Yesterday Stick and I picked up the new Civ 4 expansion. I don’t know how it is yet, but I do know that when I woke up about around 6AM, Stick was sitting in front of the computer saying he was coming to bed in one more turn.
Zoodoka
I was asked to look at Zoodaka, a new blog broadcasting service. It makes a blog’s RSS feed into an email, which can be delivered whenever there’s new content, or sent as a digest, weekly or monthly. They have fun widgets like a subscription counter, and ways to make your e-mails look pretty.
With any email marketing program, spamming is going to be a major issue. Any free, mass-mailing program has a huge potential to be abused. Zoodoka has a what they call a double opt-in method, which means you sign up on the site and then you receive a confirmation email to make sure you really want to get Zoodoka updates. I’m usually not a fan of confirming an action I just chose (honestly, VISTA, I wouldn’t have clicked “install” if I didn’t want to install NWN, and yes, I’m sure!), but we all get enough spam. Zoodoka’s also pretty actively deleting accounts of spammers, which makes me happy.
Zoodoka does everything that my dear, departed Bloglet used to do. (I’m still upset about that site disappearing off the face of the planet one day, and taking my mailing list with it.) Zoodoka’s been acquired by the guys at PayPerPost, which means they probably won’t be going the way of Bloglet anytime soon. It does mean that zany buzzwords like “customer love” are becoming more common.
Azeroth News
Azeroth World News asked me to write a couple WarCraft culture pieces, the first is here, there should be another up shortly.
Posted in New York City
Tagged Chinese life, New York City, WarCraft, World of WarCraft
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Fact Or Cr@p?
I just saw this on EastSouthWestNorth a site which translates Chinese news sources into English. Aparently the events happened in July but didn’t receive (blog) attention until this week.
Linan city Qingliangfeng town party secretary Xu had been busy with performing public service and passed away due to mental exhaustion in his car. Another excellent female cadre also laid down her life at the same time. According to information, the party secretary and the female cadre were discussing public business in a car. At the time, the car was out of gas and therefore the air conditioner was not working. Therefore, it was very hot inside in the car which was parked inside a garage. To relieve themselves from the heat, the two took off their clothes to continue discussing public business until they laid down their lives. People are lucky to have such a responsible and diligent party secretary. This party secretary had worked hard for the people, especially with respect to work related to women. The people will remember his accomplishments in their hearts.
Which totally seems like a Chinese Onion article, only the original paper printed a retraction last week.
Horrifically bad news reporting? Or genius parody? Read EastSouthWestNorth’s article and decide.
Spam-Fighting Bounty Hunter Wanted
I’ve often said China is like the Wild West.
Sicken-Me Elmo?
The story about Mattel’s factories in China has been floating around China news and blogs almost as much as the cardboard-filled baozi.
I first heard of it when my dad sent me a link to this New York Times article, about Mattel’s Chinese factories being the “gold standard” for toys and quality control. If you don’t want to register for NYT Online, the blurb for this article is: Concerns about product safety and workplace conditions have driven the toy-maker Mattel to become a role model for how to do business prudently in China.
I was pleased and surprised to see a positive case study of China factories, and besides, who doesn’t love Barbie?
Then Imagethief said something along that lines of “I hope that doesn’t come back to bite Mattel,” as Mattel announced a massive product recall because Dora and friends have a little too much lead paint. (Just a side note, has anyone else noticed that Dora and Explorer don’t rhyme?)
It’s bad news for Mattel and fans of Elmo, but it’s just one of the many made-in-China issues popping up in the news recently. Tainted food, knockoff namebrands, dangerous toys, clothing with straps that don’t survive one encounter with a drunken maid-of-honor who just loves us bridesmaids SO MUCH!!! (hic!) Ok, maybe that one’s just me.
In Xinhua’s article, Vice Commerce Minister Gao Hucheng said “some foreign media reports told of Chinese boys as young as six growing moustaches and girls aged seven growing breasts after eating hormone-tainted food.” He’s talking about the recent tainted-food scandals, not the unsafe-toys scandals, but believes that “some [foreign]media fabricated safety problems in campaigns to block imports of Chinese goods, which he described as de facto trade protectionism.”
That seemed like a weird spin, but today I saw China Daily’s article on the same thing. It begins:
Toy-maker Fisher-Price is recalling 83 types of toys – including the popular Big Bird, Elmo, Dora and Diego characters – because their paint contains excessive amounts of lead.
The recall announced yesterday involves 967,000 plastic preschool toys sold in the United States between May and August.
The article goes on, but one thing is suspiciously missing. There’s no mention of these products being made in China.
Posted in New York City
Tagged China, chinese, Chinese life, in the news, New York City, Young
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Meanderthal
Meanderthal — 1) n. A dull-witted student moving through his workbook at his own special pace. 2) v. The behavior of such a student.
Usage: John’s parents were so wealthy and well-connected that he meanderthaled through three years of English with perfect grades.
Posted in ESL, Teaching
Tagged Chinese life, dictionary, ESL, Lexicon, moving, new words, teaching, teaching ESL, teaching in China, teaching language
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What Else?
I’ve got another article up on 15 Minute Date, on dating and MMORPGs, you know, what I always talk about!
Upstart
Just saw an ad looking for writers for “an upstart magazine”. I’m thinking they meant “a startup magazine”, you know, a no pay, write for exposure, percentage of clickthoughs, etc., magazine, rather than a presumptuous and self-important magazine, but one never knows.
HP#7
I finished Harry Potter 7 but I won’t give away anything else.
