Though I’m putting together a more in-depth summary of the tour for The Tech Dynasty, I thought I’d make a quick mention of the awesome experience here. A warning, massive linkbacking is about to occur – but you wont regret checking out any or all of these immensely clickable people.

As a quick intro, the China 2.0 tour was a “tour” of China put together by The China Business Network, CNReviews and Web2Asia, as a way for prolific Western bloggers and industry professionals to get an on-the-ground look at what China is really about.

Members of the tour (in Shanghai at least) included author/blogger Shel Israel, TechCrunch UK’s Mike Butcher, Dutch ProBlogger Ernst-Jan Pfauth, freelance writer and blogger Sheila Scarborough, Melissa Sconyers, photographer Bart Lapers and Jamie Quint.

On top of those cool people, it was great to see Christine Lu again, and finally put faces to the avatars of Web2Asia’s George Godula and Markus Gruber, as well as ace-shutterbug Elliott Ng and Twittermaniac David Feng, both from CNReviews.

And if all that name-dropping/linking wasn’t enough… the tour gave me opportunity to catch up with Adam Schokora, John Guise and Kenneth Tan, raise (far too quick) a glass with Sean Leow, graffiti the walls at Tudou HQ with founders Marc van der Chijs and Gary Wang, and scarf down some amazing Sichuan food with Alibaba CFO Joe Cai, Mobinode’s Gang Lu, SpreadShirt founder and angel investor Lukasz Gadowski, CHINICT President Franck Nazikian, and JL McGregor’s Elias Glenn.

Just an insane amount of hand-shaking and card-swapping. Two things I’m not apt at. However, in spite of my networking shortcomings, it was an absolutely amazing time and well-worth the 30 minute train into The City.

Me and Shel Israel

And don’t forget to check out The Tech Dynasty for a more in-depth, less name-full, post about the innovative Chinese startups we visited. Should be up tomorrow-ish.

On top of the core site – featuring message boards, job listings, classifieds, and a number of other things – the site also plays host to a nifty little collaborative blog effort.

Largely I’ve pieced the site together over the last year or so, and it was finally time to sit down and seriously rethink its design. So, fast on the heels of this blog’s redesign, I’d like to present – Lost Laowai v2.0.

I’ll not say much about it here, as I want everyone to take the extra click and visit to see the features themselves, but basically I am trying to incorporate more Web 2.0 applications into the design to add to the interactivity and communal aspects of the site.

Head on over to the link (post) above and leave comments there on what you think. It’s not 100% yet, and there’s a few bugs I need to squish – but your feedback is much appreciated.

As such, in my time in China I’ve tested out pretty much every new site that claims to be offering streaming TV over the Internet. I’m always hopeful that they’ll have a bunch of cool shows, stations I’m familiar with, fast streaming video, etc… and, without exception, I’ve always been left wanting.

However, an e-mail invite to beta test Joost from my buddy Steven might be the channel-surfing solution I’ve been looking for. Created by the peeps that brought us that other expat wonder, Skype, Joost displays some real potential.

Channel-wise, they’ve a quickly expanding portfolio that includes some greats like MTV, Reuters, Comedy Central, National Geographic, Sports Illustrated Swimsuit, PokerHeaven TV, and a big bonus for Canucks abroad – MuchMusic. Some channels are limited by geography (“Ren and Stimpy” is US only, for example), but overall there’s no shortage of things to watch. Full channel list.

Everything is on-demand as well, so you don’t have to wake up at 3 a.m. to catch that show that plays in the afternoon in Eastern Standard Time. You just click the show you want to watch, and it goes. Adding to this, Joost has fully integrated Web 2.0 conventions such as commenting on shows, chatting with other watchers of the show, etc. A great place to post spoilers, to be sure.

The big concern I have is speed, and I’m not 100% satisfied, but it’s better than any other I’ve seen. Last night when I first gave this a go, it was reasonably fast with virtually no lag. However, this morning’s very quick check had it a bit choppy (it may have smoothed out if I gave it a chance). The bonus is though, when it flows, it flows nice. Though not HD, when you watch it in full-screen mode, slightly pixilated, but completely watchable.

The way I understand it, Joost uses torrent-like P2P technology that gets you downloading the content first from their servers and then punts you off into the community of other watchers, where you leech from them, while seeding for others.

All of this requires you have some newish system requirements. You’ll need a P4 processor, about 500 MB of RAM, a reasonable video card (32 MB+), a solid broadband connection (hit or miss here in the PRC), and around 300+ MB of free disk space for the cache (the actual program is only a 10 MB download that stretches out to 30 MB or so).

One other thing you’ll need to have is a high monthly transfer rate allowance with your ISP. I am not 100% sure about the details of this here in China, but imagine it’s not much of a problem as people are endlessly downloading movies here and not having problems. I think it’s about 300 MB of transfer for an hour’s worth of viewing, which over the month could add up if you have such caps (does anyone have these anymore?).

As Joost is still in beta mode, you need to be invited by a friend to check it out – but as invites are unlimited, I’m happy to give anyone an invite that e-mails me about it (click the contact button at the top of this blog).