The cable TV recently rerun the classic movie “Casino” by Martin Scorsese and it really reminds me the beautiful neonlights and signs of Las Vegas … you know, no matter how popular the new LED lights are, only the old style neon signs have the taste of LV.
Month: December 2006
Las Vegas – Special effect
Tourists spend most of their time around the Strip of Las Vegas but in fact they really shall spend a night to the Frement Street of Las Vegas downtown (oh yes, believe it or not, the Strip is not the downtown of LV).
With neon lights like this, who need special effect ?
Las Vegas – What to do ?
Being an “IT Practitioner”, it is really hard to convince me to place my bets or even sit around a gambling (ooops … gaming) table, even in Las Vegas.
You know, everyone can calculate the odds of winning and you will know it’s a sure loss. So what I did was to tour around the casinos, hotels … one by one … just treat them like different museums. Of course, I highly recommend the Harley-Davidson store and the Coca Cola Museum.
Web Idea: WeTube !!
OK, we are the person of the year 2006, according to Time. According to the magazine, we are the person of the year because instead of watching TV after work, we write, we shoot, we video etc. and contribute those contents to the web. And many of those contents, actually changed the world. Hmmm … I agree with that, but to me it happens every year since the born of browser back in 1994 / 1995.
Back to the idea, what will be the possible next step of all these photo, video, music sharing services ? In the past few years, there is one category of digital product waiting to take off – Digital Photo Frame. It’s now cost as low as US$ 100 and for some companies like Ceiva and eStarling, you can even update the photos automatically.
The concept of Ceiva and eStarling is quite simple but novel – the user upload the photos to a central storage or send the photos to an email address; and the digital photo frame will show the newly uploaded pictures automatically. Imagine you buy this frame to your parents and grandparents. They can see you new pictures without switching on their computers (even they know how to do it).
My idea is about combining these Web 2.0 stuff with the Ceiva / eStarling concept … WeTube !!
Imagine you can shoot a short video and upload to WeTube (the next generation of YouTube 8-). Your “multi-media player frame”, will periodically download the video and play it in the frame. Imagine … your family doctor will tell you to do a body check up in his / her video. Your children will send you the clip of their recent trips in Europe. Your friends will tell you their recent updates etc. etc. You tube, we tube, everybody tube …
All these can be done because of Google / YouTube already have hundreds of thousands of servers to provide the feed and in fact, the traffic shall be even less for such targeted video transmission if you use the Venice project approach.
In the ultimate WeTube X.0 version, even the TV and Cable companies will broadcast their shows using this approach … finally, a customer-centric TV.
A (Sad) Christmas Story
Now everyone of us owns one, two or even three digital cameras. We have mobile phone cameras, idiot-proof digital cameras and digital SLRs … and we can capture any image around us with just a flip of finger.
But what if you can capture something really touching, something that can tell a story, even though it is a sad one ?
M.Y. Lessons Learnt 