As China's Internet-savvy population grows larger each day, government officials there are worried about the detrimental effects of the Internet on both society and the economy.

One Chinese website, tencent.com (and its subsidiary QQ.com), is especially troubling for the Chinese leadership. Tencent’s messaging service, which boasts usage by over two-thirds of China’s Internet users, has its own virtual economy with currency counted in "QQcoins". The online currency is so ubiquitous that it is now accepted by some other Chinese companies as legal tender. Fearing that the QQcoins are being used to circumvent China's strict anti-gambling laws and the potential for the virtual economy to negatively affect the real Chinese economy, the government banned the use of virtual currency for anything other than virtual services.

Meanwhile, the Internet has become such a terrible social ill that China has indefinitely postponed approval for any new Internet cafes, according to a notice issued by 14 different government entities.

China is in the throes of a campaign to "purify" the Internet, and most of the content of the notice was aimed at tightening controls over the country's estimated 113,000 Internet cafes. It blamed the cafes for fostering "internet addiction," banned approval of new ones this year, and toughened penalties for those that admit minors.

If you still aren't convinced of the Chinese government’s proposition that the Internet is harmful, check this out:

An obese 26-year-old man in northeastern China died after a "marathon" online gaming session over the Lunar New Year holiday, state media said on Wednesday.

The U.S. State Department released its 2006 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices yesterday. Tucked away in all the jargon in the report on Kazakhstan was this gem, filed under the section titled Internet Freedom:

In December 2005 the government deemed as offensive the content of a satirical web site controlled by British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen and revoked the .kz domain."

Sacha Baron Cohen, is, of course, the British actor who plays a fictional Kazakh TV reporter in the movie Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. 

Shortly before the revocation of the ".kz" domain, a Kazakh government official had threatened to take "legal measures" against Cohen. Responding in the character of Borat, Cohen—who happens to be Jewish—said:

I ... fully support my government's position to sue this Jew."

In reality, Cohen didn't skip a beat, moving his site to www.borat.tv. As Nurlan Isin, president of the Association of Kazakh IT Companies, explained at the time, "We've done this so he can't badmouth Kazakhstan under the .kz domain name." So it's a stretch, to say the least, for the U.S. State Department to lump Cohen's case in with the very real and serious human rights abuses that permeate the rest of the report.

Editor's note: Passport blogger Preeti Aroon also contributed to this post.

PC World has just released its ranking of the 50 most influential people on the Internet—the people who are "shaping what you read, watch, hear, write, buy, sell, befriend, flame, and otherwise do online." Some highlights:

• 1: Eric Schmidt, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Executives, Google
• 2: Steve Jobs, CEO, Apple, Inc.
  
• 3: Bram Cohen, Cofounder, BitTorrent
• 4: Mike Morhaime, President, Blizzard Entertainment (makers of the hugely popular World of Warcraft game)
• 5: Jimmy Wales, Founder, Wikipedia
• 6: Craig Newmark, Founder, Craigslist:
  

  His Web site has no ads, charges absurdly low fees to a small fraction of its visitors, has a ".org" domain, and employs 23 people. Yet despite its humble appearance, Craigslist racked up 14.1 million page views last December and was the 52nd most viewed site last December according to comScore Media Metrix ... Most importantly, it has almost singlehandedly demolished the offline classified advertising business.

• 10: Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, Founders, YouTube
• 13: Henry Chon, CEO, Cyworld:
  

  Don't call Cyworld a Korean MySpace; MySpace is an American Cyworld. In South Korea, an estimated 25 percent of the population (and 90 percent of people in their teens and twenties) have Cyworld accounts, where individuals design miniature animated avatars to represent them in its unique online space. In 2006 CEO Henry Chon brought Cyworld to U.S. shores. Though Cyworld hasn't yet achieved comparable success here, MySpace shouldn't rest easy if Chon's track record is any indication of future competition.

• 20: Jack Ma, COO, Alibaba.com:

  Want to do business in China without springing for a plane ticket to Shanghai? Alibaba.com is your best bet. Founded by Jack Ma in 1999, this massively successful business-to-business e-marketplace is the best place online to meet people and trade proposals and product offers.

Looking for a way to kill 10 minutes at work before 5 o'clock strikes?  Check out http://andys.org.uk/countryquiz/ for a fun game. A timer will count down 10 minutes, while you type in as many of the 192 member states of the United Nations as you can. 

The site's not perfect, so I'll give you a hint. For the most part, countries are listed as they are commonly known, as opposed to their official names. For example, North Korea is listed as "North Korea," and not as "Democratic People's Republic of Korea." It's a lot harder than it sounds. I got 120, then saw which ones I missed and slapped myself silly upside the head. Remember ... no cheating! 

(Hat tip: Kottke)

Continuing in its quest to be everything for everyone, Google has added color-coded live road traffic information for 30 U.S. cities to its Google Maps service.

Will the traffic information be truly useful or just sit idly on Google's servers as a fun novelty item? It probably depends on how detailed the data gets in future months. A quick check of two areas I know well—my current location in Washington, DC and my hometown outside of Orlando, FL—didn't reveal much.

So far, the traffic info looks as if it is only for major highways. As you can see above, in Washington, it showed heavy traffic for the beltway and the highways leading into the city center. For Orlando, it showed heavy traffic on the only highway leading into downtown. No surprises there, but if the data gets more detailed, Google Maps could change the way drivers view the road ahead. I imagine the service could be very useful on web-enabled mobile phones, as Google is already claiming it is.

As venture capital reporter John Cook notes, Google is being coy about its data sources. The likely reason? Microsoft is working some mapping initiatives of its own, and the company could get into the traffic business to compete with Google.

Editor's note: Kyle Spector is a former researcher for FP. He's now finishing his undergraduate degree at the George Washington University, where he serves as the senior opinions editor for The GW Hatchet. Kyle will be guest-blogging for Passport as time allows.

The race for wired global geriatric supremacy is ON! Over the last few months, the media speculated that 93-year-old Don Crowdis of Ontario, Canada was the world's oldest blogger. Then it was supposedly 94-year-old Allan Lööf of Finspång, Sweden. Then came news that Spain's 95-year-old Maria Amelia was given a blog for her birthday by her "stingy" grandson. But now there's someone who's beat them all, and who's likely not to get beat herself.

Olive Riley, who lives north of Sydney, Australia and was born in 1899, just started her blog this month. The 107-year-old great-great-grandmother was born in the British Colony of New South Wales under the rule of Queen Victoria, two years before Australia became a nation. She loves to drink shandy. The latest:

Good afternoon everyone. This is Olive here. First, I want to thank all of you who visited my blob. Gerard says there’ve been 192,000 visits but that can’t be right.

Mike

It’s a blog, Ollie. Not a blob.

Olive

Oh, really?

(Hat tip: my brother Ted)

Is Al Gore hip? Not exactly, judging by the playlist he has co-posted on Apple's iTunes with Melissa Ethridge (is it cool to post your own song?), but at least he's trying:

1. "I Need To Wake Up" by Melissa Ethridge (Oscar-winning song from An Inconvenient Truth)
2. "Gone Going" by Black Eyed Peas
3. "This Land Is Mine" by Dido
4. "After the Garden" by Neil Young
5. "Umi Says" by Mos Def
6. "I'm Alright" by Kim Richey
7. "The Brand New Tennessee Waltz" by Jesse Winchester

(Hat tip: Gristmill)

We may not know when the next Iranian revolution will occur, but we can say with confidence that it will certainly be blogged. There were reportedly 40,000 to 100,000 blogs based in Iran in 2005, and that number has undoutedly grown immensely since then. Blogs in Iran can serve as a balance to state-controlled media, and let people both inside and outside the country know what is truly going on.

Naturally, most Iranian blogs are in Farsi, but a few are in English. Some are written by Iranians living outside their home country, such as the one by Toronto-based Hossein Derakhshan.

And don't forget, there's always Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's blog.

Matt Drudge may not believe in global warming, but at least he's recycling. Nico Pitney catches the Internet maven using the same joke he made back in 2004. Basically, it's cold and snowy outside, so therefore the climate isn't warming! Ha, ha, right?

Of course, as Nico points out, weather and climate are different beasts. The overall trend is clear: The planet is warming, and nobody serious argues with that. What the weather is like on any given day is neither here nor there, and in fact extreme weather events could be part of the show.

I wouldn't say that it's indisputable that climate change is caused by humans, however, but we're getting close to that point. Here's the gist of what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded in its fourth assessment report (pdf), according to the scientists at RealClimate.org:

[T]he report concludes that human influences on climate are 'very likely' (> 90% chance) already detectable in observational record; increased from 'likely' (> 66% chance) in the [Third Assessment Report of 2001]."

So where's the real debate among climate scientists?

The uncertainties in the science mainly involve the precise nature of the changes to be expected, particularly with respect to sea level rise, El Niño changes and regional hydrological change - drought frequency and snow pack melt, mid-latitude storms, and of course, hurricanes.

That doesn't sound so funny to me. 

The boundaries between the real and virtual worlds are fast blurring. Nowhere is this more evident than in the rapid corporate colonization of Second Life. No self-respecting CEO went to Davos without an "avatar" or online alter-ego, a sure sign that Second Life has entered the mainstream. The likes of Reuters, Nissan and Adidas are buying up virtual real-estate and setting up store fronts. Alan Court at the Financial Times reports that IBM has 1,000 of its employees spending time in Second Life. American Apparel hires cyber sales clerks to test new merchandise before it hits stores in the real world. And there's even a conference coming up next month for Fortune 500 companies who need helping devising a virtual worlds strategy.

Why the rush to a place that isn't even real? It's a chance to test new products and strategies (Starwood runs a virtual hotel), get marketing buzz, even find new talent. Fortune reports that people have already found real life work based on their performance in Second Life. The virtual "Linden Dollars" can also be converted to real cash, so the chance to make money is already there. Above all, this represents a fast growing market and a young demographic. There are already nearly 2 million users in Second Life, and while the virtual world is still way behind more traditional social networking sites like MySpace (see FP's related piece on YouTube, Second Life, and other hot Web 2.0 properties), that number is rising fast.

Most coverage of Second Life has focused on Western brands, but it cannot be long before firms from India or China join them. Like with any emerging market, there will be rising competition and new risks.

And firms won't be immune from criticism for their actions on Second Life (such as running virtual sweatshops). How long before there are calls for codes of conduct for virtual activities? Some firms are jumping ahead and aligning cyber ventures with a responsible image, which is why you can visit Mokitown, where every kid learns to cross the road safely—thanks to the good folks at Daimler Chrysler.

Michael Jarvis is a corporate responsibility specialist for the Business, Competitiveness & Development Program at the World Bank Institute. He is a regular contributor to the Private Sector Development Blog. Writers from the PSDBlog contribute a regular series of posts for Passport entitled "Fighting Poverty With Markets."

For the latest news about Second Life, visit Reuters' virtual bureau. 

Earlier today, Hillary Clinton's official MySpace page mysteriously disappeared, and surfers saw this message:

Now, the presidental candidate is down to a mere 12,198 MySpace friends, from a peak of over 24,000. Micah Sifry promises to find out whether this was a malicious prank by Rupert Murdoch, whose NewsCorp owns MySpace, or just an accident.

By the way, Illionois Senator Barack Obama already has 38,462 friends, while New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson trails badly with 664. Former vice presidential candidate John Edwards has 11,149.

That day happened to be Tuesday, which, hilariously, was also Safer Internet Day. Three of the Internet's 13 root servers—the brain stem of the World Wide Web, controlling traffic and site identification—came under sustained attack from a massive network of zombie computers. Hackers essentially tried to overwhelm the system with massive amounts of data, targeting servers operated by the U.S. Department of Defense and ICANN, the Internet's overseer. Analysts say the fact that the vast majority of Internet users barely noticed shows the resiliency of the Web. Meanwhile, computer scientists all over the globe were racing to overcome the threat and trying to track down its origins. It's still unclear where most of the remotely controlled computers used in the attack were based, but initial evidence puts many of them in South Korea.

Bringing down a few root servers would be catastrophic for the web, the global economy, communications, you name it. What's troubling about this attack was its size; it's the biggest sustained attack on the Internet since 2002. But the fact that the servers kept humming in the face of tidal waves of data designed to bring them to their knees is also reassuring. Hackers will need to up the ante next time.

(Hat tip: Security Fix) 

PHILIPPE DESMAZES/AFP

The world's oldest continuously-operating newspaper, Post-och Inrikes Tidningar, is dropping its dead-tree edition and going exclusively digital. (Judging by their spartan website, I'd say they're in a heap of trouble.) The paper had long since ceased to be a real force in Swedish journalism (I mean, it's no Aftonbladet). So, in and of itself, it's no big loss.

Of course, the larger trend of newspapers struggling to make ends meet is worrisome. With the rise of the Web, news has become a commodity, and information consumers have more choices than ever. And people who want to sell their junk or rent their property don't need the classifieds section anymore—there's eBay and craigslist. If newspapers don't figure out how to adapt soon, my dystopian media nightmare could become a reality. It's not hard to imagine a future limited to colorless wire stories, Doppler radar flyovers, and 24/7 manhunts for missing teenagers.

Perhaps it just seems like there's a rash of celebrity activism in recent weeks. We of course all know it's hardly a new phenomenon. But the most meta I've come across has to be Kevin Bacon's new SixDegrees.org, a charity website premised on the eponymous game involving everyone's favorite Footlooser. The theory goes: If you can be three degrees removed from someone halfway around the world, why not close the gap and introduce those people to your favorite charities? You can even get a little closer to the favorite charities of celebs like Kanye West and Nicole Kidman, throwing the Six Degrees game into total chaos in the process. The site has raised more than $80,000 since its launch launch this month, but it remains to be seen whether the "small world effect" can actually increase the likelihood people will donate money or whether visitors will simply go for the privilege bestowed by Bacon of being just one degree removed from the man who can be connected to just about anyone. 

(Hat tip: Grist)