The killing of a Chinese blogger has sparked outrage in China, with thousands expressing outrage in Chinese Internet chat rooms, often the only outlet for public criticism of the government.

The incident has also alarmed advocates of press freedom, who say municipal authorities had no right to attack a man for simply filming them.

Police have detained 24 municipal inspectors and are investigating more than 100 in the death of Wei Wenhua, a 41-year-old construction company executive, Xinhua reported on Friday.

The swift action by officials reflects concerns that the incident could spark larger protests against authorities, whose heavy-handed approach often arouses resentment.

This is the type of disgraceful behaviour should encourage Google to do what’s right. That is, stop supporting the Chinese Government by filtering search results based on what it deems appropriate for its people. So, Google is in no way ‘evil’?

Source CNN via TechCrunch, thanks to Jeremiah Owyang via Twitter.

It wasn’t that long ago when I took part in a W3C Advisor Committee debate regarding the use of WWW in Web site addresses.

During our debate, Tim Berners-Lee (inventor of the Web) made a brilliant observation which was totally marketing driven and not at all technical.

Tim Berners-Lee’s response

People are used to seeing WWW on business cards so it’s expected.

Technically, we don’t need the WWW in our Web addresses. However, many Web masters are failing to park their domains properly. Could you be turning away potential visitors?

Does your Web site work when you remove WWW from the address?

Aidan explains how to ensure your site works with and without WWW.

When I received an email entitled ’2008 Predictions’ from a contributor to the Mobile Monday London forum, I didn’t for a second think about predictions. All I could think about was ‘huh, can we just fix some of the crap we’ve got first’.

I’m a believer in looking forward and I’d like to think I’ve got good insight to the future of mobile technology and trends, so my thoughts and conversations are nine times out of ten, positive and forward thinking. However, the mobile industry is the least collaborative of all industries so before we can push forward, we need each stake holder to work together to enable interoperability.

I was reminded of the email thread when I read a note by Alexia Golez on Facebook. So, rather that write my predictions for the mobile industry, I’ve decided to paste my email below for your review.

Alexia’s note on Facebook

Time and time again, I read blogs and hear the tech industry talk up how convergence is the name of the game and that every gadget we will own in the future will do a hundred things. Why can’t we stop, take a breath and say, “I don’t want a hundred poorly-sketched features, I want ten well-thought out tasks that I can execute on”? Is it greed, advertising, company PR?

I just want a gadget that does things right. A phone with decent web browsing. Bin the camera. Go back to basics Gadget Industry.

My response on the Mobile Monday London forum

Could we start with some basics. For example, it would be nice if my mother could send me a picture message of her new puppy. She’s on Vodafone Ireland. I’m on O2 UK. Heaven forbid should I be able to view it on my phone. I’d almost be happy with an SMS containing a link to a site which contains the picture.

I received a link as predicted but when I visited the site it didn’t recognise my UK number. So, I didn’t get to see any fluffy pictures of her puppy – I was devastated as you can imagine.

Vodafone Ireland, please take note as I’m very confident it’s not a problem on the O2 network. At least print the picture and send it in the post.

MMS was 5 years old last year and we still can’t get the basics right.

Click here to leave a comment on Alexia’s Facebook note.

My mobile orientated posts appear to attract the most comments, so feel free to disagree with me.

Technorati has fixed a bug which will impact the ranking of the top 100 blogs. This means it’s likely to impact the ranking of your blog if you have one.

According to Technorati

Over the holiday break we found and fixed a bug that inflated authority counts for certain blogs. The blogs affected were those on domains that also have linked-to sub-domains. The links to the sub-domains were erroneously counting toward the blog authority of the blog on the parent domain. Since Technorati Authority is a calculation of how much attention is being paid to a blog and the posts beneath it, we do not include sub-domains. Sub-domains are treated as separate entitities and often are references to tools, utilities, features, and other non-blog resources.

Examples:

http://chinese.engadget.com

http://desktops.engadget.com

http://hdtv.engadget.com

http://storage.engadget.com

Well, we fixed the bug yesterday. The impact of this change is mostly limited to the Top 100 and the overwhelming majority of the blogosphere is unaffected. Thanks for bearing with us while the Top 100 experiences some turbulence.

We’re always thinking about how to improve and develop new meaningful metrics for the blogosphere and we welcome your feedback on these issues.

I’ve never had faith in Technorati. I’ve certainly never paid any attention to its ranking. That’s not to say that the top 100 don’t deserve to be there. They probably do.

Take Segala’s blog for example (trust me, I don’t keep an eye on figures, I don’t even know how many RSS subscribers we have). Our entire Web site, including this blog, is based on WordPress. When a blogger references me, or a post that I’ve managed to slapped together, they tend to link to Segala.com, my profile page, or this blog. Technorati sees these as three separate ‘blogs’ and as such, doesn’t rank ‘the blog’ properly.

I don’t really care much for rating a blog based on inbound links alone anyway. Different types of blogs attract different types of people. For example, a blog which attracts a large non-blogging audience, will not rank as highly as a blog which attracts an early adopter type audience, of which many blog and link back.

Shouldn’t Technorati be intelligent enough to recognise everything after segala.com/ as one blog? I’m not entirely sure they’ve fixed a bug as many blog networks will have entirely different blogs on subdomains. One of the main benefits of a subdomain is to create separate sites.

Read what TechCrunch has to say.

Technorati blog.

Thanks to Chris Brogan for the link via Twitter.

I published a post before Christmas expressing my interest to setup a new Industry Association to represent the interests of the digital sector in Ireland.

I was going to propose we call the Association ‘Irish Digital Media Association’ (IDMA). But I quickly realised it wouldn’t work for a very simple, non-technical reason. The acronym would conflict with the Irish Direct Marketing Association (IDMA). So, I’d like to propose the name ‘Irish Interactive Media Association’ (IIMA), similar to the British Interactive Media Association.

I need to reiterate that it’s not my intention to duplicate the efforts of other associations. I want to fill a void without overcharging for it. For example, mobile as a digital medium has little to no representation in Ireland, so this association would cover mobile.

I’d like to thank Blacknight for its sponsorship, with a special thanks to Michele for offering his support.

Venue Jaipur, 1 South Great George’s St, Dublin 2.
Date 29th January 2008
Time 7pm

The good news is that everyone who expressed their interest can come. There’s no reason to ‘invite’ specific people. The not-so good news is that we don’t have any representation from the big agencies or mobile companies. Truth be told, I never mentioned mobile until now, so perhaps that’s my fault for not providing examples of what the association could cover.

Now that we have a confirmed date, please RSVP your place now, even if you previously expressed an interest. I’m sure we can accommodate everyone, but because I’m putting out another call to action, it’s possible we might attract more people. So, the first 33 people to RSVP get in.

This invitation is open to other associations too, as they can add great value to the discussion – we could probably squeeze a few more around the table. I’ll publish an agenda closer to the date.

Below is some of the stuff I published on my initial post.

If you’re interested in helping me improve the ecosystem for the Digital Industry in Ireland, please join me for dinner in January. This is not just about having a conversation over dinner, people will need to contribute in some way, even if only to help open doors.

I intend to setup a new non-profit independent association. I will propose 12 Executive Directors, 1 Chair and up to 5 Advisors. I will not automatically qualify for any of the seats. Everything will be open and transparent. I will of course, put myself forward for the position as Chair, so if you like what I do for BIMA then you’ll give me your vote

The invitation is open to Academia, Government, Investors, Lawyers, Entrepreneurs, Corporations such as Microsoft, Adobe and Google, and anyone else with a vested interest in helping improve the system. This invitation is only extended to Enterprise Ireland if its board commits to taking away action items.

Aido and I will be hitting Cork on Monday 7th January at around 6pm. Please let us know if you’d like to meet up for dinner. Feel free to leave suggestions for a venue.

Thanks to Damien for suggesting the Clarion hotel and thanks to Pat for booking it (remember Pat, 20 quid budget).

We’ll be in Dublin on Tuesday 8th of January and you can probably guess where we’re going to eat that evening. You got it, Jaipur. So, if you’d like to hang out and watch me spill curry all over myself then drop a comment. Say 7pm in town.

After the heated discussion about Facebook dumping Robert Scoble after he tried to harvest his contacts using a script, I thought it was time for some light hearted stuff. Check out the video

Thanks to Rebecca Caroe for the link.