The Web site representing the French Embassy in China has reportedly been weathering a DDoS attack, not four days after Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister He Yafei said France “grossly interfere[d] in China’s internal affairs.”

A spokesman from the Chinese Foreign Ministry has denounced the attacks, saying that any links drawn between China and the action are purely speculation, and reports should be based upon solid proof of culpability.

While it has not been proven that the attacks were orchestrated by the Chinese government, there is a definite motive.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy was scheduled to meet with the Dalai Lama, a political exile from China who the country says is engaged in Tibetan separatist activities. China did not want the meeting to take place, and warned of possible political and diplomatic consequences if Sarkozy did not attend to the country’s wishes. Sarkozy went through with the meeting in Gdansk, Poland, and was quoted as saying, “There’s no need to dramatize things.”

He Yafei issued a statement following the meeting, saying, “The erroneous action of the French side grossly interferes in China’s internal affairs and severely hurts the feelings of the Chinese people. The Chinese Government expresses its resolute opposition and strong dissatisfaction.”

Over at the Official Google Blog today, Google Street Views product manager Stephen Chau waxes poetic about Street Views’ first year of existence. He also casually mentions that, starting today, the number of streets and areas covered by Street Views in the United States is doubling with the addition of a few key states.

Street Views has had an interesting year. It started life only available through a PC-based browser. It later extended its reach out to mobile phones. It started in just 23 U.S. cities, but has since expanded around the globe to Australia, France, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, and Spain.

According to Chau, “Today marks our biggest launch of Street View imagery to date: we’re doubling our coverage in the United States. Several states — Maine, West Virginia, North Dakota, and South Dakota — will be getting the Street View treatment for the first time. We’ve also added imagery for Memphis, Charleston (S.C.), and Birmingham, and we’ve filled in lots of gaps across the country.”

Google Inc. is shifting its Web browser out of test mode just 100 days after its debut, an unusually quick transition for a company known for keeping the “beta” tag on some products for years.

Thursday’s removal of the test label from Google’s browser, called Chrome, underscores its importance to the Internet search leader.

Google is trying to lure Web surfers away from the leading browsers, Microsoft Corp.’s Internet Explorer and the Mozilla Foundation’s Firefox.

In the process, Google hopes Chrome makes it easier to gather insights about users’ preferences and extends the popularity of its online applications, which are supposed to run more smoothly and quickly in Chrome.

Since its Sept. 2 introduction, Chrome has attracted more than 10 million active users around the world, according to a Google blog posting that announced the browser’s upgrade.

Chrome still has a long way to catch up to Internet Explorer, which has about 70 percent of the market, depending on the differing estimates from various market researchers. Firefox held about 20 percent, while Apple Inc.’s Safari was third with less than 10 percent. Chrome has less than 1 percent.

When University of Central Florida junior Nicole Nissim got stumped in trigonometry, she checked out what was showing on YouTube.

Nissim typically scours the video-sharing Web site for clips of bands and comedy skits. But this time she wasn’t there to procrastinate on her homework. It turned out YouTube was also full of math videos. After watching a couple, the psychology major says, she finally understood trig equations and how to make graphs.

“I was able to watch them at my own pace and if I didn’t get a concept, I could easily rewind it,” Nissim says. “It was a lot clearer once I watched the video.”

YouTube is perhaps best known for its cavalcade of homemade performances and TV clips, but many people like Nissim are turning to it for free tutoring in math, science and other complicated subjects.

Math videos won’t rival the millions of hits garnered by laughing babies, but a YouTube tutorial on calculus integrals has been watched almost 50,000 times in the past year. Others on angular velocity and harmonic motion have gotten more than 10,000 views each.