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

China’s BBS for breaking news

Posted on by Lyn Jeffery

One of the biggest immediate differences between mainland Chinese Internet practices and those here in the US, is the use of Bulletin Board Systems.  A great place to start is this post at ESWN, which provides a “general comparative analysis” of news media in China, Hong Kong, and the US, and highlighting the relationship of China’s BBS to mainstream media.  Excerpts:

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Virtual China

reading books on the phone

Posted on by Lyn Jeffery

Another great interview from Pacific Epoch, this one from a company called Byread that’s developed a service for downloading and reading books for handsets, with content from over 200 Chinese publishing houses.

Long awaited 3G licensing should expand what is now available to mobile Internet users in China.  In the meantime, a host of companies are developing services in anticipation.…

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Virtual China

big players in Chinese mobile search

Posted on by Lyn Jeffery

China Net Investor picks up on a recent press release from Nokia announcing that in Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, and the mainland, high-end N70 and N90 handsets will come preinstalled with applications to access Baidu (China’s leading search engine) wireless search services.

Users will be able to search news, images, and a Baidu online community.

Where’s Google?

…

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Virtual China

animated demographic stats

Posted on by Lyn Jeffery

china_profile_1

The Asian Studies WWW Monitor recently profiled a go-to site for understanding basic demographic data and coming changes in China.  Gerard K. Heilig has an impressive body of work that presents data on Chinese demographics, fertility, land use, and food production, through animations, CD-Roms, and maps.  Heilig’s homepage links to some of his publications, such as Can…

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nuanced analysis of free speech: jail, still

Posted on by Lyn Jeffery

Hao Wu, self-described "biologist-turned-capitalist-turned-writer & filmmaker wannabe," has a brilliant analysis of the position of many Chinese internet users.  His "Do I Have to Take a Stand?" is critical reading for those who are trying to figure out why Chinese bloggers would, for example, deliberately shut down their own blogs as a joke on the overzealous Western media (see …

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Virtual China

multiple meanings of IPv6 in China

Posted on by Lyn Jeffery

CDT points to an International Herald Tribune article on recent comments by Chinese government official Hu Qiheng, chair of the Internet Society of China, a government-sanctioned public-private
group founded five years ago to promote the Internet in China. According to the article:

Fighting Internet crime, which Hu defined broadly to include acts
counter to the interests of the…

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