All change please. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for staying with blognation China for the past three months. Unfortunately, due to the recent turn of events and other related matters, blognation China is no longer able to serve you here at the blognation website, as the site has been closed down.

I do understand, however, that the audience and the interest is still there; therefore, I am still able to serve the audience from my own personal blog, Raccolta Online. Be sure to follow me there (as well as my Twitterfeed) as I continue to explore the Chinese tech world.

I apologize for this inconvenience. It has been a pleasure serving you at blognation China, and I look forward to serving you more in future. Details regarding this recent move can be found on my blog (details are available in English, Chinese, German, French and Italian).

Thank you, and I hope to see you again.

Netease.com, known to the local population more as 163.com, has launched the official, upgraded beta of its in-house developed search engine known as Yodao. Yodao, by the way, is Chinese for “there is a way” (yes, there is indeed).

Yodao isn’t exactly visible on the Netease.com page, however. Although on its own domain, you’ll have to click Search (搜索) on the Netease page to get any mileage with Yodao.

With the new beta officially now reality, Yodao also has with itself “Yodao Read”, an online RSS reader. The service began as a test beta in late 2006, and in the course of a year, has added services including web site and blog searches, image searches, a desktop dictionary and a downloadable browser toolbar.

The interface resembles, to some extents, the simple UI that has adorned Baidu. There is, though, a somewhat hard-to-use (at least on my Mac running Safari 3) “flippy triangle” (to quote David Pogue in his Mac books). I thought that held your search history. I must have been wrong…

Oddly enough, Yodao has a cache function too. In fact, I was able to get to the Chinese Wikipedia entry about Singapore without suffering that feared connection reset! Of course, you’re safe from “sensitive contents”; type in, for example, the name of that great big square in the dead center of Beijing (in Chinese), and you get the result of the Tian’anmen Regional Management Committee as the first entry.

Well… I have to say, I liked the building better in snow. (We got snow about 3 days ago, by the way.)

Tags: blognation, China, blognation China, Mainland China, Internet in China, Yodao

Google’s video search is now available for China, too; the main page shows a rather teensy-weensy search field, along with links to the Top 100, humor, MV, sports and anime.

Below that, you get to see selected clips — just click on them to play. Meanwhile, to the right, you get to see the top ten clips.

But ladies and gentlemen — do please remember that this is still very much Google China. As a result, there’s quite a bit of stuff that’s out of bounds if you try so in the search field. We’re not talking about the sensitive stuff; even a search in stuff as mundane as the 7 o’clock news yields a warning: In accordance with local regulations, some results were not shown in the listing. Meanwhile, there are no YouTube videos — at all.

I clicked on one of those news program links, which took me to 56.com, a local video site. Instead of being treated to what I was supposed to be treated (the all-too-famous “news show at 7 PM”), I was told that I couldn’t see the content; any attempt to check out the content resulted in flat-out failure. No what, no how.

Still, not the end of the world — glad to see a link in the “Hot” section on the Google China Video page for a Tom and Jerry clip. They’ve now dumped Mozart and “plain-vanilla subway station shots” on the Beijing Subway Line 5 station and train TVs and are showing off Tom and Jerry on the big screens, so I’m rather pleased they haven’t censored the comic duo.

Yet.

Tags: blognation, China, blognation China, Mainland China, Internet in China, Google China

Where there is growth, there must be reverse growth: in statistics released by the head of the Chinese Ministry of Information Industry, Wang Xuedong, a more wired-up China is seen in terms of the number of villages getting online. By October 2007, 97% of all towns and villages on the Chinese mainland were ready for that great big Internet out there, and 92% of all towns and villages were online with broadband Internet. 99.13% of all villages were serviced by telephone services.

In the latest five-year projections, complete coverage of telephone services for all villages and total Internet access for all townships are planned. In particular, special focus is aimed at remote villages, as well as getting more and more farmers online.

That’s growth (getting more folks online); here’s the reverse growth, where the authorities are shutting down more and more sites. The statistics show a very well-organized “strike hard” campaign with the police. 14,000 websites, 490,000 postings and 16.247 porno sites outside Chinese frontiers were all shut down. Of those sites, the 14,000 shut down were sites that did not register with the Ministry (which since about two years ago became required by law).

The “strike-hard” campaign continues even closer to home, as neighboring Hebei province shut down 50 sites that went against copyright law and dealt with 73 cases of copyright infringement in November 2007. Slowly but surely, it seems like the Chinese Internet is getting “cleaner and cleaner”, although that may carry a wide variety of different connotations.

Once again, though, the “strike-hard” campaigns did not remove “suggesting content” involving ladies and parts of their bodies as tiny adverts on major Chinese sites, did not remove “sensitive” text ads about what a man and a woman did on their first night, and did not remove pictures of horror stories on Chinese-language tech sites. “Cleaner and cleaner?” You call the shots…!

Tags: blognation, China, blognation China, Mainland China, Internet in China, strike-hard campaign

Mind the Gap Saturday is a feature every Saturday where blognation China tells its readership the differences — the gap — in the tech, mobile and enterprise worlds between China and the Western World.

You thought blogging was — addictive, bad, or _fill in the blank here_? Get a load of microblogging. If blogging chained you to your Mac or PC, microblogging will chain you to your humble mobile phone.

But just how active is microblogging in the People’s Republic? And how do people tweet along — do they use Twitter or a local equivalent? Find out more on this Mind the Gap Saturday.

C2C?

The PRC redefines another acronym — in this case, C2C. Nope, it’s not customer to customer — it’s Copy to China (fortunately or unfortunately — you call the shots!).

If you’ve been surfing around, you sometimes may have noticed that the Chinese Web is full of stuff that looks like it was copied from the West. This phenomenon — C2C — is there because China’s a big marketplace, and someone just has to get something “foreign” to 1.3 billion (well, at least to the wired 172 million and counting).

The potential customers — and the potential cash — all await He Who Comes First. It’s probably not rocket science, then, that they all scramble for the gold. Lost in the gold rush is this thing called innovation. And that’s why we have sites looking very similar to their American counterparts.

Tweeting To A Familiar Tune

However, Twitter and its local variant, Jiwai.de, look quite different — you could tell that they’re a bit different. Let’s start with a look at Twitter. The beat’s always there — someone is updating something just about every last second.

If you’re not Twittering along, you might start to wonder: Who the heck is interested in what I’m doing? Once you’re Twittering along, though, there’s no way out. I’ve used it both as a notification system and as a semi-propaganda machine: when the World seemed to go totally wrong this morning, I aired my complaints (in Chinese no less) about how bad the World has become. Those who subscribed received about two or three posts in traditional Chinese. (Apologies if you don’t understand what I’m on about!)

Twitter is useful in another way: it’s great as a notification system. Suppose you’ve your friends all Twittering along, and they’re at the airport waiting for you. A quick tweet will let them know if your flight’s delayed or not (you of course, text tweet before you board the plane!), and they’ll get the message — on their Macs (or PCs) or on their mobiles.

And Then There’s Jiwai.de

To most of us, Twitter is common currency. Everyone’s tweeting along happily — even user groups and big celebrities. Mention Jiwai.de, though, and you go… what?

Meet the local Twitter — Jiwai.de. Hosted fully inside mainland China, fast, and all in Chinese, it’s Twitter for 172 million. It’s probably no wonder that it’s been all the rage — it’s both local (remember China’s really a huge intranet at that) and it’s in the local lingo.

And then there’s the interface. Does Jiwai.de look like Twitter? Does not, actually — much of Twitter is in sky-blue. Jiwai.de is more orange-y. And it has tabs — the stuff you don’t see on Twitter.

Jiwai.de is big — but there are other players we’ll touch in a later edition, like Fanfou. Jiwai.de made it big at the Chinese Blogger Conference in late 2007, when it supplied the IM stream for the entire event. In fact, before the blogger conf, yours truly had no idea whatsoever what Jiwai.de was.

By the way — the domain name is smart. “De” in Chinese is “of”, but this time, they’re using “de” as a bit of a “meaningless ending” — but one that every local uses. (I know it’s not easy to explain in the Anglican tongue. Just know that a lot of folks speak that way in the PRC!) So that’s why, TLD-wise, it may look a bit German… it’s actually not…

Going Local

Jiwai.de is no easy C2C rip-off Twitter. Oh no, this site is fully local. Not sold on the idea? Let’s take a look at some hard stats:

• As I’ve mentioned in previous Mind the Gap Saturdays, Chinese IM people are mostly users of MSN / Windows Live Messenger and QQ. Jiwai.de seems to know those locals off by heart: supported IM protocols include not just QQ and MSN, but also GTalk, Skype (yes!), Shuimu Community (a university community), Yahoo! and even Facebook (although I’ve never really tried that with much success — and my Twitter app on Facebook broke not long ago!).

• There’s a short code for mobile users: you can send your updates to a local number, and be charged only CNY 0.10 (that’s just over a US cent, and less than a penny in the UK) per message. Sweet — and cheap — given updates to Twitter cost 10 times that much (it has to go to the UK!).

• Here’s a big sign that Jiwai.de is in the local game for the long run: there’s an option to update your Jiwai.de notes onto Twitter! You read that right: your Jiwai.de updates now have a home on your Twitterfeeds too! (And Twitter knows they’re from Jiwai.de; there’s a little “acknowledgement link” with every tweet! Sweet!)

Attitudes in Microblogging

How big is microblogging? Maybe not that big in China — remember, most of us here are a bit more reserved than the laowai lost in foreign lands. Views about microblogging are more on the side of “this invades my privacy”, “I’m not the kind of guy to tell the World I just had cucumber for lunch” or “I’m so bored that I started microblogging!”.

In fact, yours truly got to see just how microblogging is even in the expat community in Beijing. When the blognation China launch party got underway, one of the first questions asked was: “Do you have a Twitter account?” Apart from yours truly, nary a hand went up. Maybe not the most scientific analysis — we did, after all, have about 16 people only — but it kind of shows how Twitter’s doing in Beijing.

But there are a few celebrities made because they’re tweeting along. Carol Lin from Taiwan is one. She has about 800 followers (that’s a lot of people actually), and she’s been approached by some companies to do a little promo. The tweets from the “Chairman Mao of the 21st Century”, Chinese pioneer blogger Isaac Mao, is another one. His tweets have even hit the foreign press.

And yours truly? Hey, he doesn’t mind the extra attention — but then again, he doesn’t tweet for a living. (He writes this and works on other projects at the same time.) As long as the tweeting-along minds its own gap between being something fun and being a privacy intruder, things will be fine.

Next week on Mind the Gap Saturday: Just how close are Facebook and Xiaonei? We’ll call the shots on just who’s copying who. Be sure to Mind the Gap again next Saturday!

Tags: blognation, China, blognation China, Mainland China, Internet in China, Internet Culture in China, Microbloggin in China, Mind the Gap Saturday

Some exciting news out of Beijing: insiders have posted on mainland Chinese Mac sites that there will be two Apple Stores in Beijing. One of them is almost certainly going to be in Dashanlar, near Qianmen, or the Front Gate, in very central Beijing; this shop could be open as early as April 2008. A second shop — if it’s to open — is still homeless as we speak; some say that if it does not land in Beijing, it could land in southern China’s city of Guangzhou.

When Qianmen Avenue partially shut down about a year ago, the whole Qianmen area underwent extensive repairs, with an aim to revitalize the “old Qianmen” complete with a tram. Some locals, however, have wilder dreams: out-of-this-world guesses (or wishful thinking) are of the opinion that the Qianmen Apple Store could open up close to, or in fact next to, the Quanjude Roast Duck restaurant in Qianmen.

However, here’s a new take from yours truly: an Apple Store in Qianmen does seem likely in terms of the renovation, but when the authorities decided to wholly redo Qianmen, they wanted it to be a street reserved pretty much only for the “old brands”, or lao zihao — and most of them are Chinese. It’d be difficult for an American company to “fit in” in the region — hence Qianmen looks less likely from the viewpoint of yours truly (although he can never rule anything out). Yours truly casts his eyes instead on the former site of the Wangfujing Women’s Store (which unfortunately got knocked down), as Wangfujing Avenue is as close as Beijing will get to 5th Avenue.

In terms of a second store, Zhongguancun is less likely as the “village” (as the locals know it) is currently saturated with a couple dozen Mac and iPod shops already). (Unfortunately, pirated gear is also rampant in Zhongguancun, despite it being very much Beijing’s tech hub.) Apple could explore the Jianwai and Chaowai areas, as they’re very much downtown and are big commercial circles.

Of course all of this right now remains nothing more than just pure guesswork. Specifics regarding the shop is still very much kept under wraps.

Tags: blognation, China, blognation China, Mainland China, Apple in China, Apple Store

We apologize for hosting this kind of material: Sophos shows that over 55.2% of “bad sites” (”badware” or virus infested sites, and their less hospitable ilk) are hosted in China. It actually makes me feel kind of disgusted — personally, I couldn’t believe these figures. I know they’re cold, hard figures — hard-to-swallow ones — like the fact that we reroute a lot of spam.

But we digress. So where are the remaining 44.8% of disgusting online stuff? Here’s how the rest of the stats stack out, according to CCID:

1. China — hosts 55.2% of “bad sites”
2. United States — 19.7%
3. Russia — 11.4%
4. Ukraine — 2%
5. Germany — 1.6%
6. Turkey — 1.4%
7. Canada — 0.8%
8. United Kingdom — 0.7%
8. Poland — 0.7%
10. France — 0.6%
11. Other countries and regions — 5.9%

Let’s hope they clean that mess up soon…

Tags: blognation, China, blognation China, Mainland China, Internet in China, Badware

Taiwan’s United Daily News recently ran a story in its tech section about the rather crowded state of IPv4.

The story has it that back in the 1980s, when the Internet just got started, 4 billion IP addresses seemed to appear vast. The truth, though, is thanks to the explosion of the Internet, there may be a real lack of IP addresses — within 5 years.

IPv6, which debuted in 1996, is set to replace IPv4 with an astronomical amounts of IP addresses. It’s so huge, in fact, that it makes IPv4 look like a mere BlackBerry (and IPv6 the size of our planet). With IPv6, there’d be no real fear (as of right now — December 2007) that one day, we’ll be at a loss for IP addresses.

The trouble is — right now — just about everything needs to be shifted over to IPv6. Taiwan’s starting out with 7 ISPs and TWNIC, but there’s still a lot of work to do. There is a way out with IPv6, but unfortunately, we’ll have to feel the squeeze of IPv4 before we’re over to IPv6!

Tags: blognation, China, blognation China, Taiwan, Internet in Taiwan

Will we be witness to “cleansed-up” search results in the future? If the latest moves from Mozilla’s Chinese subsidiary are any sign, the answer seems to be yes. Chinese versions of Firefox will in future come loaded with Baidu’s search engine, according to Sohu IT.

Both Google and Baidu in China are in a firestorm of controversy over censorship, with Google “voluntarily” censoring its content and Baidu double-checking your wiki mods.

The new Chinese versions of Firefox will allow you to search using Google and Baidu, as well as Yahoo!, Amazon.com, eBay and Taobao. The new function is available beginning version 2.0.0.10. (When I was a kid, I saw no more than two decimal points in software version numbers. It seems like times have really changed.)

The move comes as Mozilla’s Chinese subsidiary is moving to expand its presence (and Firefox’s presence) in the PRC’s Internet. Worldwide, Firefox already has 20% of the browser market share, but its Chinese stats show that fellow Firefox folks in China are less populated — at a mere 1%.

As is the case in most other countries, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer seems to have easily taken most, but not all, of the Chinese browser market share. But that bit between “most” and “all” looks remarkably thin in China.

Tags: blognation, China, blognation China, Mainland China, Firefox in China

With less than 250 days to go until next year’s Beijing Olympics, some people are already jumping the gun — and selling Olympics-related goods. The Market Development Department of the BOCOG (Beijing Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games) has stepped in — pulling the plug on 80 websites illegally selling Olympic goods.

There’s a bit of a monopoly in the online Olympic goods site in China (at least) for the moment, with the website 2008eshop.cn being the only site allowed to sell Olympics-related goods. Anyone else who dares to do so will be branded “illegal” and could face fines or a tête-en-tête with the police.

According to China Tech News, the only legit site — 2008eshop.cn — started up on July 30, 2008, recording a total sales revenue of CNY 1.5 million (USD 202,947.12, GBP 98,623.18, EUR 137,443.02) in the first month alone. Sales in subsequent months, however, were less than stellar as illegit sites started munching away at its share. Are better days ahead now that the “bad sites” are gone?

Tags: blognation, China, blognation China, Mainland China, Internet in China, Beijing Olympics