Ni Jian's journal

Ni Jian's blog on VOX

Here is the link to my VOX blog.

I have been trying VOX for a while.  It seems a more proper tool for me to keep connected with my friends and family but I have not made the decision to migrate totally to VOX mainly because there is no easy way to port my Typepad blog contents to VOX.

China lifted the ban on access to international blogging services

After I complained in one previous post Access to major weblog hosting services blocked in China, I was more than happy when my friends in China informed me that the access to my weblogs are OK before the end of 2005.  At least I heard access to Typepad or Blogger was not a problem any more.

Interview with Nicole Simon, bloxpert.com

Nicole Simon from bloxpert had an interview with me about Lifeblog and its podcasting is available here.

We talk about (cited from Nicole's interview report):

• Nokia has been changing from being just a mobile phone company to the convergence age
• they don't call it phones anymore - voice only is history
• easy access to digital is key to attract people to try
• mission should be: enjoy without hazzle - we'll take care of the rest
• usage of mobile phones in Europe, Asia and the US
• why a mobile is a primary phone in Europe but not in the US
• flat rate is the direction to go to encourage business opportunities
• what he would likes to know: why are normal people using blogs and what can encourage them to use it more? Who is interested in using mobile applications?
• how is mobile usage and business through it in Asia
• he promised to bring gadgets :)
• how the quality of the video is already up par with camcorders

Access to major weblog hosting services blocked in China

My friends in China complained to me that they can not visit my blogs (hosted by Typepad), which unfortunately confirmed the rumor I heard some time ago - that the access to some hosted blogs (Typepad, Blogger, etc) has been blocked by Chinese government.  It's too bad because I am trying to build my blogs as the primary source to keep in touch with my family members and friends in China.

It seems I have to open an account with one of hosting service providers within the great 'China firewall'.  However, I have not found one that can be accessed from Europe with reasonable speed and supports ATOM interface so that I can posts from my mobile with Nokia Lifeblog.

Les Blogs 2.0 exposure in blogsphere

Hit rate to search 'Les Blogs 2.0' (instead of lesblogs) at 16:45 GMT+1, 6 Dec 2005:

- Technorati: 2189

- Google Blog search: 1418

- Blogpulse: 681

- del.icio.us / search: 126

- MSN search: 28599

- Yahoo search: 168000

Les Blog 2.0, Paris, 5th-6th Dec

I am invited to speak about mobile blogging and Nokia Lifeblog in Les Blog 2.0.  Probably one of the best chances to get personal contact with some of the core members of blogosphere.  See you there!

Q Glastonbury Blog won Innovation 2005 Award

The Q Glastonbury Blog, a weblog made using just Nokia Lifeblog has won an innovation award from the Association of Online Publishers (AOP).

"This was a site we put together to contain all our coverage of 2005's Glastonbury Festival. The site editors didn't want to lug around laptops or worry about trying to get an internet connection, so we worked with Nokia and we did it all using their Lifeblog product. Regular readers of this website will know my enthusiasm for this product, and it proved it's worth when the rains came and knocked out everyone else's coverage. Q was able to keep blogging and keep the site fresh as it happened."

The judges commented...

"Q4Music.com/blogs are an innovation for the present, capturing content from the site's own audience. In a busy category, the service has surpassed its competitors and uses technology to its limits to add value for a dedicated community."

OCPC in China and blogging

Just learned a new acronym on CNN anchor Kristie Lu Stout's Web log - OCPC for the One Child Policy Crowd.  It covers almost the whole generation in China born after the 1970s.  Although it might be a bit over-generalized but it is quite true for the OCPC who are from relatively wealthy families in cities that they all "always have mobile phones. ICQ is a standard form of communication. They have never known a poor China", as cited by Stout.

I am curiously watching how blogging will spread among them. I personally believe that blogging and especially blogging from mobile devices may take off soon in China, where mobile phone is a far more 'personal' IT device than in rest of the world.  Chinese rely much more on mobile phones for communication than on PCs and landline phones.  The low PC penetration actually could help the acceleration of mobile data applications.  Think of the 200 millions SMS sent each day in China!

On lifestyle trend, China has been heavily influenced by South Korea and to some extend by Japan.  Examples are fashion, pop music, cartoon, mobile contents downloading, online gaming, you name it.  Blogging is already a phenomenon in S. Korea.  The Chinese, led my trend-sensitive OCPC, may follow suit soon.

Blogging is easy?

It took me quite some time to figure out how to post my first message into TypePad.  The working process is not that straightforward as I would hope and there are too many options.

I can not stop worndering that if a user want to start posting from his mobile phone, with built-in web browser and Lifeblog application from Nokia, would that be easy for him/her to set up everything from the tiny phone screen and limited bandwidth?  I would say that we definitely need to simplify the set up process if we evern aim to enable phone users to use services based on blogging.