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AFP – Malaysians are the most popular people on the Internet, while Japanese are the least, according to a global survey which shows how national cultures are reflected in online behaviour.

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AFP – The Online News Association (ONA) handed out awards for excellence in Web journalism on Saturday with MSNBC.com winning a top honor.

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AFP – The creation of Wikimedia’s first overseas office outside the United States could lead to the increased use of Indian languages online, the company’s co-founder said on Sunday.

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Mashable – Blekko’s alternative search engine — a $24 million venture-backed project that’s been three years in the making — is today launching its public beta. With the official rollout, Blekko is also releasing several new features designed for both mainstream and the site’s super users.

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AFP – Asian and Pacific countries agreed on Sunday to help establish next-generation high-speed broadband networks in their region by 2020, overcoming the “digital divide” between rich and poor nations.

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AFP – A Turkish court on Saturday ordered the lifting of a three-year ban on Internet video website YouTube, media reports said, but thousands of other sites are still blocked.

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AFP – Facebook took more steps to stop third-party applications from sharing identifying information about users with advertising and Internet tracking companies.

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Reuters – Chad Hurley is relinquishing his post as CEO of YouTube, the company he co-founded five years ago that revolutionized video on the Internet.

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AP – YouTube CEO Chad Hurley is surrendering the reins of the popular video website that he started with two buddies as a quirky curiosity and went on to groom into a media magnet that shows more than 2 billion clips a day.

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PC World – Facebook said it purchased most of drop.io, an online content-sharing service, but the social-networking giant sounds more interested in acquiring the company’s developers than its technology.

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PC World – While we’re all about the Halloween spirit here at the PCWorld (and by extension Viral Views), it doesn’t mean that we are going to ignore the happenings of the net in favor of some ghouls and goblins! The Internet keeps churning out awesome by the shovelful. So sit back, relax, dim the lights a little to set the mood, and get ready for this week’s Viral Views.

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The Upshot – Here is our roster of stories that managed to evade the full-on blog treatment: • President Obama discussed the mysterious cargo shipments from Yemen, acknowledging that “they do apparently contain explosive material.” (MSNBC) • Nevada GOP Senate nominee Sharron Angle is still running from reporters, in airports and parking garages. (YouTube) • A group of [...]

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AP – You can’t get away from a cell phone call, even at the top of the world.

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PC World – Online Americans like their news the old fashioned way–through network television, newspapers and magazines–but more than half of them think old media’s time is limited.

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Reuters – Schools receiving subsidies for Internet service will have to teach students about cyberbullying and the responsible use of social networking sites, the U.S. telecommunications regulator said on Friday.

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PC World – A 24-year-old Texas man has been sentenced to 18 months in prison for selling more than US$1 million worth of pirated software online, the U.S. Department of Justice announced.

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AFP – YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley is stepping down as head of the online video-sharing superstar bought by Google for 1.65 billion dollars in 2006.

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PC World – PayPal is experiencing an outage that is affecting most of its members, preventing them from using the online payment service to conduct transactions.

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PC Magazine – The Federal Communications Commission will soon circulate an order that would require schools that receive e-rate funding to adopt Internet safety policies.

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PC World – The U.S. Federal Communications Commission has issued a wide-ranging request for information about competition in the market for wholesale, high-capacity broadband networks across the nation, earning the agency praise from consumer and business groups that say large telecom carriers have overcharged for the infrastructure.

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PC Magazine – “Anonymous” successfully took down the RIAA’s Web site via a DDoS attack on Friday, although the attack was launched an hour later than expected.

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AFP – Wikimedia, the owners of online encyclopedia Wikipedia, plans to open its first non-US office in India as it seeks to take advantage of the country’s open Internet culture, the group told AFP Friday.

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PC World – The European Commission Thursday closed an infringement case against Austria after the country agreed to implement E.U. rules on TV and video-on-demand, but confusion about broadcast-related copyright rules is likely to continue.

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PC Magazine – Google is sprucing up more of its location-based services, meaning Google Maps for Android is getting updated. In a Thursday blog post, Google announced that version 4.6 of the app is now available for download in the Android Market.

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AP – The Social Security numbers, grades and other personal information of more than 40,000 former University of Hawaii students were posted online for nearly a year before being removed this week, The Associated Press has learned.

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Reuters – A private telecom firm took high speed Internet facilities to the top of the world on Thursday when it launched Nepal’s first 3G services at the base camp of Mount Everest.

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PC World – A former IT staffer has been sentenced to a year and a day in prison for stealing sensitive information belonging to his co-workers and using the data to make money filling out online health surveys.

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The Upshot – Here is our roster of stories that managed to evade full-on blog treatment: • The death toll in Indonesia from the volcanic eruption and tsunami this week has topped 400. (AP) • Tea party favorite and Alaska Senate GOP nominee Joe Miller is in third place in the latest poll. (Politico) • The United States [...]

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PC World – Given the expanding strategic role of Linux in businesses and governments around the world, it’s not surprising that organizations are scrambling to find employees with the Linux skills they need. More than a third of the respondents to a recent Linux Foundation study, in fact, indicated that they’re worried about finding people with the skills to support their increasing reliance on the free and open source operating system.

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The Upshot – Gawker was convicted Thursday in the court of Twitter opinion. The charges: misogyny and reckless link-baiting. “Today, we are all Christine O’Donnell,” wrote Salon’s Justin Elliott. He was one of several journalists and bloggers to criticize Gawker for posting an anonymous account by a Philadelphia man claiming to have gone home with Delaware Senate candidate [...]

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NewsFactor – Microsoft has released a new preview of Internet Explorer 9 featuring performance improvements and increased standards support. The latest IE9 test build will give web-site designers and software developers an opportunity to play with new capabilities such as CSS3 2-D features that let site visitors rotate photos, graphics and text segments.

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PC World – Mobile payments are starting to come to U.S. carriers in various forms after years of expectations, with AT&T announcing a trial with back-end service provider Boku a day after Sprint Nextel announced its Sprint Mobile Wallet.

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AP – Political bloggers in Vietnam are under a round of cyberattacks designed to block their websites, a sign of the widening use of targeted hacking to stifle government dissent worldwide, according to a new analysis by U.S. computer experts.

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PC World – Blair Levin is a fellow at the Aspen Institute and was the lead author of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) controversial National Broadband Plan. He spoke with David Ramli in a telephone interview about his regrets and the rising importance of wireless over wired connections.

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AFP – Facebook on Thursday launched Friendship Pages at which online pals can stroll virtual memory lanes that chronicle what they have shared at the world’s top online social networking service.

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PC Magazine – Online Personal Finance darling Mint.com knows a lot about its users—unless you lie to it or neglect it, it knows where every penny goes. And now it’s going to publish all of that data online for everyone to see on Mint Data Beta.

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PC Magazine – Chatroulette users who flash their private parts will now be automatically redirected to an adult Web site that may or may not be Hustler.

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AP – Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer pumped up unique features in the company’s new Web browser and smart phone software at a software developer conference Thursday, the company’s annual pep rally for people who will build programs for the Web, Windows computers and phones.

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AFP – Supporters of Brazil?s presidential run-off candidates are plugging into the Internet as never before, using online posts to highlight the campaigns — and to spread or deny rumors swaying voters.

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AFP – Google has promised to clarify its online advertising policy in order to end an investigation against the Internet search engine giant in France, the French Competition Authority said Thursday.

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NewsFactor – You’re in a hotel in Philadelphia and have a craving for Chinese food. Using your trusty smartphone, you search for “Philadelphia Chinese food” on Google, and are rewarded with an all-in-one lineup of restaurants, descriptions, review links, and map markers.

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The Upshot – Chief White House photographer Pete Souza is out with a list Thursday of his top 10 favorite “photo of the day” snaps of President Obama and the first family over the last year. The list, posted on the White House blog, includes photos of Obama playing fetch with the family dog, Bo, and of the [...]

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Macworld – In the wake of the white iPhone 4’s latest delay, Apple has apparently excised all mention of the elusive white whale from its online store. In fact, the job is so thorough you might say the site has been…whitewashed.

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PC Magazine – The clandestine group known as “Anonymous” plans to target the RIAA’s Web site Friday night as a part of “Operation Payback,” described as retribution for the shutdown of the LimeWire peer-to-peer client.

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AFP – Beverage tycoon Zong Qinghou and the co-founder of Internet search engine Baidu, Robin Li, are the two richest men in China, according to a new list released by Forbes magazine on Thursday.

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AP – Yahoo Inc. is turning to a former Internet sharpshooter at News Corp.’s media empire to fill a big hole on its management team.

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PC World – If you’re running a small business and you need help keeping the books, you’re in luck. Small-business accounting, once pretty much defined by the QuickBooks and Peachtree desktop packages, has blossomed on the Web and diversified. You can find a wealth of services that will meet your business’s accounting needs, from full-featured bookkeeping to payroll, expense accounts, invoicing, and more.

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Reuters – U.S. federal regulators have closed an investigation into Google Inc’s “Street View” maps service, saying the company has taken steps to address privacy concerns raised by its improper collection of emails and other personal information.

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The Upshot – Here’s our roster of stories that managed to evade the full-on blog treatment: • Tim Profitt, the Rand Paul supporter who stomped on a MoveOn.org activist’s head earlier in the week, would like an apology from the woman whose head he stomped on. (Talking Points Memo) • A new study finds that one-fifth of Earth’s [...]

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PC World – It was about a year ago that Yahoo!-hosted Geocities sites started going offline. For the majority of Internet users, this event was met with little fanfare; Geocities had long gone out of fashion as a free web host and been replaced by sites like Myspace, Facebook, Wordpress, and more recently, Tumblr.

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