Marshall McLuhan’s classic expression “ the medium is the message” hasn’t lost its luster yet, as entrepreneurs and designers re-invent products and services for the web, unleashing thousands of new applications and sites every single day.

The news industry is also in the throes of adjusting to the digital age, with countless print publications failing and folding after many years in the business while online news outlets and other platforms for news sharing, proliferate.

Education is the second largest industry in America behind health care, and it too is experiencing a similar shift as it struggles to adapt traditional design and delivery models to the demands of modern audiences who are accustomed to digital interactivity.

Google Wave officially fizzled yesterday, following just over a year of exaggerated hype and underwhelming performance.

From a practical standpoint, ending Wave development makes a lot of sense; why invest work hours and resources into an end product that isn’t being adopted and hasn’t met expectations? However, as we noted yesterday, speed in which Wave (and we promise, this is our last pun) wiped out is worth reflecting upon.

Why did Wave fail and how can Google learn from this experience?

Trent Hamm's website, The Simple Dollar, has become one of the most popular personal-finance destinations. Odds are good his devotees will gobble up the blogger's new book, also called The Simple Dollar.

But four years ago, when Hamm was in his late twenties, he was a money mess.

Despite his $45,000 job and wife Sarah's income, Hamm writes, in 2006, he didn't have enough money in his checking account to pay the bills due to "poor decision-making and selfishness."

A senior Beijing official's reference to China as the "world's second-largest economy" has sparked excited speculation that Asia's new powerhouse may have already reached a long-looming milestone by surpassing Japan.

China's rapid recent growth has made it increasingly likely that its gross domestic product, in US dollar terms, will be larger this year than Japan's.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Citigroup Inc (C.N) will pay $75 million to settle charges that it failed to disclose subprime exposure to investors in 2007, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said on Thursday.

The SEC also charged a Citigroup executive and a former chief financial officer of misrepresenting the bank's exposure, although not with intentional misconduct. It was one of a very few cases in which financial executives have faced any kind of charges, civil or criminal, related to the 2008 credit meltdown.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. stocks closed little changed on Friday, but Wall Street wrapped up its best month in a year after the earnings season rounded the final turn with a group of strong results that offset the impact of poor economic data.

While the major indexes each posted 7 percent gains for the month, it came during low volume and followed a combined decline of nearly 14 percent for May and June.

JERUSALEM – Israel's prime minister has issued a stern warning to Gaza's Hamas rulers after weekend rocket attacks from the Palestinian territory on two Israeli communities.

The attacks caused damage but no injuries.

According to several reports and data from Google, the search engine is fully blocked in mainland China as of today.

Also fully blocked are ads and mobile access. Image search is partially blocked, as are Google Docs, Google News and Google Groups.

Other sites and apps that were previously and remain blocked include YouTube, search suggestions, Google Sites, Blogger and Picasa.