Archives - April 2004
04/25/2004
More and more social networking service had launched. Over 100 SNS service in US market. This phenomenon happen in China internet market too, more than 15 social network service in early 2004. They have grabbed the attention of Internet users and venture capitalists but many are still looking for ways to make money. What's the business model for Social networking service? Actually Social networking sites have largely failed to cash in on their enormous user. I'm sure all of these sites are under growing pressure to seek a viable business models. The most important thing in Market economy is profit, although the ideas are very attractive. I notice that a online dating sites "Tickle" had launched a "People search" service that combine with AskJeeves's web search technology. Tricke hold more than 2 million user profiles in its social network. Maybe this is a viable model, providing personalized search results when people search another people, base on personal profile and common interests, probably the potential business value would be discovered between users.
To articulate the value proposition to users, Tickle invoked the example of a woman who is in the market for a home. By querying "mortgage" on the search engine, she turns up a list of her first and second-degree Tickle network friends with expertise in mortgages. Any of these she can then contact directly. A friend-of-a-friend mortgage broker may actually earn business this way, Tickle declared. Via Scott Allen
Related reading: Online business Network [1] [2]
147 Comments
04/23/2004
Patrick kindly invites me to join a China-Focused Blogger meetup during CDF conference. The China Digital Future conference host by UC Berkeley journalism school on Friday and Saturday, April 30 and May 1st. I talk about this kind of meetup with Andrea (from Livinginchina.com) couple weeks ago. It's a great opportunity for China-Focused blogger meetup together in San Fran bay area. Especially some well-known Blogger will attend this conference. Probably we could invite more Bloggers in San Fran who are interesting in this meetup. Base on my information, I'd like to post a list of Bloggers who I know likely will be in this meetup.
Patrick Delaney, Fons Tunistra, Mindy Chiang, Kevin Wen, Isaac Mao, Robert Mao, Liang Lu,Andrea Leung
Update: Phil Wolff
Also looking forward:
Xiao Qiang, Dan Gilmour
more bloggers ongoing. Meetup probably in Satuday night May 1st. I'd like Patrick to choose a place for host this meetup. with Good food even better.
76 Comments
04/22/2004
Here is the abstract of our speech in this coming CDF conference in UC berkeley. I'm still working on the PPT file.
Abstract
The blogging concept was first introduced in China in 2002. It grew rapidly and became popular in merely one year. In 2003, Social Networking and related applications started to surface in China. There are more than 300,000 people who are actively involved in Blogging and Social Networking sites. These new methods of self-expression and communication have started a new Internet trend in China. People are publishing their thoughts and experiences on Blog sites. Social Networking tools help them to establish new connections and enhance existing friendships.
Currently, blogging service providers are seeking new opportunities to commercialize their businesses. At the same time, they are adjusting their strategy to comply with evolving government regulations on Internet usage. Social Networking service providers are striving to find a profitable business model. What if we combine these two seemingly separate but yet fundamentally related concepts?
Blogging and Social Networking complement each other. Their value can potentially be multiplied through integration. Blogging improves the interaction of Social Networking users. Blogger communities become tighter and stronger via Social Networking. Naturally, this new breed of collaboration and communication application evolves into a personal portal.
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04/15/2004
China's gross domestic product (GDP) grew 9.7 per cent in the first quarter, exceeding consensus estimates and raising further doubts over the effectiveness of Beijing's effort to cool the economy.via FT
Compare with last year GDP average 9.1% increase, the market was blooming really fast indeed. In the same day in South China, the 95th Guangzhou Commodity Fair opens, over 27,500 exhibition stands this year. More and more multinationals are getting involved in China’s market. Although the economy grew, job market is not optimism for students. Probably 50% of Graduates may not get a job in this year. I’m not a analyst, I don’t know why the economy grew fast but the demand is still weak.
586 Comments
04/14/2004
Researchers from Huazhong University of Science and Technology in China have devised a distributed information retrieval system that promises to help. The system could eventually become part of the Internet infrastructure as an extension of the domain name service.
The Domain Resource Integrated System (DRIS) provides a unified search interface for information that resides on Web pages and in databases.
The software organizes resources on three levels -- an individual domain like a university or company, a subnetwork domain like the China Education Network (CERNET) that includes all the universities in China, and a top-level domain like the Internet in China, he said. via AO
I am not sure what the system is, this kind of integrated system probably works with EDU network more than public internet.
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04/13/2004
7 Chinese hostages in Iraq have been released
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I can't believe this, An online buyer has bid 9 million yuan (US$1.1 million) for a cell phone number on EachNet.com.
A deal for the number 135 8585 8585, which has a similar pronunciation in Chinese to "let me be rich be rich be rich be rich," was finally done after 70 bids since it was offered online on March 27. [link]
Last year, Chinese airline
bought a toll free number 8888 8888 for $280,000, and says bought the phone number not because of any superstitious belief. The "good Luck" number "8" is really popular in China; any numbers include "8" would more valuable than others, phone number, card number, even a Car license number. And also people extend some numbers based on single "8" to endue with luck words like: "168" (road to rich), "58" (be rich), "178" (rich together) and more, creativity is highly active on this. Actually I don't think it's a real deal, especially it's a online bid.
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A small cookie, If you are using any browser other than Internet Explorer in windows system. Like me, use Firefox which can't compatible with Google's toolbar. Use the following handy-tool to View Google PageRank without a Toolbar.
9 Comments
04/10/2004
From CNet
In its last two fiscal years, the Round Rock, Texas-based PC maker has exceeded the 14 percent yearly revenue growth it needs to reach that goal, Dell said at the company's annual analyst meeting in Austin. Thus, the company expects to exceed $60 billion relatively quickly.
I am not a Dell fan, and I'm not interested inDell's computer either. Dell's cheap Desktops and ugly design laptops are flooding all around me. Most of my friends are using Dell-made PCs. everybody envied to own a Apple computer, but all of them give in that unbelievable high price. That's why Dell reach their goal incrediblefast.
9 Comments
04/ 9/2004
From BoingBoing
Jill Smith has begun a distributed audiobook project for my novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, whose new, liberal Creative Commons license allows for exactly this kind of mishegas (see the distributed audiobook project for Lessig's Free Culture for an example of how well this can work).
As
Keke mentioned a few days ago about our new project
Free Culture Chinese Edition, Cory comment on his post said he relicensed
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom under a Derivs-Sharealike license back in January. Base on the definition,
Share Alike license allow people
alter,
transform, or
build upon this work as wish. Hopefully SocialBrain.org should setup a new Project to translate
DOMK in Chinese Edition. Wow, I missed a chance in SXSW to talk about this with Cory.
5 Comments
04/ 7/2004
Channel 9 was created by a group of engineers and "technology evangelists" at Microsoft that is convinced the software giant could do more to promote free discussion with outside developers. The name refers to the audio channel most airlines use to allow passengers to listen in on conversations between flight crew members. via news.com
Microsoft's developers launched
Channel 9 not only include video and audio content publish, also provide Wiki, Moblog, Forum etc. Pretty impressive. The name "Channel 9" inspired from Airline communication mechanism, on the audio track in airplanes, is the chatter between the pilot, co-pilot and control tower. This project initiate form MS's engineer Jeff and Scoble, they go around Microsoft campus with a video camera and do quick hallway interviews with people who are doing interesting stuff at MS and then post those clips on Channel 9. Actually many Microsoft employees are active Bloggers, it seems Microsoft to be a pretty open company, but the practice has gotten at least one worker in trouble. Longtime contract worker
Michael Hanscom was fired last year after his blog ran photos of Apple computers being delivered to Microsoft's main campus. Anyway, the "Channel 9" project would be a good example for employee interactive lives in giant company. No matter how people hate Microsoft, people who have a chance work on there still attractive.
Related Post:
Blogs Ahoy at Microsoft - Cult of Mac
Channel 9 - Scripting News
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Leander Kahney's blog Cult Of Mac Launched today. It's the second Wired Blog after Burce Sterling's Beyond the Beyond. I searched "Cult of Mac" via google, and find out actually Cult of Mac is Leander's new book will be released on Sep 2004.
Leander Kahney
is a journalist who covers Apple and the Mac community for Wired News. Before joining Wired, he was a senior writer at MacWeek. He has written for numerous publications, including Wired Magazine, Scientific American, and the London Guardian.
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Google released a new free email system, Gmail. It's a really hot topic had been talked over the blog and internet. Gmail with the 1GB of storage really had sparked the flame. Rich Skrenta had a great post with in-depth perspective in Google, I was really trilled in the last paragraphs.
Google is a company that has built a single very large, custom computer. It's running their own cluster operating system. They make their big computer even bigger and faster each month, while lowering the cost of CPU cycles. It's looking more like a general purpose platform than a cluster optimized for a single application.
While competitors are targeting the individual applications Google has deployed, Google is building a massive, general purpose computing platform for web-scale programming.
This computer is running the world's top search engine, a social networking service, a shopping price comparison engine, a new email service, and a local search/yellow pages engine. What will they do next with the world's biggest computer and most advanced operating system?
Jason (from Kottke) also posts his personal opinion after reading Scrota's post. He predict: Google will be the biggest and most important company in the world in 5-8 years. How to imagine that in the future Google providing their service not only a search engine or Mail service, but also a smart operating system with handy interface, even a build-in Google powered office applications?
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04/ 6/2004
KanTianxia.com is a web-based RSS news aggregator. Powered by urPOS Technology. The website classified the news to diversiform categories, based on RSS and XML. Support RSS feed in each category. They also provide a RSS aggregator named "KanTianXia", like most RSS tools do, KanTianXia RSS aggregator support different RSS versions. And support a tree structure catalog in menu-bar. Screenshot (1, 2 ).
Main Function:
1> RSS 0.91, 1.0, 2.0
2> RSS Feed management
3> RSS content management
4> Web Browser
5> Update frequency setting
This is the first Chinese language RSS aggregator tool. obviously, supporting Chinese character with no problem. Actually Feeddemon support Chinese character not very well, SharpReader either. The developer said he will shift this project to an Open Source project on proper time. KanTianXia's catchword: Let's bring content to presence.
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"Blog On Blog"; is a new project organized by CNblog.org Team. This is a brand-new information portal all about Chinese blogosphere, Blogger and Blogging activities. No doubt, all contents are made in China.
As we all know, CNblog.org is one of the most famous community weblog in China. It‘s focusing on promoting, sharing, transferring, and connecting information and Bloggers. There are lots of intelligent people getting involved in it; providing most trendy and valuable information. CNblog has a wise team with plenty of creativity and vitality. CNblog is leading some great project: Blogging Knowledge Blog, Chinese Weblog ring, Grassland RSS search engine, Social Software Wiki and Weblog encyclopedia etc.
So far, more than 3000 blogs have registered in CNblog weblog ring. The community grew very fast. More and more grassroot voices were released from here. We synchronized information from world wide blogosphere, to bring the most emerging news and trend to Chinese bloggers. Now, we would like to present our thoughts and movements to the world wide blogosphere. We are beginning this project to communicate most recent changes and movements in Chinese blogosphere in English to let other people know more about us.
We encourage Bloggers to join us. If you have basic English writing skill and know or interested in Blogging, please feel free to send us an Email and become a collaborative Author in this Blog.
Contact:
owen, email: wen-xin (at) msn dot net
Zheng, email: xeenet (at) hotmail dot com
This post dupe from my original post in CNblog.
61 Comments
04/ 5/2004
There is a very useful article to tell you How to move a MT Blog to a new host.
Moving your MT Blogs to a New Server or Web Host.
Actually I had moved my Chinese Blog to a New Hosting Server. The only one problem I got is character setting. I used to use UTF-8 Code for my weblog, but when I export my whole entries from MT, I did a wrong way. Once the Export page comes out, I didn't save it directly to a file, instead, I did cut/paste them to a txt file. In Windows XP system there is no problem because the system supports multi-language display. But when I import them to my new MT, through server-side program, it was identified to GB2312 code and conflicted with my MT config. Finally I ask my friend do me a favor to convert this txt file to UTF-8 encoding. So please make sure DO NOT DO ANY CHANGE in your export file, expecially some coding effect.
I am sure bloggers who are using MT need to know how to backup weblog entries. It's very important even if you trust your hosting very much. Some expert may know how to export data from database like mysql. But the simplest way to backup is export function. I prefer this way, and also please add this backup process to your monthly procedure.
187 Comments
04/ 3/2004
I design this logo for the Free Culture Tanslation Project initiate by Isaac Mao. yes, this logo is licensed by CreativeCommons NonCommercial License. Please feel free to use it except comerical purpose.
So far, 21 people have joined this collaborative project, memes appeared in lots of blogs. 12 chapters were assigned by contributors to translate. also, my friend shizhao post it to wikipedia, I believe this project will be broadcast extremely fast in blogosphere, obviously more and more people will getting involve in it. If any one want to join us please leave a comment over here inculde your email and URL.
10 Comments
04/ 2/2004
Living In China will host a BloggerCon meeting in shanghai at 17 April, it's coinciding with BloggerCon II conference at Harvard Law school in April. LiC is a active community weblog organized by some foreigner blogger who currently lived in China. I have some good experience cooperate with LiC team. espeically they collaborate with Weciti and CNblog.org to host the first China blog award.
I don't have a chance to join this fantanstic meeting, wish attendees have a great time on it. If you are a blogger and live in Shanghai vicinity, you won't miss this chance to join the party! Please remember make sure there 30 RMB in your pokets if you wanna some beer. :)
Living In China
BloggerCon Shanghai Meeting is a joint initiative of the Shanghai Foreign Correspondents Club, Living in China and Fons Tuinstra of China Herald, with the support of BloggerCon. For further information, please email bloggercon@livinginchina.com.
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04/ 1/2004
I got an excellent birthday gift from my dad: a Nokia 6600 smart phone. This phone currently is not available in US market. Also, he brought me a Bluetooth headphone which is an offical accessories for 6600. Wow, I can't wait to set it up.
I am using T-mobile wireless service right now which provided GSM network. It works with Tri-band and SIM card, its mean if a phone includes tri-band and SIM card slot, the only thing you need to do is put the SIM card into the phone and turn it on. It will work mostly. But if a smart phone you want to use with powerful function like online surfing, mobblogging etc. There's more configuration should be set it up. I had done some research and finally figure it out how to set 6600 for T-mobile network. If anyone has a chance to get this phone and also use T-Mobile service. You probably could follow configuration below to set it up, it's worked perfectly with my moblog.
PS: Absolutely, This is not a April fool's day joke! :)
Read More "Nokia 6600 for T-mobile"
1656 Comments