A court in Taiwan this week ruled against a female food-blogger who said a local restaurant’s beef noodles “were too salty,” and that she’d seen cockroaches scurrying around in the restaurant. She gets 30 days in detention, two years of probation, and must pay 200,000 Taiwanese dollars (about $7K US dollars) in compensation to the restaurant. The court didn’t argue she was lying about the bugs, but ruled that “Ms. Liu should not have criticized that all the restaurant’s food as too salty because she only had one dish on her single visit.”

From the Taipei Times:

After visiting a Taichung beef noodle restaurant in July 2008, where she had dried noodles and side dishes, Liu wrote that the restaurant served food that was too salty, the place was unsanitary because there were cockroaches and that the owner was a “bully” because he let customers park their cars haphazardly, leading to traffic jams.

The restaurant owner said “he hoped the case would teach her a lesson.” Yeah right man…

Again, from the Taipei Times:

Huang Cheng-lee (黃呈利), a lawyer in Taichung, said that bloggers who post food reviews should remember to be truthful in their commentary and supplement their comments with photographs to protect themselves.

Yey! Lawyers now have a bigger market than ever!

SOURCE via Boing Boing

Talk about freedom of speech. The Saudi Arabians should be sulking by now. Blogging has been bombarded since few years ago, and now every Tom, Dick, Jane, Lee, Park, and Minami blogs about every ant they see and every bun that they ate. But things aren’t going to be great anymore for citizens of Saudi Arabia. Blogging is going to be like running a business, because you’ll need a license to blog. Ha! The announcement was made by Abdul Rahman Al-Hazaa on behalf of the Saudi Information and Culture Ministry.

The new law will affect all web publishers and is extended to also web blogs and forums. According to Al-Hazaa, the purpose of this rule is not to suppress the media and the right to free speech, but instead, the law is being introduced to reduce the number of libel and defamation charges that are being brought up. Fair enough. Haters’ gonna hate, but the government might be able to do something about that.

Looks like the government really cares about the internet, seeing that they have tried to control VoIP services, and censor some Twitter pages and bloggers that seemed to ‘go against’ the government. Internet is serious business these days. Bold move by the government, as this is the first attempt at regulating online media as a whole.

Of course this has gotten many bloggers upset, and people have taken to Twitter to protest, with the hashtag #haza3 which refers to the Ministry official’s last name. Public protesting is illegal in Saudi Arabia. The regulation has not yet gone into effect and this story is still developing so stay close for updates.

SOURCE via techcrunch

Blogger Yang Ya-Ching is a young Taiwanese student in Paris. She has a project which she has to kiss 100 Parisian men, with a photograph for each moment. Is that a project or she just want to kiss Parisian man? Hey people maybe I got a project too, to kiss 100 Australian women, na just jokin. More kissing pictures after the break.

[via Materialiste]

Aha! I found a new wear to increase a little traffic. See that, 2dayblog on that big LCD, this pic was taken quite a long time ago ~ forgotten to post it and hey my fresh mind today reminds me of it. Alright, it was in a shopping complex, a booth promoting their USB wireless broadband dongle at the center court, there’s a computer there attached to this big LCD, that’s for the demo. So I asked the promoter about those broadband speed thingy bla bla bla then he said sir you can try it here, oh yes, this is a good chance for you to show off your blog to the public

A friend of mine introduced me a site, it is called funnyexamanswers.com. Heard of that? Yeah, it’s pretty funny. Check out this one above.

In case you can’t read from the image:
Question: CHECKING IN (Answer on your own and then hand in to the instructor)

The water of the earth’s ocean stores lots of heat. An engineer designed an ocean liner that would extract heat from the ocean’s waters at Th = 10*C (283k). He thought he had a good idea but his boss fired him. Explain.

Answer: Because he slept with his wife

Teacher response: Johnathan, oh dear..

So did you ever written something funny on your exam sheets? Lol, I hope not.

Mickey Feio blog is a Brazilian blog that show you all the ugly Mickeys art. You gonna laugh when you look at those.

[via Neatorama]

Matthew, Joseph, Sean and Bradford are Yale students and they are the people behind the project called PerSecondPodcast. It is an online audio time capsule where anyone can buy audio space by the second. You can advertise your website, rant about politics, play a portion of your bands new song and even deliver an existentialist monologue. It will soon be playing on college radio stations across the country, iTunes RSS-subscribable, submitted for play on XM and Sirius satellite radio, and physically housed in several iPod time capsules to be buried upon completion of the project.

[Thanks Elliot]

China has the most bloggers compare to any country in the world. Someone from Bokee site had created a Female Bloggers Beauty Contest that awarded cash to the female bloggers. You can check out for the most beautifulm sexiest, most popular, most fashionable and the most talented female bloggers at Bokee site but of course you need to know how to read Chinese. The picture above shows one of the competitors, you can add her to your msn at yilan0000163@163.com.

We wont hold any responsible if she kick your ass over msn. She was fine with us having her picture in our blog. Guess what! One of the competitors even get semi-naked just to attract more attention for voting! Check out the news here.

[Via TheRawFeed]

The LeftlaneNews and MacNN teams are looking for full-time highly motivated bloggers in several categories. They are looking for writers in this few categories; popular music, movies & TV, sports, celebrity gossip and technology & gadgets. If you are interested in revenue-split style pay then email to resume[at]macnn[dot]com. Give it a try, who knows you will be choose.

[Via LeftLaneNews]

We have been trying very hard to go around the web gathering information and wait for new World Cup gadget to be released. Finally, we are able to pack up this Top 10 World Cup Gadget for world cup geeks! Check out this top 10 gadget list with pictures after the jump.

(1) Toshiba’s FIFA Worldcup Edition Notebook

Toshiba Dynabook TX/870LSFIFA notebook’s case is slathered in gold and the Worldcup Trophy is embossed alongwith the dates, hosting countries and the winners. This limited edition costs around USD1730 and there are only 600 units to be sold with exclusive Worldcup content. – [TechTicker]

(2) Japanese World Cup Xbox 360 Edition

The limited edition bundle will consist of an Xbox 360 console with hard drive, wireless controller and media accessories, a limited edition Adidas Japan blue faceplate featuring the colours of Japan’s national football team, an Adidas Japan blue bandana and a copy of EA’s World Cup Germany game – [Kotaku]

(3) Official World Cup Mobile : Samsung E370

Samsung E370 is the official England team mobile phone. All you football fans will be able to enjoy a video clip that is on the phone when you buy ofGeoff Hurst’s 1966 winning goal plus there are other video clips as well. The phone will have the Three Lions logo embedded on it. – [PhonesReview]

(4) World Cup USB Webcam

Impressive ergonomic soccer webcam which features a 350K CMOS sensor with a built-in microphone. It has a high quality still picture & motion video capturing with adjustable lens for picture focusing. The head can be turn 360-degree and it work on MSN, Skype as well as ICQ. It weight 142 gram with the price of USD22.00. – [USBGeek]

(5) World Cup PQI U510 Card-type USB Drive

PQI U510 is indeed small and slim with a 3mm thin aluminum alloy casing in design and storage capacity available from 1GB to 4GB while the non-soccer edition is available up to 16GB. PQI U510 is a High-speed USB 2.0 interface and also backward compatible with USB 1.1. – [XBlog]

(6) World Cup Bluetooth Headset in Team Colors

This is the iTechs World Cup edition of its Bluetooth Clip headset. It comes in different team colors. You can choose from England, Germany, Holland, Brazil and even Italy. The Clip headset has adjustable volume and mute, and gives you 10 hours of talk time and 200 hours of standby time. – [Accessories-Review]

(7) World Cup Powerdesk Workstation

The desk has it all: an integrated PC, retractable 19-inch LCD screen, 320W sound system, TV tuner (for soccer games, duh), and best of all: a mini-fridge. All integrated into a smooth desk that rocks the flag of your favorite country soccer club. This desk carries a hefty, $15,000 price tag. – [Gizmodo]

(8) World Cup USB Twin Mouse 2006

This World Cup 2006 USB Twin Mouse will be riding on the World Cup fever for sales. This 800dpi USB optical mouse offers you the flexibility of choosing between a standard mouse and a mini mouse that is more suitable for travelers, depending on your desktop space. – [ShinyShiny]

(9) World Cup Matsunichis MF228 Football MP3 Player

The player features a 80 x 48 pixel display, supports MP3, WMA and WAV files, has FM and voice recording, 10 hours of battery life off of a built-in rechargeable battery, and an epic 256MB or 512MB memory capacity. The player also outsizes the 37.4mm diameter Shiro AS at 45.2mm. – [Engadget]

(10) World Cup K1000 Mini Speakers

This is a pocket-sized limited edition K1000 world cup edition speakers – delivering a strictly full-size stereo experience from virtually any audio device you can think of. Connecting directly to the earphone socket they give an instant crystal clear sound with full 2 watts total music power output – anytime, anywhere. – [MiniSpeakers]