It's Father's Day, I'm watching the Pistons, and it's been a long week. I'm behind reading feeds (again), and there doesn't seem to be much big news this week. Of course, I'm probably missing some stuff, but these seem to be the big news makers.

Google to launch a PayPal competitor. If anyone can come in and have a big impact right away, it's Google. If they follow through and launch it, we'll definitely give it a look.

Microsoft China is blocking words such as "democracy" and "freedom" and quite a few folks are up in arms over this. If this was in the U.S. then I could see what the uproar is all about, but Microsoft is a corporation, not a country. It's not their responsibility to judge the laws of a nation such as China as right or wrong. What if Microsoft didn't censor those words, and people died because the government of China found those people? Would Microsoft be to blame for their deaths too? Now, don't get me wrong. I think freedom of speech is the most important freedom we enjoy in this country, and if they were censoring here, that would be a problem - or would it? They own the servers, and they can do whatever they want with content on their servers - as long as they disclose their intentions ahead of time. One thing I didn't see mentioned in a lot of the discussions - both Yahoo and Google are doing the same thing! Doesn't make it right or wrong, but it does add to the context of the attacks.

Yahoo is getting into VoIP. I heard the latest version of Yahoo Messenger already had this, but by buying Dialpad, I guess they'll be able to step that up a notch. This should end the speculation that Yahoo is going to buy Skype. It sounds like AIM (AOL's standalone instant messaging client) has plans to add VoIP features soon too.

Since I didn't find much this week, I'll include two contests, neither of which I plan to enter, so you still have a shot! Both will win you trips to PDC and both are being put on by Channel 9. You can either blog your way there or you can code your way there - whichever suits your fancy.

I'm sure there will more news this next week - there are supposed to be some big announcements at Gnomedex, so I'll try to stay on top of those!