There seems to be some grassroots support for the idea of an emergency broadcast system on the micro-messaging service Twitter, at least from people who have emergencies to broadcast. The latest cry for help: A Chinese journalist nabbed by security forces during the Olympics and forced to go to a village far from the event.

You can see Zhou “Zuola” Shuguang’s Twitter stream here, but it won’t do you much good if you can’t read Chinese. A translation of his Tweets is on Global Voices Online. According to the article, Zuola–a childless 27-year-old–was ordered to meet with police over accusations of having two children, one more than the local limit. On meeting the police, he was placed in a car, driven to a mining town, and placed under house arrest.

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How do you know when one of the world’s most respected investment firms has veered off path and bet wrong? That’s the crux of the question raised by a piece in this month’s Fortune magazine, entitled “Kleiner bets the farm” that puts Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers under the lens for its recent investment decisions.

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While we’ve written several times recently about the progress of next-generation, camera-based game control technologies, including the hefty funding received by Prime Sense and an earlier update on several competing companies, there’s one detail we’ve edged around: When you’ll get to use them yourself.

That’s because most of the companies developing gesture recognition technology aren’t sure themselves. The firms developing the 3D cameras that make motion-sensing gaming possible have to work through intermediaries to get their products to the consumer market, and in the Byzantine world of game development, no small company can predict which way giants like Sony and Electronic Arts will lean. However, a company called SoftKinetic recently stepped up to tell me that it thinks the moment may be close.

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