Harry Chen Thinks Aloud

It’s really hard to find good news about the US economy. Everything seem to be falling apart: the real estate market is in trouble, banks are closing their doors and the stock market is a bear mode. I woke up this morning and asked myself, but what can I do today to protect my financial future?

First, don’t panic. Don’t let negative media news cloud your judgment. Don’t sell your investments just because the market is in a bear mode. Don’t sell your house just because its price is falling every week. Second, assess your family’s financial situation. Know how much debt your family is carrying. Known how much asset your family has. Once you understand all these, evaluate your family’s financial goals — saving for retirement, children college education or a new house down payment. Third, develop plans to achieve your financial goals. Your plans must be independent from the current market condition. They should work in both good and bad market condition.

Let me argue why people should not panic. The ups and downs of the world economy are cyclical. Unless we expect the world comes to its end soon, there is no reason to believe that the economy will continue to go down and collapse completely. If you are lucky enough to live for a good number of years, you will experience many more ups and downs of the economy.

We shouldn’t ask the question whether or not the current conditions will improve. We know for a high degree of certainty that it will improve. The question we don’t know for sure if when. It’s difficult to time the market.

Since no one has a crystal ball that can tell the future, we must rely on our understanding of the history. Because we expect the market to come back sometime in the future, while everything is cheap, it’s a good time to invest.

In Fall 2008, Disney will release a new version of its classic movie “Sleeping Beauty” on Blu-ray. The disc will offer better picture quality and allow viewers to social. What does it mean?

Viewers can watch the movie in tandem with friends in other locations and chat using a laptop, PDA or cellphone. (Comments appear on the screen.) Parents who are not able to watch the film with their children can record a video message that will pop up during a designated scene as the child watches. Viewers will also be able to compete against others around the world at trivia.

This is a major revolution in digital entertainment. Today watching movies at home is a rather private activity. With this new technology, we can enjoy movies and social at the same time! I can see myself chatting with friends about fate and truth while watching “Matrix” for the 16th times.

In addition, I think this new technology will change the way movies are made. Watching movies today is a one-way communication. With this new Blu-ray technology, we would be able to make movies that allow two-way communications. Interactive programs may be embedded in a movie and ask viewers for inputs as they watch it. User inputs can influence the story and create alternative endings.

Can’t wait to buy a new Blu-ray player.

Source: Disney taps into Blu-ray’s interactive technology

The Web is like an ecosystem that undergoes changes continuously. A latest innovation in social media is microblogging — a form of blogging that allows users to write brief text updates (usually less than 200 characters) and publish them, either to be viewed by anyone or by a restricted group which can be chosen by the user (see also). Recently I was introduced to a microblogging site called FriendFeed. After using the service for few days, I conclude that participating in microblogging is like drinking beer, moderate use can enhance our life,  but over consumption can cause serious damages.

FriendFeed

FriendFeed is a service that allows users to publish short notes and share them with other users in the community. Users can also aggregate their personal data from other social media web sites and share them. For example, if a FriendFeed user already has Flickr and del.icio.us accounts, the user can choose to subscribe to those accounts from FriendFeed. Whenever activities occur on either Flickr or del.icio.us, FriendFeed will automatically import those activities as blog entries. Everything appear in one page.

Why people use FriendFeed

To some, FriendFeed is the Wikipedia for social media. To me, FriendFeed is more than just a massive pool of community knowledge. It’s a new medium for communication. Why do I say that? For people who use social media web sites (digg, Flickr, del.icio.us etc.), their most valuable asset is the content that they created — photos, video, bookmarks, comments, etc. Users don’t create those contents for the sake of creating them. They contribute to social media sites because they want to be part of an online community.  And, most importantly, as they create, they want to receive feedback from other users. People are happy when they receive positive feedback from the community (e.g., digg comments received 10+ thumbs-up, and flickr photos was liked by 23 users).

FriendFeed is a central hub of social media. It’s a place where users can receive feedback for everything they create, no matter where they were created. FriendFeed is also a great hangout place for the social media consumers. People who are more interested in what others have created as oppose to creating new things themselves. Social media consumers usually target few people to follow online, subscribing to their blog feeds, del.icio.us bookmark feeds and monitor their twitter streams. Before FriendFeed, it was difficult to track all this information. Information is usually scatter across multiple places. Using FriendFeed, assuming that most people choose to aggregate their online data, tracking people’s online activities is relatively painless.

FriendFeed can be evill

FriendFeed can be addictive. Knowing that information can reach a wide range of online readers, content creators may be obsessed creating more and more content. They post every single news article they read, they spell out every piece of thoughts that come to their mind, and they publish every photos on their cellphones. Their life goal is driven by the desire to receive more feedback from the FriendFeed community. Somehow by doing so, it satisfies the social itch inside of them.

Just like the content creators, consumers can also over use FriendFeed. Information arrives at FriendFeed in an extremely fast pace. Every few minutes there is a new piece of information being posted. To satisfy their urge to learn, consumers will try to spend every minute that they can spare on FriendFeed. If they can’t budget their time, they are likely to jeopardize other important tasks (like work and sleep).

Been there, done that

Personally, I have gone across the border, publishing too much and reading too much. But now I think I’m back to normal. I hope by writing this post can bring awareness to the potential danger of being social media addicts. By natural, humans are social animals. As new social media technology emerges, we must be careful of how and how much we use it. Microblogging and FriendFeed are great innovations. Like consuming beer, please use them moderately.

Tags are wonderful. When you put a bunch of tags together, you get a tag cloud. Wordle is a web site that allows people to create tag clouds from any text. You also get to customize font, color and layout.

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There is a gallery of Wordle tagclouds. If you are on Flickr, check out the Wordle group.

The Web is an ubiquitous technology for information sharing. Living in the 21st century, the age of digital technologies, we often forget that some fundamental ideas of the Web really came from the age of analog. Alex Wright wrote a fascinating story about Paul Otlet, a Belgium innovator who dreamed about the Web in the 1930’s.

Important works by Otlet began with an attempt to create the world largest paper-based database of every book ever published. After Otlet and his associates created a large database of books and information, they used it to help people to find information. People would send in questions, and Otlet would use his system to find answers. As the number of users grow, scalability became an issue. Otlet believed that the paper-based approach must be scrapped. To solve this problem, Otlet sketched ideas of new technologies to create a “mechanical, collective brain” that would house all the world’s information and made readily accessible over a global telecommunications network.

According to some scholars, Otlet may have dreamed the Semantic Web and social networks. Hyperlink is an important concept in Otlet’s design of the Web. His vision of hyperlink is very similar to which of the Semantic Web. Hyperlinks are not just “pointers” to information, but also carry meanings about the information that they point to.

Recently a museum was built to house Otlet’s work in Mons, Belgium. “Later this year, a new corporate citizen plans to open a data center on the edge of town: Google.”

The United States of America has been the powerhouse of technology innovation for the past half century. One question that many people ask is can the US keep its edge? An Economist.com article overviews the inner structure of technology innovation and key problems that the US must address if it wants to keep the lead.

What’s damaging the US’s ability to innovate?

• Lacking a clear government policy to sustain technology innovation.
• The US education system is broken.
• Complex immigration issues discourage talents to stay in the US.

Why has the US been so successful in innovation?

• A country’s ability to innovate is depended on a “venturesome” culture. The US has it.
• Countries that tried to replace a “venturesome” culture with central planning have failed.
• Building a “venturesome” culture and economy is difficult and takes time.

Read the full story — Can America keep its innovative edge?

The future is mobile computing. Recently Google showed off its latest Android platform.

The demo is extremely cool. However, it’s still too early to say who will outcome strong in the future mobile computing world. Both Microsoft and Apple have good ideas and secret technologies under their sleeves. Microsoft’s Windows Mobile 7 will supports a multi-touch interface and may work with its Surface computing technology. On the other hand, Apple’s iPhone may get a 3G upgrade.

I didn’t know snails eat worms. This video shows that suburbs can be exciting if you know where to look.