Received my cell phone email bill the other day.  I never go over my voice/text limits and I have an unlimited data plan – so unless I’m traveling, my cell phone charges tend to be very consistent.  I couldn’t help but notice, though, that this bill was $10 higher than usual.  While I’m no fan of AT&T’s network quality (more on that here), I’ve found them to be pretty on top of things, billing-wise – so I was a little surprised.

Off to their website I went, looking for whatever annoying new fee, tax, or disputed charge that was surely there waiting for me – with that familiar old feeling of cell-phone-company-fear-and-loathing already coming on, I logged on to my account….

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Here in the west, the intrinsic value of individual innovation and intellectual property is such an ingrained ideal we can take it for granted sometimes.  Not so in Asia, where the blatant imitation of successful products is often the sincerest form of flattery.

This is especially true when it comes to popular culture and technology.  Twitter has been so phenomenally successful that it’s now arguably both a cultural and technological phenomenon  – so maybe it’s worth taking a look at a few of the Asian Twitter clones out there.

The first thing one notices is that most of these sites use the same shade of turquoise blue and the same style of font used in the original.  Again, to western eyes, copying the Twitter look and feel so slavishly might seem utterly shameless – yet it’s just another example of the how different the Asian mindset is from ours when it comes to such matters.

It should come as no surprise there are several Twitter knock-offs in China – but there are also more innovative sites as well.  Take, for example, digu (below).  This Chinese Twitter clone features an interface that pops up real-time geo-located balloons of posts as they occur (much like similar western sites such as twittervision).

It’s worth noting, though, that digu’s interface is really just a Google Maps-powered mashup.  It’ll be interesting to see if Google continues to make their API available to Chinese sites like digu  in the event they do end up pulling out of the search business in China…

Avid digitalmissive readers know, I have long considered the New York subway my prefered ad-hoc “test tube”, to get a read on the adoption status of the latest available digital devices and services. Turns out, when it comes to eReaders, I am really not seeing much excitement among my fellow straphangers these days.

Apart from the occasional Amazon Kindle, Big Apple subway riders don’t seem overly attracted (yet!) to the burgeoning world of portable electronic book and magazine devices.

How come?

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