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看了建硕大哥的帖子，我这个直肠子又忍不住了。

在中国，提到易趣，人们想到的是包罗万象的二手拍卖；提到雅虎，人们想到的是花里胡哨的杂烩页面；微软好一点，印象最深刻的就是老大是首富……对于微软的产品，我们并不陌生。其实，人们每天都在用Windows，可以说Windows已经融入了人们的生活，变得已经离不开。问题就是，所有这些跟Google相比起来，从普通用户眼中看来，都没有附带文化。

谈到Google，我们知道Google的各种各样的产品，搜索、地图、GMail，GTalk；我们知道Google的员工可以养宠物，有免费的午餐……新奇、亲民、准确。中国人民天天都期待着Google带来新的东西，期待那些前所未闻的文化。不得不提Google的中国Blog，那种人性化从某种角度上讲，是一种炒作；同时也是宣传文化的一个典型范例。

可以说Ebay没有文化，Yahoo没有文化，但绝对不能说微软没有文化，我是很坚信这一点的。可惜的是，微软中国至今都没有一个Channel 9/10的中文版，或者类似Google中国Blog那样的途径让人民群众去了解、去适应。文化是一种资源，我相信微软除了那些商业味巨浓的中文广告词，还可以向中国展示更多不同于Google的文化，比如“微软的中国员工是怎么生活的”、“今天Live.com上那个搜索栏到处乱跑其实是愚人节的伎俩”、“某个高层对生活、对家庭的想法”等等。这些“奇闻怪谈”也许可以比Google文化更吸引眼球，更加让人们认识到：哦，原来我天天用的Windows是这样一个公司创造出来的。

以前说在中国做生意拼产品，拼完产品拼质量，拼完质量拼服务……拼完服务拼什么？Google也许是万千答案的其中一个。

Update (8.15.2006) :

本文已不能代表小虎今日的意见。相关内容参见 His Story 8月15日的日志。

点心	窗外	逛街
街道	购物	大厦
奥斯卡	极品飞车	一顿

http://googlechinablog.com/2006/03/blog-post_16.html

It’s been a while since Google China Blog opened in Feburary 2006. The strategy of showing off Googler’s life to public to promote Google’s culture is well done. It is just amazing and attractive for all the programmers living in China and oversea, such as myself, to dream to have a job offer at Google. The URL above is a post by Kaifu Lee, the president of Google China, formerly a vice president of Microsoft Corp., talking about food suggestions in Beijing. In contrast to the previous post, I prefer more posts that are full of life style like this one.

Take a look!

概要：新的网络电话服务难以融入市场；Ekiga 使用体验中易用性部分不理想；VoIP 和 SIP 需要寻找新的突破点；WiFi 手机带来契机……

每逢有空的时候，总要跟家里隔洋跨海地通一次话，汇报一下最近的生活和工作情况。儿行千里母担忧，一会儿听不到儿子的声音，父母都会挂念。很早之前都是用电话卡的，五块十块一张，可以打个一百多分钟。后来懒得出去买卡了，就改用网络电话，装了 Skype。现在他们每次上网即使不挂 MSN，也会挂在 Skype 上，就是为了方便我随时打过去。

其实除了 Skype，还有很多其它 VoIP 软件可以打到普通电话上的，比如 Ekiga。可惜这个软件太专业，到现在我都没弄明白怎么打到普通电话上。另外因为缺少 Windows 版本，基本上不可能推广到爸妈那里去。

另外还有数种 VoIP 软件流行于世，只不过名字我懒得搜。最大的问题就是，这类软件的使用都是依赖于电脑的。每次想跟某人聊聊天，都要开一次机，麻烦至极。很多公司也推出了一些USB电话，有些是基于 QQ 的，有些是基于 Skype 的。遗憾的是，这些硬件的本质还是需要有一个提供 USB 借口的互联网设备。一般来说，这种设备除了我们普通的电脑，别无它选。

欣慰的是，最近一段时间，一种新的设备 Wi-fi 电话悄然而至。光是提供 Skype 接入的就有数种：

SMC WSKP100
ZyXEL P-2000W
NetGear SPH101
Belkin
Edge-Core

这些 Wi-fi 电话基本上都是内置 Skype，不依赖于电脑，只要有 Wi-Fi 热点就可以。当然，也有不与现有 VoIP 软件接轨的 Wi-Fi 手机，比如：

Unex WP1/WP2

UT斯达康 F1000/F3000

随着 Wi-Fi 热点越来越多，使用 Wi-Fi 手机的机会就越来越大。实际上，Wi-Fi 手机不一定要跟一个 VoIP 软件搭配在一起。一个嵌入式设备如果硬件构架足够开放，容量足够大，完全可以收入多个 VoIP 服务，然后提供统一的拨入拨出界面。这样的设备，市场的油水是无限的。

有电话来了，我先接一下。今天就聊到这儿……喂？你是哪位？

The most recent work I am doing is writing a paper for CAS 703. It is a survey paper, which requires reading a lot of other papers in the same area. Thanks to ACM Digital Library which makes accessing the references and adding BibTex information of a paper so easy. All papers are presented in either PDF format or PostScript format, making universal viewing and printing possible.

Search for References -> Inconvenience with Current HID -> Manupulating Graphical Object by Hands -> Touch Screen on Desktop -> Possible Scenario -> Pro/Con -> Future Usage

* Turn every input or output device into an input and output device

One Laptop per Child (OLPC) 是一个新的非盈利组织，希望可以通过开发100美金左右的低价笔记本电脑，来帮助我们对世界上的儿童提供更好的教育。本计划最早由OLPC现任主席Nicholas Negroponte在2005年1月于瑞士的Davos召开的世界经济论坛（World Economic Forum）提出。OLPC的目标是：为世界上每一个儿童提供一个可以发现（explore）、发掘（experiment）、发表自我（express）的机会。目前OLPC的$100笔记本电脑还没有投入生产，也不会销售，而以后这些电脑将会通过各政府部门直接在学校中发布。

OLPC网站打算提供多语言的信息，目前还没有相应的中文翻译。有意愿做翻译工作的朋友可以下载XLIFF文件或者POT文件进行翻译，然后发给OLPC有关人员。我目前翻译了POT文件的一部分，所以也可以在这个基础上继续，并把翻译后的POT文件发给我和所有其它一起做翻译工作的朋友。

Update:

OLPC已经启用了中文，地址是： http://laptop.org/index.zh.html

Yesterday, after a short talk with Sui, we’ve gained some idea about how existing search engines can increase their usability by an common method we’ve learned in university.

The motivating point is that Sui phoned me and asked for help in searching for the company of a wireless PCMCIA card, whose brand is not well know. The brand of the card is Alpha, which obviously not feasible to search it over since “alpha” is a common word widely used. Then he told me the model of the card is “AFWN411″ letter by letter, number by number. I searched it in Google and surpisingly, no result was returned.

I don’t believe that our beloved internet does not have any information of a network product, even it is not that well known. But Sui was very sure that the model code was correct. Then, I have tried several combinations, such as “A FWN411“, “AF WN411” and so on. Eventually, when I used the keyword “AFW N411“, the expected results returned, and I found that the company of this card is a company in China.

During the dinner with Sui, he praised me as an expert in searching the web. Well, I don’t really think so. Actually, everyone can be good at searching. It is just a matter of how much effort this person wants to put into it. What makes such easy task time consuming? I think it is the variability of the keywords one uses. Actually, search engines, such as Google, are already power enough in deriving “expresses“, “expression“, “expressing” from their origin word “express“, by principles in human languages. But is it enough?

In the study of computer science, we know that there is such a concept which is called “regular expression“, or even simpler which makes use of only “*” and “?” in order to quantify the string as required. Why doesn’t search engines have an option of using such quantifiers? It is not necessary for using all of them. In the example of search product model, if I could have a quantifier “?” and I search “A?F?W?N411″, the time consumed must be less for sure.

Then another issue raises now. How expensive for searching a keyword containing quantifiers? In our example, the question mark “?” is used to only present the possibility of a space. Searching time in this case is then 3 times longer than searching each of keywords without quantifiers. Imagine how many people will use such option during their searching? Not sure. But it is possible that the work load of search engine computers is increased, if more quantifiers are used, instead of just presenting spaces.

If this is true, maybe Google or Yahoo! can have a commercial version for each of their products, to support regular expression or simpler, to limit the computing work of computers. What is the price for each search? I don’t know. 5 cents is acceptable for me.

update:

这里不是报名处，请不要在此报名志愿者。本文只是小虎在组委会网站报名后写下的日志。为什么会有那么多人在我这里报名呢？想不通。

目前来说，2008北京奥委会还没有列出任何志愿者职位，只能提交个人信息到人才后备库去了。提交过程是一步一步的表格向导，简洁与专业并重，让我至少对奥委会的网站技术人员敬重十分。2008年离现在说近算近，说远也远，谁知道那个时候我会出现在哪里呢？不过能够为奥林匹克运动出一份力，还是非常令人骄傲的。

北京2008，加油！

It is very happy to come back and write stuff here, really. Yesterday, few hours after I noticed an observable slow down when visiting His Story, I was told that for some reason my blog had led its hosting server to a heavy processor load, up to 50%. HS was shut down at the moment.

HS is built using WordPress at its current version 2.0.1. By deactivating all the plugins I have installed, it turned out that they were not the reason causing the problem. Very soon, I found that the directories under wp-content/cache contained huge amount of temporary files, which seemed to be the cached pages of HS. It was slow when gftp was fetching the file names under these directories. Since they were automatically generated files which were not important, I removed all of them. Right after that, HS was responding again.

By searching through WordPress official forums, I found that its cache mechanism does not do the clean job automatically. Although it aims for speeding up the execution of PHP scripts, but due to the large amount of cached file, PHP’s file traversing function makes the website slow again. To disable, simply add following line in wp-config.php under the root directory where WordPress is located:

define('DISABLE_CACHE', true);

Hope this issue can be solved in next release of WordPress.

Reference:
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/52452?replies=17#post-330443

刚发现一个很好玩的东西，可以让访问主页的人给主人在线语音留言。这是位于加利福尼亚州三藩市的Odeo公司于2004年底推出的服务。创始人之一的Evan Williams曾经创立了鼎鼎有名的Blogger公司，后来卖给了Google。Odeo的服务基本上是基于Ajax的，加上与Flash Player的结合，显示出其特有的风格。