Catshanghai

Distributing the web is not my idea, but it resonated with me after Twitter and Facebook were blocked after the unrest in Xinjiang. The idea resurfaced among western technology commentators after a Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attack against a Georgian blogger crippled Twitter and Livejournal. The idea from tech heads such as Dave Winer, [...]

How difficult is it to get a virtual private network (VPN) working in China to access international sites that are blocked or geo filtered? A VPN is a way of connecting to a computer remotely. Many sites such as BBC Iplayer, Hulu or Pandora have geographical restrictions that block access from computers outside specific countries. [...]

What choices do we have for sharing videos with friends and family in other countries given that Facebook, Youtube, Yahoo Video and Blip TV have stopped working? I’ve been using Vimeo recently. It has a basic free service that lets you upload upto 500 mb of videos each week. All video hosting sites display uploaded [...]

I am not happy that Facebook and Twitter are blocked in China at the moment. I am not a political activist. I am not interested in telling the Chinese government how to run their affairs. Given the widespread availability of non sanctioned reports about the recent race riots in Urumqi what exactly is the point [...]

I have recently discovered how to get online via ChinaNet wireless access points, which you can see in coffeeshops throughout Shanghai. People living in Shanghai with a China Telecom ADSL account can use this account to login to ChinaNet access points. Here are the steps that you need to follow: Select the ChinaNet wireless access [...]

I use a feed reader to browse updates of blogs and news sites. I have tried many different services and software tools, but I have stayed with Google Reader. I can keep upto date with all my feeds on a variety of devices including my MacBook, school computer and cellphone. The latter is helpful for [...]

This is a perfect video for living in Shanghai. It’s a full episode of Fawlty Towers. It captures the communication problems, the sense of chaos, the flexible attitudes to copyright in terms of vintage BBC tv shows and web service design. America does Youtube. China does Youku Enjoy. Tell me if it plays in the [...]

My exile from Facebook has ended, although I have never spent too much time hanging out in this network. Sometime before Christmas I tried to add a few friends from the mobile Facebook site using my crappy HTC Tytn Windows Mobile cellphone, but Facebook defaults to ‘add all’. Like an idiot, I added hundreds of [...]

In this earlier post I complained about the stress of living in a place where I am “doomed to waste time understanding and being understood.” This is still an issue or I would not choose to resurrect such a gloomy old blog post. The difference these days is that I am enjoying my summer holidays. [...]

I have started using a VOIP service called Rebtel , which offers cheaper and more convenient Internet based phonecalls than Skype or Gizmo5, which I wrote about last year. See this post. Rebtel lets you make calls between China and the UK landlines for 1.9 US cents a minute plus 1 jiao a minute for [...]