China’s Internetz r broken

July 28th, 2008 | Posted by PostmanE

Stroll with me down memory lane, won’t you? 10 years ago. 1998. Jay-Z was riding high off the commercial success of Hard Knock Life, which wasn’t nearly as good as Reasonable Doubt but had some bangers, too. Bill Clinton was getting his knob-slob schedule openly dissected in the halls of Congress. Matt Drudge was still considered cool. You remember.

Every time you wanted to use the internet, you had to plea with your parents to get off the phone, Mom, I’m supposed to chat with my friends about our “homework” assignment, and I can’t while you’re talking to Grandma and you said you wanted us to have the internet for educational purposes so LET ME USE IT MOM. Ah, memories.

China’s Olympic peeps remember those days — in China, that was actually just last week (ht: SbB):

Slow connection speed and apparent restricted access to news websites have riled many of the media outlets already in Beijing 12 days out from the opening ceremony. The Chinese ruling party is widely known to monitor and limit all internet access within China. However, two years ago BOCOG media services head Li Jingbo promised in the official China Daily newspaper that there would be uncensored access during the Games, which begin on August 8.

Japanese reporters said click-through connections would not work. Connections drop out frequently and several organisations, including the Australian Olympic Committee, say the speed is up to 10 times slower than in Australia. One picture takes at least two minutes to send.

On one hand, this is surprising, because not only is China trying to use the 2008 Olympics to prove its status as one of the world’s great countries, its overall broadband speed is gaining ground on the fastest countries in the world. (The U.S., as it stands, is good, but not Japan-or-Sweden great.)

Then again, a lack of internet access would be a pretty handy way to keep opinions on China, and the games, as quiet as possible. It’s pretty hard to send back photos of Democratic protesters when those photos take 56K-style speeds to get there. And porn? Forget about it. What good is the internet without porn?

ESPN launches ‘blogosphere’ just after anyone with any clue stops saying ‘blogosphere’

July 24th, 2008 | Posted by PostmanE

The long-circulated rumors that ESPN would be launching a series of bloggers — and by bloggers, they mean former newspaper beat reporters with little experience blogging — are officially true today: ESPN has launched “Our Blogosphere,” which I’m pretty sure is just today’s headline, and not the name of the community, but man would it be funny if it actually was because no one who hates cringing really even uses that term anymore.

Anyway, welcome, ESPN. I anxiously await the reportage from your controlled storm of roboto-bloggers. Leachin’ ain’t easy, son.