Some of these things do not belong

The immediate assumption would be that someone’s convinced a lot of people to buy a bunch of $4.99 books with “Dragon Ball” and “Case Closed” artwork on them.  In a way, that would be correct.  However, rather than take the time to sell people on the merits of manga, someone actually hacked into users accounts and bought the apps that way.  With that, 42 of Thuat Nguyen’s apps occupied the top 50 apps in the category.  Some have said that their accounts have been charged hundreds of dollars for apps that they never purchased. {Engadget}

The apparently Vietnamese apps have since disappeared from the App Store, restoring order to the Top Selling Books app list.  Well, as much order as there can be with “Twilight: Breaking Dawn” now at number 10 rather than number 34 as it was during the problem. Not even the pros can overshadow the demand from Twihards.  Apple isn’t saying anything about the issue publicly, so it’s uncertain what will end up happening to the app developer, the hacker (assuming they are two different people), and those whose accounts were hacked.  In the meantime, if you use to iTunes Store, go to you account and check your Purchase History to make sure you weren’t affected.

Things are getting a little hairy for Google in China.

Here’s the breakdown of events as they unfolded:

• mid-December 2009 – Google’s corporate infrastructure in China is hacked in a “highly sophisticated and targeted attack.” According to Google, this hacking also affected twenty other companies (reportedly including Yahoo!) and were meant to extract data on Chinese human rights activists. The Gmail account information of two activists are accessed, but not the emails themselves.
• January 12th, 2010 – Google announces on their official blog: “we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all.“
• January 13th, 2010 – Chinese citizens hold an informal memorial mourning the imminent loss of Google.
• January 14th, 2010 – The Chinese Government puts IMDB.com on its list of inaccessible sites.
• January 14th, 2010 – China indirectly responds to Google by publicly defending its right to censor information and stating that companies in China must abide by China’s laws.
• January 14th, 2010 – Employees at Google China are given “holiday leave” and ” no longer have access to company systems.”

It seems that it’s only a matter of time before Google.cn is swept under the rug.

Read More {Bloomberg}

Read More {Google Blog}

Read More {Matador Network}

Read More {TechCrunch}