According to research from Beijing-based BDA, based on data from the China Internet Network Information Center, the country had 210 million internet users at the end of 2007, compared to Nielsen/NetRatings findings of 216 million.

Spot Runner, an internet company that helps customers in the acquisition of local TV advertising, said today that it has hired Joanne Bradford

Virgin Mobile Canada has already taken aim at former New York governor Eliot Spitzer in an advertisement.

Photo-sharing site Photobucket said today that it would reinstall images of babies in diapers that it had removed for violating the company's terms of servicing outlawing "nudity."

There’s nothing cooler in 2008 than actively, rapidly texting friends while hanging out with a group. Nothing. Who isn’t blown away by the frost of coolness from a friend sitting in silence at a bar, firing away message after to message to people you’ve probably never met, and never will? It’s hotter than hot, people, cooler than a spray-on tan certainly, and the only thing surpassing it is when it’s done on an iPhone. Now THAT is coolness unlike anything we’ve ever seen. People used to think tatts were cool. Yeah, right. Grow up, geek.

With MacWorld right around the corner and few rumors about the next trick(s) up Steve Jobs’s sleeves, the latest word from Cupertino includes an iPod with automatic volume control, designed to calculate the user’s length of listening time and noise level, gradually reducing the volume as necessary. The Daily Mail reports that Apple owns a patent for the technology.

Senators Clinton and Obama have taken to the internet to spread their messages in recent months like teens to MySpace. It began with Clinton’s launch of The Fact Hub, a site dedicated to providing quick responses to charges and news reports that her campaign deems inaccurate. Then Obama released Hillary Attacks a month later, which serves to acknowledge then dismantle incoming barbs from Clinton.

To wrap up the 2007 Year in Games, and forecast trends for 2008, we sat down with one of the industry’s biggest authorities, Joseph Olin, President of the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences. He’s been with the AIAS since 2004, and worked with video games and consumer products for 25 years. We asked him about the biggest developments in gaming this year, and some of the things we’ll see in the next 12 months. Here are Five Questions with Joseph Olin:

If a studio is going to experiment with the launch of a major motion picture on the internet, the Jackass franchise is probably a smart bet. The Hollywood Reporter said today that Paramount Digital Entertainment and MTV New Media, co-producers on Jackass 2.5, will release the film at blockbuster.jackass.com, skipping theaters entirely in a rare move for a franchise that has already had two box office hits.

Miley Cyrus’s “Best of Both Worlds” tour, one of the best selling ever, has added 14 dates in January. The 15-year-old star of Disney’s TV hit Hannah Montana will begin selling tickets to the new shows on Saturday. Detroit will host the first show on January 11th and Miami will host the last on January 31st.

The consensus for those at London’s O2 seems to be that Led Zeppelin put on a hell of a show, which for any fan of the band is nice to hear. It isn’t often, though, that a band of Led’s magnitude – and there are few – return and get panned. The show, called a “one off” event, now appears to have set the table for a tour. Rumor spread last week about a Led-at-Bonnaroo-2008 performance, and now word has it they’re thinking NYC’s Madison Square Garden as well. The nostalgia rolls on.

The Peacock is doing well enough, it seems, to reject seven-figure ad deals, as it did today by turning down an offer from conservative group Freedom’s Watch, the AP reports. It was not the ad, NBC said, that prompted the response, it was Freedom’s Watch’s website, which the network said was too political. Alan Wurtzel, head of NBC’s standards and practices, said the ad would have run if the group did not insist on including the website’s URL.

Murder suspect Erik Crespo, 17 years old at the time of a 2005 New Year’s Eve elevator shooting in New York City, was questioned by Detective Christopher Perino. But the detective later denied that any questioning had taken place, only to discover Crespo had used his MP3 player to record the interrogation, AP reports. The recording, which displayed questionable tactics on Perino’s part, was enough to arraign the detective on 12 counts of first-degree perjury yesterday, and he faces up to seven years for each count.

A Microsoft Santa Claus bot created to talk to children took on a curriculum of its own this week when it began saying, “It’s fun to talk about oral sex, but I want to chat about something else…,” Network World reported.

China - A combined frustration with the US’s arms sales to Taiwan, ongoing trade disputes, and the success of American films at the box office have led to a ban on Hollywood films by the Chinese government, The Independent reports. The ban might last until May.

Kanye West has grabbed 8 nominations for this year’s Grammy Awards, the most of any nominees. Amy Winehouse is second with 6 nominations. West’s album Graduation is one of the best selling of 2007. It sold nearly 1 million units its first week, an alarming number given today’s music environment. Graduation was nominated for Album of the Year, along with Winehouse’s Back to Black, which was also nominated for song of the year.

Ah, the sweet ironies (and hypocrisies) in life. There’s something beautifully creepy about a person fighting so hard against the same thing they fought so hard to create. In today’s case, the culprit is Mark Zuckerberg, the young man more responsible than perhaps any other for his generation’s obsession with displaying itself publicly on the internet. The New York Times has reported that a judge turned down Facebook’s request to have “unflattering documents” about Zuckerberg removed from the website of Harvard magazine 02138.

As the conclusion to the races for party nominations draws closer, bare-knuckle boxing has ensued. Senator Barack Obama has taken his fight to the internet, creating a website called Hillary Attacks, which, as its name might suggest, serves the purpose of acknowledging, and then dismantling, oncoming barbs from Senator Hillary Clinton.

Organizers of the 2008 Super Bowl in Glendale, AZ have announced that Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers will play the halftime show, Reuters reports. Prince put on a memorable performance in 2007, with 140 million people watching. According to Reuters, the Super Bowl is annually the year’s No. 1 U.S. television event.