Upgrade to WordPress 2.5

WordPress released the latest version 2.5 for two weeks now. So I decided to give it try, after skipping 1 or 2 upgrades in the past few months. The upgrade process was simple as usual.

  • Deactivate all the plugins
  • Backup the database
  • Download the latest codebase, unzip and transfer to the server
  • Run the upgrade.php
  • Activate back the plugins

There are something I like / dislike / puzzle about this version:

  • The plugin upgrade is now almost painless, very useful
  • Not all plugins can work with this version, however
  • The new administrator dashboard is fresh-looking, but need sometime to get used to. For example, I don’t like the categories section in New Post screen is now underneath the text box, but not on the right hand side
  • Somehow, two files were mixed up – plugins.php and post-new.php. Click the plugins function links to the New Post page and vise versa (!). I have to re-download the files, not sure what went wrong
  • The new engine is super slow !!

Yes, Wii can do it …

Do you know your Wii remote can be hacked to create an interactive whiteboard, a multi-touch surface and even a Virtual Reality display head tracking device ? All these great ideas are from the brilliant graduate student in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University – Johnny Lee.

I think we will soon see the Minority Report hand-waving device very very soon, won’t we ?

http://static.videoegg.com/ted2/flash/loader.swf

Zoom your pics

We all now have cameras with over 10 million pixels, but when you posted the resized version to the web you will lost all the details of the picture. One possible solution is to zoomify it, such that you can see all the details (pretty much like Google Map).

Following is the grand hall ceiling of the Venetian Hotel Macao. Give it a try.

http://www.michaelyung.com/image/macau/zoomifyViewer.swf

Presenting data

What will you do to present Number of deaths for leading causes of death. Let’s say the meaningless data will be something like:

  • Heart disease: 652,091
  • Cancer: 559,312
  • Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 143,579
  • Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 130,933
  • Accidents (unintentional injuries): 117,809
  • Diabetes: 75,119
  • etc.

Here is probably the best way:

See, will that help you to rethink how to present your data ?

Change the world

Back in 1997, Apple ran a TV commercial with a slogan – “Think Different”. The last line in this famous ad was …

… the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do …

In 2000, a team of professionals thought they could change the world and they got together, developed one of the most sophisticated Internet-based e-Government infrastructure at that time in Asia. And the rest is history. There were many naysayers in the industry all along, and they were just all talk and no action. But we are the one who really delivered the system, who spent countless days and nights to make it work, to maintain it and to serve 7 millions people in the city …

It’s really a great experience to work with you all in the last 8 years and I would like to thank every single one of you. You know who you are. As a token of thanks, following is one video captures all the beautiful moments I have …

http://static.animoto.com/swf/w.swf?w=swf/vp1&e=1294739649&f=Pm7qBJT7F3UcDAErvBDSGA&d=55&m=b&r=f&i=w&options=

We changed the world around us, but it’s time for me to move on. Thank you again and see you all around …