Combining half-naked girls with winks and sexual innuendo is nothing new to advertising, but this week 2345.com took that classic combo one step further. As a result, their sexy ad segments currently screening on Shanghai metro and bus TVs are causing quite a tizzy among parents and less-than-amused passengers. more ›

"Government websites in China will be shut down if they fail to respond to public concerns or update information, according to a circular issued by China's State Council, or cabinet. Government websites are required to provide up-to-date and accurate information, especially on sectors such as government budgets, public resources allocation and major construction projects. The move is believed to aim at improving the credibility of government websites, many of which have been accused of lacking adequate information, offering delayed updates and constantly having hyper-link errors." [Xinhua] more ›

“This approval is a significant change for Chinese language users worldwide,” said Rod Beckstrom, President and Chief Executive Officer of ICANN. “One fifth of the world speaks Chinese and that means we just increased the potential online accessibility for roughly a billion people.”

Shanghai TALK is finally really on the web. Though they'd previously launched talkmagazines.cn, the effort was... well, we guess we could call it bare bones. Very pretty, but also more or less useless. The Kristin Kreuk of Shanghai expat magazine websites you could say. more ›

First, we found Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao on Facebook. Then, there was the week-long China 2.0 Tour in November. And it looks like China's fascination with dominating the internet is showing no signs of slowing. Last week, the national campaign for the use of the new domain name, ".中国 (China)", finally took off in Beijing. more ›

• Construction starts on rail link [Shanghai Daily] "Construction on the 29.68-billion-yuan (US$4.34 billion) Shanghai-Hangzhou high-speed railway started yesterday at Fengjing area in Shanghai. The project, which is expected to be completed before the 2010 Shanghai World Expo, will cut the journey between the two cities to 38 minutes from the current one hour or more and is part of a plan to cut travel time between any two cities in the Yangtze River Delta Region to within one hour."
• Has Western Fast Food Hit a Wall in China? [Mark's China Blog] "I can't say that I'm that surprised that Chinese people may move away from eating western fast food as much as they have been. First, western fast food joints in China aren't cheap. In America, when you eat the crap that fast food places serve up you at least don't have to spend much money. That can't be said for China."
• China: ‘Can I supersize my stimulus?’ [FT Alphaville] "Expectations are growing China could super-size its stimulus package when it votes on the budget next week, especially since the draft currently being considered already foresees a record-breaking fiscal deficit for the country in 2009 of some 950bn yuan (higher than previously expected)."

You’ve seen her byline all over the site for the past several weeks, and now we’re ready to make it official: We are happy to announce that Elaine Chow is the new Editor of Shanghaiist. more ›

Harper's Magazine recently announced via Twitter that all 25 years of its awesome stats section, Harper's Index, was now available and searchable online here. We searched "shanghai" and got two results. One was about Chairman Mao jackets at Shanghai Tang, and the other was actually related to the city. Here it is, from June 2005: "Percentage change since 1994 in treatment for male infertility and erectile dysfunction in Shanghai: +100." There are considerably more results for "china." more ›

Nominations for the Ninth Annual Weblog Awards will close in around 24 hours. Go make your nominations for Best Asian Weblog and 29 other categories now: http://2009.bloggies.com/ more ›

From a source close to the proceedings: "Asia City Finance Director just made the official announcement: SH will cease publication with the December 19th issue. They're tired of subsidizing the Shanghai office's monthly loss, which is substantial, and in light of the global economy, they're stopping publication. ... They've got a few interested parties who they're in talks with, but nothing has been signed and mid-December is the deadline for that. Their plan for the future: A website. The same one they have now, perhaps not even run by anyone in Shanghai, but instead done by their Hong Kong office." The ellipsis you see in the text above replaced these thoughts from our source: "Cough, cough, bullshit, cough. It's not nearly the whole story, but it certainly provides them a convenient cover for exiting the market. Sales figures were way down well before any of the current economic crises. Cough, cough." Previously: You could be the next owner of SH Mag! more ›

While searching the web for Tianma Shan, we stumbled upon this helpful site by Robin Zhang, "the software designer of JetPhoto." Clicking around a bit, we found this neat panorama of the University of Shanghai (沪江大学) in the 1920s. We also found these current photos of the old University of Shanghai buildings, which are now part of the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology [official site | map] in Yangpu District on the Huangpu River. We found this all kind of interesting — we had never heard of the University of Shanghai, which was founded in 1906. We probably should have, since we have a friend who recently graduated from USST. Here's what she said: more ›

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

Source: Real Clear Sports more ›

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. more ›

Andrew Lih reports on some websites newly accessible in Mainland China leading up to the Olympics. They include: BBC Chinese, Wikipedia Chinese, Radio Free Asia and Apple Daily HK newspaper. Lih is quick to point out that "there are plenty of sites still blocked in China, including Tor Project, Amnesty International, Wikia, The Pirate Bay, AboutUs.org, and LiveJournal." Lih's bet on when unblocked sites will be reblocked? "8 hours and 8 minutes after the Olympic closing ceremony." In other web censorship news, the press commission head of the International Olympic Committee said he smells a conspiracy regarding the controversy surrounding inaccessible sites in Olympic media center: "I have to accept that I appear to be the fall guy and may be the fall guy." Are you a disgruntled Olympic reporter? Try this.
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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. more ›

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] more ›

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

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." more ›

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 to a page headlined with the words "Protect the scared flame, make China faster, higher, stronger!" more ›