Author: Lyn Jeffery

Lyn Jeffery is a cultural anthropologist and researcher at the Institute for the Future, a nonprofit group in Palo Alto, California. She studies new experiences enabled by connective technologies.
Virtual China

Henan student riots

Posted on by Lyn Jeffery

ESWN has translations and photos from BBS posts about student riots (and yes, they really were riots) at Shengda Economics, Trade and Management College of Zhengzhou University in Henan last week. As ESWN notes, this is another clear case of mainstream media getting their reports directly from BBS posts. It also highlights the anger that many college and university students are feeling today…

Continue readingHenan student riots

Virtual China

The Escapist on Chinese gaming

Posted on by Lyn Jeffery

Escapist

Check out the current issue of The Escapist, which explores Chinese gaming.  Includes articles on Chinese piracy, transnational work relationships, and Chinese game design. Great stuff. I especially liked the article by Patrick Dugan on different approaches to cross-cultural textual communication in games.  Excerpt:

A design I’m currently developing utilizes the Celtic…

Continue readingThe Escapist on Chinese gaming

Virtual China

Baidu’s “zeitgeist” rankings

Posted on by Lyn Jeffery

Baidu_zeitgeist

Google has its “zeitgeist” feature which allows you to take the pulse of most popular search terms for the week, month, or even year; Baidu has a similar feature called “list of hottest Chinese searches” 中文搜索风云榜.  Neither are particularly intuitive to me, frankly, since they both divide the search terms into strange categories–e.g., Google’s “spring break” list…

Continue readingBaidu’s “zeitgeist” rankings

Virtual China

Chinese vlogging contest: source of the next Asian Backstreet Boys or Bus Uncle?

Posted on by Lyn Jeffery

Vvloggeraward

Have you been wondering why two of the most well-known online video clips come from greater China (Asian Backstreet Boys may be THE most well known around the world; and while Bus Uncle isn’t, it’s gotten an amazing amount of play for something that’s subtitled)?  Chinese youth are armed with video cellphones, digital video cameras,…

Continue readingChinese vlogging contest: source of the next Asian Backstreet Boys or Bus Uncle?

Virtual China

China’s virtual goods business booming

Posted on by Lyn Jeffery

“A new profession for the Internet age” is a newspaper article from the Harbin Daily [for those who don’t know, Harbin is a major city in China’s extreme northeast], via Chinese IT community Donews. The article chronicles the ins and outs of owning, working at, and regulating businesses that sell virtual assets. Rough translation, sometimes paraphrased, follows.  The article is too long…

Continue readingChina’s virtual goods business booming

Virtual China

China’s “denied access” doll

Posted on by Lyn Jeffery

Reporters Without Borders: The Chinese authorities seem to have stopped blocking access to the
international version of Google’s search engine, Google.com. Tests
carried out by Reporters Without Borders show that it is again
accessible in Beijing and Shanghai. Google’s unblocking tends to
confirm the theory that online censorship was stepped up for the
anniversary of the Tiananmen Square…

Continue readingChina’s “denied access” doll

Virtual China

BBS today: your favorite poisonous snacks

Posted on by Lyn Jeffery

This BBS photo post from June 2, has received about 670,000 visits in the last few days.  And why not?  The author reveals the poisonous secrets of everyone’s favorite street snacks.  Each snack has its own photo, with ratings of up to 5 stars denoting how much harm it causes and how much everyone loves it, “key word” ingredients, and the criminal acts…

Continue readingBBS today: your favorite poisonous snacks

Virtual China

Hong Kong enlists kids in p2p monitoring

Posted on by Lyn Jeffery

p2pnet caught this story from the South China Morning Post.  The Hong Kong Customs’ Intellectual Property Investigation Bureau has released results from its training program for youth, which teaches them how to monitor and report illegal internet transfer files.  The program aims to expand to a cadre of 200,000 youth.

” ‘Initially we used 700 cadets from the Civil Aid Service…

Continue readingHong Kong enlists kids in p2p monitoring