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

taking on baidu AND google

Posted on by Lyn Jeffery

China Tech News has an informative interview with Kiam Choo, CEO and founder of Bbmao, a start-up Chinese metasearch engine.  Bbmao gathers search results from China’s top 5 search engines: Baidu, Google, Yahoo, Sogou (Sohu), and iAsk (Sina).  Choo touts the new service’s features as social bookmarking, clustered search results, and a job search site–a big deal…

Continue readingtaking on baidu AND google

Virtual China

China’s p2p market growing quickly

Posted on by Lyn Jeffery

According to a report issued by the China Internet Development Research Center (CIDRC), under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, China’s online p2p/c2c market tripled its size to roughly 1.7 billion US$ in 2005, as compared to 2004.  [Note: online search for the CIDRC doesn’t reveal a website in Chinese or English, only a few references to　中国互联网发展研究中心 in other Chinese articles].

Taobao…

Continue readingChina’s p2p market growing quickly

Virtual China

Chinese stealing virtual property

Posted on by Lyn Jeffery

Mainland Chinese are becoming famous for their hacking and farming capabilities.  The latest: a South Korean  network security company tracks down a ring of virtual item hackers participating in mass theft from tens of thousands of South Korean “Lineage” players:

During the period from May 2005 to February
2006, South Korea reported about 4,000 online game theft cases, in
which…

Continue readingChinese stealing virtual property

Virtual China

blogs from the masses

Posted on by Lyn Jeffery

This Newsweek article starts to go beyond the usual story on censorship and American companies, to provide a taste of the wide range of topics being covered in Chinese blogs, the emergence of celebrity bloggers, and the many ways people get around regulations.  One of my favorite examples of what’s being blogged–plagiarizing boring ideological essays to advance your career in the CCP:

…

Continue readingblogs from the masses

Virtual China

Sinifying World of Warcraft

Posted on by Lyn Jeffery

Nice interview on Joystiq with Hoyt Ma, The9’s Senior Marketing Manager for World of Warcraft.   
WoW has been a massive hit in China–Chinese gamers make up half of the game’s worldwide player base.  And this despite technical [graphics and broadband requirements], financial, and visual [getting used to 3D vs. 2D Korean games] barriers for ordinary players.  But…

Continue readingSinifying World of Warcraft