Published by rwatstein November 23rd, 2008
in China, digital and Library of Congress.
The Library of Congress and the National Library of China have concluded an agreement to cooperate in developing the World Digital Library. The two libraries agreed to provide content to the World Digital Library and to cooperate in such areas as the development and maintenance of the Chinese-language interface, the convening of international working groups to plan and develop the project, and the formation of an advisory committee of leading scholars and curators to recommend important collections about the culture and history of China for inclusion in the World Digital Library.
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Published by rwatstein November 2nd, 2008
in China.
How do you think China will surprise the rest of the world next? With so many eyes on this emerging Asian giant, what happens there continues to have an exceptional ability to draw attention and to shift perceptions drastically and suddenly. In this short piece written to start a conversation with readers, McKinsey director Gordon Orr draws on his many years of experience in China and lays out seven scenarios of possible business, policy, and environmental events that could lead us to see China in a new light.
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Published by rwatstein November 2nd, 2008
in China, Microsoft, software and piracy.
An anti-piracy tactic by Microsoft that turns some computer users’ screens black is setting off a wave of unexpected indignation among Chinese consumers, posing renewed problems for the software maker in the huge China market. In the days since Microsoft deployed an updated anti-piracy tool here, some Chinese have fumed about what they see as an invasion of privacy. Users of legitimate software have been turning their own screens black in protest. One authorized user complained to the police. “It’s a crime,” said Beijing lawyer Dong Zhengwei, who filed a complaint against Microsoft with the Public Security Ministry. The ministry hasn’t responded. “The black-screen plan implies that Microsoft can hack all its users, not just the pirates,” Dong said. “That’s not fair.”
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Published by rwatstein October 19th, 2008
in China, libraries, digital and disabilities.
A digital library for the blind, where the visually impaired can listen to electronic books, music, or online lectures for free, has opened in Beijing. Situated in the National Library, the facility was jointly set up by the Information Center of the China Disabled Persons’ Federation, the National Library, and China Braille Publishing House. It opened October 14, on the eve of the International Day of the Blind.
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Published by rwatstein October 19th, 2008
in China, privacy and censorship.
That Chinese Internet companies censor communications is well known, but a new report from a Canadian computer scientist reveals a new front in their efforts to monitor users online. The study shows that users of TOM-Skype, a Chinese voice and chat service that is compatible with the popular Internet phone system Skype, have been subject to extensive surveillance. To make matters worse, the records of their chat conversations, as well as detailed personal information, were stored insecurely on the Web. Skype has previously acknowledged that its Chinese partner, TOM Online, blocks chat messages containing certain politically sensitive keywords. The new findings, however, reveal a level of surveillance that goes far beyond this.
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Published by rwatstein September 14th, 2008
in China and libraries.
The Chinese national library’s new building opened to the public recently, making it the worlds third largest in terms of floor space. With the operation of the new building, the library’s total area reached 250,000 square meters, behind only the national libraries in France (Paris) and the United States (Washington D.C.), according to the library. The new building in western Beijing, which is considered the second phase construction of the library, covers an area of 80,538square meters, combining storage rooms, reading rooms, a display area for ancient books and a digital library, said Zhan Furui, the head librarian.
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Published by rwatstein July 12th, 2008
in China, digital and collections.
The Duke University Libraries has launched a digital collection of about 5,000 photographs shot primarily in China between 1917 and 1932 by Sidney Gamble, grandson of Proctor and Gamble co-founder James Gamble.
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The searchable collection is online here
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Published by rwatstein April 27th, 2008
in China and search.
Baidu, the leading search engine in China, is getting involved in the coming US Presidential elections it seems. They have added a caricature of Barack Obama and the democrat donkey in the Baidu logo.
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Published by rwatstein March 29th, 2008
in China, social networking and Google.
Google Inc. disclosed recently it has invested $1 million in Chinese online social-networking technology provider Comsenz Inc., a start-up originally backed by former Google board member and venture capitalist Michael Moritz. Google inc. said in a regulatory filing that it made its investment in Comsenz in July, as part of Series B round of funding for the closely held firm. Moritz, a general partner at venture capital firm Sequoia Capital who announced his resignation from Google’s board roughly one year ago, has a more than 10% interest in a Sequoia fund invested in Comsenz, Google said. Reports of Google’s investment in Comsenz surfaced in Chinese media last year, though the speculation had it that Google was putting roughly $5 million into the Beijing-based company.
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Published by rwatstein March 29th, 2008
in China, Pew Research, internet and censorship.
Many Americans assume that China’s internet users are unhappy about their government’s control of the internet, but a new survey by Chinese researchers finds most Chinese say they approve of internet regulation, especially by the government.
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Published by rwatstein March 16th, 2008
in China, libraries and OCLC.
The National Library of China, the largest library in Asia, will add its bibliographic records to the OCLC WorldCat database, the world’s most comprehensive online resource for finding items held in libraries, making those records available to researchers worldwide. The National Library of China will develop software to convert the format of its records before they can be added to WorldCat. Following development and conversion of the records, the National Library of China anticipates that some 1.5 million records will be sent to OCLC in 2008. These records, when added to WorldCat, will display Chinese characters. The Library will continue adding records to WorldCat beyond 2008 once the format has been converted.
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Published by rwatstein February 25th, 2008
in China, social networking and Japan.
Japan’s most popular social-networking site, Mixi, on Wednesday said it plans to establish a subsidiary in Shanghai to tap China’s fast-growing Internet market. “China’s Internet population is increasing at a significant pace, and its online-advertisement market is also gathering steam,” Mixi spokeswoman Hirono Kobayashi said. Internet users in China reached 172 million in 2007, and the figure is expected to reach 200 million by 2010, making it the world’s biggest Internet market by user numbers, she said.
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Published by rwatstein February 25th, 2008
in China, mobile/cell phones and journals.
Presenter, Inc. a pioneer in Internet and mobile computing technologies for business communication, recently launched a pilot run of journal abstracts over mobile phone. Run in two cities in China, the pilot covers about 150 doctors who will receive journal abstracts in text and images through MMS messaging.
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Published by rwatstein January 20th, 2008
in China and demographics.
China has now 210 million users according to a press release from the China Internet Network Information Centre (The CNNIC is a government agency). That’s a lot, considering that half a year ago there were only 165 million users and a year ago 137 million. In one year the number of users has gone up with 73 million users.
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Published by rwatstein January 5th, 2008
in China, search and Google.
The names of three banks and the word “stocks” beat “sex” to become four of the most Googled words in China last year, according to a Google China list seen recently. China Merchants Bank, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and China Construction Bank ranked second, third and sixth, according to a list supplied by Google China on its website (www.google.cn). “On the Chinese mainland, it was money and technology that took the honors last year,” the China Daily said, pointing out that “sex” was the most popular keyword for Google users in some other countries.
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Published by rwatstein January 5th, 2008
in YouTube, China, video and censorship.
China has decided to restrict the broadcasting of Internet videos — including those posted on video-sharing Web sites — to sites run by state-controlled companies and require providers to report questionable content to the government. It wasn’t immediately clear how the new rules would affect YouTube and other providers of Internet video that host Web sites available in China but are based in other countries.
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Published by rwatstein December 22nd, 2007
in China and publishing.
The Association of American Publishers (AAP) and the Publishers Association of the UK (PA) have applauded the issuance of administrative Punishment Decisions (PDs) against three universities in China’s Hubei and Shan’xi provinces for the illegal reproduction of thousands of books without permission of the copyright owners. The books, many of which are published by AAP and PA member companies, were primarily professional, medical, scientific and technical titles.
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Published by rwatstein December 16th, 2007
in YouTube, China and censorship.
By any reckoning, China should be an important new territory for YouTube. The country is the world’s second-largest Internet market, after the U.S., it’s rapidly beefing up its broadband infrastructure, and it’s home to millions of Net-savvy youths who love posting videos online. The Backdorm Boys, a Chinese-student singing duo, was one of the first breakout hits from online video, with their lip-synching clips recorded in their dormitory room winning fans worldwide. Moreover, YouTube owner Google (GOOG) is making a big push in the mainland, poaching top Microsoft (MSFT) executive Kai-Fu Lee two years ago to spearhead the search engine’s drive into China. In October, YouTube made its first moves in Greater China, launching Chinese versions in Hong Kong and Taiwan in October. But in China, YouTube is conspicuous by its official absence. It hasn’t launched a mainland service yet and Chinese who log onto the company’s U.S. site from China often complain that the site is inaccessible.
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Published by rwatstein October 27th, 2007
in China, internet and censorship.
At first, Liu Xiaoyuan just fumed when his online journal postings disappeared with no explanation. Then he decided to do something few if any of China’s censored bloggers had tried. He sued his service provider. Liu’s frustration is hardly unique. For China’s 162 million Web users, surfing the Internet can be like running an obstacle course with blocked Web sites, partial search results, and posts disappearing at every turn.
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Published by rwatstein October 27th, 2007
in China and search.
Reports have surfaced that China is redirecting traffic from foreign search engines operated by Google, Microsoft and Yahoo to homegrown Baidu.com. According to various reports online, some online users in China attempting to access Google.com, Microsoft’s Live.com and Yahoo.com search sites have been redirected to China-based Baidu.com. Blog site TechCrunch reported that Chinese traffic to Google’s blog search engine was being rerouted to Baidu. TechCrunch later published another article saying a similar situation was observed with the other two search giants.
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Published by rwatstein September 15th, 2007
in China, Pew Research and demographics.
There are now an estimated 137 million internet users in China, second in number only to the United States, where estimates of the current internet population range from 165 million to 210 million.The growth rate of China’s internet user population has been outpacing that of the U.S., and China is projected to overtake the U.S. in the total number of users within a few years. The influx of tens of millions of new online participants each year can be expected to have far-reaching consequences for the people of China, for its government and economy, and for the larger world. At the very least, the internet will offer ever greater numbers of Chinese a much more sophisticated information and communications world than the one they currently inhabit.
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Published by rwatstein June 25th, 2007
in China and web 2.0.
With the world’s second-largest and fastest-growing Internet user population, China has become the next frontier for Web 2.0 activity. In recent months, MySpace, Yahoo! and Google have all made inroads into the Chinese market by either launching local versions of their sites or investing in China-based technology or social networking startups.
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