China's broadcasting and Internet regulators have told Internet video providers that they must prescreen all programs before making them available, tightening state censorship of increasingly popular online drama series and mini-movies. China has a long-standing practice of censoring traditional television programs and films that may contain any violence or vulgar imagery. Political speech is also nixed. China also bans access to several popular foreign Web sites, including YouTube.

Facebook and NBC are expected to announce a partnership for the London Olympic Games, similar to its election deal with CNN. Facebook users will be reminded to watch NBC’s coverage, and NBC viewers will be reminded to join the conversation on Facebook. It lets both to earn more money from advertising. It's much different from Facebook’s Olympics deal with BBC. BBC will live stream Olympic events on Facebook. The BBC deal is better for Facebook because people will stay on Facebook to watch, rather than leaving to watch or splitting their attention between two screens.

Google Inc. was slapped with a huge penalty from the FTC for privacy violations. It is close to a deal to pay $22.5 million to settle charges related to its surreptitious bypassing of the privacy settings of millions of Apple Inc. users, according to officials briefed on the settlement terms. The fine is expected to be the largest penalty ever levied on a single company by the FTC. It offers the latest sign of the FTC's stepped-up approach to policing online privacy violations.

Like Kermit The Frog said, it’s not easy being green -- but don’t tell that to the city of San Francisco. Now that Apple has stopped participating in an environmental certification program (used by governments and universities to make purchasing decisions), San Fran’s 50 departments and 28,000 employees will no longer be able to use city funds to buy Apple desktops, laptops or monitors. The city’s policy doesn’t apply to iPhones and iPads, Bloomberg reports. Apple, for its part, said it still meets strict environmental standards, including the government’s Energy Star program. 

Angling for a larger share social marketing activity, LinkedIn is slowing rolling out its first major redesign in years. The layout “will put a lot more emphasis on building out relationships, make better use of socially curated news content -- and, if things go according to plan, should make the site a lot more sticky,” TechCrunch reports. A broader launch of the new design could come within weeks. 

Ill-mannered, perhaps, but Twitter is happy to boast about how much money it has in the bank. By way of defending the company’s cozy private status, CEO Dick Costolo tells the Los Angeles Times that Twitter has "truckload of money,” and, as such, would remain a private company for as long as it wants. “I like being private for all sorts of reasons,” Costolo explains. “It allows us to think about the business and the way we want to grow it in the small boardroom as opposed to being beholden to a particular way of growing the business.”

To the best of anyone’s knowledge, Apple has about $74 billion in cash lying in wait overseas -- up from $64 billion in December, and $35 billion at the end of 2010. That’s according to Moody’s Investors Service’s Richard Lane, citing SEC filings as well as his firm's estimates. Following Apple’s lead, Microsoft reportedly has $50 billion in overseas cash, while and Cisco isn’t far behind with $42.3 billion. “The top 10 U.S. tech companies now own 83% of all offshore cash for the sector, up from 74% five years ago,” AppleInsider notes. 

Google is reportedly nearing a deal to pay $22.5 million to settle charges with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, related to its sneaky sidestepping of Apple users’ privacy settings. The fine, as The Wall Street Journal reports, is expected to be the largest penalty ever levied on a single company by the FTC. “It offers the latest sign of the FTC's stepped-up approach to policing online privacy violations,” WSJ reports. 

If you haven’t noticed (and we’re sure you have), ads are increasingly encroaching on consumers’ space. “It's a rare prime-time show that isn't marred by a promotional animation constantly cavorting at the bottom of the screen,” Michael Hiltzik writes in the Los Angeles Times. “American newspapers have moved ads from their demure inside-page ghettos to the front page or even wrap-around enclosures … ads take over your computer screen until you click to drive them off … floaters seem to follow your line of sight so you can't peek around them.” Yes, advertisers are wising up to the fact that …

How well connected is the global business community? Not well enough, apparently, as its IT spend is on track to surpass $3.6 trillion this year -- up 3% from the $3.5 trillion it spent on IT in 2011, according to new research from Gartner. In particular, enterprise spending on public cloud services is expected to grow from $91 billion worldwide in 2011 to $109 billion in 2012. Taken one way, the projection is a likely “indication that economic turmoil around the globe is having a limited effect,” eWeek suggests.