China blocks access to LinkedIn

(Fast Company) -- Users in China are reporting that access to LinkedIn has been blocked throughout the country. By all indications, it seems that the popular career networking site has run afoul of the country's infamous Great Firewall.
According to LinkedIn's Hani Durzy, the company is aware of a blockage in China and is "currently in the process of investigating the situation further."
The shutdown follows days of calls for a "Jasmine Revolution" in China, on the model of the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions. Access to Twitter and Facebook has been blocked throughout China for some time; Chinese internet users seeking to use Twitter have been forced to access the site through difficult-to-use Virtual Private Networks (VPNs).
However, Chinese dissidents have another way of accessing Twitter... LinkedIn.
Use of LinkedIn, which is fully integrated with Twitter, was by far the easiest way to access Twitter in China. Messages can be easily read and posted through Twitter via LinkedIn.

One Chinese Twitter user who accesses both Twitter and LinkedIn through a proxy posted photos to Twitpic that seem to confirm a Chinese LinkedIn outage.
Adding credence to the LinkedIn-shutdown-to-block-Twitter strategy is the news that the Chinese government has started censoring the name of U.S. Ambassador Jon Huntsman from search results on the wildly popular homegrown Twitter/Tumblr clones Sina Weibo/QQ Weibo. Weibo means "microblog" in Chinese.
Huntsman faces widespread charges in China of support for the Jasmine Revolution after a citizen journalist spotted him watching a pro-democracy protest from within a crowd this past Sunday. Like any good American abroad, Huntsman was standing outside a McDonald's.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Chinese dissidents have been disseminating calls to protest and organizing events via LinkedIn. Reuters notes that the LinkedIn outagecould hurt the firm's chances at an IPO:
"If the disruption for LinkedIn is permanent in China, it could hurt the company's prospects at an IPO as a ban would exclude the company from the world's largest Internet market--about 450 million users and growing."
"It certainly would be a negative in terms of the company's future growth and profitability," said Jay Ritter, a professor of finance at the University of Florida.
"This is something where investors would take it into account and be willing to pay a little lower price per share." Luckily for LinkedIn, China's Internet censors are notoriously fickle: Sites blip on and off the Great Firewall frequently, with no prior warning. Related: Fast Company's Anya Kamenetz recently interviewed LinkedIn CEO Reid Hoffman. Read more about the social networking site as part of our Most Innovative Companies of 2011 project.
Related: Fast Company's Anya Kamenetz recently interviewed LinkedIn CEO Reid Hoffman. Read more about the social networking site as part of our Most Innovative Companies of 2011 project.

Apple releases new MacBook Pro lineup

The new lineup of MacBook Pro notebook computers, Apple Inc features new processors by Intel and graphics chips made by Advanced Micro Devices.

The new MacBook Pros will be powered by Intel Corp s latest dual-core and quad-core chips which includes integrated graphics processing. More expensive versions of the MacBook Pro also include graphics chips from Advanced Micro Devices for added performance unlike the previous versions of MacBook Pro which used graphics processors made by Nvidia.

Apple s trend-setting personal computers are a high-profile battleground for chipmakers Intel, AMD and Nvidia. Intel supplied the MacBook Pro with a faster, compact input/output technology called Thunderbolt, which supports high-resolution displays and devices through a single port.

The price of a 13-inch MacBook Pro, with a full-size keyboard, seven-hour battery life and an aluminum casing, will start at US$1,199. Whereas the 15-inch MacBook starts at US$1,799 and the 17-inch is priced at US$2,499.

News of AMD s presence in the new MacBook Pros helped boost its stock 5.5 percent to $9.02. Intel s stock rose 0.14 percent to $21.17 and Nvidia s shares were up 1.13 percent at $22.36 following a 13 percent sell-off over the past two days.

Facebook comes to the Nokia E71 & Nokia E72

The Nokia E71 and Nokia E72 now has a Facebook application, available right at the Ovi Store.


The application is pretty nifty, and lets you use all the basic features of Facebook.



There are still a couple things missing like the Facebook “like” feature, etc but hey atleast there’s finally an official app now.



It’s basically a non-touch version of the S60v5 Touch app.



To download the app, go on over to the Nokia Ovi Store on your Nokia E71 or Nokia E72 and search for “Facebook” to find the application.



No doubt more S60v3 devices will get the application soon.

Facebook Allows Users to Upgrade to the New Messages Product, Why You Should

Some users are seeing a prompt when they visit their Facebook Messages inbox allowing them to upgrade to the New Messages product launched in closed beta in November. The product automatically filters non-essential communications into an Other folder, allowing the main inbox to show only important messages. It also routes sent messages to whichever device or interface Facebook deems is the most convenient for the recipient, whether that’s Chat, Messages, SMS, or email. While initially only available to press and an early tester-base, it appears all users will soon be able to upgrade to New Messages.

At the product’s launch event, CEO Mark Zuckerberg explained that New Messages was built to facilitate modern communication which is simple, immediate, lightweight, and personal like SMS and instant messaging, opposed to more formal, asynchronous email. Though users get an @facebook.com email address, Facebook doesn’t expect users to shift things like payment receipts and newsletters there. Instead, the product reduces noise, eases cross-interface conversation, and creates a more comprehensive record of the communication users already perform. Users who don’t see the prompt to upgrade on their inbox can visit the New Messages about page to request an invitation. We expect a full rollout to occur in the next month or so, similar to how the profile redesign is now being pushed to all users.

The best part about New Messages is how it brings Chat into threaded, searchable conversation history. If someone sends you Message, but you’re online, you’ll see it as a Chat. If you send them back a Chat and they’ve already logged off, it will be routed to their New Messages inbox, and shown in the same thread as your previous Chat. This means you don’t have to worry about conversations breaking down because one person changed the interface through which they were communicating. Or if you accidentally close your last Facebook web interface window or head out the door, you’ll still be able to access those Chats from your phone in the form of Messages.

This system is similar to the interplay of Gchat and Gmail, and its adoption could pull users away from Google who use that company’s product for their reliability of delivery. The New Messages product also separates conversations by people rather than by interface, between which the lines are blurring as users increasingly use Chat, email, and Facebook Messages from their mobile device as well as the web. Other useful features of New Messages include forwarding and attachment support, and a one-click “Mark as Read/Unread” option.

The main problem with New Messages at present is the filtering of conversations. Event, Page, and Group updates are usually filtered properly into the Other inbox, leaving a high-signal, low-noise main inbox of one-to-one messages. However, Messages, including time-sensitive businesses communications, from people who aren’t your friend and don’t have mutual friends are filtered into the Other inbox as well. Without the red notification counter on your home page or gray counters on your Messages sidebar navigation link, it’s easy to forget that important Messages may be being filtered out.

For instance, I didn’t check my Other inbox for a few weeks and had multiple Messages from people who wanted to show me their soon-to-launch products. When Facebook sought to inform users of the five-day window to give feedback on proposed changes to its privacy terms via the Facebook Site Governance Page, that Message was also filtered out. Some users prefer to Message someone they’ve met before adding them as a friend, but these personal, social, one-to-one Messages might not reach their recipients until much later. Users can move a conversation between inboxes once it has started, but Facebook could address part of the problem by allowing users to opt to have the first Message from someone they aren’t connected to routed to their main inbox.

Overall, Messages will help most Facebook users. It anticipates the shift to using multiple devices and interfaces to conduct a single conversation. It also declutters the inbox by removing spammy and low-value Page and Event updates. Professionals who are frequently contacted by those they aren’t connected to will need to pay attention to their Other inbox. But for most, we advise upgrading or requesting an invitation to New Messages because it improves one of the core uses of Facebook — instant communication with friends.

TAT BlackBerry PlayBook apps blow us away

An Introduction to the Windows Phone 7 Development Platform

On Sep 16th 2010, Microsoft made available the RTW (Released to Web) version of the development platform for Windows Phone 7. In some ways, for many of you, parts of this will be a re-introduction to technologies you already know or with which you have become familiar. This is great news because it means you can become productive very quickly, and that’s no mistake. If you are wondering whether this platform is going to be a success then consider that there are millions of developers out there with existing skills which they can already leverage to build applications for Windows Phone 7. Even for those who have never used tools like Visual Studio before, the barrier for entry is low because the basic toolset has been made available completely free of charge!

Exciting news about Ovi Chat

Nokia is pleased to announce that the updated Ovi Chat powered by Yahoo! service has been released! What does this mean for you? You can now invite your Yahoo! Messenger friends and Ovi Chat friends into your friend list, giving you access to an even larger community for chatting.

If you have an Ovi Chat account but cannot log in, visit https://t.ovi.com from your phone or computer to accept the additional Ovi Mail and Ovi Chat powered by Yahoo! Terms and Privacy Policy. Once you have done this, you will be able to log in to your Chat account.

If you do not see some of your friends in your friend list, they might not have accepted the additional Terms and Privacy Policy. Please encourage them to go to https://t.ovi.com so they can join you on Ovi Chat and share in the updated experience.

We will have more exciting updates to share about Ovi Chat in the coming weeks. Until then, keep chatting with Ovi Chat!