US software firm Microsoft’s online services arm said yesterday it had inked an agreement to tie up with leading Chinese portal Sina (新浪) in its latest move to expand in the world’s largest Web market.
The partnership between MSN China and Sina will allow for some linkage of their services such as blogging and instant messaging, the two companies said in a joint statement.
For example, users will be allowed to log onto Sina’s popular micro-blogging service with their Microsoft Windows Live account name and exchange instant messages with online users of the Chinese service, the statement said.
Updates on Sina’s microblogging service, which is similar to Twitter, will also appear simultaneously on the writer’s Windows Live Messenger. Twitter is blocked in China by government censors.
The partnership “will not only offer our users more convenient and varied Internet applications and experiences, but also further enhance both sides’ competitive advantages,” MSN China general manager Liu Zhenyu (劉震宇) said in the statement.
The statement added that users of Microsoft’s Windows Live Spaces blogging service in China would be able to transfer all content from there to Sina blogs.
The partnership was announced amid an ongoing row between Tencent (騰訊), the operator of China’s popular instant messaging service QQ, and Chinese security software developer Qihoo 360 over privacy issues.
Analysts have said QQ’s growing dominance is likely to push competitors to shore up their market positions.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained