Radiolab released a podcast that is a backgrounder on how China created an input method to type thousands of Chinese characters in early computers with western keyboards called Wubi. It explains how the input method still helps the writer remember the essence of the written characters while currently the dominant (and slower) input method of Pinyin results in even native Chinese speakers forgetting how to write the characters. The podcast reminded me how I’ve been using predictive input two decades before it became common for gmail to suggest how to write my emails.

I have some sites that I want to be accessible in Shenzhen. They include being able to post content to my sites. Unfortunately many Google services are blocked in China. One such service is the recaptcha service for spam protection. Fortunately in the Google recaptcha FAQ, they provide a solution. It does not specifically mention China however when implementing this it worked.

The gist of the solution is that you need to replace references to “www.google.com” with “www.recaptcha.net”.

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