Yahoo said Tuesday that it had reason to suspect that China was blocking its Flickr photo-sharing site. The move came after pictures of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre were posted to the site, which drew the ire of the Chinese government. While Flickr apparently loads, the image links are non functional and the company has confirmed it is not experiencing any technical difficulties.

Discussion of the Tiananmen massacre Square is forbidden in the country, and state media, the Internet, and books have been scrubbed of any references to the event. Yahoo did not specifically say whether the pictures were uploaded by a Chinese resident or by someone outside the country.

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Adobe took the wraps off of AIR on Monday, its cross-operating system platform that allows developers to use Web-centric programming languages and environments to create desktop applications.

AIR, formerly code-named "Apollo," works hand-in-hand with with Flex, Adobe's framework for creating rich Internet applications. Together, "the masses would be able to create applications," senior product manager for Adobe AIR Louis Polanco told BetaNews.

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Finally emerging from beta after Microsoft told an already anxious customer base in May of last year it would eventually be available early in first quarter 2007, Service Pack 1 of Virtual Server 2005 R2 has at last emerged from beta. But some customers looking for a feature that Microsoft brochures said it has may be disappointed today to learn they really should have said it's a feature that SP1 supports (big difference): Volume Shadow Services.

For users of Windows Server 2003 on physical systems, the support is actually good news. They already have VSS, which currently enables them to take backup "snapshots" of their hard drives while they're running, for possible restoration to an earlier state in case of an emergency. After SP1 is installed, their existing VSS software will take similar snapshots of virtual hard drives as well as physical ones.

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As urgent appeals for lawmakers to finally address multiple defects in US patent law appear to finally be taken seriously, the US Patent and Trademark Office is considering riding this wave of upheaval and making a tremendous change of its own: Last week, it announced its official support of a Web site whose purpose will be to encourage citizens to assess the validity of patent applications for themselves, and issue challenges where necessary.

The goal is to expedite the discovery of "prior art" - creations that existed before the applicant for a patent claimed he invented them. If successful, the Peer-to-Patent Web site could become a kind of SourceForge for intellectual property integrity.

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The HD DVD Promotions Group said Monday that its strategy of price cuts seems to be paying off - sales have skyrocketed, it claims.

HD DVD has regained its lead over Blu-ray, now holding 60 percent of all high-definition set-top players sold. In addition, the format was able to set an all-time record for titles sold in May, with 75,000 discs shipped.

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WWDC 2007 - Responding to feedback from developers, Apple CEO Steve Jobs said Monday that the company would open up the iPhone platform for third party application. The initial concern with such a capability was security, but Jobs says Apple came up with "a very sweet solution."

Because the iPhone (due at 6pm on June 29) includes Safari's full WebKit engine, Apple says developers will be able to write Web 2.0/AJAX applications for the device. The applications can integrate with iPhone services, which means they can make calls, send e-mail and integrate with Google Maps. Because they share Safari's security features, the applications are safe and require no separate SDK. "With all the Web services built in, you can build fantastic applications for iPhone," remarked Apple vice president Scott Forstall.

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WWDC 2007 - In a surprise "One more thing..." announcement at its Worldwide Developer Conference Monday, Apple says it will release version 3 of its Safari Web browser with Leopard in October, as well as a version for Windows XP and Vista.

Steve Jobs noted that Safari has captured 5 percent of the browser market already, and says the company has built up expertise with iTunes for Windows. Safari 3 is faster than both IE and Firefox, Jobs said, and the update will have Google and Yahoo search built into the browser. Other new features in version 3 include drag-able tabs. A public beta of Safari 3 for Mac OS X Tiger and Windows XP/Vista is available for download from FileForum.

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WWDC 2007 - At its annual Worldwide Developer Conference Monday, Apple CEO Steve Jobs provided the final look at Mac OS X 10.5, code-named "Leopard," before the new operating system ships in October. He demoed 10 out of what he says are 300 new features.

22 million people are currently using Mac OS X, Jobs said, with two-thirds of that number running Tiger. Leopard will be the next major upgrade to Apple's platform, bringing a number of new and innovative features. WWDC is the first chance for developers to really sink their teeth into those changes.

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With its upgrade to Cayman complete, AOL is focusing on adding features to its web e-mail client that will help it to catch up and surpass its competitors in features.

The first of the new features is full integration with its AIM messaging product, something the first iteration of Cayman began, but only did so in a rudimentary form.

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WWDC 2007 - For many, the biggest complaint about the Mac is it's lack of games. Apple wants to change that. The company said Monday that EA Games would return to the platform in addition to several other developers, helping to further make the Mac as a platform for gamers.

Among the games coming to the Mac would be Command & Conquer 3, Battlefield 2142, Need for Speed Carbon, and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. The games are expected to simultaneously release in July.

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Video codec company DivX is seeking individuals to help beta test some "secret stuff" the company is concocting in its labs. Although it's not saying what software (or hardware) products it plans to test, DivX has built a streaming media set-top box code-named GejBox, after DivX's creator.

"We want to include a few avid DivX fanatics to help us make sure we’re building the best technology we can come up with," Gej wrote on the DivX Labs site. Applicants must have a home network with modern computer and an existing library of DivX media. Interested users must fill out a survey to apply.

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Microsoft quietly hired a former senior Linux engineer last week who will be tasked with running the company's joint research lab with partner Novell. Tom Hanrahan was formerly director of engineering with the Linux Foundation and also a former senior program manager at IBM's Linux Technology Center.

According to a statement from Microsoft, Hanrahan's work will primilarly center around "interoperable virtualization" between SUSE Linux Server and Windows. However, the lab will also would work on Office Open XML and ODF interoperability, WS-Management interoperability, and directory federation. Hanrahan will report to Sam Ramji, the head of Platform Technology Strategy at Microsoft.

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The New York Times revealed Saturday that Google was the unidentified party mentioned in a US Dept. of Justice status report last March as having lodged a "middleware-related complaint" against Microsoft. That revelation raised perhaps zero eyebrows in the technology community, who could file that fact under "D" for "Duh."

But a memo by a key antitrust enforcement official that the Times also turned up, rejecting Google's arguments and advising states' prosecutors to reject them as well, has raised some legal eyebrows over whether the relationship between the DOJ and Microsoft has grown too cozy.

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Google is being taken to task by a UK-based privacy group over its apparent lack of a commitment to the privacy of its users. However, the company is doing what it can do discredit the report.

Privacy International said Saturday that the Mountain View, Calif.-based search engine had the lowest possible grade of any of the 22 online companies it surveyed, a level which it called "comprehensive consumer surveillance and entrenched hostility to privacy."

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Yahoo criticized the Chinese government on Monday, saying it shouldn't curtail its citizens' rights to free speech. The statement came just one day after the mother of jailed Chinese journalist Shi Tao announced she sued the company in U.S. District Court. Yahoo, along with its Chinese partner Alibaba, has been accused of leaking the information that led to Shi's arrest.

Human rights groups have criticized companies such as Yahoo, Microsoft and Google, which have all been accused of either kowtowing to questionable Internet restrictions or providing governments with information that have led to arrests and imprisonment. However, the companies have defended their actions, saying they must follow Chinese law or it would put employees at risk of legal action.

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