Thailand blocked YouTube on Wednesday after its owner, Google Inc., refused to remove the slideshow of King Bhumibol Adulyadej.

The initial video, which was withdrawn Thursday, showed pictures of feet over the king's head -- a major cultural taboo in Thailand, where feet are considered dirty and offensive -- and graffiti scrawled over the 79-year-old monarch's face. At least one still frame from the video remained on the site.

A variation of the withdrawn video reappeared Friday, along with another one that showed a picture of the king superimposed with a monkey's face. It also carried messages with profanities and said Thailand's "leaders are evil and hate free speech."

YouTube said Thailand's information ministry was having difficulty blocking individual videos.

"While we will not take down videos that do not violate our policies, and will not assist in implementing censorship, we have offered to educate the Thai ministry about YouTube and how it works," said Julie Supan, head of global communications for YouTube.

"It's up to the Thailand government to decide whether to block specific videos, but we would rather that than have them block the entire site," she said.

Insulting the monarchy in Thailand is a crime. Last week, a Swiss man was sentenced to 10 years in prison for vandalizing portraits of the king.

Software giant Oracle is to open its fifth branch in China's Xi'an, capital of northwestern Shaanxi Province, an ambitious move to strengthen its presence in China's vast western market.

The company will work with local partners to develop IT products and solutions, and persuade businesses and government agencies to use more IT products, said Yan Xuan, vice president of Beijing Oracle Software Systems Co. at a trade fair in Xi'an on Friday.

Oracle will also provide internship and training opportunities for local university students, said Yan, adding Oracle plans to set up offices in Shenyang, Nanjing and Jinan.

Though he did not elaborate on the size of the Xi'an branch, Yan said "the bigger the better" as Xi'an has considerable scientific expertise, hosting lots of universities and colleges.

"The Xi'an office will manage Oracle's business in northwestern China," said Yan.

Founded in 1977, Oracle has developed into one of the world's leading software suppliers and independent software companies. It was the first global software titan to enter the Chinese market in1989.

Oracle China has offices in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Chengdu and two development centers in Beijing and Shenzhen.

Private Chinese companies drawn to U.S. initial public offerings by the cachet and strong returns from a U.S. stock offering are being courted by a cadre of American corporate law firms jockeying for a piece of the burgeoning China market.

A spate of U.S. IPOs by Chinese companies since last year has engaged lawyers as managers' or issuers' counsel from such firms as Latham & Watkins; Shearman & Sterling; Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom; and Sullivan & Cromwell -- all of which have offices in China and Hong Kong.

Even firms without an Asian presence, such as Loeb & Loeb and Philadelphia's Cozen O'Connor, have found room on the field. Cozen, for example, has represented special purpose acquisition corporations (SPACs), a type of public equity fund formed to target companies with a certain industry or geographic profile, such as a Chinese company.

Private equity investment in China is driving the trend toward U.S. listings and fueling the need for U.S. lawyers to assist Chinese companies and attorneys. The bottom line for Chinese companies is often just that: the chance to raise more cash in the public markets than they could by listing elsewhere, such as Hong Kong.

"In China, everyone wants to get registered to raise funds in the public markets in the U.S.," said Latham's David Zhang, a partner in the firm's Hong Kong office who has worked on many such deals. "It's a good opportunity for firms like us in the U.S."

Strong interest from the Chinese companies in the U.S. markets, coupled with the intricacies of such deals, translates to a glut of corporate work for those with the language skills, ties to the investment banking community and Chinese deal-making experience to stake a claim in the China market.

Work can include setting up an offshore holding company in the British Virgin Islands or the Cayman Islands, instructing the Chinese companies in the U.S. regulatory requirements, drafting the prospectus of the offering for the Chinese law firms and helping to oversee the company's shift to U.S. accounting standards. Once the deal is closer to fruition, U.S. lawyers perform the standard work with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the chosen stock exchange.

"Our role is to be the international law firm that knits it together, that weaves together the various threads," said Skadden's Michael Gisser, a Los Angeles lawyer who co-leads the New York firm's Asia Pacific practice. Skadden was issuer legal adviser for the IPOs of JA Solar Holdings Co. Ltd. and 3SBio Inc., both of which were listed on Nasdaq in February.

Instead of selling only the chip in each PC, Intel's platform strategy -- including Centrino, vPro and Viiv -- dictates an entire hardware bundle of processor, chipset, graphics card and sometimes wireless card.

The time is right to combine Centrino and vPro as business buyers continue to choose notebooks over desktops, said Mooly Eden, vice president of Intel's mobile products group, in a statement.

Intel launched vPro in September as a set of ingredients in desktop PCs sold by Dell Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co. and other vendors. The system allows corporate IT managers to manage PC fleets remotely, fixing their software problems, monitoring security threats and even booting computers up without leaving their seats. That has made vPro-capable desktops popular with enterprise customers including 3M Corp., BMW AG, ING Groep NV, Johns Hopkins University and Verizon Communications Inc., Intel said.

Intel suffered a blow in February, when partner Nokia Corp. walked away from a deal to provide 3G HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access) wireless modules on the Centrino platform, leaving it to rely solely on Wi-Fi technology to give mobile PC users wireless Internet access.

Still, Centrino Pro will improve on nearly every aspect of the original standard, holding the line on power consumption while upgrading the processor from single-core to Core 2 Duo, adding enough graphics processing power to handle Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Vista OS and offering the option of "Turbo Memory," which can cut boot times up to 20 percent by supplementing the PC's hard disk with flash memory.

Even without HSDPA, the wireless capability will improve. Intel said in January it would use the "Kedron" Next-Gen Wireless-N networking card for Centrino, using the IEEE 802.11n standard to allow users to share five times the data at twice the range of their current 802.11a/g cards. The extra bandwidth is critical to support activities like VOIP (voice over Internet Protocol) telephony and downloading music files or high-definition video.

A similarly offensive video involving the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk prompted a Turkish court last month to order Turkish telecom providers to block access to YouTube. The court lifted the ban just two days later for unspecified reasons.

"We've got that whole organizing-the-world's-information thing more or less under control," said Google Co-founder and President Larry Page, a longtime supporter of so-called "dark porcelain" research and development. "What's interesting, though, is how many different modalities there are for actually getting that information to you - not to mention from you."

"I couldn't be more excited about, and am only slightly grossed out by, this remarkable new product," said Marissa Mayer, Google's Vice President of Search Products and User Experience. "I firmly believe TiSP will be a breakthrough product, particularly for those users who, like Larry himself, do much of their best thinking in the bathroom."

As you figured it out, unfortunately it's only an April Fool's joke from Google. However, we can't help but fantasize about this great service:

Google has successfully devised a "last hundred smelly yards" solution that takes advantage of preexisting plumbing and sewage systems and their related hydraulic data-transmission capabilities. "There's actually a thriving little underground community that's been studying this exact solution for a long time," says Page. "And today our Toilet ISP team is pleased to be leading the way through the sewers, up out of your toilet and - splat - right onto your PC."

They also have posted do-it-yourself instructions on how to get it started right now:

http://www.google.com/tisp/install.html

It only takes 8 easy steps to get online at full speed, using the do-it-yourself package, or you can have a professional come in and hook up your toilet to the network. For your own physical safety and emotional well-being and in consideration of the nanobots' working conditions, please make absolutely certain that your toilet is unoccupied at the scheduled appointment time, Google warns.

Google has also announced it is actively developing a higher-performance version of TiSP specifically tailored to small and medium-sized businesses, including 24-hour, on-site technical support in the event of backup problems, brownouts and data wipes.

The Toilet Internet Service Provider (TiSP) project is a self-installed, ad-supported online service that will be offered entirely free to any consumer with a WiFi-capable PC and a toilet connected to a local municipal sewage system. TiSP is available today only in the U.S. and Canada. Google announced it has formed an international consortium of utility companies, sewage system experts, toilet manufacturers, and plumbers to develop solutions to the many problems facing all "dark porcelain"-based data-delivery innovators.

Why still in BETA phase? "When things go wrong with TiSP, they go very, very wrong. Let's leave it at that," Google answers.

So, rush out and order this April Fool's Day special from Google. It's such a great offer, it might not be available until the next Fool's Day.

Dubbed the Xbox 360 Elite, the third version of the game console will be jet black in colour, boast a 120 GB hard drive (versus the standard Xbox 360's 20 GB drive) and have an HDMI output jack and cable, allowing it to take advantage of the highest resolution available on current high-definition TVs.

But the impending arrival of the Xbox 360 Elite hasn't been met with universal praise, even from among some of the Xbox faithful on Internet forums. Some fans are pointing out that the Elite is the same price as the entry level PlayStation 3 model, but lacks the PS3's built-in high-definition, high-capacity Blu-ray disc drive.

Others are bitter that they recently bought an Xbox 360 without having any inkling that a better model of the game console was on the way for just $50 more.

The Xbox 360 Elite's controller and headset will also be black in color, and black versions of most Xbox 360 accessories will be available in stores when the new console goes on sale.

For those who want to upgrade their current Xbox 360, the 120 GB hard drive will be sold separately for $209, but existing Xbox 360s will not have an option of being upgraded to support HDMI output.