A Vietnamese blogger has been detained for "infringing on the interests of the state" after she criticised a security official and his family, reports said Tuesday.News of the arrest of Le Nguyen Huong Tra, 35, who blogged as Co Gai Do Long, came days after US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed concern about Vietnam's rights record.The blogger "had written several entries criticising a state official and his family for their patronage of some showbiz beauties," the state Vietnam News ...

Ahead of Europe’s most anticipated music award ceremony, the 2010 MTV Europe Music Awards, which take place this weekend, Nokia’s Ovi Music reveals Lady Gaga is set to scoop all five award nominations – if music downloads are anything to go by. Lady Gaga, the self-styled Princess of Pop, is the world’s most popular female artist, according to music downloads from Ovi Music across 38 countries*. She is going head-to-head with pop rival Katy Perry who is also up for five awards, ...

President Hugo Chavez, who has embraced new media in his quest to dominate Venezuela's airwaves, celebrated his millionth follower on Monday on Twitter.The firebrand leader, known for his fiercely anti-US rhetoric, opened his account in April in response to the growing use of social networking sites by opposition parties that fear restrictions in the mainstream press."Hello beautiful world. I would like to thank all my followers. We have passed the million mark! Wow! We're going to keep on winning," Chavez ...

There is much excitement in the developed world over the strides that have been made in the mobile market during the last couple of years. But it is in the developing world where the changes are having the most significant impact on the lives of ordinary people.It all began with Apple and its groundbreaking iPhone OS and app store. Blackberry and Nokia swiftly followed with their new mobile technologies, which had the effect of unleashing the huge ...

Since May this year Facebook has been dishing out nostalgia via the aptly-named "Photo Memories". The next time you're randomly stalking surfing around Facebook - and especially when viewing photos - you'll notice in the top right corner of the page that Facebook will be serving, of its own volition, your "Photo Memories" from days past.It uses an algorithm to pull bygone photos from the person whose profile you're viewing, or mutual friends which are loaded to reflect volume of ...

The pressure is on for advertising agencies who have to work harder and harder to attract the attention of jaded, seen-it-all consumers. In response, forward thinking marketers are turning to "flash mobs" and the staging of co-ordinated events linked to social media as a way of spreading their message and breaking through the clutter.The logic is simple: a live, unexpected event has an immediacy and a surprise-factor that elicits strong reactions from the people present, which makes for great ...

Ten billion messages sent to mobile phones during July of 2010; 53-million photos sent during the same month, and more than 710-million logins... these are the kind of numbers that developers from emerging markets look at with envy when studying the mature internet markets of the Western World.But these statistics belong to South African mobile phenomenon, MXit, which launched the beta version of its Application Programming Interface (API) on Friday in Stellenbosch, the town where it all began. ...

Scores of British iPhone 4 users said they were late for work on Monday after a software bug meant the alarm on the Apple device failed to adjust when the country's clocks changed.Hundreds of angry comments were posted on microblogging website Twitter about the apparent glitch, which happened even though the rest of the phone's features updated the time automatically."Well done Apple -- you've made me decide I need to use a proper alarm clock rather than relying on my ...

I was skimming through a recent Advertising Age where an article on the "Future of the Media Agency" caught my eye. Various media agency heads were discussing their views on how their groups would have to adapt to a rapidly evolving and increasingly fragmented media space. Their answers surprised me though, and clearly showed the desperate scramble to redefine how the entire communications media industry defines how it delivers value to clients.The media agency heads discussed how -- in ten ...

I spent an evening last week with the founders of the private social network Yammer, Box.net, and Zendesk, and I wanted to share a conversation I had with Yammer co-founder David Sacks and his pedigree at PayPal.I have a fascination with PayPal and its alumni because they have gone on to build and invest in some of Silicon Valley's top companies: YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, Zynga and many more.Here's a partial list of PayPal's founders and their achievements:- Reid Hoffman, founder ...