Stilgherrian » china

Links for 02 July 2008

del.icio.us — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 22:13:18 +0000

Stilgherrian’s web links I’ve found for 02 July 2008, created automatically from internets.

China As An Island | Strange Maps: China has land borders with 14 other countries. And yet you should not think of China as particularly well-integrated with its neighbours. In fact, as shown in this dramatic map, you should rather consider China to be an island.
NASA's Moon Truck Goes for a Test Drive | Telstar Logistics: A prototype of a NASA lunar rover undergoing testing at the Moses Lake Sand Dunes in eastern Washington state.
Hyperpolitics (American Style) | viddler.com: The video of Mark Pesce's presentation at the Personal Democracy Forum 2008.
Asthma Weed | Sydney Weeds Committees: This is the nasty weed which keeps emerging in our garden and resists all efforts at eradication. Chemical warfare appears to be the only resort.

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Links for 23 May 2008 through 24 May 2008

del.icio.us — Sat, 24 May 2008 23:03:06 +0000

Stilgherrian’s links for 23 May 2008 through 24 May 2008, collected almost-automatically…

Only Connect | the human network: The text of Mark's keynote at Microsoft's ReMIX 08.
Mark Pesce - Only Connect | Viddler.com: This 23-minute keynote presentation from Microsoft's ReMIX 08 is a wonderful distillation of Mark's thoughts over recent months. If you want to get your head around the future, watch this.
TimesMachine | New York Times: All issues of the New York Times from 18 September 1851 to 30 December 1922 available to browse as images and PDFs. Free to NYT delivery subscribers, but even the sample issues offered to everyone are a fascinating read.
We Travel in Tribes | Rands In Repose: Excellent explanation of the appeal of Twitter.
Royalty-free music | Aussie Bloggers: Links to some sources of royalty-free music, i.e. music for which you pay a one-off fee and can then continue to use in your production.
Twittiquette and Acceptable Online Social Network Behaviour | DEDLOG: Dedlam offers 5 excellent tips for being a "good participant" on Twitter and other social media.
All The Cool People Are Still Going… | hyperpeople: Adolf Hitler gets ready for the Burning Man party. Wrong. Funny.
PR and the Management of a Real Crisis | DEDLOG: Shanghai-based Dedlam's commentary on how China handled the media during this month's earthquake.
Power-Tweeting: 101 Everyday Uses for Twitter | Inside CRM: Examples of how the Twitter community uses this simple tool. When it works.

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Twitter flattened by China earthquake, indirectly (not)

Stilgherrian — Thu, 15 May 2008 00:17:25 +0000

While I’ve become a heavy user of Twitter, its main problem is that it’s simply failing to cope with its own rapid growth. Today’s Twitter outage is doubtless caused by a sudden rush of interest following mainstream media coverage in the context of China’s earthquake.

‘Twitters’ beat media in reporting China earthquake, said AFP, and the story ran everywhere. I guess there might be two or three dozen people wanting to know what’s happening in China, maybe even more. Twitter fall down go boom.

Now scaling-up a service like Twitter isn’t easy, I guess. However they compound the problem by failing to provide meaningful information about their outages. People use Twitter for moment-by-moment personal communication — and many of them are the global digerati! When something goes wrong, updates need to happen frequently, and need to contain meaningful information. Perhaps you could use that Internet thing we keep hearing about?

Twitter, you face a grave danger. Someone could replicate your service but with better engineering. You must recover from this outage much better than all previous ones.

[Update 11.10am: Twitter says today's outage doesn't have an interesting explanation. "Part of our caching service required an unscheduled restart. That means a slow rebuilding of data." If so, then their systems architecture needs serious work, I reckon.]

[Credit: Cartoon Twitter-bird courtesy of Hugh MacLeod. Like all of Hugh's cartoons published online, it's free to use.]

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Episode 2 is recorded live tonight

Stilgherrian — Wed, 14 May 2008 23:50:23 +0000

Episode 2 of Stilgherrian Live Alpha is being “recorded live” tonight at 9.30pm Sydney time, though do feel free to arrive early. My good friend and colleague Zern Liew will be joining me from Singapore to talk about his recent visit to China’s three largest cities, amongst other things. I’ve also spoken to Ustream technical support and I think we’ve solved the talkback / co-host problem… fingers crossed!

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Links for 30 April 2008

del.icio.us — Thu, 01 May 2008 13:08:20 +0000

Here are the web links I’ve found over the last few days, posted a bit later than I’d intended. Cope.

Dissociative Identity Disorder | Wikipedia: This is what used to be called Multiple Personality Disorder. I'm reading about it because a friend was recently so diagnosed.
End Of Speculation: The Real Twitter Usage Numbers | TechCrunch: Michael Arrington's article begins: “Speculation about Twitter’s new round of financing is leading everyone to speculate on Twitter’s actual penetration into the “mainstream”, or lack thereof.
Upside Down Text Generator: A silly utility for turning text upside down. Fun for all the family. ??u??p ?s?l ???? p?? ???? ?ou plno?s ?ll??? ? [OK, so it doesn't work in this cross-feed.]
ACMA Communications Report 2006-07: The Australian communications & Media Authority's annual report to parliament. The numbers aren't as recent as they could be, but still lots of good data.
A Visit to Beijing's Exclusive Penis Restaurant | Spiegel Online: A specialist restaurant serves painstakingly decorated gourmet meals made only from the naughty bits.
Learning to Live Like an Early Bird | WSJ.com: Tips for turning a night person into a morning person. I'm already a morning person, but I know people who could use this…

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Why the Great Firewall of China works

Stilgherrian — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 07:59:37 +0000

A lengthy article in The Atlantic explains just why China’s “Great Firewall” is so effective. As Boing Boing summarises, “The kicker is the social and political impact… simply by making it inconvenient to read certain sites, the Chinese government can keep politically charged issues from surfacing in the national discourse.”

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Lost control of the prices

Stilgherrian — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 04:16:19 +0000

Just heard on CNN, a Beijing woman brandishing a lettuce and complaining that “the government has lost control of prices”. Yes, dear, that’s called a “free market economy”. Get used to it.

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China’s online population explosion

Stilgherrian — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 00:59:11 +0000

China now has 137 million Internet users. With this level of growth, in the next few years there’ll be more Chinese on the Internet than Americans. How will that change things, eh?

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China: Giant Contradictions

Stilgherrian — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 09:16:44 +0000

China blipped up twice in a week. I stumbled upon Steward Brand’s summary of a speech by long-time China watcher Orville Schell, China: Giant Contradictions.

These days you cannot think usefully about China and its potential futures without holding in your mind two utterly contradictory views of what is happening there. On the one hand, a robust and awesomely growing China; on the other hand a brittle China, parts of it truly hellish.

And I received a poignant email which illustrates the personal impact of change in China.

This is from a new worker at a client’s China facility, who’d just been given login details for the helpdesk. I’ve left the spelling and grammar intact, though added spaces between words for clarity.

Hello,
I am very very very glad to join in here. Thank you very much.
I don’t know how to express my mood. Perhaps, I hav’t express a right
way, and I know this letter would cost your time to read, I have decided to
send this to you.
I am a local of countryside girl. I daren’t imagine one day I can speak to
any foreigner, I just a common girl, very common, but today, I can not only
speak to serval foreigner but also work with they, with many wonderfull
person they are far from here.
I will learn you language, with all I can to.
Thank you for you listen.
see you.

She was removed from the system the next day. I don’t know what happened. I, too, daren’t imagine.