YeinJee's Asian blog

Asian Culture, Lifestyle and Entertainment

Internet and online

Tom Cruise joins Chinese microblogging

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Tom Cruise Sina WeiboAmerican actor Tom Cruise has opened an account at Sina Weibo, a Chinese microblogging site similar to Twitter.

Many international social networking sites, e.g. Facebook and Twitter, are banned in China. But their local microblogging sites, obviously under scrutiny of the Chinese government, are blooming since 2009.

Many Chinese celebrities, including those from Hong Kong and Taiwan, have jumped on the bandwagon. A few Japanese stars have also joined the party.

AFAIK Tom Cruise is the first Hollywood A-list actor to do this. He already has over 300,000 followers since activating his account on February 23, though it looks like his account is managed by his subordinates instead of him personally.

Girl Walks Into a Bar

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Girl Walks Into a Bar is said to be the first major Hollywood motion picture made for the internet. It tells the story of a group of apparent strangers over one night across ten bars throughout Los Angeles. Check out the trailer (a bit NSFW) below…

Not great, but not bad either. It’s probably worth watching for the sake of knowing what the hype is about, especially if you are a fan of one of the cast, i.e. Carla Gugino, Zachary Quinto, Danny DeVito, Josh Hartnett, Rosario Dawson, Emmanuelle Chriqui, Aaron Tveit, Robert Forster, Amber Valletta, Gil Bellows, Kevin Zegers, Alexis Bledel, Michelle Ryan, and Xander Berkeley.

[Update] The movie was free for all initially, but it’s now only available in the US.

Google Chrome Japanese commercial

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Japanese commercial (2011) by Google Japan to promote its Chrome web browser which emphasizes on speed and simplicity…

Hundreds of pictures are painted, scanned in sequence, opened on Chrome, and it turned into a mini-animation when the tabs are closed rapidly.

Not sure if other browsers could do similar stuff. There are other factors involved… the PC performance for example. In my case my browser would almost certainly crash, for whatever reason it is. Regardless, it’s a pretty cute commercial.

Malaysians have most online friends

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TNS Digital LifeMalaysians have the most friends on social networks while Japanese the fewest, according to a recent study by research firm TNS which interviewed 50,000 consumers in 46 countries.

In Malaysia the average number of friends is 233, closely followed by 231 in Brazil and 217 in Norway. This contrasts to an average of just 29 friends in Japan and 68 in China. Malaysians are also the heaviest users of social networking websites, spending an average of nine hours per week on them.

LoL seems like I’m not Malaysian enough on this… I have less than 100 friends on FB and spend less than an hour per week on that. Not surprised with the Malaysian stats, but I was expecting other countries to be as ‘addicted’ too.