This morning while driving to work, my taxi driver was watching me work on my computer. That is not unusual, it happens almost every day, and some are looking like they have never seen a laptop before. But this one said: “Ah, pingguo diannao, hen hao!”. For the non-mandarin speakers, he liked it that I was using an Apple computer. So I started chatting a bit with him. In his free time (not much, he works 12 hours per day driving his cab) he likes to program and surf the internet. And he uses an Apple computer as well. He thinks they are the best computers, but very expensive. He paid over 20,000 RMB for his laptop, for which he could have bought 3 local computers. I was surprised how he would be able to afford a laptop that is more expensive than his annual income, but decided not to ask him that question. When he asked me what I do and I told him about Toodou.com, he told me he knew the website.

I had many, normally short, chats with taxi drivers, but this one was the first that was actually interesting. Most of them are about where I am from, how good my Chinese is (which it is absolutely not, I am ashamed that I am still at a very basic level after all these years in China), and about Marco van Basten and Ruud Gullit (two long-retired Dutch soccer players, who are still on everybodies mind). But this conversation was fun and he did not even ask me where I was from. If you ever happen to be in Dazhong taxi no. 246357, send him my best regards.

Sometimes you really wonder why Chinese companies cannot not peform a spelling check before printing signs or ads in English. These three I found in the luxurious Grand Gateway mall in Shanghai.

Some pictures I took this morning while walking to the bakery to get some fresh bread for breakfast.

Friday night after finishing work Gary, Qi and I had a dinner at La Gondola (great Italian restaurant by the way, check it out. Next to Westin Hotel, corner of Henan Lu and Yan’an Lu). Instead of hitting Shanghai nightlife, we decided to hit some golf balls at the driving range next to JinMao. It was still quite busy at 11 PM, and also still quite warm. Nice way to end a busy week, and not too expensive (total RMB 80 including a beer and two cokes).

(BTW, photos were taken with my phone, that explains the low quality)

The Chinese government has announced plans to limit the time that gamers can spend online. After 3 hours their characters abilities will be halved and after 5 hours almost all strenght of its characters will be gone. Most big Chinese online game companies have already agreed to include these measures into their games. Of course they have to, otherwise their business licenses will be cancelled.

Will hackers be able to break the code so players can play as long as they want? Very likely, but because most players in China are young people who can only play in internet bars, there will be probably be monitoring systems there as well.

Yesterday Oriental TV came to the Toodou.com office to produce a program about us. They will produce a 25-minute program that will be aired later this week at 7:00 PM. According to the producer, the program has the second highest rating in Shanghai, so lots of viewers probably.

Also the Toodou team was featured yesterday in a 4-page special in the Wai Tan Hua Bao (you won’t see me in the pictures, I was not there when the reporters came to visit), and the front page has a huge full-color picture of some of our team members.

This morning I watched the program that Dragon TV produced last Monday. I felt they did not clearly bring accross the message about what we are doing. One reason is that the item was only five minutes, and they also profiled one of our users during that time. I hope the other program they will produce with this material for CCTV will be better (at least it is longer, I think 15 minutes or so).

Many reviews on the web as well, but most are in Chinese. I came accross this one in English yesterday on techcrunch.com.

The site keeps growing. Lots of good new video’s and podcasts were uploaded again, and the amount of users keeps increasing. It’s great to see that when some people have an idea and manage to implement that in the right way, that it can be so successful so quickly – and all of that without spending one penny for marketing!

Interfax reports that from September 1 onwards all Shanghai mobile phone users will need to register with their ID card:

All mobile phone and Xiaolingtong (PHS) subscribers in Shanghai, new and old, will have to register their legal names with city authorities beginning September 1, the Shanghai Communications Administration and the Shanghai Public Security Bureau (PSB) said on Friday.

“We have tightened control in order to protect mobile phone users from malicious and fraudulent SMS (short messaging service) messages,” Hu Yonglong, Vice Director of the Shanghai Communications Administration, told Interfax.

Mobile phone and Xiaolingtong subscribers will now need to show their Citizen Identity cards and register their legal names when buying a new SIM card. Telecom operators will be required to confirm and register the legal names of new subscribers in a database.

Existing mobile phone and Xiaolingtong subscribers must registered their legal names with authorities at designated locations across the city within three months from September 1.

Let’s wait and see if it is just an announcement or if it will be really enforced. If it should be enforced I expect that people who use mobile phones for illegal activities will buy their numbers outside Shanghai, or will give poor unemployed workers a few kuai to register in their names. And also I do not expect the amount of spam SMS to reduce: I get about 3-5 per day, and most are from China Mobile anyway!

After lunch I had a wine tasting session to determine which wines to serve during my wedding. This is one of the nicest parts of organizing a wedding. We decided on two nice Bordeaux wines, a red 2000 Chateau Haut Dina and a white 2001 Chateau Bauvallon. During the tasting we discussed a few things about foreigners doing business in China, and the way they often look at the market (if every Chinese would buy one of my products etc.). Thomas Kaeppelin (manager of DT Asia, the wine supplier) then made a good remark: “If every second Chinese would drink a bottle of wine per day (like in France), there would not be enough wine in the whole world!”