It seems that today Chinese users could visit YouTube again since it was blocked on Oct 14.  It was really terrible when I heard YouTube was blocked half a month ago. Quite a lot of people considered that it was for the National Congress which was held from Oct 15 to Oct 21.

Catching up on news: NTT DoCoMo unveiled the official mobile phone game of the 2008 Olympics at the Tokyo Game Show 2007 in September:

“In one of the game’s events, you put the phone down on a table and pump your arms like a sprinting runner. The phone’s camera picks up your movements and accelerates your onscreen running character accordingly.”

Unfortunately…

Continue readingThe official mobile game of the 2008 Olympics

Jason posted on Citybar/City8.com last summer, and I thought I’d give a little update because I love it. City8 gives you a beautiful high res full-screen photo of the place you choose, which you can navigate for a 360 degree view, move closer and farther, annotate, and see others’ annotations as well.  (Tip: click on the middle of the green nav…

Continue readingCity8.com: Chinese urban mapping tool

糖果猫猫 popil is a Guangzhou-based designer (comic, graphic, fashion, animation) who runs a pretty little blog called “candy variety shop
糖果杂货铺.” I’ve picked out two of her works below.

First up, an illustration of a street-market scene with a classical border. The title suggests its based on a 烧衣街 in Guangzhou.

Second up,…

Continue readingFeatured designer: popil 糖果猫猫

Mad that Youtube is BANNED in China Facebook group seems mostly to be expats, although not completely. It has over 700 members at present.

From TechCrunch:

Sohu paid 30 million dollars back in 2005 to create the official 2008 Olympics’ website, and now claims exclusive rights to all internet advertising for it as well. The Beijing International Olympic Committee has yet to process their claim, but the original article from AFP reveals some insider views:

“Zeng says…

Continue readingSohu claims exclusive advertising rights to the 2008 Olympics

Businessweek ran an article recently called Rise of the Asian D-School. (Here “D-school” is short for design school, not to be confused with Standord’s “d.school” which is Stanford’s catchy name for its Institute for Design.)

Summary: Asian design schools are ramping up to recruit and retain talent, and multinationals are arming themselves with these grads to conquer…

Continue readingBusinessweek feature on Asian D-School features Hong Kong

Update, July 15 2009: see latest post on this topic here, as well as ongoing conversation in comments section. –Lyn

Advanced Chinese mobile phones are gaining an audience, but judging from the comments that are still piling up on this ChinaTech news item from May, there seems to be a growing need for a Chinese mobile phone hacking website —…

Continue readingneed for Chinese mobile phone hacking blog in English

“Coca-Cola is to launch a range of drinks based on traditional Chinese herbal ingredients and recipes.”

Via PFSK; original article over at BrandRepublic.

They seem to have a Chinese pop-star motif going on, and there’s some talk in the blogosphere about how they rely less on user-generated content and focus more on entertaining people.

I haven’t checked it out yet, but I wanted to get it on the radar, for those…

Continue readingHipHi gets a new competitor