An exploration of virtual experiences and environments in and about China.
We’ve recently been receiving a few blog comments that are spam messages from WoW gold farms. Such as this and this. (Funnily enough, neither of these are attached to a post related to WoW.) They are in English and one’s URL even has "US" in its title. But they are actually Chinese; the other site’s url is "goodluck2008.com" and their 404 Not Found messages are in Chinese.
So they’re Chinese gold farm websites in disguise. Neat huh?
For those who haven’t seen it yet, Danwei TV now has its own website here. Danwei TV is the brainchild of the authors of the excellent Chinese media blog, Danwei, and features smart, well-produced, fast moving video clips. The clip that’s up now is well worth watching: it’s on Mu Zimei, the famous, sexually outspoken blogger who brought blogs to the Chinese mainstream consciousness just a few years ago. Jeremy Goldkorn interviews Mu Zimei (real name, Li Li) in her apartment, and I guess it shouldn’t be surprising that she’s very outspoken about her sex life even when she’s not blogging! Great stuff (though I could do without the snarky (?) shots of Mu Zimei’s house slippers).
It would really be something if this format caught on so we could also watch clips produced by Chinese DIY reporters–but it might be considered too risky.
Just discovered the blog of David Churbuck, Vice-President of Global Web Marketing at Lenovo. Churbuck has been in Beijing for the past week or so, and his blog posts are worth reading for a) the comments on meetings with Chinese Internet luminaries at Sohu, Mop.com, and AsiaInfo…not to mention Lenovo itself; and b) the keen and often funny observations of an informed American with a background in e-business, new media, and marketing. In category (a):
Rich media advertising is the hottest thing they have going. There
is so much clutter on the typical page that it stands to reason that
video based adverts are going to stand out. Sohu does offer a channel
sponsorship model as well for exclusive ownership of specific
“channels.”
On keywords, one cool thing [Sohu does] is mash up maps with
advertiser’s logos. Search for “Peking Duck” around Hohai, and bang,
you will see the map with the Peking duck shops that paid for the right
to be there appear.
…if you want to see
the future of online advertising in large dollar volumes, go to China.
If you want to make Jakob Nielsen have a seizure, ask him to critique
any Chinese website. My favorite is www.it168.com — an IT site. I think
I could count 14 ad impressions on the homepage, and some of them will
induce epilepsy like that weird Japanese cartoon did to six-year old
kids a few years ago. (See our earlier posts on the aesthetics of abundance on Chinese websites).
In category (b):
Cashing a 100 RMB bill is like trying to break a $100 at a convenience
store. And it’s worth like $12. If it has a hole — a pin hole — no one
will take it.
Sexy girls are a big deal on Tom.com
We blogged about ziboy’s photo exhibition, "Here-Photoblogger Ziboy’s Self Expression" here; we did not, however, lay down his ulterior motive:
"The purpose is to demonstrate photography as a medium that overcomes
language. Using the form of photoblogs on the internet to promote
exchange and understanding among people from different countries and
locations."
We found (on T-salon) a neata fancy Flash applet that has a Flickr roll of the photo submissions from around the world that will be displayed at ziboy’s exhibition:
By the time you read this, the exhibition should be open at the Beijing Dimensions Gallery.
The Economic Intelligence Unit and IBM have released their 2005 E-readiness Rankings, a report which assesses various nations’ and regions’ abilities to "promote and support digital business and information and communications technology (ICT) services." The ranking system in and of itself, as well as the notion that e-practices will evolve along some known continuum (at one point referred to as an "e-readiness evolution ladder"), is problematic as far as I’m concerned. But there’s undeniable value in trying to create a global picture of the rapid changes around us.
Selected findings:
Check out the works on Chinese 华语 CGFeel, a BBS forum for digital art that’s apparently modeled on CGTalk, the forum of the Computer Graphics Society. CGFeel has 4058 members and you just have to poke around and see what you can find. Aside from the section titled "Original Works," it’s hard to tell (for me, anyway) which are original works by members, and which are reproductions from other artists.
Soul of the Ultimate Nation (SUN) 奇迹世界, a South Korean "action" massively multiplayer role-playing game developed by Webzen and licensed to leading Chinese game operator The9, was recently voted "Most Anticipated Online Game of 2006" by Chinese gamers. (Link to Chinese article). SUN is currently in closed beta in Korea. It will be in open beta on May 15, and testing phase later this year in China. It’s a popular game; there were 999 slots for the first closed beta testing, and over 300,000 people applied for them. Webzen says:
With the number of current
subscribers at over 1 million, many are curious to see what sort of new
record will be seen during the open beta in May.
As you can begin to see, this is not a minor issue, as the opening of an MMORPG might be in the U.S.. In China this will be a big deal in the mainstream media, the chat rooms and forums, on television and in advertising.
link to Chinese SUN site
If you’re in the mood for general Chinese gaming industry stuff, check out this recent Gamespot interview with Lisa Hansen of the gaming research and consultancy Niko, on Niko’s bullish outlook on the market.
Chinese blogger Xu Jie says Baidu’s Baike wikipedia (see earlier post on its launch) is a disappointment:
Baidu’s Baike [an alternate Chinese wikipedia] has finally formally launched. but it’s nothing to get excited about…I looked around a bit and most of the articles are naked plagiarism. They’ve hypocritically put links to reference material at the bottom…Basically there’s little of value here. When I looked carefully, this is the copyright contract: "Baidu owns all of the copyrights to material found on this website." How shameless.
As of 2:24 PST today, the site has over 48,000 articles. I looked a bit more closely into some of the people who are ‘writing" the articles. I found that at least one of the most prolific authors seems to be posting articles out of another encyclopedia, as evidenced by the orderly entry of a series of articles all of which began with the Chinese word "two" 二.
Could be a nice place for Chinese net users to find encyclopedia entries, but might not be a site for collective knowledge generation as Wikipedia is.
link (in Chinese)
Maoxianjia at China Tech Stories reviews some of the forecasts coming out of the 2006 Boao Forum for Asia, held in Hainan, China, April 21-23. Baidu’s CEO, Robin Li, noted that 3G will be available before the 2008 Beijing Olympics, potentially revolutionizing mobile Internet in China.
He estimated that in the next 2-3 years, wireless internet will add 100 perhaps even 200 million internet users…Asad Jamal, CEO of Draper Fisher Jurveston Ventures…predicts that the number will grow about 16%
annually and could reach 230 million by year 2010.
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