AP – Malaysia on Wednesday granted a license for an Australian mining company to operate the first rare earths plant outside China in years, despite public protests over fears of radioactive contamination.

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Malaysia grants license to Aussie rare earth plant
(AP)

AP – China’s two biggest video websites are fighting a court battle over accusations they are misusing each other’s programming as rivalry heats up in an industry that is luring viewers away from bland state TV.

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Chinese companies battle over Internet video
(AP)

Lawmakers seized on revelations that hackers based in China broke into the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s computer network to demand legislation bolstering government and private-sector cyber security.

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Lawmakers Urge Action on Hacking

You could be forgiven for overlooking the Ainovo Novo7 , a 7-inch Chinese Android tablet, as likely just another me-too device to be sold in electronics districts next to fake iPhones and bulk cables. And in a way, that’s what it is: at $100, it can’t possibly be as well-built as the iPad or newer Galaxy Tabs, and the size and design aren’t going to impress anyone. But it’s got two things going for it: Ice Cream Sandwich and MIPS. Naturally to many people neither of those terms signify much of anything. Most people only care whether it runs Netflix and Angry Birds. But both these features point at an interesting breakage between the China and US markets, one that will only widen with time. First, there is Ice Cream Sandwich , with which our readers are probably already familiar. With a number of new features, performance improvements, and so on, it’s the next generation of Android and the hope is that it will help to unify the disparate platforms stuck at this or that previous version. It’s making its debut on the Galaxy Nexus, which is shipping as I write this. Yet it made its real debut in China on a clone device last week, and now it’s on another, perhaps more interesting one. There will be a flood of ICS devices soon, sure, but it’s really indicative of how totally disconnected the Chinese and US markets are, to say nothing of the European, Australian, Indian, Korean, and so on. It’s humorous that while the immense machinery of the US marketing machine is warming up, preparing to ship, and running prime-time ads, there are devices available for purchase outright for a few bills on the street in China. And these aren’t pirate devices: the Novo7 is the real thing, with access to Google services, though Market access is restricted in China. Andy Rubin even praised the device as a “big win.” Part of why Rubin called out the device was its MIPS architecture. Without getting too technical, suffice it to say that MIPS is an alternative to x86 (which we find on our computers) and ARM (which we find in our phones and tablets) architectures. Why should that matter? Because China wants it to matter. Back in March we heard about China’s Loongson processor series , which is totally homegrown in an effort to avoid reliance on western-owned technologies. The Loongsons use a MIPS architecture as well, and it’s likely that China’s government is heavily subsidizing this research and companies that produce MIPS chips in order to further cut the cords that tie China to the west. Indeed, Ingenic, the manufacturer of the chip inside the Novo7, is Chinese (not a big surprise) and specializes in MIPS architecture. These China-specific devices are going to be more difficult to internationalize, but cheaper to produce and sell locally. It’s sort of protectionism via R&D. This is only the beginning, though, as MIPS architecture is still a ways behind ARM and Intel in efficiency and speed. But seeing a tablet like this really does drive home the differences between our countries which may shape the consumer electronics trade for decades to come. [via ComputerWorld ]

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$99 Chinese Tablet Is MIPS-Based, Runs Android 4.0

Facebook has confirmed to us this morning that it did indeed acquire the Baltmore-based software firm WhoGlue earlier this month. WhoGlue builds social networking software for membership organizations (like college alumni networks, for example) and apparently had the fortuity to file a patent on something called  “Distributed personal relationship information management system and methods”  in 2001, three years before Facebook existed. The two went to court over the patent in 2009 and the case ended in a “very positive way “ for WhoGlue in March 2010. According to WhoGlue founder Jason D. Hardebeck, the ongoing post-litigation conversations between the two companies were what eventually led to the sale. A Facebook representative gave us the following statement, “We can confirm that we acquired some technology developed by WhoGlue. The WhoGlue team isn’t joining Facebook and instead will continue working on its own social networking software for organizations.” According to other reports Facebook also acquired the stakes of WhoGlue’s shareholders, including  Siemens , but Facebook would not give any further details on the veracity of those reports. In a move uncharacteristic of the talent-hungry Facebook, the WhoGlue team was not part of the acquisition, and in fact Hardeback plans on forming a new company, WhoGlue LLC , that will basically continue in the same space. The WhoGlue technology allows a group to privately network within a larger network, and can be applied to subnetwork functions like integrating Facebook Groups content more widely throughout Facebook without violating user privacy. Our resident Facebook expert Josh Constine also had this quite interesting theory, “If it were ever to launch in China, the technology could also help Facebook operate a cordoned-off sub-network for the country that wouldn’t violate the Great Firewall.” Pretty cool, right?

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Facebook Acquires The Tech Behind WhoGlue, A Company That Sued It In 2009

With over 100K weekly downloads coming in just from China, Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom had a lot to say during his TechCrunch Disrupt Beijing talk, tackling head-on the issue of how to approach social in China’s unique market as well as what exactly to do about the multitudes of clones. We chatted with Systrom after his talk backstage, and found out a little bit more about where the company sees themselves in the future. Instagram is currently focused on the Asia, with its second biggest market being Japan. And Systrom isn’t afraid of the clones, “There might be 10 clones here, [but] there is also 20 clones from the United States right? You know, being copied is something that I think that every successful company will go through. Our biggest defensible asset really is our community, and I think that’s the thing that you’re not going to find on any of these replicas.” The hardest part about adjusting to China for most Internet companies is that social networks like Facebook and Twitter are censored, leaving apps like the social-heavy Instagram to reckon with Chinese equivalents Weibo and Renren. “It’s a matter of resources and time,” Systrom said, “And I think that we’re really excited, actually, in the near future to add support for a bunch of Japanese social networks, Chinese social networks, Korean social networks. Because it’s really clear that the top five social networks that we list today in the app aren’t necessarily the top five in other countries.” When asked if accumulating these resources involved Instagram raising another round of funding (as currently rumored across the Valley), Systrom said that the six-person company was focused on “staying as lean as possible.” “It’s not really a priority right now to raise more money,” he told me, “When I think the company starts scaling both on the people front and even more the network front then I think there will be an opportunity to raise more money for the company, but it really doesn’t make sense right now.” Systrom also hinted that Instagram Video was (somewhere) on the horizon, “Video makes sense to do. I will say it’s a very interesting area. We really want to go after something bigger than filtered photos. Our job and our vision is to allow you to tell the story of your life, and whatever tools that may be for video, we’ll end up making them. I’m not sure if that includes filters for video or not, but we’ll definitely consider it.” Crunchbase INSTAGRAM KEVIN SYSTROM Company: Instagram Website: instagram.com Launch Date: June 10, 2010 Funding: $7.5M Instagram is a free photo sharing application that allows users to take photos, apply a filter, and share it on the service or a variety of other social networking services, including Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Tumblr, Flickr , Foursquare and Posterous.[2] The application is compatible with any iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch running iOS 3.1.2 or above. Instagram, in an homage to both the Kodak Instamatic and Polaroid cameras, confines photos into a square shape. This is in contrast to the… Learn more Person: Kevin Systrom Website: systrom.com Companies: Instagram , Google , Nextstop , Odeo Kevin Systrom is a co-founder of Instagram, a photo sharing application for the iPhone. He also founded Burbn, an HTML5-based location sharing service. Kevin graduated from Stanford University in 2006 with a BS in Management Science & Engineering—he got his first taste of the startup world when he was an intern at Odeo that later became Twitter. He spent two years at Google—the first of which was working on Gmail, Google Reader, and other products and the latter where… Learn more

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Instagram’s Kevin Systrom On International Expansion, Instagram Video, Funding Rumors And More

Disrupt Beijing is almost here. With speakers like Pony Ma , Lin Bin , Peter Vesterbacka and Niklas Zennström , it’s going to be an amazing conference. This October 31st to November 1st, our very own Jason Kincaid, Alexia Tsotsis, Leena Rao, Greg Kumparak, John Biggs and many more will be flying to China to shake things up. Of course, our own Sarah Lacy will be hosting, along with special guest Peter Goodman . Peter Goodman knows a thing or two about disruption and China. He has more than a decade of reporting on the economy, business and technology for The New York Times and The Washington Post, with 5 of those years being spent in China. He currently is the executive business editor at The Huffington Post. Of course, like any Disrupt conference, there will also be cocktail parties, influential meetups, chats with some of the best in the business, and more. We know not everyone may have the chance to purchase a ticket to Disrupt Beijing, so we wanted to give two free tickets away to two lucky readers. If you want to come with us to Beijing for our next Disrupt conference, just follow the steps below. 1) Become a fan of our TechCrunch Facebook Page: 2) Then do one of the following: – Retweet this post (making sure to include the #TCDisrupt hashtag) – Or leave us a comment below telling us why you want to come The contest starts now and ends October 9th at 7:30pm PT. Please only tweet the message once or you will be disqualified. We will choose at random and contact the two winners this Sunday night. Also, please note this giveaway is for tickets only and does not include airfare or hotel.

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TechCrunch Giveaway: Two Free Tickets To Disrupt Beijing #TCDisrupt

Reuters – Dell Inc and China’s top search engine Baidu Inc plan to jointly develop tablet computers and mobile phones, targeting the Chinese market dominated by Apple Inc and Lenovo.

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Dell and Baidu team up for tablets, mobiles
(Reuters)

Reuters – China’s Communist Party control is at risk unless the government takes firmer steps to stop Internet opinion being shaped by increasingly organized political foes, a team of party writers warned in a commentary published on Friday.

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China state paper urges Internet rethink to silence foes
(Reuters)

Reuters – China’s state-run news agency demanded on Tuesday that Internet companies, regulators and police do more to cleanse websites of “toxic rumors,” adding to signs that the ruling Communist Party wants to tame the explosion of freewheeling microblogs.

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China state media urge crackdown on microblog "rumors"
(Reuters)