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.