China Limits Web Access During Olympics (news)

Since the Olympic Village press center opened Friday, reporters have been unable to access scores of Web pages - among them those that discuss Tibetan issues, Taiwanese independence, the violent crackdown on the protests in Tiananmen Square and the Web sites of Amnesty International, the BBC's Chinese-language news, Radio Free Asia and several Hong Kong newspapers known for their freewheeling political discourse.

The restrictions, which closely resemble the blocks that China places on the Internet for its citizens, undermine sweeping claims by Jacques Rogge, the International Olympic Committee president, that China had agreed to provide full Web access for foreign news media during the Games. Mr. Rogge has long argued that one of the main benefits of awarding the Games to Beijing was that the event would make China more open

(from The New York Times).

Western Spaghetti by PES (flash)

The stop-motion preparation of spaghetti (rated PG).

Ode To Joy - Beaker (flash)

The Muppet's Beaker sings Ode to Joy (rated PG).

$1.50 Cheesecake Factory Cheesecake Today (news)

The Cheesecake Factory is offering slices of cheesecake for $1.50 today to celebrate their 30th anniversary; it's for real.

Participation is Everything in Social Media

The normal case of social software is still failure; most of these experiments don't pan out. But the ones that do are quite incredible, and I hope that this one [a Brazilian Wiki crime map] succeeds, obviously. But even if it doesn't, it's illustrated the point already, which is that someone working alone, with really cheap tools, has a reasonable hope of carving out enough of the cognitive surplus, enough of the desire to participate, enough of the collective goodwill of the citizens, to create a resource you couldn't have imagined existing even five years ago

(from http://www.herecomeseverybody.org/2008/04/looking-for-the-mouse.html [offline as of May 2012]).

LA quake catches Twitter user in ladyparts exam (news)

A 5.4 earthquake hit Tuesday while Verdell Wilson was having an exam in her gynecologist's Los Angeles office.

Given it was her first earthquake experience, Wilson did what comes naturally - she twittered it.

As soon as I got dressed, I twittered my experience from my cell phone, Wilson said. I usually twitter to 80 friends, but I now have 274 messages from people commenting on it.

(from CNET News, via valleywag.com).

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog (flash)

Neil Patrick Harris, Nathan Fillion, and Felicia Day in Joss Whedon's three act supervillain musical: Dr. Horrible (rated PG).