PandaPassport.com – China Blog

Been a bit busy on CNet posting these days. Here’s a quick summary of a flurry of posts I’ve done recently:

Chinese dudes build full-size Transformer

Some Chinese guys down in Nanjing went and built a full size Transformer. It’s insane!
In the comments, reader Xiaoxiong points to some interesting videos, one of a fully functioning, but miniature Japanese Transformer, and as well to some guys who made some impressive Transformer costumes. Halloween’s coming! Anyone want to try?

Here is one of the videos that I didn’t quite have space to put in the CNet post:

China: iPhone? I don’t see no iPhone

Some sightings of functioning iPhones in China, and my close encounter with one at an Apple store.

Tainted report recall: Arstechnica, BoingBoing, Techcrunch, Slashdot–ALL GUILTY!

A quick summary of how many of the world’s most reputatble tech-websites incorrectly reported a blanket ban on all RSS in China.

I was just reading Ryan’s post over at DaobyDesign about how he guides his readers to upgrade to at least internet explorer 6:

My parameters were simple. If the person visiting the site had any browser other than Internet Explorer – they could come in. And to show I’m not a complete brute, I decided that those visiting with IE7, and IE6 could also come and play. Otherwise you get redirected to a page that informs the visitor that they might want to reconsider their choice of Web surfing app.

Personally, I’m not a big fan of any version of internet explorer, so I went a step further. Now if anyone lands on any of my single post pages, they see this alert just above the post headline:

Internet Explorer is BAD! Get Firefox with Google Toolbar, because unlike IE, Firefox loads the top of a webpage first so you can experience faster web-browsing.

The link is usually a firefox referral text link, though because this one was within the post, it might not always show, so I just linked to mozilla. Yes, I’m encouraging users to download, and I’ll get a small referral commission if they download it. But as this is a product I personally use and believe in, it’s one have have no hesitations recommending to readers. Readers who are using firefox already will not see this alert. Only IE users.

Here’s the code for how I made it, in case you’d like to use it one your site as well:

['HTTP_USER_AGENT'], 'MSIE') !== false)) return true; else return false; } ?> { ?> Internet Explorer is BAD! [INSERT FIREFOX TEXT LINK REFERRAL SCRIPT HERE] because unlike IE, Firefox loads the top of a webpage first so you can experience faster web-browsing.

For webmasters here in China, you might also recommend the Firefox Flickr addon, to help your readers get around the Flick block.

Considering the trouble feedburner is supposedly giving to China Telecom users, I thought I’d take the feedburner graphics off my site in an effort to make sure the page loads well for everyone who reads it.

Don’t listen to the recent reports which say all feeds are blocked in China. It’s all hearsay, and none of them seem to have noticed what people inside of China are saying (i.e. the links above Re: China Telecom).

In any case, I decided to give feedsky a go. Because if big tech websites like arstechnica and techcrunch can’t figure out what’s going on with RSS feeds in China, how can you expect the average reader to know what to do?

I decided to make it simple for readers who want to subscribe:

Inside China? Use Feedsky (?)
Not in China? Use Feedburner

If you want to do the same, here’s the code for what I just did.
Inside China? Use <a href="http://feed.feedsky.com/YOUR_FEED">Feedsky</a> (<a href="http://www.pandapassport.com/web-20/how-to-set-up-feedsky-china/">?</a>)<br /> Not in China? Use <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/YOUR-FEED">Feedburner</a>

For those of you who don’t know Feedsky, it’s a Chinese knockoff of Feedburner. I’ve been using it for about half a year now on my much neglected Chinese site, and it looks fine. For those of you who might require a little help navigating your way through setting up your feed in a second language (i.e. Chinese), here are a few step by step instructions:

UPDATE:

1. A big Thank you to Yee in who reports in the comments that Feedsky actually does have an English Interface for their site.
2. A big cao ni ma go out the guys at feedsky for making that English version of their site inaccessible from the site main page. And practically impossible to search via google. How can you not link to that shit with an English Version button in some corner?!!?!!

Fuck. Like, really…
I owe somebody a kick in the nads. I’m sending them an email right now!
Read the rest of this entry »

It’s sad to imagine that if brilliant young Chinese minds like Wang Jianshuo are in the dark regarding the situation in Myanmar, how blissfully ignorant must the general population be?

Pardon me about my ignorance, but I didn’t know what happened in Burma until a BBC reporter sent me an email to ask me whether I am happy about China’s reaction to the events in Burma . . . When I try to find out information on the Internet about Burma, all my Internet connection just consistently cut off. I have ways like VPN, or proxy to work around it, but just because of my vacation mood, and the fact that I am not at computer most of the time, I didn’t take the trouble to do it yet . . . Something I know is, most of the links in a Google News Search results are not accessible, and trigger the Great Firewall. Someone doesn’t want people in China to know what is happening, even though it is out of China. Source (Bold added by me)

It’s unfortunate that when people who care, like Wang Jianshuo, try to learn a bit more about global issues in an effort to join an online discussion — well, it’s unfortunate that someone in Beijing thinks that they should be declined that right.

Everybody deserves the right to join what is now a global conversation on a very serious situation.

Even China.

I’m not much for the rigid military flag raising ceremonies that occur everywhere in China on a daily basis. But when I came across this little homemade video just now that someone made on National Day at Beijing’s Tian’anmen Square, I thought to myself: “Self, here’s a flag raising that means something.”

Among the clutter and litter that inevitably follows any big party in China (and National Day certainly qualifies as such) a tiny red flag lies on the ground – trodden into the dirt by tourists likely too awed by Tian’anmen and the big Mao head to notice what’s they’re stamping into the ground.

When the girl picks it up, it’s likely that nobody else there paid any mind. But there’s something about this flag raising that is far more beautiful and meaningful than any other flag ceremony I’ve seen anywhere else before. China or otherwise.