Tuesday, July 03, 2007
Chinese censorship: robot fight robot?
Fons from China Herald blogspeculates that internet censors in china introduced an automatic system to filter the "sensitive words" in order to reduce their workloads. but, unfortunately due to the imperfection of the system, the "robot" caused the shut down of innocent sites like yahoo.
tonight i find two posts about HK july 1 march pop up in the front page of Douban's blog aggregator, one of the blogs, hosted by Zola, was blocked here in china.
so, what happens here? how could "politically inharmonious" photos appear on the front page of the most popular web 2.0 site in china?
well, douban uses a technology to fetch the blog posts even the host is blocked, adn the popularity of the post is determined by the reviews and recommendations it receives. all done by a software "robot", so to speak. therefore, you see a lot of "inharmonious" posts pop up on the site. in surface, there is a war between "robots".
robot tai-chi war
tonight i find two posts about HK july 1 march pop up in the front page of Douban's blog aggregator, one of the blogs, hosted by Zola, was blocked here in china.
Zola reports the HK july 1 march
so, what happens here? how could "politically inharmonious" photos appear on the front page of the most popular web 2.0 site in china?
well, douban uses a technology to fetch the blog posts even the host is blocked, adn the popularity of the post is determined by the reviews and recommendations it receives. all done by a software "robot", so to speak. therefore, you see a lot of "inharmonious" posts pop up on the site. in surface, there is a war between "robots".
robot tai-chi war
posted @ 9:27 PM
Sunday, July 01, 2007
Sites I can't live without in China
Time magazine suggested a list of web sites that most people can't live without：
Ctrip used to be my most favorite one. the site provides information of travel destinations, hotels and airline tickets. i often use it to collect information and find pals to travel together, sometimes a team would attract as many as hundreds of people. here are two photos taken by a group of backpackers who assembled themselves in Ctrip (source post, in chinese):
there must be an equivalent list here which i can't find immediately (anybody can help?). my personal favorites overlap some of the sites above, such as flickr, delicious and digg, but also include a few chinese sites i consider "indispensable" in my daily life.Amazon.com
BBC.co.uk
Citysearch.com
Craigslist.org
Del.icio.us
Digg.com
Ebay.com
Facebook.com
FactCheck.org
Flickr.com
Google.com
HowStuffWorks.com
The Internet Movie Database
iTunes
Kayak.com
NationalGeographic.com
Netflix.com
SimpleWeather.com
Technorati.com
TMZ.com
USA.gov
TelevisionWithoutPity.com
WebMD.com
Wikipedia.org
Yahoo.com
Ctrip used to be my most favorite one. the site provides information of travel destinations, hotels and airline tickets. i often use it to collect information and find pals to travel together, sometimes a team would attract as many as hundreds of people. here are two photos taken by a group of backpackers who assembled themselves in Ctrip (source post, in chinese):
Douban is a very popular web 2.0 application among young people, it focuses on reviews of books, music and movies and, recently it launches a blog aggregator service called "9 oclock" which i immediately get hooked. i use the site mainly to update my list of books and movies i want to buy, when the books in the list adds up to about 15, i will use Joyo-amazon (now a subsidiary of amazon) or Dangdang to purchase them online.
Dianping is a restaurant review sites that offers local versions in over 30 chinese cities. it is most successful in shanghai and as i know, very popular among all age groups. i use the site quite often, mainly to find restaurants to socialize business contacts or dine out with families.
there are a number of other sites i can't live without. a yahoo group that helps me keep contact with my schoolmates, news and weather forecast sites, and certainly, google.
i try to keep the list as short as possible, so if you have something to add, pls leave a comment here.
Dianping is a restaurant review sites that offers local versions in over 30 chinese cities. it is most successful in shanghai and as i know, very popular among all age groups. i use the site quite often, mainly to find restaurants to socialize business contacts or dine out with families.
there are a number of other sites i can't live without. a yahoo group that helps me keep contact with my schoolmates, news and weather forecast sites, and certainly, google.
i try to keep the list as short as possible, so if you have something to add, pls leave a comment here.
posted @ 4:35 PM
Thursday, June 28, 2007
China contributs to reducing global warming
officials all dressed up in shirts yesterday in order to save energy. the image is from yesterday's cctv news.
actually there are better ways to save energy and reduce global warming, for example, "beijing bangye" ( refers to those beijing men who strip themselves to the waist in public during summer time), you won't see a lot of them during summer olympics next year because our government is cracking down those "beijing bangye":
image from web
image from the web
image from web
image from the web
posted @ 5:07 PM
After Yahoo, what if Google is blocked?
list of sites blocked in china expanded to include yahoo, somebody is really pissed, and somebody is praying that google remains intact in the future.
if google and the likes remain intact, people will never cross the threshold level to take some actions and, even it does happen, i guess most people will be just clueless as how to react and what to do (certainly except petition or online protest).
BTW, a PR blog i read - micro persuasion - is inaccessible here in shanghai. is it blocked?
update: a lot of people shout for joy tath "yahoo and flickr are now working again". what a pity that they are now satisfied with the fact flickr is actually only accessible with a proxy.
update: fons from china herald blog believes that the increasing censorships was caused by the imperfection of automated filtering machines. if that's true, then it could become a perfect subject for a disaster movie - the GFW becomes increasing in*de*pendent and insane, someday in 2019, it takes control of the internet and filters anything that doesn't tally with its taste. since everything online containing the words "taiwan inde*pe*ndence" is blocked and, TV and radio become extinct at that time, china government doesn't know taiwan declares independence until 17 days later a PLA horse soldier send the news from Fujian to Beijing ....
if google and the likes remain intact, people will never cross the threshold level to take some actions and, even it does happen, i guess most people will be just clueless as how to react and what to do (certainly except petition or online protest).
BTW, a PR blog i read - micro persuasion - is inaccessible here in shanghai. is it blocked?
update: a lot of people shout for joy tath "yahoo and flickr are now working again". what a pity that they are now satisfied with the fact flickr is actually only accessible with a proxy.
update: fons from china herald blog believes that the increasing censorships was caused by the imperfection of automated filtering machines. if that's true, then it could become a perfect subject for a disaster movie - the GFW becomes increasing in*de*pendent and insane, someday in 2019, it takes control of the internet and filters anything that doesn't tally with its taste. since everything online containing the words "taiwan inde*pe*ndence" is blocked and, TV and radio become extinct at that time, china government doesn't know taiwan declares independence until 17 days later a PLA horse soldier send the news from Fujian to Beijing ....
posted @ 4:24 PM
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Yao Ming married, CCTV building, BJ olympics poster
yao ming married
the new cctv building under construction
bj olympics poster
recruitment ad for taiwan's air forces
posted @ 3:31 PM
"A pearl in flourishing age"
via: imagethief - We're Hu Jintao's Lonely Hearts Club Band
posted @ 3:09 PM
Monday, June 25, 2007
Blog belt: Shanghai, HK and Taipei too busy to blog?
via: business week
beijingers must have a lot of time to hang around ...
beijingers must have a lot of time to hang around ...
posted @ 11:41 PM
Is Jack Bauer a Chinese?
although jack bauer was kidnappped and tortured by chinese secret agents, i sometimes can't help asking this question: IS JACK BAUER A CHINESE?
look, no matter in what criteria, bauer is an evil man, he murdered his superior, tortured numerous suspects, help to pardon a lot of terrorists, lied to his daughter and girl friend, broke his promise many times, etc etc
he is evil, isn't it?
most people won't agree. he sacrifices partial interests of a small number of people for the benefits of the whole. this is a typical chinese (or east asian perhaps?) mode of thinking, for example, birth control.
i believe many western laolaowais will feel very uncomfortable with the way jack bauer handle many things, but eventually they will agree that he is right. then why in reality, they can't tolerate another "jack bauer"?
Jack and a Chinese fan, image from the web (source)
look, no matter in what criteria, bauer is an evil man, he murdered his superior, tortured numerous suspects, help to pardon a lot of terrorists, lied to his daughter and girl friend, broke his promise many times, etc etc
he is evil, isn't it?
most people won't agree. he sacrifices partial interests of a small number of people for the benefits of the whole. this is a typical chinese (or east asian perhaps?) mode of thinking, for example, birth control.
i believe many western laolaowais will feel very uncomfortable with the way jack bauer handle many things, but eventually they will agree that he is right. then why in reality, they can't tolerate another "jack bauer"?
Jack and a Chinese fan, image from the web (source)
posted @ 11:09 PM
Friday, June 22, 2007
Why China lags US in online ad market?
Kaiser, who maintains the Ogivy Digital Watch blog, points out the interesting discrepancies between the internet users and online ad markets in China and US:
one reason why firms are hesitate to advertise online in china is obvious - chinese netizens comprise mostly young people without much dispensable income. the same is true for advertisers, many of them are not used to use the internet and therefore play down internet as a powerful media channel.
i speculate the other important factor concerns with the brand development level of many chinese firms. product ads dominate in china, and people seldom show interest to spend big money to launch product ad online.
with a few web sites catch most of the consumer attention, and many industries lack leading web sites, many firms who want to advertise online actually find it difficult to find the right onlien platforms.
the growth rates and market size estimations are good starting point but they are superficial.
China will outstrip the U.S. in number of Internet users by 2009i am a litttle disappointed that Kaiser didn't go a step further to discuss what create such big discrepancies. the dynamics behind the online ad market is more interesting and, for those who have stakes in china market, understanding the factors that drive the online ad market growth is more important, they are just different from those of which drive the online ad market growth in the US.
...industry estimates put China’s total online ad spend this year at only about $700 million. Meanwhile, PwC’s Global Entertainment and Media Outlook, sees the online ad market in the U.S. growing to $34.5 billion by the year 2011
...then we end up with a U.S.-to-China total Internet ad spend ratio for 2006 (when China’s Internet ad market was about $600mm) of about 35.5 to 1
one reason why firms are hesitate to advertise online in china is obvious - chinese netizens comprise mostly young people without much dispensable income. the same is true for advertisers, many of them are not used to use the internet and therefore play down internet as a powerful media channel.
i speculate the other important factor concerns with the brand development level of many chinese firms. product ads dominate in china, and people seldom show interest to spend big money to launch product ad online.
with a few web sites catch most of the consumer attention, and many industries lack leading web sites, many firms who want to advertise online actually find it difficult to find the right onlien platforms.
the growth rates and market size estimations are good starting point but they are superficial.
posted @ 2:50 PM
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Security guards make a salute to my car
i have heard funny stories about the security guards of the residential communities in shanghai. one of my former colleagues were detained a few times by teh security guards of his residential community, one happened when he was standing outside of his apartment and overlooking the windows, another happened when he "dressed like a migrant worker".
i don't know from when but last night the security guards made salutes to me when i drove my car through the gate. it makes me feel good because few make salutes like this to me (see below):
image from the web
then you guess what, as soon as i leave the car and walk through the entrance, the security guards don't make a salute any more and don't even say hello to me.
hey, i am hte same guy who just drive the car in front of you! they replied, "sorry, the new policy only asks us to make a salute to a car".
this new "policy" is a shit
image from the web
i don't know from when but last night the security guards made salutes to me when i drove my car through the gate. it makes me feel good because few make salutes like this to me (see below):
image from the web
then you guess what, as soon as i leave the car and walk through the entrance, the security guards don't make a salute any more and don't even say hello to me.
hey, i am hte same guy who just drive the car in front of you! they replied, "sorry, the new policy only asks us to make a salute to a car".
this new "policy" is a shit
image from the web
posted @ 5:08 PM
How online communities respond to slave labor scandal differently?
the initial reaction of china's netizens was one of shock, so it didn't surprise me that online communities were flooded with various emotional comments in the first few days.
then i find something are different this time:
1) the impact of the censorship is minimal. despite the fact that major news portals like sina (perhaps other sites as well) received orders from the government to calm down related online discussions, you still read a lot of heated discussions on various sites, especially on those sites that heavily rely on user-generated contents
2) self-censorship is widespread. a lot of the discussions touched the topics which used to be taboos before, and commentators tried to mitigate the general tone in order to
then i find something are different this time:
1) the impact of the censorship is minimal. despite the fact that major news portals like sina (perhaps other sites as well) received orders from the government to calm down related online discussions, you still read a lot of heated discussions on various sites, especially on those sites that heavily rely on user-generated contents
2) self-censorship is widespread. a lot of the discussions touched the topics which used to be taboos before, and commentators tried to mitigate the general tone in order to