Blogging | Blogging news

"We didn't imagine how this would make social and even political changes to the whole Chinese community in the next five years." In Communist Party-ruled China, the media — including the regular internet — is tightly controlled by the government.

But blogs offer a means of dodging the censors, allowing more freedom of expression and, ultimately, freedom of thought.

"It's only natural for human beings to express themselves and share their views.

But the Chinese people have been repressed for so long and they have always kept silent.

They couldn't find an exit," Mao said.

"They need this tool to give them the freedom to express themselves.

Blogs can be a very empowering tool to them," he said.

The power of Chinese blogs was demonstrated recently by the international coverage given to a lone woman whose defiance of developers had spared her home from demolition in central China's Chongqing city.

Photographs of her house balanced precariously on a mound in the midst of a construction site were circulated all over the world after first appearing in China's blogosphere.

Bloggers manage to evade the censors by posting their comments on websites and then linking the site to many other blogs and webpages, allowing them to form a social network.

Learning to trust "Due to political reasons from the past, Chinese people don't like to share their viewpoints, they tend to hide themselves so they don...

But women, who make up about half the online community, are singled out in more starkly sexually threatening terms - a trend that was first evident in chat rooms in the early 1990s and is now moving to the blogosphere, experts and bloggers said.•More technology newsA 2006 University of Maryland study on chat rooms found that female participants received 25 times as many sexually explicit and malicious messages as males.

A 2005 study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that the proportion of Internet users who took part in chats and discussion groups plunged from 28 percent in 2000 to 17 percent in 2005, entirely because of the exodus of women.

The study attributed the trend to "sensitivity to worrisome behavior in chat rooms."Joan Walsh, editor in chief of the online magazine Salon, said that since the letters section of her site was automated a year and a half ago, "it's been hard to ignore that the criticisms of women writers are much more brutal and vicious than those about men."Arianna Huffington, whose Huffington Post site is among the most prominent of blogs founded by women, said anonymity online ha...

I should mention that we are always happy when third parties enthusiastically promote Skype however, we will not endorse promotional activities (e.g the promotion of your sites www.skype-gadgets.com and www.skype-watch.com on chopsticks) where Skype has no control over the domains in question.

Furthermore, whilst we at Skype are always happy to answer questions, may I please request that any further emails are directed to our customer support team at support@skype.net.

Faced with this threat, Jan has taken down his content, replacing it with what we've included below.

This issue is more complicated than it sounds.

Phil adds that if Seema Sharma consulted with Skype before he sent the note to Jan, he might have learned that Jan's been: working on distribution and marketing for dozens of major Skype-affiliated companies, nurturing Skype's ecosystem.

briefing business and government technology executives on Skype's effect on management, IT, telecom and economic policy.

covering Skype-related news and issues at international conferences in Europe and Asia, creating unique editorial content.

contributing to Skype Journal.

advocating Skype passionately, online and off.

Colleague VoIP blogger Andy Abramson takes that info and asks, shouldn't Skype's left hand know what the right hand is doing?

Blog This E-mail Print Sphere Previous postNext post ...