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What's the real benchmark on China's blogosphere

Xiao qiang's article on 'New Scientist" raised a lot of discussions in Slashdot community, as well in China's blogosphere. Apprearantly, three different types of voices can be seen in both English and Chinese space:

- Blog struggles in China like other internet phenomena(BBS, etc.), it's so skeptical to this space
- Blogging in China is mixture of opportunities and problems, depends on how you use it
- China's blogosphere is as great as other blogosphere, no criticism

I strongly support diversified viewpoints to China's blogosphere since I'm a learning technology researcher. People no exception construct his own perceptions with previous knowledge("Constructivism"). The 'worlds' are totally different with different benchmarks. But I personally prefer the second understanding of this space. Blog can be seen as a saw, but it should be tested on woods back and forth. Any blogosphere will endure some test, a test on "bottom-up v.s. top-down" world view, the two different social organizing structure. I like reading the essay, "The Second Superpower Rears its Beautiful Head" by James F. Moore. We know Fortunetely, we can put more hopes with more personal enabling technologies, including blog, Social Software, etc.

Someones said Zheng, me and other cnblog guys lighted up the torch of China's blogosphere. We did not, neither anyone else in my mind. Becuase blogging is not a controllable stuff in minorities' hand. It belongs to common people. From day one of CNBlog.org, we encourage people to register at once on blogger.com, and create their own blog in minutes. So CNBlog.org is not a center, neither a portal, it always follows it's base principle, "Blog on blog for Chinese". On Cnblog's blog, we respect posts from guest bloggers. We never 'reedit' or 'remove' any post from it's birth, even to those flame disputes. Some guys blogged to complain Dan Gillmor and Xiao Qiang ignored more wide voices of China's blogosphere. As I know, they are eager to know more from different sources instead of just listen to few 'famous' names.

Via del.icio.us, Xiao Qiang's article was seen bookmarked by many people around the world. I regard it as a historian writing, without solutions to the problems we are all asking everyday. We can't predict the future, because it changes too chaotically to be predicted. Also we don't need predicate the future, because we are creating it, harnessing the power of grassroots.

We history

T-salon:

Not sure whether it was Marc Bloch who said that everyone is a historian; however there are some qualities that made "professional" or at least a trained historian different from those who weren't trained in the craft of history.

I have the similar discussion with Tian months ago. Grassroots historian and archivest(?) are emerging, along with the blogging and other new formats of online collaboration works. There will be more detail things be recorded with grassroots publishing behaviors. It just like that since microscope was invented by Anton van Leeuwenhoek, people can know more detail things than ever before. The scale of history research will be downsized to minutes in digital age. Andrew Lih mentioned the gap between history book and news, I think we can put "we history" here. It's just happening every minutes, either in blogging or wiki coauthoring. ...

Xiao Qiang: Chinese Whispers

Another good piece on China's blogosphere from Xiao Qiang, published on "New Scientist"(Cover date 27 November 04):

"Blog services are now sprouting all over China. By the end of October 2004, China had more than 45 large blog-hosting services. A Google search for bo ke will return more than 2 million results, from blogs for football fans to blogs for Christians. And while the larger hosting companies, like blogcn.com, blogdriver.com and blogbus,com, have become subject to censorship regulations themselves, smaller companies and individuals do not face the same pressures. Any tech-savvy user can download and install blogging software themselves, bypassing the controls."

More could be seen on "New Scientist" paper edition.

Dan Gillmor: In China, blogs waiting to bloom

Dan wrotes his impression on China's blogosphere in Hongkong:

Estimates of the number of Chinese bloggers range as high as 600,000 -- not a trivial number. That's far fewer per capita among computer users, however, than in the United States. But blogs, the leading kind of personal Web site, are likely to have an outsized impact -- when and if people feel more free to say what's actually on their minds.

Blogger's witness on murder quoted in mass media

From CNBlog.org, "A blogger(web name "24-hour-blogger")in Beijing witnessed a murder on Wang Fu Jing avenue(The First Avenue in China)" The DV pictures then quoted by two big media in Beijing after hours, but appearantly they reported in a totally different voice and zheng commented that "it shows the discrepancy between traditional media and blogosphere".



The blogger also mentioned his worry on the slow response of police aftter he called them. He also feels oddness that no one police take photos in locale.

Leading to global voice?

Berkman center of Harvard Law School invited me to attend the conference titled "Interent & Society: vote, bits and bytes". Rebecca also has a blog site called "Global Voice Online" set up for this conference to warm it up. I did registration on the site, however, I didn't find any entry point for publishing. Let me try again....

But a funny matter may annoy me in these 2 days, the US Shanghai Consulate delayed my visa application. They said they will research on my background because it seems too complex to be processed as a normal one. What a reason! I do work on different areas by dividing my life If one person is multidisciplinary, will they feel dangrous to the country?

In these days, when I think of "global voice", I not only think of free voice in one country, but a real global conversation. The world is changing with Internet, and conversations between different kinds people are becoming more important than ever before. I appreciate Harvard's invitation, but I hate to waste time on visa application each time go to US. Isn't it a conversation block?

The changes of media

- Ubiquitous source
- Glocal checking
- Truth?
- Time line (granularity?) and speed
- Your audience/reader know more than you

thinking of such points after Dan Gillmor's lecture in Fudan Unversity.

Dan Gillmor is now conduct a lesson in Fudan University

By showing some of the slides, Dan is now explaining to many students in Fudan University Journalism School(I asked myself why those students are all girls) on the new media concept of "we media", borrowed from his new book "We the Media".

I'm very glad to hear that most of the students here know about weblog, and some of them has already had one. Dan is still doing his lecture, so let's see what's going on in this classroom. ...

Dan Gillmor in Shanghai

Dan Gillmor, the autor of "We the Media", is now visiting Shanghai. Besides some lectures in universities, he will meet some local bloggers and entrepreneurs. We just met yesterday and will held a dinner part to welcome him tonight.

Three major resistent factor in China's cyberspace

In China, we see an exiting figure on internet population, however, few real valuable content(as well sites) can be found in this cyberspace(if there is a boundary). I think there are three main reasons of that:

- Great Firewall, people can't free access the knowledge (whehter good/bad from their point), thus can't share all the opinions and even valuable science and technology content. It's the problem on Free Access.

- Blogging Damper, there are always "fears" when people do blogging. They can't publish their opinions(even citation) before re-thinking it's risks. Thus many important memes will stop spreading on it's routes. It's the problem on Free Speech.

- International Crosslinking, the language is the biggest barrier that Chinese internet users can't fully absort and export their intelligence to outside world. Translation is not always adequate to fill the gap. Thus many memes can't connect around the world, too. I think many US users can't get outside memes with the same problem. It's the problem of Language.

However, there is also a 'great' catalyzer in this cyberspace, that is "Copyright ignorance". People always copycats other's content without paying attention on the license related. It's a "good" factor for meme propaganda. It's dangerous with voilating game rules, however, it can be educated by cultural mutual-impacts anyway.

Blogger.com internationalized

We in China found blogger.com now provides Chinese interface. Is that means blogger.com now be more internationalized?

There are many great services on internet, however, most of them never thought of supporting people from around the world. I understand it's a costy thing to think about international ization from scracth on. However, when you understand how Microsoft booms from it's overseas revenue since 10 years ago, and how Google benefits from it's global search system, you may want to reconsider it in your next product lines.

I wonder blogger.com's multi-language support is developed under Evan Williams or not, anyway, it's more like google style today.

Response to AlwaysOnNetwork's blocking in China

David included me in their dicussion on AON's being blocked by China. My comments:

As I know from recent policies( you never see the policies in public, but it does exist), more foreign publishing sites will be blocked after China's gov emphasized that internet is an important media to
propaganda Cummunist Party's voices.

I think AO is on the traffic growing stage, and noticed by the Great
Firewall(a country-wide survillance system behind Internet
infrastructure). Such sites would be listed into GF's blocking list(a
general list). Once a site is put it the list, it's very diffult to be
released. Many blog hosting sites met such situation eventually.

Anyway I can still access AO's site via proxy, it's not in the
"totally blocked site" list I guess. To some human rights/democracy
related sites(VOA for example), even proxy can't help. :(

Anyway, I can sometimes try those blocked sites using url extention like this. With those tools, we can sometimes be very happy to see the pages appear from blocking. People outside China won't understand the happiness so much...

Google search tops 8 billion pages

AlwaysOn:"SAN FRANCISCO -- In a bid to keep its dominant search position, Google has doubled the amount of pages it's crawling on the Internet. Google is now crawling 8 billion Web pages. Earlier in the day, the company's home page said it searched 4.3 billion pages. By topping the threshold of 8 billion pages, Google exceeds the 5 billion pages currently crawled by Microsoft's search engine. Microsoft is expected to unveil its search engine on Thursday. The service is still in beta, and... "

Wetaste now support Firefox

After trying with many WYSIWYG solutions at last weekend, I finally choose the "in-house" solution made by Isaac myself. And of course, it's more fit for my requirements.

Though, a Firefox bookmarklet solution is yet to find. Anyway, you can taste the "digest tool" integrating with del.icio.us now! Tell me your suggestions...

AlwaysOn: Microsoft Internet Explorer lost 3% since its decline first began in early June, WebSideStory reported. Internet Explorer dropped to 92.9 percent of the browser market as of end-October 2004,which is a 2.6% drop overall. Firefox, the Mozilla Foundation's standalone browser, was the biggest beneficiary of IE's most recent losses, WebSideStory said. WebSideStory broke out Firefox's share for the first time, and the alternative browser comprised 3% of the market. Browsers from Mozilla and...

Photo album of US election

on Flickr,

See photos tagged with election, vote, ballot, and other terms related to the election, live as they are uploaded!

Virus or Great Firewall?

It's too slow to access many oversea's web sites from both my office and home in these days, so as many other friends in China. I know some of them are interfered by gov-backing Great Firewall, including blogger.com, gmail.com and google news. However, I guess many other sites could be affected by the traffic of new virus. Since China is becoming one of the biggest country on internet users(89M reported recently), it's also the one of biggest victim of any virus.

Virus plus Great Firewall, the new headache of us, who are already live upon "Always On" life.