HitHat - Billy Qiu's Blog

I recent bought a new faster wireless router made by TP-Link to replace the old D-Link Access Point that was sometimes disconnecting from the client for a short peroid of time.

The type of the new TP-Link wireless route is TP-Link WR641G. And I also bought its PCMCIA network adaptor WN610G. Both of the device are in 108M bandwidth. Owing to TP-Link’s self-invented new technologies, “Super Speed”, and “Extended Range”. They’ve made the the router’s transmission speed in real environment much faster than most products of other brands, even better than Linksys, D-Link, or Netgear, that the max transfer rate was nore than 44M. Besides, I bet you can never imagine the tremendous working-range of this router. From the Chinese authority IT media “Yesky’s” wireless router products benchmark review, TP-Link WR641G also kept the record of the longest working distance among all the products, which was 1048.955 meters. And it was said that if the testing space were bigger, this result could be definitely refreshed.

It was honored by Yesky as the editor’s choice.

So far, it have been working perfectly at my apartment. Its performance is really much more stable than the former D-Link’s. I even can’t feel any difference from the common 100M cable connection, when I’m copying some big video files via the wireless network.

Here are some pictures of the products and the benchmark comparison testing, courtesy of Yesky.com.

Now more and more online service provider in China followed the google’s good example “Google Maps” by providing china city maps services online.

My favorite map services currently is the GSUO. (the name in chinese means “Extreme Search”)
http://www.gsuo.com

It has a extensive map database of addresses of diverse commerce companies of the 3 big cities in China, Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou. And it has some basic fuzzy logic and error-tolerance, and good user experience. I personaly think it is much better then many of its competiters. It also has a MSN robot services and free query services by inserting the javascript for the other websites. It is based on the JAVA technology, so you need to install JVM before using, that’s probably the only short-coming for their services.

The second one I still recommend is Sina’s map services which is at http://bendi.iask.com. Although Sina’s Map service may have less addresses database than the GSUO, but I really like the map provided by Mapabc.com and nice and user friendly interface. It does NOT need you to install JVM that’s really nice if you are surfing the web in an internet-cafe when you probably are not able to install the JVM successfully there.

There are some other two map services, but I really don’t recommend either of them.

Tom’s map servies site is http://map.tom.com
. It is based on Java, and the search really sucks. it doesn’t provide you the kinda current google standard “business type”,”location” two value query format, but only one field. I tried, but most of the time I cannot find anything which is realy depressing. I really can’t figure it out, since both Sina, Tom and Google’s map image partner is Mapabc.com, how come they are so different.

Google’s map service for china called http://bendi.google.com. “BENDI” in Chinese means “local”. Well, the map layout and functions really is duplicate of Google maps. And the search also disappointed me a lot. Only a little bit better than the TOM’s map but still far away from the GSUO or even SINA’s standard. Google’s map images are also provided by the Mapabc.com, but I don’t know why google used “Kai” smoothed fonts, it looks very vague for me. I think best online map character for Chinese is 12px Song (Non-smooth), which was adopted by GSUO, SINA and TOM, except Google. Google is really unique at some point.

Audio: Shanghai News Digest #1 (Oct-08-2005) (mp3, 10.5Mb)
By: Billy

Show notes:

Welcome back to the Shanghai Morning News Digest, and I’m your host Billy.
In this show, I would like to share with you some of the interesting news and reports about Shanghai. and some of the upcoming events which you probably wish to attend in the city. And This is my very first experimental podcast show, so please definitely send me your feedbacks on the show. You can put your comments on the blog which is http://blog.hithat.com or you can send me email to billy [at] hithat.com. Any suggestion or comment are greatly appreciated.

Now here comes the news.

You may have heard about some debates on the China’s long holiday policy, but however there still is no any indication of cancel of the policy. I also agree that it just can’t imagine all the commerce stops for 7 days all over the country, but hey common let’s look at some positive site. I think you don’t know what is the tourist income for Shanghai city during the 7-day long China National Holiday? Ok, let me tell you that is 2.5 billion yuan.

SHANGHAI TOURIST INCOME DURING THE NATIONAL LONG HOLIDY ADDED UP TO 2.5 BILLION YUAN

Although it had rained for 4 days during the 7-day long China National Holidy, the charm of the metropolis and the convenience of the transpotation still attracted many tourists from all over China to visit Shanghai. According to the Shanghai Holidday Administration Office, the number of tourists travelled to shanghai during the 7 days had accumulated to 3.87 million. Although it was a 2.84% decline compared with last year, the per capita consumption raised dramatically, the total income of tourism was 2.5 billion yuan, that’s 7.80% growth compared with last year.

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If you have taken a Metro in Shanghai, I believe you’ll be impressed by the information board, such as the next train arriving time which is shown on the big plasma TV screens. In most cases, it was very accurate. I really liked it. Because I think it really helps to cool down the anxious crowd waiting for the train.
Now Shanghai Bus System will try to do the same.

SHANGHAI BUSES WILL SOON BE AS “ON TIME” AS THE METRO

Shanghai Buses will soon be as “on time” as the Metro. It is reported that within this year-end , 104 bus lines of Bashi Bus Group will be equipped with the new intelligence operation systems. The new type of the electronic bulletin board at bus stops can provide information such as next bus number, its estimated arriving time, and real-time traffic information. The information refreshes every 30 seconds using GPRS technology. And it also displays other useful information such as the weather report, and bus-change information. On the bus, the equipped GPS transmit its position to the control center and receives the real-time data to provides information of the road ahead and when the bus is approaching to a stop nearby it automatically activate the voice bus-stop notification system to inform the passenger to prepare for their getting-off, that used to be activated manually by the driver.
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