
Google’s decision to cease its operation in China is edging closer to reality after months of negotiations. China Business News reports that Google plans to leave China on April 10.
The report cites an unidentified Google China employee, but this information has not been confirmed by Google. Allegedly, Google gave its China employees the option of moving to the company’s U.S. headquarters or working for its Asia-Pacific operations.
If this is true, it once again raises the question of what, exactly, is Google pulling out from China: its entire operations, or just the search engine, which they’ve declined to censor? The latter now seems more likely.
In any case, if Google does pull out, it may be a long, long time before they return. According to Peter Lui, who was formerly Google’ss financial controller for the Asia Pacific region, said that Google’s public announcement to leave had “burnt bridges and they’ve burnt the Google brand in China. There is no way Google can ever come back.”
Tags: censorship, china, Google
I’ve been waiting for this. Finally a slick and easy way to find all your iTunes music on Spotify.
The App is called Unify, looks like your standard slick Apple app but in fact it’s built on Adobe AIR. Don’t let that put you off, installation is a breeze and once you’ve got the app open, it’s a matter of seconds before you’ve selected the playlist you’re wanting to “import” into Spotify and Unify is doing the dirty work, elegantly.
Once it’s done tracking down all the songs in that playlist on Spotify, select all and drag them over to your favorite Spotify playlist

If you’d rather transfer specific albums or tracks, rather than playlists, not a problem. You’ll notice a nice little orange album icon. This area displays all the albums your iTunes Library. Just drag them over to Spotify the same as you do with tracks.
Now, don’t expect to find every track in your iTunes library on Spotify. Spotify is very good and you’d be hard pressed to not find a song, but clearly it doesn’t have everything. Your personal rendition of No Woman No Cry will not be on there.
Now how much does this all cost? Free for 5 tracks from each playlists, but for an unlimited number of tracks, you’ll set yourself back only £1.99 (approx $3 US), peanuts really for the availability of your favorite music everywhere.
Grab the app here, watch a demo video below.
Original title and link for this post: Finally. Drag and Drop Your Music From iTunes to Spotify with Unify.
Op 17 maart kondigde YouTube een nieuwe mijlpaal aan. In 1 minuut tijd wordt er 24 uur aan videomateriaal op de servers van YouTube neergezet. Een dag uit het leven van Jack Bauer dus, zoals ze zelf zo trots aankondigen. Lees meer
Another gem from the USPTO has been uncovered by he team at Patently Apple. This time it appears Apple are working on a social networking app called iGroups.
The app is likely to tie in with your iPhone and MobileMe and will make it possible for groups of users to share information around events. Events could include concerts, tradeshows, business meetings, weddings, rallies etc..
According to the patent, the app will be able to detect users location and group them according to their GPS co-ordinates.
Of course, this is likely to compete head on with other geo-location apps like Gowalla and Foursquare, as well as New York based Hot Potato who focus exclusively on discussion around live events.
More details to come, bear with us.
Original title and link for this post: Apple’s Working on a New Social Location App Called iGroups

As you'll recall, the Seattle P-I was forced to shut down its print edition last year after all other attempts to stop the bleeding failed. In doing so, it fired 88% of its newsroom, shrinking from 165 to 20.
Good news, though. A year later, seattlepi.com is going strong, with 40 million pageviews a month. We doubt it's profitable yet (20 newsroom folks probably means an overall staff of at least 40), but it's certainly closer.
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Are your parents on Facebook? Do you wish they weren’t? Well, it looks like you’re not alone.
We already knew that Facebook users are getting older. You can’t have 400+ million users without a few (million) adults, after all. So many parents are now joining the world’s largest social network that Facebook added a section where you could declare your family affiliations.
Not everyone’s a fan though, and college kids who used to post countless pictures of their passed out bodies strewn across the dorm floor now have worry about mom posting that one picture of you in tights on your Facebook wall.
Well, the good people over at Back of the Class feel your pain, and thus have created a hair metal anthem dedicated to your woes: “My Mom’s on Facebook.” It’s dedicated to all of those things you just wish your mom wouldn’t say on your Facebook wall.
While the lyrics and instrumentals may not be worthy of Led Zeppelin, their metal rocking ways have quicly gone viral, amassing over 125,000 views in a single day. Watch and listen, and you’ll see why:
Tags: facebook, viral, viral video, youtube