Following their somewhat bizarre picture last month of Obama and a "dapper" donkey, the latest person to grace Baidu's homepage gives a slightly clearer message. The picture is of "Wheelchair Angel" (as she's been dubbed in some sections of the press) Jin Jing clutching the Olympic Torch to her chest, a position she adopted when pro-Tibetan protestors tried to snatch the flame from her in Paris last month. Clicking on the picture takes you through......

Graham Webster of CNet blog Sinobyte reports that William Chang, chief scientist for Baidu, told the WWW2008 conference in Beijing yesterday, "'There's in fact no reason for China to use Wikipedia, a service based 'out there'... It's very natural for China to make it's own products," and hence all of us should be good boys and girls and use Baidupedia instead. He of course conveniently forgot to mention Chinese Wikipedia remains blocked.HiPiHi, the Chinese clone......

digg_url = 'http://digg.com/2008_us_elections/Is_Chinese_search_engine_Baidu_endorsing_Barack_Obama'; Or is Barack just fishing for the Asian American vote? (Get it? He's throwing a net? Nets are sometimes used in fishing? Ah, f*ck it. It's late.) Anyway, when we first saw this, just minutes ago (thanks, Sage) we went, "Huh?" Odd, no? Check Baidu out for yourself. Pacific Epoch tries to explain: Baidu has chosen US presidential candidate Barack Obama as the sixth face to grace its homepage logo. Following......

Shanghai Securities newspaper came out with an article that claimed that they had a contact that says that tax authorities are investigating Google China for tax evasion. Moreover, they are not just looking at the company's taxes, but individual income taxes as well — including those of Lee Kai-Fu, Google's man in China, who is rumored to owe more than 5 million RMB in unpaid taxes. The report says that there is a several month......

We've been looking around all day for a video of Björk's final song Declare Independence at her Shanghai concert and here it is! [Click here for another alternative video] Björk chanted "Tibet, Tibet" not once, but thrice, before yelling out "Raise your flag" again and again in a crescendo that made the crowd completely ecstatic (presumably because half of them didn't understand what she was saying?). A scan of Baidu News reports on the concert......

Chinese television actually isn't as bad as most of us are inclined to think, we've chanced upon informative talkshows and documentaries on interesting subjects sometimes. But the rest of the time, horrendous TV commercials are on hand to remind us why we're better off watching bootleg DVDs or Project Runway on Tudou.com. Should anyone think nothing can be more jarring than Mr Whipple, then they haven't seen the latest TVC by Shanghai-based wool clothing brand,......

BAIDU RAPPED FOR SPREADING THE PICTURES; CHINESE COPS ARREST 10 SUSPECTS IN SHENZHEN We told you in an earlier story how Baidu, China's most popular search engine, was making it oh-so-easy for everyone to find pictures of Edison Chen engaged in naughty activities with various Hong Kong starlets. Conduct a Baidu search for Edison Chen's Chinese name "陈冠希", and Baidu will offer up automatic related keyword searches for "Edison Chen Sex-Photo-Gate", "Edison Chen Gillian Chung......

While reading up on the latest lawsuits brought against Baidu by the world's top music labels, we were alerted to this old Baidu advertisement that stars Hong Kong funnyman Stephen Chow (周星馳) as Ming Dynasty poet Tang Bohu (唐伯虎). In the 1min 50 sec long spot, Tang Bohu endeavours to charm over a girl with a Caucasian man who says nothing apart from “我知道” (I understand) in all the wrong tones. The Caucasian represents Google,......

For Part 1 of this story, click HERE. Shanghaiist is hyperventilating. Just when we thought the worst was over, a new set of pics have surfaced. After looking through the pictures, we had to take a while to recover from the massive nasal haemorrhage we suffered before we could calm down ourselves enough to put this story together (oh how very self-sacrificial!). The surfacing of the new pictures are an embarrassment to the Hong Kong......

Japanese investigators have found 'no abnormality' at the dumpling factory in Hebei Province at the centre of a food safety scare in Japan after hundreds of people suffered from pesticide poisoning from eating the dumplings. Traces of pesticide were found on the outside of the dumplings and not in the fillings, leading investigators to point to "deliberate poisoning, rather than accidental contamination". This idea, however, has been rejected by Chinese experts.The world's most powerful music......

RELEASE OF PICTURES OF HONG KONG STARS IN THE NUDE IN VARIOUS COMPROMISING SITUATIONS SETS TONGUES WAGGING ACROSS ASIA WARNING: Images after the jump are NOT safe for work (unless you happen to be a blogger working from home) Hong Kong celebrities Edison Chen (陈冠希), Bobo Chan (陈文媛), Gillian Chung (钟欣桐) and Cecilia Cheung (张柏芝) are currently embroiled in an embarrassing sex photo scandal that has whipped up a storm in the territory and the......

No, she hasn't been reincarnated, but yes, she's back, and this time as a virus! Reports are out that hackers have pounced on the news of Benazir Bhutto's assassination and within twelve hours of her death, viruses and malicious scripts appeared on the internet preying on surfers interested in additional information surrounding Bhutto's death. Well, guess who's responsible for the attack! CNet China has the details:据专家分析，由病毒的编写手法、来源网站、木马植入方式、病毒的危害对象等来看，此带毒网站可能与中国黑客有关。但是，由于在搜索引擎上搜索布托夫人英文名字的主要是国外人士，并且该网站在百度等国内搜索引擎的排名并不高，因此对中国用户的危害相应较弱。 Analysts have looked into the way the viruses are......

Leading Chinese search engine Baidu is mourning the loss of its CFO, Shawn Wang (王湛生) who died in an accident during his Christmas vacation in China on Thursday (no more details were given). The man was credited with leading the company through a successful initial public offering on NASDAQ. Meanwhile, a group of seven leading global record companies, including EMI, SONY BMG, Warner Music and Universal Music have lost their lawsuit against Baidu for aiding......

Nature News cites an EU report that finds that the real value of a Chinese scientist's wages is the lowest among the 38 countries surveyed. Yes, Chinese scientists make even less than Indian scientists. (h/t to Global Voices )CNNIC announces that China now has 72.82 million blogs and 47 million bloggers. That's one quarter of all Chinese netizens.The Little Red Blog bets against Baidu and roots for Google in the year 2008.Washington Post asks......

If you think only Chinese people use Baidu, you're dead wrong. Recently, a friend of ours in the US complained that he was unable to find any more music through Baidu's MP3 search service. Not a surprise really, since that treasure trove of pirated music that is now getting sued for big bucks in a Beijing court by some of the biggest names in music including Universal, EMI, Warner, Sony BMG and their local subsidiaries,......

Here, Shanghai, were your favourite stories for the month of November: Most voted: 1. Public pocket pinball 2. Yahoo China takes jibe at Baidu with latest banner ad 3. Panda-monium 4. The Red Laowai 5. Interview: Nanheyangrouchuan, blog commenter Most commented: 1. Interview: Nanheyangrouchuan, blog commenter 2. Cal Kitchen: Going back to Cali? I don't think so 3. Fatburger cometh soon? (and other food news) 4. Is Yahoo a moral pygmy? 5. China 15 years......

Despite the fact that Kevin Rudd - the fluent Mandarin speaking leader of the Australian Labor Party - is widely predicted to romp it in at the Australian Federal election this coming Saturday, it seems he's not taking any chances. The latest salvo in Rudd's "earnestness offensive" according to the Sydney Morning Herald, takes form in a seven-metre billboard of The Great Rudd (see right) that has been suspended above Cameron Road in Hong......

Baidu has released its video search report, and Kaiser Kuo of the Ogilvy China Digital Watch translates and summarises some of the key findings. Interestingly, “adult-related” search terms account for 34.14% of daily search volume, followed by celebrity-related (14.74%), TV serial related (12.48%), and animation-related (12.21%) searches. Google is reportedly under investigation in China for tax evasion, says Paul Midler of The China Game.Chinese Skype users now exceed 25% of the global total.While venture capital......

Last weekend, we told you that Yahoo! is now apologizing for not telling the full truth to Congress at the February 2006 hearing where Yahoo! was taken to task for its role in the conviction of Chinese journalist Shi Tao. Now both Republicans and Democrats have launched scathing attacks on Yahoo. San Mateo Democrat Tom Lantos has called Yahoo "moral pygmies", and New Jersey Republican Chris Smith compared Yahoo’s cooperation with the Chinese government to......

Baidu rolled a new feature as of yesterday—a person of the month, which you can see in their logo. They say that they pick the person based on searches done in their engine, so it's a bit like Google Trends meets Time Person of the Year on a monthly basis. This month it's Xu Sanduo (许三多), a character from a popular TV series called Soldier Sortie(士兵突击), which has become one of the more popular shows......

Yahoo China has taken a jibe at its arch-nemesis in the search arena, Baidu, with new banner ads featuring a bald big-bellied man peering out into the distance with a telescope and a tagline that says "If you can search only 100 degrees, you might as well search 360 degrees with Yahoo" (搜索只能搜100度，不如雅虎全能搜搜360度). Baidu's Chinese name 百度 means, literally, "100 degrees". According to this report at least, several webmasters have complained that their websites......

So in the meanwhile, Youtube remains blocked. Shanghai blogger John Pasden of Sinosplice informs us that Youtube wasn't the only unlucky fella. Revver.com and Dailymotion.com also appear to be hit. And of course Google Video was never accessible in China to begin with, so that's a no-count. But the mainstream media don't seem to be bothered with the Youtube block. If you don't believe me, just compare for yourself by clicking here and here. For......

On finding out about the Youtube block, these were the first reactions of Chinese blogger Ken Wong:昨晚YouTube发布了香港分站也即繁体中文站时，我还可以正常访问所有YouTube站点，而今天一大早起来，就发现已经全部撞墙了（广州电信ADSL）。看了一下昨晚读者朋友们的反馈，他们也和我一样。暂时还不知道该说什么好，或者一个字就够了：扌喿！ Yesterday when Youtube released its Hong Kong / Traditional Chinese version, I could still access Youtube normally, but this morning when I woke up, I found that it had been bummed (I'm on Guangzhou Telecom ADSL). Comments on yesterday's post from readers suggest they experienced the same thing. I don't really know how to respond to this, except......

News tidbits from the public transportation world: Maglev hours are being extended to match the operating hours of the Metro Line 2, opening at 6:45am and closing at 9:30pm. In 2005 the high-speed train extended its hours in a bid to snag more passengers; this time the move comes as it rides a new wave of popularity. Shanghai's Dazhong Taxi is following the city of Beijing's footsteps and declaring all of its taxis to be......

Alibaba.com, China’s largest B2B commerce site is going public in Hong Kong in a few weeks. With the current frenzied market back drop, and Alibaba’s tremendous earning power (Goldman Sachs’ analyst pegs the site will earn a net profit of USD $83.8 million this year, up 186 percent from last year), the IPO will no doubt be a roaring success. Sounds great, so where can we get some allocation? Well, that’s the thing, there will......

For those of you using Feedburner to manage your RSS feeds and wondering why you haven't been able to read any of your favourite blogs, it looks like it might have been GFW'ed. CNet Asia's Little Red Blog says the Feedburner block was only temporary, but we're still unable to access any of our feeds at http://feeds.feedburner.com. It also recommends that we check out FeedSky, which it says is China's number one RSS feed service,......

Hu in new bid to tighten screws on rival faction, by Chua Chin Hon of the Straits Times:One has died from an undisclosed illness while another is already behind bars on corruption charges. But there appears to be no let-up in Chinese President Hu Jintao's attempts to put the squeeze on members of the rival Shanghai faction, a group of senior leaders and officials allied with his predecessor Jiang Zemin. News emerged in recent days......

Chinese search engine Baidu just can't seem to stay out of the news. Pacific Epoch thinks that Baidu is finally living up to the formerly tongue-in-cheek moniker of "Google of China," while fool.com likens the growth of the company to a "runaway freight train." Certainly, there are plenty of reasons behind its phenomenal growth: for one, it copies most of the neat functions and applications that Google has—including a rumored instant messaging application. Called "Baidu......

Late last year, actress Zhang Yu made headlines for blowing the whistle on the widespread use of the "casting couch" in the Chinese film and TV industry. The above video reminded us of that, though in this case, the two men are attempting to get the woman, named Shi Mei, to do some kind of nude scene for her music video. They try to persuade her this way and that, while Shi replies that......

Baidu Sued For Copyright Infringement "Video downloads of Guangdong Meng Tong Culture's licensed historical costume drama series "Zhen Guan Chang Ge" were found on Baidu space channel (hi.baidu.com). ... Meng Tone is asking Baidu to pay 440,000 Yuan in compensation." China vows to revamp leprosy villages "The disease has now been officially eradicated in China, but the villages remain partly because the patients were unable to rebuild their lives after being institutionalised for decades."......