Meta

Andrea: Adopt A Blog Update from John

Andrea ever mentioned the program last time and before. I appreciate this program, too, because it's a more authentic way to share resource and save more intellectual archive from being robbed and abandoned by ruling power.

Someday, my blog maybe blocked or cracked by government, too. Hopefully, i can find more adopting possibliities around the world, we need the hands.

DNS failure with del.icio.us?

It could be DNS failure yesterday that make del.icio.us unaccessible here. Joshua asked me to get the nslookup result, but right now everything seems back to track. But it's time to rethink of the social bookmark service. There are many sensitive links in del.icio.us from my observation, bloggers in China likes this site because it can bookmark the links or comments a few words without too much exposure. So del.icio.us is ust like another form of blog, isn't it? Also del.icio.us provides a way to reflect social evaluation on url, that makes people more intelligent to see some useful links and collect them too.

Although the service is too general to be said content-oritented, but in China, who knows. I can't even access a site called patternbee.org with proxy. It's just a learning game site that Jordan designed for kids, no any links to sensitive content.

the screenshot of del.icio.us in China.

Del.icio.us was blocked in China?

I just found del.icio.us was unaccessible in China today. The homepage to any del page now displays an odd "Error 404" page, however, it's normal when using a proxy to access it. Just need to double check with others.

M$'s bloglines

I just tested Microsoft' online RSS aggregator, started at start.com. Slow and no fun. Microsft still repeats it's old model of software market strategy, copy but no innovation.

Though they have employed a lot of javascript code in this online aggregator to make it more accessible and ease of use. I can't actually accept the other functions I guess the next step is to integrate this service with their MSN Spaces service. The world of blogosphere in Microsoft's eyes will thus become more and more close. Just like other paradoxes we talked between centralization and decentralization, i'm afraid MS is losing and will lose this game eventually. Too early to conclude? Maybe....

Talks with Rebecca

Rebecca asked me several questions on recent event about BBS and web site registration by China government. She posted it the script on the Global Voices blog. Hopefully, more oversea's bloggers can understand the situation of Chinese bloggers from the short coversation.

In a small seminar yesterday in Shanghai Normal University. I was invited to talk to dozens of educational bloggers. I encouraged them to make more communication with bloggers around the world that they can learn more, know more and do more from global collaboration. Actually, educational bloggers are a big part of the whole blogosphere in China. We should pay attention and do more support to such group in the future.

Our non-profit organization, Social Brain Foundation(SBF), is working on serveral frontiers to improve grassroots culture in China. The educational web site, oedu.org, is also a project supported by SBF.

More responses from bloggers to "web site declaration regulation" in China

from Zheng, Zola, many bloggers are outraged with the new regulation of "web site declaration regulation" by China government which will be taken effect from Mar. 20th... I will keep watch on this in the following days.

Ben met Kevin and Luliang at SXSW

Both Kevin and Ben told me their meeting, small world again. Ben also mentioned TsingHua's BBS was orderred to close for more strict control on voices by students.

Red terrorism

There are many incredible things happened in China's blogosphere in these days. The first thing is many BBS sites in unversities were orderred to close, covering almost all famous BBS sites such as the one in Tsing Hua Unversity. Many bloggers(see trackbacks) expresses their angry, like klogs, maomy, Why thinking, wang, etc.

I wrote on CNBlog that not only BBS is dying in China as a majoy window to watch China's public voice, but also those centralized Blog hosting services. They are all very easy to be blocked or orderred to shut down by gov. I'm happy to see that more and more netcitzen and bloggers realized it and moving to more distributed blogging solutions.

But another funny thing is that China government is commanding all internet web sites to register(including personal web sites)[via zheng]. If you have a web site hosting in China, e.g. abc.com, you should register under China gov central database first. They want to control the whole internet in this way, but I think it's so foolish they didn't understand how huge the web will be and the explosion of internet objects will eventually flood their stupid effort.

Winning the Race for Knowledge Worker Productivity

The paper by Kathleen Gilroy(CEO of The Otter Group) quoted some pages of CNBlog.org to show potentials of Blog in knowledge management and business use cases. Actually, till today, blog didn't show it's power within workplaces yet. The reason is same to it's social uses, but could be worse. The hierachical structure in business is more strict than in society. Can you imagine a CIO who doen't even know what's blog to approve the budget to set up internal blog system?

Anyway, i'm happy to see efforts from teams like Kathleen's to evangelize and pave ways in this area. Still slow, but promising.

Gossip about Blog regulation in China

It's said several portal sites(including some listed in Nasdaq) in China are working with government to design a brand new "internet publishing" regulation, especially to constrain blog hosting and blog writing activities online. If it's true, all those portals will benefit against audience losing; gov will benefit from against control losing, too.

Let's see how funny things will happen in next months.

Seems this blog hosting can't work again. :(

Maybe I should decide to move to another host.

How Blog can benefit from DOI

I didn't google out any other ideas about Blog and DOI. But we do meet many occassions to identify a blog post. The current blog tools provide a permanent link(or GUID in some tools) to identify a blog post. But actually there are already a matural digital content identity system-- Digital Object Indentifier(http://www.doi.org). DOI is a system for identifying and exchanging intellectual property in the digital environment. If weblog tools can support this sytem, the "peronal publishing" will be catergorized into the whole publishing industry. I ever tried get an ISSN for my Chinese blog from local ISSN agency, however, I failed because they said it's not a recognized journal yet. With DOI's opaque numbering mechanism, grassroots publisher can be more active to participate in the common knowledge space belongs to the whole human being.

DOI also works closely with other identifier system in the world, e.g. the new released ISBN-13.

From Microsoft to Google
Microsoft The software company bids adieu to Pat Helland, headed for Amazon, and Mark Lucovsky, now at Google. Hoho...not a small transition. [CNet]

Also Wired news, "Google v.s. Evil" to see how Google founders argues with those possible evil accusement. And how to put the code of conduct, "Don't be evil", into future actions.

I was troubleshooting this hosting server for weeks because the server didn't support passive ftp for uncertain reasons. Now it seems ok, but not sure how long I will stay with current hosting service.