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China's strict controls on its Internet usage will eventually fail as more of the country's people go online and express themselves, said Google CEO Eric Schmidt. "Ultimately, the people will...

More and more, computers will serve to “augment humanity” by filtering and directing relevant information to users, Google chief executive Eric Schmidt said Tuesday.

Google-owned video service YouTube now represents 36 percent of total video traffic on wireless networks worldwide according to mobile web platform provider Bytemobile’s second-quarter 2010 Mobile Minute Metrics report.

Still, the hope for a Northwest Passage lingers and has become central to a key international debate heating up over the Arctic north. If climate change and global warming are real -- and there's currently little doubt over that-then it stands to reason that the ice covering Arctic waterways will decrease in coming decades, presenting fewer navigational problems for shipping. If the ice recedes -- and few experts expect it will do so year-round-cargo shipping times and distances could, the thinking goes, be cut: A 12,400-mile voyage from Japan to England by way of the Panama Canal could be shortened to less than 8,700 miles using the Northwest Passage, saving 14 days and costs.

Despite Twitter's success in the U.S., the three-year-old company's service hasn't caught on in Europe. According to Twitter's search tool, Twitter Scan, there is one account under Tesco, the U.K.'s largest retailer, but it has only one outside comment so far. The same goes for financial services firm HSBC, which has 18 followers but no status updates. Most European companies haven't even heard of Twitter, and some might think it's a time waster. A spokeswoman for energy firm Total says that Chief Executive Christophe de Margerie has no idea what Twitter is. British Telecom says it doesn't have a Twitter account and doesn't plan to open one. Nestle's communications manager says using Twitter "just never came up within the group strategy." In general, experts say Europeans don't latch on to new social networking technologies as quickly as Americans.