สวัสดีปีใหม่ 2551 - Happy New Year 2008!

Our beloved king of Thailand made this new year's card so I would like to share it with all of you. Have a prosperous, joyful and excessively fun new year!

MS Exchange Mail on iPhone - the workaround that works

I heard a lot of raves about how iPhone doesn't support corporate emails running on Microsoft Exchange. The main problems here is that Microsoft doesn't open an API to their ActiveSync and Exchange Server (Why would they? Microsoft Windows Mobile is actually big in the corporate email user market). By default, you have a few options down here.

• Use iPhone's Exchange mail protocol (however some mentions it works with only some companies)
• Set the rule to forward or divert mail from Exchange account to other IMAP or POP3 account (A lot of companies, including mine, that are cautious about corporate security and confidentiality disable this rule, even if it's client-based. Also, addresses in To: and Cc: fields may get lost with these rules.)
• Access the email through OWA, Outlook Web Access (It's difficult enough to use OWA on Internet Explorer of Windows Mobile devices. I can't imaging using it on iPhone's Safari).

Another workaround you may want to try is having an always-on Windows box that locally copies all the incoming mails to another iPhone-compatible mail account. Here are the benefits:

• The rule is totally client-based and designed for copying mails from one folder to another. Thus, your company is not likely to block it.
• All the mails will live inside iPhone's proprietary, user-friendly Mail application.
  
• All the addresses on To: and Cc: lists are preserved so you can reply to all without re-populating the addresses from phonebook.
  

Here are what you need:

• A cheap Windows box that you can always leave it on at home, with Microsoft Office and Outlook installed and set up to your corporate account
  
• An alternative email account, preferably IMAP since it gives better integration to iPhone Mail than POP3. Gmail is one of the better options here.

Here are the quick steps that you can fine tune in Outlook rules. Note that I've tried this on Outlook 2003--will give you an update once I've got Office 2007 machine next month.
1. Set up an IMAP account inside Microsoft Outlook client in the same domain as the Exchange corporate account.
2. Add a rule in Outlook client by starting with a blank rule.
3. Set the rule to Check messages when they arrive

4. Filter some emails to be moved as desired (don't tick any box if you want the rule applied to all incoming mesages)


5. Select Move a copy to the specified folder. Then, click the link specified in the text area at the bottom. Choose the folder that belongs to your IMAP account.


6. Set up your iPhone Mail application to retrieve emails from this IMAP account. Use your corporate email address as the From: address on iPhone Mail app.

With this, all incoming emails to your Exchange account will be moved to IMAP account that will appear on the iPhone. You can receive and reply the Exchange emails on iPhone now.

Some caveats of this workaround include the need of leaving the machine on (if your dog hits the power switch when you're not home, your forwarding system is gone) and the Sent items have to be maintained on two accounts (although you may have some creative rule to move the messages on Sent items of IMAP account back to Exchange account).

I don't use iPhone myself but have tried the moving to my Gmail account; it works beautifully. Just give it a try and let me know :)

Key to the Next-Gen Kindle

I wrote a while ago about Amazon Kindle and its technology. Although the current e-ink technology is very energy-efficient, visible in bright sunlight, and sufficient for black & white materials, it still lacks the huge ability to display colors. I found this potential next step that can fulfill the need through MIT Technology Review magazine.

E Ink--the company that invented the current e-ink technology used in Amazon's Kindle and Sony Reader--is working on the next generation of e-paper. The firm claims that it can now "add red, green, and blue filters to the capsules, producing a prototype color display". It also claims that the prototype screen can refresh at the rate of 30 frames per second.

Amazon.com is one of my favorite companies. I can't wait to own a gadget that is big enough to read on (not readable on cellphone) and is small and fast enough to take out to read at breakfast or an airport gate (not laptop, of course). With monthly and paid contents from Amazon (hope the pricing model will change by then), it's excited to think that I can read Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, MIT Tech Review, blogs, and books on the device, in colors.

... And I'm not even talking about Harry Potter-like moving images, and possibly video, that it can show. Imagine how cool that's going to be?

This Summer's Going to be ... Dark

The Dark Knight, second part of the 'new era' of Batman will be out summer 2008. Same crew mostly: Christian Bale as Batman, Gary Oldman as the cop, Michael Caine as Alfred. The director is Christopher Nolan of Batman Begins, The Prestige and Memento (woohoo!).



You can watch the 2-minute trailer and download HD clip here.

Dude... Where is my country?

After over four years of highly corrupted government which still shows damage to the economy and one coup that dilute the value of our democracy, now he's back.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119837519117247325.html?mod=hps_us_whats_news

It's extremely sad to see the wasted two-year attempt of trying to improve political situation in Thailand. I still think that having a business Prime Ministers is good for the country since they can get things done faster and more effectively. However, ethic, honesty and love to the country are still the top qualities that any politicians must have.

The biggest problem in Thai political system is that there are several parties that try to just maximize their own benefits...

Q: Why do Thai politicians cross the road?
A: Because the other side gives them better position to be in the government and better chance for spots in a minister

One of few things that the ousted PM Thaksin said and I agree is:

There is no true friend or permanent enemy in Thai politics.

Only god knows what's going to happen next. I don't think there's anything we can do except to hope that the system is going to sort itself out. Another coup would do more damage than help to the country.

Give us back our country. There has to be the point that enough is enough.

Most Lovable Song on 107.7 The End Now

Great guitar, nice lyrics, cool vocal. The screaming part is breathtaking and not overdone.

Dilbert's Ashok died!

Dang.... this can't be real. I really like the his personality. Hope he's going to be cloned back in the next few days.

Dang you the PHB!

Kindle - Good Idea, Bad Implementation

Amazon just introduced a device that lets you read electronic books, blogs, magazines, and newspaper in paper-like manner. Although it's a visionary idea, people says it's doomed to fail because:
1) The device is expensive. $400, without touchscreen, or backlight.
2) The users will have to pay for blog access. The books, newspapers, and blogs can be downloaded over-the-air via cellphone network without any monthly charge. However, only a limited number of blogs is available and the monthly fee to access blog, though minimal, is not zero.
3) Funky Keyboard and colorless screen. Imaging reading Stephen Colbert's I'm America without color. Also, the keyboard makes the screen unnecessarily smaller and ugly.

Here's how I think it should work:
1) The device should be much much cheaper, say $100 to create externalities. Amazon is going to harness the profits from the magazine/newspaper subscription and high-margin electronic books anyway (currently charged at reasonable $10).
2) It should come with color touchscreen and without a keyboard.
3) Flat-fee monthly subscription can be charged minimally to cover cell network costs incurring to Amazon. With this, it should allow free access to any blog.

This is going to be like other e-book readers that came out and flopped. They can come up with future slicker device but that's not going to take off until they're reducing the price and willing to take some loss on device cost. $10 is the price point that people are happy to pay.

Don't be afraid of pirated ebook distributed on BitTorrent or something. Think about how Apple is making tons of money out of their DRM iTunes songs...

They Kill Again...

The Killers's new album, Sawdust, is finally released. I'm trying the new Amazon mp3 service that lets you legally download non-DRM mp3 songs and listen them on all your computers and devices regardless of their platform and number of times. The price of whole album is considerably cheaper (~20%) than on iTunes.

Click picture below to go straight to amazon mp3 page...

Best of Both Worlds - My Mac Experience

From my step-by-step Twitter update, you guys must already know that I just got an entry-level macbook yesterday. Here's my experience after roughly 24 hours of having it.

• Speed and user experience are unbelievable - It takes about a minute to boot up from total shut down, hard drive is almost silent, and it never requires the Ctrl-Alt-Del to kill the applications that hog CPU/RAM usage.
• Out-of-the-box applications are amazing - Apple Mail is even superior to Thunderbird. iTunes works flawlessly and real fast compared to the Windows version. Firefox (well... not really out-of-the-box but I think it deserves to be listed) has almost identical UI and shortcuts as the Windows version, but renders the page much prettier (esp. images) and faster. Spotlight is just blasting fast!
  
• Windows is fully supported - Parallels Desktop makes it happen that they deserve every single award they received. My company's Outlook runs beautifully on the virtual machine, and speed is incredible. With Office and Trillian installed, I can now do most of my work at home on this Mac.

The only little things are the screen, which is a little too small to do some document work, and Firefox, which seems to act a little slow when Parallels is on. Hmm... I guess it's already time to go Pro.

Red Sauce Pasta is Totally Obsolete

I tried a couple of light tomato pasta and really liked it. Then, I realized it's incredibly easy to make, esp. considering removing the need for horrible canned tomato sauce and making everything from fresh materials. Found the recipe here.

1 medium onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
6 fresh tomatoes, peeled, seeded and chopped
1/2 tsp. granulated sugar
1/2 tsp. basil
1/4 cup red wine
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Directions:

Saute onion and garlic in large skillet coated with non-stick vegaetable spray. Add remaining ingredients, and simmer 15-20 minutes. Serve over hot pasta.

Dressing has 2.2 g fat per serving.

I did everything pretty much the same except I used olive oil, didn't have cooking wine, didn't add sugar, added two shrimps in there (which are amazing), used dry chopped basil instead of fresh, and didn't freshly grind pepper in there (my pepper grinder was left at friend's place during the crazy drinking night -- now I'm crippled!).

Overall meal quality- fantastic. So glad it turned out so well so we don't have rely on canned red sauce anymore. The linguine was at its perfect al dante (add bunch of salt, wait till water boils before throwing the pasta in, keep the water boiling for exact nine minutes). Too bad I don't have any freshly ground pepper and fresh basil leaves. Also, we didn't have any chilled Italian Peroni beer so I had to go with Stella (Belgian) which is equally good but hey.. it makes it not fully italian. Garlic bread is not homemade (the secret is ครก) but it's not a biggie.

P.S. Biggest improvement of Windows Mobile 6 is the ability to upload the photos right into Windows Live Spaces. I had to beam one picture at a time with WM5 which was unbelievably tedious!

Greatest Hacker of All Time (also iPod Invention) Revealed

xkcd rocks again! Never knew the writer is big fan of Chinese fighting saga...

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

See the third part for the inspiration to Steve Jobs that really created iPod. I'm sure even the Fake Steve Jobs doesn't even know about this. (BTW, I just got his book yesterday. It IS high-larious)

Performance Review

As my mid-year review is approaching, I just found this blog post of my friend. She's working for the geeks' most sought-after company with the name started with G.

I'm very happy with it. It proves that non-sense girl can be successful at work. It proves that you don't have to bullshit to be successful. It also proves that stealing bottle water from microkitchen everynight doesn't effect my performance.

I'm fairly happy with my career right now. But I can't say that I'm not jealous with her feeling above.

It's on Its Way...

Life's too short to be frustrated by something you work, play, and live on... everyday.




Ordered it through MacMall.com. Will update with the overall shopping experience from this machine :) To make sure that those of you who'd like to buy it on Amazon don't pick the older releases, I've linked the latest update of the 2.0GHz model ($1,099) to the image above.

Other models are: 2.2G White ($1,299) | 2.2G Black ($1,499)

Tech Icons You May Be Looking for...

There's a guy who's kind enough to create these fabulous icons and publish them without copyright... Visit UserInterfaceIcons.com

Found it via Twitter of Dave Winer.

Go Tartan!

Finally we took the first place from DAPRA Challenge back from Stanford who admittedly performed better last year. Anyway, the VW Touareg is much cooler than the Tahoe, but what can I say, GM is a huge funder for researches at Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute.

So, next time you're in Pittsburgh, esp. on Forbes Ave, be careful of a GM vehicle with a bunch of gadgetry stuff on top. It may be unmanned.

Seattle's Best Thai Food - Krua Thai Kitchen

Krua Thai Kitchen

2515 NE 55th St
Seattle, WA 98105

(206) 985-4398

www.kruaseattle.com

My girlfriend and I love good authentic thai food. We've been looking hard to find anything that's close to the restaurants we usually visited back in thailand. We know a lot of thai friends some of whom serve in thai restaurants. All of them say this place is a real thing so we gave it a try.

This place is definitely our favorite Thai restaurant in Pacific Northwest. We fell in love with Krua Thai since the first time we tried it. Fish sour broth (thick orange curry with water crest omelette and shrimps) really hook us and is the dish we must order every time. For the menu... Hmm... Where should I start? It's too hard to describe all the dishes we like in detailed like my normal food review on my treo keyboard during the flight. But i'd say there's no dish we tried that's disappointing. Beside that orange curry, the top ones are clay pot prawn, pork skewer, and trout salad. I guarantee with my thai tongue that all these are authentic. Quality of their raw materials including seafood, vegetables, and duck is also second to none.

They have about seven to ten tables inside and about three tables of outdoor seatings so the back lot can accommodate everyone's parking. We've been there on random nights in the week including saturday and have never experienced any wait for the table. Two waiters are staffed at all time but they also handle to-go orders which can peak some nights so the service may be a little slow. After all, they're all efficient, attentive, polite (and sometimes hot :P).

Full marks for food, service, price, and parking. Oh... Did I tell you that the place and food are incredibly clean for the price range? I would cut half the star for not selling any alcohol but it's a no biggie.

We eat at this place so often that you are likely to run into us when you're there. If you see a geek with a treo and orange curry on the table, don't forget to say hi.

Best Beer Buy at Costco

I tried this Peroni the first time at Little Italy in Boston with a client who was raised in Italian family. Along my post on Italian wine, I think it's a good idea to blog this Italian beer as well. It tastes like Kloster (the beer popular in Thailand before Heineken came in and convert beer drinker including my dad to be its fan) so it reminded me of a lot of early beer drinking experience.

I found Peroni 24-bottle box at about a dollar per bottle and was so glad that Costco doesn't carry just domestic trashy Bud-Miller-Coors trio. It's quite easy to drink and not bitter but not tasteless like other light beer (good for girls and guys). The price is comparable to Heineken and Corona so I would recommend it if you want to stock some beer for future parties or dinners. It will make your party memorable because everyone has Heineken and Corona in their fridge.

Italian Wine of the Year - Straccali Chianti

I've never been into Italian wine. Most of the time, we had Chianti at Italian restaurants since they always carry it as house wine. My experience with Chianti hasn't been good - the ones I tried had very high acidity and tannin esp. the horrible one Buca di Beppo carries (probably I should stop eating there).

I found this Straccali at the grocery next to my place. It's in the "clearance tray" with $6 price tag for 1.5L bottle. Can't remember the year but I think it's 2003. No expectation for quality at all - just buy and bring it to large party, I thought.

We had a house-warming party last night an a friend's place. There were me and my friend who were not against red wine so I was a little reluctant to open it in case it was lemon. Man... it turned out to be an amazing wine even when you don't consider the price - medium-body, great taste, and super drinkable. Between two of us, we finished 2/3 of the bottle even before the appetizer was ready - it was duck foie gras brought directly from Paris. I absolutely enjoyed it since alcohol has turned off my sense of liver stinky smell.

Someone also brought 1.5L Yellow Tail Shiraz and we opened it. A few other people helped us on that bottle but I could tell that the toilet bowl at that place was quite purple last night ;)

BlogRush Update: Steve Jobs-Style Introduction

Just got this email from BlogRush...

Boom! Phase 2 Is Now Active (And New Video)
BlogRush to me
10:02 pm (1 hour ago)

The massive BlogRush "Phase 2" is now active!

New Dashboard, new reports, new widget sizes, and a lot more!

Please start by watching this VIDEO that will explain how to use it all:
http://www.blogrush.com/vphase2

* It's very important that you watch the video FIRST
or you will miss out on some of the new additions.

After you watch the video login to your account at
http://www.blogrush.com

AND...

We're not done yet!

Lots of additional improvements and features in the works!

We're working very hard to help drive even more traffic
to your blog.

Stay Tuned.

Best Regards,

John Reese
Founder of BlogRush

The subject line is funny. It makes me think he tries to copy Steve Jobs at Apple Keynotes.

I really want to check it out BUT it looks like they screwed up my password during the migration -_- Just asked for the new password and hope it's going to work tomorrow.

In terms of stats, still two visits were driven in from BlogRush widget. Still keep monitoring.

Romantic Side of xkcd...

Click the image above to see the full-sized.

Album I'm Waiting for...

The Killers is coming out with their new album, Sawdust. Click the image below to pre-order from iTunes and listen to the first single. Hmm... these guys are pretty active -- releasing three albums in three years with some singles.

BlogRush Update: I'm Qualified

Only a day after I blogged about BlogRush's quality audit process, I've got the email below from the founder.

-------------------------------------------------------------
Congratulations!
-------------------------------------------------------------

You are receiving this update because your blog has passed our strict
Quality Guidelines and criteria -- we believe you have a high-quality
blog and we are happy you're a member of our network!

-------------------------------------------------------------
10,000+ Blogs Removed From BlogRush
-------------------------------------------------------------

We've just completed a massive SWEEP of our entire network. We've
removed over *10,000* blogs (Yes, ten thousand) that did not meet our
new Quality Guidelines.

I've always placed the widget four pages (for 1024*768 resolution) down on the right pane. Well... sorry to say this but I wouldn't consider it a good page location (at least I wouldn't put AdSense there).

But after all, keep up guys. You're at a very important moment of your idea... whether it will take off or will flop.

BlogRush Update: A Month Later

After I started placing BlogRush widget on my blog and wrote one update, here's the update at one-month mark:

• BlogRush member's Dashboard and Report are not up yet; the temporary Dashboard shows that my "Traffic Last 7 days" is 36. Below is the preview that the founder promised to the community. Looks pretty neat.
  

• Google Analytics reported that I've got two single visits from BlogRush widget, with the average page view per visit of... one.
• The founder sent a short email (thank god...) to every member and link it back to his blog post. Here's a quote (with the part that I think important bolden):
  

We are adding Widget Performance Monitoring to our network. If a member’s natural widget performance (the rate at which visitors click headlines and other factors we aren’t making public) falls far below the average activity of other members in their category…

THIS MEMBER WILL BE REMOVED FROM THE BLOGRUSH NETWORK.

We are working on something that might give members with poor widget performance a “warning” to let them know they are in danger of being removed from the network; which will give them a chance to give the widget better placement on their blog so they can, hopefully, rectify the situation and remain a member of the network.

We are not going to require our members to place the widget at the very top of their blogs or put it in any specific location. However, it’s common sense that if someone places the widget where normal visitors aren’t going to see it much, that they will achieve poor widget performance — and will most likely be removed from the network.

DO YOU HAVE THE WIDGET PLACED REALLY LOW ON YOUR BLOG?

If so, you need to move it higher on your blog to give it better placement.

Don’t want to do that? THEN PLEASE REMOVE IT COMPLETELY.

As I said, BlogRush was designed as a FAIR system. There’s a reason it was created as a COOPERATIVE network. It’s so its members can work together to generate more targeted readers for their blogs.

But this system doesn’t work if all members aren’t contributing at least somewhat equally. Why should any member give the widget high placement if other members are not going to? And yet those other members stand to receive the SAME REWARDS? It’s just not fair and, therefore, we have no choice but to make this change.

So any member that’s only willing to put the BlogRush widget at the very bottom of their blog isn’t a member we want in our network — and our network will deliver more traffic, per member, without them.

This is the part I don't get. We have to give their widget good placement enough, otherwise, we'll be removed from their network? Here are my takes on this:

1. BlogRush is not yet a mature service. Its success relies heavily on involvement of the community, i.e. bloggers. Thus, the "stick" approach - forcing the bloggers to give up the valuable page space (potentially for ads) to the service that hasn't been proven to boost traffic - is not going to work.
   
2. The criteria for fairness and equality doesn't make sense. I haven't gone through the whole logic for giving members the credits yet but I feel from his message that earned credits are primarily constituted of the number of times that the widget is loaded, and not much on the times that the widget is really viewed or clicked. As you figure, the weight on views and clicks should be much higher.
   
3. Lastly, I don't agree that the higher the widget is located, the better performance it's going to give. Back to the second point, BlogRush should change their logic to give more credits when blogger's widgets are watched or clicked.

Like I said, I'm a big supporter for innovative internet marketing ideas but BlogRush doesn't go the right direction. The blogger should have freedom to choose where in the screen they want to place the widget and accept the consequence of higher or less traffic. Threatening to cut off membership is, frankly, quite dangerous for BlogRush at the moment.

Say that again? Dumbledore is Gay???

JK Rowling revealed in her interview at Carnegie Hall that, while she was writing her HP Saga, she always imagined in the back of her mind that, Dumbledore is actually... Gay.

Found it through Digg and Leaky Cauldron so this shocking news must be legit.

The Office - Screen Saver

I never ever got this show but wow... this is hilarious. Not sure how long YouTube is going to keep it though but just in case you're lucky.

Myers-Briggs - The Fortune Teller

Have you ever been to or read fortune teller who just describe how you're like to make you ooh and ahh of how accurate it is? I just experience it myself. I took the MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) a while ago with this the result below:



However, I just found out what it means to be an ISTJ - Introvert, Sensing, Thinker, Judging. Holy cow... it's like the writer has worked with me for years...

Serious and quiet, interested in security and peaceful living. Extremely thorough, responsible, and dependable. Well-developed powers of concentration. Usually interested in supporting and promoting traditions and establishments. Well-organized and hard working, they work steadily towards identified goals. They can usually accomplish any task once they have set their mind to it.

The text is excerpted from PersonalityPage. You can take the test of 60 questions and see the results there.

Something you can't stand, but can't live without...

... the Palm Treo 750

Turbulance

Love this ad. It really explains all how my Saab 9-5 handles on the freeway.

xkcd rocks...

Oh man... I took me twice to get this.




I would be really surprised if they don't have any constraint on the Students table. But well... that's probably the first time they got this after all these years.

If you like it, here's their site and RSS feed.

This is the First Time that Dilbert is Way Wrong

By wrong, I meant that the Dilbert part never happens. :P

Just kidding...

Danang Krungthep - pork leg, anyone?

DaNang KrungThep Restaurant
905 San Pablo Avenue
(between Buchanan St & Solano Ave)
Albany, CA 94706
(510) 524-6837




I'm on the run again - now to Richmond, CA, a little town just a bit north from glamorous Bay Area (sayonara Kansas City, I won't miss you!). Great food, lots of night lives, tons of Thai friends.

Seems to me things are not that simple in consulting. For the first two weeks of the project, I have been carpooling with my manager to the client site at 7.15, attending back-to-back meetings till 7 in the evening, feed myself with crappy cold food at the hotel room, and work a few more hours before spending valuable time on recharging sleep. The cycle has been like this three to four days a week.

I rang a good Thai friend who went to Stanford for two full years, asking what she recommended around the area close to my hotel. The first and only thing she could think of is this place - Danang Krungthep. With all the steam I accumulated during the work hours, I know it's the time to give myself good Thai food and a bottle of Singha. DaNang is the forth largest city in Vietnam while KrungThep is the Thai name for Bangkok. So, we expected the balanced mix between Thai and Vietnamese menu from this place. (be careful of another place called Thep or KrungThep down the same street - it's not the same restaurant)

I was impressed with Danang Krungthep. The place, though not highly decorated, is spacious, clean, and well ventilated. At the time we arrived (7-ish Tuesday night), the place was less than half full. Parking is just in the convenient back lot. We were seated right away. The menu is huge. And, most importantly, they had the unlimited supply of Singha... Ahhh....

We spent about ten full minutes to go through the hundred-page menu. I decided without thinking to go with the pork leg (it's chinese/thai stew style with pickled cabbage). Seriously, most Thai restaurant just stick with perfecting their spices for stirred fry and sauces, and don't bother to buy the whole pig legs and make this rare dish from scratch. It comes with appropriate amount of skin. The meat is tender. Pickled cabbage is mellow. The dish and Singha just go really well together. We also had fried spring roll as appetizer. You know how good Vietnamese spring rolls are so it's not a disappointment either.

Full five stars for great food, parking without hassle, good service, willingness to go above-and-beyond on food, and supply of Singha.

I guess I have 412 more items to try at this place.

Chocovic Guaranda

I just blogged a couple of days ago about the the amazing dark chocolate I found at Trader Joe's. As promised, I gave the sister bar with cocoa from Ecuador "Guaranda"a try. Although it's more fruity, mellow, and easy to enjoy, I like the strong cocoa flavor of the Ocumare better. Give both a try and let me know how you like them.

Demotivational Posters

Since the motivational posters are grossly overpriced (it could range from 9 to 20 bucks depending on how good wordings are), here's the site that let you create your own demotivating posters on your own. The selected ones are posted here.

Suicideville, WA

As my girlfriend is gone on a business trip for two full weeks, this is how my weekend alone at home looks like.










This is how the next weekend and the week after is going to look like...

Dark Bar of the Month - Chocovic Ocumare

I incidentally found this bar when I was doing my Monday project night drill, picking up water at Trader Joe's in Emeryville. There are several selections of dark chocolate at the register but the one with the tag "Unique Origin - Ocumare" offers specific sources of cocoa. Interesting idea, I think, so I gave it a try on the one from Venezuela.

My girlfriend and I agreed that it's the best dark chocolate we can find so far. Strong but not too bitter. Not at all any sour smell like what Lindt and Hershey's always screw their dark with. Absolutely right level of chewiness and sweetness. And it's just $1.99 per standard-sized bar. Great deal...

After a little more research, I found that the brand is Chocovic from Spain (so amazing that they don't really put their brands on the label; want the product to sell itself? Weird marketing tactic for chocolate bar). The one I tried was the Ocumare with the cocoa from Venezuela. Will try the one from Ecuador this Monday and will let you know.

Big thanks Trader Joe's for this dark sweet find.



If you don't have any Trader Joe's around your area, you can get it from Amazon below:

BlogRush Update: How to Write a Good Email

I wrote about the weblog headline exchange service called BlogRush about two weeks ago. Although their widgets on the lower right pane consistently stream links to contents similar to those in my blog, they have hard time keeping their member's dashboard up. Currently, what they can provide is how many visits (and the primitive blogrush credits) my blog got so far, and how many referral traffics my blog received and created which equal to... ahem... 0 from the start till now. Google Analytics hasn't identified any traffic generated from BlogRush yet.

Their report feature hasn't been up yet so I don't know what it does. Oh... one thing I found interesting is that I received an email, all in plain text, from the founder. I've copied it below. I'm a big supporter of innovative internet marketing concept so I'm not going to criticize their service which is still strictly beta right now. But man... you really need to find a better way to write your email.

Even though I never consider myself a good writer, my first and foremost recommendation would be keep it short. Then, I know it's hard to call something out sometimes when you are writing plain-text email, DON'T OVERUSE CAPITALS. Also the mix of *asterisk bold* and capitals keeps stopping me when I was trying to finish the mail.

TO: All BlogRush Members
FROM: John Reese, Founder of BlogRush


ARE YOU READY? Because *everything* is about to change. Forget
everything else up until now...

PREPARE FOR *BIG* CHANGES! (TWO MAJOR CHANGES ARE NOW LIVE.)

BlogRush CAN'T EXIST if we're not sending you a lot of ongoing,
targeted traffic. We fully recognize this and that's why this is our
ONLY FOCUS.

The BlogRush team has been hard at work making major improvements for
you and we won't rest until BlogRush is running 100% smoothly and
sending you tons of targeted traffic! This is OUR MISSION. Please
know that our entire team is working around-the-clock to make
improvements and fix any problems AS FAST AS HUMANLY POSSIBLE.

(We sincerely appreciate your patience.)

We've encountered some problems since our historic launch just over a
week ago, and we fully recognize that we've made some real 'goofs'
with the system for our Public Beta release...

For example, our data center provider (one of the largest in the
world) had a short, temporary outage (they had to replace a network
switch) two days after our launch. We had no control over this
outage but want to SINCERELY APOLOGIZE to those that saw this message
on their blogs (where the widget should have been):

"We are currently experiencing some technical issues and the site
will be back online shortly. Please come back in a few minutes."

We were completely *EMBARRASSED* when we realized this happened.
That simple message was part of our application code and was meant to
appear only on *OUR* WEB SITE PAGES if we ever experienced an
outage. This was accidentally 'marked' to be a global error message
for ANY outage -- including if our widget ever had a problem
loading. This was a major GOOF and we're willing to admit it. Our
code was planned so that in the case of a problem with our widget,
NOTHING WOULD LOAD in its place. So a visitor to your blog doesn't
see an error or anything wrong should the widget ever have any
technical issues.

This was quickly corrected and is now working properly. Should the
widget ever have any problem loading in the future, your blog will be
served a transparent space (which will show whatever background your
blog design has) and
your blog readers won't really notice anything.

Again, our sincere apologies for our major goof. It was quite
embarrassing.

NOW ONTO SOME SERIOUS ISSUES...

We also realize that we completely underestimated the number of
unethical people that would sign up and proceed to CHEAT and try to
'game' the BlogRush system. These cheaters ruined the click-rates of
many of our members (and burned through a lot of their credits using
automated 'exploit' methods) and hurt BlogRush's ability to send
maximum traffic to our honest members' blogs.

BUT ALL OF THAT IS ABOUT TO BE ERASED... LIKE IT NEVER HAPPENED.

In the next several days to come, we're going to be rolling out MAJOR
changes to BlogRush. BIG changes. And these changes (again) have
just ONE primary purpose -- to drive more ongoing, targeted traffic
to your blog.

We've listened to your valued feedback and constructive criticism and
we have been working in TURBO MODE to make the changes you want ASAP...

----- HERE'S WHAT'S COMING IN THE NEXT 48 HOURS -----

100% MANUAL BLOG REVIEW.

Our team is going to be manually reviewing every single new blog that
registers to participate in the BlogRush Network.

We'll be applying some quality guidelines and criteria to our
decision-making process. (We'll be publishing these guidelines very
soon.) If a blog does not meet our guidelines and criteria, THEY
WILL BE REJECTED from the network and not allowed to join -- i.e.
they won't be able to serve our widget, refer other users, or have
their blog posts distributed across our network. They will have no
access to any BlogRush services.

Our members, like YOU, made it LOUD AND CLEAR to us... BlogRush needs
to only have members that have quality blog content -- not blogs
filled primarily with ads and other spammy looking JUNK.

The only accurate way we're going to keep these junk blogs out of our
network is to REVIEW EVERY SINGLE ONE BY HAND. And we're willing to
do it to protect the integrity of our network. I don't care what it
costs us to hire more people (if we need them) to review 100% of any
blog trying to join our network. We will be reviewing ALL OF THEM
from here on out.

* We realize that several non-English language blogs blatantly
ignored our "ENGLISH BLOGS ONLY" warning on our Registration page.
Rest assured, though, they'll all be PURGED from the network when we
do our QUALITY CONTROL AUDIT over the next several days (you'll read
about it in a moment).

As I've said several times before, BlogRush isn't some passing "fad"
or short-term service. We're dedicated to building an incredibly
valuable resources for bloggers FOR MANY YEARS TO COME.

We'll also be doing a QUALITY CONTROL AUDIT of all of our existing
member blogs. We'll be reviewing every single blog that's currently
in our network (or that registers before the Manual Review Process
becomes active.) And we'll be completely *REMOVING* any blogs in our
network that don't meet our quality guidelines and criteria.

As you can probably tell by now, we're not messing around. We have
put a lot of hard work into the development of this service and we
will continue to bust our butts to make it one of the best Internet
services in the world. COUNT ON IT.

We're also deploying several new Anti-Cheat measures to SHUTDOWN AND
WIPEOUT the cheaters and unethical users that have abused our
network. Sorry, crooks, but THE FREE RIDE IS OVER.

We'll be dedicating an entire department to stay on top of any
abusive behavior in our network. We believe that our new measures
are going to instantly eliminate most, if not all, of our system
abuse. It's going to take us a few more days to roll-out all of
these measures (and to complete our entire QUALITY CONTROL AUDIT) but
rest assured, BlogRush is about to go through a major TRANSFORMATION.

And a quick word to any 'cheats' that might be reading this
letter... it's very possible that you may come up with something
extremely creative that temporarily gets by us, but you should know
something... IT'S NOT GOING TO BE WORTH YOUR TIME. And I'm not just
talking about the tiny amount of traffic that you'll receive before
we shut you off.

You see, we have other plans in the works...

If you attempt to cheat or abuse our network in anyway, shape, or
form, we will not hesitate to come after you. Our company is well
funded and has plenty of resources. And we WILL use them to punish
you to the fullest extent of the law (and civil court process). Oh,
you think you can just hide behind some anonymous proxy IPs? Sorry,
it's not that easy. ANY reason you'd have to try and cheat the
BlogRush network for traffic and any attempt you make to monetize
that traffic will lead directly to your front door -- whether it's
AdSense, any affiliate program in the world, any online pharmacy,
porn site, casino... ANYTHING. We will follow the trail and it WILL
eventually lead to you.

Our hard-working company provides the income for MANY families. As
the CEO of our company, I take this very seriously. I HAVE TO.
People that attempt to abuse or cheat BlogRush are affecting the
livelihood of all my employees and their families. And I will do
everything in my power to protect them -- it's MY DUTY.

So for all you cheaters that joined BlogRush and had your fun trying
to siphon off some traffic, hopefully it was fun. And I'll go ahead
and make this statement right now... IF you were one of the people
that has been cheating our network I'm going to give you ONE
opportunity... quit now and we'll pretend it never happened. I
think that's more than fair.

BUT... if you continue after this point, all bets are off. We WILL
eventually discover what you're doing, where you're trying to send
traffic, and we will prosecute you. I GUARANTEE IT. Sorry, but WE
HAVE NO CHOICE NOW.

* If you're one of our valued, HONEST users, I'm very sorry you even
have to read stuff like that. I know it's a waste of your time.
Unfortunately, there are unethical people in this world that attempt
to abuse and take advantage of others.

MOVING ON...

---- ALSO COMING SOON! ----

**** A LOT MORE CATEGORIES! ****

You asked for it, and you're getting it!

We're going to be greatly expanding our directory of categories to
increase the relevancy of post links appearing in the widget on your
blog -- this will also increase click-rates (and traffic) for all
members.

* Stay tuned over the next several days for more news about the
addition of new categories.

AND...

**** IMPROVED REPORTING! ****

The current Dashboard stats are being under-reported for all users
right now. This is the reason that users show discrepancies when
looking at Google Analytics data (or other stats packages). We're
currently sending more traffic to our users than we're reporting in
the Dashboard because we are giving all users bonus credits
everyday. We'll soon be reporting all bonus credit activity so all
the numbers will be accurate.

SPECIAL NOTE TO ALL LOW-TRAFFIC MEMBERS: In the near future we'll be
giving our low-traffic members (those that need more traffic the
most) the BULK of our bonus credit allocations. You'll get a ton
more bonus credits than high-traffic members because you really need
it. It's only FAIR!

* Also we apologize to anyone that has seen a "negative" credit
balance for their account. This is a minor bug that we're taking
care of. It doesn't mean anything and you can just ignore it for
now. We apologize for any confusion.

**** IMPROVED NETWORK DISTRIBUTION ****

A few of our users have noticed that they're building up credits
faster than the system is using them. This will eventually balance
itself out as the network continues to "adjust" to the growth levels
and traffic patterns of each category -- because our network provides
syndication distribution based on daily average "cycles" and then
adjusts moving into the future; so it's able to accurately predict
how fast to use a certain user's credits, etc. -- as compared to just
using them all "as fast as possible."

---- AND HERE ARE *TWO* BRAND-NEW ADDITIONS THAT JUST WENT LIVE!!!! ----


**** BLOGRUSH "FLAVORS" ARE NOW ACTIVE!

You can go login to your account, click the "Settings" tab and then
select "Flavors."

You can choose from (13) different widget colors. You no longer have
to only use our original "black" widget design that many users
thought was ugly! (Hey, just don't let our lead designer hear
that... he thought his black design was "really cool.")

Now you can select a color that more closely matches the look of your
blog. Our users have been asking for this since we launched our
Public Beta, and we've taken action to offer these new options.

* We have future plans for further widget customization but we're
working on one "stage" of improvement at a time! Please bare with
us. We're fully aware of the request for a more narrow widget as our
current one doesn't fit on some blogs. We're trying to produce a
solution and should have some news soon.

HERE'S THE BEST PART...

You don't have to copy and paste new code to your blog. Just go to
that "Flavors" section for your account, select the flavor you want,
then hit the "APPLY FLAVOR" button. That's it! Reload your blog in
another browser window and take a look.

And if you want to see what a different flavor might look like, just
pick another one, hit the "APPLY FLAVOR" button and reload your
blog. PRESTO! :-)

AND LAST BUT CERTAINLY NOT LEAST...

***** BLOG POST CONTROLS *****

Under the "Settings" tab you'll also find a new option called, "My
Post Control." Here's what this awesome new feature does...

You can create POST FILTERS for your blog posts...

For example, you can add a keyword or phrase and create a new post
filter. If you ever create a post on your blog (while you have that
filter active -- and you can add/delete them at anytime) that
contains one of those keywords in the TITLE of your blog post, that
post...

WILL *NOT* BE SHOWN ACROSS THE NETWORK. And you won't use any of
your syndication credits!

All bloggers post "off-topic" stuff from time to time, or short posts
that don't have a ton of great content. Well, now you can easily
keep any of those types of posts from using your valuable syndication
credits and from being shown across the network!

This is GREAT for you because now you can control exactly which posts
of yours will be syndicated. This can help you maximize your CLICK-
RATES and, ultimately, the traffic you receive from the BlogRush
network. AND it can help retain NEW READERS for your blog (your
ultimate goal that can grow your blog's traffic on a day-to-day basis.)

Here's Why...

By selecting which posts get syndicated (by simply adding filters
right BEFORE you publish a post on your blog that you don't want to
be used; or having setup one well in advance) you can make sure that
you're only syndicating your BEST POSTS. The ones with top-quality
content. Your posts that a new visitor to your blog will enjoy and
be much more likely to make a "YES!" decision to become a regular
reader for you!

AND OH YEAH, ONE MORE THING...

This is only the very beginning for BlogRush. We have so much great
stuff in store for you! As I said at the beginning of this
letter... we will continue to work VERY HARD to make improvements
and add-ons with ONE PRIMARY FOCUS...

To drive more ongoing targeted traffic to your blog.

I want to personally THANK YOU on behalf of our entire company for
your interest in BlogRush. We've received a lot of criticism from
many bloggers on the Internet, and we'll be the first to admit we're
not perfect and a lot of it was WELL-DESERVED.

But please know, we're busy working around the clock FOR YOU. You
have our word on it.

Now go login to your account and try out some of the new "Flavors"
for your blog! And also start setting up some Post Control Filters
so you can start maximizing your content syndication.

I'll be in touch when I have more "news" to share. Thanks for
reading this long letter. I had a lot to tell you about. :-)

Best Regards,

John Reese, Founder of BlogRush

Windows Development Uncovered

Paris Hilton on David Letterman Show

OMG... He tore her apart, rip, laugh at her, and tore her apart again, and again.



While I'm not a big fan of her, I feel bad for her that she was laughed at by Letterman and talked to like a three-year-old. It was a good move to try to stop it but the better thing would be not going to this kind of show at all. Don't know what she was thinking...

MIT Pranks

Apart from academic quality, MIT is definitely the best school if you want to build your career in pranking. They already have a group called MIT Hack that will do fine job training you by involving you in prankster extra curriculum. This year, they have made Halo the sacred, historic, and world-renown statue of John Harvard.

Before:


After:

My favorite is this one -- they've moved a small-sized fire truck up to the Great Dome. Pretty darn cool...


Send your children here. You won't be disappointed.

Steve Jobs Hates People Like Me

Uncle Stevie's got an angry rant today about the job McKinsey did over there. Although I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about, terribly sorry, Steve. I picked this career track before I even know your secret diary exists.

And yes, my firm's end-user platforms are completely Microsoft now. We run Windows XP on ugly ThinkPads, all firm-approved mobile devices are required to run Windows Mobile, we don't know what we do today nor can send message without Outlook and Exchange, we don't call each other anymore but chat through Live Communicator. There are more but I think you get the idea... People just keep complaining about work/life balance in this industry. I guess you can turn things around by moving things to Apple. Free MacBook Pro, iPhone, and free iPod Classic will surely save a lot of our sanity and blood pressure level. And we will be the coolest kids on the plane!

I heard that there may be needs for our help at Apple. I would be more careful before coming in if you have this attitude then. I probably need to paint my ThinkPad silver, put on the Apple white sticker that you give us with an iPod, run WindowsBlinds with Mac OS skin, and shut up when we get BSOD. Peace out. Namaste.

BlogRush - Hoax or Real?

Just found this article about the new blog headline exchange service dubbed BlogRush via BlogNone site. Basically, a blogger has to register their blog and RSS feed with BlogRush, place the BlogRush widget, and then BlogRush service will automatically find the similar contents to your blog and place them in the widget. Your postings will also be placed in others' blogs in return.

The article argue that this BlogRush doesn't do any good except trying to boost their site popularity. I feel it's no harm trying it so I just placed it there. I've also got Google Analytics enabled in this blog -- will report back how much more traffic it improved.

Another Corporate Example from Dilbert

I'm sure you have or will have experienced this in a project at some point.