I don't want to be seen as some kind of apologist for China, given its horrendous human rights record. I think the President meeting with the Dalai Lama despite Chinese warnings sends the right message and is eminently responsible.

But that doesn't mean we can't learn something from how China is reacting to the recession with quick and massive stimulus that is succeeding in creating jobs and growth.

The world's largest human migration the annual crush of Chinese traveling home to celebrate the Lunar New Year, which is this Sunday is going a little faster this time thanks to a new high-speed rail line.

The Chinese bullet train, which has the world's fastest average speed, connects Guangzhou, the southern coastal manufacturing center, to Wuhan, deep in the interior. In a little more than three hours, it travels 664 miles, comparable to the distance from Boston to southern Virginia. That is less time than Amtrak's fastest train, the Acela, takes to go from Boston just to New York.

Even more impressive, the Guangzhou to Wuhan train is just one of 42 high-speed lines recently opened or set to open by 2012 in China. By comparison, the United States hopes to build its first high-speed rail line by 2014, an 84-mile route linking Tampa and Orlando, Fla.

China spent $88 billion dollars on high-speed rail investment in 2009 alone, a substantial increase from previous years. It rivals the construction of the interstate highway system in America in the 1950s for its audaciousness and use of public monies to spur jobs and growth. And it's working:

As China upgrades and expands its rail system, it creates the economies of large-scale production for another big export industry. The sheer volume of equipment that they will require, and the technology that will have to be developed, will simply catapult them into a leadership position, said Stephen Gardner, Amtrak's vice president for policy and development [...]

Officials drafted a plan to move much of the nation's passenger traffic onto high-speed routes by 2020, freeing existing tracks for more freight. Then the global financial crisis hit in late 2008. Faced with mass layoffs at export factories, China ordered that the new rail system be completed by 2012 instead of 2020, throwing more than $100 billion in stimulus at the projects.

Administrators mobilized armies of laborers 110,000 just for the 820-mile route from Beijing to Shanghai, which will cut travel time there to five hours, from 12, when it opens next year.

You can do this far more quickly in a command economy, of course. But it's the priority order that is striking. China needed economic stimulus, and rapidly accelerated public investment. The US (which actually has added more in stimulus than most countries in Europe) took a balanced approach based more on tax cuts. Aside from the question of what approach works better in terms of economic activity, look at the end result practically all of China will be served by high-speed rail within a matter of years.

It's not perfect. Some Chinese have complained about the fare costs. And again, a single decision-maker rather than a phalanx of competing interests makes decision-making that much easier. But there's something that can be learned here. If you want to create jobs, rather than the Rube Goldberg approach of tax breaks and nudges toward private investment, just go ahead and create the jobs. In the long run you'll have higher growth and a better quality of life for the nation.

Orange County District Attorney have charged 18-yo student Omar Khan with 69 felony countsincluding identity theft, computer fraud, falsifying a public record, second degree burglary, and watching Ferris Bueller's Day Off and War Games 5,405 timesafter allegedly getting into Tesoro High School's computers to change his grades. The Matthew Broderick wannabe was not very subtle, though, leaving a trail the size of the Exxon Valdez's oil spill.

According to the DA and the Orange County Sheriff, Khan and fellow student Tanvir Singh committed their crimes between January and May 2008, breaking into the school on numerous times using a stolen key. The brilliant Khan also attempted to steal a teacher's password to push his grades and those of other twelve students. All of this while both were exchanging text messages discussing their activities the whole time.

Apparently, the smartymorons then pushed their C, D and F grades to As and Bs, hoping that nobody would notice. But when Khan got denied admission in the University of California, he went back to school to ask for a new transcript.

Being a bad student, the school administrators noticed the new stellar grade record, starting the investigation that has ended in this court case, and Khan's potential 38 year degree in laundry systems, cooking, and inter-personal communication, with a second major in shower plumbing, sponsored by California's state prison system. [CRN via The Inquirer]

Yesterday, Digg went down for an hour in the middle of the day. Initially we thought it was an unplanned outage, but it turns out that a number of changes were made to the algorithm that controls what stories are "promoted" to the front page. The changes have started a mini-revolt among the top submitters that is reminiscent of the community uprising over the HD-DVD unlock code last year. We talked to several top diggers to find out what changed, why they're upset, and we have our own theory for why the changes were made.

The main change affects "top diggers," the few submitters who contribute a huge percentage of the stories that make the Digg front page. These users, who have all submitted thousands of stories each, submit more than 10 percent of stories that make the front page of Digg. Muhammad Saleem -- known as msaleem on Digg -- has submitted 1,201 articles that eventually made the front page. He tells Valleywag that prior to the algorithm change, it would take him between 110 and 130 Diggs for a submitted story to make the front page. Now, it can take more than 200.

A top digger submits a story, it gets 100 diggs and then sits there in upcoming queue for 8 to 10 hours getting 180-190 votes and not being promoted to the front page. Other stories with 40 votes (from newbie users) get promoted from under you. Everyone loses. Good content submitted by top users is doomed to fail.

It seems a fairly transparent strategy to clean house of the submitters who have been dominating the front page for a while now. Essentially [they] adjusted the diversity factor to skew against popular submitters. Digg-critical stories are frequently buried before they ever reach the front page.

Our theory? Digg is attempting to throttle the number of stories that make the front page. As more and more stories get promoted to the front page of Digg -- FP'd, in Digg-lingo -- stories spend less time in the spotlight. By increasing the number of votes it takes for a story to make the front page, turnover should decrease.

I also spoke to Drew Curtis, proprietor of Fark.com, a semi-competitor of Digg's, about the changes.

Fark is a benevolent dictatorship or as I like to call it, a house party. You can come in and have a good time with the rest of us but if you shit on the floors and tell me my sense of decor sucks and the beer is awful, you're gone.

Digg is like Student Government on any given campus. It's a full-blown governmental institution completely ignored by the administrators, created for the appearance of having a say in what's going on. No wonder there is chaos. Or maybe it's more like Soviet Russia, where you're told you've got freedom and a voice and can make a difference, but you really can't do shit.

Digg's trying to do one of two things, either improve the quality of submissions or drive the pageviews up. I would suspect the latter, once VC gets involved it's all about the money.Digg founder Kevin Rose posted on the Digg Blog about the recent changes, saying "as we point out in our FAQ, occasionally you will see stories in the upcoming section with 100+ Diggs - this is evidence of our promotion algorithm hard at work. One of the keys to getting a story promoted is diversity in Digging activity. When the algorithm gets the diversity it needs, it will promote a story form the Upcoming section to the home page."

But Kevin, why won't you make these algorithm changes transparent? Why won't you make public who buries the stories? Why do you refuse to acknowledge the existence of moderators manipulating stories behind the scenes? Isn't "social media" about openness and transparency? Fark has never pretended to be open. There is editorial control behind every story that makes it to the front page.

If there continues to be manipulation and big brother-esque control behind the iron curtain of Digg, the users may soon give up and look for social news elsewhere, taking their page views with them.

I attempted to reach Digg CEO Jay Adelson and founder Kevin Rose via email. Rose was in a meeting at the time, and has not gotten back to me yet.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Almost a year ago, we released Internet Explorer 7 for Windows XP. Since then, IE7 is well on its way to becoming the most used browser in the world, and we've seen lots of evidence that IE7 makes it safer and easier to accomplish everyday tasks online. For example, the built-in Phishing Filter has protected consumers from known phishing web sites an average of 900,000 times per week. IE7 is the first and still the only browser with native support for Extended Validation SSL Certificates that help prevent online fraud. (Of course, tabbed browsing, QuickTabs, shrink-to-fit printing, an easily customizable search box, CSS improvements, and some add-ons are all good things too.)

Because Microsoft takes its commitment to help protect the entire Windows ecosystem seriously, we're updating the IE7 installation experience to make it available as broadly as possible to all Windows users. With today's Installation and Availability Update, Internet Explorer 7 installation will no longer require Windows Genuine Advantage validation and will be available to all Windows XP users. If you are not already running IE7, you can get it now from the Internet Explorer home page on Microsoft.com, get a customized version from a third-party site, or, if you haven't already received it via Automatic Updates, this version will be delivered to you as we described previously. If you are already running IE7, you will not be offered IE7 again by Automatic Updates.

Additionally, we've made minor changes to IE7 for Windows XP based on customer feedback:

• The menu bar is now visible by default.
• The Internet Explorer 7 online tour has updated how-to's. Also, the first-run experience includes a new overview.
• We've included a new MSI installer that simplifies deployment for IT administrators in enterprises. Learn more about it here.

Thanks,

Steve Reynolds
Program Manager

As your business grows (no doubt thanks to your ability to streamline your sales funnel with the Etelos CRM system), we wanted to make it easier to add new sub-users to your account.

Now, when you hire a new sales person or manager, all you need to do is send them an invitation.

E-mail your invite

Apparently, the letter "e" followed by "Vite" is trademarked. But that's basically what we're doing here. Send your new sub-users an electronic invitation to use the CRM system.

As you can see in the screen shot below, all you need to do to add sub-users is simply send them an invitation to use the system. Simply enter their email addresses, separating each with a comma, and they will receive an email with instructions on how to begin using the CRM tools.

Account setup

Below is the first screen new sub-users will see when they to set up their new account. They enter in their basic contact information and can change their user name and password as well. The CRM Version drop-down is used to select the default homepage of choice. I use Netvibes, but the user has the freedom to choose.

Install the CRM

After the new users finish updating their contact information, they are taken to the final step in the process. In the screenshot below, you can see that we make installing the CRM system easy. Simply click on the link that begins "INSTALL..." and they will be redirected to the version they selected in the previous step.

As you can see in the screenshot, we also provide links to begin using alternative editions of the CRM system. Part of what makes the Etelos CRM system so great is that we provide freedom and flexibility to create a customized work environment that fits in with each individual user's work flow.

The account administrator will still need to edit the users permissions, such as the ability to edit any contact or message. The default setting is that all new sub-users can edit any message or user.

Improved appointment management

We have added the ability to filter your appointments by type and by date range. Simply choose your filter from the drop-down menu and your appointment list will automatically, umm, sort itself out.

You can even filter your appointments by both categories as well.

Most of our new features come from customer requests, so if you have an idea or would like to see something work differently, please go to the support forums and post your ideas.