A U.S. and British library plan to reproduce online all 75 editions of William Shakespeare’s plays printed in the quarto format before the year 1641.

The Bodleian Library in Oxford and Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC have joined forces to download their collections, building on the work of the British Library which digitized its collection of quarto editions in 2004.

“There are no surviving manuscripts of Shakespeare’s plays in his handwriting so the quartos are the closest we can get to what Shakespeare really wanted,” said Bodleian spokeswoman Oana Romocea.

“Some quartos do, however, have his annotations around the printed text.”

The project is designed to make all of the earliest printed versions of Shakespeare’s plays, many of which are only accessible to scholars, available to the wider public.

Syria is cracking down more on Internet use, imposing tighter monitoring of citizens who link to the Web, as well as jailing bloggers who criticize the government and blocking YouTube and other Web sites deemed harmful to state security.

The tighter hand is coming even as Syrian officials show off a press center with fast Internet access and wireless technology for journalists covering this weekend’s Arab League summit. The clampdown doesn’t appear to be tied to the summit.

In recent days, authorities extended restrictions on Web use by requiring owners of Internet cafes to keep detailed logs of their customers, apparently to make it easier to track down anyone deemed to be a threat.

The rules, conveyed orally by security agents, require Internet cafes to record a client’s full name, ID or passport number, the computer used and the amount of time spent on the device. The logs must be available to show to security agents upon demand.

“It’s a new form of psychological pressure and part of the state’s systematic intimidation of Internet users,” said Mazen Darwish, a journalist who heads the independent Syrian Media Center.

Yahoo Inc said on Tuesday that it supports a program by archrival Google Inc to develop applications for social networks and will help create a joint foundation to keep it alive.

Google launched its OpenSocial network in November to lure developers already creating popular Web applications on social networks like Facebook.

Yahoo, Google and News Corp-owned MySpace said on Tuesday they will create the OpenSocial Foundation to maintain a neutral, community-governed forum for developing applications. It will be set up as a non-profit entity, with assets to be assigned to the new organization by July 1.

Indonesia plans to restrict access to pornographic and violent sites on the Internet after the country’s parliament passed a new information bill, officials said on Tuesday.

The Southeast Asian country has had a vigorous debate over pornography in recent years, exposing deep divisions in the Muslim-majority nation.

“I think we all agree there’s no way we can save this nation by spreading pornography, violence and ethnic hostility,” Information Minister Mohammad Nuh told reporters.

Nuh said that members of the public had asked the government to block sites with violent and pornographic content, concerned about their negative impact as more Indonesians gain access to the Internet.

The new legislation, the Electronic Information and Transactions Law, will allow courts to accept electronic material as evidence in cases involving Internet abuse, officials said.

Under the law, anyone found guilty of transmitting pornographic material, false news or racial and religious hate messages on the Internet could face up to six years in prison or a fine of 1 billion rupiah ($109,000).

Edmon Makarim, an adviser for the information ministry, said the government hoped to start implementing restrictions on sites containing banned material next month using special software.

Software for blocking sites would be made available for downloading on the ministry’s Web site (www.depkominfo.go.id), he said, adding that it was also looking at the possibility of direct blocking.

Companies that provide services for improving Web sites’ search-engine rankings and running effective search-engine ad campaigns have a new competitor: Google.

Bundled in the DoubleClick acquisition came Performics, which provides search-engine marketing (SEM) and search-engine optimization (SEO) services.

This has created concern for SEM and SEO service providers, which now face Google, a key partner, also as a rival.

“It puts us in the awkward position of competing with Google’s own [SEM/SEO] agency for client accounts,” said Lance Loveday, CEO of Closed Loop Marketing, an SEO and SEM firm.
Background

Over the past seven years, as Google’s popularity with advertisers and end users has boomed, so has the SEM and SEO business. Marketers began spending significant amounts to advertise on search engines, primarily Google, and they realized that they needed help from SEM firms to design, fine-tune and track the effectiveness of those campaigns. At the same time, those marketers recognized that they also had to make sure that their companies’ Web sites ranked well on search engines when users entered keywords relevant to their businesses, which is what SEO service providers specialize in.

Before the DoubleClick acquisition, SEM and SEO firms saw themselves as providers of complementary services to Google, but now that Performics is part of Google, things have changed.

For starters, there is a concern that Performics will get special access to inside information about Google’s search-engine algorithms, allowing Performics to provide SEO services that are more effective that its competitors’.

Then there is the worry that Google will push its in-house Performics SEM services at highly discounted prices, or maybe even free, in direct competition with SEM service providers.

Due to these and other clash points, SEM and SEO providers say their relationship with Google will inevitably get strained. This will likely be bad for Google, considering that SEM providers have a lot of influence over how their clients allocate their search advertising budget.

Online DVD rental leader Netflix Inc. is suffering a technology breakdown that’s knocked out its Web site, inconveniencing its 7.5 million subscribers.

The outage could mean some customers will have to wait longer than usual for their next rentals.

Company spokesman Steve Swasey says the trouble blocked access to Netflix’s Web site about 7 a.m. PDT Monday. The site was still down in the afternoon.

Swasey says DVDs that normally would have been mailed Monday may not go out until Tuesday because the problem also has hobbled some Netflix distribution centers.

A Web site where a Dutch lawmaker was promoting an upcoming film that criticizes the Quran has been suspended by its U.S. hosting service.

The site had shown Geert Wilders’ film’s title, “Fitna,” the words “Coming Soon” and an image of a gilded Quran. Now it shows a note that the company is investigating whether the site violates the firm’s terms of service.

Wilders has not described the 15-minute movie, due to be released by March 31, in detail but has said it will underscore his view that Islam’s holy book is “fascist.”

Dutch officials fear the movie could spark violent protests in Muslim countries, similar to those two years ago after the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in a Danish newspaper.

Wilders said he would release his movie on the Internet after television stations refused to air it.

“In this situation with the dialogue that’s happening throughout the world we’ve made the choice to suspend the site as of last night,” said Susan Wade, spokeswoman for Network Solutions. “This site is suspended so people can’t see the content right now but the customer still has access to their site. They can make whatever changes are necessary as we complete our investigation.”

Facebook Inc. is tweaking the privacy settings on its popular online hangout to let users exert greater control over which of their friends are allowed to see personal details they post.

The Palo Alto-based company said it would add features Tuesday night that will give its 67 million active users the option of selecting individual users who can or can’t access certain parts of their pages.

For example, someone who uploads a racy batch of photos or lists his cell phone number or personal e-mail address on his Facebook page can now bar some people on list of friends from seeing any of that information.

A man in Australia is auctioning his life – his house, his job, his clothes and his friends — on eBay, after his marriage broke up, saying he wants to start a new life.

“It’s time to move. A completely fresh start. I want to see where life takes me,” Ian Usher, 44, told Australian television on Tuesday from Perth in Western Australia state.

Usher said he was auctioning his life as “a package” with his house in Perth valued at around A$420,000 ($385,000).

“Hi there, my name is Ian Usher, and I have had enough of my life! I don’t want it any more! You can have it if you like!,” reads his Web site www.alife4sale.com, which has a link to eBay for bidders.

Usher said his life auction, which starts on June 22, included not only his house, a car, a motorbike, a jet ski and a spa, but also an introduction to “great friends” and a job at a rug shop in Perth for a trial two-week period.

“When it’s over, I will just walk out the front door, take my wallet, my passport and start a new life,” he said.

Complaints by Jewish settlers angry at Facebook for listing them as residents of “Palestine” prompted the popular social networking Web site to allow users to switch themselves back to Israel.

Facebook users living in Maale Adumim, Ariel and other large Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank protested when the site automatically listed their hometowns as being in “Palestine”. A group of settlers accused the California-based company of having a political agenda.

“I was surprised and disappointed to find that my hometown of Ariel is listed in Facebook as being part of a country called ‘Palestine,’” wrote Ari Zimmerman in a posting on Facebook. “I am a citizen of Israel, as are all of the other residents of Ariel. We do not live in ‘Palestine’, nor does anyone else.”

Brandee Barker, Facebook’s director of communications, said users living in major settlement blocs can now choose between being listed as residents of Israel or Palestine.

Internet users in China were blocked from seeing YouTube.com on Sunday after dozens of videos about protests in Tibet appeared on the popular U.S. video Web site.

The blocking added to the communist government’s efforts to control what the public saw and heard about protests that erupted Friday in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, against Chinese rule.

Access to YouTube.com, usually readily available in China, was blocked after videos appeared on the site Saturday showing foreign news reports about the Lhasa demonstrations, montages of photos and scenes from Tibet-related protests abroad.

There were no protest scenes posted on China-based video Web sites such as 56.com, youku.com and tudou.com.

The Chinese government has not commented on its move to prevent access to YouTube. Internet users trying to call up the Web site were presented with a blank screen.

Time Warner Inc’s AOL Internet division said on Thursday it will buy social network Bebo for $850 million in cash, bolstering its consumer Internet offerings even as the media conglomerate mulls splitting off the business.

Bebo, which claims a global membership of about 40 million users, is the top social network in Britain, Ireland and New Zealand, it said. It is No. 3 in the United States behind News Corp’s MySpace and Facebook.