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Tests at the main Olympic press center and on other connections around Beijing have shown that both journalists and regular Beijing Internet users are getting less restricted access than usual.

That’s according to the OpenNet Initiative’s assessment of online censorship after the first week of the Games.

After journalists spent a lot of energy complaining about their inability to reach many Web sites without the use of a proxy, the international and Beijing Olympic committees both seemed to respond, and many restrictions disappeared.

ONI notes that the bulk of the opening occurred for foreign-hosted Chinese-language Web sites, while “the majority of advocacy sites and politically ’sensitive’ organizations remain blocked.”

It may be nice that these sites have come available, but content is still filtered by keyword, if not encrypted during transmission, and there’s no way to know whether this increased availability of Chinese Web sites will outlast the Olympic pageantry.

Sure I read lots of technology blogs, but lately I am always hungry and more interested in food news. If you are not reading Slice and Eater, you are missing out.

Hybrid pizza-calzone

(Credit: Slice.com)

Look at that gorgeous amalgamation of pizza and calzone and tell me that Web 2.0 is more delicious. You can get it at Peppino’s in Bay Ridge Brookyn.

Find more deals, coupon codes, and bargains on CNET’s Shopper.com.

Games that once sold for $40 to $50 are now available for under $20.

The store also has less-than-$20 deals for Nintendo DS, Sony PSP, Sony PS2, and even the good old PC.

On the
PlayStation 3 front there’s Fracture for $19.82, Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga for $19.82, and Burnout Paradise for, you guessed it, $19.82.

As you might expect, these aren’t the latest and greatest titles, but they’re not all bargain-bin rejects, either. For example, you can get the
Wii versions of Lego Indiana Jones and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed for $19.82 apiece.

Sorry if this comes across as a big fat plug for Walmart, a store I know many of you dislike. If you’d rather shop elsewhere, you can find many of the same deals at GameStop–or even get them cheaper by opting for used versions.

I won’t spend $50 to $60 on a video game. Just can’t do it. Even $40 feels like too much. But $20? That definitely satisfies my cheapskate tendencies. So imagine my delight at learning that Walmart currently has nearly 1,500 video games priced at $20 or less.

(Credit:
Walmart)

Xbox 360 owners can snap up Call of Duty 2: Game of the Year Edition for $16.82, Half-Life 2 Orange Box for $19.82, and Medal of Honor: Airborne for $14.74.

Most of the titles are available online and/or in-store, and in some cases you can get free site-to-store shipping (though you’ll still have to pay sales tax).

As for why AOL did buy Bebo, the anonymous sources indicated to the Silicon Alley Insider that it might have done so to make AOL itself a more attractive buy. Jeffrey Bewkes, chief executive of AOL parent Time Warner, has said he would consider spinning off all or part of the Web 1.0 mainstay.

Executives at several key AOL divisions, including Advertising.com, the Platform-A ad network, and the Userplane chat software product, were not consulted on the acquisition, according to Blodget’s sources. “Our sources believe that Ron (Grant, chief operating officer of AOL), at least, was aware that several senior AOL managers were against the deal,” Blodget explained, “and that, as the deal progressed, these managers were intentionally kept out of the Bebo loop.”

Citing anonymous sources, editor Henry Blodget said a number of senior managers at the struggling dot-com thought–and still think–that Bebo won’t turn out to be an ad revenue treasure trove.

An AOL representative, speaking to the Silicon Alley Insider, called the prospect of sealing dissident senior management off from the deal “ludicrous.”

So why were those shadowy senior managers skeptical? Well, Blodget wrote, they had some specific qualms about Bebo’s profitability, mostly tied to the all-too-common wisdom that social networks just don’t bring home the bacon. There were also concerns that the social network’s growth wouldn’t go on much longer and that its executives would jump ship as soon as they could.

Not everyone at AOL was in favor of plunking down $850 million for social network Bebo, the Silicon Alley Insider reported Thursday.

Apple has acknowledged video problems with the latest shipment of MacBooks and MacBook Pros.

Early customers of the Penryn refresh of the Apple notebooks had complained of flickering images during a QuickTime video playback on MacBooks and MacBook Pros shipping with the latest version of
Mac OS X Leopard, according to our colleagues over at MacFixIt. Several discussion threads have sprung up over on Apple’s user forums, and some customers report that Apple has now acknowledged the problem and is working on a fix.

MacFixIt reports that fix should come with Mac OS X 10.5.3, currently in the works. AppleInsider has reported that Apple has been a little more active than usual with the release of new builds of 10.5.3 to developers, suggesting that the next version might arrive sooner rather than later. Mac OS X 10.5.2 shipped in February.

I just returned from a trip to Shanghai, and in case you didn’t know anyway, here’s my No. 1 insight: China scales.

What’s also remarkable (and different from the Western social networks) is QQ’s monetization. Facebook posted revenue of $150 million for 2007 (and according to Plus8star a loss of $50 million); MySpace.com (purchased by News Corp. for $560 million) is projected to generate $750 million in revenue this year; and Bebo (purchased by AOL for $850 million) had revenue of just $20 million in 2007. While QQ reported revenue of $523 million and an astonishing operating profit of $224 million in 2007. The revenue distribution is unusual, too: 60 percent of the revenue came from services like games, an additional 21 percent from mobile services like ringtones, and only 13 percent from online advertising.

Do added value services trump ad based revenue models?

(Credit: QQ)

Let’s take QQ.com as an example, the leading Chinese online social network. The site is reported to have more than 300 million active accounts. That is eight times the member base of Facebook–and it’s the same size as the U.S. population.

(Credit:
CNET)

Wrong! I’ve already spoken about the 16:9 revolution that’s sweeping this nation faster than Swine Flu hysteria and this is where it has its biggest impact, in the 21.5-inch to 22-inch category.

For many, this increased resolution over larger monitors is reason enough to get excited, but check out our full reviews of two 21.5-inch monitors, the Dell SX2210 and the Lenovo L215p to see if anything else is worth getting excited over.

With a 16:9, 21.5-inch monitor you get a native resolution of 1,920×1,080 pixels, whereas with a 16:10, 22-inch monitor with a 1,680×1,050-pixel resolution, you have 16 percent less actual usable pixels.

The Lenovo L215p laughs at your 22-incher’s resolution.

Right now, many of you are reading this on a 22-inch monitor at a 1,680×1,050-pixel native resolution and you’re probably thinking, “Man, this is it. I mean sure, it’s not as big as some of my friend’s monitors, but hey, 1,680×1,050 on a 22-inch screen ain’t bad. Right?”

IE 8 beta gives other browsers a run for their money

Internet Explorer 8 screen shots

Robert Vamosi and I discuss the new features and browsing capabilities of Microsoft’s
Internet Explorer 8 and how it stacks up with other browsers. The new release brings IE up to par with
Firefox,
Safari, and Opera, and even pushes Microsoft a little ahead of the competition in a few areas.

Internet Explorer 8 gets a massive makeover

See also:

Internet Explorer 8 beta 2 review

Solayzme’s process differs from most algae farming in that the microalgae is grown without sunlight in a setting more akin to a brewery than an open pond.

Solazyme’s certification is a milestone in algae-based fuels, one of the hottest areas of biofuels.

The fuel is chemically the same as petroleum-derived diesel, Solazyme said, so it can be distributed using the existing infrastructure. But it burns cleaner than petroleum-derived diesel, with fewer particulates and sulfur levels.

Here is algae being grown in dishes at Solazyme's labs. The oil produced by the algae can be used for fuels, chemical, or food oils.

Solazyme, a South San Francisco, Calif.-based company that creates synthetic biological products, said Wednesday that its microalgae-derived fuel is the first renewable diesel to meet the American Society for Testing and Materials’ D-975 specifications.

A 100 percent blend of Solazyme’s diesel has been road-tested in a 2005 Jeep Liberty with a diesel engine, the company said in a statement.

In its fermentation process, the company puts large amounts of algae into a vat, mixes in sugar, and then controls the pressure and other environmental factors inside the vat to induce the algae to metabolize the sugar into oil.

But, in general, the technology is still experimental and algae-based diesel has not been produced at commercial scale.

(Credit:
Solazyme)

Algae as a feedstock is more desirable than soy because it is not a food crop, yields more oil, and can grow on marginal land.

Tiny algae is ready for some long-haul trucking.

The process can be used to make oils and chemicals from other forms of biomass, including wood chips, corn stover, and switchgrass.

So, the next time you read a report, blog entry, or article, consider who pays the writer (including when reading this blog).

The answer is, “No.” Most people don’t check. They see the headline, look at the pretty charts, and forget about the fine print.

CIO.com raises an important issue about the integrity of research being done by industry analysts. Namely, if a sponsor pays for the research, do they get favorable treatment in that research?

But do you ever wonder about the research’s integrity? Do you care enough to go to the next page of that document or website and see just who was so interested in this topic or trend that they shelled out big bucks to enable this research project to take place?

I’m not suggesting that the research is corrupted. I’m just suggesting that it’s hard to remove the taint of sponsored research. Just take a look at Gartner’s “Hype Cycle” on open source, which is woefully inaccurate, probably in part because Gartner gets its information from the vendors who sponsor its research, not the customers who are buying into open source in droves.

commentary

Analysts, to a person, will scream “No!” they’re not biased by the money. But it’s human nature to be influenced by a paycheck. Very few people/analysts have the clout of Walt Mossberg to be able to nakedly diss a product or company.

But I’m an industry participant that makes my money selling services around open-source software. I don’t have to pretend to be neutral.

Some of us have the luxury of being able to get paid in accordance with our ideals. I have exactly zero problem advocating the adoption of open source, because I see it benefit customers on a daily basis, and because it jibes with my personal, moral philosophy.

For those who don’t have this luxury, I feel for you. But try to avoid the sponsorship, all the same.