Without stealing Apple’s hard needed thunder, we’d like to point out that a Chinese hardware manufacturer made an iPad clone three months ago.

In what may be the first case of a manufacturer trying to clone a product that doesn’t even exist yet, China company Shenzhen Dragon Brother Industrial has introduced their own ‘P88′ “Apple Style” tablet last October. Now that the product is realeased, we see that the product resembles the real deal in a lot of ways.

• P88 doesn’t sound cool, neither does iPad
• It actually comes with three USB ports, so no clunking around with docks
• It supports multitasking
• It’s cheaper
• 160GB disk drive instead of a max 64GB disk
• With a little bit of hacking, it might even be able to run OSX or Android

The specs side by side

Who am I kidding, I’m probably going to buy an iPad as well, the iPad has 10 hour battery life, Apple’s UI is slick and Apple has and extensive app store. But it’s interesting to see that SDBI developed the product before Apple did, probably inspired by mockups floating around on the web. If they get better in this game, user generated designs might be the new thing, and 2010 might be a tipping point for Apple’s almighty throne. Via Shanghaiist

It seems that China’s most popular search engine, with a market share of over 77% has been hacked by Iranian hackers.

At present, the website is unavailable, but we have found a screenshot from Twitter user Budi Putra.

It seems that the website has had its DNS hacked by the “Iranian cyber Army”, the same guys that hacked Twitter a few weeks ago. The process, called DNS cache poisoning, is the corruption of an Internet server’s domain name system (DNS) table by replacing an Internet address with that of another, rogue address, in this case what the Iranian Cyber Army want you to see.

Exactly why The Iranian Cyber Army has decided to target Baidu.com is unknown but sources say it might be in relation to Iran’s nuclear ambitions, although no one is certain.

Can someone read Persian and translate this?

Update:

We’re being told the site is now accessible from some parts of the world. Still not so from Europe. Please let us know in the comments.

Thanks @raykwong

Every week we publish an interview with an Asian based start-up. We ask five questions, hoping the answers will give you inspiration and new views.

This time we’re interviewing CEO and co-founder Thorben Linneberg of OrSiSo, a Singapore based startup.

OrSiSo is an Adobe AIR based application, allowing you to organize your friends, update your status, connect, and merge social information. They have rapidly been adding social networks including Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr, Friendster, Twitter, AIM, MSN Messenger and Yahoo messenger.

To be fair, I wasn’t that excited to be reviewing another social activity spider, as there seem to be many out there. However, I was pleasantly surprised with the original and useful concept of this application, and great execution of it.

Besides smooth setup, I’ve had a first time experience to get an overview of all friends from my networks, and I could rank them from “inner circle” to “outer circle”. Besides well executed overview of friends, the status update is compelling too. Although I’ve never actually felt ‘home’ in any AIR program (missing a decent menu bar items and high CPU usage of the Adobe platform), I am tempted to use this application in the future to avoid a cluttered desktop full with social media application. Find out for yourself. Read more about the OrSiRo application and the company behind it:

How did you come up with the idea of OrSiSo?

“The inspiration behind OrSiSo came from my growing frustration in trying to keep up with all the different Social Networks, managing memberships, interacting with the same friends on different networks. Many times, I missed events, simply because i forgot to log into that particular network.

At the same time, the amount of mails, pokes, zombie wars and other notifications and requests in my inbox became overwhelming.

The idea of a tool where all this information would be centralized and prioritized grew in my mind, and in October 2007 I decided to put these ideas into a business plan and present it to a group of experienced angel investors and close friends in Asia Pacific.

Remember at the time… Open Social API’s didn’t exist, and almost all networks were stuck in the “walled garden” approach to growth.

Today the industry has moved towards openess and this has helped our progress greatly.”

What was your biggest challenge during the development process?

“The biggest challenge during development was to translate the vision of OrSiSo into a cool application that everyone loves to use everyday. We have been working very hard on this, and we believe that OrSiSo already has a lot of unique features that are very appealing to Social Network Power Users. Like intelligent filtering, sorting by closeness, uploading albums from OrSiSo to Facebook”

Can you describe the Singapore start-up culture compared to Silicon Valley?

“The start-up culture of Singapore is evolving very fast. There are a lot of great tech and internet start-ups in singapore now… and the investment climate is getting better all the time. Due to our location and proximity to India & China, Singapore based startups have an advantage in creating innovative solutions for these huge markets. The only disadvantages of not being in SV is the lack of visibility to Valley based investors and partners. So far we are getting support from government initiatives to fund our growth and we have been able to raise some seed funding from a few experienced angels in the Asia Pacific region. No other country i know of, has so much to offer to statups. Having said that, it is important to be present in the eco system of the Vallley, and we are planning to set up at least one of our business developement offices in the Valley after this next investment round. We may however keep our main development office in Singapore, as we can develop at very competitive rates as compared to the US.”

What will be the influence of your start-up on the next web?

“We are witnessing a shift in how the web is used. No industry, no business, and no individual is untouched by the proliferation of social networking usage.
It is true that Social Media is enabling us to share and communicate in new and revolutionary ways, but its also true that it’s pulling us apart into a fragmented mess of communication systems that are incompatible with each other!

We build OrSiSo to pull it all back together, to free users so they can get back to the fun of socializing, without having to spend more time on organization.
Just like search engines became necessary to navigate and find pretty much anything on the Web, Something is needed to help “guide” users to make sense of all the Social Networks data and activity.”

How are you going to monetize OrSiSo, what partners are you intending to work with?

“We have several revenue streams for Orsiso: highly targeted advertising, subscribtions (pro version, Mobile versions) for example.

Also we are in the process of building a client for TV. We are launching Orsiso with partners that offer internet, mobile, and TV services… covering the big 3 screens. Our backend intelligence SocialCraftTM will log behavioral patterns cross platforms and cross devices, giving our industry partners a totally new and fresh look at how effective their services are. At the same time we will wrap social networking around their offerings in a way that blends the brand delivery into users social stream in a seamless way.”

Give it a try

Go to OrSiSoand try it for yourself
(read more)

Every week we publish an interview with an Asian based start-up. We ask five questions, hoping the answers will give you inspiration and new views.

This time we’re interviewing CEO and co-founder Thorben Linneberg of OrSiSo, a Singapore based startup.

OrSiSo is an Adobe AIR based application, allowing you to organize your friends, update your status, connect, and merge social information. They have rapidly been adding social networks including Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr, Friendster, Twitter, AIM, MSN Messenger and Yahoo messenger.

To be fair, I wasn’t that excited to be reviewing another social activity spider, as there seem to be many out there. However, I was pleasantly surprised with the original and useful concept of this application, and great execution of it.

Besides smooth setup, I’ve had a first time experience to get an overview of all friends from my networks, and I could rank them from “inner circle” to “outer circle”. Besides well executed overview of friends, the status update is compelling too. Although I’ve never actually felt ‘home’ in any AIR program (missing a decent menu bar items and high CPU usage of the Adobe platform), I am tempted to use this application in the future to avoid a cluttered desktop full with social media application. Find out for yourself. Read more about the OrSiRo application and the company behind it:

How did you come up with the idea of OrSiSo?

“The inspiration behind OrSiSo came from my growing frustration in trying to keep up with all the different Social Networks, managing memberships, interacting with the same friends on different networks. Many times, I missed events, simply because i forgot to log into that particular network.

At the same time, the amount of mails, pokes, zombie wars and other notifications and requests in my inbox became overwhelming.

The idea of a tool where all this information would be centralized and prioritized grew in my mind, and in October 2007 I decided to put these ideas into a business plan and present it to a group of experienced angel investors and close friends in Asia Pacific.

Remember at the time… Open Social API’s didn’t exist, and almost all networks were stuck in the “walled garden” approach to growth.

Today the industry has moved towards openess and this has helped our progress greatly.”

What was your biggest challenge during the development process?

“The biggest challenge during development was to translate the vision of OrSiSo into a cool application that everyone loves to use everyday. We have been working very hard on this, and we believe that OrSiSo already has a lot of unique features that are very appealing to Social Network Power Users. Like intelligent filtering, sorting by closeness, uploading albums from OrSiSo to Facebook”

Can you describe the Singapore start-up culture compared to Silicon Valley?

“The start-up culture of Singapore is evolving very fast. There are a lot of great tech and internet start-ups in singapore now… and the investment climate is getting better all the time. Due to our location and proximity to India & China, Singapore based startups have an advantage in creating innovative solutions for these huge markets. The only disadvantages of not being in SV is the lack of visibility to Valley based investors and partners. So far we are getting support from government initiatives to fund our growth and we have been able to raise some seed funding from a few experienced angels in the Asia Pacific region. No other country i know of, has so much to offer to statups. Having said that, it is important to be present in the eco system of the Vallley, and we are planning to set up at least one of our business developement offices in the Valley after this next investment round. We may however keep our main development office in Singapore, as we can develop at very competitive rates as compared to the US.”

What will be the influence of your start-up on the next web?

“We are witnessing a shift in how the web is used. No industry, no business, and no individual is untouched by the proliferation of social networking usage.
It is true that Social Media is enabling us to share and communicate in new and revolutionary ways, but its also true that it’s pulling us apart into a fragmented mess of communication systems that are incompatible with each other!

We build OrSiSo to pull it all back together, to free users so they can get back to the fun of socializing, without having to spend more time on organization.
Just like search engines became necessary to navigate and find pretty much anything on the Web, Something is needed to help “guide” users to make sense of all the Social Networks data and activity.”

How are you going to monetize OrSiSo, what partners are you intending to work with?

“We have several revenue streams for Orsiso: highly targeted advertising, subscribtions (pro version, Mobile versions) for example.

Also we are in the process of building a client for TV. We are launching Orsiso with partners that offer internet, mobile, and TV services… covering the big 3 screens. Our backend intelligence SocialCraftTM will log behavioral patterns cross platforms and cross devices, giving our industry partners a totally new and fresh look at how effective their services are. At the same time we will wrap social networking around their offerings in a way that blends the brand delivery into users social stream in a seamless way.”

Give it a try

Go to OrSiSoand try it for yourself

Taobao, the internet shopping portal for B2B e-commerce group Alibaba has announced that they will launch a short message-based price comparison service.

The new service will allow mobile phone users to inquire about products available on Taobao, when they are shopping in traditional stores. By sending a simple short message, the service will text you the price range from the Taobao site, giving users a price comparison tool.

The price for these messages are the same of general text messages, depending on the specific plan for the user, and no extra service charge is required. The new service is currently available for China Mobile’s mobile phone users, with exceptions for those in Henan, Hebei, Shandong, and Ningxia. No similar service is launched for users of China Unicom or China Telecom.

This service is an excellent idea, you probably have had the experience being in a shopping mall (or market) and thinking what the online price of that mobile phone, USB key or plasma would be. I wonder if there are other trading sites that provide the same, I couldn’t find one. If anybody has some time, please build one for eBay.

Through Chinatechnews

Google is trying to satisfy both China and India, by splitting a sensitive area on Google Maps for their respective users. This particular sensitive area is Arunachal Pradesh, a region where ownership is disputed by China and India.

These actions are the result of India criticizing Google Maps earlier this year for what Google described as a mistake of using the Chinese script to mark the Arunachal Pradesh area, a state formally administered by India.

How did Google settle their maps to facilitate the wishes of both countries? What happens is that the Chinese Google Maps shows part of the area inside the Chinese borders, while the Indian version depicts it within the Indian border. Besides these local version, the global version of Google maps shows the area as a ‘disputed territory’ and displays broken lines on the map.

A Google spokeswoman said that they want to show all disputed regions around the world, based on the global properties. They do not endorse or affirm the position taken by any party, but merely provides information regarding the geopolitical situations to their users.

India

China

World

Yahoo! apologised to clients about a lap dance show organized during The Taiwan Hackday last weekend. Girls wearing nothing but a bra and miniskirt performed in front of male participants on stage. Not exactly the message Yahoo wanted to send out.

Hack Days, where developers race to create web applications in less than 24 hours, draws a lot of Internet engineers to Taipei. Chris Yeh, head of the Yahoo! Developer Network clarified that: “As many folks have rightly pointed out, the “Hack Girls” aspect of our Taiwan Hack Day is not reflective of that spirit or purpose. And it’s certainly not the message we want to send about our values here at Yahoo!. Hack Days are about making everyone feel welcome, including women coders and technologists.”

Source (and picture): digital beat

Previously, Google signed a contact with China’s biggest carrier to gain footprint in China, however, their number one competitor in this nation signed a deal that will add their search pre-installed on many of the next generation phones, starting with a side-by-side display on the launch of the iPhone next month.

Google is included in virtually every new released mobile telephone today (being pre-installed with Android and iPhone OS and all), In an attempt to overcome this dominant stronghold, China’s number one search engine Baidu announced that their services will be pre-installed on these next-generation mobile phones in China. The pre-installed services will include internet search, music store and message forum and will be put on 3G handsets, including iPhone from China Unicom. For China Telecom, services are also embedded, but Google signed the search and application search on those particular phones. While the market is preparing, competition seems to be getting fierce, can Google stand a chance being side-by-side a local competitor?

China’s three carriers are all expanding their 3G networks this year and racing to attract users for them. Pcworld.com reports that Baidu performs three out of four online searches in China. Chinese mobile users performed over 270 million Web searches on their phones in the second quarter this year, more than twice as much as in the same period a year earlier. (read more)

Taobao, the Chinese equivalent of eBay is a place where you can buy everything – even babies, as it seems. Recently, someone posted an ad to sell a baby girl, an advertisement that rapidly spread throughout China and shocked many netizens.

The ad specified that the baby was born in April 2008. Bids start at the symbolic amount of 1 RMB, and there are no shipping costs. However, the seller wanted to meet the buyer before transaction could take place.

The seller had been successfully selling DVD’s and alarm clocks, and gained a high buyers approval rating of 97.25%. The shop had a cell phone number and home address attached. Shortly after, Chinese media contacted the reseller explained that they wanted to continue the family name, but his niece had a girl instead of a boy. “I am not a human trafficker, it is adoption, and we do not require any money or material things in return.”

However, China Hush reported that the seller was indeed violating the law. Sichuan Lushi Law Firm attorney Pu Kui said that it is not accurate. According to the Adoption Act, there are strict rules for the adopter, the donor for adoption, the person to be adopted and related conditions. Violators may be constituted the crime of human trafficking babies, and subject to criminal charges. We have seen this in Germany before, the mother then said it merely was a joke.