While playing video games, a Taiwanese man died of cardiac arrest due to low temperatures. It was reported that the man checked into the cafe on Tuesday night and was eventually found dead by a waitress the following night, according to police.

The waitress said she saw the 23 year-old man talking on the phone sometime around noon on Wednesday; apparently he had died sometime after that because she later discovered him dead. Authorities say he sat amongst other cafe gamers for up to nine hours before discovery; oh the morbidity.

In the commercial Ah-Ken can be seen sporting Mr. Jobs’ black T-shirt and blue jeans with angel wings and a halo to top it. The company apparently feels that poking at the late American technology giant will help boost sales of their product, but has it also created negative controversy? The ad is intended to be humorous and is a hit in Taiwan, but after being revealed on YouTube in America, critics are a little offended.

What do you think about the commercial? Harmless or hurtful? Do you think Action Electronics is being intentionally rude or do you feel it’s a homage to the tech juggernaut? Let us know what you think by commenting.

Want China Times is reporting that the chairman of Hon Hai, parent company of Foxconn, invited the director of the Taipei Zoo, Chin Shih-chien, to talk about the management of animals. Foxconn, if you remember, is the company that manufactures all those pretty iPads, Xbox 360s and Nintendo Wiis.

“Hon Hai has a workforce of over one million worldwide and as human beings are also animals, to manage one million animals gives me a headache,” Hon Hai chairman Terry Gou said.

Gou invited the zoo director to speak at the company’s annual review meeting. He also asked all of the general managers to listen to the lecture. He apparently wanted them to learn how to manage a wide variety of animals and their various quirks.

While Chin was lecturing, sharing his experiences at the zoo, Gou was attentive and listening carefully. He then asked Chin to put himself in his shoes as chairman which reportedly garnered laughter from the managers.

Even if the method was unorthodox and demeaning, Want China Times says that Gou was sincere as his company faces a crisis with handling their workers.

Foxconn has had trouble in the past with worker suicides and worker threats that even reportedly shut down the manufacturing of Xbox 360s during the mass suicide threat last week.

Want China Times says that China is no longer the cheap labor camp it once was and that companies like Hon Hai and Foxconn will have to work on bettering their work conditions for those workers who won’t take low wages and terrible conditions just to improve their family’s condition.

With more and more people in the West becoming aware of the sacrifices and conditions that people go through to make shiny new iPads and other gadgets, those changes may come sooner than later.

Switzerland, Taiwan, and Portual are the three main attractions (as you probably gathered from this piece’s title).  Interesting and even stunning views are available of each, with the image below showing off Grindelwald, Switzerland.

As for the odds and ends, Stephen Chau, a product manager, explained in a post on the LatLong Blog, "We took our Street View cars for spins around two race tracks in California: Thunderhill Raceway Park and Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca."

Chau then continued, "We’ve also used our Street View Trike, the new bicycle-based system, to gather imagery at San Diego State University and LEGOLAND California.  We’ve included a little surprise at LEGOLAND, which we hope you will enjoy!"  (That surprise – possible spoiler alert! – may or may not be the Lego Pegman.)

So there’s plenty of stuff to keep Street View fans busy.  And since it had been a while since the last time Google released any fresh Street View imagery, this morning’s update should prove especially welcome.

The move may make sense as a form of diversification, if not an outright escape plan.  As the American economy continues to flounder, and AOL’s role in this country shrinks, it might as well try to make money elsewhere.

 AOL’s Site For Taiwan

In regards to the Taiwan story, Norman Koo, VP and General Manager for Greater China, stated, "Our industry-leading products and programming combined with our content partnerships will provide a unique experience for consumers and advertisers, as well as an international, regional and local mix of news, finance and entertainment information."

He also hinted, "The launch of AOL.tw is just the beginning of an ongoing effort to provide consumers in Taiwan with the services and content they want."

AOL seems ready to launch about a dozen other portals this year, as well.  Reports appear to indicate that they won’t be anything special (just the standard stories, email, search, and instant messaging mix), but AOL is at least increasing its international profile.

For their part, execs at Google and YouTube are just hoping the service catches on.  They’ve had some difficulty making breakthroughs in Asian markets, and given Taiwan’s proximity to China, it could conceivably act as a stepping-stone.

On the other hand, Taiwan is at odds with China, and YouTube users may not do anything to improve that relationship.  “The island’s Government Information Office Minister, Shieh Jhy-wei, called on people across Taiwan to use YouTube as a weapon against China’s attempts to thwart the island from gaining membership in the United Nations,” reports Dan Nystedt.

Nystedt then continues, “He asked people to post videos to YouTube showing off the island’s beauty and democratic progress, as part of the UN for Taiwan campaign to join the UN.”

Interestingly enough, the Taiwanese version of YouTube may already be playing a significant economic role in the region; following its introduction, people in China who have tried to access sites owned by American companies have been redirected to Baidu.

Yahoo Takes Panama To Taiwan

Unless, of course, we ignore the “Panama” moniker, which is exactly what The China Post’s Dimitri Bruyas did.  I admire his style, and his quotes from Hung Hsiao-ling, the general manager of Yahoo Taiwan.

“Since 2005, sponsored searches in the United States and Korea have been steadily increasing,” said Hsiao-ling.  “In 2007, sponsored searches constituted 43 percent of all searches in the U.S., and 62 percent in Korea.”  Bruyas points out that paid searches are only at 36 percent in Taiwan, though, and the possibility of improvement was likely a motivating factor behind the introduction of Yahoo’s upgrade.

The last place in which we saw Panama take hold was Australia; prior to that, our own David Utter covered a round of improvements, and Lee Odden of TopRank Online Marketing wrote, “Panama is catching up to Google AdWords in features pretty quickly.”  Google, meanwhile, has been testing different homepages in various Asian markets.

Hat tip to Search Engine Journal’s Loren Baker.

With 2.8 million members, Wretch is the most popular USG site in Taiwan, hosting blogs, vlogs, and online photo-sharing. The company is also planning to launch a video site similar to YouTube.

Yahoo announced the acquisition Thursday without disclosing the terms, and expects the deal to close early next year. Wretch will continue to operate independently.

Today, Yahoo announced a strategic cooperation with GigaMedia Limited’s FunTown, based in Taipei, to co-brand the site, on which Mahjong and other casual games are popular.

Direct links to FunTown and Yahoo! Taiwan will be featured throughout the content on Wretch.

FunTown is one of the most popular online games sites in Taiwan, generating large revenues from its Mahjong offerings. GigaMedia, which also operates an ISP in Taiwan, will place banner advertisements alongside game offerings and messenger homepages.

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“I again call on China’s Communist government and on multinationals that have sacrificed freedom of speech for corporate profits, including well known companies such as Yahoo and Google, to respect democracy and freedom, because it is the correct way to ensure continuous future development,” said Chen.

The ceremony was the 17th annual celebration of magazine publisher Cheng Nan-jung, a protestor who set himself on fire in 1989 as police tried to arrest him.

Both Google and Yahoo have come under criticism in the past year for bowing to the conditions set for them by the communist Chinese government. Google self-censored its web service to set up faster capabilities on servers within China, arguing that a limited access was better than substandard or no access.

Yahoo too, has been criticized for turning over email records that led to a 10-year prison term for a journalist. Yahoo said it didn’t know the nature of the crime being investigated and was only following Chinese law.

One might assume that President Chen’s words have more symbolic weight than teeth. His outrage against Google was conspicuously absent when Google announced the opening of a research and development center in Taiwan.

Having been a self-ruled island since the end of a civil war with mainland China in 1949, Taiwan was displeased with being displayed on Google Maps as Taiwan, Province of China.’ A Mercury News report said that dispute has been resolved.

A Google spokesperson confirmed that the company had made that change, and now the island shows up labeled as Taiwan on Google Maps. The update was part of an overall update to the Maps service, which has been merged with Google Local. That service has left beta and been given a bit of an update to its interface.

Last week, Taiwan began making its displeasure known to Google and the media. A Taiwanese official expressed the country’s views to Reuters. “It is incorrect to call Taiwan a province of China because we are not,” foreign ministry spokesman Michel Lu said. “We have contacted Google to express our position and asked them to correct the description.”

A grass-roots email campaign began, with messages sent to Google and news outlets. Those senders encouraged Google to remove the offending Province of China’ label. WebProWorld received one of those messages:

David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business. Email him here.