A friend of mine, Cai Qing, was recently in Chaoyang Park (Beijing) when she noticed a group was holding open auditions for a part in an upcoming Chinese movie. She’s not an actress by profession but thought it would be fun so recorded a couple of short introductory casting videos and went on her way. For most people the story would end here but things took an intriguing twist…
For folks living and travelling in China having a VPN (Virtual Private Network) has become a necessity if you want to leap over the great firewall and access sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to name but a few. While personal VPN providers like Witopia and 12vpn provide easy to set up packages which you can install on your computer many people will still intermittently experience slow or unstable connections (through no fault of the provider) which can dampen the experience.
The “Great Firewall of China” (GFW), officially know as the Golden Shield Project (金盾工程), is the system which filters, blocks and censors the flow of information online within the People’s Republic of China as sanctioned by the government to “protect” its citizens from content it deems harmful to societal stability (or “harmony” as they call it here).
For almost as long as records have existed being a member of an exclusive club or organisation has been the preserve of the rich elite around the world. As well as giving them access to people and resources, it makes them feel privileged and provides an ideal way to flaunt their wealth among their super-rich peers. In other words somewhere to show off.
After the Beijing 2008 Olympics most people anticipated that internet censorship in China would ease but contrary to expectations the situation continues to get worse with more sites being blocked by the week (see whatblocked.com for the latest). Traditionally people bypassed the blocks using anonymous proxies and other free services but many of these have also been barred by the government and those which remain are usually so overwhelmed that service is patchy and slow at best. The best solution for foreigners in China and anyone wanting to access sites such as YouTube, Twitter and Facebook these days is to get a personal VPN account using one of the commercial services available. A VPN, or Virtual Private Network, basically allows you to create a secure tunnel through…
It struck me the other day that most of the great internet companies and services which have seen massive success in recent years were in many ways a result of coincidental evolution rather than by prior design. That is to say few of them started off life how we know them today and that most came from small groups or individuals rather than massive corporations. Here are a few examples to name but a few: Flickr was originally built as part of an online multiplayer game Facebook started life as a student information directory at Harvard Twitter began as an internal project at a company doing something completely different YouTube came about when the founders couldn’t find an easy way to share videos Some…
I recently compiled a list of popular English language sites which are currently blocked, or have been at some point in the past, in China (you can find the most current version on whatblocked.com): What struck me is how this has changed over the past few years; before mainstream news organisations (e.g. BBC) and various activist groups were the clear targets but today this has dramatically shifted towards social media (e.g. Twitter) and services which allow the free sharing of content outside China’s digital borders (e.g. YouTube). Within China clones of sites like Facebook (e.g. RenRen) have been allowed to flourish under the direct control of the government who are free to monitor and censor at will. After the 60th anniversary celebrations at the beginning of…
Photo by gothopotam A couple of weeks ago I turned 25 which was a fairly unremarkable event but did get me thinking about how technology and the internet in particular has changed our lives over the past quarter of a century. Many things we take for granted today were unthinkable 25 years ago and have fundamentally changed the way we live our lives. I put together a quick list of 10 things I couldn’t do 25 years ago but now rely on daily… Communicate with people on the other side of the world in real time from virtually anywhere Write something and make it available to billions of people for free without any technical knowledge Search billions of pages of information and find almost anything in less than…
Being an expat with multiple bank accounts in different countries, important documents such as passports, visas, life insurance and other contracts I seem to have amassed a huge collection of important but private information which is essential to the smooth running of my life. Whatever the documents may be if you’re like me then keeping track of it all is a headache made even it’s made even more complex as conventionally it’s a bad idea to store it all in the same place which would make identity theft much easier if that information was compromised (i.e. stolen). Added to this you need this information to be easily accessible as it would be pretty difficult to memorize it all (e.g. online bank credentials, emergency contact and policy numbers…
Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 updated for 21st Century China (and my current mood): Photo by wvs Oh Great Firewall shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? No, I shalt compare thee to a thorn in my backside. Thou art more restrictive and more disruptive. Rough connections do shake the darling congress of March, And 1989′s memory hath all too long a block. Sometime too hot the eye of CPC shines, And often is Youtube’s complexion dimmed; And every post from BBS sometime declines, By chance, or golden shield’s changing course, untrimmed; But thy eternal censor shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that power thou ow’st, Nor shall freedom brag thou wand’rest in his shade, When in eternal lines to Time thou grow’st.…