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Amazon.cn, the Chinese branch of the American Internet retailer, has adjusted its delivery standards and will now charge a CNY5 delivery fee for any order under CNY29.

Amazon is the latest Internet B2C retailer to give up the free delivery policy for all shipments in China, following 360buy.com and Newegg.com.cn.

Wang Hanhua, president for Amazon.cn, revealed to local media that the free delivery measure was a very expensive investment and Amazon.cn has spent several billion Renminbi to support this policy in the past.

Amazon.cn has marked on its official website that consumers can gain free delivery by purchasing goods of over CNY29, effective from 07:00 on February 2, 2012. The new policy affects all products sold and delivered by Amazon.cn as well as those sold by vendors and delivered by Amazon.cn. However, products sold and delivered directly by vendors are not included.

B2C e-commerce websites in China have recently started cutting distribution costs. On November 22, 2011, 360buy.com announced that it would give up the complete free delivery policy and started charging a CNY5 delivery fee for any order under CNY39. About a month later, Newegg.com.cn, which previously provided free delivery in first-tier Chinese cities, said it would charge delivery fees for any order under CNY99.

“To me, closed isn’t anything that doesn’t have total freedom,” Laurs told me. “By that definition, Android is already closed.”

Laurs has some bold predictions for 2012. He believes Google will start to exert a tighter control over Android, restricting what kinds of apps are developed and what technologies they can use.

“You can’t blame a company for getting as much as power as it can get,” he said. “If I were Google, it’s what I would do.”

He calls the 30 percent cut of the revenue generated from apps paid out to Google a tax on developers. The cut is supposed to account for Google hosting the app, running it on the Android Marketplace, and handling the transaction. While that may be great for some smaller developers, he said larger players may not necessarily need all of those services, and could manage the apps on their own for a lower price.

Laurs said the 30 percent cut is an industry standard only because Apple, which runs a closed system, dictates it.

Laurs isn’t without his own biases. His company, GetJar, is an independent app store that in many ways competes with Android’s own marketplace. The company has worked hard just to ensure Android phones are able to download apps from sources outside of Android’s store, something a few of the wireless carriers have played along with.

But GetJar has seen significant traffic, having crossed 2 billion app downloads in August, and 100 million downloads a month.

Google, for its part, has always maintained that Android is an open system, and points to the number of varied vendors and developers that use the platform. The company, to its credit, has been able to draw a diverse mix of partners.

But Google’s reputation for openness isn’t without its question marks. Over the past year, the company has been battling allegations from Skyhook, a private provider of service that help phones locate their position, that it muscled it out of a partnership with Motorola. Google has denied any wrongdoing, and claimed Skyhook didn’t meet Android’s technical requirements.

On Wednesday, visual voicemail company YouMail complained that its app was completely pulled from Android Market because of a request from T-Mobile. YouMail later found out a version of its app was in fact unnecessarily hurting T-Mobile’s network, and after some tweaking, said it was coming back. But the company still took exception to Google pulling the app completely when only one carrier made the request.

The process may be gradual, but Laurs sees Google exerting more control. The acquisition of Motorola is another step, he said, adding the company could always threaten to give Motorola the latest version of Android to maintain control of its partners. Google has said it would treat Motorola the same as any other vendor partner.

Android’s dominance is poised to continue. Laurs said by next year, it should surpass Apple as the destination of choice for developers, adding that he expects a number of Android-exclusive apps to pop up.

How do we make creating change more fun and engaging?Yes, social innovators are jumping on the gamification bandwagon too. Like entrepreneurs and educators who are venturing into this field, we’re trying to figure out how to engage people more effectively at a time when they are becoming increasingly more distracted by the tsunami of information and content generated by everyone.

Young people, especially, are distracted by online games that are the very definition of addiction. (As I wrote this last sentence, I was notified by Farmville that I had to harvest my pumpkins, which forced me to take a 10 minute break.)But social innovators are also turning to gamification — the application of game elements to non-game settings — to address an age-old problem.

It’s a problem described succinctly by some as the “knowing-doing gap” — the unfortunate reality that there’s a gap between what we know we should do and what we actually do.

We know we should be eating more healthful foods but we gorge ourselves with hamburgers and french fries. We know we should be reducing our use of plastic bags and bottles but we rarely carry reusables with us. We know we should all reduce our carbon footprint but we _________ (fill in your own excuse).

There’s a limit to how much we can appeal to logic and reason to get people to “do the right thing.” The upper limit for recycling (of municipal waste) seems to be 30 percent, even after decades of promoting such practice. For greater success, we have no choice but to appeal to other motivations.

Games, especially video games like Angry Birds and online games like Farmville, teach us what humans are motivated by.We’re motivated by feedback that’s frequent and rapid, challenges that are not too easy or too hard, rewards that are both expected and unexpected, a real sense of purpose or epic meaning, mastery of skills, productivity, accomplishment, involvement of other people, and some degree of autonomy. Those are just a few of the more popular game dynamics.

I’ve created a social innovation competition called Fun for A Change to invite youth to create social change solutions that are more fun and engaging. And I’ve been testing this approach at conferences in Asia, working mostly with university students but also with children as young as 10.Seeing with my own eyes how engaged young people can be in this type of design process, I’ve come to believe that fun is the most powerful way to invite young people into the social change space.

I’m especially encouraged by the pilot just completed at Simon Fraser University in Surrey, British Columbia. The school’s chapter of Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) held its own Fun for A Change competition and some great ideas emerged.

The runner-up, Lotto Globe, proposed a way to recycle millions of train tickets printed each year by creating a special lottery that you enter by recycling your tickets after you’re done. The prizes can come from local businesses, which allows the lottery to promote the local economy. It also sends an important message that recycling small pieces of paper can add up.

The winning idea, Image Garden, went after a more ambitious behavior change. It’s a game inspired installation that invites children to express themselves creatively in a public space and take ownership of the public spaces they occupy.

We plan to demonstrate both ideas in the coming months to measure their effectiveness.Starting in October, Fun for A Change will also be held at 16 universities in Taiwan, one in India, and a few other schools that are not yet confirmed.

Youth who are not at a participating school can also take part in the online challenge at Fun for A Change. Designed to be game-like, “players” design their social change solutions (powered by game dynamics) by completing seven simple missions.

Gamification is not a panacea. In some cases, it may even do more harm than good. But if much of social change involves behavior change, then we need to start taking cues from Angry Birds.