August 28, 2007
Recently I've been trying to find examples of good modern Chinese music. It's been a hard search. Most Chinese music appears to be made entirely for the karaoke market. The reason for this is probably one of simple economies - the karaoke market in China is huge. Almost everyone takes part in it, both men and women, young and old. Karaoke centres are vast buildings with hundreds of private rooms where people go to sing on all manner of occasions - with friends, lovers, even on business.
TV is also full of karaoke-style shows. At any moment of the day it is likely that somewhere there is a TV station in China broadcasting amateur singing. It's taken very seriously, with big competitions and major prizes. Often a popular karaoke singer will go on to start a successful pop career. It even goes deep inside the state with CCTV7 broadcasting the unintentionally funny army karaoke show (or at least, that's my interpretation of it).
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August 27, 2007
This is a biggie so I'll try and not write too much. HeadSpace is now running at version 3.2 and has had a thorough overhaul and feature boost that is designed to push it past other meta-data plugins. This includes:
- Modularization - everything is now a module and can be enabled or disabled and re-ordered. You can decide exactly what meta-data you are interested in and how it should look
- Site modules that affect the whole site and add Google Analytics, Mint, StatCounter, Crazy Egg, and more
- Much better tagging, with a smart auto-suggestion that matches similar words
- New modules for custom 'more tags' and no-index capability
- Mass-editing mode that allows you to edit all your meta-data from one page
- Importers - now you can easily import data from other meta-data plugins directly into HeadSpace. This includes UTW, SEO Title Tags, and All-in-one SEO
Phew!
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August 22, 2007
I'll admit a certain liking towards end-of-the-world movies. For me there's something irresistible in seeing what happens when everything goes wrong and Bruce Willis doesn't manage to save the day. It was with delight that I watched 28 Days Later, a 2002 movie by Danny Boyle and Alex Garland about a horrible blood-spitting disease that strikes Britain. Maybe it was the bleak London vistas, maybe it was the unrelenting music and in-your-face video, or maybe it was just the fact that it was a great budget movie that packed a big punch.
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August 14, 2007
It would be easy to assume that everyone on the internet speaks English. The majority of software is produced in English simply for the reason that doing so gives it a larger potential audience (or, maybe more appropriately, gives it access into the American market). However, you shouldn't assume this means everyone reads and writes English at the same level, or that non-native speakers wouldn't want software in their own language. There is a world of speakers outside of English and now is the time to tap into them.
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August 9, 2007
This guide is another in the Inside WordPress series and attempts to show how to produce a translation for an already-prepared theme, plugin, or WordPress itself. Even if you have little PHP or HTML skills you can still contribute to making WordPress a truly international experience by providing localizations for existing themes and plugins.
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