According to the report made by Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing shut down over 1.3 million websites last year alone. The ASS says that the shutdowns resulted in a 41% decrease of the total number of Chinese website by the end of last year. However, ASS spokesman Liu Ruisheng claimed China enjoyed a "high level of freedom of online speech." Still, the number of web pages in China increased by 79% so far.

New research found that too much Internet browsing may result in damaged brain. Chinese researchers used a limited testing group to discover possible evidence that excessive use of the Internet may lead to the change of physical characteristics inside your head.

The Annenberg Center for the Digital Future at the University of Southern California released a study that showed 28% of Americans that were interviewed last year said they have been spending less time with members of their households. This is nearly triple the 11% who said that in 2006. Interestingly the survey found that the decrease in family communication coincides with the rise in using the Internet.

Vic Gundotra, Google vice president of engineering, had presented a "technical preview" of the new HTML 5 Gmail during Tim 2.0'Reilly's Web 2.0 Expo last week. Gundotra highlighted that with the new Gmail the internet for mobiles would emerge a real platform for apps, as it runs on both the iPhone and Android.It is also expected that the new email service will enable users to access recently received messages even when they are offline.

According to statistics, nearly 70% of Americans use a mobile phone, and the demographics of mobile phones users are much more diverse than that of Internet users. That’s why m-banking, or mobile banking, is so popular in the U.S. It opens up new opportunities for financial institutions interested in providing their services and attracting new customers. What is m-banking?

Whether you want to buy auto insurance for the first time or find lower quotes than you have now, there is a fast and easy way to do it – browse insurance websites online. You will be able to analyze and compare policies from a wide range of insurance companies. Most of the major insurers are now online, and there are a lot of companies that sell only via Internet. Find out how to lower your auto insurance rates and decide which company offers the best deal! 

Zbill, Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Payment Data Systems, announced that it signed an agreement with another company on addition of PDS’ Private Label bill payment services to its payroll card programs. The second party of the contract is being kept anonymous, although it has been announced to be a leading provider of stored value cards and transaction processing services to a variety of industry segments.

About half of parent TD Bank Financial Group's 1,075 branches on the East Coast have two computer systems that can't talk to each other. It creates difficulties for those who make a deposit. Those two computer systems exist because the Toronto company bought Commerce Bancorp Inc., of Cherry Hill, N.J., in March, but won't fully integrate the combined bank's branches until September.