I’ve been the owner of an iPad for about a few weeks now — and it’s got all the bells and whistles. I’m off to Sanlitun again tomorrow to get the long-awaited Bluetooth Keyboard for the thing… it’s a tall order trying to type on the virtual keyboard and I prefer the physical version no matter what.

(Being a soul born in the 1980s, I prefer a lot of — you know, things that would make someone born only a decade later puke. That’s me… You remember those old pre-digital number lights that appeared on some super-old gas pumps in the West? I’m a fan of that…)

Once upon a time when I was iPad-less, I used to engage in Digital Drool Mode over anyone in a Starbucks with their iPad in front of them. When I was at the start of the Girls in China launch event in Beijing, I was like — honestly, very jealous of the lady emcee who had a mic in one hand and an — iPad in the other. We’re getting hooked to this thing.

Well, having used the thing for three weeks straight, and having actually put this thing live in radio stations as I did my travel and train shows (where it was of great help), here’s my update on how well it’s doing.

Big question: Can the iPad replace a Mac laptop — yet?
Answer: NOT YET.

My worst grievance against the present-day iPad is that it has no traditional Chinese input methods, so I had to go to the iPad app store to download an app (fortunately for free!) that would let you input “simplified text” and translate it into traditional script. Tap a button, and it’s copied. Very cool. That being done, I could easily tweet in Chinese.

The iPad also does VPNs, so in this country where every second site that everyone goes to is blocked (Facebook or Twitter, anyone?), it’s a relief scaling the Great Firewall and being able to get access to Facebook. Safari displays the desktop version of Facebook (in a normal Safari Web browser on a Mac) incredibly well, and most pop-ups on the site work great.

Finally, backwards compatibility with iPhone-and-iPod-touch-only apps are good, but the one thing that would have made it better is 1x magnification that would have worked in landscape mode. (Getting the Apple iPad Case puts the thing in landscape mode if you tilt it — for those of you with the case, you probably know what I mean.) It’s a bit of a pain right now — rotating the iPad itself.

With the imminent arrival of my Bluetooth keyboard and the Camera Connector to come, my express train travels to Tianjin may very well feature the iPad only. Except for that the iPad has some things it just simply can’t do on its own…

• Reorganizing iPhoto libraries. I’m a big fan of iPhoto and keyboard organization, so for that the MacBook Pro is always with me. You just can’t do that on the iPad right now.

• Synchronizing new address book, contact, or Things changes. I use Things (call me a rich capitalist roader in this communist country — Things is one of the most expensive things to land on an iPhone, iPod touch, iPad or Mac) to keep my to-dos done — and if I wanted to get all three synchronized, I need a Mac. No use getting a new iPad contact linked up to my phone: no iSync, no go.

• Doing new Bento databases. Sometimes I need a new Bento database done right — I’ve tried doing a new database on the old iPod touch and it was a complete disaster. The iPad version is slightly better but still leave much to be desired (eg doing a calculation field).

There’s one final complaint I have on the iPad, and it has to do with Twitter: the Twitter for iPad app is something I basically condemned to iHell when it came out (and a few tweeps chimed in with me on that). I’m only starting to get used to it, but it’s just one of the oddest apps out there, especially in terms of design. Twitter’s not about a book, so why use such design ideas? (Although @shelisrael, who wrote a book Twitter, might respectfully disagree!)

For trips solely inside Beijing, especially short jaunts, look for an iPad-only David Feng in future. I’m happy with the thing, even if it’s pretty big out in the open streets (where an iPhone makes you look “in”, but an iPad makes you look like an arrogantly expensive iGeek). Best thing about the iPad: you don’t have to spoil a KTV party with your huge 17-inch MacBook Pro just to show off pictures of way-out-there Chinese railway stations to your singing “Taiwanese compatriots”.

How cool is that!…

Rain and the added traffic hell didn’t stop a fair number of people from queuing outside the Sanlitun Apple Store today, where the new iPad debuted. Although store staff would not disclose how many iPads were sold or when the line really started piling up, your blogger on an afternoon trip to the Sanlitun store still had to wait in line for about three minutes before being let in. Apple staff were on hand to make the welcoming of the iPad an exciting one, with chants of “Go iPad!” heard every so often.

Somewhat surprisingly, all Genius Bar services were interrupted today, as all Genius Bar corners became additional or makeshift check-out counters. Buying iPads today was easy, as the store had plenty of these in store. (Of course, the iPad arrived early — its early 2010 arrival (January 2010 announcement followed by first units shipping in April 2010) meant that folks could have gotten their pads outside China — basically, by hook, by crook, or via a visit to another country that already had iPads.) Very few people were exempted from lining up, but the queue, especially in the afternoon, was a zippy one.

There of course was also someone your blogger calls “Revolutionary Comrade Number One”, or the first guy in the queue. Being a Mac revolutionary, your blogger likes to see folks get in the Mac revolutionary spirit to get a hold of the latest “think different” gear. It was hard to part without something iPad-ish, so an iPad case was purchased with nary a second thought. It made the tweeting much easier to do in the Element Fresh not far away; Apple’s design made the iPad that easier to use on a slant. (The Steve is all about details!)

(The guy was caught tweeting on Sina Microblogs. Not Twitter. Apparently Macs at the store weren’t design for reroutes outside the Great Firewall…)

On also were quick iPad demos, so that new iPad owners could get the thing to work right out of the box.

The only minuses: a cold, damp, wet Beijing day, the awful traffic, and the fact that this is no 3G version of the iPad. Other than that, it’s good news all around!

First, a “responsible” alert from this website:

There… now onto the news. A 14-year old Miss Zhang, whom you could hardly tell got hit by a T-storm (see the pic below, taken from the Nanjing evening paper Yangtse Evening News), did indeed get hit by a T-storm on August 5, 2010. This cut very deep into an otherwise incident-free trip, with both mom and daughter just back from Shanghai en route to Chongqing.

Her being struck by lightening made headline news on the August 11, 2010 Yangtse Evening News. (Due to the “efficiency” of China Post, your tech blogger only got this in hardcopy form today.)

When Miss Zhang, otherwise known as Xiao Pu, woke not long after she got rushed to the hospital following the incident, she had no idea why she was there — as in her being in the hospital. This T-storm had her lose track of what happened (especially as thunder struck), and she’s still struggling with vertigo and still speaks less than before. It took her two days before she could eat anything, and another three days before she could be helped back onto her feet, even with her feeling dizzy.

When thunder strikes people, the first that happens is that the heart stops beating — boom — just like that. If the victim doesn’t die an instant death (or doesn’t get medical help soon), he or she goes instantly into “limb mode” (like our Xiao Pu here). Needless to say, her earphones were totally, totally wrecked, especially the bits in her ears.

Once again, a big reminder in ALL CAPS RED TYPE:

What’s to like about Internet cafés in China? There’s no opportunity to link up to “reroutes” (so to speak; that’s if you must be so reactionary as to tweet or plurk in China), the place is dark, dank, and nicotine-laden, and there’s a good chance that official censors are just about everywhere. It’s a more Pyeongyangish part of our capital, and to the chagrin of those who just are dying to be censored, you can have only that many — Qianlong Web reports that a maximum of 1,927 Internet cafés (read: “official” cafés) are to be part of the Chinese capital.

Topping out the list is Chaoyang (unsurprising as it hosts the Sanlitun Apple Store) and Haidian (the place where our capital got its tech start in), with 350 and 300 Internet cafés authorized for each part of the city respectively. When reading over the stats for Dongcheng (106) and Xicheng (140), keep in mind that they incorporate what used to be Chongwen and Xuanwu districts, respectively. The least wired-up part of the city has got to be mountainous Huairou up north. Even with the new National Highway 111 extended, that’s not doing a lot to bring new computers into the hilly district, which will sport only 20 “official” Net cafés.

Lest you think that’s the only way capital-ists will be allowed online, there are also wifi bars, mobile phones, and your tech blogger’s absolute fav — works great in many places: iPhone 3GS tethered to his 15-incher. Voilà!

It’s no longer illegal for individuals to grab a .cn, but this time you must register the thing with the Chinese government. As if that wasn’t enough, there’s also all that red tape to sift through just to do a website. And while the official People.com.cn’s bragging about the Chinese language version of .cn, .中国 (read: dot zhong guo), being registered by big banks, fact is: for too many of us, .com is still the way to go.

The stats have it: official CNNIC numbers dating back to as recent as June 2010 show that we are seeing 13.7% less domains registered in China (probably much of that has to be the loss of all .cn domains) — a loss of 2.79 million or so domains. This is the first loss to happen since 2006 — and despite the fact that Chongqing is seeing an increase in .cn registrations, the general trend is more in favor of .com domains. (Figures see an increased market share for .com — that’s 535,000 more dot coms taken!)

Guess what: the porno people (as well as the dissidents and the bogus “med folks”) are now all on .com. And because the US controls the .com “system”, so to speak, China can only yell — and block — .com sites; it can’t take them away.

If you’re interested in posting reactionary propaganda indirectly — as in the form of discrete links — you’re in trouble.

Quite a number of microblogs — of note Sina and especially Sohu — are now double-checking your links that you embed into your tweets (or “microblog messages”, in 2.0-speak with Chinese characteristics, so to speak). Needless to say, “bad stuff” that’s hosted inside Chinese Internet domains are just simply going to be nixed. But what if that bit of polit/porn is hosted overseas?

This is where the link censors kick into effect. Apparently, you’re no longer getting working links to sites based outside China. Don’t ask how the techies did that — they just did it. If that website is based outside China (as in using a non-mainland China web server), that’s it. This is most likely the case if the foreign-website-in-question engages in “controversial content”.

We’re a fair bit sure, however, that someone inside the Middle Kingdom will find a way around this… don’t ask why, we just feel it’s coming…

Ever wonder why Twitter’s doing great with just 205 personnel and still manages to crank out 190 million pageviews a month?

Here’s something to ponder about: along the same lines of that stat we’ve just thrown out, Chinese “Twitters” (retermed “microblogs”), being on less libre PRC territory, has way less people in terms of the user base. Yet still, we’re seeing over a thousand people employed.

(Yep, we realize there’s a “number error”. Read on…)

Many of these folks are involved in this peculiar trade of being a “content inspector”. This is censorese for — well — censor. Post anything “inappropriate” (ie political), and your post just got deleted. That’s 90% of all tweets, according to @lzaiting.

And as long as there’s a censorship requirement of one form or the other, Chinese web sites will continue just chugging along — much like an overloaded freight train pulled by a locomotive dating from earlier in the last century.

14:59 update: Tweep @multiple1902@ is now heading out live to the scene of the blast.

First, tragedy:

And this (typical here in China):

Apparently, according to the Chinese-language twitterverse, the head of the Communist Propaganda Department, Ye Hao (å¶çš“) got pretty upset when live TV crews poured in — in no time. Media were treated to what could well be yet another 2010 catchphrase on the Chinese Interwebs: Who let you broadcast it live!? (è°è®©ä½ åšç›´æ’­çš„)

There’s also footage of the explosion, as well as photos. Needless to say, there’s an increasing number of tweets coming out of this as even a few of the Twitterati head to the scene, live.

Noted Chinese mainland blogger Han Han seems to be in Hong Kong today, and despite reports that the Q+A is going ahead “the old fashioned way” using pieces of paper instead of a microphone (probably for fear of folks being censored?), that hasn’t stopped Han from pulling out his legendary short’n’snappy responses.

One of which, may we note, considers marriage. Here’s what he said:

The Chinese believe in “fate and chance”, which is yuan fen in Mandarin, and this concept can be very alien to — well, aliens (ie foreigners).

Let’s just say that @DavidFeng took the first half of this month to further studies in the mediasphere, so to speak. One’s never too old to learn, and we’re hoping the readership’s learning new and interesting things about the Chinese web every day through techblog86.

techblog86 is now back, and the site’s going to get an infrastructure update soon, which will allow much more in the way of tweeted updates and “on-the-spot” posts.

We hope we didn’t leave you all in the cold!