Friday, September 21, 2007

BoBoing - Boing Boing's Chinese Diggest



BoBoing is a new entertainment team blog which is dedicated in translating Boing Boing's interesting stories. At the first glance, nothing special on it can catch my sight, I mean, many Chinese Blogs are titled as "Boing Boing's Chinese language edition" but virtually become silent or disappear in this year, such as the dying Postshow (it's possibly dead when you see this post).

However, my intuition tells me BoBoing can not only survive but will become a sound brand on China internet one day. As the initiator Sein told me BoBoing was a sister blog of Jandan and the Jandan authors team would continue to update both blogs, my intuition tells me again that BoBoing may be a sound brand among china blogosphere in the furture.

Why I'm so interest in another Jandan-mode translation blogs and think it highly? Because:
  1. BoBoing's orientation satisfy readers - Most Chinese internet users surf the web for relax, this make entertainment blogs easier to be accepted. In addition, few influential media focus on translating boing boing, so in the eyes of normal Chinese netizens, boboing's Chinese language posts are "unique" and never seen before.
  2. Listing out the key information - Many Chinese bloggers insist that translating a full article into fluent Chinese is quite important, while Jandan-mode think that Blog posts should be short and summary, to avoid infringement and save readers' time.
  3. Not only translation - Thanks to the development of artificial intelligence technology and language education, translation is no longer an impossible mission for us, I firmly believe that with the help of computer, even a 15-year-old middle school student can translate a post from techcrunch. Hence, to be a successful translation blog in China, bloggers have to create their core competitive strength. Both BoBoing and Jandan have developed their unique "humor" culture which added extra fun to their posts and this advantage made them different from hundreds of other "translation robots".
  4. Got a reliable and accountable head - Some team blogs in China can not last long because their writers get tired of making contribution without pay, the sad truth is, making money from blogs is still a very challenging job in China. Under such situation, the head of the team must try his best to motivate members, in this case, must help authors retain their interest in voluntary translation. I believe the initiator Sein do the organizing job well: he aways can find qualified and voluntary translators on the internet, he set up loosen rules and create very relax environment and never push the authors. Despite of organizing the team and providing technical support, he is also a diligently writer of Jandan and BoBoing especially when other authors are tired...
PS: Merely introducing is boring, and I will prefer to add my analysis in my future posts.

Monday, September 3, 2007

How to visit blogs that are banned

Today I received an email from Wei who just returned to China, he asked if there are any ways to access Blogspot blogs and xanga. As usual, I replied him with my answers and his problem were solved.

Considering that many foreigners (we prefer to call them "Laowai" for short) know little about China's internet censorship, I feel it's necessary to write a post here to tell everybody how to visit banned blogs.

My solutions:
  1. Use http://www.pkblogs.com/ , it's a special web-based proxy designed for blogspot blogs
  2. Use Google Reader or Bloglines or other available foreign online RSS Readers, they can automatically load recent posts from most blogs
  3. Use web-based proxies listed on this page or from this result, if everything goes well you should be able to read and comment
  4. Firefox users may try this method, I'm not sure whether it's still working though.
  5. Install proxy software, like Freegate and Tor . According to my experience, they are very slow in scanning alternative IPs and loading websites...
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