Author: Michael Yung

Michael possessed over 30 years of experience in Information Technology with focuses on complex application development, database technologies and IT strategy. He also spent the last 20 years in Internet technology, eCommerce development / operations, web usability, computer security and Public Key Infrastructure technologies.

Journey To the West … Part 2

So I was stuck in Paris, CDG airport. Luckily, I managed to get a seat of another flight and all I needed was to find ways to kill the 5 hours wait. First thing came to mind, of course was to send email to Copenhagen to postpone the meeting …

In the whole Terminal 2D of this airport, there were only two Internet Kiosks and the minimum charge to access the net (for 15 minutes) was “only” 2.5 Euro. What a rip off ? Do the airport operator know Internet now is very important to business travelers, or any casual travelers ?

I swiped my credit card and started to type the email with the metalic keyboard, letter by letter … what a pain ?!

Lesson Learnt: Make ubiquitous Internet access free please.

Journey To the West … Part 1

I checked the details of the e-Ticket (Hometown – Paris – Copenhagen) and asked myself many times before the trip – “Can I really make the connection in 50 minutes in CDG airport ?” …

Almost like a Murphy’s Law experiment, the flight delayed to take off for half an hour… and it took longer flight hour than expected to arrive Paris because of strong wind … and then it was a long queue to go to the connect-flight transfer area … and it took me 18 minutes to run from one gate to another (what a brilliant design of airport ?!)

I missed the flight to Copenhagen. Dame it. And I have to stuck in the CDG airport …

Lesson Learnt: Reserve at least two hours for flight connection.

#53

Just came back from a trip with a mind recharged but the body discharged … it was just a very tiring trip. Anyway some thoughts from the trip …

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I think we all had the same experience – no matter where we traveled, we kept comparing the other countries / cities with our city. And same in my trip, I kept thinking why the “systems” in Copenhagen and Paris are so inefficient … their airports, subways, restaurants etc. etc.

That questions kept popping in my mind and then one day in Paris I asked myself another question – is our city a better city then Copenhagen and Paris … even though we are doing things “a lot more efficient” ?

The answer is of course NO. Then I reckon doing things efficiently are good, but not great anymore. I mean, that’s no good by just keep doing the old things (even though in a super efficient way) any more. We need to do things in a new way …

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Then I found all sort of interesting things around me. The subway display panel in Copenhagen is a lot advance than in HK. Even the toilet design is a lot clever than I saw anywhere (even though it was designed _40_ years ago).

And the ticketing kiosks in Paris have only three user interface elements – Yes button, No button and a “scroll bar” – there is no mouse pad, no keyboard, no touch screen. But it does everything you found in our subway’s ticketing kiosks – including support of multi-language, multi-products and multi-payment methods.

All these “Think outside the box” designs are so good that it blend into the city’s culture seamlessly – you don’t even know they exist unless you take a very close eyes to those.

And I think that’s what we need – Doing things efficiently and differently. That shall be our goal to compete in this volatile market.

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Things change quickly and I learnt the following lines from my friend couple of weeks ago.

If you are a wind-surfer professional,

  • that’s no use to master the skill of forecasting the wind direction.
  • what more important is to master the skill of maneuver the sail and the board when the wind changes.

Indeed, wind (like business scenario) changes all the time, that’s no point to forecast how, when and where it changes; but we all shall focus ourselves in learning the skill on handling the changes itself.

Three Websites, Three Web Tools

Finally finished the revamp of three web sites and I used three different web tools to do the job. One is a Blog tool, one is a CMS and one is a Wiki tool. So first question, why three different tools ?

It was a very good lesson to me, because I learnt that all these tools are targeting different requirements.

If your web site content is like a diary, a record of something and you don’t mind to present your content in a chronological order – then you should use a Blog tool. If your site is a news oriented site and you need to present your content by sections or categories, then you should use a CMS.

Lastly, if your site is like a knowledge base, you need to update the same piece of content again and again, and you want to present your content like a mind map – Wiki tool is the way to go.

Lesson Learnt: Different tasks require different tools.

Web 2.0 ?

All a sudden there is a lot of talks about the Web 2.0 – i.e. Gmail, Google Map, Flickr, Del.icio.us, Technorati, Wikipedia etc. etc. They all use commonplace technologies such as AJAX, RIA, Wiki, Blog, tagging etc. etc.

But what exactly we are heading to ?

I recently revamped one website (80days.com) from PostNuke to Dokuwiki. And apart from some minor hiccups, the installation / configuration was smooth and Wiki is really a lot easier than CMS (if your document requires changes after changes like 80days.com).

And I am sure, there are better tools out there to make the web to be our web / application platform. Don’t wait, try it out.

Lesson Learnt: Time to evolve to next generation of the web.