Internet

I must admit that I have totally embraced the use of communities on the net. It is not that I am particularly exhibitionistic or for that matter seeking contact with everybody about everything. No, what really has attracted me is all the knowledge you can find in the different communities. Today, whenever I want to know more about a subject or going to buy something more expensive I first check if there is a good community somewhere on the Net to learn more from.

It all really started in my passion for photography. About 5 years ago it was time to upgrade to a digital SLR (DSLR) and when you are about to shell out a couple of thousand dollars of your hard taxed savings, you really want to get the most out of it. So I started to lurking around on www.dpreview.com, probably the largest community on the net for photo buffs. I was quite amazed about the activity going on in the different forums at DPReview as well as how much I learned about the different cameras that were available on the market at the time. It took some effort though before I got the grip of the language used. Why did so many of the posts contained the abbreviation IMHO and why did some of the posts started with ”BTW”. And what was this LOL combined with a big smiley :-D? But over time I figured it all out.... IMHO - ”in my humble opinion”, BTW - ”by the way” and this LOL meant ”laughing out loud”. It made me feel I really was in line with the times, LOL .

After only been reading without participating in the discussions I took a deep breath and started my first question. Quite scary at the moment - how was my English? Was my question ”stupid”? Would the readers post nasty remarks regarding my question? Surprisingly it all went very well. I not only got an answer, I got several. And this is how it works in a forum - different people have different views and above all experiences. In the community you get to know them all which sometimes get you somewhat confused, but that’s how it is and IMHO it just gives you a better position to form your own opinion.

Today I have progressed even further by having my own web site, www.hakanaldrin.com, where I post my pictures for everybody to see and above all give feedback on. I also write some short reviews now and then of photo equipment I use for anyone interested to read (not many are but still....). And I just recently discovered Twitter, sort of a micro blog, where you can follow people as well as companies and news magazines like the Financial Times (www.twitter.com/hakanaldrin) . Of course I am also keeping up with all of my friends around the world by using Facebook.

Hmmm, maybe I am a bit exhibitionistic after all...

Hakan

It is really nice to be back in the old home country, even though it is a bit cold, dark and rainy. But it is fresh and the food is very nice. The best part of coming here though is actually that internet is FAST!! You know I just click on links to see how fast a web page is loading, no matter what page it is. Or downloading music from iTunes just to be able to watch how the download bar is moving fast from left to right. Weird I know but it is soooo nice to see that bar move.

As you can gather Internet in China is not fast. Or more specific, if you go to sites outside of China it is not fast. Sites located inside of China is really fast, just like here in Sweden, but that is not much of a help for a foreigner.

The reason for the slow speed is partly the so called Great Firewall of China and I also believe capacity problems.

The Great Firewall is the most extensive firewall in the world keeping track of which sites Internet users in China are visiting. In the compound where I live many of us are quite frustrated of the lack of speed (you pay for a 2 Mbit line and it work at times as if using a dial-up modem), so a meeting was set up some time ago with China Telecom to discuss the problem. In that meeting we were told that it really doesn’t matter what speed we have subscribed to if we are surfing on sites outside of China. The signal requesting to see a particularly page would be fast, but the signal coming back with the content on the web page would be slow. The reason being that China Telecom reduces the speed so the Great Firewall will be able to scan the content of the web page. So not much to do about that.

The other reason though is capacity problems. The number of Internet users in China is growing very rapidly and of course they are also not only surfing on sites inside of China. You can really notice this capacity problem on weekends, especially in the afternoon/evening when the speed dramatically goes down because so many are on the Internet at the same time.

Now this speed issue also creates problem for companies. In most cases they need to connect to internal systems with servers located outside of China and to their intranet. If you do not want to pay for a dedicated line to your home country (expensive) they have a problem in not being able to use their internal systems as they would like to. I am actually quite often contacted by companies asking how we as a bank have solved this problem. Well, because of the nature of our business we have had to pay the money it costs for a high speed dedicated line, but the price tag for such a service is often a bit to high for most companies.

A tip though is to check out a dedicated line to Hong Kong. The price for this service is very reasonable and from Hong Kong you will have direct access to the Internet without anything slowing the signal down. It might not be a speed demon line, but in most cases it seems to be sufficient.

Hakan