在2009年金曲獎獲得最佳新人以及最佳作曲的盧廣仲在10/30推出了他的第二張專輯：七天。這張專輯一開始聽起來，跟他以前的風格感覺有小小的差異 — 似乎少了一點「雜湊」的味道？ 至少整個專輯聽起來是很舒服的！不過，這些炸聽起來很簡單的歌，其實並不好唱。就比如說下面這首「Oh Yeah!」裡面，有許多轉音、壓音，以及盧廣仲自己特殊的口氣，這絕對是一般人所唱不出來的味道。

另外，這個版本的「七天」也滿生動可愛的，雖然不是盧廣仲唱的，不過唱的還真不錯！

This morning I had a 30-minute on-campus interview with Microsoft. My interviewer, Winnie, is a very nice lady from China. She has been working in Microsoft for nearly 15 years and had experienced several positions as program managers, developers, test engineer etc.

The interview process is unlike other interviews that I had before. In the whole process, Winnie spent time looking into my resume and my job application form. Although I intended to apply for a program manger position, she suggested me to start with a test engineer for the reason that 1) non-native speaker do have some disadvantage in a management position; 2) many Ph.D.s are trained to have great logical thinking and excel in a test engineer position.

To evaluate my programming skill, she asked me to write  a breadth first search algorithm, in which I failed. Based on her evaluation, I am more suitable for an internship position, which has lower entrance bar. An internship is a great opportunity for me to understand if that position fits my passion, as well as for the company to know if I am a proper full-time candidate.

In addition, based on her own experience, she suggested me to look for jobs in a small company, or even a start-up, so that I can explore different perspectives of a company. Latter, if I want to, I can move to a larger company so that I can know how to scale a business. Big companies are good for those who has expertise and depth in a specific area, and since I am good at nothing (know little bit about something), a small company should be a better fit.

Overall, it is always good to have career advises for experienced people. I really treasure this interview experience and hope that I can clear up my mind about what I want to do for my next step very soon.

Finally, if I really want to apply to a software company, significant practice on one type of programming language is inevitable. In that way, I will be able to write code when being asked a question, rather than just expressing my logic flow.

星光一班的冠軍林宥嘉在10/30推出了第二張專輯–感覺這次的曲風變化沒有上一張專輯多，但是他的歌唱風格更是明顯了。用他迷幻的聲音唱出來的歌還是那麼有味道。

第一波主打為輕快的「看見什麼吃什麼」，第二波主打為「說謊」 — 兩首歌的風格在上一張專輯中都有表現過，但在唱歌的技術上似乎更純熟了。

看見什麼吃什麼：

說謊：

更多的介紹請參見華研音樂網頁！

Mobile phone is getting more powerful these days — including navigation. For Apple’s iPhone, there are built in navigation engine to do the job, but for Google’s Android platform, the new Google Navigation system can do the work (while your 3G/wireless connenction is alive?). Watch the video for more info:

And more analysis from Techcrunch , Standalone GPS will be fine, Effect on Garmin and Tom2’s stockprice

Although the economy seems to gradually recover, money-saving ideas are still prevalent. Recently, I found that by paying cash, some stores provide 10% discount and some stands are tax-free. Since the CA tax rate is greater than 8%, both means more than 8% of saving in that purchase. In contrast, if I pay by credit card, the best cashback I can get is probably 3% (maybe 5% when using Discover card). Therefore, going for cash payment is the top choice.

Of course, for tax-free states such as Oregon or for tax-free online purchases from Amazon.com, using credit card for an 1%+ cash back would make a lot of sense.

It seems that instead of paying with plastic bill,  I should carry more cash around now.

I read an interesting article regarding a guy who accidentally dropped his Kindles 2, thereby making it un-usable. He is not happy with the robustness claim of the Kindles product advertised by Amazon.com and filed a letter to request for a settling fee. Amazon.com replied in a month after they received the mail and agreed with the settlement. It is an interesting read as the letter is written in a very strong wordings and with some legal terms. It may be useful to learn such writing style for various occasions.

Read the whole story here.

Apple have re-invent technology in many ways … this time is the mouse we use (almost) everyday. However, it costs $69USD for this magic mouse! See Apple magic mouse page for more detail.

那天我看到這張照片
http://www.terragalleria.com/parks/np-image.chis20527.html
我想說 這是哪個國家公園 如此美麗, 原來就是我每天在實驗室站起來，往窗外眺望，就可以看到的國家公園啊!
只能說攝影技術真的太重要了。
去過了七個國家公園，結果最近的還沒去過，一定要找機會去才是!!

http://www.tmp.ucsb.edu/extracurricular/keynote_lecture_tim_westergren.html

This afternoon, I attended a talk given from one of Pandora’s founder, Tim Westergren. It is absolutely fantastic to listen to one of the major websites that renovates the music industry in the recent five years. In addition, Tim, as a true Entrepreneur in himself, sets a great example for young Entrepreneurs.

Tim graduated from Stanford in 1988 (if I remembered it correctly), and went into must-related jobs for ten years. The Music Genome idea started to be formulated in these years, and during the first prime time for the Internet — approximately 1999 –, he and other fellow friends got an Angel founding and started  a company to work on this project.

The situation become bad when by the end of 2002, they ran out of money. They paid no salaries to the employers until in 2004, they got a 9 million USD from a group of VCs. During that difficult period, they owed about 2 million of salary. It is amazing to me about how Pandora can keep the employers even under this tough situation, but they survived.

After getting the major funding, they hired a new CEO, and then re-positioned themselves to become an online radio. In fact, their original business model was to license their software to the big brand names to help recommend songs that someone might be interested. Latter, they figured out that online radio is, in fact, the way to go, and thus started the website we currently see today in 2005.

The Pandora radio is soon a great hit and more people registered after than launched an iPhone version. They do not need to license the music, according to Tim, since there is US laws that allow them to freely put music on a radio format. This is also why, when you key-in the title of a certain song, it cannot play it. Any music on the “radio” need to be played in an un-predictable fashion.

There are two barriers of entries: one is the music selection algorithm behind the music engine and the other is that the music genome, in reality, require human to listen and label them. Each album may take up to more than 2 human hours. Of course, this will results in some scalability problem and may also prohibit them from fast expansion, but they do not intend to cover all music but, perhaps, 10% of the all music in the world.

Pandora is now a very popular internet radio and their success is basically worth-of-mouth, with very few advertisement. The story is definitely inspiring from young entrepreneurs.

The video will soon available on the TMP website.

http://www.tmp.ucsb.edu/extracurricular/keynote_lecture_tim_westergren.html

Sherman

Today (10/7) is the 57th birthday of barcode. Thanks to this invention, many tracking become very convenient. More information on barcode can be found on Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barcode

Interested readers can generate their own barcode from the following website:

http://www.morovia.com/free-online-barcode-generator/