Rev2.org

Yesterday afternoon, Google announced on their blog that they are re-thinking their entire approach and operations in China.  Why?  Because, Google says, the attack on their infrastructure, which originated in China, was not just a group of hackers trying to wreak havoc.  It was, they assert, not just on Google, but on several other large Internet businesses that also operate in China.  Most tellingly, the target of the attacks appeared to be email services, specifically the accounts of human rights activists.

That last part is what has turned this from a simple private sector security matter into a full blow diplomatic affair.  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton penned a very short response on her blog asking the Chinese government for an explanation.  In short, this is not ordinary international affair.

Google’s conclusion is the most startling of all: they may pull operations out of China altogether.  The response is not some knee-jerk reaction to the attacks either, but comes in a measured, steady, and almost regretful tone in the Google blog entry.  The Wall Street Journal reports that this would not only be a rare repudiation by a western company, but it would be coming from one that operates as the largest Internet player in the world’s largest Internet market.  It’s not likely that the Chinese government would take such a threat lightly.

The interesting note here, however, is that while Google definitely benefits from operating in China, the cyber giant doesn’t necessarily need that market to continue in prosperity, whereas the Chinese Internet would take a huge blow were Google to withdraw from it.

In fact James Fallows at The Atlantic sums it up well with his remarks, coming from the perspective of someone who knows the Chinese tech market intimately.  The most significant aspect of all of this is not necessarily Google’s response, but will be based on the Chinese response to Google.  That response will shape Chinese relations with the rest of the world, especially the west, significantly and for some time.

We live in interesting times, indeed, and this is definitely something that will be filling the news for the coming weeks as the story unfolds.

An industry rumor and a change in an Apple subsidiary are more signs that the buzz about Apple working on a new tablet computer is true.  In fact, one of them is a good sign that the tablet will be here sooner rather than later.

Sylvie Barak at TD Daily says that the rumor on the floor of the Consumer Electronics Show was that Apple has been quietly sucking up the available supply of 10-inch touch screens in both LCD and OLED.  An anonymous source at the CES event told Barak that the near-future 10-inch screens have all been pre-ordered by Apple and Asian suppliers have nothing for anyone else.

Of course, if Apple has really bought up all of the LCD and OLED screens available, it would mean they plan to sell a lot of tablets.  On the order of four million or more per year, to be precise.

Another angle comes from MacRumors.com, which points out that Fingerworks, a company Apple bought up about five years ago, only just now removed the content from their website regarding gesture-based interfaces and multi-touch keyboard technologies.  That could be another sign that the tablet is on its way, integrating these technologies in its design.

That is confirmed with more information from Richi Jennings at Computerworld, who puts together a nice roundup of the rumors and innuendo surrounding the Fingerworks-Apple and tablet PC tie-ins.

While all of these are just more pieces to the puzzle of rumors that surround Apple’s (possible) plans for a tablet computer, everything known so far seems to point towards a likely announcement in the next month.  If Apple is already purchasing hardware for the tablets, they’ll be coming sooner rather than later, of course.  A timely announcement towards the end of this first quarter would be a great stock booster for the tech giant as well.

The founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, went on stage Saturday, joining TechCrunch founder Michale Arrington at the Crunchies.  Zuckerberg talked about Facebook, the social media revolution, and privacy.  He flatly stated that the age of privacy is over now and if he were to start Facebook as a new startup today, he would make user information public from the get-go.

Explosive words, for sure, and his explanations of why this is are being analyzed and re-analyzed by websites everywhere.  Why?  Well, Facebook is the largest social networking venue on the planet and their view of privacy is likely to become the view of all others as well.

Arrington asked Zuckerberg where privacy is going on Facebook and around the Web.  In response, the Facebook founder spent about a minute explaining that blogging and similar endeavors have taken off in the past five or six years and with it, more and more people are putting themselves out there, on the Internet, sharing their personal information.

In short, Zuckerberg believes that the social norm has evolved to the point where people are now much more comfortable sharing themselves with total strangers online.  He then tried to spin what Facebook did with their privacy settings changes as being “revolutionary” as a “lot of companies wouldn’t” do what they did.

The Guardian points out that this is a far cry from what Zuckerberg has promoted for the past few years, only recently changing from “privacy first” to “publicity first.”

Chris Matyszczyk at CNET puts it more bluntly, stating that Facebook employees will all leave the company one day for a career in politics, so good are they are spinning the lies.

I’m with Chris on this one.  When Facebook first announced the privacy changes, immediate controversy rose.  When we covered that here at Rev2, we also saw that the changes were all benevolent, as FB might have wanted us to believe.  They were commercially-driven, profit decisions instead.

So this latest spin, as Chris puts it, is definitely just that.  More spin.  Facebook, of course, is a private enterprise and, as such, exists to make a profit.  But why are they so adamant about pretending that this was not the primary reason for their changes?  Wouldn’t we all have more respect for them if they just came clean?

Google has officially released the much-anticipated “Near Me Now” search option they debuted in December at the Computer History Museum.  A post by John Eric Hoffman and Jussi Myllymaki on the Google Mobile Blog officially launched the new option.

The option is for mobile search and functions on both the iPhone and the Android platforms.  Going to Google.com on either of these devices will show a tiny “Near Me Now” option underneath the search box.  This ads your current geo-location to your search query, making finding things nearby much easier.

So rather than Google Mapping your location and trying to figure out where you’re supposed to be going, for instance, you could instead just put in the name of the location (“PizzaRulesThePlanet Pizzaria”) and use the Near Me Now option to find it.  More useful, it can help you find items near you that you might not have thought of when planning your route to start with or a quick way to find lunch or a coffee while in a strange city or location.

The uses are pretty limitless and it’s very cool that these geo-location apps are becoming more and more prevalent.   A couple of days ago, we told you about Foursquare going global, which is another step in the emerging geo-loc phenom.

The new Google function works only in the US, but plans for European and Asian releases are forthcoming.  As Mashable’s Jennifer Van Grove points out, this may be a part of a small war happening between geo-location platforms, though I would think that if that were the case, Google would be more actively working towards replacement of Foursquare, though this new add-on may be a Yelp-killer.

Here’s video from Google on how Near Me Now works:

The story broke at Gawker.com with comments on the “Brad Pitt of the blogosphere” (referring to Mashable’s founder, Pete Cashmore).  Beyond that gimmickry, though, is some real meat.  Mashable beat out TechCrunch last year as the most popular tech blog on the Internet, which means they’re apparently the hottest property to be snatched up by content-hungry buyers like AOL.

For their part, AOL just left Time Warner and their plans are to focus on content and SEO.  That, of course, is something Mashable appears very good at – not to mention social networking.

The story was confirmed by Robert Scoble in a tweet saying that the deal is confirmed and Mashable is being sold.  Later, he rescinded that and said that it might be “over ad revenues,” instead.  Which some think is just CYA talk since he probably doesn’t know as much as he’d like people to think.

AOL and Mashable, for their parts, are keeping quiet about the whole thing and aren’t saying more thnan “no comment.”  AOL has been, however, moving towards a next-generation media company kind of image, currently running about 80 independent blogs and growing.  Those blogs, however, are entirely dependent on AOL itself for traffic, which means they aren’t reaching the ‘Net’s largest audiences: Google searchers and social media activists.

For that, they’ll need someone to come into the fold who is doing those things.  Mashable fits that bill perfectly.

To wrap up the saga, Chris Crum at WebProNews states the burning question: if Mashable is purchased by AOL, what will happen to its content, current high standing, and Web reader’s confidence in the blog?

A lot of buzz suddenly hit when CNET published a story announcing that Foursquare, the popular geo-location social network, had changed its user settings page to an open-entry text box for home location, replacing the previous drop-down pick-and-choose from a short list of cities.

This probably doesn’t seem like much to most people, but it’s actually a pretty big deal.  One of the limitations that the new startups in the newly-emerging geo-location (or “geo-loc” or “geo-based”) social networks have faced is that their coverage was of a relatively small area.  Usually limited by either the network’s own self-imposed boundaries (as with Tri-Out), or because of software or iPhone/Android network limits, which was the case with Foursquare.

Although, as Mashable points out, this is a “soft launch” of the new location choice, it will be rolling out to all Foursqaure users in the near future.  Foursquare is now available on nearly all smart phone platforms, including the big two: iPhone and Android.  Now that it’s also global, with users everywhere from Miami to Seattle (and now Yuma to Garyton) having access in their own home town, it will become even more popular.

In addition to the update to the location a user can set as their “home” port, friends lists on Foursquare are also changing.  Users are no longer limited to friends only in their area (eg: the same “city”).  They can now have friends world-wide.  This is a big boon to travelers and the like and I foresee a lot of things changing in how people are using the app.

For instance, this opens up the possibility of not only meeting up with friends in disparate cities on a whim while traveling (5 hour layover in Boston?  No prob, see who’s in the area and ask them to lunch), but also the possibility of virtual meetups as well.  Better yet, it also opens up your friend network to the full 6-degrees, giving you the opportunity to find friends in your area who you wouldn’t have known about because your common acquaintance is 2,000 miles away on the other side of the map.

This is at once an obvious upgrade for Foursquare and at the same time it might be one of the most exciting and enabling.  It’s possible it will be what makes the startup geo-loc app the new Twitter, knocking out closest competitor Gowalla.