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Riding on the popularity of Web 2.0, United States Secretary of State Hilary Clinton is making waves as she redefines stolid diplomacy. Under Mrs Clinton, the State Department has made headlines over the past year by using social media for promoting new missions and reaching out to a wider audience. Officers josh about who gets the larger Twitter following in the department which hosts perhaps the densest hub of dabblers in the new media in the Obama administration. It was less than three years ago that the State of Department slowly began to shape its Web personality. The DipNote, the department's official blog which keeps track of its latest activities, was set up under the Bush administration. But the website -- which has attracted 12 million page views -- has since grown, with new additions such as a YouTube channel, Twitter feed, Facebook page and Flickr photo account.

A looming foreign talent crunch has been pinpointed as a top factor that threatens to rob the Silicon Valley of its title as the world's innovation center. "There are clear warning signs suggesting Silicon Valley has entered a new phase of uncertainty and that our competitive standing is at risk," says the 2010 Silicon Valley Index released on Thursday. Although alarms are raised periodically about the Silicon Valley's vitality, this is the gloomiest outlook ever painted by Silicon Valley Community Foundation and the Joint Venture: Silicon Valley Network which produce the yearly index and have been compiling and analyzing a variety of economic and social data relating to the Valley since 1995. Apart from voicing doubts about the area's continued ability to draw upon some of the world's best brains, the report has highlighted other trends that are furrowing brows - the declining levels of venture capital, inattention from the federal government and California's political dysfunction.

Everyone can have their own websites whether it’s for personal or for business. But when wanting to have your own site, careful planning is essential and crucial. Aside from needing to think of a name for your site and registering it with a domain name registrar, one of the most important things is choosing the right web hosting provider to host it. And this is where it gets confusing and challenging since there are just so many web hosting company to choose from. If you happen to looking for a free web hosting provider, the list even gets longer. But the problem with some free hosting providers sometimes is the unreliable service they provide which causes websites hosted on them a lot of downtime issues. Reliability is one of the key factors of a good web host whether free or paid. And among the free web hosting around, Doteasy is one of the few that is capable enough to provide a free and yet reliable hosting. Not to mention, an ad free site as well.

Singapore-based technology start-up Fusion Garage is on a collision course with its former ally in a fight for the ownership of, and profits from, its tablet computer The JooJoo. Last Saturday, the 13-man team filed a motion dismissing American blog TechCrunch's lawsuit, on the grounds that its claims either do not exist under the law or are "so vague and indefinite as to require a more definite statement", according to legal documents obtained by The Straits Times. The two had joined forces in 2008, after TechCrunch, a United States-based tech news website, put out a call for help in building a cheap touchscreen tablet computer for browsing the Internet. Fusion Garage, formed in January 2008, took its work to a meeting with TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington, who subsequently expressed interest in acquiring the Singapore start-up. Over the past year, the companies have progressively unveiled prototypes of the tablet, originally called the CrunchPad. But by November, negotiations had broken down, and Mr Arrington wet public about his unhappiness.

The battle between Google and China is opening up a new front in the struggle for control of an increasingly varied and complicated international landscape. No longer is the diplomacy playbook of the 20th century sufficient for China, as the emerging superpower squares up against an "enemy" that has no government, no borders and no nuclear weapon. Even the experiences of the United States in dealing with a shadowy terrorist organization like Al Qaeda are inappropriate. Google does not hide. But it is just as powerful as any sovereign state, if not more. Through just a blog post on Jan 12, the superbrand grabbed international headlines and cast the emerging superpower as the representative of all that is bad about humanity. By threatening to pull out of the country following alleged attacks by Chinese hackers on its e-mail service, and protesting against the Chinese government's increasingly tight control of the Internet, the global search engine assumed the role of a global moral crusader. It is the defender of freedom and openness: China is not. The People's Republic is the villain. More importantly, Google has the guts to go where few, if any, major multinational corporations have gone: Publicly chastising and challenging a Chinese government that is known to be extremely thin-skinned.

Much is unknown about the basis of Google's astounding assertion it could choose to exit China unless it was given more business leeway. A company with the foresight to invent a futuristic service model does not crumble at the first hurdle in what would be the richest market, for information search and other uses yet to be designed. The China market is not yet a goldmine for Google, but every foreign company doing business there dreams of what is to come. It is implausible in the circumstances that Chinese government filtering of Google's search content has suddenly offended the firm's mission beliefs. It set up in China four years ago on explicit terms. Google also implied Chinese involvement in cyber attacks on its systems and other unnamed technology companies. E-mail accounts of citizens under security watch were believed to have been compromised. This could be credible. But theft of proprietary and corporate secrets can be countered through treaty law (World Trade Organization, for example) and licensing of select technologies. Google could also have taken the e-mail hacking issue straight to Beijing, but without the "or else" bluster.

Google’s first attempt at retail has encountered a speed bump. Scores of buyers of its first “own brand” smartphone, the Nexus One, seem to have experienced 3G connection problems. The much-hyped phone is sold directly to consumers through its website at google.com/phone. Google started selling it just four days ago to consumers in the United States, Britain, Singapore and Hong Kong. Already, pockets of users have been posting their problems on the Google Mobile Help Forum. Their complaints centre on the phone constantly switching between 3G and the slower Edge (Enhanced Data Rate for GSM Evolution) networks, resulting in tardy responses when they surf the Internet. Voice and SMS functions are unaffected.