Tangos Lifestream - tagged with tools

Welcome Back, Yeeyan

Sat, 09 Jan 2010 08:30:00 -0800

Yeeyan, a popular online translation collaboration community in China, was back online in yesterday morning, after it was shut down in Nov 30, 2009 by China’s online content regulators. But its domain name changes from Yeeyan.com to Yeeyan.org. On almost all my list about my favoriate China’s websites, you can find Yeeyan. Since it started in 2006, still a group blog at that time (see our first post on Yeeyan), I kept an eye on its developments. In 2007, Yeeyan becomes an online content collaborative translation community, users can collaboratively translation and publish foreign language articles into Chinese. The translators can also have opportunity to gain financial benefit from the articles translated by them. I think it is the best crowdsourcing website in China. Yeeyan partnered with both foreign and Chinese media, by translating articles from foreign media into Chinese and publishing on China’s newspaper, magazine and website, it can reward its translators with real money. Yeeyan also translated and published several books by this crowdsourcing model. According to Chen Haozhi, CEO of Yeeyan, some of the translators can get RMB4000 to 6000 a month, and Yeeyan also makes break even. But partnerships with foreign news media, such as The Guardian, Time Magazine, New York Times, also made troubles to Yeeyan. In Nov 30, Yeeyan was shut down by regulators, because it published news in its website without getting necessary licenses.

Now Yeeyan is back, but the new Yeeyan will focus more on tech, science and business, not on current affairs which might enrage regulators. You cannot find articles from those foreign news media now. Yeeyan also introduces a pre-publish auditing system, a new translation will only be open to public after it is reviewed manually. The group feature is replaced by a new feature called Project, it also reflect the new Yeeyan tries to strengthen itself on translation collaboration functions, rather than generic social networking. Anyway, welcome back, Yeeyan. We missed you.

Related posts:Yeeyan Rolls Out New Version Yeeyan: Translate Chinese Blog Posts into English Earthquake Relief Efforts on China’s Web

Post tags: Yeeyan

Apple Acquired EditGrid?

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 09:57:00 -0700

Apple4us, the leading Chinese blog on Apple, reported that Apple has acquired EditGrid, an online spreadsheets service provider in Hong Kong. In April 2006, we profiled EditGrid when it just launched public beta test. EditGrid actually is one of my personal favorite Chinese web 2.0 services, since it kept on introducing innovative features and its good user interfaces. In June 2007, EditGrid raised a US$1.25M Series A financing from WI Harper. David Lee, founder of EditGrid, posted an article on EditGrid’s blog on Sept 24, it may make people suspect it is dying, because it discontinue its customer support for 30 days. I’m excited to announce that we are making some changes to our business that will allow the EditGrid Team to focus on developing new and exciting web apps. … Effective today all EditGrid.com online services will now be available for free, including our premium subscription services. … in order to focus our resources on new R&D efforts, email and forum user support for EditGrid.com shall be discontinued 30 days from now on 2009-10-24. In crowded online office service market, EditGrid, as a stand-alone service, has little chance to make a profitable business. I’m not surprised to hear that it is acquired, but I’m surprised to know it is Apple.
Why Apple buy them? EditGrid’s capability on online office apps, esp. online spreadsheet, will strongly enhance the development of Apple’s iwork.com online service. According to Apple4us, the acquisition is valued between $10m to $30m.

Post tags: Apple, EditGrid

EditGrid: An Online Spreadsheet (8)

40+ Essential Front End Web Developer Cheat Sheets | tripwire magazine

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 07:33:00 -0700

web前端开发速查手册

Baidu Personalized Startpage

Fri, 17 Apr 2009 04:17:00 -0700

Baidu’s startpage is now available at my.baidu.com. The domain should be available since around April 1st. Certainly it’s not an April fool. Before that, a lot of us have seen an earlier version through a public IP address. In one word, it’s just like iGoogle or any other startpage services. You can add service widgets or RSS feeds to the page and organize them into tabs. You can re-order them through drag and drop. You can find more modules at here. There’re currently 55 modules listed. Maybe finally, those 885 modules of Baidu Space would be ported to startpage too. On the default homepage, you will find a calendar module. There’s currently no calendar service from Baidu. This module can serve as a simplified solution. Baidu has been providing calendar service for its postbar for a while now. There’s also a music module on the default page. It’s not from Baidu mp3 search, but from Qianqian, a popular music player. Qianqian was rumored to be acquired by Baidu for years. There’s no clue if Baidu will open API for the startpage or not. The current modules are mostly news and ranking list.
Update: The domain my.baidu.com is not new. Originally it’s an old version of startpage under the flag of Baidu browser bar. You can find some clue on this help page. Update2: A lot of users are complaining that the new version don’t have customized link, which is available in the old version. Customized links are static links to frequently used sites like those on hao123 and 265. Refer to the according postbar.

Post tags: Baidu

Who is Leading China’s Blog Market? (14) Voice Matters: Baidu Launches Voice Search, QQ Voice Mail Follows (3) Use Search Engine To Compare Popularity of Chinese Websites (4) The Secrets of Baidu’s Investment (4) The Coming War Between Baidu and Taobao (4)

Douban To Add Book Series

Sat, 04 Apr 2009 00:07:00 -0700

Douban, the book reviews and recommendation service, has just announced a new expansion of book attributes, series. Via Wikipedia, a book series is a sequence of books with certain characteristics in common that are formally identified together as a group. Book series look like a public and collaborative version of another more private feature — book lists. According to douban, some initial data coming along with the new features would have been converted from a group of well maintained book lists. Contributors to the book series would be listed on the according page in the same way like other wiki services. What’s not clear is who has the final decision of the qualification of those series. Apart from those formally identified by publishers, you can group book series according to topic or author. Is there minimum number of books for a qualified series? In theory, any author with multiple publications would eventually have a series named by his name. By adding another dimension to the data, the management would become more challenging. Book series is also a feature used in recommendation. Douban mentioned that since books in the same series will be listed on book profile, they won’t include them in recommendation any more.

Post tags: Douban

Top Ten Web2.0 News of 2005 in China (5) The Color of Web2.0 Party (4) News Roundup: Douban, Qzone, iNeZha and Tianji (2) New 9taps Reader Rocks (3) Microsoft Spring Festival Search, Douban New 9taps (1)

Hello, I’m QQ: QQ Speaks English Now

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 00:48:00 -0800

When we are talking about China’s Internet companies, we will definitely talk Tencent, whose IM software QQ is the most popular IM software in China. At the time I’m writing this post, QQ has over 45m concurrent users online. Based on its QQ software, Tencent generated revenue of USD297 million in the quarter ended on Sept 30 2008. But it is not easy for a foreigner to understand this China’s Internet phenomenon, partly because QQ’s software is all in Chinese. Now Tencent quietly launched an International website I’mQQ.com, which enables you to download an English version QQ and register a QQ id. If you are an iPhone user, you can also try QQ for iPhone. But for Mac or Linux users, QQ for Mac and QQ for Linux haven’t provide English version now. Actually, it’s not the first time for Tencent to start its internationalization. For example, in 2007, QQ Game partnered with AIM, in early 2008, Tencent invested in an online game operator Outspark. (tip by Thijs Terlouw)

Post tags: IMQQ, QQ, Tencent

Wenwen.com: Tencent’s Ask & Answer Service (2) Taotao: Twitter Clone from QQ (11) QQ Launches Resource Sharing Platform (1) Pony Ma Downplays Facebook Developer Platform (4) China Web 2.0 New Roundup (2)

Balsamiq Mockups Home | Balsamiq

Sat, 10 Jan 2009 06:27:00 -0800

UI设计利器

Ju690 Shows You What Chinese Users Are Sharing

Sun, 28 Dec 2008 23:09:00 -0800

Ju690 is a social memetracker, which we firstly reported in July 2007, when it was still called onejoo. Since then the service has been improved a lot. The newest addition is a social recommendation aggregator. Different from earlier ones like Zhuaxia hot article and Douban 9taps, which is centralized that you will have to vote for the article on these sites. Ju690’s social recommendation considers link sharing in other places like Google Reader and Twitter. While the original motivation of Ju690 is anti-link sharing, since target users don’t share link a lot, the adoption of link sharing tools like Google Reader and Twitter has driven it back to the track. The layout of the main page is simple. It’s a digg like layout, with three tabs: latest, hottest and upcoming. You will see where these votes come from under the article. In case the original site is unavailable there’s a cached version of the article. Ju690 is currently a project for research purpose.

Post tags: Ju690, Onejoo

Onejoo: Memetracker in China (10)

Sogou Released Its Own Internet Browser

Mon, 22 Dec 2008 06:55:00 -0800

Sogou, the search engine service under Sohu, today released a Internet browser, Sogou Browser. It is an IE kernel-based browser with some features to improve users experience. Sogou Browser claims that it is using a multi-task asynchronous browsing technology which can make each tab browse the web independently. When a tab is crashed, other tabs will not be affected, which is similar to Google Chrome. To provide better online video-watching experience, Sogou Browser enable you to play only flash video on a web page in an independent windows, which can be put on top of all other windows and can be resize freely, then you can watch videos which you are browsing other tabs. To address the Internet usage problem of China’s university students, Sogou Browser has an embedded proxy feature. In China, students in Universities are using CERNET (China Education and Research Network), which does not allow them to access overseas websites freely. Sogou Browser adds a proxy which enable users inside CERNET to access overseas websites.

Actually, Internet browser is an important software segment in China. There are several browsers in China which are using IE kernel, the most famous one is Maxthon which has been downloaded for over 177 million times, and on the list of top 10 international products of 2008 by ReadWriteWeb. Tencent also has its IE kernel browser called Tencent Traveler(TT). Another one is The World, Qihoo released a safe browser early this year based on The World and Qihoo 360safe security software. Even on mobile applications, there is a very popular Chinese mobile browser called UCWeb. Besides those local-made browser, both Firefox and Opera also want to take more shares in China market by offering special Chinese version. Last month, Firefox launched a Firefox China Version specially made for Chinese users. Opera released its China version just in last week.

Post tags: Sogou, Sogou Browser

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Xiami: P2P music sharing

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 08:01:00 -0800

We have been hearing about Xiami’s new beta from multiple sources. Xiami is a P2P music sharing community. The key services include a P2P client, web based metadata directory and economy system. To have a preview of the music, you don’t need the client. There’s a web based music player. But to download the music, you will need the client. It’s like verycd, but focused on music. All music is uploaded by users. To encourage users to upload music, it has its economy system. Uploading music or others downloading your music will earn virtual coin for you. Certainly, to download music you will need to spend virtual coin. You can also buy virtual coin with real money. Have they solved the copyright issue? After carefully studying the website, I think no. They don’t mention how artist or labels will get anything from it. Its main business is not selling music, but enabling automatically swapping music album. It also has a feature to let you create costumed album like Baidu Zhangmenren. These albums can also be downloaded and earn virtual coin for you. Here’s a blog post introducing the website by the founder.

China Web2.0 Review | Permalink | 1 comment | Add to del.icio.us

Post tags: music, Xiami

Yiqilai.com: Yet Another Online Music Discovery Service (7) Weazone to launch Tumblelog (4) Voice from Chinese Music SP Regarding Government Regulation (2) Taiwan ezPeer+ To Enter Mainland China Digital Music Market (4) Preparing For Kuro, The Chinese iTunes (3)

Baidu IM Launches Web Version

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 22:31:00 -0700

Starting Yesterday, if you visit Baidu space, you will be able to chat with other Baidu users within your browser. If you logged in your Baidu account, you will see a little Baidu Hi logo right beside your user name. Clicking it, you will be directed to the web version. The launched product is the Web version of Baidu’s instant messenger. Baidu’s IM, launched in March this year, is sharing the same name with Baidu space and tightly integrated with it. The web version is quite simple. It doesn’t show you a buddy list, as most of your expected. To start a conversation, you just click the button on the upper left side of the screen, then input the user name that you want to chat. The user on the other side will be notified, if he is on the site as well. So it’s not a rich and fancy web product with tons of javascript to compete with other web IM. It’s good for a quick catch of someone that you really have something to say. From my point of view, it works and is enough.

China Web2.0 Review | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us

Post tags: Baidu

Comsenz Sells ECShop To ShopEX

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 08:43:00 -0700

ECShop, a Comsenz’s software which enables users to build up their own online shops, today was sold to ShopEx, a Shanghai-based company and its biggest rival. On August 2007, Comsenz, the famous social software enabler in China, acquired ECShop, after the acquisition Comsenz developed ECMall, which allows you to build a online C2C platform. And on October 2007, Comsenz rolled out Maifou, which is a hosted online shops service. It is said there are totally over 100,000 websites are using ECShop to sell goods online. Now all these three services are sold to ShopEX. ShopEX, established in 2002, is another leading player in the market, whose ShopEX software and hosted service Wdwd.com are also very popular. Just in Sept., Comsenz also sold its OpenV SuperV to Ku6.com. OpenV SuperV is a software which helps you to build your own online video sharing sites. After selling ECShop and OpenV SuperV, Comsenz will focus its resources on two products: Discuz!, a popular BBS software and the core asset of Comsenz, and especially UCenter Home, a SNS software and which is critical to Comsenz’s future development. ps. Kevin Dai, founder and CEO of Comsenz will present at OpenWebAsia Conference in Seoul next week, he will be on the panel of “Innovation in Asia”.

China Web2.0 Review | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to del.icio.us

Post tags: Comsenz, ECShop, ShopEX

Maifou: The online Shops Platform from Comsenz (4) Comsenz Acquired EcShop (3) UCenter Home: Comsenz Helps You to Build Your Own Facebook (8) MYOP: Comsenz’s Answer to Open Platform (3)