The system for ordering, paying for, and issuing Beijing Olympic tickets has had many kinks, the latest of which may be the middle name question.

A Wall Street Journal blog reports that people found a Bank of China branch unwilling to issue tickets to some foreigners because the registered name lacked the middle name present on the required passport. Without an exact match, you're nearly out of luck. Just like getting on a plane in China.

Or that's what the report says. It's a blog post based on a single anecdote from an anonymous foreign friend in … Read more

Google CEO Eric Schmidt, in an interview with The New Yorker's Ken Auletta, said he never anticipated router-level information restrictions and said he's concerned.

"I had never appreciated that governments would see the internet as so important that they would begin to block it at the router level, so I worry about that," Schmidt said.

Schmidt did not name specific countries, but the type of blocking, including that of Google's YouTube, applies directly to China. He also said that Google talks to governments about what they're blocking and tries to convince them that offending … Read more

As of right now in a Beijing bar and restaurant, Anonymouse.org is inaccessible. It returns the "connection reset" message that is a hallmark of most Chinese internet controls.

Anonymouse is one of the most commonly used tools among my friends for accessing websites blocked in China. Its limitations, including inability to load complex web pages, i.e. those using javascript or streaming video, led me to seek out other options, but Anonymouse has been an important tool for many.

One alternative, proxy4china.com, does a better job dealing with complex pages, and is working again after a … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--Over the 8,260 miles I've driven on Road Trip 2006 and Road Trip 2007, I've visited, written about, and photographed some of the most interesting destinations in California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah.

I've also gotten to road-test some really cool gadgets and drive the spiffy and comfortable Infiniti QX56 over some long and very hot distances.

Now I'm getting ready to depart on Road Trip 2008. This year, rather than leaving from my home base in San Francisco, I'll be flying east and starting a grand tour of the … Read more

NOVATO, Calif.--I'm sitting outside a nondescript warehouse space in this Marin County town, and sitting right behind me is Rick Nash, an NHL all-star with the Columbus Blue Jackets.

All of us are chowing down on barbecue, and every single one of us is wearing comfortable clothes: jeans, T-shirts, and the like.

But not Nash. He's in a full-body motion-capture suit. That's because he's here to for a mo-cap filming session for 2K Sports' forthcoming hockey video game, NHL 2K9.

I'll run a full story on this later today, and a full gallery, most … Read more

A week after the Sichuan earthquake lit up instant messengers and Twitter, Google statistics show a huge drop in searches during a national moment of silence.

Users apparently observed the silence while sitting at their computers. Meanwhile many people around the country paused.

My experience seems a bit odd in retrospect. Having just landed in Shenzhen, a Mainland metropolis across the border from Hong Kong, I found people at the pick-up area speechless, but surrounded by blaring bus horns. I considered the possibility that the sound, which I couldn't determine the source of at the time, was an air … Read more

MARIN HEADLANDS, Calif.--This is very surreal.

I'm sitting on a bench on top of a cliff here, overlooking the Pacific Ocean and looking straight at the Golden Gate Bridge.

For the last 15 minutes, there has been a steady stream of sirens from emergency vehicles, and I can see that all traffic on the bridge is completely stopped. I Twittered what I was seeing, and almost immediately, one of my followers replied with details of what seems to be a multiple-vehicle accident blocking most of the lanes on the bridge.

Before this happened, I was planning on starting … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--One of the cool things about going on road trips for CNET News.com, as I've done in both 2006 and 2007, is that I get to test out a bunch of cool tech.

For the trip I'll be embarking on next month, that is very much the case, and one of the gadgets I've been looking to get going is the USB727 EVDO modem Verizon lent me for the trip.

The only problem has been that until today, I had been unable to get the modem to work properly. I had been told it was … Read more

At around 11:50 p.m. Pacific time Sunday night, uber-blogger Robert Scoble posted a short note to Twitter: "@dtan just reported an earthquake in Beijing. Wonder how large it is? Off to check out USGS site."

Of course, as the world knows by now, Scoble was referring to the devastating quake that is already believed to have killed at least 12,000 people.

Some may be skeptical about Scoble's subsequent claims that news of the disaster was flying around Twitter before the U.S. Geological Survey posted anything on it, but one thing seems clear. Because … Read more