broom’s blog

It’s a good reason for me to start blogging again, lol.

Admin look&feel changed a little bit, haven’t seen any significant improvements.

foursquare是个最近很热门也很好玩的应用，大概就是去了什么地方都在手机上check in一下（手机必须有GPS且能装foursquare的客户端，iPhone, Android, Blackberry都可以），这样朋友就知道你去哪儿了。然后可以给去过的地方写写tips，比如某饭馆什么菜好吃，某cafe的wifi密码是多少之类。经常去某个地方的就可能成为那儿的市长（mayor），这样就可以修订这个地方的名字地址位置等信息。另外还有满丰富的badge系统，多用的话就会获得各种各样的奖章。

这个应用整个就是和GPS绑定在一起的，在手机上你可以随时查询周围在foursquare上都有什么地点，有什么tips，在网站上可以看到每个地点都有哪些人check in过。想check in一个地方的话必须真的在那附近，否则就算你check in了也拿不到积分和奖章。所有的地点都是用户自行添加进去的，在北京用这个的人还相当少，很多地点的位置也标得很不准，如果数据能做到跟大众点评那么丰富的话，就真的可以算是killer app了。

总之现在刚开始用，基本上还是纯玩，不太具有像大众点评那样查询信息的功能。在北京这样的“蛮荒之地”，去个地方经常得自己添加地点，倒是有些开拓者的感觉，很容易当上市长，哈哈。这东西主要的目的还是让你知道朋友去哪儿吃饭了去哪儿玩了，这样就可以聊起来，所以foursquare本质上还是SNS性质的吧。

听说Yahoo已经出价1.25亿要买了，希望不要买了就玩死就好……

至于国内已经开始兴起的clone版，这种应用不像twitter，发一条可以同步到n个网站上。这东西的用户粘性是很大的，我去了一个地方肯定不会打开n个应用挨个check in。一个地方的check in信息也没法随便就同步到另外一个地方除非你彻底剽窃地点信息的数据库。所以winner takes all，自求多福吧。。foursquare的手机客户端做得还是相当专业的，而且有Blackberry版，我估计国内clone的一年之内都不见得会有做像样的Blackberry客户端的，啊，为什么我这么鄙视这些clone呢！

Google’s “A new approach to China” announcement is the break news today. My first reaction is “will all stuff of Google China be relocated to US?”, which is a little bit weird, probably because friends talked about “escaping from 贵国” often these days.

Then I read the official blog post carefully and got some comments on it:

• The posts starts with describing the cyber attack, seriously. With “at least twenty other companies” and “relevant US authorities”, this sounds like a real threatening statement. I even doubt there will be the 3rd World War, online.
• Google mentioned their “investigation” several times. It seems they still have plenty of cards to play.
• From my point of view, it isn’t necessary to point out the GMail accounts being hacked are China human rights activists’. This sounds like a small trick to attract western media and people’s attention.
• Not only security and human rights, but also freedom of speech. In my mind this is the POINT. No matter Google’s retreat is more for business value or for morals, if it claims this and does pull out, I will applause.
• Google said it will “discussing with the Chinese government”. I really doubt if it can find the actual person to talk with, which would be from the most famous, most powerful but no-one-has-ever-seen “relevant departments(有关部门)”.
• At the end of the post, Google claimed this decision was made “without the knowledge or involvement of our employees in China”. This is an interesting point. Is it trying to help employees be clear from being bothered by China gov? However China gov definitely won’t care about this line… So is it trying to make something clear to US gov?…

I also read an article from TechCrunch which is insightful in my opinion. One of the points in it is “Google is ready to burn bridges”. Because by throwing out such a blog post, Google doesn’t show any attitude to negotiate to China gov in fact. Google is not acting on impulse and must aware of it. So this article is just buying affection tendency from the rest of world, and giving China gov a slap. However, I wonder if Google China, and its stuff, will really be “thrown under the bus” as the article predicted.

Google is not a charity organization, and it will follow the instinct of a company, to pursue the maximum value. The question is how much different things worth in Google’s eyes. Giving up biz in China may reduce around 600 million of Google’s revenue. How much does it worth to give up conscience and help China gov to strengthen controlling? How much does it worth to stain Google’s reputation and keep good programmers who don’t want to be “evil” away? How much does it worth to waste best people’s talent on censorship shit and flattering god-damned gov suckers?

Anyway, today is memorable, 2010.01.13. Goodbye Google. I respect your efforts here and wish you the best out of China.

The UI is so clean and cute. And Chinese is supportted well when reading! Let’s see if it works when posting… 喔喔喔

Get it from here

A few days ago I noticed the default searching on this blog doesn’t work well, especially for Chinese. So just now I found the Google Ajax Search plugin and applied it. See it in action here. Pretty cool~