Black Orange – Peter Du’s Blog

It is becoming a trend: everything is going dark on the earth hour.

Last year, Google turned its front page to this total darkness:

Message? Simple: switch off ALL your electric devices during the earth hour.

This year, more people are involved in the movement locally, I know a friend started the baiktour group on facebook to promote bicycle riding for one hour.

I advocate consistency, which means I believe 20 minutes of exercise every day drives you a longer way than 2 hours of intense workout over weekend, so cycle to work every day after the baik event if you are a true believer of earth hour.

In the cyber world, which is quickly turning into a TwitterLand or the pages to FaceBook, there are supporters similar to the black Google.

Senatus is one of the extraordinary, besides painting website black, they manage to find suitable content that shines in the darkness, materials that might make an lingering impact on conversing energy. So instead of doing a Google search which costs 12 grams of coal, you stay on to read more.

Turn off to 

So don’t it is time to go to Senatus if you believe only in participating ad hoc events that soothe your feelings and firm up your belief.

And don’t please go to Senatus if you enjoy only popular culture and think all want to become wall street people who are financial masters.

During the earth hour (Saturday 8.30pm GMT+8), you should turned off your laptop, skipped using the Internet, stayed in the dark, kept still and silent, so you could help to conserve as much energy as possible.

Or perhaps you could continued to surf the Internet, went out with friends for drinks in the bar, enjoyed the bright lamps along the street, kept on your air conditioner, and had fun playing WII.

But either way, remember, when you leave house next time, turn off all the lights, all the switches, take the train instead of your car, do whatever you could to save the energy.

Wouldn’t it be fun if you could play the game of saving energy, or rather redesign the game to suit your taste?

A Singaporean journalist shares the difference between a columnist and a blogger:

A columnist is as good as the last column she wrote, while a blogger could lose her audience for a while and regain them later on more relevant posts.

This is the event that I attended in Ogilvy Centre

While she, a SPH scholar who worked for SPH for 10 years, a veteran columnist for Straight Times, who reads blogs through search engines instead of Google Feed Reader, thinks blogging is similar to or exactly same as journalism, they are intrinsically different – the most obvious: journalists are paid to write the sensational, the factual and the political, bloggers volunteer their time to create a voice of her personality. The motivations behind them are not the same.

Exercise: create a compelling ultra short story with 6 words. This is the most enjoyable part of the conversation when I am in the position to create. If you’ve been paying attention on twitter, there was this 6 word/twitter short story event a while ago.

Anyway, here is my 6 word story:

Beer with a woman, later suicided.

Compare with the most famous one:

For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

You don’t need a lot of words to tell a compelling story.

So I’ll end my post here, and I’ll do a post about creating a compelling story another day.

It has been days since the inauguration of President Obama a week ago, with the close of change.gov and the new whitehose.gov. We can see how this old government will bring change to this old land under the leadership of a new president.

While that is yet to be seen, I still could recall the CNN + Facebook experience I had that day. It was wonderfully executed online. As long as you have logged into your facebook account, you have a tiny conversation box with your friends and everyone, here is a 1 minute screencast explaining what happened on the day:

It was indeed a powerful experience, though dated back to the days when we have no money to afford one TV per house. When the crowd gather to one place, watching the TV program, talking to each other on the programme, or some other randomly interesting topic. The desire inside people wanting to socialize is always there, and CNN facilitated this desire by creating this virtual platform for everyone. The “everyone-come-together-watch-tv-and-talk” experience.

PS:
It’s interesting that some people was wondering that who few people twitterred during the election. I did some research through compete.com, the result is quite shocking:

Facebook Twitter Plurk Comparision

Facebook has 60 million unique visitors per month, comparing with pathetic twitter or plurk. Guess the numbers say all.

The action packed, technology advanced and attractive TV show 24 has finally arrived. I was the fan of the show since 4 years ago. And I am once again intrigued by the pictures this time. After a long delay because of writers’ strike last year and the recent burnt down of the 24 set in the Universal Studio LA, the first 4 episodes have finally arrived at the beginning of 2009.

I am a fan of technology, so I was constantly seeking what the new changes are from last seasons, let’s use some shots from Episode 1 and 2 to illustrate the point

1.A Large Touchscreen! It seems that after Apple has popularized multitouch with its iPhone and Jeff’s multitouch demo at TED, these touchy device starts to get very popular, even CNN were using them.

Touchscreen on TV Monitor

2.Dell. I can’t say if there are more dells visible in the scene, but those giant words definitely popped right at my eyes!

Dell Monitor

3.Apple Cinema Display, no more iMacs, no more. There are no more iMacs running some kinda of customized operating system (it might be purely VFX, who knows), instead, they have placed only Apple Cinema Display there to show the schematic.

Apple Cinema Display running Vista

4.Windows Vista Everywhere We can from nearly all the shots I captured here have some Vista imprint. Some are for sure windows vista operating system, some might be a vfx effect, but nevertheless, it might the cost of Microsoft Vista’s adversiting budget into this.

After Touched the Screen

Field Monitor - Vista on the right

You can watch the TV series through the Fox On Demand, if you know how.

I used to be a fan of Microsoft’s social networking website, whose name ironically I have forgotten. They have the interface like the following:

The Look of Microsoft's Social Networking Research Project

It was sort of like private network, where you could upload your music in full length to share with your close friends (i missed those times, badly),  and put your best photos as your background for people to enjoy. There was this element of connection in the picture. I mean visually, there is this connecting line in the picture you can see, and it changes as your click on other people “connected” to you.

In 2005, the research project came to a closure, or rather yanked because of running out of funds. I heard they built another website based on the same concept but on a different domain, which I had no access to to until today.

I could not remember if Microsoft Live Spaces has the option of opting out showing your content to non-explicitly added friends in the very beginning, but it eventually has the function of  blocking everyone but those selected few on your whitelist. The most recent discovery of mine on the topic is:

They allow your friends on your MSN messanger to have the access to your content only unless you want to share with the world

Wait a second, and think about what that means.

Table: Facebook and Spaces Difference

I am not sure if Microsoft is trying again to molopoly the social networking website, but they ARE catching up fast.

From NY Times:

22 citizens of China have been held at Guantánamo

However, that does not come to me as a really shock , well, you’ll see the reason when you read the piece. From it I can realize why some of the organizations Chinese government is purging could survive.

I came across this chart on the Internet today, which explains the popularity of the different social networking services around the globe. The accuracy of this chart might be in doubt, but the data still has interesting data for me to muse on.

1. Japan, Netherlands, Poland and Russia has its own dominating social networking website ( China has xiaonei.com as the primary one)
2. None of American social networking websites was popular is Japan and Russia.
3. Yahoo ditched the Mesh, while maintaining 360º , for it is still popular in 5 out of the 17 places mentioned.
4. Google is still losing to Yahoo in India market

One more thing as one of the most discussed topics in the web:

Chrome, the Google Browser is out, after using it for a while and reading the making of Google Chrome, I realize one thing this browser is best for: Surfing all Google Product Website – Google Reader, Google Email, Google Calendar. Simply perfect. For the rest of the web, Rocks.

This is short summary and review for the newly release HP Touch Smart IQ500 has launched in Singapore. I was invited by Melvin Yuan to take a look at their releasing product in this coming July in Asia last Tuesday.

After talking with the HP product manager Daniel for TouchSmart IQ500 in Singapore, and tried first hand on the set. I’ve discovered that there are 10 things you might not be aware of HP TouchSmart through merely looking at the Ads or some online review, here they are:

1. No Apple-like multi-touch yet, which means no pinch to zoom nor three fingers to go back, but the multi-touch screen is designed to be object-sensitive rather than pressure-sensitive, so you can actually use your fountain pen to write on the screen.
2. The native screen resolution is 1680 * 1050, which means you can view HD1080p with large amount of pleasure due to its clarity because of many pixels are present, but you can’t take the advantage of the full resolution of 1080p because it still lacks quite a number of pixels according to that.
3. The keyboard and mouse came with the computer are both wireless. To me they feel just alright comparing with those magnificent ones on my MacBook Pro and my Logitech DeNovo Edge. And the wireless duo doesn’t come with a dock + charging station like that of DeNovo Edge – Yes, you need to replace the battery.
4. Don’t eat KFC and play with the screen at the same time! the screen is not oil-proof, though it could resist a certain amount of normal grease on your fingertips.
5. The PC comes with a remote control, which is designed for Windows Media Center rather than the HP TouchSmart Center, which is the piece of software HP developed for this TouchSmart PC.
6. TouchSmart Center can’t do TV, nor could it easily help you to transfer photos from your memory card to computer just yet. And yeah, you can’t delete the photos or videos through the interface either, which might be a good thing for people who like to press the X button all the time.
7. The plainly washed white and bright ambient light makes me want to buy a nice lava lamp and put beside the PC to create some nice ambience  instead
8. They are many pieces of pre-installed software on the PC. Many are quite useful, unlike that of Sony. But for that many games installed, you have only 4 free credits to play, so pay more to play them all.
9. HP software does not use the native resolution, which causes screen to flick  and computer to hang for a period when switching out of the TouchSmart center program using Alt+Tab
10. Vista still hangs now and then, and many applications take a while to start.

And here are the ten things you might know about:

1. HP produces some of the best Ads in the market today, including a nicely composed tune
   
2. The product looks really nice from afar, a giant photo frame sitting there.
3. You can use your stylus to write on the screen and play ink ball with your thumbdrive
4. Playing Solitaire and BeJeweled with fingers are really neat with friends together, a multi-user hot-seat scenario.
5. Coverflow on the machines is nicer than that of Apple, there is more context visible when spreading like a fan instead of vertically stacked.
6. You can watch TV on your desktop without bothering to buy TV cards and install them
7. They have wooping 4G RAM pre-installed to use on the system
8. It runs a 64-bit Windows Vista!
9. Telling Mom how to use the computer has never been easier, MA, just use you hand to press that red button!
10. It has built-in audio and video recording capability, you can do audio notes and voice memo easily.

Check it out for yourself when this coming July, you just find the perfect PC to sit in your living room.

PS: I think Apple’s iMac 24 inch’s look is cool comparing with this as well, but it lacks the Touch function and many more. And there are many reviews out there, if you will, take a look at them as well. But you really gota touch this HP TouchSmart IQ500 first to experience for yourself.

If you want to know what the feeds I am subscribing to, click the following link:

http://www.toluu.com/dusenyao

If Last.FM is the music meta browser, then Toluu is the RSS feed meta browser.

On the profile page, it displays all the RSS feeds you are subscribing to currently (I imported all my RSS feeds through Google Reader’s OPML export function), all the contacts of yours and some really great feeds(regardless if you have subscribed to them or not)

On clicking on each single feed, you can see recent posts in the feed, what popular posts are, as well as how many people have subscribed to this feed in Toluu.

One more thing about Toluu is that when clicking on one of your contact, you are able to see how many feeds do you have in common, which is kind of fun if both of us are feed junkies.

If you want an invite as well, send me a direct message d dusenyao on Twitter with your email address and name.

PS:

If you are really a feed junkied, you can

1. Use Shyftr for reading RSS in a different way,
2. Assemble an online news paper from various blog use Pageflake, and
3. Follow the recent development of OpenWeb.Asia for the development of Web2.0 in asia

It has been really a long while since we have seen the first rumors of the upcoming HP UMPC 2133 (now HP Mini) first in February. The product has finally come to the light. Since the invention of OLPC and followed by that EEE PC vs. OLPC case, I was getting more and more interested in the UMPC world.

Deep in my heart, a ultra-portable tablet PC with extraordinary performance, like gaming, CAD design and long battery would be definitely a killer to me. However, due to the difficult of engineering such piece, I think, the dream of mine is still hanging there.

I have seen a few reviews from online, like jkOnTheRun, which contains a video review of a closer look at the device, as well as side by side comparison of two UMPCs, he has high praises for the device, declaring it the best UMPC he has seen so far, but I that’s just because he got the top-end version to review for free. The price tag on this device isn’t cheap at all. The current available model is priced at $600 USD ($888 SGD with GST) and the top version is $750 USD ($1111 SGD with GST). I hope they are not charging more for shipping and marketing in Singapore. Notebook Review has posted a balanced look on the device with more benchmarks. The major hurdle in the machine is the lack of a powerful processor, the VIA C7-M just doesn’t cut it in term of the raw processing speed.

Yet. I think the device has some really nice quality I am looking forward to, I am afraid that the keyboard is not going to be as nice as my MacBook Pro, but recalling my experience using all the tiny keyboards provided by Packard Bell as well as the EEE PC, I am just looking forward to try it out really soon and do a comparison.

I was once dreaming of carrying a laptop like carrying a book in my bag, and I think the dream is near.

PS: I might get hands on experience really soon. So watch out!

Update:

The device is only given to JK as a review item, not free gift, but again, since the price factor comparison is with high-end UMPC, there is nothing we could talk about here. I am going for the launch event tomorrow in Singapore for HP Mini. We’ll see then.