Town authorities use Google Earth to find illegal pools

Turns out that Google Earth, the wonderful software developed by search company Google, can be useful for more than just looking at one's own house from above.

A small town on New York's Long Island has been using the program to look for pools that it has not permitted in the back yards of unsuspecting citizens.

Violators, a New York television station was told, had to get a permit or scrap their beloved pool. "The technology is going so far ahead of what people think is possible, and there is too little discussion about community norms," a spokeswomen for the program said.

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Parents can hire a "hall monitor" for the web - be the China of their own home

"Fear can be good for business", reports the New York Times this morning in a story on how some parents are employing the use of subscription-based services that monitor their child's activity online.

In the dangerous wild west of the internet, there are a number of parents that are worried about the effect that some of its content may have on its children.

The article also details how the content filtering system of the service blocks out content based on certain keywords that are included in it - for example 'kill' or 'suicide'.

Of course, this can - and no doubt will - stop people from accessing perfectly innocent content. For example, when somebody doesn't see a post like 'the band killed last night'.

Imagine a day when children cannot lookup "To Kill a Mockingbird" without being red flagged by the China of their own homes. [Some content via NYT] 

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China, you've changed man...you used to be cool

In something of a turning point in Google-China relations since the search giant started redirecting users to its Hong Kong site, Google has decided to stop redirecting its huge Chinese audience to the uncensored Hong Kong website as it seeks to renew the license it holds to operate on the Chinese internet.

For the last three months, reports the New York Times, Google has found a clever way of bypassing the ethical and legal problems it has faced in Mainland China over its Government's internet and media censorship laws - to which the US company objects.

The company says that it has resubmitted an application for renewal of the license it still holds to operate in mainland China, and will be seeking a different approach to Chinese censorship.

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Pakistan blocks YouTube, Facebook

'Sacrilegious content' was cited as the reason for the blocking of social networking site, Facebook earlier this year, and today video sharing site YouTube was given similar reason today in Pakistan.

YouTube, one of the most popular internet destinations to date, has been blocked by the Pakistani Government - in part because of depictions of the Profit Mohammed.

The blocking is part of a growing program that aims to block sites that conflict with the religious beliefs of Pakistan's Muslim population - which forbid depiction of any sort of the Profit Mohammed.

Likewise, access to photo sharing site, Flickr, and collaborative encyclopedia, Wikipedia, was also put on hold.

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