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I am now blogging at CN Reviews and Elliott Ng. Please visit me there!

Saturday, September 09, 2006

English or Tingbudonghua?

Been "out of blog" and canceling meetings, etc for the past few days. I have been pretty busy with preparations for my travels to China this week, and compounded by having to make arrangements for my wife's birthday party that just happened today.

I have secretly been lurking at the Talk Talk China blog, enjoying sarcastic laowai ripping China (all in good spirit of course). Since I'm heading off with my buhao Chinese in a few days, this recent post raises the question: English, or Chinese? or maybe what I really have to choose from is English or tingbudonghua...:)

Monday, September 04, 2006

What's interestng today in Web 2.0 land

A nice succinct post on what's interesting on Web 2.0 (with companies):

1. Internet TV
2. Webware
3. Aggregators
4. Places
5. Recommendation-based music
6. Mobile 2.0
7. Lightweight project management
8. Open IM
9. Presence
10. Shared calendars
11. Structured data
12. Classifieds
13. Toys
14. Customization

My favorites:
1. Places (2L, WOW)
2. Presence (Plazes, Twttr...I see the potential but nothing that useful so far)
12. Classifieds (except I'm thinking about B2B, and specialized search to discover listings/business information out on the edges, also labor marketplaces)
14. Customization (Cafepress, Etsy)
15. Search as a platform, vertical search (e.g. Rollyo)

Or check out Matt Cutts' faves.

Sunday, September 03, 2006

Provinces I've visited so far

Here's a map of China courtesy of Mark Wang's China Map creator. You can select the provinces you've been to and the site will generate HTML for inclusion in your site or blog. I ran into the map numerous times surfing blogs of expats in China, and since I'm going to be meeting with Mark in a few weeks I thought I'd give some link love to the map tool!



create your own China map

Amazing how these little tools (suitable for bloggers) can be great for link baiting.

Saturday, September 02, 2006

Watermelons? OK, we'll take it


I found this to be a hilarious "welcome to China" post. I wish I hadn't found this so funny...

Watermelons, anyone?

Edgeio vs Craigslist

Here's a Bob Wyman post I discovered via Edgeio's blog that talks about the trend toward structured blogging, microformats, and the openness of Web 2.0. I'm not totally convinced that everything will move out of publishing environments like Craigslist, but the Edgeio model bets on the breakdown of "marketplaces" like Ebay and Craigslist where sellers and buyers both go, to the broader Web as an open marketplace where listings are discoverable.

Here's the critique of CraigsList and eBay:

On the other hand, the legacy, "old-web," "walled-garden" sites like CraigsList and eBay only provide service for data which is published behind their walls and in their proprietary systems. Data which is published within one of them is almost inevitably not published within any other service or on the open web. Thus, there is no opportunity for publishers and users to benefit from the kind of vibrant competition that forces innovation on the open web. Closed, walled-garden services essentially steal "network effects" from the open web and use those network effects to their own benefit. People use CraigsList and eBay not because they are the most excellent services, in terms of features or ease of use, rather they use these services because they have pulled the most data and the most users off the open web and into their closed, walled-garden systems...
Here's Bob's vision:
In the world of Structured Blogging, you compete not by "capturing" people's data within your proprietary system but by providing better service to data published on the open web and accessible to all your competitors. The source of competitive advantage is in providing the best service, not in building high walls around other people's data. Let's all hope that many others follow Edgio's example in helping to exploit and build this new, innovative and open web of structured data.
There are similar themes in what I'm exploring (stealth mode start-up). And some fairly similar criticism from the blogosphere on the incumbents (albeit without the Web 2.0 lens).