“With music by Damon Albarn, and imagery by Jamie Hewlett — the duo that brought us the Gorillaz — I am loving BBC Sport’s marketing campaign for the Chinese Olympics.”
Via Drawn.
Author Archive for Jason Li
You’ve all seen the Beijing National Stadium by now…
But have you seen this farmer creation?
(Actually, Aw Guo guesses that a farmer made it. We don’t know for sure.)
Via IfGoGo (originally from Xiaonei).
Two calls to sign this petition have been floating around my inbox recently:
Being from Hong Kong, I quickly submitted my name to support this cause. Thoughts stirred in my head: What was the UN doing? Is this a signal for Taiwan? Does this mean Hong Kong will switch to simplified Chinese soon?
Upon further research however, it seems have all been a hoax based upon a chain of sloppy journalism. According to Xiao Zhao who took the time to investigate the matter:
…the rumor was obviously started with a false message from a professor in China, named Chan, Zhang Tai who casually said UN will stop use Traditional Chinese in 2008 to a reporter with a Chinese newspaper in Hong Kong, Oriental Daily in March 2006. The reporter didn’t confirm with UN and just went ahead reporting what professor Chan said. Later on, UN had to announce that there is not abolishment of traditional Chinese in 2008 and UN has never used Traditional Chinese since 1971.
See the full exposee at Xiao Zhao’s blog: A Country Bumpkin Offering Sunshine.
We reported over a year ago on the release of the first mini-PC based on a China-developed processor. But according to Fool’s Mountain, it seems like that it either didn’t really ship or perhaps it didn’t register on his radar. So, there is a supposed new release that is the “second” first-ever commercial product based on an indigenous Chinese processor (the Loongson).
Some interesting details from the Fool’s Mountain post:
Over the past decade, researchers and engineers at the China Academy of Science has been given a budget in the tens-hundreds of millions of dollars to develop a commercially viable processor design, using only Chinese intellectual property. And although there have been numerous press releases about various technical feats, the simple fact of the matter was, you couldn’t actually find a commercial PC based on the Loongson.
Combine with this the fact that a different processor project (汉芯, Hanxin) was found to have been a complete fake (the researcher actually purchased a Freescale DSP and ground off the markings on the packaging)… all in all, it’s been a difficult process.
This new mini-computer only apparently shipped 500 units, which raises doubts about its legitimacy.
For tech specs see here — in short, it’s a slow and lightweight mini-PC. But hey, it’s only $262USD.
Does anyone know more?
My friend Nod has some new work up on the Behance network. It’s a pretty mix of the traditional and modern, of analog and digital.
Spotted on the web, a luxury concept hotel in Guilin: the Hotel of Modern Art (HOMA) Libre.
They are the only Chinese hotel that is part of the global Relais & Chateaux (luxury hotel and gourmet restaurants) alliance.
Book one of the 46 individually-designed rooms now! Via concierge.com.
This plopped into my inbox like a piece of anonymous spam, but who could resist such a beautifully crafted piece of spam:
Title:
创业要简单！创业要面试！创业更要学习！
(Entrepreneurship made simple! Entrepreneurship needs interviews! Entrepreneurship needs to be studied!)
The website given is hosted on Baidu’s blog platform and is titled:
华人第一创业系统—-在家创业系统，让创业变得更简单！
(Chinese people’s first entrepreneurship system — be an entrepreneur at home, makes entrepreneurship simple!)
Inside the site, there are posts about classes/meetups as well as tips/stories for budding entrepreneurs. One post talks about how the creator of massively popular MMORPG 传奇 (Legend of Mir) got his start, and quotes him saying, “I then discovered my own two formulas to get rich: The first is focus, the second is rhythm.
The 6th Chinese Internet Research Conference is themed, “China and the Internet: Myths and Realities.”
It takes place on June 13-14 in Hong Kong. Topics are interesting, and registration only costs 300 HKD.
Mafia is a decently well-known game within role-playing communities. To put it succinctly (see wikipedia for a more elaborate explanation of the game), it’s a game played by a group of people in a living room, where people are secretly assigned mafia or innocent roles.
During each turn the innocents have to suss out which people are mafia and vote to kill them. At the end of each turn, the mafia gets to choose to kill another innocent. The game ends when only mafia or innocents are left alive.
Sometimes this live-action game is played on a forum, or even through IM.
And then (according to press statements), the game was brought to China by a foreign student who was in Silicon Valley.
Exhibit A: http://killer.uland.com/
The game was transferred to forums/chatrooms in China and the avatars were dolled up. They also added a new cops role (making it cops, killers and innocents).
Exhibit B: http://www.ss911.cn
These people dolled it up some more, stole some graphics from existing games and created a spiffy GUI for it. They are currently setting up the ability to buy items for your character (making them look prettier or have new special weapons).
What’s interesting to me:
- Does the game work well with just text (versus the living room in-person context)?
- Does the game become more interesting with the cops role?
- Will it evolve further?
(Also: Is it unethical for them to use pirated graphics? I don’t think so — at this beta stage, they’re clearly placeholders for what’s to come. Even if they’re not: They’re using them so badly right now, it would be silly to penalize them.)
Thanks to Gamasutra writer Frank Yu for his help: Check out his new blog — Yum Yum Games.
(Original link to Killcity/SS911 via Dennis’ Blog.)
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