The Best Virtual Drive

Check this out and you will agree that this has to be the most wicked driving experience any gamers can get. I reckon that this is the best Xbox 360 Forza 2 Setup in the world.

This crazed gamer has splashed out on THREE Xbox 360s all running Forza 2 in tandem. To further feed his addiction, he has even wired them up to three Samsung HDTVs, a leather racing chair, a Xbox 360 racing wheel and a very impressive looking 5.1 surround sound system!

Check out the background behind and its real cool finishing. Its the perfect virtual Formula 1 driving experience.

Top 10 Websites in China

Do you know what are the top websites in China? Some of you may be of the opinion that its dominated by the US websites as its the case with many of the countries outside the US.

For those of you who have little knowledge about the leading websites in China, the most popular and No. 1 Chinese website is baidu.com, the leading Chinese language search engine who is listed on the Nasdaq. It provides simple and reliable search experience, strong in Chinese language and multi-media content including MP3 music and movies, the first to offer WAP and PDA-based mobile search in China.

2. QQ.com - Founded in Shenzhen in November, 1998, Tencent, who is listed on the Hong Kong stock Exchange is recognized as the operator of the leading Internet community in China. QQ is famous for its Instant Messenger service similar to MSN IM and commanding in excess of 100 million users in China.

3. Sina.com.cn - With 230 million registered users worldwide and a record 500 million daily page views, SINA is the most recognized Internet brand name in China and among Chinese communities globally. Its listed on the Nasdaq.

4. Sohu.com Inc. (NASDAQ: SOHU) is China's premier online brand and indispensable to the daily life of millions of Chinese, providing a network of web properties and community based/web 2.0 products which offer a broad array of choices regarding information, entertainment and communication.

5. 163.com: NetEase operates a leading interactive online and wireless community in China and is a major provider of Chinese language content and services through our online games, wireless value-added services and Internet portal businesses.

6. taobao.com is the largest consumer e-commerce website in Asia with more than 30 million registered.

7. yahoo.com.cn is a leading Internet search engine and portal serving China's consumers and businesses.

8. google.cn: Enables users to search the Web, Usenet, and images. Features include PageRank, caching and translation of results, and an option to find similar pages. The company's focus is developing search technology.

9. google.com

10. tom.com is a leading wireless Internet company in China providing value-added multimedia products and services.

Microsoft Surface Computing

You have got to see this video. Its the new surface computing technology released by Microsoft. Its unbelievably magnificent and really give you a feel whats like living in the nearest future.



The Surface computer is able to recognize physical objects from a paintbrush to a cell phone and allows hands-on, direct control of content such as photos, music and maps. Surface turns an ordinary tabletop into a dynamic surface that provides interaction with all forms of digital content through natural gestures, touch and physical objects.

Mobile Marketing - Mobile Users prefer Instant Prizes

Consumers prefer smaller instantaneous prizes in mobile phone promotions on mobile phones than they do the chance to win bigger prizes, according to new research by mobile marketing firm AirG.

In the online study conducted in April, AirG recorded the results of 15,500 people in 22 minutes. When asked what types of freebies they’d most want in exchange for watching ads on a phone, 55 percent said they’d like ringtones; 14 percent said wallpaper; 12 percent said mobile video; and 19 percent said the chance to win a car.

Twenty-nine percent of survey respondents have clicked on an ad on a mobile phone and 21 percent have participated in a contest or promo on a phone. But this potential has yet to be tapped completely as 48 percent of respondents said that they would accept ads on their phone in exchange for a free service or chance to win a prize.

To get consumers engaged in mobile marketing promotions, it is important to understand the medium. Moving your online strategy to mobile is not going to work, mobile is a different medium that is more intimate and needs to be treated that way in the promotions done through this channel. Consumers spend alot of time a day on their phones but this should be broken up into about five-minute increments so campaigns should be short and give an instant response to get a good response rate.

Keeping the mobile marketing simple and providing short and simple contest has been a very successful formula for us in China. Its defininitely a good way to keep the users engaged and more importantly to keep them coming back. Believe me, the right gratification will create an unimaginable viral effect. Mobile users in China are all hard core recipients of mobile gratification. Many of them will spend a great deal of time browsing through their mobile phones to receive anything free to instant prizes offering.

Miss Japan is Miss Universe 2007

Who Won Miss Universe 2007?

1. Miss Japan - Miss Universe 2007
2. Miss Brazil
3. Miss Venezuela
4. Miss Korea
5. Miss USA

Miss Universe 2007 was anything but predictable this year especially with huge underdog Miss Japan winning. Two of the big favorites, Miss Venezuela and Miss Brazil were in but controversy hovered over the competition following Miss USA making the final having fell on stage during the evening gown competition.

She was booed when she took on the stage to answer question. Its a real pity for her but let's get real, you don't fall in the Miss Universe competition and move on to the final five.There was already much controversy surrounding the USA delegate due to tensions between host country Mexico and a hotly contested US policy on immigration. Miss USA was a 4th runner up.
Venezuela shockingly came in as the 2nd runner up. Miss Korea was the 3rd runner up and heavy favorite Miss Brazil taking 1st runner up.

Miss Japan, a huge underdog took the crown. Riyo Mori, a 20-year-old ballet dancer from Shizuoka Prefecture has been selected as the 2007 Miss Universe Japan. Its great for Japan and Asia afterall its been a while since an Asian won the Miss Universe pageant.

Cartier embraces Mobile Advertising

Cartier will run its first ever mobile ad campaign across GQ and Glamour mobizines. The ads are part of a wider campaign to promote Cartier's "Love” jewelry range and will appear throughout June on CN’s mobile Java sites.

Mobizines are "mini" versions of magazines that are cut down to optimize their viewing on mobile devices. Mobizines can be downloaded and cost nothing except the network operator’s data download charges. Mobizine versions of CQ and Glamour have been available since February, 2005, and have a combined subscriber base of 60,000. Other titles with mobizine versions include Maxim, Time Out, Sporting Life and NME. A small collection of U.S. titles have recently been added including Forbes and Reuters.

Mobile advertising is no longer just for the mass market advertisers as its ability to do target marketing has allowed advertisers to reach deeper into the focus group. Its this advantage that differentiates it from other advertising medium.

Free E-Book from John Chow - How to Make Money Online

An e-book that could had been sold for hundred of bucks are given away free, i mean really free with no strings attached. John Chow will show you the way how he had gone from zero to making $10,000 a month by just blogging. I m certainly not in John's league but I do believe many of you would want to know the formula.

You can download it here. Thanks John.

Vote for the New 7 Wonders of the World

Go to www.new7wonders.com and vote for the new 7 wonders of the world. We can all decide and vote for the new 7 wonders. The results will be announced on July 7, 2007 -07.07.07, join the N7W Society now and vote for the new 7 wonders. Lets all make history together.

Its an initiative by The New7Wonders Foundation and its calling on all citizens of the world to support it. The Foundation was created in 2001 by Swiss adventurer Bernard Weber, with a mission to protect humankind's heritage across the globe. The initial stages of the New7Wonders campaign were financed by Weber himself, aided by a small number of committed N7W Members. Fifty percent of all net revenue raised by the New 7 Wonders Project is to be used to fund restoration efforts worldwide.

The results will be announced on July 7, 2007 -07.07.07, join the N7W Society now and vote for the new 7 wonders. Lets all make history together.

My 7 wonders are :

1. The Acropolis
2. The Colosseum
3. The Angkor
4. The Great Wall of China
5. The Petra
6. The Stonehenge
7. The Taj Mahal

You will be wondering why i havent voted for the Pyramids. The Pyramids had been made an honorary 7 wonders of the world by the Foundation thus its an automatic choice by the people of the world. Let me know what you had voted and what are the 7 wonders of the world that had inspired you.

Joost at The Indy 500

Internet TV on-demand startup Joost proudly displayed at the 91st Indy 500 race, and their race team, No. 2 Vision Racing Dallera/Honda/Firestone driven by Tomas Scheckter came in 7th place.

Joost sponsoring an Indy 500 team? Whatever it may be, i hope it doesnt involve any kind of sponsorship afterall Joost is only afresh startup. Even with the $45 million raised, its no justification to advertise on such large sporting event which i m sure $45 million will be burned pretty rapidly. Considering the announcement earlier this month regarding the IndyCar Series partnering with Joost, its quite likely that they have both inked a deal to broaden each other reach which is more sensible.

Footage from today’s race will be available for viewing on Joost, along with footage from all of the Indy 500 races dating back to 1990. Just tune in to the IndyCar Series channel on Joost. If you still do not have Joost invite, drop me a comment.

$5 Made in China 2 Gig Thumbdrive

If you are buying a thumbdrive in China, i suggest that you go buy it from a reputable shop. Dont get carried away with the good offer that you may get from those unscrupulous Chinese part time businessman. You can never guess what you end up buying. Below may possibly be the thumbdrive version that you end up bringing home. After all a good deal is really non other than a con job. In China, anything is possible. It sure do look like a 2 Gig thumbdrive when the casing is secured together. Haha.

Its a Big Ad, very Big Ad

Its truly a big ad, very big ad and definitely huge budget too. You got to see how BIG this creative ad is. Well done Carlton.

How to do Mobile Marketing for Dummies

Many consumer marketers are interested in using mobile marketing, and I m certain a good percentage of those interested will be exploring into the world of mobile marketing in the coming months. The big question would be how do we go about executing a mobile marketing campaign.

MarketingSherpa has the solution: an interview with one of the pioneers of mobile marketing, John Hadl. How long do you have to be in the business to be a pioneer? He’s been doing mobile advertising and branding for Fortune 500s since 2001. (Unfortunately, the article is only free access until last wednesday)

Hadl gives 10 tactics for mobile marketing, but many of them would be well applied to any campaign.

1. Determine goal: audience reach or customer engagement?—Always step one.

2. Match brands with the right audience—Know where your market is. If they’re not using mobile web, then why should you? And yes, the mobile audience does skew younger.

Success in mobile marketing has less to do with your particular industry or product type and more to do with connecting certain brands to the right audience. Its all about targeting. Marketers planning mobile campaigns should make sure their brands matches important characteristics of the mobile audience such as :

a. tech savvy;

b. early adopters; and

c. age

3. Mobile application differences—Know the difference between text messaging, the mobile web and mobile video. As each of the application will vary in size of the audience, marketers need to understand before choosing the best approach for the mobile marketing campaign.

4. Match campaigns to available infrastructure and inventory—Is your site mobile ready?

The good news is that there is currently ample supply of advertising on the mobile web but pricing must be negotiated 1st hand between the marketer and the mobile web ad owners and the current pricing models include :

a. Cost per impression (CPM),

b. Cost per click (CPC),

c. Cost per action (CPA), such as a purchase or a completed mobile survey.

5. Capitalize on mobile’s peer-to-peer communication abilities—That’s what cell phones were invented for, right? Give your audience the opporunity to share with a friend.

6. Integrate mobile with online and offline marketing—A successful mobile campaign should be part of an overall marketing mix campaign leveraging on all available online and offline channels.

7. Allocate enough set-up time—Mobile marketing isn’t a last minute kind of thing. Campaigns require planning and foresight—and testing on lots and lots of different phones. (I would recommend at least an advanced planning period of 6-8 weeks)

8. Varying ad sizes for each phone—With so many phones on the market, screen size, supported formats, etc are all different. Therefore multiple creatives will be needed. The Mobile Marketing Association has developed a complete mobile marketing guidelines with the hope of easing such complexity.

9. Don’t do mobile just because you can—Make sure you’re doing it to appeal to your customers where they already are, and integrate it well with your other campaigns.

1o. More guidelines from the Mobile Marketing Association—Lots more guidelines.

Definitely very sound advise and feel free to comment if you have other advises to add on.

See how far you can kick Paris Hilton's Ass

Put this game on your blog Create your own More games

Create your own fun games with just a few steps! Simply upload your image, select the game template and start playing! I m sure you will enjoy this Paris Hilton got kicked game from Pictogame.

See how far can you kick Paris, I managed to kick Paris some 100,180 meters. How about you?

Internet Advertising revenues in the US hit $16.9 Billion in 2006

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC) today released the Internet Advertising Revenue Report which shows record results for the full year and final quarter of 2006. Internet advertising revenues in the U.S. continued upward totaling $16.9 billion in 2006, a new annual record exceeding 2005 by 35%. Q4 2006 internet advertising revenues totaled $4.8 billion, representing record revenues for a single quarter and a 35% increase over same period in 2005.

The report states that search, display, classifieds and lead generation all continue to grow at a healthy rate with an increase in both performance-based and CPM or impression-based pricing. Consumer advertisers continue to represent the largest category of internet advertising spending.

More details here :
http://www.iab.net/resources/ad_revenue.asp

It should be noted that mobile advertising hasn't even started to appear in these numbers yet.

Chinglish still alive and well in Beijing

Despite the recent efforts to clean up English signs in Beijing, it seems that fans of Chinglish can relax: there's still plenty of it around. For example, this sign was photographed by Paul French in a hotel room near Jianguomen.

iPhone - Before and After

Check out this insightful post from Tomi regarding iPhone's impact on the mobile industry. As always, his posts are thought-provoking.

Woman divorces Husband via Billboard

Maki discovered this photo on Flickr and submitted it to Digg. I guess Steven deserved getting shamed in public like that! This has to be the coolest and expensive divorce message. I m sure its definitely going to hurt Steven's pocket and his ego too. Hahaha.

China acquires $3 billion stake in Blackstone

This isn’t a venture capital story, but is significant because it is an unprecedented commitment by China to a U.S. investment firm — and suggests more Chinese money may be flowing that way, possibly to VC firms. The Chinese government said it would acquire a $3 billion stake in the Blackstone Group, the private equity firm, as party of China’s efforts to diversify its $1.2 trillion in foreign-exchange reserves beyond United States Treasury bills. The New York Times has the story.

The deal will give China a roughly 8 percent stake in Blackstone. Gone were the days that investments were only going one way from the US to China. Now its China investing in the US. China had been investing abroad for years now and with more than $1.2 trillion in foreign reserves they can practically buy up many countries' economy and still have spare change.

The Power of Blog: iPhone loses $4 billion market cap

I had previously blogged on the rising power of chinese bloggers and their influence that they command in China. Do not underestimate it even a giant company like Apple had to succumb to $4 billion of reduction in its market cap over a news that reported that Apple iPhone and its Mac OS X Leopard will be delayed. This news was subsequently corrected by Engadget but the initial news was sufficient to ripple the stock price of Apple. After the correction of the post, Apple's stock recovered some of its losses.

None could ever imagined that a 96-word post from a powerful blog can easily stir even the financial markets. Here are the words from Engadget:

"This one doesn't bode well for Mac fans and the iPhone-hopeful: we have it on authority that as of today, the iPhone launch is being pushed back from June to... October (!), and Leopard is again seeing a delay, this time being pushed all the way back to January. Of 2008. The latest WWDC Leopard beta will still be handed out, but it looks like Apple-quality takes time, and we're sure Jobs would remind everyone that it's not always about "writing a check", but just how much time are these two products really going to take?"

The lesson is simple, the business world will never ever underestimate the power of blogs again. Always be sensitive and conscious with what you blog and most importantly substantiate your facts. Great power comes with great responsibility.

13 year old startup CEO

This is the buzz at the latest TiECON 2007, the technology conference in Santa Clara, California that kicked off yesterday as reported by VentureBeat.

13-year old founder and chief executive, Anshul Samar spoke about his business plan and intended to talk to VCs to raise funds for his Silicon Valley gaming startup Elementeo. The confident and fast talking entrepreneur confidently proclaimed, touting his new fantasy role playing board game which he believes will change the way kids learn chemistry by injecting fun into education. He exudes confidence, vision and a passion to change the world. He’s more articulate than many CEOs four times his age.

Well done Anshul and I wish you all the best in achieving your revenue of US$1 million next year. This is truly inspiring and i hope it will inspire you too.

Web 2.0 In Under 5 Minutes

Check out this video on Web 2.0. It really had simplified the meaning of Web 2.0. By the way the creator of this video was highlighted as 2007 Rave Award winner by Wired magazine, which wrote:

"How do you sum up the power and potential of Web 2.0 in a 271-second video? By moving really, really fast. When Michael Wesch, who teaches cultural anthropology at Kansas State University, made “Web 2.0… The Machine Is Us/ing Us,” he’d been working for months on an academic paper that would explain new Web tools. As he struggled to define concepts like hypertext, tagging, mashups, and wikis, he had an epiphany: He was working in the wrong medium. He needed to use the tools of Web 2.0 to explain Web 2.0. Anthropology — humans studying the experience of being human — is a recursive discipline, and Wesch’s is a recursive video, cutting quickly between screenshots that show him bookmarking Web sites with del.icio.us, creating a blog with Blogger, and posting pictures on Flickr."

Enjoy the video.

Fusion Cuisine at the very Best

Last night we were all so privileged to have been invited via my Shanghai connection, Andrew Poon, the star chef of the night and not forgetting his new sweetheart, the ever happy go lucky teresa. They have put in so much effort to getting the dinner ready as it was their 1st attempt at cooking chinese dishes. They had spent the whole day ransacking all their cook books thinking what to cook. Must had been a huge task taking into consideration that they had never cooked chinese before.

I m not a great cook myself as all that i can possibly prepare are simple microwaveable food and the really simple instant noodles. Anything more daunting would be a nightmare. I m lucky to have my own personal chef, FC who is next best in Shanghai. So i do understand the agony that Andrew was going thro. For teresa, its more than just agony as she was clearly one of those who had never walked into a kicthen before. hahaha.

For his effort, I think he has earned admiration from all of us and believe it, the food turned out fine and instead of chinese, it was more of a chinese fusion. Take a look at the pictures of the dishes below though i must apologise for the poor quality of the shots as we had started eating before shooting the dishes. Guess we were so hungry afterall the dinner only started after 10pm.
The awesome finger licking chinese marinated chicken wings (best of the 5 dishes)
Diced sirloin steaks with tomatoes
Chinese glass noodles with minced meat (spaghetti bolognaise chinese version)
Creme de la creme century eggs (oversteamed though), I kinda of ate the most. haha

The last dish was Clear Soup but somehow the soup didnt turn out the way we wanted it. Andrew is a real pro when comes to preparing chinese soup. I had it before and it was at the highest quality like those my mom would prepare everyday for us.

Bottom line, I would give it an eight out of ten (8/10). Well done bro and your sweet heart too.

Chinese Automobile Copycats

Piracy in China of any kind has always been rampant and its never easy to control due to the size of this nation. Anything that can be copied will be copied so long there is a market for it. It ranged from pirated copies of Spiderman 3 DVD to watchmaker brands to even automobiles.

The almost look alike between the Mercedes C vs Chinese designed Geely Merrie 300 above are just blatant copies of their more established counterparts. Spot the difference with more pictures below.
Rolls-Royce Phantom vs Hongqi HQD
BMW 7 series vs BYD F6

BMW vs BYD

Honda CRV vs Laibao SRV

Toyota Prado vs Dadi Shuttle

Smart vs Chinese Smart

Five minutes to respond on SMS

Discovered some interesting stats on 160characters from an online survey that they had conducted. The survey looked at the messaging habits of end-users across email, instant messaging and SMS in personal and work environments.

- 84% of users expect a SMS response in five minutes

- Most people would respond to a personal SMS (84%) in less than 30 minutes while only 56% would respond in that time to a work related message.

- SMS as the preferred key communication tool, especially when an immediate or near immediate response is required.

- 26% of respondents would take between two and five hours to reply to a personal email and 31% would wait till the next day to reply.

- However for work related emails, 26% said it would take them two to five hours to reply and 22% would keep you waiting till the next day. At least this was better than the response time to personal email with 31% waiting for the next day.

- 60% would never use MMS for work related communications with long delivery times cited as the main reason.

- Mobile IM still has some way to go for both business and personal use with 42% not using mobile IM for personal reasons and 54% not using it for business.

- This compares to the PC where only 15% don't use PC based IM for personal and 27% not using in business.

Remove scratches from your CDs

Remove Scratches From Anything Using Toothpaste - video powered by Metacafe

Pretty Amazing stuff, this kid managed to remove scratches from a CD by using toothpaste. All you need to do is spread toothpaste all over the CD and clean it off after 5 minutes and you will find your CD back to the original condition again.

Weird China - Care for Fresh Croc Meat

Crocodiles are commonly found in the zoo, but on the 13th, a reporter unexpectedly saw one in Guangdong Zhongshan's huge supermarket. The decapitated crocodile lay still and motionless on a pile of ice, waiting to be sold as it's the first time that crocodile meat is part of the diet for the people of Zhongshan.

What about it's price? This "delicacy" costs 198 Yuan per 500 grams, but its paws are slightly more expensive as they are sold for 300 Yuan each. A staff of the supermarket explained though many shoppers were just curious, sometimes the crocodile meat were selling fast and could fetch few thousand Yuan.

54 animals were being approved for breeding for consumer purposes by the government, and believe it or not, the crocodile is one of them.

Dont use your mobile phone at the Petrol Station

Gas Stations And Phones... - video powered by Metacafe

Take a look at this video and you will know why you are not supposed to be using your mobile at the petrol station. By doing so, there may be a chance of igniting the gasoline vapor. To demonstrate it, a man placed 3 bits of cards and a crushed cooking foil on a pan. A little of petrol is then being poured onto them. He started making several calls using his mobile phone near the pan, and eventually the cards and cooking foil burns up. Imagine if this happen in a petrol station, it wouldn’t be just a small burning. Be responsible, switch your phone off when you’re in a petrol station.

AOL Acquires Mobile Ad Firm Third Screen Media

AOL has closed a deal to acquire mobile ad network and mobile ad-serving platform provider Third Screen Media (TSM) reports mocoNews. The companies have been in talks since February, but financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. mocoNews also reports that Third Screen Media will continue to be headquartered in Boston as a wholly owned subsidiary of AOL.

This is a clear sign and endorsement that mobile marketing is heading for prime time as more and more bigger players are coming into the space. Mobile marketing will play an important role in the overall marketing mix strategy. The acquisition of TSM will definitely add value to AOL's subsidiary Advertising.com which will allow them to provide a more comprehensive interactive marketing mix strategy.

Mobile marketing is certainly here to stay but the road ahead isnt going to be an easy one as there are lots of challenges ahead. With the internet giants playing a more active role in mobile marketing, I m sure this will speed up the time needed to resolve the many issues surrounding mobile marketing. Its going to be interesting to see how each of them tackle and resolve the issues.

39 Million WAP Users in China

China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) just released a survey report (its in chinese though) on development of WAP in China.

The key findings of the report are as follows:

-As of March 2007, there were about 39 million active wap users in China, they used mobile handsets to access WAP sites in last six months. About 90% among them are internet users as well, they access internet via PC in last six months.

- 60.8% of WAP users are from the eastern part of China, 24.1% from middle part and 15.1% from western part.

- About 9.7 million, or about one forth of total WAP users, live in Guangdong Province.

- 57% users will use WAP at least once a week.

- 26% users pay RMB 11-20 yuan per month for WAP usage, 23% users pay 21-50 yuan and 20% users pay 6-10 yuan.

- 48% users used WAP search in last six months, 40% played WAP games, while the most popular service is ringtone and image download (63%).

- 65000 WAP websites and 260 million WAP webpages in China.

- Baidu, Sina, Sohu, Tencent and Netease are all among ten most popular wap sites, others include wap sites by Kongzhong, 3G.net.cn, Yicha.cn(wap search), Lxyes, and China Mobile Monternet.

China's growth in wap users will continue to grow exponentially and with the introduction of 3G in the coming months, and better mobile internet access and even greater mobile internet user experience, dont be surprised to see the wap users surpassing the 100 million mark next year and it wont be long before it will surpass the pc as the main device to access the internet.

Get A Free Copy Of Bejeweled Deluxe (Until Weds)

Great offer that i had discovered from the posting on Connected Internet that I m sure its a gift that will keep your mom sits on the PC for hours.

Onetipaday.com is featuring a great offer from PopCap.com, who are giving away the deluxed version of Bejeweled, which normally costs $14.95, for free until Wednesday as part of a Mother’s Day promotion. I will certainly get a copy for my mom who is a big fan of similar casual games. She will definitely be hooked on this for hours.

To get your free copy of Bejeweled Deluxe do the following:
- Go to the Bejeweled Deluxe site and click the Buy Now link located on the middle of the page.
- Once you get to the checkour page enter the coupon code coupon code FREE4MOMS

Once you’ve done this you will get a download link. Remember to write down your order number as you’ll need it to register your software.

Sina Impressive Q1 Results

Chinese Internet portal Sina.com (SINA) has announced impressive unaudited financial results for the quarter ended March 31, 2007. Sina reported total revenues of US$51.3 million, compared to US$46.7 million in the same period in fiscal 2006 and US$56.4 million for the fourth quarter of 2006.

Advertising revenues for the first quarter of 2007 totaled US$31.8 million, representing a 43% increase from the same period last year.

Impressive results and increased in the online advertising revenues of Sina.com by 43% from the previous period is a sign of that more money are been poured into online advertising in China.

Currently online advertising revenues in China accounts less than 2% of the total US$50 billion advertising market revenues in China. In comparison to the US, online advertising revenues account for slightly more than 10% of the total US$150 billion advertising market revenues of the US.

There are still tremendous upside and growth in online advertising revenues in China in view of the low online advertising penetration. Most of the current advertising budgets are focused mainly on TV but this should gradually change to reflect the real internet penetration in China.

Shanghai Mobile Initiates EGPRS Commercial Use

Shanghai Mobile will formally initiate the commercial use of EGPRS, which is expected to boost online surfing speeds for mobile phones.

EGPRS network makes the online speed up to four times faster than GPRS. At present, most of the newly launched mobile phones on the market support EGPRS and China Mobile started to sell customized EGPRS mobile phones from April 23.

Shanghai Mobile said that the traffic fee for EGPRS is the same with the existing fee for GPRS.
EGPRS is a form of EDGE which enables data connections at speeds up to 474 kb/s. EGPRS opens up possibilities for connecting to data networks on mobile phones, making it faster and more convenient to stream video and download larger files.

We are certainly heading for prime time mobile internet as the speed on GPRS gets faster and with the imminent release of 3G mobile infrastructure in China before the Olympics next year, the mobile landscape gets more exciting.

Going from many Failures to Great Success

Do YOU have the balls to try? Failure is an option. These are postings of James Hong of Hotornot and Jeremy Liew of Lightspeed that had inspired me very much and had given me a new perspective to the meaning of failure. We should not be despair and live in isolation for the failures that we had endured and to use those experiences to better prepare ourselves for the bigger challenges ahead.

Jeremy Liew points out that the beauty of silicon valley is not that everyone succeeds whenever they try to build a startup, but rather that we applaud entrepreneurs even when they fail... because every entrepreneur recognizes that the hardest step in becoming a success is always the first one.. the decision to drop everything and go for it, against all odds.

It is no surprise that a lot of success stories are about entrepreneurs who succeeded on their second, third, or fourth tries. I m currently working on my 4th startup. HOTorNOT was James 3rd startup attempt. Paypal was Max Levchin's 3rd. The Facebook was not Mark Zuckerberg's first website. The list goes on and on. Most successful people had gone from many failures before achieving great success. I must say failures are recipes for great success.

Its not about the success and failure, as my dad had always put it, its the journey. Entrepreneurs all have one thing in common, the balls to try and the guts to fail. Its never easy to put a plan together and its even harder to put it to work. There are way too many considerations and way too much risks to contemplate from giving up your job and other opportunities and many unanswered questions. Entrepreneurs in general are what i would regard as super human. Most people dare to dream, but they are the one who is unique and have the will power to make it happen.

It may sound discouraging as more than 90% of startups wont make it and less than 2% would become successful and only a handful will become great companies like Google, Yahoo, Ebay and Amazon. And though these figures are not a figure that would encourage any sane person to attempt at startups but the numbers of startups that are popping up globally is definitely a figure that none can comprehend. Its for this reason that the entrepreneur are to be applauded for their willingness to take a chance on starting a company, not condemned because that particular company wasn’t successful. How many of you out there are as courageous and as gutsy as them?

So anyone criticizing failing companies should realize that those people got further than the people who criticize probably have. They may not had succeed but they certainly had learned alot more in their journey. I certainly had learned a great deal than i would had worked for others. Its definitely a quicker way and I can guarantee you whatever the outcome, you will definitely be rewarded with great skills and experience to elevate you to the next level.

It's true that a lot of ideas people are working on out there may not be what i would agree but I must say i that on the same note, I have the greatest utmost level of respect for them as an individual for having the BALLS to try (the truth is if you don't have at least 9 bad ideas first, you'll never have 1 good one either). The idea is to keep on trying until you reach to the top. Lets not forget, the one thing that matters the most is the journey to the top. Its not going to be an easy ride and like any startups the ride will usually get rough before it gets smooth.

All my rides had been very rough and there were numerous times that i had contemplated giving up and numerous times that i had kicked my ass for even starting one in the first place. Usually its the pride of having to give up that made it hard to surrender. Its always hard to admit defeat but only when you dare to admit defeat that you can rise again. Its the failures that you had experienced that will assist you to make better judgements and more importantly not to make the same mistake again. Not many of us would have the luxury to pay for our own mistakes. Each mistakes that we pay for will definitely make us a smarter person. Its a definitely a sin to pay for the mistakes and repeating it again.

Entrepreneurs are surely a different kind of specie and its never easy to understand why we do and react in certain way. We are just special in our own right. Its this positive will power that we all have that will allow us to go from many failures to many successes.

Companies and startups may shut down but the founders and employees will learn a great deal from the experience and move on to work and start more companies and this time well equipped. I m confident that this new group are more ready than ever to take on new challenges and believe me as I m speaking from experience. With so many failures under my belt, i cant see why I wont make it bigger than before. This is how I see it, only when you had lost thousand, will you be ready to make the millions. And if you have lost millions, I m sure you are setting your sight the your 1st billion.

To all the entrepreneurs out there, you can lose financially and your pride but dont lose your passion and your dream. Keep dreaming and continue to have passion in what you do as my dad had always advised me, I m sure the door to great success will open up in due time.

The Mobile Ad Market in China

I was reading Helen's Keegan's blog and she had spotted this article on Contagious by Kaiser Kuo, group director, Digital Strategy at Ogilvy, explaining the ins and outs of using mobile marketing in China and it seems solid advice and comment to me. Here are some of the keypoints :

- Mobile phones have really taken off in China in a big way with mobile subsribers crossing the 500 million mark by next year. (there are more mobile phones in China than the population of US)

- Wap advertising is also on the increase with several Admob and Madhouse-a-likes sprouting up as well as a raft of mobile search companies. The mobile advertising and marketing industry is poised for growth.

- more than 120m Chinese subscribers have tried Wap and about 30 million or more use it regularly.

To sum up, Kaiser Kuo comes up with 10 top tips for running mobile marketing campaigns in China :

10 Tips for Mobile Marketing Campaigns in China

1. Target with maximum precision: Leverage available user data, and aim by time, place

2. Hard sell turns off more users than it switches on

3. Play by the rules, and don’t anger operators or regulators

4. Keep it simple: WAP destination sites should be idiot-proof, with limited choices. This goes back to the point on user experience

5. Know the technology’s capabilities, and play to those: Technology can drive creativity

6. Pull is better than push: avoid spam as much as possible

7. Know when to get on a fad—and when to get off it

8. Use mobile to access user info, and own that data: mobile ad is relationship marketing to build advertiser-user engagement

9. Reward users for viral behavior

10. Mobile alone doesn’t work: make it part of a bigger campaign

I want to add a few more important points to the above.

The first and most important is Permission, permission is the core of mobile marketing and with permission and relevance incorporated into the overall marketing mix strategy, its the recipe for good mobile marketing campaign in China.

Secondly is to analyze the mobile marketing campaign from the reports and data provided to evaluate on the effectiveness to better improve on-going and future campaigns. There are alot of trials and errors and only through understanding and actual experience that future campaigns can be executed more successfully.

Lastly, keep on trying, dont give up afterall mobile marketing is still a new thing. Its either that you choose to be on a sideline to see what others are doing or get in yourself and realize the true power of mobile marketing. I would strongly recommend you to read "Open your eyes and wake up your business" by Agustin Calvo where Agustin has put in simple perspective on the power of mobile marketing.

The Porns on the Internet

Check out this video that shows a number of stats about the Internet pornography industry. It is staggering how much actual money flows through porn and how many people are involved in the industry:

Sex is the most popular searched word on the search engine
89% of porn is created in the U.S.
$2.84 billion in revenue was generated from U.S. porn sites in 2006
72% of porn viewers are men

Usually the porn industry innovates first and key features make their way to more mainstream sites. But over the last couple of years, many of the new ideas around web applications, like user generated content, video sharing, etc., went mainstream first and are now hitting the porn sites. You can check out these latest user generated porns inclusion at Pornotube (YouTube clone for porns, as well as a few others like EroShare and ScrewTube.

Funny or Die

A marriage between Silicon Valley and Hollywood talents led to the birth last month of a video start-up Funny or Die. What took YouTube to do in six months, Funny or Die did in six days.

Its traffic exploded after the release of its first 2-minute clip, The Landlord, starring Will Ferrell. The video drew almost 24 million views. This would be in YouTube’s top three of all time.

Go check it out.

7 C's of Cellphones

Tomi Ahonen has written a must read post on the 7 C's of mobile;

1. Communication
2. Consumption
3. Creation
4. Commerce
5. Community
6. Commercials
7. Control

Its a good blog and it's very well thought through and has a wealth of useful facts to support the arguments. I strongly recommend all of you to read it.

Is it time to move into Mobile Marketing

As the number of mobile users grow, more mobile users will be accessing the internet from their mobile phones. In China alone, the number of mobile internet users have reached a staggering 120 million as of last year and its still growing rapidly and its expected to surpass the number of internet users in China by 2009.

Most of us have our mobile devices with us all the time, but not our notebooks and computers. With an attentive audience like this, marketers would be remiss to ignore mobile marketing. I certainly believe it's time for organizations to take mobile marketing seriously.

Should we invest the time to understand and to pursue mobile marketing, or wait a little longer because it isn't ready. What should we do?

I m of the opinion that jumping in the water early can help an organization get miles ahead of its competition. Its always good to try it and see the results yourself. You will be amazed with the outcome of the mobile marketing campaign. But before jumping into the water, its best to understand whats mobile marketing in general. Certainly reading my blog is one way but for starter, you can refer to the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) homepage and its executive director's columns. A recurring theme is that mobile marketing reaches customers when they're in a situation where they have nothing better to do than to interact with their mobile devices.

Its part of life to fail many times before reaching success. Mobile marketing requires taking risks and having patience, but tweak a program enough and you might have a hit. After all, you're ahead of the game before it gets crowded.

Be warned, however, that it may be difficult to come by customer behavioral data with regard to mobile marketing. Even if you can collect the data, it may take time to create meaningful metrics from the data. It takes time and patience to better your mobile marketing campaign each time. With each additional campaign, you will learn and understand more about mobile marketing and ultimately your customers. Mobile phone is possibly the best interactive device to build engagement between you and your target audience.

Though few can guarantee you success on mobile marketing, most agree that the number of mobile device users continues to grow. It's just a matter of time before mobile marketing goes prime time. Its up to you or your organization to decide whether you want to be a leader or follower. Its definitely smarter to jump in and see the real power of mobile marketing yourself.