Links: 2008-06-02

• For the life of me - Mountaineer chronicles his Everest rescue by Calgarian Andrew Brash and defends those who left him for dead
• Quotes from Yves Saint Laurent (1936 - 2008) * "I participated in the transformation of my era. I did it with clothes, which is surely less important than music, architecture, painting ... but whatever it's worth I did it." (2002) * New York Times slideshow and obituary
• "Asset-backed insecurity" - an interesting piece about sovereign-wealth funds by The Economists
• Poor People With Checks - nicely done video "Checkmate"
• ABC Blesses Blogs, Endorses Embedding
• Owning the Clouds [via Cory

Links: 2008-04-06

1. Computerised toothbrush makes oral hygiene a game - with YouTube clip
2. Flash Storytelling - neat.
3. Some UK social networking stats, " * 41 per cent of children and 44 per cent of adults leave their privacy settings as default ‘open’ which means that their profiles are visible to anyone, * 34 per cent of 16-24 year olds are willing to give out sensitive personal information such as their phone number or email address"
4. eBay launches a corporate blog - Nice to have an outsider looking in and blogging official.
5. Open Skies' New Baby - And they are going to post the painting of their first plane! Strangely, I think I will check it out. I hope it is not simply watching paint dry. (smile)
6. Harvard's New Stockpicker
7. Worthless Wall Street Research - We may be better off doing the research ourselves. (smile

Randy's The Last Lecture on ABC

ABC is airing an one hour special about Randy Pausch on April 9th, 2008 at 10/9c. Don't miss "The Last Lecture: A Love Story For Your Life" (with a promo clip).

See my other posts about Randy. In particular, this blog entry links to Randy's Last Lecture online video, and this blog entry links to Randy's Time Management video.

[Hat tip to Jeff Zaslow, ghost writer of Randy's book "The Last Lecture"]

My Starbucks Idea

After founder Howard Schultz came back to be the president and CEO of Starbucks in January to put some magic back, I hope the ideas at mystarbucksidea.com can add some needed love and $$ back as well.

Since the Starbucks blog has only been launched for days, it is particularly nice to see the two things customers want most - some freebies (although not quite free coffees for frequent purchaser) and complementary Wi-Fi will be added soon.

Here is an excerpt from Brad Stevens’ March 24, 2008 entry, (note: why is the entry not linkable and the blog doesn’t have an RSS feed?) (emphasis added in the following excerpt)

So, starting in mid-April, when you pay with your registered Starbucks Card here’s what you’ll get at participating stores:

• Complimentary customization (add selected syrups or modify your milk – soy or breve), on us. For instance, a Tall Vanilla Soy Latte will be the same price as a regular Tall Caffè Latte. A 70-cent savings in most places.
• Free refills on brewed coffee.
• Tall beverage of your choice with the purchase of 1 lb. whole bean coffee.

And in the near future, we’ll be adding complimentary Wi-Fi access—another hot topic on this site.

Money can buy you happiness - if you spend it on others: study

From CBC news with video,

People are happier when they spend money on others than when they spend it on themselves, a new study by researchers in Canada and the United States suggests.

“Our results suggest that how people spend their money is at least as important for happiness as how much they earn,” co-author Lara Aknin, a master’s student at the University of British Columbia told CBCNews.ca via e-mail. “Therefore, small alterations in your spending choices — even small amounts — can have a significant impact on your happiness level.“

Bill Gates’ Daughter - chain mail hoax

Do you think the above young lady is Bill Gates' daughter? Many people seemed to think so and the photo has been forwarded around the internet via emails and posted on blogs. I think it is purely a time-wasting hoax and I am betting a shiny dollar that it is just a hoax.

First of all, Gates' eldest daughter Jennifer Katharine Gates is not quite 12 years old yet (born in 1996). (Note: see bottom of this Taiwan MSFT page, interestingly the US site has no such info.) And according to this blogger, the charming lady in the above photo is the actress Alyson Stoner and the photos in her official site do show some resemblance.

I think the photos have been forwarded because Bill Gates is rich, the girl is cute, and the act of forwarding the pictures seem so harmless.

May be I am too allergic to chain emails and internet hoaxes, I think the act of forwarding chain mails is harmful as it waste our time, spread lies, and teaches us to be very uncritical of things we read, believe, and then pass on. And in this case, a hoax that involves a 12 years old child just seem so wrong, regardless of who the child's parents are.

The one "possible" side benefit, assuming the lady in the photo is indeed an actress, is that her agent may now have a slightly easier job in getting her new acting assignments as her face is now more familiar with thousands and thousands of people. Even that, if the girl is indeed Alyson, I wonder how she feels about all these misguided attentions?

P.S. Feel free to correct me if I am mistaken in this post. Thanks.

Is this frog a prince?

Hmmmm, I am slow but late is better than never I guess. Is this frog a prince? Bought to you by the good people at the Office of the Privacy Commissioner (emphasis added),

Last year, IT security firm Sophos ran an experiment on Facebook to demonstrate just how willing people were to hand over their information to potential ID thieves. They created a fake profile page on Facebook for a small green plastic frog and sent out 200 friend requests to other Facebook users. Eighty-two of those people responded, and in doing so, divulged personal information like their email address, birthdate, workplace or school location, and phone number - all useful details for the aspiring identity thief.

I guess even a frog can teach us something. (smile) Including PLASTIC frog! (big smile)

Get a lower VISA or Mastercard interest rate - by asking!

How do you lower your credit card rates (VISA or Mastercard, etc.) from 18.9% to 10.9% (an 8% drop) or 19.5% to 11.5% (also an 8% drop)?

Well, from this CBC experiment (with video) with some random credit card holders in a shopping mall, all you need to ask!!!

It may not work for every credit card companies or for everyone but if you have a high credit card balance paying 19.5% interest, it certainly worth your 5 minutes to give each of your credit companies a call. Many people have more than one credit cards, I say try them all and simply go with the one that gives you a good deal.

Looking back, and I knew it then already, talking myself out of paying the small amount of VISA card interest was peanuts compare to a whopping 8% drop in interest charged!

Watch CBC news report (with video) and then give your credit company a call and see if you get a interest rate cut. Please share your stories in the comments section here to help the others. I love to see how many people get a rate cut.

P.S. If you have a particular credit card for a while (i.e. have a history with them) and you have a balance (own them money and pay them 19.5% interest) often or at least once in a while, you are a GREAT customer to them and they will want to keep you. :)

P.P.S. I am NOT in the credit consolidation business. But if you hold a really large credit card balance, you should seriously talk to your bank and get a loan to drastically cut down on the interest you have to pay.

Links: 2008-03-07

1. What Are the Lessons of the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD Battle?
2. A challenge from the New York Times?
3. Patent Office Will Now Require Biological Deposits Before Publication
4. The Best Defense is a Breast Defense - Too funny to ignore (smile)
5. News of two Canadian companies got picked up and some entrepreneurial insights
6. $100,000 for your thoughts - Bill Gates foundation seeking ‘unorthodox’ health ideas - interesting way to start 60 projects that can lead to ideas to prevent HIV infection or help protect against infectious diseases

Links: 2008-02-23 Girls vs boys online, cellphone business, 29-yr-old Obama-campaign lawyer, $500,000/yr doorman, customers’ tips, Belgrade Looting Yo

1. Girls are doing more online than boys - interesting (not too surprising?)
2. Cellphone business and its $99 problem
3. Law Blog Q&A: Obama-Campaign 29 years old staff counsel Kendall Burman - interesting insight from within a campaign
4. $500,000-a-year doormen in Vegas? - man, I am in the wrong business. (smile)
5. Love the customer who hates you
6. The Belgrade Looting YouTube video After Kosovo declaring independent - [The scary power (good/bad) of YouTube to draw attention)

The Last Lecture - read it in April

After watching and felt deeply touched by Prof. Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture, I check up on Randy’s site once in a while to see how is he doing and happy to see him well at his last update (Feb 15, 2008) jokingly holding up a copy of the New York Times.

I noticed that his book is done and will be published by Hyperion in early April. Read it. I know I will.

Getting Married at Good Earth

Yesterday at around 4pm, a group of us volunteers were having a rather serious meeting to talk about details of bringing the Darfur/Darfur multimedia project to Calgary at the Good Earth Café on 11 St. SW and 15 Ave. SW (pictured above). And then to the pleasant surprise of us and everyone else in the café, a charming bride in a beautiful wedding dress (an A-Line style dress?) walked in with her bridesmaids, groom, and groomsmen.

The beautifully charming bride and the group must have stayed for at least 5-10 minutes taking pictures and ordering coffees and snacks before they left. Sorry my fellow volunteers, I was paying way too much attention on what the bride was doing and was paying less attention to what you were saying (I did take notes (smile)).

I so much wish I had my good camera and snapped a few unobtrusive pictures to share with you here. The scene was charming, very happy and warm.

To the happy married couple, I wish you all the happiness in the world for many many years to come. I will treasure the beautiful pictures of you both in my mind.

To couples that are getting married in the future, may I suggest you visit some favourite hangouts of yours (coffee shops, restaurants, etc) and take a few pictures in full wedding dresses and tuxes. That should be fun and memorable for you and everyone that saw you. (smile)

Again, my best and warmest wishes to the married couple I met yesterday at Good Earth.

Ronald Coase - Great minds of our time

It is my great pleasure to finally fulfill my earlier promise to blog about professor Ronald H. Coase in my Great Minds of Our Time series.

As I blogged earlier, “Here is prof. Coase’s 2003 Coase Centennial Speech (500MB QuickTime file, recommend downloading it before you watch it) from Ronald Coase Institute’s online material section.” I now can say I have watched or listened to the video more than three times now, and I am sure I will still learning from it when I watch it again.

I am going to use a different approach to blog about professor Ronald H. Coase for this Great Minds of Our Time entry. Here is my Top 10 list,

1. Ronald is a really funny and sharp witted man as we clearly can see from his 2003 Coase Centennial Speech.
2. Well, he does have a Nobel Prize in Economics.
3. Ronald’s “The Federal Communications Commission” has helpped governments around the world “make” billions from Frequency Spectrum Auctions. (including the latest round of auction by the FCC in U.S.)
4. When describing a ground breaking discussion where his idea in the FCC paper fundamentally shifted the thinking of University of Chicago, he said, “I could not understand why a statement, the equivalent of 2+2=4, should be treated on the par with e = m c square.“
5. His 1974 “The Lighthouse in Economics” not only shed light in economics but also taught us an important lesson in not to take things for granted and the fruits in doing research from the ground up with real data.
6. Have I already said that he is a funny (and humble) man? (smile)
7. And he was 93 years young when he gave the speech in 2003!
8. Millions of Chinese have learned about Coase’s work even before he won his Prize in 1991 because of Steven Cheung. (As an aside, Steven Cheung bid $25 (in an used books/magazines auction) and bought a copy of the 1958 first issue of Journal of Law and Economics which contains Ronald’s “The Federal Communications Commission“.)
9. I want to thank Prof. Steven Cheung again for introducing ideas from great economists like Professors Coase and Friedman to millions of Chinese over the years.
10. Ronald, age 93 then, said this at the 2003 Coase Centennial Speech, “New ideas are most likely to come from the young. Who are also the group most likely to recognize the significance of those ideas.“

Links: 2008-02-13 - Lock-in, Amnesty Ad, CBC, Buffett, Baltimore Cop, Power Dressing, Patent

1. Lock-In (iPhones, etc)
2. Amnesty International Ad
3. CBC President and Ouimet on Search Engine (14th Feb, 2008)
4. Buffett's bond insurer gambit no burst of altruism - What's wrong in making money again if both sides agree? (smile)
5. Cop roughs up teenage skateboarder on video
6. Nanowires allow 'power dressing' (self-powered nanotechnology)
7. Patent Law: Issues With Employee Assignment Agreements
   

Julie Payette - The sky is not the limit !

Julie Payette was my Teaching Assistant in my Comp Sci CSC258 class at University of Toronto.

Few years ago I got in touch with Julie via the Canadian Space Agency telling her how I remember her when we were at UT. And she was very nice in sending me the two autographed pictures (see above) which I've hung proudly on my wall. (smile)

Here is some latest news today,
Canadian astronauts to visit space station in 2009

P.S. I remember Julie as charming and cute but she was quite strict as a TA too. And she even gave me an impromptu French test when I wore a t-shirt with the word "monsieur" embroidered. I was lucky that I haven't totally forgotten what "monsieur" means from the months of Alliance Française classes I took in Hong Kong. (smile)

P.P.S. Here is a pre-recorded Q&A with Julie Payette in NASA's Astronaut Flight Lounge - Select "Julie Payette" from the Astronauts tab.

Links: 2008-02-10 - Delete your Facebook, Fate of Penny, Isaac, Cancer, AIDS

1. Hitting the Delete key on social networking site like Facebook - not as easy as you like
2. A Penny for Your Thoughts? What an Insult! - More on 60 minutes this Sunday Feb 10th (unless the show gets preempted by something else)
3. Thank Goodness for Isaac
4. Cancer Control - Why Do Some Tumors Spread?
5. Disarming AIDS - nasty but needy

When should a company start blogging?

Recently I've been talking to a few friends about corporate blogging. And I thought this may make a good blog entry. So here it goes.

My current thinking is that a company should start blogging as soon as it is known to the public (i.e. out of "stealth mode") and have insights to share with its customers, potential customers, and the public at large.

Should a company wait for the "perfect moment", "perfect blog entry", "perfect ..." to start blogging? I don't think a company should wait as I think Bruce Mau got it right in his "An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth",

"9. Begin anywhere. John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere."

I don't think there is a "right way" to corporate blog. There are as many ways to blog as there are different companies, different personalities and personal tastes, preferences, etc. for different blog writers and companies. Ultimately, companies will find their own voices in time. The voice should be identifiable (there has to be a person behind a blog entry, not just the anonymous "corporation"), and this voice has to be real, authentic, and passionate.

Here are some of the corporate blogs that I read. It should come as no surprises that they can be quite different from each others,

• The Legal Thing - by Mike Dillon (Sun Microsystems' General Counsel) (first entry - "This should be interesting")
• KR Connect - by Kevin Roberts (CEO Worldwide of Saatchi & Saatchi) (first entry - "One From The Heart")
• The Google Official Blog - by various Google executives
• OpenSkies - by Dale Moss (Managing Director of OpenSkies, a new British Airways subsidiary flying transatlantic flights) (first entry - "It's official! Project Lauren becomes OpenSkies.")
• Photo Matt - by Matt Mullenweg (Founding Developer of WordPress)
• on the Java Road - by James Gosling (Father of the Java Programming language)

Start blogging now to share your insights with your customers, potential customers, and the general public at large. It's not just a blog, it is a conversation.

Begin anywhere.

P.S. I hope you've enjoyed and learned something from my first entry at infoport. If not, well, there is always the next blog entry.

P.P.S. It was not an accident that the "Blog Council" was not mentioned in the main blog entry. I thought Jeff Jarvis has covered Blog Council's challenges well in his "It's not just a blog" entry. It also seems strange that the Blog Council doesn't even have a blog. (big smile)

*******

March 7th, 2008 Update: eBay has added a new blog for "Desktop".

Re: New CBC president discouraged by attacks on Teamakers’ blog

I am going to blog some more because I think this is very important to my beloved CBC. Here is my comment to the entry “New CBC president discouraged by attacks on Teamakers’ blog” at the official CBC blog “Inside the CBC“.

Note: Here is the official press release of the appointment of Mr. Hubert T. Lacroix as President and Chief Executive Officer of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC)/ Radio-Canada.

*******

Hi Hubert,

I am glad I waited for a few days before I comment because I take issues with the tone of your first comment but your latest comment sounds a lot better.

A few quick points before I take some time to blog more later in my own blog,

1) It is important you responded to the Teamakers’ blog entry as open and transparent dialogue is key to understanding

2) I accept your apology in writing your comment like a [legal] memo. Just please promise to not “heretofore” or “hitherto” us in your comment. (smile)

Note: My better half and a few friends are lawyers, so I tell unfunny lawyer jokes sometimes. (smile)

3) May I suggest you start your own blog and leave the comment sections open for people to comment at your blog ?

On this final and very serious point #3 of suggesting you to start blogging and allowing comments. You may appreciate the significance of the following more as you were a lawyer. I recently interviewed my blog friend, Mike Dillon, a lawyer for 23 years and currently General Counsel of Sun Microsystems (a Fortune 500 and publicly listed company). (note: I will be posting that podcast/audio interview later.)

When Mike started blogging in August 2006 at http://blogs.sun.com/dillon/ , he decided to open his comment section against advice of a colleague. Since then Mike has been really happy with his initial decision and he thinks a more open dialogue has been achieved. It will be my pleasure to try to connect you with Mike. (Incidentally, when CBC tried to establish its Blogging Policy (which reads like a legal-cover-your-behind-document) for employees some months ago, I thought CBC might learn a few things from Sun’s clean one page easy-to-read policy but that idea and my and Mike’s offer for help was sadly ignored.)

Again, I comment and blog about CBC stuff because I love CBC. Also, I have blogged and commented with my real name because I think I have pissed off enough CBC senior executives with my often idiotic comments that I know I have a better chance in winning a Lotto than working for CBC. (big smile)

In the world of Blogs and open communications, it is nice to read “I’m reading everyone’s comments with interest and will continue to do so for the next five years …” from you.

Keep reading, you may be surprised what you learn from people who work for you (in all levels).

Best Regards,
Kempton

Groundhog Day 2008

Me and my better half have been watching Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell's Groundhog Day (the film) on Groundhog Day (Feb 2nd) every year for longer than I can remember. As always, I also discover something new this year. I found this wonderful 2005 Roger Ebert re-review of the film. I tried to find a YouTube clip of a few scenes in the movie that I love, unfortunately I couldn't find any nice ones to include.

P.S. Here are the 2008 Groundhog Day "predictions" so far according to National Post,

The results so far:

Shubnedacadie Sam (Nova Scotia): Spring

Punxsutawney Phil (Pennsylvania): Winter

Wiarton Willie (Ontario): Spring

General Beauregard Lee (Georgia): Spring

Balzac Billy (Alberta): Spring

Buckeye Chuck (Ohio): Spring

Staten Island Chuck (New York state): Spring

Malverne Mel (New York state): Spring

Healthiest dying man in America scuba diving

I just want to see how Prof. Randy Pausch is doing and then I saw these two pictures of him having fun scuba diving on Dec 1st and calling himself in the running for “healthiest dying man in America“. (note: I have previously blogged about his “Last Lecture” and “Time Management” videos and you can check them out.)

With the usual Randy’s sense of humour, he wrote,

When I asked my oncologist if I could go scuba diving, he thought for a while and said, “Medically, I can’t think of any reason you can’t …. but I have to admit, it’s not a question that comes up very often for metastatic pancreatic cancer patients!“

Now, if you are not living life to the fullest, then what the #$%@& are you wasting your life for? Do you think you will live life twice? Or are you thinking you can do it again?