Steven Schwankert

China's home-grown 3G standard, TD-SCDMA (Time Division Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access), received a limited trial during the Olympics, and is now undergoing a final, broader test before China Mobile officially launches it by the end of this year. To see how it performs I took a couple of the first handsets out onto the streets of Beijing and liked their performance -- it's the network that seems to be the problem.

First-generation TD-SCDMA is designed to offer top speeds of 384k bps which, if attained, would be as fast as a typical ADSL (Asynchronous Digital Subscriber Line) connection in China. However, the TD-SCDMA USIM cards issued so far have "128k" stamped on them, which points to lower speeds on the trial service.

For anyone who ever wanted to watch "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" while submerged, : H2O Audio's iDive 300 lets you take your iPod where no digital content has gone before.

The iDive is a case with waterproof headphones that allows you to take any number of iPod and iPhone models to as deep as 300 ft. (90 meters), allowing you to listen to music and watch video in the octopus's garden. Designed for divers who need to while away hours during decompression stops, which can sometimes last hours, the case would also suit canoers, kayakers and other water enthusiasts who need to keep their tunes dry.

Internet addiction is on the rise in the world's largest Net market, and now Chinese doctors have officially defined it as an ailment.

Users who spend six hours or more per day online, and exhibit at least one symptom including difficulty sleeping or concentrating, yearning to be online, irritation, and mental or physical distress are classified as meeting the definition of addiction.

YouTube is expected to announce Monday that it will host full-length films and television shows from MGM, including classic Western "The Magnificent Seven," The New York Times reported Monday.

Both companies are trying to catch up with rivals via the move. MGM has lagged behind other film studios in moving its offerings online. YouTube is still seen by advertisers as a collection of home movies, whereas rival NBC-Fox joint venture Hulu offers only content from major production houses. CBS already has a deal with YouTube and is posting episodes of older shows such as "Star Trek" there.

Chinese and U.S. representatives exchanged pleasantries and punches at an intellectual property rights (IPR) forum in Beijing Friday, expressing differences of opinion over copyright protection and its enforcement.

"We believe that some key improvements for the effective protection of intellectual property rights in China are still needed. Uneven enforcement of laws continues to undermine the legislative progress being made. Widespread counterfeiting, piracy and other forms of infringement have not been deterred," said Clark T. Randt Jr., the U.S. ambassador to China and founder of the 7th Annual Ambassador's Intellectual Property Rights Roundtable.

Warner Bros. will launch a digital film rental service in partnership with a Beijing-based broadband company, bringing licensed viewing of many of its film titles to China for the first time, it said Tuesday.

Users will be able to download or stream DRM (Digital Rights Management)-protected copies of films including "I Am Legend," "Fool's Gold" and "Speed Racer" for a cost of 4 yuan to 7 yuan (US$0.59-1.03) each through the service that will be run by Union Voole.

Microsoft on Wednesday marked the 10th anniversary of Microsoft Research Asia (MSRA), its largest such R&D facility outside of the United States, at its annual Innovation Day in Beijing.

"We came to China because we believed that there were incredible amounts of creativity and enthusiasm...to take advantage of the top universities in China and the rest of Asia," said Rick Rashid, senior vice president at Microsoft and founder of Microsoft Research.

Members of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) have won a lawsuit against a Chinese DVD manufacturer that will give the group a say over how that company's DVD players are made in the future.

The U.S. District Court for the Central District of California found that Gowell Electronics of Shenzhen violated its agreement involving the Content Scramble System (CSS), which helps to prevent unauthorized duplication of DVDs, the MPAA said late Friday.

Alibaba is no longer advertising with Chinese search engine Baidu, but said that the decision is not linked to the latter's launch this week of an e-commerce site.

"The clicks that Baidu brings do not benefit small and medium businesses," Alibaba said in a statement. The company said that it had ended the advertising for its Alibaba.com B2B (business-to-business) site on October 10, and that it had done the same for Taobao, its C2C (consumer-to-consumer) site, late last year. Despite the cessation, Taobao traffic has grown 180 percent over the past year, Alibaba said.

CSC is opening new IT services delivery center in the Chinese coastal city of Tianjin on Tuesday, and has begun construction of a new data center for both global and local service.

The company did not specify the size of the Tianjin delivery center, but said that it would start operations in the spring of 2009, with local work beginning at a temporary location on Nov. 1. It will initially employ 200 workers, with plans to expand to 500 within three years. The data center would be completed and ready for use in mid-2010, CSC said.

China's Internet regulator on Monday ordered 10 online video sites to shut down and warned another 17, resuming an aggressive policy on such sites that had been relaxed during the summer.

The State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) said in a notice on its Web site (Chinese) that under the "Internet Audio Video Program Service Management Regulations," "there are still some Web sites posting audio and video programs containing pornography, violence and terror, endangering national security."

Saying Intel will invest its way through the current economic crisis, President and CEO Paul Otellini put the company's money where his mouth is Tuesday, announcing US$170 million to be spent on new projects in China.

"Gordon Moore is the one who said 'you can't save your way out of a downturn.' Craig [Barrett] believed that, Gordon believed it and I believe it. Our investments next year remain intact," Otellini said at a press event in Beijing.