Comments on: Beijing mobile portals: Listings for geeks on the go

By: johnpatrick777

johnpatrick777 — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 19:12:06 +0000

John has done it again! He finds the most interesting sites and posts a link on twitter every half hour! follow john!

By: Martin Bassler

Martin Bassler — Sun, 23 May 2010 11:14:55 +0000

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By: Alvin Graylin

Alvin Graylin — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 07:20:47 +0000

Long before any of these portals, Guanxi had been providing mobile search and directory services to hundreds of thousands of loyal Expats throughout China…. Guanxi now has an SNS service, a mobile clients and of course our trusted SMS services nationwide. http://www.mGuanxi.com or 1066-9588-2929. Go Guanxi!

By: Beijing Daze

Beijing Daze — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 08:48:59 +0000

@Tim: Thanks for taking the time to read and clearing that up Tim. I look forward to seeing the result of the scheduled tweaks.

@Andrew: Thanks for the explanation… It’s pretty tough dealing with Geocodes and I wrestle with them on a daily basis in my “regular” work.. and yes, I would LOVE pinyin and know quite a few other folks that could use it.

@Peter… mate, come on! don’t distract them from their Beijing obligations… we want them to stay busy here and keep making it better.

By: Peter Jolicoeur

Peter Jolicoeur — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 05:06:46 +0000

I have been a MobNat user for a while, and thought it was interesting to see the comparison with the other two services (which I had not tried before). It is quite frustrating that most search engines require you to guess at what pinyin combination is stored in the database. I’ll say this, though… I moved to Shanghai a few months ago, and on numerous occasions have wished for a guide even remotely as useful as MobNat. (So, how about it, MobNat? When will you move south?)

By: Andrew Schorr

Andrew Schorr — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 04:20:12 +0000

Beijingdaze, thanks so much for the great feedback. Adding better Pinyin support is one of hundreds of items on the ever expanding to-do list. I’ll see if we can’t up the priority for you.

I think one of the biggest differences users may notice in the services is the differences in geo-coding, basically how the point on the map is determined. Mobile Native takes the time to verify every point by hand because geo-coding just doesn’t work very well in Beijing (because of non-uniformity in odd/even side of the street, non-consecutive numbering, and difficult address formatting, etc.). This gives us accurate positions both for our map and for a geographically accurate “places near here” search that no one else can do.

Try comparing the maps for Yugong Yishan where the address is in a difficult format:
http://cityfu.com/beijing/listings/nightlife/live_music/has/yugong-yishan/.map/
http://www.mobnat.com/index.php?c=6&p=KK_NrOfbH1I=&map_lang=cn&map_lang=en/index.php?c=6&p=KK_NrOfbH1I=&map_lang=cn&map_lang=en

Or Salt, where the address is insufficient for geo-coding:
http://cityfu.com/beijing/listings/dining/mediterranean/has/salt/.map/
http://www.mobnat.com/index.php?c=6&p=Qf+LwEC1Khs=&map_lang=cn&map_lang=en/index.php?c=6&p=Qf+LwEC1Khs=&map_lang=cn&map_lang=en

By: Tim Murray

Tim Murray — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 02:09:11 +0000

thanks for this excellent analysis. I will ask our team to improve the city fu functionality. Our search function on Cityweekend.com.cn and cityfu.com (which uses the same site essentially) is really poor and we have scheduled work on it. Cityfu was completed in 7 days by one programmer just to get something up to play with and get feedback. You are quite right we need to put more resources behind this application.

I would be interested to see what you think of the various iphone apps for Beijing.

Tim