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anonymous

CGV opens world's biggest screen - 0 views

www.koreaherald.co.kr/...200909170057.asp

largest movie screen in the world multiplex

shared by anonymous on 18 Sep 09 - Cached
  • anonymous on 18 Sep 09
     
    largest movie screen in the world , multiplex, screen
  • anonymous on 18 Sep 09
     
    largest movie screen in the world , multiplex, screen
fiona hou

QQ: Master of the Micropayment. - 0 views

zerosocialmedia.com/...qq-master-of-the-micropayment

QQ China Lagest instant messenger service micropayment

shared by fiona hou on 14 Aug 09 - Cached
  • QQ is China’s largest instant messenger service; in 2008 it owned 86% of the market, with MSN owning 5%, and a bunch of others owning less. QQ dominates the market – but the money made seems not to be from its instant messenger; rather its leveraging and channeling that huge audience through a gauntlet of micro-payments.
  • How is this achieved? It’s very smart – QQ doesn’t aim for the brain, it aims for the heart using QQshow – which is very similar to Yahoo Avatars, but with a  “billion’s of RMB from China youth market” twist.
  • QQ is head and shoulder’s above its competition, of this there is no doubt. Why? QQ is more than an instant messenger service, it’s a portal to a vast array of entertainment services in China; ie: while MSN, skype, etc, focus solely on instant messages, QQ IM is just the first step in a long sale.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • There are many reasons why QQ remains top dog in China IM; it led the pack during the Internet boom in China, it’s parent Company Tencent, controls many of China’s top sites, and its a domestic Chinese product fueled in part by nationalism, and in part by insight into what Chinese really want, and what they are willing to pay.
  • So what are they willing to pay? We’re talking pretty small amounts, like RMB 10/year (about USD 1.50)for “Red Diamond” membership. Sounds like nothing right? We’ll when you multiply that number by 100 million, then you can begin to see the power of China’s massive population coupled with payments that are way under their daily budget.
  • QQ is more than an instant messenger – way more; the messenger is simply a portal to a thriving online community fueled by an endless series of micro-payments. The avatars of these communities engage users on a “heart” level – they are invested, they have spent time, they have spent emotion. By connecting on a low-barrier, simple value-add proposition, QQ has leveraged it’s community in a way no other site in China has.
  • Taking this further, Brands that sell to the China youth market can quickly tap into a giant market of very engaged individuals. This is a perfect medium for fashion, beauty, and fun accessories. With the right content, it’s an excellent way to drive trials and sales, build brands, and create memorable experiences.
  • fiona hou on 14 Aug 09
     
    QQ is China's largest instant messenger service; in 2008 it owned 86% of the market, with MSN owning 5%, and a bunch of others owning less. QQ dominates the market - but the money made seems not to be from its instant messenger; rather its leveraging and channeling that huge audience through a gauntlet of micro-payments.
Christoph Zed

War Profiteers?: Study Reveals Germany Is World's Third Largest Defense Exporter - SPIE... - 0 views

www.spiegel.de/...0,1518,553755,00.html

economics germany export defense military EU Europe globalisation markets

shared by Christoph Zed on 30 Aug 09 - Cached
  • Germany Is World's Third Largest Defense Exporter
  • Once one of the world's most aggressive powers, Germany today likes to project a pacifist image
  • a report released yesterday by the Bonn International Center for Conversion (BICC), a German think tank, reveals a different side of Germany's relationship to war.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Germany, it turns out, exports nearly a billion euros worth of military goods each year ($1.55 billion) to developing countries.
  • That makes Germany the European Union's biggest military goods exporter, and worldwide it's behind only the US and Russia,
  • The BICC's annual report, guest-authored by former UN Chief Weapons Inspector Hans Blix, focused on the rise of military spending all over the world, a development that the end of the Cold War was supposed to reverse. Instead, global spending on weapons and armies rose by 15 percent between 2001 and 2006. Today it tops €650 billion ($1.1 trillion). A third of that is spent by the US.
  • "We see a revival of Cold War politics without the Cold War -- a Cold Peace, if you will."
  • "Apart from America there are a number of fast-growing countries -- like China, India, Indonesia and Pakistan, not to mention Russia -- where the global trend towards militarization is showing itself most clearly,"
Tony Sullivan

Background Briefing - 5 July 2009 - Cairo, a divided city - 0 views

www.abc.net.au/...2613439.htm

globalisation Egypt

shared by Tony Sullivan on 05 Aug 09 - Cached
  • Cairo
  • Mr Berry: When you walk in the gate it's nice. It gives you the impression that maybe you have a place in Australia maybe, maybe it feels like you in Australia, maybe somebody else, OK, maybe in Saudi Arabia, or anywhere else in the world, maybe in Italy, maybe somebody has the same feeling like Oh, this looks somewhere in Rome, somewhere in Greece
    • Tony Sullivan
      Tony Sullivan on 05 Aug 09
       
      Describes 'gated communities' for the affluent, being established in desert areas beyond the border of Cairo city.
  • Mr Berry: Golf, it's a very prestigious thing.
  • ...37 more annotations...
  • Not everyone back in Cairo is happy about the obsession with golf courses. Professor of Landscape and Architecture at Cairo University, Mohammad Refaat says they are a status symbol and the game doesn't come naturally to Egyptians
  • Mohammad Refaat: The first golf course that was created in these new developments was in Katameya Heights. It started - why is that? Because we started to have the Japanese in Egypt. The Japanese, they love golf, and we have several firms with Japanese managers, so it became a luxury to provide the service for them. But I believe that we're never going to be golfers as Egyptians, and I don't know, it's irritating now, because whenever you go, whenever you get a project, even in my private office, they say, 'Ah, the golf', and then we start doing the compound. The main idea of the golf from the owners' point of view is that to provide value for the people so that he can start to sell.
  • Mohammad Refaat: The thing is that I feel that we are Westernising ourselves. The thing is that due to the effect of the media, everybody wants to live in a Dallas, or in a Falconcrest or one of these things that we used to see when we're kids.
  • And they did not understand the Egyptian culture. If I speak about myself, I'd rather live in what we call the hara, or the alley, the old alley that we have, you know, when you have people all living in one street, of having all the services in the street, what we call the philosophy of the extended family. This is very, very Egyptian.
  • Anwar Sadat
  • opened up the country to the world, and very significantly, for the first time, all Egyptians could travel overseas.
  • Egyptians from all classes went abroad to get jobs in Gulf countries. They came back with money and with an appetite for things like shopping and luxury living. Some also brought back new ideas about Islam. It was more conservative and fundamentalist.
  • teachers, engineers, medical doctors, peasants, the large peasant migration
  • get passports, go and work in Jordan, in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, come back. Some of them also in Saudi Arabia perhaps never ever encountering women, right? And coming back with new notions of segregation, of headscarf, of Islamisation
  • Hagar Cohen: In Cairo today more and more women are segregated and wear the burqa, which is the full head and body cover. But everyone likes the shopping, and the new and glitzy malls are full of people in all kinds of dress
  • It can be uncomfortable now for women in western clothes, who don't wear scarves, because conservative men and women clearly show their distaste. This mix between consumerism and a very religious lifestyle is sometimes known as 'petro Islam'
  • Mona Abaza: They have different notions and variations of Islamic ideologies. There is a difference between a 16-year-old kid who is out of a family of 10 living in a slum, and a schoolteacher who lives long years in Saudi Arabia comes back, very much influenced by what I call the petro Islamic ideology, Saudi Arabian consumerists, very much into conservative accommodationist kind of religion, enjoying a shopping mall but at the same time dressing in Islamic code for instance. So marrying certain forms of consumer culture, but giving it a flavour that can look Egyptian, so that you convince yourself that you are different.
    • Tony Sullivan
      Tony Sullivan on 05 Aug 09
       
      Also discussed in relation to Salafism, a quietist social current encouraged by Saudi Araba, in 'The fever under the surface', The Economist 25 July 2009, p11-12, part of a special report on the Middle East.
  • the gated communities inside. the more upmarket, the faster they're selling, and they have names like Beverley Hills, Hyde Park and Dreamland.
  • Another kind of cultural reference for all of this is old Egyptian movies from like the 1950s you know, black-and-white films, where the setting was very, very often the Pasha's villa, which always had a very grand staircase, and a very grand entrance. This is the sort of lifestyle that Egyptians haven't had access to since the 1950s because of the crowding and so on and so forth. So now it's sort of become a lifestyle option for wealthy Egyptians that wasn't really there. So you can now have your own Pasha's villa.
  • Hagar Cohen: Dina Hussanein says she isn't comfortable living in a place with a name like 'Beverly Hills'. Dina Hassanein: That's a very sad thing, because we have a remarkable history and civilisation and yet, you know, we can't think of any Arabic word of our own that we could use to name the places. So I can tell you, Beverly Hills Egypt is nothing like Beverly Hills California
  • Hagar Cohen: Dina Hassanein is a modern woman. She lives on her own, and has a fiancé who lives nearby. She is very beautiful and smartly dressed in Western clothes. She has a job which involves interaction with all sorts of people
  • Hagar Cohen: Dina Hassanein and other residents have to rely on Old Cairo for almost everything, including shops, restaurants, and health services. There are also no local street markets, little shops or stalls, or workshops. In some places, the rules even forbid them. Big supermarket chains can be found easily, but you have to drive to get to them
  • Said Sadek: And you have rulers who believe in gated communities. Mubarak himself, lives in Sharem el Sheik or Borg el Arab, isolated, always isolated. The ruling elite in Egypt are isolated. And so you can tell by this political orientation of the elite that this is what they want, an isolated community because they cannot meet the demands of the masses. There are 40% of Egyptians below poverty line, earning less than $2 a day. And so this abject poverty amidst people who have a lot of money, may drive people to be envious
  • Very poor quality housing found in slums and shanty towns is expanding in Cairo
  • r Cohen: What in terms of sewage and garbage services? Are they available? Manal Tibe: We are talking about no water, so don't talk about sewage and garbage
  • Hagar Cohen: Manal Tibe says that the government isn't doing anything to improve conditions in slums, but has been very generous to private developers of gated communities. The desert land is subsidised by the government as well as the price of fuel, electricity and water. And that makes expenses in gated communities very low.
  • Manal Tibe: More hatefulness from poor to rich people and also to the government. Now, poor people that they want revenge, and this is being interpreted in some crimes against rich people.
  • Hagar Cohen: Dina Hassanein is missing city life, but at the same time she says that she doesn't fit in there any more
  • Dina Hassanein: It's not that I don't want to live there, it's just that our realities are very different, the places that we go are very different. If I were to walk into a slum I might get torn apart. You can't just walk in wearing normal clothes like we do into a place like that. I can barely walk down the streets without getting harassed actually, because it's a much more conservative society, so it's just different, it's almost impossible for these worlds to intermingle.
  • Hagar Cohen: These two very different worlds are on display inside some of Cairo's shopping malls. Western music there is piped through just as it is in any Australian city. This shopping mall is in the suburb of Giza. It's one of the most exclusive ones in Cairo. There's a care there serving Caesar salads and cappuccinos. Just across the road is the Giza Zoo, which is a popular hanging out venue for poorer families
  • This shopping mall
  • It's only a few days before Christmas when we're here, and in this Muslim country, it's ironic that Christian carols are playing throughout the atrium. Mona Abaza: It's a mix of definitely well-to-do Egyptians, and lots of expatriates, foreigners coming. You can see the Christmas decoration. During Ramadan they make Ramadan decorations, tents and Islamic style, and in Christmas they put Christmas decorations
  • Mona Abaza: There is this idea that the old downtown city is now slowly being depopulated by its, let us say, middle class. It used to be a very important commercial centre. It is now losing out this significance, because the centres have been now little by little moving out. So the idea is to get out of the city, because as if it's the inside is rotten, and it's very interesting how the poor can easily look at the lifestyles of the rich. Now this is evidently a bit of a problem for the rich, so that is why they opted for the American Dream, which is getting out and walling off.
  • Mona Abaza: If you look at it just visually, the problem is slums. One can easily say that the view is that as if the whole of Cairo is consisting of slums. Now the past 20 years, the neo liberal ideology of the government is to try and handle the problem of slums, and the way they handle it is as if it's an evil, a cancer that has to be drastically eliminated, with violence, because they consider and they believe that in slums, that we have the breeding of terrorist ideology, Islamist, poverty, violence etc. Now all this is quite often very over-exaggerated. I mean it's a form of discriminating the poor, that's clear. But you have the issue also of the city now experiencing a new form of cleaning up geared towards of course the encouraging of tourism and sites of consumption. So the cityscape is taking place as a huge space for consumer culture and tourism
  • Hagar Cohen: The American University, where Professor Abaza lectures, has also moved out to the desert and is now based in a town called New Cairo. She says it's a bad move, because a whole generation of well-off young people will be isolated, away from historical Cairo or the old Egyptian culture
  • Mona Abaza: You might be astonished but my students, 18 years old, 19 years, have never for instance known anything about downtown, have never even gone to downtown.
  • You will find the American fast food and the Egyptian fast food, and Italian, Mexican. Upstairs there is a McDonald's and Kentucky
  • Towheid Wahab: There is a rule here in the University. There's no mosque, there's no church, there's no temple, there's no monastery. All the people here are equal to do their religion by their own
  • Max Roderbeck: There are good reasons why they want to move, because you get a nice amount of space, you can re-brand yourself with a new image of being something that looks very modern instead of something that's fitted into a shabby old neighbourhood. There's certainly a trend, I mean there are quite a lot of institutions that have moved out.
  • Max Roderbeck: The danger of Cairo being hollowed out is pretty real. And I mean, some of the things that a city needs to be vibrant, seem to be already been pulled out of the centre of Cairo. I've seen other places where downtown becomes either a hollow shell, or ends up just being a sort of transport hub, you know, a sort of junction of roads and things. And I think it's a very real danger with Cairo.
  • Hagar Cohen: Somehow, Cairo has always managed to function as a lively city, says Max Roderbeck, but this time around, things are different
  • These satellite towns were developed in this way because of the government's quick sale of the land to private hands. They wanted to make a return quickly, and big villas and golf courses were in demand. But they don't work as lively urban centres, says environmental architect, Abbas el Zafarany
  • Tony Sullivan on 05 Aug 09
     
    The complexities of globalisation evident in Egypt's largest city and its surrounds
xinning ji

Modern Japan - Entertainment - Popular Music - 0 views

www.japan-zone.com/...pop.shtml

shared by xinning ji on 23 Sep 09 - Cached
  • Japan has the sixth-largest population in the world; the music industry generates billions and billions of dollars worldwide every year.
  • Japanese popular music is all commercialism and void of any artistic merit
  • The late 90's also saw some more western-style artists, such as Dragon Ash and Utada Hikaru explode onto the scene.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Born in New York, the 16-year old Utada debuted in 1999 and though she looked just like another idol, she was clearly something completely new. She wrote and sang her own songs with a soulfulness beyond her years.
Lucy Rechnitzer

BBC NEWS | Technology | Tech giants unite against Google - 0 views

news.bbc.co.uk/...8200624.stm

shared by Lucy Rechnitzer on 23 Aug 09 - Cached
  • Tech giants unite against Google By Maggie Shiels Technology reporter, BBC News, Silicon Valley Not everyone in the coalition wants the deal blocked, some want revisions Three technology heavyweights are joining a coalition to fight Google's attempt to create what could be the world's largest virtual library.Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo will sign up to the Open Book Alliance being spearheaded by the Internet Archive. They oppose a legal settlement that could make Google the main source for many online works. "Google is trying to monopolise the library system," the Internet Archive's founder Brewster Kahle told BBC News.
  • Critics have claimed the settlement will transform the future of the book industry and of public access to the cultural heritage of mankind embodied in books. The Internet Archive scans around 1000 books a day at 10 cents a page "The techniques we have built up since the enlightenment of having open access, public support for libraries, lots of different organisational structures, lots of distributed ownership of books that can be exchanged, resold and repackaged in different ways - all of that is being thrown out in this particular approach," warned Mr Kahle. The non-profit Internet Archive has long been a vocal opponent of this agreement. It is also in the business of scanning books and has digitised over half a million of them to date. All are available free. As the 4 September deadline approaches, the number of groups and organisations voicing their opposition is growing. But with three of the world's best-known technology companies joining the chorus, the Open Book Alliance can expect to make headlines the world over.
  • In its defence, Google has argued that the deal brings great benefits to authors and will make millions of out-of-print books widely available online and in libraries. In a statement, the company said: "The Google Books settlement is injecting more competition into the digital books space, so it's understandable why our competitors might fight hard to prevent more competition."
Lucy Rechnitzer

Fairfax, News to charge for online - 0 views

www.theage.com.au/...-for-online-20090808-edm3.html

shared by Lucy Rechnitzer on 16 Aug 09 - Cached
  • Fairfax, News to charge for online Tom Hyland August 9, 2009 THE loyalty of readers accustomed to getting their news online free is about to be tested, as Australia's largest newspaper groups prepare to charge for access to their websites.Fairfax Media is considering two levels of access, one free and the other incurring a charge, as newspapers move to protect declining revenues.Last week, News Limited chief executive Rupert Murdoch announced that sites featuring the news content of his stable of papers would no longer be free.The plan to erect pay-walls around their online sites comes as newspaper companies confront a decline in the advertising revenue that has financed print production.
  • Monetisation will have to happen, because without monetisation of the online sites that the newspaper industries have operated very successfully, we can't afford to keep the big newsroom staffs we have,'' he said.Fairfax was looking at a number of pay models, including offering readers two levels of access - free entry for a mass audience, with a charge for ''more upmarket, high quality data''.
  • The move is a risk for both publishers, which are gambling on readers being prepared to pay for news they have been receiving free - and will remain free on sources such as the ABC.While newspaper websites carry advertising, they do not finance the news content, most of which comes from the papers
Lucy Rechnitzer

Students to dump textbooks for e-books - 0 views

www.theage.com.au/...-for-ebooks-20090815-elsu.html

shared by Lucy Rechnitzer on 16 Aug 09 - Cached
  • Students to dump textbooks for e-books Carmel EganAugust 16, 2009 HEAVY book-filled school bags could soon be a thing of the past, with the e-book industry claiming most of students' textbooks will be contained in light hand-held portable devices within three years. The internet-linked reading devices will store hundreds of e-textbooks bought online or borrowed from school libraries. ''E-textbooks will be mainstream within three years,'' the executive director of DA Direct, Australia's largest distributor of portable reading devices and e-books, Richard Siegersma, predicted. Mr Siegersma said digital technology would lead to the costs of e-textbooks falling in a year to 18 months. ''There will be just-in-time and customised delivery to flexible, full-colour screens; textbooks with audio and video components; touch screens for handwriting and margin note-taking and text highlighting,'' he said.
  • HEAVY book-filled school bags could soon be a thing of the past, with the e-book industry claiming most of students' textbooks will be contained in light hand-held portable devices within three years.
  • ''E-textbooks will be mainstream within three years,''
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • ''Book culture is still confused with print culture and it is really only this year people have started to get e-books.''
  • At the selective boys' secondary Melbourne High School, students were not persuaded by the new technology. While enjoying e-book mobility and easy access to multiple titles, they complained of slow data uploading, slow page-turning and too few titles available free.
xinning ji

Indian student visa requests decline - 0 views

www.theage.com.au/...sts-decline-20090918-fvf5.html

shared by xinning ji on 19 Sep 09 - Cached
  • a decline in student visa applications from India compared with last year.
  • The department was unable to provide the figures last night because they are still being compiled.
  • Education is Australia's third-largest export, after coal and iron ore. Universities have come to depend on international student fees to cover the shortfall created by chronic underfunding from government.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • there had been a drop in inquiries from prospective students in India, but interest from China, Australia's No. 1 source of international students, remained strong.
amy wu

China rebuts report of violating India airspace - 0 views

www.chinadaily.com.cn/...content_8643508.htm

China India airspace violate

shared by amy wu on 02 Sep 09 - Cached
  • amy wu on 02 Sep 09
     
    China does not encroach on other countries' airspace, said Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu Tuesday at a press conference.
  • xinning ji on 08 Sep 09
     
    i am not sure when the relationship between India and CHina becomes bad. I can find online news recently, there are a lot of issues about the war prediction in the future between two nations. I wouldn't believe it can be the truth because if so, I cannot imagine how many innocent people will be dead.Please do not forget, both India and CHina are the first two countries with the largest number of world's population.
Christoph Zed

Can India's economy overtake China? - 0 views

news.bbc.co.uk/...8273464.stm

markets india china economy globalisation

shared by Christoph Zed on 05 Oct 09 - Cached
  • Can the lumbering elephant overtake the hyperactive dragon?
  • In 2010, the Indian economy may grow faster than that of China.
  • China and India, accounting for roughly 40% of the 6.5bn plus people on Planet Earth, are not merely the two fastest growing major economies in the world at present, but are among the few countries that have continued to expand at a time when the economies of most countries have contracted
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Economists argue that one reason why India's economy can grow faster than that of China in the near future is simply on account of what statisticians describe as a "base effect"
  • China's economy is roughly three and a half times bigger than that of India - Gross Domestic Product (GDP) measured in US dollars in 2008 for the two countries stood at $4.2 trillion and $1.2 trillion respectively.
  • Two years ago, China overtook the US as India's largest trading partner.
  • World Bank in its Global Development Finance 2009 report projected that in 2010, the rate of growth of India's economy at 8% would be faster than that of China, expected to be 7.7%
  • developing countries could "become a key driving force" in reviving the world's economy
  • it was no longer improbable that India could grow faster than China or that South Asia would expand at a faster pace than East and South-East Asia
Christoph Zed

AppleInsider | Apple challenges new Woolworths logo - 0 views

www.appleinsider.com/...enges_new_woolworths_logo.html

apple woolworth branding globalisation markets logo

shared by Christoph Zed on 05 Oct 09 - Cached
  • Apple have begun a legal response against the largest supermarket chain in Australia over a logo the electronics company says is too similar to its own iconic trademark
  • The Australian company has steered clear of mentioning apples in relation to its new mark, claiming the stylized 'W' was been paired with "an abstract leaf symbol" to represent fresh food
  • similarity to that particular fruit
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • At first glance, the chance for confusion between a computer company and a food seller seems remote, but Woolworths' application asked for a blanket trademark extending even to electrical goods and technology.
  • Apple will make its case to IP Australia, the federal agency that governs trademarks in that country.
Andrew Ooi

Thousands Defend Role of Press in Italy - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...04italy.html

Freedom of Press Freedom of Information Berlusconi Italy Protest

shared by Andrew Ooi on 04 Oct 09 - Cached
  • ens of thousands of protesters thronged to a historic square in one of Europe’s largest capitals on Saturday to defend press freedom amid concerns of growing government interference in how the news is reported in Italy.
  • Free information, not on a leash
  • Mr. Berlusconi dismissed the protest as “a real farce.” Speaking at a political convention in northern Italy, he said, “Freedom is far greater in Italy than any other Western country,”
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • For years accusations of conflict of interest have dogged Mr. Berlusconi, who owns the country’s leading private television networks and a publishing empire. His government also oversees the state broadcaster RAI.
  • Andrew Ooi on 04 Oct 09
     
    The elites and their control again...
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