The best children’s toys delight more than just the kids, and Winter Island in Winter for iPad 2 does just that.

Think of the favorite storybook from your childhood, and add touch. The premise is simple: you’re the master of a tiny island (actually, the back of a big yellow whale) that’s home to an adorable piglet. It’s like a kid’s version of the popular iPhone game, Pocket God.

If you’ve watched Mission Impossible 4, aside from the action scenes, is there anything that kept you thinking after walking out of the cinema? Such as, is it possible for Tom Cruise to drive his car over a 100-meters drop and survive? Is a bullet still lethal when shot into water?

Well, there’s a website with the answers you’re looking for: it’s called Guokr.com.

What’s subscription commerce? Simply put, you, the ‘subscriber’ receive a box full of new products each month from a subcom company that typically focuses on a specific vertical. Verticals range from clothing, beauty, food etc. Notably, within China and HK, I have witnessed several beauty subcom companies emerge from the woodwork like Glamabox and Myluxbox which very closely resemble those well on their way in the US ( Birchbox, Beachmint).

While the investment world is fixated on Sina Weibo’s business model, Tencent Weibo is quietly improving its user experience. For Tencent, Weibo is not a product that needed to be urgently monetized, but one that can be perfected over time. CEO Pony Ma is also known as the company’s lead product manager.

Tencent Weibo is now the closest to the Twitter experience of any of the microblogs I’ve seen in China. Yet it also has special merits of its own.

We launched TechRice a little over one year ago with a mission to write sharp analysis of China’s internet. 215 posts and 730 comments later, and I think TechRice has carved out a nice niche for itself. Here’s what we’ve done to-date and what we hope to do this year.

As we all can attest to or imagine, learning Chinese is no small feat. Further, the exhaustive resources available with which to choose from becomes that much harder due to the subsequent aftermath of brain-swirl to pick the fastest and most optimal way to learn. It’s no wonder users feel overwhelmed. The recent acquisition of ChinesePod by Bigfoot Ventures this past week is a big step forward to hopefully being the mecca for future students eager to learn the language.

The reign of the Sina Dynasty may be on the wane in the realm of Chinese microblogs. Regional warlords have risen rapidly to take advantage of weaknesses on the fringes of Sina’s empire. To add to Sina’s troubles, upstarts are recruiting confused citizenry in guerrilla warfare and sleeping Titans may be starting to stir.

The Pinterest sharing model is the latest trend in China’s startup scene, with no less than 20 Pinterest clones in existence. Some of them are following the classic cloning route, changing the UI only thinly, while the more intelligent clones are leveraging the Pinterest interface design for more outright commercial practices (like social shopping).

The entire concept focuses on building users based on interests rather than social networks, and it’s opened up new doors for China’s social startups.

InnoSpring is a new incubator focusing on cross-border US-China startups across a broad range of technologies including mobile, software, health, and renewables. It’s opening in Santa Clara at the end of March or early April, in a 13,500 square foot building that will house 30 to 50 early-stage startups.

It’s the Chinese Lunar New Year in China, the Year of Dragon, which feeds a television frenzy that culminates in CCTV’s (China Central Television) Spring Festival Show. Watching these shows I noticed that Tencent Weibo–not Sina–is the dominant partner (surely because they paid the most money).

In 2012, Tencent will continue to push forward aggressively in social and present a formidable challenge to Sina. In my first blog post of 2012, let’s have a look at how the two top microblog players in China will fare against each other.