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    With the spread of internet and multi-media technology, Chinese scientists and educators have applied digital technology into popular science teaching in poverty-stricken areas.

    The Computer Network Information Center (CNIC) under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) signed a strategic cooperation framework on Friday with the China Youth Development Foundation (CYDF) to boost information technology application in classrooms of Project Hope.

Increasingly, scientific breakthroughs will be powered by advanced computing capabilities that help researchers manipulate and explore massive datasets.

The speed at which any given scientific discipline advances will depend on how well its researchers collaborate with one another, and with technologists, in areas of eScience such as databases, workflow management, visualization, and cloud computing technologies.

In The Fourth Paradigm: Data-Intensive Scientific Discovery, the collection of essays expands on the vision of pioneering computer scientist Jim Gray for a new, fourth paradigm of discovery based on data-intensive science and offers insights into how it can be fully realized.

It may not be a matter, these days, of sitting at your typewritter every morning and typing. The process may go, perhaps byt not necessarily for everyone, somewhwat along these lines. Or it can be shorter - from blog post to magazine article to book.

Bloggers like Tom and John and Brian routinely use their blogs to post parts of their future books, expose them to feedback and criticism they can use to refine their work. While others (for example) may blog about related topics, but derive their book material from their earlier research rather than blog posts.

Several reports say the phones being given to employees are unlocked, meaning they are not tied to a particular wireless carrier. It is not clear if Google would sell unlocked phones directly to consumers. A Google employee said the phone was made by the Taiwanese company HTC and runs a new version of Android. The touch-screen device has no keyboard and appears to be a slightly larger and thinner version of the HTC MyTouch, which is sold in the United States by T-Mobile.

The new device appears to have impressed some of the people who saw it. The Twitter user GreatWhiteSnark said: “A friend from Google showed me the new Android 2.1 phone from HTC coming out in Jan. A sexy beast. Like an iPhone on beautifying steroids.”

And the list could go on and on. And yet, amidst all this reporting, lobbying and information dissemination efforts, one is left with a fundamental question: will web 2.0 make any difference at all on the outcomes of the conference? (Social) media impact is notoriously difficult to quantify, but can we in any way claim that, thanks to the panoply of tools at their disposal, our citizens are better informed, our politicians take better decisions, lobbying and campaigning efforts are more transparent?

As Business Week pointed out earlier this week, “the best way to avoid a..  [social media] backlash today is for social media's practitioners… to shift the focus from promises to results. It may be the only way to convert the skeptics—and flush out the snake oil”.

Will Copenhagen be the snake oil remedy for web2.0 and the development sector?