Baidu Encyclopedia Digital Museum

You can click the map tab, select the region and view a list of museums. You can then click on the museum’s name to view its collection, or visit its Baidu Encyclopedia entry. So far, only collections from six museums are available.

Also read:: Baidu Launched New Homepage with Modules

Millward Brown released their second annual BrandZ Top 50 Most Valuable Brands. You can get the PDF here or view a summary below (Internet companies are bolded).

Baidu, Tencent, Sina, Renren, Ctrip and Sohu are the six Internet companies that made it to the Top 50 most valuable Chinese brands; Baidu (6) and Tencent (10) are even in the top 10. 

BrandZ Top 50 Most Valuable Brands in China

1. China Mobile
2. ICBC (Bank)
3. China Construction Bank
4. Bank of China
5. Agricultural Bank of China
6. Baidu
7. China Life (Insurance)
8. Sinopec (Oil)
9. PetroChina
10. Tencent
11. China Telecom
12. Ping An (Insurance)
13. Moutai (Alcohol)
14. China Merchants Bank
15. China Unicom
16. Air China
17. Wu Liang Ye (Insurance)
18. Meng Niu (Dairy)
19. CPIC (Insurance)
20. Changyu (Wine)
21. Suning (Electronics retailer)
22. Yili (Dairy)
23. Lenovo
24. China Eastern Airline
25. Sina
26. Yunnan Baiyao (Herbal Remedy)
27. GREE (Air conditioning)
28. China Southern Airline
29. Haier (Home Appliance)
30. Metersbonwe (Casual wear producer and retailer)
31. Midea (Home appliance)
32. Shuanghui (Meat processor)
33. GOME (Electronics retailer)
34. Tsingtao (Beer)
35. Renren
36. Tong Ren Tang (Herbal remedy)
37. Li Ning (Sportswear)
38. Huaxia Bank
39. Snow (Beer)
40. Ctrip
41. Anta (Sportswear)
42. Yan Jing (Beer)
43. Bright (Dairy)
44. 999 (Pharmaceutical)
45. Septwolves (Apparel)
46. Hainan Airline
47. Fulinmen (Cooling oil and rice producer)
48. BYD
49. Sohu
50. 361 (Sportswear)

Also read:: Hurun Most Valuable Chinese Home-grown Brands List 2011

Chinese government agency has announced the public holidays in 2012 last week, which marketers should know for planning:

• New Year’s Day: 1-3 January (3 days), 31 Dec 2011 (Saturday) is a working day
• Chinese New Year: 22-28 January (7 days), Jan 21 (Sat) and Jan 29 (Sun) are working days
• Ching Ming Festival: 2-4 April (3 days), March 31 (Sat) and April 1 (Sun) are working days
• Labor’s Day: 29 April – 1 May (3 days), April 28 (Sat) is a working day
• Dragon Boat Festival: 22-24 June (3 days)
• National Day: 30 September – 7 October (8 days), Sep 29 is a working day

Also read:: 2.556 billion passenger trips during Chinese New Year

Robin Li by jurvetson via Flickr

This year’s New Establishment list from Vanity Fair identifies the top 50 of an innovative new breed of buccaneering visionaries, engineering prodigies, and entrepreneurs.

Baidu CEO Robin Li is in the top 25 and the only Chinese who made it to this year’s New Establishment list.

New Establishment List 2011 Top 50

1.    Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook
2.    Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Google
3.    Jeff Bezos, Amazon
4.    Tim Cook and Jonathan Ive, Apple
5.    Jack Dorsey, Square, Twitter
6.    Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, Andreessen Horowitz
7.    Reed Hastings, Netflix
8.    John Lasseter, Pixar, Walt Disney Animation Studios
9.    Lady Gaga, singer
10.  Dan Doctoroff, Bloomberg L.P.
11.  Dick Costolo, Twitter
12.  Mark Pincus, Zynga
13.  Jim Breyer, Accel Partners
14.  Tim Burton, Johnny Depp, and Graham King, Movies
15.  Michael Moritz, Sequoia Capital
16.  J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter
17.  Trey Parker and Matt Stone, South Park
18.  Reid Hoffman, Greylock Partners, LinkedIn
19.  Herb Allen III, Allen & Co.
20.  Judd Apatow, Apatow Productions
21.  Jay-Z, Roc Nation
22.  Todd Phillips, Green Hat Films
23.  Yuri Milner, DST Global
24.  J. J. Abrams, writer, director, producer
25.  Robin Li, Baidu
26.  Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook
27.  Andrew Mason, Groupon
28.  Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, television
29.  Mark Wahlberg and Stephen Levinson, Leverage
30.  Angela Ahrendts and Christopher Bailey, Burberry
31.  Elon Musk, Tesla Motors, Space X
32.  Natalie Massenet, Net-a-Porter Group
33.  Paul Graham, Y Combinator
34.  Sean Parker, entrepreneur
35.  Fred Wilson, Union Square Ventures, Flatiron Partners
36.  Peter Thiel, Founders Fund, Clarium Capital Management
37.  Peter Jackson, Wingnut Films
38.  Ryan Kavanaugh, Relativity Media
39.  Mike Allen, Politico
40.  Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, All Things D
41.  John Hennessy, Stanford University
42.  Jeremy Stoppelman, Yelp
43.  Ashton Kutcher, actor, investor
44.  Tyler Perry, director, producer, writer, actor
45.  Dennis Crowley, Foursquare
46.  Kevin Ryan, Gilt Groupe
47.  Daniel Ek, Spotify
48.  Henry Blodget, Business Insider
49.  Mikael Hed, Niklas Hed, and Peter Vesterbacka, Rovio
50.  Justin Timberlake, singer, actor

Also read:: Toocle Launched First B2B Top Search List

Baidu UEditor

Baidu just released an open source online editor called “UEditor“; you can try out the demo here. UEditor is compatible with Mozilla, MSIE, FireFox, Maxthon,Safari and Chrome browsers.

If you develop online applications for Chinese market, you should probably check this out as it provides several features

Also read:: Baidu to Launch AdWords Editor like PPC Editor Next Tuesday

We are stopping daily email subscription to CIW blog content. For previous Blog email subscribers, you will receive weekly update on Wednesday afternoon, as well as whitepaper update; please click “UPDATE YOUR PROFILE” link to complete your information.

This weekly newsletter combines Blog content (weekly) with whitepaper update. For those who only want to receive Blog update or whitepaper update, please click “UPDATE YOUR PROFILE” link at the bottom of the email newsletter to avoid unwanted content.

Also read:: Microblogging in China Whitepaper [update]

As Google’s Internet Content Provider (ICP) license is up for renewal on June 30 in China, Google now has a new approach to handle Google.cn visitors.

Since Google’s January announcement this year that Google was no longer willing to censor results on Google.cn, Google had automatically redirected everyone using Google.cn to Google.com.hk, which offers unfiltered search in simplified Chinese.

Google has started taking a small percentage of Google.cn users to a landing page on Google.cn that links to Google.com.hk (as shown in the above image). It’s a bit deceptive as it looks like a normal Google search box which in fact is an image that links to Google.com.hk.

Google has announced that over the next few days they’ll end the redirect entirely, taking all their Chinese users to the new landing page.

Also read:: Explore Shanghai World Expo on Google

In a Youku poll to see what made the biggest impression on viewers of World Cup 2010, the vuvuzela takes the first place, with 22.5% of respondents (2,355 votes) voting for “The ear-splitting vuvuzelas” as the most striking feature of the matches so far.

You can check out the voting results here (Chinese).

Also read:: Explore Shanghai World Expo on Google

China’s central bank on Monday said it would allow non-financial companies such as Alibaba, the country’s leading e-commerce company, to offer online payment services.

The move comes after months of uncertainty over whether the People’s Bank of China might severely curtail the business of AliPay, an affiliate of Alibaba. The central bank has been pushing Chinese banks to set up a common online payment settlement platform themselves that would compete with AliPay.

via FT.com

Also read:: China Q1 Online Payment Exceeded 212 Billion Yuan

Google Maps aggregated Shanghai Expo data and you can explore different pavilions, activities (not available in English version), and World Expo history.

Check out Expo on Google in Chinese or English.

Also read:: Google launched Chinese version of its merchant center service

Today, April 21, the whole country mourns its earthquake victims and the nation’s flag lowered to half-mast around the countr. Not only the front pages of Chinese newspapers were bathed in black but also the online properties.

Also read:: Top China Internet Properties by Unique Visitors in May 2010

Previous Google China Homepage

Google China’s homepage changed its name to “Google China” on April 3, 2010. Previously, Google had a Chinese name “Gu Ge” (as shown in the image above), announced in April 2006.

Google China Homepage

Also read:: Google Search Dropped by Tencent

I think this is no more surprising to you:

Symantec Corp. (Nasdaq: SYMC) today announced the publication of its March 2010 MessageLabs Intelligence Report. Analysis of the origins of targeted attacks, malicious emails sent in small volumes aimed at gaining access to sensitive corporate data, reveals that the majority of targeted malware sent this month, originated in the United States (36.6 percent) based on mail server location, but when analyzed by sender location, more targeted attacks actually originated in China (28.2 percent), Romania (21.1 percent) and United States(13.8 percent).

View Larger Map

Interestingly, the report also showed the city of Shaoxing (in northeastern Zhejiang province) in China seems to be a major source, accounting for 21.3% of targeted attacks, as is Taipei (16.5%) in Taiwan, and London (14.8%) in the UK.

Also read:: China’s 2010 auto sales up 32% to hit 18.06 million units

Baidu shares jumped on Monday as it appeared increasingly likely that Google  will shutter its Chinese-language search engine. Financial Times seems pretty sure about it,

Google  has drawn up detailed plans for the closure of its Chinese search engine and is now “99.9 per cent” certain to go ahead as talks over censorship with the Chinese authorities have reached an apparent impasse, according to a person familiar with the company’s thinking.

A baidu employee is quite excited about the current circumstance; here is a short entry on her RenRen blog:

Also read:: China Search Engine Market Report 2009

Tencent launched English version instant messenger some time ago and it has recently launched an English portal for expat netizens – imqq.com.

Unlike its Chinese portal qq.com, imqq.com currently seems to focus on local content. Right now, it has included Shanghai and Beijing.It also promotes its English version instant messenger – QQ International (in English, French, and Japanese) which includes a light Mac version as well.

The content covers local events, listings, group, and video.

Also read:: Baidu launched its English blog: Baidu Beat

Baidu.com was not accessible this morning and possibly hacked by Iranian Cyber Army, and Chinese hackers retaliate back!

A friend from China pinged me of this site iribu.ir (seems like an education institution page), whose page is currently replaced by Chinese hackers’ page. This is a cached page from Bing on Jan 10 showing what it looked like before it was hacked:

This is what this page looks like now:

Also read:: Baidu Hacked by Iranian Cyber Army?

Around 7:20 this morning, many posts at webmaster forums reported that Baidu.com and its subdomains could not be accessed. It’s already working when this post is being published.

Ming Liangshu, a webmaser from Beijing, reported yahoo DNS showed up when he pinged baidu.com (8:25am):
Ming Liangshu, a webmaser from Beijing, reported yahoo DNS showed

C:\Users\inso>ping www.baidu.com
Pinging sbs-p11p.asbs.yahoodns.net [98.136.50.138] with 32 bytes of data:

Iranian Cyber Army page was reported seen around 8:36am:

Some users even saw Yahoo error page when trying to access Baidu.com around 8:43am.

Baidu has not responded to this incident yet.

Also read:: Chinese Hackers Retaliate and Hacked Iran Website

Alipay CEO

Alipay (under Alibaba Group; similar to PayPal) CEO Xiaofeng Shao made a promise this July that he would go streaking if Alipay daily transactions exceed 1.2 billion yuan by the end of 2009.

It reached 1.213 billion yuan on Dec 7 for the first time; and, yes, Mr Shao kept his promise and ran around naked in front of the crowd on Dec 8, which also happened to be Alipay’s fifth anniversary.

Guess it only happens in China.

Also read:: About Alipay of Alibaba Group

CCTV reported in its Morning News program that the Google China Digital Library is suspected for large-scale infringement of copyrighted Chinese books.

According to China Written Works Copyright Society, a total of 17,922 books from 570 authors, including works from government officials, have been scanned into Google China Digital Library without authorization.

Soruce: TechWeb

Also read:: Chart: Select Digital Media Penetration in China in Q2 2011

via FT.com,

Foreigners would be banned from operating online gaming within China through wholly foreign-owned investments, joint ventures or any other forms of co-operation with local companies, the country’s publishing regulator said.

Also read:: China to Allow Non-financial Companies to Offer online payment services