China artist Ai Weiwei 'banned from using Twitter

Chinese artist and government critic Ai Weiwei is reported to be under further restrictions following his release after nearly three months' detention.

Mr Ai has already said he cannot talk to the media, and he is not allowed to leave Beijing without permission.

He is also reportedly banned from using the microblogging site Twitter. His account has been dormant since April.

Mr Ai was released from detention on Wednesday after the authorities said he had confessed to tax evasion.

China's foreign ministry has outlined the terms of Mr Ai's bail, which are valid for 12 months, saying that Mr Ai is not allowed to leave Beijing without permission.

Mr Ai has made it clear to the media that he is unable to discuss his case.

Now it appears he cannot tweet either.

Mr Ai regularly used social networking sites to keep in touch with his fans and followers. He has more than 89,000 followers on Twitter and has tweeted more than 60,000 times - the last time was on 3 April, the day he was detained.

Some lawyers have expressed disquiet about these restrictions.

One pointed out that no formal charges have been brought against the 54-year-old. The restrictions show, he says, the extensive legal powers enjoyed by the Chinese authorities.

China's police allege Mr Ai has admitted to tax evasion and promised to pay back the money. But no more details have been given.

'Inane chatter'
Mr Ai's arrest in April sparked an international outcry.

He was held for 80 days at a secret detention centre with no access to a lawyer or contact with his family.


Western governments had demanded Mr Ai's release and that of many other activists who have been rounded up by China's authorities in recent months, in what is the most serious crackdown on dissidents in China in many years.

The artist's case is expected to come up during Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's European tour. Mr Wen is currently in Hungary, and will travel to the UK and Germany.

The state-run Global Times newspaper on Friday published an article saying that Mr Ai's release was not a result of Western pressure.

"Western media believe foreign pressures have worked. It seems that their interpretation will do no harm to China's external relations," it said.

"But China will hold its judicial sovereignty in its own hands. The country will continue to stride forward, and it will not pay heed toward this inane chatter.

"Ai Weiwei, like the rest of his countrymen, will keep living his life within the framework of Chinese laws."

 

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Taiwan blogger fined $7,000 over restaurant review

A Taiwanese woman was ordered to compensate a noodle shop Tw$200,000 ($7,000) for defamation after criticising the store as unclean and its food as "really bad" on her blog, a court said Friday.
Liu Ying-hui escaped a 30-day jail term, with the high court deciding to grant her a two-year suspended sentence after she agreed to compensate the shop, according to the verdict released by the court.
Liu was convicted of defaming the shop in February for commenting on her blog in 2009 that its food was "really bad ... too salty" while the owner was a "bully" and the stop was "unclean with cockroaches", the verdict said.
A district court in central Taiwan ruled that her remarks "crossed the boundary of an appropriate review" since she had failed to prove her allegations.
It was the latest of a number of controversial rulings involving Internet commentaries, after a teacher was ordered to pay her dentist Tw$1.5 million for calling him a "rat's dropping" in March, according to local media.

 

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'Online harassment' over affair leads to landmark court case

A plumber is accused of using Twitter and a string of websites to expose graphic details of his wife's affair with her multimillionaire boss at one of the world's largest financial companies.

Ian Puddick, 41, is accused of harassment after he created a host of blogs, tweets and online videos to expose the affair of his wife, Leena, with insurance firm director Timothy Haynes, a court heard.

Mr Haynes claimed the campaign of harassment had left him needing counselling for the "hurt and distress" that ultimately led to his resignation from his job a year ago. Mr Puddick denied the charges at the City of Westminster Magistrates' Court.

The landmark case has renewed interest in the clash of technology and the legal system as information is spread via unregulated social media sites. Mr Haynes told the court: "I think most of the country, thanks to the internet, is aware I had an affair."

He spoke of his "embarrassment and shame" after neighbours received letters containing graphic accounts of the fling, and colleagues and clients were contacted through fake profiles on social networking site LinkedIn.

His affair with Mrs Puddick, which started at a Christmas party in 2002, was exposed after Mr Puddick read a text message on her mobile phone in 2009. However, Mr Puddick's counsel, Michael Wolkind QC, claimed it started much earlier, citing an email sent in 2003 that read: "Where do you want to have sex next? The office, your flat, al fresco or all three? You greedy girl."

Asking Mr Haynes if he was a "dishonest and deceitful man", Mr Wolkind said: "What is it about the website that you are moaning about? You suffered the same degree of harassment that a burglar does when he is caught by the police."

He argued that the real reason Mr Haynes left the firm was because he had come under investigation over fraudulent expense claims whilst having secret trysts with Mrs Puddick. He referred to another email in which he told Mrs Puddick she was "reassuringly expensive". But Mr Haynes, who, the court heard, was investigated by his employer over expenses claims, said he had been alluding to her "taste for expensive champagne", claiming he paid for it out of his own pocket.

Mr Haynes added: "Every medium including Twitter was being utilised to create information about myself and the affair. The whole thing is causing my wife upset and distress. We are very anxious that, with the graphic nature of the website, children do not stumble across it."

His wife, Anya, told how her past two years had been "turned upside down", adding that Mr Puddick's actions had frightened her.

The hearing was adjourned until tomorrow when Mr Puddick is due to give evidence. The case continues.

 

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Ed Miliband broke new ground for Britain's political leaders by hosting a Twitter chat.

All did not go exactly to plan after Harry Cole, who runs the Guido Fawkes site, arranged for his followers to bombard #AskEdM with mischievous questions as the chat started at 5pm.

Cole's first question was: "So @Ed_Miliband Do you feel bad about stabbing your brother in the back?"

Later, @David_CameronPM, a fake Cameron account, tweeted: "Ed's mum has phoned my mum and asked if we can all play nicer with him."

Miliband did manage to answer some serious questions In answer to @Emily_Knight, a Tory political aide who asked if it was right for the PCS public sector union to strike on a 32% turnout, he tweeted: "@Emily_Knight Strikes are a sign of failure on both sides. Government needs to get round table not ramp up rhetoric."

Giles Dilnot, the BBC political journalist who tweets as @reporterboy, tweeted: "I think #AskEdM might be attracting some serious thoughtful political questions and a truckload of, er, shall we say, less so."

Miliband answered the questions on his office computer. His iPad, a wedding present from his staff, stays at home. But he did tweet from his iPad on his wedding day.

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Twitter tantrum sinks Duke Nukem Forever PR agency

How not to handle bad PR for your product or your client’s product: Let us review the sad tale of Duke Nukem Forever and The Redner Group.

PR agency blacklists are nothing new in the tech media business. Upset the wrong people at the wrong time and you, as a journalist, can find yourself in a black hole the next time it comes to needing information for an article or product to review.

But general consensus is that Jim Redner, president of The Redner Group, really stepped in it on Tuesday when he used Twitter to publicly threaten journos who were trashing Duke Nukem Forever, the new game published this past week by 2K Games.



2K Games was Redner’s client. I emphasize was here, because on Wednesday, 2K Games announced they’d fired Redner’s firm.

Posting from the official Redner Group Twitter account on Tuesday, Redner himself tweeted, “Too many went too far with their reviews … we are reviewing who gets games next time and who doesn’t based on today’s venom.”

He went on to say that it was okay to give a bad score to a game, but “venom filled reviews,” in his opinion, were different. Redner didn’t specify which reviews he thought were “venom filled” and which were, well, critical.

Within minutes word began to spread of Redner’s tantrum. Game journalists and gamers alike collectively clucked their tongues at Redner’s display of emotion - uncharacteristic for a PR firm that values its image and the image of its clients above everything.

Emotions from game journos are running high after Duke Nukem Forever’s release. The game is famous for having a 14 year (yes, a decade and a half) development cycle, originally created by 3D Realms and ultimately finished by Gearbox Software.

Coincidentally, Gearbox finished the game later than they first anticipated. The collective eyeroll from game journalists around the world set the Earth off its axis momentarily.

Duke Nukem Forever’s predecessor, Duke Nukem 3D, was infamous in its own right, for having a musclebound, cigar-chomping hero that uttered one-liners worthy of the cheesiest action movies, and for being steeped in politically incorrect humor with plenty of T&A thrown in.

Duke Nukem Forever, as it turns out, is a chip off the old block. MetaCritic.com rated DNF a scant 48 out of 100 as this article was posted - a miserably low rating for a major console release from a big publisher - with critics calling out the game as a “relic from the past,” “a mess,” “sloppy, cobbled together” and more.

Clearly DNF has touched a nerve with reviewers.

And a nerve with the head of The Redner Group, a company that has worked with 2K Games and Gearbox before to launch their hugely successful game Borderlands, according to Gamasutra.

Jim Redner realized he stepped over the line shortly after doing so, apologizing publicly in his Twitter feed and promising to contact game journalists individually as well. But by then the damage had been done.

“2K Games does not endorse or condone the comments made by @TheRednerGroup and confirm they no longer represent our products,” said the company in a tweet of their own. “We maintain a mutually respectful relationship with the press and will continue to do so. We don’t condone @TheRednerGroup’s actions at all.”

2K Games’ role in all this is pretty safe, despite being the purveyors of crap that the game journalists are so grossly offended by to begin with. As for the Redner Group, well, only time will tell. But clearly Jim Redner has some fences to mend.

 

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Data from Google Insights shows that in the category 'Products,' searches for the long-anticipated video game Duke Nukem Forever have increased by 250 percent in the days following its release on June 10.

Data from Google Insights shows that in the category 'Products,' searches for the long-anticipated video game Duke Nukem Forever have increased by 250 percent in the days following its release on June 10. 

The game was released on June 10 in Europe and, unusually, later in the US, hitting American shelves on June 14. 

Duke Nukem Forvever is part of the Duke Nukem series of games renowned for their un-PC humor and over the top action which first became popular in the 1990s. The games were originally developed by Apogee Software which was later restructured as 3D Realms; the latest intalment of the series was finished in collaboration with Gearbox Software. 

In this latest instalment, the muscle-bound Duke must do battle with swarms of alien invaders in order to once again save earth. The game's production was beset with delays and setbacks taking in total 12 years to complete; since release the game has received mixed reviews. 

However following the release of Duke Nukem Forever internet users around the world have been searching for the game. Data from Google Insights shows that in that category 'Products,' searches for "Duke Nukem Forever" increased 250 percent, making it one of the ten most popular search terms over the seven days prior to June 15.

The data also shows that searches for the term "Duke Nukem Forever" have been dramatically increasing since late May; this can most likely be attributed to fans searching for news of the games release.

Though the game is one of the most searched for products over the last seven days, it is nowhere near as popular as Call of Duty: Black Ops; which  is currently the fastest-selling game ever, moving over seven million units within the first 24 hours of going on sale on November 9. Over the last 12 months searches for the game experienced growth rates of over 5,000 percent on four separate occasions.

Find more information and purchase the game via the official website at http://www.dukenukemforever.com (age restrictions apply).

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Japan astronaut tweets about space sickness

Japanese astronaut Satoshi Furukawa has tweeted from the International Space Station that he suffers from travel sickness in space.
"Space motion sickness got me. Especially when I move my head suddenly, I really feel sick. My head feels heavy. Help!" Furukawa, who is also a medical doctor, said in a message posted on his Twitter account (twitter.com@Astro_Satoshi) Tuesday.
Furukawa arrived at the International Space Station last week along with American Mike Fossum and Russian Sergei Volkov after travelling on a Russian-made Soyuz spacecraft.
The three are due to spend the next six months on the station conducting experiments.
In a later tweet, Furukawa played down his space sickness.
"From MD point of view. No problem. About 2/3 of first flyers experience transient space motion sickness," he wrote.
"It is considered a brain's adaptation to weightlessness."
"Your head feels heavy due to fluid shift. No problem since the symptom is transient," he said in a further tweet.
In an interview last month posted on the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) website, Furukawa said he was interested to see how the body changes in space.
"Personally, as a gastro-intestinal surgeon, I'm very interested in seeing how having a full stomach would feel in space. I hope to report back first-hand about the differences in the way my body feels in space and on the ground," he said.
"In addition, if my fellow astronauts should happen to get sick or injured, I can examine them and manage the situation in cooperation with doctors on the ground."

 

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