Couple of weeks ago, I read a news about AC/DC’s new studio album, ‘Black Ice’. The story went like their album was leaked on bittorrent sites before the launch, and it hit 400,000 download!!!The interesting thing was that it said these old dogs decided not to release the album in any online stores, and choose to sell it only in offline shops. Jesus, I couldn’t even remember when was the last time I bought an album in the store. Since I have been using iTunes, I have bought zero(maybe one?) albums in a wrapped CD form for last 2-3 years.
It was an weird feeling while I was thinking back those old days when I was a teenager, listening to music from the cassette players, it suddenly brought me many memories I have forgotten for long time. Again, Scott day-dreaming for 30 seconds at work …
Anyway, the following weekend, I walked into music store in Newtown, and grabbed AC/DC’s new album, ‘Black Ice’, and went to cafe. Me and my girl friend ordered coffee and I started opening the wrapping. That was it~! Something that I have been missing without knowing it, the expectation building up from the moment I buy an album until the CD goes into the player. Flipping through album booklet while listening to the first track, reading the lyrics, checking engineer names although I never remember, guessing who are all these thanks to people.
I just smiled myself quietly thinking what an old dog myself is Some people might say I am not that old to write something like this in the blog, but what can I do? This is just how I feel.
The album itself? Try yourself people, it simply ROCKS! Enjoy riding Rock’N Roll Train~~!
A couple of weeks ago Greg Sherwood, the product manager at Squiz Labs gave the very first public demonstration of new product from Squiz, MySource Mini. It was a part of the MySource Matrix International Conference 2008 at Coogee Beach in Sydney. Finally the demonstraion video is out.
Personally I feel very lucky to be a developer of this great new product, which will be launched next year. I work with some great fellow developers, Greg Sherwood, Sertan Danis, Rayn Ong, Danny Peters and Deborah Sherwood. All these MySource Mini team rocks big time ~!
This demonstraion will highlight some great features we have:
1. Brand new WYSIWYG editor from Squiz.
2. Context sensitive integrated Help system.
3. Time machine like version control system for every content.
4. Advanced caching system.
and of course there are much more features that couldn’t be included during this demonsration due to the time restriction. Please enjoy the demo video, and also don’t forget to check Greg Sherwood’s blog for the upcoming news.
UPDATED: The video has been moved to YouTube site.
Microsoft started the second wave of rebranding ad compaign, “I’m a PC” ad.
Comapring to the previsous Bill & Seinfeld power duo (as shown in my previous post), this ad is way much superior. Only the sad thing is that the reason they are cool is because it’s the counter attact to Mac’s “I’m Mac” ad. Instead of John Hodgman’s nerdy boring PC, now we have MS version of many cool Justin LongS.
Isn’t this irony that MS only can be cool by copying Mac’s ad style? Am I too biased toward Apple here? Even though I’m, who cares, LOL.
This $300 million TV campaign is already bashed in most of reviews I found on the Internet. Oh well, I couldn’t stop laughing when I saw it first time and felt pity for the marketing guys who squeezed their brain to try to change the stereo-typed image of Microsoft. Would it be only me thinking of the similarity between this advertisement and Commonwealth Bank’s hollywood ad-agency series?
One common thing in both of ads I found was that they are fundamentally uncool. I mean uncoooooool. Commonwealth Bank, it’s a bank. No need to be cool, in fact it just needs to be cheaper for most of people.
Microsoft, just stick to what they are good at, I think Apple has a way better skill to be cool than Microsoft. Again, I said the word, ‘cool’. It’s not a technical word.
I know, I am a mac fan boy but I just have to mention Apple’s TV campaign,
“Hi! Im a mac, and Im a PC”
So easy to understand. Simple message in simple ad, even simpler white background colour which gives all the focus to two main characters and their dialogues.
One thing for sure Apple’s campaigns implemented excellently well is delivering their message to the audience in 30 secs. Hang on a sec, does TV ad need to do anything more than that?
One of my friends recently left me a message in facebook regarding to my comment about Apple’s engineering achivement in iPhone. He said,
“… Have found some fantastic applications with the iphone except the beer application?”
This provoking statement to my Apple appreciation gave me a chance to think about what I ACTUALLY do with my iPhone.
Of course this is a mobile phone. I call and answer the phone calls, send and receive SMS with iChat like interface, most importantly I play Sudoku before I go to bed. What else?
I’m not a big facebook person but still enjoy reading friends’ statuses, browsing photos and so on. Especially from my iPhone without loading crap loads of useless apps. (new facebook interface seems better but still too much information to me for daily use) Facebook app for iPhone gives me a nice simple concised version of facebook experience. I can still poke people, navigating photos is very fast and also I can add comment to photo directly, which I think it’s fantastic.
Web applications. Oh my god, it just keeps coming. I use Google reader for my RSS feeds. It’s iPhone version also brings pretty much every functionalities I need. Read, share, email and bookmark. Still it has much rooms to improve but is simple and works fast. Not only Google reader, new.com.au has mobile optimized page looks slick on iPhone. Digg got good interface too. Even I use ANZ banking via web app. Once I started to use web applications, I realized how much unnecessary content we see everyday just to navigate the web. Countless ads, images and furthermore those endless tracking tags hidden everywhere in the page (ironically by bog also has Google analytics tag embeded). It’s great pleasure to do simple things in simple way.
Lastly I’m writing this blog in my iPhone using Wordpress app. I can not deny that it’s really tedious to type this amount of text using iPhone keyboard sitting in front of my MacBook pro. However the integration with my self-hosted Wordpress blog and this app was very easy and I can even add the photo from my photo library directly. Although it only attaches at the end of the post.
I hope this blog will give colivarrrrrr a better perspective about my engineering orgasm
Also message for basil in Europe, maybe my blog is boring but the way u look in the photo is more boring bxxch! How’s ur iPhone without 3G doing huh?
p.s: Google map with GPS and navigation deserves to be mentioned since it saved poor lost sheep Scott many times on the road.
Some people might say I am not that old to write something like this in the blog, but what can I do? This is just how I feel.