卦Trigram 2.0
Asian Snowcrash

The delivery date for the Meizu M8 has constantly been slipping. Amongst the faithful waiting for the phone to reach market, doubt has been setting in - will the M8 ever actually enter production, or will it become a might-have-been?

For me, it’s already too late. I need to buy a new phone soon and, once I have, I won’t need the M8. Pity, I was looking forward to using a really innovative, China-designed phone.

Anyway, for those who can still afford to wait, Engadget have released these clips of Meizu’s semi-functioning prototype:

 Update:

According to Phone magazine, the people at the Meizu stall are saying that the M8’s launch is 6 months away. Hmmm. I think that’s a killer. By then, the established phone manufacturers will have come up with something better, I would have thought. Perhaps Meizu should have been less ambitious with their first phone….

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!

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….

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…

The Straits Times has a piece in its Home section today on the MiniOne. Apparently, it’s expected to hit the market here in Singapore from next month, and will cost between S$600 - S$700. The author, technology correspondent Alfred Siew, does mention that it will run Windows Mobile, but mostly discusses the similarity between the appearance of the M8 and the iPhone. He’s hardly the first, but goes on to focus on the “Chinese ripoff” angle, with mentions of cheap iPod knock-offs (the Zling Nax I bought in Carrefour would be one example - and it is cheap and shoddy, I agree!). Still, it would have been useful to mention that the M8 apparently will have a lot of differences with the iPhone, and will be superior in some regards (such as the better cameras). The piece is topped by a couple of uncredited images to compare the M8 and the iPhone. Pity, it could have been a lot more in-depth, and taken a look at current Chinese innovation in the mobile market, rather than just going for the cheap shot.

Since Gizmodo is reporting a likely launch date of March 3rd… perhaps I’ll hang on and get one after all once I hit Beijing.

And since I’m talking of Apple and Beijing, MacNN report that the Chinese capital’s first Apple Store is planned to be on Qianmen street - which is to say, the sanitised, faux-traditional shopping quadrant that is being constructed on the ruins of what was a truly old, vibrant community.

I loved the old Qianmen; I’ve written before on my martial arts blog about my experiences, and the great times I had, there. I guess I’ll just have to see what I think of the new one when I get there, but the metaphor of an Apple Store emerging from the ruins of a bustling and ancient part of Chinese history doesn’t need me to labour the point.

When I was working in the mountains of Lesotho, many moons ago, keeping in touch with people was a major undertaking. For example, my parents were concerned about my welfare - me being 17 at the time, and South Africa not being the most stable country then… and of course, this was before the time of cheap flights, so southern Africa was mentally much further away than it is in these days of mass air travel.

In order to speak to my folks, I had to wait for our truck to leave on its weekly supply run. Assuming that the bridges weren’t out, we would get to the nearest town, Hlotse (usually called Leribe), and then cross the border into the South African town of Ficksburg. I would have to go to the main post office, wait for the one official with an international line in her office to be free, go to her office to make a collect call to my parents, and then wait for them to call back. I could then talk, while the post office lady listened in. Luckily, she was very nice!

Getting a landline - or even a fax or telex - to our base up in the mountains was a dream - I have no idea whether or not they ever got one!

On another personal note, I remember the joy I experienced when I first got access to the internet back in 1994. Coming from a small country town, where information and knowledge were hard to come by. The Net changed all that. Suddenly, I was able to find things out without making a trip to the library in the nearest city; I was able to talk to people on the other side of the world who shared my interests.

The arrival of mobile telephony in developing countries is freeing hundreds of millions of people from the need to make the kind of trips that I had to make, and presenting them with the same kind of liberation that I experienced. What difference will it make to them?

I’m going to be looking at this a lot, particularly with reference to Africa and China. Pointers to more information are welcome!

First of all is this very interesting piece at worldchanging: Africa Calling - SND MNY 2 YR MBL. It’s a very good primer on how mobile banking via handphones is making life much easier for the poor, via services such as MTN Banking. It points out the similarity of this venture to similar successes in South Asia, and Bangladesh’s Grameen Phone in particular. This is the sort of thing that Niti is very interested in… Are there similar services in China? If so, who? If not, why not? What are the design needs for this kind of service? Watch this space for answers to these questions!