Archive for March, 2006

game.com.cn live!

Spill Group Asia today launched game.com.cn, our second gaming casual website in China. Youxi.cn is now online for about two weeks and is seeing a healthy growth in traffic.The next launch of a site in China is planned for mid-April. And then it's time to start with sites in other Asian countries outside China. Things are moving forward, and that's a good...
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Coca-Cola China's online marketing strategy

Coca-Cola is one of the very few multinationals in China that seem to understand the market. Although it is a foreign product it is known and accepted by almost every Chinese, and it's available all over China. It might be the only foreign product that can really reach all China's 1.3 billion customers. I follow their branding and marketing activities, and also there they seem to have a good nose for trends. Last year they partnered with The9 to promote World of Warcraft in China. Coinidence or...
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Diamond credit card

The China Daily (yes, I sometimes read it...) writes that Minsheng Bank is offering a credit card with a monthly overdraft facility of 3 million RMB. This is already quite some news, because the official maximum overdraft in China is only 50,000 RMB. But even more interesting is one of their main target groups for this diamond credit card: senior government officials.Outside China this would not raise too many eyebrows, but a vice-minister level official in China only earns about 3000 RMB per...
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I have a nice apartment in Shanghai, but certainly not as luxurious as the expat compounds that I used to live in while working for DaimlerChrysler. So to my surprise I noted a Maybach that was parked right in front of the entrance to my apartment building. Did one of my neighbours win the...
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Famous guests?

Just came back from a meeting at the Four Seasons hotel, next to the China Bay office. Outside two TV crews were waiting (Shanghai TV and Oriental TV) and at the entrance a new Bentley was parked (very nice car by the way). I was observed by three doormen while walking in, and inside several staff with ear pieces were nervously walking around.I wonder what famous or important guest is staying here. Even in October when Michael Schumacher stayed here and in December when Tom Cruise lived here,...
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Online Chinese casino?

My RSS reader automatically picks up stories on the internet that are related to online gaming in China. This morning I saw a headline that said "Online casino tips for Chinese players". Because online casino's are banned in China I was curious about the article and clicked on it. And to my big surprise I see an article about youxi.cn in which I am describing the game portal as an online casino!I have no clue what happened here. I do interviews every now and then, but I have never used the...
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Toodou Party – Saturday April 15

Next month Toodou.com will have the 1st anniversary of its website. On April 15, 2005 the site officially went live. Only one year, it seems like a much longer time.To celebrate this we will host a party at our office at the Si Hang Warehouse on Guangfu Lu. More details will follow later, but it will certainly be a party to remember. And it will likely be the last Toodou party in our current office, so if you are in town make sure to drop by on Saturday night, April...
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Hong Kong business trip

I am in Hong Kong at the moment on a business trip, and did not find enough time to post on my blog yet. Over the past days I had some excellent business meetings here for Spill Group Asia, and I have lots of new ideas about how to build up our business in this city as well. Also I set up the holding company for Spill Group, and that is moving forward quickly as well.What I noticed about Hong Kong is how expensive it is compared to Shanghai. A decent meal in an non-Chinese restaurant is...
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Bund tourist tunnel to close?

I wrote before about the Shanghai tourist tunnel, the somewhat tacky tourist atrraction that takes you from Puxi to Pudong in a small carriage surrounded by sounds and lights.It seems that not enough people are using this means of transportation, not completely unlogical considering the current entrance price of RMB 30 one-way. So a plan has been developed to turn the attraction into a normal means of commuting. Of course, this means the price would have to be reduced drastically.I think this...
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Conctraception misconceptions

I always thought that pharmacists know a lot about the medicine they sell. But it seems that this is not always the case in China for conctraceptive drugs: The Center for Reproductive Health Technical Instruction and Training in Shanghai conducted a survey among 100 pharmacies and found that only 9% of the pharmacists knew that morning-after pills are different from regular contraceptive medicine!This has of course some negative effects on women who buy these products and get a wrong advice....
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The Bund? Zhongshan Road!

Over the past years many of the old buildings along the Bund have been turned into entertainment venues. It all started with M on the Bund, but many have followed since. Among them Bund 18 with shops, a top restaurant and a bar with huge terrace, and 3 on the Bund with the Armani flagship store, an art gallery, a spa and many good bars and restaurants. The buildings used to be dilapidated, but are now back to their old grandeur. The Bund looks much better than just 2 years ago.But now the...
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Youxi.cn press release

Spill Group Asia launches unique online gaming portal Youxi.cn offers the most popular games on an innovative platform. The portal is also the launching customer for ToodouAds, a revolutionary promotion tool. Shanghai – March 17, 2006 – SPILL GROUP, a leading operator and developer of online gaming portals in Europe and Asia, today announced the launch of its new online gaming platform youxi.cn. The site offers all games that are currently most popular in China. Youxi.cn differs...
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Stress?

Tomorrow Spill Group Asia will launch its first site in China: www.youxi.cn. And this caused me a bit of stress today because a lot still had to be done and many people wanted information at the same time. At 6:30 PM I realized that I was in 9 MSN messenger conversations at the same time, while 12 new emails came in within 30 minutes. Next to that I also had some phone calls. I am used to multi-tasking and like doing 3 things at the same time, but for me this was also an extreme situation....
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Serve the People – virtually

Lei Feng is an icon in China, although some people doubt he really existed. Born in 1940, he became an orphan after his father was killed during the anti-Japanese war and his mother committed suicide after being harrassed by her landlord. At a young age he joined the People's Liberation Army and allegedly spent all his spare time and money helping the poor, old and needy. He died at the age of 22 after a telephone pole fell on his head (no kidding - someone drove a truck into a pole that struck...
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Rolling Stones tickets!

I managed to get 4 tickets to the Rolling Stones concert on April 8, they were just delivered to my office!'I can't get no satisfaction'? Well, I am pretty satisfied now.'You can't always get what you want'? True, but I managed to get my hands on these tickets.'It's only rock 'n' roll' - good enough for me though!Anybody else planning to...
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Google down in Shanghai

For the past couple of hours Google.com has been down in Shanghai. But not only that, also its adservers seem to have a serious problem: when opening a site with Google ads you get the error message that googlesyndication.com cannot be reached. Luckily Gmail still works, although it seems to be slower than usual.Google.cn is working flawlessly, coincidence? Update: (March 15, 8 AM) Google.com is working again in Shanghai, but all their adservers are still down. Maybe it was due to a...
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Dave Winer to stop blogging?

This morning I was as usual reading Dave Winer's blog Scripting News on my way to work. And I was surprised, very surprised, to read that he plans to stop writing his blog. Dave has influenced me a lot, even though I have never met him in person.For those of you who don't know him or don't regularly follow his weblog, Dave is a software and internet pioneer. He is one of the very first bloggers (he started in 1994 with his first semi-blog), he invented XML-RPC, RSS (that is finally taking off)...
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Job openings at Spill Group Asia

Spill Group Asia is a fast-growing online gaming company with headquarters in Shanghai. We run and build online gaming webportals in China, Malaysia, Singapore, India and Australia.We are currently looking to expand our team with a junior programmer/web designer and a senior systems engineer/programmer for our office in Shanghai (Xujiahui). Details of the requirements for both positions: Function description Designer/Junior Programmer Functional design of sites, games, cartoons, logo’sMaking...
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Support the relocation!

Mid-December last year one of my companies (China Bay) received a notice from the landlord that we would have to vacate the building. The reason was that our office villa would be torn down to make way for a skyscraper. We would have exactly one month to find a new place and to move out. Well, that's a bit short, and even if we had wanted to move we would not have been able to do so within a month. Finding a new place and renovating it already takes at least 2-3 months. So after some serious...
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The Rolling Stones: coming to Shanghai or not?

I was getting a bit worried that the Rolling Stones might not play in Shanghai, because the ticket agency (Emma Tickets) had taken the event off their list. Checking the official Rolling Stones website, I found no mention of the concert either. I sent Emma Tickets an email about this a couple of days ago, and asked for the status of the event. No reply of course.This morning I called the company directly, and was transferred to someone who confirmed that the concert is on. She could not explain...
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