I didn’t expect too much extra-curriculum reading while my school is still in session, in particular when I have several written case assignments due this week for my term 4 of Duke MBA study. Nevertheless, the library book “Reality Check” from Guy Kawasaki is due this week, so I have to finish it, interestingly several interest links in the book offered some insights to reveal the superhot twitter platform success receipt.
Here is the link As the twitter founder Evan Williams pointed out, you cannot design your success. the twitter’s current usage pattern is totally not their initial design, it is the unexpected usage of twitter that makes twitter useful. but one thing they did right to enable the unexpected usage was that they started the whole thing simple. This simplicity lowered the threshold for the entire world to join the twitter movement. One trivial creativity built on top of another trivial creativity made the twitter shine. As simple as that.
BTW… just realized there are so much decent presentations on TED. get to check that out..
March 11th, 2009
Not sure you have noticed this during the Beijing Olympic opening ceremony (amazing show by any standard, if you haven’t seen it, wait for the Bluray DVD to come out), Spain Olympic team all wear Li-Ning branded outfit (their Logo is a flying letter “L”, shared some traits from Nike’s logo). I think this is very smart move for a Chinese company, especially considering what Spain’s sport has accompolished this year (they win the title from UEFA (European Football), Nadal beats Federer at the Wimbeldon…). Imagine if Nadal claims the title of Man’s Tennish single game and wearing the LiNing brand on the podium, that will win a lot of people’s eyeballs.
What is more interesting is LiNng choose to give up on the battle with Addidas for outfitting Chinese delegation (the country where LiNing brand is growing from), the offer price from Addidas is just too high - $80 million for the sponsorship, that is more than the total annual marketing expense of LiNing. China team is just too strong to pass for an advertising compaign (remember China was the 2nd and 3rd in the past two Olympic game medal list.
Now I don’t know when Li Ning (the founder and the CEO of the Li-Ning company) watches a final game between Spain and China in tennis, which side he wants to win.
August 9th, 2008
While I was planning for the end of year trip to Taiwan, I started to check what Sheraton (starwood) reward can offer, then I realize the starwoods point is so valuable, especially to the hotel properties located overseas after you use the currency converter. Some Le Meridien hotel can be exchanged for as low as 3000 pts/night (category 2). That is about the same points I’d get by using my credit card each month, in other word, I get a free hotel night after every month 
Here is the link to the list of all hotels under each category, some really nice hotels are listed under category 2 and 3 (try Asia)
Sheraton Xiamen Hotel
Sheraton Dongguan Hotel
Sheraton Huizhou Resort
Sheraton Shenzhen
Sheraton Guiyang Hotel
Sheraton Haikou Resort
Sheraton Changsha Hotel
Sheraton Nanjing Kingsley Hotel & Towers
Sheraton Shenyang Lido Hotel
Sheraton Xian Hotel
Sheraton Shanghai, Daning
Sheraton Chengdu Lido Hotel
Sheraton Jiuzhaigou Resort
Sheraton Lhasa
Sheraton Hangzhou, Binjiang
Sheraton Zhoushan Hotel
July 11th, 2008
Well.. Steve Jobs claims MacBook Air as the world thinnest laptop, look at the thickness from the picture, it is really amazing, but seriously, people care about the smallest laptop, or the lightest laptop, why they care about the thinnest laptop.
I looked at the spec of the macbook, here is what it said, and compared to thinkpad x61 (as you can tell, I am a biased PC user, but I also use mac):
- Intel Core 2 Duo 1.6ghz - the x61 model started with 2ghz (also with 1.6 ghz low voltage)
- 3 lb, - x61 model weights 3lb 10 oz, 10oz difference is not that big
- 80gb HD, that is way too small, - x61 gives you option to upgrade to bigger hard drive, or you can replace yourself, x61 uses standard SATA HD.
- 0.76′ thick, -x61 is 1.4″, that is half of the thinkness, cannot deny this is amazing
- ports for other devices, this is something MacAir really bothers me, it has only 1 usb port, 1 micro-DVI port and 1 headphone. that means if you have more than 1 USB device, you will need to carry a big USB hub. And if you have a miniDV which uses 1394, you are out of luck!! - x61 has 3 USB 2.0, 1 1394
- Starting price $1800, - x61 started from $1050, if you want the 1.8ghz MacAir, you have to spend more than $3000. This is crazy!
That said, judge yourself, if you have a few thousand bucks to burn, MacBook Air will sure get you enough attention. An alternative option is to buy a leopard and install it on your Thinkpad, what you lose is the shiny LED screen and a multi-touch trackpad. That is what I am using..
then compare to my favorite brand IBM thinkpad X61, I don’t see compelling reasons for people to jump ship
January 15th, 2008
One php script that I used was encoded with Zend so I must enable Zend optimizer to run those scripts on my web server, yeah, as any smart people would guess, Zend optimizer should run smoothly with Zend Debugger, after all, they are all made by Zend, right? Turns out I was wrong.
I got this message after I enabled both Zend optimizer and Zend debugger: (I was using xampp with php 5.2.4)
PHP Fatal error: [Zend Optimizer] Zend Debugger must be loaded after Zend Optimizer in Unknown on line 0
The php.ini was configured this way
zend_extension_ts = “E:\xamp\php\zendOptimizer\lib\ZendExtensionManager.dll”
zend_extension_manager.optimizer_ts = “E:\xamp\php\zendOptimizer\lib\Optimizer”
zend_extension_ts = “e:\xamp\php\ext\ZendDebugger.dll”
After some research, turns out the default suggested configuration was wrong, you must use a hidden arg zend_extension_manager.debug_server_ts and point it to a container directory that names its children directory with a name pattern “php-n.m.x”.
Here is the steps,
- download latest 5.2.10 Zend Debugger here
- unzip the downloaded zip file to your web host, rename the children directory from m_n_x_comp to php-m.n.x, i.e. change 5_2_x_comp to php-5.2.x
- point zend_extension_manager.debug_server_ts to the parent folder of php-m.n.x
- enable optimizer in the same way
so completed php.ini should have something like this.
zend_extension_ts = “c:\xamp\php\zendOptimizer\lib\ZendExtensionManager.dll”
zend_extension_manager.optimizer_ts = “c:\xamp\php\zendOptimizer\lib\Optimizer”
zend_extension_manager.debug_server_ts=c:\xamp\zend-5.2.10
zend_debugger.expose_remotely=allowed_hosts
zend_debugger.allow_hosts=127.0.0.1/32,192.168.1.0/255
zend_debugger.allow_tunnel=127.0.0.1/32
Now start your apache and have fun!
January 13th, 2008
The business trip to Japan is coming up, shoot, that is tomorrow! I haven’t spent time preparing for the trip yet!!
I’ll go alone this time because Jane is so worried about Owen taking long haul flight -15 hours of plane time it is not too exciting travel alone, but she promised that she will go watching Olympics with me next year, we will see.
Planned stop is Tokyo, Nagoya, Koyto, Osaka, Hikkado. Heard many rumors saying Hikkado is so popular in summer and I’d have to book 3-4 month in advance, so I must go find out now.
Stay tuned for the trip report when I am traveling, one thing for sure, there will be lots of photos.
Here I come, Japanese food!
July 4th, 2007
The TV series “Planet Earth” gets amazing rating on IMDB, 9.8 out of 10, that is the highest score that I saw on any movies and TVs that is ever rated on IMDB, but I don’t think that score is serving the justice, this TV deserves 11 out of 10 if you own a HDTV (most of my blog readers should most likely have one). Just watching that TV on Discovery HD channel makes me feel my monthly satellite bill is well worth it.
I used my xbox360 to play the 1080p version on my 110in home theater, I think that is the most amazing picture I have ever get since I set up the screen four years ago. Maybe it has to do the with the filming equipment and the way they shoot the scenes, it is so 3D, sometimes I just felt I was flying with the camera, that experience totally blows me away, sometimes I would just feel the nature and animals are just next to me, I can literally freeze any of the scene and that snapshot would be a perfect PC desktop.
I think most people who watched the HD-DVD or HDTV series will agree with me, no wonder this is the #1 popular HD-DVD title (among all HD-DVD or Blu-ray DVD) on Amazon.
If you still haven’t watch this after you saw my blog, you definitely owe you an apology. This is def 1 of 1000 things you get do before you die 
June 30th, 2007
The new version of the lightbox is out, try it! it looks very attractive with the script.aculo.us based animation, install is very simple, just include three js, one css in your header, then now in your code where you typically use
<a href=”bigger_jpg” mce_href=”bigger_jpg” >
to show the bigger version of the jpg, now you just use
<a href=”bigger_jpg” mce_href=”bigger_jpg” rel=”lightbox”>.
The result is very cool, maybe I should add that to many of my pages..
May 10th, 2007
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