草莓

China: Memedia Issue 3: New century for grassroots media

[Technology & Internet]
How do you steal data from a monitored computer cased in lead? You can be sure there are bad eggs willing to help you to sort it out! Google remains castrated, blogs Ken Wong at GSeeker, for terms like Deng Xiaoping and secretary of a municipal committee of the CPC in Shanghai have disappeared from Google search results. Blogspot once again cannot be visited, although there are still ways to visit the site, and is it possible for Google.cn PR to resolve the blocking?

While we are making a fuss about MeMedia( grassroots media), for those on the other side of the ocean, it has already become part of life. In the Netherlands there are online and offline unDEAF activities, all the more interesting for being Unplanned, Non-Host, and Self-Organized. Mozilla tells something about the internet’s openness and accessibiliy. As for the invasion of the IMs such as Gtalk, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, QQ et al, finally it can be achieved (albeit wearing protection). America was supposed to follow the astonishing mainland China ‘website registration’ system. The final decision is that: Political bloggers have no need to register with the government, however, individual Bloggers’ lives are not always easy. Some of them are facing death threats, so it is seems that the bad eggs are everywhere.Copyright has more and more impact on internet, but that isn’t the Chao Xing’s fault (it was supposed to set up the world’s biggest online library, but was defeated by Google). A good example for this? It was said thatVeryCD punished itself with 80 thousand yuan, but can it do any good to achieve a Communist society？ Meanwhile, the digital map is imposed censorship. On the other side, new version of GPLv3 draft was launched amidst bickering.

[Society]
The conscience and backbone of the society won’t be broken, while everyone in the country keeps silent, the whole world is paying attention to this. And Zola, the Blogger hero is in the frontier, reporting the story about the Nail house in Chongqing. Is an independent blogger the same as a Citizen Journalist? Herock suggested that Independent Blogger + Professional training = Citizen Journalism, while from the foreigners’ point of view, there’s still a long way to go. And though 24-processes filtered pure water is good, isn’t natural spring water with plenty of minerals even better?

Just as Zola said, he is a young cynic following his intuition. He took a two-days and nights train from Hunan to Chongqing, and tried to cover the Nailhouse story as a blogger. He lacks professional news knowledge, even though his photo with the Nailhouse hostess has drawn extensive attention, to the extent that he is now being recognized by strangers on the streets of Chongqing. He has achieved his aim: Shoot To Fame Overnight. Just as expected, he was interviewed and reported by Nanfang Daily, and was in contact with quite a number of domestic and foreign media reporters. In the end, Zola’s trip fulfilled part of its purposes. Certainly, there are lots of other ways to get a personal feature. It seems that Zola has already grasped the sponsor for the most characteristic blogger in 2007 well in hand. He was actively supported by his internet friends during his trip in Chonqing, and got more than 1900 RMB in financial support from his net friends in Beijing, anonymous net friends in Shenzhen and Heilongjiang, and even Chinese friends in Japan, America and Germany. A middle-aged man from suburb of Chongqing even rushed to the city center to see Zola and give him support. Some of them were Chinese bloggers, some of them were strangers. It’s surprising to see such impulsive action from an ordinary young man, a young cynic who entertained himself and the public had driven so much reaction. Hundreds of passionate blogposts enthusiastically supporting and discussing Zola, it makes people wonder if Politainment (Politics as entertainment) has become the best way for political affairs to spread. It also makes people evaluate the power of personal media: whether the Chinese personal media is entering the public sphere?

“When all the dreams drain. Same are lose and gain. Green mountains remain. As sunsets ingrain” (Translator note: A Ming Dynasty Poem). Tan Boniu, a Chinese blogger, commented on Hu Shih’s defence for Qin Kuai (Translator note: A well known Song Dynasty traitor who had signed a peace treaty with Jin).

Nowadays we need proofs for our claims, and don’t be so fast to think about denying it, because you could very easily end up quite embarrassed. Chinese local government leaders are being shifted, from one location to another, and coverage seems close to reaching its g-spot. Actually Schwarzenegger is willing to move to Washington DC. Too bad he wasn’t lucky enough to be born in China.The Japanese prime minister apologised again for Japanese soldiers having forced women to act as sex slaves in World War II; at least he should first apologise for his previous statements, and then apologise for this. Otherwise, he will be trapped in a vicious circle of making apologies. What’s fairly to say is that Chinese bloggers have stopped caring about this, being so fed up with it all.

[Business]
Since China Telecom’s postpay business drew back, it’s been complaining about a postponed 3G license. China Telecom is dicing on making a reconfiguation plan, and some people are betting that China Unicom will be dismemebered, which might just be a rumour, but not that it matters. In any case, money just goes from the right pocket to the left pocket, no need to get outraged. Taobao.com will probably charging sellers soon, and Bumian provides some good suggestions for this, which are similar to QQ’s fee. Mai Tian reminds people about the renren.com bubbles.Twitter is still on the top list for this week. More and more people chatting there, and you can even see what people from over the world are doing right now through their map. Meanwhile similar applications on the mainland are emerging in larger numbers.