Week in review: Kai-Fu Lee’s tips on Chinese startups, the math on HP-Palm

Here’s our roundup of the week’s tech business news. First, the most popular stories VentureBeat published in the last seven days:

5 things to know about Chinese startups, from former Google China president Kai-Fu Lee (video) — This week, we were lucky enough to sit down with Kai-Fu Lee, one of the most prominent figures in the Chinese internet universe. In discussing his startup incubator Innovation Works, Lee offered intriguing observations about how startup culture is different in China than America, and how he’s training entrepreneurs to take on both.

Apple vs. Adobe Flash: What Steve Jobs really means — Simeon Simeonov, founder and CEO of startup advisory FastIgnite, argues that reading Steve Jobs’ open letter with his “thoughts on Flash” literally misses the point. The deeper message: Apple is willing to throw its recently-gained weight around in a big power play against all major platform companies, save one.

I didn’t spend my money on Apple stock, and all I got was this lousy PowerBook — After Apple shares hit an all-time high of $272.18, a few fanboys started reconsidering their purchases from long ago. Jason L. Baptiste wrote on Y Combinator’s Hacker News website, “If you spent the money on an original iPod in 2001 on Apple stock ($499), you would have $14,513.78 today.” Thus, a meme was born.

Microsoft’s Courier tablet project is dead — Microsoft’s dual-screened Courier tablet was one of the more intriguing ideas to come from the company in the past decade, but now it seems the device will never see the light of day.

Coming soon: Call of Duty Black Ops — Activision Blizzard has announced the next game in the Call of Duty series, which has generated $3 billion in revenue over the last seven years.

And here are five more stories we think are important, thought-provoking, or fun:

Surprise! Elevation Partners makes $25M on Palm-HP — When Palm finally sold to outside suitor HP for $1.2 billion, many assumed investor Elevation Partners took a big hit. But Elevation actually made $25 million, according to people familiar with the matter.

3 ways Microsoft Hohm trumps Google PowerMeter in vision, clarity — Microsoft and Google went head to head in the energy-monitoring arena at GigaOm’s Green:Net conference in San Francisco — with Microsoft clearly coming out on top, according to VentureBeat’s Camille Ricketts.

Facebook and Google watch you, whether you like it or not — One of the most heated battles for control of the Web is happening through the tiny snippets of code companies like Facebook, Google and Twitter are pushing people to add to their sites. We look at some of the privacy implications.

Trion Worlds aims to disrupt video game business with new online titles — After more than four years of toil,Trion Worlds raised the curtain on three major online games that collectively represent one of the most daring bets in video game history.

Apple buys Siri: iPhone to get a personal assistant? — Apple is acquiring Siri, a well-funded and promising startup that built a personal assistant application for the iPhone.