I am closely working with a UX and Site Management team for this purpose. I saw the following rap song in YouTube, that is very relevant to what the UX/Site Management team has been advocating.

This is definitely one of the funniest videos I have seen in some time.

Do follow the lyrics of this song in the YouTube site.

Here's something else that had to happen...the invention of the ultimate Swiss army knife. It was part of a fascinating slide show on MSN (or was it MSNBC?) about modern gadgets that might enhance the utility belt of Batman (the subject of a soon-to-be-released movie). Unfortunately, I can't find the link to the original article (I knew I should've posted it on here ASAP), so you'll just have to drool (or gag) over this photo.

Finally, this didn't necessarily have to happen, but with the advance of digital information storage and presentation, it certainly became inevitably possible. The Codex Sinaiticus (the oldest surviving Greek New Testament manuscript) will soon be available online (this has already happened with the Hebrew Aleppo Codex).

שלום וברכה במשיח ישוע
יוחנן רכב

This morning I woke up thinking it was Sunday. =.= My parcel finally arrived from singpost! These days. Technology has moved at a pace like nobody's business. Everything can be automatic. Just take the recontracting with SingNet procedure, you can DIY. Even the setting up of the new modem. The SingNet SmartWizard, I dare say it's damn smart! I got reconnected to the internet with the new modem within 10 mins. Well. Being Home Administrator is good and bad. Good - You get to use just that bit of configuring knowledge to ensure peacetime is maintained and all goes well for the better of everyone's pc interest. Bad - You are the only one guru. You see shit, only you can clear it.

Morning breakfast was? One innovation. Mom made red bean soup. So I took one thick slice of the BreadTalk high calcium bread, spread the red beans from the soup on it, and dang it into the toaster. 5 mins later, I got a lovely red bean thick toast. OH. YUMMY! If I'm still using the camera phone, I would have taken it and shown YOU. In the past for me, everything MUST be wholemeal. But now. Due to ... I got to embrace white bread. Certain compromises must be made to maintain peacetime. I learnt it. So I worked my way around. I wanna sink my teeth into thick slices. I'll feel more comforted that manner. There you go, although it's expensive, I rather still buy it, everyone gets their stomach space happily filled and nobody starves if I'm around.

Afternoon lunch was? Beehoon with soup. Haha! My comfort food. Boiled ikan billis to form the soup base. Fresh Xiao Bai Cai. Shiitake Mushrooms. Roasted Sakura Chicken Shreds. Topped up with shredded carrot bits together and with some cold cuts of chicken ham found from fridge.

Not sure bout dinner yet. But one dish that's confirmed. Broccolli with oriental mushrooms!

But it absolutely blows my mind the amount of press this tiny unconfirmed rumor about a "product transition" creates. This left me wondering how Apple manages to create such enormous buzz with just about anything they ever do. I understand they make good products, I have an iPod, I wish I could afford an iPhone, I sort of want a Macbook; but what I don't understand is their power over the citizens of the internet.

One must first look at the amazing turnaround they have accomplished over the last ten years. Back in the late 90's it looked like Gates was finally putting the nails in Jobs' coffin as Apple continued losing ground fast to companies like Dell and Gateway. But they were saved by an invention initially dismissed as bulky, over-priced, ugly, pointless and stupid. At the release of the first generation iPod back in late 2001 it was generally given reviews something to the effect of: who the hell would need this fat piece of shit? But a few generations later, the iPod was the toy everyone wanted for Christmas.The iPod put the spotlight back on Apple, allowed them to produce buzz around their other products which shared the iPod's sleakness and simplicity. This allowed them to continue to take advantage of Microsoft's squirming.

Nowadays you can't walk around a college library without hundreds of glowing Apple logos staring back at you. Apple has been enormously successful among college students and young people in general. I think the younger market is very important in technology because they decide whats cool, define the trends, and dictate which product will be successful. They also decide which computer they want for graduation, and which computer should replace the one Mom spilled coffee on.

I think simplicity also has a lot to do with Apple's success. Their product line is simple and concise, in other words shopping for an Apple product is easy. If you want a laptop, you can get an Air, Macbook, or Macbook Pro. But if you look at a competitor like Dell or HP, you have multiple product lines, within those product lines you have multiple models, and each model has multiple configurations. All this choice mostly serves to confuse the hell out of the general public. Also, looking at Mac OS X, simplicity is evident in the design and functionality, especially when looking at it side by side with the disaster that is Vista. Everything Apple does has a very clean shine to it.

Its difficult to place what else makes Apple so capable of generating buzz. I almost want to say its Steve Jobs, but I find it hard to believe anyone actually likes someone who is such an asshole; seriously look at this guy. I guess Apple has a reputation somewhat akin to Google: the company that does no wrong and is super-duper awesome.

Its pretty clear now that Apple will continue to piss off Microsoft for many years to come, they will continue to gain market share in computers and sell tons of iPods. They will continue to keep the market on its toes with gobs of innovation. And they will continue to generate stupid rumors that make it to the front page of Digg, Gizmodo, and every other stupid blog including this one.

Also on an unrelated note, if you haven't started watching HBO's miniseries Generation Kill, get your shit together, its awesome. If you don't have HBO, steal it off the internet like everyone else.

I’m moving to Identi.ca as my main status blog, and I’m asking my friends, family, and anyone who reads this to join me over there.  At the very least, register an account there and get your preferred username while it’s still relatively new and uncrowded. I’ll still be posting my sutff at Twitter, Plurk, Jaiku, etc. through the miracle of Ping.fm, but I’ll be hanging out at Identi.ca

Sounded good at the time.  Turns out, though, I let my enthusiasm get ahead of my common sense.  While I still think Identi.ca points the way to where this type of service needs to go, I'm making Jaiku my home base for now. When all is said and done, Identi.ca is still very much in beta, and has a way to go before it's mature enough to rely on.

What happened? Well, yesterday they rolled out SMS posting (that's text messaging, to use the common term). Something happened, and Identi.ca's servers decided they didn't want to deliver the SMS messages I sent to the email address I was given (they're using an email address instead of a phone number or shortcode). This resulted in dozens of multiple error messages being sent to my phone, over and over again. All day.  And all night. And well into today, for good measure.

This, coupled with a hiccup with the servers at Ping.fm, who also decided to send me multiple SMS failure messages, meant I got inundated with unwanted incoming text messages. This is exactly the sort of problem that one has to expect when rolling out a new service, but unfortunately it's also the sort of problem that can cost the recipient real money if it pushes him over the limit of what his mobile provider's calling plan allows. I'm still not sure why Identi.ca kept sending me messages—it was down almost all morning, and Evan, the developer, said only that it was "a terrible bug"—but Ping.fm blamed it on my mobile provider, Verizon Wireless. Or maybe it was my phone.  Yeah, that's it...

Gee, thanks. I'll just ring up Verizon and LG straightaway and get them to totally revamp their software architecture so I can post what I had for lunch on a website in beta.  No problem.

Since I needed to make the ringing stop, I totally disabled my Ping.fm account, deleted my SMS information on Identi.ca once it came back online, adjusted my Verizon Wireless settings to reject practically all SMS messages, and spent the day with Twitter and Jaiku. And you know what? I had no problems. Both have US shortcodes, so I could post from my phone with no hassles. And Jaiku has a particularly appealing and well-thought-out interface (to my eye, anyway). I'd forgotten how much I liked it.

So, for the time being, here's the deal: if I'm in front of a computer, I'll crosspost through Hellotxt.com. Otherwise, I'm sending SMS direct to Jaiku and Twitter.  I really encourage you to post at Jaiku, since it's the only one that never gives me a problem, but I can't force anyone to do it, so I'll check in at Twitter from time to time. But if you want to join Jaiku, let me know. I've still got some invitations, and it'll be a great place to track me when I go on vacation in a few days. Ironically, it's the polar opposite of Identi.ca; it runs proprietary software and is owned by Google, so I've gone from completely open to as closed as you can get.

And Identi.ca? A great idea.  I'm keeping my account (despite an earlier post), but I'm just a bit leery of relying on it. As it stands now, as a single provider, it's just as liable as Twitter to have scaling issues; the magic happens when other sites running the Laconica software crop up, and interoperability happens. We'll get there eventually, but we're not there yet. Meanwhile, Twitter has the community, and Jaiku has the aesthetics and feature set. Say what you will about the small-town atmosphere of Identi.ca, sometimes it's nice to have big-city conveniences.

Since Craigslist is based on a local model, manually searching the globe via Craigslist would entail searching thousands of sites individually. We present a double shortcut today: a Firefox keyword search that lets you search every Craigslist site by entering just two letters in your address bar plus the item you're searching for.

For those unfamiliar with Firefox's excellent keyword feature, it allows you to assign shortcuts for your address bar that populate a web site's input fields. Here's a quick example of how it works which you can try right now:

1) Open a new tab or browser window.

2) Go to http://www.imdb.com/

That's the Internet Movie Database site.

3) Right click in the web site's search bar and select "Add a Keyword for this Search..."

4) In the box that appears, type "imdb" (without the quotation marks) in both fields. The first field is the name you'll be saving this keyword as; the second field is the actual shortcut. Click the "Add" button.

5) Now go to your address bar and type "imdb dark knight" (again, without the quotation marks) and hit enter. You'll be taken to the Internet Movie Database's results page for a Dark Knight search.

Now, anytime you want to search for a movie, you need only enter "imdb" into your address bar, followed by a space and the name of the movie - you'll get the same result as if you'd visited imdb.com and entered the name of the movie in imdb.com's search bar. This works with any site and is a great time saver.

OK, time for part II: a global Craigslist search with a keyword.

1) Go to www.google.com.

2) In the search field, right click and select "Add Keyword for this Search...".

3) In the Name field, enter "Craigslist" (no quotations).

4) In the Keyword field, enter "cl" (again, no quotation marks). Click the "Add" button.

5) Open your bookmarks and right click on your "Craigslist" bookmark. Select "Properties".

6) In the Location field, enter "http://www.google.com.my/search?hl=en&q=site:craigslist.org%20%22%s%22&meta="

Not to be ridiculously repetitive, but no quotation marks please!

Click the "Add" button.

That's it.

From now on, whenever you want to search all the Craigslist sites in existence for an item, simply enter "cl" followed by a space, followed by the name of the item you're looking for.

NOTE: the above keyword searches for exact matches (ie the equivalent of enclosing a phrase in quotation marks in Google). If you prefer to search results with the included words but not the exact phrase, substitute the following for the Location field in your "Craigslist" Properties dialogue:

http://www.google.com.my/search?hl=en&q=site:craigslist.org%20%s&meta=

i've contended for awhile now with the idea of keeping a separate blog from my mainstay online presence at luke-sha. nothing out of the ordinary or completely out of place from what you're used to getting from me, but something that comes in shorter bursts of thought. or, if you'd like, a shorter stream of consciousness.

the typical "setting up" for making a normal blog post for me is to try and concentrate on a particular topic or something that's affected me and coming up with some sort of basic outline for how that post will run. i'll wait until the moment's just right to get it done because honestly, publishing to my .Mac, errr, MobileMe account can be a pain in the ass: i can't write on the fly, i must be at a desk or tied to my MBP, and for whatever reason, it feels as if writing something two sentences to one paragraph long is just a waste of time.

enter the "microblog."

to understand why this is perfect timing, you have to understand the recent development of the Apple App Store. it was my sincere hope that somehow, Apple would release a mobile version of their iWeb publishing tools for iPhone users. sadly, Steve & Co. seem to completely overlook this aspect of blogging, the spontaneous need to blurt something out for the world to read.

and then word of WordPress releasing an app specifically for the iPhone to accommodate bloggers on the go hit the rumor mills. and then here it was today, ready for a free download.

and... the answer to my blogging prayers.

i can't tell you how many times in the course of the day i think, "i'd love to blog about that!" and then forget about it by the time i get home. writing it down somewhere doesn't help; i lose slips of paper and notebooks worse than Wayne Industries loses microwave emitters. and as i was explaining to someone earlier today, Twitter (yes, that Twitter) just isn't really a space to properly blog in. i enjoy using Twitter/Loopt, but to try and convey some sort of convenient thought process into 160 letters or less is just silly. and, as i've discovered, most of you seem to feel Twitter is a silly service. fair enough.

so that's what this is for: somewhere in between a Twitter update and one of my typically epic-length luke-sha postings. i'll keep using my main blog (although its on lockdown right now) for those lengthy diatribes, so don't delete that blog from your daily checking schedules. consider this an addendum, footnotes if you will, to the big posts you usually find from me. follow this if you'd like, or don't. i know it can be a pain in the arse to check blogs sometimes, and even worse when someone has two different blogs. 

just know that this will be here for you when you get bored. check it often because there are sure to be quicker movements on entries and thoughts than at my home blog.

cheers!

Howbeit Manes written down good understanding a URL as long as the then second, my bracket got smoothen burned(NC-17) seeing that pertinent to these words: sleep(20x), essentially(6x), cum (5x), oven(4x), misery(3x), spoil(2x). NC-17 tack"recantation sovereign 17 and least of all accepted."

Unit riddle Myself'll beget up to mark down toward those loose Latin prepositions and underling conjunctions. Be imminent yet posts as for foal dogs and teddy bears, therewith.

Except from “Revolution of Me” - A book outline by Chris Saad

THE AUDIENCE HAS LEFT THE BUILDING

There is no more audience. There are no more users. There are only participants. Participants in a human scale network.

Participants do not passively consume what an author, creator, director, developer, editor, critic or media outlet has to publish. They do not accept the authority. They do not sit silently ready to have their eyeballs converted into cash.

Participants participate. They create their own original information, entertainment and art. They remix their own version of mainstream pop culture - copyrighted or not. They post their thoughts, publish their fears and fact check every announcement faster than any newsroom. They share with their friends to discover the quirky and interesting, making it an instant blockbuster - at least for 15 minutes.

Participants have ideas to be declared. Individually they are a market of one. Collectively they are a trend, a publishing powerhouse and a voice to be heard. A voice that has something to say.

Participants have changed the way media is published and interactions are monetized. But more broadly and importantly than that, they have changed the flow of global information from top down to bottom up. They are changing the tone and tempo of the conversation.

Elvis? Who is he? The audience who has left the building. The only people left are fellow participants. We are all authors, creators, directors, developers, editors, critics and media outlets. We are a million voices saying one thing - listen to me.

Read more on the wiki

Comments, ideas and contributions welcome!

on Engineering & Science 2008

IGCES 2008

PRAKATA (INTRODUCTION):

Persatuan Pelajar Indonesia di Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (PPI-UTM) bekerjasama dengan Sekolah Pengajian Siswazah /SPS (Program Pascasarjana) UTM akan menyelenggarakan seminar international bertajuk:

"International Graduate Conference on Engineering and Science" atau IGCES 2008

Panitia mengundang semua mahasiswa S1/S2/S3 dan Dosen juga Peneliti di Tanah Air dan di Luar Negeri, untuk ikut mensukseskan acara tersebut dengan cara submit paper sebanyak mungkin.

Acara akan dilaksanakan insya Allah tanggal 23-24 Desember 2008 di Johor Bahru, Malaysia. Adapun skedul nya adalah sbb:

******

CALL FOR PAPER:

Finding the frontier of knowledge in engineering and science faces significant challenges due to demand of rapid technology achievement and demand of globalization. The new technologies of engineering and science are nowadays moving at a tremendous pace by offering new feature and performance improvement in industries. Click for Details

This conference is proposed to become an annual event of academics, scientist, and engineers all over the world to present and to exchange much ideas and their progress in researches. In line with educational process, this technical conference is designed to promote tremendous researches, enhance the skill in paper writing and oral presentation.
All the excellent papers and experiences gained in this conference will be much valuable to increase the quality of research and technology achievement.

Actually this IGCES is the continued of RPCES (Regional Postgraduate Conference on Engineering and Science) in 2006. The scope of call for paper submission is for Master and PhD student or it graduant. Click for Details

DATE AND VENUE

The conference will be held during on 23-24 December 2008 at Persada Johor International Convention Centre, Johor Bahru, Malaysia Click for Details

oooOOOooo

]]> http://geniusandco.wordpress.com/?p=31 Wed, 23 Jul 2008 05:40:54 +0000 clehman http://geniusandco.wordpress.com/?p=31 Both of these are well worth looking into...Read the intro on universe and or both..Universe is way confusing without instructions though.

"Since August 2005, We Feel Fine has been harvesting human feelings from a large number of weblogs. Every few minutes, the system searches the world's newly posted blog entries for occurrences of the phrases "I feel" and "I am feeling". When it finds such a phrase, it records the full sentence, up to the period, and identifies the "feeling" expressed in that sentence (e.g. sad, happy, depressed, etc.). Because blogs are structured in largely standard ways, the age, gender, and geographical location of the author can often be extracted and saved along with the sentence, as can the local weather conditions at the time the sentence was written. All of this information is saved."

http://www.wefeelfine.org/index.html

Universe does not suggest a single shared mythology. Instead, it provides a tool to explore many personal mythologies. Based on the chosen path of the viewer, Universe presents the most salient stories, statements and snapshots, as found in global news coverage from thousands of sources. Through this process of guided discovery, patterns start to emerge. Certain stories show up again and again, and they become our great sagas. Certain people start to shape the news, and they become our heroes and villains. Certain single words rise from the chatter, and they become our epic themes.

In Universe, as in reality, everything is connected. No event happens in isolation. No company exists in a vacuum. No person lives alone. Whereas news is often presented as a series of unrelated static events, Universe strives to show the broader narrative that contains those events. The only way to begin to see the mythic nature of today's world is to surface its connections, patterns, and themes. When this happens, we begin to see common threads — myths, really — twisting through the stream of information.

http://universe.daylife.com/stages.html

I bring this up because I have recently been feeling a desire to make some games with and for my son as a way to educate, engage and entertain him.

It all started when I was playing (and rather enjoying) a very simple game on my cell phone. Unfortunately, the game required no longer than fifteen minutes to complete, but it called to mind hundreds of ideas for similar, longer games that I could create on the computer and would be simple enough for a child to play.

I know some limited Visual Basic, so when I see something like a simple point-and-click cell phone game I often think to myself, "I could do that." I am wrong sometimes, but if I can't do it I find a way to do it or I find someone else who can.

The sad thing is, if I had set out a month ago when I had the idea, and just started making the game, it'd be done by now. Unfortunately, this is not possible with me, as I outlined in a previous post. In fact, I specifically brought this idea up in that post when I mentioned that I had an idea for a game that has since evolved into an idea for a game creator and editor.

Uncharacteristically, I was able to restrain my ambitious tendencies and keep the game type specific. My game/game maker was to be for a simple scene based game where the user can click on and interact with items in a static environment, changing scenes with simple navigation buttons. In my technical write-ups I was often tempted to add in functionality for scrolling or 3D, but I kept things as simple as I could within my already exploding idea.

Today I was working out a few of the technical aspects of my idea when it occurred to me that the project had grown larger than my plate. I was either going to need to enlist outside help, or find someone else who has already done what I wanted to do.

So, I came up with a plan. I was going to outsource the programming. I found a site online that offers programmers for hire. Unfortunately, I have no money or budget for this project, so I set that idea aside and decided to look for communities of programmers that do programming work for free (yes, they actually do exsist, but they are difficult to enlist). In order to pitch my idea I needed to write up a very detailed description of what I wanted to accomplish.

I planned on creating a main page with Google Sites, then drafting up more specific, technical documents in Google Docs with schematic drawings and images. I would advertise it by linking to the project homepage with a quick plug at several developer community sites and forums. In thinking of what I could write for the project's introduction, I had an idea.

That's when I remembered RPG Maker. In a sense, RPG Maker was a lot like my idea. Rather than just make an RPG, the creator of RPG Maker made a program to assist anyone and everyone who wanted to make an RPG. I wanted to do the same thing for a much more lame type of game. The boring, static, simple games. So, just for the heck of it, I decided to research RPG Maker in preparation for writing this entry, and that led to something else, and one thing kept leading to another thing...

What I've discovered is that the game maker programs are out there, they've just been hiding (there is even one called "Game Maker"). I found dozens of free tools that offer all of the functionality I had planned for my big project (I think) plus a whole lot more. Obviously, I downloaded a bunch of them. Now I just have to install and evaluate each of them to find one that I can use for my purposes.

I'll be sure to let you know which one I like the best and I'll share whatever I create with you (many of them will be targeted at or designed by children, but there might be a little something for you too!). If I were a little better organized I would have been saving links to the sites I found while doing all that research so I could list them here. In fact, if I were less lazy I could just go to my browsing history and pull it all back up.

Just because I'm nice, here are two that I found that look promising. The first is called Game Maker by YoYo Games and the second is called Adventure Game Studio. I'm pretty sure I downloaded at least one more, but I really can't remember which one(s). Oh, and I downloaded RPG Maker 95 too, of course!

Stay tuned for updates on this exciting new adventure!

ใน ฐานะประธานเจ้าหน้าที่บริหารและประธานสำนักงานใหญ่ มร.เธา จะเป็นผู้นำในการขับเคลื่อนธุรกิจของดีลิงค์ทั่วโลก โดยให้ความสำคัญกับการพัฒนาตลาดใหม่เป็นพิเศษ ในขณะเดียวกันก็ยังคงสานต่อเจตนารมณ์ของผู้ก่อตั้งคือ มร.เคน เคา ซึ่งมร.เธา จะทำหน้าที่เป็นผู้บริหารของดีลิงค์ อินเตอร์เนชันแนลด้วย

การ แต่งตั้งตำแหน่งใหม่นี้ มีขึ้นหลังจากการลาออกของมร.จอห์น ลี ประธานและประธานเจ้าหน้าที่บริหารคนปัจจุบัน รวมถึงมร.เจ.ซี. เหลียว ประธานคนปัจจุบัน ซึ่งมีผลอย่างเป็นทางการเมื่อวันที่ 1 กรกฎาคม 2551 ทั้งนี้มร.เหลียว เคยมีโอกาสได้ร่วมงานกับดีลิงค์ในส่วนของภาคพื้นยุโรปมาก่อนเป็นระยะเวลายาว นานถึง 12 ปี ก่อนที่จะมารับตำแหน่งประธานของดีลิงค์ คอร์ปอเรชันในปี 2546

" นับเป็นความโชคดีของเรา ที่สมาชิกที่มีความสามารถสูงอย่างมร.โทนี เธา ตกลงใจรับตำแหน่งนี้" มร.ลี ประธานของดีลิงค์คนปัจจุบันกล่าว "และด้วยประวัติการทำงานด้านการพัฒนาธุรกิจเครือข่ายที่ยาวนาน ประกอบกับความสามารถในการบริหารจัดการจะช่วยให้บริษัทมีความเจริญรุดหน้า และทำให้องค์กรบรรลุวัตถุประสงค์ในการก้าวไปสู่การเป็นผู้นำสูงสุดของแบรนด์ ด้านเครือข่าย"

จาก ที่ดีลิงค์เป็นที่รู้จักและยอมรับในฐานะผู้นำโซลูชันด้านเครือข่ายที่ใช้งาน ง่าย ปัจจุบันดีลิงค์ยังเป็นผู้นำระดับโลกที่ผลิตและส่งออกอุปกรณ์ Draft 802.11n Wi-Fi ซึ่งจากผลการวิจัยของ In-Stat ซึ่งเป็นหน่วยงานวิจัยด้านเทคโนโลยี Reed Business Information ของสหรัฐฯ ได้รายงานว่า ดีลิงค์ได้ส่งออกอุปกรณ์ของเทคโนโลยี Draft 802.11n เป็นจำนวนถึง 584,000 ชิ้นในไตรมาสที่ 4 ของปี 2550 ซึ่งคิดเป็น 33% ของสัดส่วนตลาดโลกโดยรวม

ใน ปีเดียวกัน ดีลิงค์ยังได้รับการจัดอันดับจาก Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA), BusinessNext และ Interbrand ให้อยู่ในลำดับที่ 6 ของแบรนด์สินค้าที่มีคุณภาพระดับโลก ซึ่งนับเป็นครั้งที่ 2 แล้วที่บริษัทได้รับการจัดอันดับ ทั้งนี้เพราะดีลิงค์เป็นแบรนด์คุณภาพ ที่สามารถสร้างยอดขายได้ถึง 347 ล้านดอลลาร์สหรัฐฯ และมีการเติบโตที่สูงถึง 40% เมื่อเทียบกับปี 2549 และมีรายได้รวมตลอดปี 2550 ที่ 1,012 ล้านดอลลาร์สหรัฐฯ

" นับแต่ได้รับการแต่งตั้งให้ดำรงตำแหน่งประธานกรรมการบริหารของดีลิงค์ อินเตอร์เนชันแนลเมื่อปี 2540 มร.โทนี ได้กลายเป็นผู้บริหารหลักของกลุ่มกรรมการบริหารของดีลิงค์ และด้วยความสามารถของเขา ทำให้เราประสบความสำเร็จเป็นอย่างยิ่งในกลุ่มตลาดใหม่ และการบริการลูกค้าในกลุ่มเอนเตอร์ไพรส์และ SME ขณะเดียวกันยังประสบผลสำเร็จในการสร้างความคุ้มค่าให้กับสินค้าและบริการ รวมถึงยังคงรั้งตำแหน่งผู้นำทางการตลาดไว้ได้อีกด้วย" มร.ลี กล่าวเสริม

ใน ฐานะประธานกรรมการบริหารของดีลิงค์ อินเตอร์เนชันแนล มร.เธา จะรับผิดชอบในการพัฒนาและการเติบโตของตลาดในภูมิภาคเอเซียแปซิฟิค, อเมริกาใต้, ตะวันออกกลาง และรัสเซีย ยิ่งไปกว่านั้นแล้ว เขายังจะรับผิดชอบการดูแลตลาดที่เกิดใหม่ในละตินอเมริกา, อัฟริกาใต้, ตะวันออกกลาง, รัสเซีย, อินเดีย และเวียดนาม และยังมีบทบาทสำคัญยิ่งในการสร้างอัตราการเติบโตรวมของดีลิงค์ อินเตอร์เนชันแนล ให้โตขึ้น 23% จาก 301 ล้านดอลลาร์สหรัฐฯ ในปี 2549 ให้เป็น 369 ล้านดอลลาร์สหรัฐฯ ในปี 2550

ก่อน ที่จะเข้าร่วมงานกับดีลิงค์ในปี 2540 มร.เธา เคยร่วมงานกับบริษัทไอบีเอ็ม เป็นระยะเวลานานเกือบ 8 ปี ในตำแหน่งผู้จัดการฝ่ายพัฒนาธุรกิจช่องทางการจัดจำหน่ายของภูมิภาคเอเชีย หลังจากนั้นจึงได้มาร่วมงานกับ Digital Equipment Corporation เป็นเวลา 3 ปีครึ่งดูแลด้านการบริหารจัดการช่องทาง SME และช่องทางการจัดจำหน่ายในภูมิภาคเอเชียแปซิฟิค มร.เธา สำเร็จการศึกษาระดับปริญญาตรี สาขาการจัดการอุตสาหกรรม จาก Ming-Chi Institute of Technology ประเทศไต้หวัน และปริญญาโทสาขาบริหารธุรกิจ จาก Illinois Institute of Technology มลรัฐชิคาโก สหรัฐอเมริกา

So I've had breakfast and I go to my PC to check email and messages. My wireless network at home now consists of a variety of devices and networks linked together. These include my Entertainment Server which links to various TV's around the house, the Sky Dish, cable TV, media audio players and recorders, HD radio tuner as well as the Toshiba Fenininity Server which allows us to control and monitor the stove, dishwasher, washing machine and dryer, climate control, breadmaker and a host of other appliances not to mention the HVS climate control.

I also have the latest Kindle which lets all of us read our personalised news. It aggregates the top stories from mother Herald as well as other papers and magazines of interest so we all get the version we want. Scared the hell out of me the other day when I opened my wife's logon by accident and all I saw was stories about TV and filmstars and their failed marriages and getting their 23rd adopted child out of Afghanistan which is the new Darfur. But then that is the beauty of it that we all get MeNews and not what someone else wants us to read.

I'm still into social networking in a big way, but have a number of portals that manage and aggregate each of my networks. I check my Music Portal which manages all the sites where I showcase my music. Now I can load my new songs, video's, blogs and gig calendar onto one site and it updates the 127 sites I feature on in one hit, according to each sites unique specification.

So it's time to go. I leave the house and activate the alarm which sends a signal to my iPhone to say the system is now armed and hop in the car. I drop the iPhone onto the little tray beside my seat and as I put the key into the ignition and my seat and steering wheel adjust itself to my preferred positions, my phone announces itself to the Wireless CANBUS so that it has access to the entertainment system.

I tell my integrated GPS navigation unit to take me to 'the office' select the podcast I want to listen to from those that are just audio as I don't want to get pinged by the distraction laws and get on the road. As I near the top of Chartwell Drive, my podcast pauses (I used to hate missing stuff when the old system just muted the sound) and the nav tells me that there is a serious traffic incident on High Rd that it has picked up on TMC and would I like to route around it. I say yes, and it seemlessly takes me on down Diana drive and I arrive at work right on time.

As I wait at a set of lights I check the Buddy feature on my GPS and see an image of my wife's car crawling along Bush Rd on her way to work. Her unit beeps to alert her that I have checked her location and she sends me a smart message back by tapping on the SMS keyboard on her nav unit which uses Bluetooth to send the message via her phone. Her car and system is a bit older than mine. 2009.

When I get to work my phone opens the carpark grill and after I have parked the car, it unlocks the door into the building and then into my office. I fire up my  Touchbook which has just been upgraded to Vista ("WE" like to be cautious about our computer network and go to the machine in the kitchen for a perfectly fluffy flat white.

As I have done forever, I start my day with email. My touchscreen notebook is now running Windows Vista Touch and although Microsoft has announced their new OS I will be using this one for another couple of years until our IT Department is comfortable that it is reasonably robust, especially given that it took 3 years to get most of the kinks out of Vista and for a while they went back to offering Windows XP again as an option in the 2nd half of 2009.

One thing that we have now universally adopted is Unified Communications. All my voicemail whether it comes from my landline, mobile or email is now waiting for me in my Inbox and with my iPhone or my notebook.

My days haven't changed much. Probably the only major difference is that I do now use video on a lot of my phone calls so I can see the person I am talking to. This has saved me a lot of wasted travel time given the disaster that is Auckland's roads today. They have started building the Auckland Harbour Tunnel, but it will be a couple more years before it opens for buses and T3 (cars with at least 3 peple in them) let alone ordinary traffic. So many meetings have been replaced by necessity with vidphone calls. Of course I can also do this on my iPhone 6, but unless I'm doing it over the Wireless LAN (and we still don't have one in the office) the costs are prohibitive.

At lunch time I quite often walk to the Subway for some exercise and of course their food has the Heart Tick. On my way, I check out their menu on my iPhone and wonder if the food will look as good as the picture. I specify exactly what time I will get there. On the way back I get the phone to play me some Utterz messages from friends while I'm walking.

On the way home I drive past a bar and get a Speights Mates message saying there is a Happy Hour Running and sending me an eCoupon to get 2 for one in the next half hour and prompting me to hit the forward button to send the same coupon to any of my personal Speight's Mates who are within a 2km vicinity to come and join me for an after work beer. I love location based marketing and decide it is only right to support people who have invested in this technology given that I helped to develop it. Isn't that called the fruits of your labour? Yes. I know hops aren't strictly fruit.

Before dinner, I go to my home studio and record a lead track on my Gibson LP Guitar onto my 8 track TASCAM for my latest song, nothing has changed there really, call me old fashioned. I still have my music on loads of web sites and while I've sold some songs, I haven't scored a number one hit yet.

I bought the new Internet TV Aggregation Server last year and replaced my MySky. Now that I have cable for internet as well as TV, I can cherry pick and watch exactly what I want when I want and am no longer subject to the whims of SKy TV. Yes, I still subscribe to Sky Sports Channel because they have exclusive rights for many events that NZ teams compete in such as All Blacks Rugby and do support NZ sport better than anything else, especially the biased commentators, although I wuldn't have a problem if Murray Mexted got some new material, but the rest is pretty much free. I don't have to watch ads although many programs have very overt displays of product i the story.

I finally got an 80" TV, the largest my wife would let me buy, and that wasn't easy. Sometimes we have multple screens running so that we can watch different things at once and have adapted to that. We tried the VR glasses from the new Nintendo, but they are very antisocial. Awesome for 3D movies tough! Home entertainment is now awesome. No more channels full of reruns of programs we have already seen umpteen times, I never have to sit through another show of Friends again! Now I can see exactly what I want when I want, subject to agreement in the house of course and we all have to compromise sometimes,

Along with cable came free international calling to anywhere in the world for a modest flat fee, so I don't use Skype much anymore. Finally a little music from iLike at the end of the day. I kept my CD's and vinyl as souvenirs, but for a flat fee of $10 a month to our ISP, the house can access and download unlimited music from almost all record companies in MPEG 9 which is great quality at 960kbit/s.

Not a lot has changed in 5 years, but life is certtainly a little easier than it used to be.

This is a very positive development.

The UCDoers will meet at the McKinstry Company located at 5005 Third Avenue South Seattle, WA  98134 (http://www.mckinstry.com/). 

This month Greg Taylor & Per Farney of Microsoft's Certified Architect (MCA): Messaging Program also known as the "Exchange Rangers" will join us. Greg and Per will provide an overview of the program including requirements to attend, what the training program consists of and the benefits of the Exchange Ranger program to the Messaging Community.  We will also provide an update on upcoming meetings\plans for the group as we continue to grow the UCDoers User Group! 

Come out and join us; food and drinks will be provided!

RSVP: http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/923349/?ps=5

Yup. Filling in for Pastor John tonight on our church's internet radio station. I'm thinking about a discussion about redeeming media. The show goes on at 9PM Eastern or shortly afterwards and can be streamed via Windows Media Player if you click through here. It will also be available for download form our podcast page Thursday.

Any thoughts from you guys on this topic?

What is a Nokia product code?

It's a 7-digit code that identifies the firmware installed in your Nokia phone. It also defines the features and languages installed in it. Product codes are region dependent. Where you purchased your Nokia phone corresponds to the code it has.

Some Nokia enthusiasts will change the product code of their Nokia phones to alter their phone's features. The most common reason is to "de-brand" a Phone company-issued phone, most of which have limited features compared to the retail ones.

Where can I find my Nokia product code?

It is usually printed on the sticker at the back of your phone when you take out its battery. Look for a 7-digit code just below your Nokia's IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity).

How do you change the product code?

The most common program to change the product code is the Nemesis Service Suite, or NSS. The latest version of NSS has no problem detecting the E71. There are also some programs that can change the product code, diagnose and and even upgrade or downgrade the firmware of your Nokia phone. But these programs costs a lot and needs proprietary hardware to work with.

What happens if I change my product code?

You will lose your warranty. :P

Coming soon from Apple... watch out.

Other intelligent men and women were going through this same kind of crisis, and they realized science was right in a lot of ways – there was a lot of nonsense in religion, but was it all nonsense? And they came up with the brilliant idea of: can we apply the method of science? Not the particular findings at any moment, but the method to investigate various phenomenon – spirituality, religion – and begin to separate out what was true and important, and what was false and superstitious. That was an inspiring vision for me, and basically that’s what I’ve been doing the last 50 years.

You'll find the transcribed interview at www.shrinkrapradio.com/34.pdf

Before doing a tour on Monday I was up in the Gallery and was reviewing a display book summarising Paolo Soleri's work. It was a section that touched on the Grand Delusions and Animism. For Soleri it is black and white: all religions and concept of the spirit as something intrinsic is core to the illusions that keep humanity out of synch with the larger universal reality of which is comprized his sacred trinity Miniaturization, Complexity and Duration. Soleri's theory of Arcology does leave open the possibity of spirit emerging from matter that is the result of human development via technology and consciousness.

Soleri's view of the universe and reality seems to leave little room for even the possibility that thousands of years of indigenous development may have developed innate technologies and wisdom based on a more spiritually based understanding of how the life and universe operates.

What's more is that it rejects without any questioning or doubt the experiences of countless people today who have experienced phenomena they cannot explain. Thus I see the problem as not a questioning of spirit, a caring universe or a universal consciousness that some refer to as the singularity that binds us to the forming of the universe, but an inability to consider that possible alternative scenarios may indeed exist and explain the pheonomology of the unverse and its development.

Of course AI proponents like Ray Kurzweil have come up with the idea of Technology Singularity:

Singularity: The rise of super intelligent life, created through the improvement of human tools by the acceleration of tecSingularity: The rise of super intelligent life, created through the improvement of human tools by the acceleration of technological progress reaching the point of infinity,

Also see the Wikipedia post which is a bit more expansive: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity

So Soleri seems seduced by the Technology Singularity concept but ironically the most practical manifestation of that which led to the writing of the Paradox Thesis and the organization of several Paradox Conferences at Arcosanti including Paradox III which I attended, included some of the spiritual leaders of Spiritual Singularity movement (Marlyn Fergeson for example).

Peter Russell offers an alternative take on Singularity that seems to come aspects of traditional philosophical understandings of singularity (I first grasped the term in my Philosophy of Religious class at Missour State U) that might be worth contemplating in this discussion: http://www.peterrussell.com/WUIT/Sing.php