A.Connector

Connecting

admin — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 08:00:16 +0000

The other day I had a Skype chat with a friend I know from Twitter. Nice guy, good connection. I finally found out that he worked in the financial sector. Then a light bulb went off in my head. I have a good friend that is really skilled in financial market analysis. So instantly the A.Connector DNA kicks in and I asked my friend on Skype if he would be willing to talk to my friend. He said, “Sure. I’m alway looking for qualified analysts.”

So why am I excited? What benefit is there to me? Well I happen to be big fan of the new bleeding edge economics and not doing evil. There is still one better than that-doing good. Don’t know why, but it always makes me feel good when I can help others connect in a frictionless good fit kind of way. File this under-because that’s how I roll…

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Let’s get Acrobatic

admin — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 02:45:25 +0000

Disclosure-I’m a long time Adobe product lover from my days as a Mac only guy(yes Virginia, I’m on the infernal Winblows machines now too). I’ve had so many discussions with web/geek friends about Adobe and how it’s so incredulous with their engineering/design abilities and strong advantage with Flash platform, that they don’t do more in light of Google’s Documents, Zoho,etc.

Well happy to say that recently they’ve launched Photoshop Express for touching up digital pictures and more recently Acrobat.com as a launching point for Buzzwords, their Word alternative (on flash of course) and Connect Now a collaborative communications suite that allow you and other collaborators to have video and voice chat and see each others desktops,share whiteboard and have option to control others’ desktop/browser as well.

I’ve been testing these and they all seem to offer a lot of promise. The interface for the Buzzwords word processor is pretty sexy, only complaint I have right now is that it didn’t offer ability to change formatting from left to center or right. I might have missed that or it may be on their to do list. In any case. much more robust than Google or Zoho’s similar offering IMHO.

For those that didn’t ask-no I’m trying Plurk because I just don’t care. Sick of the alphabet-soup shiny object of the moment thingie, even with a some what sick Twitter. I’ve been using FriendFeed more

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China Quake relief/News

admin — Thu, 15 May 2008 02:50:18 +0000

China Vortex put together a few links for those interested in news about and/or are interested in donating to help the victims of the Sichuan Wenchang earthquake of May 12 tragedy.

* Danwei earthquake updates
* Shanghaiist earthquake coverage
* MSNBC earthquake coverage
* BBC earthquake coverage
* Guardian earthquake coverage
* Youtube video earthquake coverage
* Tianya public forum
* Tudou video earthquake coverage
* QQ news center
* Sohu news center
* Sina news center
* CNReviews 24+ ways to give
* China Esquire earthquake update news and donation information

Technorati Tags: bbc, China, cnreviews, danwei, donations, earthquake, guardian, hyperlinks, links, msnbc, news, qq, redcross, shanghaiist, sina, sohu, tianya, tudou, video, youtube

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Yang, Yahoo & Chinese business custom

admin — Thu, 08 May 2008 01:50:35 +0000

Jerry Yang and Yahoo have been in the tech news a lot lately due having his “Texas Hold ‘Em” style bluff called by Miscrosoft’s Steve Ballmer. Sure it’s easy to second guess Jerry, and understand why shareholders would be really pissed at him in this world of , “Hey you made me lots of money 7 minutes ago but what have you done for me lately?” thinking and ethics. Yang’s biggest sin is being faithful to his cultural DNA. He is of Chinese descent. The Chinese are almost exclusively family businesses and are run like a family not like a company. Hence, there is a ton of emotion and passion tied-up in them. It’s very hard to distance one’s self from one’s company under the Chinese model way since they are so intertwined.

I am a small business owner myself and can empathize with Yang completely on this point. Sadly, I don’t have the comfort factor of hundreds of millions of dollars at my disposal to walk away gracefully and do something else. That’s the point though-Jerry is probably more focused on the intertwined identity of Yahoo/yang more than the financials. He has a lot to be proud of and his bruised ego will heal. Yahoo once a disruptor and trend setter has become a poorly managed behemoth. Time once again for Wall Street to devour what it has created.

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Sometimes a great notion

admin — Fri, 02 May 2008 16:51:12 +0000

There are times in business where you can still be pleasantly surprised even after you’ve mentally prepared yourself to bang your head against the wall in resignation to the unpleasant reality that nobody is listening to you or cares about what you have to say. in this case it’s a fairly large Taiwan-owned tire company that does a small tire for our customers sporting goods products. We have been doing business with them for the better part of 12 years. They recently decided to shift small tire production to one of their China factories. The only problem is that China has gotten smarter and smarter over the last few years and doesn’t let foreign-owned companies just bring anything they want into China-in this case the existing tooling for our tires! So I wasn’t entirely surprised when my suppliers beautiful dream to shift production over there hit a snag. What did trouble me was when I got a sample from their China factory that was lighter in weight(less material/thinner) which my customer of course reacted to as being unacceptable.

Lo and behold I just got an e-mail showing a very responsible attitude in the form of a notice that they will be running this batch at the Taiwan factory until they get their China line problems sorted out. This makes me a happy camper and enables me to share some reassuring news to an excellent long term customer. Rock on!

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Writer’s Block?

admin — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 23:38:10 +0000

I’m alluding to less frequency of posts here lately. In fact been plenty busy in my business,business blogging, flickr, and my old mainstay web presence. Not to mention a photoblog, and some other odds and ends. Many who maintain blogs claim that Twitter has depleted them or significantly diluted there blogging. I can see some of that. I have been tweeting less. I look at Twitter primarily as dropping by a party or a cocktail lounge. So, fun and refreshing sometimes if I’m in the mood. Yes, I occasionally learn something really significant.

Having just written that I’m reminded of an event during the early days of the Internet. Many people were excited at this new “connection” or connectivity channel. Here in Taichung some expats(a former Vietnam War pilot and one of the first ISP guys here) decide to channel some of their exuberance and get a group going. I forget the name of the group but they knew I was an early adopter of the Internet, having my own website since 1995, e-mail(s), etc. Wow, those were the good old days indeed. Since there were so few doing websites here then I often received inquiries from US based buyer’s but I digress.

The shiny Internet group met at cool restaurant here in town. The owner of the restaurant would find nice houses renovate and furnish them and give them names like “Bird Vs. Man”… So I showed up for the first meeting and the principals: Bruce and David would begin the navel gazing session. It was almost surreal and exaggerated to the point of something inane like,”OK let us begin chanting-M>O>D>E>M,MO>DE>M, MODEMMMMMM.” OK I am getting a little exaggerated but for a reason. They like so many geeks are far more obsessed with the tool than their ability to wield it. I have always been very utilitarian in my approach to tools. That is why I don’t have a collection of various brushes with hairs of different origin-I couldn’t paint if my life depended upon it, much to my chagrin and disappointment.

So here I am in this bleeding edge group and being asked to add my insights to this exciting earth shaking phenomenon called the Internet. I just looked around the room, smiled and said,

“To me the Internet is a window. Like any window I don’t care if it is a branded one like Pella or just the generic variety. Actually, all I really care is that it is clean so it can clearly transmit the light and views from outside that I wish to see. There is a reason that windows use clear glass, they are just a vehicle or channel for allowing glimpses into something significant; namely life outside the space you are inside of and looking out from.”

Hey wanna hear about some cool new app that you can invite all of your friends to join and get paid not to blog while you help Darfur and Tibetan causes? Anyhow, here’s to focusing on life and doing small things within our ability to affect it and the lives of those around us.

Update: I was pointed to an excellent post by Karoli on significant action vs. the inanity of the blogosphere.

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No not from the Twitter (pick a color) Team

admin — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 02:45:13 +0000

I received a Facebook message from Garsen Subramoney someone I know through Facebook and Twitter. he contacted me on quite a serious subject actually, not the inane Ze Frank initiated color team war meme on Twitter. In fact this involves the future of a young democracy, one of the few hopeful spots in a a troubled continent: Africa. In this case South Africa-Garsen’s country. It is quite concerning and maybe merits you reading of the article in it’s entirety.

It seems that the world has a series of challenging forces and factors to deal with: presidential elections in Taiwan and USA, Tibet pushing against Beijing control, and now this political change for the worse in South Africa. Let us be aware of these places and issues and do what ever we can in what ever way we can to try to make a difference. Many would say why bother in this corrupt dystopian world we live in? I’d say that partial idealism is much more hopeful and potentially helpful than complete apathy.

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A lesson learned?

admin — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 05:33:14 +0000

Yesterday I was watching the Chinese Taipei baseball team battle the Canadian national team on the baseball field here in Taichung. The Taiwan team got off to a good start and overall it was quite a good contest. In the latter innings with the score seesawing back and forth between the local and visiting teams, the Canadians got in scoring position and the big Canadian player bulldozed the much smaller Taiwanese catcher. Amazingly, the much smaller Taiwanese catcher held on to ball and successfully tagged out the Canadian runner.The crowd instantly started booing and felt like the big guy was picking on the little guy. In fact many made it a personal thing, like “the big white guy picking on the little Asian guy.”

Oddly, I’ve had some personal experiences like that here. Fortunately, not for many years. There was one time that a local guy and I were heading for the same spot at the same time. To be frank, we were probably playing chicken and guess what? We collided. Now the local guy got all stinky faced and abusive because I was bigger and surely was taking advantage of size… Well surprise surprise. No I didn’t want to hurt the guy, but I have enough common sense not to play chicken with someone much bigger than me if the downside is having it sting.

Back to the baseball game. My wife came in when she heard the furor of the crowd and even she was unhappy with what she saw on the replay screen. My son then informed her that the Canadian player was simply doing what any runner would do and going for broke in a close game and shot at home with catcher blocking the plate. This explained by a loyal Taiwan team fan to his mom.

Sadly, the Canadian team won. The moral of the story-if you want to dance, you need to pay the band. Kudos to that Taiwan catcher for holding on to the ball after being steam-rolled. You rock!
Story link here.

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Free Screencast: useful web app

admin — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 01:09:22 +0000

I tend to be reluctant about commenting on the newest shiny objects of Web 2.0 since many are so much more focused on that than me. I do however like to promote useful things that I come across. Free Screencast is one of them. It is an excellent application(Windows only at present) for recording what is on your screen and what you are doing on your computer. Very intuitive and excellent service by Jason, the applications developer I believe. The reason I know is, I had a problem and e-mailed Jason. I received his reply almost instantly. Love when you get prompt and cogent response. The problem I had and Jason will address in UI shortly is that the api login (you need to download a desktop app for synching with site) asks for user name when in fact it wants user e-mail, while the site wants user name at login. Here is my demo at A.Connector. Please try and let me know what you think.

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Fear Factor

admin — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 03:46:05 +0000

My friend and collaborator at Depth Charge Len Edgerly had an interesting conversation earlier via Skype that motivated me to think through and write this post.

We were discussing the hope and optimism cased by Barack Obama’s message and style and similar feelings for Larry Lessig (who happens to be a Barack supporter) and Lessig’s attempt to bring the balance of the political machine back to the people from the special interest groups. I have been an admirer of Lessig’s for a while. Obama is certainly starting to get some traction in my mind share. Yet I digress.

I mentioned to Len the concern I had about Obama being a target of special interest groups for assassination, and they’d probably use a white supremacist type to do it. Len admonished this line of thought saying that, “fear of him getting offed has the effect of enfeebling our hope and energy, which needs to run pell-mell to the future. If he dies, by a bus, a virus, or any other means, the nation will mourn more deeply than it did for the Kennedys and MLK. I pray every morning for his safety, and that of the other candidates. “

Len then went on to say, “I heard interesting comment by NYT editor on podcast who covered Mandela and Gorbachov, saying what was exhilarating in both cases was to see a leader help his nation come out from under the shackles of fear into the light. That’s what Obama can do here, I hope. We’re ready. Roosevelt did it. perhaps every great leader in their own way does it, except for the ones like Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin - who lead by feeding the fear and controlling the people with it as a bloody tool.”

I agree with Len on the point of fear. It is an excellent albeit it wicked motivational tool. It saddens me deeply to see how this device has been employed to a great degree in the US that is hailed in it’s national anthem as “the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.”

I sure hope the next US President helps us get back on track US to being the “Land of the Free” once again.

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