Yet Another Week In Seattle

Jan 20 – Jan 25, #1109, Hyatt Regency Bellevue, window facing west, over the hills down the road is the Lake Washington.

The only task was to attend the ExPo-Tech program. All the time I explained it as a training, although it is stressed as a journey at the kicked off meeting months before. I totally agree with Karen that it is so much more than a training. Training usually gives one person some things like knowledge, skills, techniques. To talk about journey, it mainly means you are part of it other than standing outside. Here you learn, you experience, you grow. The only difference from general journey is that no goal is predefined. The only commitment is our time. The achievements totally depend every individual.

The content focuses on personality, networking, and communications. It added some about self-awareness as well. The 3.5-day-long time was full of these bunch of things, which made me exited, surprised, and a little bit tired. Hardly can I spell out every details. Let me try to highlight some points which impressed me a lot.

CREDIBILITY. I became to recognizing the importance of it as soon as I learn about this word, which is definitely one of the core values for the western people. To my understanding so far, it is kind of capability that others can expect something on you, although it is not necessary they do require that from you. They know you can make it. They believe you can achieve it. No promises, no conditions, only credit. Also, that reminded me that the whole western world is build on a solid credit base. Credibility is just like the sun rising everyday. I’d ever taken honesty as the most important thing to me. From now on, it is upgraded to credibility. Where is your sun? Is it rising tomorrow?

YOUR BUSINESS V.S. MY BUSINESS. It’s well-known that the western people do not consider others as we Chinese do. Basically they are described more self-centric. They enjoy living isolate. They care about privacy. They break into your speech suddenly if they have question. They drive the children out once they are 18. They do not even take care of the elders. Is it true? Perhaps mainly yes. However, you may also find some other interesting things. They respect your greatness. They donate a lot. They serve the society. They enjoy being volunteers. They approach to help you out as soon as you are lost. They never hesitate show up the greatest smile to you. What’s up? Why these things look so different from each other? I suppose they are clearly separate things of what’s your business and what’s my business. Never step on others’ feet. Nor boring me by attempting to do me a favor without permission. Giving someone a hand is greatly praised. But, it must be necessary and the privacy is not violated.

CULTURE DIFFERENCE. It is even more complicated than that I can imagine. One game from Day 1 is to select top 6 personal important words from a bunch of cards labeled with words such as curiosity, passion, family, innovation, integrity, health, blabla. Possible you can figure out that curiosity must be have for the western guys. However, can you imagine that family is seldom included in their selection? Neither is the health. We randomly selected a partner to share the top 6 words with each other. It turned out to be a very small intersection.  The paragraph above can add to this point as well. Why it seems somewhat wired to us? It is roughly because the difference between cultures.

LANGUAGE PROBLEM. Again and again I suffered from the fact that English is my second language. Thinking, translating, then communicating. There’s an extra step, which make me mad, especially in the small group discussion. Conversation kept flowing quickly from time to time. It is really hard to concentrate on both the idea and the language. Whatever, everything around language stuffs were improved more or less. I had no choice but try my best to catch up. One more personal trick is that speak aloud is really more important and more acceptable than murmured without language problem, especially for the western people. They will pass you if you cannot be heard clearly twice.

[-- Main part stops here. Some other interesting things below --]

Watched one NBA game. Houston Rocket V.S. Seattle Super Sonic. 109:107 Yao was not bad.

Had a tour on the Museum of Flight. Amazing.

Bought two books.

1. Yoga – The Path to Holistic Health by B.K.S Iyengar.
2. The Complete Sherlock Holmes

Seattle was clear and shinning. But San Francisco was raining.

http://ditu.live.com

Please check it out. I will write more about it some later.

http://ditu.live.com

[update: December 14th, 2007]

Virtual earth is a map service already deployed in US for years. Also, there’re lots of local map services in P.R.China. Now, the local map service specified for P.R.China is going live from Microsoft. It is developed by the VE team in Windows Live (China).

Although live search is coming better and better, the virtual earth is now rushing ahead. I haven’t used it too much. However, I believe it is a great product which can compete against the ones from other competitors. I know the guys in the VE China very well. They are excellent, crazy, full of passion. They devote very much to the baby product. I do know the difficulties of make it happen in this country as a foreign company. Both the tech things and the non-tech things. After all, after months, it happens. And, it will be better and better.

Usually, I used go2map, mapbar, mapabc, 51ditu, the map services from baidu and google while search somewhere in China. Now, I have another good choice. To be frank, I do not think the accuracy could be very different across so many map services. Especially in this country, too much changes are happening day after day. G, a super guy in VE China team, kept talking to me, his commitment is to achieve the top accuracy. His confidence impressed me a lot. And, I do know he is well qualified to achieve this goal because of the strong tech background and high level view. To talk about the user experience of this map service, it is my favorite feature, especially of the transit service. No longer type in, search and then route, Click-route instead. Open the map, right click your location, set as the start point, right click the target location, set as the stop point. That’s ALL. It is really straight forward, really COOL as well. Look into the results, the transit points are marked with dash lines and you are kindly informed a walk is possibly necessary. It looks like a service provided by human other than by machine. It is really awesome, isn’t it? I like these features even though I seldom take a bus nowadays. While I introduced this service to Min yesterday, she performed several tests, which turned to be really difficult to make a satisfied route by machine. One typical scenario is to find a transit plan between two points WITHIN Tsinghua (Haha, this naughty girl). Know what? The transit plans returned are almost the same as we expected, even the two points are somewhat far from the gates. Can’t you help loving such a service?

地圖服務在中國大陸已經遍地開花。微軟早已擁有自己的地圖服務，但在中國一直是個空白。現在，微軟中國終于也交出了自己的答卷，這就是http://ditu.live.com。

這是一個優秀的服務。我尤其喜歡其中的公交換乘功能。與以往的類似服務不同，查公交換乘，可以不需要先搜索出發和到達的地點，而只需要直接在圖上用右鍵就可以直接標記出發和到達的地點了。對於並不知道確切的車站分佈的情形，這顯然是非常有用的，當然，方便更是不用説了。此外，如果中途需要換乘，那麽在換乘點會用虛綫標出兩個車站的位置，距離和行走的估計——這個設計確實很人性化。尤其在北京這樣的城市，往往一個站名在多條綫路上會對應多個不同的地點，是不是在馬路同側不必說，單是距離有時候就有夠人走的，還不算走錯的情形，而有了這個換乘點的信息，是多麽方便的事情啊？真貼心！雖然我已經很少去乘公交車，不過，這仍然是我最喜歡的功能之一。

關於地圖數據的精確度再説兩句——其重要性自不必言，實現難度也是周知的，尤其在中國北京這樣變化日新月異的地方。我不敢說微軟地圖服務的精確度和其他相比會如何，畢竟，數據本身的準確從根本上我們作不了主，我們的工作與合作夥伴的努力是緊密相關的。但是，一個地圖的核心開發人員G，我的好朋友，一直對我說，他就是要做中國精確度一流的地圖，這是他的承諾。我深知這是我能期許和等待的承諾，因爲我了解他，了解他們做地圖的一群人，他們有這個信心，更重要的有這個能力達到這個目標。他們了解中國，他們有微軟支持，他們有合作夥伴的幫助，需要的只是時間和耐心了。

昨天，向敏介紹這個服務的時候，她頗刁難了一下公交換乘。比如，在清華“裏面”選兩個地方，讓地圖找出一個換乘方案（這丫頭有夠狠）哈，一開始我可沒期望機器能夠得出讓人滿意的結果。但看到方案后，還是讓人很滿意的，不信可以親自試試哦。:p

Javascript: Number <–> UTC

<script>
	document.write((new Date(112345920*1000)).toUTCString());
	document.write(Date.UTC(2007, 06, 07)/1000);
</script>

Attention:

1.  The month is ZERO-based while invoke UTC.
2. Millisecond, other than Second, is the functions variables

Reference: Date reference from w3schools.

Movie: SECRET [不能說的秘密]

I love this movie.

 

–

Update[10 Aug. 2007]:

Watched the movie again last night. Even love it more.

One year, one pound

Title borrowed from Eric.

One year passed since I joined this company. This is my first job on my career path. I love this job, especially enjoy working with persons full of passion here. It is a really big change for me to start at such a point from school life to career life. Actually, too many changes happened and are happening in this year. Let me try to list them below:

• Get married after a 8-year-long falling in love. That’s really really important to me.
• Achieved the goal to get PhD. Actually, I don’t think it difficult to me to get PhD. from Tsinghua DCS&T. But, it did consume me too much. I must catch up what I’ve lost, the time, the passion, the energy.
• Found an ideal job. The job is much different than I ever thought about, however, even more better than I expected. I definitely love it, although the organization keeps changing from time to time.
• Having a car. Peugeot 206. Small, but cute. Small, but enough. Small, but easy to drive. Small, but make life better. Min and I enjoy the rush to GuiJie for dinner at night. We love to drive around Beijing for fun. Is it amazing?
• kunwu.org ready. Blogging again. It will not change my life much. But, it will run along with me.
•  …

Too many exciting stuffs rush into memory. The list is not competed. I’ll fill it all the time, all my life.

–

參加工作一年了。這是我的第一份工作，我喜歡這份工作，更喜歡和這里充滿激情的一群人一起工作。這一年對我來說，有太多的變化，而且，有些還正在進行當中。列一列吧：

• 結婚了！八年的愛情長跑進入了一個新的起點。這對我該是最重要的一件事兒了。愿天下有情人終成眷屬！
• 拿到博士學位。這個博士拿的著實不易。在上面我失去的太多。要補回來，全都補回來，那些失去的日子，那些激情，那些……
• 找到了一份理想的工作。這工作和我最初的想像很不同，但是是出乎意料的合我胃口。一下子，成家，立業，兩全了！
• 有了車車。標志206，很小，但是可愛，夠用，容易開，更重要的，讓生活更美好，我們喜歡夜里沖到簋街大快朵頤，喜歡在北京四處兜風。很酷，不是嗎？
• 有了kunwu.org。真正開始寫博客。
• ……

一下子有許多的激動人心的事情涌入腦海。這個列表看來是寫不完的，因為，要用一輩子去寫了，認真地寫，快樂的寫。

Biao is on track.

Biao will quit Sogou and join Sober’s team. I got this news a few weeks ago. I’m not surprised about this. In the days that Biao was leaving Tsinghua, I can tell the Sogou would not be the final stop for him, although the project was attractive to him. Personally speaking, the most important thing to Biao is the balance between his novel ideas and the business benefits. Actually, it’s hard to leverage them, even if for a veteran. Biao want to stand at the frontline. At the same time, Biao needs the flexibility to move back and forth at will. A startup but not too fresh or a medium corp will possibly be the good choice.

It must be an amazing opportunity and position to work in Sober’s team for Biao. The WEB based stuffs are the major tasks for him. Biao always keeps talking about the good ideas since he’s a student. Now, will the dreams come true? I really do think so. Biao is now on the track.

Nevertheless, as Biao worried, he will give up much and push himself in a somewhat risky adventure. To some extent, it’s right, especially from the points of the family’s view. More bandwidth will be devoted to the family being a fresh father. Surely I can understand this situation. But, what I believe is that the right choice is to let the right person do the right job in a right time. Also, I belief Biao can make a wonderful balance after joining the new team.

Is there some advice for him? No, but only take care. Enjoy life, enjoy job, enjoy the reunion of roommates. Nothing but a best wish for his new adventure.

Good Luck! Mozilla Online!

Mozilla Online opened this Monday. Li announced it in his blog. The new office locates at Building C in Tsinghua Science Park. Again, Li returns back to the Tsinghua campus. From Sun Micro System to Windows Live (China), now the Mozilla, never has Li move beyond this area. 

Several months before, nobody knows what Li will take as the next career adventure while he quits Microsoft. We can understand why he left Microsoft. But none of us have an idea about where he would go. Seems neither did Li can tell. Guang had talk to me the possible choices. Google? MySpace? whatever. There’s almost solid reasons that each of them is not fitful for Li, especially considering the Li’s experiences. At that time, surely Mozilla was not in the candidate list because of no information about Mozilla’s plan in China. However, several month ago, while we heard that Li joined Mozilla Online, and he would build up the new head-quarter in China all by himself, we all agree that this is a good, perhaps the best choice.

Li had talked some about his job in Mozilla Online. Mozilla conducts a very different business from the traditional software industry. It’s indirect. It’s full of freedom. It’s a big challenge in China. Being compare to IE, the Internet customers in China know very few about Firefox. Even less if talk about Thunderbird, Sunbird, etc. To some extent, it could be a power toy for Geek. It’s very reasonable to argue the future of Mozilla in China. However, if consider the popular IE-hearted browser Maxthon, we would have more confidence. Change is the only constant. And, impossible is nothing.

I’m very glad that Li locates the new office nearby, although I cannot tell why I’m happy about it. Good Luck Mozilla Online. Good Luck Li!

–

谋智网络这周一正式挂牌了。宫力在他的blog里宣布了这个消息。公司选址在清华科技园C座。这样，从Sun到Windows Live (China)，再到谋智网络，宫力又回到了清华。

几个月前，当宫力离开微软，没人知道他会去哪里。似乎他自己也没有具体的安排。杨光曾经和我一起猜过，但是所有能想到的地方似乎都不适合。当然，那时没有想到谋智网络，因为还没有Mozilla要在中国开展业务的消息呢。后来，听到了宫老师选择Mozilla，并且亲自打造中国公司的消息，倒是恍然觉得这个选择是个很好的选择，甚至是最好的。当然，仅限于从在我们的角度看。

宫老师提到了一些在谋智网络的工作。Mozilla的商业模式和传统的软件产业好像有很大的不同。不那么直接，充满自由，并且具有挑战。和IE相比，在中国知道Firefox的用户很少，如果谈到Thunderbird，Sunbird等等，也许会更少。有理由怀疑Mozilla在中国的发展是不是会一帆风顺。但是呢，如果想想傲游（Maxthon）的流行，似乎应该对Mozilla在中国的未来有信心！万事皆有可能。

知道宫老师又回到了这边，有种莫名的高兴。好运，谋智网络！好运，宫老师！：）

–

謀智網絡這周一正式開張了。宮力在他的blog里宣布了這個消息。公司選址在清華科技園C座。這樣，從Sun到Windows Live (China)，再到謀智網絡，宮力又回到了清華。

幾個月前，當宮力離開微軟，沒人知道他會去哪里。似乎他自己也沒有具體的安排。楊光曾經好我一起猜過，但是所有能想到的地方似乎都不適合。當然，那時沒有想到謀智網絡，因為還沒有Mozilla要在中國開展業務的消息呢。后來，聽到了宮老師選擇Mozilla，并且親自打造中國公司的消息，倒是恍然覺得這個選擇是個很好的選擇，甚至是最好的。當然，僅限于從我們的角度看。

宮老師提到了一些在謀智網絡的工作。Mozilla的商業模式和傳統的軟件產業好像有很大的不同。不那么直接，充滿自由，并且具有挑戰。和IE相比，在中國知道Firefox的用戶很少，如果談到Thunderbird，Sunbird等等，也許會更少。有理由懷疑Mozilla在中國的發展是不是會一帆風順。但是呢，如果想想傲游（Maxthon）的流行，似乎應該對Mozilla在中國的未來有信心！萬事皆有可能。

知道宮老師又回到這邊，有種莫名的高興。好運，謀智網絡！好運，宮老師！：）

Using Reference.com in IE7

While surfing, what will you do if you need to lookup a word without a dictionary at hand? It turns out to be a good idea to lookup it up by the services provided by Reference.com.  It can be set as a search provider if you are using IE7. Open the search provider setting dialog by click Changing Search Defaults … on the drop down list besides the search box embedded in IE7. Add this string as another search provider and set it default one.

 http://www.reference.com/browse/all/TEST

Attention: TEST must be in UPPERCASE so that it can be replaced by what you want to lookup. Press Ctrl-E to set focus on the search box. Press Alt-Enter can open the search result in a new tab window. What about it?

如果手頭沒有英文字典，可以用Reference.com查單詞。在IE7下，還可以把他加為一個搜索提供商，并設為缺省值。這樣，按Ctrl-E可以激活搜索框，按Alt-Enter可以在一個新的tab里面打開搜索結果，是不是很方便？添加搜索提供商的對應字符串如下（注意TEST必須大寫）：

 http://www.reference.com/browse/all/TEST

—-

Update [2007/06/28]

An easier way to add to the search provider list: while browsing reference.com, it can be automatically added as candidate into the popup list while clicking the down arrow button. That’s cool, isn’t it?

Also, another amazing dictionary service, The Free Dictionary , is strongly recommended. It provides dictionary, thesaurus, idioms, wikipedia and some other special references. Moreover, you can search by double-clicking a word on the page. That’s really awesome. Actually, it’s the one I used now.

還可以有一個更簡單的加入方法，在瀏覽reference.com時，單擊那個向下的小三角，點開增加搜索提供商的菜單，就會發現它已經作為一個候選被發現并放在里面了。

此外，發現一個更加推薦的站點The Free Dictionary。它提供了辭典、同義詞、成語、wikipedia等多個參考源。還有，它支持在頁面上直接雙擊查詞，厲害吧。我現在就在用它。贊！

Debugging with Flash Debug Player version 9

A Flash Debug Player is shipped together with Flex SDK. Whatever, for version 9, something is different from the earlier versions in the configuration. The links below provide very perfect tutorials step-by-step. 

• digitalflipbook: Trace from the browser, using standard trace()
• mentalaxis » Debugging with Flash Player 9,0,28,0

And, an Adobe official link to test the Flash Player version installed.

• Adobe – Developer Center : Debugging Client-Side Code in Flex Applications

The official download page for all kinds of Flash Debug Players

• Adobe Flash Player – Downloads

And, an add-on for Firebox (Flash Debug Player needed)

• Flash Tracer

Flex SDK提供了一個Flash Debug Player，但是版本9的配置方法和網路上不少介紹的不盡相同。下面的鏈接有很好、很詳細的介紹：

• digitalflipbook: Trace from the browser, using standard trace()
• mentalaxis » Debugging with Flash Player 9,0,28,0

下面的鏈接可以用于檢測安裝了的Flash Player的版本號：

• Adobe – Developer Center : Debugging Client-Side Code in Flex Applications

各種Flash Debug Players的官方下載頁：

• Adobe Flash Player – Downloads

一個給Firebox 的插件(要先安裝Flash Debug Player)

• Flash Tracer

Writing In Traditional Chinese [用繁體漢字書寫]

It turns out to be some better while writing in Traditional Chinese other than in Simplified Chinese. I introduce my site to one friend from Taiwan today. And, I find it a problem while she read the content in Simplified Chinese. Most of the people who can read the Simplified can also understand the Traditional. But it is not true for the reverse condition. So, I decide to write in both English and Traditional Chinese from now on. Indeed, there must still left something confusing while considering the difference in syntax and vocabulary. Whatever, it’s better than none.

發覺應該用繁體來書寫而不是簡體。今天介紹我的小站給一個臺灣的朋友的時候忽然有這樣的想法的。對于大多數能看懂簡體的人來說閱讀繁體并不那么困難，但是反過來就不一樣了。所以，我決定開始使用英文和繁體。雖然這并不能徹底解決語法和一些詞匯上的差異，但是總比不做的強。就這樣啦。