Danwei Picks is a daily digest of the "From the Web" links found on the Danwei homepage. A feed for the links as they are posted throughout the day is available at Feedsky (in China) or Feedburner (outside China).

The Olympics of spin: Tim Johnson comments on a South China Morning Post report on a recent request from China's propaganda organs for mainland journalists to avoid negative stories about the Olympics:

The written circular, which the paper said was delivered last week, warned reporters that they should take particular care with four sensitive topics: air quality, food safety, the Olympics torch relay and the Paralympics.

"It also requires state media to put a spin on those topics in order to 'offset the bad publicity' created by those previous reports," the newspaper quoted an editor informed of the new policy as saying.

Get close to Burma: Amoiist recounts a one-month stint working as a translator/interpreter for Burmese workers at a Chinese paper mill:

The paper factory has previous experience in training Burmese technicians, so it could win the bid for this newly program. Burma is a mysterious country to me, the military government, religion and their customs, not until the day I saw them had the mystery been revealed. In this factory, I heard of that there was once a batch of training team which is led by a military leader. It was the basic impression of mine to the people from Burma and their country. A length of two months is not long in one's life, but when you get along with foreigners in such length of time, it seems that you can learn much from them and their country.

The 25 skills Chinese men need to know: Hecaitou quotes Yan Feng's translation into Chinese of Popular Mechanics' list of the "25 Skills Every Man Should Know." Then, in Chinese with whimsical English translations, he suggests 25 skills that are suitable for Chinese men.

China to allow HIV positive people to enter country: AFP reports:

China plans to relax rules that are currently barring HIV/AIDS carriers from entering the country, the health ministry said on Monday. Ministry spokesman Mao Qun'an said the decision was based on current knowledge of the way the AIDS virus spreads.

He said the existing restrictions, strongly criticised by AIDS activists as discriminatory, were introduced when people were 'unfamiliar' with how the disease may spread. Mao did not disclose when the new rules would take effect, or if the relaxation would mean a complete end to limits on HIV/AIDS carriers' entry into China.

Making sense of Windows Live Translator Beta: At blognation China, David Feng critiques Microsoft's new automatic translation service:

Sites that "attempt" to be multi-lingual by offering you a cheezy array of "click this flag to translate into this language" buttons think that they've done their task at the end of the day. To be fair, they have - to some extent - if the only language they're fluent in is the Anglican tongue. When a guy proficient in up to ten languages comes along for the test drive, however...

Windows Live Translator Beta looks like a straightforward site. Give it a website or paragraphs on end to devour and translate, and it'll do its task. Except (and this is not just a "Microsoft problem"), it does the task very poorly.

On the outside, looking in: Tim O'Reilly recaps his experience at China Foo Camp, held in Beijing last weekend:

While we met a fabulous group of people, that group was weighted towards expats, folks from multinational companies with offices in China, Chinese who've been educated abroad, and Chinese bloggers like Isaac Mao who blog in English as well as Chinese. It was also weighted towards the internet industry and linux, while in the US Foo camps, we draw from these areas, but also hardware hacking, gaming, publishing, public policy, PC software, and the sciences. In a show of hands, about 1/3 of the attendees were programmers; 1/3 were entrepreneurs (with overlap between the two groups.) There was no one from any state owned enterprise -- still a huge economic sector in China. The university segment was also lightly represented.

China's recent history mirrored in southern Africa: Paul at the Zhongnanhai blog writes about a round-table interview he conducted with members of ZANU-PF:

The parallels between Mao's China and Mugabe's Zimbabwe are undeniable. Mao was constantly worried the western powers, and after the Sino-Soviet split the Russians, were trying to usurp the CPC's power in China. It's that conspiratorial nature that eventually led Mao launch the Cultural Revolution. And things don't appear to be too much different in Robert Mugabe's government in Zimbabwe, given Ms. Chimene's suggestions.