The 7.2 Richter scale earthquake in Southern Taiwan caused the disconnection of the Trans-Pacific line, linking Asia with America. Internet access slowed to a crawl since yesterday. It was reported that connection will not return to normal for weeks!
This episode greatly impacted those that host their Internet services outside of China (usually in the US). In my case I can’t get to my emails and website.
Events like this would spur the development of local Internet and to move business critical Internet service locally instead of housing them across the Pacific. But still, with the regulatory environment in China, some may be hasitent to put content in China. It is a far-fetched fear but fear nevertheless.
Published on
21 December, 2006 in
Online.
Thank to Louie who tip me off, I was not aware that the site was down for a good two weeks. My hosting provider moved their server and missed informing me.
Business was challenging and that leave me with little time or energy to update. Good things are happening though … Hope to update soon.
Before anyone can browse a few blogspot pages after they were discovered to be unblocked, they are blocked again.
Same goes for Wikipedia. This happened as I was browsing! One moment loading, the next moment, connect was reset.
Just like many rules, regulation, enforcement in China, they are changed and re-interpretated regularly.
Following the unblocking of Blogspot, Wikipedia is now also unblocked and accessible from within China. Seems like China is becoming more “open”.
Now if they would just unblock Technorati and Wordpress.com.
Although eBay is not doing well in China, and by proxy PayPal (è´å®)， this is something to cheer about.
This has been a long time in the waiting. A big boost to ecommerce in Singapore no doubt.
Singapore badly need a payment system to complete with those pricey solution from eNETs and WorldPay. If PayPal get their way, more people would be opening online stores from their bedroom.
Came across this article that eBay is getting out of China. The report indicate that eBay is planning to sell the eBay and PayPal business in China to Tom.com.
Those following online business in China may recall that eBay brought Eachnet about 2 years ago making the founder (forgotten his name) one of the riches guy in China.
Yahoo also sold their operation to Alibaba last year. And Alibaba again is behind the site Taobao which is eating eBay’s pie in China.
Reading the comment that follows the article, I have to agree that eBay do not know how the fine art of doing business in China.
Also mentioned, the undercurrent of protectionism is very real. Certain policies are unwritten but through execution can legally create barriers. In the offline arena, Walmart is also feeling similar heat.
It is worth noting that there are incentives to grow local (ie Chinese) business that can compete with their foreign, especially US, counterpart.
For the intrepid entrepreneur, it means there are still plenty to do in China.
As usual I was surfing around and clicked on a blogspot blog. The usual drill is,
- open the blogspot blog in another Firefox tab,
- copy the URL into a proxy,
- browse the site through a proxy.
A few minutes ago, something extraordinary happened, the blogspot sites loads!
Has China unblock all blogspot sites?
A quick check on WordPress.com, it is still blocked.
Can’t believe it. The famous Nigeria scan is now in Singapore - complete with UOB and Government of Singapore.
If only entrepreneur are as creative…
Continue reading ‘Nigerian scam comes to Singapore’
Compare this to this. Guess which site I read more?
I don’t get it why SPH is blocking readers at the door. I click on a link, see the sign in and leave immediately.
Frankly I never care about their news now that I’m outside of Singapore. Any news of importance are cover elsewhere too, why go where you are not welcomed.
Trust me.
I was reading Cobalt Paladin’s Corporate Junk. It is on blogspot which is blocked in China and I couldn’t reply. (Actually I didn’t want to sign in over the proxy.) So I’m posting a reply here.
The incident is typical, all in the day job as an entrepreneur. What I want to comment on is on the comments. I bet none of them are running their own business.
Why? Because if they are, they wouldn’t be telling their customer to get lost.
True, customer can be difficult, even impossible. But the truth is customer pays the bill.
If the you are waiting for that customer’s cheque to pay your upcoming office rental, you better be thinking creatively to get the customer to buy. At least he is committed to buy something.
What about not wasting time on bad customer? I believe in that too. But’s that for another post.
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