Archive for July, 2008

Moving to Suburbia

When I arrived in China many years ago I deliberately decided not to live in one of the compounds in Shunyi (close to Beijing airport) where most of my colleagues had their villas. I took an apartment close to the Second Ring Road (at the then brand-new East Gate Plaza) and have lived in the city center of Beijing and later Shanghai during my whole stay in China. I never thought I would ever move to the suburbs, it's just too convenient to be able to have shopping malls and restaurants within...
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Randy Pausch passed away

By coincidence my parents (who are visiting Shanghai) just mentioned Randy Pausch' The Last Lecture to me, and I decided to watch it again on YouTube. There I noticed that Randy passed away yesterday, age 47. His Last Lecture was an inspiration for me and many other people.On the Internet many people are talking about Randy right now. 3o minutes ago he was number 7 in the list of hottest tags on Twitter, and at this moment he is number 3 already (higher than terms like iPhone or Barack Obama)....
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Dunkin' Donuts or Krispy Kreme – who will be first to open in Shanghai?

A couple of months ago Dunkin' Donuts announced that they would open their first store in China in May this year. I love donuts, so I was quite happy to read that there would be an alternative for the Japanese-owned Mister Donut chain. However, so far Dunkin' Donuts promise did not come true. I have not seen any retail outlet for their donuts in Shanghai, even though it's July already. Maybe they got cold feet at the last minute? The company already had a bad China experience: As some long-term...
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Spill Group's new name: Spil Games

Today Spill Group officially changed its name to Spil Games. Over the past years Spill Group has become known as a leader in game portals. Therefore the brand image under the name Spill Group did not accurately reflect who we are, what we do and what we stand for. The main purpose of the new brand name is to quickly give our customers, portal visitors, the press, and other business partners an accurate representation of our identity and exactly what we do.The logo has changed as well, the new...
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Young Dutch entrepreneur starts ice cream shop in Shanghai

This afternoon I was walking through Taikang Lu, the hip entertainment area in Shanghai, when I saw a new ice cream shop. In front of the shop a young blond man was using a hammer to hit nails into a wooden chair. He turned out to be Bing van der Lande, the Dutch owner of the shop. Bing is only 23 years old and told me that during the day he is doing an internship at Dutch company Randstad. But instead of going out at night and spend his money on beer, he decided to use it to set up a business...
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Chinajoy 2008

This afternoon I went to China's biggest gaming conference and exhibition, ChinaJoy. It's a fun event, but it's also very crowded. And when it's 38 degrees outside it's also very hot. I mistakenly thought that today was an industry day, but when I arrived I saw lines of people waiting to buy tickets that were literally hundreds of meters long.Luckily in China there are always scalpers around, and I managed to buy tickets for 75 RMB (normal price 50 RMB), which saved me an hour of waiting in...
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Le Sirop de Monin

Last Sunday night while shopping at Grand Gateway, I found a small shop specialized in coffee and coffee accessories. If you follow me on Twitter you probably know I like to drink good coffee, so I decided to venture into the shop. I not only came out with some nice cappuccino and espresso cups, but I also found a chocolate-flavored syrup from Monin (Le Sirop de Monin). The shop owner told me it would be a great combination with coffee or espresso, so I decided to give it a try.For some reason...
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China New Media book on Slideshare (Chinareis 2008)

This April I co-organized a trip for over 40 Dutch new media business people, entrepreneurs and investors to China. The delegation visited many internet and new media companies in Shanghai and Chengdu, and based on the group's experiences and research we made a 76-page book about New Media in China. The result was presented last month during a seminar about New Media in China in The Netherlands.Now the book is also available in digital format, and you can read or download it for free here on...
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Plastic bags not for free anymore

A couple of months ago the government announced that plastic bags would be banned starting June 1 this year. I was a bit skeptical when I first read it; often this kind of new rules are announced but in the end many of them do not get implemented. But in this case it looks like it was not just an announcement, but something that is actually enforced and it even seems to work. I am quite happy with this, because everywhere you would get plastic bags to put your goods in. Even if I would buy just...
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M1NT Shanghai to open in October

In October this year M1NT will open its first private club in mainland China, on the 20,000 square foot penthouse floor of the M1NT Tower in Shanghai (currently still called the Cross Tower, on Fuzhou Lu close to the Bund). The 24-story building used to be owned by Goldman Sachs, but they sold it last year for USD 150 million, and it is now being upgraded to a Grade A office space with the M1NT premises on the top floor.The concept of M1NT is that the club is owned by shareholders who are also...
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China Mobile launches ringback tones advertising

Advertising is everywhere in China. In the most unexpected and unlikely places you are bombarded with advertising messages (see for some good examples this article by Sam Flemming). And one more advertising location has now been added to the list: ringback tones. I personally hate the current music ringback tones, and when I call people that use them the conversation may be off to a bad start because of it. Why force me to listen to music you may like? To make matters worse, people normally do...
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My tickets for the 2008 Beijing Olympics!

Exactly one month from today the 2008 Beijing Olympics will open, on 08-08-08 at 08:08 PM (8 is a lucky number in China). And today I received my tickets for the Beijing Olympics, and of course I had to take a picture of the tickets :-)I only bought tickets for the last 9 days of the Olympics, including a ticket for the Closing Ceremony. But a couple of days ago I heard that I am also invited to attend the Opening Ceremony of the Games as a guest of Dell (thanks to Tudou). That means two trips...
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Translate Server Error

If you have a restaurant and want to translate that word into English for your sign, but you don't want to spend money on it, what do you do? You just use free translation software! That's what the owner of this restaurant likely did. However, he probably did not speak a single word of English, because when the software gave an error message he used that as the translation on his sign...Thanks to Shanghaiist, that got the picture from Fools Mountain. Whoever took the picture originally: thanks...
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Lunch 2.0 at Spill Group Asia

Last Friday we organized a Lunch 2.0 event at the Shanghai office of Spill Group Asia. In case you never heard about Lunch 2.0 before, it is basically a regular event where employees of internet companies visit another start-up during lunch time to learn a bit about that company and its culture, to meet fellow geeks and new friends, to talk about interesting internet topics - and to have a free lunch. The event is loosely organized in several cities all over the world, and one of them is...
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"TV China" recording

On Monday I was in Beijing for the recording of an episode of the new Dutch TV program, "TV China". Interesting was that the studio was on an army base, so I could not just take a taxi to get there. I was picked up by a car with darkened windows so I could get in and out of the studio without being spotted as a foreigner! The studio itself was the same as most film studios I have seen so far, just a big dark room filled with camera's, sound equipment and huge amounts of cables. The set was...
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New fast Shanghai-Nanjing train a bit too fast?

Today's Shanghai Daily has an article on its front page creatively titled "It's express delivery for a Delta dasher". The article is about a new high-speed train connection between Nanjing and Shanghai, which construction started yesterday and that should be in operation before July 1, 2010. Pretty fast, but that's what you get used to in China and the opening date right before the Expo 2010 is probably correct.When I read the article I noticed a couple of things that cannot be correct,...
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