国际网站.com

It's been a few months since I posted anything (partially because Blogspot is blocked by the government again), so the least I can do is repost an interesting article...

Many of you will know I'm a linguist by hobby. I'm also a technophile. So when technology, in this case the internet, crosses language barriers I'm particularly excited. It should still be a few years before non-Latin domain names begin appearing on the internet, but it's nevertheless a pretty revolutionary development.

Oct 10, 2007
telecomasia.net

Internet domain names group ICANN is about to trial non-Latin language
domain names in what it says is one of the biggest changes ever to the Net.

It will begin a pilot of top-level Internationalized Domain Names
(IDNs) in 11 languages next Monday.

Internet users around the globe will be able to access wiki pages with
the domain name example.test in 11 test languages — Arabic, Persian, Chinese
(simplified and traditional), Russian, Hindi, Greek, Korean, Yiddish, Japanese
and Tamil, ICANN said in a statement.

“This evaluation represents ICANN’s most important step so far towards
the full implementation of IDNs. This will be one of the biggest changes to the
Internet since it was created,” said ICANN president and CEO Paul Twomey.

The evaluation is made possible by the insertion into the root of the
11 versions of .test, which means they are alongside other top-level domains
like .net, .com, .info, .uk, and .de at the core of the Internet.

The wikis will allow Internet users to establish their own sub-pages
with their own names in their own language. “The evaluation is being done in the
11 languages of the Internet communities that have shown the most interest in
moving IDNs from concept to reality,” said the statement.

The introduction of IDNs allows users to write the whole of a domain
name in the characters used to write their own language. Right now, they
can only use these characters before the dot, and as a result .com, .net, .org
and other suffixes can only be written in characters from basic Latin. IDNs will
change this so that literally tens of thousands of characters will be available
to the world.

“Right now only the ASCII characters a through z are available for use
in top level labels — the part of the address after the dot,” Twomey said.
“Users will be able to have their name in their language for their Internet when
full IDN implementation makes available tens of thousands of characters from the
languages of world.”

Green is the new black...

Green is the new black

Prepare to be educated... when your screen is white – eg; an empty word page, or on a Google page, your computer consumes 74 watts, and when it’s black it consumes only 59 watts.

A chap called Mark Ontkush wrote an article about the energy saving that would be achieved if Google had a black screen, taking in account the huge number of page views, according to his calculations, 750 mega watts/hour per year would be saved. In a response to this article Google created a black version of its search engine, called Blackle, with the exact same functions as the white version, but with lower energy consumption, check it out:

www.blackle.com

Use this site as your search engine and do your bit for the planet and replace your old google favourite’s icon with blackle.com!

Portal News: China and Korea

Faithfull readers -

Earlier today I was on the lookout for mobile media portals, 3rd party products that can run on operators' mobile platforms allowing them to earn revenue from the data streaming across their networks without having to deal with bothersome issues such as IPR protection and censorship.

While I found that providers of these platforms are indeed slowly emerging and gaining a place in the mobile media value chain, my feeling is that despite all the arguments about the user-interface (UI) challenges of mobile rather than internet media consumption, it will still probably be the main search engines and internet portals who establish dominance in the mobile media world.

For this reason, I'm going to highlight today 2 search engine newsbriefs from UCLA's AsiaMedia Program.

The first, "Cyworld-Emphas merger alerts Naver," discusses a recently announced merger in the South Korean serach engine space that will bring together SKT's Cyworld SNS (Social Networking Service) and Nate portal with the Empas search engine. While the move was expected and the article maintains that the deal will bring competition to Naver, the leading portal, I think another key story here is how bringing these three roles (SNS, Portal, Search Enging) together under one roof points the way to an online experience where peer connection, algoroithm, and editorial contributions all work in parallel to guide surfing behavior. I expect it will be more than just search technologies that spread across all three new partners.

The second article, "Google receives license to provide Internet content in China," discusses the recent ICP (Internet Content Provider) license Google received in China. If the industry matures the way many observiers think it will, Google may well continue to develop its impotance in both internet and mobile searching in China.

That's all for today. Thanks,
Gary

Daily News

A few pieces of news I liked today:

1. iPhone requires server-side components. I wonder how many operators will migrate to a business model whereby they relegate control of some of their more profitable services (media) to 3rd parties. Some of this is happening with Mobile TV already, but I know operators will do all they can to try not to let this happen. Anyone seen a really forward-looking operator media platform initiative recently?

2. Baidu bowls Google a fastball. Baidu is expanding internationally. First Japan, then Europe, then the world...

3. QQ to enter the CRM service market. I'm happy to see Tencent bringing IM to China's CRM market. I'm not sure how many small and medium Chinese businesses currently have sufficiently mature internet strategies to demand real-time customer communication tools, but it's a step forward nonetheless...

4. Korea to regulate user generated content. The upcoming regulations place copyright and other content burdens on the creator. Much of Korean UCC is already created using a real-name registration system. Its not yet clear to what degree this will spread to the rest of Asia...

5. Music piracy in Asia fact sheet. Synovate released an interesting report recently. Here are some of the key figures.

Pioneers on the road to my dream

Finally, after trying for 10-months, I'm going this Monday to Mobile Monday Beijing.

What is Mobile Monday you may be asking? Mobile Monday is an international knowledge sharing network for the wireless industry. It helps people like me know who is doing what in the industry and what important trends to try and keep on top of.

I know the best time to have gone to Mobile Monday would probably have been last fall when I was looking for work in the industry, but circumstances conspired against me. What is it then that makes me decide to go this time for sure?

The answer is the topic, Mobile Social Ventures! Now I'm currently doing a few projects on corporate social responsibility and in my time at the World Bank I did a fair bit of work on development, and even the use of technology to support development, but in the context of my current private sector consulting activities, it's often hard to see the links between these social engagements and the business-orientation of my industry as a whole.

Yet murmurs have been growing for a few years now about new business models whereby businesses, no less profit-oriented than they are today, nevertheless make contributions to society either as a by-product of their main businesses or (ideally) as the core offering of the business itself.

Next Monday's talk promises to highlight some of these emerging business models that help wireless companies make healthy profits through the provision of social goods.

I'm always hesitant about putting my dreams on paper, but I've been saying for some time that a goal of mine is to develop the consulting skills necessary to aid the financial and business planning of mobile social ventures such as we will be talking about at the meeting. I hope that some of what we discuss on Monday and some of the people I meet at the discussion will help me move one step closer to this dream.

Peace.

Easy on the eyes...

So PwC has this great online information service called Communications Direct, which sends me daily technology updates.

This morning it sent along an interesting article from Phone+ about how the "i-Phone effect" has spurred manufacturers into making a wide variety of new devices to compete with Apple.

I'll let you read the article yourselves if you want, but I wanted to highlight one neat product, the Readius from Polymer Vision (used to be part of Philips). It seems small unrollable screens are ready for the market, and I bet we will see them soon in HSDPA phones and/or WiMax devices. Rollable screens should make a big impact on wireless applications, making video and web content viewing much easier than with the current generation of mid-sized smartphone and PDA displays.

On to the future...

Microsoft's Media Strategy in China

I was doing some research the other day on Microsoft's media strategy in China and although it's not a complete list, I thought I'd share some of what I found. The most interesting thing I found was on Silverlight, Microsoft's new web-based multimedia technology. You can find silverlight at the bottom of this post.

Happy linking.

I. MSN

• Microsoft to set up MSN center in China (1/07)
• http://goog.bloggingstocks.com/2007/05/10/24-7-media-posts-loss-microsoft-still-interested/

• Beijing Netcom is one of the 15 operator customers listed on the Microsoft TV website.
• Microsoft TV IP Edition Brochure
Microsoft TV Foundation Edition Brochure
• From FAQ:
How are Microsoft TV products different from the MSN TV service?

Microsoft TV platforms are developed for cable operators and broadband providers to deliver differentiated TV services. The MSN TV service (formerly the WebTV service) is a turnkey product with subscription services for U.S. consumers that are delivered via a set-top box running software based on the Microsoft TV platform.

• Microsoft IPTV Partnership with Alcatel
Alcatel is often the systems integrator for operators’ ADSL systems. When this is the case, Alcatel can offer to provide the Microsoft IPTV services. This will mean that when the operators procure IPTV STB, the STB vendors will be required to install the Microsoft IPTV operating software in each box. Alcatel will also have to add some storage and other hardware components to the ADSL system to accommodate for the IPTV services, and there may be additional Microsoft software installed at the server level as well. I think this is what has happened in the Beijing Netcom case, but I am not sure.


III. PCs

• Windows Media Center (XP Media Center Edition, Windows Vista Home Premium, Windows Vista Ultimate)
Useful online summary

It's entertainment on your terms with Windows Media Center. If your PC has a TV tuner, you can use Windows Media Center to record, watch, and pause live television on your desktop or mobile PC. Use the built-in television guide and a compatible remote control for even greater convenience.

o Windows Media Center Extender – a hardware device to extend PC media capabilities to TVs in other parts of the house.

Keep your PC where it makes sense, but enjoy all the digital entertainment stored on it, in any room of your home with Windows Media Center Extender. Connect a Windows Media Center Extender to any TV in your home and access the pictures, music, video, and recorded TV stored on your PC running Windows Vista Home Premium or Ultimate through your home wired or wireless network, using the Media Center easy to navigate menus. Keep your PC where it makes sense, but enjoy all the digital entertainment stored on it, in any room of your home with Windows Media Center Extender. Connect a Windows Media Center Extender to any TV in your home and access the pictures, music, video, and recorded TV stored on your PC running Windows Vista Home Premium or Ultimate through your home wired or wireless network, using the Media Center easy to navigate menus.

• Windows Media Player

IV. Web

• Microsoft Silverlight

Microsoft® Silverlight™ is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of .NET based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web. Silverlight offers a flexible programming model that supports AJAX, VB, C#, Python, and Ruby, and integrates with existing Web applications. Silverlight supports fast, cost-effective delivery of high-quality video to all major browsers running on the Mac OS or Windows.

plain-text translation: Silverlight is a lot like (and should be a key competitor for) Flash.
o Great explanation of Silverlight from MSDN Magazine June 2007
o See also the Silverlight developers' blogs
o Windows Media technologies and the upcoming rich media client platform with Silverlight bring great improvements to the challenges of delivering content on the Web. Silverlight and Beijing 2008 Olympics.

Social Journalism

Morning all -

Some of you may remember about a year back when I was so excited to have a picture of mine from flickr sourced for a Reuters article about North Korea on the citizen. journalism site, NowPublic.

We this morning, NowPublic sent an interesting bit of news out that they are now compatible with YouTube videos. So now all of you who have stories to share can document them for the public in multimedia, Whoopee.

It's not the first of its kind, and it's not a major news site making this announcement, but I'm happy to see even the English-language internet beginning to catch on to some of the technologies that have been in (at least) Japan and Korea for a couple years.

One more posting to come today....