Global Voices Advocacy, a network of bloggers and on-line activists fighting against censorship cites a report that said people using China Telecom have been unable to access and read their Feedburner feeds[Source]. According to Global Voices Advocacy, The Moon-Blog discovered the block:

Last July 25 2007, Sun Microsystems announced that it would start to release corporate news over the Internet [Source]. As such there will be an embargo or time delay of ten minutes in the release of the news between the company website and the news distribution service. And as the news appear on the website the RSS Feeds will then push to all those who have subscribed to the service.
The news was featured in the Financial Times – COMPANIES INTERNATIONAL: Sun to announcekey news first on the web by Richard Watersin, July 25, 2007. Excerpt or summary …read more

While bloghopping I came across a post at RSS4Lib pointing to his particular study. Now this is a must read for anyone into the study or lore of RSS. A study conducted by the The International Center for Media and the Public Agenda, which was established by the University of Maryland and the Philip Merrill College of Journalism, takes a critical look at the RSS feeds of several news media outlets. The study entitled International News and Problems with the News Media RSS Feeds ranked the rss services of each media outlet into four main criteria: (i) Reliability, (ii)Inclusivesness, (iii) …read more

The comedy site, BBSpot, published an article the other day on “RIAA Updates Mission Statement to Reflect Priorities”. It has gone from this, “Our mission is to foster a business and legal climate that supports and promotes our members’ creative and financial vitality” to “Our mission is to maximize hatred for the music industry by using creative legal and innovative technological methods which will further destroy our member’s creativity and financial vitality.”
“The RIAA was recently voted the worst company in America in a recent online poll, narrowly beating out Halliburton.” The poll was done at the Consumerist.
Now the …read more

The other day I wrote about Net Neutrality. Here is something else large telecoms are doing – they are blocking calls to teleconferences! So far it has been determined that it is Cingular/ATT, Sprint and Quest but I’m sure others will follow. Here’s what I don’t understand – the teleconference companies that are being blocked offer free teleconferencing services but the consumer still pays a normal long distance fee. So why are they doing this? They still get their outrageous long distance fees.
Michael Port at Book Yourself Solid has some thoughts on this too.
This is just …read more

NewsGator Go!, previously only available for Windows Mobile, is now available for Blackberries and Java-capable phones including models from Nokia, Motorola, and Samsung.
Now you don’t have to endure RSS withdrawl when you are on the go. Newsgator made this announcement last week but I don’t generally watch the mobile market.
Apparently other RSS/mobile solutions have been around for awhile but as far as I know, this is the first major aggregator to go mobile. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
Check this out at Newsgator’s site.

In the totally useless but cool news department, the Smiley turns 25 in September of this year. An article by Carolyn McCarthy in CNet News chronicles the life of the smiley from birth until now. Here’s part of what Carolyn has to say about it:

After all, the phenomenon is about to turn 25–a dinosaur in Web years. The origin of the ASCII smiley face is typically traced to September 1982, when Scott Fahlman, a research professor at Carnegie Mellon University’s Department of Computer Science, suggested that the :-) symbol be used in the subject line of an online …read more

Michael Arrington over at TechCrunch has some interesting statistics on customizable, Ajax-rich home pages.
The newer startups like Pageflakes and Netvibes are not included but the statistic that got me was Yahoo’s domination of this market.
Here’s Michael’s take on it:
All Yahoo has to do is remain competitive, and their massive user base will keep them at the top of the pile. Their recent enhancements are a good first step. Now they need to focus on integrating their Konfabulator desktop widget platform into My Yahoo as well – widget compatibility is an area where they are noticeably lagging Microsoft and Google.
He …read more

Today’s issue of USA Today will sport a new look. Their blog, On Deadline, reports that there will be RSS feeds on the front page. They aren’t using the term ‘RSS’ (will that confuse people?) but they are calling them ‘automated feeds’. And, according to Kinsey Wilson, executive editor of USA Today, ‘And the editors are selecting the featured feeds; readers will not be able to add their own.’
Another new feature will be a personal page. The previous link takes you to a mock-up of what the page should look like. Don’t know exactly what …read more

Anthony Dhanendran at Computeract!ve reports that Windows Messenger will deliver news. Here’s what he says:
Users of Microsoft’s instant messenger can now get news alerts from Reuters.
Windows Live Messenger now includes the ability to display the latest news headlines to users, if they sign up for the service. Users can sign up at the MSN site.
The RSS feeds include world news, entertainment, business, sports and a category of strange news from around the world. The program can be customised so it only delivers news when required by the user, who can set ‘quiet times’ when they don’t want to be …read more