Results tagged “tech”

While the system seems pretty cool, we feel like we've definitely seen that OS somewhere else.

We've been burned so many times before, so we're taking this with a grain of salt - but China Tech News reports that China Unicom has reached an agreement with Apple to bring the iPhone 3G to China by May 2009. If the rumor's correct, then it means that China Unicom will be launching the iPhone the same time it starts up its WCDMA 3G network nation-wide. Apple had allegedly been talking to China Mobile as well, but talks stalled over the tech company's iTunes app business.

A man in a Guangzhou Lenovo store died after the cellphone in his chest pocket exploded. The explosion severed a major artery in his neck and caused massive blood loss, almost immediately killing him. Though the make and model of the mobile phone are still under investigation, a member of the staff said the man had just changed his cellphone battery to a new one. This is the 9th recorded cellphone explosion in China since 2002, so maybe it's best to make sure your cellphone's in a bag or something, rather than on your physical person. Hexun

If you have a US iPhone 3G and have been tempted by repeated reminders in iTunes to upgrade to the 2.2 version of the iPhone firmware, you may soon be able to give in to the temptation without fear of relocking your device to AT&T. The iPhone Dev Team has announced that they will be launching a software hack to unlock your 3G iPhone on New Year's Eve. This will allow you to upgrade your firmware and keep it unlocked for use in China or anywhere else with a GSM network for that matter.

2009 is shaping up to be a very interesting year for China's mobile market. All that excitement over Google's Android phone is finally making its way to China. On the right you see a sleek new gadget codenamed "OPhone" that is making its rounds on gadget forums lately. Said to be a joint effort between Lenovo and China Mobile, this is the first in a series of phones that will be "based on China Mobile's OMS (Open Mobile System) which is essentially Android + TD SCDMA (China's home-grown 3G standard)." ITProPortal says the phone is expected to debut sometime in February or March.

Tech super blog TechCrunch tells us of a rumour swirling around that China Mobile will be "offering the iPhone at a heavily subsidized discount in order to court the massive Chinese population". An article at it.hexun.com which cites a member of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) as its source says:

China Mobile will procure the handsets for their full price, and then on-sell subsidized handsets to consumers. The source explained that China Mobile could buy a 3G iPhone from Apple for USD 299 – an example price – and then sell the handset to users for USD 199, treating the additional USD 100 as compensation to Apple. [Translation by Marbridge Consulting]

Check out John Pasden's helpful tips here (and be jealous that your company doesn't subsidize the purchasing of cool smuggled gadgets).

... comes from The New York Times. Check it out and let us know if you have found anything better.

From Beijing-based techie Frank Yu: "iPhones for sale in Beijing. 1st Gen 8 gig iPhone USD 735. 2nd Gen 8 gig 3G iPhone USD 1,176. The Older iPhones rose almost 42% since 3G." [Source]

Thanks to Twitter’s perpetual failures, Lu’s Fail Whale now features on t-shirts and coffee mugs while other artists create kinetic Fail Whale sculptures.

In a critical post about a new search engine awkwardly-named Cuil, the folks at popular blog TechCrunch posted a screen grab of a Cuil search for "TechCrunch" and said: "And I have no idea who that person is next to the results for our 'About' section." Why it is none other than Shanghai's biggest R.E.M. fan, Sam Flemming, head honcho of Internet Word of Mouth research and consulting firm CIC. So, that answers the "who" portion of this question ... but what about the "why"? The only thing we can think of: Cuil rightfully finds Sam a more attractive alternative to TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington.

Amnesty International's website is unreachable for journalists covering the Olympics one day after the organization issued a harsh report criticizing China's failure to make good on promises to improve human rights leading up to the Olympics. A more practical complaint from the press room — the internet is sloooooooooow. Welcome to our nightmare, guys. A spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, while admitting that websites for certain "cults" will indeed be blocked, blamed other inaccessibility issues on foreign web hosts. “There are some problems with a lot of websites themselves that makes it not easy to view them in China,” Liu Jianchao said. Hmmmm. [Source]

Well, you might want to check out these Chinese website search plugins for your browser. Some work for IE7, too. [Source]

"'As soon as we get it from Hong Kong and bring it over and unlock it.' ... Asked about claims that the new iPhones could not be hacked, he replied: 'The Chinese are very quick at unlocking iPhones. They used to say that the PSP couldn't be hacked as well, but we hacked it,' referring to Sony's PlayStation Portable game console." We believe the price they quote for an iPhone — 3,000 kuai — is for the earlier model. Story says new iPhones are going for upwards of US$860 in Thailand and US$600 in Hong Kong, where users must sign a two-year contract. [Source: IHT]

Cisco announces a three-year $45 million (RMB300 million) commitment to helping rebuild in the aftermath of the Sichuan earthquake that left nearly 5 million people homeless. The memorandum of understanding signed by both Sichuan Governor Jiang Jufeng and Cisco Chairman and CEO John Chambers was the result of several weeks of meetings between the Cisco team and officials from all levels of the Chinese government to gain a better understanding of the current situation. Corporate Social Responsibility News (CSRWire ) brings us the detailed story here.

• The famed Shaolin Temple has started its own online store on Taobao, and everything we've seen there looks like a bargain — from this Kinnara engraving (RMB1,800) to this god-knows-what-it-is (RMB9,999). The store, which opened a month ago, has sold a whopping 24 items. Reuters details all the praise Chinese netizens have for the temple's latest commercial venture here.
• Shanghai-based Ebay subsidiary Kijiji.cn has just announced its rebranding to Baixing.com. The company headed by Shanghai blogger Wang Jianshuo hopes the name change from 客齐集 (a phonetic transliteration) to 百姓网 ("bai xing" means the folk / the masses / the people) will help it become more memorable in the minds of Chinese websurfers. CNReviews has more.
• Ken Carroll of Chinesepod tells Thomas Crampton how to learn Chinese using Web 2.0 while Harvard fellow and Duke University professor Vivek Wadhwa disagrees that China is the new Silicon Valley.

From Danwei: "But conspicuously missing from the list are the Big Three of the Chinese Youtube clones: Youku.com, Tudou.com and 56.com. Although 56.com has been off line for nearly two weeks after an apparent porblem with the authorities, these three websites have the largest amount of funding of any video websites in China, most of it foreign. By most accounts they are also the most popular video sites in China."

">handy tri-colored boxes in communication stores throughout the city to be used to recycle or properly dispose of cell phones. The initiative could make a huge impact in helping the city's environment: Shanghai Mobile reports 3.2 million phones are trashed in the city each year. The local trend may be indicative of a nation-wide movement. During his recent visit to China, Samsung CEO Lee Yoon-Woo announced the company’s Green Operation Plan, which may involve up to 150 million RMB invested in environmentally-friendly factories, products and protocol. China’s D.Phone has followed suit, declaring plans to receive e-waste from shoppers at store locations throughout the nation in exchange for coupons worth 50-150 RMB. China Electronic Energy Saving Technology Association and China Quality Management Association For Electronics Industry are also advocating what they dub the “Green E-Campaign.”

• Search for Carrefour's Chinese name 家乐福 on Google.cn right now and you get a blank screen with a one-liner (screenshot on the right) telling you that you can't access the results for your search term, and please go back to Google.cn to search for something else. Funnily enough, the same search term on Google.com is not blocked within China and returns 6.2 million results. In related news, ISP's across China received orders last week to remove anything related to "Carrefour boycotts".
• Junk text messages in China has doubled in the year 2007 to a whopping 353.8 billion.
• The Internet Society of China has closed down the open email proxies and relays of more than 4300 email service providers, many of which have been exploited by spammers to illegally send emails to Internet users everywhere.

Video from HiPiHi.

A Chinese man is hoping to get in the record books after creating what he claims is the world's largest working mobile phone.

Continue reading "Chinese man builds world's largest cell phone"

As the Financial Times reported, April 1 was the day that China Mobile started trials of its homegrown 3G wireless technology in eight major cities, with about 60,000 customers.

A few weeks ago it came to our attention that what appeared to be a large price tag-shaped sign was affixed to the front of a building under construction across the street from Zhongshan Park. The sign was under wraps, but the shape alone was enough to conjure up images of Best Buy and many high school hours spent searching in vain for movies and music that they don't keep in stock. Now despite the fact that Zhongshan Park already has a Gome, Yolo, Suning, and a host of other crappy electronics stores, we couldn't help but get a little nostalgic for the good old days, when buying a print cartridge just meant you had to pick up the box and take it to the register. No red stamps, no getting an attendant to take it out from behind bullet-proof glass, and no waiting around for someone to go find the 'real' product after you've paid and shown your stamp to the requisite three to ten people.

By Kenneth Tan and David Feng

Xinhua: Spielberg slashed by Chinese, but his movies still admired

About.com has entered the Chinese market as Abang.com (阿邦网), and the website, like so many other Chinese portals, is looking very 热闹 ("busy"). The range of topics on Abang.com doesn't look like its very extensive yet but that's because they've only just started. Thomas Crampton catches up with Matt Roberts of About.com and finds out why they have chosen the name 阿邦 for their China presence. We thought the name was a great idea — one that fit what About.com is all about and one that should go down well with Chinese netizens.

the "best user experience", Nokia?)

Here, Shanghai, were your favourite stories for the year 2007:

No, we're not talking about "personalized networks of influence" — everyone needs those. We're talking about Guanxi, the paid SMS service that allows you to send the name of a venue and it replies with the venue's address. Yesterday, for about the 27th time[1] in the past several months, we got a message supposedly from Guanxi telling us their number had changed ... again: Due to Mii rule chng,new# of Guanxi Search is 106695882929.Pls save!...