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Legions of Japanese robots, which are the largest fleet of mechanized worker in the world are now idled as Japan suffers its deepest economic recession in more than a generation as consumers throughout the world cut expenses for buying cars and gadgets.

At Yaskawa Electric Factory, the largest robot manufacturing plant in Kyushu on the southern island of Japan, robots used to turn out more robots. But today a lone robotic worker with its steely arms twisted and turned, testing its motors for the day new orders return. At the same time, its immobile co-workers stood with silence in rows, many of them with arms frozen in midair.

Those robotic workers may be out of work for a long time since Japanese industrial production has tumbled by nearly 40% , and at the same time, the demand for robots has also stepped down.

In short, the future is not so bright. Tighter cash is being injecting a dosage of reality to some of Japan’s more fantastic projects, such as pet robots and cyborg receptionists that may hamper innovation later after the economy recovers.

Yaskawa’s profit plunged by two-thirds at 6.9 billion yen, or approximately US$72 million in the year that ended on March 20, and the company expects a loss this year.

Japan’s robot association said, shipments of industrial robots dropped 33% throughout the industry during the last quarter of 2008, and 59% in the first quarter of 2009.

Research firm Fuji Keizai expects the market to stumble by as much as 40% this year as investment in robots has been the first to go as companies protect their human workers.

Robots may be cheaper than flesh-and-blood workers in the long term, but the upfront investment costs are much higher.

In 2005, more than 370,000 robots worked at factories across Japan or about 40% of the global total, representing 32 robots for every 1,000 manufacturing employees. In 2007, the government planned for a technology policy that called for one million industrial robots to be installed by 2025. That will almost certainly not happen because the recession has set the robot industry back years. That goes for industrial robots and the more cuddly toy robots.

In fact, several of the lovable sort have already become casualties of the recession. Robot maker Systec Akazawa filed for bankruptcy in January, less than a year after it introduced its miniature PLEN walking robot at the Consumer Electronics Show(CES Show) in Las Vegas.

Roborior by Tmsuk - a watermelon-shape house sitter on wheels that rolls around a home and uses infrared sensors to detect suspicious movement and a video camera to transmit images to absent residents - has struggled to find new users. A rental program was scrapped in April because of lack of interest.

Though the company will not release sales figures, it has sold less than a third of the goal, 3,000 units, it set when Roborior hit the market in 2005, and there are no plans to manufacture more.

That is a shame, because busy Japanese in the city could use the Roborior to keep an eye on aging parents in the countryside. Roborior is a kind of robot Japanese society needs in the future.

Japan’s aging population had given the development of home robots an added imperative. With nearly 25% of citizens 65 or older, the country was banking on robots to replenish the work force and to help nurse the elderly.

But sales of a Secom product, My Spoon, a robot with a swiveling, spoon-fitted arm that helps older or disabled people eat, have similarly stalled as caregivers balk at its US$4,000 price.

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries failed to sell even one of its toddler-size home-helper robots, the Wakamaru, introduced in 2003. Surely, less practical, novelty robots have fallen on even harder times in the downturn and that goes also for robot makers outside Japan.

Ugobe, which is based in Idaho, is the maker of the cute green Pleo dinosaur robot with a wiggly tail, it filed for bankruptcy protection in April.

Despite selling 100,000 Pleos and earning more than $20 million, the company racked up millions of dollars in debt and was unable to raise further financing.

Sony pulled the plug on its robot dog, Aibo, in 2006, seven years after its introduction. Though initially popular, Aibo, costing more than $2,000, never managed to break into the mass market.

The US$300 i-Sobot from Takara Tomy, a small toy robot that can recognize spoken words, was meant to break the price barrier. The company, based in Tokyo, has sold 47,000 since the i-Sobot went on sale in late 2007, making it a blockbuster hit in the robot world.

But with sales faltering in the last year, the company has no plans to release further versions after it clears out its inventory of about 3,000.

Research and marketing firm Seed Planning says many of Japan’s robotics projects tend to be too far-fetched, concentrating on humanoids and other leaps of the imagination that cannot be readily brought to market.

Japanese scientists grew up watching robot cartoons, so they all want to make two-legged companions, but the questions will be: Are they realistic? Do consumers really want home-helper robots?”

Robot Factory, once a mecca for robot fans in the western city of Osaka, closed in April after a plunge in sales. In the end, whose store, Jungle, took over some of Robot Factory’s old stock, robots are still expensive, and do not really do much. But that is not true for industrial robots - at least not when the economy is booming.

Fuji Heavy Industries argues its robots are practical and make economic sense. The company sells a giant automated cleaning robot that can use elevators to travel between floors on its own. The wheeled robot, which resembles a small street-cleaning car, already works at several skyscrapers in Tokyo.

Companies are able to regain the six million yen investment in the cleaner robot in as quickly as three years, Fuji said. The manufacturer has rented out about 50 so far.

A robot will work every day and night without complaining, while we can even save on lights and heating, because robots do not need any of that.

Along with the increasing use of the Internet throughout the world, there have been rising demands for a new way of supervising some of its basic functions that include the allocation of domain name suffixes like .com and .org.

For the past decade, this duty as well, as other important technical functions have been carried out by Icann, a private and non-profit organization which is based in Marina Del Rey (California) based on an agreement with the US Commerce Department.

Among such demands is one that came from the European Union media and telecommunications, which called for a severing of Icann’s links with the US government when the current agreement with the Commerce Department expires this autumn. Instead, the European Union media and telecommunications has proposed the creation of a “G-12 for Internet governance” to supervise an independent Icann.

In the long run, the European Union media and telecommunications said, it is not defensible that the government department of only one country has watched an Internet function which is used by hundreds of millions of people in countries all over the world.

Besides, the European Union media and telecommunications, also has called for the creation of an “independent, international tribunal” to review Icann decisions.

At a recent Icann meeting in Sydney, there had been discussion of creating an international subsidiary of the organization, possibly based in Switzerland. But Icann said it will oppose efforts to fragment it, because no one can have it his own way and have it unified. It also said that part of the power of the Internet is that the standards that parties have to agree on are so minimal.

Icann has moved over the years to give itself a more international profile, holding three major meetings a year outside the United States. Gatherings are also planned for Seoul in October and Nairobi next March.

The organization’s Governmental Advisory Committee, which has representatives from more than 80 countries, has been trying to broaden its membership. China, for example, recently agreed to rejoin the committee after a five-year absence.

Now Icann is trying to persuade another big country, Russia, and hopes that a plan to allow Internet domain names to be rendered in Cyrillic, set to begin next year, will be helpful.

The move to embrace Cyrillic addresses, along with other scripts like Arabic and Chinese, is part of a broader drive by Icann to open up the domain naming system, an initiative that also has its critics.

The organization plans to start adding large numbers of new address suffixes, or “global top-level domains,” next year, making it possible to register city or company names like .paris or .nestle.

While Icann says the creation of new addresses will help accommodate the international diversification of the Internet, some companies worry that the process will make it harder to protect their brand names. The Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse, a group based in Washington and representing multinational marketers, says the expansion of domain names could lead to a rise in the practice known as cybersquatting.

Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse has called Icann to “halt all current or future policy initiatives” until a commission, appointed by the US President or Congress, and consisting of government, academic and business representatives, reviews its operations. The coalition said Icann has been too beholden to companies that sell and manage actual domain names on behalf of Web sites.

In the wireless internet technology now, we will not be tired of delivering a new SD card that refreshes photos when we intend to make a digital photo frame like a very great holiday gift.

A new wireless internet digital photo frame, D-Link products, in order to enable our users to remotely manage their frames over the internet that allows us to send photos to its 10-inch LCD digital photo frame built-in wireless connection remotely by using a WPS (Wi-Fi Protected Setup).

The D-Link 10-inch DSM-210 wireless internet photo frame combines the benefits of a digital photo frame with the convenience of the internet, available at some electronic store like TigerDirect, handle many of your standard flash memory formats such as USB thumb drive, SD, MMC, and Memory Stick. Or you can choose to get pictures from a local UPnP AV server such as a PC or Network Attached Storage (NAS) device.

By comparison, D-Link has planned to offer a small-larger 10-inch TFT LCD frame that will have full remote-management capabilities. It will let users send photos to a remote frame either directly by wireless connection or from any gadgets save in 1GB of internal D-Link DSM-210 memory, where all photos are stored and managed.

The D-Link 10-inch wireless internet digital photo frame allowing you can display and share family, vacation, and holiday photos with friends and loved ones around the world. The frame can also access the internet to view new photos from multiple websites and get RSS feeds of the latest news, weather, sports, and more.

In fact, the DSM-210 as a gift to your family and loved ones, then share your latest photos with them through popular photo sharing sites such as Flickr, Picasa, Facebook, FrameChannel, and more. You can also use the internet digital photo frame to subscribe to your favorite RSS feeds. Get the latest news, stock updates, sports scores, clock, calendar, weather conditions, and more directly on your frame.

The frame design is clean and simple, with only easy button, a USB slot and an SD memory card slot. And, better yet, it’s used the latest wired technology and simply to push the WPS button on the frame then on your compatible router to connect.

You can be wall mounted to hang in your living room or proudly displayed next to all your other photo frames on a shelf in the hall, the power savings isn’t just for large appliances anymore. The internet digital photo frame has motion detection so it can automatically turn on when you enter the room or off if nobody is in the room.

The frame itself will cost $239.99, ships within 24 hours to your home. However, Memory card and USB flash drive not included. D-Link is not responsible for damage to the device and/or memory card/flash drive, or loss and/or damage to files on the memory card/flash drive, due to improper installation or usage, include the Internet Service Provider (ISP) subscription required for internet access. You may see the product guides, knowledge, tips and additional info here.

Sprint Nextel said the company has prepared to hand over the operation of its networks to Swedish telecommunications equipment manufacturer, Ericsson, as the company’s latest effort to reduce cost and stop further falls in subscribers to its cellular phone services.

Sprint said the company has signed an agreement with period of seven years and value of US$4.5-5 billion, which will free a substantial lump of cash that the company intends to use for developing new products and improving network coverage and quality.

The company said Ericsson will undertake day-to-day tasks like maintenance of service and cellular towers, while Sprint will retain its ownership. Sprint will still have full control of the network, own it and will never sell it.

Under the agreement, 6,000 Sprint employees will be handed over to a subsidiary of Ericsson which is based in Overland Park (Kansas) near Sprint’s headquarters.

Sprint has been striving to overturn its luck and prevail over the status of poor customer service, and has seen a slight rebound recently, chiefly with the Palm Pre smartphone, which lately debuted to amble reviews and is available exclusively on Sprint in the United States.

Charter Equity Research said it agrees that the outsourcing agreement will free cash for the company, which has endeavoured with decreasing revenue and operating losses. Sprint is doing this out of necessity, while the Palm Pre they just released is costing them a pretty penny, so it is a big cost for them, the research firm said.

Sprint denied to give details on the cost saving, but Macquarie Securities expects the network outsourcing and reshuffling employees to lead to an yearly savings of US$100 million.

Separately, Nieslen IAG said Ericsson is familiar with handling operations for other mobile phone companies, from Britain to New Zealand. Nieslen said Ericsson currently manages networks that serve more than 275 million subscribers throughout the world.

But considering that Sprint  has 50 million users, the company is the largest carrier that Ericsson has handled and so far this is a big deal for Ericsson. Separately, Ericsson said the company’s vast experience in managing services has made it capable to operate the network at lower cost than Sprint.

Yet, Ericsson reminded that Sprint should be cautious that the hand-off will not harm the quality of its voice and data services. It said that one of the biggest challenges Sprint has today is to make the American public confident that the network will be at least as good as it is now when Ericsson is going to run it.

Anyway, the changes should actually improve Sprint’s service to customers. With Ericsson doing the day-to-day job, Sprint can focus on the quality of the coverage, pay attention to new products and services that differentiate the company from the competition.

In the stock market, investors seemed to have a positive response to the report, as Sprint shares climbed 17 cents or nearly 4% at US$4.48 by the end of the trading day when Spprint announced the plan. The company’s share price has climbed by almost two times since January.

The British Library in London is preparing to reunite online the available parts of the world’s oldest Christian bible, Codex Sinaiticus, which was hand written by four scribes in Greek on animal hide, known as vellum, in the mid-fourth century around the time of the Roman emperor Constantine the Great who embraced Christianity.

Although not all of it has withstood the ravages of time, the pages that include the entire New Testament and the earliest surviving copy of the Gospels written at different times after Christ’s death by four of the Apostles, namely Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

The bible has 800 remaining pages and fragments  which was originally about 1,400 pages long and contain half of a copy of the Old Testament, while the other half has been lost.

Scot McKendrick, head of Western manuscripts at the British Library said,
Codex Sinaiticus is one of the world’s greatest written treasures. He said this 1,600-year-old manuscript serves as a window into the development of early Christianity and first-hand evidence of how the text of the bible was transmitted from one generation to others.

He said the texts include abundant revisions, additions and corrections made during its evolution down through the ages. The Codex is arguably the oldest large bound book to have survived, he said, and each page is 16 inches tall by 14 inches wide.

According to him, it marks the definite triumph of bound codices over (papyrus) scrolls, a key watershed in how the Christian bible was regarded as a sacred text.

These ancient parchments, which appear almost translucent, are a collection of sections held by the British Library, the Monastery of St Catherine in Sinai (Egypt), the National Library of Russia and Leipzig University Library in Germany.

Each institution owns different amounts of the manuscript, but the British Library, which digitized the delicate pages of the entire book in London, holds by far the most.

The four-year joint project, which began in 2005 with the aim of “virtually reunifying” and preserving the bible, as well as undertaking new research into its history, has shed new light on who made it and how it was produced.

Prominently, experts at the British Library say, the project has uncovered evidence that a fourth scribe - along with the three already recognized — worked on the texts.

The assembly and transcription of the book includes previously unpublished pages of the Codex found in a blocked-off room at St. Catherine’s Monastery, at the foot of Mount Moses, Sinai, in 1975, some of which are in a poor condition and have been difficult to study.

But the British Library’s  project manager of Greek manuscripts, Juan Garces,  who worked on the digitization, said that there are many unanswered questions still about how the book came to be.

Just for example, where was it made? which religious order commissioned it? And how long did it take to produce? “The limits on access to this manuscript previously have meant that people (academics) have tended to dip, so that they have seized on particular things to advance theories, he said.

He said the website will enable research to be carried out in a holistic way for the first time, forcing top scholars to view their theories in context.
A good example, he said, was evidence advanced by some academics pointing to the theory that it could have been made in the ancient city of Cesarea in Israel. “It is our hope this will provide the catalyst for new research and it is already creating great interest,” he said.

The bible, which can be viewed online free from Monday, includes modern Greek translations and some sections translated into English. The British Library is expecting massive interest from believers around the world as well as the academic community.

Sony Ericsson will announce later this year about the company’s Google Android-based mobile phone code-named Rachael, which will be part of SE’s XPERIA series and so far includes the Windows Mobile-based X1 model.

In December 2008, Sony Ericsson joined the Open Handset Alliance and since then it has been somewhat clear that the Swedish company will join the Android-running smartphone army.

The Android-loving Sony Ericsson Rachel is based on the Qualcomm Snapdragon platform (QSD8250), wich will give the phone processor speeds of up to 1GHz and 7.2Mbit per second HSPA downlink speeds.

Besides, Sony Ericsson’s upcoming Android phone features an 8.1-megapixel camera with autofocus and flash. At the top of the phone a 3.5mm headphone jack and a miniUSB port are also present. No specific details on the phone’s display size or resolution were released, but reportedly it has a pressure-sensitive touchscreen.

Some of the specifications of the Android phone are looking very good in comparison to other smartphones on the market today. An 8.1-megapixel camera will be most powerful on an Android handset yet, and remarkably better than the 3-megapixel camera on the latest iPhone 3GS. On the Android realm, the HTC Hero and the Samsung Galaxy have only a 5-megapixel camera.

It is very likely that Sony Ericsson’s Rachel will run on the upcoming 2.0 version of Google Android operating system, which is also expected to be released toward the end of this year. As for Adobe Flash, it is unclear yet whether this phone will feature this capability. For more touchscreen smartphone goodness, you might want to check our Smartphone Palooza: 10 Hot Touchscreens Compared.

Michael Jackson is the first artist to sell more than a million tracks over the Internet in a single week, as 2.6 million Michael Jackson and Jackson Five songs were downloaded over the Internet in the days after his death.

According to Billboard,  the so-called King of Pop will occupy nine of the top 10 spots on the Top Pop Catalog Album chart this week. Among them are two greatest-hits collections and the mythmaking “Thriller” album. “Thriller” easily maintains its place as the top-selling record in history, with more than 100 million copies sold worldwide, and counting. On the magazine’s Top Digital Albums chart, Jackson has a record 6 out of the top 10 slots, including the top four. The one set not related to Michael Jackson in the top 10 - at No. 10 - is a reissue of the “Woodstock” soundtrack.

Around 1980, at the height of Michael Jackson-”Thriller” mania, digital downloads weren’t a factor in music sales. But the singer’s song catalog has remained popular in the digital era: In the week before his death, 48,000 of his songs were bought online. Still, the jump to 2.6 million is amazing.

Jackson’s online presence goes beyond audio as well. According to Visible Measures, a firm that tracks Internet video, the 13-minute classic “Thriller” music video from 1983 has been watched more than 8.5 million times online since last Thursday, the day when Michael Jackson passed away.

Apple Inc is holding negotiations with China’s cellular company, Unicom, concerning iPhone sale in China, and Apple said in April that it hoped the Chinese firm to begin sales in the country within the next year.

In fact, there is another Chinese firm, Hanwang Technology Co, which produces electronic devices and Chinese handwriting recognition systems under the brandname “i-phone” for mobile phones in China. But the similarity of the name iPhone would make it illegal for Hanwang to sell Apple’s smartphone under that name in China.

Apple had proposed to register the iPhone trademark in China by the end of 2002, but its application only covered computer hardware and software, and did not include mobile phones.

Then, about two years later, Hanwang - which is also called Hanvon - applied to register the i-phone brandame in the category covering phone equipment as well as mobile handsets. The company started selling a handset called i-phone.

In a bid to sell the iPhone in China, Apple will need to reach an agreement with Hanwang or apply for the trademark office to cancel Hanwang’s trademark. But revoking a brandname usually takes three to four years and is a process which is unlikely to succeed.

Apple has never contacted Hanwang regarding the matter, and has never received any notification from China’s trademark office of any action by the US company.

Smuggled iPhones are already very popular among rich Chinese living in urban areas, and there are more than one million iPhones in China.

A new website that contains news and reviews of mobile phones, digital cameras and other electronic toys, has been launched by Ryan Block and Peter Rojas, after the predecessors,  namely Gizmodo and Engadget like Gadgetwise which is owned by The New York Times or AMJ Gadgets Magazine it self.

GDGT, the new website, is different from Engadget or Gizmodo as it is meant to be a gadget-oriented social network, where users of the site will be able to create profiles and specify which consumer electronics devices they have, had or want to buy. Besides, then they will be able to talk about those devices with other owners, discuss new trends and tips, and decide how and when to replace them.

Gadget sites mostly provide only to 5% of a gadget’s lifecycle while 95% of the time we have the product there is no place to go, so the new website is a place where we can live with our gadgets online in eternity.

The GDGT founders, whose expertise in consumer electronics has earned them a significant online following, will not review gadgets by themselves. Instead, they will link to news and reviews on other sites, and will invite GDGT users to evaluate their devices. All reviews must be over 200 words, to guard against succinctly uninformative reviews.

Besides, GDGT will have information that will help users compare devices and links to online stores where they can make purchases. The site plans later to develop a marketplace for people to sell their devices once they are done.

For its advertisers, GDGT will know what devices its users own and which ones they want. Research in Motion, maker of the BlackBerry, has signed on as the exclusive advertiser for the first month.

It will run banner ads made to look similar to other content on the site - inviting people to add a RIM phone to their wish list, for example. The ads are clearly labeled as a sponsorship. In short, this is the final act. “Gizmodo was the prototype. Engadget extended the idea. AMJ Gadgets a gadgets magazine this could possibly be the last great gadget site.”

The Chinese government has postponed its controversial regulation that requires manufacturers to include Web-filtering software in all new personal computers sold in the country.

The government’s noticeable retreat, only one day before the rule was to be enacted, follows intense criticism of the software plan at home and abroad since it was first reported online June 7 by The Wall Street Journal.

Chinese government’s Xinhua news agency said late Tuesday quoting a spokesman at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology that some PC makers had said they had too little time to prepare for the Wednesday deadline. “Based on this factual situation, postponing of pre-installation is allowed,” the spokesman said. But the report did not say how long the delay could last, and officials couldn’t be reached for comment.

The Xinhua report is a clarification that the government is not explicitly abandoning the filtering software, which is called Green Dam-Youth Escort. “We will encourage PC makers who have already pre-installed the software to actively expand the market,” the spokesman said in the Xinhua report, and added that the government is “adhering to our path” and plans to continue providing the software free online in schools and Internet cafes.

“As for how to do pre-installation on other PCs, MIIT will further solicit opinions from various sides, perfect the plan, improve our methods, and complete the relevant work,” the spokesman said further.

The postponement has caused relief for global PC companies. They had feared that implementing the rules would leave them open to legal liability and charges of abetting censorship — especially with so little time to test the software. But they were also reluctant to openly defy the government, as China is the second-biggest PC market by unit sales after the US and also home to much of the world’s PC production.

In China, “green” is a term used for online content free from pornography and other illicit material. The government said the software was intended to block children from viewing online pornography and other “harmful content.”

Isaac Mao, a fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society, said the delay showed that the Green Dam plan “has lost legitimacy” and that the government wouldn’t be able to enforce it. “Of course, the face-saving way is to say ‘postpone,’” he said, but Internet users “are declaring their victory.”

Tuesday’s announcement follows complaints from the U.S., the European Union and other governments, as well as from global PC makers and Internet users in China and abroad. Some critics said the plan appeared to be aimed at extending the government’s massive Internet censorship into people’s homes and offices, and others worried it could expose PCs to hackers or cause technical problems. Researchers who studied the software found evidence that it blocked a range of content including sites covering sensitive political issues.

The ministry spokesman on Tuesday repeated the government’s position that the software is designed only to block “poisonous content” from young people, and said that it “definitely has no capability for collecting users’ information or monitoring their Internet behavior.”

US government officials said they welcomed the postponement. “We understand that the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology is delaying the implementation of the Green Dam software requirement. The United States welcomes the opportunity to engage with the relevant Chinese authorities on our concerns regarding the software,” a US Trade Representative spokeswoman said in a statement.

The US government applied pressure on the Chinese government to reconsider the mandate in recent days, with agencies including the office of the Trade Representative and the Department of Commerce actively lobbying on behalf of PC makers, according to people familiar with the talks.

But it was not clear whether the companies would have been able to meet the requirements by the deadline. “I sincerely don’t know what would have happened” if the mandate wasn’t delayed, said Dean Garfield, president of the Information Technology Industry Council, a trade group that was one of 22 business groups that sent a letter to Premier Wen Jiabao last week urging that the plan be reconsidered.

Computer makers and the US government were worried not only about the deadline, but about the nature of the mandate. The computer industry supports giving parents the ability to block access to offensive content, but is opposed to any requirement that specifies a particular company’s product, Mr. Garfield said.

The delay has not made the issue go away, said Mark Bohannon, general counsel and senior vice president of public policy for the Software and Information Industry Association, another trade group tracking the effort.

On Tuesday, a spokeswoman for Hewlett-Packard Co which is No. 1 in global PC shipments and revenue, said it is working with the Information Technology Industry Council “to seek additional information, clarify open questions and monitor developments on this matter.”

In a statement, Dell Inc did not address the delay explicitly, but said that the company respects the Chinese government’s stated goal of protecting children by filtering access to pornography through the Internet. “We will continue to advise customers worldwide about widely available Web-filtering software that has been thoroughly tested and we know performs well on Dell computers,” the company said.

Chinese officials plainly failed to anticipate the intense backlash against their plans, which grew out of efforts in recent years to use similar filtering software on school PCs. Local media have carried heavy criticism of the plan, prompting repeated government attempts to defend its decision.

The government’s effort to control the Internet - including sophisticated network software, government monitors, and sometimes harsh punishment for breaking rules - does keep out much information, and occasionally helps the government ferret out dissent.

But the Internet has enabled levels of individual expression and discussion that are unprecedented in Communist China. Users who want access to blocked content usually easily find ways to circumvent the system.

Of course, the Green Dam plan seems to have widened public interest in China in questions about government intrusiveness and censorship. Rebecca MacKinnon, a journalism professor at the University of Hong Kong who studies the Chinese Internet, said that searches for the term fan qiang, or “climbing over the wall” - shorthand for circumventing China’s “Great Firewall” - surged after news of Green Dam became public in early June.