1. Beijing ranks fourth in a report on the quality of life in Chinese cities;

2. China will levy new taxes on automobile gasoline;

3. Eleven people were killed and 43 injured, with another two missing in a blast of unknown cause in Milei county of China's Yunnan Province;

4. Spanish tennis players Carlos Moya, Juan Carlos Ferrero and Rafael Nadal visit The Forbidden City in Chinese royal attire during a break from the China Open tennis tournament;

5. Six Party Talks to resume fully today (lots of reports that there will be a meeting, no new developments).

As will undoubtedly make the rounds everywhere in the blogosphere today, Google has just launched Google Blog Search. Google's perhaps the single company most identitied with search, so their entrance into the blog search space is a big milestone even...

The below is from a new blog about China's entertainment industry called Hollwood China. Danwei warns Xinhua and China Daily editors to read this carefully before reproducing:

Taking a cue from the financial and public relations success of "Super Girls", the Standing Committee has decided to leave the fate of Taiwan up to the people.

"We wanted to send a message to the rest of the world that we are progressive, and what says progressive like the fate of an entire island being decided by how accurately people can manipulate their thumbs?," said a Chinese offical who wished to remain anonymous.
"Plus," he went on, "this could be a real money-maker for us. I have heard that Taiwan plans to pay people here on the mainland to text a vote in their favor. It doesn't matter to us; we get a percentage of each text. We expect to make a few million US dollars out of the text messaging alone. Then you have a sudden surge of Taiwanese investment into our work force. It's just smart business. All I can say is, I hope they are paying some people with some fast thumbs and good reception, because the clock is ticking."

Another official, also wishing to remain anonymous, says he thinks Chinese will enjoy the entertainment value of voting on Taiwan.
"I'm pretty sure if we are tabulating text votes about whether to nuke Taiwan, we will have a pretty good ratings share--specially in Taiwan. I predict it will be much higher than "Super Voice Girls."

"I could see China reach a point where pretty much all major decisions are left in the hands of its people and their phones," says Smythe Willard, a Professor of Asian Studies at Harvard. "And I wouldn't be surprised if they used the Olympics to press that kind of thinking on the rest of the world. Suddenly, a gymnast's score wouldn't be decided by a crooked judge from France. It would be decided by a bunch of drunk guys with Nokias in a bar in Chengdu. In my opinion, that is progress."

Our Japanese Six Apart team has released Movable Type 3.2 Beta. Featuring all the improvements and new capabilities in Movable Type 3.2, this version is completely localized in Japanese and supports all of the plugin functionality and templating options of...

1. 《水煮三国》不是很火吗？接着跟风，《水煮后三国》、《水煮楚汉风流》、《水煮春秋战国》、《麻辣三国》、《说三国话权谋》、《麻辣水浒》、《诸葛亮日记》，《狼图腾》之后有《狼性》、《从狼群争斗中学的经营管理》、《狼图腾启示录》，以及《狼道》、《狼的诱惑》、更恶心的《狗图腾》、《鲸图腾》，还有《xx画传》满天飞（画传——向左走，向右走？）。靠，你丫煮吧，老子吃生的！
2. 美国军方人手一册、全球热销数百万册、全世界1000多万家报刊媒体和网站转载过。。。靠，骗谁啊？（经管类热销书真的热销欧美？）
3. 计算机类书更容易出，随便抓几个研究生，管他懂不懂呢？书名就叫《精通XXX》、《XXX从入门到精通》，反正都是东抄抄、西抄抄，书不够厚吗？前面抄几章基本概念，附录再附上API文档，至少100~200页，多少字啊？多少稿费啊？基本上书皮上写着XX工作室之类的名字不用想，就几个学生干的！
4. 高产的外文书籍翻译家，一年翻译好几本书，有的根本不懂相关领域的知识，完全直译，翻译得乱七八糟，狗屁不通。甚至有的根本没取得外文书籍的翻译权，真TMD无耻！
5. 明明是中国人，愣装外国鬼子，更有甚者和某某大牛握过手就说和人家合作、深入探讨过，往自己脸上贴金。靠，这么说我还是百名杰出青年呢（在我们公司，公司共有80多人）。

在china-pub上看到一个好玩的：

 bobosir ：给东南大学一个忠告：不要把读者当成傻瓜，这种价格你在全中国出版社的阴影版是高的离谱，说白了是抢钱，网络上都有O'Reilly 的书，我保证你会亏的很厉害！你没发现O'Reilly 的都在打折吆喝吗？请你们接受偶的这个忠告！！！把价格定位在每页10-12分之间

jkkjkjk ：价格不能下调，我们要买房买车，你们就忍着点，别让我失望。如果你们等跌价，我明天就涨价

cloudiar ：我是东大社编辑，jkkjkjk的发言与我社无关。读者的意见我们会很认真的考虑。会在后续的书中稍做调整。

Posted by Nicole Wong, Associate General Counsel

A Washington state judge ruled today that Dr. Kai-Fu Lee can immediately begin working for Google. (There's a profile of Dr. Lee in today's San Francisco Chronicle.) We're thrilled, and he's excited to get right to work on several big things, including recruiting, building our Chinese R&D center, and related government relations.

You may remember that in July, right after we hired Dr. Lee to build and head our new China R&D center, Microsoft sued both of us. They argued that Dr. Lee was going to do work at Google that was competitive with what he had been doing at Microsoft - which they said would violate the one-year non-compete agreement that Microsoft requires employees to sign. (They sued even before knowing what Dr. Lee was going to be doing here. Hmmm...) At first, the judge in the case decided temporarily to limit what work Dr. Lee could do at Google until he learned more about the dispute.

But after listening to evidence at a two-day hearing last week and reviewing various documents and court briefs, the judge decided today in his ruling on Microsoft's request for a preliminary injunction to allow Dr. Lee to work on a much broader range of things for Google. There are some restrictions, but the ruling basically allows Dr. Lee to do what we've wanted him to be able to do. The judge said that Microsoft had "not sufficiently shown that it has a clear legal or equitable right to enjoin Dr. Lee, pending trial, from Establishing and Staffing a Google Development Facility Center." A trial is still set for January to get a final decision.

And we filed suit against Microsoft in California to stop them from enforcing a Washington state non-compete against an employee who wants to work for us in California and China. The first court hearing on that will be Oct. 14.

A lot of legal process, but the bottom line is Dr. Lee is going to get busy. Chinese speakers note: Dr. Lee has a website, and there's also a blog about this case.

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