techblog86

In list form so that the details come out the quickest:

• Two quakes that hit earlier today (August 17) seem to have done damage — one off Japan, one off Taiwan.
• Websites hosted on DreamHost appear OK. Websites on Media Temple are not.
• This is not a Great Firewall issue; Hong Kong is equally affected.
• Access to Windows Live Messenger is impossible.
• iTweet.net loads slowly (this is relevant for those who tweet in China, as Twitter has been blocked for about a month now).
• VPN access often fails as well.
• Apple’s page at www.apple.com does not work; however, both me.com email, MobileMe iSync and apple.com.cn seem to work great.
• Most importantly: if you can stand slow connection speeds, try going through China Mobile’s GPRS services. (Your tech blogger has tested this; it works.) Add VPN, and you’ve also broken the Chinese Great Firewall.

Widespread reports are coming in about slow Internet access — especially when sites outside the Chinese Mainland are requested. This is also causing email, MSN Messenger and VPN several headaches.

Tweets are flowing in about this as well, with some comparing this issue to the undersea cable underneath the Pacific that borked in late 2006. We at techblog86, however, also do not exclude the possibility of heightened censorship efforts.

Onto stuff unrelated to the Internet, we even have reports that security at the Beijing Subway, of all things, have been stepped up. It’s China Big Sixty on October 1, 2009, but clearly, folks are only going to be in the mood to celebrate if the birthday party, which features a military parade, goes ahead without a hitch.

Those of you who may have been watching my unscheduled TV premiere may have heard me babbling semi-consciously about why Green Dam is wrong, why we can climb over that Great Big Firewall and stuff. I was tuning in as well — the cameralady (let’s no longer do male-only job titles!) let me in on what the BBC was talking about in London. Boom. Guy on TV introduced me as “blogger and radio host”.

Yep — I do have a radio gig at Radio Beijing, where I co-do (”guest host”) the travel shows. I’ve been doing this for over a year and a half now — so that’s part of my daytime gigs. However today I did not appear “courtesy of”, or “in affiliation with” Radio Beijing, so I’d like to clear the radio station from any wrongdoing — you know, anti-Green Dam rhetoric or “related wrongdoing” (to put it in perfect #Zhongguolish).

The “blogger” bit, though, is fine. “Tweeter” might be better, but that’s for when Auntie Beeb is a 140-character game… 140 days down the road from now? Hmm…

Update: Google “David Feng BBC” and you’ll find “Radio talk host David Feng” galore. Good going guys. But hey, that’s just part of the truth. Tech watcher sounds better — thanks…