The Vatican has made some attempts in making a presence online - including having their own YouTube channel - but the Pope has issued a new message ahead of World Communications Day that tells priests that they should embrace social media and start blogging - yes, you heard that right.

"God’s loving care for all people in Christ must be expressed in the digital world not simply as an artifact from the past, or a learned theory, but as something concrete, present and engaging," Pope Benedict XVI wrote. "Our pastoral presence in that world must thus serve to show our contemporaries."

His new message could see priests uploading images and videos on services like Flickr and YouTube, while writing blog posts and having podcasts or vodcasts. Some American ministries that focus on youth have already embraced social media.

The trend has already been embraced by Father Bob McGuire, who has a blog and two podcasts - one from the Podcast Network and another from Triple J. He also has a MySpace and Facebook profile and a Twitter account, where over 3,000 follow his tweets.

However, just don't expect your priest to write messages that may or may not contain their deepest darkest secrets, or posting drunk pictures of themselves on Facebook - which they do not do, hopefully - or playing Farmville. The decree by Pope Benedict XVI has warned that priests should be used be spread the Gospel in their parishes and/or diocese.

"Priests present in the world of digital communications should be less notable for their media savvy than for their priestly heart, their closeness to Christ," Pope Benedict XVI said on the matter.

After publicly announcing that it may rethink its China strategy after an attempted breach of its servers and stopping censoring content from its search results, Google has given all of its employees based in China a holiday as the company steps up its security of its networks.

"We are currently running tests and scans internally to ensure that the network is safe and secure," a spokesperson for the company wrote to Bloomberg.

The network security tests come as Google was one of the 33 websites attacked by Chinese hackers in an attack to target human rights campaigners, with Google announcing in a blog post that it may shut operations down in China, including offices and its websites. Google has struggled with market leader in China, Baidu - and Google is also facing similar trouble in Japan and South Korea, as localised search engines beat Google.

Google, however, is likely expected to shut down operations, given how public this has become. But given China's stance on censoring the internet, allowing Google to not filter could set a precedent that could also see Bing and Yahoo follow.

Facebook currently is the most popular social networking tool, but many don't realise that it hosts a lot of personal data - from birthdays to embarrassing pictures from your friend's 21st birthday party. This, of course, means that many don't realise the how dangerous it can be by posting that much personal information.

In a recent interview to The Rumpus, an anonymous employee of the social network reveals how Facebook staff can access your profile, even as far as typing your user ID and typing a master password comprising of "upper and lower case, symbols [and] numbers" that would spell out Chuck Norris.

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It's official. Rotten Tomatoes, the popular movie reviews aggregator, has a brand new owner - Flixster, another movie social network. The company acquired the site from IGN, which is owned by News Corporation, in exchange for a minority stake in the company.

"It’s a huge step forward in our goal of connecting users to their own personalized world of movies on any platform they choose. We can’t think of a better pairing for movie fans and our technology partners," CEO of Flixster, Joe Greenstein, said.

"Joining Rotten Tomatoes with Flixster creates a company that can dominate the online movie category," President of IGN Entertainment, Roy Bahat, said. "This also enables IGN to focus on serving the male 18-to-34 audience–especially videogamers–and the advertisers looking to reach them." Bahat will also join as an observer to Flixster's Board of Directors.

However, exact details of the deal have not been revealed yet; but the deal looks like a perfect partnership as both deal with movies and user reviews from Flixster and critic reviews from Rotten Tomatoes would complement each other. They previously had a partnership where the critic reviews from Rotten Tomatoes on Flixster's website and its mobile applications.

First Kevin Rudd, then Barack Obama and now Yukio Hatoyama? Hatoyama, who is the current Japanese Prime Minister, has decided to join a long list of politicians who are hoping to gain some youth creditability by launching a blog and tweeting - especially when his government's support rating has dipped after taking control from the long-running Liberal Democratic Party of Japan in September last year.

His blog, titled Hato cafe, aims to "burying the gap between people and politics as well as changing this country together," according to Hatoyama. He even uploaded a picture of his office roof from his mobile phone camera, and promises to tweet once a day to get the hang of it (though, we are highly sceptical that he will be doing so and maybe get an aide to do it for him).

One little problem - it looks like it may be in hiatus for a couple of months sometime in the year because it is an election year for its upper house, as laws currently prohibit internet political campaigning; though they are considering in lifting the ban as many young politicians start using the Internet to campaign, following in the footsteps of Barack Obama - including Twitter, which has gain in popularity in the country after the microblogging site opened a localised version in April 2008.

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RUMOUR MILL: Want a rumour to keep your senses tingling? Well, it might for some of you - especially those with an Android phone. WordPress is rumoured to be launching an Android application where, like the iPhone and BlackBerry applications, to edit and manage your WordPress-powered blog from your phone.

Turns out it may be true, they have created a special blog on the subdomain android.wordpress.org, hinting at the development of the application. And, if you are a master of hacking, you are more likely never going to see what is behind the protected blog.

So, what OS is next after Android? Symbian?

Source: The Blog Herald

Disney has nominated Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer for the largest social networking site Facebook, to become part of its Board of Directors as an independent board member.

“Sheryl has been at the forefront of a technological revolution that's opened up a world of new possibilities for consumers and which has greatly affected the way we do business. Her unique insight, born of great practical experience, will be of considerable value to Disney's shareholders,” President and CEO Robert Iger said in a press statement.

The post becomes effective immediately when she is elected, along with the re-election of the other twelve members of the board, by the shareholders at its annual meeting on March 10 of next year in San Antonio, Texas.

Before joining Facebook as its COO (its previous one, Owen Van Natta, joined rival MySpace to be its CEO), Sandberg was the Vice President of Global Online Sales and Operations for Google, and was a former Chief of Staff at the US Treasury Department.

Her election makes her the second tech industry head to join the board, with CEO of Apple Steve Jobs already having a seat at the board after Disney acquired Pixar Animation Studios in May 2006. Jobs remains to be the largest shareholder in the company, owning seven percent of Disney stock.

But having two technology heads in its board of directors might not be a bad thing, as its already has a foot in the Web 2.0 world. It already owns an equity stake in Hulu, alongside NBC Universal and News Corporation; owns a virtual world for kids titled Club Penguin; and is rumoured to be in discussions to be part of Apple’s rumoured subscription TV service.

The Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris, the court of responsible for handling large claims, has found Google guilty for putting the books online as part of its Google Books Search service after a legal challenge by the major French publishers and authors.

The court heard arguments made by the La Martiniere group that Google’s plan of digitising books and putting extracts of the text online saw publishers and authors losing out. Along with the French Publishers’ Association and the SGDL, a group that represents authors in France; they also argued that scanning of the books was an act of reproduction – and that they should receive royalties.

According to Le Monde, the search engine will be forced to pay 300,000 Euros. This was less than the 15 million Euros asked by the plaintiffs, according to Reuters. It would be also fined an additional 10,000 Euros per day until it removes the French books from its database.