Marketing Profs reports on Edelman’s latest “scandal”. Apparently, they were involved in a Microsoft PR campaign where a number of high-profile bloggers received rather expensive laptops with the new Vista operating system installed. To review and write about.

While you may have some objections to giving away such expensive gear to journalists - why not just let them use if for a little while and then return it, which would be less complicated - there was full disclosure on many blogs. They told their readers from where they got the laptops, and that’s fine.

Let’s say Edelman and Microsoft even explicitly told bloggers to be open about where they got the laptops from. It would have been the right thing to do, and I believe both companies are smart enough to know and do that.

Even then, they would still have committed a big mistake. If you have the current history of online scandals, like Edelman do, and the reputation of Microsoft, you shouldn’t be doing things that are even remotely near something that could be criticized.

That lack of analysis is the real scandal.

The December issue of Far Eastern Economic Review has an article in Internet censorship; how the filtering is done, which western companies are supplying the technology, as well as a grass-roots effort to try to bypass the filter.

An interesting passage in the article deals with the difference in censorship of local and foreign language sources:

The ONI [OpenNet Initiave - an organization mapping Internet censorship] has also documented a more concentrated effort among states to target content in local languages, such as Vietnamese, Mandarin, Arabic and Farsi. […] Although determining the motivation for such variation is difficult, one might surmise that political authorities may want to target that web content which hits closest to home while leaving English speaking visitors to the country (e.g., journalists, Western human-rights activists) with the impression that censorship is rare.

It is indeed very easy to forget the censorship when you can reach most any English language web site you want to (Wikipedia being a notable exception). You simply don’t see it. It’s sometimes good to get a reminder.

(The Economist also recently published an article on the subject, with a few more examples of methods to bypass the filter.)

“You get to a point where you feel a bit sickened by it.”

Said by a friend visiting Beijing, after having spent around 10 000 RMB shopping cheap clothes, shoes, bags and more.

By the way, the average monthly income in Beijing is around 1 800 RMB (and growing with every high-spending tourist).

Danwei has an interesting post about Beijingers’ time allocation and how it has changed during the last 20 years.

According to the survey, both men and women have a lot more free time today compared to twenty years ago. How do they spend it? Consuming media, sleeping and staying away from the kitchen.

They also spend 21 minutes more commuting between work and home. All of them in black Audi A6 4.2l cars, it seems.

Each day, one thousand cars are added to the already clogged roads of Beijing.

Which is one of the reasons this is what I see when I look out my window today; a light grey fog, made worse by pollution from cars and coal-fired heating systems.

Reuters reports this has caused “the closure of highways across an area as large as Britain“.

What I see today.

What I see on a clear day.

As you may have heard - it’s been blogged a lot - KFC has created the “world’s first brand visible from space”; a 87 500 sq ft Colonel Sanders in the Area 51 desert. Which is great if you live on the ISS!

The stunt is part of the campaign to launch their updated logo: the Colonel had his double-breasted suit replaced and is now wearing an apron. Updated restaurant designs, advertising, point-of-sale and more to come, according to the KFC press release.

One can wonder if the giant logo is such a good idea.

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• Chinese medicine strikes back at critics. Search and replace “chinese medicine” for “creationism” and you will be instantly teleported to the US.
• YouTube Takes Down Comedy Central Clips Based on DMCA Claims. I guess after all this is done, what will be left are clips of depressed teenagers spilling their misery and a bunch of pointless Jackass imitations.
• Second Life Natives Feel Invaded by Big Companies. Second Life gets too close to reality for some.
• Like.com Visual Search. When will Google buy them?
• Web 3.0 and the Widgetized Web. Widgets are interesting. But, please, enough of this Web X.0 already.

This blog is hosted by DreamHost, and I think it will continue to be so even though DreamHost has had some technical problems lately.

Why? Because DreamHost is a great company! And so says a lot of other people on the net.

Why? Because they encourage you to be a loyal customer and to talk well about them.

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What you get for 50 RMB (5 euros):

1. An excellent dinner for two at our local Szechuan restaurant here in Beijing, or
2. 350 ml of Evian mineral water at the Pudong Shangri-La in Shanghai.

Recently I was in the market for a new digital camera. I did quite a bit of research during this summer, scanning forums, review sites, questioning friends and family.

You see, buying a camera with interchangeable lenses is not just about the camera. It’s about picking a brand you can stick with. Once you’ve invested in a few good lenses, switching to another brand becomes expensive as your old lenses won’t work with that brand.

I finally settled for a Nikon D50 with a few additional lenses, fully aware of the fact that it’s a model Nikon is replacing with an updated one in the near future (the D80 was just announced and rumors of a D60 was circulating). The price had been cut, so I thought it was a great deal.

View from The Temple of Heaven, shot with my new Nikon D50.

Reading various photography forums, one person quickly emerged as an authority on Nikon gear: Ken Rockwell. Ken has a great site, giving advice on everything from lenses and other equipment, to softer issues such as how to convince your wife an expensive camera is a great investment. What makes his writing different - and I suspect is also the reason for his popularity - is that he’s very direct in his recommendations, and sometimes offers controversial advice on equipment issues (read Color Management is for Wimps for an example of this). You almost never leave his site feeling unsure about what he thinks is the right choice.

Ken Rockwell has been a Nikon loyalist since the 80s. But he’s starting to soften a bit. The reason? Nikon’s ridiculous slowness when it comes to making new gear available. He’s written a lengthy piece on it, comparing Nikon to Canon and listing announcement and delivery dates for a lot of recent Nikon gear. Not a pretty list. Not only that, he’s now started to review Canon gear.

Canon doesn’t seem to have been slow catching this. Ken now seems to be receiving their gear for review, having posted comparison reviews with Nikon cameras. He also writes Canon-only reviews, like this one.

How many times will this be quoted in other forums? How many times will someone write that even Ken Rockwell is giving up on Nikon?

I hope Nikon is paying attention to this. The word-of-mouth warning bells are very much ringing for Nikon.