Beijing’s Forbidden City has long been one of China’s most popular tourist spots and iconic landmarks… but now, online visitors can experience the old dynasty culture without having to set foot on the Chinese soil.
After three years of development, the Palace Museum and IBM have unveiled on Friday (Oct 10) a virtual palace where online tourists can peek into the history and culture of the former imperial palace in a game-like 3D environment.
The project will allow people who cannot visit Beijing to experience the Forbidden City, while also providing a platform for further learning and refences for those who have visited the place in real life.
Image from the website’s photo gallery
The project looks pretty cool at first glance, but the loading speed is killing me… seems like it might take forever to download the software.
Style-arena.jp is a website about Tokyo street fashion, with weekly photo updates of latest Japanese fashion in the streets of Harajuku, Shibuya, Omotesando, Daikanyama and Ginza in Tokyo. Pretty cool site if you are into fashion and trends.
Korean pop star BoA’s American debut song “Eat You Up” is leaked on MySpace. The song was uploaded on a MySpace account, but I believe that it’s not an official account for a few reasons.
The major clue is that the account cited BoA is from Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) instead of Republic of Korea (South Korea). Well, it’s either a fake account, or the webmaster of BoA’s online campaign deserves a big smack.
Anyhow, it seems like SM Entertainment is not making much noise about it… testing the online responses perhaps? Update - the full music video is out.
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Search engine giant Google has released an open source web browser, the Google Chrome on Tuesday (Sept 2).
Google claims that the new and free browser is more stable, faster, safer, simpler and more efficient (than Internet Explorer, although they didn’t mention the name). You can read more about the idea behind Google Chrome via Google’s comic books if you are into techie stuff.
Google said that the Chrome is meant to add value for users and is just another option that could help drive innovation on the web. While the statement is not untrue, the rivalry between Google and Microsoft for online dominance is heightened obviously.
Internet Explorer still dominates the web browser usage around the world; it’s estimated that 75% of the web surfers are using IE.
The BETA version of Chrome is available for download for Windows user only at the moment. I am testing the browser now… at first glance, it’s a bit too simple for my liking, although simplicity is one of its advantages that Google has stressed about.
Japanese celebrity blogger Yusuke Kamiji’s weblog is certified by Guinness World Records as the “most unique users on a personal blog in 24 hours”, or in human language the most popular blogger in the world.
The certified record is 230,755 unique visitors in one day, with daily pageviews of 5-6 million. The highest unofficial record is 13,171,039 PV on April 12th, and 56,061 comments on April 17th. [Asiajin, via Japanprobe]
That’s some crazy stats… my blog’s popularity is literally nuts compared to his lol.
Guimp.com, measures at only 18×18 pixels, is arguably the world’s smallest website.
There are a few sites that are smaller than Guimp, but when it comes to functionality, Guimp rules… the website even has games like pacman, pong, asteroids etc. and a gallery of pixel arts.
Korean pop star Rain has launched his official site on April 8.
A screenshot from Rain’s official website
Frankly, the introductory flash animation sucks. The loading is slow, the dances are not cool, and the image looks poor with Rain’s face looking distorted. It’s cheap.
Set that aside, the site has a nice gallery and shares some decent information about Rain. Some of the links (discussion and English language etc.) are not working at the moment… perhaps they are launching the site to match the promotion of movie “Speed Racer” with Rain as the co-star, and thus chose to ignore some of the details.
Popular Taiwanese boy band Fahrenheit has launched their official international site on April 6. The site is accessible using English, Chinese and Japanese languages.
Fahrenheit… (L-R) Wu Chun, Aaron, Jiro and Calvin
Fahrenheit is one of the most popular boy bands in Asia. Their albums are not really best sellers, but their popularity is sky high at the moment because of their looks and their success in dramas acting.
