Today for the first time a Google search on the word ‘Toodou’ showed over 100,000 results, 103,000 to be precise. Two days ago it was still 98,000, so it’s increasing quite fast. Most are Chinese sites using the word Toodou. “Only” 11,700 Enlgish pages mention Toodou, 152 Dutch ones, 15 in German and 14 in French.
I still remember when we registered the name Toodou, then Google still asked: Did you mean ‘to do’?
Quote from yesterday’s New York Times:
Internet distribution does not seem to affect the viewership of the broadcast programs(…). Ratings of ABC’s “Lost” and “Desperate Housewives” have increased since they have been available for sale on iTunes. Similarly, Mr. Zucker said, the audience for “NBC Nightly News With Brian Williams” has grown since the network started making a Webcast of the program available at 10 o’clock Eastern time each night.
Good news for both the TV industry and for video/podcasting websites. I wonder if the same is true for radio programs that are available online? The results there might be different, because radio listeners have a different behaviour than a TV audience. I expect the total listeners to go up (live radio plus podcast audience), but don’t think people will actually tune in for a radio program podcast that they are listening to on their iPod or mobile phone.
Fons Tuinstra from the China Herald interviewed me over Skype, and put the podcast online. The quality could be better, because Fons’ voice is recorded much louder than mine (he said that he will work on this), but the Skype connection between Brussels and Shanghai was quite good.
The blog post is here, the interview can be also be accessed on Toodou, just click here.
Gary set up a tent in the Toodou office for people who work overnight and need some rest. It looks kind of funny, and it’s the first thing visitors note. How many offices in China have a fridge full of beer, a bar full of whiskey and wodka, a treadmill for running, colorful graffiti on all the walls, and a tent for sleeping? Maybe we can shoot a short video ad for Toodou – The Most Interesting Office in China!
Toodou.com, in cooperation with Podlook, Seehaha, Imboke and Vvlogger is organizing the China Podcast Awards 2005. And this is the website: http://www.cnpodcastawards.com/.
From today until Dec. 15 everybody can nominate the best Chinese language podcasts in 10 different categories. After that the public can vote for one month for the best podcasts in China. So on January 16 we will know who the winners are of the China Podcast Awards 2005.
And as a clear indication that podcasting is moving into mainstream media, it was announced that the word ‘podcast’ was chosen as “Word of the Year” for 2005 by the New Oxford American Dictionary (source: http://www.mediafact.nl/weblog.php). Last year the Word of the Year was ‘weblog’.
It suddenly got quite cold in Shanghai, and what happened: many buses and garbage trucks could not drive anymore. During summer they are using a cheap kind of diesel, that can only be used at temperatures above zero degrees. Because the temperature dropped so quickly they did not have time to change to better diesel, and even if they had the time most gas stations did not have it in stock. One of the few station that carried it had two-hour waiting lines to fill up the tanks of waiting vehicles. But soon the garbage trucks will drive around again, as temperatures gradually go up again to about 12 degrees.
The Shanghai Daily has a story this morning that at first glance is funny, but which is actually very sad. A male gay couple put an ad online to look for a lesbian couple to get married to. The males are being pushed by their parents to find wives, and they are even setting up dates with potential partners for them. To get over this they now decided to find a lesbian couple that is facing the same issues, and get married to them to be able to continue their current lifestyle.
It is sad that many people in China are still so conservative that they cannot accept homosexuality. Especially when people are forced to marry someone they don’t love, just to make sure the family does not loose face. I think this couple made a good decision, at least better than marrying a woman who has no idea about their gay background and potentially putting her into misery as well. But of course the only real solution would be if they would be able to come out of the closet.
Hallmark China’s service was better than expected (see post below – we found out that all Christmas cards that we bought had a price sticker on the back that could not be taken off without damaging the card, and we had to go back to return them). After a short discussion they agreed to send us new cards, although they may be different from the ones we bought.
They told us that all their cards have the price and barcode sticker on the card itself, instead of on the plastic cover. The reason is that Chinese tend to take the card out of the plastic in the shops to take a closer look, and then put them back without the plastic. In that case the bar code would get lost and the card cannot be sold. Strange that this only happens in China, and even stranger that we seem to be the only ones complaining about it (so maybe Chinese really like the recipients to see the high price they can afford to pay for a card?). The cards with sticker we could return, except for the ones that I already wrote on. Good service Hallmark, other companies can learn from this!
Several blogs including Danwei write this morning about the fact that Chinese premier Wen Jiabao has joined the trend and is also blogging. He does not have his own server, but blogs on the partly foreign-owned bokee.com. Check his blog out at http://www.wenjiabao.bokee.com.
If you are afraid your blogging service will be blocked in China, such as happened to for example typepad and blogspot accounts, just switch to bokee.com. I am very sure they will not shut the premier’s blog provider down!
Update: the blog has been shut down, it seems it was all a hoax.
