internet - Controlling the internet

Cindy Cohn of the Electronic Frontier Foundation gives an overview of the way China controls the internet. She mentioned quite some features I have not really heard of before, but she seems to read many not too accurate reports about these things. Hope that other speakers give a bit of a fairer image of the real situation. She obvious had a rather one-sided view on developments on China.
Bill Xia Dynamic Internet technology, in this tradition, telling about the ways to block the internet. While the blocks can delay access, experienced surfers need only ten seconds to go around the blocks. Again very little or no info about the increased freedom on chatrooms and other internet tools. Bill was partly selling his own system to go around the official blocks.
A thorougher overview by Jonathan Zittrain of the Berkman Center at Harvard University on how filtering on the internet works although in between based on information of a six week experiment two years ago that basically proved filtering content caused so much economic damage it failed. He called upon the BBC and the New York Times to work on avoiding their blocks in China. Blocks are still in place for BBC, NYT is already unblocked for two years. Keeping updated is very hard when working in Harvard.

internet - Internal networks

Thorough description of China's e-government by Jack Lichuan Qiu (USC Annenberg). Interesting is the existence of a physically seperate internal network, connecting the provinces with Beijing. Two networks (one internal and one external), one portal, four databases and twelve golden projects. Not sexy, but rather useful.

internet - China tries to reinvent itself - Orvill Schell

Orvill Schell, the dean of the journalism school at Berkeley university painted China as a country with two sides: one dynamically developing, and other one lagging behind. "China is in itself a contradition," he said at the conference 'China's Digital's Future'.
The internet is a - still incomplete - place where discussions and discours is developing. "It is a new way how Chinese communicate with each other."
China tries to control a technology that is by its character very hard to control, he added. "China tries to keep out what it finds undesirable, while adopting the things its wants."

internet - Virtual communities: what makes them run?

Internet has wiped away time and place as defining elements, but what is coming in their place? When you look at Craigslist.org (one of the speakers this morning) locality still seems to be important. Susan Mernit defines also e-bay as a 'trading community' . People want to have a real world connection. "The network is the database" says Mark Pincus of the Tribe Networks. "People want to have a voice". A revolution of the ants.
Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos, of a political blog: we were nobodies when we started. We built a community online, without any credentials and could build up this community.

internet - In business at Berkeley

Do not expect too much: in the morning we deal with general new media questions, so it is a good method to test the systems.

internet - US + connectivity = a nightmare

Ok: it started already at Pudong airport in Shanghai were I received three signals but could not get online. Arrived in Berkeley things were even worse: my Hotel Durant has a wireless, only it did not work. And at the University of Berkeley they had no way to go past the security measures to get us online. This evening some people hacked the system from the first panel we attended, so security seems not that tight anyway.
In the hotel we are on again, and the promise is that a conference on blogging should have wireless access. Now too tired after two days not sleeping, more tomorrow. Nice mixed group of people here and a fair number of Chinese got through the US visa procedure, including Isaac Mao. Have been enjoying also the great food here today, Korean and Mexican.
Also the Cyberjournalist looks forward to the meeting, that will be in webcast.

blogger - Bay Area event getting serious

Patrick Delaney just reports that he has made a reservation for twelve China bloggers in the French restaurant La Note in Berkeley. Looks pretty serious from here.
Here getting ready to leave in a few hours to Pudong airport, I might have a go are the wireless there if security is not taking too much time.
Patrick found that Andrea started an aggregator.

internet - Social networks drive me crazy

I'm just invited to become somebody's friend over the fifth network that gets into my system. Somebody should be working very hard very soon to interconnect all these networks, otherwise this kind of software might be more problematic than useful.

visa - Shanghai police shuts down US visa call center

Shanghai police has last Friday closed a visa call center, a commercial operation by the US embassy, because it was considered to be illegal. The official Foreign Affairs spokesman addressed the issue, writes the China Daily. Also the website of the US embassy reports about the closure.
The official reason is the - indeed rather high - charge of 54 renminbi (US$7) per 12 minutes callers had to pay when they waited to get connected. The centre got up to 10,000 calls a week, the Shanghai Daily writes. The closure on Friday made it impossible to make new appointments for visa applications, dragging an application process that has already caused much annoyance, but among the Chinese applicants and US companies and institutions that see many opportunities go awry because of the difficult visa process.
Many Chinese applicants do not get visa or get them too late because of the increased control.

media - BBC cancelled 'East Asia Today'

Almost a month ago the BBC Worldservice cancelled its famous "East Asia Today", so it can focus more on the Middle East and the Islamic world, says the press release that went along with a decision that has sparked off remarkable little protest.
In stead of relying on its experts, the BBC now flies in famous presenters who - thanks Duncan Hewitt - accused Chen Shuibian of surpressing the poor Kuo Min Tang, forgetting that the KMT have been the real evil guys for too long. Also the coverage of North Korea seems to have been underwhelming.
It is part of a tendency where foreign correspondence moves into the direction of entertainment like much of the rest of the media, and information is only a tool to get more listeners, who we do not want to make upset with our information. They might switch off!

internet - China's booming blogosphere

Kevin Wen has some nice entries on his blog on the fast-developing blogosphere in China. his estimate is also that over 300,000 internet users blog in China. He has also identified 15 services that offer a social network service (vs 100 in the US).
More important, he has a first list of China bloggers that will come together in the Bay area this weekend: Patrick Delaney, Fons Tunistra, Mindy Chiang, Kevin Wen, Isaac Mao, Robert Mao, Liang Lu, Andrea Leung. Good to see that Isaac is still on the list.

slowdown - Packing, writing, managing, traveling

Postings might slowdown a bit for the coming days as I have to start packing for my next trip, try to look at the story I'm doing for the Nieman Report before I actually leave, manage ongoing business and get on time to the plane. On Wednesday the traditional celebration of the Dutch National Day: at least one social event I'm not missing this time.

SARS - Just in time

SARS is back, just before the May holiday. Compared to last year the outbreak is still limited, and the authorities seem to be on top of it. Some of my fellow bloggers reported that disinfectants are sprayed in their elevators again. I have not seen any sign of change.
This time, slack procedures at a lab seems to have triggered off this outburst. The stories about the behavior of the lab worker involved, whose mother died, seems rather irresponsible: she took almost every train possible before the alarm went off.

internet - Webcast Berkeley conference on China

For people in China with severe sleeping disorders the proceedings of the internet conference I'm going to attend at UC Berkeley will accessible by webcast. Since it is at the Westcoast, timing is even more a problem than we had a few weeks ago with the BloggerCon at Harvards Law School.
The event kicks off at 29 April at 7 PM PDT with Living With The Genie. On Technology and the Quest for Human Mastery. It is part of seminars of the Western Knight Center on "Controlling the internet". The China leg kicks off at Friday 30 April with "China's Digital Future". It is still unclear whether we will have access to the wireless systen, otherwise I will try to do some blogging from the site. Do not stay up for me: my turn will come only at Saturday 1 May at 4:15 PM PDT.

internet - Hunger in America

Funny to see the so-called 'public service' ads by Google's Adsense on Chinese websites asking for our help against the hunger in America. You can help them too.

service - Face does not want your money

Some of you might associate Australian wines with fair quality and a fair price, that changes when you get it in smaller doses in Face in Shanghai. I have been shying away from this beautiful location after they made me very unhappy by cancelling their happy hours. Yesterday I ended up paying 99 Rmb (11 euro) for a too small glass of wine. But that might have been because they added without being asked also a glas of beer of SFCC board member Paul French to the bill. I did not dare to protest of course.
Fortunately, it is very hard to get the attention of the waiters, who mostly do not seem to be present. That saves lots in the expenditure.

economy - PBOC warns for tougher measures if overheating continues

Vice governor Wu Xiaoling of China's central bank, the People's Bank of China (PBOC) has warned that tougher measures are under preparation if the current efforts to cool down the overheated economy do not work, writes AFX.

perspective - The Da Shan rant

Professor Joseph Bosco severely attacks fellow blogger Life as a Rat for his rant at Da Shan. I agree with most of his arguments: you cannot attack the person behind a figure or cartoon and suggest he is the same as the person he wants to portrait.
The criticism of our rat does fit into a longstanding tradition among foreigners to get upset about Da Shan and it is important to describe that tradition.
First, the figure of Da Shan was the first 'foreigner' to show up frequently on CCTV after the events at Tiananmen Square in 1989 and was used in the political struggle at those time to suggest to a Chinese audience that the foreigners still loved China. That love was over for some time then and he was used by CCTV as a political tool. I personally would not hold that against him any more at this stage - although it should not be forgotten.
Secondly, he has been the typical foreigner as the Chinese love to see him. Just image one of the US networks would use a Chinese cartoon figure for the same purposes! The Chinese internet would be red hot with nationalistic indignation. The Chinese ambassador in the US would be called home!
I think it is a pity the Chinese get offered this simple cartoon as the picture of 'the' foreigner. I do not think it does a good service to CCTV. Otherwise I do not think any Canadian, US or other ambassador should be recalled because of any cartoon.

blacklists - Zapata's reacts on my complaints

This weekend I delivered a rant on the lack of service I notice in Shanghai and elsewhere in China on this weblog and on Chinabiz. Just now got a reaction from Zapata's, and although they do not offer apologies, it is better than the Pudong Shangri-La who did no rect. Just waiting for more.

Tim Clark wrote:

hi there fons

tim clarke here, working partner at the newly opened zapata's.Apologies for the shoddy service on your last visit. No excuses really, except that we underestimated the response from the shanghai public who appear to be starved of good mexican grub. Hopefully you managed to snag a jug of our frozen margerita to anesthetize your rumbling tum.
if you have time, please allow us to redeem ourselves with our compliments. i've copied lance, our shop manager, on this message who will hopefully receive a request for a reservation from you in the not too distant future.

cheers
tim

And I wrote:

Hi Tim,

Really was so hungry, that I fully forgot about the marguerita's. Will be in California until half May, but will test hour hospitality again upon return.

Cheers.

Fons

That does not mean I will be bribed for a few marguerita's, although it might soften my mood.