About China blogosphere, travel, and entrepreneurship

Excited and a bit humbled to be on the same page with all these China A-listers!

I was excited to hear that CN Reviews was featured on the new China.Alltop.com, a new blog aggregator created by Guy Kawasaki. Thanks to Guy Kawasaki, Christine Lu, and the Alltop editors.

So now we are on the same page as many of our blogosphere idols. This will force the humble CN Reviews blogging crew to continue to raise our game!

Six other China blogs that we recommend for your personal Alltop

It was hard to find blogs in my Google reader not already on Alltop. Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, we wanted to share the love by mentioning six diverse blogs for you to consider on your own version of Alltop:

China Financial Markets

I’ve been increasing on edge about the global economy since the Bear Stearns meltdown, and Michael Pettis’ excellent blog has helped me make sense of it from China’s perspective. Michael is a professor at Peking University’s Guanghua school of Management. If you like Seeking Alpha, where Michael often posts, you’ll like China Financial Markets.

IfGoGo

IfGoGo was started by Aw Guo (郭启睿 Guo Qirui) who mainly blogs in Chinese at Awflasher. We first posted on Aw Guo and the new generation of Chinese blogosphere in December 2007. IfGoGo is a group blog by Chinese who choose to blog in English. Some of my favorite writers include Cat Chen, Lisa, Aw Guo himself, Gijo, and Chris Ding. The blog frequency is too low for my tastes, but I love connecting with “real” Chinese blogging in English. If you like Wangjianshuo, you’ll love IfGoGo.

Sinosplice

Sinosplice is written by John Pasden, who works at ChinesePod. It is lifestyle blog that covers interesting topics around language learning, linguistic and cultural differences, and travel. Having looked at other people’s blogrolls, it is no exaggeration to say that All Roads Lead to Sinosplice where the China expat blogosphere is concerned. If you like China but have “This is China moments”, you’ll love Sinosplice.

Thomas Crampton

Thomas covers technology, politics, media, and startups. He often has great video interviews of executives and entrepreneurs. His posts are more journalistic than personal. Based in Hong Kong, Thomas was a journalist for International Herald Tribune and New York Times. If you like Ogilvy Digital Watch, RConversation, and China Business Network shaken, not stirred, then help yourself to Thomas Crampton.

TechBlog86

Our own David Feng has his own technology centric blog, that takes over where CN.Blognation.com left off. David is a consummate blogger and journalist, who covers news fast and furious on both his Twitter stream and his various blogging projects. If you like China Web 2.0 Reviewand Pacific Epochbut at Twitterlike speed and brevity, you’ll like TechBlog86.

Violet Eclipse

Finally, one of my favorite expat bloggers is Meg Stivison, who also is a guest blogger here at CN Reviews. She first started blogging when she was at Yantai as a student, and now resides in Beijing with her boyfriend Stick. She writes about Beijing life, her work, and has a keen eye for cultural differences as a foreigner in China. In addition to our common interest in China, we also share a common interest in Azeroth! If you like Sinosplice, you’ll like Violet Eclipse.

There you have it. Elliott’s picks for his own china.alltop.com. What are some of your favorite undiscovered China bloggers?

Updated 4/11:  Dan Harris at China Law Blog offered the following four suggestions:

1. Absurdity, Allegory and China
2. China Bystander
3. Mutant Palm
4. The China Game

Thanks Dan!

UPDATE: Part 2 of 2 posts on China Proxy Server Tips. Part 1 by Min Guo is here.

I hate to make a second post for this but given that I cannot simply edit my additions into Min’s post, I decided I’d have to throw up another post for the benefit of readers like Sue who are having trouble with the Great FireWall (GFW).

Note: In order for Min’s Option II to work, you’d have to be able to get the RSS feed link, which can be hard if you can’t get to the blog in the first place. Of course, you can have a friend get it for you, but that requires you discovering the blog first. Moreover, certain feeds burned through Feedburner have difficulty getting into China, which is why you’ll see some blogs using Feedsky, a Chinese equivalent to Feedburner.

Option III: Anonymouse.org

Probably one of the more famous casual proxies, Anonymouse has the added benefit of being available in German and English. Well, that’s actually pretty unimportant, but I guess the Germans never know when Germany is going to block popular Chinese portal sites like sina.com. Using Anonymouse is about as simple as inputing the URL address for the website you wish to visit. In return for their service, they’ll pop up a window and overlay an ad on the targeted webpage (both of which you can close easily). Anonymouse isn’t hardcore enough to get through everything, but it works most of the time.

Option IV: T0r Pr0j3ct (note: l33t used to mask sensitive keywords)

I’ll quote Black and White Cat for Option IV and V:

Since the block is a strong one and Youtube has also been harmonized, now is perhaps the time to mention two of the serious proxies that get through to everything, including BBC news video, can handle Youtube and enable you to watch Google videos.

1) The first is maddeningly slow (though one enthusiast assures me it works quickly on his computer) but you need it if you want to download the faster second option. Tor works in Firefox. Once you’ve installed the program on your computer, you will see a red notice at the bottom right of your brower saying “Tor Disabled.” To turn the proxy on, click once on that notice and it will turn into a green “Tor Enabled.” You can now read or watch anything you want, but slowly. Tor also offers high-quality anonymity and privacy, but only if you read, understand and act on the instructions. For most of us that is not necessary since we simply want to get past the blocks.

Option V: Ult——h (sensitive keyword)

2) The second, faster option only works in Internet Explorer. I’m not going to name it in full because it is blocked at the keyword level in China. I’ll refer to it here as U. If you want it, it’s the first result for this search (look for the word Download on the U page). Don’t even bother Googling it on the mainland unless you are using a powerful proxy like T0r. Unlike T0r, U is an executable file that you save onto your computer, but do not have to install. If you decide you do not want it anymore, delete the file. As with option #1, you can read anything or watch anything, though it often messes up Youtube - if that happens, close down IE and U and try again.

If you choose Option V, you should be aware that it is a creation of FLG and financed by the US government. Bear that in mind when deciding whether you want it on any particular computer. Both these proxies function only in one browser. So if you use Tor in Firefox, you can carry on browsing in Internet Explorer while you are waiting for the page/file to download.

There you have it.

Anyone have any opinions about all these methods? BTW, please be discreet about using sensitive keywords in comments so CNReviews doesn’t get harmonized! It is already slow enough as it is in China. — Elliott

UPDATE: Part 1 of 2 posts on China Proxy Server Tips.  Part 2 by Kai Pan is here. 

I received an email from one of CN Reviews‘ readers yesterday. Here is the abstract of Sue’s kind message:

I just stumbled onto your blog and find it enormously helpful. I wonder if you already have a post on proxy servers and if not, may consider doing one.

I’m incredibly frustrated about not being able to find certain sites. I’ve just arrived in China and am still figuring out how to find the right proxy server, esp if I’m trying to blog.

I am not a technical person and really don’t know much about proxy servers, but I do find my way to read 99.5% of the blogs I like including those are not directly accessible in Shanghai, such as gigaom.com.

Option I: Gladder - Great Ladder

This is a firefox add-on called “Great Ladder”- ladder to the great wall. You can find it here.

• Step 1. Click on the green button says “Add to Firefox”.
• Step 2: You will see the pop up window asks you to install it. Follow the instruction and you will get an icon on the right bottom corner of your browser like this:

Now you are armed with the ladder to climb over the wall!

When you are on a web page, right click on the ladder icon and you will see the menu like above image. We are lucky that we don’t need it for CN Reviews. We are not afraid of being harmonized but would prefer not to be!

To enable the gladder, simply click on the URL on the menu. When the gladder is enabled, you will see a “check” mark in front of the URL See above image. Joe Duck’s blog is not as lucky as CN Review and it looks like his when the gladder is not enabled.

A recent Gladder review by Jianjun can be found here.

Option II: RSS feed readers such as Google Reader.

I don’t have a problem reading Joe Duck’s blog after I subscribed to it on Google Reader. But, of course, I can’t see the blog visual design, can’t browse by its categories, tags or menus. I think RSS feed reader is a good option for the blogs that you are familiar with and want to subscribe to it.

That’s all my secrets. I think they are good enough for people don’t like the technical hassle. Good news is that you don’t need it for English Wikpedia since a few days’ ago. Good luck!

It was my great honor to meet Robert Scoble on BIL conference in Monterey California early Mar. 2008. We remembered that Robert blogged that he wished he was in the Chinese Blogger Conference last year, so we took the opportunity to bring up CnbloggerCon 2008 to him in Monterey. Later I contacted Isaac Mao and learned the timing might not be good for Robert to synch up with his plans to go to the World Economic Forum in China. What a pity!

But if you are interested in coming to the China blogger conference this year in China, who would you want to meet up with?

This is a graph I got from Aether’s (in the middle) Facebook album. I met Aether in Hangzhou in 2006 where he was an very active volunteer. It is a great start point to know who you should meet and talk to:

• Isaac Mao: Co-founder and organizer of CnBloggerCon.
• Keso: A pioneer of Chinese bloggers, an IT reviewer with sharp insights.
• Carol: The Twitter Queen of Taiwan, she has 1,306 followers on Mar. 26, 2008.
• Tangos and Luyi : Key contributors of China Web 2.0 Review.
• Awflasher: Guo is running a blog network called IfGoGo - an English blog written by Chinese.
• Bruce Wang (a.k.a Number5 or #5): Bruce is passionated about SNS and now is developing a SNS product for Linkist.com.
• Herock: Herock is an typical example of great blogger who then became an entrepreneur. He has been mentioned in many “top 10 bloggers” list, now in Feedsky, an RSS feed syndication service.
• Vista: One of the first few Taiwanese bloggers to CnbloggerCon. IT blogger.
• Zola: Independent news/media blogger reporter; he first reported the famous “Dingzi Hu”(nail household, 钉子户) news. (Note: “dingzi hu” refers to the residents who defy the local government’s order of moving out of their homes for settlement. These households are usually dislocated by some commercial projects and are compensated by the developers (or government) but in many cases the compensation is hardly enough to start a new home. Therefore they refuse to move, even when construction is proceeding around (literally) their homes.)

Of course, there are many more great bloggers to meet, in art, music, education or even NGO areas, such as as Jianshuo Wang (Wangjianshuo) and Jeremy Goldkorn from Danwei.

BTW, don’t forget to eat some authentic Chinese food when you are in China!

UPDATE: David also had excellent coverage about this momentous Beijing Twitter Meetup on TechBlog86. Go there for even more pictures! -Elliott

So how do you name this thing — Tweetup, Twittermeet, Twitter Meetup, TweetMeet or whatever you think is best? We had a difficult start: there were people roaming about with different names for same event. Once the naming was unified (or appeared to be unified), however, the Twitter meetup went ahead just after 7:30 PM.

I co-hosted the event with Siok Siok Tan, and everyone came had a blast. Before long, we had about 6 or 7 computers on the desk. There were 8 of us (there was an iPod touch, by the way, for those who came unprepared), so there was enough tweeting going around.

For those of you who came to a meeting of the Beijing Macintosh User Group, a Tweetup is a very different thing altogether. Instead of being bored to death by yours truly (mic in hand no less at big parties), everyone gets to type away like mad at the keyboard. Through this mysterious-yet-much-admired thing called the Internet (running with Twitter), the 8 Twitter-ers, assembled in Twitter congress, linked up to Twitter “bigs” around the nation such as Isaac Mao, web-styled The Chairman Mao of the 21st Century, as well as Carol Lin over there in Taiwan. And, of course, our very own Elliott tuned in as well, as did fellow BeiMac guy niu-bi from New York.Tweets and Twitter lists of all fellow Twitter-ers exploded like mad: yours truly grew by about 15 fellow Twitter-ers, and tweeted about 100 tweets or so (although the stats report otherwise). Before everyone was lost in tweeting, though, the two hosts ordered food and drinks so that we all could survive to another day with food. Hey, we need to keep on twittering!

The Tweetup wrapped up at around 10:00 PM with a dead David Feng MacBook (battery-wise) and a David Feng iPod touch tottering on its last legs. The next Tweetup will most likely either feature an expanded scope (embracing fellow Fanfou people — as in people who tweet using mainland services), be a KTweetV (a KTV fest), or both.

Stay tuned!

By the way, thanks for coming! We had a great night!

Note: Contributing Editor David Feng will be posting a more detailed follow up post on the 1st Beijing TweetMeet, coming soon to CN Reviews.

Anyone who pooh-poohs the social impact on Twitter should be put on notice by the two Twitter Firsts that happened last night.

Twitter History: First Marriage Proposal

Mashable just broke some news that we may have witnessed the first wedding proposal over Twitter from @maxkiesler (website) to @emilychang (eHub).

His proposal: To @emilychang - After fifteen years of blissful happiness I would like to ask for your hand in marriage? 03:13 AM March 20, 2008 from web

Her response: @maxkiesler - yes, i do! 03:14 AM March 20, 2008 from web in reply to maxkiesler

Congratulations to both @emilychang and @maxkiesler!

Another Twitter First: Beijing TweetMeet

I discovered this Twitter first through another Twitter first: The 1st Beijing TweetMeet, held Friday 3/21/2008! My friend and fellow CN Reviews blogger @DavidFeng posted the link to Mashable and that’s how I discovered this, even though Mashable is on my Google Reader.

The more complete TweetStream is below, but here is @DavidFeng’s take:

This is the first-ever Tweetup in Beijing. Ladies and gents, you are witnessing Twit-stery (Twitter history). ….

For those of you who have never been at a Tweetup, the whole thing feels surreal. People are literally GLUED to their laptops, tweeting!…

We are twittering like mad. We are actually thinking if the server is about to go down chez Twitter ‘cos of the Beijing TweetMeet!…

Question: How did Twitter generate such emotional attachment from its users, so that people would meet up to Tweet together and that other people would get engaged over Twitter?

Just one month ago, I didn’t “get” Twitter. Now I see it in MMORPG terms.

Just 1 month ago, I “didn’t get” twitter and thought of it solely as microblogging. But the fact that a small group of Twitter fanatics met at the Beijing Bookworm (Building 4, Sanlitun South Road near Gongti North Road in Chaoyang District of Beijing) this Fri evening to Tweet to each other highlights how Twitter can be much more than a blogging platform. It can become a nexus of personal relationships and social exchange that makes it similar to Social Networks like Facebook or MMORPGs like World of Warcraft.

To non bloggers and non Twitterers (Tweeters? Twits?), microblogging and blogging can seem like information exchange and a process of social discovery of information. But in fact, it is not just that…it is space and place for social exchange. Microblogging far underestimates the power of Twitter. In fact, Twitter is a specialized form of Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) but one in which the “role” is tightly bound to your real identity (in most cases).

Amy Jo Kim of Shufflebrain has a brilliant exposition of game dynamics. As an expert in game design, she identifies 5 factors that make games addictive. Here’s how I think it applies to Twitter:

• Collecting - # of followers, # of “friends” that you follow
• Points - # of updates or tweets
• Feedback - people follow you back! And you get an email with an exclamation point! It’s flattering when @JasonCalacanis is following me on Twitter! (before I followed him)
• Implicit Exchanges - Implicit exchange represents the positive feedback you receive as you “follow” more people and see more of who they are through their tweets. You implicitly exchange with your followers when you tweet and share what’s going on with you.
• Explicit Exchanges - Direct messages are explicit exchanges. But @twitteruser messages directed to someone else but visible to everyone’s followers, is also an explicit exchange recognized by the entire community. You are on stage, in the commons, sharing your life with everyone in the village commons.
• Character Customization - Yes you can reskin your Twitter profile page. But more importantly, you can customize your character and your persona by modifying the composition and mix of your Tweets.
• Interface Customization - Web? IM? Gtalk? Twitbin? Tweetbar? Twitterfox? Twirl? Twitterific? Directory here at the Twitter Fan Wiki. Enuf said.

If you are not already familiar with her work, you must go flip through her Game Developer Conference 2007 slides available at her website. Her blog is here.

And now back to the Tweet-by-tweet coverage of the Beijing TweetMeet

I don’t know all the people at the Beijing TweetMeet. But from the TweetStream of @DavidFeng, this is what I captured (in reverse chronological order):

• @sioksiok OK, OK… You will see me with TWO laptops next time! about 1 hour ago from web in reply to sioksiok
• OK, that was my MacBook. Now tweeting on my iPod touch… about 1 hour ago from web
• OK guys, my MacBook’s battery dies in 5 minutes. No sweat - that’s why I’ve the iPod touch!… about 1 hour ago from web
• @davidavdavid The Beijing Bookworm, we are 8 strong live… about 2 hours ago from web in reply to davidavdavid
• @webleon You want my iPod touch to tweet with? Sheetake, I should have brought my PowerBook G4 17-inch along!… about 2 hours ago from web in reply to webleon
• I think I can easily hit that magical 2,500 mark in terms of updates this weekend. Unless an Act of God happens in the Twitter world… about 2 hours ago from web
• @BlogAndGrow QQ = China’s biggest IM service. This thing is MASSIVE. about 2 hours ago from twitterrific in reply to BlogAndGrow
• @BlogAndGlow I think so! about 2 hours ago from twitterrific
  OK guys I am floating this proposal around - a KTV fest for all Beijing Twitterers. Tweet back if you’re in for this! about 2 hours ago from web
• @BlogAndGlow Welcome to read Chinglish. about 2 hours ago from twitterrific
• @elliottng OK, how many Web 2.0 services are you on?… about 2 hours ago from twitterrific in reply to elliottng Icon_star_empty
  This is scary: QQ + Twitter + CN = http://www.taotao.com/ about 2 hours ago from web
• Tweeting AND eating… a David Feng tradition… now shared with all fellow Twitter-ers… about 2 hours ago from web
  Late dinner - Spaghetti for me… ricey-kind of stuff chez
• @sioksiok… about 2 hours ago from web Icon_star_empty
  OK ???: ??????… http://fanfou.com/DavidFeng about 2 hours ago from web
• @isaac @thecarol ????! about 2 hours ago from web in reply to isaac
• @sioksiok ?, There are no secrets in the Twitter world… about 2 hours ago from web in reply to sioksiok
• @kaiserkuo One of your fans (and Twitter-ers) greets you. Musically… (hint hint) about 2 hours ago from web in reply to kaiserkuo
• @thecarol NOW we are ready for you! TweetMeet ?? featuring… about 2 hours ago from web in reply to thecarol
• @elliottng Zhichunli ;-P about 2 hours ago from web in reply to elliottng
• @WebLeOn about 2 hours ago from twitterrific in reply to webleon
• @elliottng THIS is the hair that I’m — well, after for better or worse… about 2 hours ago from twitterrific in reply to elliottng
  I just got a haircut, so if you’re seeing me look a bit funny, that’s… the hair. about 2 hours ago from twitterrific
• @thecarol @webleon No sweat! ???! (We all make mistakes…) about 2 hours ago from twitterrific in reply to thecarol
• @WebLeOn @thecarol They probably mean @DavidFeng about 2 hours ago from twitterrific in reply to webleon
• @WebLeOn @carol They probably mean @DavidFeng about 2 hours ago from twitterrific in reply to webleon
• @isaac Greetings from us from Beijing. You in Shanghai right now? about 2 hours ago from twitterrific in reply to isaac
• OK folks, first pics from the Beijing TweetMeet reality: http://www.flickr.com/photo… about 3 hours ago from twitterrific
• Salve* @chengfen (* Latin greetings) about 3 hours ago from twitterrific
• This is the first-ever Tweetup in Beijing. Ladies and gents, you are witnessing Twit-stery (Twitter history). about 3 hours ago from twitterrific
• I think everyone’s Twitter list at the meetup just went that bit more stratospheric. The ISS is next in terms of altitude. about 3 hours ago from twitterrific
• Allegra* @zhengle (* Rhaeto-Rumansh greeting) about 3 hours ago from twitterrific
• Cute baby pics at the Tweetup! about 3 hours ago from web
  With horror, fellow Twitter-ers at the Tweetup discover that yours truly speaks 10 languages. Gasp! about 3 hours ago from twitterrific
• We are talking about Swiss nationality at the TweetMeet since I’m a Swiss national with Chinese ethnicity… about 3 hours ago from web
• We are twittering like mad. We are actually thinking if the server is about to go down chez Twitter ‘cos of the Beijing TweetMeet!… about 3 hours ago from web
• Bonsoir* @webleon (* French greetings) about 3 hours ago from twitterrific
• Buonasera* @nickcheng (* Italian greetings) about 3 hours ago from twitterrific
• For those of you who have never been at a Tweetup, the whole thing feels surreal. People are literally GLUED to their laptops, tweeting! about 3 hours ago from twitterrific
• Link for tonight: AllTop: http://twitter.alltop.com/ about 3 hours ago from twitterrific
• (Guess who is the 1/2 Mac / PC user…) about 3 hours ago from web
• 4.5 PC people, 2.5 Mac people. This is an INSULT for the Mac citizenry, having a BeiMac meet just tomorrow! LOL about 3 hours ago from twitterrific
• (Bad keyboard!) about 3 hours ago from twitterrific
  Grüezi* @PhilipJohnson8 (* Swiss-German greetings) about 3 hours ago from twitterrific
• Grüezi* @PhiipJohnson8 (* Swiss-German greetings) about 3 hours ago from twitterrific
• @sioksiok and @davidfeng hosting the first Beijing Tweetup… enjoy about 3 hours ago from twitterrific in reply to sioksiok
• OK Ladies and Gents! Live Tweetcast! Live Tweetcast! Beijing Tweetup! Live Tweetcast! about 3 hours ago from twitterrific
  3 more people with the fellow Twitter-ers in Beijing. about 3 hours ago from twitterrific
• Venue: The Bookworm, Nansanlitun Road. See: http://www.beijingbookworm…. about 3 hours ago from twitterrific
• People are getting married via Twitter! http://tinyurl.com/36tcys about 3 hours ago from twitterrific
• Bilingual tweetup, English and Chinese about 3 hours ago from twitterrific
• Grüezi* @JoMangee (* Swiss-German greeting) about 3 hours ago from twitterrific
• I am seated at the long table at the front entrance. about 4 hours ago from twitterrific
• Am at Bookworm… @sioksiok and others? about 4 hours ago from twitterrific
• Heading to the Bookworm. God pray for no traffic jams! about 4 hours ago from twitterrific
• Äh… Twitter meetup… silly me… about 4 hours ago from web
  Facebook meetup in about 35 minutes. Will be on the road soon for the big meet-up. about 4 hours ago

If you read carefully, @DavidFeng is threatening to combine his two addictions: Twitter and KTV! I will have to come out to Beijing for that combination. I will have to break out my Wang Qing Shui (忘情水) rendition for that event.

So Twitter, the MMORPG, has kept me from my day job at Kango of helping people plan family vacations to San Diego, Santa Barbara family hotels, and other such places. OK, David Feng will follow up with a full report once he recovers from a long night of Tweeting and networking with other Twitterers.

I emailed Livid before our CN Reviews Livid interview post about him was up. V2EX was an online community that Livid started based on his open source project, Project Babel. Because of the freedom of expression of V2EX members, it was unplugged by regulatory authorities and was later blocked at the keyword level by the Great Firewall.

He told us something about V2EX that was totally unexpected. He said:

“Most things will eventually be turned into memory. So I’ve decided to shut down V2EX.com within 24 hours. I wrote down some of my thoughts on: http://www.livid.cn/doc_view.php?doc_id=5731“.

Then I checked the V2EX site using a proxy server just now and it says only 4 letters “ciao” on the big white screen, as said in the post <消失的未来> (Fading Future) he mentioned. It is a sad news.

Here is my translation to his post. I didn’t do it in word-to-word, but tried to keep the original ideas.

V2EX.com was a website with black color background to originally designed to present my personal stuff. But all the applications I developed (including an RSS aggregator lividot and a dictionary lividict) disappeared in the unplugging “accident” in early 2007.

Maybe I can tell you the exact reason why I built a site like V2EX two years’ ago. To prove something? But I can’t tell the reason now.

I don’t want to use the word “to get hurt” to describe what we have experienced. Maybe this is the best, no better way out. My thoughts have changed a lot in the past two years.

I think I spent too long hours before my computer, and I don’t think this is a good thing, for many reasons.

I believe there are a lot of people who spend at least one hour a day on Google Reader or reading blogs for a variety of complicated reasons. Is “being bored” one of the reasons?

Why can’t we spend more time on tangible things? Why can’t we spend more time to travel or to love a real person? Why must we spend more than 8 hours sitting before a computer? When is the last time the skin of your feet touch the sand on a beach or earth? Is that true the green in your eyes are only the trees along the roads in cities? Is Twitter a must have in our life?

I want to focus on what I really care about, and those are not only limited to the scope of the Web, such as douban and facebook. All these tools are trying to bring to the digital realm the realness and beauty in our life. But then some of us, even all, will consider the digital form as the backdrop of our world but not part of the world. Why?

Chinese abstraction from his blog:

最早 V2EX.com 只是一个有黑色背景的用 ColdFusion 做的陈列我的一些作品的网站. 那些作品已经悉数消失于 07 年初的拔线事件. 包括一个 RSS 聚合器 lividot 和一个词典 lividict.

或许 2 年前我会很明确地说出自己做一个像 V2EX.com 这样的网站的原因, 为了证明一些什么东西? 而现在我说不出任何明确的理由.

我不想用 [ 受到伤害 ] 这样的字眼来形容我们所有人在这个过程中所经历和体会到的. 或许, 青春本来就应该是这样的. 全无更好的出路.

2 年了, 我的很多想法改变了.

我觉得自己在电脑前坐的时间太长了. 我想, 这并不是一件十分好的事情. 原因很多.

我相信这里或许有很多人每天实际上都花超过 1 个小时甚至更多的时间在 Google Reader 或者别人的博客上, 这么做的原因很复杂, 不知道其中是否有任何 [ 无聊 ] 的因素?

…

为什么我们不能将更多的时间用于旅游, 用于去爱一个真实的人, 用于接触这个世界的更多角落呢? 为什么我们一定要这么每天在电脑面前坐超过 8 个小时呢? 你的双脚的皮肤有多长时间没有接触过泥土和沙滩了? 你眼中能看到的绿色是否只是城市里的行道树? 难道我们听的音乐只能是从 iPod 耳机中流出的而不是亲自坐在演奏者面前? Twitter 对于生活难道是必要的么?

我想关注那些我真正想关注的, 而关注之物的选择范围不应该只是从 www. 如豆瓣和 Facebook 这样的东西在试图把我们生活中一切真实的, 美好的东西都映射为电子化的存在形式, 然后我们中的一些甚至全部人则把这样的映射当作了世界的背面而不是部分. 为何如此呢?

…

Even though I only met Livid once, I feel sad about it, especially surmising the reason why he shut the community down from the post above. As our commentor Charles mentioned, Livid is working on another project, footbig. I wish him good luck!

I want to reponse to Livid’s questions in his post:

1. I spend long hours at the computer because: a. I need information for decision making, for fun, for education and just for no reason; b. I need it for my work at Kango;
2. I read blogs because I am seeking the wisdom of both the crowds and the leaders.
3. I want to spend more time travel too; but I have many friends who simply HATE to travel. Does everyone have to want to travel, Livid?

What do you think, CN Reviews readers?

UPDATE: We emailed Livid after posting this interview, and he shared with us the sad news that Livid is shutting down V2EX.  We posted on his announcement here.

One must be a great person to be able to develop a good skill (on something).

-Livid, Jan. 5, 2008 @ Chamate Jing An Temple

We met Livid Torvalds (Liu Xin, 刘昕) for the first time this January. He has blogged on his personal site Livid’s Paranoia since 2005. I picked up the number on his blog as on Feb. 2, 2008. The blog had been viewed for “3,388,186 (# of estimated site page view) +3,067,590 (# of estimated RSS aggregator view) times, average 3727.38 times per article” and he posts “5.68 new articles per week” on average. This is an amazing number for an independent site without Google Adwords. Livid is also famous for his community project called “V-the-number-two-E-X” (which according to Livid is now blocked at the keyword level with the Great Firewall (aka Net Nanny on Danwei). We will call it “the V project” in this interview.

Livid seemed to be very familiar with the tea house Chamate where we met. He ordered a drink without looking at the menu. He surfed Internet on his unlocked iPhone (one of 400,000 iPhones in China) and showed a webpage of his project’s Community Guideline to us. He speaks English very fluently.

Here is a summary of the conversation between Livid & CNReviews (Elliott Ng and Min Guo).

CN Reviews: What are you busy at recently? I noticed that you are working for 6.cn from your facebook profile.
Livid: (giving us his name card) Can you tell what’s the special about this business card? (We couldn’t figure it out) There is no title in this business card! I am still “free” while working within this company. I met the CEO also in Chamate, I respect him and want to work with a great person like him.

CN Reviews: We know you from “the V project”, Wang Jian Shuo mentioned it a few times on his blog. What does it mean?
Livid: It has two meanings: 1. Way to Explore. 2. Way to Extreme. (V = way)
Way to explore: I found there is no place to go in the Chinese Internet world. Why? For example, if you go to the major (main stream) portals/websites, you will see most of those contents are trying to appeal to human being’s lowest part. These are not something I want to explore. The V project is for people who want to explore other things.

To keep up our curiosity, we have to keep exploring the new things. This is part of our human condition, a part of human evolution. I believe that all things are to be born and then to fade away soon. We have a deep urge to keep exploring.

CN Reviews: Is this like Digg?
Livid: No. Digg is just about what is popular, and mostly about technology. I think this “Way to Explore” is more like Wikipedia. Wikipedia is an ideal way to explore and organize new knowledge, things and ideas. I want to create a space for people to keep exploring via discussion and sharing.

Author Note: There is an interesting difference in Western views of Wikipedia vs. Chinese views. To Livid, Wikipedia represents freedom to explore…a project that shares knowledge via the community. In the West, Wikipedia just represents knowledge and has less of a feeling of exploration.

CN Reviews: What do you mean by “Way to [be] Extreme”?
Livid: Way to Extreme: I like the style to push things to the end, to its extremeness. Only by this means, I feel satisfied and happy. I took this term from “Extreme Sports” and “Extreme Programming.”

CN Reviews: When did you start the V project?
Livid:
- 2005/10: It was started as an internal project of kijiji.cn and I was responsible to build an open source platform.
- 2006/03: It was official launched as “Project Babel”. People can download the open source code that the V project is based on to build their own communities. So far, there are around 1,000 “Project Babel” on the Internet. For me, year 2006 is a year of happiness and pureness.(for focusing on programming and helping more people to use the source code).
- 2007/01: It was blocked for the first time.
- 2007/02: A few VCs approached me to talk about this project
- 2007/05 - 07: Some new features introduced: group blogs, built-in “Creative Commons” license to 9 original templates; Gtalk status update widget.
- 2007/09: It was blocked for the second time.
- Now: It is a keyword in the list of GFW.

CN Reviews: Tell us more about why it was blocked?
Livid: A journalist from Life Weekly (三联生活周刊, a magazine found in 1920s) magazine interviewed me in Dec. 2006. A few days after the story was published in the first issue of 2007, on Jan. 11 2007, the net wires connected to the servers were ordered to be unplugged (Livid’s notes in Chinese here) and all the data were not accessible.

CN Reviews: Why?
Livid: It was because of the report. I didn’t go to college and dropped out of high school, but I was able to learn to program, build a community and develop an open source project all by myself without going to college. The “related authority” thought my website was distributing ideas that would create doubts on the current education system. More and more people raising a question like “should I go to college” is not what this authority would want to see.

CN Reviews: Who are the community’s members in your site?
Livid: Mostly students who 1) feel that they don’t know where to go (in Internet) and 2) want to build communities by themselves; 3) who are not Lusers.(Wikipedia: a painfully annoying, stupid, or irritating computer user. ) They want a community of Truth, Love and Realness (v.s. Rumor, Hatred and Fake). Can you believe that a super popular internet game recently launched is “successful” because its rule is to “kill more people to create more hatred to game up”? For example, the ranking of a kingdom is calculated by the number of victories in wars, and the murderer/killer is rewarded with double points whenever she/he killes a person. Of course, you can through in CASHES to buy your weapons and status. This is not the place my community members want to go.

CN Reviews: What are the most popular topics in the communities?
Livid: Whether of not to drop off school, or go to college.

CN Reviews: How would you describe the V project in the Internet world in China?
Livid: A small mirror of China Internet.

Author Notes:
The ONE hour conversation with Livid was too short for us. We see Livid as a small mirror of Chinese new generation bloggers and want to understand him as a “Post 80s” (80后, bā líng hòu) Chinese geek via the first big project he started. Of course, Livid bears many other tags, such as “single child”, “drop out”, “freelance” “creative” and even “mac”.

He feels disappointed that there is no way to access more knowledge. Wikipedia is great, but it is not accessible now. He believes that a person must to be a GOOD person in order to master a skill. I know there are exceptions but I lean towards to agree with him, or I wish what he believes is true.

“More than one-fifth of the world’s population is children of the 80s, The post-80s generation of China has alternately been dismissed as emotional and self-centered, or lauded as passionate and creative.” CRI said. I don’t want to and don’t know how to categorize Livid, yet. I sincerely wish Livid find more happiness and satisfaction in his new projects.

Apendix:

Profile of Livid

Name: Liu Xin 刘昕
ID Used: Livid Torvalds | Lividecay | Castalia
DOB: May 31st, 1985
Home Town: China -> Yunnan -> Kunming
Music: Opeth | Lacrimosa | Rhapsody | The Doors | Nirvana | Smashing Pumpkins | Suede | Lube | Beatles | Dido
OS: Mac OS X
Language: Mandarin | English | Deutsch
Drinks: Starbucks Natie
Hobbies: Literature, painting, programming and 读秒
High school: Kunming No. 3 High School, Middle Schools of Yunnan Normal University
Wish: Get yself satisfied everyday
Spiritual Leader: Myself

I’ve been debating whether to really share my Google Shared items feed or just use it to share with a few friends and my intrepid fellow bloggers here at CN Reviews. Should I share my Google Shared items out or just reserve it for a few friends? Here’s what I found interesting this week. (BTW, writing this post took way too long so not sure I’ll do this on a regular basis)

TechBlog86 - techblog86 Mind the Gap Saturday: Microblogging Revisited, China and the West
China Microblogging has been an area of interest here at CNReviews (starting with our CNbloggerCon Microblogging roundup). Our own David Feng highlights some interesting differences between China microbloggingm, where you are bei guanzhu (被关注) and the West, where you are “followed” or “following”.

The Chinese word for being part of the “attention span” is bei guanzhu (被关注), which equates to something along the lines of “being focused upon”, “being followed”, or - as I said it a moment ago - “part of the attention span” (ie “someone is paying attention to everything you do”).

The way these very words are used reflect pretty much on how things work in different parts of the planet. In the West, where individualism is the order of the day, you’re pretty much all-out after attention; you love it when folks follow you around. In China, though, the feeling that “someone is paying attention to everything you do” gives you a warm feeling that sometimes care about you.

RConversation - Hong Kong 2.0
I’ll always have a soft spot in my heart for Hong Kong and Hong Kongers, partly because my family is from Hong Kong and partly because I experienced the summer of 1989 in Hong Kong. Rebecca posts about her preface to Charles Mok’s new book Hong Kong 2.0 where she admits that many Beijingers disrespect my Hong Kong homeboys but she has come to know and love the people of Hong Kong. This brought a warm feeling to my heart, Rebecca. Thanks for rooting for my peeps.

China Web 2.0 Review - What do Chinese Internet users do online?

49 mm bloggers, or 23.5% of the total 210 mm internet users at the end of 2007. While 34% access the internet through an internet cafe, 74.8% of them have a high-school education or below.

Thomas Crampton (via Danwei) - Exclusive: Matt Roberts on About.com’s launch in China as Abang.com and related post on 14 China Internet insights About.com learned launching Abang.com -

1. Chinese don’t trust professional-looking sites (vs. US users who like a more polished look)
2. Chinese like titles to be the same length (vs. US users who don’t care.
3. Chinese love images (vs. US who care less)
4. Chinese love nutritional information on recipes (vs. US About.com readers)
5. Chinese like to comment after each article (vs. US About.com readers…this seems wrong to this blog writer who thinks About.com is a bit antiquated in user experience)

Marketing Pilgrim - How to Make a Blog Post go Viral with Social Media. Some interesting ideas include creating your own Facebook Application for your blog (BlogFuse, $5 per month), create a profile page for your blog on MySpace (not sure that’s my audience though).

Read Write Web (via TechCrunch)- Humans Interupting Algorithms: Wales v. Calacanis on Human Powered Search
Marissa Meyer was pretty negative on the whole idea of human edited search. You cannot do the “fat tail” solely with human intervention…the value is in the long tail, and that requires an algorithmic solution. Calacanis: “I will go kill myself now. My dream just got slashed by one of my idols. No, but I think fat tail equals humans. Long tail equals advertising.” I’m watching Mahalo pretty closely to see what I can learn from them.

Mad about Shanghai - link to Artzine China. I’m interested in learning more about Contemporary Chinese art and wish I had found this resource before my last trip to China (where my goal of setting aside a whole day to tour galleries with a knowledgeable independent curator turned into a one-hour walk through of Beijing’s 798 District…never enough time…

Scobleizer - what to do if you’re laid off in the 2008 recession. All great tips even if you are happily employed. And wired like the Scobleizer!

Plus8Star (via China Vortex) - Inside QQ report is out!
I learned that Tencent (QQ) is largest in the world at 270 mm accounts vs MSN 250 mm. It’s roughly a 400 mm USD company in 2007. Here’s what I gleaned from the report:

Why do global giants fail in China? (23/184)

1. Expats and execs from HK and Taiwan have limited field of vision, ensconced in nice high rises with well-paid office workers
2. Lack attention to and understanding of the masses
3. Risk adverse because they are earning 8-10X salary than local competitors. More willing to do nothing than to risk failure and loss of their fat salary
4. Focus on Long term strategy rather than reacting fast…long decision making loops with foreign HQ

Examples of current Internet pop culture (34/184)

1. Mice Love Rice
2. Backdorm Boys
3. Furong Jiejie
4. Mu Zimei
5. SuperGirls

Kaiser Kuo’s framing of key differences of the China’s internet industry (94/184)

1. Entertainment-focused to the point of distraction
2. Ferociously competitive
3. Plagued with very bad and unreliable metrics
4. Less obsessed with privacy issues

Via Techmeme, I saw a post by Louis Gray entitled Mashable Uses A-list power to Steal B-list buzz alleging that Mark ‘Rizzn’ Hopkins of Mashable stole a quote without attribution.

Aside from getting me a bit indignant about the plight of the little guy, the post reminded me of a Mashable post from Mark bashing the tech blogosphere for being obsessed with Robert Scoble’s Facebook erasure versus the violence and disputed election in Kenya. Which then spun out-of-control into criticism of Robert Scoble himself. Which then resulted in Scoble defending himself and explaining why he doesn’t blog about Kenya. Via RConversation, I also read Global Voices co-founder Ethan Zuckerman’s defense of Scoble that also does a great job explicating the “known bug” of the blogosphere that people write and read about what they know about, and they often don’t know and don’t care about international issues like the Kenyan post-election events. If you read this, please take the time to read Ethan’s post now!

In fact, Robert Scoble is already global, and his post on wanting to go to CNbloggercon was one reason why we opened this blog. He has also repeatedly tried to share his blogger fame and fortune generously with Global Voices’ founders Ethan and Rebecca MacKinnon. He is already a globalist. So we emailed Scoble late last year and asked him what he wanted to learn about China.  This is what he had to say:

1. Who are the best tech bloggers in China and how do they differ from bloggers elsewhere in the world?
2. What is being a blogger in China like? What perceptions do you have of bloggers elsewhere in the world?
3. Take us around your local technology store and give us a tour.
4. How do you perceive American companies like Microsoft/Yahoo/Google/Sun Microsystems and how are they behaving in China?
5. What are the big topics in China? News we should pay attention to?

(I didn’t get advance blogging permission on sharing this so I hope its ok Robert that I share this!)

These are the issues that we intend to cover at CNReviews. We want to create greater awareness and cultural understanding. We are not sure what the dividends are but it will be surely goodness.

At the same time, we want what we do to have reach and to generate profits, and agree with Ethan’s view that the problem is on the demand side, not the supply side. I also engaged in a great dialog about this subject with Kai Pan at Tripdingo.com (disclosure: I work at Kango and Tripdingo.com is a Kango sponsored blog) where he shared some similar insights about what people really gravitate toward and some tough questions about who our target audience is. In Beijing, I also had one of the best chocolate croissants in my recent life in Chaoyang (contact me if you want to find out where!) with Kaiser Kuo where he shared a data point that one very respected China blog is only getting about 1000 unique visitors/day, and only has about 1000 RSS subscribers. That was a bit depressing because I really viewed this blog as a giant in the field. There is clearly a demand problem.

So I’m excited about 2008 and the journey that we are on with CNReviews. I know we can make a contribution, and I know we can engage with some great blogs and some great bloggers. I hope we can get some people to read the blog too! In the meantime, we’ve got some great feedback from Robert Scoble and hope to tackle some of these issues in the months ahead!

Photos with CC license for commercial reuse: DEMOSH from Kenya; Kai Hendry from China