Monthly Archive for April, 2008

Microposts from Twitter on 2008-04-01

Published
by
Josh Bancroft
on April 1, 2008
. 0 Comments
  • Just registered for IDF. Yay, there’s wifi! Now, I need food. Starving. #
  • Hmm. The hotel restaurant has been taken over by some IDF lunch. That narrows my options. Do I venture out into Shanghai alone? #
  • No one should be surprised, but Google Maps is useless here. I’m navigationally crippled! :-) #
  • @billpearson any quick food recomendations near the convention center? ;-) #
  • ISN China folks (Richard and Welles) showed me around Shanghai this afternoon. Waterfront, then PC Mall, which is 5 floors of Frys on crack. #
  • Before that, I took a walkabout around the promenade and "Super Brand Mall", which lives up to its name. Video soon, Globetrekker style. :-) #
  • Connectivity is hard to come by (wifi) in Shanghai. Maybe I should bite the bullet and enable Data Roaming on my iPhone. How much is it? #
  • Richard and Welles, from the ISN China team, are amazing hosts. The showed me around all afternoon, then took me to dinner. Thanks guys! :-) #
  • Guess what? Intel launched a sponsored forum on Ars Technica. Lots more from me on this when I get a chance. http://tinyurl.com/23jf7h #
  • Bought some SkypeOut credit, talking to Rachel and the kids right now for the first time since Saturday night. So nice to hear them! :-) #

Video: Josh’s Shanghai Walkabout

Published
by
Josh Bancroft
on April 1, 2008
. 9 Comments

I’ve been in Shanghai for about a day and a half now, for the Spring 2008 Intel Developer Forum conference. I’m here to shoot video of stuff that’s interesting and useful for software developers and generally cover the event for Intel Software Network.

Yesterday was “Day 0″ of the event - badge pickup, etc., but no real events scheduled. I took the opportunity to escape my hotel, and do a little walkabout exploration of my surroundings in Shanghai. I’ve been shooting tons of pictures and video, and I could write thousands and thousands of words about how cool Shanghai is. For now, enjoy this little video I put together of my “walkabout” in Shanghai.

Features include: about 100 people offering to sell me a “Rolex”, some of the great Shanghai architecture, exploration of the “Super Brand Mall”, including the Chinese versions of McDonalds and Toys R Us, a supermarket, and more.

Later that evening, my ISN China colleagues (and Shanghai natives) Richard and Welles basically showed me the town. They took me to PC Mall, which is a 5 story mall full of nothing but computers, electronics, cameras, and games. It’s like Fry’s on crack, and I’m DEFINITELY going back there before I come home. :-) There’s a bonus clip of PC Mall at the end of the video.

I also ran into my first “blocked in China” site while trying to upload this video - blip.tv. I love Blip, for lots of reason - video quality being one of the top. So I was bummed to not be able to use it for this video. Instead, it’s on YouTube (strange that Blip is blocked but YouTube isn’t - what’s up with that?), with the accompanying quality loss. But at least you can see it. And the quality isn’t super high anyway - it was all shot handheld in HD on my Aiptek Go-HD, then reencoded to 640×360 on my trusty Elgato Turbo.264. I’ll put up a high quality version when I get home.

Here’s the video - enjoy! :-)