Greetings from Asia
4.29.2005
i just spent a little over a week in china where it dawned on me that i take my blog for granted. i couldnt access any blogs hosted by blogspot, nor could i post while i was there! value that free speech folks.. expression ain't guaranteed even today. i'm in india now, where people are super eager to express their opinions (and have been for many years), although i think blogging has yet to take hold here like it has in east asia. maybe there's pent up demand in places where expression is stifled by either statutory or cultural barriers.
in india, i'm amused by how often i find "customer satisfaction" forms and surveys in the most random places... restaurants, hotels sure.. but in airports and trains? and people actually fill them out vigorously! the state of online yellow pages is terrible here though, someone should harness people's desire to provide feedback to build a killer local property (although 3% online penetration means that mobile/SMS-based submission may be more feasible).
bittorrent is kicking ass in china. the protocol is responsible for roughly 70% of the internet traffic there. hard to say what exactly people are using it for, although i'm told that educational content is a huge and growing category. teachers are making multimedia lesson plans and looking for cost effective ways to distribute around the country. Torrents are found frequently on school "BBS" sites.. fascinating stuff. some large portals and gaming sites are also deploying "download.com" type sites all based on bittorrent. do a baidu search for "bittorrent".
i'm dying to blog about this funny experience i had in china.. all you walmart haters out there are gonna love it.. as soon as i get my picasa/hello or flickr running here, i'll post. stay tuned.
in india, i'm amused by how often i find "customer satisfaction" forms and surveys in the most random places... restaurants, hotels sure.. but in airports and trains? and people actually fill them out vigorously! the state of online yellow pages is terrible here though, someone should harness people's desire to provide feedback to build a killer local property (although 3% online penetration means that mobile/SMS-based submission may be more feasible).
bittorrent is kicking ass in china. the protocol is responsible for roughly 70% of the internet traffic there. hard to say what exactly people are using it for, although i'm told that educational content is a huge and growing category. teachers are making multimedia lesson plans and looking for cost effective ways to distribute around the country. Torrents are found frequently on school "BBS" sites.. fascinating stuff. some large portals and gaming sites are also deploying "download.com" type sites all based on bittorrent. do a baidu search for "bittorrent".
i'm dying to blog about this funny experience i had in china.. all you walmart haters out there are gonna love it.. as soon as i get my picasa/hello or flickr running here, i'll post. stay tuned.
Labels: china
