Harry Chen Thinks Aloud

With WiiPress, WordPress users now can optimize their blog sites for Wii’s Opera browser.

The WordPress Wii Edition Plugin is a plugin that automatically renders an optimized version of your blog when visitors come to your blog on a Nintendo Wii running the Opera browser. Wii’s are automatically detected, there is no configuration needed. The theme used by the plugin is based on the colours of the Wii interface and uses the “Wii” font at sizes that provide for easy reading on TV screens. This plugin was inspired by Alex King’s Mobile Plugin.

Here are some demo screenshots:

• harry.hchen1.com (pic)
• ebiquity.umbc.edu/blogger (pic1, pic2)

If you’ve purchased a Wii remote before December 2006, you’re entitled to a free replacement of the remote strap. This recall is in response to a strap problem with the original Wii remotes.

To receive a strap replacement, enter your contact and Wii console information at this Nintendo recall page.

http://www.nintendo.com/consumer/strapreplace.jsp

In April 2007, Google employees will be permitted to auction their stock options to preapproved financial institutions, according to a CNet News report. This is a completely unorthodox. According to Google executives, this new plan is aimed to bring fairness to employees who have higher strike price.

Traditionally, employees have two ways to deal with stock options: exercise (take ownership) of them once they have “vested” and sell them at the current trading price, and pay back the company for their so-called strike price (that’s typically the trading price the day the options were granted), or hold on to them after exercising them.

For employees who have arrived at Google long after its stock price started to climb, the auction potentially presents a more profitable alternative to trading on the public markets. It would work like this: once an employee’s options are vested, he or she can look for bidders in the private auction. A financial institution may offer the employee, for example, $150 per option. If the employee’s strike price was $400 and the stock was trading at $500, the employee would have made $50 more per option going the auction route rather than selling them on the public market. Employees can also set a minimum price at which to sell.

I think this is an innovative approach to maintain employee loyalty. Not only this will give comfort to current employees, but also will attract new talents who see Google as a true innovative company.

To all married men, here is a philosophical question that your wife or your mom may ask: “if both us (i.e., your wife and your mom) fall into water at the same time, who do you rescue first?”

This is a tricky question. If your wife asks this question, and your answer is “my mom”, then you’re doomed to sleep alone in the basement for days. If your mom asks this question, and your answer is “my wife”, then you may receive a long lecture about how much your mom has sacrificed in order to raise you and why it is important for you to care about her even after your heart now belongs to someone else.

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Nintendo Wii is a video game console for everyone. This includes painters and painters-to-be. MTV reports that Nintendo is in talk with Bob Ross, a famous American painter who is known for his hit TV show The Joy of Painting.

The report didn’t say much about the kind of games that the company intends to create. However, there is a statement from Bob Ross Inc. expressing interests in creating games with Nintendo, for both Wii and Nintendo DS.

I see this is another sign that Wii will be successful in expanding its market into the world of non-traditional gamers (that includes me). We can only speculate what the future will hold for Wii and its competition with Sony PS3 and Microsoft XBox 360. One thing that I know for sure is that the future looks very exciting.

DARPA announced its prize money $3.5 million for its urban robotics race next November, CNet News reports. The agency will grant $2 million for first place, $1 million for second and $500,000 for third (see also the official announcement).

About DARPA Grand Challenge

Created in response to a Congressional and DoD mandate, DARPA Grand Challenge is a field test intended to accelerate research and development in autonomous ground vehicles that will help save American lives on the battlefield. The Grand Challenge brings together individuals and organizations from industry, the R&D community, government, the armed services, academia, students, backyard inventors, and automotive enthusiasts in the pursuit of a technological challenge.

In order to win the competition, vehicles must complete 60 miles within six hours. In addition, vehicles must obey traffic laws while merging into moving traffic, navigating traffic circles, negotiating busy intersections, and avoiding obstacles. The location of the competition is yet to be announced.

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DarwiinRemote is a software that allows users to use Nintendo Wii remote as an input device in Mac OS X. The setup instruction seems to be relative simple.

Here is a video that shows DarwiinRemote in action.

My speculation is that very soon Wii Remote will become a general purpose input device for many our home electronics, e.g., desktop PC that are connected to living room TV sets or a TiVo.

With Wii Rmeote, users will be able to control home entertainment applications that previously require keyboard and mouse inputs. Wii Remote is one device that can be used in many different ways. Nintendo may be able to make few more dollars by selling Wii Remotes to customers who don’t even own Wii game consoles.

Additional video that shows using a Wii remote to play games:

• WiiMote playing Half-Life 2

Spam 2.0 is a new wave of spam technology that outsmarts the traditional antispam software techniques. Unlike the previous generation of spam messages, which were mainly text-based and sent from the spammers’ desktops, Spam 2.0 messages are image-based and sent from a network computers that have been hijacked by the spammers (aka. botnets).

Spammers have effectively foiled the first strategy — analyzing the reputation of the sender — by conscripting vast networks of computers belonging to users who unknowingly downloaded viruses and other rogue programs. The infected computers begin sending out spam without the knowledge of their owners.

… 250,000 new computers are captured and added to these spam “botnets” each day.

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