Hong Kong
Lau Kin-Wai: Decline of Chinese Cuisine Since the 1950s
Lau Kin-Wai, a well-known Hong Kong chef and restaurateur, laments in this video that the pace of cooking in modern-day China has destroyed the country’s cuisine.
Kin, who shuns use of MSG and artificial flavoring, prefers cooking that takes time and uses natural ingredients.
Tonight I ate the Yellow Door, one of the “private kitchens” Kin founded in Hong Kong. These are tiny legal restaurants set up in apartment buildings. The at Yellow Door was a delicious set menu with no choice in order for the chef to make sufficient quantity/quality dishes. We must have eaten 15 different dishes for HK$288 (US$36).
At Kin’s Terrace, Kin has a 70-year old chef who cooks dishes like salty chicken that take up to an hour to prepare. The system of salting the chicken by hand, compares with a 15-minute method of soaking it in salty water that many younger chefs use.
Lau founded a number of “private kitchens” in Hong Kong, including Yellow Door Restaurant, Kin’s Kitchen and Kin’s Terrace.
8 Ideas from Broadband World Forum Asia 2008
1- Shanghai Media Group is looking at 3-D TV. (A real Bandwidth hogger.) Others are working on it too, so it should be in most markets by 2017. - Ron Westfall, Current Analysis
2- Piracy of satellite signals can reach up to 50 percent in Asia.
3- Customers demand higher quality of service from Mobile TV than from Home TV. Home TV can play in the background, but Mobile TV has the viewers full attention.
4- Hong Kong residents have an average of 1.5 phones. (and 2.0 ears?)
5- Hong Kong has one of the highest broadband levels in the world, with 77 percent penetration. (Mainly 30-100 MB for a few hundred HK dollars)
6- Nearly one third of Hong Kong households use IPTV.
7- Aksh Optifibre in India is launching an IPTV service, I-Control, that is intended to mainly earn revenue through advertising.
8- Secret list for executing IPTV, by PCCW:
- Base it around a cheap set top box.
- Use the simplest technical solutions
- Offer customers choices and flexibility
- Quality must be better than cable
- Make it extremely easy to use
- Maintain a high responsiveness to customers
- Content provider relations are key. You need their trust, so make it entirely piracy proof.
- Build up In-House experts to develop new products and sustain a high quality of service.
Preston Lau
Preston Lau is the general manager for Google in Hong Kong, responsible for sales and business development as well as team and operation oversight in Hong Kong.
Prior to his current position, Lau led Google’s strategic partnership development in the region, establishing relationships with telecom operators and mobile manufacturers - including Hutchison and HTC - as well as content developers to beef up Google’s service offerings around videos, maps, and finance.
Before joining Google, Lau held regional sales and business development roles at technology firms including Sun Microsystems, Silicon Graphics, and Alcatel.
He earned his bachelor’s degree in computer science from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and his master’s degree in business administration at the Santa Clara University.
Broadband World: IPTV is tough
IPTV, a recent obsession of mine, has been a recurrent theme at the Broadband World Forum 2008 in Hong Kong, but not everyone thinks implementation is easy.
John Reister of Big Band Networks:
Entering IPTV is difficult
High competition
- Rival media types
- Many providers moving into IPTV and set-top boxes
Big investment
End users have heavy and growing demands
- Choice
- Control
- Quality programs
- Cheap
good news for IPTV is that the technology is evolving quickly.
- Compression improving
- Storage cheaper and cheaper
The strongest IPTV critique - perhaps not surprisingly - came from Peter Jackson, CEO of AsiaSat
TV is becoming more of an individual than a group event, Jackson said, which poses a problem when you are selling a product based around a set top box. Everyone wants to see the programs where they want and when they want.
Not only does this mean that more boxes must be supplied per household, but it also means that the limits of bandwidth will be reached quickly.
One answer to this bandwidth crunch, Jackson said, is using satellite tv in a hybrid way with IPTV. His company is working with several companies in that way in Europe.
Marketing publisher trash-talks rival Media Magazine
Justin Randles, founder of Marketing Magazine, trashtalks the competition in this Marketing Magazine, trashtalks the competition in this video below, saying why you should read his recently launched publication and ignore his highly established main competitor, Media Magazine.
(With Marketing magazine fighting Media magazine it can get somewhat confusing. Can someone please tell these guys to think up more creative titles for their publications?)
Founded out of Singapore by Randles in 2002, Marketing Magazine is intended to attract marketing, advertising and media professionals in Asia. The publication has opened up market-by-market using an online first strategy. If the online audience seems to justify the investment, they launch a publication, as they recently did in Hong Kong in 2007.
Media Magazine, published by industry giant Haymarket, just doesn’t match the ambitions of Marketing Magazine, Randles said.
“Their approach is pretty much one magazine for Asia, whereas we treat each country as a separate and parochial market,” Randles said. “When we go into one market, such as Singapore, we really focus on the needs of our target audience in that particular market.”
In the second video, Matt Eaton, editor of Marketing Magazine for Hong Kong, explains his editorial approach to the market.
Update from Eaton: Marketing will soon be audited in Hong Kong. They currently claim a print run of 9500 mags for Hong Kong and added another 1116 email addresses added in China this week to make for a total of 8500 e-newsletters going out each weekday in Hong Kong and China
Anyone from Media Magazine available for comment?
More on Randles’ market-entry strategy in a previous posting Justin Randles: 4 ways the Internet has changed niche publishing.
This is a further installment of my postings on English language publishing in Asia.
Should you read The Asia Media Journal?
Today my tour of English language publishing in Asia brings us Mike Savage, editor of The Asia Media Journal, explaining why we should read his publication.
Mike has covered media for more than ten years, including six years in Britain before coming out to Hong Kong about four years ago.
His publication, which covers developments about the media in Asia, differentiates itself through depth of coverage, Mike said. The publication is closely associated with Media Partners Asia, a consultancy that specializes in analyzing Asian media markets. They put out thick publications on a range of topics. They have a sister site: Media Research Asia.
While the publication comes out about four times per year, Mike updates The Asia Media Journal blog regularly.
Not convinced? See video for more.
Chinese Internet Conference in Hong Kong June 13 and 14
Rebecca MacKinnon has organized a conference next weekend on China’s Internet with some great participants, including Jeremy Goldkorn of Danwei, Duncan Clark of BDA, bloggers Isaac Mao and Roland Soong as well as many others. Here’s the details:
6th Annual Chinese Internet Research Conference
Date/Time: June 13-14, 2008, 8:30-6:30 daily
Venue: Council Chamber, 8/F, Meng Wah Building, University of Hong Kong
Host: Journalism and Media Studies Centre
Languages: English and Putonghua (with simultaneous translation)
Website: www.circ.asia
Held at a different university each year, the annual Chinese Internet Research Conference (CIRC) brings together academic scholars, policy analysts, industry leaders, journalists and legal practitioners from around the world. This year’s conference comes to Hong Kong for the first time, hosted by the Journalism and Media Studies Centre.
This year’s conference theme, “China and the Internet: Myths and Realities,” seeks to separate fact from fiction about the Internet in China. As the attention of the world will be focused upon the upcoming 2008 Olympic Games, this timely event will explore the political, social, economic, cultural and institutional aspects of Internet development in China.
Panels of scholars will present the latest empirical research as well as qualitative and critical studies of the meaning of information technologies in the Chinese world. The programme also includes roundtable discussions and presentations by some of the people who are shaping the future of China’s internet: Chinese bloggers, internet entrepreneurs, journalists and industry experts.
With simultaneous translation in English and Putonghua, the event will be of great interest to anybody who studies Internet developments in China.
For further details about scheduled sessions and panels see:
www.circ.asia
Registration: www.circ.asia
Registration: http://jmsc.hku.hk/blogs/circ/register-2/
(Registration fee is waived for full-time HKU students and staff)
China and Hong Kong: World’s Most Dangerous Websites
McAfee, the company that makes money protecting Microsoft customers from viruses, warns that the .hk and .cn domains are the world’s most dangerous to surf.
19.2% of all Web sites ending in the “.hk” domain pose a security threat1 to Web users. China (.cn) is second this year with over 11%. By contrast, Finland (.fi) remains the safest online destination for the second year with 0.05%, followed by Japan (.jp).
The domain .info was also found to have a high level of risk. Perhaps because the .info appears to be informational.
For these findings, McAfee analyzed 9.9 million heavily trafficked Web sites in 265 different domains, including countries (those ending in country letters e.g. Brazil .br) and generics (those ending in .net or .info for example).
In a separate and highly unscientific survey, the author of this blog found that 97.3 percent of anti-virus press releases use scare tactics.
World of Warcraft invades Hello Kitty online
Odd MMORPG cross-dressing: World of Warcraft fanatics have been banging at the doors to beta test the Hello Kitty Online game.
The Sanriotown site, run by Hong Kong company Outblaze, launched a “Video Pitch” competition for 3,000 beta memberships based on the most creative videos about why people should be allowed into the game.
Yat Siu and his team at Outblaze were surprised to find among the 50,000 applicants, a large number of WoW players who wanted to trade in their roles as Orcs, Trolls (or whatever they are) to play in a game starring a kitten with no mouth.
Go figure. Battle fatigue, perhaps?
Here’s a bunch of Yat’s favorite examples. Enjoy!
For other trailers, that do not necessarily include WoW, search for the tag HKOcontest.
Kitty fan alert!! Another trailer competition just began with a grand prize of a Hello Kitty Totebag.
Second prize? TWO Hello Kitty Totebags. (Just kidding, Hello Kitty - and WoW - fans!!)
(Drawing above courtesy of Hello Kitty Orc Raider)
John Berthelsen of Asia Sentinel
John Berthelsen, now editor of Asia Sentinel, came out to Asia to cover the Vietnam War and then went on to work for the Asian Wall Street Journal for eight years with postings out of Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong and Thailand. Following the Journal, he became the regional head of production for Dresdner Bank.
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