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For a second, I thought the Radio Shack ad in my Gmail inbox was trying to sell me a new netbook or a previously unreported competitor to Apple's forthcoming iPad. Then I took the time to read all the ad copy: ...

Three of the biggest names in the Internet industry are founding members of the Global Network Initiative, a consortium of companies, non-profits and academic groups formed in October 2008 to promote human rights and privacy around the world. However, now one of those companies, Google, finds itself going head-to-head with the Chinese government over issues regarding censorship of search data, while most other technology companies have remained on the sidelines as they wait to see how this economic and diplomatic standoff resolves itself in Beijing...

Google's relationship with the Chinese government officially entered the brinksmanship phase this week with the announcement from the company that it is ending its Communist-mandated censorship of search results and directing queries to its unfiltered Hong Kong-based service. The Great Firewall immediately slammed down on some of those results, and there are reports of possible backlash involving other Chinese business dealings for Google, particularly in the mobile space...

It's a good bet that when "The Daily Show's" Jon Stewart spends six minutes making uber-ironic fun of a particular trend or topic, it's pretty much arrived as a legitimate Mainstream Media Phenomenon. Such was the case recently with Stewart's hilarious deconstruction of Chatroulette, the Web site that facilitates random video chat conversations, at least half of which apparently involve men engaging in some kind of sexual activity -- judging, that is, from all the print and broadcast coverage...

The U.S. Census Bureau has started mailing out its forms, so I would like to take this opportunity to announce a new demographic category for those of us who will be writing "journalist" in the "occupation" box: Old New Media Dogs ...

"Avatar" may be the box office champ in this or any other galaxy, and the first weekend of ticket sales for "Alice in Wonderland" has certainly put a Cheshire Cat smile on the faces of Walt Disney studio executives. However, all that monetary activity stems from watching those two movies in the plush, dark expanses of a special, 3-D-enabled movie theater.

"OMG, somebody call the Waaaambulance!" went a comment on last week's column about South by Southwest. ...

Gaming companies like Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft ask a lot of their customers. Every few years, they are encouraged by the companies to spend a few hundred bucks to upgrade to a fancy new console. But as far as I can recall, only Sony has ever asked its fans to not play those consoles ...

You don't have to search very hard on Apple.com to find the 2010 Supplier Responsibility Report, the company's internal audit of how workers are treated on the assembly lines at the overseas third-party companies making its Macs, iPhones and iPods. ...

Austin, Texas, is the home of the annual South by Southwest Festival (SXSW), which in 23 years has grown from a music-only celebration featuring a few Sixth Street bars, a handful of bands and lots of Shiner Bock beer, into a two-week, multi-media extravaganza featuring hundreds of Next New Thing musicians, filmmakers and technology movers/shakers -- and lots of Shiner Bock beer...

After years of keeping everyone in the dark about its solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) technology, Bloom Energy officially brought its first product out into the sunlight Wednesday with a media event launching its Bloom Energy Server, a cleantech refrigerator-sized power plant for homes and businesses ...

On top of all the other demographic categories that segment the United States, the FCC on Tuesday introduced some new ones that its chairman says serve as reasons for adopting a new national broadband strategy, which the agency will present to the public March 17 ...

Bloom Energy, a clean energy startup based in Sunnyvale, Calif., officially launches its core product this week. However, the company really had its coming-out party on Sunday's "60 Minutes," with executives giving CBS' Lesley Stahl a first look at a US$700,000 wireless power-plant-in-a-box called, appropriately enough, a "Bloom Box." Those executives claim Bloom Boxes will bring cheaper, cleaner and greener energy to American homes and businesses...

If competition for Google is still "just a click away" -- as its executives kept saying last summer to anybody who would listen -- then the U.S. Justice Department and the European Commission made that click easier with their decisions this week to bless the Microsoft-Yahoo search technology merger ...

I had planned on using Hayden Hamilton, founder of the Portland, Oregon-based ProgressiveRx.com, as my source for updates on how things were going in Washington with healthcare reform -- especially regarding any technology-driven solutions to spiraling healthcare costs. After all, Progressive is an online pharmacy resource that helps consumers buy discounted drugs from overseas outlets, one of many that have sprouted on the Internet and seen their traffic soar along with the cost of buying medications. Hamilton was keeping close watch on the goings-on in D.C., since he has a business stake in the outcome...

Just as Skype devotees use the Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service to talk to friends and family anywhere in the world, Verizon Wireless used Skype Tuesday to send a loud message of its own to Apple, AT&T and the rest of the competition: We can play the VoIP game too ...

A newly formed international consortium has claimed it can be the glue that unites a fragmented mobile applications market. However, if the Wholesale Applications Community can't deliver on its promise of an open platform that will let developers write apps for all devices -- save perhaps Apple's iPhone -- then that "glue" could simply result in a stickier situation in the mobile space...

After enjoying a holiday bounce, the U.S. video game industry came crashing back down to Earth in January with post-Christmas double-digit drops in hardware and software sales, according to the latest figures from industry researchers NPD Group. ...

Innovation was certainly on display at this week's Google Buzz press conference, but there was only one moment that truly registered an 9.5 on my personal CQ (Coolness Quotient) meter. That was during the mobile segment of the demonstration. Vice President of Engineering Vic Gundotra spoke into his Android phone, and the magic of Google Voice, combined with GPS-tagging and location-based services, allowed him to post his "buzz." ...

While the technosphere was busy Tuesday pitting Google's new Buzz service against Facebook and Twitter in some kind of social media steel-cage deathmatch, the search giant's executives were hinting at what they see as the real winning uses for Buzz -- within the enterprise and out and about in the mobile arena ...