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fiona hou

Multiculturalism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

en.wikipedia.org/...Multiculturalism

Multiculturalism Eastern societies Western societies

shared by fiona hou on 14 Aug 09 - Cached
  • The term multiculturalism generally refers to the acceptance of various cultural divisions for the sake of diversity that applies to the demographic make-up of a specific place, usually at the scale of an organization such as a school, business, neighborhood, city or nation.
  • Australia The response to multiculturalism in Australia has been extremely varied, with a recent wave of criticism against it in the past decade. An anti-immigration party, the One Nation Party, was formed by Pauline Hanson in the late 1990s. The party enjoyed significant electoral success for a while, most notably in its home state of Queensland, but is now electorally marginalized. One Nation called for the abolition of multiculturalism on the grounds that it represented "a threat to the very basis of the Australian culture, identity and shared values", arguing that there was "no reason why migrant cultures should be maintained at the expense of our shared, national culture."[83] A Federal Government proposal in 2006 to introduce a compulsory citizenship test, which would assess English skills and knowledge of Australian values, sparked renewed debate over the future of multiculturalism in Australia. Andrew Robb, then Parliamentary Secretary for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, told a conference in November 2006 that some Australians worried the term "multicultural" had been transformed by interest groups into a philosophy that put "allegiances to original culture ahead of national loyalty, a philosophy which fosters separate development, a federation of ethnic cultures, not one community". He added: "A community of separate cultures fosters a rights mentality, rather than a responsibilities mentality. It is divisive. It works against quick and effective integration."[84] The Australian citizenship test commenced in October 2007 for all new citizens between the ages of 18 and 60.[85] In January 2007 the Howard Government removed the word "multicultural" from the name of t
  • The response to multiculturalism in Australia has been extremely varied, with a recent wave of criticism against it in the past decade. An anti-immigration party, the One Nation Party , was formed by Pauline Hanson in the late 1990s. The party enjoyed significant electoral success for a while, most notably in its home state of Queensland , but is now electorally marginalized. One Nation called for the abolition of multiculturalism on the grounds that it represented "a threat to the very basis of the Australian culture, identity and shared values", arguing that there was "no reason why migrant cultures should be maintained at the expense of our shared, national culture." [83] A Federal Government proposal in 2006 to introduce a compulsory citizenship test, which would assess English skills and knowledge of Australian values, sparked renewed debate over the future of multiculturalism in Australia. Andrew Robb , then Parliamentary Secretary for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, told a conference in November 2006 that some Australians worried the term "multicultural" had been transformed by interest groups into a philosophy that put "allegiances to original culture ahead of national loyalty, a philosophy which fosters separate development, a federation of ethnic cultures, not one community". He added: "A community of separate cultures fosters a rights mentality, rather than a responsibilities mentality. It is divisive. It works against quick and effective integration." [84] The Australian citizenship test commenced in October 2007 for all new citizens between the ages of 18 and 60. [85] In January 2007 the Howard Government removed the word "multicultural" from the name of t he Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, changing its name to the Department of Immigration and Citizenship.
Christoph Zed

Venezuela bans Family Guy cartoon - 2 views

news.bbc.co.uk/...8277129.stm

media flow glocalisation culture clashes globalisation localisation

shared by Christoph Zed on 28 Sep 09 - Cached
  • Authorities in Venezuela say they will punish TV stations if they continue to broadcast episodes of cult US animation Family Guy.
    • xinning ji
      xinning ji on 28 Sep 09
       
      what I think is that authorities are those who work for the government or politics. so the issue is based on the decision of the government rather than general publics. therefore, the interactive communication between different cultures are limited by the politics.
  • the show should be banned because it promotes the use of marijuana
    • Andrew Ooi
      Andrew Ooi on 04 Oct 09
       
      If anyone wants to ban anything cigarrettes should be first on the list. This demonization of cannabis has gone on for far too long. Cannabis/Hemp species have been used for thousands of years for medicine, fabric, paper, biodiesel (recently, but you can use almost anything to make it anyways). If anyone disagrees I challenge you to a duel.
    • Nora Ibrahim
      Nora Ibrahim on 04 Oct 09
       
      True that Andrew! :-)
  • messages that go against the whole education of boys, girls and adolescents
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Televen avoided the fine by pulling the show and replacing it with Baywatch.
  • Venezuelan TV is known for filling its schedules with re-runs of old US series and Latin American soap operas
  • Christoph Zed on 28 Sep 09
     
    Interesting move, I guess the "localization" process overlooked a few issues. Personally I think "the family guy" does quite often cross lines that should not be crossed, (eg: when making fun of pedophilia) The show highlights a trend in western society to ridicule any value and/or anything "sacred".
  • ...1 more comment...
  • Nora Ibrahim on 04 Oct 09
     
    I am a HUGE fan on Family Guy since they started airing in States and recently have been watching the episodes from Season Seven (compliments of RMIT Library) back to back. I must say there are loads of 'jokes' used in the episodes which I found was bordering on 'so wrong'. The writers do make fun of every single thing and no one is spared, not even physically challenged people.
  • fina ramlee on 04 Oct 09
     
    I've watched it once and I didn't like it.Everything about it is so wrong but I guess it's now a trend to use cartoons as medium for silly jokes.
  • anonymous on 06 Oct 09
     
    Some people might capture the meaning wrongly. Perhaps Venezuelans view Family Guy as those who criticize the western value. Since Venezuelan TV is know to re-runs of old US series and Latin American soap operas, they tend to manage the conventional value instead of looking at the west in a modern society who gets ridicule by the writers.
Christoph Zed

Celebrities, recession fuel interest in etiquette | Lifestyle | Reuters - 0 views

www.reuters.com/...idUSTRE57658I20090809

manners etiquette values style social behaviour

shared by Christoph Zed on 09 Aug 09 - Cached
  • Misbehaving celebrities and the recession have pushed more people to improve their etiquette in a bid to gain an edge over job rivals
  • he art of living with style, class and grace
  • For too long this 'stupid girl' behavior has been burning the daily headlines and I really think there's a lot of people out there who wanted to see a return to our feminine values,
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • tand up and take back our dignity and our values and our self respect," said Christy. "It's great that we have seen this resurgence in etiquette and manners and self respect
  • studies has shown that "85 percent of the reason a person gets a job, keeps a job and moves up is related to their people skills.
  • Manners are the great equalizer and if you have manners you can walk into any business or social situation
Christoph Zed

The Axis of Honour: Honour, Modernity, and al Qaeda « The Sensible Jew - 0 views

sensiblejew.wordpress.com/...-honour-modernity-and-al-qaeda

globalisation terrorism al qaeda values society capitalism pluralism secularisation colonialism moral honor

shared by Christoph Zed on 23 Aug 09 - Cached
  • So many scholars and commentators attribute suicide terrorism to such factors as poverty, foreign occupation, or religion, among many other things.
  • Over the past two hundred years, there has been a global, though highly uneven, shift within the values systems of various societies.
  • One particularly profound transformation has been the relegation of one’s religion to the private sphere, as a matter of purely personal choice.
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • So societies that have embraced modernity, have effectively “privatised” religion. Indeed capitalism has been the driving force behind secularism because it required the dismantling of the communalist society.
  • Replacing the old communalism is heterogeneity and pluralism. These have eroded not only religious monopolies, but their centrality in various societies. The end result of this is a society’s secularisation.
  • Globalisation, in which western technological and cultural products predominate, is often framed as a form of colonialism.
  • Ironically, the rise of transnational Islamist terrorism is also a product of globalisation.
  • As the power of the nation state diminishes, religious ideology’s mobility allows it to permeate shifting borders.
  • The current face of modernity is therefore ideally suited to –  and an ideal breeding ground for – the creation of suicide terrorist groups.
  • In order to fortify the in group, moral strictures must become ever more rigorous, while condemnation of transgression must become ever more vociferous – and violent, thus intensifying the demarcation between “good” and “bad”.
  • terrorism implies a crisis of legitimacy
  • But can we say that such a crisis of legitimacy applies to transnational terrorists such as al Qaeda?
  • modernity is an attempt to destroy community and communalism…, all those forces which created identity and authority
  • such threats to communalism result in feelings of humiliation amongst those who do not benefit from the new order.
  • humiliation therefore “links the concepts of honor and human rights in an enlightening way, providing a framework both for ideologies and for the transition between them.”
  • Scott Atran identifies the primacy of honour throughout Arab societies, noting that the Arab perception of being humiliated by outsiders is a prime motivator for suicide attacks.
  • There emerges from the collective sense of humiliation something of an obligation to demonstrate outrage and embark on actions – even if they have little chance of success – in order to avenge honour. Martyrdom is one such example.
  • Beit-Hallahmi writes, that under such circumstances, “contemporary martyrdom can be viewed as an uprising against the end of history and the final triumph of liberal capitalism.”
Christoph Zed

Big Brother Is Watching Your Blackberry: How Wired Gadgets Encroach on Privacy - SPIEGE... - 0 views

www.spiegel.de/...0,1518,637640,00.html

shared by Christoph Zed on 29 Jul 09 - Cached
  • And so, to the surprise of buyers, Amazon erased the two books -- which had been paid for and delivered -- from the electronic reader.
  • In the age of networked digital devices, it seems that values such as the sanctity of the private sphere, the protection of our private property and the inviolability of our correspondence no longer count for very much
  • All of these devices can be remotely modified at any time through software updates. So you could say that an iPhone doesn't really belong to you -- at least not in quite the same way that your refrigerator or bicycle does.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Hence Apple -- like Amazon -- reserves the right to remotely meddle with your iPhone at any time and without the consent of the user, in order to delete objectionable applications. All with the best of intentions, of course
  • A shift to tethered applicances also entails a sea change in the regulability of the Internet" (author's emphasis). The "dangers of excess" will no longer come from viruses or hackers anymore, "but from the much more predictable interventions by regulators
  • We will need to get used to the fact that these "curious technological hybrids" will never fully belong to us -- even if we have paid a lot of money for them.
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

Singapore: Multiculturalism or the melting pot? | geraldgiam.sg - 0 views

geraldgiam.sg/...ulticulturalism-or-melting-pot

shared by xinning ji on 10 Aug 09 - Cached
  • Multiculturalism can be defined as a demographic make-up of a country where various cultural divisions are accepted for the sake of diversity. A melting pot, on the other hand, is a society where all of the people blend together to form one basic cultural norm based on the dominant culture.
    • xinning ji
      xinning ji on 11 Aug 09
       
      we always define Multiculturalism as the country with diverse cultures , but it seems hard to achieve in many multicultural countries, like Singapore, Australia, America etc. I think reasons could relate to politics, one particular/dominant culture and social bias. they all bring imbalance and unequal norms that against the value of multiculture, and so that to strength one main culture and igore others.
sayaka uchida

Top 10 Geekiest Constructed Languages | GeekDad | Wired.com - 0 views

www.wired.com/...-geekiest-constructe-languages

language

shared by sayaka uchida on 27 Aug 09 - Cached
  • 1. Klingon Perhaps the most fully realized science fiction language, Klingon has a complete grammar and vocabulary, permitting countless nerds to learn it like it was high school Spanish. Fans have translated Shakespeare, Sun Tzu and the Bible into the language. There’s a Klingon Language Institute, the purpose of which is to promote the language and culture of this nonexistent people. You can even select Klingon as your language of choice in Google.
  • it has become almost de rigueur for fiction writers and moviemakers to include a constructed language (conlang) when crafting a new universe. Here are some of the best:
  • sayaka uchida on 27 Aug 09
     
    I believe Klingon speaking people certainly share some value and the way of thinking....
xinning ji

Eyeing off cultural difference | The Daily Telegraph - 0 views

www.dailytelegraph.com.au/...story-e6freuy9-1225761653092

shared by xinning ji on 17 Aug 09 - No Cached
  • the oriental "neglect'' of the mouth can lead to more mistakes in interpreting a person's emotion, said the study, describing how feelings can be ``lost in translation.''
    • xinning ji
      xinning ji on 17 Aug 09
       
      different culture makes people who have different behavious. it is obvious between West and East. people in Asia do nto have many facial expression and body language; they looks shy and strict. in contrast, Western people's facial expression always change when they talk to each other. In Asia, people would not like to express themselves to each other. in other words, they sometimes seems try to hide something, or sometime they do not like others, such as family members to worry about them. So, we usually tell each other good news and hide bad things. it is quite interesting to know different cultural values around the world, and also it is useful to understand various ways to communicate with people from all over the world.
  • Asian participants had difficulty recognising facial expressions of fear and disgust, mistakenly interpreting them as surprise and anger instead
    • xinning ji
      xinning ji on 17 Aug 09
       
      I do not think it is a mistake Asian participants made because different explanation or understanding is based on different cultral backgrounds from West and Aisa. so it is not wrong or right but cultural conflicts and differences.
xinning ji

Japanese pop culture isn't lost in translation - 0 views

www.seattlepi.com/...178161_virgin17.html

shared by xinning ji on 17 Aug 09 - Cached
  • If you have had any exposure to adolescent or teenage girls over the past decade, then you are all too familiar with the phenomenon known as Hello Kitty, the mouthless cartoon cat that decorates the paraphernalia (usually done in garish pink) that has made Tokyo-based parent Sanrio Co. Ltd. an 83-billion-yen-a-year company (about $795 million).
  • Why would Japanese cartoon characters appeal to American youth? Why stuff that is, to put it mildly and to use an American expression, cheesy?
  • What allows some products or concepts to travel around the world, while others can't get out of the house?
    • xinning ji
      xinning ji on 18 Aug 09
       
      the success of Japanese products is because they know what people like, what is the common ground of people around the world, and these products are really entertained, such as Hello Kitty, Ben 10, etc. Rather, these characters are well connected between Western and Asian social and cultural values. SO, they are global symbols.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • "In its imagery and style, derived from video games and comic art, Japanese culture seemed to ride the wave of postmodernism ahead of its American counterparts, It seemed 'foreign' and strange, which was part of its appeal."
  • The logical conclusion is that there is little logic to it, so marketers will have to keep trying the hit-or-miss approach, even for the most outlandish ideas.
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.
Rika Ninomiya

QANTAS eyes Malaysia | The Australian - 0 views

www.theaustralian.news.com.au/...0,,24824650-20142,00.html

globalization cultural imperialism hybridization Qantas

shared by Rika Ninomiya on 22 Aug 09 - Cached
  • QANTAS may pursue Malaysia Airlines following the demise of the Australian carrier's $8 billion merger plans with British Airways.
  • Qantas had wanted majority ownership in the deal, reflecting its bigger market value, but BA was not prepared to become a junior partner.
  • faced a number of significant hurdles
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Malaysia Airlines, run by savvy ex-petroleum industry executive Idris Jala, appeared the most likely partnership option in Asia
  • merger with Singapore Airlines, often touted as a good match, was unlikely because of questions of control and potential competition issues
  • He believed another possibility often raised, Cathay Pacific, was also unlikely, as were Thai Airways, Garuda, Philippine Airlines and the Chinese carriers.
  • However, he did not rule out a possible partnership with another European carrier or Japan Airlines in the longer term.
  • Rika Ninomiya on 22 Aug 09
     
    The article talks about Qantas's pursue of Malaysian Airline and other foreign airlines to merge with them. By merging with other major airline, Qantas is hoping to operate in more places which would help increase their market share in the world.
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