I believe that HTML5 will become the new standard for online games, especially for games that you play on a mobile device. No more need to download apps, but play them directly in your browser. And also no more wars between Apple and Flash, because HTML5 can be played in a browser on any device, even on an iPhone or iPad.

Spil Games, which has grown into the world’s largest online casual gaming company, believes HTML5 will be the future standard and has decided to put all its efforts behind it. Today we launched HTML5 mobile game sites on all our portals, except for our sites in China and Japan that will follow in September. This means that if you have an Android or iPhone and visit one of our sites (for example www.agame.com) you will see our HTML5 gaming portal in your mobile browser. Spil Games also organizes a HTML5 developer contest with a total of USD 50,000 in prizes for the best HTML5 games, for details see www.html5contest.com

Below the picture is the press release that we are sending out right now:

HILVERSUM, THE NETHERLANDS, August 31, 2010 — Today, the potential of HTML5 for mobile gaming becomes a reality. SPIL GAMES, the world’s largest online casual gaming company unveils mobile versions of its gaming websites frequented by 130 million unique visitors every month. This means that consumers can enjoy their favorite game environment just as easily on their mobile devices as they do on their computers. Additionally, SPIL GAMES is launching a contest offering HTML5 developers prizes totaling $50,000 for the best HTML5 games.

Mobile gaming has never been as popular as it is today, due to the massive adoption of touchscreen mobile devices, such as those using the iOS and Android operating systems. However, unlocking the full potential of mobile gaming for both developers and end users has been hampered by different protocols, operating systems, and platform-approval processes within the mobile world.

HTML5 will free up developers by saving them the time and money they currently lose modifying games for different mobile platforms. Thanks to HTML5’s open standard, developers only have to develop a game once, and it can be easily deployed on all devices with browsers supporting HTML5, such as PCs, iPads, iPhones and Google phones.

The openness of HTML5 will also be a real game changer for the mobile gaming user experience. Players will no longer be forced to download a game from app stores. They will be able to instantly play games through their mobile browser whenever and on whichever mobile platform they choose, without any installation hassles.

HTML5 Mobile Sites:
Central to SPIL GAMES’ endorsement of HTML5 is the launch of its new mobile sites, available today. For the first time, a user who owns a mobile device with a browser supporting HTML5 (iOS and Android devices from version 2.0) can go to any of SPIL GAMES’ 41 game websites (www.gamesgames.com, www.agame.com, www.girlsgogames.com) and be automatically rerouted to its dedicated mobile version.

HTML5 Developer Contest:
As part of its commitment to HTML5, SPIL GAMES is inviting game developers to bring HTML5-based games to market through a contest. The contest boasts a total prize pot of $50,000, and winning games will be featured on all SPIL GAMES’ mobile sites. The contest will run for six months, and each month SPIL GAMES will select new games to be awarded. Developers can submit their games and find all related information at www.html5contest.com.

“Openness is at the core of everything we do, which is why HTML5 fits so well with our company mission to unite the world in play,” said Peter Driessen, CEO of SPIL GAMES. “We are aware that HTML5 is still at an early stage, but already developers can use it to make great games, and we are confident that the industry will quickly embrace it. Within three years, we expect HTML5 to be the standard in gaming devices.”

Although I am not a big fan of Baidu’s search results, I have to admit they are quite innovative. Their latest innovation is something I have not seen anywhere else so far: if you search for game related words such as 小游戏 (mini game) you will first see 4 mini games before you see the links to the highest ranked mini game websites. And not only that, you can even play the games right there on the Baidu.com site, see for example Popcap’s Plants vs. Zombies below. (If anybody from Popcap reads this, did you make a deal with Baidu or are you as surprised as me to see this game there? According to the text the game was supplied by youyouwin.com, not Popcap).

It seems a smart move from Baidu, that can pull this off because they are a semi-monopolist after Google left. I wonder if the users really like it, do you prefer to play games in a search engine result page instead of on a social network or a site dedicated to casual games? Maybe because many of Baidu’s customers are low end users they will be okay with it, but for me it’s annoying and an additional reason to stay away from Baidu.

It seems Baidu is planning to roll out integrated apps for other areas as well. So far there are two other categories that have this feature: entertainment (right now with only PPTV and Douban.fm as search results) and software (that can be downloaded directly without going to another site).  I wonder if the featured apps (be it games, software or other things) are displayed on a CPC or CPA basis, because it looks like a disguised form of advertising to me. It can be a game changer if people like it or it can give other search engines an opportunity to catch up with Baidu.

China is different from any other country, I have experienced and learned that many times over the past decade here. But even I would not expect pictures of the burning wreckage of a plane crash on the home page of the airline that crashed one of its planes just over a day after the accident.

But that’s exactly what happened: on Tuesday Henan Airlines flight VD8387 crashed during a night landing in foggy weather in Yichun (Heilongjiang), killing 42 passengers and injuring 54. And today the whole website of the airline has been replaced by a site that reminds me of an official mourning site. No links to any other information, just a message saying that they regret the crash with some additional information and phone numbers to call. To me it feels a bit creepy…

h/t Shanghaiist

In early 2006 my Gmail box was almost full. I tried to get additional storage but it was impossible despite Gmail’s slogan of “Never delete another message anymore”. In the end the only thing I could do was to delete thousands of emails to get sufficient new storage. At that time I wrote on my blog that I would not mind paying USD 100 per year to get unlimited storage. Well, it seems my prayers have been heard, because when I got a message yesterday that my Gmail account was once again full (despite now having 7 GB of storage available instead of 2.7 GB in 2006) I immediately received an offer to buy additional storage. This is not something new, but so far I didn’t need it so I hadn’t tried it yet.

So of course I immediately bought more space and I now have another 20 GB to fill, enough for many extra years of emails (assuming average file size won’t increase) and with the option to also use it for other in the cloud storage (e.g. Google Docs). The price? Just USD 5 per year. Considering that I was willing to pay USD 100 it seems like a bargain. If you need more storage that’s also available, up to 16 Terabyte right now (16384 GB).

It also gave a me the chance (or better: it forced me) to sign up for Google Checkout. Yes, I am a late adopter for once. Nothing special, but it works a lot faster than PayPal in China, so I am likely to use it more often. In that respect storage is a good marketing tool for Checkout, Google!

More information on Google Storage here

During my short summer holiday in Holland I started running a bit more. I love it but I need to make time for it, and time is always my biggest constraint it seems. Not only because of work, but also because of the kids. And with a wife who regularly works until the early hours it means I normally don’t go to bed until 1 or 2 AM. So it’s virtually impossible to run in the morning before taking Scott to school and going to work.

But I set myself some goals and decided to start practicing more again. My plan is to run at least 25 km per week and to row another 15 km – at least when I am not traveling. That means my basic shape should be good enough to run a half marathon without too much trouble (except for muscle ache in the days after because I am not used to the distance).

One problem that I often have when I start running more is that I get injuries. Some people told me that that’s because I don’t stretch enough. As a runner in the high school track team we always did a lot of stretching exercises, but I hated them. I hardly ever do them and normally just start my runs a bit more slowly. I feel stretching doesn’t bring me much.

And now it seems that science confirms my experience. A study sponsored by USA track & field shows that stretching does not lead to less injuries. Interestingly there also does not seem to be any correlations between age, gender, mileage or level of competition and injuries. The only two factors that seem to influence whether a runner gets injured more is being overweight or having a recent injury.

If you are a big fan of stretching don’t suddenly stop doing it, however. If you are used to doing it and suddenly stop you double your injury risk. That probably explains the ‘myth’ that you need to stretch, because if you’re used to it it seems to really help.

The summary article on USA Track & Field is here: http://www.usatf.org/news/view.aspx?duid=USATF_2010_08_20_12_13_14
For more details or the clinical details you can go here: http://www.usatf.org/stretchStudy/index.asp

Thanks to Joe for sharing the link on DailyMile.com

In my last post I mentioned the expensive cars at Soong Ching Ling kindergarten. This morning when I took Scott to school I observed something else: almost every single expensive car belonged to a Chinese family and all the average Buick and Honda minivans were driven by non-Chinese families.

Of course the main reason is that many foreigners are here on corporate expat assignments and top of the line BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Lexus or Landrovers are not part of the package. When you’re posted somewhere for a few years you may also not want to invest a large amount of money in a car, especially not if that car costs here twice as much as in the US or Europe.

Another reason is that a car is a very important status symbol for many Chinese. If you made it you just have to drive the most expensive car to make sure others know that as well. A bit different from Holland, where this is frowned upon (IMHO showing how conservative and small-thinking Holland actually is). In China just a Mercedes-Benz is not enough if you really made it, it should be an S-class and preferably the S600. And the result is what you see at the school’s parking grounds.

The main reason we have a Honda Odyssey minivan is because with 2 kids, 2 nannies and 2 strollers a sedan is just too small. We sold our Buick Lacrosse last summer when we realized that we had only been using the Odyssey after Elaine was born. Do Chinese families not have this problem? Or do they have another, more practical, car at home for family outings? I haven’t figured that one out yet, but my driver made a good remark: most Chinese still only have one kid. Maybe that explains it.

This morning Grace and I took Scott for the first time to his new school, the Soong Ching Ling kindergarten (Hongqiao Campus). Grace did a lot of research on schools and eventually decided that this was the best for Scott. I visited the campus once before and was surprised how big it was, over 10 hectares full of gardens, playgrounds and even a swimming pool in the middle of Hongqiao. This used to be the edge of town many years ago when the campus was built (1994), but nowadays so much space is very unusual in Shanghai.

Scott was excited, and so was I actually. It’s quite something to bring your little boy to school and leave him there. Last year he already went to the nursery in our compound, but that was different. It was just a 3 minute walk to see him, now you leave him behind in a big school. Initially Scott seemed to like it, but when we had to leave he of course started crying. Becky (one of the 3 teachers for the 10 students, she is British) held him and when we walked past the window a few minutes later he had calmed down again.

The teachers told us that Scott behaved well, but some other kids did not stop crying the whole morning. I guess Scott had the advantage of having been in the nursery, which was a bit similar. When I asked Scott how he liked it he didn’t say much, so I assumed it was okay. But tonight he opened up to Grace: he liked the nursery much better and misses his teacher there, so he wants to go back there. She explained that he is now a big boy so he has to go to a different school and that all his classmates are now also in different schools. She also explained that Elaine will soon go to the nursery now, but his reaction was that she can then go to his school so he can go back to nursery!

I am sure he will get used to the new school quickly and also make new friends soon. The school itself is better than any school I ever attended (and I attended a lot of schools when I was young!), so he is privileged. Soon he will likely speak a lot better English as well, because that’s the first language in his class (second language is Chinese). We are encouraged to speak English with him every now and then as well. Must be confusing for him…

I noted this morning that quite some Chinese kids go to Soong Ching Ling as well, it’s luckily not a pure expat school. The school is popular (we were happy that Scott was admitted) but obviously not very cheap and you can see that from the cars that some of the people, or normally their drivers, bring the kids to school in. When we went there this morning a Mercedes-Benz S600 limousine had been parked next to our car, another S600 was parked 2 places next to it and a Porsche 911 was parked opposite us! Nice for Scott, he is a big car fan now already and each time he spots a Porsche he will inform me about that, so he will have a lot to tell me every day.

On December 5 the 2010 Shanghai Marathon will take place, and for the first time the route will go through both Puxi and Pudong. The start will be at Nanjing Road as usual and from there it will go along the Bund and the South Bund to the Fuxing Road Tunnel. After the tunnel the runners will pass the World Expo (at least what’s left of it by then) and continue on along the Huangpu river. The half marathon will then go East in the direction of the Shanghai Oriental Sports Center (where the finish is). For the full marathon the organizers decided to make the last 25 km as boring as possible by including a 12.5 km straight road with a turn at the end from where the participants will have to run back the same 12.5 km. It might lead to fast running times, but it’s not what you hope for as a runner.

If I am in China around December 5 I will probably participate in the half marathon, I likely won’t have enough time to train enough for the full marathon. Next to that I am not a big fan of the new full marathon course, so that makes the decision even easier.

If you are planning to participate, you can sign up for the race starting from September 1 until November 14 (note: after September 27 prices will go up). As usual they discriminate foreigners by charging them more money than Chinese (I wonder if that’s actually allowed in China? I remember that about 10 years ago a law was passed to stop the practice of having different prices for foreigners at for example tourist sites), but the entry fees are still reasonable: USD 45 for foreigners (full marathon), RMB 180 for foreigners living in China and RMB 60 for local Chinese. You can find more information about the registration procedures for the marathon here.

Map credit: http://shmarathon.com/map_cn.html

One of the annoyances of living in China is the flood of daily spam calls from telemarketers. Most are in Chinese and I just pretend that I don’t understand a single word of the language (‘hello? hello?’) and hang up on them. The English language ones are mainly trying to ‘help to manage your money’ or they have some ’special offshore investment opportunities’. Also these ones I would normally hang up on without wasting any further time, angry that they interrupted my work: telemarketers got hold of my direct office phone that I normally don’t give out – it was probably listed on some official form and then a government employee sold it.

But now I found an excellent way to get back at them through “the counterscript”. Dutch company EGBG prepared a telescript just like the telemarketers use, which you can apply to fool the telemarketer. Today a Chinese person called me to to invite me to some investment forum but before he could tell me more I already cut him off by asking his name. I then followed the script by asking him to spell it for me (twice, I told him I could not write it down so quickly) and then asked him how he got my phone number (his boss gave it to him). I followed the counterscript precisely and now have his mobile number, his salary (a full-time job for about RMB 5000/month) and I even know that he is not allowed to go to the dentist during work hours. He couldn’t tell me his favorite toothpaste brand though.

At a certain point he got annoyed and asked me why I was asking him all these questions, so I asked him whether he ‘had problems answering questions for which he did not know the purpose, from a stranger on the phone’. He didn’t see the irony I guess, so I told him we had to continue the interview because I didn’t have a lot of time. He obliged and kept on answering the rest of the questions without further questioning me. In the end I thanked him for his time and hung op.

Two minutes later he called back. I told him I was happy that he called back because I still did not have his toothpaste brand. He said he didn’t know the brand, so I replied that he should look it up first before calling me again so that we can finish my investigation. Then I thanked him once again and hang up. He didn’t call back anymore.

Too bad I could not record the call, I found it hilarious. I now put the script next to my office phone, so if any more people call they will have to go through the interview process as well. I am actually looking forward to the next spam calls.

The counterscript can be downloaded here (pdf). You can also read it through here first. Make sure you read it through before your first interview, especially the right side is important in case the caller gets annoyed (‘I can appreciate your concern, but aren’t you calling me? Let’s continue with the next question’).

Yesterday we landed in Shanghai around 12 PM and when I left the terminal I was still wearing the sweater that I usually wear during flights. Not a smart idea, the Shanghai heat literally hit me when the doors opened. It was extremely hot and humid and I immediately took it off. But it didn’t help much: I only stayed outside for 2 minutes but I was already sweating before I got into the car.

Today I read in the Shanghai Daily that the mercury broke another record yesterday, it was officially 39.8 degrees Celcius – it never gets over 40 degrees in Shanghai because then people get a day off I think. My car thermometer (normally pretty accurate) showed 43 degrees while driving home from the airport. It was also the 4th day in a row that temperatures were above 39 degrees, a record according to the Shanghai Daily, this never happened since people started recording Shanghai temperatures in 1833. In total we already had 21 days above 35 degrees this summer…

At night a heavy thunderstorm with rain and a lot of wind cooled down the air a lot (overnight it was only 27 degrees, the night before it was 34 degrees!), but today it was again over 35 degrees. And the heat wave will continue, tomorrow it will be 36 and later in the week even warmer. Luckily both my house and office have good air conditioning systems, although it can still get hot during the regular power blackouts (this morning we had another one, I already lost count of the number of blackouts this summer).

Update 18 Aug 2010: KLM contacted me after reading this post, see the end of the article

I have a love / hate relationship with KLM. I am happy with the many upgrades that they give me and with the way their Twitter team works. But there are also a lot of things that KLM needs to improve and that I complain about on Twitter when I encounter them (some examples: a website in China that is often not working because it seems to be hosted outside the Great Firewall, continuous problems with their customer service & call center in China, delays on every single daytime flight from Shanghai to Amsterdam, rude/non-service oriented flight attendants).

On Twitter I sometimes get the question why I still fly KLM. The answer is simply because they have the monopoly on the route Shanghai-Amsterdam, there are no other airlines with direct flights. If you fly regularly for short trips you don’t want to have the additional hassle (and time!) of stop-overs. Many of my Dutch business friends here feel exactly the same, the topic of frustration with KLM often comes up over dinner or a beer. There is so much KLM can learn from airlines like Cathay Pacific or Singapore Airlines, but they seem not to care. The flights to Shanghai are always fully booked so they probably feel there is no need to improve their service.

Yesterday I encountered another typical example of why I have a problem with KLM. I dropped off my luggage for the delayed flight from Amsterdam to Shanghai. We had 4 suitcases: 2 small trolleys of around 10 kg, one bigger of 18 kg and one of 24.5 kg. Our total luggage allowance was 46 kg each for me and my wife, 23 kg for Scott and 10 kg for Elaine, so no problem at all I would say. No, not for KLM: The lady at the baggage drop off told me the 24.5 kg suitcase was too heavy and I would have to pay EUR 100 to check it in. The 46 kg allowance has to be split into 2 times 23 kg. Why? She had no idea, but those are the rules.

The maximum weight of a suitcase is 32 kg, just like at many other airlines. But if one of your suitcases is more than 23 kg, even if your allowance is much higher, KLM will charge you. This is ridiculous of course and I see it as one more way for the airline to make money off its customers. That they also scare their customers away is something they seem to forget.

To solve the problem we opened our suitcases at the check-in desk, took out 3 pairs of jeans and put them in another suitcase. Nothing changed in the total weight of the suitcases, so I felt it was a totally useless thing to do. But rules are rules at KLM, even if nobody knows why. Even if you are one of their best customers (I am a platinum elite member) and already paid a ridiculous EUR 3700 for 2 economy class tickets for 2 adults, plus a baby and a toddler.

The check-in lady then hoped we would have too much hand luggage and asked us to put those bags on the scale. Bad luck for her, because we were easily within the limits, so KLM could not charge or punish us for this. Not sure if this is a new KLM policy, but this is the first time ever that I am asked to weigh my hand luggage at check-in.

Many airlines are not so strict with weight, if you have 2-3 kilos extra they won’t balk, some even have policies that the first 5 kgs are no problem (I learned this on Twitter when I tweeted about this yesterday). But the lady at the KLM desk told me that she gets into trouble within 24 hours if she allows a suitcase that is above 23 kilo without an additional payment. Is that really the way KLM instructs its staff? Can a staff member not make some decisions on his or her own like in the past?

I will file a formal complaint with KLM about this. I would like to know if these are really their policies and would like to understand what the reasoning behind them is. I wonder if KLM management has any idea what the results of their policies are and how their regular customers perceive the airline. Maybe they will think about it and eventually change this rule. Wishful thinking? Maybe, but they also just reversed their new regulation to pay for check-in golf bags after customer complaints.

Update: KLM contacted me after reading this post. They explained that there are additional costs for suitcases of between 23 kg and 32 kg (32 kg is still the maximum weight) because of labor legislation, therefore the price increase. They suggest to book overweight in advance, then you get a 20% discount. I thanked them for their reply and told them to inform ground staff about this, that would solve a lot of problems. Also I said that you normally don’t know the weight of your suitcases until a few hours before departure, so booking overweight with a discount is not a solution. Personally I think that KLM should be more flexible for (at least) business class and for its Elite members, just like some other airlines do. KLM has to become more service oriented, not only on board but also on the ground.

The past week I spent in The Netherlands with my family for a short vacation (we’ll be back in China this weekend). Work has been quite intense over the past couple of months and I felt I really needed to be away from the office for a while. I therefore decided to take it really easy this week and not travel all around the country like I normally do on holidays in my home country. Except for a day trip to Gent (Belgium) and a trip to the zoo in Arnhem we stayed at my parents place the whole vacation.

The trip started off with a 4 hour delay. The daytime KLM flight from Shanghai to Amsterdam is always delayed, but normally just 1-2 hours. Luckily the KLM called me a few hours before departure so we went to the airport a bit later (they only called a few people I found out, we were the only ones at check-in 2 hours before departure! Thanks KLM). The flight itself was not easy, taking care of 2 small kids on a 12 hour flight is quite a task. I was very happy when we were finally at my parents place. The kid’s jet lags didn’t make the first days easy either, they were sleepy (or not sleepy at all) at the wrong times.

I read a lot, among others the book Nina, about Dutch business woman Nina Brink. She is the former CEO of World Online which listing at the stock exchange was a disaster and that lost many people tons of money. Not many people seem to like her and now I understand why: if only 10% of the book is true I would stay away from her as far as possible in business. The book describes her as a billionaire criminal in business disguise who sues everybody that she doesn’t like. Scary. The book is in Dutch, so most of your won’t be able to read it, but this is the link to the book.

I also read The Passage by Justin Cronin (Amazon site, official site for the book). I wasn’t sure whether I would like this kind of book (I never read, nor like, horror or SF) but bought it as an ebook for my Kindle a few weeks ago because it was chosen as one of Amazon’s books of the month. It’s a huge book (784 pages in the print version) but for me it was worth every page of it – and when I finished it I found out that this is only part one of a future trilogy! I am not going to review it here (over 600 people already did that on Amazon) but I loved it, once I started reading it I couldn’t stop.

Of course I also did a bit of work, but I tried to reduce it to max. 2-3 hours a day (my wife had to work a lot harder than I did this time…). One day I tried to keep my laptop off the whole day but I realized I felt less relaxed than when I would check my mails every 2 hours or so. I guess that’s the curse of modern business life, but I don’t feel it impacted this vacation as much as some other vacations over the past years. I feel I am almost stress free after a week here and can start next week relaxed and with some new business (strategy) ideas, but without hundreds of unread emails.

I am happy that I could spend a lot of time with the kids over the past days. I walked a lot with Elaine in and around the house (she loves to walk barefoot on the grass) and she lost her fear for walking on her own. She could already walk alone, but she felt much safer if somebody would hold her hand. Now she just gets up and walks off, so we have to watch her a lot more.

Scott changed his language completely from Chinese to Dutch in a few days. Even in his dreams he is now talking in Dutch! He can translate well now, if I tell him a word in Dutch he translates it for me into Chinese. And Elaine now answers in Chinese if you ask her something in Chinese (saying simple things like 好 or 要), and in Dutch if you speak Dutch to her. A week ago she only understood Chinese!

We took the kids to Burgers Zoo in Arnhem one day. I had not been there in about 25 years and it had completely changed, it’s a great zoo. I am not a big fan of zoos, but if you design a zoo this is the kind of zoo you should build. No cages but open air areas for most animals and huge domes to simulate a tropical rainforest, a desert and the ocean. The kids really enjoyed it, especially Scott who knew most of the animals by name in Dutch, English and Chinese. After the zoo we went to my sister’s new house close to Sonsbeek Park in Arnhem for a late lunch and a bottle of wine.

Tuesday I went to Ghent (Gent in Dutch) in Belgium with my dad, where we had dinner and drinks with friends. I had never been to Ghent, so we left home a bit earlier to do some sightseeing. Ghent is a beautiful old city, it was much nicer than I had expected. The atmosphere is one of enjoying life: people wear nice clothes and everybody seemed to be relaxing with beer and wine on one of the many outdoor terraces in the city. I felt at home right away!

Today we made a ‘cruise’ on the river Vecht in Ommen with the family. Although my grandparents had lived in Ommen since long before I was born and my parents lived here since 1995 (and I lived here for a while during my high school years) I had never taken this cruise. For some reason some things you just don’t do when you live somewhere. It was a very nice boat ride, not just for the kids but also for us. From the water a place always looks different. Among others I took a last look at my grandparents house (not visible from the road, but visible from the river). My grandma passed away last year and the house has now been sold, so I will never go there anymore.

This vacation was very different from the ones we had before the kids were born. Less relaxing than our former tropical beach holidays or vacations in Southern Europe (also because of work I suppose) but more rewarding as well. Spending more time with our kids is something I would like to do more regularly, it’s so nice to see how they develop and to have real conversations with them. It was also nice to be at my parents place, to drink good wines and eat good food. All in all an enjoyable week with good memories.

As usual I took a lot of pictures, you can see many of them here.

Tudou just announced that we closed a USD 50 million dollar round, led by Singapore’s Temasek. Below the official press release.

Tudou’s latest round led by Temasek Holdings, investing in mobile/portable device growth strategy and building a full media house

(Aug 5, 2010 – Shanghai, China) Tudou (www.tudou.com) today announced it has closed a US$50 million Series E funding round.

Gary Wang, Tudou Founder and CEO said the company is investing aggressively into expanding its main advertising supported web platform, and developing mobile/ portable device video technology as the key future growth drivers.  Tudou also plans to integrate professional content with its “Orange Box” made-for-Internet original programming debuting the first Tudou drama series in fall 2010, as well as large UGC (user generated content) archive of over 38 million videos.  Tudou is transforming its website model into a fully operated media house.

Tudou’s Series E funding round included $35 million led by Singapore based Temasek Holdings Pte. Ltd. (www.temasekholdings.com.sg), and US$15 million from existing investors.  In total Tudou has raised US$135 million funding since the website went live on April 15, 2005, representing the largest investment to date for an online video business in China.

A good example of how fast prices in Shanghai increase sometimes: in this shopping mall the parking fee went up by 75% on August 1. It may not be expensive by Western standards (the price for parking is about USD 1 per hour), but considering that this mall is far out in the suburbs of Shanghai it’s certainly not cheap either.

It’s late on a Saturday night, or actually early on a Sunday morning, and I just realize that today the Shanghai Expo 2010 is exactly half way. Three months ago it opened, and initially not too many people visited it. During a Tudou board meeting in early May one of the VC’s told me that there were not many visitors on the Expo terrain and that he could visit most pavilions without waiting. I thought the whole thing would be a disaster, but for some reason (unknown to me) suddenly the Expo started to become hugely popular: per day 400,000-500,000 people visit the Expo and for many popular pavillions waiting times are now 4-6 hours…

This video on Tudou.com captures how visitors pour into the Expo site as soon as the gate opens everyday at 9 AM sharp.  Almost a daily scene, plan-ahead visitors begin their “500-meter” final run towards the most popular of all pavilions such as Saudi Arabia, Japan and Germany. Men and women of all ages take part in the race as running for a few minutes may save up to several hours of queuing time in the scorching sun (it’s over 35 degrees in Shanghai in summer) if you are among the first ones getting there. There are 3 more months to go before Shanghai Expo closes at the end of October. Are you ready? Run!!

A couple of weeks ago I put a video on my blog of a sand artist who had made a tribute to the football World Cup. I thought that was quite spectacular, but this week I came across a form of art that’s at least as special: water art.

It’s basically an artist putting some oil pigment on water and dispersing this to create a work of art. The artist is highly skilled and in this video he paints among others a desert on water and later on a Buddha. See it for yourself in the embedded video or here on Tudou.

For the full story behind this video see here on TudouChina.com, the English language Tudou blog.

Yesterday I went to the soft opening of the Dutch Design Workspace, an incubator in Shanghai for Dutch companies active in the fields of design, fashion and architecture. I am on the selection committee of the incubator program and this was my first visit to the Workspace. I was pleasantly surprised, the Dutch Design Workspace looks great. The space is big and very bright, with lots of windows and a very nicely designed interior. Plus it has a very nice rooftop terrace!

The Dutch Design Workspace is open for small and medium sized Dutch design companies. These companies could already have done a project in China and want to develop their (international) business or start for the first time in the Chinese market. At least one of the key designers of this company will move to China to live in Shanghai and work within the incubator location together with the rest of his (local) team.

The second group that the incubator aims at is individual Dutch designers. He or she should have a strong design talent and sufficient skills to work in a flexible environment. The designer will live and work in Shanghai, close to the location of the incubator. For these participants the incubator offers a flexible solution; they can start with workspace on an individual basis that can be extended once their activities grow.

The third group is local designers, researchers and other collaborators. The participants from this group shall have a strong relationship with one of the participants, one of their projects or Dutch Design in general. The support of the incubator program does not apply for this group; market standard fees will be charged for the workspace.

Selection will be made by the incubator organization to ensure that they fit the requirements of the Dutch Design Workspace, level of design quality and do not become competition to other Dutch participants.

The first three companies that were selected for the incubator program, architecture firm MVRDV, museum and expo designers Northernlight and multidisciplinary design firm FiveSpices, will move into this location soon. But there will be some more selection rounds, so if you are interested to join the incubator program you can find more information on the website of the Dutch Design Workspace.

For more professional pictures of the Workspace see here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pechakuchashanghai/sets/72157624621135238/

Tudou is looking for a part-time social media intern for its Shanghai office. We are looking for a native English speaker with a good knowledge of written and spoken Chinese. A proven track record in English language social media (SNS, blog, video etc.) is a must. You should be a good writer and be available for about 2.5 days per week for at least 6 months. Starting date: asap

The internship gives you the opportunity to be active in a very dynamic working environment and to be one of the first people to learn about internal and external developments at Tudou. You will be reporting to Tudou’s VP of Marketing & BD and work closely together with our PR people in the US (and probably also with me sometimes).

Interested? You can get in touch with Ms. Anita Huang at ahuang (at) tudou (dot) com for more information about this position. You can also directly send her your resume. Make sure to include links to some of your online presences.

Next month Tudou’s first made-for-Internet original production “That Love Comes” (欢迎爱光临) will launch on our site. It’s the first production that comes out of our Orange Box initiative, our plan to produce several series based on what our Chinese audiences like to see and made with only the Internet in mind.

The Orange Box idea came from the fact that the kind of shows that you see on Chinese TV are not very interesting for a younger audience. That’s why many of our viewers go online and watch shows they like on video sites, and many of these shows are Korean, Japanese or Taiwanese. We have observed this while we were growing Tudou.com over the past years and now decided that if nobody produces these shows in China we will do it ourselves. Of course in this way we also can further differentiate ourselves from the competition, with strong, relevant and unique content.

As mentioned the shows are made for the Web, but now already several TV stations (both in China and abroad) contacted us to license the shows for non-web usage as well. The first run will be only online but after that the shows may run on TV as well. It’s turning the world around, so far TV shows would air at a later stage on the Internet (in China actually some shows air at the same time on TV stations and on video sites), but now Web shows might move to the TV screen.

Although producing shows ourselves is more expensive than licensing shows we feel it is worth it. Not only does this offer us the opportunity to differentiate ourselves once again from the competition, but also we have more ways to recoup our costs. Instead of having pre-loaders and other advertising as main revenue drivers for our content, we are now able to also use product placement and script placement in the series. Being able to integrate brands into the story line is of course very attractive to brands focusing on a young, urban audience with a high disposable income (Tudou’s core audience).

Although doing our own productions is new, we are quite confident that this will be a success. There are no other video sites in China (nor in the West) that are getting into original content production on the scale and level of dedication that we’re working on. There are some variations of  “original production” initiatives out there, but mainly in the form of joint funding or a production investment by the video sites who in return will own some or exclusive rights in broadcasting and licensing deals. We are taking it to the next level, working on a content production business that generates our own IP next to our two other areas of strenght: video distribution and the Tudou Film Festival.

More detailed information & trailers of the series:

• You will soon be able to watch That Love Comes @Tudou, check out our special page for the show here.
• For more information about That Loves Comes and the Orange Box idea, see this interview in English on TudouChina.com.
• During the shooting of the show (starring among others Joseph Cheng and Li Fei’er) we took some pictures and put them on the Tudou Flickr page, you can see them here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tudoudotcom/sets/72157624418284735/
• Trailers of That Loves Comes you can see here (from the female perspective) or here (from the male perspective). The voice-over is roughly saying something like “There is someone in the world, waiting. If you start believing in love at this very second, That Love Comes”.

While driving commuting between home and the office I always work in my car through a 3G connection. The connection is normally fine, but what gets on my nerves are the ads that China Unicom keeps on serving. No full screen China Telecom ads anymore like a year ago, but some still cover half the screen. At least they go away after a few seconds – so quickly that you can’t even take a screenshot.

Yesterday I was driving home when I checked Spil Games’ Arabic site DailyGame.com. I opened the site and noticed a big pop-up on the lower right side. Knowing that Spil Games does not sell pop ups on its sites I knew right away that this was once again an illegal China Unicom action. To make things worse the pop-up did not disappear automatically and even caused my browser to crash (Chrome, not Firefox). At least it gave me the opportunity to take a screen shot.

This just reminded me of a picture that one of my blog readers sent me: http://www.startinchina.com/components/com_jd-wp/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/china_telecom_ads.jpg

So at least the pop-ups are smaller now…