It is a sad day for Internet companies in China that run online video sharing websites. In an effort to censor video content, China has imposed a new rule that allows only state owned companies to broadcast online video.

That means if Google is streaming YouTube video via servers located inside China, they may face issues running YouTube inside the “great firewall.”

Some businesses (particularly in UK) have blocked access to Facebook during office hours as IT managers feel that surfing social networking sites at work could make employees less productive.

If you also happen to work in such a company where the office firewall has restricted access to Facebook, there’s a workaround - your email.

A new service called MoDazzle makes it possible to use Facebook (and LinkedIn) through email commands.

For instance, you can send an email to fbreadwall@modazzle.com with the subject SELF to read messages posted on your Facebook wall - alter the subject like JOHN to read John’s Facebook wall.

You can do most Facebook actions via email including poke, status updates, writing on a friend’s wall, read messages lying unread in your Facebook Inbox and so on.

Modazzle.com - also supports LinkedIn and Google Maps.

The service could also pick up in schools and countries like Syria and UAE that have banned Facebook on religious grounds.

Related: Most Useful Email Addresses

After blocking Skype and Flickr, the UAE government has now banned Twitter in the country.

If you are a Twitter addict and happen to be in Emirate of Dubai during this time, here are some easy workarounds to help you bypass the ban access your Twitter updates like before:

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[For non-techie parents who have a computer at home and are worried about their kids safety online.]

A mother recently wrote saying she is very concerned that her young children are spending too much time on websites like Orkut, MySpace and Facebook.

Her worries are not just about children wasting time on the Internet - it’s more about the activities that children are doing on these sites. She is concerned that children could be interacting with complete strangers (or online predators) and even sharing personal information.

And with some news reports saying that criminal activities could have been planned on Orkut, the mother has finally made up her mind to restrict access to Orkut and some other websites on the home computer.

The only problem is that she has absolutely no clue about how to block websites – parental control software like Net Nanny or Norton Internet Security are pretty good but they cost money.

Now before you take this extreme step of blocking website (that is very likely to be opposed by children), try a few things:

1. Educate your children about the dangers of sharing information online with strangers. Family members should talk in detail about privacy and the web.
2. Place the computer in the living area of your home from where you can easily see the screen so you’ll have some idea about activities that children are doing on the computer including the websites they are visiting frequently.
3. Orkut is an open social network – that means you can easily see who’s in the friends’ list of your children and what kind of text notes (or scraps) are they exchanging with each.

Finally, to block websites on your home computer without investing in expensive software, here’s the trick (for Windows PCs):

Step 1: Click the Start button and select Run. Now type the following text in that Run box:

notepad c:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

Step 2: You will see a new notepad window on your screen containing some cryptic information. Don’t panic. Just goto the last line of the file, hit the enter key and type the following:

127.0.0.1 orkut.com
127.0.0.1 facebook.com
127.0.0.1 myspace.com

Save the file and exit. That’s it. None of the above sites will now open on your computer.

You can block as many websites as you like with the above technique. If you want to remove the ban later, open the same file as mentioned in Step 1 and delete the above lines.

Pretty simple but remember, our children are also very smart. And there are some popular ways to unblock websites.

When it comes to filtering content on the web, China tops the chart (see Internet World Maps) - the country has extensive filters in place to automatically block content that contains "offensive" keywords like "Tibet", "Democracy" and more.

The Chinese government has also imposed tight rules for the Internet service providers in the country to ensure that ISPs monitor data exchanged by their customers and block sensitive stuff before it even reaches the government routers.

Wondering how life would be for the average Internet user in China ? Well, if the recent recommendations of our "ill-informed" politicians are approved, India could become another China.

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To access YouTube in China or any other country where access to YouTube is blocked, try Truveo from AOL and download the YouTube video using Vixy.net

For China’s 162 million Web users, surfing the Internet can be like running an obstacle course with blocked Web sites, partial search results, and posts disappearing at every turn.