When Google turned off its Chinese search engine Monday and rerouted Mainland users to an uncensored version in Hong Kong, the company girded itself for the possibility that Chinese officials might restrict access to the Hong Kong site -- they even posted a page that showed whether Google services were available in China.

When that status page was posted, a set of green checks indicated there were "No Issues" for Google's Web, Image and News searches.  But as reports flowed in that China's Great Firewall was already preventing users there from opening many Web pages that dealt with sensitive topics, it was quickly unclear whether Google's definition of "No Issues" was in line with that of users.

Earlier Tuesday, users searching for restricted subjects like the Falun Gong and Tiananmen Square were able to see pages of Google results, but unable to open individual pages by clicking on those results.  But by Tuesday evening, searches for some sensitive subjects were blocked outright, returning an error message. That indicated Chinese authorities had caught up, and were now censoring Google searches themselves.

Still, Google's China status page, called "Mainland China service availability," showed that there were "No Issues."  The company said it would update the page daily, but as of this writing, it is Wednesday in China and the status page still shows a date of Sunday.

Google explained that the status page was not meant to reflect individual instances of censorship -- where, for example, the Great Firewall prevented a user from opening a page on Falun Gong if they clicked on it from Google's search results (in that case, the censoring lies with the Chinese government, not Google). 

But now that Chinese authorities appear to be blocking pages of Google results, the question is when and whether Google will reclassify the availability of its services there.

-- David Sarno

Censorship by China grabbed the headlines for weeks. But what of restrictions on Internet freedom elsewhere in the world?

Case in point: The latest country in the news for attempting to block objectionable content is Australia.The Sydney Morning Herald reports that Google, Yahoo and others have criticized government plans to force Internet service providers to make certain content inaccessible.

Australia plans legislation this year that will blacklist certain sites. Google has gone on record saying the scope of the filtering is too broad, that it would slow down Internet access, could easily be circumvented and would give  parents a false sense of safety.

Yahoo had similar objections, fearing the proposed legislation "could block content with a strong social, political and/or educational value." 

Google is battling censorship in China and Australia. But what about in other countries where, for differing political or cultural reasons, censorship takes place, asked business professor Christopher Tang. He points out that Google operates in other countries that monitor and screen the Web.

“Even the U.S. government monitors the Web, but it does it quietly. In China, the authorities do it more overtly. It’s a different culture,” Tang said.

Oded Shenkar, a professor of business management at Ohio State University and the author of “The Chinese Century,” said the Chinese controversy may shine a brighter light on Internet censorship.

“What’s going to happen in other markets that are not completely free?” Shenkar said. “Where exactly do you draw the line?”

-- Jessica Guynn

What was the world's first tweet? That is the question.

Spark Capital partner Bijan Sabet blogged that Monday was Twitter's fourth birthday and that co-founder Jack Dorsey's first tweet was: "inviting coworkers."

Blog commenters disagreed, saying it was: "setting up my twttr."

Influential technology blogger Marshall Kirkpatrick weighed in: "Hate to say it, but other blogs (The Next Web, Mashable) are posting 'setting up my twttr' with a timestamp 10 mins before this. Hmmm.... :) Ah history, I wish I knew what I was doing that day!"

-- Jessica Guynn

Photo: Spark Capital's Jack Dorsey. Credit: magerleagues

U.S.-based solar cell companies are getting a cloudy rating from a Silicon Valley environmental advocacy group, which released a score card of solar manufacturers Tuesday.

The Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition’s first solar performance report measures photovoltaic module manufacturing based on factors including environmental health and safety, sustainability, workers’ rights and social justice.

German companies Calyxo, SolarWorld and Sovello topped the rankings with high scores of 90, 88 and 73, respectively. But the two companies based in the U.S. – First Solar Inc. of Arizona and Abound Solar of Colorado – scored 67 and 63.

The coalition reached out in 2009 to more than 200 solar photovoltaic companies based on a list culled from trade show literature, Web searches and industry association directories. After concluding that roughly 30% were in commercial production while the rest were still in pilot production or the research-and- development stage, the coalition sent a survey to 25 companies in October.

The 14 companies that responded represent 24% of 2008’s module market share, according to the coalition. The nonprofit advocacy group has conducted several similar surveys on the environmental effects of other technologies and said it hopes the solar industry phases out pollutants such as lead and other toxic chemicals from its products.

Eight companies said they would support mandatory take-back and recycling programs for solar panels at the end of their life spans, and six firms said they are setting aside funds for collecting and disposing of the panels.

Half of the respondents said they would provide free recycling services. Six companies said their products contain lead, but all intend to eventually phase out the metal.

-- Tiffany Hsu

Photo: Solar panels from a new Chevron testing facility near Bakersfield. Credit: Tomas Ovalle / For The Times

Commercial space travel moved a little closer to reality Monday when Virgin Galactic’s mother ship and rocket plane took to the skies for its first "captive carry" test flight at the Mojave Air and Space Port.

The carrier aircraft, which resembles a flying catamaran because of its two fuselages, and the six-passenger rocket plane, dubbed SpaceShipTwo, are beginning a test flight program that will continue until Virgin believes it can begin commercial operations.

Instead of launching a rocket into space, the carrier craft will fly SpaceShipTwo under its wing to 50,000 feet, where the spaceship will separate and blast off.  The craft will climb to about 60 miles above the Earth's surface. At that suborbital altitude, passengers will experience weightlessness and see the curvature of the Earth. The price for the experience: $200,000.

“The captive-carry flight signifies the start of what we believe will be extremely exciting and successful spaceship flight test program,” said Burt Rutan, founder of Scaled Composites, which engineered the spacecraft, in a statement.

Virgin Galactic, founded by British billionaire Richard Branson, hopes to make its first passenger flight from the yet-to-be finished Spaceport America in New Mexico by 2011. The company said it has taken about 330 reservations for the experience.

“It comes as no surprise that the flight went so well,” Branson said in a statement. “Today was another major step along that road and a testament to U.S. engineering and innovation.”

-- W.J. Hennigan

With Google redirecting users to its Hong Kong search engine, powerful new results now show up for sensitive subjects such as the June 4 Tiananmen crackdown, Taiwanese independence and the Dalai Lama.

But opening those links is another matter.

Connections to the banned search results are denied, much as they are for any foreign website under the purview of China’s censorship machinery, known as the Great Firewall.

Search for a forbidden term one too many times, and the connection to the Google site in Hong Kong returns an error message.

-- David Pierson, in Beijing

With negotiations at an impasse in the high-profile showdown that has escalated tensions between China and the United States, Google Inc. has begun to redirect users of its Chinese-language search engine to uncensored results on its Chinese-language service based in Hong Kong.

The Internet giant said it will maintain other operations in the country, part of its bid to continue to operate in the fast-growing Internet market in the world’s most populous country while not backing down from its pledge to end censorship.

The Chinese government was not forewarned about the move. It could block people on China’s mainland from connecting with the Hong Kong service. Google said users would probably see some slowdown in service because of the added load on Hong Kong servers.

“Figuring out how to make good on our promise to stop censoring search on Google.cn has been hard. We want as many people in the world as possible to have access to our services, including users in mainland China, yet the Chinese government has been crystal clear throughout our discussions that self-censorship is a non-negotiable legal requirement,” David Drummond, Google’s senior vice president of corporate development and chief legal officer, said in a blog post. “We believe this new approach of providing uncensored search in simplified Chinese from Google.com.hk is a sensible solution to the challenges we've faced. It's entirely legal and will meaningfully increase access to information for people in China.”

The unusual public spat has captivated the business world. Google rebuked China 2 1/2 months ago when it pledged to stop censoring search results on its Chinese site, Google.cn, as required by Chinese law. It cited increased restrictions on Internet freedom and a series of attempts to hack its systems from within China. Foreign companies rarely publicly challenge China’s policies or threaten to scale back or leave a market considered so crucial.

Over the weekend, Chinese state media attacked Google in editorials, saying it must obey the laws of countries where it does business. “One company’s ambition to change China’s Internet rules and legal system will only prove to be ridiculous,” the commentary said.

China, looking to avoid a populist backlash, is portraying the dispute with Google as “information imperialism.” Chinese users brought flowers to Google’s Chinese headquarters after the Jan. 12 announcement to express their dismay that Google would leave China.

Rebecca MacKinnon, an expert on Chinese censorship, wrote on her blog that the “Google China incident” as many Chinese call it, has heightened awareness of the extent of Internet censorship.

“It has sparked a lot of debate and soul searching about the extent to which their government is causing them to be isolated from the rest of the world,” MacKinnon wrote.

Heated rhetoric from government officials could signal that China plans to further restrict Internet access, isolating Chinese users from the global Internet and forcing other companies to decide whether to continue to operate in a country where government regulation and local competition have stymied so many foreign technology companies.

“It’s very clear that China is going to become more protectionist,” said Oded Shenkar, a professor of business management at Ohio State University and the author of “The Chinese Century.”

Analysts say the massive market is almost entirely dominated by Chinese players, which are more easily controlled by government officials. The Chinese government encourages Internet use for education and business, but authorities ban content they deem subversive or pornographic. Popular international websites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are blocked in China.

“Every few years the Chinese are driven to try some new kind of control. It’s a dance,” said James Lewis, a technology expert with the think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Google strayed off the playbook.”

-- Jessica Guynn

Seattle might be a beautiful city in its own right, but according to a new study from security firm Symantec, it's also the nation's "riskiest" city when it comes to cyber crime.

Symantec examined 50 U.S. cities using 24-million security sensors that monitor malicious-attack activity around the globe. The company looked at a wide array of security issues, including attacks used to gain access to a user's PC, viruses and worms, computers that have been overtaken specifically to send out spam, and bot-infected computers used by malicious hackers to infect other machines.

To determine a city's cyber-crime risk, Symantec examined the frequency of those security attacks. It also considered the availability of Web access and high-risk activities that people typically engage in, such as connecting to a Wi-Fi hot spot or making online purchases without a secure connection. Each city was individually scored on a per-capita basis to determine "riskiness."

According to Symantec, Seattle scored "near the top" in every criterion it used to determine risk. The security firm found that Seattle was heavily affected by cyber attacks. Its citizens are also more likely to access the Web each day and use the Internet to make bank transactions than people in any other city.

Boston closely followed Seattle in terms of risk. According to Symantec, the city suffers from an inordinate amount of spam (the third-highest tally of spam infections in the study) that, combined with heavy Web use, helps make Boston a potentially dangerous city for Web users.

Washington, D.C., which ranked fourth overall in frequency of cyber crimes, took the third spot in Symantec's risk study. It was followed by San Francisco and Raleigh, N.C., to round out the top five. Atlanta, which ranked sixth in Symantec's study, had the highest number of cyber-crime attacks.

Neither New York City nor Los Angeles made the top 10, even though they had extremely large populations.

Whether Symantec's study will change practices in risky cities remains to be seen. But it effectively highlights the fact that Web users continually engage in risky actions without properly securing their data beforehand.

Unfortunately, the Web is becoming an increasingly scary place, and Web users are finding that out the hard way.

-- Don Reisinger

twitter.com/donreisinger

Ever since Twitter exploded three years ago at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, many venture capitalists and technology commentators look to the annual conference as a forecaster for the next big Web start-up.

Last year, Foursquare was it. The location-centric social network launched in anticipation of SXSW 2009 and made friends instantly.

The project of Dennis Crowley, who sold his last location-based social network called Dodgeball to Google in 2005, and co-founder Naveen Selvadurai earned a second consecutive unofficial title of SXSW prom king.

To make the real-life mobile game more attractive, the New York company created 16 unique badges specifically for SXSW. Players earn badges when checking in to certain locations or a string of places. For example, checking in to barbecue joints unlocks the "porky" badge.

A social component is key for websites looking to gain traction at SXSW. It helped Twitter, a social network that could be utilized with any cellphone, catapult itself into the hearts of techies. The increasing prevalence of smart phones contributes to Foursquare's viability -- something that certainly hindered Dodgeball's growth.

While most of the early adopters who attended the SXSW Interactive conference are back home recovering and detoxing, Foursquare continues to be a prevalent tool at the SXSW music festival, which continues until Sunday. Friends are using it to keep in touch as they hop between concert venues and 6th Street hotdog stands.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has awarded Apple a patent that describes a location-based social-networking application for the iPhone.

The patent, discovered by Apple blog Patently Apple, describes a location-based app, called iGroups, that would enable users to form a social network with others around them. The main focus is to deliver a social-networking-like service, while maintaining a person's privacy.

"During private or public events, a typical individual may have many brief contacts with individuals for which they would like to have further correspondence post event," Apple wrote in the patent application. "With conventional social network websites, the individual would have to collect personal information from the contacts, manually create a social network on the social network website and invite the contacts to join."

Apple doesn't like that. IGroups would enable users to create an ad-hoc group during and after an event and communicate in real-time without being forced to share private information typically found on social networks, like Facebook or Twitter. IGroups works within a specific proximity, which means users are able to communicate with others in the group only when they are near one another.

The idea behind iGroups isn't all that unique. The service is similar to other location-based tools, like Foursquare and Loopt, that access a person's geographic location through their mobile phones to help them establish a social network with others in their area.

It's also worth noting that there is already an app called iGroup in Apple's App Store. If Apple ever releases its iGroups application, it will either need to change its program's name or work out a deal with the original iGroup developer.

But whether Apple will actually release iGroups is unknown. Like most tech companies, Apple files for several patents that sometimes turn into products and sometimes don't. For now, Apple has said nothing about iGroups, and there is no reason to believe that it will be coming to the iPhone or other mobile devices any time soon.

That said, given the recent meteoric rise of location-based social-networking applications, it would be the perfect time for Apple to join the fray.

Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the patent application.

--Don Reisinger

twitter.com/donreisinger

Image: A view of the iGroups app in action. Credit: Apple/U.S. PTO

Chris Hughes, a Facebook co-founder who helped launch the social networking phenom and then the tour-de-force online organizing campaign for Barack Obama’s presidential bid, on Thursday unveiled his latest endeavor: A website to connect individuals and organizations striving to help the world.

The site is called Jumo, which means “together in concert” in Yoruba, a West African language. It will officially open for business in September or October. He announced the new project on his blog and on Twitter.

Hughes, 26, who now lives in New York, wants to use the experience and knowledge he gained at Facebook and on the Obama campaign to “have maximum impact on the world.”

In an interview, Hughes said he arrived at the decision to form a nonprofit that would tap the power of the Internet to connect people and causes after a post-campaign year of traveling in Africa, Asia and Latin America and work as an entrepreneur-in-residence at a venture capital firm and at his old stomping grounds, Facebook.

“You learn pretty fast that there is no magic solution to poverty. There are not even a single set of solutions or strategies that are going to be the answer to all of these challenges,” he said. “Instead you have to support all the individuals and organizations working on the ground doing good, valuable work.”

The most effective way to give that support is to create a site that can match people, their skills and interests with the organizations who need them, Hughes said.

While working on Facebook and the Obama campaign, Hughes said he learned that if you make it easy for people to get involved, they will. The Obama campaign made political history by enlisting voters in droves on the Web.

“You can get a lot of people to give money if you show them a photo of a malnourished African child. That’s pretty similar to what we saw in the world of politics. Before the Obama campaign, the standard was to assume that people had short attention spans and that the message had to be that urgent action is needed,” Hughes said. “What we did with Obama is we took the leap of faith that people have longer attention spans and that if you really build a relationship with them and help them understand what the campaign is about, what the values are and why it is important for them to get involved, they will not only contribute once but over the long term.”

Hughes is banking that will be true when it comes to philanthropy. “I really want to move away from the old model in which you have to rely on people giving $10 after a humanitarian crisis to a newer model where people give money but also their time and their skills, whatever they have, to the causes that are personally meaningful to them well before the crisis moment presents itself,” he said.

Visitors to the Jumo site are asked to answer a list of questions designed to help them discover personally relevant opportunities to donate their time or money. Jumo has a staff of three (Kristen Titus, a nonprofit expert, and the Obama campaign’s former designer, Scott Thomas) and is looking to hire several more. Hughes is seeking $2.5 million in funding from individuals and foundations and he said he has already raised about a quarter of that amount.

“I fundamentally believe that people have a genuine desire to be positively engaged in the world around them,” he said. “I don’t think the online world has yet caught up with that desire.”

The Internet has spawned many efforts to help organizations solicit interest, volunteers and donations. Hughes’ generation is actively experimenting with how to use social networking for social good. Hughes’ friend Joe Green and veteran entrepreneur Sean Parker created Causes on Facebook, which helps raise money and awareness for nonprofits through the activity of millions of users. Causes has become a model for how the Internet can level the playing field for nonprofits that cannot afford expensive -- and often ineffective -- direct marketing campaigns.

"People are doing amazing things right now on the Web. They are all doing pieces of the puzzle," Hughes said. "I do think that they are still very focused on the very last step, that moment of action or donation. If you zoom out a little bit, you can build an information channel so people can have an ongoing relationship with issues and causes."

-- Jessica Guynn

Photo: Chris Hughes. Credit: Union Square Ventures

We’ve closely monitored how words spoken into a phone can be instantly translated into various languages. (See David Sarno’s recent article about Google's new phone application.) What you may not know yet, however, is that researchers have now developed a way for people to communicate by speaking into a phone silently by simply moving their lips.

The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany is behind the new developments that are enabling  people to hold phone conversations in complete silence.

This borderline telepathy-meets-technology is no simple feat, requiring electromyographic sensors to be attached to the face to measure the movement of facial muscles related to speech. Those movements are then converted to sound on the other end of the line.

[Updated: We received a picture from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology of what the sensors look like. See below.]

Though it’s not yet at a stage where the masses can use, the potential ramifications of the development are incredible. In addition to opening up major opportunities for speech-impaired individuals, the ability to "say" a Social Security number over the phone or have a conversation with a family member in the middle of the office in complete privacy may be closer than we think.

-- Zohreen Adamjee

Photo: Two subjects connected to electromyographic sensors that measure  movement of facial muscles related to speech. Credit: Deutsche Messe Hannover

Camcorder as fashion accessory? That’s new – although the mini digital camcorder from IRes Technology Corp. looks more pocket protector than glam accessory.  

But the company appears to be aiming for convenience. You can wear the uCorder on your shirt pocket with an integrated clip or on a lanyard, which is included with the camera.

Referred to as "the modern day pen," the uCorder takes away the burden of carting around your camcorder. It could be useful if you want to capture a series of moments during a high-speed or high-intensity event (on a roller-coaster, para-gliding, bungee-jumping, race-car driving).

The IRDC150 model is 1 GB and can record up to six hours of audio and video, while the IRDC250 is 2 GB and can record up to seven hours of video.

Although the uCorder out beats most of the flip camcorders we looked at in terms of recording length (typically only one to two hours of recording time), the biggest downside is that if you choose to hold the camera, there's no screen that flips out to watch what is being recorded. 

Still, it may not be too long before we reach for a camera the same way we reach for a belt or necklace.

-- Zohreen Adamjee
 

If you haven't eaten your breakfast yet, read this post with caution.

Ken Aversano, a huge Mac fan and a writer for website The Cooks' Den, and his wife, Diane, teamed up to create a sculpture of Steve Jobs' face out of a block of ... mozzarella. Why cheese, you may ask? Ken said that the cheese was good for food carving and the mozzarella proved to be a particularly good medium, with its consistency and pliability on being slightly melted. The step-by-step process of the carving is pretty fascinating and is featured on The Cooks' Den website.

Diane, who specializes in watercolor, has done sculpture in the past and carved the cheese with  a knife, using food-coloring for the shading and adding pepper to give the illusion of hair. As you might guess, this isn't the first time she's carved with food; she's been carving for a while and previously carved Star Wars character Jar Jar Binks out of a jicama.

Ken's and Diane's cheese sculpture has received quite a bit of online attention, but they have not yet gotten a reaction from the Apple man himself. Perhaps when Jobs finds out, he'll be just as amazed that he has his very own personalized iPad Thai.

-- Zohreen Adamjee

Ever been in an emergency situation where you can't call 911 and you need a simple, quick way to alert someone about your exact location and that you may be in danger? Few of us would expect this phrase next, but ... now there's an app for that.

The $3.99 app is called Silent Bodyguard and using it is simple. The app sends an emergency alert and your GPS location about every 60 seconds to the number and e-mail address you list when setting up the application, without alerting onlookers or potential attackers. (The background of the main page containing the emergency alert button is just a picture of a river, see the picture below.)

When I tested the app, it sent an e-mail to several of my assigned contacts that read: "This is Zo, I am in an emergency situation, please help!" It also gave a link to Google Maps showing my approximate location when I was sending the alert. In most cases it was within a block of where I was. Because it sends alerts every 60 seconds, those getting the alerts can also track your movement. (The app does not call 911)

The application was created by a mother as a means to keep her kids safe. MSNBC analyst and former FBI chief hostage negotiator and criminal profiler Clint Van Zandt (known for profiling Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber) recently endorsed the application, and the app now links to his LiveSecure.org website.

This is one of the few apps that I've seen that I would consider a necessity for my phone.

My only caution to users would be to do an emergency test after installing the application. When I first tested the application, it didn't work precisely as it should because I hadn't updated my iPhone in a while. Also, the application has to stay on for the alert to continue and the phone has to be in an area with cellphone service.

-- Zohreen Adamjee

After reviewing objections, a San Jose federal judge has approved a $9.5-million settlement of a class-action lawsuit over social networking site Facebook’s program Beacon that published what users were buying.

Facebook denied any wrongdoing but agreed to end the Beacon program last November.

As part of the settlement, Facebook will fund a “digital trust fund” that will issue more than $6 million in grants to organizations that study online privacy. Over the objections of privacy advocates, Facebook will have a seat on the fund’s three-member board. The board consists of Chris Jay Hoofnagle, who heads the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology; Tim Sparapani, Facebook’s public policy director; and writer Larry Magid.

"We're pleased that Judge Seeborg has approved the settlement after carefully considering all opinions,” Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt said. “The independent foundation will fund worthy projects helping protect and improve Internet users’ privacy, safety and security. We look forward to providing additional details on the foundation in the weeks and months ahead.”

One privacy advocate said he’s exploring whether he can appeal the decision. “This sweetheart deal for Facebook is outrageous, and another indication they don't really want to ensure privacy online,” said Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy.

-- Jessica Guynn 

"So, how was your week?" asked Umair Haque in his first blog post since his widely panned interview of Twitter CEO Evan Williams at SXSW. "Mine was interesting."

"In short, the Twitterati in the audience thought our hourlong chat was about as interesting as watching a pair of grandmothers play Canasta. I'll be the first to admit to being a bit green as an interviewer, and entirely new to SXSW. Maybe, in hindsight, I should have monitored Twitter on my laptop from the stage so I could have adjusted our conversation ... especially in front of a raucous audience not known for leniency. In any case, I apologize to the SXSW community that our conversation didn't live up to the significant pre-event hype."

The post, which goes on to delve into what Williams had to say during the interview, is getting a lot of re-tweets.

-- Jessica Guynn

As most Twitter users know, a significant portion of the social network's value comes from all the interesting links that send users from one part of the Web to another.

Market-research firm Hitwise recently decided to see where all those Twitter users go when they leave Twitter.com. The firm found that most folks go to entertainment sites and other social networks.

According to Hitwise, about 60% of Twitter users go to entertainment sites or social networks after leaving Twitter.com. Out of that group, the majority of folks visit photo- or video-sharing sites.

That won't surprise hard-core Twitter users. The social network is inundated with links directing users to a person's images on photo-sharing services such as TwitPic, Tweetphoto and YFrog. YouTube is also a popular video destination link on Twitter.

After social networks, Hitwise found that about 7% of Twitter users surf to search engines, while 5% go to lifestyle sites. Just under 5% of users head to news sites.

All told, Hitwise found that destination sites are seeing a 138% uptick in visitors from Twitter.com compared with the same period last year.

In other words, Twitter isn't the only site benefiting from its immense growth.

-- Don Reisinger

twitter.com/donreisinger

Image: A graph showing where Twitter users are going. Credit: Hitwise

Actor Marlon Brando once said: “Privacy is not something that I'm merely entitled to, it's an absolute prerequisite.”

He probably would not have appreciated how the Internet is peeling away the last vestiges of privacy.

And neither apparently does outgoing Federal Trade Commissioner Pamela Jones Harbour, who said Wednesday that Google, Facebook and other major U.S. Internet companies need to better protect the privacy of their users or face stiff penalties.

The views she expressed were her own, and not those of the FTC, she said.

"I am especially concerned that technology companies are learning harmful lessons from each other's attempts to push the privacy envelope," Harbour said during an FTC privacy workshop, according to PC World and other accounts. "Even the most respected and popular online companies, the ones who claim to respect privacy, continue to launch products where the guiding privacy policy seems to be, 'Throw it up against the wall and see if it sticks.'"

Harbour, who is leaving the FTC next month, says she advocates “intolerance” toward companies that push the privacy envelope only to backtrack when consumers protest that their data has been publicly exposed.

Exhibit A: Google’s February launch of social networking tool Buzz inside of millions of Gmail accounts, which prompted a flurry of privacy complaints. Harbour accused Google of “irresponsible conduct” and questioned why the technology leader had not learned from past product launches that sparked controversy.

She also cited a comment from Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt during an interview with CNBC: “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”

"Google consistently tells the public to 'just trust us,'" she said. "But based on my observations, I do not believe consumer privacy played any significant role in the release of Buzz."

“Unlike a lot of tech products, consumer privacy cannot be run in beta,” she said. 

Google spokesman Brian Richardson said in a statement to the Wall Street Journal that the company made changes to Buzz's privacy settings within 48 hours. "When we realized that we had unintentionally made users unhappy, we worked quickly to make immediate changes,” he said.

 -- Jessica Guynn

Photo: Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt. Credit: Matthew Staver /  Bloomberg News

A Texas jury awarded nearly $106 million to a California communications company after deciding that computer technology giant Microsoft Corp. had violated two of its patents.

VirnetX Holding Corp., based in Scotts Valley, originally asked for $242 million in damages. But the jury, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, recommended on Tuesday that Microsoft pay $105.7 million.

The trial lasted for a week in Tyler, Texas, and dealt with Microsoft products including Windows Vista and XP. The award involves $71.7 million for one patent and $34 million for another, the company said.

The jury also found that the Redmond, Wash.-based software behemoth willfully infringed on the patents. The patents deal with methods of creating virtual private networks, or VPNs, between computers and for establishing VPNs using secure domain names.

VirnetX spokesman Greg Wood said company executives were “obviously just overjoyed.”

“Yesterday, the foundation of the tech world shifted,” he said. “We are sitting on a goldmine. We probably have the most important patent portfolio in history in regards to security, and yesterday was instrumental in validating that.”

The company’s stock jumped nearly 14%, up 77 cents to $6.36, Wednesday afternoon. The stock was not publicly traded on Tuesday.

Microsoft said it was disappointed by the verdict and planned to appeal.

“We respect others’ intellectual property, and we believe the evidence demonstrated that we do not infringe and the patents are invalid," said spokesman Kevin Kutz in a statement. “We believe the award of damages is legally and factually unsupported.”

-- Tiffany Hsu