Guest andrea@t-salon Posted September 28, 2003 at 01:16 PM Report Share Posted September 28, 2003 at 01:16 PM One question: how frequent are we planning to publish this zine? I think originally (when Adam et al first talked about it), it's going to be a bi-monthly publication. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Chairman Meow Posted September 28, 2003 at 03:15 PM Report Share Posted September 28, 2003 at 03:15 PM Thanks Andrea. I'm working on a mock-up at the moment which I hope to share with you all tomorrow or Tuesday at the latest. I want to preface this by saying it is by no means absolute and I will be relying on as much input as possible to refine the design so that we are all satisfied with it. The photo of the month idea is great and I agree top right hand placement would be good. Initially I am just using Movable Type as I reckon we're all pretty accustomed to it and those who aren't will find it pretty easy to use. I'm currently pushing it to its limit and deriving a nerdish enjoyment in the process Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bokane Posted September 28, 2003 at 03:46 PM Report Share Posted September 28, 2003 at 03:46 PM I was going to ask what CMS we'd be using - MT is great. Has anyone given any thought to how already-existing blog content will get represented in the zine? Maybe have RSS feeds from contributing bloggers/PRCNews/whatever? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Chairman Meow Posted September 28, 2003 at 04:29 PM Report Share Posted September 28, 2003 at 04:29 PM I totally agree with Andrea that rotating the editors will work, and hopefully we can inspire enough people to take part in the project. NEWS. On the issue of including news, I think that as Adam makes such a great contribution to news on his PRCNews blog, it would be a shame not to include it in the LIC project. Provided we can incorporate news feeds from PRC so he's not too frantic. As a portal, it is OK if there's a doubling up. If people discover their favourite China blog via LIC then so be it. The site is as much a conduit to the blogs in China as it is its own entity. I think there's also room for more news which other contributors can provide, such a localised events and happenings. I would like to see Adam take control of news & editorial in the launch phase (at least). FREQUENCY As for frequency of posts, I think that is going to be at the discretion of section producers. It's going to be trial and error in the first few months. With RSS feeds some sections will update automatically. Once we get enough bloggers on board, more frequent updates should not be a problem. The news section will need to be current. While a features section could be updates less frequently. Initially the project will demand a share of responsibilities to get it going. Once its up and running, I hope LIC will be hassle-free and a pleasure to contribute to. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bokane Posted September 30, 2003 at 11:08 AM Report Share Posted September 30, 2003 at 11:08 AM On the tech side of things, I've been looking around at different CMSes and found <a href="http://drupal.org/features">Drupal</a>, which looks like it might be better-suited to a zine-style site than MT. Take a look if you're so-inclined. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adambsmurf Posted October 2, 2003 at 02:15 AM Author Report Share Posted October 2, 2003 at 02:15 AM I think we are woe to have our domain name be dictated by google search parameters. Living In China sounds exactly what was described earlier -- pragmatic tips and helpful advise. That's not exactly what our ezine is going to be about. Life in China is a much better one, it seems to represent "all apsects of life," but is rather boring for a title. I'm thinking someone goes to the site and thinks, "Oh" and then clicks "close." We got to set ourselves apart somehow. I think we should come up with a different name altogether. Something that makes a statement. I'll try and think of some. I'm very pleased to see Chairman Meow taking us up on this project, and I think he could serve very well as project manager. I'll be happy to be the news editor guy, although I'm not sure what that will involve, but since he's also going to be the designer it's only fair that we take up some of the slack on other ends. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Chairman Meow Posted October 9, 2003 at 09:35 AM Report Share Posted October 9, 2003 at 09:35 AM OK, so still some debate over the name. I'm open to pursuasion, just so long as the name issue doesn't become a sticking point between all of us. In determining a name, we need to consider who our audience is and what names and themes appeal to them. For my part Living In China sounds like the name of a magazine about life and lifestyle in China. It conjurs images of people doing everyday things in China. Furthermore it is easy to remember, search-engine friendly and devoid of webspeak (eg 'blogzine' - a combination of two terms most people have never heard of). In terms of web users, as that's our primary market, I see an opportunity to target readers who do not spend a lot of time online and who are a bit overwhelmed by the myriad of endless blogs out there. I'll give some more thought to this after a nap. I'm happy to input as much as possible. Only I will be in Paris and Barcelona the last two weeks of October. Cheers, Michael Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Chairman Meow Posted October 9, 2003 at 09:40 AM Report Share Posted October 9, 2003 at 09:40 AM we could always customise the description tag to something like : why the hell are we ... how did we end up ... what do we know about ... i can't believe i'm ... ciao for now ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest andrea@t-salon Posted October 10, 2003 at 11:10 PM Report Share Posted October 10, 2003 at 11:10 PM As said before, I have no problem with the name Living In China. I actually like the tag line: "One Country, Many Voices" quite well. It gives the sense of diverse perspectives we try to show and even the diverse nature of this country. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Chairman Meow Posted October 11, 2003 at 02:33 AM Report Share Posted October 11, 2003 at 02:33 AM Maybe I need to play around with the 'Living In China' part of the logo, perhaps to emphasise the word 'Living'. Any suggestions? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Chairman Meow Posted October 12, 2003 at 05:08 AM Report Share Posted October 12, 2003 at 05:08 AM Hi team, OK, so while we mull over the name thing, it seems the best bet is to stick with LIC until we come up with a better alternative in the future (we can always set up a redirect and temporary cross-branding if and when the name is changed in the future). WHO'S IN? So... who's in? I assume that everyone taking part in this discussion, namely Adam, Andrea, Brad, Brendan, Roddy and yours truly, will be contributing in some way shape or form. Also, the formmail on www.livinginchina.com/about.html has already generated two expressions of interest. One from Douglas, a blogger in HK [ http://www.byoi.blogspot.com/ ] and a non-blogger, and another from Greg, a non-blogger in Shenyang who is keen to contribute. Soon I think we should take it upon ourselves to contact bloggers in our respective regions, or those with whom we have more frequent contact, to garner more support. At the very least I'm confident we should be able to get RSS feeds, and placement of the little teeny weeny Living In China logo [ http://www.livinginchina.com/graphics/lic-but.gif ]. And hopefully more. ABOUT THE FORMMAIL That formmail directs to everyone at livinginchina.com (it is coded with a scrambled, spam-proof address), which in turn will forward to all participants' @livinginchina.com address, which you can have forwarded to your preferred email client, or otherwise access via www.livinginchina.com/webmail I welcome any suggestions on how to tailor the format of the formmail so that we can know which member of the team is probably best to deal with any enquiries. EMAIL For security purposes, I'd rather each person emailed me with their preferred login name. I'll reply with a password then away you go configuring it to your preference. Also, let me know the forwarding email address if that is what you'd prefer. MT I want to give everyone access to Movable Type. Please tell me, via email, your preferred login name (as it will appear on the website). Also, tell me what level of access you'd like. Whether you just want to post, edit or have access to templates, or should I just give everyone full access? BLOG DESCRIPTION As per www.livinginchina.com/blogs.html , I'd like to include a brief description of each participating blog. Plus the precise, case-sensitive name and preferred URL. So just tell me the wording you want. BLOG LOGO You will notice at the top of each page a JavaScript code which randomly selects a logo from participating blogs. The dimensions of that image is 148x48px with a 1px white keyline border (altogether 150x50px). If you're not altogether happy with the way your logo is treated, just send me a new one, or give me some direction and I'll fix it for you. FINAL NOTE At the moment www.livinginchina.com and www.chairman-meow.com are one and the same. I will set up chairman-meow.com with its own server this week. I just wanted to wait until we had more or less decided on using livinginchina.com SO - WHAT I NEED: - preferred email login - email forwarding address - formmail suggestions - MT login (as it will appear after "posted by...") - MT access you desire - case-sensitive blog name - blog description - blog URL - blog logo direction Can you please email these to me at michael at livinginchina.com post haste, as I'm out of the country between 16 Oct and 1 Nov (Paris and Barcelona, poor me), and I want to be sure that everyone has something to work with by the end of the week. All the best, Michael [edit]I noticed some spam coming through on the everyone@ address, so I masked it in this post -Roddy[/edit] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adambsmurf Posted October 26, 2003 at 12:26 PM Author Report Share Posted October 26, 2003 at 12:26 PM So I guess it has been official launched then? I noticed you got some great posts going so I linked to it from Brainysmurf. Good show so far. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark Baker Posted September 20, 2005 at 06:58 PM Report Share Posted September 20, 2005 at 06:58 PM I noticed recently that "Living in China" (and indeed the entire "Living on the Planet" operation) seems to have gone off the air. Does anyone know where/when/why/how it's gone? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roddy Posted September 20, 2005 at 07:57 PM Report Share Posted September 20, 2005 at 07:57 PM It got bigger and bigger and bigger, and some time ago it appeared to go pop The basic idea was solid, and I do think it could have worked. There was a lot of enthusiasm for it amongst English language bloggers in China. However, the people behind it were very keen to expand very quickly, and the whole thing quickly became confusing and unnavigable - at one point there seemed to be livingindesign.com, livinginpink.com, not to mention livingin[every place on the globe].com and it just lost all identity - tellingly, the url went from being livinginchina.com to livingontheplanet/index.php?category=96 or something similar at one point. I don't know what happened to the other branches, but as far as China went people got fed up with it - Some discussion, and you'll find further links from there. I'm not sure if the other locations ever went much beyond being glorified RSS aggregators. After that it seemed to go into decline - it had quite significant downtime, ads became more and more prominent, and the layout of the site started to appear to be designed to keep people away from the weblogs it relied on rather than supporting them by directing traffic to them. Eventually it just seemed to stop working, and now the domains just don't resolve. I was kind of involved on the edges of the project, and some of the early discussion about how the site should work went on on here. It was a shame to see it fail, as it could have been an excellent little site. Unfortunately it ended up being a mediocre huge one. Roddy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark Baker Posted September 21, 2005 at 12:24 AM Report Share Posted September 21, 2005 at 12:24 AM It was a good concept--it's obviously been a long time since I or anyone else has read anything there--but I think I stopped stopping in when it became a sub-category of LivingOnThePlanet.com, as you mention. What made me even think of the site was my increasingly regular visits to Shanghaiist.com, and the thought that, "Hey, I wish this was what LivingInChina.com was doing for other locations in China." The tongue-in-cheek / pleasantly acerbic wit approach to journalism at Shanghaiist.com appeals to my particular sensibilities ... and I sort of recall thinking that Living In China (n) took living in China (v) ... and itself? ... too seriously at times. Shanghaiist.com also enjoys a more consistent voice and style guide, IMHO. Maybe it's time for the appearance of Beijingist.com, Xiamenist.com, Chengduist.com, and so on? Maybe Dan will see this and tip Jen off to the concept, though I do wonder if Xi'anist.com would have trouble getting that ' in a valid domain name. Anyway, thanks for the info & links, and hats off to everyone who contributed to LiC. It was an admirable undertaking while it lasted. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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