Here are three tools I use to make my online reading more efficient and enjoyable:

1. Read It Later

I often discover or receive online content at times when I can't read them. Read It Later lets me quickly stack up the articles and read them at a more convenient time. More importantly Read It Later apps download the content to your smartphones and tablets so you can read them anywhere. Yesterday, for example, I read through more than twenty blog posts while waiting for a doctor's appointment.

Read It Later is not the only bookmarking service out there; Instapaper and others offer similar services.

2. Readability

Poorly formatted websites are difficult to read. Readability fixes this by offering you the tools to customize column width, font size, and background color.

3. Topicmarks

Topicmarks is a new service that summarizes the piece you're about to read. This comes in handy with certain ranty bloggers and journalists who decide to publish 10000 words articles even though all they needed was five bullet points. The service is currently in beta and is unlikely to stay free going forward. Nevetheless, I think it'll be a valuable tool for a time conscious reader.

 

These tools combat a problem I am beginning to confront daily: information overload. I'm currently working on a simple solution to cut down the amount of time I spend going through unimportant blog articles. If it works, I'll demonstrate it in a future post.

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(This piece requires an understanding of APIs...)

API is how services open up to developers or share data with other parties. Today, they're ubiquitous to the extent that it's hard to find a single popular mainstream application that doesn't support an API. From a developer's standpoint, it's easy to see why APIs are wonderful (e.g Kurrently and Mama Translation both rely heavily on APIs). But what's in it for the service or parent company? 

The simplest benefit is that APIs often improve a service or platform. Had Facebook or Twitter been stupid enough to keep their services close, they would've been supplanted by a more open competitor. In another word, by building a platform rather than a service, Facebook and Twitter have become better products.

That's the simple, boring explanation. Not all APIs, however, fit under this model.

Consider Google Translate APIs: Google allows developers to use their APIs for free, even though the end results (e.g Mama Translation) may directly compete with Google Translate (the service). Unlike Facebook and Twitter, Google Translate is not a platform; Mama Translation and others do not contribute to Google Translate in anyway! So, what's the catch? Surely, Google didn't spend millions developing the technology and maintaining the APIs just to be altruistic?

A few days ago, I finally found the right analogy to reconcile this problem. For some companies, supporting an API is like opening a R&D department. The researcher's (i.e the developer's) job is to find new ways to profit from the existing technology (i.e the API functionalities). The cost of this R&D department is just the bandwidth and maintaence cost of running the servers.

Of course, unlike a traditional R&D department, the company doesn't "own" the ideas that come from the department. If the 3rd party developer or company succeeds (e.g Zynga), the parent company owns none of it. It still sounds like a bad deal [for the company], right?

No - in fact, this is a fantastic deal. There are at least two ways for the parent company to recuperate value from a third party. One is for the parent company to buy out the third-party company like how Twitter bought Twittie. The cost of acquisition can be considered from the parent's point of view as the cost that would've been needed to develop the same solution in-house (under the circumstances of a closed API). The other option is to ruthlessly copy from. Take the best ideas from everyone and make it their own: evil but effective.

If you're still unconvinced, think of it this way.  When Twitter supports an API and acquires a successful company (e.g Tweetie), they're paying not only for Tweetie but for the other companies that failed as well. That is, Twitter has essentially "hired" hired a whole bunch of other companies to make Twitter clients, but Twitter only ends up paying for the best one. It's like a R&D department consisting of thousands of employees, but the company only has to pay for the product that pans out. 

Why is it that Twitter keeps running without a business model anyways? It's because they've been better off waiting for third parties to validate business models for them. Twitter's business model: sit still and learn from those who can bear the risk of failure.

This is why Jason Calacanis warned Y Combinator Startups against partnering up with Facebook. He believes that the latter is stealing ideas from startups or coercing startups to sell.

Frankly, I think Mr. Calacanis is being overdramatic (as usual) and leans on the verge of fear mongering. Nevertheless, his words gives some insight into the benefits of supporting an API.

"The Internet is not a thing, a place, a single technology, or a mode of governance. It is an agreement." - John Gage, Director of Science, Sun Microsystems, Inc. (from WWW Virtual Library)

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One thing I've wondered lately is whether it's possible to educate in a way that fosters both self-discipline and creativity.

I specified the two attributes because they are  - in my opinion - two essential ingredients to success in today's workforce.

My definition of creativity may be vague. By creativity, I refer to the ability to work beyond a set of instructions, the ability to learn and create new solutions, or the ability to do what machines cannot. The essence is obvious: if your skill set can be imitated by a machine, you either won't have a job in the near future or you'll be earning minimum wage soon.

Self-discipline, on the other hand, is much more straight forward: having self-discipline just means being able to concentrate on a piece of task for a sustained amount of time. It sounds easy enough, except most people can hardly do it. A roommate of mine bitterly noted (after only the second day at work), "If my colleagues would stop tweeting every 15 minutes, they'd have their sh*t done a lot sooner!" Perhaps that's not so bad compared to the upcoming generation which is purportedly sending texts every "couple of minutes" every hour of the week (see Texting May be Taking a Toll).

from The Age

Neither education in the west (e.g Canada) nor education in the east (e.g China) seems to produce people with both attributes.  Western culture encourages imagination and innovation but not self-discipline. Eastern culture, on the other hand, is obsessed with self-discipline and hard work but not creativity. These are broad, general, subjective statements, but there are some evidence behind them: in a survey on 21 countries, China's children rank first in computing power, but dead last in imagination.

The good news is that at least one side is trying to learn from the other: there seems to be growing envy from the West of Chinese immigrants' professional success (e.g Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior). The bad news is that copying the Chinese isn't the answer. You don't want to be Chinese; you want to be better than Chinese.

Then there are those who insists self-discipline and creativity form a duality: you either have one or the other. I'm referring to creative people who are reluctant to embrace any form of system or repetition; they feel that one must be "free" and "spontaneous" to be creative. They think being "disciplined" will destroy their flow or damage their brilliant minds. Perhaps they are correct to a certain extent, but no amount of creativity is going to outweigh the detriments of being carried away by every distraction around us.

In the ideal world, educators will figure out whether we can educate students to innovate and focus. 21st century students should be generating creative solutions by leveraging an incredible amount of information. At the moment, however, no concrete education reform is underway and whatever changes being made are actually moving farther away from this goal.

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It's 2am in the morning. You haven't done much the entire day because you couldn't focus. You need sleep. You /know/ you need sleep. Instead of calling it a night, however, you decide to click on "just one more" youtube link to see if it's interesting. Another 2 hours pass before you finally drop dead on your bed. Sounds familiar?

It's been a hectic week in the office. Nobody on the team has left work before 8pm. More than once today, you have inadvertently dozed off in front of your computer monitor. Your body urges you to go home as soon as you can to get some rest. At the end of the night, however, you end up chugging beer at the bar with a few friends. Sounds familiar?

It's a strange phenomenon: our brain can convince us to doze off and it can convince us that we're tired, but it can't convince us to take the rest we need. Instead, short term rewards (i.e a funny youtube video or a night out) lure us away, as if the short term rewards are the only way to justify the painful day.

For some of us, the results are minor: we have one or two of these "bad days" once in a while, but we take the necessary breaks over the weekend and recover to full strength. For others, results are detrimental: a lack of sleep leads to an unproductive day, an unproductive day leads to a longer day in office, a longer day in office leads to a lack of sleep, and a death spiral conspires.

There's an euphemism for this ongoing death spiral: "Work hard; play hard." The term is predominant at certain academic institutions, long-hour industries, and work-intensive cultures (e.g Hong Kong, Tokyo). The connotation of the term is excellent: accomplish a lot, play a lot, and neglect the boring stuff (i.e sleep). 

But what exactly does such a life style accomplish?

On the surface, "work hard, play hard" points to a productive life. Yet, from personal experience, I've never met too many accomplished people who literally works hard and plays hard. One doesn't hear Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, or Steve Jobs partying away every weekend. The people who uses the attractive phrase are often university representatives or HR recruiters. Yet I've never once hear an accomplished student or office worker boasting the "work hard, play hard" culture at their school or company.

Looking through the surface, one realizes that the lifestyle is not so intuitive. A person only has so much energy. Work requires energy, play requires energy, and sleep replenishes energy. Where does one find the energy to be productive (i.e work) if one neglects replenishing energy in the first place? In another words, how does one work effectively the day after getting hammered?

So maybe the point of "work hard, play hard" isn't to optimize for productivity. Perhaps it optimizes for "a good time." Our brains, after all, don't seek productivity as much as contentment or "happiness." Yet this doesn't seem to make sense either. Ask a person during a party how they feel and they'll probably say "GOOOooooood~", but ask them anywhere else - at home hung over or at work sleep deprived - and they most definitely would not say they're happy. Neither Japan nor Hong Kong ranks high on the Life Satisfaction Index.

Hence my question: why don't our brains prompt us to rest more assertively? Is this just a case of short term rewards outweighing long term rewards? Surely though, sleep is more immediately gratifying than "potential fun?"

Speaking of sleep - I should really head to sleep myself... just let me close off these IM convos...

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It's been well over a month since I've written. I doubt anyone actually missed my writing; still, I want to keep writing for the sake of improving my writing.

It has also been two weeks since 7 Cubed Project ended. Various people have asked me about it, but I have been quite brief with my responses. Describing a week long experience is difficult. Where should I begin? Where should I end? Would the questioner even understand?

Nevertheless, I wish to put my thoughts down on paper - even if the thoughts are incoherent and disorganized. This post is dedicated to that crazy week.

Why? Why would you do such a thing?

7 Cubed Project was a completely voluntary project. Nobody coerced us; nobody invited us. Ross Robinson and Gareth Macleod came up to me after class one day and we engaged in the following conversation:

Gareth: We want a Hackathon.
Me: Cool.
G: It'd span 7 days.
M: Cool. How do you want to get the people? Just UWaterloo? UofT?
G: ...no, we just need a few people... ideally 7.
M: I don't understand.
G: 7 people, 7 hacks, 7 days
M: That's crazy.
G: That's the point.
M: ...you're right.

Why anyone would lock themselves in a room with 6 other nerds for 7 days is a fair question to ask. I think Mark Zuckerberg puts it best:

We're hackers; we like building things. We're entrepreneurs; we like building the whims of our minds. We're talented people (save me, I guess);  we enjoy working with other talented people.

Sense of Purpose

In a way, the week was quite repetitive: I woke up at 7:30am every morning, bused down to Kitchener, and hacked away in an office space until 10:00pm. Was it exhausting? Of course! Was it hard to get up? Yes! Was it difficult to get the day going? Not at all! Once I got past the "I don't want to wake up." phrase, the day was all drive and adrenaline I enjoy having a sense of purpose; I think most people enjoy the same. However, not everyone is lucky enough to know what drives them; I'm glad I've affirmed my interests and I hope I can continue pursuing them.

Brainstorming

The first half-hour of each day was spent in postmortems. To me, Nothing was more important: it's okay to fail... it's not okay to not know why we failed.

The next hour and more was allocated for brainstorming. Everyone pitched an idea they had and everyone voted based on feasibility, "fun-ness", and impact. Looking back, I wish we had more time in brainstorming to allow for idea development. We had plenty of ideas, but never the time and energy to improve them.

This process worked fine at the beginning of the week. By the end of each session, we always came up with an idea that excited everyone. As the days passed, however, the better ideas were exhausted and we were left with ones that only excited us individually. This is why we split up to mini-projects in the last day.

While we're on the topic of brainstorming, let me establish the following: brainstorming is tough. The naive approach is to walk into a room and expect ideas to have sex. This approach is similar to me walking into a bar expecting someone to have sex with me.

In my opinion, brainstorming comes down to two things:

• let all hell break lose...
• ...while maintaing focus on the problem

Everyone knows how to say "think outside of the box" but nobody actually does it. Thinking outside of the box requires getting outside of the box, and that means getting oneself and others uncomfortable. It means throwing ideas out there are absolutely ridiculous and farfetched. From personal experience, the best ideas come after something suggests a farce like, "Hah, maybe we can like... get Justin Bieber to sing 'Baby' at our product promotion event, hah!" If people are laughing rather than ridiculing in a brainstorming session, then we have a decent atmosphere. After all, humour is nothing but strange ideas clashing against mundane ones and that is what we want.

The best brainstorming comes from a relaxed environment where the even the dumbest ideas have a shot at getting laid. This is not easy! It takes a significant amount of self-constraint to keep a destructive mouth from opening when listening to silly, imperfect ideas; the more perfectionist and critical one is, the more likely one is going to scream, "BUT...!" Once a "but" comes out, the speaker is under attacked; all chances of sex goes to zero. More importantly, participants now feel they must have a perfect idea before presenting one; this defeats the purpose of brainstorming! The point is to create a cute little baby together - not deliver a perfect baby on one's own.

This is why people are encouraged to separate "brainstorming" from "idea evaluation." - just one of many suggestions that have been preached for years but never done in practice.

Let all hell break lose, but don't get side tracked. A trick I learned this term from my HCI course is to say the word "rathole" every time a discussion goes awry. Someone needs to be a buzz-kill; I didn't mind being the one.

Coordination

We had seven people splitting up projects that weren't meant for seven people.

We knew that entering the week, so we came up with ideas of tackling the problem before hand. One idea was to split into pairs, pair program initially, and split up the work into finer grains when appropriate. For part of the week, this worked brilliantly. For other parts of the week, we were plagued with communication and task granularity problems.

I used to be a big fan of Pair Programming, Test-Driven Development, and all those other "exciting" programming techniques. As I have matured as a developer, however, I've come to believe that none of the techniques are one-size-fit-all caps. Simply put, if the engineer at hand knows exactly what he is doing, draconian policies to pair him with another engineer or rules to mandate "tests first and code later" will only waste time and effort.

Are there times when PP and TDD are useful? Yes - if the task is ambiguous, difficult, or prone to errors. Under these circumstances, pairing is probably a good option. Otherwise, it's time to lose the training wheels.

Egos Clashing

Someone suggested that we would get extremely sick of each other after a week. No one wanted to see glasses broken or monitors smashed, but everyone enjoyed imagining the possibilities that seven nerds would break into a fight.

Fortunately, we didn't come close to anything like that.

At worst, some of us were annoyed at a lack of progress or a series of communication breakdowns. Were egos damaged? Possibly. Did anyone cry? Doubtful. (actually, Gareth might have wept in he hallways after a certain Android 3rd party plugin wouldn't work the way it should...)

Perhaps we just weren't the types of people that blow off steam by lambasting each other. Perhaps the short project maintained our focus and kept us from blaming each other.

Most failing projects have a period when the ship is sinking and people resort to pointing fingers. Our projects failed, too, but they usually sank in no more than two hours. The seven of us had enough self-composure to eat, pack, sleep, and come back the next day anew.

Internet

The internet is a strange beast. On one hand, there were people who encouraged and supported us ardently. On the other hand, a bunch of people spent the week trashing our projects and ideas - trolls!

I feel sorry for trolls sometimes. It saddens me that there are people on this planet so insecure about their own accomplishments they'd go around the internet anonymously attacking people. It makes me wonder if one of our projects should've been a hotline for trolls: "dial 1800-TROLLS today to troll whoever is on the other side of the line!"

The best troll we had was an anon who entered our Justin.TV chat room to question "the point of it all." It began with benign statements like, "I understand what they're doing... I just don't understand WHY they're doing it..."

Later, a friend of ours engaged in a conversation with him (bad idea!) and the chat quickly degenerated to:

"They [the 7 of us] are ruining society by not attending lectures!"

The internet is not evil by any means, but the personalities that shine through the crowd are too extreme. It'd be nice if there was a way to more accurately deduce public sentiments. I know more than one company attempting to generate marketing data from "voices of the internets" (i.e Twitter, forum comments, etc.), but I wonder if the results will be what one desires. We certainly don't believe the guy down the street shouting "Obama is Muslim!" to be representative of the general public. What is a tweet but a shout from down the street?

Conclusion

I don't have a grand conclusion here. As forewarned, this piece was merely a disorganized thought-dump for a chaotic week. 7 Cubed Project was a blast. I learned a lot.

Cheers.

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Americans aren't happy.

Some Americans are furious about government spending, others are angry about illegal immigrants, and more are enraged at corporate America. At least one of the three - Americans believe - are responsible for the near 10% unemployment rate.

Also, let's not forget the significant few who scream, "Obama is Muslim and he's killing our jobs!"

At the core of this nonsense seems to be Americans' self-centric behaviour of blaming everyone else but themselves: "It's the government!"... "It's the Mexicans!".... "It's the cruddy economy!".... but it's never "me."

Consider the following notions: 1) I can't find a job because something else or somebody else is failing. OR  2) I can't find a job because I lack the skill set  companies want.

Which sounds more reasonable?

Remember the good old days when there were people whose jobs were to record the entire company inventory on paper? Well, something called a computer database came along and threw those jobs out the window. What about managers whose jobs were to facilitate communication and coordinate teams? Technology killed those positions, too; companies use e-mails now. Then there were those car manufacturing jobs of which America was oh so proud. Unfortunately, manufacturers use robots now.

The truth is that technology has outpaced American education in the last thirty years. What used to be decent, middle class jobs aren't even jobs anymore. Not only is 10% of the population jobless, but "the middle class" is vanishing at an extraordinary pace.

Americans need to educate themselves high level skill sets - skill sets the modern economy needs.

What annoys me is that nobody in America is willing to acknowledge this fact. Why would they? In a nation of anti-intellectual citizens, which "bold" politician would dare to step up and say what nobody wants to hear?

Regardless, even if somebody shouts and everybody listens, it's not clear what the solution is. How can an entire generation of thirty to fifty year olds re-educate themselves for the modern economy? Not many in America have savings to afford higher education. Assuming enough people can afford classes, there are not enough teachers and education institutions to facilitate the training. More importantly, can people past their youth even learn effectively?

It would seem that any kind of education initiative would need to come from the government; yet how will that happen when much of the government doesn't even recognize the problem? Obama is the loudest voice for education at the moment, but with two wars, a terrible economy, and an useless congress, how much can he really do?

To be fair, this is not just America's problem. China - the fastest growing economy in the world - is staring at the same conundrum. After all, why is the Chinese government so reluctant to raise the Yuan's value? - perhaps because increasing the Yuan will move jobs away from China and leave a massive population of manufacturing workers unemployed? No government wants to do that, especially a government fearing 1.3 billion citizens.

The difference between America and China, of course, is that the latter understands the importance of education. The current Chinese population largely comprises low end workers, but the next generation is primed with higher level education and fit for the shifting economy. America, on the other hand, continues to bicker about its economical and political issues. Now, I am not suggesting that national expenditure or healthcare aren't significant issues, but will solving either make American workers anymore valuable and attractive in the current job market?

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1. People read your entire resume.

They don't. They're too long. They're too boring. 

Look at your resume. Back to this post. Back to your resume. Now back to this post. How long is your resume? I'm guessing one to two pages, where each page looks something like this:

Maybe you're thinking, "It's only two pages! How long could it take to read through my resume?"

Indeed, it doesn't take a road trip to read your resume, but it sure does take a life time to read everyone's resume.

Let's do the math: at my school University of Waterloo's job listings, every somewhat decent position has at least 50 applications. That's counting my school alone. Now consider the entire city, the entire country, or the entire planet. I don't want to depress you too much, so let's work with an optimistic estimate:

2 pages x 150 applications = 300 pages

When was the last time you read 300 pages from a book not named "Twilight" or "Harry Potter?"

"Surely," you think, "Companies split up the work and/or read resumes very diligently! It's their job!" I wish. At best, there are no more than a few people reading the resumes together (usually people on the same team). Realize that employers are never obligated to "read resumes" or "find the best candidate." Their jobs are to "find a competent candidate." If not reading half the resumes still yields a decent crop, then half the resumes will not be read. Safe to say that we should be grateful if a potential employer spends more than ten seconds looking at each of our resumes.

What should we do if that is indeed the case? Well, for one thing, we want to make sure our resumes are clear and concise. This means using a resume template that is well formatted, contains bold headers, and has as much whitespace as text. More importantly, we should make sure our resumes deliver succinct messages to our readers (e.g "I'm experienced", "I'm well rounded.") and that the said messages aren't overloaded by distracting information. This brings us to the second myth...

2. You resume is too short; you need every piece of information on your resume.

My roommate once screamed, "Oh my god. I've tried to trim everything and I can barely contain my resume to two pages!" If you're in the same situation, then let me be blunt: your resume has more useless stuff then Windows Vista. Purge them, now.

Take contact information fox example: do you have your home address on your resume? If yes, why? I swear half the world has their home addresses on their resumes (and alternate addresses too if we all follow my school's advice) even though we're ten years into the 21st century. No company in their right mind will send applicants snail mails just to inform them of interviews. If they want to send paper work, they will most certainly ask for addresses via phone or e-mail.

Then there's all those common phrases every resume template put up top: "works well in team environment", "great communicator", "can type at 80wpm", "experienced with Microsoft Office" etc. What exactly do those phrases achieve? Does putting "great communicator" make us sound more sophisticated? Or does omitting "can type at 80wpm" suggest oneI can't type?

As for experiences, details like "communicated and collaborated with colleagues" or "demonstrated leadership skills" are mundane. Either a job position suggests leadership and collaboration (e.g "President of Club X" and/or "Event Coordinator") or a position doesn't imply leadership even if one says so (e.g "Summer camp volunteer"). Many experiences, especially the ones from high school, are irrelevant and should be kept off resumes.

Finally...

3. Your resume is remarkable and outstanding.

You have never told anybody this, but deep down, you think all those experiences on your resume have been wonderful and life changing. Every time you re-read the your volunteering experiences at "Heavenville Summercamp", you can't help but recall those sparkling moments that carved you into you. You wager that you're the only applicant who has volunteered at "Heavenville Summercamp" and that it will be the difference between you and the other applicants.

Perhaps you are really the only applicant who spent a summer at "Heavenville Summercamp." Still, your memorable experiences won't catch anybody's attention. After all, everybody has their own "Heavenville." Everybody has their own "Subway." Everybody has their own "American Apparel." What is remarkable and distinctive to you does not necessarily stand out among others. You can marvel at your own experiences all day long and still not find a job. 

I, too, suffer from the this problem. Many people look at my past internships and fathom they must make me a superstar. I know full well, however, that hundreds of resumes are floating around with as many "big name" companies. Is "Microsoft" really that impressive when over one thousand interns gathered in Redmond this past summer?

The world today is extremely competitive. Globalization has forced all of us to compete with billions. To be truly distinct, we must accomplish what billions have not. This means being able to take extra, unique steps away from the crowd - steps like writing a research paper as oppose to assisting a professor;  starting a club as oppose to helping a club, or organizing an event as oppose to volunteering for an event.

Many pending college undergrads are severely disillusioned: they believe that good jobs come bundled with their degrees. While that was true in our parents' days, today's world no longer offers such luxuries.

Take a hard look at your resume: what makes you any better than some other college grad? If the answer is "nothing," then maybe it's time you do something different.

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Last week, Holman Jenkins at Wallstreet Journal wrote about an interview with Google's CEO Eric Schmidt. The man in charge of Google commented on the mobile revolution, the future of newspapers, and privacy in the digital age. What caught my attention and raised others' eyebrows as well was his glaring suggestions about privacy:

"I don't believe society understands what happens when everything is available, knowable and recorded by everyone all the time," he says. He predicts, apparently seriously, that every young person one day will be entitled automatically to change his or her name on reaching adulthood in order to disown youthful hijinks stored on their friends' social media sites.

Either Eric's words were taken out of context, or he hasn't thought too deeply about this "social thing." Here's what's wrong with his suggestion and where I think privacy is going.

First of all, changing your name to start a new life won't hide your identity. As we speak, better algorithms and data storage techniques are being developed to support searching people through facial features;  PicTriev demonstrates a bit of that. The technology is still immature at this point, but let's not fool ourselves into thinking it won't happen. In fact, a demo I saw recently convinced me that  before long, we will be able to whip out our cameras, take pictures of other people, and find their Facebook profiles in seconds. So much for "disowning youthful hijinks" by "chang[ing] his or her name"; I'm afraid we will need plastic surgeries to really change our identities.

(from Sofapizza)

At first glance, such conclusions are daunting. The truth is that everyone of us are slowly losing control of our information in this digital age. Nevertheless, diminishing privacy is not the end of the world. In return for our privacy is social transparency and integrity.

Take fidelity for example. It used to be that people can have multiple partners with little conflicts (e.g "She fell in love with him not knowing he is married!"). Now? Either Facebook relationship statuses give it away, or lusty wall posts belie the cheaters.

In the words of my California banker, "You work at Facebook? Damn it man. I meet these girls at bars and they write stuff on my wall, you know? I always delete them the moment they come up! If my girl sees that stuff, I'd be in deep trouble!"

(from FailBook)

Let's get back to this "hijinks" idea. When reports came out a year ago claiming that employers are looking at candidates' Facebook profiles, people freaked out. Many began untagging themselves from party photos, in fear that future employers might find them "unprofessional."

In the short term, hiding your drunk photos is probably not a bad idea. In the long run? Nobody will care. The truth is that almost everyone of us have unprofessional photos of ourselves. Unless you never drink, never dance, and never allow others to takes photos of you, there's an unprofessional picture of you out there. Everyone in my generation and forward have these photos online and employers (if they try hard enough) will find them easily. So are companies going to stop hiring young people because they look unprofessional?

At some point, employers will get used to seeing people's party photos - the same way grandparents got used to dyed hair and tattoos. Instead, employers will look to other telling signs that actually distinguish candidates.

Another fear people have about posting information online is: "Things will come back to haunt you years from now... with unforeseeable consequences!!!"

Society, after all, treats people's past mistakes unforgivingly. 

Or does it?

President Barack Obama openly admitted that he smoked weed when he was young. Does that make him any less electable?

Everybody makes mistakes. We know that. In fact, the younger we are, the more mistakes we make. Isn't the idea is to acknowledge these mistakes and learn from them?

What Mr. Schmidt suggested is that everyone will want to run away from their past. What I'm suggesting is the exact opposite: everyone will be forced to acknowledge their history. Like celebrities, we will be confronted with our mistakes. Because everyone have their mishaps, society will not judge us on our mistakes (unless they're truly horrifying by public standards); society will judge whether we've learned from our mistakes or what we've done to rectify our missteps.

Actually, I will take a step further: years from now, a lack of web presence will actually hurt you. That is, leaving your public album empty or keeping the number of tweets to a minimum will diminish your public image. It's already happening now: someone my age who doesn't have a Facebook account is deemed "a weirdo." In the future, what will we think of people who don't share any information online? Unreal? Suspicious? Untrustworthy?

What we're witnessing today is a social revolution. Like in every revolution, somebody will get hurt. At the end of this social revolution, however, people will be more open, more honest, and more accepting. Is the cost of our privacy worth it?

I think so.

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Google Me, for those who have not heard, is Google's rumoured attempt to drop the gloves with Facebook. After six years, Google is finally acknowledging Facebook's threat to their global dominance (read this if you're not sure why Facebook threatens Google). Are we about to see a full blown war?

Skeptical are most people of this due or die comeback. After all, we're talking about the company that produced Wave, Buzz, Orkut, and Friend Connect. Some argue that Google - like a shy, awkward nerd - is inherently incapable of being social. Adam Rifkin wrote a nice piece claiming that Google sucks at making "lobster traps."  Others suggest that, with Facebook already at half a billion users, Google's best efforts will be rendered moot by sheer network effect. "Too little, too late," the pessimists bemoan.

Although leaning bearish as well, I'm reluctant to rule out Google Me. Sure, those Googlers are socially awkward, but they're insanely intelligent and creative. Even the nerd can make a few friends if he sets his mind to it.

How exactly can Google make an impact in the social arena? After weeks of listening and reading what others have to say, I've put together focus points that Google might be able to exploit:

Privacy

This one is a no brainer. For years, Facebook has been lambasted for fuzzy privacy options and mercurial privacy changes. Google needs to ride this wave of protest and present themselves as a viable alternative. The media loves "David vs Goliath" and "Good vs Evil." As long as Google keep up its typical "Don't be evil" demeanor, the media will hail victory even the if Google me is utter crap.

Privacy, however, will not give Google anything close to a victory. In fact, I'd argue that an over emphasis on privacy will only be a waste of time. Obviously, users want more power and control over their privacy ... but at what cost?  

Facebook has already shown us that supporting granular privacy controls only causes confusion. Unless someone at Google comes up with an ingenius idea on how to simplify data infiltration within a social network, the "give control to our users" approach will only yield the same mind boggling cockpit that was Facebook. I would even argue that the very act of "being social" involves "being open and transparent." and that the future of human behaviours on the internet is about being more open and transparent. Mark Zuckeburg gets that. Does Google?

Developers, Developers, Developers!

Since 2007, Facebook has strived to be the almighty web platform. In the early days of applications, one pundit even hailed Facebook as the "Windows on the web!" While successful by most standards, Facebook as a platform is a far cry from Microsoft's ubiquitous operating system. The network's attempt to be the social glue of the internet is still work in progress. The problem seems to be that nobody knows exactly what this platform should look like, resulting in numerous iterations and alterations. Unlike new user interfaces and new features which take no more than five minutes to understand, platform changes require weeks or months in development time to devour and concur. The utter immensity of the social platform only compounds the problem. Developers like stability and Facebook hasn't provided any.

Looking back, Facebook has gone from Applications to Facebook Connect  recently to Open Graph. The latest attempt, thanks in large to Bret Taylor, is delightfully simple relative to previous attempts. Nevertheless, meandering through the various pages of incomplete documentation remains frustrating. 

With this in mind, Google can certainly win a few developers over if they keep up their high quality APIs. Friend Connect and Wave may not have won many users over, but the efforts and thoughts dedicated into the two platforms enticed a number of developers to try their hands. Of course, the two products combined multiplied by ten still won't yield a killer app, but Google's developer-centric attitude coupled with a decent social network might lead them to the promise land that Facebook has yet to reach.

Mobile

The future of social networks is mobile; that is clear. Still, Facebook's offerings on the mobile space remain unimpressive. While the mobile version (m.facebook.com) and the touch version (touch.facebook.com) deserve praise, Facebook's Android application is a joke and their iPad application is nonexistent.

We've yet to see a social application that exploits all that mobile has to offer. Fourquare is not much more than a location service but they already have a million users and counting. What if Google Me is Foursquare and more?

Android, too, is growing at a fierce pace. The exact number is unclear, but at least several million users have Android handsets. If Google Me is installed to Android by default and offers an innovative mobile social experience, who can stop them from gaining momentum?

Unfortunately for Google, the gaping hole in the Facebook mobile environment is probably temporary. Facebook's new mobile chief Erick Tseng (who ironically came from Google) seems to understand social, mobile, and location quite well. What we are currently seeing from the Facebook mobile team might just be a lull before an overwhelming takeover.

Marketing

As I mentioned earlier, with the media being media, Google Me will have little trouble lifting off. Reaching critical mass, however, will take more than just a media blitzkrieg. If those Googlers are serious about "Me", then they will ad bomb the crap out of the internet like they've done with Chrome.

The acquisition of AdMob will come in handy, especially if Google Me focuses on the mobile experience like I mentioned.

Ads is just one prong of many. It's feasible Google will push people's Me profiles atop search results. Too evil for Google, you say? That's exactly what they did in the early days of Google Profiles. For Google, the meaning of open is when it's convenient for them.

So can Google Me be something more than nothing? I've shown already that Facebook isn't perfect. So yes, it's possible. But these weaknesses are no more than cracks and fissures. Unless Google pulls off multiple ingenious ploys and Facebook stops innovating, Google Me's success remains improbable.

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University of Waterloo is one of the most serious universities in North America. According to a classmate, an orientation survey showed UWaterloo's entrants valuing academics much more than their social lives. Still, it's not difficult to find students here who carry lackadaisical attitudes to class. If the environment here is not the best, I can hardly imagine the attitudes that pervade other university campuses across North America. As such, I'm going to spend this piece discussing dubious attitudes towards university education.

The worst attitude I've come across is "Hey, I'm just here to get my diploma, man. I don't give a fuck about Environment Studies." Not many people will come out and say these exact words, but it's probably a common mentality. Society tells everyone college degrees are the minimum requirements, so everyone goes to college to satisfy said requirements. Since "the end justifies the means," people copy, cheat, and plagiarize their way through university. Some people even consider themselves "smart" for knowing how to abuse the system. 

The irony is their stupidity. Imagine that you're an aspiring soldier that has been asked  to complete a "Strength Training Program" before joining the army. How "smart" would you be if you decide to fabricate a "Strength Training Diploma" thinking the diploma is all you really need?

Thankfully, many people realize that there are probably good reasons why society wants people to go through colleges, so they begrudgingly finish their degree without taking too many shortcuts. Nevertheless, people question the higher education's utility. Some quotes I've heard are:

"I'm just gonna BS that stupid paper on anatomy of Narwhals. It's not like understanding Narwhals will actually land me a job, right?"

"Why da hell do we have to learn Scheme [ the programming language ] anyways? The university is so stupid. Don't they realize that nobody uses Scheme in the real world?"

Going back to the army analogy, one might question exactly why soldiers needs to go through strength training before going into battle. After all, armies don't win wars by lifting weights and climbing monkey bars, right?

Of course not; but soldiers do strength training to strengthen their muscles. In a real battle, they're stronger, faster, and more likely to outlast the enemies.

Higher level education also trains people's muscles: their brain muscles. 

The anatomy of Narwhals may never come of use in one's future jobs, but the research skills, the analytical skills, and the communications skills that one earns writing a research paper will forever be invaluable in one's endeavours.

Similarly, the Scheme programming language may not be prevalent in the workforce, but the intangible skills one acquires while using Scheme will apply to any programming environments.

Nevertheless, students continue to bring up "counterexamples" to justify their own laziness:

"Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and my cousin never completed college and they're all doing splendidly!"

Suppose Arnold Shcwarzenegger [in his prime] wants to join the army as well. Do you think he needs to complete the same Strength Training Program to which you were assigned?

Let me put in anther way: are you Arnold Schwarzenegger?

If not, then hit the gym and start training. Otherwise, buy some custom machines that have twice the weights of those at a regular gym. You don't seriously think Arnold just sat at home and watched his muscles grow, did you? The only reason he isn't doing the same program you're doing is because he has his own custom program which is many times more difficult.

University offers myriad challenges in unbounded fields. It takes a severe dearth of humility to think that "University doesn't teach anything."

Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg didn't quit college because it was useless. They quit because they know how to learn on their own. They know how to attend their own university lectures. They know how to strengthen their own muscles.

Don't become the "smart" soldier who skipped strength training. You'll end up in the army alright, but you won't stand a chance against the people who actually trained - the people who you thought were "stupidly obedient." They will slaughter you ruthlessly, leaving you with no one to blame but yourself.

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Canada spent 800 million dollars to host the G8 / G20.

That money could've been used for humanitarian relief; it could've been used for renewable energy research; it could've been used to cut Canada's deficit.

Instead, it was used to hold a rather long meeting, to tempt nearby morons to torch police cars, to let police tear gas peaceful protesters, and to build fake lakes at which people can marvel.

I'm sure I'm trivializing the importance of global summits. But as far as I can tell , "global summit" is just a great euphemism for "a bunch of people chilling in a conference room."

Consider the Copenhagen Conference: after days of "intense negotiations," President Obama came out and basically said, "We've agreed ... to agree ... on setting goals on green house gas emissions."

Meetings and conferences are slow and difficult; I understand - I worked at IBM and Microsoft. Cooperation is tough; I get it. But surely, there's a better way to communicate then fly everyone to the same place and sit them down at a table for 72 hours?

If my mom can Skype, why can't Barack Obama?

I know DimDim, GoToMeeting and TokBox sounds silly and aren't up to the task of simulating a global summit. But I also know Canada just spent 800 million dollars holding a conference and 0 dollars developing video conference technology.

People watch Star Trek and beam at the way the characters communicate. They then exit the theater and say, "Well, back to reality. That stuff is sci-fi." Come on! That stuff is here! Look at the iPad! Look at the iPhone!

Beneath this rant is my utopian vision of a truly flat world. A world where world leaders will chat and cooperate with each other on a frequent basis. A world where government will tear down the existing bureaucracy through transparency and mass communication. A world where Ethiopians and Canadians can converse as if they are neighbours speaking the same tongue. A world where national borders are more landmarks than fences.

I understand that change is not easy and change is not fast. All I hope is that change happens and that "I Dreamed a Dream" won't be my favorite song when I am eighty.

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Half a mile ahead, the light turned green. The cars in front began crawling forward. I took my foot off the brakes and gassed my rental Corolla, thinking some movement forward is better than no movement forward. The light turned red before the car behind me even started. I frowned. This isn't what I imagined driving to be when I avidly thumbed my way through Gran Turismo 4.  

After two weeks of "commuting by car," I've since switched to bussing and walking. The former is a waste time and waste of energy. On the bus, I can sit back, relax, and read on my Nexus One. On a car, I scream and curse the jerks who think traffic rules are there to be broken. 

Everyday, in the short walk from the bus stop to my office, I dream of a world without cars and drivers. I imagine a world with magnetic rails instead of roads. On these rails would run compact, smart cars like vehicles that can bring me anywhere in the city. The system would be publicly owned and centrally operated. With a touch on my smart phone screen, a vehicle would come zooming to a location near me . No collisions, no time forgone, no energy wasted. 

My more conservative friends have probably screamed "Communism!" by now. To this I would ask: are sidewalks communist? Should richer people have nicer sidewalks while poor people walk on mud? 

Nevertheless, I understand the idea is too radical to take place in my life time. It fails to build on existing infrastructures and no government has the money, time, and crazy mindset to flip the city upside down. 

This led me to dream of a more likely scenario: a world with autonomous cars. I would step into my Lexus, RFID activate my car, specify my destination using voice and touch, and before long I would be there without my hands on the wheel or my foot on the pedals. Unlike the aforementioned grid system, current technology isn't quite there yet to support such vehicles. There are, however, signs of hope:

The biggest hurdle to this idea, of course, is human's irrational fear of machines. My friend Anton, a Microsoft intern, said something along the lines of, "I work too close with the code to trust it." 

I was too tired at the time to argue with him. If he says it again today, I'd reply, "I work too close with moronic drivers to trust them over computers." Seriously: just think of all the idiots who drive while drinking, texting, putting on make up, checking out other drivers, or getting a blow job, and your distrust in machines will look more absurd than your love for Lady Gaga. 

Nothing is perfect and accidents are going to happen. I can already envision some congressman (think Ted Stevens) who will stand on the floor lambasting the new "machines" as "evil", "unreliable", and "unsafe" after somebody dies from an autonomous vehicle, even if he's the first to suffer in a billion. 

I hope that's just my cynicism at work. I really do dream of a driverless future and want it real before my 30s. In the mean time, I'll keep saying "Thank you." to bus drivers.

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So, if you haven't heard already, May 31st is suppose to be "Quit Facebook Day" because some users are fed up with the complex privacy settings and default options.

Here's what I think is gonna happen:

* May 31st *

User A: YES! YES! YES! I've quit Facebook ONCE AND FOR ALL! Yes! I went to the steps to DELETE my account and not "deactivate." I'm sick of these blood sucking, money hungry scumbags who wants to sell all my drunk party photos to evil advertisers!

* meanwhile in Palo Alto.... *

Mark Zuckerberg (to media): Over the past few weeks, we've heard a lot of feedback from our users. Today, we're announcing a variety of changes that will hopefully make privacy settings much easier to understand...

* and back... *

User A: Dudes, join me on Diaspora. It's like this totally free, open, liberal super cool social network that doesn't even have a mock up design. Dont' worry man, I'm sure those 4 students from NYU are like hardcore geniuses and stuff. They'll pwn those 300+ Facebook engineers any day.

Dudes: Hey... wth, you quit? Why? FB just changed their privacy settings, dude. They're like... dead simple now. Even my grandma gets it.
 
User A: Wtf? really? Omg... they did! Alright, maybe FB isn't that bad after all... lemme log in again... OH SHIT! My account has been deleted! WTF!!! All my friends... my photos... my stash... it's all gone! WTF I want my stuff back! Why isn't there an undelete feature!!!?? FML !!!!! 

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I love shopping online: Amazon, Amazon Fresh, Zappos... they save money and they save time; next thing you know, they'll be saving lives.

Despite my love for online shopping, my attempt to buy a bike last week left me eye to eye with a huge problem with online stores: too many choices and no curators.

The realization began when I tried to pick a bike at Performance Bicyle. 

Frankly, the folks there have made a pretty decent website: you can filter by types, sort by price, and even zoom in to take a closer look at the bikes. I didn't know exactly what I wanted, but I had some ideas: $200 - $400, road or hybrid, and not pink. These criteria left me with over 30 bikes. I was baffled. 

To resolve my distress, I drove down to the actual Performance store to check the bikes out in person. Unfortunately, it was even harder to find the right bike among 5+ racks of two wheel vehicles with no descriptions.

My problem was only resolved when the person at the counter noticed my confused countenance and came over to help. Of all the salesman I've met to date, he sounded the least motivated and most Asperger-like. There were so many awkward silences between our conversations I wanted to leave in between. Nevertheless, he made three to four recommendations that instantly won me over. In said context, he was an expert and experts are comforting to consumers.

This brings me to how e-commerce sites today can improve themselves: help your users find satisfactory products. This isn't as difficult as it sounds, as there is a huge difference between "satisfactory" and "perfect." Did the guy at Performance find the "perfect" bike for me? Of course not! He just looked at the catalog and gave me three bikes with half-decent features. There might have been better bikes, but I trusted his expertise enough to believe that I wouldn't regret my pending purchase. The best salesman don't find products that tailor to their customers' "needs"; they sell products that tailor to their customers' "feelings."

Online stores should consider developing wizards for their websites. Allow the user to do some simple filtering (e.g price, types) and grab the reigns from there. Show the user the "recommended products" and justify the choices. "This bike is light!" or "This bike has better brakes!" All it takes is a little demonstration of expertise.

The wizard doesn't have to stop there. Anyone with a little marketing knowledge would know there are many ways to manipulate customers. Suppose the store has customer profiles and histories (e.g Amazon). To a frugal customer, the wizard can show a mid-price product a long side more expensive products. Even though there are cheaper products available, the "recommendation" would make the customer feel the cheaper products are yields less quality and the "recommended" product isn't that expensive anyways (relative to the other recommended ones). Conversely, if a high rolling customer comes along, the wizard can recommend some high end products and justify with satisfying buzz words (e.g "This is the latest and greatest, i7 core, cloud reaching, web 4.0 capable, multitouch-enhanced computing device."). I'm sure there are more ploys, but I'll leave them for the marketing experts to explain.

The said wizard would be what I'd do to boost profits to my online stores. Unfortunately, I don't own any and I don't work at Amazon anymore. I wish someone would take this idea and run with it. I don't care if you earn millions off it; I just want a better shopping experience.

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Today, a Facebook group called "我地小學小息個陣打鐘要定格" reminded me of all those "wonderful" memories of Hong Kong education. The group name translates to, "Our elementary schools made us freeze when the recess bell rang!"

No, nothing was lost in translation. Let me elaborate: like most elementary schools in the world, HK elementary schools held small 5-10 minute breaks during the day. Like everyone else, there are buzzers or bells that signal the beginning and end of breaks. When the break ends is when the fun begins. As stated in the school rules, every student must "freeze" when the bell rings. What happens if a student doesn't "freeze"? An upper year 風紀 (i.e prefect - Harry Potter style), would scream at the offender and optionally record him/her down in a "detention notebook." Some prefects are nicer than others, but most prefer to utilize their privileges (think Stanford Prisoner Experiment).

If Hong Kong students themselves think it's a ridiculous rule, all of you who grew up in North America probably thinks it's inhuman.

At the end of the day though, success takes discipline. As messed up as rules like this one sound, they do help students follow instructions and stay focused.

Like everything else in life, this coin has two sides.

P.S If that wasn't enough quirkiness for you, check out "Teaching the Cinderella Story: China vs America."

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P.S First post!

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