In what seems to be a move to cement its newly-formed ecommerce subsidiary, Tencent the Chinese Internet conglomerate wrote a US$ 1 billion check to the nascent initiative with Martin Lau president of the company reigning over the effort as chairman. This is the second largest investment of China’s Internet sector trailing only 360buy’s Series […]
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MSN Only Has Less Than 5% Share of Chinese Instant Messaging Market, But Don’t Complain About QQ
QQ is for Chinese young generation, MSN is for white-collar, Skype is for people who have international background, and Gtalk is for geeks. This is how people were using instant messengers in China, several years ago. I was using MSN, just because it’s neat and simple and QQ was ugly and looked messy. But things […]
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The “Quantified Self”: How Sensors Can Allow You to Understand Yourself
Like nerve endings which translate senses such as touch, smell, heat, etc. into electrical impulses in your nervous system, sensors can translate the physical world into the digital; and help humans become more aware of ourselves in the process. “Quantified Self” is to use algorithms to correlate all these sensor data, and provide valuable information for better living.
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Aigo Founder, Feng Jun, Wants to See World Class Chinese Brands
From humble beginnings selling keyboards out of Tsinghua University, Feng Jun the Founder and CEO of Shenzhen-listed electronics manufacturing company, Aigo, believes now is the time for Chinese companies to be global players. In the recent BrandZ Top 100 ranking which measures the most influential brands in the world; American tech companies take the top […]
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Starting Up in China: The Same, But Entirely Different
Metaphors are a great way of giving someone a basic sense of what something is very quickly. It’s just that beyond that, they’re not really very helpful. And in the aforementioned cases, they leave you with the impression that there’s nothing new in China; everything’s just a copy of something from elsewhere, but a bit more, well, Chinese. But, What’s happening here isn’t the same as in the West and it may well ultimately be at least as successful.
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Three Teams Standing out from BizSpark held by Microsoft
In the second BizSpark startup competition held in Beijing by Microsoft andEntrepreneur China (Chuangyebang), three teams stood up to the challenge and ranked top three with RMB 80,000 award and ongoing supports from Microsoft including free development tools, Windows Azure cloud service and so on. BizSpark is aiming at uncovering startups with potential through a […]
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Winter is Coming, For Chinese E-Commerce Companies
“Winter is coming.” It’s as if citizens of Winterfell are describing the state of Chinese E-commerce. Even the best and brightest of the bunch cannot escape doubt. 360Buy has to make repeated denials of the rumor that the company is short of 5 billion Yuan.This comes right after Li Guoqing, the CEO of 360buy’s competitor […]
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If You Build It, They Will Come
iPad is a successful product for many reasons, but one of the most significant must be that the design of iPad is so intuitive that an illiterate 6-year-old can use it without instruction. A good product taps into something basic in human nature, something shared across culture. Apple designers did not build a product specifically […]
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Disrupt大会产品演示：移动网络连接的众包平台OpenGarden
试想一下，你可以把你的网络连接分享给周围的所有人，而不只是连接到你手机或热点的几个WIFI设备，这是件多么神奇的事情。今天在TechCrunch Disrupt大会上推出的Open Garden就能做到这一点。你可以创建一个网状网络（mesh network）将周围所有运行Open Garden的设备聚合组成一个大型网络，所有设备间就能自动共享网络访问以及带宽。简而言之，Open Garden致力于成为移动网络连接的众包平台。 目前，Open Garden可以运行于Android、Windows和Mac平台（今天在Disrupt大会上演示后就会在Google Play商店上架）。Open Garden的远期规划是推出可用的iOS应用程序。 这家位于旧金山的公司成立于2011年，创始团队个个履历亮眼。比如说联合创始人米沙·贝诺里尔（Micha Benoliel）自己开公司前曾在Skype工作，联合创始人斯坦尼斯拉夫·萨鲁诺夫（Stanislav Shalunov）在网络基础设施方面有着深厚的背景，曾参与了Internet 2和BitTorrent的开发。而该公司的第三位联合创始人格雷格·哈泽尔（Greg Hazel）曾经担任广受欢迎的BitTorrent客户端μTorrent的首席程序员。 这一项目尤为出彩的地方在于，Open Garden利用自己在网络和P2P方面的深厚造诣开发出了独特的发现机制（并申请了专利），运行其软件的设备能够很容易互相检测到。由于这一技术的专有性，该公司并没有在公开场合详细说明它的工作原理。 目前，Open Garden仅仅使用了一条网络通道（offramp）创建整个网状网络（尽管值得注意的是，它也是将大型网络分解多个包含大约十个节点的小型网络）。如果网络检测到多个通道，它就会选择最快的可用通道，如果节点离线或者变慢就会切换至另一个通道。 贝诺里尔表示，不久后该系统将支持多通道聚合，从而实现更高的数据吞吐能力。理想情况下，即使你的手机不在网状网络中也不要紧，它允许你并发地使用WiFi和3G或4G网络。不过就目前而言，该公司将重点放在把测试版应用推向市场，以及实现尽可能无缝的整体使用体验上面。 当然，对于这样的项目人们不禁会问，运营商会作何反应。贝诺里尔告诉我，他对此并不过于担心。他用VoIP来打比方，现在运营商们已经接受了这一技术。运营商终究会接受这样的概念，并找到利用它们的最佳方式。Open Garden团队相信，从长远角度看，运营商会明白他们作为Open Garden开放网络中的一部分也能从中获益。 当然，理想情况下，这样的ad-hoc网状网络也能帮运营商降低3G及4G网络的数据负载。尽管该公司不愿意透露任何细节，贝诺里尔告诉我，Open Garden已经和一家“高瞻远瞩的欧洲运营商”达成了合作协议。 这个项目恐怕会让其他一些公司如坐针毡——比如说Boingo或GoGo这样的付费WiFi网络。说到底，在机场登机厅甚至在允许开启Wi-Fi的飞机上，一台运行着Open Garden软件的手机可以给所有人提供基本的网络访问。 该公司可能是首批落户在旧金山金银岛的企业之一，在此前的种子融资中已经获得了一些投资，他们希望在本轮融资中再筹资金，或者不久后发起一轮规模更大的VC融资。 [tc_5min code=”517375308″] Disrupt Q&A Q：你们是不是打算卖应用赚钱？ A：我们想将它免费提供给大家。计划采取免费增值的模式，对于企业用户提供一些如VPN访问之类的额外功能。 Q：安全性和隐私性如何？ A：这一网状网络是经过加密的。你无法通过设备捕获到网络中传输的数据。 Q：对电池电量有何影响？ A：大部分的电量消耗都来自数据传输。当你数据卸载（offload）至WiFi模式时，Open Garden也能帮你省电，WiFi要比3G或4G连接耗电更低。 Q：如何解决免费蹭网的问题？ A：Open Garden一直在考虑加入一个信用系统。 Q：目前有没有竞争对手？ A：我们已经建立了许多的IP地址。我们有着很强的竞争优势。要说竞争对手，运营商的网络卸载（offload）业务算是一个。这也是许多硬件厂家在生产小型基站等设施的原因。 （译：顾秋实） Open Garden Lets You Crowdsource Your Mobile Connectivity
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Sina Weibo Working on New Marketing Solutions
Sina Weibo will be launching an App Store for enterprise soon in the wake of its recent announcement of the Weibo display advertising platform and a revamped enterprise Weibo. Earlier this month, Sina announced its enterprise Weibo 2.0, which provides better page customization, more insightful analytic tools and all new open APIs. Prior to this, […]