Posts filed under 'General'
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
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
I am current AA gold member, which will get 50% bonus miles for each flight I fly, but it is expiring this month, I didn’t travel that much to qualify again for this year. I just cannot fly without elite membership.. luckily, AA has this status match policy for my employer, so I just called them to match my Delta frequent flyer program elite status, I was Delta’s silver elite member, guess what - AA just awarded me platinum membership using the match policy.. wow, AA rocks!
February 17th, 2007
I must say Mr. Jobs is a very good public speaker, if I were there at SF listen to his pitch, I’d buy the cleverly marketed iPhone immediately, but luckily I was not there… Obviously the investors don’t think taht way, they are getting crazy about the new phone and thinking it is the next big thing, at least as big as the original iPod that saved Apple (Computer) Inc.
Maybe I am dumb, but how big deal is this phone? Is it really that big that can push the stock value 8%? Let’s look at the reality, the mobile phone market is a very mature market, most consumers still use phones for talking only or sending SMS, except business men who really have their life count on push-IMAP email (normally managed by Exchange server). how many consumer users will like to pay $599 for a really-looking-cool phone? I’d highly doubt this phone can have over 2M units sold in the first year, assuming each unit 200 profilt, that is about $400M profits, this alone is not sufficient to support the current stock price level.
let’s checking the features of this phone:
- google map… I don’t think it is that useful if the phone doesn’t have built in gps chipset.
- mac os X software… yeah it is nice, but I doubt I’d really spend time to read html on the device because afterall, it is still too small, plus, I don’t think you can install any software on this phone (unlike smartphone)
- no wifi? how can a mobile computer without wifi? I am sure you will have to pay big bill if you rely on cingular to read html
- as usual, you cannot change battery, you cannot add memory, it is closed, I cannot agree on this given now the entire world is moving toward open…
Regardless of the shortcomings, I believe Apple has made a leap toward creating innovation, I’d like to see iPhone 2 before I jump on it…
(be careful with Steve’s presentation, sometimes his chart is misleading, e.g. one page showing 200+ patents for iPhone, here the fine print is 200+ patents filed, a patent filed and issued are very different)
January 9th, 2007
As promised, here is the rest of exciting things happened around us, hope you are having \”fun with Jane and Sherwood\”.
- Christimas holiday celebration is the largest in scale so far. First of all, this is the first time Sherwood\’s parents to come over US to see how American people enjoyed the holidays. Secondly, Jane and Sherwood setup Christimas tree to celebrate the holidays for the first time ever since they moved to the house 5 years ago. This is also the first time for Sherwood in his life to setup one. The end result has been pretty stunning, especially in the night time thanks to 1250 lights and 50+ ornaments on the tree. Finally we have such a huge Christimas eve dinner that totally eight people barely eat half of the stuff.
- Getting crazy to buy a PS3. Sherwood and Jane participated in an online fight to place a PS3 station into their cart on launch date, but unfortunately, we failed miserably, leaving both of us sad and mad. Half an hour before the official time Costco said it would post the PS3 link, we were nervewrecks hawking at the site…around 10:40, chaos began. Each of us had about 10 windows opened simultaneously and were alternating back and forth in an attempt to get through (kept on getting page errors due to the overload) - it was a REAL test of endurance and patience!!! Each time we reached the next step, the very next one would fail and we would have to start all over again. It was not until later that we learned from a forum that there are tricks - such as saving the page each time a milestone is reached, and holding down the control key down while clicking furiously at the link - word has it that out of the 10 windows, 8-9 will fail but one will go through). Maybe the traditional way of physically lining up isn’t so bad after all…*sigh*
- Sherwood finally travelled so much that his frequently flyer mileage is enough to buy a round trip ticket to Asia, meanwhile, Sherwood\’s contribution to RDU airport has tripled, he has used the airport 21 times this year.
- Tigeryao.com has changed a lot without incurring significant development expense. Major changes include: New baby blog is created and owned by Owen, it is very well received among families and friends, new features added to main blog and baby blog to prevent spams, 26 new albums added to photo gallery. Overall in 2006 site total page view reached 305529 hits and 3.4GB total data usage (according to my web host). Maybe it is time to add google adWords for some cash.
- Among the first few people installed and used legal copy of Microsoft Windows Vista because I have MSDN. Overall, the real excitement was the moment after the install ended, that is also when the excitement ended. The only thing that I liked is really the cool Aero 3D user interface. Nevertheless, I have a firm belief that Vista will create huge positive impact on the overall PC hardware business because it needs such powerful computing power to render it nicely. Somehow I think Vista is more of a copycat of mac OS X on several things, you know what I am talking about if you are a MAC user.
December 25th, 2006
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