I was preparing a presentation and did a Google image search on ‘China Internet’. I did this a few days ago as well, but then Google seemed to be very slow and did not show the pictures. When I tried it this morning I got the first few pictures, but the others did not display. Strange, because just before that I had done several image searches on other keywords without a problem. I tried other keywords, but from that moment on only got the message ‘the document contains no data’.

What does this mean? It seems that the search term ‘China internet’ is blocked in Google, at least for images. Once you hit a forbidden combination of keywords, as a punishment other image searches also do not work anymore. Luckily there is still Yahoo image search, which seems to have no problem with these keywords. I am starting to use Yahoo more and more lately for search (they are getting quite good!), and now I will also start using them for image search.

This week the Toodou.com team moved into its new office in an old warehouse on the Suzhou Creek. A good reason to throw a party, and so we did!

Coincidentally the party was the night before Shanghai Bloggercon, so many of the bloggers that made Toodou well-known were able to attend as well. Furthermore, the traditional media were there, several VC’s, and of course lots of friends. In total about 200 people showed up, and it was already busy before the official starting time of 8 PM.

To add to the fun, we decided to allow anybody to put graffiti on the white walls. At first only a few people made some paintings, but when one professional artist took out his airbrush suddenly everybody started to ‘help’. The result: a very colorful office! Interestingly, most people did not sign their creations with their names, but with their weblog addresses.

IDG, the company that invested in Toodou, also put its name on one of the pillars. But it seems that another VC (who I won’t name) was not so impressed with them, because a few minutes later he put a big cross through IDG’s name!

All pictures from the party can be viewed and downloaded here

Update: Just noticed that Fons Tuinstra already put an entry on his blog before I had a chance to write.

According to an article in the China Daily, the government has decided to introduce a black list of all companies and individuals that have offered bribes in sectors such as construction, finance, education, and government procurement. The hope is that this will reduce corruption.

But will it really? First of all giving bribes and kick-backs is so common that it will be a huge list. So I suppose only the big cases will end up there. Second, it could have the exact opposite effect. If someone needs vendors for the company he works for and is looking for some money on the side for himself, he can use the list to find suitable suppliers!

The article also includes a sentence I do not fully understand: “The maximum penalty for a bribe-taker is the death sentence. But in reality, punishment for bribe-takers is usually much heavier.” Does the China Daily employ any editors who check the articles before they are published?

It does not happen often to me, but today I had a day that everything that could go wrong indeed went wrong.

It started in the morning. I woke up because I heard the maid walking around the house cleaning stuff. That is strange, because she normally does not arrive before 7:45 when I have gotten up already. A quick look at my watch revealed that it was 8:30… I overslept! That never happens to me, I always get up right away when I hear my alarm and also never miss my alarm. Turns out that I forgot to set my alarm this time.

So I had to hurry, because I booked a taxi to pick me up at 8:45. I just managed, and even had a quick breakfast in these 15 minutes, but then the taxi did not show up. After waiting for about 20 minutes, a phone call to the taxi company learned me that they made a mistake and cancelled the booking.

When I finally arrived in the office and wanted to check my mail I noticed that my computer was extremely slow. I restarted it, and then it did not load the operating system. One more restart worked a little better, and I even got into my mail, but it took me 15 minutes just to restart. So I decided to visit the Apple shop on HuaiHai Lu for a computer check-up.

There they checked my harddisk and virtual memory, but that did not reveal any problems. I told them the computer had been slower for about 10 days already, since they installed OS X Tiger for me. But that could not be the problem they said, and sent me off to an Apple Service Center. After arriving there, they told me that I would need to leave my laptop there for two working days and that they might need to format my harddisk. Oops… I told them that this was not an option for me, so they just ran a one-hour hardware test (for which I had to wait). Also here they found no problems, so they told me to go back to the store again. The service center only does hardware not software, and this must be a software problem. Great, that’s where I just came from. But glad I did not let them keep my computer for two days and format my HD.

The Apple store agreed to reinstall the operating system, but first needed to back-up my data. I had about 80 GB of data on my laptop, and they did not have a harddisk that size left that could be used. This took them 15 minutes to figure out (solution: not backing up the applications that they could reinstall themselves). They told me to come back in 1-2 hours. I asked them for their phone number, because I did not want to come back for nothing.And I was glad I did, because when I called them 3 hours later they told me that backing up was taking so much time that I could not get my laptop back until Friday afternoon….

Back in the office I decided to work through my webmail on another PC. But what do you think? The webmail was not working either. So I decided to forget about work for today (it’s 7:30 PM anyway), write a quick post on my blog and go home for a run in the gym. I hope the treadmill will not suddenly stop working!

Not much sleep last night because I stayed up until 3:30 for a live interview with the Dutch radio program Radio Online. The interview in Dutch can be heard here (Real Player stream), or the whole program can be downloaded here as mp3 (the Toodou interview is at the end of the program).

Toodou.com moved to its new office on the Suzhou Creek (next to the Xizhang Lu Bridge) and I took some pictures today. It is still a bit empty, and decoration is not completely finished yet, but at least there is a treadmill so I can run 🙂

This Friday night there will be a office-warming party during which some graffiti artists will decorate our white walls. Next week things should look different!

Stan van Engelen from Dutch public broadcaster VPRO came to visit our office this afternoon.
The future meeting room of Toodou.com, with a fantastic view over the river.
My Apple Powerbook in action

Not sure which word will survive, video podcast, vodcast, or vlog (or something completely different), but for now I go with video podcast. Most people already have difficulties understand what a blog/weblog or a podcast is, so I am not going to make it more difficult for them.

I came accross this article on Business Week’s blogspotting weblog, that talks about Apple selling 1 million videos in 20 days. That seems a lot, especially considering that most people probably do not have an iPod Video yet, but play the episodes on their computer. So there clearly was a market for this that was not being filled.

Even more interesting, however, was the first comment under the post. Here a reader writes that a company that he consults for changed from an audio podcast to a video podcast, with amazing results. They now have 7000 subscribers to their podcast (but he fails to mention how many there were before). It fits with what we we are seeing at Toodou, people love video podcasts and the iPod video will only make video podcasting bigger.

Today Holland’s biggest newspaper, De Telegraaf, published an article about Toodou.com. I got lots of phone calls and emails today because of this, it’s amazing to see how many people read it. Traditional media still seem to rule, at least in Holland!

Also just got off the phone with a reporter from Dutch radio program Radio Online. This is a weekly program on Dutch Radio 1 about the internet and online activities. They plan to interview me on Tuesday in their program, but because the program is live and broadcasted at 8 PM I need to get up at 3 AM… The program is also available as podcast, will put a link here.

For the Dutch readers, this is today’s article:

In digitale tijdperk zetelt het nieuwe Hollywood in China

NEDERLANDER PIONIERT IN VIDEOPODCASTING VANUIT SJANGHAI

door ANNE MEIJDAM

SJANGHAI – Met Apples allernieuwste iPod kunnen voor het eerst video’s worden afgespeeld, maar wat de gebruiker allemaal op zijn scherm kan krijgen, is tot dusver nog niet erg duidelijk. Op een vijftal televisieseries na die alleen in Amerika kunnen worden gedownload, is de consument eigenlijk behoorlijk aan zichzelf overgeleverd. Voor de oplossing van dat probleem kijkt de hele wereld zoals gebruikelijk ook nu weer naar de VS, toch dé zetel van de internationale amusementsindustrie. Maar interessant genoeg zou een heel grote bijdrage nog wel eens geleverd kunnen worden door een land waarvan niemand dat verwacht: China.

Dat stelt Marc van der Chijs, een 32-jarige geboren en getogen Arnhemmer die met zijn bedrijf Toodou.com vanuit Sjanghai een wereldwijde voorsprong heeft in het zogeheten videopodcasting: de technologie die individuen in staat stelt zelfgeproduceerde muziek, foto’s en nu ook filmpjes op een website te parkeren.

Anderen kunnen via die website de producties weer downloaden en afspelen. Natuurlijk op computers, maar ook mp3-spelers, mobiele telefoons en op Apples beroemde iPod.

„De videovariant is zeker vergeleken met muziekpodcasting over de hele wereld nu nog het ondergeschoven kindje”, zegt Van der Chijs. „Maar met wat we hier bij Toodou voor elkaar hebben gekregen, daar kunnen ze in de rest van de wereld alleen nog maar van dromen.”

Toodou – wat aardappel betekent – bestaat pas sinds oktober vorig jaar, maar het beheert nu al zo’n 13.000 producten van Chinese makelij, waarvan er zo’n 5000 regelmatig worden vernieuwd. Een aantal dat zich zelfs per dag uitbreidt. Bijdragen variëren van onder andere een indrukwekkende korte documentaire over de problemen in de fabrieksstad Shenzhen, tot vrolijke kungfukluchten en zelfgemaakte muziekclips. Een kort filmpje van een meisje dat zich optuigt als Barbie werd niet minder dan 300.000 keer gedownload. Cijfers die alleen in het gigantische en computergekke China mogelijk zijn.

„Uiteindelijk willen we naar honderdduizenden kanalen toe”, aldus Van der Chijs. „Die moeten worden geproduceerd door gewone, maar wel heel creatieve mensen.” Die prognoses spreken natuurlijk ook zeker in Amerika tot de verbeelding. Een week geleden lagen de Toodou-servers geruime tijd plat door het plotseling toegenomen verkeer uit de Verenigde Staten. Dat was veroorzaakt door een enthousiast artikel van de bekende columnist Thomas Friedman over het Chinese internetbedrijf in de Amerikaanse krant The New York Times.

• De Chinezen zelf lijken al bijna verslaafd aan filmpjes op internet.
FOTO: REUTERS.

Toodou had tot voor heel kort niet meer dan zeven man fulltime personeel, de meeste medewerkers bleven gewoon in het piepkleine kantoor slapen. Maar na ondertekening van een overeenkomst deze maand met de Amerikaanse Venture Capitalist IDG (International Data Group), kunnen Van der Chijs en zijn partner Gary Wang nu op een stevige uitbreiding tot wel 22 man rekenen.

Een gloednieuw kantoor in een verbouwd pakhuis aan Sjanghai’s vermaarde Suzhoukreek wordt begin volgende maand betrokken. Over winstverwachtingen durft men bij veel internetbedrijven weliswaar nauwelijks te praten, maar de Nederlandse ondernemer lijkt zich daar zeker niet druk over te maken. Volgens hem zijn de commerciële mogelijkheden welhaast onuitputtelijk. Binnen afzienbare tijd zullen de Toodou-bezoekers een klein bedrag aan lidmaatschap voor het gebruik van de website moeten betalen, en verder tekende het bedrijf al een overeenkomst met een gsm-bedrijf voor het streamen van video’s naar mobiele telefoons.

Ook wordt er gedacht aan speciale tv-programma’s voor de meest populaire videopodcasts. „We worden welhaast dagelijks met zakenvoorstellen benaderd”, lacht Van der Chijs. „Naar aanleiding van dat artikel in The New York Times werden we ook al direct gebeld door Nokia in Finland. Wat we voor elkaar kunnen betekenen, was de vraag.”

Toodou sluit een snelle sprong naar het buitenland zeker niet uit, maar Van der Chijs verwacht dan wel een conflict met zijn investeerders. IDG wil dat het bedrijf zich eerst onwrikbaar in China nestelt voordat de rest van de wereld aan de beurt komt. „Daar moeten we snel over gaan beslissen”, zegt hij. „Om internationaal te kunnen opereren, heb je ook als Chinees internetbedrijf echter nauwelijks wat nodig. Een westerse interface en snelle servers in het buitenland. Buiten de Chinese internetfirewall.”