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Shortly after christmas, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof opened an account on Sina Weibo, a Chinese microblog service that, like Twitter, allows users to share short messages of up to 140 characters. Kristof began testing what topics would be censored. He found out quickly. One of his first messages was "Can we talk about Falun Gong?" — a reference to the spiritual movement banned by Beijing. Within an hour of his first post, Kristof's account was canceled.
At first glance it would seem that China's new Internet is a lot like its old Internet. Overseas sites that are deemed sensitive — including YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, among thousands of others — are blocked, part of a network of control sometimes called the Great Firewall of China. Inside the wall, Chinese search engines won't, for example, link to content to do with the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown, Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo or Tibetan independence; also, domestic Internet companies are required to delete any material that the authorities find objectionable. Even as China's Netizens have rushed to embrace Web 2.0, an Internet in which users are more closely and quickly linked by social-networking services, microblogs and free video hosting, those rules have still applied. ...
The Grammys were so great this year, weren't they? So many amazing performances! My favourites were the two Rihanna performances with Drake/Eminem, Skylar Grey & Dr. Dre, the Aretha Franklin tribute, Janelle Monae, B.O.B. & Bruno Mars and I've heard Muse were very good, but I haven't watched their performance yet. What are yours?
For now let's forget about the Grammys and focus on the BRIT awards! They'll be awarded tonight and there'll be some awesome performances by Take That, Plan B, Rihanna,Tinie Tempah, Mumford & Sons, Adele, Cee Lo Green and Arcade Fire.
Today Florence & The Machine released some tour dates in the US via Facebook. On June 26 and June 29, she'll join U2 in East Lansing, Michigan and Miami, Florida. The other dates are solo shows.
Berkeley - June 12
Where: Greek Theatre
When: Sunday, June 12 from 7:00 pm to 10:00 pm
LA - June 13
Where: Greek Theatre L.A.
When: Monday, June 13 from 8:00 pm to 11:00 pm...
Skylar Grey, who is nominated for the Grammy this year in 5 categories, wrote a blog for Grammy.com, in which she describes how it feels to be a first-time Grammy nominee. Fort Minor fans know that Skylar Grey is none other than Holly Brook who was featured on Fort Minor's hit single "Where'd you go" (scroll down to watch a performance of the song). Apparently Holly/Skylar decided to change her name before she started to work on world domination by writing hits like "Love the way you lie" (Eminem & Rihanna) and "I'm coming home" (Diddy Dirty Money).
The Recording Academy asked this year's first-time GRAMMY nominees to collect their thoughts and share what it feels like to be nominated for a GRAMMY. Tune in to the 53rd Annual GRAMMY Awards on Sunday, Feb. 13 on the CBS Television Network from 8–11:30 p.m. (ET/PT)....
When the Swedish pop ingenue Lykke Li first arrived in 2007 at all of 21, she was an adorable little thing, singing and shimmying with gumption. Her debut album, 2008's Youth Novels, was as resolute and irrepressible as the best of her compatriots -- Robyn, Nina Persson, Jens Lekman, even ABBA. And she enchanted a few notables along the way, including the rapper Drake, who sampled her "Little Bit" for an arresting mixtape deep cut. But there was a chill in the music -- sax skronks, woozy keyboards, Kewpie-ish voice lurching to the brink of sadness -- that her co-conspirator Bjorn Yttling helped install to keep things from ever getting too cute....