Life and Times in the Southern Capital
Internet
Pleco 2.2 Looks awesome!
Aug 18th
http://plecomirror.com/ocrdemovid.html
Check out this demo, on the fly OCR from your IPhone camera without needing you to take a picture! This could be a lot of fun (for total nerds like me).
GFW Google Schizophrenia
Apr 2nd
So appears I spoke too soon (along with just about everyone else). Google appears to be back to the same state it was in a few days ago in China. Namely rerouting through Hong Kong, but still delivering search results.
Turns out it was just a “glitch” and not censorship. Well, not intentional censorship of Google anyways. The search results were returning URLs which contained “gs_rfai”, which gets blocked as the Great Firewall interprets them as having something to do with “Radio Free Asia”, which is in fact blocked. So Google fixed the “glitch” and we’re back to normal, or what passes for normal in this cyber soap opera\pissing contest………
more info:
Google Search Finally Blocked in China
Mar 30th
At 5 pm today searches via google.cn (which currently redirects to google.hk) and google.com started to intermittently trigger connection resets after searches were attempted. Within a couple hours any & all searches would trigger a connection reset (i.e. you would get an error message page instead of the expected search results). It seems that occasionally I am able to still get a search result in different ways (via Firefox search tool bar, etc), but looks like a message is being sent loud and clear to Google HQ.
Forbes story: http://www.forbes.com/2010/03/30/china-blocks-google-tech-markets-firewall.html?boxes=Homepagechannels
Hello Nanjing!
Oct 30th
So from word of mouth I started looking for info on the new bar\restaurant\casino\wtf? venue Studio 21. My searches led me to hellonanjing.net and am I ever glad they did.
It is a decent expat guide to Nanjing with a forum and good articles, podcasts etc. While I had been a fan of Nanjingnow, the main things I thought held them back were the lack of user registration (thus the source of alot of the anonymous name calling on the boards) and the lack of a well organized review system in restaurant\bar reviews. As luck may have it, it is in these areas that Hello Nanjing shines the most. The site has obvious room to grow, but the technological infrastructure is there to support the growth. The problem any Nanjing expat site is obviously going to have is the lack of foreigners in Nanjing providing info, while we may never be able to fight the big boys in China like shanghaiexpat.com, at least Hello Nanjing has given us the battlefield to try and build something useful for us “2nd Tier City” expats. While they veer more heavily towards the Shanghai Lu & Sheraton’s areas of the city, there is useful info there for all. I for one am excited to see what plans they have for the future.
Let Freedom Ring…
Jun 8th
Well, sort of. Twitter and Flickr are unblocked again, though the rest remain blocked…. I’ll take what I can get
**UPDATE**
As of October 2009, Flickr, Bing (in a modified form), and hotmail remain completely unblocked, while Twitter is blocked again….
Great Net Blockade of ’09
Jun 3rd
So it would appear the fun is over for awhile, a fresh round of sites blocked within China started yesterday. Among the early casualties are Twitter, Flickr, Bing (the new Microsoft search engine that is just a few days old) and in some areas even Hotmail (though still accessible in Nanjing for the time being). Also many proxies that worked previously are now not functioning within China. Of course existing blocks (Youtube, Blogspot, etc) remain in place.
If you need these sites, I would suggest a personal VPN, a popular choice has been Witopia, though not free, it runs ~$40 USD/year. Hopefully the blockade will ease in the next few weeks as certain sensitive anniversaries pass.
TaoBao Mania!
Jun 1st
I’ve got to admit that I am seriously addicted to Taobao, even when I am just trying to figure out how much something should cost on the streets (i.e. what I should aim my bargaining at), I usually check on Taobao first. But what I like most about Taobao are all the crazy things available. So, I was understandably pumped when I first read the excellent blog Taobao Field Guide. The site offers posts, links and pics to some truly awesome, and sometimes just awesomely bad items for sale on Taobao. It also offers how-to guides and practical advice for Taobao newbies and those who lack Chinese language abilities.
And if you’ve somehow never heard of Taobao, it is like the Chinese Ebay, and if you’ve never heard of Ebay, well…let me me be the first to say ”Welcome to the Internet! Please visit Google to begin your orientation.”
Best Nanjing City Map Ever!
May 21st
Best Nanjing map out there, combines a 3-d modeling of the city as well as street map and satellite views. Lots of landmarks are listed, some are a bit off (like the McDonalds on HuNan Lu) but most are spot on.
Back from the dead….
May 19th
So I finally got all the spam cleaned out of my comments, so in case I went a little overboard, just let me know if you are here looking for cheap Viagra and I can supply you with the thousands of links so thoughtfully left in the comments from my pharmaceutically inclined readers.
I will take that as a small victory for today and simply post this picture of proof that white trash culture (though a high brow version) has come to Nanjing, so get your beer coozies and mullets ready, next thing you know Nascar will be racing at Olympic Stadium.
expathome.cn
Jan 6th
I’ve long wished Nanjing had just one decent expat site (or any decent broad Nanjing page in English). There seems to be a new site attempting this, expathome.cn
The site has all the structure of a good site, but is currently lacking in content, I would hope that in addition to continuing to add decent information (The movie show times for the Deji theater are great, as they are a pain to find and I usually only can find them on a Chinese BBS like xici.com) that they would also consider a forum. As a regular visitor to shanghaiexpat.com I can honestly say that once you get an active forum going, there isn’t much need for the site owners to add a lot of content, as the users generate a lot of content themselves.
But whatever, check it out, the English can be awkward in places, but those looking for expat sites in Nanjing can’t afford to be too picky…