Category Archives: QQ Instant Messaging

QQ Instant Messaging, Qzone Photo Album

Add Photos to Your Qzone

July 26, 2012 Computers Made Simple Leave a comment

Last time, we showed you how to open up your Qzone. This time, we’ll show you how to add photos to it. Here we go:

First, open your Qzone.

Qzone photo — **Your Qzone. No photos yet.**

Hover at the top to bring down the list of icons.

Click on the second icon to start the album upload process.

Here’s where you can name your album, describe it and select different permission settings.

Ignore the next menu. Click the X to close it.

Clicking the blue button brings up a typical Windows file choice menu.

Once you choose the photos and click the OK button in Windows, you get a thumbnail pic of whichever ones you’ve chosen. Click the upload button to finish the process.

At this point you can describe the photos as a group or, one by one. If you’ve taken a trip, for instance, you can describe them all saying something such as ‘Summer Trip 2012’.

You’re done! If you use Google Chrome, the whole process is somewhat easier since Chrome will translate most menus for you. For the ones it doesn’t translate, copy and paste the text into Google Translate.

Other than photos, you can add blog posts to your zone, ask questions and interact with your friends in many ways. We’ll show you how to add blog entries in a future post.

Thanks for reading!

Creating Your Qzone

July 25, 2012 Computers Made Simple 8 Comments

Signing up for a new QQ account is very straightforward. No knowledge of Chinese is needed if you go to the QQ International site. You’ll find it here: http://www.imqq.com/

Once you have your account set up, basically that involves telling QQ who you are, your date of birth, a new password and confirming your email address, you can start looking for new friends. Each QQ account has a Qzone attached to it. A Qzone is where you share photos, stories, logs (blogs) with your friends. They can comment on your material and you can visit their zones to do the same. The Qzone is sort of a mini-Facebook.

Some QQ users spend a lot of time dressing up their zones. You can too but, first, you have to open it up. Once you log-in to QQ, click on the right icon, the one that looks like four mini computer screens, then click on the Qzone icon shown here:

Photo of QQ main chat window — ***Clock on the Qzone icon.***

Once you click on the Qzone icon, you’ll be taken to a page that is completely Chinese. Ah, your adventure begins. While the QQ chat window is in English, everything in your zone is in Chinese. Don’t worry, we’ve been using QQ for years and we’ll show you how to get around. This is what the first page looks like:

Photo of QQ Invitation Page — **QQ is inviting you to open your zone.**

The English for the blurb under the words “JOIN US” reads like this:

Logging life bit by bit, photo sharing moments
Show their own individual tastes, and friends with idyllic
Independence not as good as the public Lele Lele, so what, just join the QQ space family! (at least that’s what Google translates it as).

If you click on the big blue box, the one that has QQ followed by two Chinese symbols, this is what you’ll see:

Qzone Confirmation Page — **Fill out the information here, some of which is already completed, then click the bar at the bottom.**

Basically, you name your zone (you can change it later), confirm your nickname, your sex, what calendar you want to use, your country of origin then a captcha (the BVQX thing). Lastly, signify that you have read the agreement by clicking the bar at the bottom. You’re set!

Next time we will add some photos to create an album. Stay tuned.

Thanks for reading!

Chinese Social Media, QQ Instant Messaging, Qzone Privacy

Lock Your Qzone – update

July 2, 2012 Computers Made Simple 5 Comments

Our post on locking your Qzone was correct but one reader couldn’t duplicate one of the menus so here we are again. We’ll post another path to your security settings in case you can’t get to them as per the previous blog entry. Here we go:

1. Open your Qzone. Your main page will look like this but you can get to the security menu from any page:

Photo of basic Qzone menu — This is the area that you want to find at the top of the page.

2. Hover your cursor (mouse) over the third set of symbols to bring up this menu:

Hover over the third set of symbols, underlined above, then click the circled symbol.

3. On the next page, look for the set of symbols on the right. Here they are:

Photo of Qzone menu — Look for the set of symbols that we’ve circled and click on them.

4. Once you click the circled symbols, this page will come up. What you are doing here is finding your profile settings and editing them, just as you do in Facebook or any other social networking site:

Photo of Qzone security page — Under the padlock icon, click the first set of symbols.

5. Clicking on the circled set of symbols will bring up the same menu as shown in our post about locking your profile. That article is here: Locking your Qzone

This is the menu:

Photo of Qzone security settings menu — Hovering over the circled set of symbols will bring out the menu just below it. This is where you can lock your zone.

TIP: As we said earlier, these settings are no different than the ones on Facebook or your MSN zone, basically the same as any other social networking site. The difference is that these settings are all in Chinese. If you use Google Chrome, the job is a bit easier. Part of the fun of all of this is getting to know some Chinese symbols and working out these settings on your own. It’s a mystery, right? Everyone loves a mystery. We hope this helped you. Let us know if it didn’t.

Thanks for reading!

Privacy, QQ Instant Messaging, Qzone Privacy

Protect Your Qzone from Strangers

June 28, 2012 Computers Made Simple 11 Comments

QQ is a chat application from China, created by Tencent Inc. Whole most users are Chinese, QQ is slowly spreading around the world. Many Westerners, including some of us here at Computers Made Simple, have used it for years.

QQ is free, of course, and with every account comes a few gigabytes of space to share photos, stories, etc. with your friends. By default, your zone is open to everyone but it’s probably a wise move to keep your Qzone somewhat private. You can lock your photo albums but if you want to lock your whole Qzone to strangers, here is how you do it.

1. Head to your Qzone. If you are using the International (English) version, the chat interface will be in English but your Qzone will be in Chinese. With the latest version, you have to add the Qzone app first, then you can go to your zone.

2. On the main page, look for the gear up on the top, just to the right of your profile pic:

Photo of the gear to change your Qzone settings — The gear is where you can set your privacy limits.

3. Hover your cursor (mouse) over the gear to bring up this menu:

Photo showing dropdown menu — The one you want is the third choice, highlighted here.

4. Choose the third group of symbols. This will bring up this page:

Photo of Qzone privacy menu — All the settings you need are here.

5. At this point, this zone is open only to friends. The choice on the left will make it open to everyone, the right one means it’s locked to everyone except the user and the middle one has its own internal settings.

TIP: If you use QQ for a while, you’ll receive many requests to be friends. Some users are looking for partners, some are looking for English speakers and some are just looking for friends. Before you can use the next set of privacy limits, create a new group in your friend list. Name it Strangers or whatever you want, but put all new requests that you accept in this group until you know more about the person you care chatting with. Don’t worry, there is substantially more spam and fake ‘hot girls’ on Yahoo than there are on QQ.

6. If you have made sub-groups inside your list of Friends, this is where you can choose which groups have access to your zone. Hover over the light brown string of symbols, in this case they are just to the right of the 0/6. This menu will come up:

Photo showing which groups can see your Qzone. — Every group selected here will be able to enter your zone.

7. What you’re doing in this menu is selecting the groups that can enter your zone. Each group that you select by clicking in the box beside the name, will be able to enter your Qzone. In this example none of the groups can enter this person’s Qzone.

8. Once you have finalized your group selection, make sure you click the Save button at the bottom, the one that looks like this:

Photo showing the Chinese symbols for 'save changes' — Look for the button that looks like this. Click it to save your changes.

9. Once you click this button, your choices will be saved for you. That’s it! Your Qzone is now private.

Thanks for reading!

QQ Instant Messaging

QQ International – the perfect chat app for everyone

June 7, 2012 Computers Made Simple 7 Comments

Tencent (Tencent, Inc. available at tencent.com) have several different free products that are worth looking at, even if you aren’t Chinese. As the Chinese Internet boom keeps booming, almost half a billion Internet users at this point, Tencent continues to offer innovative and interesting communication software. We have written about Weixin or WeChat in previous posts. Here are the links: Weixin 1 and WeChat Shake . Right now, we will give you a few details on QQ International, the incredibly efficient and fun chat app for everyone.

QQ has been around for quite a while. We’ve been using it for over four years now and it keeps getting better. We aren’t affiliated with Tencent in any way but we do admire their products. Since they are all free, we feel we should give praise where it’s due. Free is good and simple, that’s what we’re all about here, right? If you are Chinese, you already know about QQ and its many features. If you aren’t, now is the time to download it and start opening up your world.

QQ International simplifies the seemingly overwhelming job of accessing modern China. Where do you start? How can you discover the unique world that is modern day China? Well, an easy and fast and free way is to head over here: http://www.imqq.com/ and download QQ International, currently on version 1.3. Install the software and signup for an account using your current email address. QQ includes an email account but you need a third party email account to sign up. Everything is in English up to this point so don’t stress.

Once you have completed the sign-up, simply log in using your username and password and you’re off to the races….probably a completely different race than you’re ever experienced. Hundreds of millions of Chinese use QQ but more and more non-Chinese are using it everyday. While QQ International opens up the door to chatting with friends in China, there is no reason why you can’t chat and interact with users all over the world. If you are a trendsetter, convince your friends to download QQ and together you can start to enjoy a feature-rich chat experience unlike anything you’ve ever used before. MSN and Yahoo Messenger pale in comparison.

What features does QQ International have? To begin with, QQ will translate messages from Chinese to English almost instantly, allowing you to chat with someone whose English isn’t perfect PLUS QQ translates your English into Chinese just as instantly. Highlight the other person’s message and choose the translate button,then type your words in English and use the Alt/e key combo to translate your message back to them. Of course the translation is literal. Don’t expect the nuances of either language to come through and do expect a bit of confusion but don’t worry about it. If you aren’t familiar with China or its residents, you’ll find them very eager to chat with a native English speaker and equally as eager to share their knowledge of China and its customs.

QQ International also offers superb webcam support as well as crystal clear audio chat. Want to share a video you shot? Click the ‘Share video’ button and you’re off. Need some help with your computer? QQ offers an excellent remote assistance setup as well.

You can share files, of course, but you can also video chat with up to twenty other users. This feature is new with Version 1.3 but previous versions allowed multiple users the ability to chat with each other using their microphones. Many Chinese are extremely keen to learn English and have set up groups of people with similar interests. Using QQ, the group can trade pronunciation tips and stories with each other.

Each QQ account comes with a free Qzone. The Qzone is similar to MySpace in that you can post your photos, your stories, your music or whatever else you want to share with your friends. Here is where you might run into a problem. The Qzone is in Chinese. Unless you are using Google Chrome you will be lost trying to set yours up. Start to use Chrome and you’ll be off on your way to the excitement of discovering a new world.

There are many other features that come for free with QQ. We’ve outlined the main ones, you’ll have to discover the others on your own. If you need help, ask us or, better yet, make a new friend and ask them.

With WeChat, QQ, renren and Weibo, to name a few, China is offering up a solid set of communication tools which are just as good, sometimes better, than anything you’ll find on this side of the globe. Just because you live in North America or Europe, don’t assume you’ve got the best of the best. Give QQ International a try and you’ll see what we mean.

Thanks for reading!

a little bit of hi-tech, a little bit of common sense and a lot of fun