Category Archives: Technology

Microsoft’s Bing in China

In the nerdosphere today Microsoft announced a new search engine, dubbed “Bing” to be launched next week. In China bing.com is redirecting to cn.bing.com – leaving many (nerds) guessing what the Middle Kingdom will get in terms of a search engine. In Chinese, Bing could mean a number of things depending on which tone you [...]
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A what film?

At first I thought this headline in Shanghai’s Enjoy Classifieds was a poor choice of words from a skin cream company, or similar: But, for 2000RMB ($400 Australian) an hour?……Oh.
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Shanzhai Eye: DIY helicopter

It’s one thing to Shanzhai a USB stick or SD card. Another to copy the iPhone. Amazing to see a whole F1 car made from scratch. But, a helicopter? Update: Thanks to Swiss James for pointing out this story was last month’s news at Shanghaiist and 56minus1.com. 56minus1 even has an update on what happened [...]
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Stop motion animation: Shanghai Auto Show

This is a short stop motion animation taken in front of the Volkswagon pavilion at the Shanghai Auto Show last week. A few less than obvious things to note from the clip: The HD screen in the background was amazingly huge and clear. There are models walking up and down the stage in front of [...]
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Shanzhai Eye: The Hi-Phone

Make no mistake about it, Shanzhai (fake) phones are big business in China. According to some in the local mobile industry, shanzhai phones make up between 20-30% of the market in China. If you take the industry figure of 650 million mobile subscribers in the middle kingdom then you’re looking at a ballpark figure of [...]
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Kung Fu Cyborg

I hope you’re sitting down, or have a book handy to hide pending excitement, because there’s a new movie hitting cinemas soon – “Metallic Attraction: Kung Foo Cyborg”. Here’s the English trailer: We’re not quite sure what the movie is about but the trailer says its a romantic sci-fi set in a future where the [...]
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China’s top 50 Websites

China: the world’s largest population of Interweb users. But what’s going on inside the great firewall and what are people interested in? This is a complex question to answer for a number of reasons; poor industry data, poor publisher’s data, data manipulation, and lack of industry standard measurements. However, one can find a general primer [...]
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Video: Lenovo’s Android phone for China

According to Engadget this is a hands-on video of Lenovo’s Ophone, a new smart phone powered by Google’s Android operating system. According to reports this iPhone wannabe will run on China’s TD SCDMA (China’s home-grown 3G standard) and be available through China Mobile. When? We’re not sure, but, possibly before Apple’s rumored release of the [...]
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Embed and share Google Music playlists

The big music news in China last week was the launch of Google Music – a free service allowing users in the mainland to download or stream more than a million licensed songs. Yes, you heard that right – FREE. Finding FREE MP3s to stream and download isn’t exactly news, right? The difference here is [...]
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Shanzhai Eye: Marlboro Phone

This week on Shanzhai Eye: Take one poisonous habit and a rising emotional attachment addiction, mash it up, and you get this ingenious invention – the cigarette pack phone. What looks like a regular packet of Marlboro Reds, dubbed “Cowboy killers”, is in fact a phone in disguise with the ability to hold at least [...]
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What does IE 8 say about Web development in China?

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) was released late last week – another browser, “whoop-dee-do”, right? Well maybe, but, the new browser release is an interesting insight into the way Web development seems to happen in China. In non-geek speak the new browser uses a new rendering engine which more closely follows open standards such as [...]
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Will China vote Ying or Yi for the “Best Job in the World”?

Meet Yao Yi, a 30-something year old from Guangdong, and Yu Ying, a media professional and documentary maker from Beijing. They’re the lucky Chinese candidates shortlisted from over 34,000 YouTube video entries submitted from all over the globe for the ‘best job in the world’ – Caretaker of the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef. [...]
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