• Graham Webster of CNet blog Sinobyte reports that William Chang, chief scientist for Baidu, told the WWW2008 conference in Beijing yesterday, "'There's in fact no reason for China to use Wikipedia, a service based 'out there'... It's very natural for China to make it's own products," and hence all of us should be good boys and girls and use Baidupedia instead. He of course conveniently forgot to mention Chinese Wikipedia remains blocked.
• HiPiHi, the Chinese clone of 3D virtual world Second Life has opened its doors to the public with a beta test that includes free features, writes Duncan Riley of TechCrunch. Meanwhile, anti-CNN demonstrations have taken place at another Chinese virtual world, Second City (第二城市), writes ESWN. Crazy times.
• Rick Martin of PandaPassport notes that Youku has jumped on the "Heart China" bandwagon that we told you about.
• Meanwhile, another video-sharing site Tudou (which has just celebrated its third anniversary) has completed its fourth round of financing estimated to be between US$57 million to US$70 million. Despite all this cash however, Bloomberg reports that Tudou, like Youtube, has been struggling to post a profit.
• ChinaTechNews reports that AOL's research and development company has formally landed in Beijing.
• The AFP reports that the Internet has been a major driving force behind recent protests all across China, which has just surpassed the US as the world's largest nation online.
• Last but not least, Shanghai-based online games operator The9 announced it has invested $38 million in Korea’s G10 Entertainment for a minority stake. Baidu has also just outlined moves to join the online gaming sector.

Video from HiPiHi.