Members of international social network hi5 will now be able to access and play massive multiplayer online-style casual online games with friends, family and colleagues on other popular social networks such as Facebook, MySpace and Bebo, through the first social gaming community, Mytopia.

Launched on March 24, 2008, by company owners and siblings Guy and Galia Ben-Artzi, Mytopia is, according to its creators, the first casual MMO and aims to bring together the social features typically found in hardcore MMO games to timeless, casual favourites like chess, backgammon, bingo, dominoes, sudoku and Texas Hold’em, to name a few.

“Bringing Mytopia to hi5 users is part of our mission to help the world play together – from any social network, any widget, any online entry point,” said Guy Ben-Artzi, founder and chief executive officer of Mytopia. “Today, online social networks are isolated from one another. Members of different communities really can’t socialise with each other freely.

“Mytopia and others in the games industry are changing that. We’re building bridges, uniting these islands of isolation to form a larger, converged community that welcomes internet users from every corner of the modern web.”

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Google has invested $1 million in Comsenz, a Chinese provider of social network software. It’s yet another move by Google to gain a foothold in China.

that Google is preparing to launch a joint music download venture in China, largely to take on Chinese search engine The investment occurred in July as part of Comsenz’s second round of venture funding, and it was recently revealed in a regulatory filing . Rumors about the investment previously pegged Google’s portion at $5 million. The news follows a reportBaidu.com, which has been beating Google by offering free music.

As for Google’s American competition, Microsoft has a direct presence in China, while Yahoo owns a large stake in Chinese online marketplace Alibaba.com.

Beijing-based Comsenz provides bulletin board and social networking software, as well as hosting services, to Chinese websites. (We don’t have any more details — not surprisingly, the company’s website is in Chinese.)

Comsenz is backed by former Google board member Michael Moritz. Moritz is a non-managing member at Sequoia Capital China, which owns more than 10 percent of the Chinese company. He left Google’s board last May.

Separately, Google revealed it acquired Peakstream, a company that makes it easier to run applications on multiprocessor systems and thus should help Google boost its internal server architecture, for about $20.3 million (see p. 39). That means Peakstream’s investors lost money on the deal. Peakstream soaked up $23 million over two years (our coverage) from venture firms Foundation, Kleiner Perkins — and yes, there’s that connection again — Sequoia Capital. Kleiner and Sequoia, both original investors in Google, each took in about one-fourth of the acquisition proceeds. Kleiner’s John Doerr also sits on the board of Google.

Adobe today announced Photoshop Express, a new online photo service that makes it easy to upload, share, and - more importantly - edit digital photos without running a dedicated program such as iPhoto or Adobe’s own Photoshop Elements. The service is free, currently includes 2 GB of online storage, and is a public beta.

It’s easy to see the appeal of Photoshop Express as being “Photoshop on the Web,” a way to tap into the long heritage of image editing established by Adobe Photoshop. But when I saw a preview of the service last week, my first thought was, “This is more like a really good online version of iPhoto.” It features an easy to use interface and basic capabilities for uploading and organizing images into photo albums.

As you might expect from technology based on Photoshop, the service shines when it comes to making adjustments to your photos. You won’t find levels or curves adjustments in this consumer-oriented approach. Making an adjustment such as exposure gives you a strip of thumbnails with various degrees of the settings applied; click the one that looks best to you. (A few adjustments, such as White Balance, also offer sliders for a bit more control over how the effect is applied.) Making edits is also non-destructive, with a clear method of reverting to previous edits and toggling the application of adjustments you’ve applied.

Unlike Las Vegas, what happens on Facebook doesn’t necessarily stay on Facebook, which has resulted in a wave of recent complaints and, in some cases, disciplinary or legal proceedings against people for their actions on the social networking site.

The latest controversy involves an 18-year-old student who faces possible expulsion from Ryerson University in Toronto because he was an administrator on a Facebook group set up to assist in completing assignments in a first-year course.

Fellow students and supporters of Chris Avenir have argued that the group was an online “study hall” and he has been unfairly singled out.

The assignments were to be completed independently, and while Ryerson officials will only say that the potential sanctions have to do with “academic integrity,” the allegation is that the online group made it possible for students to cheat.

The controversy at Ryerson is another example of an apparent misunderstanding by students and young people about the potential real-world consequences of what is done online, according to professors and others who study social networking sites such as Facebook.

“Peer pressure has more influence than the rule of law,” on these sites, said Jesse Hirsh, who consults to businesses, polling groups and even politicians such as Bob Rae about the use and marketing potential of Facebook.

“There is a certain sense of entitlement, that real-world rules do not apply,” said Robert Currie, a professor at Dalhousie Law School in Halifax and a member of its Law & Technology Institute. “They do not feel it is as bad,” if it is online, said Mr. Currie.

James Norrie, director of the School of Information Technology Management at Ryerson, suggested there may be a “societal disconnect” about online actions.

“Students have a misunderstanding that it is a private forum,” he said.

The allegations against Mr. Avenir are no different than if he or other students were accused of sharing work in a study hall or cafeteria, to complete assignments that were supposed to be done independently, Mr. Norrie explained.

While Ryerson has stated that it is not opposed to students using sites such as Facebook, the president of its student union said its use is at the heart of the disciplinary proceeding.

“They just want to make an example of a student to say, ‘Don’t even think of cheating on Facebook,’ ” Nora Loreto said.

Mr. Avenir was an administrator of the group, did not post on it and the site existed merely as a study aid, Ms. Loreto stressed. “There is no evidence of wrongdoing,” she said.

For professors, the prospect of students cheating on assignments is nothing new, said Jim Turk, executive director of the Canadian Association of University Teachers. “I don’t think there is any change in the notion of what is cheating,” Mr. Turk said.

The notion may be clear for professors and for parents, but the definition is not necessarily the same for the millions of young people using Facebook and other social networking sites.

If everyone on a Facebook group agrees that an action is acceptable, then that carries more weight than any conventional rule against it, Mr. Hirsh said. The technology that enables so many people to access a single group, results in an “amplification” of the peer pressure, he said.

As a result, it is not surprising there is so much support for Mr. Avenir from his fellow students at Ryerson, Mr. Hirsh said. If the university truly believes the group facilitated cheating, he said, the only way to send an effective message is to seek sanctions against all of the more than 140 engineering students who were using it.

Mr. Hirsh recently testified as a defence expert witness at the criminal trial of a young man who had posted comments on his Facebook group that he would launch a “suicide” attack against a children’s aid agency that apprehended his infant son.

The young man was acquitted of threatening charges because the judge found that while the comments were “misguided”, there was not any criminal intent or a desire for the agency even to see the postings.

Defence lawyer Sam Goldstein successfully argued that his client was “blowing off steam” with the postings. Someone may still be prosecuted for postings on Facebook, but it is always necessary to look at the context, he said. “Facebook is not an absolute defence,” Mr. Goldstein said.

Mr. Hirsh testified that Facebook users routinely embellish what they say as part of an online persona. His evidence was meant to explain the way Facebook is used and not to justify inappropriate content, Mr. Hirsh stressed.

Sites such as Facebook, which has been available to the general public for less than two years, are used as a form of youthful rebellion, he said. However, many users of the site “don’t understand how exposed they are,” Mr. Hirsh said.

“Their mind gets away from them. They don’t recognize the permanence or the potential consequences of their activity,” he said.

Young people may have virtually no expectation of privacy, yet they are “creating evidence” in their online postings, which are subject to traditional rules in areas such as libel and slander, Mr. Currie observed.

While many of the postings may be in jest, it is not surprising that teachers or others who are the subject matter of these comments do not see them that way, he said.

“When you see something on a Web site, you react more seriously,” Mr. Currie said.

Provider of restaurant order automation technology and services GetQuik released its iPhone offering to enable Apple’s handset users to skip long restaurant lines by ordering their favorite food from their shiny phones.

In order to use the new service and save some time while on a dinner, you’ll need to register for a free account at GetQuik’s website, and then create and save favorite menu items and meals from participating restaurants, only to access them later on your iPhone via iphone.getquik.com.

As you might guessed, GetQuik is talking about the web-based application but they also vowed to go “native” after the new iPhone/iPod Touch firmware is out. In addition, at the moment you can only access the data you saved from your desktop, but in the future you’ll be also able to search, view and order from a restaurant’s complete menu directly from the iPhone…