Attack! by FlyinPhotography
How do we foreigners live in China when YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter are all blocked here? We use VPNs to get around the blocks. Five years ago, it seemed like only a few foreigners I knew in Shanghai found it really necessary to pay money to circumvent the blocks. Now, almost all foreigners I know find it necessary. Tools like Facebook have become too important of a means of communication to just give up.
For a …
The Chinese internet has been all kinds of slow lately. Foreign sites load extremely sluggishly, and I can’t upload to Flickr at all.
Enter Firefox 3! The Chinese internet is still damn slow, but at least the browser is faster! Gmail works dramatically faster.
The one problem with upgrading immediately is that many Firefox addons might not be up to date and no longer work. Actually, though, most of these plugins can be forced to work by editing …
So you may have heard that YouTube is blocked in the PRC. Those of us who live here have come to depend on YouTube for little 2-minute clips of entertainment which keep us smiling throughout the workday. So now what do we do?
Well, I was all set to recommend Divx’s Stage6 as a substitute. It worked on Friday. I’ve been getting into it because it has such superior video quality and also hosts long videos. However, as of …
AB报 (ABBao.cn): See the front pages of a slew of Chinese print newspapers. Pretty cool! Definitely worth exploring more.
饭否 (Fanfou.cn): the Chinese Twitter clone. Buboo.tw: the Taiwanese Twitter clone. [Twitter]
Sun Tzu’s Art of War: the whole thing in English, plus commentary, plus the ability to link to or comment any individual passage. Now if only it was in Chinese as well….…
Is it my imagination, or has internet speed in Shanghai (for international websites) been extremely slow starting yesterday? Is it just Shanghai, or the rest of China too?
(Did I miss a news story?)
May 10 Update: It seems to be back to normal again.
May 10 Update #2: OK, just kidding. The internet here is crap again.…
IPTV advertisement
I’ve been seeing and hearing a lot about IPTV lately. The image at left is the ad I now see every month in my phone bill from China Telecom. So what is IPTV? According to Wikipedia:
IPTV (Internet Protocol Television) describes a system where a digital television service is delivered using the Internet Protocol over a network infrastructure, which may include delivery by a broadband connection. For residential users, IPTV is often provided in conjunction with Video on
…
Recently Andrea invited me to Douban. I had never heard of it, but I checked it out. My first impression was negative. Although it’s not a photo sharing service, the site’s design and “Web2.0″ social networking structure was completely ripped off of Flickr. But I explored a little.
I found that I really liked Douban! The site allows you to share what books you are currently reading, what books you have read, and what books you’d like to …
Just in case your inner geek is the least bit curious about what went down at the Chinese Blogger Conference in Shanghai over the weekend, Micah offers a fairly extensive account.
So yes, I was curious how it went. Did I read Micah’s whole account? Yes. Do I wish I had gone? No. (I had to beat Shadow of the Colossus over the weekend! Man, that is a truly awesome, ground-breaking game.)
I think we can expect another …
I recently received a new submission for the CBL called blog中文翻译 (“blog Chinese translation”). It doesn’t qualify to be listed on the CBL, as it’s almost entirely in Chinese, but it’s a good idea nonetheless. The author starts an entry with a link to an online English article, then translates it.
It could be very useful to Chinese readers as well as to advanced students of Chinese. The topics all seem to be geeky tech topics. I haven’t yet taken …
I got this in my e-mail today:
Firefox extension unblocks Google Cache in China
Chinese users of the latest version of the popular Firefox extension CustomizeGoogle are happy. A new feature modifies the Google Cache urls so that they are no longer blocked by the Chinese firewall.
I don’t have time to give it a try today. If anyone else within China has time to verify it, that would be great.
Update:
OK, I got a chance to try it …
John has lived in China for
11.8
years. He is a linguist focused on SLA and tech.
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