Results tagged “internet”

If you've never seen Far West China, it's a pretty fantastic blog written by an American expat living in Xinjiang. Since the unrest in Xinjiang this summer, the blog has become a platform for airing the Kafkaesque circumstances that have been imposed on the region. From posts on the psychological effects of the complete internet blackout to the numerous new security checks at mosques and on buses, as well as the increases in tourism to Dunhuang for web access, the blog chronicles the very human issues involved. Personally, we can't even imagine what months without internet would be like, and we're sure that's the least of their concerns. Photo byRemko Tanis @ flickr

According to a presentation by MTV about youth and social networking in Asia, China is the only country where people actually have more ONLINE friends than offline friends. We guess that's not so surprising coming from the Land of 1,000 Internet Addiction Camps, but it still makes us want to go all Ogre on these kids. NERDS!!

It seems to be a recurrent theme in Chinese history that farming and happiness are linked. The ancient Poet Tao Qian wrote of the idyllic beauty of picking chrysanthemums and gazing towards the southern hills; everyone from politicians to students were "sent down" to the countryside to promote re-education in the ways of the land; and these days, you can even farm on Kaixin to ease the pain of your technology-ridden soul.

The latest Facebook Global Monitor report released by Inside Facebook has revealed, rather unsurprisingly, that China heads the pack of three countries that actually lost more active users than it gained for the month of September (the other two being Iceland and Cyprus). When Facebook was banned in July, the social network had one million monthly active users. That figure collapsed to half a million in August, before shrinking further to 41,000 in early September, and now as of the beginning of this month, only a measly 14,000 remain. Totally authoritative anecdotal reports suggest that these 14,000 diehard Facebook users comprised mostly of smart Shanghaiist readers who know where to get their VPN and other desperate expats who just miss their friends back home.

Remember when text messaging wasn't that big of a deal? Way back before touch screens and T9, when your elders had barely gotten used to having a cellular phone on them? Well, the halcyon days of instant communication technology are long gone - if you're one of the "after 90" generation, you've grown up in constant contact with friends, family and the rest of the world.

Coming hot on the heels of previous reports, more info has been released regarding the recent emails sent to journalists in China containing malware. It seems whoever is sending the emails has been targeting Chinese employees of major media organizations, hooking the reader’s interest by detailing a possible trip to China to research China’s role in the global economy.

Daedalum Films released the first half of their excellent documentary, Human Flesh Search Engine, onto the internet a couple of weeks ago. Now the second half is up too, though you'll need a password to access it. Email info (at) daedalumfilms (dot) com for the password and then check the rest of their film out either on Vimeo or on the Daedalum Films' website.

Wow. According to Thomas Crampton and the Shanghai Foreign Correspondents' Club, somebody out there is targeting journalists with emails containing malicious viruses.

The saga of problems and setbacks that China has faced in attempting to implement the controversial Green Dam internet censorship software just keeps on going. After postponing the software's release indefinitely this summer, the government has attempted to find ways to censor the 'net without provoking massive public outrage. Which is funny, because the government is sneaking around trying to do things on the internet without anyone noticing, just like us!

In case you missed the screening of Daedalum Films' Human Flesh Search Engine, the documentary is now available on Vimeo. Well, currently half the documentary is available on Vimeo. The second part will be released soon, its directors say.

What is this? A pretty cool graphic of China twitterers based on where they're located. Thanks to resizing issues, it's hard to read this pic, but head over to @gabyu's web trend map and you'll find a good list of people to follow if you're into China issues (us included!).

Months after Twitter was blocked and Chinese Twitter clones Fanfou, Digu, and Zuosa (apparently Zuosa is still alive) were felled by the mighty hand of the CCP censorship army, Internet portal Sina has started its own "microblogging service."

Ministry of Health guidelines for Internet addiction are out and it looks like anyone who spends just 40 hours online each week can be considered an Internet addict. The draft definition was "based on research into the standards used by foreign countries and has also been influenced by China's experience with the problem," according to CRI English. We just took a good look at how many hours we're logged on each week and it seems like we could be considered internet addicts twice over. Uh oh. We hope this doesn't mean someone's booking us for one of those painfully deadly internet addict camps.

• Chinese mainland to hold television fundraiser for Taiwan typhoon relief [Xinhua] "Five TV stations in the Chinese mainland are organizing a televised fundraiser on the coming Thursday to raise money for victims of Taiwan's deadliest typhoon in half a century. A number of the country's biggest names in the entertainment industry will be invited, such as directors Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige and Feng Xiaogang, actors Jackie Chan and Jet Li, actresses Zhang Ziyi and Zhou Xun, as well as sports stars Yao Ming and Guo JingJing. The close-to-four-hour fundraiser are organized by the Shanghai-based Dragon TV, Jiangsu Satellite TV, Zhejiang Satellite TV, Hunan Satellite TV, and Shenzhen Satellite TV. The event will be broadcast live beginning 7:35 p.m. Thursday."
• Chinese Espionage: Britain's MI5 reports epidemic in spying [Examiner] "The almost legendary MI5 British counterintelligence service is said to be deeply concerned over an increase in spying by Chinese operatives in the United Kingdom. Although intelligence experts aren't certain how widespread the problem is, they believe the espionage is rampant and a serious consequence of the global economy."
• Rainwater collection projects gather 24.5 million m3 of rainwater in Beijing [CCTV] "One rainfall may create a new “Kunming Lake” in Beijing. Although rainfall for 2009 has been relatively less than that of prior years, rainwater collection projects across urban and rural areas have been playing a big role. According to statistics from Beijing Water Authority, until August 13, 24.5 million cubic meters of rainwater, equivalent to 21 “Kunming Lakes” had been stored in Beijing. Rivers and lakes in urban areas also stored 18.04 million cubic meters of rainwater, creating a fresh and beautiful sight in Beijing."

Despite assurances that cable operators totally have everything under control, it seems like the earthquakes really did affect the internet. Again. Shanghai Daily confirms that the 6.8 quake that rocked both Taiwan and Japan yesterday morning shook up the undersea cables once more. A back up channel that flowed through Pusan, South Korea also became victim to the earthquake, which is what caused most of the trouble for us here in Shanghai. The internet seems to be relatively okay today, so we guess whatever magic China Telecom used to tide us over until the cables are repaired works.

• China earthquake activist on trial [AFP] "A Chinese activist who was investigating whether shoddy construction caused school collapses in last year's massive Sichuan earthquake went on trial for subversion, his lawyer said. Environmental activist and writer Tan Zuoren, who was charged with "inciting subversion of state power," is accused of defaming the ruling Communist Party and the government over their handling of the Tiananmen crackdown on pro-democracy protestors in 1989. Mr Tan's brief trial in Chengdu, capital of southwest Sichuan province, ended without a verdict, Pu Zhiqiang, one of his two lawyers, said."
• Chinese police detain supporters of quake critic [AP] "A high-profile Chinese government critic said he and 11 others were detained by police in a hotel Wednesday to prevent them from attending the trial of an activist who investigated the deaths of thousands of schoolchildren in last year's earthquake. Avant-garde artist Ai Weiwei said police in the southwestern city of Chengdu also roughed up him and one of the other supporters who had traveled to the city to try to attend the trial of Tan Zuoren, an activist charged with subversion. The charges Tan faces appear to be linked to his quake investigation as well as essays he wrote about the 1989 student-led demonstrations in Tiananmen Square that ended in a deadly military crackdown. Beijing routinely uses the charge of subversion to imprison dissidents for years."
• Murder at the 'reboot' camps [China Daily] "Deng Senshan had never skipped school, never been diagnosed with a mental illness and, according to his family, surfed the Web only on weekends. Yet on Aug 1, the 15-year-old was admitted to a rehab camp for Internet addiction (IA), where, after being ordered to run 5 km as part of his "treatment", he was beaten to death by counselors."

While some of our readers are lucky enough to live in far off lands of fast internet and access to that thing called YouTube, the many of us here in China are stuck behind the ever-present and always annoying Great Firewall. So how do we at Shanghaiist still have access to our favorite timewasters websites like Facebook and Twitter? Does it have something to do with our obvious awesomeness? Well, yes and no.

Hurrah! China has decided to delay indefinitely its plans to force manufacturers to include that Green Dam Youth Escort software on new computers, just hours before the policy was supposed to start. Their reasoning: "Some businesses pointed out the heavy amount of work, time pressures and lack of preparation." The news comes days after various international organizations petitioned the Party, begging for it to rethink the regulations, and PC makers have said that they can't make the deadline. The plan had also engendered threats of violence towards the company responsible for the Green Dam software and huge Chinese netizen backlash. Its indefinite postponement is not only a victory for free speech, but also a victory for anyone who doesn't really want malware on their brand new computer.

Remember how the internet got uncomfortably, ridiculously slow last night? The Great Firewall might be to blame for that too. While we just got a couple of annoying connection difficulties, several parts of Guangdong province were completely cut off for nearly four hours. China Telecom, southern China's main ISP, said it was due to glitches that have now been fixed, but would not comment on the scale of the disruption. But two IT analysts said the breakdown could have been the result of an upgrade to the GFW. In which case, we say FU GFW. Source: South China Morning Post

Floating around on the Chinese interwebs right now is the very creative Declaration of the Anonymous Netizens 2009. It is an apt description of our mood right now following the mysterious disappearance of all Google apps in China [h/t Rick Martin, @mranti @fumi]

The internet can sometimes be a very dangerous place, especially for teenage girls. Yesterday evening, a 16-year-old school girl named Fang was stabbed to death in Nanjing by a man she met online.

Oh that troublesome Ai Weiwei! Not content to stick to taking subversive pictures around Tiananmen Square or investigating Sichuan Earthquake victims, he's now starting internet blackout protest days!

我想提醒你的是，这里是外交部的新闻发布厅，
不是讨论同性恋问题的场所。
What I'd like to remind you is this.This is the Ministry of Foreign Affairs press conference and not a forum for the discussion of gay issues.

The Chinese government has been drawing a lot fire these last few days after it was revealed that they would be requiring that computers manufactured or imported in China have "Green Dam and Youth Escort"—an internet filtering software—preinstalled.

Yesterday, an MIIT (Ministry of Industry and Information Technology) directive was leaked to Rebecca MacKinnon of Rconversations that stated that as of 1 July, all computers for distribution in China must have the net nanny software "Green Dam - Youth Escort" pre-installed. The Shanghai Daily reported today that schools in China had already received this directive last month. This news comes after the social media crackdown last week and reports that Twitter and Flickr have been unblocked in Shanghai.

Chinese microblogging site Fanfou (饭否) is now temporarily unavailable for "server maintenance" and according to a note posted on its website (see screenshot), will be back up by the morning of June 6. From now till then is four days, so this sounds like some pretty massive "server maintenance" going on, but make of it what you will. Meanwhile, it's business as usual at other Chinese Twitter clones Digu, Zuosa, Komoo and Taotao.

Everybody's favorite portal for Chinese BBS happenings, chinaSMACK, has gone down in a Denial of Service attack suspiciously close to certain sensitive anniversaries. For those of you who don't need to deal with these kind of things, DoS attacks are when hackers flood a target's server in an attempt to keep it from functioning. Usually, it's done by either continuing to force the targeted computer to reset, or consume its resources so much that normal users are shoved out from accessing it. We don't really know how long chinaSMACK will be out of commission, or why it was brought down in the first place (though we have our suspicions - especially after reading this article), but we welcome anonymous tips to our tipline! Until we know, we'll just sit here desperately hoping it comes back soon. (Thanks Bryan!)

The scorned Shanghai boyfriend who posted pornographic pictures of his ex after she dumped him has now been detained by the police - for charges of "insulting behavior," according to Shanghai Daily.

Screenshot was taken from People's Daily online, in an article about a Guizhou tourism official who caught the attention of netizens for being so beautiful. From the picture, it seems that nationalistic fervor in China was a little more amorous than we thought.

Have you been missing laughing babies and sneezing pandas? Haven't seen Star Wars kid in too long of a time? Or you just wanted to feel plugged into the international video-trading scene again?