'It will take a long time until we can actually challenge CNN or BBC' — Xinhua, China's official news agency, on the launch of its English-language channel
You know what?
They have plenty of time — and money.
According to Kathrin Hille's June 28, 2009 Financial Times (FT) story, the Chinese government will "... hand out $4.4–$6.4 billion to media groups."
I wonder which channel — Xinhua English or Al Jazeera English — will be the first carried on mainstream U.S. cable and satellite.
I'm putting my money on Xinhua.
Here's the FT article.
••••••••••••••••••••
China agency to launch English TV news
Xinhua,
China’s official news agency, will launch an English-language
television news programme this week on screens in supermarkets and
outside Chinese embassies in Europe, in a cautious first step towards
spreading Beijing’s view of the world to western audiences.
The move, planned for Wednesday, comes six months after the Chinese government launched a plan to improve its global image through English-language television news channels to be built by trusted state-owned media.
It
highlights how daunting a challenge it is for media organisations that
function mainly as propaganda outlets to compete with experienced
commercial western groups in wooing a global audience.
“Our goal is to get China's voice and perpective of things out there
and to offer a different choice to a news audience all over the world,”
said a department head at Xinhua with detailed knowledge of the TV
preparations. “We have been hiring aggressively and building our TV
capabilities for months. But still, it will take a long time until we
can actually challenge CNN or BBC.”
Xinhua this month started
offering Chinese-language TV news on Kaixin001, a social networking
site. But editorial staff at the agency said broadcasting overseas
would require a lot more preparation.
“We decided to test
viewers’ reactions first by putting up some screens at Chinese
embassies in Europe so people can watch it while they wait for their
visas,” said one person. “Also, we will have Xinhua English-language TV
in supermarkets in Brussels and other cities.” Academics with an
advisory role in the plan have said the government would hand out
Rmb30bn-Rmb45bn ($4.4bn-$6.6bn, €3.1bn-€4.7bn, £2.7bn-£4bn) to media
groups.
The government has denied the numbers and refused to
comment further, but many state media have focused on the project for
months. China Daily, the country’s first nationwide English-language newspaper, started overseas circulation this year. In April, Global Times, an affiliate of People’s Daily, the Communist party’s mouthpiece, launched an English-language edition.
Senior
Xinhua journalists, advertising industry sources and media executives
said the agency had been picked as the main media organisation for the
TV portion of the propaganda push, and state funds for the project had
started pouring in.
One of the main challenges for the state
media in conquering foreign audiences has been the conflict between
their propaganda background and the speed and transparency required in
a free and commercially driven media market.
The English-language
Global Times has experimented with balancing the two. But even stories
and pictures that would have been considered too sensitive in China’s
domestic market were seen by many western readers as sophisticated
propaganda.
Wait a minute joe — a particle is either virtual or it's not: there's no border.
Are you sure?
Anyway.
Long-time reader Ray Earhart just sent me news of this company, writing "I really want a new shed. 'Physical Design Co. — Make Your Digital World Physical.' The really cool part is that it uses Google Sketchup, a free program, to allow you to design your building. I can't find the price list yet. Darn it...."
Stay tuned, Ray: I've got my crack research team on it.
There are those who'd ask, "Gee, joe, what the heck are you paying your crack research team for, if they don't find stuff until it's nearly four years old?"
Don't rub it in.
Here at bookofjoe we like to say we're on the clotted edge.
That's the Bizarro World-equivalent of the bleeding edge.
In case you were wondering.
I wasn't, see, but I thought maybe you were.
Enough, this thread is going nowhere fast.
"Haha joe, just like you!"
Who said that?
Close readers will note my age on MySpace (top) is 99, that's because they don't let you pick a birth year after 1996.
And everyone knows bookofjoe was born on August 24, 2005, so that I'm precisely five years old late next month.
The way I see it, if you can't take it to one extreme, there's always the other....
The carnival of Venice lasted four months, except when it lasted longer. From everywhere came acrobats, musicians, thespians, puppeteers, prostitutes, magicians, fortune-tellers, and vendors offering potions, good-luck tonics, and elixirs for a long life.
And from everywhere came the tooth pullers and the aching mouths that Saint Apollonius had been unable to cure. In agony, the latter approached the gates of Saint Mark, where, pliers in hand, the extractors awaited, anesthetists at their side.
The anesthetists did not put patients to sleep: they entertained them. They gave them not poppy or mandrake, but jokes and pirouettes. And their humor and grace were so miraculous that pain forgot to hurt.
The anesthetists were monkeys and dwarfs, dressed for carnival.
•••••••••••••••••••••
Ken concluded, "I do not know how factual Galeano's account is but I thought that you might enjoy it."
Use it to "... create nearly any three-dimensional form of 4-square-inches or smaller," wrote David Gelles in a June 29, 2009 Financial Times (FT) article .
Continued Gelles, "Users of MakerBots simply
create or download a 3D computer file using one of several programs,
then set the machine to work. The MakerBot takes spools of
spaghetti-like plastic, heats it to 200°C and squirts it out in the desired shape. Already the MakerBot has
been used to make missing parts for electronics and the casing for new
flashlights."
"After
just two months Mr Pettis has sold 60 printers, half of them
to clients outside the US. 'We originally had the idea that we were
going to revolutionise American manufacturing, but it's global,' he
says."
Here's the FT story.
••••••••••••••••••••••••••
DIY fanatics find a cyber showcase
Eric Wilhelm was studying for his PhD in mechanical engineering at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2000 when he decided that he
needed an athletic pursuit. So he took up kite surfing, a sport that
was then in its infancy.
Because kite surfing was so new, there
were no established manufacturers producing reliable equipment. So Mr
Wilhelm decided to make his own. He began sewing kites from rip-stop
nylon and crafting boards from plywood. "It's a perfect sport for an
engineer," he says. "You can build all your own gear."
Mr Wilhelm
posted instructions and pictures of his craftsmanship on his personal
web page. It soon gained a following, and readers e-mailed to ask where
they could find documentation of similar projects.
The website
evolved into Instructables, a San Francisco-based portal, and Mr
Wilhelm is its chief executive. The business employs 10 and registers
5m unique visitors a month. The site, Mr Wilhelm explains, serves as a
sort of collective repository for creative types who want to show off
their wares.
More broadly, Instructables is a symbol of the
latest evolution of a do-it-yourself culture of invention that has been
the lifeblood of California's Silicon Valley high-technology industry.
Apple, Google and Hewlett-Packard are just three global companies that
began with a couple of creative tinkerers experimenting in a garage.
The new DIY tech culture is made up of a loose-knit group of
computer geeks, arts-and-crafts fans and whimsical sculptors and is
enjoying a mainstream renaissance, thanks in part to television
programmes, magazines and festivals that celebrate the quirky culture
of making.
It
has also been enabled by the connectivity of the web, with sites such
as Instructables acting as online hubs for adherents to find each other
and exchange ideas.
"When you build something at home, you put it
on the coffee table so people who come over can see it," says Mr
Wilhelm. "We've put that coffee table on the web."
The
decentralised nature of the DIY tech culture makes it hard to value it,
and there are no estimates of how much it is worth. Yet with hundreds
of thousands of enthusiasts around the globe, it is a potentially
lucrative market for those who can tap it.
Indeed, scattered
among the creative spirits are would-be entrepreneurs who are trying to
open up the manufacturing process to encourage innovation and lower the
costs of the research and development.
The biggest annual festival for the community is the Maker
Faire, held at the San Mateo County Expo Center in the heart of Silicon
Valley. At this year's Faire, held one weekend last month, more than
65,000 people showed up to admire interactive sound sculptures,
handmade carnival rides and fountains made from Diet Coke and Mentos.
In
one aircraft-hangar-sized hall, attendees took turns building their own
alarm clocks and reliving their childhoods in a giant pen filled with
Lego. Nearby, petrolheads admired a finished version of the
all-electric Tesla Roadster and a stripped-down version of the car
exposing its battery and chassis.
Bre Pettis is the founder of
MakerBot Industries, which sells affordable 3D printers. While most 3D
printers cost anywhere between $25,000 and $250,000, (€18,000-€180,000,
£15,000-£150,000)
, Mr Pettis sells his, which can create nearly any three-dimensional
form of 4sq in or smaller, for a mere $750. Users of MakerBots simply
create or download a 3D computer file using one of several programs,
then set the machine to work. The MakerBot takes spools of
spaghetti-like plastic, heats it to 200
0C and squirts it out in the desired shape. Already the MakerBot has
been used to make missing parts for electronics and the casing for new
flashlights.
"It changes the way you live," says Mr Pettis, "from being a
mindless consumer to being a creative participant in the marketplace."
After
just two months Mr Pettis (pictured) has sold 60 printers, half of them
to clients outside the US. "We originally had the idea that we were
going to revolutionise American manufacturing, but it's global," he
says.
Indeed, in March the UK held its first Maker Faire in
Newcastle, in the UK. According to the organiser, Ian Simmons, science
communications director at the Newcastle Centre for Life, about 5,000
people attended the event. "It's really coming up in the UK," he says.
At the Maker Faire in San Mateo, Mr Pettis was set up in a
warehouse mostly occupied by the crew from TechShop, a well-appointed
community workshop founded two years ago by Jim Newton in nearby Menlo
Park. For $100 a month, tinkerers are given access to plasma cutters,
welding tools and industrial lathes. Members have created everything
from homemade electrical scooters inspired by the Segway to
remote-controlled video-conferencing robots.
Mr Newton says
TechShop is a second home for aspiring inventors in need of a
community. "They come to TechShop because they have the drive to be a
maker but they can't afford the tools themselves," he says. "You always
can find people to talk to about your project."
TechShop is also
a growing business. Mr Newton is finalising a $2.5m round of investment
in the private company, and has opened franchises in North Carolina and
in Oregon. The company declined to discuss its revenues.
The
DIY community even has its own method of commerce. While most of the
wares produced by makers never see the inside of retail stores – small
volumes make wide distribution impractical – there are ways to consume
a bit of the culture.
Etsy, an online marketplace for handmade
goods, based in New York, has become the community's Ebay. Makers and
non-makers alike can buy anything from a handmade rechargeable
light-seeking robot ($55) to a hand-carved footstool in the shape of an
elephant's foot ($280). Most often it is the maker doing the selling,
and buyers are encouraged to get to know the craftsman.
"It's a
different way of shopping," says Adam Brown of Etsy. "You meet the
people and hear the stories behind the items." Etsy is not yet
profitable but he says it is on the path to making money soon.
But
isn't there something incongruous in a profit-seeking marketplace for
specialised goods that are supposed to be the antidote to big box
shopping? Herein lies the paradox of the DIY tech ethos: much as it
would like to escape the confines of the throwaway economy, it cannot
exist too far outside consumer culture.
Mr Wilhelm of
Instructables does not see a conflict. The DIY movement, he says, "is
not anti-capitalist...It's a backlash against mass market. It's not
like everyone who does DIY is a communist."
account is but I thought that you might enjoy it."
