Category: Services & Products

Second annual report of a tiny, little blog

Even though this tiny, little blog has been maintained for many years, I started the annual report only from year 2009. I found it’s a very good exerciseย  for me to review what I have done in the past 12 months, and then focus on how I can make this blog better. So here is it, the second annual report of the www.michaelyung.com.

One big achievement last year was the traffic, it reached the all time high in December, 2010 and the number of pageview was almost 10 times more than just two years ago. Really happy about it.

I think there is a couple of reasons of the traffic surge, one obviously is the ever growing popularity of the Amazon Kindle eReader. Many blog posts in this website were written about this fantastic device – Kindle news, tricks, and review reports. Another possible reason is I wrote some other blog posts about iPhone, iPad, Olympus M4/3 and blog engine setup. One last reason is I added the Facebook Like button to each blog post and it helped a lot to the traffic as the sharing of a blog post to my Facebook fans will get back many incoming traffic.

OK, back to the sales … year 2010 was a great year. I sold over 120 Kindles (4 times better than 2009), over 120 physical books and eBooks (6 times more compare to year 2009). And surprisingly I sold a few camera lens from Olympus and Panasonic as well. However, the most stunning sale was someone bought 20 Zune HD music players with one order !!

Lastly, same as year 2009, there were many bizarre sales such as Hair regrowth treatment, coconut oil, bed raiser, soap dispenser, Yamaha guitar, and even X’mas LED bulbs. Amazing.

So that’s about it, what’s going to happen next year ?! I will let you know same time next year.

Kindle 3 – the Bestselling Product of All Time on Amazon

According to the latest press release from Amazon, they announced that the Kindle 3 is now the bestselling product in their history, even better than the “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7)”. And in the same business wire, it says on Christmas Day, more people turned on new Kindles for the first time, downloaded more Kindle Buy Once, Read Everywhere apps, and purchased more Kindle books than on any other day in history.

I am sure the above claims are true as somehow this tiny site you are reading also reached the all time high traffic in 26th December, 2010 – the Boxing Day and a Sunday!!

The top 10 visited blog posts are:

  1. Running Gmail with your Kindle 2
  2. Reading PDF documents in Kindle 2
  3. Connect Kindle 2 to 3G network
  4. Buy Kindle books from outside US
  5. Facebook photo album image size
  6. Buy Kindle 2 from outside US
  7. Using Kindle outside US
  8. 10 steps to migrate your iPhone 3G / 3GS to iPhone 4
  9. Kindle 2 firmware update to read PDF files
  10. The first 30 days

7 out of the top 10 are in fact Kindle related posts. Congratulations, Kindle !!

The first 30 days

“We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.” – Mother Teresa

Years ago I bought the book The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels and thought that might be one day I needed it for a new job or new role. It was a good read, but not until I took up the new job last November, I found I needed the skills in the book badly. However, I am also convinced that in nowadays’ Internet business world – 90 days are too long to prove your value. In many cases, you have only one month, or even only two weeks to understand the business / operations, to contribute and to make an impact.

So I’ve been on board for 30 days, in a new office, a new business initiative, a new technology infrastructure and with a new group of bright people. What did I learn ? They are:

  1. Well before you join the company, learn as much as possible about the new business – search the materials from Wikipedia, Google etc. and read. Also, ask around to see if your friends can tell you something about the business and technology behind it.
  2. Be a good listener, learn from the new colleagues and try to understand their problems and what they need at the same time.
  3. Don’t be afraid of making decision, even if you don’t know everything. It’s important to make decisions and to make mistakes in the first few weeks / months. And then, don’t make any more mistakes.
  4. Be proactive. It may be difficult to be proactive if you are not familiar with the environment. But I reckon we can wait forever and do nothing; or we can make the first move, ask for more work, and then learn new things along the way.
  5. Train your staff, don’t hold back. Train them everything you have – your skills, your knowledge, your ideals.
  6. Last but not least, don’t stop to contribute – even outside your office hour. For example, joining local UX interest group.

“No man is so poor as to have nothing worth giving: as well might the mountain streamlets say they have nothing to give the sea because they are not rivers. Give what you have. To someone it may be better than you dare to think.” – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Olympus E-5 test shots

It’s hard to write a camera test report without a lab like dpreview.com or writing skills like passionate photographer Robin Wong. But what I can do is to give you some first hand information from the point of view of an E-1, E-300, E-510 (I sold it already) and E-P1 user. First the new E-5 is very solid, as good as E-1 if not better. It’s heavier, larger, but also easy to handle.

All the controls are easy to access, and the control menu is no stranger to users from E-510 and E-P1. The 10 art filters are very useful, especially I don’t like to post-process the photos to get the same effect (but as we all Olympus camera owners know, we don’t need to post-process the photos because the JPEG engine is so good).

However, the major breakthrough is the sharpness of the photos, it’s unreal from a camera with “only” 12 Megapixels. I now truly believe 12 Megapixels is all I need but not 20 Megapixels, really. Here are some test pictures I took yesterday, all with the Zuiko 50mm F/2.0 lens.

Loneliness

According to Wikipedia, “Loneliness” is an unpleasant feeling in which people experience a strong sense of emptiness and solitude.

And I think it’s now in that state – the busier the work, the stronger that loneliness feeling … Airport, office, hotel, office, hotel, office, airport … never-ending. To many, they will treat it by visiting their family doctor; to some, they buy something expensive; to Olympus camera fans, they will certainly get the new flagship camera E-5.