Blog Up Front

Thu 18 Jan 200106:50 AM

I’ve been meaning to do this for some time, but late last night I finally published a revised version of the home page. You’ll notice (if you’re reading this now) that it integrates my old Log into the main body. This just made a lot more sense. The old log was a little hidden.

Also, I’ve begun using the archiving features of Blogger to move items off of the home page and onto an Archive page.

It’s Anyone’s Call

Wed 17 Jan 200112:02 AM

“It’s just really difficult to call whether it’s a slowdown or a recession. There’s just an economic wet blanket over the world right now and we’ll see what happens when things pick up again.”
— Intel CFO Andy Bryant, on Intel’s poor Q4 results, as reported in The New York Times.

Journal: 15 Dec 00

Tue 16 Jan 200110:27 AM

Yesterday, I posted a new entry to my Journal. This one is about how “being back in Singapore is weird, in unexpected ways.” Last week I also sneaked in a year-end round-up (albeit somewhat late) of the best media that I consumed in 2000.

Just as I Left It

Mon 15 Jan 200101:00 PM

When I left New York and moved away to Singapore the first time in July, I told my office coworkers not to be sad, it wasn’t as if I were leaving the family (which is to say, it wasn’t as if I were leaving the company); rather, it was more as if I were heading off to college. It was a convenient analogy then, and it’s kind of a convenient analogy now that I can use to describe how odd it is for me to be back here in Singapore, finally, after four months away. Imagine that, after the first month in your freshman year at university that you had to slip back and do four more months in high school.

William Hewlett, Rest in Peace

Sun 14 Jan 200109:58 AM

This past Friday, William Hewlett, co-founder of Hewlett-Packard and one half of the team that pointed the way for the whole of Silicon Valley, passed away in his sleep.

Good Feed

Sat 13 Jan 200108:23 AM

The new logo for Feed Magazine rocks the house. And it’s orange, to boot.

Narrative Is an Interface

Sat 13 Jan 200108:07 AM

“In all the linked lists and nicely-constructed graphics that show up online and in multimedia products, with the tendency to bullet-point and encourage skimming (as no one reads), it’s easy to forget that narrative is the original interface to enormous databases of cultural, economic, and historical information.”
&#151 From “Initial Thoughts About Narratives” in Ftrain by Paul Ford

New Crop

Fri 12 Jan 200101:27 AM

I guess everyone loves the new Apple Titanium PowerBook G4, just announced on Tuesday. I admit that’s a slick little laptop, but I have to reserve judgement until I see the actual thing, up close and personal. At a distance, I’m not particularly enamored by its slavish devotion to squarishness. And at 5.3 lbs., I’m not particularly impressed by its weight economy, either.

The big question everyone should be asking is, what the heck is Apple’s long-term gameplan? This may be a fancy little machine, but it still leaves unmet most of the challenges facing the company today&#58 lagging processor speeds, poor price-to-features value, ever-shrinking marketshare. I’ve been down on this company that I care for so greatly for so long now, for the simple reason that the products they’ve delivered have seemed increasingly detached from reality. I know until this year, they’ve actually managed to prosper and show a profit, but I feel like the creativity is a pale ghost of what it once was.

Cute

Wed 10 Jan 200111:01 AM

If you grew up anywhere near Washington DC as I did, then the idea of a National Zoo without pandas just isn’t an idea that carries a whole lot of currency. Thank goodness for the arrival of Tian Tian and Mei Xiang.