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

June 1, 2006 by Lyn Jeffery

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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finding Chinese colleges

May 27, 2006 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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Guge still gets to back alleys of virtual China

May 10, 2006 by Lyn Jeffery

Part trashing Google/Guge, part pursed-lips shock, part guide to the backstreets of virtual China, this May 10 “Daily Economic News 每日经济新闻” article spells out how to find drugs, guns, and other illegal things online–and makes the assertion that Guge/Google is not doing a proper filtering job.

The reporter’s central question: “How can we prevent the Internet from becoming more of a…

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Baidu’s wikipedia: review

April 26, 2006 by Lyn Jeffery

Chinese blogger Xu Jie says Baidu’s Baike wikipedia (see earlier post on its launch) is a disappointment:

Baidu’s Baike [an alternate Chinese wikipedia] has finally formally launched. but it’s nothing to get excited about…I looked around a bit and most of the articles are naked plagiarism. They’ve hypocritically put links to reference material at the…

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start here: Chinese Internet market 101

April 21, 2006 by Lyn Jeffery

One of the best pieces I’ve read on the politics and business of Virtual China: Clive Thompson‘s NYT piece on the Chinese Internet, what it means to its users, and how American businesses are navigating the market. The basic conundrum, from an American point of view, is summed up in these excerpts:

…as [Google’s Kai-Fu] Lee…

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reverse-engineering GuGe

April 18, 2006 by Lyn Jeffery

Okay. According to Pacific Epoch, Eric Schmidt translates Google’s new Chinese name, GuGe 谷歌, as “fruitful and happy song.”

Red Herring says “valley song” or “harvesting song.”

ChinaTechNews translates it as “Happy Song.”

John Kennedy at Global Voices says it should be “valley song.”

China’s official news agency,…

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some people against GuGe

April 17, 2006 by Lyn Jeffery

Postshow points us to a grassroots anti-GuGe campaign being waged by some hardcore Chinese Google fans. As of 10:40 pm Monday evening April 17, 944 had signed an online petition against using the new Chinese language name, GuGe “谷歌”. 468 prefer the original English name (indeed, the Chinese version is the first time Google has changed its name…

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“Song of the Grain”: the back story

April 14, 2006 by Lyn Jeffery

I’ll try to stop posting, soon, about GuGe news, but it’s awfully juicy at the moment.

Donews has a great E-Business World article describing the events that led up to the choice of a Chinese name for Google. According the the article, Google’s Chinese name has been on the drawing board ever since the company hired its first Chinese employee in…

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