Archive for the 'Web 2.0c' Category

Chinese DIY: story of a homemade plane

Published
by
Lyn Jeffery
on June 3, 2007
in Design, Translation, Video Clips, Virtual China and Web 2.0c
. 3 Comments

Our first subtitled Chinese video! It’s the story of Wang Qiang, a Sichuan barber who grew up making model planes and eventually built his own and became a self-taught pilot. This is one of the things I love about China–an ordinary guy can build his own plane and fly it, without a whole lot of interference from anyone.  Especially in rural areas.  The government appears to be trying to crack down on some of them, according to this story of a farmer-pilot from Zhejiang province.  And not everyone is as lucky as Wang Qiang: an amateur Beijing pilot (called the "birdman" recently had a crash. 

For those of us interested in translation work: to do this I used mojiti.com and would definitely recommend it.  It’s unbelievably intuitive and easy to use.  You just tell mojiti what video you want to upload and it does it for you, then you add "spots" to it.  You can get anything that’s on Youtube, Yoqoo, Tudou, and a number of other sites. I think that the video is "open," meaning that someone else could go in and edit the translation or add their own spots.

Chinese MySpace: strange crosscultural platform

Published
by
Lyn Jeffery
on April 26, 2007
in Photos, Translation, Virtual China and Web 2.0c
. 5 Comments

Can NOT resist.  Myspace.cn has just opened up and you must take a look if you haven’t already.  It’s almost worth creating a MySpace page.

The front page shows 3 mainland Chinese users and 3 international users, and they can all friend each other.  How do they choose who gets on the page as international users?  Unclear.  But Tom is every Chinese MySpace user’s first friend, as usual.  Seems like there might not be that many Chinese users…or maybe not that many writing in English.  Unclear.

Myspace_cn

Maybe Chinese users will pick up on it in order to meet people from other places; or maybe there will be a Chinese-language only group that doesn’t interact at all with people outside China. If the numbers pick up in China, this could skew most popular blogs, videos, and so on on MySpace. Hard to say what will happen. Some thoughts about what could be:

  • MySpace users outside China get to expand their friends list by…exponentially.  Expect contests for most friends to move to the next level.
  • Chinese MySpace users get to make friends with some really different kinds of people than they’ve met before, like Barbie Gangsta Bitch, for instance, in the US.  They’ll talk in English mostly.
  • Non-Chinese MySpace users get exposed to a wide variety of Chinese people: from serious as in DIck, 24, in Chongqing who wants to meet "the president of every country
    the famous economists" to sassy like Kiki Lee, 24, in Shanghai. Chance to practice Chinese for all those kids in the US now studying Mandarin; chance to meet Chinese people before your next trip to China.
  • Chinese pages are for the most part uncustomized at the moment, but that will no doubt change.  Everybody gets to see what the others like, listen to, and think is funny.  Perhaps some trading and remixing might go on, new fads, new widgets, etc.. 
  • Indie music outside of China gets exposed to the Chinese market; and vice versa.  Possibilities there.

Twittervision of China

Published
by
Lyn Jeffery
on April 4, 2007
in Geoweb and Web 2.0c
. 0 Comments

Go here to see a real-time map of Twitters–short messages from random people who are letting us all know what they are doing. Warning: it’s hypnotic.  You can see the different Twitters popping up nonstop all over the world…people in the middle of the night, just leaving the house in the morning, getting ready to go to bed, pondering.  The map isn’t that good for China–it kind of looks like everyone is somewhere around Wuhan. 

Twittermap

But watch for awhile and you’ll recognize the names…Isaac, Flypig, Engadget Chinese, Sinanews (!) [Update:] Fons Tuinstra, and so on.  You can sign up for your own account here.

MeMedia vol. 3 sums up some of the Chinese chatter on Twitter.  There’s even something similar in Chinese, now in beta.

HipiHi = Chinese Second Life?

Published
by
Jason Li
on February 27, 2007
in Dating, Games, Virtual China and Web 2.0c
. 11 Comments

Second Life has no Chinese port yet. Welcome to HipiHi, a China-produced and Chinese language version of Second Life.

Hiphiceo

There’s been some buzz about it over at Second Life Insider, and at various blogs in Virtual China: LaoBai has written a post about it, and a Chinese blogger who reports heavily on Second Life was hired by them just recently.

Hiphiworld8

Screenshots and a demo clip (where you can watch the female commentator’s avatar change into a more provocative outfit as her first task, get it here) reveal a rather unoriginal take on Second Life, though their website claims that they will later provide Flash & cell phone interfaces to the virtual world.

They’re still in private beta right now, so there is time yet for them to define themselves as merely more than a "Chinese Second Life."

They’re hiring too, in Beijing, if you’re interested.

HipHi.com, via PostShow.

The perils of Chinese tag clouds

Published
by
Jason Li
on February 12, 2007
in Translation, Virtual China and Web 2.0c
. 2 Comments

Rex Wong, a Hong Kong UI guy, points out the problems of setting up a tag cloud in Chinese:

  • Sorting: Do they sort by pinyin (preferred by Mainland Chinese) or by strokes (preferred by Hong Kong Chinese even though it’s hard to gauge how many strokes goes into a character)?
  • Font sizing: Some Chinese fonts do not scale up well (see below).
  • Mixed language: Where would English tags go in a pre-dominantly Chinese cloud?

Yahoo_chinese_tag_cloud

Original post at UIGarden, via jaredRESEARCH.

Also of interest:

Uigarden

"uiGarden is a bilingual on-line magazine that provides an opportunity
for researchers and practitioners who work in the user interface design
(including user experience, information architecture, GUI,
and usability) field in the Chinese and the English speaking worlds to
publish their thinking and exchange views with each other. The goal of
uiGarden is to facilitate information exchange and communication
between the Chinese and western user experience design communities."

Right now, there’s more generic UI articles than there are Chinese-specific ones; however, many of them come in English and Chinese.

meijob: ajax job searching

Published
by
Jason Li
on February 4, 2007
in Web 2.0c
. 4 Comments

Meijob_logo

An AJAX-powered job search engine, with personal and company profiles, email alerts, notes, and a really, really shiny logo.

There is already quite a large batch of jobs listed, and the site is offered in both Chinese and English (the jobs are mostly offered in Chinese).

http://www.meijob.com/

Now a treat for the Mandarin speakers who may be wondering what "mei" has to do with a job. From their website:

"“Mei” is a phonological sound indicating different words and
meanings in Chinese. As for “Meijob”, “Mei” could mean “Beautiful”,
“Charming”, “every (job)”, “Media”, “Matchmaker/Intermediary” and
simply “No” - each signifies an important aspect of our activity in
“Meijob”:

Whether you have or you do not have a job right
now (“Mei you”), www.Meijob.com is a great media to find your next
beautiful or charming job. We do so by aggregating each and every job
from each and every source available. We will be the “Matchmaker”
between you and your next job.

You are welcome to share with us
your thoughts and ideas about the meaning of the name “Meijob” for you,
and some Meijob T-shirts are waiting for you as a humble reward for
your attention."

QQ’s ipTV: a road to virtual China

Published
by
IFTF
on January 22, 2007
in Blogs, Design, Games, Television, Virtual China and Web 2.0c
. 1 Comment

ChinaTechNews reports that Tencent has partnered with Chinese electronics manufacturer TCL to develop an Internet-enabled,
interactive TV with QQ-branded applications such as IM and games. It’s
called iTQQ. IPTV (Internet Protocol Television) is moving ahead relatively quickly in Japan, South Korea, and especially in Hong Kong. It is already available to some Chinese urban residents via pilots such as the one that brought IPTV into the tiny one room apartment of a migrant worker family I interviewed in Shenzhen in 2006.  No-one in the family had ever been online, nor did they have much of a sense of what that even meant (aside from a vague idea that their son would have to learn about it to get a job in the future). Nevertheless, they were learning to navigate an interactive screen via the familiar remote control and a new set-top box that had been installed in their apartment by their landlord, for which they were paying a monthly fee.  It may be that for many ordinary urban Chinese, virtual China will be experienced in the coming decade not through the PC at home, work, or Internet cafe, not even through the phone–but through the ubiquitous television, so beloved by most Chinese families.

IPTVWorld.net has photos of the recent iTQQ demo at TCL’s Industrial Research Institute in Shenzhen:
Itqq
Intel’s Mobile in China blog posts details:
this
new iTQQ TV not only can play TV programs, but also can provide
interactive services for end users such as online game, photo album,
e-cards and instant messagers…aged people can now inquire the working status
of their children through the device even with no former internet
experiences. Furthermore, remote controller can be used to communicate
with the children to know whether and when they will come home for
dinner. Besides, with such an innovative TV set at hand with QQ IM
functions, the end users may share their favorite TV program with
friends instantly…Unlike traditional TV users need TV controller and
set-top-box controller at the same time to switch between two screen,
iTQQ TV users have seamless entertaining experiences with both TV
program and internet value-add service . very impressed !

China’s Threadless

Published
by
Jason Li
on January 21, 2007
in Art and Web 2.0c
. 0 Comments

20070121_tshirt

If you know what Threadless is, think of this as a China version without the designer flair.

If you don’t, MyTshirt.cn is a website to submit, share, purchase T-shirt designs.

(The above design is by ibuzzo, and is a combination of two Chinese characters. You can purchase it here. Or you could just get the fan-favorite keso’s Playin’ with IT shirt shown below.)

20071021_kesoshirt

Via PostShow.

语录中国, Quotable China

Published
by
Jason Li
on January 19, 2007
in Web 2.0c
. 1 Comment

20070119_quotes_1

语录中国, Quotable China (or to be precise,Recording the Quotes of China), is a website that collects interesting quotes by various peoples, including 鲁迅 LuXun, keso, and 老白 (random old guy). Here’s what 老白 (random old guy) had to say about GFW:

"’The future is unknown.’ Technorati’s death, Google’s ‘continuous resets’, all reveal to me the confidence of being a Chinese IT worker."

Link to site, link to source of quote (thanks zhwj!).
Via PostShow.

Chinese citizen journalism: sympathy for the poor

Published
by
Lyn Jeffery
on January 14, 2007
in Photos, Virtual China and Web 2.0c
. 1 Comment

A Molive/Moobol story (which, incidentally, was in the top 3 photo-sharing sites in 2006 in China–I prefer it to Tudou and Yoqoo, actually).  Even as poor people (mostly from the countryside) are discriminated against in the cities, as the gap between rich and poor widens to an extent not seen since before the Chinese Communist Party took power in 1949, there is a widespread, deep sentimental affection for the poor in China.

These kinds of stories show up often in online stories from the mainland, much more than I see them on American sites, and are also a common feature of Chinese television.  One nurse I interviewed in Sichuan last year said that farmers without money to take care of sickness, and with no support coming from the government, could as a last resort go to the media and appeal to the public.   

The Hard Life of a Father and Son, Taken on the Side of the Road (Molive tags: father, beggar, on-the-spot photos, moving, disabled, street, lower-class, son, pitiable)

I came upon a father and son one day on the street.  Normally I might not pay attention to this kind of roadside beggar because I always felt that most of them were frauds…But today I was having a smoke and waiting for a friend, and I observed them for quite a while. At last I felt moved, and took some photos.  I don’t know why, but the father’s hands were disabled. I think the child was sick, and even though Dad had no hands, he used his arms quite proficiently to mix medicine for the boy and feed it to him. Then he organized the child’s clothes. A well meaning passerby gave the boy 2 yuan and the child took it shyly.  The father called from the side, "Hurry, thank the uncle!"  After taking the money the child was still uncomfortable, while his father stood to one aside with a simple and honest smile. Then, even though he had no hands, the father washed his son’s face.  After I took the pictures I felt bad, put out my cigarette, and gave the little boy 10 yuan before leaving.

Father_and_son