If you’re a fan of Steve Jobs and Guy Kawasaki, you will love their presentation to death. They both have excellent presentation skills and professionally prepared slides. For skills, I think you really need to have their charisma as well as working hard … i.e. not all of us can do that. But for the slides, at least you can reference their high-impact slides and get some ideas. Here is one from a marketing firm with pretty much the same idea – Meet Henry. Enjoy !!
Category: Technology
Dopod C730
I waited for the Samsung SGH-i600 / BlackJack for over 6 months and I don’t think I can wait any longer. First, Dopod introduced the C730 (i.e. the HTC Cavalier) in town with a very attractive price and secondly, unlike the BlackJack, the C730 is pre-installed with the latest WM6. So … how’s it ?
Here is the picture of the C730 with my previous phone Nokia N80. The theme I installed with the C730 is the Razor-TXW from Cuago Designworks.
Check out how thin it is …
But one point to note though … the manual and the software come with the device / CD are all in Chinese (?!)
The Last Waltz – La Dernière Valse
One of my friends once said if you found a TV ad that you don’t understand what the fuzz all about … then it’s probably an ad of a new housing estate or apartment. All these ads are full of beautiful cars, scenery, women and men – i.e. nothing really matter with the housing estate. Another trick they used to do is to have someone sing a very beautiful song in the ad.
Recently there is another such hard-to-understand TV ad. Again there is a very good song in the ad with a very familiar tune, but this time it is a French song. So what’s that song ? Let’s do some Internet searches.
I first went to Google and search the name of the new housing estate – “XXXXX”. Quite some results popped up and it seems many are asking the same question from one popular forum. So I searched again in Google but skipping all the links from that forum site – “XXXXX -site:YYY.com”. Soon I found the answer, as someone in one music forum know the answer – the song is The Last Waltz. Ah … that’s why the tune is so familiar, it’s the famous song by Engelbert Humperdinck.
So what’s next ? I searched again in Google – “Last Waltz French version”. Yes … that’s it – the result returns “La Dernière Valse by Petula Clark”. So “The Last Waltz” in French is “La Dernière Valse” and sang by one French singer Petula Clark. There is even a site with a part of the song as well. And you can buy her CD in Amazon.com
Of course, the next stop is Youtube, and then I found the whole song / video by the famous Japanese singer Lisa Ono (sorry for the extra click, as the video is set to view only in Youtube, but not in other places).
Lastly, the original song by Engelbert Humperdinck, 40 years ago. Enjoy !!
The First 112 Pages
I’ve told myself many times not to buy this book – The World Is Flat
But just before the trip to Thailand, I decided to give it a try – after all, being a book-addict, I could not leave a bookstore empty-handed 😎
So after 112 pages, what did I find ? I found that if you’re living in Asia, and if you’re working in IT / Internet industry … then, don’t buy this book, it’s probably a waste of time. In these pages, the author wrote about outsourcing industry in India and China; and then how the fall of Berlin Wall changed the world; and then same to the Internet, fiber optic cables, Netscape browser, open-source software etc. etc..
All these topics were no doubt written in a lucidly clear fashion, and the author did research a lot for the book … but hey, all these topic are old news … so old that everyone should already knew it – unless you don’t know what’s going on in Asia and Internet.
Then you will probably ask, why it’s such a hot book in U.S.A ? My view is, excuse me, many American just don’t know much about what’s going on in Asia, outsourcing, Internet and globalization … Of course, I will read the rest of the book (another 400 pages) and I may change my view of this rather well-written book. In the meantime, stay tuned.
User Experience – Unsubscribing a Newsletter
It never comes to my mind that even a newsletter unsubscribe function requires some user experience design. But recently, two colleagues left the company and their subscribed newsletters were all forwarded to me. Obviously, some of these newsletters overlapped with my own and I want to unsubscribe those. In addition, I want to unsubscribe some newsletters that do not relevant to me.
You know, every newsletter has an unsubscription link somewhere in the bottom of the newsletter. So in the past few weeks I tried many of these “unsubscription functions” and soon I found that there are at least four ways to unsubscribe a newsletter (!)
Click that unsubscription link and:
- It hops to anther site with an email address in the URL – the destination website simply unsubscribe the newsletter based on the email address in the link / URL and then greet you with a message – You’ve unsubscribed the newsletter.
- The link leads you to a site, you will need to answer some questions about why you wanna unsubscribe the newsletter. Later on, the web page unsubscribe the newsletter requested.
- The link leads you to a site like method 2, but you have to login with a proper password. Afterward, you still need to answer some questions about why you wanna unsubscribe the newsletter.
- The link simply pop up a mail client and ask you to send out an email from the original subscription email address, with an email subject line like “unsubscribe XXX newsletter”.
All methods work, if you are the subscriber … but what if I wanna unsubscribe emails like in my case ?
- Method 4 doesn’t work for me, as I could not send out an email with the original subscriber’s email address.
- Method 3 doesn’t work for me, as I don’t know my colleagues’ password.
- Method 2 is ok, but I have to answer some stupid questions …
- Method 1 is the best, simple and fast.
So web site designers / developers, please implement method 1. Others don’t work and not user friendly in some cases.
M.Y. Lessons Learnt 