China’s government unveiled its most detailed survey ever of the pollution plaguing the country, revealing that water pollution in 2007 was more than twice as severe as official figures that had long omitted agricultural waste [...]

While Apple iPad tablet has just been unveiled in the U.S., a product of similar appearance strangely there for six months now on the Chinese market.The resemblance has prompted local websites, including Shanzhai.com, technology blog dedicated to Chinese copies, with irony on the turn made by domestic manufacturers now able to clone a product before it has been revealed.Its manufacturer is surprised: “Why Apple did the same thing as us?” [...]

At some point in your career, you’ll be called upon to sell UX to someone in your organization. You’ve probably already done it. Perhaps you’ll need to justify what you do in an organization or industry that’s just beginning to adopt UX methods or sell UX to secure your position within an organization or get future projects. So, what do you need to know to help you sell UX? What challenges might you face?

As Richard Farson’s truism “no one smokes in church no matter how addicted” points out, context informs almost everything that happens in an environment. Online social experiences are no exception. How a product’s social model is set up can impact not only who contributes, but how much, and why. From permission-based subscriptions to one-click follows, Luke will discuss the attributes and implications of several popular social models by looking at data and behavior in the Web’s most popular social applications [...]

A great user experience starts with the user interface. In this talk, Jason Beres explores best practices in user interface design in a learn-by-example approach of the good, bad and the ugly in user interface design. From web sites to rich client, you will learn how areas such as navigation, layout, typography, controls and dialogs can make or break the usefulness of an application [...]

Seth Godin argues the Internet has ended mass marketing and revived a human social unit from the distant past: tribes. Founded on shared ideas and values, tribes give ordinary people the power to lead and make big change. He urges us to do so [...]

The Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) has announced its approval on China Mobile’s (CHL) nationwide commercial trial network based on TD-SCDMA technology. A spokesman from China Mobile confirms that the group has already received the formal approval from the MIIT, but insists it does not mean a 3G license has been issued. The 3G licensing has been continuously delayed in China in the past few years, mainly because the TD-SCDMA technology is not mature…

Lucasfilm Ltd. and Lucasfilm Animation are using Autodesk® Maya® software to create the upcoming television series Star Wars: The Clone Wars, just as they did to create the feature-length animated film that is now in theaters. Lucasfilm Chief Technology Officer Richard Kerris said, ‘Star Wars: The Clone Wars brings an entirely new look and feel to Star Wars by moving it into animation. We wanted to use technology that would live up to the high standards of Lucasfilm, and selected Autodesk Maya as our animation platform for both the film and TV series…’

South Korea’s Internet searchers conducted an average of 104 searches in April/2008, nearly twice as many as Malaysians, who clocked in at 54 searches per searcher; according to Comscore’s latest findings; Asia ’s largest number of searches, not surprisingly, came from the 82 million Chinese Internet users doing 6.2 billion searches in April/2008. That is an average of 75 searches per Chinese searcher [...]

Online Chinese shoppers spent 16.2 billion yuan (2.3 billion U.S. dollars) in 19 major cities in the first half of 2008, China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) said on recently. The findings were based on a survey carried out in four municipalities directly under the central government — Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin and Chongqing — and 15 developed cities such as Changchun, Dalian, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Jinan and Guangzhou, among others [...]