卦Trigram 2.0
Asian Snowcrash

Interesting - I just clicked a link in Bloglines to open an article in a new window… then found that the page was hosted on Blogspot. And it opened!

Blogspot has been inaccessible from China since I arrived…. I’ve tested a few sites now, and they are all loading normally. My own blogs are also loading normally; even though I’ve been able to access them over the last few days, each page has taken over a minute to load.

Seems like the Great Firewall is becoming more open - for now, at least.

I don’t know why, but I haven’t been able to access any of my blogs on this domain since I got to Beijing. Email and ftp were OK, but not http. Now, though - just as I was preparing to try and change hosting company again - I’m able to get in. What changed? I don’t know, but let’s hope it lasts!

Beijing is great, as always; I love it here!

In this blog’s previous incarnation, I was tracking the development of commercial spaceflight with great interest. One very exciting prospect was the proposed development of a spaceport here in Singapore. I wrote when I first heard of it, it showed a Singapore that might have “advanced bioscience and cheap space travel, in a Garden City with great food and loads of kung fu schools“… Hehe, of course, that reveals a lot about my interests!

Anyhow… I’m not sure what’s happening with the biotech industry; friends of mine who were working for biotech startups tell me that it’s not working out, and they are leaving. I can’t say whether this is indicative of the biotech sector overall here… but from that list of mine, the spaceport project has, sad to say, come to a halt.

Yesterday’s Straits Times reported that the project has stalled due to a lack of funding. I can’t find an online version of the article, but this older article gives an indication of the problems it faced - notably, that potential investors are unconvinced that there is a strong enough demand (something I was also beginning to wonder about last year…)

I’ve already spoken about why I moved from the old blog address, and mentioned that I split the topics of that one blog between several new, more focussed blogs - of which this is one.

One consequence of moving was that my traffic dropped significantly (only temporarily,I hope!) That made a recent spike in visitor numbers all the more noticeable. The new traffic was all to one post - the one about the Meizu MiniOne being featured in the Straits Times; my post got mentioned in the MeizuMe forum site, which drew a flood of traffic, several hundred visitors over a day or so.

I’m still watching the traffic for a while before i do any detailed analysis, but it’s immediately clear that the interest is concentrated in Europe and the US. There’s some, but not much, traffic from developing countries; almost no-one came from Africa.

Initial summary of my conclusions:

• this traffic came from a fan-site, not mainstream media;
• traffic to my post spiked immediately after the link went up; MeizuMe members are monitoring the site closely for updates;
• the site members are eagerly anticipating the release of the M8, and there is a great deal of speculation over what the phone’s final specifications will be;
• the traffic came largely from developed, mature markets. There are plenty of handphone models available there, and yet these indivduals are interested in a specific model from a Chinese manufacturer.

I find this very interesting indeed: what we are seeing seems to be a ‘cult’ forming, beneath the radar of most analysts. Of course, it’s nowhere near the size, and has nothing like the strength, of the iPhone movement. Furthermore, it draws much of its initial momentum from the iPhone, which has clearly inspired the design. However, to dismiss it as a cheap knock-off clone,as the Straits Times did, is pretty lazy; the M8 is a feature-rich phone that improves on the iPhone in various ways. What exactly is generating the excitement is something to be looked at further. Speaking personally, as someone who is also looking forward to the M8’s release, I find that while the iPhone is very cool, it just doesn’t suit my day-to-day needs; it also costs more than I want to pay, given that I don’t spend much on fashion items, and need features more than I need ‘cool’. This, for example, is why I bought an Asus EeePC rather than a MacBook Air!

Also…. and I speak here as a long-standing Mac fan, I’m turned off by the way Apple seem to be developing the iPhone as a closed system. I know that they’ve turned around, and announced that third-party apps will be allowed soon, but first impressions count, and Apple’s gone corporate; the ‘rebel’ factor has moved to China…

Another notable point about the M8 is that it is Meizu’s first phone; the company is better known as a manufacturer of MP3 players, and is now diversifying into a new product line, bringing a strong consumer base with it.

I think this is an important indicator of future trends. The scattershot design method of Chinese phone manufacturers, which I wrote about on a previous occasion, is generating a lot of niche models. These are already beginning to find a market outside China, and as they become better-known for variety and pricing, their market will grow. Since manufacturing costs are not high - which makes short-run production feasible - I’m thinking of this process as guerilla design for the long tail…

More on this later, perhaps. As for the M8, that Straits Times article wasn’t backed up by anything solid. I’m going to assume that it was filler, since pretty much all of the content has been available online for some time. Regarding the local content, where the author referred to local shops preparing to stock the M8, I was in Sim Lim Square a few days afterwards, scouting out prices for the EeePC, and I didn’t see any evidence of phone shops advertising the M8. That’s not to say that nobody is, but there’s no buzz to speak of. In fact, the MeizuMe forum is reliably suggesting that the M8 won’t hit the market until Q2. Speaking personally, I can’t wait that long, as my current phone is on its last legs… I’m still tempted by the CECT T100, as I am curious about its bioemetric security system….

My computing resources, as of yesterday lunchtime, consisted of:

• a Toshiba Satellite, running Windows XP;
• a Powerbook G4, with a non-functioning screen, but which still works fine with an external monitor;
• a G3 Clamshell iBook;
• a G4 late-model iBook;
• my 8Gb iPod Touch.

The Toshiba is my main desktop machine, and is going to China with me. The Powerbook and Clamshell are going into storage. I wasn’t sure what to do with the iBook. I’m going to need a mobile computer that I can easily take with me as I move around Beijing, and perhaps elsewhere in China… The G4 iBook has been my mobile computer here in Singapore, but it’s getting a bit old… plus, it’s heavy! Weight really is an issue for me, as I’m taking a lot of books with me.

So, I made a decision. The G4 will also go into storage here in Singapore. Niti had been raving about her Asus EeePC, and it seemed like it would also suit my requirements. Yesterday afternoon, I went to the Challenger superstore in the Funan IT mall, and bought a white one.

It cost S$598, which is a fixed price - even the cheapo shops in Sim Lim Square were charging the same price. This is real mobile computing - forget the MacBook Air I was able to use it on the MRT and the bus last night to draft a business report, and it worked really well. I have some SD cards lying around that I can use to expand the storage, and it looks really good. So… I think it was a good buy. It is certainly very small and very light, so no more sore shoulders from lugging a laptop around all day…

Just as with TED, the LIFT08 conference has a large number of utterly fascinating videos of their speakers online. A few days ago, I was watching the keynote speech by Bruce Sterling, and at the end was not impressed. I came away with the impression of a rant about Nicolas Sarkozy and Carla Bruni, who really aren’t a big presence on my Asian radar. I even went so far as to comment in an email to Niti that I’d been disappointed. Still… I guess I should have wondered about that; I’ve been a really big fan of his books. I put it down to an off-day and thought no more about it.

As it happens, I’m a long-time RSS subscriber to Pasta & Vinegar, blogged by Nicolas Nova - who also happens to be LIFT organizer. This morning I opened up a post about Bruce’s speech, which made me go back and watch the video again… and OK, now I see what he was doing. I should have known better than to think that he would have gotten tied up in a discussion of celebrity gossip

In my defence, I can point out that a) I seem to have been far from the only person who didn’t catch the point, and b) which is far more relevant, I’m only a few days away from moving to Beijing, and I didn’t have my full attention on the video. In fact, rather more than half of my attention was at that point devoted to packing, shredding, putting aside for recycling, or otherwise attending to, my dwindling pile of possessions…

So, lesson learned: when Bruce Sterling speaks, give your full attention or you’ll miss something important!

I was impressed as well by Jasmina Tesanovic’s presentation. She was talking about Radio B92, the student radio station that evolved into the multimedia channel for dissent in Slobodan Milosovic’s Serbia. I was following what they were doing at the time, ie mid 90s, especially because they were very innovative in their use of the internet; furthermore, I’ve only just finished reading Matthew Collins’ Guerrilla Radio, which tells the story of B92 during that period - and in which Jasmina’s name appears more than a few times! (Bruce and Jasmina also happen to be married now, which is why I mention them both here!).

This didn’t show up when I searched the Straits Times‘ website yesterday, but I just came across it via Google. It isn’t the article I was referring to before, but is pretty informative - and does mention the Finns’ involvement! It’s an article by Tracy Quek: China a leader in developing eco-cities. It’s got an interesting couple of paragraphs deep down:

It intends to stand out from other projects by putting an emphasis on building a strong sense of community among residents, leveraging on 40 years of experience in fostering bonds between people from disparate backgrounds.

‘It’s not just the hardware, but changing the mindsets of people and inculcating in them a whole new way of thinking where they give the environment priority,’ said a source close to the project.

The People’s Association, which oversees grassroots organisations in Singapore, will set up community centres and other grassroots mechanisms that will draw the community closer.

To me, this does reinforce the impression that the Tianjin project is not just a way to boost Singapore’s brand, engineering know-how, and R&D insights, but could also be a way to test social engineering techniques for re-introduction back here - namely, how to build green awareness. And, I have to say, that wouldn’t be a bad thing.

Following my last post, I idly wondered whether YouTube had anything about China’s eco-cities. Here’s what I found:

Simulated flyover of Dongtan eco-city:

A BBC report on Dongtan eco-city:

Finland involved in the Tianjin project?

This was a surprise to me. My reading in the Straits Times here led me to believe that the Tianjin eco-city is a collaboration solely between China and Singapore, but - unless there are two projects near Tianjin - it seems that the Finns are involved as well. Who else? This clip is nearly 5 minutes long and, actually, doesn’t contain anything specific to the Tianjin project, but its YouTube page leads here.

More from China Digital Times: it seems that construction of the eco-city at Tianjin, a collaboration between China and Singapore, will begin in July.

It will be very interesting to compare how this goes with the concurrent Anglo-Chinese project being developed by Ove Arup near Shanghai.

There’s been a lot written over the last couple of years about the latter:

• Wired: Pop-up cities
• The Guardian: British to help China build eco-cities
• China Digital Times: China’s Green Revolution
• IEEE Spectrum: How to build a green city

Between those, and other, articles, there’s a lot of detail available on the design of the new city, Dongtan, near Shanghai. The Tianjin project, on the other hand, seems to have generated lots of press releases, but as yet I can find very little detail on how the city will be designed, or how it’s expected to work. I get the impression that the project is still in its early stages as far as design is concerned, even if construction is will commence soon. There was an interesting piece in the Straits Times recently which mentioned, IIRC, that Singapore would be bringing its substantial knowledge of environmental technology to the project, but that the experience gained in the project would be fed back into future urban planning back home in Singapore - so the project is, in effect, an opportunity for Singapore to experiment with green design and architecture in China, see what works and what doesn’t, and use the winning lessons to re-design “the Garden City”. An interesting strategy from Singapore.

Tianjin isn’t far from Beijing, and I wanted to go there anyway. Perhaps I should make a trip in July…

A mention in China Digital Times pointed me to this Washington Post article: In China, Pulled by Opposing Tides. It’s talking about the culture shock experienced by Chinese who return to China after a long period of study and/or work in the West, usually the US. There’s a term for them, “sea turtles”.  I have to confess, I thought that this term was out of date. I first encountered it in 2005, and wrote about it then; even at the time, it was a phrase slipping out of currency. During my time at Tsinghua, my Chinese friends knew the term, but didn’t really use it any more…  I think it was more relevant in the late 90s, and very early noughties; by 2005, the numbers of returnees who only knew the pre-boom China were dropping significantly.

The Post article focuses on someone who’s been away for ten years; perhaps there aren’t so many like him left…