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“Send your location in by SMS at any time to 106920052131”

Wozone 我族网 is a free online social networking service that can also be used on your cell phone. You SMS your location and it tells you who is nearby that you might want to meet.  It adds location to the usual online China features: chat rooms, BBS,…

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As car culture grows in China, I can’t wait to see how Chinese enthusiasts customize their cars.  Here’s a set of photos from Moobol/Molive (a photojournalism website) showing a DIY car interior complete with laptop and GPS.

As the caption says, “a this little QQ unexpectedly did has a completely modern remodel!” (I’m not familiar with…

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The Hong Kong government proves yet again that it is decidedly backward with regards to internet governance.

Original article from ESWN:

• “‘fireman 1324’ at the chat room ‘Adult Images Posting Area’…”
• posted links to overseas pornographic material
• “Police raided a Sham Shui Po flat and arrested Woo”
• “fireman 1324” is fined…

Continue readingHong Kong falls yet again

Sony Online Entertainment Taipei and Shanghai Northstar are teaming up to create an online game for Stephen Chow’s hit movie, Kung Fu Hustle.

The game will only be released in China, and it will be free to play… unless you wish to purchase extra lives and special items.

According to the press release, it’s a sort…

Continue readingKung Fu Hustle online game, a China exclusive

See Nan Yang’s extraordinary English translation of memedia’s Strawberry Weekly, issue 5, now at GVO, for a roundup of content in Chinese-language blogosphere. So much interesting content, there’s really no way to excerpt it.  It’s quite a bold publication. 

From Chinese spambots, ads for a device that allows you to turn anyone’s mobile phone into a listening device.  We followed them to a little company called usa peian, whose homepage says, helpfully:

Every product on this site is illegal.  The products on this site are professionally used by the American FBI. Chinese technicians can discuss high level technology…

Continue reading“this is illegal”: turn a mobile phone into a bug?

Mr. Fan Jianxiang, who owns “Oriental Tea House” restaurants across Russia, is also a passionate collector of about 400 pieces of Soviet Union realism art works, mostly from the Soviet Union period since 1931, and mostly in Socialist Realist style.  Mr. Fan has opened a gallery at Chingning Library in Shanghai. This gallery will open formally in June and charge 20MRB/ person.…

Continue readingSocialist Realism: a Chinese love of Soviet art

Shanghai’s One CIty Nine Towns program and foreign-themed New Towns are strange and wonderful things. All are collaborative efforts between Chinese and international design teams.

Shanghai urban planners are trying to preserve the center of the city by not building any more new highways, and by setting up 9 satellite cities, or “New Towns” far out in the Shanghai suburbs.  But…

Continue readingShanghai’s foreign themed satellite cities

SinoCities Awards 2007 is an urban design competition sponsored by the civil engineering company MaxitGroup, and related to a Shanghai nonprofit architecture center called FAR (who also write the very interesting SInocities blog, with an impressive list of architect and urban planner authors).  You download the map…

Continue readingSinocities: open-source urban solutions?

We should really start a list of what new services and infrastructure are being promised for Beijing in 2008 Olympics.  Here’s an interesting one: live TV coverage on the new subway line. The line:

will have a transmitter every 200 meters that can receive
above-ground TV signals, said Ding Shukui, assistant general manager of
Beijing Railway Construction and…

Continue readingnew tech and Olympics: subway TV