PandaPassport.com – China Blog

Chinese video sharing sites are great. They’re like youtube, only way faster and you can watch way longer clips.

Now one of the bonuses of these two features is that you can watch full length productions on there (often as high as 1 hour long videos), without having to wait for them to load as you sometimes might on youtube.

Of course, given that it is China the more “relaxed” approach to (Hollywood’s) intellectual property often results in many movies and TV shows being posted on there that many people would not agree with. Personally, I think we could do worse that expose a previously isolated country to our American culture through our pop media. And the citizen journalism that happens on there is a huge plus as well. But that’s another discussion…

Another reason why such movies and TV shows can fly under the radar is thanks to the stealth cloaking often referred to as Mandarin Chinese. Most people in America just can’t read the interface, and so box offices won’t lose any revenue as a result of these videos being online. (Of course it was a different story when TVlinks started embedding the Chinese videos on a site where English speaking viewers could find them!)

Anyway, to get to the point — if anyone was itching to check out these video sharing sites, but doesn’t read Chinese or doesn’t have Chinese software installed, here’s something you can try.

Here are the links to some of them, run through Google Translator: Read the rest of this entry »

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 »

First there was digg.cn (read more)
then there was dingr.com

Now there’s verydig.com.

Very creative is what it’s not…

Check the screenshots on this one, in comparison to digg.com.

Verydig.cn:

and now the original:

via weird asia news

But for the really interesting copies, as always, try here.

Here is my list of top 5 Chinese youtube clones, but make sure you stay tuned till the end, because the +1 is a real gem! The neato thing about most of these sites is that they can host shared/stolen content for everyone to enjoy/report.
Note: I’m not endorsing these sites, I’m just trying to make the barrier between the eastern and western internet a little bit more transparent.

So here are the top 5, according to the gospel of panda:

5. mofile.com

A lot of web-cammery, a decent tags section, these guys break my top 5 — even though I haven’t used them too much. Looks good though, as you can see from this White Stripes Video?Seven Nation Army:

4. 6rooms.com

You can find some stuff on here, but it’s more difficult than some of the other sites. I’m usually not too impressed with them, but I am today. They earn my 4-spot, mostly because they have Spiderman 3 online! (Click here to see) Poor quality, but what do ya expect?
Note: Sony claims that they “have so far found no pirated copies of Spider-Man 3 on the Internet” (thx Imagethief), but I guess that “so far” is done with as of now.
Here’s a sample:

Read the rest of this entry »

MySpace.cn launches today, and is doing so very quietly with very little warning on the english blogosphere. Today on MySpace’s main page, there’s a big over-animated flash banner which just goes to show that MySpace is already down with Chinese internet practices (most Chinese sites have enough Flash to make you seasick!).

Their slogan is ????. This is kind of a play on words, of ????, but ? (friend) takes the place of ? (have)? to give a nice warm and fuzzy?yet dual-edged sword slogan.

It’ll be interesting to see exactly how long Myspace takes to catch on with Chinese netizens, since they’ll be competing against Sina Blog, Bokee, BlogCN, Sohu Blog, just to name a few.

Of course everyone’s trying to take advantage of the China market these days, and it was inevitable that MySpace would cross the Great Wall eventually. But this move makes a lot of sense when you think about the demographics of China’s internet users – that being, in a nutshell, students.

Whether or not MySpace catches on with kids in the Middle Kingdom is certainly a key question. But possibly even more key is how more social network platforms will affect the evolution of China’s online society. And how that in turn, will affect society as a whole.

Whatever they decide to talk about, giving China another platform to discuss and spread ideas certainly cannot be a bad thing.

I was just reading Rebecca MacKinnon’s article about Web innovation, and why Hong Kong lags behind China. I like Rebecca’s site, but – as one of her readers did – I gotta disagree with her on this one. Here’s why:

Slightly Outnumbered…

To compare the web development happening in China (population 1.3 billion) with Hong Kong (6.9 million) is would be similar to making a comparison between India (1.1 billion) and Dalian China (6 or 7 million, depending on who you ask). On a per capita basis, I wouldn’t be surprised if web development isn’t actually a little better in Hong Kong.

The Copy-Cat Syndrome

We all know that China likes to copy stuff. If you’ve been reading this blog lately, you’re especially aware of that (see China Stolen-Media-of-the-Day below). If you ever need two of anything, you might want to consider giving it to a Chinaman, and it most likely it’ll come back in duplicate. NOTE: Have him CC it to another Chinaman if you need three. This phenomenon seems to be prevalent on the internet as well.

Want Proof?

Here examples of some so-called Chinese web 2.0 innovation, and the corresponding site that was ripped off:
Youku.com is a video site very much like youtube.com.
Xiaonei.com is a blatant rip-off of Facebook.com.
Fotolog.com.cn is a Chinese Flickr copy.
Hipihi.com is the Chinese Second Life.
Dingr.com is a clone of Digg.com.
** For the ultimate copy cat story, see how Digg.cn used the exact same layout as digg.com. I can’t seem to access Digg.cn right now though.

Basically, if you can think of a innovative/pioneering web 2.0 app, chances are it’s been copied in China. They may even be so bold as to slap a “.cn” on the end to replace the “.com” domain.

Web 2.0 is about innovation, and if it’s not original — well then, you’s disqualified in my book. Now granted, I’m glad that these clones are making it to China. Even if they are copies, they do make the Chinese internet a much better place.

But I wouldn’t call it innovation. I can’t think of many web innovations that were made in China.

Can anyone prove me wrong?
I hope so…

And appropriately…

China Stolen-Media-of-the-Day: Star Wars Attack of the Clones

Well, actually it’s not just attack of the clones. Some guy went and uploaded a bunch of Star Wars movies to his tudou account. You can watch 5 Star Wars Episodes streamed back-to-back here. And they’re fast too.

By the way, 25 days left and I still can’t speak Japanese.

Well it seems I’ve been tagged in the latest internet meme (i.e. online tag/sars) floating around the blogomasphere. Chris over at Eyes East has apparently gotten himself drunk of his titties and tagged me as one of his favorite 5 Thinking Bloggers. If any of you have yet to check out Chris’s blog, please do so. And for those of you who already know of Chris, please be sure to change your bookmarks, because he just moved over to wordpress.

My turn

So now I get to tag 5 bloggers that I deem to be “thinking bloggers.” The first one that comes to mind Ryan, but it seems Chris got him tagged already. Dezza is a no-brainer as well, and I think everyone is aware of him. But there are lots of great thinkers out there, and here are a few that stand out:

1. China Web 2.0 Review: I don’t know what it is about this site. They don’t post all that often, but it’s one of the few sites that when I see something new on there, I’m pretty sure it’s gonna be good. Lyn and Jason are great resources of what’s happening on the net in China, and there aren’t too many solid English-language resources for that. But this is one.

2. YouMeiti ???: Another good source of Chinese net news. I’ve forgotten about this one for a while, but it’s a keeper. “Youmeiti” literally translated is “Have Media,” and Tricia, like Lyn and Jason, is definitely doing a good job of keeping tabs on a very mysterious little niche.

3. Coolcode.cn: I thought I’d include a Chinese site as well, because this is one that kinda surprised me. I’ve been using wordpress software on this site, and until I found Coolcode by Xenium and Andot, I had no idea what kind of developments Chinese people were making with wordpress. These two guys know a shitload about web development, and they’ve been representin’ east-side making some cool wordpress plugins — a couple of which I’ve been using on my Chinese blog. One is a Chinese Social Bookmark Plugin and the other is for installing some retarded bbs-style emoticons just above your comments box.

4. Sinosplice – Has no one else tagged John yet? There is no bigger-thinking white boy in this country than John, it seems (Screw you Dashan! You and your wacky Chinese coat and bleepy dictionaries!). While the rest of us are bitching and complaining John has managed to keep a positive voice on his blog, one of the longest running in the China blogomasphere. Oh yeah, and he helped build Chinesepod.
Note: John, if am I’m the second person to tag you, I challenge you to name 5 Chinese Thinking Blogs!

5. Nomadic Marketing Library Project: While technically not a blog, this one deserves a mention. Tom recently started one phase of this non-profit project in here in Dalian, successfully starting a makeshift library for poor Chinese kids. He’s in Vietnam right now, but this project is still going and could use a small donation if you can spare some change. If for some reason you can’t, the least you can do is put a tiny link on your site promoting this project:

The Library Project

Ok guys. So now it’s your turn to tag. I’m not sure how many of you five are going to see this one, but I hope some of you do take the time to reward those who are doing good work/thinking out there.

China Stolen-Media-of-the-Day: Get Smart

In keeping with this theme of “Thinking,” here’s on oldie for ya — Get Smart. I’m not sure why this has made it onto the Chinese internet. Who knows? Maybe the Shoephone is a already a fixture in Zhongnanhai?