Meta

MOJAVE, California -- The first private manned rocket to reach space soared toward the edge of the atmosphere again yesterday in the first half of a bid to earn a $10-million US prize....[Edmonton Sun]

Pasta shows the glue effect of social sofware

Really touched by Pasta, a simple program by Maciej Ceglowski, Joshua's partner on LOAF. The program just couples with del.icio.us to help us digest content instead of just a link.

Now Pasta only supports plain text posting. Along this idea, we can extend it to HTML pasting and automatcially update del.icio.us via API, also we can categorize all content from Pasta into a specific group via del.icio.us folksonomy system.

That's why Liz called Pasta a Yummy(be more delicious?), haha.

Five important "open" letters in 2004 to impact on China's political future

(I lost the original content of this post because blogger.com are too difficult to access in China now, so just list four letters here after frustration)

Five letters spreading in cyberspace but eventuall filterred by Great Firewall this year:

1. "The letter to Party Central Commitee ", Dr. Jiang Yanyong
2. "Declaration of the Campaign against The Central Propaganda Department", by Prof. Jiao Guobiao
3. "Open letter to Zhao Yong", by a journalist Lu Yuegang
4. "Why I Wore A Bullet-Proof Vest For The Last Six Years", by Huang Jingao, a local official in Fujian province
5. "To Peiking University President on YTHT BBS"(in Chinese), by Prof. He Weifang

it's not end, I believe. More elite with conscience will dare to express their opinions in this digital age. The grassroots media is beoming a balance power to the one-party-governed country.

CNBlog(The Wind Vane site of Chinese blogosphere). I googled the funcy idea and found a more clear picture from Joi Ito.

The water was provided on >Ars Electronica Festival

Furl to be accquired?

Got a email from "furl @furl.net" about Furl's acquisition by Looksmart. It said that the news will be announced the next day. Congratulations, if it's true.

What's is a good blog post?

Heh, fun and readable enough:

She��s shifting to what is a good blog post? Blog often -- a lot, all day. Bob Scoble at Microsoft does 50 a day. It��s like fresh rolls. Funny is great. Let��s kick publishing��s ass here. Somebody called her on the 50 thing. There are people with good stuff to say who blog weekly. Key is the audience. Back to tips -- make them short, quick, link to others. She loves to be over loaded...me, not so much. Other styles -- op/ed, word of mouth. You, as an editor, can become a brand. Be something you can��t get anywhere else -- that��s No. 1. Be original or die. And be faster than anyone else. Someone called it reverse voyeurism. Narcissism watch. Be daring and blunt. And of course, it��s a community. ----- [Lee Waters: Blog Rolling]

Wikipedia at a Million

From CNBlog, Wikipedia has just published its millionth article. Ha, congratuations, also Chinese articles in Wikipedia reaches 14,000.

Talk About Fun!

Outfoxed(anti-fox news channel documentary) Offered for Remix Greenwald has announced that he is making much of the Outfoxed unedited footage available free of charge, under a Creative Commons license, to the public for remixing and re-using in nearly any manner imaginable. Under these licenses, holders of original copyrights give other people permission to use ...

via [Furlog][Wired News]

How Social Software be categorized?

We talked about Social Software for months, since the first Social Software online forum at 2003/5 in China. The definition is still in discussion, but the business experiments never stop. There are always geeks and entrepreneurs to explore the new frontiers.

In some recent discussions, we talked about Flickr.com, Del.icio.us, Wealink.com, allconsuming.net, and of course blogosphere, as well other social featured new stuffs. In all these social software samples, people are connected by unstructured knowledge, including microcontent(blogs, urls, book titles, photos, contact information, etc.), it's the tacit social networking within, all publicity can be controlled by user himself/herself. You can expand such social networking by protecing your proviacy at the same time. However, to those explicit social networking service(SNS), such as friend-making/professional matchmaking sites, it's unlikely to be privacy ensured as the same time of expanding your networking(whether inviting existing connectors or request new connections). Or it's so weak connection and no-use to people(people event don't want to share their real name or real contact there). So Social Software will be re-categorized from konwledge type, privacy/publicity, people's requirements, etc. The value of SS can also be categorized and compared accordingly.

Need more time to figure out...

The photo is from Ring's flickr. She told me there was a big parade in Suzhou city in 9/18. Some Japanese businesses, including SK-II, insist on their opening shop in that day. Many people in Suzhou got angerred with those Japanese businesses. They gathered and show objections to Japanese products. The protest was totally under tight surveillance by local police bureau, then ended after hours.

Hu's era starts...

Just in the curiousness of foreign media, CCP announced the real retirement of Jiang Zemin(Many reports in Google news, either in English and Chinese). Whether it's too late or right time, we all know the day unavoidably comes.

500,000 bloggers in China

So do you know there are already over 500,000 bloggers in China? -----[via cnblog.org]

I've collected some USB Gadgets in Flickr, here, such as this USB Vacuum Cleaner. Actually, USB is just as an extension of power supplier in most of these toys. However, people always likes to "extend and create" based on new tech concept. It's fun and with fashion style. Seems they won't care whether it's effective or not(The USB boiler really works?). So it's called gadget.

Gmail exchange

There is a cool Gmail account exchanging site. It's more like a resource pool model I ever like. So I just post one Gmail invitation based on it's instruction. I think someone elsewhere can enjoy it as soon as possible.

Grassroots seems always cool and effective if activated.

MPAA's evil propaganda

Wow, the "Proect copyright" propaganda really terrify us(via acer). So we should try to do more things to ease ourselves instead of doing nothing.

I just try to post from Flickr to try this cool function. Flickr support very easy integration with one's blog by supporting various blog API. Now I pick up this "United Federal of Blogger" from Blogger.com(rec. by acer) as a readable scientific fiction.


I like such loosely coupled web federation, there must be more and more such applications emerging around us.

I can't post via Blogger API to this blog for two days. Now trying proxy to post again.

Can't post on blogger.com again?

The blogger.com seems more and more difficult to be accessed here. I can't even check for posts in history. When I open that that page, it will splash for one second and then "page not found" error. Even a proxy can't access it. I wonder if there are any new weapons in Great Firewall to block this site smartly. Let me try to ask more guys before finding an answer.

Trust vibration

An interesting topic was prompted in last dinner: Sometimes you may not want to cooperate with your close friends on some businesses, even you know he/she is qualified to cooperate with you. It's just because you know them well. Instead, you may easily trust another guy that you know only for days. You can talk about millions of dollars business with new partners without hesitation. Is it the weakness of some types of people, or a real existence of social features anywhere?

Lifelong Economy

We are finding more features to define Social Software. From early days, we think SS as "People take software to join a group"; then "The software that can accumulate people's Social Capital", then ":"Social software treats triads of people differently than pairs", etc. All these definitions are trying to get a real essence of this new genre.

Today, I'd like to call Social Software from another point of angel, "Lifelong software". It means that all social software should pay attention to timeline factor other than a static function. From this point, the new genre of stuff can inspire more scenarios in our life. All the applications based on SS schema can form a new generation of "Lifelong Economy". Either blog or SNS are not the end of social software, many new forms are yet to be discovered to find the value of "Lifelong Economy".

From Zheng to Zheng II

Zheng got a son about 20 days ago. He was very happy to announce it on his blog and many Chinese bloggers say congratulations to him. It's so movable. Then he built up a baby blog (written by father, of course) based on his own site. I can't say any better words than other smart bloggers, but I can change the icon of "Zheng" on cnblog to "Zheng II" with my admin privilige. So I did it. Haha.


(the two images will exchange automatically after days when I change back to father's icon)

So, congratulations to Zheng, again.

Hotmail blocked Gmail?

I just know from 3 bounced message that hotmail may block messages from gmail. No time to research blogosphere on the topic yet, so anyone else know more about it?

Google provides Chinese news crawling now

Google now provides Chinese news(acer told me about this news) just after days ago I found Korean and Japanese news. It looks really better than Baidu Chinese news aggregation in classification and must be smarter on algorithm.

Unfortunetely, I can't always access this page. It often splashes some content and then disapear. So it must be Great Firewall taking effect. Sigh...

How to invest in Chinese stocks as economy cools. Riding the brake

China is set to carry the Olympic torch in 2008, but investors are increasingly concerned the country's bright economic flame may fizzle long before then. Chinese stocks have been standout investments. China Region mutual funds, for example, averaged 12.5 percent annual gains over the three years ended Aug. 31, investment data firm Lipper reports. Now bullishness about China is waning. China's local "A-share" stock market and Hong Kong-listed... [via AlwaysOn Network]

As we all know, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has been approved recently to invest in China's A-share stock market via QDII. I suggest any partnerships with local players are more safe in this 5 years.

New Numbering System Planned for Internet Calls
ZDNet.co.uk, Ofcom outlined plans for a new numbering system for Voice over Broadband (VoB) users. Providers will be able to offer customers who are switching from traditional services geographic numbers ...

I wonder if it's neccessary to internet users, since Skype model is becoming more and more popular. Will a numbering system or ruling makes it reversed?

Add flickr post-it to sidebar

Looks cools, eh?

Google groups unaccssible from China

Some groups we were using for project disucssion on Google Groups, were found unaccessible from last night on. I can visit them only via a proxy or "nyud" method.

It also seems that the pictures on Google News site are also invisible. So I guess the Great Firewall upgraded itself again this week. So "Great".

Google news goes international

I found that google news has provided multiple language editionsI(including Espa?a, France, Japanese and Korean, Chinese exclueded). In China, Baidu(a Google competitor but with some investment from Google) also provides Chinese news aggregation service in this web site. Comparing to the news aggregation results, I found google's algorithm is more accurate and intelligent. Baidu is mimicing on the format, but the content presented seems always not well classified.

My flicker page

Lerry invited me to flicker, it's cool and fun with in-depth understanding on social software. I will try to testdrive this photo-sharing-based system on it's features soon. (My flicker page)

One of the interesting things is that flicker users can set up their degrees of photo sharing. Thus you can share photos(or pictures) only with your direct contact(one degree connections).

I ever talked with Andrea that how future blog system can set sharing degrees by integrating with Social Networking service. It seems flicker is trying to implement the concept in some ways.

A new way to bypass Great Firewall

nile provides a new way to access blocked web sites in China. It's no neccessary to set up any proxy, just extend a url with such a domain name(.nyud.net:8090), e.g. if you want to access cnn.com, just type http://www.cnn.com.nyud.net:8090. It's fast and stable to access most of the blocked site in China. So do you wanna try?

Taiwan's high-tech giant Acer Inc. on Wednesday announced a leadership reshuffle and the retirement of Stan Shih - the company's founder and a major figure in Taiwan's bid to dominate the personal computer industry. Shih will retire at the end of the year and will be replaced by Acer President J.T. Wang, who will take on the dual roles of chairman and chief executive at the world's fifth-largest computer firm, the company...

via AlwaysOn