News.com's Ina Fried leaps into the blogosphere with Beyond Binary, a look beyond the ones and zeros of technology.

  Clemson professor proposes following NASA's lead on energy-capturing space probes to convert car heat into useful electricity

  When Chinese Web surfers try to use the three big U.S. search engines, they're reportedly redirected to Baidu. Recent political events, including Dalai Lama's American award, may be to blame.

  Google needs to deal with its Viacom lawsuit before the industry can move forward on copyright protection.

  VMware was once a tool to improve server utilization for engineers, but now it's an ecosystem of third-party products and services.

  The SLR maker plans to publish instructions in coming weeks for how people can fix a problem that had afflicted the new 1D Mark III camera.

  Industrial designer takes inspiration from comics, movies while working on the interior of Virgin Galactic spacecraft and the suits tourists will wear on suborbital flights.

  Politicians and trade officials are still pressuring the nation to shut down "illegal"Web sites and to align its intellectual property laws with "international standards."

  It's only now that Viacom's rethinking its strategy. In part, the about-face reflects a desire to blunt the impact of YouTube's stunning viral growth.

  Hot topics at the San Francisco conference include Popfly, a mashup tool from Microsoft, along with what's up for Web biggies MySpace and Facebook.

  Apple has announced that it will drop prices on its DRM-free AAC downloads to $0.99, the same price as all other single-song downloads. Amazon responded by giving its affiliates a 20% cut of all sales.

  Also: Distortion-free lens tech puts things in a negative light. Read these stories and more from around the Web on News.com Extra.

  Microsoft chairman talks about what matters to him; a Popfly at the Web 2.0 Summit; and does libertarianism work in the real world?

  A blogger out there is latent.