Category: Technology

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

An afternoon with M.Zuiko 9-18 and M.Zuiko 40-150

My Micro Four-Thirds camera’s travel kit is now completed – first, the 17 mm kit lens, then the 14-42 mm standard zoom, and then the extremely sharp and fast Lumix 20 mm. This basic set is recently complemented with the ultra lightweight and fast focusing zoom lens – M.Zuiko 9-18 (some pictures here) and M.Zuiko 40-150. So now my travel kit is the trusty E-P1, 20mm, and the two new zoom lens. With only three lens, it covers the range of 18mm to 300 mm. Absolutely lightweight, fun to use and with very good quality as well.

Some photos made in the last weekend along the beautiful Victoria Harbour of Hong Kong.

Best Travel books / guides / sites

After I threw away about “two feet of books” (in other words, I don’t know how many) and an hour’s hard work, I have made my travel bookshelf back in shape. After this “shake-up”, now I have “only” 200 travel books, about half of them are in English, and others in Chinese. Compare to my other IT / photography / web design / usability reference books, business books, comic books and novels, it is still quite a lot.

My travel book library

The reason I bought so many travel books is because, believe it or not, I like to “study” travel books … in other words, understand how they were written, how the information is categorized, presented, cross-referenced etc. etc. In Internet’s term, I like to study the information arhitecture of travel books. However, seriously, after studied so many travel books, I still have not found my ideal book.

All along I believe the best way to plan a trip is not to go to Internet to research, as there are too many information in the Internet and you have no way to tell which one is correct and which one is useful for your style of travel. Searching thru travel books and guides are not necessary the better way as well, mainly because it’s hard to search the details in the physical book. In addition, most books are just a long list of attractions but doesn’t tell you how to connect the attractions together.

Out of the 200 books from that mini-library, the best ones so far are the Daytrips series from Hastings House. All these books let you plan your trip day by day with all the attractions, transportation and dining details.

Therefore I think … will it be great if I can go to one single website and plan my all trips, with all the information I need in a day by day fashion (just like the Daytrips series) ? That idea has been planted in my mind for almost 10 years now, and about 3 and a half year ago I wrote this blog post to illustrate the possible database design …

Not sure you have the same trouble / idea like this or not but if you believe you cannot buy the best travel book from bookstores or Amazon, and you think you have to make your own travel guides – let me know. May be it is about time to develop the best travel site on earth.