Review – Page 5 – little bridge

May 17, 2006June 12, 2006

Singapore – the most Podcast aware nation?

Search “Podcast” on Google Trends, and click the Regions tab you will get the following diagram,

Singapore tops the list.

That means, out of all the search on google, Singapore has higher percentage of Podcast search than the United States, a country where the Podcast was born.

Does that mean Singapornean are more aware of Podcast? It could be.

But there are some factors besides listenership may affect the list.

Listeners use other search engines to look for Podcast. For example, users in the States may prefer iTunes or Yahoo than Google as the Podcast search platform.
Users in other countries search so many other topics that dilute the Podcast search.

Google Trends is a very interesting tool to know the users’ behavior on internet.

Search “China”, you will find Singapore is just behind Hong Kong.

That means many Singapornean are interested in China, which is not a surprise as Chinese is Singapore’s majority.

But when I search “Asian babe”, Singapore is in the second place too!

“Asian babe” is a term used in porn graphics search. Does that mean Singapornean are hypocrites and sex maniac? It could be. 🙂

But when I search “Play boy”, South America countries occupy the top 10 list.

One possible explaination: different countries use different terms to search porn pictures.

May 3, 2006May 3, 2006

Why Podcast is importance?

You can access all kind of information from all over the world in audio format.
You can search the Podcast you want through search engines, such as Google and Yahoo.
You can listen to Podcast anywhere and anytime you like.
It is easy to produce.
You can catalog your audio or video by name, author etc. on iTunes.
You can personalize the audio.

Podcast is an eco-system. It will change the way people get and share information.

April 12, 2006April 13, 2006

Movie review: Understanding the Universe

“How the world was created?” “What will it be at the end of the world?” These are the questions we asked when we were small. The adults’ answers sometimes were very interesting. But those are not the truths. When I dug into books and tried to find it out, I realized that the adults actually do not have answer.

This video shows us how human are trying to understand the universe by probing far beyond the Milky Way, from our sun, nebulas and supernovas to the theory of Black Hole and Big Bang. Likes many other Discovery programs, it presents problems in a very simple, direct way, yet it is informative and interesting.

April 7, 2006

My Country And My People

吾国吾民

It is a book written by Mr. Lin Yutang in 1935. This is a very good book helps you understand China. It covers most things of Chinese normal life.

Interestingly, it helps me, a person from China, understand his home country better. I know most of the things, such as Chinese women’s life, the tea-drinking tradition, Mr. Lin talked about. Those are so common to my life that I have never tried to understand their meaning and influence to me. Mr. Lin, with profound knowledge to both the East and the West, refreshed my view to many things about China by this book.

April 5, 2006April 13, 2006

Movie review: 12 Weeks With Geeks

It is a documentary about a software project development. Four interns worked in the Fog Creek Software for the Copilot project. They worked for 3 months and delivered the first version of the application.

I learnt about Fog Creek Software from the book and the blog Joel On Software. The book gives some very interesting and enlightening explanations on software engineering and project management.

I expected that I could find out from this movie in details how Joel led a team to develop software, web application particularly. I’d thought this movie would show me something like collecting user specifications, making plan, working on code, fixing bugs and so on. But the movie actually is about the life and thoughts of the developers. You can not learn project management skills from this movie. Rather, it is about what makes a dream office, team, or life to geeks, the software developers here.

Though they kept saying they have to work over night, long hours, they all looked very happy and satisfied. They had very nice workstations, though lack of privacy, and comfortable dorms. They grew tomato, went jogging, and had parties. They made fun out of samll or senseless things in life. For example, they tried hard to figure out whether they could escape the building by jumping to the next block in case of fire.

The movie gives me some senses of how the start-up gets started in the US too. But it does not go deep into that. It does not show how and where you can get funds or what you should do after complete the development.

Overall, it is an interesting movie. I would suggest the viewers to read the Joel On Software before or after the movie.

The driving force (for the hackers) is usually a combination of the desire to get rich, the desire for power, and the desire to sort of make something. And they (are) kind of overlap. – from the movie.