Byline: By richard siklos section: Section C; Column 5; Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 1 Length
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GEOGRAPHIC: NEW YORK, NY, USA (79%) NEW YORK, USA (79%) UNITED STATES (79%) New Paltz (NY) LOAD-DATE: March 4, 2007 LANGUAGE: ENGLISH PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company 1073 of 1258 DOCUMENTS The New York Times
Late Edition - Final A High-Fashion Lane in China BYLINE: By ANDREW YANG SECTION: Section 5; Column 1; Travel Desk; SURFACING SHANGHAI; Pg. 4 LENGTH: 519 words TAIKANG ROAD, at the southern end of the French Concession area in Shanghai, does not look like a portal to the cutting edge of high fashion. A dark alleyway leads to Lane 248, a narrow street filled with, among other things, old bicycles, yam carts and clotheslines dripping with laundry. But on a recent afternoon, the floodlights from a television crew pierced the drabness to report on the opening of yet another boutique along the lane. The store, Jaooh, which sells loose-fitting, or deconstructed, clothing under its own label, had just opened the day before. ''This area is quite unique and has more personality and character than many other places in Shanghai,'' said Yvonne Wang, an owner of Jaooh (Shop 47, Lane 248, Taikang Road, 86-21-6466-5385). ''There are lot of new shops, but the character of the buildings has stayed the same.'' In Shanghai, where mega-developments are the norm, the small stone houses known as shikumen along Lane 248 are being lovingly restored and converted into trendy boutiques, patisseries and cafes. Since last summer, nearly two dozen shops have opened. ''Every day I come here, there's something new,'' said A-Ti Dong, a recent transplant from New York City who runs Arts du Monde (Shop 43, Lane 248; 86-21-5465-7896), which sells unusual items like trench coats made from Tibetan fabric (2,500 yuan, about $316 at 7.9 yuan to the dollar), and vintage Christian Dior Mary Jane high-heeled shoes (3,500 yuan). The ''shopification'' of Lane 248 has been spurred largely by young entrepreneurs from cosmopolitan cities like Taipei and Hong Kong. Some jokingly refer to their budding district as Lao Tian Di (Old Sky Earth), a riff on a popular entertainment district in Shanghai known as Xintiandi (New Sky Earth) that features immaculately restored shikumen houses -- and a Starbucks. But unlike that master-planned entertainment district, Lane 248 is a community with deep roots. ''There's a lot of interaction and harmony among the shopkeepers and the locals,'' said Bobbie Cornell, a New Zealand native who opened up her shop, Nuzi (Shop 30, Lane 248; 86-21-5465-3245) in November. Ms. Cornell said that her next-door neighbors, longtime residents of the lane, welcomed her to the area by offering her a number of home-cooked meals. Nuzi sells New Zealand-inspired furniture and accessories like an ash and birch loveseat by the designer David Trubridge (35,000 yuan) and large-scale prints by the artist Brent Wong (about 600 yuan). For a Zen-like break between shops, stop by Meshi (Shop 37, Lane 248; 86-21-5465-2450), a Japanese-style teahouse that serves traditional green tea and has the feel of an old Kyoto house. The Alley Bar (Shop 33, Lane 248; 86-21-6433-3469), a tiny bar and coffee shop with a third-floor patio, was getting ready to open this week. Locals who stumble onto Lane 248 don't always appreciate its appeal. ''My producer thinks it's strange,'' said Huo Yi-Lin, a film editor working on a documentary about Lane 248. ''They are such poor quality houses. But foreigners really love them, and think they are emblematic of Shanghai.'' URL: http://www.nytimes.com SUBJECT: FASHION & APPAREL (90%); FASHION DESIGNERS (90%); RETAILERS (90%); RETAIL BAKERIES (71%); CITY LIFE (65%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (50%) Travel and Vacations; Apparel COMPANY: CHRISTIAN DIOR SA (58%); CNINSURE INC (91%) TICKER: CDI (PAR) (58%); CISG (NASDAQ) (91%) INDUSTRY: NAICS316992 WOMEN'S HANDBAG AND PURSE MANUFACTURING (58%); NAICS315232 WOMEN'S AND GIRLS' CUT AND SEW BLOUSE AND SHIRT MANUFACTURING (58%); SIC3171 WOMEN'S HANDBAGS & PURSES (58%); SIC2331 WOMEN'S, MISSES', & JUNIORS' BLOUSES & SHIRTS (58%); NAICS316992 WOMEN'S HANDBAG & PURSE MANUFACTURING (58%); NAICS315232 WOMEN'S & GIRLS' CUT & SEW BLOUSE & SHIRT MANUFACTURING (58%) PERSON: Andrew Yang GEOGRAPHIC: SHANGHAI, CHINA (92%); TAIPEI, TAIWAN (79%); NEW YORK, NY, USA (79%) EAST CHINA (91%); NEW YORK, USA (79%); XIZANG, CHINA (50%) CHINA (94%); TAIWAN (79%); UNITED STATES (79%); HONG KONG (78%); TIBET (54%) Shanghai (China); China LOAD-DATE: March 4, 2007 LANGUAGE: ENGLISH GRAPHIC: Photo: Shopkeepers on Lane 248, where the restoration of old buildings has created a chic shopping district. (Photo by Ariana Lindquist for The New York Times)Map of China highlighting Lane 248 and surrounding areas. PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company 1074 of 1258 DOCUMENTS The New York Times
Late Edition - Final The People's Republic of Sex Kittens and Metrosexuals BYLINE: By DAVID BARBOZA SECTION: Section 4; Column 1; Week in Review Desk; THE WORLD: Naughty Little Red Book; Pg. 3 LENGTH: 1156 words DATELINE: SHANGHAI WHEN Sports Illustrated's swimsuit issue hit the newsstands last week in China for the first time, with the sexy singer Beyonce on the cover, the competition was fierce. Readers here had already seen the February issue of For Him Magazine, which features a Chinese singer named A Duo on its cover wearing a white V-neck leotard that reveals every other inch of her rather substantial figure. Inside, A Duo poses like a dominatrix, clutching her breasts, wrapping her naked body in celluloid and bending, sweat-drenched, over a submissive man. The racy For Him Magazine also offers tips on ''how to do it in five minutes'' (because a ''sex break is the same as a coffee break'') and features stories with titles like ''The Dangerous Sex Journey of QiQi.'' The images and text would hardly be shocking to American or European readers. And the magazine's photographs are tame compared with what appears in magazines in Japan and other parts of Asia. But in China, where sex is still a taboo subject and pornography is outlawed by the ruling Communist Party, the images are not only highly provocative but perhaps the latest sign that sex and sexuality are infiltrating the mainstream media. And this powerful burst of sexual energy seems both a symbol of how rapidly China's transformation is unfolding and, to some, a harbinger of the troubles ahead for a nation that will inevitably struggle to absorb its newfound freedoms. ''There is a fine line between the open mind and sexual indulgence,'' said Xie Xialing, a professor of sociology at Fudan University in Shanghai. Even five years ago, Chinese books and magazines were censored or banned from showing pictures of scantily clad models or publishing content that was deemed offensive or morally corrupt. The only sexual content to be found was in sex education pamphlets or books of nude Chinese women sold as ''art works'' at big city airports. Today, however, with China's economy booming and the government loosening its hold on the personal lives of everyday citizens, magazines are beginning to publish soft-core pornographic photographs, sexual fantasies, even clues about where to pick up call girls. Popular Chinese Web sites are going further, posting erotic videos and creating forums for women eager to market their sex appeal and post their photographs on the Internet: images of traveling with friends, undressing at home, even striking erotic poses. ''This is a kind of grass-roots sexual revolution,'' said Annie Wang, author of ''The People's Republic of Desire,'' a satirical novel about the country's mad race to modernization. The government announces periodic crackdowns on pornography and often censors sexual content in magazines and on the Web. But since about 2000, the censors have started to look the other way. Political activism is still a no-no in New China. Entertainment is a different matter. Even the Web site of Xinhua, the state-run news agency, offers slide shows of the ''10 Hottest Babes of 2006'' and ''Rarely Seen Photos of Sexy Men.'' Many say the trend is being driven by the market, and by entrepreneurs eager to cash in on the country's freer lifestyles. ''The market is the No. 1 driving force behind the boom of such magazines,'' said Pan Suiming, a professor of sociology at Renmin University in Beijing.Western luxury brands entering the Chinese market want to advertise in popular magazines and on Web sites that draw consumers. And in China right now, pictures of sex kittens draw. For Him Magazine is one of the success stories of this genre, with a circulation of about 480,000. (It probably helps that the magazine is published by a government agency, the National Tourism Administration, an indication of official interest in investing in the phenomenon.) Jacky Jin, the editor in chief, says he wanted to affirm a new kind of lifestyle for readers that he calls China's new metrosexuals, guys who love cars, gadgets and girls. ''We're opening a new window for Chinese men,'' he says, noting that he's been criticized by government censors on several occasions. A decade ago, the private lives of people in China were still quite restricted. Whom you married, where you lived and what was considered permissible were tightly controlled or closely monitored by the government, employers and parental authorities. But urbanization, greater mobility and the power of the World Wide Web have challenged all that. Now, experts say, China is going through a period of enormous personal and sexual freedom. Young people -- most of whom grew up without siblings under the country's one-child policy -- are wearing more hip and provocative clothing. And they're growing addicted to entertainment online, where they can also search for love and indulge their lust. Professor Pan said he thought one reason for the cultural change was a change in women's attitudes. ''Today's women, especially young women in the cities, no longer think it's a bad thing to expose their bodies,'' he said. ''Five or six years ago, when some women started to wear clothes that exposed their midriff, most people couldn't understand why belly buttons should be regarded as beautiful and deserve public exposure. Today, young women think it is natural to bare their midriff.'' Zha Jianying, a Beijing writer and author of ''China Pop,'' says the growing openness is actually a good thing. ''This trend of being more open about sex is definitely healthy, coming after all those years of puritanism and Maoist suppression,'' Ms. Zha says. ''Now, maybe we're seeing the pendulum swing in the other direction.'' But Professor Xie at Fudan University says things have gone too far. ''In certain periods in history, such as the decadent Ming Dynasty, sex was not a taboo and even intellectuals would talk about their sex skills casually over tea,'' he said. ''Today's society is still better than that. But I do find that people care less about dignity.'' He went on to call for limits on how much skin can be shown publicly, and said: ''Human beings should have a sense of shame.'' Other critics say the new freedoms have brought degeneracy, a boom in prostitution, and what Ms. Wang, the author, called ''the concubine mentality.'' Hard-core pornography, of course, is under assault by the government, which can exact heavy fines on trespassers. One pornography kingpin was recently sentenced to life in prison. And censors are wary of influences from the West, like ''Sex and the City,'' which has a huge following here, mostly on pirated DVDs. Even ''The Vagina Monologues'' show was canceled here recently, apparently because of the title. But in a country that also happens to be the largest manufacturer of sex toys, being naughty is catching on. In November a man here in Shanghai was selling condoms in packages bearing the likeness of Chairman Mao. His shop was closed, of course, for selling condoms in ''inappropriate packages.'' URL: http://www.nytimes.com SUBJECT: WOMEN (89%); PORNOGRAPHY & OBSCENITY (89%); CENSORSHIP (89%); BOOK REVIEWS (89%); INTERNET & WWW (84%); NOVELS & SHORT STORIES (77%); HUMANITIES & SOCIAL SCIENCE (68%); POLITICAL PARTIES (66%); SEX EDUCATION (50%); AIRPORTS (50%); HUMOROUS LITERATURE (63%); CHILDREN (73%); TRENDS (60%); HUMAN RIGHTS (59%); COLLEGE & UNIVERSITY PROFESSORS (50%); SINGERS & MUSICIANS (90%) Freedom and Human Rights; News and News Media; Sex ; Life Styles; Children and Youth; Social Conditions and Trends COMPANY: CNINSURE INC (93%) TICKER: CISG (NASDAQ) (93%) PERSON: BEYONCE KNOWLES (74%) David Barboza GEOGRAPHIC: SHANGHAI, CHINA (92%) EAST CHINA (92%) CHINA (96%); ASIA (79%); JAPAN (79%); UNITED STATES (79%) China LOAD-DATE: March 4, 2007 LANGUAGE: ENGLISH GRAPHIC: Photo: Party Girls -- A photo layout in the Chinese edition of Esquire goes light on ideology, lighter on clothing. PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company 1075 of 1258 DOCUMENTS The New York Times
Late Edition - Final Point and Shoot for Bonus Points BYLINE: By SETH KUGEL SECTION: Section 5; Column 3; Travel Desk; WEEKEND IN NEW YORK SCAVENGER HUNT; Pg. 16 LENGTH: 998 words ONE reason people visit New York is to catch a glimpse of things they'd never see in the average American city. Some such sights are mystifying, some charming, some jaw-dropping -- and some are even legal. This week, Weekend in New York offers a photo scavenger hunt, in which you (working alone or in a group) seek out scenes and objects intrinsically New York and capture them with your camera. The hunt could be the centerpiece of your weekend, but also could serve as just a way to enhance your downtime as you wander from restaurant to park to museum, observing the natives in their natural habitat. If competing against others, award two points to the team that does the best in each category, and one point to anyone coming in a reasonably close second. Or, if you're playing alone, just award a whole bunch of points to your own team and declare yourself the winner.FOOD Biggest crowd waiting for a brunch table: Sociologists are unable to explain it, so why should you even try? New Yorkers like to wait -- arms crossed and toes tapping, of course -- as long as possible for their first meal on Sunday. To qualify, those waiting must be huddled on the sidewalk. Worst bagel/cream cheese or spread combo: Blueberry bagel with olive tofu spread? You can do better (worse) than that. Either a photo of the offending sandwich or, if you don't dare order it, separate photos of the elements qualify. Most expensive pizza slice -- cheese only: The price of a slice of plain old cheese pizza is always creeping up. What's the highest you can find? (Hint: $2 probably won't win.) Most expensive slice, no toppings barred: Add chicken or basil or bacon or artichokes or gold leaf, and watch the price take off like a pickpocket being chased in the subway. Most unusual-looking fruit or vegetable for sale: If it can get through customs, it's somewhere in this city. BUSINESS The A.T.M. charging you the most outrageous amount for a withdrawal: $2 minimum. Most newspaper/magazine dispensers on one street corner: They're often chained together, and the ones with things you'd actually want to read are empty or require your pockets to be jingle-jangle-jingling with quarters. Most out-of-town and/or foreign language newspapers at one newsstand: In some parts of town, you'd think fans of Le Monde and La Gazzetta dello Sport and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung had never heard of the Internet. Cheesiest Statue of Liberty-related tourist souvenir. Multiple Starbucks in one picture: Two, certainly; three is a challenge.TRANSPORTATION Best parallel parking job: The city's drivers know that if a parking space is an inch longer than their car, they can ooze in. Be sure to photograph both the front and back ends. Vehicle with multiple parking tickets: The easy-to-spot orange envelopes should be on the windshield or clearly visible inside the car. Old tickets that truck drivers place to avoid reticketing are valid, as are tickets ripped apart in rage. Most yellow cabs in one photo: No fair taking an aerial shot from the top of the Empire State Building.LIVING CREATURES Most unlikely companions: Some New York restaurants specialize in unusual wine and food pairings, but the entire city specializes in unusual people pairings. Is that fashionable babe really dating that pitiful slob? Is that silver-haired guy about three times that woman's age? Is that a rabbi necking with a Senegalese hair stylist? (100 points for the last one.) Best-dressed dog: And by that, we mean worst-dressed dog. Most dogs with one human: In New York, money buys anything, including the guy or gal who comes to your house, picks up your dog and drags it and a bunch of others to the park. Absolute minimum: four dogs. Pedestrian triple-tasking: Someone doing at least three things at once, one of which is walking down the street -- plus eating and talking on cellphone; listening to iPod and reading magazine; or knitting and screaming at friend. Pedestrian stupid-tasking. Someone who is text-messaging while crossing a hyper-busy street, something that could soon be illegal in New York City. Picture of a celebrity on the street: Trick question! In New York you're supposed to ignore celebrities. Minus 20 points. Someone using a pay phone: Not too common these days; even less common, two people using adjacent pay phones (double points). A traffic police officer smiling: It's a tough life giving out tickets to the roughly seven million cars that are breaking parking laws at any one time. Subjected to nasty looks and verbal lashings, these officers don't have much to smile about. Anyone wearing George W. Bush paraphernalia (hat, T-shirt, full body tattoo): Manhattan voted 82 percent to 17 percent for John Kerry over Mr. Bush in 2004. The word on the street is that the president's popularity has not increased. NONEDIBLE INANIMATE OBJECTS Public advertisements or notices in languages other than English: one point for each language. Spanish is a freebie, kind of like the space in the middle of a bingo card. (Starting clue: Check out the signs about being in one of the first five cars on the No. 1 train to South Ferry.) Most amusing spelling or translation error: Combine immigrant store owners with immigrant sign makers and what do you get? An entrepreneurial spirit that keeps the city's economic engine humming? Yeah, sure, but also errors terrible enough to drive language sticklers insane. Most monstrous baby stroller: It's not that strollers aren't monstrous everywhere, but here the sidewalks, store aisles and bystander tolerance are narrower. Most unusual piece of refuse: A city that collects the strangest things also discards the strangest things, and they don't all fit in a trash bag. Most intellectual book being read in public: O.K., or perhaps just used as a prop to attract a Ms. or Mr. Right prone to lugging around a copy of ''Gravity's Rainbow.'' If you hear someone say, ''Oh, you're into Kierkegaard'' -- whirl, point and shoot. URL: http://www.nytimes.com SUBJECT: CITY LIFE (89%); RESTAURANT REVIEWS (89%); CITIES (78%); TRAVEL HOSPITALITY & TOURISM (75%); SOCIOLOGY (71%); RESTAURANTS (70%); NEWSSTANDS (66%); ECOSYSTEMS & HABITATS (54%) Scavenger Hunts; Travel and Vacations PERSON: MICHAEL MCMAHON (83%) Seth Kugel GEOGRAPHIC: NEW YORK, NY, USA (79%) NEW YORK, USA (96%) UNITED STATES (96%) New York City LOAD-DATE: March 4, 2007 LANGUAGE: ENGLISH GRAPHIC: Photos: Shoots, and scores: Garlic bagel with scallion-tofu cream cheese and jelly rare phone booth in use smiling traffic officer and snug parking. (Photographs by Robert Caplin for The New York Times) PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company 1076 of 1258 DOCUMENTS The New York Times
Correction Appended Late Edition - Final
It is a curious pairing. Cisco, with 38,000 employees, makes networking equipment for telecommunications providers and other big companies. Tribe.net, run by a company with eight employees, has been trampled by newer social sites like MySpace and Facebook. But along with the recent purchase of a social network design firm, Five Across, the deal will give Cisco the technology to help large corporate clients create services resembling MySpace or YouTube to bring their customers together online. And that ambition highlights a significant shift in the way companies and entrepreneurs are thinking about social networks. They look at MySpace and Facebook, with their tens of millions of users, as walled-off destinations, similar to first-generation online services like America Online, CompuServe and Prodigy. These big Web sites attract masses of people who have dissimilar interests and, ultimately, little in common. The new social networking players, which include Cisco and a multitude of start-ups like Ning, the latest venture of the Netscape co-creator Marc Andreessen, say that social networks will soon be as ubiquitous as regular Web sites. They are aiming to create tools to let ordinary people, large companies and even presidential candidates create social Web sites tailored for their own customers, friends, fans and employees. ''The existing social networks are fantastic but they put users in a straitjacket,'' said Mr. Andreessen, who this week reintroduced Ning, his third start-up, after a limited introduction last year. ''They are restrictive about what you can and can't do, and they were not built to be flexible. They do not let people build and design their own worlds, which is the nature of what people want to do online.'' Social networks are sprouting on the Internet these days like wild mushrooms. In the last few months, organizations as dissimilar as the Portland Trailblazers, the University of South Carolina and Nike have gotten their own social Web sites up and running, with the help of companies that specialize in building social networks. Last month, Senator Barack Obama unveiled My.BarackObama.com, a social network created for his presidential campaign by the political consulting firm Blue State Digital. Many of these new online communities cater to niche interests. Shelfari, a Seattle-based start-up, recently began a service to let book lovers share their opinions. This week it received an investment from Amazon.com. Mr. Andreessen's Ning, based in Palo Alto, Calif., is fashioning itself as a one-stop shop catering to this growing interest in social networks. Anyone can visit the site and set up a community on any topic, from the television show ''Battlestar Galactica'' to microbrew beers. Ning users choose the features they want to include, like videos, photos, discussion forums or blogs. Their sites can appear like MySpace, YouTube or the photo sharing site Flickr -- or something singular. Those setting up Ning communities can pay $20 a month if they want the site free of text advertisements delivered by Google. They also have the option of delivering their own advertising, as CBS does on Ning-based social networks for its shows ''CSI'' and ''The Class.'' Mr. Andreessen said that even with its two acquisitions, Cisco might be underestimating the ease of combining technologies behind Tribe.net and its earlier acquisition, Five Across. ''The idea that Cisco is going to be a force in social networking is about as plausible as Ning being a force in optical switches,'' he said. Tribe.net, which developed the technology that Cisco is now acquiring, almost led this new social networking phase. In 2004, the U2 singer Bono approached the company and asked it to create a separate network for his antipoverty campaign, One.org, according to several former employees. Tribe.net, founded by Mark Pincus, a prominent Silicon Valley angel investor, decided to remain focused on building a destination site, like Friendster and MySpace. Bono went on to create the One.org network with Yahoo. Mr. Pincus left Tribe.net in 2005 but repurchased the company from lenders last summer when it was nearly out of money. Today, Tribe.net is primarily used by artists who attend the annual Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert. Executives at Cisco and Utah Street Networks, Tribe.net's parent company, declined to comment on their deal or its terms. But people close to the discussions said Tribe.net would remain an independent site, while its underlying technology would go to Cisco. Several former employees have left Tribe.net to start their own firms offering social network tools. Alex Muldoven, who had been a product manager there, started a company called Crowd Factory to design social networks for large companies. He is now building services for several telecommunications customers and says the new model makes more sense for Internet users. ''If I'm into fly-fishing, that is where I'm going to spend my energy online,'' he said. ''I don't think it is easy for MySpace and Facebook to adapt and bend to the needs of individual brands.'' One challenge is getting users to join new social networks when there are few other members. For example, Google helped Nike design its soccer community site, called Joga.com, but it does not appear to have significantly attracted users. ''I think this will work for certain kinds of brands, and other brands are just barking up the wrong tree,'' said Paul Martino, a former Tribe.net chief technology officer who is now the chief executive of Aggregate Knowledge, a service that taps the online behavior of other users to provide shopping advice. Another challenge is persuading users to enter their information over and over when they join new online communities. To solve the problem, several firms are pushing a standard called OpenID, which would let users sign on and easily transfer profile information among social sites. Marc Canter, a former Tribe.net consultant who has created his own social networking firm, People Aggregator, was an early supporter of OpenID. ''Humans are migratory beasts, and we do not want to re-enter our data every time we join a new site,'' he said. ''Users own their data and should be able to move it around freely.'' Cisco is positioning itself for the day when mainstream consumers are spending much of their time taking part in these online communities. With the acquisition of Tribe.net, it is also trying to further its quest to become a consumer-oriented company. In the last few years, it has purchased the wireless router company Linksys and the set-top-box maker Scientific Atlanta, giving it a significant presence in many American homes. Dan Scheinman, the mergers and acquisition chief who led the Linksys and Scientific Atlanta purchases, now runs a new division at Cisco called the Media Solutions Group, which has been responsible for the deals for Five Across and Tribe.net. After the Five Across acquisition, Mr. Scheinman said in an interview that Americans were quickly changing their media consumption habits. He said his new group would let Cisco help its media customers, like TV networks and cable companies, develop their sites and move more of their content onto the Web. ''Part of our job is to form a relationship with media companies and deliver technologies and services to them, so consumers can consume what they want online,'' he said. Directory: ~hesterj -> Entrepreneur Entrepreneur -> Byline: By armand limnande section: Section mm; Column 0; T: Men's Fashion Magazine; Pg. 76 Length Download 4.36 Mb. Share with your friends:
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