Internet | Dominik Mayer – Products, Asia, Productivity

ThisWebsiteWillSelfdestruct.com:

Hi,

I’m a website. I’ll be gone soon, and that’s okay.

You can send me messages using the form below. If I go 24 hours without receiving a message, I’ll permanently self-destruct, and everything will be wiped from my database.

That’s okay though.

Until then, let me know how you’re doing. Other people will be able to read what you write, but your name or identity won’t be attached to anything, so feel free to say what’s on your mind.

It’s been a rough month.

With love,

ThisWebsiteWillSelfdestruct (dot) com

Head over and read the messages. Or send one yourself and keep this wonderful page alive.

It seems to have survived for three weeks already.

I was at work, here at italki, when a very good Chinese friend called me. She was the one who has been looking for an apartment for me before I even arrived in China, she helped me to find the room that should become my home for the next year and she guided my first steps in this foreign country.

She said she knows italki. Of course. That’s where we first met. I remeber. Back at the computer, I checked my friends and there she was. And on Saturday, we’ll meet in person.

A recent discussion among friends. They think the Chinese government is on a good way. It’s working in the best interest of the country. We have to understand that.

Today, the Golden Shield also blocks Twitter, Flickr, Hotmail, Live, and Bing.

One of the friends is now “disappointed by the government.”

I feel confirmed. And helped her to set up tor.

Pandora isn’t allowed to provide its service outside the US:

Using Tor sometimes loads the application without playing the music. And sometimes doesn’t:

“Tor” is German for gate or short for “The Onion Router”, an anonymity network finally allowing me to access the world outside. VPN hasn’t been working for long. Again. Thanks to a great guide I don’t have to rely on it any longer.

So VPN works now. Quelle surprise. Maybe because I’m using a neighbor’s Wi-Fi as our cable network gets disconnected every other minute. And I’ve read they’re going to censor more after the end of the Olympic Games. Great prospects. If I’ll be gone for the next four months, you know why.

Wow, that was fast. So they came up with a great fourth option. I hope Shanghai will be next.

Google has been offering a Chinese map of Shanghai for quite some time. Not at maps.google.com but at ditu.google.com. Ditu, 地图, is the Chinese expression for map.

Now I stumbled upon a new, English one:

It doesn’t only show the public transportation but also restaurants, banks, cinemas, theaters, … Here an example of the area around Nanjing Lu:

But the most beautiful maps of Shanghai come from edushi (E都市, E-City):

They have already covered many Chinese Cities and seem to want more.

So why Yahoo, why, why, why don’t you make maps, buy maps or allow the use of one of the above mentioned ones in flickr?

And asked the woman if I use the internet. At least that’s what I understood. Very strange.

NULL encryption just worked once. With help of the lrz I’m about to narrow down the problem. Today I bought a new network cable and for now I can use VPN. In case it stops working again, I got three more points on my list. But I hope the best.

No news from the lrz. They didn’t even bother to reply. Today I played around and checked “Allow using NULL encryption” in the configuration dialog. For the moment, VPN works. I hope it’ll last.

Would be great if the lrz could finally fix the problems with their VPN server that I’ve reported over a month ago. The golden shield prevents me from accessing several sites. This blog is one of them.

I’ve tried twice but never got beyond two posts. With me being in Shanghai and twitter’s increasing popularity I’m thinking about giving it a third chance. Let’s try it for a few days.

Ubuntu 8.04 brought me Firefox 3 Beta 5 which is not yet supported by one of my crucial add-ons. Chinese Perapera-kun translates Chinese words by hovering over them. Very useful.

Now I have to get along with these:

• Chinaboard: Translates whole expressions
• Google Translate: Not very accurate but provides a rough overview
• dict.leo.org: German/Chinese and Pinyin
• Dict.cn: English/Chinese

Since yesterday I can reach the German Wikipedia without VPN and now the English one is also “unprotected”.