Roundup: China fires back at US, Q4 venture numbers

Here’s the latest action:

China fires back against Clinton — In response to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s call for China to investigate Google’s claims that human rights activist email accounts were hacked, the country’s Foreign Ministry posted a messaging saying the Obama administration was making “groundless charges.”

Dow Jones VentureSource shows uptick in venture investing – VentureSource found that after a crummy year for startups raising money, VC funding actually went up during the fourth quarter of 2009 compared to the same period in 2008. You can compare VentureSource’s data with the MoneyTree report from PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association.

Astronaut tweets from space — Previous “tweets from space” have involved email messages sent by astronauts to people back on the ground who actually post the message on Twitter. In this case, astronaut T.J. Creamer posted the tweet himself, via the International Space Station’s LAN connection. His message: “Hello Twitterverse! We r now LIVE tweeting from the International Space Station–the 1st live tweet from Space! More soon, send your ?s”

Google vs. Microsoft vs. Apple vs. Yahoo — To help understand how these four tech giants compete, The New York Times’ Nick Bilton created a chart showing the different markets where each company has a product. Among his conclusions: “Microsoft competes with everybody” and “Apple is the only one of the four that charges for online services.”

Science fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin petitions against Google Books settlement – Le Guin (who is among my favorite living writers) previously resigned from the Authors Guild to protest the settlement. Now she has created a petition asking that the United States be exempted, and that petition has been signed by nearly 300 authors.

Digg to go real-time … eventually — Kevin Rose, founder of the popular news aggregator, has been talking about overhauling the site and making it more “real time” for almost a year. Now he’s telling the Telegraph that the redesign will go live in a few months, and it will be the biggest change in the site’s history.