The Dark Visitor

The Chinese government website of Duck Harbor Village has been shut down for unknown reasons.

The website has grown into a running joke among the Chinese online community and its recent closure has once again sparked conversation.

Duck Harbor Government Website

Referred to as the most “Cow-Country” website in history, the Duck Harbor government website was once forced to close due to the public pressure it received for being so gaudy and unreadable.

Coming from the “Duck Harbor” of the US myself, I can accurately translate Chinese words like “Cow-Country” into the proper term hillbilly.  Better citified linguists might go with something like “backwards.” Nope, hillbilly.

This is really cool if you are into Geographical Information Systems.

Mapbar (China’s largest online mapping service) has teamed up with IDOIDO (Marriage website) to create a social mapping service for those lucky couples about to tie the knot.  You just click on the IDO Map and you can run searches for: landmarks, train stations, scenic spots, public parks, educational institutes (what?), municipal agencies, and route info.

Not layered information like a true GIS project but getting there.  Here is a query from the IDOIDO website on Nuclear Power that shows the Beijing Nuclear Power Ltd Co.:

IDODO Internet Bars

IDOIDO Hacker Restaurant (What?)

Sadly, the search for military only returned the location for the military museum.

I’m a bride with special needs!

NetEase has just released its 2008 China Internet Communication Report.  Listed are the annual top-10 rankings for: Internet Hot Figures, Internet Hot Key Words, Entertainment Stars, Sports Persons, Entrepreneurs, Hot Movies, Hot Music Singles, Hot TV series, Fund companies, and A-share listed companies.

A show with everything including Yul Brenner.

I’ve looked at 1/2 of them so I’ll be kind of busy getting around to the others.  What is the population of the US? 310 million?

By the end of November 2008, the number of blogs in China exceeded 100 million and the number of bloggers exceeded 50 million…

To date, the number of Chinese Internet users is over 290 million, making it the No. 1 Internet country in the world…