The Chinese Government decided to block the mobile app service Fourquare after users “check in” to  on the 21st anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Although Fourquare is new and small compared to the giant web service, Facebook, this event shows a very interesting usage of the web application as a protest vehicle. During the 20th anniversary, other web services were banned as well, including Twitter, Flickr, Blogger, WordPress and Hotmail.

In memory of the Tiananmen Square massacre
In the summer of 1989, more than 3000 protesters and students were killed by the Chinese government for protesting against communism in Beijing, China. All forms of discussion of the massacre  are strictly forbidden in mainland China.

Google is facing class action lawsuits in Oregon and Washington states over privacy concerns relating “street view” data collection for it’s online mapping program.

The plaintiffs, Vicki Van Valin and Neil Mertz, say that their privacy was violated by the camera strapped cars that Google uses to photograph for the street view of it’s online maps, and they request a preliminary and permanent injunction for such data collected. Google has pledged to destroy the data, as it had done in Ireland. This would be an obstruction of justice, however. The concern extends allow to the employee access to that data. At least hundreds if not thousands of Google employees may have access to that data.