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June 2008 - Posts

Illegal baby part 1: The strange case of the sluggish passport

Posted Monday, June 30, 2008 12:09 AM by will
Anyone within earshot will know that Imagethief welcomed his son, Zachary, into the world last March 9th. The nearly four months since have been one long sleepless adventure. Despite my fatigue induced delirium, however, the experience has been a happy Read More...
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On vacation next week

Posted Friday, June 20, 2008 4:03 AM by will
Imagethief will be on vacation in Singapore next week, introducing his son to his Singaporean grandparents for the first time. (And getting him vaccinated and setting up his health insurance and bank account and etc. Not really much of a vacation at all, Read More...
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And you thought the Air Force tanker deal was just about the billions of dollars

Posted Wednesday, June 18, 2008 7:54 PM by will
Imagethief was interested to read in the New York Times today an article about the wrangling going on over the United States Air Force's new monster procurement deal for aerial refueling tankers, one of the biggest defense programs ever. A little back Read More...
4 Comments

Monetize this!

Posted Wednesday, June 18, 2008 5:14 AM by will
David Churbuck with the best angry response to Associated Press' ill-conceived pay-to-quote-us policy (and follow the chain of links there for more info): Here’s the deal: The Associated Press, a coprolite concept of a global news syndicate used by newspapers Read More...
8 Comments

Is it "war" against Chinese blogs?

Posted Monday, June 16, 2008 7:13 AM by will
BusinessWeek's Dexter Roberts has written an article titled " Inside the war against China's blogs " that looks at the impact of China's blogosphere on companies doing business in China, and how a group of specialist PR and monitoring companies help clients Read More...
16 Comments

Shock! Chinese bloggers not completely obsessed with foreign companies

Posted Monday, June 16, 2008 6:59 AM by will
Ok, so we know that Chinese bloggers criticize a lot of stuff (and we can say from experience that bloggers from other nations do as well). From the Wall Street Journal's China Journal blog, here is an interesting piece quantifying what, exactly, Chinese Read More...
3 Comments

Spontaneous Olympic joy by decree and other news

Posted Monday, June 16, 2008 6:28 AM by will
Cliff Coonan has a story in showbiz trade Variety that examines the broadcasting problems I posted about last week. The article is something of an omnibus piece on current Olympic issues. Among other things, it gets into the organizers' efforts to develop Read More...
6 Comments

Everything you need to know about the Chinese visa situation?

Posted Saturday, June 14, 2008 8:07 AM by will
China mavens will know that China has tightened up its visa issuance regulations significantly in recent weeks. There has been much piecemeal reporting on this, but it has been hard to find good, comprehensive information on the situation. While several Read More...
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Chinese mourning rituals and the great Wenchuan quake

Posted Saturday, June 14, 2008 7:40 AM by will
During the official mourning period declared a week after last month's Wenchuan earthquake, I put up a post remarking on the government message that replaced the foreign entertainment channels on my building satellite TV system. This got me zapped by Read More...
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The mysterious outage of video-sharing site 56.com

Posted Saturday, June 14, 2008 7:10 AM by will
The number three video sharing site in China has been offline for a week. What's going on? No one outside of the company or the government seems to know. Kaiser Kuo has been trying to find out. From his blog at Ogilvy : This looks to be fairly grim, and Read More...
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Plug for my brother's film: "Full Battle Rattle"

Posted Saturday, June 14, 2008 2:45 AM by will
My brother, Jesse Moss, is a documentary filmmaker who's major projects to date include films about a notorious con man , a demolition derby driver , and Republicans in Hollywood (all three available on DVD from Docurama, via Amazon). His latest film, Read More...
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Chinese propaganda posters on display in Rotterdam, and online

Posted Friday, June 13, 2008 7:15 AM by will
In May Imagethief had a chance to get together with Chinese propaganda poster expert, Prof. Dr. Stefan Landsberger of Leiden University in the Netherlands. Stefan literally wrote the book on Chinese propaganda posters (it's no longer available new, but Read More...
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Nicholas Carr: Is Google making us stupid?

Posted Thursday, June 12, 2008 6:58 AM by will
Imagethief has a good friend who wrote for the New York Times as a foreign correspondent for many years. This person (who shall remain gracefully anonymous) had three main complaints about his job: He was paid like a chump; his editors were idiots who Read More...
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Tough times for English entertainment mags in Beijing

Posted Thursday, June 12, 2008 6:47 AM by will
As an occasional contributor to That's Beijing The Beijinger , Imagethief heard a few days ago that the Chinese publisher has decided to appropriate the That's Beijing brand from True Run Media, the company that has actually run the magazine for the past Read More...
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Rumblings of trouble from the Olympic Broadcast Center

Posted Thursday, June 12, 2008 6:19 AM by will
Imagethief has been hearing for the last few months from friends in positions to know that the setup of Beijing Olympic Broadcast Centre is not going well. "Total chaos," and "Way behind Athens at this stage," are some of the not-so-kind comments. I was Read More...
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E-mail form problems part III

Posted Thursday, June 12, 2008 3:42 AM by will
Well, it turns out that my trusty, old will -at- imagethief account has also been offline for about the past month. This is the problem with multiple accounts all directing to the same place -- you sometimes don't notice when something goes offline, even Read More...
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Good PR for American tech firms providing quake help

Posted Wednesday, June 11, 2008 6:08 AM by will
An interesting article in the Wall Street Journal today on some things that American technology companies are doing in addition to donations to help out with quake relief. Google, Microsoft and IBM are all using their technology in various ways to help Read More...
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E-mail form problems part II - UPDATED

Posted Wednesday, June 11, 2008 5:05 AM by will
Apologies if anyone has tried to use the e-mail contact form to contact me in the past month. It appears to be broken again, most likely because all of my webmail accounts treat anything coming from it as spam due to large amount of, well, spam that gets Read More...
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This postless spell

Posted Monday, June 02, 2008 1:55 AM by will
Apologies to readers for taking the recent week or so off. It's been a little bit hectic what with general fatigue, baby registration issues (more on this particular disaster soon) and the arrival of my father in town. More top-notch content coming soon. Read More...
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