Not for the first time, Iran is reportedly stepping up its website-blocking efforts, on the eve of the anniversary of the revolution that overthrew the country’s monarchy and replaced it with an Islamic republic.

Following a period of public protests and civil resistance, the Shah left Iran for exile in January 1979, with the royal regime collapsing shortly after on February 11, when rebels overwhelmed troops loyal to the Shah. Now, as we approach the 33rd anniversary of this date, reports are starting to filter through of a widespread Web-blocking programme focusing on specific sites.

Based on some reports, websites using the secure “https” protocol are being blocked – e.g. banks – as well as Yahoo, Gmail, Google and all sites that rely on the search giant’s API – such as WolframAlpha. Sites such as BMI.ir , BPI.ir and Parsian-Bank.com are apparently banned.

The reports suggest that the blocks are reasonably widespread and started taking effect earlier this week, covering the capital Tehran and other major cities such as Shiraz, Bushehr and Isfahan. We’ve checked at Blocked In Iran, and there’s no indication that the sites in question are blocked, however, and we would like to ask our readers in Iran to confirm on our behalf but it seems that we are still blocked, four months after we first reported this.

It’s thought that any blocks currently being enforced could continue until Esfand – next month according to the Persian calender, and long after the 33rd anniversary of the Revolution .

This is backed up through a report on Hacker News, where a source says:

“I’m writing this to report the serious troubles we have regarding accessing Internet in Iran at the moment. Since Thursday, Iranian government has shutt down the https protocol which has caused almost all Google services (Gmail, and Google.com itself) to become inaccessible. Almost all websites that reply on Google APIs won’t work.

Accessing to any website that replies on https (just imagine how many websites use this protocol, from Arch Wiki to bank websites). Also accessing many proxies is also impossible. There are almost no official reports on this and with many websites and my email accounts restricted, I can just confirm this based on my own and friends experience.”

A number of other reports gleaned from the social sphere on Iran Media Program backs these latest reports up too, with tweeters both inside Iran and out, claiming that that a number of sites were being blocked:

Around half an hour all of websites are blocked in #Iran, from supreme leader’s website to IT blogs! @Liberationtech @SaeedKD @jilliancyork

— Amin Sabeti (@aminsabeti) February 7, 2012

Whilst many of the most popular websites such as Facebook are blocked sporadically across Iran, millions of citizens have easily bypassed the government’s increasingly effective firewall.

But the software that has enabled this to happen has recently stopped working for much of the time. And as the Washington Post reported yesterday, when it does start working again, “speeds are so excruciatingly slow that sites such as Facebook and Balatarin.com – which evaluates unofficial news and rumors in Farsi — become unusable.”

We’ll continue to monitor the situation and, if you are able to verify the current state of play in Iran, do leave a comment.

Let’s face it, we’ve all said something that we might not be too proud of on the Internet. But one girl from Albemarle, North Carolina found out just what happens if she oversteps the mark by disrespecting her family on Facebook.

Tommy Jordan’s daughter posted an irate status to her friends on Facebook (not her first, after receiving a 3 month grounding previously), being careful not to include a List that included her family members, so they weren’t able to see it. It involved her thoughts on being made to do chores, being woken up by her brother and being a general slave to her dad and stepmother.

However, she forgot to include the dog’s Facebook profile on her block list, and her dad found out. He decided to record a video in response. It may be a little extreme, depending on your views:

The video has gone viral, receiving interest from US TV stations and news agencies. Jordan has received an immense amount of comments on his Facebook post about the matter, later clarifying how he came to find the post and what has happened since.

He invited his daughter to record a response video but she declined, it seems she may have learnt her lesson.

UK mobile retailer Phones4u has launched its new Just Update My Phone (JUMP) tariff for UK consumers that allows customers to potentially upgrade their handset every six months by splitting the handset and network cost for ownership of their device.

Phones4u will allow customers to take out two separate rolling 2-year contracts, paying one monthly amount for the handset and services provided by JUMP and a separate monthly amount for the network airtime agreement.

This can be renewed every six months, taking the hassle out of one-off costs and high upgrade fees. However, the network airtime agreement remains unaffected.

The new Phones4u has been trialled across 100 of its stores, carrying a premium of £3.99. If a user wants to change their phone after 6 months, they must first contact Phones4u and work out how much is outstanding on their current agreement and determine the worth of their handset that they wish to trade in.

Customers then agree on the phone they want to upgrade to and the operator will work out the amended cost that will be charged each month. By trading in a handset, the amount is reduced. If the customer is happy, they then visit their nearest Phones4u store and trade in their old phone for a new one.

Tencent this week revealed some impressive statistics around the success of its mobile gaming platform, Mobile QQ Game Hall, which has surpassed 200 million registered users.

According to a report from Marbridge Consulting which cites a Chinese news report, Tencent is seeing 13 million users on the platform every day, with usage peaking at more than 1 million concurrent gamers in the games platform.

In China’s fragmented handset market, Tencent has found success in its support of a range of platforms, including Symbian, Java, Android, iOS and Windows Phone 7, while there is also an HTML 5 version.

Right now, the selection is fairly slim, with just “several dozen” games available. Tencent has claimed it is adding more titles to the collection of casual games, which already includes Chinese chess and Tetris, amongst others.

As you’d expect, the platform is linked to Tencent’s hugely popular Weibo service — which boasts more than 250 million members — and the company continues to further ‘socialize’ the gaming experience for users.

To give some comparison, Facebook just announced it is seeing 60 million users interacting with its apps each month, leaving Tencent’s figures to show just how developed China’s Web space is. Tencent Weibo and Sina Weibo both have integrated games services and, with mobile a key Internet access point for many in China and Asia, a mobile games platform has the potential to succeed there.

Japanese firms DeNA and GREE have both taken huge strides with their mobile social gaming platforms. The firms are currently involved in a legal tangle but have been working to extend the range of their service worldwide, and both are active in China.

This month, GREE agreed a deal to bring its platform to Baidu Yi devices, building on a similar deal with Alibaba to take its gaming platform to Aliyun OS devices. While DeNA is also active in China after launching its Mobage gaming service in the country in July 2011.

Mobile QQ Game Hall can be accessed from a PC which made us initially hestitant of these figures, however we clarified with Marbridge who confirmed that the 200 million subscriber number is for mobile users only.

WordPress has updated its native Android application for smartphones and tablets, delivering features from its version 2.0 update and making them available for owners of Amazon’s Kindle Fire and B&N’s Nook Color/Tablet.

WordPress’ for Android v2.0.5 sees the blogging app gain post editor and geotagging improvements but understandably, the focus is on its new support for owners of both 7-inch tablets from two of the US’ biggest booksellers.

Despite having a smaller screen than most Android devices and Apple’s iPad, the WordPress team has ensured that its new Dashboard UI renders perfectly on the Nook and Kindle Fire displays. The app has been enhanced to make it easy to post new updates in either landscape or portrait orientation.

As always, the WordPress app includes support for editing post content, adding media, viewing stats, comment notifications, and other additional desktop features.

➤ Wordpress – Android Market | Amazon Appstore | Nook Store

PayPal is using smartphone-crazy Singapore to trial an interesting initiative which allows phone owners to buy goods on the go using a QR code reader application.

The experiment is taking place at 15 stations on the country’s metro system (SMRT) where the eBay-owned payment company is showcasing gifts from eight retailers at reduced prices for Valentine’s Day, as AllThingsD reports.

Singapore’s underground is one of the few that boasts full mobile and data coverage while the country also has city-wide free WiFi, which are key to this test. To get involved in the trial, smartphone owners must first download the PayPal QR code reader which allows them to scan products. Once scanned, items can be purchased by logging into PayPal (of course) or by providing credit cards details.

Mobile payments are growing rapidly in the US, however Asia remains largely untouched for a number of reasons. Not only are smartphones still a growing niche in many parts of the reason, but credit card ownership — and even bank account usage — is low too.

Singapore is a standout case in Southeast Asia, and it was once the capital of iOS devices; boasting more per person than anywhere else in the world. The surge of Apple worldwide may have seen it lose the record, but nonetheless smartphone usage remains high there and it has high levels of Internet connectivity and fast speeds to boot.

Singapore has been the setting for trials around contactless payments, NFC-based commerce and other such pilots, and we’ll be keeping an eye on this QR code trial with interest.

English Premier League football club Manchester City looks set to expand its brand presence into Japan, having recruited a firm to build a local mobile website in the country, according to Reuters.

The deal will give MLJ, a Tokyo-based website developments, the rights to develop the club’s official site for Japan’s i-Mode mobile Web, which is supported by the majority of devices in the country.

Details on the site will mirror City’s official website, with visitors able to read club news in Japanese and access a range of club data, merchandising and memorabilia. There will also be an option to by tickets for those who are contemplating a 5,000 mile trip to the City of Manchester Stadium.

Ian Cafferky, chief brand & commercial officer for Manchester City, was buoyant about the  deal and its potential to bring the club closer to its fans in Japan:

This deal marks another chapter in the club’s digital strategy to engage with our international fan base, bringing supporters as close as possible to the match-day experience, through greater interaction online and on mobile.

The club is emerging as a digital pioneer with some of its recent moves in the space. City became the first English club to agree a content agreement with YouTube, where it became one of the earliest professional channels, and it tested the waters further still by broadcasting a selection of fans’ tweets on the giant screen in its stadium.

Last month, City announced plans to appoint TV and online exec Russell Stopford as its head of digital media, as PaidContent reported. He replaced former Trinity Mirror and Tiscali director Richard Ayers who stepped down as planned after a year in the position on an interim basis.

As revealed on his blog, Ayers will stay on at the club “in a roving role looking at  digital business development, new products and innovation” as City continues to push the boundaries on digital media.

The club’s on-field activities are stronger than ever after being taken over by the Abu Dhabi United Group in 2008. The new investment has heralded an era of big spending on transfers and wages as the club has recruited some of the world’s most talented players, and its challenge for the Premiership title is regarded as particularly strong this season.

Philippines telecom operator Globe has hooked up with its Singaporean counterpart SingTel to bring a new apps store to its subscribers free of charge, as a report from ABS-CBN reveals.

The duo are launching MyAppsMall, which will carry more than 20,000 items that includes games, social networking, sports and other apps. The store will be exclusively free for Globe customers, but users of other networks will need to pay for some of the content listed there.

Smartphone penetration is still growing across Southeast Asia — where it shows great promise — and, as such, MyAppsMall supports a range of mobile device platforms, including Android, Symbian, Java and BlackBerry.

With operating billing enabled, customers will be able to buy apps with the simple click of a button. The charges will be made alongside their monthly postpaid bill or taken out of their existing prepaid credit for those on pay-as-you tariffs. Customers that prefer to use credit cards will be able to.

The operators are hoping that the store and its wide access will encourage local developers to create and distribute their apps through the platform. Developers will doubtless be attracted all the more as SingTel is also looking to broaden the store’s access and could launch it through affiliate operators in other countries in the region.

Glenn Estrella, who heads up Globe’s digital media business, called the store “a very exciting” development, and he claims that it will help boost local developer talent:

[We] are helping expose Filipino talent and creativity to the global market by tapping local developers and allowing them to sell their apps and services.

Earlier this week, a report revealed that the US mobile application industry is responsible for almost 500,000 jobs in the country. While Apple has stimulated and continues to lead the industry in North America, Southeast’s Asia mobile market remains dominated by ‘dumb-’ and feature- phones. Smartphones are a small but growing niche, but they account for just 19 percent of devices across the region, on average.

App stores like Globe-SingTel’s are an interesting alternative, but it remains to be seen just how popular apps are outside of Apple and Android smartphone users, who already have official channels that they can visit to download apps.

There are countless ways by which we can tweet today, thanks to all manner of desktop, Web-based, mobile and third party apps that make it easy to stay in touch wherever we are and whatever we do.

Twitter has since clamped down on third party apps, but you can peruse the Internet for a thousand guides to making the best of those clients. However, why not take a look at how the pros do it…and when we say ‘pros’, we mean Twitter’s own employees.

Thanks to data from Twitter’s Isaac Hepworth, who measured all tweets sent by Twitter’s staff during 1-7 February, we now know that Twitter.com is the most used channel, accounting for 35 percent of employee tweets. That’s hardly a surprise given the emphasis Twitter is putting on encouraging traffic to the site, which was redesigned extensively last year.

According to the chart below (which you can click on for a larger image), we estimate that 94 percent of all tweets during the period were sent through official, Twitter-owned channels. The results are very much as you’d expect but nevertheless they are interesting.

The top seven clients — which include Twitter for Mac, Twitter for iOS, Twitter for Android — are all official Twitter channels, with Instagram coming in as the most used third party service. However, the blockbuster photo app accounts for a mere 2 percent of tweets.

Tweetdeck, which Twitter bought last year, is perhaps surprisingly less popular than we expected, although it may be used to monitor Twitter rather than actually tweet. The top third party services with Twitter integration are Foursquare, Flipboard — now available for the iPhone — and highly rated mobile social network Path.

Despite the hundreds that are available, just three dedicated Twitter apps from third parties make the list; Tweetbot, the iOS app which just released an improve second version, YoruFukurou (known as NightOwl), a Mac OSS X client “designed for Twitter addicts”, and Echofon, a popular app available on a range of platforms.

Camera on iOS is also interestingly well used. Indeed, Apple’s integration of Twitter into the heart of its iOS5 mobile operating system saw new sign-ups from iOS devices increase three fold.

What about you: We’re not at all surprised by Twitter’s own usage of the service, but why not tell us what your favourite Twitter client is, and why?

There’s no doubt that what interest-aggregation site Pinterest has managed over the past few months is spectacular. Recently reaching the milestone of 10 million users, the site has gained traction faster than just about any other site in history. But with that growth comes the responsibility to handle it and the site seems to be falling into spammer territory.

A couple of hours ago (as of the time that I’m writing this), Google’s Don Dodge started tweeting that Pinterest was sending him a mass amount of emails saying that he had been followed on the site, and then asking him to follow that person back. Rightly suspicious by the volume of emails that were being sent, Dodge connected directly to one of the people to ask whether the request was made:

“They said they received an email from me saying I followed them on Pinterest, and suggested they follow me back.”

In short, no, Dodge didn’t connect to them manually, nor did he state that he’s authorized Pinterest to do so via his Facebook account. It would seem, then, that Pinterest is mass spamming all of your Facebook friends who are connected on the service, then requesting of them to follow you in return.

Need further proof? Check out the screenshot below from SevenLunches founder Jeff Lee who recently joined the site. The arrow points to a “request” from Don Dodge. Dodge has specifically stated that he did not request to connect to any of his Facebook friends:

A couple of questions obviously come to mind. First, are you specifically giving Pinterest permission to do this within the settings when you connect to Facebook? There sure seems to be a lot of surprised people, if that’s the case. Second, even if you are, is Pinterest’s use of your contacts in this manner something that you’d knowingly agree to? It’s worth noting, but not even a question, that what Pinterest is doing falls way outside of the lines of best practices.

The company has had a bit of a rough go over the past few days. As it continues its astronomic growth, it’s been found that it is changing some of the user-submitted links to profit directly via Skimlinks. While the company has disclosed that it could (and would) modify links, the whole scenario just rubbed a few people the wrong way.

So what’s the right answer? First off, Pinterest needs to make absolutely certain that it’s being clear about its intention to add your friends via Facebook’s connection. Second, it needs to offer you the option to not have this happen. Third, notification emails should only happen for directly-initiated connections, or they shouldn’t happen at all by default. Finally, the company needs to do all of this really fast before the backlash hits.

I gave credit to Pinterest, a few days ago, for growing quickly because of smart marketing. But with the average Facebook user having 120 friends (and many folks having exponentially more), it’s easy to see how growth of active users like this could happen in a much less justifiable way. To quote a Facebook friend of my own, “spam called. They want their idea back.”