Life goes on

'Continuous' problem with iTunes Match

2012-01-28T01:36:00.000-08:00

I uploaded all my CDs to Apple iTunes Match.

There are now some 10 songs (out of 5000) which are in iCloud/Match with a 'Continuous' text entry in the Time column which are greyed out.

I cannot download those songs, stream them nor do I find a way to change those songs on iTunes.

Can someone please help me?

Still dreaming of plug and play

2012-01-21T14:43:00.000-08:00

I am finally giving up on CDs and move into the 2nd digital age of moving everything into MP3s.

When I heard of Apple with their new Match feature on iTunes I decided to finally rip all my CDs and then let them RIP in boxes in my cellar.

After making some progress getting to letter 'C' my Apple MacBook's hard disk threw in the towel with an overflow message.

With Apple iTune Match still being in beta phase I didn't want to trust them by deleting all my MP3 files relying on the copy in Apple's iCloud. So on I went to buy a Western Digital 2TB disk as a security backup.

While our household consists mostly of iConverts, I still have a company Dell laptop so I wanted to make sure, that I can still backup some files from that laptop.

Did I expect the USB 2TB to seamlessly connect to my Airport Extreme?

Maybe not but I definitely didn't expect myself needing to dive into user forums understanding the differences about NTFS, HFS+ and FAT32.

...and if anyone can help me with understanding, why a WD FAT32 disk behind the Apple Extreme HFS+ is SOOOOOOOOO slow I would definitely appreciate some guidance.

Until then I am still dreaming of plug and play

goodbye HP, welcome Canon

2011-05-01T15:12:00.000-07:00

We recently moved from the US to Europe with a fully functional HP Photosmart C4480.

Printer Cartridges were the HP 74 and 75 in the USA.

Graciously the power supply of the Photosmart was accepting 110V and 220V, so we could continue to use the HP printer in Europe as well.

So now came the time when the printer cartridges were running low and we needed to replace them.

Funnily enough the numbering schemes for European cartridges are different. So for the same Photosmart C4480 you need to buy an HP 350 and 351 cartridge.

Mechanically the same BUT the printer will reject the cartridges.

Looks like, that there is some different programming between the HP 350/351 and the HP 74/75 despite that the Photosmart printer is exactly the same.

Tried to find a way to reprogram the printer to accept European ink to no avail.

Tried to then even find a new HP printer to accept the HP350/351 (as the cartridges are nicely priced almost more expensive than the printer itself) to no avail either.

In the end I was so upset that despite my last 4 printers being HP, I would rather spend an extra 20 Euros to buy a new Canon printer just to get away from the HP...

Clever marketing gone sour!!!

Good bye HP, welcome Canon

My Keyboard needs a 'P'

2011-04-16T04:09:00.000-07:00

Need some help from someone, who can send me a 'P' (alternatively any other key) which I can use for my old G4 PowerBook

The computer is still too good to retire, so if anyone has a spare key left I would very much appreciate it...

Schummelt der Spiegel?

2011-03-20T11:55:00.000-07:00

... wenn ich hier zusammenzähle, komme ich bei den Zweitstimmen über 100%,

http://www.spiegel.de/thema/landtagswahl_sachsen_anhalt_2011/

Miele Staubsauger: Wie man den Arretierungs Knopf an das Teleskoprohr anbringt

2010-11-20T11:20:00.000-08:00

Bei unserem Miele Staubsauger ist kuerzlich der Knopf des Teleskoprohres abgebrochen.

Nachdem wir uns Ersatz fuer den defekten Knopf besorgt hatten, kam jetzt die kniffelige Aufgabe, den Knopf wieder an das Rohr zu befestigen,

Teleskoprohr des Miele Staubsaugers

Arretierungsknopf des Staubsaugers

Hier jetzt ein kurzes Video (thx Oli), wie man das schnell fixen kann:

AMS Technologies Company Presentation

2010-08-27T07:12:00.001-07:00

put our latest Company Presentation online... check it out

AMS Technologies Company Presentation

View more presentations from janmeise.

World Cup fever: Panini stickers haves and wants (thanks to MyCaption)

2010-04-25T05:37:00.000-07:00

Yeap, we are officially crazy now... World Cup must be around the corner.

Nope, we are not waiting until June, so we already start hyping ourselves with Panini's latest 'official licensed stick album'. (-> http://www.paninigroup.com/fifaworldcup)

After 2 Euros for the album, >60 Euros for stickers and 6 hours worth of opening 5 packs, sorting the stickers and trying to get that back paper off those self adhesive stickers my album is about 4/5th completed (note to Panini, why don't you perforate the back of those stickers like the US stamps, that would save half the time...??)

Still need to clean up my floor from all those packs and back papers (see http://tinyurl.com/3axasdw) but I am now on the hunt for those stickers which I still need for completion.

I am sure it would have taken me multiple hours to go through the album and duplicate stickers, typing those numbers in a computer but instead I used my Blackberry with the latest MyCaption speech-to-text software. With just 2 three minute memos I sorted all those in no time. (Have a BlackBerry? You have to try http://www.mycaption.com)

For all those Panini nut cases like me, here is the first list of wants and haves:

WANTS:

10 11 14 15 18 19 22 23 29 33 37 39 45 47 49 58 67 64 69 73 85 97 98 102 103 112 113 119 124 136 141 146 151 152 158 169 171 174 182 187 198 193 195 210 217 228 239 255 256 262 270 275 277 278 279 282 285 287 303 307 312 333 340 341 349 375 378 383 384 390 415 423 438 444 454 456 462 477 485 487 488 494 499 504 506 507 509 514 519 520 525 528 529 530 537 554 556 561 588,591,601,608,614,618,619,624,627,641

HAVES:

636, 597, 594, 581, 579, 576, 565, 552, 541, 538, 516, 501, 484, 481, 469, 467, 458, 457, 451, 446, 445, 436, 432, 430, 425, 422, 418, 413, 411, 405, 395, 388, 386, 379, 365, 364, 361, 336, 335, 317, 316, 311, 306, 298, 296, 295, 289, 286, 284, 281, 276, 245, 241, 240, 234, 233, 232, 231, 219, 213, 205, 209, 201, 177, 164, 162, 143, 132, 128, 126, 107, 101, 82, 74, 68, 63, 60, 57, 54, 42, 41, 30, 27, 20, 13, 8, 5

As there are quite a few Panini nutcases in my office I expect this list to change quickly, so please visit the comments below for any changes to the list.

Business Week article: "Is Silicon Valley Losing its Magic?"

2009-01-11T11:05:00.000-08:00

Here is a paragraph I copied from last week's Business Week article: 'Is Silicon Valley Losing its Magic?'

'... What really infuriates him [Andy Grove] is the concept of the "exit strategy". That's when leaders of startup companies make plans to sell out to the highest bidder rather than trying to build important companies ove a long period. "Intel never had an exit strategy", he tells me. "These days, people cobble something together. No capital. No technology. They measure eyeballs and sell advertising. Then they get rid of it. You can't build an empire out of this kind of concoction. You don't even try."

Now how true is that???

Here is the podcast version:

http://www.businessweek.com/mediacenter/qt/podcasts/cover_stories/covercast_01_01_09.mp3

and a video

Smooth Pour versus Good beer

2008-06-08T19:25:00.001-07:00

Here is an interesting Marketing campaign.

How do you pretty up the bland beer taste of the silver bullet?

You smoothen the pour ;-))

Coors Light now ships the wide mouth can and you can see the ads posted on quite a few billboards these days

What's even more interesting is the use of new media in parallel to the old billboard signs.

First the paid videos

From Crackle: Coors Light Perfect Pour

(see the comment on the right hand side of the video: "Yes, we got paid for this. It was awesome because it was EASY MONEY! CHA-CHING!")

and

We even have a Coors Light group on Facebook with >1,000 members and the Coors Light Brewing Company with 24,000 fans on that same platform.

... and all for one of the weakest beers on earth.

So I checked my favorite beer on Facebook and the Jever community lags with some 181 members

Note that we are allowed to surf the Jever website with 16 while we have to wait to enter the Coors Light site with 21 ;-))

Na denn Prost

Muddy Buddy 2008 Ride & Run (and mud bath)

2008-06-08T18:15:00.001-07:00

Guy and I got through the 5 legs of the Muddy Buddy 2008 in San Jose finishing it off in the mud pit.

... and I thought it was almost harder than a Marathon.

Check out the pictures and the video of the mud pit below:

AVCHD what...? High Def Cameras with limited software support

2008-06-07T09:24:00.000-07:00

The Marketing campaign was working.

When we were on the search for a video camera it had to be high definition. Well, with our flat panel display and an HD Tivo box at home, how could you go back to 'normal' video when you could have high def...

The choice between Hard Disk, DVD/CD, cassette and flash was quickly decided towards hard disk.

But then there was the 5 letter acronymn AVCHD, with that sticker

glued to these high definition video cameras...

We spent some time on the web and finally decided to go with the Canon HG10 after reading the reviews in our mixed PC/Apple household knowing that we wouldn't be able to download the AVCHD video onto the older Apple.

We were all the more surprised when we saw the lack of good software and utilities. Especially converting the high def files to .avi proves to be something which I still haven't been able to accomplish even with studying a bunch of user forum sites...

In summary AVCHD cameras are still for the techies and not a plug and play solution for the general public.

Let's hope that this lack of ease of use software support is getting resolved soon.

Goodbye DirecTV, welcome U-verse

2008-05-23T20:58:00.000-07:00

After 5 years with DirecTV, with 3 years of HD service, we finally decided to jump ship and got ourselves U-versed.

Sometimes it seems that being an early adopter is just not the right decision; in 2005 I paid some $800 for an HD Tivo box, which back that time was state of the art. As some of you might remember the early boxes were only capable of decoding MPEG-2 while you needed a new box for MPEG-4 decoding, necessary to view the local stations in HD (without an off air antenna).

So my $800 box plus the $10/month HD service fee got me <10 HD stations and after only 3 years the hard disk crashed, not even allowing live TV to be watched...

Time to say Goodbye to DirecTV and Tivo

and say Welcome to AT&T U-Verse.

The installation process was very friendly and customized as my technician pulled a cat5 connection to a bonus room where the wireless signal only got one bar on my laptops.

The Wireless Router from 2-Wire is quite a bit larger than my previous Netgear device for DSL only, but it's still small enough to hide under a shelf.

The Set Top Box from Motorola is quite a bit smaller than the Tivo box and is now too small underneath the Bose system:

Our Philips flat panel HD TV has some challenges displaying the SD content centered in the middle and seems a little offset to the right, while HD content seems centered alright.
I would also subjectively say that the U-Verse SD and HD picture quality is inferior to the quality of DirecTV. Quite some pixelation even in slow moving pictures and static text at the bottom of the picture.

So far, I would give it a 5 out of 5 for customer installation service but only a 2 out of 5 for the picture quality.

(quote technician: most customers get used to the picture quality after a while)

Still have some 3 weeks to decide if I want to stick or pull the plug...

Shang Lian Meise Primary School opening in Anyuan County, Jiangxi Province, China

2008-05-17T15:53:00.000-07:00

Finally had the chance to follow up on my previous trip to the Jiangxi province and open the Shang Lian Meise Primary school in Anyuan County.

I have a lot of fond memories from our trip in the end of 2006 and probably the most memorable picture of 2006 was the below of the most happy children I have ever seen.

So, finally in April 2008 we have been able to organize for a follow up trip and attend the opening ceremony for the Shang Lian Meise Primary School.

We took a minibus from Shenzhen, China and drove 7 hours to Anyuan City in Anyuan County, Jiangxi, China.

After a good night sleep we went for another 30 minute drive to the mountainous village where we were greeted by the school children (please see the slide show below)

As there is no map of the village I took my Garmin GPS handheld this time and tracked our route, you can see the location of the school on the 3rd photo

Laserwire at Interop 2008 in Las Vegas

2008-05-05T18:06:00.000-07:00

LCD and Plasma Panels; the thinner the better

2008-01-15T06:19:00.000-08:00

Size does matter...

We have finally figured out that we will need to buy a new or remodel our old house to build walls to hold these monstrous 100 inch+ LCD and plasma panels.

So what was new in displays at CES 2008?

Superslim Displays and plenty of them:

One very impressive one was the Sony OLED display:

Now the only question is, how are we going to get a video cable aesthetically pleasing connected to the display...

HD-DVD, put to rest at CES 2008, the Un'Amusement Controller'

2008-01-15T06:05:00.000-08:00

Toshiba showed the 'Amusement Controller' at CES 2008

While I was there the HD-DVD part of their booth was deserted, just the little blues band demo was up and running playing the last song...

RIP HD-DVD, thanks for playing

Sony's Rolly, finally an MP3 player for dogs...

2008-01-15T05:41:00.000-08:00

It's finally here, the iPOD for your dog.
While mankind is using their iPODs in the Gym we have wondered what our 4 legged friends are going to be using... It's finally here; Sony released Rolly, the most ridiculous rolling and moving mp3 player.

Please find below a movie I took at CES 2008 this year; enjoy:

I give Rolly some 20 seconds survival time when playing with a Rottweiler...

Want more information on Rolly?

Visit:

Engadget

PC World Rolly Review

Dell's first DisplayPort at CES 2008

2008-01-15T00:37:00.000-08:00

took me a while to find it but after some crawling I got a camera shot of the first Dell DisplayPort in a monitor.
Still no sources to connect it to though

See also

http://techdigest.tv/2008/01/dell_debuts_mon.html

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2243941,00.asp

http://www.slipperybrick.com/2008/01/new-dell-30-inch-display-uses-displayport/

Why is Chase chasing me?

2007-12-25T19:17:00.001-08:00

Just got my second flood of Chase/United Airlines/Visa credit card offers.

Almost every week I receive a letter from Chase now with different level of sign up miles bonuses. They oscillate randomly between 16,000 and 25,000 miles with no apparent reason.

Since I am already a Chase/United/Visa credit card customer I am really wondering why Chase is going all out here to sign me up on a second card,

Anyone?

Does anyone know how to stop these letters, my understanding is that if you are customer of theirs they can send you anything they like?

the fine line of feeling ripped off, Sub-Zero charges $20 for some screws

2007-12-25T00:20:00.000-08:00

Yes, we were fascinated by that Sub-Zero fridge/freezer combo; so when we did our kitchen remodel in Q4 07 there was no way surviving without the over-under 650 model...

Our kitchen contractor came an installed that monster with 5 of his friends.

The suction the fridge creates is enormous; takes quite a bit of muscle to open that door but I guess it shows a good insulation design.
Challenging it was though that opening the door the fridge edged a little out of the built in cabinet frame... But Sub Zero to the rescue.

There is an 'anchoring kit' they sell to mount it firmly to the cabinet walls.

So we ordered the kit (directly from SubZero) and got the following package:

We got 10 screws with a couple of washers...

And paid:

Dear Sub Zero, your fridges are definitely not the cheapest on the block so don't you think that you could just add these 10 screws right away instead of making us feel ripped off, paying another $20 plus ~$10 for freight.

Thinking of buying a GE Monogram Wine Cooler/Reserve (ZDW240 series: ZDWR240/ZDWT240/ZDWC240)?

2007-12-22T11:56:00.000-08:00

Take a look at the below pictures of some Pinot Noir bottles from Iron Horse which I tried to put into ZDWR240.

The bottles don't fit into the wine cooler. Didn't even get warned by our kitchen appliance specialist. According to them the GE Monogram is the biggest seller.

Too bad that we bought and installed it before reading some of the reviews online which all seem to indicate that this is a major design flaw.

The same challenges apply for the other GE Monogram wine reserves ZDWT240 and ZDWC240.

AT&T's U-Verse, Triple Play, are we there yet...?

2007-12-01T23:06:00.000-08:00

I am one of the lucky ones in an area where AT&T's U-Verse is being deployed.
While I have been able to resist the door to door sellers I have heard good feedback so far from my neighbors which have been signing up.

AT&T has been pretty aggressive on the promotion front; while the service itself seems pretty much in line what Dish, DirecTV and Comcast offer over here, the interesting package features are:

1) free installation
2) free HD DVR plus 2 HD receivers
3) no contract

So I was almost sold as I am already using their DSL service today and thought that I could get rid of my DirecTV Tivo box... And then today I found this flyer in my mailbox...

AT&T offering triple play??? Well, that makes sense... Getting rid of my old SBC local account and potentially throwing out the MCI Verizon long distance service and getting the real deal...

So I called AT&T to inquire about the service especially since there is no mentioning of it on the web yet.

To my disappointment though the triple play service is not the 'real deal'; in fact it's only a 'bundle' of products and you are still getting 2 invoices from AT&T.

For the phone service (AT&T All Distance for U-Verse) you are getting charged $40 per month for
- unlimited local calling
- Nationwide long distance caling
- Up to 13 custom calling features, including Caller ID, Call Waiting, Call Forwarding etc.

With my limited US calls it wasn't worth it for me...

So, still giving my DirecTV/TIVO box another month before I kick it out of the living room...

J

Sun's Constellation switch at Supercomputing 2007 in Reno

2007-11-19T16:03:00.000-08:00

Maybe I missed the Sun announcement in Dresden earlier this year:

but I had the chance to take a look at it a little closer during Supercomputing in Reno last week:

Take a look at these 3 photos, what a monster switch ;-))

Hawaii Chair ;-)))

2007-11-11T14:04:00.001-08:00

Yes, I am a massagoholic but please, who would want to buy the Hawaii Chair?

see a few others trying their luck with it:

in the infomercials you even see folks trying this out at work...

Here is a reference to their website

http://www.hawaiichair.com/os/

and a couple of other blogs on this topic:

Crave's review

Infomercial hell

NYC marathon 07 review

2007-11-11T11:40:00.001-08:00

A week after the New York City Marathon here is a few pictures from the event.

the course went through all 5 boroughs of NYC; see pic below

here is the link to a few pictures of the marathon:

NYC Marathon

and here is the final proof of that I accomplished my goal of finishing the marathon:

Found Vivapix Webcam Pro Drivers

2007-10-28T11:16:00.000-07:00

remember my post for looking for drivers for the Vivapix Webcam Pro?

found some drivers and a user guide in the following folder

enjoy

Did I train enough for the marathon? ;-))

2007-10-28T09:24:00.000-07:00

Here is my picture from the 2 weekends ago;
my very first 20 mile run, starting in Willow Glen
and getting down the Los Gatos Creek Trail.

I have been running various parts of the Trail
a few times but never knew that it actually comes
up all the way to Willow Street in Willow Glen.

Here a few links to the Los Gatos Trail:

Los Gatos Creek Trail on Wikipedia

Los Gatos Creek Trail on San Jose Park website

San Jose Rock and Roll Half Marathon

2007-10-27T09:57:00.000-07:00

Jan's longest run ever

2007-10-22T21:15:00.000-07:00

All

Remember my Half Marathon and my Relay run? This was all just part of the training plan ;-))

I am finally going to run my very first Marathon in New York City in a couple of weeks time and as in my previous runs want to highlight a good cause.

I am running these 26.2 miles for the Mental Health Foundation which is helping people to survive, recover from and prevent mental health problems. Mental health problems are often still treated as a taboo in our society, in fact one in five people don't even want to talk to their doctors about their problems.

I am sure that we all know someone who has or used to have mental problems;

... and this run is dedicated to them

A few facts about Mental Health as well as my Donation Page can be found on the below link

Jan's first Marathon

Thanks Jan

Garmin 305 Forerunner dead after power charge

2007-10-15T17:30:00.000-07:00

got in quite a bit of a panic after my $300 odd Garmin 305 did not work during my 1/2 marathon last weekend.
I charged the device overnight to make sure that I have full juice and then right at the start line I want to power it up and - NOTHING

Of course the warranty just ran out by about a week so while using heavy swearwords I googled if this was a common problem with Garmin and voila...

The Adrenalin rush was luckily unjustified as you can bring your Garmin back to life, pressing the "Mode" and "Reset" buttons at the same time. Let go of those two buttons after 2 seconds and then pressing the power button the unit will turn back on.

Very intuitive ;-))

http://garmin.blogs.com/my_weblog/2006/03/chets_corner_pe.html

http://blogs.trifuel.com/?p=12999

San Jose Half Marathon 2007

2007-10-14T11:48:00.001-07:00

Just came home finishing my second year of running the San Jose Half Marathon;

what a great weather for the event

Lung Distance Runners cont'd

2007-05-13T20:51:00.000-07:00

just wanted to add some pics from my Garmin Trainincenter of the 3 legs I have been running:

1st leg:
2nd leg:
3rd leg:
started off nicely with a 9:50 minute mile and ended totally exhausted in leg 3 with a 12:44 minute mile...

Still contemplating with that Marathon, so I better get my training started ;-)
J

Lung Distance Runners

2007-05-12T22:33:00.000-07:00

Well, we might not have been the fastest ones (we came in 157th) and my average pace of a 12+ minute mile on my 3rd leg of the 199 mile relay certainly didn't help but this was far more than just going through some muscle sour...

We made the 3rd place in raising awareness for Organ Donation and

and were in the same starting wave as Team Dean (how on earth someone can run 50 marathons in 50 days is beyond imagination?)

...but this would not have been the experience if it wasn't for Rich.

Rich found out about his lung situation 13 years ago. At the time, he was training for a triathlon. On a typical run one day, he struggled to make it to the top of a hill. Of course, as any athlete would think, “I’m just having a bad day”. He continued to train over the next year, but found that more and more often, he just struggled with things that he didn’t feel he should be struggling with. He was starting to have a hard time just walking up several flights of stairs.

Finally he decided to go see a doctor. They ran the tests and determined that he had Pulmonary Fibrosis and would need a lung transplant within 5 years to continue living. Of course, that was 13 years ago, and up until 2 months ago, his vitals had stayed at a level that kept him off of the transplant list. Medical doctors from around the world have been studying him, as life expectancy with Pulmonary Fibrosis after 5 years is rare. He was definitely an anomaly. A damn good one at that.

About 2 months ago, his vitals had reached a point where doctors felt it was time to put him on the actual transplant list. He has been on that list doing fairly well, staying calm and positive as only Rich can do. Two weeks ago, the doctors felt that it was time to put him on oxygen 100% of the time. They also wanted him to stay home, as most transplant candidates are not currently working. Of course, Rich wouldn’t hear of it, so has been working with an oxygen supplier to get a tank put in his office, so that he could continue to come to work, which brings us to to the Relay day.

I was about to start for my 2nd leg of the Relay when we got to the breakfast station. That's where I met Rich for the first time in person for a mere 5 minutes before I had to get to the start line.

And if this wasn't inspiration enough less than 7 hours after our last Lung Distance Runner came through the finish line in Santa Cruz, Rich received a phone call from Stanford that some matching lungs were en route...

Some 8h later he was proud owner of new lungs...

Go Lung Rich!!!

Want to donate to Organs 'R' Us?

More pictures of our run?

American Airlines and the need for a more intelligent Computer System

2007-02-03T17:08:00.000-08:00

Here is a short story of a botched automated notification system...

A few weeks back I was scheduled on an AA flight from SJC to DFW. A few hours before the flight departure I get the friendly reminder over email that I could check in online, a service I use on pretty much all domestic travel as it cuts down on my door to board time a bit.
AA.com comes back with that I would not be able to check in online and that I would need to check in at the counter.
With the extra 20minutes and my carry on bag I am off to the airport just to find out at the counter that the flight had been cancelled and that this was known way before I got my friendly email reminder for the departure time.

1) Why did AA.com send out the email when they knew that the flight was cancelled?
2) Why did noone contact me despite that AA has all my contact details?

I contacted AA.com asking for a clarification but since I am not Platinum I don't seem to be worthy of an answer,

Maybe they know that most of my flights are with United, which will probably stay that way ;-)

United expiring SWU (System wide upgrades) in apparent system glitch

2007-02-03T12:47:00.000-08:00

I would recommend all United 1k flyers to check their Systemwide Upgrade statements if:

1) you still had SWUs in your account from your 2006 allocation (expiration date 1/31/07)
2) you flew in January 2007 and got upgraded

In an apparent system glitch it seems that rather than using a FIFO (First in First out) system by which the old 2006 SWUs (expiring at the end of January) United used a LIFO (Last in First out) and has used your 2007 SWUs for upgrades in January,

I am in an interesting email trail with an outsourced United's Customer Relationship Center to get the missing SWU refunded to my account; that's probably worth another post ;-)

J

Oprah Winfrey's $40m school

2007-02-01T04:49:00.000-08:00

Firstly let me state that I admire everyone who is helping children getting a quality education and for that we have to thank Oprah for her contribution in South Africa.

What I am questioning though is if it is necessary to spend $40m on one school rather than trying to upgrade a much bigger number of school, helping many more than just a few hundred kids

$40m would have gone a long way in China; probably building some 5,000 to 10,000 schools in rural areas;

Please see my previous post on China school post;

Other posts on this topic:

Starpulse Post
Livescience Post

China's boom and impact on its children

2007-01-27T10:43:00.000-08:00

Let's start off with some good news; China waives school fees for 150m rural children. The government's initiative is to tackle the problem of rural poverty and trying to close the gap of education between the rural hinterland and the central city schools.

At the same time the Human Rights News reported that Beijing's municipal authorities closed some 50 schools for children of migrant workers in an attempt to discourage migrant workers to stay in the capital so close to the Olympic games in 2008. Similar activities have been reported now in Shanghai.

The results of these activities are somewhat predictable. We will see migrant worker's children staying behind in the rural provinces while the parents are seeking jobs to support the family in the cities.

Last week's Wall Street Journal covered an article from Loretta Chao on the impact of families as parents move to the cities for work while the school children stay behind.

She reports that Chinese authorities estimate, that of the 200 million migrant worker's children some 30% are watched after by their grandparents or other relatives while some 22 million!!! children stay home alone.

China's rural children are continuing to struggle with defunct families until the same level of education received in Beijing and Shanghai can be enjoyed in the farmland.

Please see below my earlier post on a visit to some rural schools in China

http://janmeise.blogspot.com/2006/12/rural-schools-in-china.html

other interesting articles on this topic:

http://time-blog.com/china_blog/2007/01/migrants_and_money.html

Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and the use of text markers

2007-01-18T09:45:00.000-08:00

Dear fellow travellers

I finally understand now why we are not allowed to bring Starbucks into the security area. It is not the fear of the TSA for what might be inside the cup but that we, the travellers need a free hand.

...a free hand for the boarding pass and the drivers license which TSA's employees are so thoroughly checking.

I am not sure if the current approach will catch the fraudulent boarding passes created on the web (see http://slightparanoia.blogspot.com/2006/11/takedown-orders.html and http://slightparanoia.blogspot.com/2006/10/airport-insecurity-for-masses.html) and have yet to understand why they wouldn't be just putting the same scanning machine they use when you board the plane right where you enter the security area.
Maybe we need a little time here to standardize the boarding passes across the airlines but this is not what I am talking about the need for 'hand free' getting into the security area.

Next time you hand over your boarding pass watch the TSA employee... Some are just drawing a line on that paper, some circle your name and gate, others initial it but why do they have to do this with these cheap $0.20 text markers.

Half of the text maker's color ends up on your hand and the travellers which are on their cell phones and stuff the boarding pass into their white shirt pocket will wonder next time they look into the mirror where these green, pink, yellow or red stains come from.

Technology has advanced and these permanent markers come in colors now, Staples offers them in 22 colors!!!! And there are even volume discounts to get below a $1.

Until then, keep your hands free and hold the boarding pass with 2 fingers at the non color coated are and keep it away from any of your cloths until you get in that plane; get a drink and wipe of the excess with that 'Thanks for flying with xxx' napkin...

J

Are Video calls a niche play, cool gadget or do they make business sense

2007-01-15T14:03:00.000-08:00

I am a proud new owner of one of these tiny Webcams which I can stick on top of my laptop's screen. It's so small that it doesn't even make a dent in the computer bag, so perfect for traveling. $15 for the Camera including a little headset... didn't need to rob a bank for it.

Within 1 week we almost had the whole family hooked onto Video Skype; chatting and testing out the lag time between audio/video/sending and receiving.
I have to admit that I am quite impressed with the voice and picture/video quality coming through and with Skype In and Skype Out you can tailor your connectivity when you and/or your contacts are online or offline.

While manufacturing offshoring trends started the wave of Business Video Conference Calls on big and expensive Polycom equipment I haven't though seen the video option swapping over to B2B one on one calls.
There is folks out there saying that more than 35% of their contacts have a webcam; I don't see that on my end.

So are these cameras starting to change our habit in doing business together?
Are we videocommuting instead of telecommuting?

I am sure that once 3G/WiFi combo camera phones are available we will see much more business use of the video option. The mobility aspect is most likely key for volume adoption of the video cam.

Using a PC, MAC and shared hard disk drive at home; thanks to MacDrive 6

2007-01-14T21:59:00.000-08:00

I am definitely an amateur when it comes to setting up my network at home.

All the more praise I have to give to Mediafour's MacDrive 6 software which let's me access my Apple/Mac home network with my company's laptop.

I knew nothing about NTFS nor HFS+ and it was a piece of cake to install. At $50 I thought it was reasonably priced.

Also saw that they announced a version for Vista

J

See links on this topics at:

http://www.internet-nexus.com/2006/04/macdrive-bridges-apple-boot-camp-gap.htm

http://jonnewman.blogspot.com/2006_08_01_jonnewman_archive.html

Blu-ray Disc & HD DVD combo at CES 2007

2007-01-11T22:24:00.000-08:00

Do you really want to pay $1300 for a hybrid Blu-ray Disc & HD DVD player?

Why not buy instead the PS3 plus an XBOX 360 with the external player and save some money ;-))

Check posts on the LG hybrid

http://www.tgdaily.com/2007/01/10/ces2007_warner_hd_dvd_blu-ray/

http://www.i4u.com/article7519.html

http://gear.ign.com/articles/753/753206p1.html

http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2007/01/lg_to_unleash_h.html

Data repository strategies for managing your contacts

2007-01-11T13:47:00.000-08:00

Got a new cell phone or a new computer?

Gone are the days were you spend lots of hours/days typing in all your contacts into the phone or trying to rescue .pst files before IT deletes your hard disk.

Here is my strategy for making it all work together:

1) I use Microsoft Outlook as the heart of my contact list (full disclaimer: I do own a MAC at home). We use Microsoft Exchange at work, so whereever I am in the world I synchronize my laptop with whatever is on the Server

2) I then use Plaxo for managing the accuracy of the contact details as well as having a data repository through Plaxo on the Web. Plaxo synchronizes with my Outlook contact list and any changes which are made by Plaxo members, manually or through Plaxo's update requests are automatically changing my Outlook .pst file

3) I then use our company's Good subscription to synchronize my .pst content with my Treo phone.

4) To get the contacts into Outlook in the first place I use

a) a Powerpen scanner for business cards. The OCR software is definitely not something to write home about; I just make sure that the email address is correctly identified and send an update request to the contact.

b) the 'grab' function in LinkedIn's Outlook toolbar for new contacts with details in the email message body

5) To eliminate duplicates Plaxo has the 'find duplicate' option which is really useful when you have more than 1000 contacts to manage

So I can still go onto Plaxo Online from my MAC at home or from any other PC connected to the Internet to find tel#, addresses and keep the contact list nice clean and tidy.

Now I share some of the concerns about folks which don't want their contact details stored on the web but if you want to save time going manually through your contact list Outlook/Plaxo/Goodlink/Treo/LinkedIn is the way to go.

See also Web Worker Daily,

thx J

Consumer confusion @ CES 2007

2007-01-10T21:12:00.000-08:00

Here is what we learned during the days at CES 2007:

According to CEA's Shapiro's keynote we are entering a new era of convergence "of services, content and technology"
while Motorola's Zander sees Consumer Electronics looking beyond 'Cool Devices' and moving to 'Cool Experiences'

As mentioned in my earlier post the consumer is getting more and more confused. We consolidate our living room to the bare minimum amount of boxes; the TV, an HD DVR and a BOSE system and we still get 3 "UNIVERSAL" remote controls which are unfortunately not universal enough to control all 3 boxes.

There is one good coming out of this; Consumers are willing to pay a premium for integration, service and experience so I am sure that we will see more Geek Squad cars driving around to help the confused.

At the end of the day the consumer is voting against confusion with his/her wallet; prime example being the lackluster sales of HD-DVD and Blu-Ray players.

See also http://www.nyquistcapital.com/2007/01/12/ces-2007-summary/#comment-11282

Cisco to sue Apple

2007-01-10T17:22:00.000-08:00

probably something expected but nevertheless funny...

Cisco sues Apple

looking forward to hearing Apple's side of the story on why they haven't sorted this out beforehand with Cisco.
I would assume that Cisco just felt too good knowing that Infogear held the iPhone trademark for some time

Let the lawyer games begin... of course "in good faith"

please also see http://appleiphone.blogspot.com/

64" 4k x 2k and 108" LCD display from Sharp at CES 2007

2007-01-09T20:01:00.000-08:00

I thought the 8.84 Mega Pixel display from Sharp was one of the highlights at CES

just need to figure out where the content for this is coming from

Same company also showed a 108" LCD TV, the largest of its kind; I don't think I would even find a wall at my home which is large and strong enough to hold this monster.

See Asimo!!

2007-01-09T19:23:00.000-08:00

Our best friend from the future Asimo shows itself to the CES community in Las Vegas this week;

this time he doesn't fall over as in December but delivers the full package of

standing on one leg, jogging, running in a circle, playing football (hmm, kicking the ball), dancing and getting up and down the stairs in one piece

It's refreshing to see that after Sony put its dog Aibo to sleep in 2006, that we have the humanoid from Honda, "producer of mobility products" filling in the void.

In their video message to the CES Asimo was touted as the home nurse... While I cannot see my grandma wanting to talk to him/her I hopefully still have a few years getting used to the idea and for Honda to improve the day to day user experience.

German Universities and relationships to their Alumni

2007-01-07T21:17:00.000-08:00

Please find below a link to some notes I wrote about German Universities and their challenges with building an Alumni network.
Link to the blog entry, text is in German

LinkedIn has Answers

2007-01-06T11:21:00.000-08:00

As mentioned in my previous LinkedIn post I was hoping for LinkedIn to add interactivity to their Business Network platform... Here we are a week later and we have the 'Answer'.

After "MySpace for grownups" we now have the same for Yahoo Answers.

The look and feel is actually very similar other than that we hopefully don't see to many questions on "Britney Spears". The first Sales spam has already been sighted (Answer Spam) but the beauty of LinkedIn is that the questions are not coming from 'jobo', 'lola' or 'scott1234' but from folks with real names.

So, is LinkedIn Answer the answer for the interactivity amongst business networkers?
Will it help getting the folks which historically only used LinkedIn as a data repository for their resume to be an active part in the virtual network.

Time will tell if Seamus is right or if LinkedIn Answer is a tool we don't want to miss in the future...

HDTV displays, why do we buy them??

2006-12-31T18:30:00.000-08:00

Yes, our family was an early adopter of DirecTV's HDTV product offering, we first bought that Philips display, tore down the sheetrock to get the nasty Monster cables behind the wall, upgraded audio to Bose and got the TIVO HDTV box...

Starting to connect everything we figured out that local channels were only available with the off antenna and BTW, did we forget to mention that your ZIP code has too weak of a signal?

The Philips had only one HDMI input but it used the same TV channel as the S-Video connection which the Bose DVD system needed. Turning between the Satellite and DVD channel on the remote is an interesting experience.

...but we were one of the happy early adopters,

So where are we more than 12 months later?

We still get these 10 channels HDTV at a price of $10 per months and finally DirecTV can support local HDTV without the off-air antenna.

... but wait, only with an MPEG4 receiver and unfortunately the early adopters with the TIVO box are out of luck since it's only MPEG2 capable, ouch...

So, if I am going through the above with a little technical background, what is Joe Six-Pack experiencing, who thinks, that with buying an HDTV display he automatically gets HDTV content?

If only less than 50% or even 70% of HDTV display owners only get an HDTV signal feed and then a bunch of those start connecting their HDTV source with S-Video or Composite Cables there definitely is a lot of need for consumer education.

I am not even going to comment on the extra dimension of confusion with Blu Ray and HD-DVD and poor Joe going into Fry's DVD department,

Once Joe figures out that S-Video and Composite are not the right connections he is going to end up in front of the Monster Cable section looking at the HDMI cables; and the next confusion is just waiting for him: HDMI 1.1 and now HDMI 1.3??

What cable does he need to get HD, True HD, Full HD, Ultra HD and how do these relate to 720p, 1080i, 1080p

So, are the HW manufacturers really fighting consumer confusion or is this just lip service?
Do I need buy a book with >>100 pages just to make an informed consumer decision?

Yes, the transition from black and white tube TVs to color was a little less confusing with only one Coax input available but I am sure the 2009 shut off of the analog signal is going to put enough pressure on content providers and hardware suppliers to clear up the fog...

thx Jan

PS I just had to return a Christmas present because I forgot to remember to buy the 'Wide Screen' and not the 'Full Screen' version.

PPS a few other links I found interesting:

CNET article on consumer confusion on DVD players

Crave CNET blog on HDMI 1.3

HDMI, see what's brewing on the VESA side

Boycott of products with mail in rebates?

2006-12-30T14:22:00.000-08:00

Everyone coming to the USA first wonders how some of these consumer retailers would be able to sell some stuff at $0...?

... and even when reading the fine print, one still gets puzzled on why someone offers a $5 product only to discount it to $0 after mail in rebate.

Only after having spoken to some folks in the "mail in rebate" business do I finally get the concept.

Note these "mail in rebate" companies act as the middleman between the manufacturer of goods and the consumer retailer.

"Mail in rebate" is big business... Over the years these companies have put together nice statistics on how many folks are actually getting their money back by going through the steps of

1) sending in the mail in rebate form

a) correctly filled out

b) with all the necessary documentation

c) within the deadline

2) and then deposit the cheque when and if it comes into your mailbox

Mail in rebate companies know how many consumers statistically miss out on one of these hurdles bracketed by value of the mail in rebate; the higher the value the lower the % of consumers missing out.

Coupled with the cash flow and interest made between the consumer's payment to finally putting the cheque into your account there is enough money for quite a few companies focusing on this consumer misleading practise...

Only way to avoid these pitfalls is to stay away from mail in rebates... I learned my lesson from quite a few mail in rebates I never filed for, a few which I sent in but never got back but which were too insignificant to follow up with and one which really upset me because I can't even get an answer from the "mail in rebate" company after having sent 2 reminders;

Avoiding mail in rebates avoids needing to go through Mail in Rebate Report Cards

or complicated rebate structures, getting mail in rebate nightmares or

Not convinced yet? Then dive into your next "mail in rebate" at FreeAfterRebate.info

or read some further articles and blogs at:

PC World Mail in Rebate article

Support rural schools in China

2006-12-28T19:04:00.000-08:00

It almost made no headlines in the Western world but China is waiving school fees for 150m children living in rural areas of China. Yeap, just for reference, this is half the population of the United States.

These children live with in families with an average yearly income of less than US $400.

The government did probably good to share some of the prosperity of the 'rich' coastal regions with the rural hinterland in a bottom up effort to improve educational conditions.

With 60% of rural students leaving school after Junior High School and other Reports mentioning a large move from rural areas into the larger cities and that's certainly a trend the government will need to stear against.

One of the reasons, why my wife and I went onto a China trip in November 2006 to get a first hand view of living and teaching conditions in rural China and to see how we can help.

With our Chinese partners on this project, the China Candlelight Educational Fund we have explored the Jiangxi province.

The biggest positive surprise to us was that Chinese rural kids are despite living in extreme poverty extremely happy.
They didn't have any toys in whatsoever and were still happier than any kid I have seen in Silicon Valley over the last few years.
(I really recommend the Economist lead article on "Happiness")

We have hardly seen any toys during our trip in rural China and playgrounds in the schools were not worth talking about but still, the smiles of Chinese kids are gripping... (check out our pics from this trip)

So how do we keep these kids in school and get them a proper education.

With the China Candlelight Educational Fund we are working on a project scope for a Jiangxi school we visited to help building up the school to a standard which gets these kids a proper primary school education. We build new teaching rooms and boarding rooms (note that >30% of these kids stay in the school all week and only go home during the weekend) , will build new restrooms, improving their hygiene conditions and hopefully have some money left for a proper playground.

Here is a provocative question I got asked a few times: "Why would you help the Chinese to get educated and steal more jobs from the Western World?"
And my answer to that is: "The reason the jobs are leaving is because Chinese are undereducated"

LinkedIn versus XING/OpenBC

2006-12-27T18:54:00.000-08:00

With the recent IPO of openBC/XING (Yahoo Finance link) the Business Networking market is on everyone's radar screen again. Red Herring and Business 2.0 have been covering this space for quite some time and the blogger community has also been very active on this subject.

So we all know that LinkedIn has a much larger community and we also know that they are particularly weak in Germany where openBC/XING has its stronghold. (see VisibleNetworking blog article)

… but who is going to be the winner or will there be no clear winner in this market at all?

Different than in Scott Allen's Linkedintelligence article I do see the Business Networking market converging:

Ecademy, Ryze and other early networking platforms are in the shadow of the 2 shining stars and I believe that they will have a tough time getting any significant traction in the future.

The last 2 standing, LinkedIn and XING/openBC are eyeing a customer base, which is too similar and I would believe that their feature sets are going to be converging based on their customer's feedback.

Ultimately this will leave little differentiation for the one with the smaller network: So how could LinkedXinG looked like?

Here is my feedback from working with LinkedIn and openBC/XING for quite some time and being a moderator of an academic alumni group on both platforms:

TOP1: We don't want to get spammed!!!

The foremost reason for someone not to sign up to a networking platform is that they are afraid of getting lots of spam emails. Yes, you can opt out for people to send you emails on XING but for me LinkedIn's referral system is clearly the winner.

While Vinnie Mirchandani and Jerry Bowles blogs suggest that they would rather prefer to be contacted directly I am already drowning in emails which fell through our company’s Tumbleweed filter.

Any email from an outsider would probably end up in my trash folder and not get the attention it should get. Having someone I trust referring one of his contacts to me gives it so much more weight…

Note: How some of these LinkedInPowerGuruConnectors still found out my email address and sent me invitations to their network is fascinating. In my young LinkedIn days I even signed up to most of them to broaden my radar screen visibility. With LinkedIn's new entire network view I am definitely waiting for Konstantins 'disconnect' feature as described in a comment on Zoli's blog.

TOP2: Quality of Network

With XING being more successfull in Germany and my center of business being less Germany centric I have to give this one to LinkedIn as well.

LinkedIn attracted CEO and VP level folks early on and I use their richness a lot for profiling potential customers and developing leads for Business Development purposes. Dean might call LinkedIn a ‘passive networking’ platform and I have read other blogs, that perceive LinkedIn as a recruiter platform but I definitely would disagree based on my positive non-recruiting related experiences.

Yes, I agree with Scott that LinkedIn currently does not offer any real public interaction but I think they will need to in the future as they are missing out on the potential to capture a more active audience. In fact LinkedIn is trialing this with their latest Services application, let’s see where this one is leading?

Emlyn pointed out that LinkedIn is missing the boat by not being first to market in Asia/China. I partly agree but I see the “Quality of the Network” tied to the concept of using one language. Yes, Chinese will sign up to a Chinese looking platform faster than to an English one but this will only lead XING down the path where they will have multiple parallel Networking Platforms, all in their own language. If you look at my Profile on XING, I circumvented this by having all text in English and German. So, just like in the business world we will need to vote for one language to be able to talk, write and network.

Yes, and I mentioned above that I signed up on quite a few LinkedInPowerGuruConnectors which I would like to disengage with now but I love Konstantin’s comments on Zoli’s blog about a reclassification of a ‘contact quality’. If I can’t disconnect anyone then let’s at least 3 quality grades; 1 for ‘hardly know this person’, 2 for ‘loose business acquaintance’ and 3 for ‘rock solid would do anything for this contact’.
While this would be invisible to your immediate contacts it would route any referrals through the strongest path

TOP3: Richness of Profiles

Something LinkedIn started to get a little better with but XING still has a leg up.

My advise for LinkedXinG is to take LinkedIn's Summary and merge it with XING's ‘Wants and Haves’ which leaves us with Photo or no Photo? ;-)
If you have a strong LinkedIn connection you should know how they look like anyway but I am a visual person, so I am voting for the photo.
XING’s profile view seems a little more clean than LinkedIn’s and seems to invite new members to fill out more information and work related history but that’s more a gut feel and not founded on any numbers.

Has there been any quantitative analysis on ‘information richness’ comparing a representative number of Profiles? Would love to see that.

TOP4: Groups

LinkedIn Groups are based on a completely different concept than the ones on XING.

LinkedIn assumes that a Group has been established and formed before it is set up in LinkedIn and that any Group activity would happen outside of LinkedIn. The LinkedIn Group serves solely as a connection point between members.

XING Groups are based on a Forum approach. Members can read and write messages on a group bulletin board enabling communication within the group itself.

I personally prefer the XING approach on this one based on the activity level of my Alumni groups on both platforms; this might be though biased as it is a German alumi Group.

So, who is going to win this battle?

It’s LinkedIn’s market to loose.
Keep the referral system but open yourself up to interaction.
Did I read somewhere that LinkedIn wants to go with German language? That’s in my eyes the wrong direction…

I had no problem inviting my Alumni members in English language and they were happily signing up.

Jan

Profiles on

LinkedIn

XING/openBC

1and1 Website builder review

2006-12-26T16:29:00.000-08:00

Holiday season... enough time to take a look at the family website I am running.

I have been using the 1&1 hosting services with the WebsiteCreator package for more than a year now.
Saw now that there were cheaper offerings and decided to switch to the Home package covering my 2 sites for US$4.99 (the first 6 months are even half price)

Now I thought that over the last few years Website creating software would be a bit more sophisticated but that's unfortunately not the case; Take a look at the Blogger.com Posting options, mixing and matching HTML code with a text editor.

So why can 1&1's editor not do that? They advertise in their help section to use for HTML fuctions but I have tried a few times to enter adsense buttons in there and they all just get scrambled on the preview.

Also, the Software does not seem to be very robust itself; make sure that you hit the "save" option frequently as once the SW is stuck there is no way out anymore.

Another one is the 'Extra' menu. Can't open that feature at all.

All in all, basic functionality for building a website is there, but you need a lot of patience while closing and reopening their application software when it's stuck...

Note some more positive comments for 1&1 below

http://www.dslreports.com/comments/2443

PC and Picasa versus MAC and iPhoto

2006-12-26T12:42:00.000-08:00

Well, we bought our MAC because MAC is synonym for video/photo/audio editing...

Quite disappointed though with what MAC has to offer on the photo side.

I disabandoned my Picasa account for a MAC with iPhoto and iWeb. I even bought iMAC for a new family website.

However other than the integration of iTunes into iWeb I have little good to say about this software.

My family website loads SO SLOW, that I moved it away from web.mac.com and went back to 1&1. iPhoto has no real sorting mechanism, it imports the photos into the library and seems to scramble them up, using the date the picture is taken. No fun to try to sort them by hand afterwards...

So my plea goes to Google and the Picasa folks to finally make their product Apple proof...

I read about an uploader for WebPicasa (link here) but haven't tried it out yet.

In the meantime I am going back to my PC as the data repository for all my pictures and use the Picasa for blogging, sorting and Web presence of my libraries.

Here is some more reading material on this topic:

http://forevergeek.com/windows/picasa_2_released.php

http://www.google.com/mac.html (the uploader software link)

Datacenter at 10Gbps

2006-12-26T00:46:00.000-08:00

A customer of ours showed me their in house datacenter lab. Take a look at all the bundled CX-4 cabling.

Hope you won't need to change anything after the first install...

See some CX-4 links below

http://www.networkworld.com/details/6301.html

Need a Driver for my ancient VivaPix WebCamPro

2006-12-25T15:50:00.000-08:00

Is there anyone out there who has a driver for the VivaPix WebCamPro part# VPX3013.
I would need it for XP and for MAC Tiger 10.4.

Any help would be greatly appreciated

Please contact me through jan@meiseweb.com

thx Jan

UPDATE: found some drivers, please follow the link

Broken China/ Zerbrochenes Geschirr

2006-12-25T15:39:00.000-08:00

Leider sind uns bei unserem Umzug ein ganzer Teil unseres Porzellans zerbrochen. Wir suchen nach Einzelstuecken oder Teilsammlungen von Villeroy und Boch, Gallo Switch 2 in Weiss. Unten sind zwei Referenzbilder.

Wir suchen nach 2 Suppentassen, 1 Suppenuntertasse, 1 grossen Teller, mehrere Vorlegeplatten, Schuesseln, 8 Kaffetassen und Untertassen und 8 Kuchentellern

On our last move we unfortunately broke quite a few of our China. We are looking for single items or complete sets of Villeroy and Boch, Gallo Design Switch 2 in White. Below you see 2 reference pictures

We are looking for 2 Soup Cups and the corresponding plates for these; 1 large dinner plate, several oval and round smaller and larger serving plates, serving bowls in various shapes and sizes as well as 8 coffee cups and the corresponding plates and coffee plate.

Kontakt bitte unter/ Please contact me at jan@meiseweb.com

Unten einige Links fuer Gleichgesinnte, die nach Einzelstuecken suchen.

Below are a few links for folks which are looking for replacement China.

www.replacements.com

www.matchingchina.com

www.thechinacupboard.com

http://stores.ebay.de/alteserien

Selling TRX REALLY hard

2006-09-27T17:40:00.000-07:00

Coldplay in San Jose

2006-02-03T13:32:00.000-08:00

My company pet

2006-02-03T13:18:00.000-08:00

Eine kleine Maus

Nicole's first Ramen at Halu

2006-01-29T12:57:00.000-08:00

Heaven on earth

2006-01-25T23:20:00.000-08:00

Weisswurst, Leberkaes und Nuernberger in Muenchen

Kids in the toystore

2006-01-25T04:19:00.000-08:00

Federico and Philippe evaluate the wine situation

Na dann wissen wir ja wo die Klingel ist

2006-01-25T00:43:00.000-08:00

Die Meisensippschaft

2006-01-22T06:42:00.000-08:00

Omi und Mutti im Alex

2006-01-22T03:07:00.000-08:00

Fjorn @ Santana Row

2005-12-26T12:48:00.000-08:00

Finisar opened req for RSM position for ASEAN/Indian market

2005-12-23T00:48:00.000-08:00

we just opened a req for a new RSM position located in Singapore responsible for the Finisar Optics product portfolio.

Products are Optical transceivers mainly for the communication market.

Job responsibilities are:

1) ASEAN subcontractor market:
build and maintain relationships with the ASEAN subconcontractors (Celestica/Solectron/Flex/Jabil/Sanmina)
work in close liason with US/European RSMs to maximize Finisar's share achieving a preferred position for Finisar through strategic programs with the CMs

2) Indian OEM market:
establish and execute strategy for Finisar to enter the Indian Telco/Datacom OEM market

3) ASEAN Datacom aftermarket
develop strategies to penetrate VAR/ SI aftermarket for GbE and FiberChannel system resellers.

If you have any suitable candidates for this position I would appreciate if you get in contact with me,

Looking forward to hearing from you

Best Regards

Jan Meise
janmeise@gmail.com
www.finisar.com

Disneyland Fruehstueck

2005-10-21T09:11:00.000-07:00

Katrina's 1st B'day

2005-10-08T17:06:00.000-07:00

Gundlach Bundschu picnic

2005-10-08T13:59:00.000-07:00

Maybe

2005-07-31T13:21:00.000-07:00

We should buy a truck...

The bricks are served

2005-07-20T07:42:00.000-07:00

Teske Germania with Clavis

2005-07-19T20:44:00.000-07:00

Tula in the pool

2005-07-15T19:51:00.000-07:00

Just some base rock

2005-07-13T07:28:00.000-07:00

2005-07-10T22:40:00.000-07:00

Montecristo Habana

2005-07-10T22:39:00.000-07:00

New Orleans' SUPER DOGS!!!

Tula ans Lola

2005-06-28T18:29:00.000-07:00

Anniebumbangi

2005-06-25T14:30:00.000-07:00

Cingular/ AT&T customer service

2005-06-19T08:13:00.000-07:00

Ever had that experience before:

You finally switch over to AT&T's GSM network but after a few month you figure out that the service they are charging you for had never been ordered in the first place...

You then call the hotline (on Christmas eve) and someone actually picks up the phone ;-)

You deactivate the services you don't want and think that you are done.

2 months later you take a look at the bill again and guess what; they are still charging you for these services.

You then call again; they give you the refund; uhhps but only for the month for which you have gotten the invoice already; for the one you are in you would need to call again next month.

...but guess what, even after that call they continue to charge you for the services.

You then think, maybe it's that phone doesn't work with Cingular/AT&T and that they are now fully automated and everything is done online.

You go onto their website, set up an account for your phone number and click on customer service -> CONTACT US.

After you type the story line with account# and invoice#s you then click on 'submit' and get

"THERE WAS AN UNSPECIFIED PROBLEM"

------------------

Further reading material:

Consumer report: A sorry picture for Cingular/AT&T

Engadget: AT&T wireless leads in Customer complaints

MSN money: Should you remain an AT&T customer?

Seattle Post: Cingular, AT&T Wireless ring up most complaints

Chris Pirillo: The Sins of Cingular

Lola taken a break

2005-06-05T17:49:00.000-07:00

Am Ende eines arbeitsreichen Tages

2005-05-30T19:05:00.000-07:00

Landscaping in the front

2005-05-30T12:58:00.000-07:00

Retail therapy @ OSH

2005-05-28T19:29:00.000-07:00

Salesman's hand

2005-05-27T19:42:00.000-07:00

On the search for breast hair

2005-05-27T17:52:00.000-07:00

Machado-san incognito

2005-05-27T17:51:00.000-07:00

Secret party

2005-05-27T17:21:00.000-07:00

Ray @ the Restaurant in Montreal

2005-05-24T15:58:00.000-07:00

2005-05-21T12:29:00.000-07:00

our street

2005-05-21T12:28:00.000-07:00

Cleaning up the backyard

2005-05-21T12:26:00.000-07:00

Having a relaxing weekend in the garden ;-))

2005-05-21T12:14:00.000-07:00

coming back into SFO, Golden Gate Bridge

2005-05-19T08:39:00.000-07:00

spicy fishhead soup... big fish is watching you. Two spoons of this and you loose all taste buds for hours

Sandy and Owen @ lunch

2005-05-18T22:35:00.000-07:00

Outside of a meeting room of a large subcontractor in Shenzhen. 100s of game stations

2005-05-18T19:47:00.000-07:00

Shenzhen from the 50th floor

2005-05-18T04:20:00.000-07:00

Some Chicken feet to start with

2005-05-17T21:59:00.000-07:00