I think it’s great to see foreigners in China using their creativity to put new resources online. (Let’s face it: just writing a blog takes very little work.) Two recent noteworthy efforts:
The Hao Hao Report. If you’ve seen Digg, you’ll recognize the format immediately. Users submit links, and other users vote on them. This one is all about China, and created by Sinosplice commenter Ryan of The Humanaught. Check it out.
The Taiwan Blog Feed. Old-timers will remember that once upon a time there was a thing called the Living in China Aggregator. It enjoyed quite a bit of popularity in its day (before Living in China was engulfed in the fires of its own greed). Hopefully this aggregator will have a better fate. Maybe it is better to limit the focus to a smaller region such as Taiwan. It’s run by Mark of Tushuo.com (the guy that made the cool Chinese Number Tool). Check it out.
[...] Well, despite it being my country’s birthday, and not my own (not for two weeks anyway), I have some celebratory things going on today. The work I’ve put into The Hao Hao Report is getting some notice. Most notably from John over at Sinosplice and Jeremey at Danwei. Thanks a lot for the plug guys. If you’ve not visited The Hao Hao Report site, please go check it out. Registration is free, but you don’t have to be registered to browse or vote on the stories. And if you’re someone who runs a blog in China, send me an e-mail or check out the Blogmaster’s Tools (once you’ve logged in) for some ways to get your stories on The Hao Hao Report. [...]
July 1st, 2006 at 3:05 pmWow, that Hao Hao Report is awesome! I’d love to know how to code something like that. It really does look just like Digg. Is there some sort of open source components he built it from, or did he have to code the whole thing himself?
July 1st, 2006 at 5:26 pm@John, thanks a load for the plug, and the suggestions you gave!
@Mark: Hey thanks Mark. Sadly, I can’t take credit for the coding, it is based on an open source project called Pligg. Though pretty solid, it’s still a bit buggy, but I think it’s suitable enough for our needs.
I had tried going a different way with it (mostly coding it myself) at first, but it was a BIG pain, and this saved a lot of time. Still eating away hours ironing out the wrinkles and customizing, but it seems to be sailing semi-smoothly now.
July 1st, 2006 at 10:10 pmRyan, The Hao Hao Report is an intersting idea, and very useful. But I’m curious as to what sort of ‘top level’ controls you may be taking regarding ‘contraversial’ topics which might get it barred from view within China.
July 2nd, 2006 at 10:46 pmWasnt there a site a while ago called livinginchina.com ?
What happened to that?
July 3rd, 2006 at 7:38 amash,
I believe I answered that question:
July 3rd, 2006 at 7:40 amYes, it was. A real shame, because for a while - a long while - it brought everyone together. Too bad they wanted the moon when they had the stars.
July 3rd, 2006 at 11:49 amHey Penfold… it’s a topic worthy of debate, but as individual sites are rarely blocked, I think we only need to worry if the local ISP filters pick up key words and render it unviewable.
To avoid this I may incorporate some guidelines to trick the sensors… using terms like J4th, FLG and the likes in the story descriptions. If the blog/news links themselves are blocked … and it becomes frequent… I will add instructions on how to submit the URL with the Anonymouse.org add-on, just like the (AMAZING, SUPER FANTASTIC) CBL uses now.
Basically, it’s not been a huge problem in China yet - we can access ESWN, Truth About China, all the major news sites (minus Epoch for obvious reasons) - so, I’ll not make it one (nor compromise the sites newsworthy integrity) until it is.
BTW: Is this Jim? If so, I must say, DalianXpat is looking fancy smancy these days. Good job on the Joomla move.
July 3rd, 2006 at 9:05 pmHi Ryan, This isn’t Jim, but I thought I’d fill the URL tab with something rather than leaving empty, and I am in Dalian at present.
Good luck, it seems a niche that didn’t have a product, so you could have some success.
July 4th, 2006 at 9:33 am