Interestingness Rediscovered

iPad is for Kids

A month has passed since the sensational debut of the iPad, and some people are starting to wonder if the fuss is sustainable. Early adopters are loving the iPad even more than the iPhone, but will the mass public follow? My verdict: No, for now.

The iPad’s customers, adults with at least $500 disposable income, have one fatal shortcoming: they understand a new device only as an extension of existing ones. Consider Apple’s past “revolutionary” products: they were, in fact, more likely “evolutional,” fixing big holes in existing devices that few people noticed, in addition to making them beautiful.

• Apple II: brought mainframe computers to our homes.
• iMac: made the existing desktop computers, ugly black boxes, desirable.
• iPod: made the Walkman searchable and configurable.
• iPhone: made smartphones...smart.

The iPad is an anomaly. It does not fix an existing problem. In fact, on the surface, it seems to fix nothing.

• Mobile device: We cannot hold the iPad in one hand, and cannot put it in our pockets. Netbooks have similar screen sizes, similar weights, and built-in keyboards.
• eBook: I am not sure if we want to keep reading texts and PDFs on a glossy screen.
• Movies: If we are at home, we have big LED TVs. If we are out in the streets, we have IMAX theaters. If we are out on the road, we have on-demand movie libraries on the plane.

Sure, the iPad has huge potential. That’s why all of us jumped in and shelled out $500 - $800, right?* Yet we are using it as we did on devices before: reading texts and watching videos. Where did the “potential” part go? I guess a bulk of the users’ frustrations will come from the iPad not making their lives better in any way, or not seeing any of the promised magical moments.

I believe that in the midterm, the fever will fade away and the troubled voices will emerge from Apple believers that Steve Jobs might be over. I do think Steve Jobs is preparing to retire. But it is not because he cannot make smart decisions anymore; it is because he did the most important job— maybe even a mission—in his life: creating a device for future generations.

Almost everything he has done before was aimed at his peers, or paying customers. This time, he made the iPad for the kids. That’s why the iPad is essentially a blank slate. Its real potential is in its nothingness, or in other words, the power to absorb anything. This device is designed for creators, not executors. And who are the best creators? Kids, of course.

Of course, the current iPad is not there yet. It is way too adult—heavy and colorless—for small children. But that is part of Apple’s strategy. How do you bring an expensive magic tablet to a child? By disguising it as an expensive toy for adults. Soon or later, dad will be bored playing with it, and pass it over to his children—and that’s when the real users start to using it for real.

In several years, we will be seeing iPad 2.0, or even 3.0, in a completely different shape. It will be much lighter and “toyish.” It might even look cheaper. But by then, the swarms of teenagers, who had their hands-on experience on the iPad as kids, will start buying the new models with their own money, and will also start creating things.

Unlike the current iPad users who are still seated as the audience and waiting for the show to begin while killing their time reading books and watching movies, the new generation of iPad users will get on the stage and start making magic on the spot. I bet that’s what Steve Jobs is dreaming about. His only hope might be that this day will come before his days are over.

*I have tested, but haven’t bought, the iPad. I bought Kindle instead. That’s what it means to be mentally teenage but intellectually adult.

It’s About Who You Are, Not What You Say

I have never considered taking an MBA program, but an argument by Vivek Wadhwa made me almost wonder if I had missed the train to greater-career-ville altogether. This is his life story unveiled, centered around an MBA program.

1. A young man invests in an MBA program to increase his career potential.
2. He questions his choice after getting a programming job at his first post-degree career.
3. He nevertheless persists, and climbs up the corporate ladder step by step.
4. Along the way to the executive level, he finds out that the business skills he acquired during the MBA era are quite handy.
5. Now as a successful entrepreneur, he is convinced that getting an MBA degree was the best investment he has made.

The story doesn’t exactly offerrefreshing insights, but is nevertheless encouraging and persuasive. The secret of his persuasiveness lies not in what he says, but in how he builds his argument, highlighted by his recollection of a debate with an anti-MBA celebrity: Guy Kawasaki.

In email exchanges, Kawasaki explained that his issue with MBAs is that they are “taught that the hard part is the analysis and coming up with the insightful solution”. In other words: implementation is easy and analysis is hard. “But this is the opposite of what happens in startups. Implementation is everything in a startup.” Kawasaki believes that MBAs aren’t a good fit for startups, and engineering graduates are.

I agree that engineering degrees are important. They provide a level of technical depth and analytical capability that is invaluable in the tech-startup world. But not everyone needs to be an engineer. You need smart people coming up with creative marketing campaigns; managing finances; and selling your products. And the CEOs and CTOs need to master all domains.

It doesn’t matter whose opinion, Wadhwa’s or Kawasaki’s, is right—chances are, both are correct. After all, they both made their names following their own voices. What matters is how gracefully Wadhwa handles this topic.

• He gives proper credit to his opponent’s position and praises its merit; he does not end up in finding fault with Kawasaki’s argumen.
• He admits his success story is not applicable to everybody, and even implies that Kawasaki is right in some degree
• He understands that the whole argument should ultimately benefit the readers, not the debaters, and tries to share as many valid viewpoints as possible

While reading this article, I thought: I still don’t know the reality of getting an MBA degree, but if this guy says it is valuable, it might be*. If this article were his speech in an MBA showcase event, I would be signing up to a program afterward.

We used to spend a big chunk of our time in a decision-making process for collecting information. No more. Thanks to Google and its news aggregator service, we can get 100 opinions on a single subject in a matter of hours. Now we spend more time in finding useful information while surfing through the tsunami of texts, images, podcasts, and videos.

We are like speculators during the Gold Rush, relentlessly digging dirt in order to hit the jackpot. Guess who made the most money in that period? The tool suppliers. In the MBA degree case, it is the information filter that matters.

And what filter is more trustable than authenticity? We can find a million people saying having an MBA works and ten thousand people getting (or having gotten) MBAs either online or offline. But how many people are out there who claimthey are who they are because of an MBA? That’s authenticity. And that’s what we should all aspire to, if we want to persuade others on a big subject.

*I must confess that I felt exactly the same when I first read Guy Kawasaki’s argument against MBA programs.

From Consulting to Doing

One of the most popular themes of blogging is how to make a living while blogging. Apparently some people make money by blogging about how to make money by blogging. And here I am blogging about people making money by blogging about making money by blogging.

It is like becoming an entrepreneur who offers consulting on becoming an entrepreneur. I don’t say it’s wrong or right; I just feel...awkward. Not about individual bloggers but about the whole blogosphere, filled with discussions and posts regarding this topic.

Blogging on blogging is, in short, (a) consulting to the (b) converted. These two points are where I feel awkward, and I would like to dig deeper into this issue.

Going consulting

Consulting itself is just a job category, maybe even a noble one, if we consider it part of the education industry. But it is never about doing something on our own; it’s about helping others do what they want.

Here, we need to stop and ask ourselves why we started blogging in the first place. It was probably because we wanted to establish our own brand or voice. We wanted to claim our independence, and wanted to make a difference in this world.

Then ask ourselves next: Why do we want to consult? Perhaps we wanted to break out of living our lives fulfilling someone else’s (= our employer’s) dream. Falling into consulting—unless your dream is to become a consultant—seems like going back to square one. Po Bronson, in What Should I Do With My Life?, sums up this question nicely.

Why was I bent on encouraging people to change their lives?...Because I have seen us glorify those who make decisions over those who enact decisions, prefer being a consultant to being fully engaged, being an investor to being invested in, being an advisor over being politically involved, being an expert over being partisan, being a news analyst over being a news gatherer—all in fear of the inflexible boredom of commitment?

Preaching to the converted

Another issue is that the whole consulting thing works mainly inside a small circle of bloggers: people who already share similar ideas and goals as you. But if you go too far in that direction, you are doing a glorified version of scratching each other’s back, eternally staying inside the small community of bloggers. A recent article (or warning) from Hugh MacLeod highlights this issue nicely:

We’ve written blog posts that other bloggers like (especially high-traffic, “A-Lister” bloggers who link to us). And we squealed like happy children when we saw our traffic stats spike up massively.
[...]
But at the end of the day, it’s not the A-Listers or the pajama-clad, Web 2.0 basement-dwellers who are paying your mortgage. It’s the regular shmoes with a regular problem who are willing to pull out their credit cards to get it solved.

We blog to be more authentic and to connect with the world outside our inner circle. I personally would love to see a blogging society in which growing a blog means offering something unique to bloggers and non-bloggers alike, and becoming a consultant is treated as a temporary solution for making ends meet—unless you are destined to become a kick-ass consultant.

Criticism changes our actions, but not our attitudes

We often use criticism and accusations to change behavior, be it that of governments, organizations, or individuals. A majority of the cultural improvements in our society have been brought by punishments under the name of justice. But sometimes correcting behavior by force obscures the real issue. I have seen that in two cultural incidents related to Japan: a demonstration by Chinese citizens and a documentary about dolphin fishery.

Five years ago people in China, mainly younger generations, stood up to demonstrate against Japan for its atrocities during the Second World War. They claimed that Japan never apologized officially, and that Chinese people were still suffering from the traumatic past. As a result, the Japanese government cancelled Prime Minister Koizumi's annual visit to the Yasukuni Shrine, where convicted war criminals are honored along with the nation's 2.5 million war dead. So it was a happy ending? No.

After the demonstration erupted, all I kept hearing in the Japanese news media and among my friends was confusion (Why now? Why the spoiled brats?), anger (It’s in the past! Look at what the Chinese do to others), and fear (We gotta get out of China, now). The Japanese government changed its behavior not because it understood the issue more deeply, but because it didn’t want to aggravate China any more.

Few people discussed the real issue: further communication that should have lead to mutual understanding and respect, proper apology or other form of condolence, etc. This incident triggered a “Cold War” between the two countries. Trust was lost, mutual hatred increased, and organizations started to close cultural doors. From what I hear, the relationship has not yet recovered.

Last year, the documentary film “The Cove ” followed the covert operation of a group of animal rights activists fighting against Japanese dolphin fishermen. The film won the Oscar, Japanese media noticed, and the dolphin fishing industry shrank its activity. Win-win? Again, no.

The majority of the comments from the Japanese media and Internet communities can be summarized as follows: Why do they keep bashing and preaching to us for preserving our culture? We just eat some dolphin out of tradition, we preserve the limit, and we don’t extract oil on a massive scale like they did hundreds of years ago.

Again, the real issue, the importance of preserving wild animals based on scientific facts and logical arguments, was nowhere to be seen. The whole argument moved to the tired but addictive “crash of the cultures.”

Accusations and criticism have the power to change our actions, but not our attitudes. I admit that’s easy to say. Let’s face it: punishment and humiliation work as huge (de)motivators in our lives. I don’t know if there is positive way for making an impact on others. But if we succeed only in superficial changes, but worsen the underlying tensions, doesn’t it go against the original purpose?

P.S. As a Japanese, I am obliged to state my personal opinions.

Demonstrations in China: Historical incidents never become history unless we face them to the fullest, and hey, the Japanese haven’t, from the outsider’s point of view, either by avoiding it on purpose (older generations) or by being uneducated about the past (younger generations). So we have to learn. That said, I see that incident as another sign of the surge of nationalism happening worldwide. With fewer people having real memories of real wars and the traditional religions no longer answering our questions effectively, nationalism is gaining power as our new god. That scares me.

The Cove: I am against killing dolphins but I also think every wildlife protection measure should be discussed based on percentages, not on preferences. Personally, I worry more  about the extinction of tuna fish than dolphins. To be honest, I am half sure that some species of tuna fish will be extinct in the near future. And yes, the filmmaker of The Cove, Louie Psihoyos, is a righteous snob.

Noting that some Japanese media have been saying that "The Cove" is bashing Japanese people, Pshioyos said, "To me, it's a love letter. I'm giving you the information your government won't give you."

Who does this guy think he is?

Self-Image is Important, But Get Away From The Mirror Sometimes

If a person’s self-image is far apart from how the world sees him, the whole situation turns into a tragic comedy. I had a chance to witness that in *cough* BBC online news. The article Why are British actors playing Americans? says British actors are flourishing in the U.S. mainstream media because they are seen as a cost-effective yet talented alternative to the U.S. actors.

British producer Andrea Calderwood, who worked on Generation Kill for HBO, agrees that cost is an issue.

"American producers are going for the best talent. Obviously there is an element of cost involved.

"Once you become an established actor in the US, you can command huge prices - so people are looking for fresh talent that doesn't cost that much."

Strangely, she and the news touch only half of the “cost” issues. The other and arguably the bigger half, tax sheltering, is left out. Wikipedia explains the British tax shelter scheme as follows:

The same copyright can be sold again to a British company and a further $10 million could be raised, but UK law insists that part of the film is shot in Britain and that the production employs a fair proportion of British actors and crew. This explains why many American films like to shoot at Britain's major film studios like Pinewood and Shepperton and why a film such as Basic Instinct 2 relocated its action from New York to London.

The action film Wanted showcased that trend well. It was directed by a Kazakhstani-Russian (Timur Bekmambetov), shot in Hungary (Budapest), and starred a British (James McAvoy) and a German (Thomas Kretschmann). The only visible “American” elements were Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman in supporting roles.

Well, nobody wants to admit that they had an advantage from the beginning, but omitting what everybody knows only highlights the missing parts. And it’s not just the producers who seem to be missing the big picture:

"More value-for-money, that's really what it is. If they wanted someone experienced and I was American, they'd pay a lot of money - and I'd be better known, I suppose. We're cheaper."

English actor James Purefoy, who played Mark Antony in Rome, believes the network of British actors is perceived by American colleagues as cheap labour.

"We are often referred to in Los Angeles as white Mexicans," he told an audience of British hopefuls at a seminar on how to make it in America.

Considering the fact that James Purefoy is still alive, I bet he never said the above comment to a real Mexican trying to break into Hollywood. When did British/Irish actors become underdogs? They have always been the most privileged among the non-American acting peers. They are the only “minorities” whose cultural inheritance works for them, not against. Even the same article admits this point.

Moreover, anything with a sword-and-sandals theme offers employment opportunities to British thespians. It has often been suggested that American audiences expect their Romans to speak like the English. So the HBO/BBC mini-series Rome was peopled by British and Irish stars.

Those are not the only juicy parts. The same article quoted Helen Mirren as complaining that Brits always play the villain.

Speaking at an event in Los Angeles to celebrate British success in Hollywood, she said: ''I think it's rather unfortunate that the villain in every movie is always British, we're such an easy target that they can comfortably make the Brits the villains.

''It's just nice to say we're not snooty, stuck up, malevolent, malignant creatures as we're so often portrayed. We're actually kind of cool and hip!''

I seriously wanted to be a reporter for a moment. Here are the *some of the* questions I wanted to ask her.

• Have you shared your opinions with French or Russian actors?
• In which part of the world does the James Bond series make the most money?
• Batman is directed by a Brit and played by a Welshman. Is he a British character too?
• Name one major British film that has a non-British/Irish hero/heroine.

What I get from the all above unintentionally funny quotes are ignorance, arrogance, and snobbery. I now admire BBC News, James Purefoy, and Helen Mirren because of their splendid act: revealing their naked selves wearing a dress. Well, you might be “kind of” cool and hip, Dame. Everybody is entitled to her opinion.

No Impact Man: Leading a Green Life Inside a Gray Building

The documentary No Impact Man follows the story of a man who decides to create an experiment: Make the least possible ecological impact on earth. The catch is not in what he changes but in what he does not change—his address, in Manhattan, New York. His wife and daughter join the ride. They go vegan, cut electricity off, wash their clothes with their hands (and feet), walk the stairs to and from the 9th floor, stop drinking coffee, live without toilet paper, while recording their adventures in a blog.

Although the idea is ground-breaking, the execution goes on quietly. News media treat his experiment sensationally, but otherwise he lives an ordinary life, offering some insights along the way about healthier eating habits, more awareness about our ecology, etc. If a viewer is looking for a grand climax or a spiritual experience, he’ll get disappointed (I did - I admit).

But this documentary did one great job. It effectively killed our excuse for not taking up a radically eco-friendly life. When we hear about someone taking a big leap toward a greener lifestyle, we instantly react by saying No I Can’t, Because... followed by one or two pieces of “evidence” showing how impossible it is to ditch the way we live now. Like, We Need to Live in the City, implying that urban life and green life cannot co-exist.

Thanks to this film, we now have a strong counterargument: This guy did it in Manhattan. Ouch. Economically unpractical? His wife kept her job and supported the family. Not family-friendly? They had a toddler. Sure, the whole project was not practical, but it was proven to be doable. For this point alone, No Impact Man deserves to be listed in the Hall of Fame for Documentaries.

And yet, No Impact Man also shows the limitation of the current ecology movement. The results aren’t quantified. We cannot blame the documentary; we simply don’t have the means to measure our “greenness” yet. At least I haven’t heard of any.

We all know that we cannot solve a problem unless it becomes measurable. A good example is our diet. Although reducing our weight itself is hard, the methods are simple: take in less energy, or burn more energy. It is a zero-sum game played in a one-dimensional world.

But in case of ecology, we are playing in a two-dimensional, or even three-dimensional world. It is like trying to pull a thread out of a ball of strings. Every time we untangle a bit, we also tighten another bit, in an unexpected place. Nobody knows what is going on inside that huge ball, and everybody is secretly hoping for someone with a sword to cut the ball in half to end this endless game.

Let’s take chopsticks for example. If I stop consuming chopsticks, am I going to save one more tree in the Amazon jungle? How many trees? Or should I just switch to bamboo chopsticks to nurture the alternative industry to wooden chopsticks? Wait, I heard (at least in Japan) that we should use a certain brand of chopsticks which has a partnership with the domestic timber industry to use residual wooden chips, which in the long run discourages deforestation. The question goes around endlessly. A pair of chopsticks lead to global logistics, and then our thinking stops. Brain overloaded.

Can we create a model that measures our impact on this earth with reasonable accuracy, ease of use, and available for anybody with access to the Web? I think that’s the whole question.

* How could he blog without having electricity? Check the film. It’s one of the best parts.

Changing the Blogging Schedule

For past several months I have been blogging once each other day, but recently it is getting hard to keep up with this schedule. I decided to prefer quality over quantity; from now on, I will update my blog twice a week, on Tuesday and on Friday. I will do my best to put more creative energy into my writing. Therefore the next post will appear next week, Tuesday.

In the meantime, my Tumblr posts, those who appear on the sidebar, are going well and alive. Many of them are updated each day, so please enjoy them :)

Read What Matters Now

I used to buy books that promised to give me loads of instant (yet permanent) wisdom. Remember the scenes in The Matrix where they mastered Jujutsu or flying a helicopter in a matter of seconds? I wanted that. As a result, my bookshelf was filled with these:

• Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus (Now I know exactly what to do with women)
• China Shakes the World (Now I can open a venture in China)
• The Game (Now I know exactly how to score on a first date)
• Getting Things Done (Now I am a super-performer)
• The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari (Now I am totally enlightened)

They worked. In the following ways:

• I forgot what was written in the book the moment I finished it. (It’s not that bad; I could also wipe the fact that I wept a couple of times while reading the Ferrari Monk book off my memory. Wait, not yet.)
• I memorized lessons, and then forget to follow through them in real life.
• I found out that when you read books that you don’t need at the moment, they become incredibly boring.
• I hated myself for doing all the above for two decades.

Recently, out of frustration, I switched my motto from “read what I should” from “read what I want.” No more books for the sake of acquiring instant wisdom or filling my bookshelf with impressive titles.  (If I want that, I can always go to a flea market and find a set of second-hand Encyclopedia Britannica. Is that why these books always look gracefully aged when we see them? By getting tan in the field?)

I started reading what mattered to me most at the moment, regardless of the topic. I welcomed satires, bitching from a bitch, confessions of an alcoholic writer, weird statistics, and comics. Impressiveness out, interestingness in.

And they started to stay in my head. I carry them (in my Kindle) all the time, I read whenever I have time to read, I take notes. I live through books, not just read them.

Somewhere in Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman says the brain forms itself by strengthening the synaptic path well traveled. It doesn’t “add” information as we add layers on a cake. It gives wider and faster neuron highways to the most traveled information. Even when we add a Ferrari or Mercedes version of precious information to the highway, if 99% of existing information is, say, Toyota, then Toyota gets the way.

There is no room for superficial wisdom. In order to truly make some new information, new wisdom, or new technique part of who we are, we must DO them and grab a larger share of the neural passages in our brain. And the easiest way to do so is to read about topics that are on our mind at the moment - the “hot” topic.

Today’s (the decade’s) lesson: read what matters. And if it means following Lady Gaga (I don’t, fortunately), get used to it - or change what matters to you. Then the brain will digest the information.

The Retirement Home for Japanese Salaried Workers: Their Workplace

Nintendo’s president, Satoru Iwata, does something few CEOs do: He conducts informal, in-depth interviews with key employees and shares the results on the company website. Titled “Iwata Asks” (Japanese / English), the interview series has been going on for several years, revealing surprisingly detailed anecdotes behind the game development scene from the usually secretive company.

The latest edition of Iwata Asks (in Japanese only, as of Apr 25th 2010) traces the history of the great-great-granddad of handheld game consoles, Game & Watch, which was created almost three decades ago. The lessons we can learn this time? How they transformed the mundane pocket calculator into a pioneering gaming console (yes, yes...), and—this entry’s topic—what happens to Japanese salaried workers after they pass their prime.

The interviewees, ex-Game & Watch designers, from left to right:

• Masao Yamamoto, New Business Promotion Department
• Makoto Kano, President’s Office
• Takehiro Izushi, New Business Promotion Department

(The rightmost person is Satoru Iwata, the interviewer)

What’s curious to a non-Japanese are the following:

• They are still working in Nintendo (the lifetime employment is still working, apparently).
• Their current positions seem out of sync with their expertise.

The latter is the key issue here. How can a semi-retired ex-game designer promote new business? And what does a senior guy do among 20-something secretaries in the president’s office?

Well, as a Japanese who was once employed in a traditional Japanese company, I can attest: they are demoted workers spending their semi-retirement life doing easy jobs in positions or departments specifically created for them.

In a traditional Japanese company (with more than a hundred years of history, surely Nintendo belongs to that category), typically all freshmen start with equal conditions and climb up the promotional ladder one step at a time. The tipping point arrives when they reach their mid-30s. A handful of elite workers will be given important roles, and the rest will be transferred to non-critical positions, making room for the upcoming younger generations.

If this story ends here, we are not seeing anything Japanese (= peculiar). What separates Japanese companies and their overseas counterparts is that in Japan, a new position will be created for those non-elites if an existing one is not available. The company provides them non-critical jobs such as administrative tasks or organizing motivational seminars.

Thus, in the aforementioned Nintendo’s case, we are seeing new divisions with few substantial jobs (New Business Development) and harmless positions in existing divisions (President’s Office). When I was working in a Japanese company, I saw divisions called “Future Creations Department” and “Idea Generation Group” packed by middle-aged guys.

Have you ever wondered how the infamous lifetime employment system worked? This way.

What It Takes to Work in a Japanese Company: Assimilation, not Adaptation

“Can you adapt to our way?”

I was having an interview with an overseas branch of a Japanese company. The interviewers were comprised of “multinational” workers (from Japan, China, and India) but when that question came out, I thought I just turned the clock ten years back in time. A warning sign started to flash in my head: Gosh, most of them might be non-Japanese but don’t get fooled—this company is still so Japanese.

If it were a company from any other country, the question should have been “Can you adapt to a new environment?” or simply “Can you adapt?” I would have happily replied “yes” and walked the talk. The ability to adapt to a new workplace is indeed an important skill that every professional, especially an expatriate, should possess.

Except that adaptation was not the real issue. Although they used the word adapt, the Japanese company was, in fact, asking me to assimilate.  By combining one word, our, with a standard interview question, Can you adapt?, the interviewer created a detoxed version of the original raw demand: Are you willing to become us?

To be fair, the Japanese company had no malicious intent. The interviewers were simply describing how they had been running the business for decades: use known methodologies with known people. They might have welcomed foreign market, capital, and presence, but they were not willing to accept foreign ideas. Their dualism, or contradiction, was crystallized in a single question, probably unwittingly.

The (traditional) Japanese way can be very flexible in terms of depth. Thanks to a tight-knit group of workers who know each other inside out (professionally and personally), dozens of product models can be churned out each year, minutely differentiated according to local needs and market demands. Go to any Toyota dealer in any place in the world and you’ll get the idea.

But that way can be very rigid in terms of width. Uncertainty is one thing that these companies avoid at all costs, therefore non-tangible “foreignness,” including philosophy, culture, communication, and ideas, need to be “Japanified.”

Which means that the above-described Japanese way works in the short run but ultimately kills both the employer and the employees by becoming too rigid. If a worker adapts too much to a particular way of conducting business, he can no longer move to a different company or change his career direction easily.

Optimization is the ally of perfection, but the enemy of change. As a result, many talents in Japan cling to their old employer even when they are treated in a less-than glamorous way. And slowly but steadily, companies start to operate in order to protect themselves, not to grow further— which would mean change.

I had already witnessed the massacre of talent when I was working for a Japanese manufacturer. The best circuit designer in the company was “promoted” to the Quality Assurance division because he was deemed unfit for managing positions and also his expertise, analog circuitry, was no longer in large demand. And, after a flagship product failed to penetrate the market as expected, the director of R&D division was relegated to a head position of a manufacturing facility in a place where 20% of the population shared the same surname. Neither of them quit. I, a non-performing employee, did, after observing their behaviors.

P.S. No, I did not join the aforementioned Japanese company but I appreciated the whole interview experience and the insight I gained. I wasn’t willing to switch to a new job to narrow my career options.

Number Equality Does Not Lead to Power Equality

In this entry I try to connect the dots regarding the glass ceiling for women, from an outsider’s (male’s) point of view.

I am reading the book Microtrends, a wonderful collection of small trends that flow under the traditional trend-radar but nevertheless are shaping the future of the U.S. and the world. The “Wordy Women” section tells us that “women are on the verge of taking over word-based professions, like journalism, law, marketing, and communications.”

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as of 2005, 57 percent of news analysts, reporters, and correspondents were women. Even 57 percent of TV news anchors—that authoritative role once reserved for the likes of Walter Cronkite—are women.

This observation matches what I have witnessed in Taiwan. Almost half of my co-workers in word-oriented positions, including marketing, sales, and writing, have been female. (Let’s not talk about the situation in Japan, the third-world country of gender equality.)

And yet what I remember most vividly about what it means to be a female journalist/writer today is an article from James Chartrand. Before she (yes, it’s she) became James Chartrand, the über-writer at Copyblogger, she was a single mother with two daughters, struggling to make ends meet.

One day, I tossed out a pen name, because I didn’t want to be associated with my current business, the one that was still struggling to grow. I picked a name that sounded to me like it might convey a good business image. Like it might command respect.

Instantly, jobs became easier to get.
There was no haggling. There were compliments, there was respect. Clients hired me quickly, and when they received their work, they liked it just as quickly. There were fewer requests for revisions — often none at all.
...
I was applying in the same places. I was using the same methods. Even the work was the same.
In fact, everything was the same.
Except for the name.

Something feels odd. If the number of women in the word-oriented industries is equal to or outnumbering men, why did she have more success after picking a pen-name of the opposite sex? Mark J. Penn, the author of Microtrends, also admits this contradiction and offers a statistic that shows that the majority of decision-making positions in the wordy professions are still filled by men:

To be sure, that women flood the wordy professions doesn’t mean that they always dominate decision-making. In journalism and in law, particularly, women drop off somewhere between the professional schools (where they are the majority) and the corridors of power. Women are only 17 percent of law partners. They are only one-third of full-time journalists working for the mainstream media.

And sadly, my own observations agree with this statistic too. In the past five years I have seen female managers in word-oriented positions (in total, 5 or 6), maybe more than their male counterparts (4 or 5). But when it comes to executives, I have seen only one female. Mark J. Penn does not offer a reason why, and instead throws in a slightly evasive statement: “But this trend is new, so it may take a long time for it to percolate through to the top.”

Aside from the tired (but persuasive-sounding) theory of “women are biologically not programmed to be interested in power,” the only reasonable explanation so far that I have heard comes from Penelope Trunk, who says:

Forget the glass ceiling because it's about to become irrelevant. Not because women are finally going to get to the top of Fortune 500 companies in forces of more than two companies at a time. That may happen, but no one's holding their breath. The glass ceiling is going to become irrelevant because the women who are coming into the workforce now see what's above that glass and they are uninterested.

So here is my guesstimation on what is going on, deduced from my own observations and these stories. Because younger generations are less interested in climbing the ladder, the old folks (men) who should have been pushed to retirement some time ago can still afford to cling to their positions, and are filtering out the non-traditional workforce, including females, probably subconsciously. Any other explanations?

Why Google Failed to Create Twitter: Because Google is Too Good at Being Google

Shel Israel says Twitter has gone through a wormhole (a much better phrase than breakthrough which ought to be included in every buzzword bingo). Twitter now owns a proprietary tweeting platform, holds developer conferences, and claims its archive should be part of the U.S. Library of Congress. The last item means that when U.S. scholars and policy makers need reference materials on the cultural impact of the strategic alliance between North America and Asia, they can look upon my tweets such as: A Taiwanese singer is covering Bette Midler’s From a Distance. He picked a bad song (good choice) and made it worse (even better).

But the biggest, least surprising yet most ironic part of Twitter’s selling out breakthrough wormthrough is that Google is going to add zillions of tweets to their ever-expanding search base.

The world's largest search company has announced it will make the Twitter archives searchable online and apparently has exclusive rights for now. There will be a six-month time lag before you can do this so searches will be historic rather than for finding out who became mayor of your local pizza joint yesterday.

It is big news, no doubt—considering how rare it is to hear positive news when Google singles out an organization. And it’s no news too, no doubt—considering making everything searchable is Google’s mission.

But why does it sound so ironic? Because Twitter established itself as the king of social media, a position Google failed to achieve not once but twice, with Wave and Buzz. I know, both Wave and Buzz are alive, but nobody believes that Twitter or the other king of social media, FaceBook, will be ousted by them. What Google really wanted was to NOT announce anything about making social media searchable, because everybody—in Google’s wet dream—knows that Wave and Buzz store all records.

The reason Wave and Buzz failed to attract users is obvious. Nobody, even Google employees, couldn’t describe their usage in the context of existing communication tools. What problem do these services fix? What desire do they fill? We still don’t know. (On a totally different subject which might become a separate blog entry, I think Apple’s iPad might fall into the same pitfall.)

Twitter, on the other hand, did fill our desire—one we didn’t know existed: Talk.

It’s not talk with, something that requires a partner. It’s not talk to, something that requires an audience. Just talk. Talk about interesting stuff, our private life, anything.

Unlike blog platforms which force us to “rationalize” our thinking through writing, Twitter allows us to just speak our raw thoughts. Most of our little speeches fade away in 3 seconds among the streams of tweets with hardly any attention paid to them, just like a single character in the green stream of letters in The Matrix. That’s fine. In fact, fading away is exactly what makes tweets special. Tweeting is essentially intellectual excretion. Get these thoughts out...there, I feel much better.

Google does not get that point. For Google, every piece of information must be (1) searchable and (2) a means to an end. In Google’s eyes, we do everything with a purpose, and even non-purpose is a type of purpose, therefore it must also be organized and referenced. Google never gets rid of ideas; it always stores them. Eternal storing might work for computers, but not for humans.

I admire Google because it serves the role nobody wants to take: the ultimate librarian. And the problem is that Google has become too good at doing its job. We rely on our librarians to learn about communication, but do we rely on them as communicators?

My Online Technical Communication Program Experience

This post is a quick shout-out for the graduate school program I have been enrolled, MSPTC (Master of Professional and Technical Communication) from  the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT). If you are interested in taking a higher education in technical communication (= a fancier version of the phrase technical writing, not unlike executive administrator vs. secretary).

Two years after stumbling into technical writing, I decided to turn it into my lifetime career. I  had fallen in love with the surprisingly rich and rewarding work of organizing and mapping technical information. One thing bothered me, though: the lack of formal education.

I had acquired all my technical writing skills on the job, from collaboration with engineers to document formatting to graphic layout. I had enough skills to execute the tasks at hand, but would I be able to rely entirely on my own initiative to keep acquiring and expanding the expertise required in the ever-changing world of technology? I doubted I could, and moreover, I wanted to explore my skills beyond my hands-on experience.

It was time to take formal educational training. I searched for a night school in my neighborhood—Taipei, Taiwan—and found nothing, not even a course offered in Chinese. Then a quick Google search yielded a surprisingly rich selection of U.S.-based programs, including a MSPTC (Master of Professional and Technical Communication) from  the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT).

MSPTC at NJIT stood out from other distance learning programs in two aspects. First, it offered the best mixture of writing and technology. Some universities modified their existing English writing degrees into a Technical Communication program, relying on proven English writing materials and not adding enough curricula on the technology aspect of technical communication.

Second, NJIT offers a two-tier system: a graduate certificate and a master’s degree. Students can enroll in the Technical Communication Essentials graduate certificate program, which includes four essential technical communication courses, and then if they want to explore more, they can step up to the master’s degree, carrying the credits they have already earned.

I started as a graduate certificate student and this year I have taken the leap and joined the master’s degree. So far, mostly, I have been taking one course per semester. It is a slow pace, but has three benefits. First, it works well with my daytime work; there is only so much I can do after my office hours. Second, I have less financial burden thanks to NJIT’s per-semester paying scheme. Third and most importantly, I have been spending ample time on each course and applying what I have learned to my work, and vice versa. 

What about the distance between me and the university? So far, I have encountered no problems. Although Taiwan and the US have almost twelve hours of time difference, most of the course works are done asynchronously. Synchronous events such as online chats usually take place in the evening (in the US), early morning in Taiwan (which provides me with a good incentive to get out of bed earlier).

I am more than satisfied with the learning and networking experience I have acquired so far. At this pace, I might graduate from the course at 2012, a full five years after enrolling in the program. The long time is worth it; the purpose of this learning is not to quickly tuck an “M.S.” into my resume but to slowly absorb knowledge and grow as a professional.

P.S. Sounds too pretty? Yes, I haven't talked about the negative aspects of that program. If you do want to know because you are seriously considering NJIT, please send me a message at isaokato (at) gmail.com. I will describe the untold stories, although my conclusion stays the same: go for it.

Why I Chose Kindle over iPad: Because Less is Better

I have been pondering  buying a good e-book reader but couldn’t decide until now, because I heard the iPad, the Terminator for everything between mobile phones and laptops, is much better than Amazon’s Kindle.

• iPad allows access to as many books as Kindle (the Kindle app is available in iPad)
• iPad is as readable as Kindle.
• iPad is colored.
• iPad plays movies.
• iPad syncs with iTunes.

Okay, iPad is so much more than Kindle. Therefore, I realized that Kindle might be the right device for me, because it does less.

Kindle weighs less

Fred Wilson says the iPad is a bit heavy for long reading. That’s a big red flag.

I showed the Gotham Gal several books she has just read on the Kindle displayed on the iPad. She grabbed the iPad and immediately said "This thing is way too heavy." I guess I will be reading on the iPad and she'll be reading on the Kindle. I agree that the iPad is heavy. I've been holding it for about five minutes so far while typing this and can feel the strain in my left forearm. The Kindle never feels that way even after hours of reading with it.

I used to carry a digital camera everywhere I went, occasionally taking snapshots of events and objects that interested me. Frustrated by its bulkiness and frequent need for a battery charge, I decided to buy a smartphone to solve all my mobile needs with one device. Its camera function looked reasonable, aside from lack of zoom and longer snapshot time; just three seconds more, three meters farther.

After a month, I took twelve photos with that smartphone. In my digital camera days, I was taking more than fifty in the same period. What changed? With the smartphone, I was discouraging myself with each photo I took. I discarded more than half of snapshot opportunities because I was too far away or my smartphone was too slow to respond. With my digital camera, I discarded only 30% of the opportunities, which motivated me to take more. What looked initially like a small difference turned into a huge dividing factor, after all.

I expect the same thing to happen with an e-book reader. That extra 300g or so might not feel like a big deal in the beginning. I can cheat my brain into dismissing my muscle ache; but my body won’t forget. I could imagine myself buying dozens of books in a surge of excitement, only to leave them unopened. Worse, I might blame my weak determination for the decreased reading time despite the increased cost.

Kindle does less

Evelyn Rusli at TechCrunch says the iPad provides a kitchen experience while the Kindle stays in the microwave position.

But even if Kindle drops the price to, say, $100 from the $259 baseline, I think many will look at the purchase decision as microwave vs. kitchen. Why spend $100 for the microwave, if you could get a whole kitchen for $499— the economics favor the kitchen (that is if you plan to use all the appliances, like e-mail, internet, multimedia and the app store).

I think a better analogy would be the living room in your house. iPad has everything, from the television (movie player), stereo set (music player), game console (game apps), NetFlix (iTunes), to the bookshelf, the only function for Kindle. And here is the question: Do you read more books when you are surrounded by those luxury items? Me, no. I read best when I have nothing but reading to do.

Or let’s use the analogy of a long flight—one of the best occasions for reading. Having an iPad is like sitting in a business class seat in Singapore Airlines, complete with exotic food, superior service, a warm blanket, and the latest movies. I might never reach out to my books in that environment. Having a Kindle, on the other hand, is like sitting in a center seat in United Airlines’ economy class, sandwiched by two overweight gentlemen. I wouldn’t be surprised if I could open that book’s reading club by the end of the flight.

In order to read deeply, I need to be in my study area, close the door, and face nothing but the books, notes, and my pen. I want to gently force me to immerse myself in the world that only a book can offer: a world told by the writer, but owned by the reader.

I ordered a Kindle.

P.S. There is one more thing that matters. Kindle is V2.0 and iPad is V1.0. You cannot expect a virgin to be good in bed (-time reading).

Guest post @ MultilingualMania

I guest-posted an entry on being an alien yet part of the local picture in Taiwan in MultilingualMania, a cool website dedicated to multilingualism in the new millennium. Check other stuff from that site especially if you are interested in being bilingual.

Why we still look back on the 80s: lost innocence

Hot Tub Time Machine has come out. This is how it (should have) started.

• Writer: Hot tub time machine.
• Friend A: What?
• Writer: Nothing. It just popped into my head.
• Friend A: Sounds lame but funny. What are you going to do with it?
• Writer: I don’t know. Maybe I can pitch it around.
• --------- 4 weeks later ----------
• Writer: I got feedback. We can make it into a movie about four losers in a Jacuzzi tub going back in time to the 80s.
• Producer A: Are you out of your fxxking mind? Who is saying that?
• Writer: John Cusack. He also wants to be in it.
• Producer A: That’s a brilliant concept! Secure the rights and deliver the final script in two weeks. We’re gonna shoot it in six months.

When a movie goes out of the safe-bet zone, probably there is someone in the background with power and lunacy (this time, in a logical way). The logical lunacy here is not why the time machine has to be a Jacuzzi tub, or why the protagonists have to be middle-aged losers, or why the movie has to be “Hot Tub Time Machine” at all. It’s the 80s. Why not the 70s or 90s?

The answer: to be nostalgic about our lost innocence. As a Gen-X who has witnessed four decades starting from the 70s, I remember the 80s as the only decade in which we indulged in materialistic pleasure without seriously worrying whether our future or world was going to turn upside down. After going through the social upheavals and experiments in the 60s and the 70s, we started to hallucinate (again), as if we had forgotten all the lessons learned. We had done our homework,  why not indulge for a moment decade?

Enjoy the moment; it is going to last forever. That was our unspoken motto, until the crash of the Berlin Wall brought us a new era of political freedom—and also an alarm clock. Time to wake up, boys; the party is over.

What follows a decade-long party? Answer: withdrawal that lasts for two decades. By singing “Hello, hello, how low?” Kurt Cobain wasn’t trying to be provocative, as many critics said then; he was merely describing the world as it was. Kids adored him and adults frowned upon him for the same reason: Nirvana opened a Pandora’s box by making the audience realize they were socially sick. And at the turn of the 21st century, our frustration and sickness turned into collective anger: I don’t need to restate what happened there. Our memory is still fresh (and raw).

No wonder we want to remember the last glory days of our lives, even knowing that they were partially built on delusion. I overheard a friend of mine saying, “Somehow the 80s never die.” They do not, because what the decade represents—lost innocence—is a timeless theme that gets reinforced as we grow older. We can never “undo” knowledge. In this sense, ignorance is truly bliss.

Hot Tub Time Machine is not doing well in the box office, which is a good sign. No matter how fun it might be, nostalgia is nostalgia and we don’t need it more than once—especially when it involves watching grown-up men taking a Jacuzzi together. John Cusack, himself an 80s icon, seems to get this point and that’s why we still love him:

I think being self-referential is really narcissistic. Who’s to say anybody’s even thinking of you that much? But some of these movies that I’ve done, people still recite lines to me, even 20 years later. And “Say Anything” seemed to become a big touchstone film for people. I was in one of the first John Hughes movies, and then I made “Better Off Dead” which people still remember so fondly, so I thought there was something delicious about a grown man having to get trapped in that. And then the joke’s on me.

We have just started the new decade (no, we won’t die in a few years). So we should go watch this film, say good-bye to our innocent days, and prepare to shape the next ten years. 

P.S. I typed “innocence” as “innocense” seven times and the spell checker punished me with red ink each time. Somehow my brain cannot compute the logic behind having three ns, two cs, and two ces in a single word; two many. I am so sorry.

Is China becoming more like Japan?

Following the well-documented debacle between Google and China, the San Jose Mercury News says people are realizing that doing business in China is getting tougher for U.S. companies.

"It was inevitable after a certain time they would no longer roll out the red carpet for foreign companies and give them special treatment," said Susan Shirk, a former deputy assistant secretary of state in the Clinton administration responsible for U.S. relations with China. "But now we don't have a level playing field. We have nontariff barriers (in China) designed to protect local companies."

Shunning foreign companies is a logical decision from the Chinese government’s point of view. Remaining in the manufacturer’s position will never give China the worldwide power and recognition it wants (or deserves, according to people there). China needs to acquire technological expertise and worldwide access, which is most easily achieved by inviting global players and learning (copying) from them. Now that it is almost done, who needs those “laowai?”

I am having a déjà vu sensation reading the dramas of those companies ejected by China. They resemble what has been going on in a country I am very familiar with: Japan.

We know how “open” Japan is toward the outside, despite having established itself as a major player in the free-trade world. People don’t speak English. Setting up a company is notoriously difficult for everyone, even natives. Mobile phones armored with the world’s top technology are sold only in the domestic market, to work on a proprietary Japanese wireless network.

And today, Japan is paying a huge price. Foreign companies are fleeing Japan due to high costs, a shrinking market, and the complexity of “local habits.” Younger generations are disillusioned by the rigid social customs and lack of career prospects (traditional office jobs are saturated with middle-aged men and part-time jobs are grasped by nothing-to-lose retired grandpas). And what do we call that proprietary smartphones? Galapagos mobile. “This country has everything. Except hope.” That was the opening line of a fictional young character in a best-selling novel published in 2000.

Why Japan has become so inward-looking? Because it could afford to do so. A population of 100 million people means that as a Japanese you can make a good living, or even become a millionaire, doing something entirely in the domestic market—including writing poems in your native tongue. Why risk yourself and adjust your behavior according to external requirements?

Let’s go back to China. Its economy has been growing for more than thirty years. It has a potential market ten times larger than that of Japan. And probably most importantly, its citizens do not have the “frontier spirit,” a driving force behind the onslaught of many US/European pioneers/companies. Historical evidence suggests that during the Middle Ages, Chinese vessels frequently explored the world but never did much more than that. From Jim Rogers’s A Bull in China:

Chinese explorer Cheng Ho set sail on ships twice the size of Columbus’s ships in the fifteenth century and explored much of the world. Yet he never once annexed territory....Their ships and navigational skills were better than those of the great European explorers, yet they never attempted to seize territory or set up colonies.

China is already the center of the world. Why go out? (中國 literally means Middle Earth, or Kingdom). So in the short term, I believe China will become domestic, or domesticated, and prosper as the world’s largest economic entity. In the long term, the same malaise that caught Japan will catch up with China.

The signs arealready there. Lenovo, the company that purchased IBM’s ThinkPad brand several years ago, dumped its ex-Dell CEO William Amelio after several years of disappointing worldwide sales, returning to Chinese leadership and a focus on their home turf. I bet many more companies will follow through in the coming years.

What exactly is “Green Consumerism?”

The Rubber Manufacturers Association says it takes about seven gallons of gas to make a single tire, but new technology is being developed to make “green” tires using renewable raw materials. The Business Ethics Blog, always thought-provoking, asks us what we think:.

So, let's take this new technology and ask a hypothetical question. If "green" tires were to hit the market, and if they a) really were substantially more environmentally friendly but b) were only "nearly" as safe (say, 98% as safe) as old-fashioned rubber tires, would you buy them? Should you?

I couldn’t help thinking that the real ethical question lies elsewhere. Isn’t the whole concept of “green consumerism” bogus?

By definition, going green is to consume less, not more. Does buying green tires make us more eco-friendly? Isn’t getting rid of the life with tires the real solution? (I know that practicing a car-less life in Taiwan, where I live, is far more easier than doing it in, say, North America. Here in Taipei, owning a car is illogical, even suicidal at times.)

Probably the real problem is the word usage, specifically the combination of two contradictory terms for the sake of making up marketing jargon.

• Q: How can we make our ecology-minded customers purchase our products?
• A: Make them believe that they consume less by buying more.

Certainly, nobody’s motivated to buy by listening to more honest phrases such as “tires made from tired materials.”

We use terms similar to green consumerism all the time; some examples are listed below. Their main purpose is to convince ourselves, the speakers, rather than the listeners.

• Risk hedge
• Virtual reality
• Safe sex

Today’s lesson: Be ethical about our language before focusing on companies’ behaviors.

P.S. My answer to the question in the quote would be “Yes, as long as I do not have small kids riding along with me.” In other words, no. I know, it does not make logical sense at all. What is the actual effect that tires 2% less safe than standard ones have on safety? Talking while driving is far more dangerous—which is what we always do when driving with kids.

Tackling articles: five articles traps ESL learners fall into

In a perfect world of language, everything would work according to simple rules. Dictionaries would have fewer pages and grammar boot camps would be shut down. Well, reality does not work that way and here we are, struggling with mundane grammar rules such as...the usage of articles. Here I will present the five exceptions for using articles that are difficult to master for ESL writers (read: me). I hope this list will be useful for any non-native English writer attempting to write well in English.

Nouns that can be both countable and uncountable

Some nouns can be both countable and uncountable (or abstract concepts vs. specific instances), with a small twist in their meaning.

• Correct usage: He has much experience.
  Here, “experience” is an uncountable noun and refers to abstract knowledge or skills. Therefore, we do not need an article.

• Correct usage: It was an experience.
  Here, “experience” is a countable noun and refers to a particular instance of event. Therefore, we need an article.

• Correct usage: I don’t drink coffee.
  Here, “coffee” is used to generalize a type of drink called coffee, which is an uncountable noun. Therefore, there is no need for an article.

• Correct usage: Would you like a coffee?
  Here, “coffee” is actually an abbreviated version of “a cup of coffee,” and we add the “a” to emphasize the hidden word “cup.”

Nouns that do not change in their plural forms

Some nouns can take plural forms but do not change from their singular forms. Let’s take the word “advice” for instance.

• Correct usage, singular form: Here is my advice.
  The “advice” in this sentence means a piece of advice.

• Correct usage, plural form: I will give you more advice.
  The “advice” in this sentence means multiple pieces of advice. The trap ESL learners fall into is to use indefinite articles a/an in front of a noun whenever it can point to multiple instances.

• Incorrect usage, singular form: I will give you an advice.
  The word “advice” is an uncountable noun, therefore we cannot use “an” in front of it.

• Incorrect usage, plural form: I will give you more advices.
  The word “advice” does not change in its plural form.

Proper nouns that require or do not require the definite article “the”

Proper nouns do not require an article, right? For example: My name is Isao Kato. / Let’s go to New York. Not so fast, the reality is messy. Even the grammar books admit that there are no formal rules and they recommend the time-tested method of memorization to tackle this issue. Here I will list some of the correct but illogical usages of “the” in front of proper nouns. Let’s go back to our fifth grade and restart word games.

• Lake Michigan BUT the Nile (They are both about geographical locations.)
• State Street BUT the Empire State Building (They are both about landmarks.)
• Great Britain BUT the Soviet Union (They are both about countries.)
• New Jersey Institute of Technology BUT the University of Virginia (They are both about educational institutes.)
• Activate Microsoft Windows BUT Turn the MacBook on (They are both about computer systems.)

Countable nouns used in generalization

When generalizing, countable nouns can take a definite article or change into plural forms.

• Correct usage: Helicopters are the new choice of transportation for the rich.
  Here, by using the plural form “helicopters” we know that the author is referring to helicopters in general, not a specific model.

• Correct usage: The helicopter is the new choice of transportation for the rich.
  Here, the context makes it clear that “the helicopter” is referring to helicopters in general.

• Incorrect usage: A helicopter is the new choice of transportation for the rich.
  This sentence reads like “using only one helicopter is the new choice...” which might be cool in the real world but is not the intended usage here.

• Incorrect usage: Helicopter is the new choice of transportation for the rich.
  Never use a countable noun without pluralizing it or adding an article, unless you are writing a child’s dialogue: “Daddy, it is car!”

Nouns with articles understood by the context

We use the definite article “the” as a writer when we assume the readers know what we are referring to. This issue is easy if we are writing sentences such as “My boss gave me a mission to buy a tall half-skinny half-1 percent extra hot split quad shot (two shots decaf, two shots regular) latte with whip at the Starbucks on Center Street.” In a fictional world, there is only one Starbucks on a street, therefore we can use the “the.” But what if we are referring to an everyday object? Here are some examples of nouns taking “the” because we all imagine one object according to the context.

• Correct usage: Close the door.
  There is usually one door in a room, the one both the writer and reader can imagine.
  Notes from my editor:
  There is often implied special knowledge. Imagine a married couple, he often leaves the front door in the living room open, it is a bone of contention between them. He walks into the bathroom, where she is brushing her air, and she asks “Did you close the door?” He knows which door she is referring to. (Or to be precisely correct, “He knows to which door she is referring).

• Correct usage: I am going to the library today.
  There is usually only one library in the neighborhood, so everybody can imagine that exact library at the corner of the city hall. But...this usage is also a victim of “it depends”:

• Correct usage (in American English): I am going to the hospital.

• Correct usage (in British English): I am going to hospital.

Conclusion: keep learning

As the last example in the previous paragraph shows, there is no end in sight when it comes to grammatical exceptions in English. Keeping the types of exceptions in our mind helps, but that is only the beginning. As a wise man once said, in the end, persistence triumphs talent (or unconsciousness in our case).
Here are even more learning materials for you grammar masochists.

• Martin Hewings: Advanced Grammar in Use
• Gerald J. Alred, Charles T. Brusaw, and Walter E. Oliu: Handbook of Technical Writing
• The Chicago Manual of Style Online 
• The Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL)
• World Wide Words.org

Tackling articles: never an easy road for ESL learners

To use or not to use articles, that is the question

What are articles?

Grammar-wise, articles are types of adjectives which specify the noun they designate. There are two types of articles: One is the indefinite article (“a” and “an”) that denotes an unspecified item, as in “a simple man” and “an education.” We know there is one gentleman and one educational experience, but we don’t know which one we are talking about (or let’s pretend so). The other is the definite article “the,” that denotes specified items, as in “the other guy.” We all know who this person is, except for husbands.

That’s it. Case closed, except it is not, at least for English as a Second Language (ESL) writers.

Articles: a tall order for ESL writers

To us ESL writers, few grammar rules are more difficult to master than the usage of articles. I have been using English for almost thirty years on and off, and for the past several years I have been writing extensively in English as a professional technical writer and a blogger, churning out more than one thousand words per day. And yet I still cannot use articles correctly, a fact my editor and playwright loves to point out, “literally,” in every piece of writing I submit to her. (And I appreciate it dearly :)

My question, or conclusion on rainy cold days, is: Is it only me? I cannot even write down my feelings because I am not sure if I should say “the usage of articles” or “usage of articles” and then I turn into my eternal ally: TV.

Fortunately, it is not just me; the usage of articles is a universal problem for ESL writers. Julia Miller at Flinders University Student Learning Center points out the complexity of articles for ESL writers in an issue of the International Education Journal as follows:

In almost any piece of writing submitted by a non-native speaker of English, three things will often indicate that the writer is working in a second language: the choice of tense and aspect, the subject and verb agreements, and the use of articles (the, a, an). While verb problems can largely be overcome and the mistakes in agreements eliminated by careful proofreading, the problems with articles frequently remain....Hewson has called the English article system a “psychomechanism”, through which native speakers use articles correctly but unconsciously.

Change the unknowns into knowns

The last word in the previous paragraph, “unconsciously,” is the key to understanding why native speakers “get it.” Unfortunately, that key word is also a synonym for “talent,” or even “gift,” for us ESL writers. It is an uphill battle, but there is hope: conquer the exceptions. Here, “exceptions” actually mean rules that are not obvious at first sight.

In the next entry, I will list the five of those hidden rules that continuously give me headaches; it is an attempt to both help me become a better writer and to share the lessons with those who are struggling with the usage of articles.

Three dating spots for Taiwanese teenagers

My friend, a Spanish teacher, stopped asking his Taiwanese students “What did you do when you were a kid?” (¿Qué hiciste cuando eras un niño?) as a conversation starter in his class because he kept hearing only one word: Estudie (I studied). That’s it? He asks, and the students add more information: studied at home, school, or cram school.
(Another teacher is also losing his battle by using “How was your week?” and constantly getting retorted by “Worked a lot” (Trabajado mucho).)

That’s fine, everybody has a different lifestyle (a useful phrase for making a peace agreement). But if one’s teenage life is circling around a single purpose—to get into a better university for a better career—where can he spend that extra energy and have fun?

Well, Taiwanese teenagers do seem to have learned a way to enjoy social life without compromising their career or family relationships: make out in public. Here are the three most popular dating spots for teenagers (by that I mean kids wearing school uniforms) in Taipei, according to my observation.

1. Subway

Crowded subway carriages offer an ideal chance to get close together. It’s the Taiwanese version of the backyard bench experience - you know, the one that is barely big enough for two people so you can’t sit together without touching each other’s thighs.
Popular posture: girls burying their heads into boys’ chests, being forced to do so by obtrusive adults (such as yours truly).
Simulating: foreplay.

2. Starbucks

Starbucks keeps providing havens for everybody. They offer coffee that is not exactly top-notch, they reinvented the idea of self-service out of no-service, and they aren’t doing well sales-wise in the US. But we will keep loving you, Starbucks, at least here in Taipei. Most tables are barely large enough for two people - again, gently forcing the couples to get closer.
Popular posture: boys taking a nap while girls watch. Then they take turns.
Simulating: sleeping with each other. Asynchronously.

3. Bookstores

Taiwan’s largest bookstore chain, Eslite, provides a safe dating environment for teenagers, if sitting on the floor and reading books to each other can be called dating practices.
Popular posture: boys pillowing their heads on girls’ lap.
Simulating: afterplay.

Those three locations have one thing in common: they blend well with academic life and external expectations. Commute on the subway, write some report in a Starbucks, and read more in the bookstore—isn’t that what parents want their kids to do?

After all, Taiwanese teenagers might be enjoying their lives no less than their overseas counterparts.

P.S. A movie came out this month, conveniently shot in and backed by Eslite, the aforementioned bookstore.
Story: A bookstore-dwelling nerd falls in love with a cute clerk.
Key message: being a bookworm is good for your sex life.

Let’s expect even more extravagant activities. Maybe they will build some “study rooms” inside the store.

I am in love with books and I want to touch them, see them and know they are there

This is a guest post from Sherry Lamoreaux, who edits my blog, in response to this paragraph in my previous entry:

In other words, when it comes to reading, what matters is being able to carry the book around and have “an experience” when I feel like it. We do not care that much about the package. Come to think of it, it was never about the package no matter how we associate our love for books with their appearances.

Her input was not only insightful but also beautifully woven, laced with personal memories. I felt that the story should be shared with many others. So I asked her to be my guest (blogger) and got my wish. Please take five minutes to read it—you’ll find yourself much comforted getting off to work (or going to bed).

Sherry Lamoreaux is a playwright, editor and publicist.  In addition to Vitriol & Violets, she’s the author of Letters of a Portuguese Nun, a screenplay which took second place in the Kay Snow literary contest, and the short play Little Sister Laments, which was produced in 2007.  She is currently working on a screenplay.

******************************************************

Recently I was hired to research the book “Pull” and find the components of it that supported (or not) a particular business plan under construction.  I had a tight deadline, so I saved time by downloading the book.  I saved more time by searching through it (I have the Adobe Reader, but I assume other eBook readers offer search as well) to find the relevant passages.  I was irritated that I couldn’t figure out how to transfer ownership of it to my client…I couldn’t sell it to him or loan it to him…and I couldn’t print it or copy and paste anything.  I was able to make screen shots, but still had to type out passages.  But overall, it was a fine way to quickly grasp data.

I appreciate the point about portability; that’s important.  For me, there’s more to it…

I have on my shelves an old copy of Salome by Oscar Wilde.  It’s from a limited run.  The pages are uncut and there is hand-applied gold leaf on the illustrations.  The whole thing slides into a paper case that lets the spine show.  It’s a work of art.

I have hardbacks made with gorgeous paper and carefully crafted typography.  I have ancient paperbacks that smell of old glue, that turn yellow and whisper of the readings they’ve had.  I finger a page when I turn it, sometimes too soon…it is a sensual experience, this feel of paper and texture.  It’s porous, and probably retains some of my molecules.  If you read a book that was last read by a murderer, would your fingers sense this?  And books from the library feel different than books you buy and take home.

I have books that I inherited from my father.  There they are, lined up in a bookcase in the living room, a wisp of his presence still there.  This room in which I write is lined with books…E through Z of the fiction (A through D is in the living room, with the anthologies), plus nonfiction books on writing, theatre, and such.  I am surrounded by friends and helpers, who remind me of who I am and what I value.  In the dining room, books on food and health and gardening.  In the basement, business books and well-read mysteries.  In the living room, Paul’s books…cars and trucks and motorcycles and trains, fiction, biographies, all manner of things British (he is English) and more…this is partly how we tell ourselves who we are.  I do mean “we” as specifically he and I, not “we” as in all humanity.

I think, to wrap up this ramble, that I am in love with books and I want to touch them, see them and know they are there, I mirror myself in them.  They are a significant part of my physical reality…so I need the leather-and-tree versions.  That said, when it’s just information I’m after, I am happy to read online.  Although I have a lot of cookbooks (and cookbooks are often beautiful, and I love the ones you inherit that have pages stained and smeared from cooking, or the ones in which you see your own history in the splatters) more and more often I turn to the Net.  (Let’s see, I have two lemons and some chicken breasts…what can I make out of that?)

Someone told me that studies have been done that showed that the brain reading a meat-world book and the brain reading a book on screen lit up in different areas…that the brain processed the info differently depending on how it received the info.  I don’t know if that’s true, but might it explain why the birthday card you get in the mail means more than the one you get on-screen?

Pseudo-Kindle experience 2/2: ownership and mobility are what matters + some poems work

I read the Kindle edition of Do You? (on my computer), a collection of poems and photos that touch our soul gently and sharply. The following is my favorite passage. (Is there anybody who considers herself a writer who has not had this experience?)

Unvoiced stress gnaws at my brain at night before dreams take hold,
grinding teeth and clenching jaw,
bottled emotions bubbling under the surface.
I have no choice but to listen to my inner voice,
It commands me
to record my thoughts and feelings.

I also felt the desire to carry the book around, not just view it on my desktop display. I might want to re-read these lines on a whim: on the road, in the office, at a coffee shop. For me, reading good passages is not about digesting information; it is about reminding myself what, why, and who I am, a simple collection of awareness which unfortunately needs periodical maintenance. We sometimes need to look back in order to move forward.

Does it mean that I am going to order a paper version? Well, probably I am going to get a real Kindle and download my favorite books into it, along with one hundred other books. Yes, I am selling out and I am fine with it. What matters is not the physical form—the sense of ownership and mobility is.

Steve Jobs once said “People want to own their music” when he was explaining why Apple considered iTunes as a retail, not rental, business. He was dead on, and the same idea goes for books. Both music and books allow us to have a transforming experience within the reach of our hands.

In other words, when it comes to reading, what matters is being able to carry the book around and have “an experience” when I feel like it. We do not care that much about the package. Come to think of it, it was never about the package no matter how we associate our love for books with their appearances.

E-books also allow us to pick the relevant part in a book easily. I frequently worry about what to do with books with one good chapter and nine irrelevant ones. For example, I have Guy Kawasaki’s The Art of the Start, a collection of practical tips for starting businesses written almost five years ago, before the financial crisis. Why keep it? For reading the parts that are still relevant, and learning from his experience, such as this:

Bill Reichert, a managing director of Garage, likes to tell entrepreneurs that the odds of raising venture capital are equal to the odds of getting stuck by lightening while standing on the bottom of a swimming pool on a sunny day. He’s exaggerating. The odds aren’t that good.

I used to think of Kindle and other e-book readers as the brute force that destroys the good old relationship between books and us. How wrong was I. Though I haven’t owned an ebook reader yet, when I have one I am sure it will reinforce my connection/affection toward books, because the pleasure of book-reading—carrying a book around and reading it on a whim of passion—is exactly what the e-book readers delivers better than their paper counterparts.

P.S. Reading Do You? also freed me from thinking that poems were meant to be collections of undecipherable statements that defy logic and grammar and meaning. Here is another great poem, Before I was a Mom/Dad, that opened my eyes in a similar manner.

Before I was a Dad,
I never held a sleeping baby just because I didn’t want to put it down.
I never felt my heart break into a million pieces when I couldn’t stop the hurt.
I never knew something so small could affect my life so much.
I never knew that I could love someone so much.
I never knew I would love being a Dad.

...However, not having had a child yet, I must confess the only part I truly get for now is the following.

Before I was a Dad
I made and ate hot meals.
I had unstained clothing.
I had quiet conversations on the phone.

Pseudo-Kindle experience 1/2: distribution democratized

I had my first Kindle book experience (on my computer). Here are the steps I took:

1. Purchase (= download) the book (30 seconds)
2. Install the Kindle Reader for PC (3 minutes)
3. Read the book (30 minutes)
4. Write this blog entry (3 hours)

This post is about my thoughts on the first bullet: purchasing an e-book. The next entry will deal with the third: reading an e-book. I might be chopping a blog post in half too many times. I will deal with it—in a two-part blog entry.

When I downloaded the Kindle book in 30 seconds (including the check-out process), I felt that personal publication has been liberated. Amazon.com says so too. Gone are the days of an author tracing a myriad of distribution channel threads before reaching his audience, a situation described in a blog post written by a literary agent.

He'd paid to print 500 hardcover copies, and was pursuing local and national bookstore chains and distributors. But he'd hit a brick wall, finding that most buyers and distributors were not interested in talking to him.

Let’s picture a suit-wearing backpacker carrying weightlifting plates in the form of hardcovers and pleading the bookstores to adopt his love child (= books). The agent’s advice to this author was straightforward, which is always the best way to give it.

But I told him that his problems getting distribution are the main reason self-publishing doesn't work for many people. If you don't have a channel through which YOU can sell your book, then self publishing usually isn't a profitable option. And by a channel, I mean something you're doing yourself: You're out speaking and selling your book in the back of the room. You're the pastor of a 10,000 member church and you sell it through your church bookstore. You have a terrific website or blog that gets 100,000 hits a month and your book is featured for sale there. Or something like that.

She talked about two issues: getting distributed and getting recognized. The writer thought the former was the key to get published. She reminded him it was the latter. The story is sad, but I think ultimately it is about hope. I guess the reason she could focus on the more important aspect, recognition, is because the distribution problem is becoming irrelevant. Do you count thirty seconds and three clicks away a considerable barrier that stand between the author and readers?

The recognition, the Holy Grail, deals with a resource that cannot be duplicated: our attention. Hugh Macleod summarizes it dryly: “Human beings don’t scale.” We aren’t closer to this Holy Grail than ten years ago, but it is visible now. How encouraging is this for writers?

P.S. At least on the Kindle platform, if we set the price right, we can instantly have a kick-ass marketing campaign. Enjoy a threesome: 3 seconds, 3 clicks, 3 dollars. I am sorry; I won’t do it again, in this post.

Typepad, Tumblr, Twitter ecosystem 2/2: news programs on TV

The last entry described the similarity between blogging platforms (Typepad, Tumblr, and Twitter) and our (fantasy) partners. This time, it is about news programs on the TV.

Blogging platforms as news programs on the TV: Typepad is the headline news with nice-looking anchors and computer monitors in the background showing market data (sometimes not). Tumblr is the "rest" tucked after the major news with purposefully less-gorgeous anchors and pseudo-Excel bullet point lists. Twitter is the annoying messages (okay, news) that appear at the bottom or top of the screen. Each has an equally important role, as media companies preach to us, but some roles are always more equal than others.

Typepad: headlines

• Detailed analysis (Typepad is where the “carefully crafted pieces of informative writing with...” comes in. Whatever.)
• Storytelling (Using Typepad, I try to tell a story. Using Tumblr and Twitter, I try to draw a picture.)
• Multimedia (Texts, videos, images, and even audio can be combined into one.)

Tumblr: today's other news

• Listed (Tumblr posts are updated daily and are vertically streamed.)
• Some picked, some not (The good thing about viewing lists is that as an audience you feel like you covered everything just by looking at the titles.)
• Background can be glamorous, main cast not (You cannot hide the fact that each post is short,  both in terms of content and the amount of attention paid, compared with Typepad)

Twitter: sidebar fillers

• Real-time (Twitter streams are updated so frequently, the window opportunity for each tweet is less than 0.5 seconds. Of course, that short attention span is exactly why Twitter is so useful.)
• Single sentence (To express something meaningful in 140 characters, you have to eliminate everything non-essential, sometimes even punctuation.)
• "Hook" for new audience (140 characters are still long enough to express funny/intriguing/controversial ideas. They do stop me from switching channels: i.e. surfing the web.)

What analogy you might use for the ecosystem created by your multiple blogging/writing platforms?

Typepad, Tumblr, Twitter ecosystem 1/2: our partners

I have three Ts for my writing platform: Typepad, Twitter, and Tumblr. Typepad, one of the oldest blogging services, is where the main posts reside; carefully crafted pieces of informative writings with deep insights and top- notch humor. I'm allowed to dream on.

Tumblr, going one step from Typepad toward social media, is great for sharing contents that are abundant but still too short for full-fledged posts: quotes from books, photos with comments, and collection of 80s music video clips.

Twitter, going one more step from Tumblr toward social media, is where I broadcast my updates, poke/stalk strangers, hijack contents (retweet), and share ideas that are too short/silly to form articles. Tweets fade away quickly, so I can be even more shameless here.

Surprisingly, I am not confused about how to use these three platforms, despite their blurry distinctions, overlapping features (and names). Nobody taught me; for each platform, after a few days of usage, I was able to transform myself from an awkward test driver to a semi-pro racer. Again, I am allowed to dream on.

I could do so probably because I subconsciously applied real-world analogies to the aforementioned three platforms: in particular, our partners and news programs. It is time to pull them out in the sunshine and see if we can extract some useful lessons.

Blogging platforms as our partners: Typepad is my spouse, and Twitter and Tumblr are my lovers (again and again, I am allowed to...). It might not be a coincidence that these three platforms have similar names; we keep choosing the same type of people as our partners no matter how many times they (we) disappoint us (them), right?

Typepad: spouse

• Won't go anywhere, been there for a long time (SixApart, the company that hosts Typepad, is the pioneer of blogging - they won't go down, despite having rough times. I hope.)
• Most accepting of all three (Typepad allows writing long and short posts, texts and multimedia. Various widgets are available too, including Twitter and Tumblr plug-ins. How generous is it? I know, everybody enjoys content-swapping these days)
• High maintenance (Typepad requires monthly fee. It also takes god-awful long hours to write a blog entry, though it's not Typepad's fault)

Tumblr: lover #1: the fantasy housewife

• Feels both familiar and fresh (Tumblr allows me to create blog-like posts in a Twitter-like interface)
• Low maintenance, no strings attached (No monthly fee is required. And writing each entry is easier than in Typepad because it is short. Tumblr is an ideal place when I have fewer ideas, less time/energy but would like to write something)
• Not quite enough to satisfy hunger for words (Like eating fast-food does not quite substitute for a good old home-cooked dinner. Didn’t Paul Newman say “Why go out for hamburger when you have steak at home?” (Uh, it was about NOT cheating on his spouse.) Tumblr is fun, but eventually I sit down in front of that bulky Typepad interface to write something meaty.

Twitter: lover #2: the social gal

• Parties all the time (Twitter allows me to have interesting interactions with total strangers)
• Ideal for one-night stand (Many Twitter interactions are spontaneous, supported by the whim of passion)
• Easy come, easy go (There is no requirements for fee and permission to follow or unfollow someone)

Continued to the second part, the news programs analogy...

Five fantasy games in scuba diving (NSFL: Not Safe For Lunch)

I have been attached to weird sea creatures throughout my life. Probably it stems from my days in Malta, when my dad used to take us to the beach and taught us to catch snails, which later ended up on our dining table. They looked ugly alive, and even uglier on the dish. *

When I was into scuba diving in Japan, I was the only one crashing over crown-of-thorns starfish while everybody else was searching for cute sea slugs. The scuba instructor gave me the nickname King of Eccentricdom and we liked it so much we went around broadcasting it all over the diving groups. Before I knew it, I was attracting self-made marine biologists (men) and repelling bikini girls, for good.

Time passed and I became wise enough not to disclose my real taste too soon. But recently I have been subscribing to Authentic Realities and I had a moment: screw that, I am going to be real. So here is one of those baby steps: Five creatures that should give me the same effect as a pill of Ecstasy.

Nemertea Worm

Siphonophore

Blobfish

Tongue-eating louse

Frilled Shark

* Years later I re-visited the Mediterranean sea from the other side, on a beach in Israel. There were gigantic jellyfish--imagine transparent Domino pizza with extra topping--all over the place. Some   people ignored them, some poked them, and some did the Russian-roulette jellyfish catch. You know, the one who first catches it on the wrong side loses. And I reinforced my childhood nightmares.

The news industry is dead. 2/2 Learn from Mario.

Recently I am all over advice on blogging and much of it tells me to insert a provocative, unexpected element into the title. So I chose Mario. They didn’t say I have to appear intelligent.

The 1D trap

Continued from the last entry... Until a decade ago, news media competed on only one metric: speed. * The slower ones could survive because overall, delivery speed was far slower and readers were regionally segregated, less aware of other choices. Once the net came in and the winner took it all, there was little room left for the rest. In fact, the astonishing thing is not that most of them are dying, but that most have survived to this date.

Ask Mario: Super Mario Brothers (1985). Run through the field, defeat enemies, make out with the princess.

The lost 2D frontiers

So, the one dimension of speed isn’t enough to give media an advantage. The next logical way forward is to jump to the two-dimensional world: different topics. Only…that is not enough. News media could try to branch into niche-categories, but all of them are already taken. When you find websites dedicated to different flavors of KitKat (> 100) or instant noodles (> 4000), you know the wild frontier of niche topics does not exist anymore.

Ask Mario: Super Mario 64 (1996). Explore the field, defeat enemies, make out with the princess.

The final way out: 3D

The only way left to go is three-dimensional. I am not talking about depth, although that is important. Here, 3D is about creating your own planet with your own rules. Competing on the same metrics or in the same area is over. It is time to get out of competition.

Ask Mario: Super Mario Galaxy (2007). Fly around the space, defeat enemies, make out with the princess.

Okay then...

We understand we've got to be the only one of something, a unique existence. How? That is going to be the topic of another entry. One of those blog advisers said “Milk your content as much as possible.” Maybe they used different words, such as “have a stock of ideas,” but I am sure that’s what they wanted to say. After all, they have been blogging about being a better blogger/writer for years; in other words, saying “Keep writing” in a thousand different ways.

Wait, one more...

* My trusted editor and mentor, Sherry Lamoreaux, pointed out an obvious shortcoming in the idea of speed as the only metric on which traditional media companies competed. “I disagree, at least as far as print goes. Some newspapers were known for brilliant investigative reporting (see the Pentagon Papers, see Watergate) and some for wonderful writing, or for having great authority (NYT).  The Guardian has it all, still.” She is dead-on, and that gives me a good reason to write another entry...

The news industry is dead. 1/2

The traditional role of the news media, to collect facts and broadcast them as quickly and accurately as possible, is dead. It is old news (though they haven't done a good job reporting it, except for some brave souls); a majority of the people working in the news industry are facing the possibility of becoming either worthless or jobless or both. Who is killing them?

Everybody. Even themselves.

Why? Because as readers, all we need is the one news source—the best—and it is already on the web. When I want news I have HuffingtonPost. When I want anti-news I have The Onion. That's it for me, my news needs are met. Perhaps for you that “one course” is Financial Times, or The Sun, or both, but that's the only one news outlet you really need.

It's not just news. For every topic I am interested in, there is a giant resource on the web that shows me everything, usually for free.

• Conspiracies World affairs: The Economist
• Blogging tips: Problogger
• Technology trends: TechCrunch
• Box office: Box Office Guru
• Cool stuff: Wired
• Oddities: BoingBoing

I know there are other resources. But I don’t care, because the ones I chose satisfy all my needs and more. The hundreds of second-tiers, the almost-as-gooders, don't exist for me.

It is like getting married. We might spend a ridiculous amount of time picking our best possible mate, but after that, as long as the relationship provides net positive results, we don’t consider other temptations.

Sure, websites are not humans. The virtual world has a big difference from the real one: everybody can own—not share—the same best mate. You can have either, or even both of, Brangelina in your hands. And they stay young, without (or with) the thirty kids coming ahead. Do you still need more?

So. If a media outlet (or a website, or a blogger) cannot be "The Best"—which is too far to go for 99.9999 percent of us—what should we do? Here is where the second option, “The Only,” comes in. Continued to the next entry...

Mar 20: P.S. Had a great comment from Tariq West on the "becoming worthless or jobless or both" part in the first paragraph.

"Worthless or jobless or both" is perhaps not a great phrasing in the sense that bloggers and other new-media outlets very much depend on the work of traditional journalists - they may be jobless, but the more they disappear I think the more we'll realize how much they're worth.

He is right, that wasn't an appropriate phrase. I was having the situation of journalism in my home country, Japan, when I wrote this entry and realized what is happening there just doesn't apply to journalism in English-speaking world.

Decades of language barriers have created a haven for the Japanese news industry, which unfortunately has invited a serious deterioration in the quality of the news. Maybe I should write a separate entry.

Guest post @ expat + Harem

Here it is, my first official guest blog post. Although I am credited as the writer, this post really was a collaborative effort with expat+Harem's creator, Anastasia Ashman. Without her guidance and encouragement (+ a top-notch editing) the post wouldn't have made it.

I am supposed to read through the finished article but still cannot; instead I want to crawl my skin and bury my head into dirt (with my butt showing up, obviously on purpose). Gosh, some of the episodes are still raw. Guest-blogging have been a bit hard but altogether exciting experience--until now. I never expected anxiety and doubt, even for a short period of time, to arrive after the posting. During drafting, I was only trying to put the stories out; the only doubt was what episode to delete or add. After drafting, I just waited for time to pass by.

Well, the anxiety comes from sharing my private stories with total strangers, even though I secretly wanted to do so for a long time. Sometimes we need to dig into our memories and share stories that we believe are "done." More often than not they aren't (that's the true reason why we wanted to label them as "done" in the first place). In addition, after they are out in the public area (the web), those stories do not belong to us any more.

If a story is deep and well told, it will start to have a life of its own and inspire people beyond the reach of its original author. Eventually through the audiences' reactions, the author will start to see different point of views and be able to reconstruct his past (and future) in a different way--hopefully in an exciting way.

I hope I will one day be able to reach that level. Right now, I did what I could do now, and all the judgment is up to the readers.

Today's lesson: write first, worry later. You'll be glad you did it.

Expressing yourself in six words

I stumbled on the Six Word Memoir challenge started by Michelle Reynoso, through a LinkedIn group. It's simple — (1) describe (2) your (3) life (4) in (5) six (6) words — but addictive. Here's hers. Bottom to top; over and over. Here's mine. Lived eyes closed. Wrote eyes open. As of March 5th, more than 100 people have left their 'autobiographies.'

 Why are we are so attracted to the idea of micro-autobiography? As one member wrote (in six words) "Six words cannot summarize my life," it is impossible to squash our entire life history into a single sentence. (Well we can, as we all became aware that one time, around 4am, but let's skip that part.)

I liked the idea because it was actually about searching, not summarizing. We all want to find the central theme, the common thread, that runs in our life. Sometimes we catch its glimpse or shadow, but after the initial three-hour empowerment gets milked by our work, life, and fantasies, all that's left is the vague memory that we had our moment of sensation. The core message, or lesson, is gone.

The six-word challenge gives us the perfect tool to retain the message. Six words are long enough to contain important ideas but short enough to shut out unnecessary words (noise). Most important of all, the six-word phrase is easy to remember. It does not vaporize amid the daily chaos. Find it, note it, keep it.

Wanna know how memorable short message could be? A while ago, the CEO of Sun Microsystems tweeted his resignation in haiku. "Financial crisis / Stalled too many customers / CEO no more" I don't (won't) even remember his name, but I surely will remember this line.

What might be your six-word memoir?

P.S. Inspired, I have started a photo haiku series on my Tumblr account (the latest one appears on the sidebar of this blog). The haiku format may turn mundane photos (I have too many of them) into lesson/joke/scandal/whatever. I hope.

How to get over remaking the remake

The planned Spider-man4 was officially axed, together with the original director Sam Raimi and THE Spider-man, Tobey Maguire. They say it was because Sam Raimi, the original director, refused to use a villain that the studio wanted.

Honestly, who cares? If they can put a nerdy scientist wearing a green goblin mask standing on a flying saucer as a super-villain, you can do anything with any material. The audience have long accepted Spider-man's campiness. Besides, it's Sam Raimi--have some respect.

Worst of all, they are going to "reboot" the franchise with cheaper director and casting. It is getting ugly. If we want to know where this ultimately goes, take a look at the history of Friday the 13th series. In a sense, it is scarier than most of its films.

1. Friday the 13th: The mom is the killer.
2. Friday the 13th, Part II-VII: We didn't use her son. Let him kill more. And more. (x 5)
3. Friday the 13th, Part VIII: Used up all ideas? Let him walk Manhattan.
4. Friday the 13th, Part IX: Or go to hell.
5. Friday the 13th, Part X: Or space.
6. Freddy vs. Jason: No, it is not over. Combine him with Freddie Cruger.
7. Friday the 13th: Reboot.
8. Sequel has to be made, right?

What should they do instead? Look up to our hero, Clint Eastwood. List his last several movies and it becomes clear. He keeps pushing the envelope, embarking on new challenge. There is no sequel, no reboot, not even a remake. And take a look at their background; none of the movies plays the game safely.

• Mystic river: Three childhood friends grow up and kill each other. And it is not a horror movie.
• Million dollar baby: The coach helps his protegee commit suicide.
• Flags of our fathers: De-glorifies one of the war legends. Hello, Spielberg?
• Letters from Iwo Jima: A Japanese-spoken film shot with Japanese crew and actors.
• Changeling: Hmm...this one plays it safe. It's fine once in a while.
• Gran Torino: Semi-pro Asian actors + a story of dying generation + a dying community (Detroit).
• Invictus: Based in South Africa (where is it?) + rugby, a sports unknown in the American continent.

Everybody should look up to Clint Eastwood, and make films like he does. This guy is still the man, at the age of 80.

Clash of alter ego: Google and China

Slightly old news: Google joined the online storage business: all existing companies are screwed. Google chose to flatten the industry landscape than negotiate with current landowners. They broke the existing environment in the name of a better society.

Sounds familiar? Like, with what the Chinese government does? The difference is that what Google does is generally accepted by users, including yours truly. What the Chinese government does...is...wait a second, accepted by many people, especially younger generations, too. They are curiously alike.

Switching to another topic, Google is planning to (almost) pull out of China after being forced to compromise and nevertheless being cyber-raped. Rumor has it that the decision was made by one of its cofounders. Clearly there should be an illogical reason for such un-marketwise decision. I suspect Sergey Brin is trying to crush his alter-ego.

In the past, Google had claimed triumph in many of the industry it has entered into.

• Email: Gmail finally turned Hotmail into what it truly deserves: a joke.
• Video: Well, if it cannot be beaten, buy it out...
• Office software: Google office has a long way to replace MS Office, but at least for uploading on the web and sharing with others, Google Doc is becoming the default tool.
• Mobile phone: Android phones nailed MS Mobile's coffin. iPhone is still far away, but at least Google is competing with it, which nobody ever did before.

Now here is China. They cannot be bought, cannot be beaten. Just like Google itself. To add salt in the wound (or to make China even more Google-like), a copycat is claiming the top market share, in Google's eyes.

This battle is personal, at least for Sergey Brin. By witnessing the series of event, we are also realizing who he is as a human being, not as a genius programmer.

Is Designing Great Products a Matter of Personal Taste?

Here are three companies/products earning great reputation on their innovative design and intuitive user experience. With an episode of the leading guy's personal trait.

Google Nexus one: Andy Rubin

And he wouldn’t compromise, even after it was clear Google would miss their original deadline of shipping the Nexus One in time for the 2009 holiday rush. “Rubin kept saying it has to be thinner,” mumbled one tired team member to me after the event, “so we made it thinner.”

Everything from Apple: Steve Jobs

To Jobs, the world is an epiphenomenon, a side effect of the existence of Steve. Or rather, it is a pyramid with Jobs at the top, a few bright people just beneath him, and then the rest of us — the “bozos”. The customer bozo is not, to him, always right. In the early days it was said the Apple marketing department consisted of Jobs looking in his mirror and asking himself what he wanted

Games from Nintendo: Shigeru Miyamoto

Miyamoto has also been known to have Nintendo implement delays "to make a game [...] of the high quality standards that Nintendo is known for," at times even scrapping the entire development of games.

Is great design (not good design) a matter of personal taste that cannot be quantified or qualified? Otherwise we cannot explain the fact that dictators keep churning out great products. If it is true, maybe all design philosophies, especially those for wannabe world-changers, can be summarized in one sentence: find a genius asshole and let him do whatever he wants.

Similar logic-bending stories are heard about other so-called genius. The son of the world's most famous investor, George Soros, tells us through Malcolm Gladwell how to decipher his father's trading secrets.

My father will sit down and give you theories to explain why he does this or that. But I remember seeing it as a kid and thinking, Jesus Christ, at least half of this is bullshit. I mean, you know the reason he changes his position on the market or whatever is because his back starts killing him. It has nothing to do with reason. He literally goes into a spasm, and it's this early warning sign.

After all, as Stephen King says, it might be a "telepathy" stuff.

We are writers, and we never ask one another where we get our ideas; we know we don't know.

4 Myths about Japanese Culture

Despite enjoying Japanese culture to deeper extent than other countries, Taiwan still has its shares of myth held against Japan. Part of the reason is in Japan itself: we are the world's sloppiest nation when it comes to explaining who we are, what we do, and why we are the way we are. Here are some of the myths I have heard over the years. Let's see if they are true.

Japanese are horny.

False. I know, I know. Where did the word Bukkake (be careful, Wikipedia has gone NSFW) come from? It means "splash over your face" in Japanese. Who invented the tentacle rape (don't ask me)? If you go to any of the 100 adult entertainment shops in Taipei, 95% of the 10,000 DVDs sold are from Japan. But hey, lies, damn lies and statistics are on our side. The Japanese enjoy the least amount of sex, people, according to Durex.

Then what explains the amount of Japanese adult entertainment? What's true is that we (1) tend to over-divide a category and (2) almost all industry in Japan is saturated. Over-detailed and over-competitive; a deadly combination of two tendencies have driven the Japanese adult entertainment to an extreme, and as a consequence, fueled underground economies all over the world.

Japanese companies are not a great place to work.

True (from what I still hear from my friends). Each time I have high hopes for Japanese companies getting open to the world, a news like this pops up. The road is long...

(Taken from the merger of Lehman Brothers and Nomura, a Japanese investment heavyweight)

Lehman bankers encountered a different work culture at Nomura. One team of Nomura traders, for instance, sang a company song at morning meetings.

Asked about the training sessions for new hires, a Nomura spokeswoman said that both sexes were taught business etiquette, and the men and women were trained separately for logistical reasons.

Some Nomura managers interpreted strictly the company's dress code for women. They told women joining from Lehman to remove highlights from their hair, to wear sleeves no shorter than midbicep and to avoid brightly colored clothing, according to several people who joined from Lehman. Several women were sent home from the trading floor for dressing "inappropriately," these people say.

Japanese love eating whales.

False for Japanese in general, true for some old people. Whale was once considered valuable source of protein, and because we have enough meat now, whaling is a dying profession, reserved for old generations who eat for nostalgia. Full disclosure: I ate whale meat a couple of times with my granddad, and it does not taste good as meat (good for us after all).

A documentary called The Cove sheds some light on Japanese fisherman slaughtering dolphins. The fact: all Japanese on my network, including myself, learned we eat dolphins thanks to that film.

Ninja still exists.

False (I'm sorry). I mean, I thought that was a universally accepted truth until I talked with a Taiwanese acquaintance several months ago who told me "Of course they still exist, don't they?" It's all because of Kosugi Sho and his Carolco Ninja series. Damn you. In one of those films, titled Nine Deaths of the Ninja, his character is called Spike Shinobi (=spikey Ninja in Japanese). It is beyond salvation.

I saw a movie Ninja for the first time when I was 6, in Enter the Ninja, where Franco Nero plays a modern Ninja in white outfit. (If you wear a bright white costume in a bright sunny day, doesn't it discredit the whole point of being a secret agent?) Below is the trailer, but you can see the whole film on YouTube. Enjoy when you have nothing to do in a Sunday morning.

How to revive Hollywood movie: sampling

What does Hollywood offer these days? Everything looks tired.

1. Remake a known property. (Spider-man)
2. Create its sequel. (Spider-man2)
3. Stretch the series as much as possible. (Spider-man3)
4. When the production gets too costly/demanding, suck them and reboot. (Spider-man4)
5. Then create its sequel. (Halloween (Reboot), part 2)
6. Maybe a prequel. (X-Men Origins: Wolverine)
7. Or two. (Wolverine2)
8. Go back to number 1.

Things are moving in full circle, which is always a good sign in the traditional movie context, but this time the whole thing is resembling Ouroboros. That doesn't end well. The circle gets smaller and soon there will be no more meat to cannibalize (diagram taken from Wikipedia).

Since the current Hollywood is run by banks and overseas investors, not the movie industry itself, there is little chance to do something original. But I think there is a way to be creative AND to appease the investors: mashup.

The idea is to integrate two well-known concept into one and start something anew. It's not the "VS" series as in Alien vs. Predator. It's rather integration of the two. Here are three such ideas.

• Zombie + Vampire = Zompire. A vampire sucks blood from a zombie. Or a zombie eats a vampire. The rule is off the limit.
• Shaolin Temple + Ninja = Shaolinja. Calm as a monk, Strong as a Shaolin fighter, Fast as a Ninja. The problem here is that the real Shaolin temple won't agree their "properties" get associated with Japanese Ninja. Come on, aren't you supposed to be enlightened? Also, using lawyers as weapon is tired.
• James Bond + Jason Bourne = Jameson Bondourne. This one has a small problem in securing rights, so it should be considered as the big gun. The story will be of a double-spy moonlighting as a high-class escort for mature women (and men too: he prefers duality over anything). His killer pitch (when he leaves his client): What's your name? Bondourne. Jameson Bondourne.

Investors will be happy because there are not only one but TWO known properties. The creative team will be happy because they can write their own rule. Audience will be (hopefully) happy wondering what the fuss is about.

It's a win-win scenario. How come no one hasn't executed it yet?

My 5 rules for posting regularly

The road to hell is paved with blogging about blogging but what the hell, I'll do it. I post a blog entry every other day (at least after January 1st, 2010), which is fairly constant and frequent. Here is how I do it.

1. Devote the best hours of a day to blogging

My brain works best right after I wake up in the morning. So that is when I face my laptop. I spend about two hours for researching and writing before I head to work. Sadly, many days the "research" part takes too much time because it is easier and writing is hard.

To recoup some of the lost opportunities, I try not to indulge in stuff that are not related to blogging (such as watching a re-run of Racing with the Moon with young Sean Penn and Nicholas Cage: I watched bits of it in no less than 4 times but still haven't gotten the whole story)

2. Do it every day

Many people say brain is like muscle: in order to be better, you need to use it every day. Making writing a habit is the best strategy. I find it also helpful for keeping me concentrated on my work during the day. If I do not spend writing time in the morning, I feel the urge to compensate for it during office hours. Needless to say, it's risky.

3. Take notes and put them in a single location

Jjot.com is my favorite online note-taking tool. When away from a computer, I send an email to myself, or if the idea is good enough to stand on its feet, tweet it. Twitter is a wonderful tool not only for broadcasting micro-messages and interacting with people but also for keeping online memo.

Having all memos in a single location matters, because the most interesting aspect of writing (or blogging) is forming a new combination/idea from old, seemingly unrelated materials. More about this topic can be read here.

4. Locate a large chunk of time once a week to write in bulk

On Sunday morning I allocate several hours to assembling all the drafts I wrote during the week (yes they do not have to be published immediately) for the upcoming week. During this stage, I complete unfinished drafts and correct goofy errors. Also, taking another look at the initial draft often generates another idea or leads to previously unnoticed mistakes.

Having more than a couple of hours is important because for some reason my brain needs idling time when it comes to writing, even when it is most active.... The two-hour writing hour during weekdays usually gets shortened to a one hour of concentration, which is not long enough for completing an entry.

5. Schedule posts beforehand

Typepad, my blog service, allows scheduling. I make sure there are always at least two stocks of unpublished posts. That way, there is no pressure in rushing and posting something I would later regret or starts the day with a bad mood. The workplace pressure is already giving us enough headaches. We should be spared from that at least while writing for the sake of writing.

Which is dying: job category or people inside

A while ago, Marian Schembari shared a good reading about people committing suicide taking enormous amount of risk by jumping into so-called dying industries (she is mentioned on page 3, alive and well).

Well, why? Are they rich enough to indulge themselves? No - almost everybody introduced in the article made their choice without preparing a safety cushion (some even ditched it). They are, as the article says, just "incredibly enthusiastic about their career choice."

I believe those courageous people who listen to their inner voice will transform not only themselves but also those professions from outside. How come? Because they (1) already have passion and (2) are flexible enough to change their process when things do not work as intended.

Marian herself ditched traditional job-hunting arsenals such as resume and cover letter; instead, she focused on networking using social media tools (it apparently worked very well). An ex-social media expert trying to become an English professor is thinking of landing a job as a high school English teacher, even going back to social media if thing does not go the ideal way.

The writer of the article, Michelle Goodman, also recommends not following the beaten path.

Picture an office building with a row of four to six doors at the entrance. Most people who want into that building will bottleneck around one doorway instead of taking the time to open one of the unused doors themselves. (Admit it; you know you've seen this real-life scene a thousand times.)

Like lemmings, we're conditioned to do what everyone who's gone before us has done. My advice to those entering an already saturated profession: don't be the career lemming.

The ironic fact is that probably the majority of people already in the saturated profession are career lemming without knowing so. Some job categories are slowly dying not because we don't need them anymore but because people working there cannot adapt well to the new reality.

We still still read news and learn English, after all. Someone will take care of them, and I hope them to be "outsiders."

Competing these days is about not competing at all

Competition is still about fighting each other in the same ballpark, at least in the Japanese business context. On the surface, it sounds fair and gentlemen-like. Deep inside, everybody is exhausted trying to catch more fish in the red ocean. Also over time they lose the ability to think outside their box. Some even don't realize they are in a box.

Each time I make a visit to my homeland, I see companies trying to "impress" clients and competitors. Let's take digital cameras for example: A quick googling "The world's thinnest" in Japanese yields the following results as of Feb 14th, 2010.

• The world's thinnest camera with 10x optical zoom (Nikon Coolpix S8000)
• The world's thinnest full-HD video camera (Sanyo Xacti)
• The world's thinnest G-Shock camera (Casio Exilim G Ex-G1)

Seriously, who cares? They might be spending all their power to beat their opponents, but they do not realize they are just collectively masturbating, at least from their customers' point of view. None of them came up with Flip Mino, a video camera we actually want.

The definition of competition has changed. It is no more about competing against each other. It's about how not to compete.

I once visited Sanyo, then an electric giant boasting Japan's largest electronics industrial complex owned by a single company, to demonstrate a semiconductor IP. They said they were not interested in. We gave them the name of our biggest Asian customer: Samsung. They dismissed Samsung as the "company who just kept wasting an incredible amount of money."

Five years later, Sanyo became a subsidiary of Panasonic and Samsung became the world's No.1 electronic brand. People at Sanyo (to be fair, me too) did not understand Samsung was not only competing with them but also was already surpassing them. We failed to see its influence because Samsung played a different game from Japanese companies.

Japanese companies developed almost everything inside, with their in-bred workers. Samsung brought in almost everything, from staff to technologies to design. Japanese companies sold products domestically first, and after a successful reaction, sold them worldwide. Samsung targeted worldwide audience from the beginning. Even the Korean market, their supposedly home base, was treated as one of the many Asian regions.

Competition will always exist, but it is getting clearer that winners are those who put the word "competitor" out of their head and do what really matters for them and their customers.

Upgrading URL shorteners

Hootsuite, which I use for tracking and composing tweets, comes with a URL shortner: ow.ly. It is a versatile tool that I use whenever I want to introduce a web link. It is like having a freebie. On a free web application.

The only downside of ow.ly is that it shows off the Hootsuite advertisement at the top of the destination page. Wait a second, maybe I am exposing my colleagues the fact that I am a semi-Twitter addict. Let's hope they already know. We all hate surprise.

URL shorteners came a long way to become shorter thatn the original TinyURL days. Because they all have tracking features to find out who clicked how many times at what hours, major companies are joining the bandwagon by providing their proprietary shortners. Statistics might be worse than damn lies, but we still trust it despite/because of.

To me, ow.ly is still the best just because it has only four characters, the shortest of all major shorteners. Can others follow suit? Here are the major shorteners and how they can be improved.

Google: google.com -> goo.gl

Nearly perfect, but it is still five characters. Also it is hard to pronounce. What about gu.ge? Their soon-to-be-closed Chinese version is pronounced Gu-Ge (谷歌) anyhow. They won't mind about copy infringement, if done internally.

Youtube: youtube.com -> youtu.be

Too long. Following our SMS conventions, "you" -> U, and "tu" -> 2. Therefore, U2.be. Oh, no.

New York Times: nytimes.com -> nyti.ms

Again, too long. What about ny.ti? Sounds like Nice Tie? because all people who read New York Times in paper apparently wear ties. They will be extinct soon, of course.

Facebook: facebook.com -> fb.me

This is a smart naming. "Facebook Me." Also short. But not exactly flawless. They should focus more on the core part of their brand, the "Face" part. Therefore, it should be fc.me. Hmm, maybe no.

The losers should have some redemption too.

TinyURL: tinyurl.com -> tinyurl.com

They might be the pioneer of URL shorteners, but their days are numbered. It's time to start anew: they should pick ti.ny. There, much better.

Microsoft: Bing.com -> Binged.it

This TechCrunch article says it eloquently: they are (as usual) beyond redemption. fa.il.

Rediscovering blog identity

The seasonal identity crisis has arrived. This blog used to be called "Free Random Thoughts: melting technology and communication in the Asian pot." Now it is "Interestingness Rediscovered: missing angles in our familiar view." The following describes why so.

I always thought I had no consistency in the blog topic I chose. In the 30 days prior to the title change I wrote about being freelance, Powerpoint as ebooks format, overrated value of stuff, making viral online video, our shortening attention, editing in the 2010s, what iPad means, online notepad, Google Buzz, and quoting.

They are loosely connected by two keywords: technology and communication, as was stated in the blog's old description: melting technology and communication in the Asian pot.

It is actually a cop-out statement. Communicating is what makes us who we are, and technology helps us do so. Plus I happen to be in Asia (Taipei). Therefore the description is no different than "everything about a person living in Asia." Which is nothing, considering there are billions of people living in territories defined as part of Asia. The title "Free random thoughts" doesn't say anything either; all our thoughts are random, in a sense.

In short, I picked the blog title and description because I didn't know what my blog was about.

But during waves of soul-searching(which get surfing-high after a long meeting, missed lottery, or fewer marbles than usual in a pack of M&Ms), I started seeing there is a pattern in topics I choose. They are about finding a fact or truth that are not paid attention to.

It's not necessary about presenting a unique opinion, though it might be so as a result.  It's also not about catching up with the latest trend, though it might be timely. It's about finding out a missing angle when seeing familiar (in other words, tired) issues in our life.

For example, this entry itself is about an obvious point being missed when naming a blog: this blog's old title showed who I was, whereas a blog title should always describe what the blog is about. Period.

Mission Statement

My ultimate goal is to shout "It's an elephant!" in the well-known story of a group of blind men touching an elephant:

Each one touches a different part, but only one part, such as the side or the tusk. They then compare notes on what they felt, and learn they are in complete disagreement.

 ...But more likely than not, I might be one of those blind men. At least I hope I am presenting a partial truth about that elephant.

Why Segway Failed and How to Make it Come Back

Once self-touted as the greatest invention in history of humanity, Segway was quietly sold at the end of January. Despite the initial fanfare, they never acquired the ubiquity they aspired for. What was the problem?

I suppose it was because no one could make riding Segway sexy. Listing the iconic Segway riders makes this point clear. Is there anyone who wants to date them?

• Mall cops
• Chinese Segway army
• The movie Speed Racer (corporate engineers)
• Steve Wozniak and his pals playing polo

Clearly Segway's unpopularity is not because of its impracticality. Millions of city residents buy shiny BMWs and Audis, 10 times as costly as Segway but only twice as useful (I guess). I am afraid the real answer we don't want Segway is that we simply cannot think of a context to impress others (especially girls for men) using it.

Objectively, riding a Segway can be as sexy as riding a mountain bike wearing pink helmet and yellow spandex. But alas, bike riders has Lance Armstrong as the official sexydom ambassador. Segway had Steve Wozniak. The game was over even before it started.

The Segway team really should have added sexual element into that so-unsexual machine. Maybe the current owner will do it; that's when Segway will come back with a vengeance. What about this Korean dancing team (very hot in Taiwan currently) doing their moves on Segways?

What does it mean to be self-employed?

At BrazenCareerist.com Penelope Trunk and Ryan Paugh had another (almost) weekly webinar on career management: resume doctor, location independent, how to be a better blogger, so on. This time it was about self-employment, which touches on almost everybody's nerves. (They do pick interesting subjects.) Here is the summary of their messages.

To employ or to be employed

• There is no shame in suiting employed life.
• Self-employment is NOT a goal. Set a work goal.
• If you are doing good as employee, test your water by doing side projects. If you can't do that well, you won't be able to handle self-employment.
• You can try, and you can always go back to corporate life. It's not going to be a dead-end in your resume.

On marketing

• Do or hire great marketing.
• 80% marketing, 20% real work.
• Random hook-ups does not hurt. Just try it as a marketing tactic. Don't be bad in bed, though.

Self-employment vs. Entrepreneurship

• Self employed and Changing-the-world are different. The former is a one-person operation and comprises almost 90% of all entrepreneurs. The latter works in team and is actually about being funded.
• It is very hard to find a fundable idea. (For Penelope) finding the right idea and team for funding took 3 years.

On ideas

• There is no unique idea. It's all about execution.
• People who don't tell idea are people who don't do anything.
• Most entrepreneurs go through 15-20 ideas before they hit on one.

Am I ready?

• The only question: are your skills/ideas marketable?
• Don't think of yourself as woman. Men have all the power, no women did it all alone. Dress like women, network with men.
• Once you think failure doesn't matter, it's much easier to start.
• Be specific at what you are great. Nobody wants to hire non-experienced freelancer.

On time management

• System for time management: most people work 100% of their time.
  
• Have personal time to keep yourself from getting crazy.
• Most entrepreneurs get up early. at 5am. And they work more hours than most people.

To keep on going

• Declare what you don't do.
• At the beginning, take whatever.
• Be great at spending less consistently.
• Have a structured, excellent package.

Does quote make a person look smart, or the other way around?

We all love quotes. If we look at them individually, almost all of them teach us something invaluable, make us look smart (by listing quotes), or at least make us laugh. The quote form itself has a magical power: almost anything sounds smart-ass when marked as quotes.

Quote is the greatest tool for making a boring sentence/person look smart. - Isao Kato -

Why does a quote always sound wise? I believe it is because a quote is stripped off its original context. We wrap a quote with our imagination; we try to make up for or find our personal story that actually fits well with the quote. In another way, we add our own meaning to a quote. It is especially true for the one below:

There are two ways to argue with a woman. Neither one works.

Naturally, a question arise: are people with many quotes actually who we think they are? When we take a look at their individual quotes they look awesome. But what if we review their quotes collectively?

I picked up Henry Ford, the visionary auto czar, to review his integrity through his quotes: all quotes are taken from Brainyquote and Wikiquote.

• Any colour - so long as it's black. (be arrogant)
• If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person's point of view and see things from that person's angle as well as from your own (be emphatic)
  
• If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses (be arrogant)

Is this guy an arrogant genius or emphatic dreamer? Two more...

• As we advance in life we learn the limits of our abilities (know your limit)
  
• Anyone who keeps learning stays young (dream on)

Is this guy a believer or pragmatist?

Conclusion: though each quote might have its own source of wisdom, collectively they show an image of a real human: full of contradictions and conflicts.

Everybody will be famous for 15 minutes. - Andy Warhol -

Why don't we way, every quote has its wisdom for 15 seconds, and move on without caring too much about them?

5 ways I want to read an imaginary e-book

I might be selling out by naming the entry that way. Countless online tips say naming the title "10 ways to", "How to", and "Why" is the way to attract more readers. I clicked those tips maybe fifty times and after the first three, all advices start to look the same, except for ones revealing personal experiences.

If including a personal element is the way to make a collection of tips stand out, why not having one purely based on fantasy? That's totally personal.

So, here are the five ways I want to read digital books using an imaginary e-book reader.

Search and destroy.

This one is already realized, I guess. Pick a keyword, read relevant topics, then consider the book to be finished. It's even better than using the Index.

Example: university textbooks, adult entertainment (which is completely out of yours truly's choice, except for learning foreign languages).

Say it aloud.

I want uninterrupted reading experience. Why can't we read texts when the book reader is open, and continue listening texts when the reader is closed? That way I can read while, say, on a bus, and switch to listening while walking. I seriously want this function; it's either this feature becomes realized or I die hitting my head on poles and stomping my feet into ditches while reading texts on my smartphone.

Follow me.

I have an attention-deficit problem, frequently losing where I am reading and re-reading a chunk of page. I would like the e-book to have a colored marker on the page moving at a constant speed. All I need to do is to follow the marker to keep the reading pace, therefore forcing me to pay attention and never losing track of where I am. It should even turns the pages automatically.

Translation on the spot.

I love learning languages. My current goal is to be able to read and write in Chinese and Spanish. Reading books in those languages is an excellent start, but referring to a dictionary does not work well with the reading flow. I would like the e-book to integrate Google Translation so that whenever I touch a word it shows up the definition immediately.

Book-on-demand.

I want a fully-functional library system realized on an e-book. I can borrow unlimited number of books for a fixed monthly fee. After a certain period of time I lose access to those books. Simple, right? The library system will solve...

• The school textbook dilemma, again. We lease a book for the term, and when done, return it back. That's what we want (not the scholars and publishers).
• The short story collections dilemma. If I only want to read a section or a chapter in a book, I want to do that. People who say a book has to be read as a whole to properly get the idea obviously overlook the fact that most of us now buy singles in iTunes and are fine with it.

We know how to use Buzz, but we do not know how to talk in Buzz

I have started using Google Buzz. Or I should say Google started making me use it, because when I woke up one day the Buzz icon was there, complete with the list of my followers and people whom I follow. If someone "steals" our connection and declares that I am a fan of who-knows, we would be blocking that person/service for good. But it's the act of God, so no one complains.

What if the "Following" list included someone unwelcomed (fortunately not my case), let's say, our parents and our boss? If we list these scenarios in order of chillingness, it should look something like this:

1. Our boss following us
2. Our parents following us
3. Our ex- following us
4. Our secret crush following us (and promptly dumps/unfollows us after finding out the auto-following function)

As of this moment (Feb 12th) the whole world is buzzing the Buzz. But no one I have read has buzzed about the stalkish nightmare that should follow. I suppose it is a matter of time.

One issue with Google Buzz is that it nearly flattens the hierarchical relationship we had with each email acquaintance. The email used to be our mailbox at our gate: everything comes in, from coveted love letters to letters about making love, and we filter them subsequently. The entry is wide open because we know they cannot come in further.

With the integration of Buzz, it looks like now everybody can enter into our living room. People get our email address (the location), follow us (get inside our house), listen to our conversation (dwell in our living room). We still have our bedroom locked, but is the wall thick enough to shut all the sound?

Facebook has the same feature but that's a service originally intended for our dearest friends, so there is little problem. (Almost) everybody in Facebook is someone whom we trust, so we can talk about our private life. It's the 3PM tea-time chatter.

Twitter does that too but that's a broadcasting station so we know everything we say should be generic, mass-media. It's the 3PM radio station. If you want to talk about your privacy, it's your choice.

Email list is problematic. It includes everybody from the dearest to the hated. And we don't have a good way to talk with our friends, family, coworkers, students, etc. in a single voice. If we take the safe route, there will be no juicy element inside our conversation and that's not a conversation any more.

The fact is, with Goolge Buzz the Pandora's box has opened. If the email starts going the public road, what else is left for privacy? Whether we like it or not, we have to figure out a way to deliver our message in the everything -is-in-the-eye-of-the-public world.

The definite online note-taking tool: JJot

I have no business or personal association with jjot.com and its creator. I am going to promote jjot.com just because I find it very useful. No, it is not jott.com, another online note program. Neither it is jot.com (which curiously leads to google.com).

What is Jjot?

It is an online Post-it application. That's it. This is how you use it.

1. Any given day, an idea comes up: Tiger Woods actually boosted Nike's profile by living its mantra: Just Do It.
2. Tweet it from your mobile phone. The end.
3. Okay, that was a bad example. An idea that has a potential to become a blog entry or to-do item comes up: Did Tiger's behavior benefit any of his sponsors? / According to her, I need to buy a 1/2 kg pack of non-sweetened, non-Craft yogurt by tomorrow 4pm at Jason's market in Xin-yi road.
4. Access jjot.com, jot them down.

The easiest application to use

The best part of this application is that it is damn easy to use. No login process (it's still private though), no save dialog, no screen switch, no endless options. Just create a new note and write, then the application automatically saves the note for you. Everything is handled inside the main view. The sign-up doesn't even need the usual email verification. And of course it is loaded extremely fast.

Minimal, but absolutely necessary functions.

It has just the right amount of features. Let's list them.

• Note board creation/deletion
• Note size change/full screen/pop-out
• Bold letter
• Bulleted list
• Hyperlink
• Search
• E-mail
• Print

That's it. Sure there is no image-saving, voice recording, or even numbered-bullets. But does it matter? What we need is a Post-it, not an editor. Besides, unlike the paper version, sorting the posts is dirt simple: grab and drop. Also, there is no advertisement. Huge plus.

The original post-it company, 3M, has its own version of electronic post-it system. Unfortunately and surprisingly, it sucks. It has bloated features like photo-post option, is riddled with 3M advertisement, and worst of all, everybody needs to pay after the 30-day trial. Everything goes against the spirit of post-it notes: easy to use and dirt cheap.

Ideal for blogging idea board

Jjot.com can be used as a to-do task list but that's kind of limiting its potential. I find this tool very useful for assembling random ideas which can form the basis of a piece of writing, such as blog post.

Jjot interface does not include sub-folders. Everything is done on a flat plane, visible in a single interface. Sub-folders are must items when we need to separate information, but they actually works against fusing ideas. When we put items in separate folders, those ideas become fixed, or in other word, dead. The currently-invisible connections among ideas are lost - we can see the connections among items in the same folder, but not at all beyond the folder "walls."

Putting all ideas in a single plane keeps the potential connections among the seemingly random ideas. Considering that one of the most interesting aspects of any writing, including blogging, is to witness the creation of a new idea/insight/truth by fusing well-known, existing topics, having all ideas in a single place without getting them over-cluttered is an ideal environment. I must confess I didn't know I needed it before I started using Jjot.com.

I also like keeping the size of each note small - 140 characters or so before the scroll bar starts showing up. This way, I can list many notes on my screen and also force myself to tighten my writing as well as thinking. One positive effect of Twitter is that it trains us to be a concise writer due to its 140 characters limitation. We can do the same for post-it notes.

Bonus: Ninjawords

The same creator has another useful tool called Ninjawords.com. It is touted as an online dictionary "fast as a ninja." After using it I can confirm it is fast - maybe faster than Ninjas. Google translation is still my favorite because of its translate-as-you-type response and practicality (for example, no need to search for the root word when looking up the meaning of a Spanish verb), but Ninjawords comes up at a good second place.

Writers vs editors

From Technical Editing by Carolyn D Rude: Ernest Mazzatenta (what a surname), former president of the Society for Technical Communication, has collected statements from hundreds of writer-researchers about what they like and dislike about editors. I am going to skip the boring part (what writers like most about editors) and get down to the juicy subject: what writers dislike most about editors. Bold highlights are added by yours truly.

• asks the writer to rewrite a section without giving any indication of what's wrong with it or any direction to take
• makes changes only to incorporate the editor's style of writing
• suggests qualifiers and disclaimers to analyses that, in the writer's professional judgment, are excessive
• uses words that are not acceptable to the writer and won't change them
• replaces words with synonyms
• requires too many iterations (for example, ten)
• makes comments that are inconsistent with the department head's comments

Except for the last two points, they are all about crash of the egos. I imagine the dialogue that goes there.

Writer: Don't forget who you are - do just what you are supposed to do.

Editor: Let me help you, hard-head. I know better about what good writing is about.

Should we all put down our keyboards and take 101 Office Politics?

iPad kills who?

I am milking the iPad news as much as possible, but this is the end. Every innovation crushes one or two old industry, and iPad is no exception. Who will be declared obsolete?

Netbook

It is the first obvious group of victims. The problem with netbooks is that they are not better at doing anything compared with iPad. Even the price point, the biggest advantage they have had so far, is eroding due to iPad's US$499 offer at the entry level. Even its most expensive model costs less than $900. High-end netbooks cost around $1,000. It is clear who the winner will be.

Kindle and its followers

The only advantage Kindle has over iPad is its incredible battery duration (1 week against iPad's maximum 10 hours). I personally have been a book person for my whole life, and I will buy an iPad over Kindle. It is because iPad allows me to distract. I cannot sustain my concentration over an hour just by reading a book. Sometimes I need to take a break, jot my notes down, and search for relevant information on the web - and iPad allows me to do them all.

Portable video player

Remember the DVD players with small LCD screen? They are all going to die. Bad news for Asian electronic industries clunking out those exotic players. Good news for frequent travelers who finally have a portable device with which they can spend the torturous time on the plane.

Digital photo frame

iPad does not have an SD card slot nor USB memory. But does it matter with iPad's 16GB or more storage? Besides, as my friend says, it is "a nice experience to view something/someone in the bed." Power-connected photo frames cannot do that, even if some of them can play videos and connect to the Internet.

Macbook Air

Apple's own products cannot be spared from the coming tsunami either. Macbook Air is essentially an iPad with slightly larger screen and full-size keyboard. Unfortunately the keyboard is not detachable, the screen is not touch-sensitive, and the battery dies after a couple of hours. In hindsight, Macbook Air will be remembered as a necessary experiment to move toward the iPad. (I volunteered myself to become a guinea pig. Only that I did not know.)

Phone support representatives at Apple

How do we separately pronounce iPod, iPad, and eye pad? Apple will be seeing the situation described in this skit from the classic movie Airplane! Millions of times - enough to kill several support representatives out of exhaustion.

Breakdown of iPad video: successor of Jobs

I bet that the true reason Steve Jobs "slipped" his tongue before iPad's official release and said that it would be his "most important thing he has ever done" is because he now really knows his days are numbered. Liver transplant is a serious issue and we shouldn't have a high hope for the new decade, probably even a quiet retirement for him. I think he knew iPad would be his last big job. How could it NOT be his most important work?

Switching the topics (I admire Steve Jobs but do not feel empathy for him), who would take the throne after he is gone? The iPad launch video holds a clue. I guess it is Apple's way of introducing the next leader(s).

Four executives are introduced in this video. One of them will be the CEO, and the rest will be promoted to CXO, whatever that X is. Here are the four, in the introduced order:

• Jonathan Ive, Senior Vice President Industrial Design
• Phillip W. Schiller, Senior Vice President Worldwide Product Marketing
• Scott Forstall, Senior Vice President iPhone Software
• Bob Mansfield, Senior Vice President Mac Hardware Engineering

Jonathan Ive

Pros: Guru of industrial design, which is probably the most important element of Apple-ness. Liked by Jobs supporters and haters alike due to his subdued and humble nature.

Cons: Looks like a soccer hooligan without beers and tattoos (maybe he has one). Too media shy. Too content being in the current position.

Phillip Schiller

Pros: The boss of marketing, which is usually the closest step toward the coveted CEO. Frequently talked on stage while Jobs was battling his cancer.

Cons: Has three big warts on his left cheek. I know, it is racist and irrelevant, but how come I clearly remember their positions and shapes but none of the stories he talked about in the video? When Steve talks, people watch. When Phillip talks, people stare.

Scott Forstall

Pros: Young.

Cons: Nobody knows him. Well, many people know by now, in the following context: "Who is Scott Forstall?" "That creepy guy in the video with misty eyes" "Oh I see. What does he do?" "I don't know"

Bob Mansfield

Pros: Sounds very knowledgeable and trustworthy. Despite the scary face, his eyes show genuine respect and kindness. Nicknamed "Teddybear" inside Apple. I don't know.

Cons: Probably looks better on the Mac vs. Windows ad series, but as an ex-KGB henchman for the Windows guy. Looks does matter.

Conclusion

Ive will be the new head. That is why he appears at both the beginning and the end of the video. Mansfield will become his mentor and soulmate who supports him in the backstage. Schiller will orchestrate the strategy and events. Forstall serves as the "passion" guy.

In the worst case scenario, Forstall gets sacked after people realize he ISN'T faking his misty eyes in the video. Schiller gets frustrated by his eternal No.2 position and starts demanding irrelevant stuff to Ive (such as: design something that looks like Windows machine - it's the best strategy to crush them). Mansfield and Ive leave Apple to start their venture. Apple goes back to the dark ages under the helm of Schiller. He then writes a memoir defending himself. Steve Jobs rests somewhere up there (or down there).

In the best case scenario, Steve Jobs recovers fully and continues being a tyranny for the employees and messiah for the users.