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SPIL GAMES Champions HTML5 to Drive the Mobile Gaming Revolution

Spil Games LogoI 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:

Spil Games mobile portals

HILVERSUM, THE NETHERLANDS, August 31, 2010

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Baidu innovative game search results

Baidu innovation

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 ??? (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).

Playing plants vs. zombies in the Baidu search results

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).

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Airline website the day after a plane crash

The Henan Airlines website after a crash of one of its planes

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

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20 GB additional storage for Gmail

I bought additional storage for my Gmail account

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

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Stretching does not prevent injuries

Marc before the 3 hour run

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

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Expensive cars

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.

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Scott’s first day at Soong Ching Ling kindergarten

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.

Scott's first day at Soong Ching Ling kindergarten in Shanghai

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!

Scott's first day at Soong Ching Ling kindergarten in Shanghai

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…

Scott's first day at Soong Ching Ling kindergarten in Shanghai

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.

Note (Jan. 2013): in the comments below this post people wrote negative things about the school, but if you scroll until the end you will see that they are referring to a school with the same name in Chengdu. At first I wanted to delete the comments, but I now decided to keep them and make this short edit to the post. Soong Ching Ling Kindergarten is probably the best kindergarten in Shanghai and maybe even in China. It was the best choice I could have made for my kids.

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New course for the Shanghai Marathon

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

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The telemarketer counterscript

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’).