Microsoft in China

This is the mail I replied to my friend seeking for internship position in Microsoft in China

Hi xxx,

Thank you for visiting my web site and your interest in Microsoft internship program. I have forward your resume to our HR manager. First thing you need to know about Microsoft in China is that Microsoft has four independent organizations in China, namely, Microsoft (China) Ltd., Microsoft Global Engineering Center, Microsoft R&D Center in China, Microsoft Asia Research Center.

Microsoft (China) Ltd. is a subsidiary focusing is on sales and marketing. Just like Microsoft (Singapore) or Microsoft (Malaysia), there are positions like sales, marketing, channel manager, product manager. Typically, they do NOT offer summary internship position. Visit http://www.microsoft.com/china. It is located in Beijing and has branches in Guangzhou and Shanghai.

Microsoft R&D Center is located in Beijing focusing on localization, localized test for Chinese (both Simplified and Traditional) version of Microsoft product. It also owns Chinese specific product like PinYin IME, Chinese word breaker? There are some summary intern positions there.

Microsoft Asia Research Center is the famous research organization, formerly held by Kai Fu Lee. It is a pure research organization and has lots of summary internship opportunities. A lot of students from Tsing Hua and Peking Univ. got internship position there. It is also located in Beijing.

Microsoft Global Engineering Center (a.k.a. GTEC), the organization I am in, is mainly the support center serving Microsoft customers around the world. We support customers in Asia region, helping other Microsoft subs in other countries in Asia. We act as escalation center focusing enterprise customers. We also support customers in U.S., with a very long product line. Recently, we began to support Europe and Australia. Besides the support business, there are more and more other opportunities so many projects are going on within the organization. It is a very successful organization led by Dr. Jun Tang. There are internship program in GTEC. GTEC is located in Xu Jia Hui of Shanghai.

Knowing this, you may want to choose an organization you are interested in and send resume to the right place.

Regards

Jian Shuo Wang

Project Manager

Microsoft Global Engineering Center

P.S. This entry was previously published on Thursday, January 10, 2002

Web Construction History

Here, I would like to release a construction history log for your reference. As you can see, the site continues its growth since the first page is created back to 11/12/2001. Up to today, this site contains 377 all kinds of files, including 257 photos/pictures and 120 web pages. The total size reaches 14,541KB.

WebContructionHistory.jpg

Date source: FrontPage report Created at January 8, 2002 by Jian Shuo Wang

P.S. This entry was previously published at 2002-01-08 20:42:51

Attended Media Conference in Microsoft

The 30 medias cover almost all famous national wide or Shanghai local newspapers and television, such as CCTV, Guang Ming Daily, China Youth Daily, Beijing Youth Daily, CEO&CIO, Xin Hua News Agency, China News Service,

People’s Daily, Economic Daily, China Daily, Computer World, China Infoworld, China Business, Global Entrepreneurs, Jie Fang Daily, Wen Hui Daily, Xin Min Weekly, Xin Min Evening News, Shanghai Morning Post, Orient TV, Shanghai TV, Eastday.com and Shanghai Online.

I presented “Growing with GTEC?on my experience in Microsoft and Microsoft culture such as passion for technology, customer focused and broad opportunities.

Afterward, I was interviewed by Miss Huang Qinlei from Shanghai Broadcasting Network. The topic is about my experience in Microsoft, the training mechanism in Microsoft and employee life.

The report on China Youth Daily

For complete report, please visit web site of China Youth Daily.

http://www.cyd.com.cn/gb/rencai/2001-12/04/content_347423.htm

Hereby, I would like to correct the fact in the report.I didn’t visited tens of countries as stated in the report. The number 2000 is not the number of customers. It is the number of cases.

The report on Economy Observer

For complete report, please visit web site of Sina.

http://tech.sina.com.cn/it/m/2001-12-24/97128.shtml

Hereby, I would like to correct the fact in the report.It seems the reporter mixed the fact that I appeared only in the media conference held in Shanghai and the Beijing event. The fact is, I didn’t go to Beijing with Jun at that time.

Report on China Central Television Channel 4

P.S. This entry was previously published at 2001-11-30 20:35:04

5 Easy Ways to Find Out This Site

Sometime to find a long lost friend is not easy. You don’t have his phone number

and you forget his email. Maybie it is the situation when you want to contact me

after several months or years. To prevent this from happening, I am trying to list my

name on many directories as possible (both on the web and using traditional

ways) so you can reach me wherever you are and whenever you want. Now what I

need to do is to tell you who to ask if you lost my contact information one day.

New! A new method to access added

Directly type "Jian Shuo Wang" or "Jian

Shuo" or "wangjianshuo" in IE

toolbar. You will find my name listed #1 in as result.

screen-msn.search-jianshuowang.jpg

1. Dial 114 and ask for phone number of Jian Shuo Wang

I have asked the Shanghai Telecom to list my home phone in the 114 directory.

The most convenient way to locate me is to dial 114 (021-114 if you are not in

Shanghai) and ask for the phone number of me. By the way, if you want to list

yours, dial 1000 for residents in Shanghai.

2. Search for in

http://cn.yahoo.com

You will get tens of result from Yahoo!. Pick up the one which leads you to

my homepage at http://www.wangjianshuo.com

and you will find my contact information at [Contact Information] section.

3. Search for Jian Shuo Wang or

Wang Jian Shuo in any search engine

At least it works on google.com, yahoo.com…, more and more search engines

are listing this web site now.

4. The most easy way, remember this web site

http://www.wangjianshuo.com

You will find all the information you need about me on this web site. It is

updated frequently.

5. Contact my friends and ask.

I don’t concern too much about my privacy. You can easily get my contact

information from my friends if you remember any of their names. If any one asks

for my mobile number or email address, just feel free to tell him/her.

What if I forgot your name? I only remember I once hit an interesting

personal web site?

It is usual that you visit a web site, feel it interesting, want to go back

and …. you don’t remember the URL or the name. There is no keyword to search

in Yahoo!, there is no hints so that you can ask others? What can you do?

Check the History of your browser. Press Ctrl+H in your browser to call the

history pane if you are using Internet Explorer. Take a look at the items in

history list one by one, carefully. If you are lucky, you can find it.

P.S. This post was previously published on Tuesday, January 01, 2002

Business Travel to Changsha

December 01, 2001. Chang Sha

Starting from December 03, I will travel to Chang Sha to deliver training. This is my first time to Chang Sha, also the first time to Hu Nan province. I will leave Shanghai by flight MU5301 at 15:30 and return to Shanghai by flight CZ3867 at 12:40 on December 05, 2001.

I will post more pictures about Chang Sha when I am back.

December 02, 2001 Chang Sha

I arrived in Chang Sha and was hosted in Huang Tian Hotel.

On plane. I was at

22A, a window seat. It is the emergency exit.

Wow. What

a cool digital camera. I just hold it, pointing to me and took a photo like

this. I mean the bird eye is really bird eye.

Wow. What a cool digital camera. I just hold it, pointing to me and took a photo like this. I mean the bird eye is really bird eye.

P.S. This post was previously published at 2001-12-02 18:04:34

I am on My Trip to Daocheng, the lost Shangrila

Note: This weblog will be paused from Sept 29 to Oct 6.

I will be away from the Internetized world for the next 8 days. From 6:00 AM tomorrow, I will be on my way to Daocheng, the lost Shangrila in China.

The small town is at the west part of Sichuan. The scene is exteremely beautiful. I am taking my cameras with me so I can share my photos with you when I come back. It will take me more than one day to get there by bus. Some areas can only be reached by horses. I may not be able to access computer or Internet there — actually, the mobile phone does not work in most areas and some of the towns I am going to tour are not covered by the electronic power network.

Sorry for the pause, but I will defintely share the best pictures you have ever seen with you as soon as I am back after Oct 6.

Hotels in Chengdu

This is my forth day in Chengdu, the capital of the south-west province of China.

I am very supprised by the poor service quality of a four-star hotel here (Xi Yu Business Hotel). It seems all the people here are very nice, very happy to help, but, there is no process and some of them are not professional. The operators yelling at me on the phone, the laundry fee must be paid in cash, no tea or orange juice for breakfast, and no equipment is completely work…

Based on this experience and those in Wuhan, I believe it is the time for me to set the right expectation for a four star hotel. Five star means perfection or near perfection – the expection is unlimited, but for any non-five-star hotel, the expectation should be set correctly to avoid depress.

BTW, Chengdu Sheraton is very good. It has a grant lobby and the elevator and rooms are very nice. It will be definitely a good choice to stay.

My Site Remains Illegal in China

Notice: You are reading an illegal site in China.

Today, I received an email from Hichina Corp. (Chinese site). I am their client for domain names. They reminded me that I report and register for my web site – yes, for my personal web site.

China State Concil Order 292

The order (unofficial English translation) came into effort two years ago, namely, Oct 1, 2000. (via the explaination of Paul McKenzie in his article China’s State Council Issues New Rules Governing “Internet Information Services”)

Article 3. There are two types of Internet information services, namely business-oriented and non-business oriented services.

Business-oriented Internet information services refer to service activities such as the provision of information or Web page creation for online users via the Internet for compensation.

Non-business oriented Internet information services refer to the service activities of providing public and shared information to online users via the Internet without compensation.

My site belongs to the category of nonbusiness oriented site. In the regulations issued by Shanghai government, it is explicitly expressed that all personal web site, as long as it has a dedicated domain name, is required to carry out filing procedures.

Article 8. All those who engage in non-business oriented Internet information services shall carry out filing procedures at the telecommunications administration authority at the level of the province, autonomous region or municipality directly under the central government or at the authority in charge of information industry under the State Council. When carrying out filing procedures, the following materials shall be submitted:

(1) basic particulars concerning the sponsoring unit and the person responsible for the Web site;

(2) address of the Web site and its services;

(3) where services fall within the scope set forth in Article 5 hereof, the approval documents already obtained from the relevant competent authorities.

As I understand, it is my responsibility to file my site since my site operates in China.

Article 4: No one may engage in Internet information services without obtaining a license or completing filing procedures.

Article 19: If any person engages in non-business oriented Internet information services without completing the filing procedures or provides services exceeding the filed scope of services in violation of these Measures, the telecommunications administrative authority at the level of the province, autonomous region or municipality directly under the central government shall order correction within a prescribed time limit. In the event of a refusal to correct, the Web site shall be ordered to close.

Sure. I need to file my web site, as stated by the Order 292. I decided.

With whom I need to register? A question not easy to answer

The first problem is to locate the government authorities who accept the application. I asked Shanghai Informaiton Administration, and Shanghai telecom, and any telephone I believe is right. After about about ten calls, I finally figured out I need to send filing application to Shanghai Communication Adminstration (Chinese site). I begin to wonder, why it is so difficult to follow the Order.

Unrealistic requirements

On the web site (Chinese site), I found it is almost impossible for me or anyone who like me to meet the requirements to file. The Order issued by Shanghai Communication Administration (SHCA) requires:

  1. All web sites, including personal web sites, as long as it has an independent domain name, are required to file. Actually, it is impossible. The domain names registered is boosting. If I understand it correctly, every domain name owner need to go to SHCA to register for the domain name again in SHCA again, which is a exteremely large number. I don’t know the exact number, but I believe it is far beyond the processing ability of the Administration. It is even more sure if you know the process for filing – it is all done manually now.
  2. An annual review of the license is required for each site. The time ranges is Dec to Jan of next year. I am afraid the annual review itself will be a big problem if all domain name owners rush the administation in the two month window.
  3. The application should be sent to SHCA 60 days before the launch of the web site. I garentee no one will wait for two months just for this license and postpone the launch of a personal web site.
  4. Detailed information for at least two persons responsible for the BBS is required. Really hard for me. According to the definition, the comment system included in MovableType is also type of BBS. It requires to person who administrating it. I have to write down my name and my GF’s name in this column.
  5. A dedicated Information Security Specialist is required for any one who provide information service on Internet. An Information Security Specialist must hold a certificate named “Computer Information Network Security Specialist Training Graduation Certificate” issued by Shanghai Policy. I never heard of the certificate and don’t want to hire any body for my personal web site, but I am obviously not a “dedicated” Security Specialist. Again, is it possible for any company in Shanghai who has a web site to attend a single training? I believe it is only joking, not a very serious requirement.
  6. All web site need to post a logo at the right-bottom corner of your web site. This one is very reasonable. If you want to see the logo, you can check http://cn.yahoo.com. Yahoo! China is always a very good citizen in China. I found it always stand up and follow any regulation from the government recently. Just when Google is banned, Yahoo! switched to Baidu.com.
  7. Any organization or person who has aquired a license SHALL NOT link to any site without the license. It is another intersting requirement. It seems our good citizen Yahoo! will have trouble, since I don’t think all the site listed in its directory has a license.
  8. No web site will pass the annual review when: 1. it is infected by virus for many times with bad results, or 2. it is hacked for many times, 6. it links to any ICP without an ICP license. It seems no web site in the world can pass the annual review unless it has only one required logo.

After carefully reviewed the regulation, I found myself hopeless to get a license. Later, I decide to have a try, even though my site didn’t meet any of the requirements.

The final call – no money, no registration

When I call SHCA to ask for procedures to get a license, the operator told me to download the Word documents from their web site first. It is very cool the government is going electronic. Good job.

Later, she told me that I need to mail it to SHCA. Fax, email or another other method is not accepted. OK. I will send it out. I decided.

Then, the girl continues: “We will inform you to come to SHCA to hand in the money”.

Money? What money? Do I need to spend money on that? The answer is simple, it is free to registeration, but 500 RMB (60 USD) is required to publish a notice on newspapers. No monay, no registration.

Now it seems I am totally hopeless to get a license. I don’t want to pay the money, it is more expensive than my domain name + my hosting + ……

Most Importantly, Is the License that Imporant?

The Order 292 came into effect on Oct 1, 2000. It claimed that only 60 days time window is given before any unofficial web site is forced to stop operation. After 60 days, nothing happened.

On Nov 25, 2002, SHCA issued an order with strong voice: all sites without the license will be disconnected after Jan 31, 2001. ISP MUSTNOT provide service to these web site. Nothing happened.

On May 22, 2002, SHCA issued a third order that all site who has no ICP license should be shutdown by SHCA before June 10, 2002. After that deadline, nothing happened.

Actaully, I am very confused when I am facing this embarrasing situation. I am reviewing an Order that is impossible for me to follow. I guess 99% of personal web site cannot reach the requirements and not all business-oriented site can reach it. The order has some problem in itself.

To be or not to be, it is a question

Pardon me if I am too serious on the regulations. I am analysising it in a very interesting manner. If I did take the regulations seriously, I may have three choices:

1. Shutdown the web site immediately.

– or –

2. Do not use a domain. Register a free space without a domain name. The regulations say, such personal web sites don’t need to file.

– or –

3. Follow the requlations. Here are the steps to do it.

  • Shutdown the site for 60 days
  • Hire a dedicated “Information Security Specialist”
  • Send him to the training
  • Pay for the training so he can get the certiciate (or I quit my job to be a dedicated Security Specialist for my site)
  • Hire two more person who will be responsibile to monitor the comments posted and delete anything the law or the order does not permit. – I have only 1 comments every two or three days.
  • Filling out the form and send it to SHCA.
  • Hand in 500 RMB and wait my site appears in the long list of web site on major newspapers.
  • Get the license, if everything goes smoothly.
  • Remove my link to any page out side China – they don’t have an ICP license yet.
  • Remove my link to all my friends in China. I don’t remember they have a license yet.

After that, my site is legal, it will not have the risk to be shutdown “immediately”. After that, I am already mad.

Home.wangjianshuo.com Moved Out of my Home

This is the quickest decision I have ever made in my life – apply a hosting service for my blog home.wangjianshuo.com.

Why so urgent

My site has been down for more than 24 hours. It is not acceptable for my site. Although it is a personal web site without any sponsor, I am still want to keep it as stable as possible. But 24 hours downtime has made the avaiablility of the site to be less than 99.7%. The commercial web site is targeting to 99.99% availability. I need to fix it, as soon as possible.

CompanyCN.com is a good company

Thanks for Google (Chinese site), I found CompanyCN.com in the first page of the result.

I’d like to especially thank Miss Cao who helped me a lot during the setup of the web site in 24 hours – from sending the cash to the company, to setting the domain name system, and to configuring the Perl with the required modules by Movable Type.

The price is pretty good, 380 RMB (45 USD) for one year’s hosting for Perl, ASP and PHP. It is fine for me since it is still cheap after I compared the price between hosting it in ISP and in home.

Netcraft.net provides a very good report on the history hosting of this web site. From the report, you can monitor the hosting change:

Web Server and Hosting History for home.wangjianshuo.com

OS Server Last changed IP address Netblock Owner

Windows 2000 Microsoft-IIS/5.0 26-Sep-2002 202.101.10.123 Shanghai Telecom Co. Qingpu Telecom Breaure

Windows XP Microsoft-IIS/5.1 19-Sep-2002 211.161.107.18 FOR GWBN SHANGHAI # 145 RESIDENTIAL COMMUNITY BROADBAND NETWORK USERS’ BROADBAND ACCESS

Server Outage – My Home is Still Not a Perfect Datacenter

My dear readers,

You may not be access this web site from Sept 24 to Sept 26. This is due to the network outage at my home. The 48 hours is very hard for me. I made a somewhat stupid decision to host home.wangjianshuo.com at my home. Actually, I have spent a lot of time checking the availability of the site, worrying about whether it is down, or is there any problem with the network. Hosting a web server in my house is really problematic and expensive. Here is why:

  1. The electronic power. The need to keep the computer up and running every day and every minute. The power fee is no cheaper than the renting fee. To rent a pretty good server with ActivePerl, ASP and PHP support, it is only 380 RMB ($45) per year. That is about 1 RMB per day – I am paying more than 1 RMB for the power for my computer everyday – if you know my computer does not support hibernate. Thanks for CompanyCN.com to provide this service for me. I am especially grateful for Miss Cao’s great help during the setup.
  2. The network. The network provided by Great Wall Broadband is good, it also has some problem. Recently, with the government strengthen the control over networks, it uses a new authentication method. It required end user to type in account name and password before accessing the network. Sometimes this will drop. If the network connection is dropped, there is no way to remotely resume the connection unless I am physically at the computer to do so. This is the reason why my site is down for 48 hours. It happened before, but this time, I am on business trip to Chengdu and cannot reset it.

P.S. This log is attached at the day of Sept 26, but it is written on Sept 24, since the computer may be down, but my writing won’t.

Net Send – Yet Another Type of Spam

SPAM IS A BIG HEADACHE FOR EVERY ONE ON THE NET.

“The activities of a small number of people are becoming a bigger problem for the Internet.” via Fight Spam on the Internet

Recently, I found another form of spam, which is becoming more and more popular: NET SEND SPAM.

What is NET SEND SPAM?

It works this way: on any networked Windows computer, anyone can type the following command in command line window:

NET SEND 127.0.0.1 Hello

A message box will appear with the greeting word “Hello”. Looks interesting, isn’t it? However, if you change the IP address to any other valid IP address and change Hello to your advertisement, the IP address owner will receive it. Moreover, a simple script can send the same message to thousands of IP addresses, or millions of, if the sender wants.

Still sounds interesting? Not at all! I don’t want this to inspire anyone to do it. Never do it and never give it a try. I am the angry person here who is fighting back with this kind of spam – NET SEND SPAM.

Net send spam under spotlight

Now Mr. Yan, who owns http://bestyan.vip.sina.com has come on board of the Net Send Spammers. Every two or three days, this guy will send Windows message to my networked computer in my home. I may be working or reading news or composing a weblog – no matter what I am doing – chances are, a gray dialog box pops up and says:

Message from ZMZ to 211.161.107.*** on 2002-9-22 23:28:40

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX http://bestyan.vip.sina.com XXXXXXXX

(Note: XXXXX is garbage characters that I cannot read on my computer)

It is annoying. It made me angry after I received six of such messages. I am almost mad after I receive more than ten of such messages. However, Mr. Yan seems to be a very good evangelist for his web site and does not care too much about my feelings. Later, I found he does not care about the feels of thousands of people. Keep reading to know how many people were affected…

Finally, after six invitations, I decided to visit this web site.

Visit the site

It is a normal personal web page. The owner seems to be fond of poems. It lets me feel not THAT bad since it is not a commercial site.

This guy has a guestbook too. I checked it, and found there are some one already yelling there for the spam they received. Some people said:

Please stop prompting your site using this kind of spam message

Some said:

I am in Korea. I cannot read the characters you sent to me, but I can see the web site address. I am feeling angry since you sent this message to me

I also posted a long message (half screen long? Maybe) to describe the feeling when I receive this message and asked him not to do that. In my post, I also quoted Mark Bernstein‘s suggestions on bloggers:

Though you write with passion about things that matter greatly, always remember that it’s a big world, filled with people and stories. Don’t expect the world to stop and listen

It worked. Within five minutes, my post was deleted from the guestbook, along with other negative posts.

To be honest, I was really shocked when I see people doing this:creating a web site; send messages to thousands of people, millions of, maybe; force them to read; DELETE posts on his personal guestbook when he doesn’t like.

I posted for the second time. This time, I added a note:

This message is deleted by our honored web owner, just as others who protests for his spam. I believe this message will be deleted again, just want those who saw this to know what happened.

What I expected is true. It is deleted within six hours.

Now, on bestyan’s guest book, there are still 21 entries. I found the webmaster will delete anything negitive and leave those compliments. It is bad. Really bad.

I know I can stop any message like this by stop the Messenger service in my computer. But I’d like to be involved in further spam and see how it evolves and how bad it will be.

Would you suggest what we can do to fight against NET SEND SPAM? Write your comments here.

Update

Packing for Chengdu

We are packing for next week’s Software Development Management Training in Cheng Du, where I will deliver three training sessions during the five day training. They are Microsoft Product Cycle Model Overview, Development Process and Tools in Microsoft, and Software Usability. The training will start from Sept 23 to Sept 28.

Foreign Companies in Shanghai

Tonight, I enjoyed the ice cream mooncakes from Haagen-Dazs. The Belgian chocolate flavor ice cream is really nice, as described on its web site: “When the first spoonful melts in your mouth the moment is pure pleasure”.

Haagen-Dazs changed its products a lot to meet Chinese styles and festivals. It seems Haagen-Dazs did great job in penertrate into the mooncake market of Shanghai. As I know, more than 10,000 joint-venture company employees received Haagen-Dazs mooncake certificates from efesco. This is also the third year I receive the Haagen-Dazs mooncake certificate. It must be one of the big deals of this

It is not long since Haagen-Dazs appeared in Shanghai. I still remember I attended the opening ceremony of Haagen-Dazs in Shanghai Center six years ago. Now, it has opened about four stores in Shanghai (based on the stores I know). There are two Haagen-Dazs stores near the building I am working in. One more store is under construction near my old apartmnt. It also expanded its coverage to Beijing, Dalian, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, according to China Online’s report.

I have chatted with Bill Lum about another European company IKEA. I told him the store is very profitable in Shanghai and Beijing.

“If there is a holiday or a promotion, there are sometimes as many as 10,000 people here, so many you can’t move”

said Linda Shi, PR manager of IKEA Shanghai Store

Source: siamfuture.com

It is very true. When the store opens in 1997, I have visited the store and only few people are there. The price in the store is considered very high. Now, every Saturday, there are so many people that “you cannot move”. It is more like a supermarket of furnitures.

They are going to the second store in Shanghai. With 35,000 square meters’ store area, the new store will be the largest IKEA store in Asia. I was very supprised when Bill told me IKEA opened a store in San Francisco only one year before.

Update March 30, 2003

New IKEA store will open on April 16, 2003 in Shanghai… FULL STORY

Mid-Autumn Festival Comes

Tomorrow is the traditional holiday in China, known as Mid-Autumn Festival. I’d like to send my best wishes to my dearest GF, my families my friends, my old classmates, my colleagues, and all visitors of this site.

Mid-Autumn is an occasion for families reunion. Families get together to eat moon cake. However, I am 1000+ km away from my parents in Luoyang, and 12,000+ km away from my brother in Toronto. I regret that I didn’t send the moon cake to them earlier so that they can get it on the Mid-Autumn Festival night. Fortunately, I will enjoy the holiday tomorrow with my GF. It is also sweet.

From Pu Dong Airport to People’s Park

Today, I got a question from my reader:

Are there any reasonably priced shuttle services to get me from Shanghai Pudong airport to my hotel near Peoples Park?

It must be a very frequently asked question. Unfortunately, it is not easy to get an answer — I checked on the web but couldn’t find any useful resource before I gave up after five minutes.

Here is my suggestion:

The most convienit and cheap way to get from Pu Dong Airport to anywhere in the dowtown is to go by the Airport Bus. There are five lines connecting Pu Dong and downtown Shanghai.

# From To Price (RMB) /Estm. USD

1

Pu Dong Airport

Hong Qiao Airport

22 RMB / 2.65 USD

2

Pu Dong Airport

Shanghai Exihition Center (Near Ritz Carlton or People’s Square)

19 RMB

/ 2.28 USD

3

Pu Dong Airport

Zun Yi Road

20 RMB / 2.40 USD

4

Pu Dong Airport

East Jiang Wan Rd.

18 RMB

/ 2.16 USD

5

Pu Dong Airport

Shanghai Railway Station

18 RMB /

2.16 USD

Source: etang.com

The service time is 6:00~19:00 for downtown or 8:00~21:00 for Pu Dong Airport. For more information, you can call +86-21-38484500.

Hope this is useful for you if you travel to Shanghai.

See also:

Updated: Questions and Answers

Felicia from Singapore asked

What is operation hours & days that the bus from Pudong Airport to Shanghai Exhibition Center (Route #2) and vice versa operate?

A: It operates seven days a week. The first bus will leave Shanghai Exhition Center at 6:00 AM and returns at 8:00 AM from Pudong Airport. The last bus will leave Shanghai Exhibition center at 19:00 and returns from Pudong at 21:00

Is there fix timing for the buses daily eg departure every hour or half hour?

There is no fixed schedule for the bus. There is a fixed interval of 15 to 20 minutes. For busy hours, it is scheduled with 15 minutes interval and the interval is 20 minutes normally. There is no definition of busy hours or normal hours. Mabe it depends on the mood of the operator. :-)

How do I go about getting bus tickets from Shanghai Exhibition Center to Pudong Airport?

You can buy tickets after get onboard the bus. You don’t need a ticket to get onboard.

However, it is a little bit wired to find the bus stop. It is at the gate of Shanghai Exhibition Center on Nanjing Xi Rd. (or someone call it Nanjing Rd. West), opposite to Shanghai Center (Shanghai Center is also know for the Portman Riz-Carton Hotel inside). Please check your hotel receiption for detailed walking direction – there is no bus stop there though.

Real-Time Stream Broadcasting Cookbook

9:50 PM

As I promised before, I will share with the steps to set up a webcam to broadcast real time video with Windows Media Encoder in this article.

Before I begin, please visit my webcam page to experience what you are going to create. (It will open a new window.)

Overview

There are two part of this article. The first part is the client side configuration. Please make you check you can view the content of my webcam from your Windows client. A simple troubleshooting guide is included.

The second part is the server side configuration. I will guide you to setup the hardware and software on the server side, so you can broadcast what your webcam captures to the whole world.

Client side platform supported

Your experience will depend on the operating system you are using.

  • Windows XP. You should not encounter with any problem if you are using Windows XP, since it includes Windows Media Player Windows Media Player 8.0.
  • Windows 2000. If you are using Windows 2000, which includes Windows Media 7.1, you will be prompted to install Windows Media 8.0 codec. Choose Yes if you want to continue to view.
  • Windows 98, Windows 95 I haven’t tried yet, but it should be more complex to get it work. It includes Windows Media Player 6.4 by default.
  • Mac. If you cannot view it, try download Windows Media Player for Mac OS X. To be honest, I haven’t tried to view my broadcasting on a Mac computer now.
  • Solaris Download Windows Media Player 6.3 for Solaris. I was working of Solaris when I was in Tele cooperation Lab when I was a senior in SJTU. But I believe not so many people is using Solaris now, especially for viewing online media.
  • Other OS. I don’t know how to view it. :-(

Bandwidth required

I am using broadband in my home. You should also use a high speed connection. I have tested it from different locations around China. It works very good for both broadband connection or T1. My friend Bill Lum also told me that he can view the video smoothly in San Francisco. For modem dial-up, maybe you can only see black window, with “buffering” always there on status bar. Try a faster connection.

Troubleshooting when connecting

Check the status bar of the Windows Media Player. The correct status bar sequence should be

  • Connecting…
  • Connecting to Media…
  • Buffering: xx% complete…
  • Buffering: 100% complete…
  • Playing

If you see Ready in status bar but the video does not come out, it means there is a connection problem, or the Windows Media Encoder is not running on my server side.

If you can only see stable Buffering, it must be a speed problem.

Hurry, tell me how you made it

Well. After addressing the client side requirements and troubleshooting steps, let’s take a look at the server side.

Hardware

A normal computer that can run Windows XP is fine. Mine is a Intel Celeron 440, 256M Memory. Pretty low configured, isn’t it?

OS

I am using Windows XP. Windows 2000 will also do.

Webcam

Any webcam should be fine. I am using Samsung Anycam. The only annoying thing I met was, Windows does not natively support it, so I need to download driver separately for it.

Media Server

Broadcasting from home does not need a Windows Media Server, the only software you need is Windows Media Encoder. It is FREE. You can download the latest version from Microsoft web site.

Install the Windows Media Encoder

Download Windows Media Encoder (9 MB) first. Installation the Windows Media 9 Series is as easy as installing any other Microsoft product, even easier. Click Next forth and click the Finish button will do the work. The only additional step you need to go is choosing “I agree” at the End User License Agreement page.

Configure Windows Media Encoder

Follow the New Session Wizard. It should be very easy step, since more of the questions are easy to understand. Here are some tips:

  • Select “Broadcast a live event…” since you are not broadcasting a piece of video you have recorded.
  • Select the camera in Video source.
  • You can select your Audio source too, but don’t expect the sound effect is good. You can use a .WAV file as background music.
  • HTTP port. Just leave it as it was — 8080. Change it if you have to.
  • Always select Pull instead of Push, since you don’t have Windows Media Server.
  • For profile selection, you can try different profile that meet your needs. The common rule is, the higher the resolution is, the more bandwidth it requires. I am using 320×240 in size, 15 fps, and on 100 kbps.
  • Think carefully when entering Title and Author, it will be displayed on the viewer’s media player.
  • Finally, do NOT select save the video to file unless the video is really important or you have enough disk space.

After everything is done, click “Start Encoding”. Congratulations. The server part is done.

How about the client then?

To test, you can open Windows Media Player, click Open URL… on the File menu. In the “Open URL…” dialog box, enter your media source like this,

http://home.wangjianshuo.com:8080

(It is valid source and you can try to open it)

Substitute the source with your server name and the port you chose.

If you can see the video, you can go ahead to create a web page so others can directly view it on a web page as I did.

You can copy the source code of my page into your page. You are free to do so and you don’t need to link back since I got the source code from MSDN sample.

Congratulations

If you have successfully setup your own Windows Media server and can broadcast to the Internet, I will congratulate you on the achievement. I will feel very happy for the 1.5 hour I have spent on this article. My only requirement for you is to write a comment under this article and share the URL of your online broadcasting station with my readers.

“Oops. It does not work as you said”

It may also be common. Write a comment under this article so all the community members, including me, can help you on that.

Happy broadcasting!

Updated

  • I am happy that Joe setup his cam using steps listed in this article. Thanks for linking back. See his cam Nov 24, 2002

My Blogger Code

I came across a very interesting site yesterday by reference of andersja’s blog. There is a page named Freedom to Reproduce Content?, I found another blog with 72 comments. Wow. It is a very popluar web site. Finally, I found it is the web site for the famous weblog book – “Web Blog: Publishing Online with Weblogs“.

In chapter 3, the author mentioned Blogger Code. It is interesting that someone over there are developing different strange tools and codes to claify bloggers. It is very cool and interesting.

Here is my blogger code

B1 d++ t+ k s+ u– f+ i- o+ x– e+ l c

You can use this decoder to decode it.

P.S. My Blog on broadband in Shanghai was mentioned on Rice Cooker today. Thanks.

I was a Called Copier Today

Today, I was shocked when I found my name appreared on my favorite weblog andersja’s blog. It is even more astonishing when I found my name was related to something negative – copier.

“I like writing articles and other content for my weblog, and I like tinkering with design – visually and technically. Now, wangjianshuo has copied my CSS stylesheet and also other MT config elements very closely, and I’m not entirely sure if I’m comfortable with it.

Other people occationally nab links without linking back… not exactly weblog etiquette, but something we’ll have to live with…?”

andersja wrote.

I have to say, it is my fault not to be careful enough to link back to the site I copied from or inspired by for all instances. However, I did link back in some blogs.

I have changed my site after I saw andersja’s post. For some of my readers of page was directed by the post, I still keep a copy of my original page, so you know what andersja said is true.

I wrote a comment to clarify the whole thing. This is the comment I posted with a little bit change to add hyperlink to words instead of leaving the unclickable URLs.

Hi andersja,

This is Jian Shuo Wang, the “copier?you mentioned in your blog.

== Firstly, I apologize ==

First of all, I have to admit that I have used your CSS completely and I added category link function as you did on your site. I sincerely apologize for it since it has made your feel uncomfortable.

== But the true is, I did link back ==

You may misunderstand me on linking-back. The truth is, I did link back.

On my first blog at MovableType Successfully Installed on Windows XP, at the end, in the Acknowledge section, I wrote:

“I also want to thank andersja, the owner of anderrsja’s blog. His site on weblog are very well done. I learnt a lot on categories and the pertential usage of MovableType from his site.”

Certainly I swear I did it on the day of Sept 11 instead of adding it after you got angry. Geo, my friend at http://russianlegs.com can also confirm it, since he also commented after my blog.

In the acknowledgement part, I mentioned the categories function on your web site. It inspired me a lot and I decided to make my own category links. I finally completed the function on the day before yesterday with the help with MovableType document.

I noticed you may have read this article since you wrote comment for this blog on the same day — Sept 11, 2002 09:48 PM:

“Thanks for your feedback and congratulations with getting Movable Type running on XP – very cool (I haven’t seen it done before :-)

Happy blogging!

Posted by: andersja on September 11, 2002 09:48 PM?

Maybe you didn’t notice I linked you back on my first blog.

== More evidence that I did link back ==

On my forth blog, I started my paragraph with

“Inspired by andersja’s Optimizing Movable Type (part 3) – get more readers , I sent my blog site to DMOZ.org.”

Posted by Jian Shuo Wang at September 14, 2002 09:31 PM | Categories: MovableType

As you can see, as a beginer of blogging (only 6 logs so far), I have read carefully on many of your articles on your site and was trying to follow your steps to setup a blog. This includes registering my blog on DMOZ.org. But after I did, I wrote in my blog to thank andersj for the great inspiration you gave me.

I wrote six blogs so far and two of them mentioned that I am inspired by your site. I didn’t put you on a seperate link for your site on the right pane of my first page. The only reason is, I am running this blog for less than one week and there is too much things for me to improve. I am going to do so now.

== The facts ==

I have commented on your page on and received your quick reply. This is very helpful for me. Although I have been web developer for many years, it is the first time I setup blog and the first time to play with Perl and MT stuff (as I mentioned at the beginning of my first blog. I worked very hard to get some idea from other great site like yours. I was using MT’s default CSS template. I just wanted to change the font to Verdana instead of the odd font. At that time, I copied your CSS and made very little modification and used it in my site.

== Anyway, I apologize ==

Again, I admit I did it. I should have mentioned somewhere on my blog, but I haven’t yet. That is “not exactly weblog etiquette”. I will go back to change it to the default one immediately if this made you uncomfortable.

Please be assured that I am not “fighting back” in this comment. I am still grateful for everything you did on your site, including sharing your setup experience of MT and your tips to optimizing MT. They inspired me a lot. That is the source of my first blog “MovableType Successfully Installed on Windows XP” and later, “Webcam Set Up, Broadcasting Shanghai”. I will also continue to share how I created the site and how to make things work as you did. I agree with you weblog etiquette is very important and I am always trying my best to follow. Sometimes I may make mistakes and I will be fully responsible for that.

Please do not hesitate to let me know if any of my content or behavior makes you think I do not respect other people on the net. I’d like to hear and like to improve.

Best wishes

Jian Shuo Wang

The Copier

As always, Anders replied very soon after I posted my comment. I agree with him on this reply:

To copy from one = plagiarism

To copy from many = inspiration! ;-)

I continued to send email to him and explain the whole story. It seems the mistake has been recovered and the issue has been settled.

More on credibility

Anders is a very kind guy who wrote this only to encourage innovation instead of plagiarism. This reminded me to check throughout my site to ensure I “properly give credit where credit is due“. It is essential to build up the credibility of the site I own.

I was refered to this page by andersja’s page. After that, I found Spartaneity Project is a very good source for credibility.

Result of the review

After carefully reviewing the content of my site, I found I did something good and something bad.

  • I kept the POWERED BY MOVABLE TYPE 2.21 logo which gave credit for MovableType. They did wonderful job on authoring this tool.
  • I missed links-back on my homepage. I added link back under a special section called “Credits” on my homepage for andersja’s blog and Geo’s www.russianlegs.com. Geo’s site is the first one which let me be aware of the personal publishing form called “weblog” and andersja inspired me a lot on feature-related or technical aspect.
  • It seems I have tried my best to keep giving credit. I gave credit to Billy Qiu when quoting his words – I also asked him to review the page during the course of my publishing.
  • I linked to the source of the news in my blog on Korea’s broadband development and other sources.

To be honest, I didn’t realize it is so important to add link to sources before this accident. I used it to make it easy to verify accuracy of the information of my site. Now it means something more important to me – to show respect to others by giving others credit. This is the most easy and powerful way to build up my own credit.

Webcam Set Up, Broadcasting Shanghai

I have setup a webcam, broadcasting the street scene from my window in Shanghai.

Click here to view.

How I made it

[coming soon]

Update: The steps are available here.

I am going to improve the camera so that it can be viewed by many people. Now, as far as I know, it should work fine on Windows XP. It may also work on Windows 2000 with Windows Media 7.0 or higher. I cannot garentee you can see it if you are using older version of Windows. Please let me know if you can view online broadcasting or not. Simple click the comments link below. Tell me, “I can see the cars and people moving on the street. My system is … ” or “I can see nothing, except the blank Windows Media Player and Ready on the status bar. My system is …” Thanks.