fast company: startup company grows from large companies

Steve Jobs got experience from Atari. Wozniak was trained in HP.
Youtube founders cut their teeth in ebay. So really, garage startups are a myth. Successful startups come from Corporate America.

Talking about Captialization

Steve Jobs: The greatest second act in the history of business
Excerpts from Steve Jobs’ unauthorised portrait — ‘iCon’ by Jeffrey S.Young, William L. Simon

Flowering and Withering

There was something about Jobs and Nolan Bushnell, the founder of Atari, responded to. “When he wanted to do something, he would give me a schedule of days and weeks, not months and years. I liked that,” said Bushnell.

One day, according to Alcorn, Bushnell “grabbed Jobs and made a deal on the side. On his blackboard, Nolan defined the game of Break-Out, how the game would work, the details.

Then Alcorn, the head of engineering, took over with the logistics—Jobs could build it as long as he worked at night when none of the other engineers were around. “He said that for every (computer chip) under fifty—or some number—I’m going to give you, like, a thousand dollars or something as a bonus to salary.”

In Break-Out, the player would constantly fight a brick wall, trying to ‘break out’ of it to win. Mastering the game turned out to require total concentration upon the task at hand, determination to succeed, and a driven attitude— all of which Jobs and Woz had in their blood.

The design for Break-Out was completed in one forty-eight-hour stretch. The company thought Jobs was designing it, but it was entirely Woz’s work. “Steve's role was to buy the candy and cokes while Woz did all the design,” said Randy Wigginton, a very young camp follower who would end up at Apple.

True to his past achievements, Woz managed to do the work using a ridiculously small number of chips. Alcorn was impressed and paid Steve the $1,000 he had offered. But Steve went back to Woz and said that Atari had paid only $600. He gave Woz his ‘half.’ So Woz, who had done all the work, ended up with $300, while Steve Jobs pocketed $700.

Let’s Be Pirates!

Despite the successes, Steve Jobs wasn't happy. The Apple II was Woz’s machine. Steve wanted a machine that everyone would know had been created by Steve Jobs. He wanted to show that he could do it, that Woz wasn’t the only computer genius at Apple Computer.

Steve had in mind a new machine that would go well beyond any thing anyone had ever seen or even dreamed of. He already had a name for it. In one of the strangest, most difficult-to-understand choices possible, decided to give the computer the same name as the baby he at the time refused to accept as his own: Lisa. For many years, one of the great Apple insider games was for employees to outdo each other in coming up with plausible-sounding explanations for what the letters LISA meant in computerese. Few people were fooled.

Defining the future

If impossible tasks are the catnip of overachievers, then Steve Jobs was rolling in catnip.

On the last Monday in April 2003, Steve was back at the Moscone Center, an hour’s drive north of Apple headquarters in the heart of Silicon Valley. Looking radiant, pumped as usual in front of an audience, his charisma turned up to the max, he launched into his announcement of the iTunes Music Store. Steve the outsider had done what observers would have predicted was impossible: getting signatures on agreements with the top music companies.

He’d wanted those agreements so badly that he’d done the negotiating personally. Ordinarily, on an issue with as many strategic implications as this, the CEOs would have agreed in principle and then left their underlings to see whether an agreement could be worked out. Steve got each CEO to say, “We’ll consider it,” and then had been willing to do the horse-trading himself.

Even for Steve Jobs, breaking the logjam of the music industry was no pushover. Hilary Rosen, who was then chief executive of RIAA (the Recording Industry Association of America), explained that top executives of major music companies were wary of people from the computer industry, who in the past had shown little grasp of music industry issues.

Steve won them over for two reasons, Hilary believes. The first is mundane and almost laughable: “Apple had such a small market share that it made their risk fairly low.” The other reason isn’t unexpected: “The shift came from above all because of the sheer will power of Steve. His sheer charisma and his intensity absolutely made a difference.”

Many people, Hilary said, believe that Universal first signed up for Steve’s vision. In fact, “Steve developed a relationship at the outset with Roger Ames, at Warner. Roger was really the first one to jump on board.”

One executive who was closely involved in the negotiations for a top-five music firm saw the action from an inside perspective. The music companies, he said, had been wary about the idea of downloading, dragging their feet, unwilling to move ahead until completely satisfied with every detail of the terms. Then Steve Jobs showed up on the scene. Suddenly, the source said, “the industry folded at his feet, acquiescing to whatever he wanted. There was a train about to leave, and everybody wanted to be damned sure their company was on it. For the first time, the leverage (in negotiating download deals) shifted to the other side.” It was the same at all five of the companies, he said.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, he described one of the most visible executive vice presidents in the music industry, who was that company’s point man in dealing with Steve, the target for every bit of Steve’s overpowering charisma. Every time our informant saw the vice president during this period, the man was full of talk about Steve this and Steve that. He was completely taken in, glowing as if had just found his true love or at least a lifelong friend. If the vice president had been asked, the informant said, he would have knelt down and shined Steve’s shoes and would have been willing to do it in front of a conference room of other people.

Other executives quickly fell in line because what Steve was proposing made so much sense. Andrew Lack, CEO of Sony Music Entertainment, was one of those. “I don’t think it was more than a fifteen-second decision in my mind (to license music to Apple) once Steve started talking,” he said.

Steve the billionaire, Steve the pooh-bah of a global company, sat at his conference table while a parade of executive vice presidents and CEOs marched up to Cupertino to be serenaded by him.

ipod, iTunes, Therefore I Am

When Steve returned to Apple he shut down the clone Macs that his predecessors had reluctantly licensed. He claimed that they only stole sales from Apple with their low prices, never penetrating the Windows and IBM PC market. Now he was going one step better. With the falling prices of components, and his experience with Far Eastern contract manufacturing for the iPod, Apple was outcloning the PC clonemakers. Steve has put together all the pieces—Bill Gates is a tough competitor. The battle should be intense. Will cool beat copycat?

Steve wasn’t done. It was time to move to iTunes and finally the iPod.

“In the last quarter I am pleased to report that we have sold over four and a half million iPods.

That is a 50% growth year on year. We have sold over 10 million iPods to date and over 8 million of them in 2004. The digital music era is upon us, and we are leading the charge.

‘Thank you.’ It was a remarkably heartfelt thanks, given directly to his audience. Steve seemed to have learned that the real key to his success were his customers. This was the new Steve Jobs.

With that, he described some of the over four hundred secondary products for the iPod—iPod Nation —and described a series of cars with iPod adapters. “Even Alfa Romeo and Ferrari.”

But that wasn’t all. He told about the Motorola iTunes deal and showed one of the cell phones that will soon play music. “These two things and many more are why we believe that
we have just begun the world of digital media. “But there is one more thing we want to tell you about. It’s pretty great.”

To finish the presentation off, he invited John Mayor onstage to sing his Grammy-winning song, “Daughters,” For a man who had neglected his own firstborn daughter for years, it was an ironic choice. But maybe not. “Fathers, be good to your daughters,” sang Mayer. “Daughters will love like you do.”

Steve Jobs had returned, to all appearances as fit as before and even better.

Yet at times it seems as if he is only just getting started. He hasn’t changed fundamentally. He’s still the same aggressive, opinionated, driven creator who inspires people around him to reach unimaginable heights and destroys the fragile egos of those whose skin is too thin to handle his abrupt barbs and relentless questioning. Yet not he’s a middle-aged man, with three kids at home and a world of experience standing, but on reaching fifty, he’s still the same man he always was.

URL: http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=144938

Proper way to serve fish

According to Akira Kurosawa, the proper way to serve a whole fish is with its head pointing to the left and its open belly facing the guest. So it's easy for the guest to pick up the fish from its belly.

The only occasion where a fish is deliberately served with its head pointing to the right, is when the guest is about to commit Hara-kiri (ritual suicide), because that's the only scenario, it's offensive to show the open fish belly to someone who is about to cut his own belly.

Happy Spring Festival

Happy Spring Festival

Shiso Crab Cocktail

Excerpted from The Herbal Kitchen: Cooking with Fragrance and Flavor by
Jerry Traunfeld (Morrow Cookbooks, 2005). © 2005 by Jerry Traunfeld. Used with
permission.

6 servings

I'll admit not everyone falls in love with the flavor of shiso at first
taste, but it doesn't take long to be charmed by its knack for enhancing certain
foods. Traditionally, shiso is added to some types of sushi and used to flavor
rice or pickled vegetables. Over the many years that I've cooked with it I've
discovered it's the perfect counterpoint to fresh crabmeat.

If you don't grow shiso in your own garden you can find the fresh leaves in
Asian grocery stores. There are both green and deep purple varieties. Choose
either for this elegant crab cocktail.

• 1/4 cup finely chopped red onion
  
• 1/4 cup seasoned rice wine vinegar (sushi vinegar)
  
• 1-1/2 tablespoons finely chopped shiso (perilla)
  
• 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
  
• 8 ounces best-quality fresh crabmeat, picked over for shells and cartilage
  
• Pulp from 2 ripe avocados, cut into 1/2-inch dice
  
• Freshly ground black pepper
  
• Coarse sea salt or kosher salt if needed

Stir the onion, vinegar, and shiso together in a medium mixing bowl and let
it sit at room temperature for at least 30 minutes to mellow the onion
flavor.

Stir in the olive oil and then gently toss in the crab and avocado. Season
the salad with a few grindings of black pepper and taste it; add salt if you
think it needs it. Some crabmeat is already quite salty so the salad might not
need additional salt. Spoon the salad into stemmed glasses and serve cold.

天才与平庸

最近看到几个天才的生平
1) Jimi Hendrix, 摇滚乐史上最好的吉他手之一。他生长在Seattle。其实说起来Seattle还是出了不少音乐人的，比如Pearl Jam, Kurt Cobain (Nirvana), Kenny G。
Jimi Hendrix自己说，他最崇拜的音乐人是Bob Dylan。连发型都是Bob Dylan早期的爆炸头。

2) David Lynch，无数美国teenager是看他的Twin Peaks系列片长大的。
他和前妻关系最紧张的时期，开始相信超越冥想，虽然冥想最终没能挽救他的第一次婚姻，但是却是他日后灵感的源泉。

3) Isaac Asimov，最牛的Big Three 科幻作家之一(另外两人是 Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke)。他后来名气大到自己想写纪实文学而出版商坚决要他继续写科幻。
下面是他自我解嘲的一段
"Now guilt (for those of you who have never experienced the emotion) is a dreadful annoyance, souring one's life and making one unable to enjoy properly any renown or riches that come one's way. One is bowed down by its weight and is rendered fearful of the (usually imaginary) accusing eye of public disapproval."

4) 一个高中同学，在澳洲学建筑。假以时日，完全有可能成为I. M Pei级别的大师。


所谓平庸呢，就是说我自己了。人应该甘于平淡的生活，但是不能甘于平庸。超越平庸，需要的不止是天才，还有板凳甘坐十年冷的毅力。

transcendental meditation

One significant day in my life

By David Lynch

Jane - May, 2004

A significant event occurred in my life the day I learned that our human physiology, our body, is made of consciousness.

Consciousness???

"What???" I asked out loud in wonder.

I learned that our human physiology is so magnificent and complex, and so exquisite in its design and makeup, as to be wondrous beyond imagination. We are spun out of unbounded, infinite, eternal consciousness.

I learned that underlying all matter is a vast, unbounded, infinite and eternal field of consciousness called the Unified Field. I found out that modern science started taking this field seriously about 25 years ago and that all matter is unified at this level in a state of perfect symmetry, or balance. The entire universe emerges from this field in a process called "spontaneous sequential symmetry breaking."

Are you still with me?

I also learned that there is another science called Vedic Science. This Vedic Science is ancient, and it has always talked of the Unified Field.

Interesting!

Veda, I learned, means "total knowledge." The home of total knowledge is the Unified Field. It is also the home of all the laws of nature. The branches of Veda, 40 in total, make up the language of the Unified Field, the impulses of this eternal field.

I realized this Unified Field is quite an interesting place. It is not manifest and is full, meaning it is no thing, yet all things in potential. It manifests and permeates all things: the whole universe, everything, while still remaining full and not manifest.

Amazing!

Is this mind-boggling or what?

Now comes the hippest part. I have learned that any human being can "experience" the Unified Field.

Really?

Or: So what?

Why in the world would we care to experience the Unified Field?

First, another question.

Have you ever heard that most of us human beings use only 5 percent of our brain, our mind? Have you ever wondered what in the heck the other 95 percent is all about?

This is the beautiful part coming up.

The "experience" of the Unified Field actually unfolds "enlightenment"-higher states of consciousness culminating in Unity Consciousness, the highest state of consciousness. These higher states use that 95 percent of the brain. That is what the 95 percent is there for-to give us permanent, all-time enlightenment.

Now, what is enlightenment? If you were a lightbulb, let's say, your "glow" might light up your whole house and surrounding yard. In enlightenment, your "glow" would be unbounded, infinite and eternal. That would be some glow!

Enlightenment is fulfillment. Supreme fulfillment. Unbounded, infinite, eternal bliss, consciousness, intelligence, creativity, harmony, dynamic peace.

Enlightenment, I have learned, is our "full potential." It is the birthright of every human being to enjoy enlightenment.

Is this good news? I think it is such good news.

In Vedic Science, the Unified Field is called "Atma." Translated, that is "Self"-the Self of us all.

The Unified Field is not something foreign, or even something far away. It is right within each of us at the base of our mind, the source of thought. A great sage from the Himalayas, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, brought a beautiful gift to our world in the form of Transcendental Meditation. Transcendental Meditation is an easy and effortless, yet supremely profound, technique that allows any human to dive within and experience that unbounded ocean of pure bliss, pure consciousness. the Unified Field, our Self.

It may be interesting for you to know that millions of people are practicing Transcendental Meditation all around the world. People from all religions, and all walks of life. Over 600 studies have been done in universities and research institutes validating the profound benefits of Maharishi's Transcendental Meditation Program.

Having this kind of knowledge and technologies of consciousness available to us in this age is, in my mind, a significant event. Yet the "experience" of that Unified Field is the most significant event, because it unfolds what we truly are-totality.

David's movies'inciude Eraserhead, Dune, Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive.

Six steps to a stress-free career

New Scientist reveals how to keep your hair and ditch your high blood pressure without emigrating to a Pacific island.

This feature is a part of the New Scientist Careers Guide 2007, available for free download.

1. Create a good space

The angst begins before you even get to work. You can picture your workspace: narrow, cluttered and far too close to a loud-mouthed colleague. Then there’s the overactive air con – your uncomfortable chair is right in its line of fire – and that’s not to mention the lack of natural light and privacy.

Although it is oh-so-clear what your employer needs from you, few bosses have considered what kind of place you need from them. Work-related stress may be a hot topic these days, but little attention is paid to the importance of the physical working environment, says Jacqueline Vischer of the University of Montreal in Canada – how the wrong working space can stress you out, how the flow of people through an office or lab can affect communication and a sense of belonging, how the “feel” of a place influences the attitudes of the people who work there. We all sense these things, but few researchers have tried to quantify them, let alone address the situation.

Vischer has begun to measure the impact of the working environment on stress. She is looking not only at the physical side, such as chair height, lighting levels and air quality, she’s investigating psychological comfort too.

Take an open-plan office. Vischer has studied how the partitions between desks can influence workplace stress, and she found something counter-intuitive: the higher they were, the more people complained about noise from their neighbours. Partitions, she found, should ideally be no more than 1.3 metres high – never so tall that you forget you’re not alone. This trade-off between privacy and a need for interaction can be just as important in a lab.

Thankfully, some employers are beginning to realise this when designing workspaces for scientists (see “A place fit to work”, below). The rest need to pull their socks up. It’s not just the employee who pays the price; ultimately, a dysfunctional workplace will cost an employer too, says Vischer. “There’s a hidden productivity cost of trying to make do with space that doesn’t work.”

OK, a freezing office or an ill-placed coffee machine will probably cause less stress than a psychotic boss or an inhumane workload, but even if the working environment only accounts for a small slice of your daily stress, she says, it is one of the easiest things to lobby your boss to fix.

A place fit to work

Scientists’ workplaces are often particularly badly planned for their needs. “Good design understands use,” says John Zeisel, an architect and sociologist. But as any scientist who works in an ancient lab in the bowels of their building will attest, many employers could do better.

Apart from the need for sunlight, people working in a lab have particular demands, Zeisel says. “The basic dynamic of a lab is this tension between the need to focus totally on your own, in private, and the need to communicate with your collaborators.”

One place that has tackled this issue is University College London’s functional imaging lab, with a design that has come in for a lot of praise from its users. So what did they do right?

• Everyone works together in what is effectively one large, shared study area. Physicists work side by side with neurologists, breaking down disciplinary boundaries; research fellows are seated randomly rather than in groups, fostering communication across projects; and all levels of seniority share the same room, which is great for mentoring, not to mention grapevines.

• Only the principal investigators (PIs) have private offices, but they are denied a coffee station on their floor, forcing them to mingle when they need caffeine or sustenance.

• The areas around the imaging machines are visible to all, a potent reminder to all that the people maintaining the equipment play just as vital a role in the experiments as the people conducting them.

• The rooms where imaging information is processed are small and secluded, allowing people to focus and avoid interruption while they carry out that work.

• Last but not least, says Richard Frackowiak, one of the PIs who worked closely with the architects on the design, the office is aesthetically pleasing, meaning people actually like being there.

2. Raise your status

Are you the secretary? Working in the post room? The technician in a lab full of big shots? Beware: having lower status can shorten your life.

This was the big lesson of the Whitehall I study in the 1970s, which looked at the health and working life of thousands of British civil servants and found that the lower a man’s “grade” the more likely he was to die young, especially of coronary artery disease. Status has a similar effect on stress levels in the natural world.

Over the past 20 years, the second phase of the study has been tracking men and women in the civil service to tease out exactly how low status affects health. In one part of Whitehall II, which was published in the BMJ in 2006 (BMJ, vol 332, p 521), Michael Marmot and his team at University College London looked specifically at the long-term health effects of chronic work stress. Over

14 years, they asked over 10,000 people across 20 civil service grades about job stress, as well as collecting data on factors such as weight, diet and exercise.

They found that stressed employees were much more likely to develop what’s known as “metabolic syndrome”, a constellation of characteristics such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol and high fasting glucose levels, which together increase the likelihood of heart problems. It seems that prolonged exposure to work stress directly affects the autonomic nervous system, raising levels of the stress hormones cortisol and adrenalin. These findings, the researchers say, provide a plausible explanation for how psychosocial stress at work can cause heart disease.

Take control

What can you do about stress caused by low status and lack of control? Well obviously if you were in a position to choose, you’d have complete control over all aspects of your working life. So-called “stress” in the top ranks is different from the frank lack of control experienced by underlings. But in the meantime, here are some things you can try:

• Negotiate your hours - Work is less stressful when you have more control over your working hours and days off. Leena Ala-Mursula at the University of Oulu in Finland asked over 32,000 full-time public-sector employees in 10 towns about how much control they had over the length of their workday and breaks, how easy it was to take holidays or compassionate leave, and so on. She found that even for highly demanding jobs, more control made a difference, particularly for women.

• Educate yourself - People with PhDs live longer than people with master’s degrees, who in turn live longer than people with only a bachelor’s. A study of census data by Robert Erikson at Stockholm University in Sweden found that men aged 64 with a basic tertiary education had a greater rate of mortality than men with doctorates. In the years between 1991 and 1996, the less educated men had a 9.6 per cent chance of death, versus a 6 per cent risk among those with PhDs. Those with a master’s had an 8.5 per cent risk of death.

• Develop team rituals - Working as a team is essential to taking control, says John Zeisel, a sociologist and architect. “Everyone on the team needs to initiate ideas,” he says. “You can’t wait for the boss to come around.” He suggests ideas like employee-managed notice boards in prominent places so people always know what’s going on, and a weekly communal lunch.

3. Be social

Hang out at the water cooler. Lunch with your supervisor. Booze it up together after work. Confide.

No matter how monotonous your job or how close you are to being laid off, social support from work colleagues will help lower your stress levels.

An earlier part of the Whitehall II study of civil servants’ health at work showed that social support – including moral support from colleagues, encouragement from supervisors and clarity and consistency of information received from on high – had an effect on health (Journal of Psychosomatic Research, vol 43, p 73).

Employees with this support were less stressed and were less likely to have to take time off for psychiatric illness. Men with low social support, they found, were 31 per cent more likely to suffer from anxiety and depression, and women 43 per cent.

It's a primate thing

As with British civil servants, so with olive baboons in Kenya. Levels of the stress hormone cortisol in low-ranking male baboons are 66% higher than those in their superiors, according to research by Robert Sapolsky of Stanford University in California. But baboons with a social network, he found, do vastly better. “The single most important variable after you control for rank is social outlets,” he says.

4. Don't be too social

Being sociable is great, but sociability to the point of not getting anything done is stressful. The day often follows this kind of pattern: you’re intent on getting the data crunched, but in the cracks between replying to “urgent” emails, trading gossip with your neighbour and attending a string of impromptu meetings, there’s just no time.

The average working person faces more interruptions each day than you might think. The scale of the problem definitely surprised Gloria Mark, a researcher at the University of California, Irvine, who set out to quantify how interruptions affect our working day. She followed 12 information workers around for three days and discovered that on average people squeeze in only three minutes of sustained work between interruptions. And you can’t blame it all on colleagues, either: half of all interruptions are self-generated.

Part of the problem is new communication technology, and the expectation that anything – information, a person, a song – should be available the instant we want it. The good news is that many of the people who brought you the disruptive devices in the first place are developing ways to help you cope.

Microsoft, for instance, has a product that can evaluate all your incoming messages, and decide for you how urgent they are (New Scientist, 24 June 2006, p 46). It also checks on you to see whether you’re too busy to be disturbed by those “urgent” emails.

As in any such arms race, however, this will ultimately lead to ever more sophisticated ways of getting in touch. And it won’t stop you from gossiping…

5. Learn to switch off

Being able to forget about work after hours is good for you. So-called “psychological detachment” from the office has been associated with less fatigue, more positive mood and fewer days off work. If that’s true, though, why do so many people keep a BlackBerry or a cellphone in their pocket?

“It’s a modern addiction,” says Edward Hallowell, a physician in Sudbury, Massachusetts. So addictive, in fact, that the BlackBerry has even acquired the nickname “crackberry”. “If you take the substance away, you have an effect.” He recounts a tale of one patient who had classic withdrawal symptoms when she changed jobs and had to give back her corporate BlackBerry. “She kept reaching for it and it wasn’t there,” he says.

Then there was the patient who asked if it was “normal” for her husband to put the BlackBerry on the pillow next to them when they made love.

Much of the problem starts at the top, Hallowell admits, with bosses who use “global competitiveness” as an excuse to keep their employees on the job 24/7. “They’re overlooking the human brain,” he says.

Burnout is no better for the company than it is for the individual. “Just as we learned how to drink responsibly, so we need to learn to use technology.” Compulsive email checkers would do well to keep an egg-timer beside their home computer to call time, he says.

If that doesn’t help, and work worries are keeping you awake at night, make a point of writing them all down before you go to sleep, says sleep specialist Colin Espie of the University of Glasgow. It helps you lay them aside for a few hours. Oh, and turn your BlackBerry off once in a while – just to prove to yourself you can do it.

6. Modern stress-busting

Even with the perfect office, great colleagues and a harmonious home life, the demands of work can cause stress. Some people try yoga, deep breathing or lunchtime walks. But what if you need something a little more powerful to alleviate your angst?

If deep breathing doesn’t do it, you might be up for a trip to an oxygen bar. The claim is that breathing in a cocktail containing 30 per cent oxygen – as compared with the 21 per cent you get out in the open air – will relax you. A 10-minute fix costs about £5. Be warned, though, there’s not much evidence yet to show that it relieves stress.

According to the US Food and Drug Administration, which has the power to regulate oxygen supplements as a prescription drug but doesn’t see the need, no long-term well-controlled trials have ever been conducted.

Besides, if you’re going to go sniffing things for relaxation, you might be better off putting your nose into a man’s armpit – at least if you’re female. George Preti at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia exposed 18 female volunteers to extracts from the armpit sweat of six men – and the volunteers claimed to feel “less tense” and “more relaxed” as they sniffed (Biology of Reproduction, vol 68, p 2107). No other aspect of mood was altered. Exactly how it might be working, says Preti, is unclear.

Maybe it’s better to be sniffed than to sniff: we know animals help relieve stress. Sadly, though, most offices have policies against keeping a cuddly cat or bouncy puppy under your desk. Workers in Tokyo now have another option. An “animal therapy” centre in the back of a shop called Cats Livin’ lets office workers nip out in the middle of the day to rub a feline tummy or two in a home-like setting.

Of course, you’re never more relaxed than when you’re asleep, and a nap may soon be as easy to buy as a haircut. In New York, for instance, MetroNaps will sell you 15 minutes of shut-eye for just $14. You can tuck yourself into a “pod” and doze until a gentle shaking and raising of the lights rouses you.

A tribute to those in the arena

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done
better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives
valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy
cause; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat."

 

- Teddy Roosevelt, Sorbonne, 1910

Doing business in China

Found a book named "How to do business in China", written by a professor teaching MBA courses in Britain.

One of the points in the book is that Chinese, although eager to learn western culture, will not be converted. Just like the Japanese in the 80's. All our cross-culture learning is only going to help us penetrating the western market, but NOT vice versa.

The book is written in 1995 and published in 2002. I guess since then, things have changed drastically. But it seems to be holding true given the failure of US websites in penetrating the Chinese internet market, if there is one.

msn webmessenger up

meebo.com could be smashed up.

Given that Yahoo IM and msn IM has already connected.

 

 

Chinese retail websites are still burning money

Just heard over lunch with a friend from China, it's clear that all the retail websites in China are in red.

 

What's puzzeling me is that after all these years, they still managed to survive. Why are the captical so fond of the concept that they would continue chipping in such an unprofitable market?

 

Scratching my head unless there is some money laundry scheme or smart accounting going on.

 

Talking about web 2.0, there are over 200 Chinese website taking the form of MySpace or YouTube. Woww....

I guess Microsoft would be happy to hear that most of them uses IIS, ASP.NET and SQL Server, as long as they did pay for the license.

 

One more sign that your life is being cybernized

You can tell if it's raining outside. Not by looking through the window, but by the Forecastfox.

hedge fund and homeland security

Both profit by playing the fear game.

Investors are scared of depression and bear market, so they put their money in hedge fund. But hedge fund put the money into more risky game. While those hedge fund managers are making rocketing profit.

 

US people are scared of terrorists and put their trust into Bush. He used this power to wage war and put US into a larger mess, while profiting his friends and family.

 

The only way to liberate general public from the controling of the greedy finance empire and the bloody Republican government is to free them from fear.

 

Depression and bear market are caused by the exact same marketing hype created by the hedge fund. And terrorists are created by the same government that claims to be fighting them.

 

where is the money in web 2.0

After observing douban's proposed business model, i.e. building consumer forum and profit from refereral fee from media seller, I have the following thoughts on profit model in web 2.0.

 

The money eventually comes from the consumer, although most web 2.0 sites claims to be free. The merchandize that they are referring to, is not free. So eventually it boils down to advertisement and marketing of traditional merchandises.

Much stack is put on building a user base. How to catagorise this user base in order to most efficiently direct the marketing campaign is the question. But it's not a new question. Traditional media (newspaper, magazine, radio, TV) has devised very sofisticated methods to do so.

 

So what exactly is the web 2.0 social networking hype bringing to us?

I'd say, better web design and more snappy user experience.  Technology wise, v2ex is also very cool.

 

 

 

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When in doubt, blame BBS.

 

 

Groundhog day: history just repeats itself again and again

http://www.radioopensource.org/groundhog-day/

In Woodstock, IL, where “Groundhog Day” was filmed. Think “That first step’s a doozy!” [rbieber / Flickr]

It’s Groundhog Day…again.

It could have been just another funny comedy, a Bill Murray vehicle, a good but forgettable flick. But clearly it’s much more. It’s more than a cult film, even: it’s a classic. Why?

In a story meeting a few days ago Mary said that “Groundhog Day” is for a certain generaton — mine, I guess (I’m 30) — what “High Noon” “The Searchers” was for a former one. I’m not exactly sure what this means, but I have a feeling she’s right. And also that it’s more than generational.

Screenwriters crib from it. Film theorists teach it. Orthodox Jews love it. As do Jesuit priests. And Buddhists really love it. Stanley Cavell, the Harvard philosopher who normally writes about Wittgenstein and Emerson (along with film comedies of the 30s and 40s, and a lot more) named it as the contemporary work of art that will be cherished 100 years from now.

Almost six a.m. Again. [Shot of David’s screen, playing the movie in our office this afternoon]

But unlike, say, “Caddyshack” — another Bill Murray movie also directed by Harold Ramis — people don’t memorize lines or standout scenes. Fans may have their favorites of each, but the movie seems to be beloved more in its totality. Which seems good and right in a Buddhist sort of way.

But if Mary is right (and when isn’t she?), and “Groundhog Day” is some new touchstone for a generation or a time, what does that mean? What does Groundhog Day mean to you? Why does it hold up? (Or maybe the first question is: does it hold up, for you?) Why does it get better, this film with so much repetition and such subtle variation? What kind of religious gloss would you give it? Any at all?

http://www.radioopensource.org/groundhog-day-day-two/

It’s Groundhog Day… again. (Again.)

In the spirit of Groundhog Day — or maybe it’s proof of our faith in the beautiful notion of perennial, incremental betterment — we’ve decided to do this whole thing one more time. Think of it as a repeat of our first annual special.

In case you don’t remember last year’s show, it sounded a bit like the setup of a joke: a screenwriter, a scarily knowledgeable fan, a rabbi, a buddhist, and the author of The Bell Curve walk into a radio show. This year, we promise a fan at least as knowledgeable (who has seen the movie upwards of 400 times), director Harold Ramis, and hopefully a surprise or two. (And by that I mean that we’ll be just as surprised as you.)

In the meantime here’s a homework assignment in that Groundhog Day spirit of self-improvement through repetition: What did we miss the first time around?