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

find, download, link, share: check out playlists at Baidu 掌门人

Posted on by Lyn Jeffery

Zhangmenren

Now THIS is what I’m talking about. Wanna hear what’s on playlists generated by Chinese young people?  Here’s a song from a playlist called “Perfect World,” put together by Ah Yang.  Ah Yang’s playlists are number one on the user-generated Top 20 list (however, it’s not like we’ve got hundreds of thousands of voters.  It’s not SuperGirl.  He…

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Virtual China

microfinance + computers and internet for Chinese farmers

Posted on by Lyn Jeffery

Zuoquan

If you haven’t seen them yet, do check out the two-part video documentary, “Broadband for Barefoot Bankers: Zuoquan County” on YouTube, from the European Commission and PlaNetFinance’s “Broadband for Barefoot Bankers” program.  The videos document a process undertaken with poor farming families in Shanxi province wherein already existing local microfinance loan officers  are set up with a computer/Internet system to…

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Virtual China

Chinese blogposts becoming blogbooks

Posted on by Lyn Jeffery

Bookcover_01

John Kennedy at GlobalVoices has a wonderful translation of numerous Chinese blog posts about the latest media twist in the Chinese blogosphere: big name bloggers publishing books of blog posts.  Wish we knew more about who was reading them…people who can’t easily access the Internet?  Who would like to have more time online but don’t?  And of course,…

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Virtual China

less than 1% legal: Chinese digital music

Posted on by Lyn Jeffery

A HUGE part of virtual China, whether via large or small screen, is about digital music.  A *great* recent article in the online newsletter Knowledge@Wharton breaks down some of the basics for us.  Key excerpts (but really, just go read it):

Digital music can be
divided into online music and mobile music; each broadcasts,
respectively, through the Internet and a…

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Virtual China

finding Chinese colleges

Posted on by Lyn Jeffery

The categorization of search services in comparision with other
national/linguistic Internets, will continue to be one of the more interesting
developments in virtual China.

Baidu, China’s leading search engine, has launched one of those obvious-in-hindsight, badly needed services. Baidu College Search 百度大学搜索.

For instance, if you were interested in studying at the Chongqing University…

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Virtual China

Chinese blogs can drive quick public action

Posted on by Lyn Jeffery

We all have our own ideas about what charity is and how to make it happen. Charity on the Chinese mainland takes place within the context of socialist class ideologies, Chinese Buddhism, newly resurrected pre-revolutionary civic structures, Chinese-style non-governmental organizations, and emerging Western-influenced philanthropy.

In the last few years, bloggers have also voiced social justice issues, such as the “BMW case”…

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