Tag Archives: Technology

Free laptops for NPC delegates – it looked good on paper

Let’s say you’re a company selling some kind of product. Let’s say your product is –let’s just pick something at random here– laptop computers. Globally, this is a heavily commoditized category jammed with companies selling look-alike products with similar feature … Continue reading

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Seriously? They blocked IMDB?

Imagethief is as annoyed by the Great Firewall (or Net Nanny or what-have-you) as anyone who lives in China and uses overseas social networks. One of the great joys of mypox-afflicted Christmas vacation was having one of my annual bursts … Continue reading

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Don’t scoop the reporter who interviews you, and other PR basics

Last Wednesday, the 21st, the IT news channel of giant Chinese portal Sohu published the transcript of an interview of Sohu CEO Charles Zhang by Hong Kong-based BusinessWeekjournalist Bruce Einhorn. All well and good, you might think. Chinese portals regularly … Continue reading

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Communication is the real lesson from the Green Dam Youth Escort fiasco

So Green Dam + Youth Escort blocks images based on skin tone. But what if I like Afro-porn? These, and other important questions are arising now that serious analysts (which is to say, people other than me), have had some … Continue reading

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Why I’m not in a tizzy over China’s new Internet filtering software

Another day, another censorship-related thing to get bent out of shape about here in China.This week it’s the dreaded “Green Dam Youth Escort” internet filtering software, which goes right to the head of the nominee list for the annual Imagethief … Continue reading

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Consultants say hardened Chinese death-nerds are coming for your daughters

Yes, it’s true. Those Chinese death-nerds are everywhere. They’re in your bank account. They’re in the Pentagon. They’re sending naked pictures of themselves to your daughter. And they’re completely invulnerable to all known countermeasures! Or at least that’s the terrifying … Continue reading

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Chinese cyberspies? Sheer lies and heinous fabrications!

Alright, I confess I made up the “heinous fabrications” bit. But the “sheer lies” sound bite comes straight from China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which has clearly worked hard to make sure that its representatives around the world are working … Continue reading

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What if Yahoo abandoned China?

If you grew up in the US reading Marvel Comics, like Imagethief, you may remember the old What If? series. In What If? the fates of Marvel superheroes were projected into alternate realities. It made for some pretty good stories … Continue reading

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The disappointing silence from the top

It’s been nearly two weeks since representatives of Cisco, Microsoft, Yahoo and Google testified before the House Subcommittee on Human Rights about their various entanglements with China. As expected, after blowing hot in the run-up to the testimony, coverage has … Continue reading

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Congress to grill US net firms on China

The US government has begun to take note of what American Internet firms are doing in China. A report in CNET’s News.com from technology policy journalist Declan McCullagh (also now picked up by Rebecca MacKinnon, Asiapundit, etc.) says that two … Continue reading

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