One View a Day

Uptake Vacation Search: Beta Launch

2008-05-14T23:19:00.001+08:00

UpTake is created so you can sit in that beach chair above, having a great vacation, confident you made the very best decisions you could with your scarce time and dollars! A brief screencast giving a demo of the UpTake travel search site.

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Kango: Semantic search for travel

2007-12-18T23:21:00.001+08:00

Kango, launching in private beta today, is yet another travel recommendation site. This one's special sauce is its "understanding" of the travel lingo, so it can turn out better advice for you.

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Get to know about Chinese Blogosphere

2007-11-12T16:22:00.001+08:00

" Young and cute faces are still the weapons." Financial Time Chinese columnist Wei Cheng looked into the Chinese blogosphere and revealed some secret weapons to get better blog ranking. Neuron from Yeeyan translated into English.

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Former Head of Yahoo Travel talks about the state of internet travel

2007-10-25T12:17:00.001+08:00

Yen: I’ve been in online travel for the last 10+ years, most recently as General Manager of Travel at Yahoo! (with the Search Division). While there, it became clear that travelers were not getting the help they needed from to make informed travel planning decisions... But, if consumers had not decided on a plan, it was a slog.

read more about "The View from the Corner Office: kango" | digg story

Preview of New Travel Search Engine Kango.com

2007-10-17T00:01:00.001+08:00

After TechCrunch's review on the new travel search start-up kango.com, global tourism and hotel marketing strategist, Jens Thraenhart, had an interview with Kango founder Yen Lee. Read the full report to get a closer look at the product...

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A review about Kango by People Search Digest

2007-10-16T11:35:00.000+08:00

Do you need to plan a vacation? Or maybe you’ve been debating taking one, but need the extra push. Kango, an “almost alpha” personalized travel site, could be just the reason you’ve been looking for. Whether it’s a romantic getaway or a family trip, Kango has you covered.

Until now, Kango has been flying (or jumping?) under the radar. Travelers hardly need another travel site to choose from, as there are already so many out there. What’s great though is Kango not only recognizes this fact, but even echoes this sentiment - going so far as to admit to site visitors that if you already know exactly what you want to book, then sites like Expedia and Orbit would probably be better suited for you. Or, if you have a range of options, but are searching for the lowest prices then you will want to try FareCast or SideStep. However, if you want options upon options then Kango is your one-stop-shop. It brings together more than a thousand sites, 400,000 lodgings, activity destinations, and 18 million reviews, ratings and blogs from all over the web so you can find everything you need in one place...

Read the full text here: http://peoplesearchdigest.com/travel-search/kango

Al Gore - 2007 Nobel Peace Prize Winner - Eye Witness Report

2007-10-13T14:32:00.001+08:00

Al Gore gave his first public speech as a Nobel Peace Prize recipient in Palo Alto, CA, this morning (10/12/07). A trio of Kango bloggers give you an eye witness report of the press extravaganza surrounding the former Vice President.

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Big Sur, California 2005

2007-10-03T22:33:00.001+08:00

Golden Gate Bridge, A Must See in San Francisco

2007-10-03T12:26:00.001+08:00

Beijing, The Capital

2007-10-01T23:03:00.000+08:00

Stanford University, Palo Alto, California

2007-09-29T10:10:00.000+08:00

Big Basin State Park, California

2007-09-24T15:38:00.000+08:00

Big Sur, California

2007-09-17T23:50:00.000+08:00

Hong Kong is not only about City Life...

2007-09-16T10:59:00.001+08:00

One of the most beautiful, romantic, secluded beach in Hong Kong, Lang Ke Bay

Beach of Half Moon Bay，California

2007-09-15T11:36:00.001+08:00

Hearst Castle, San Simeon, California

2007-09-14T21:48:00.001+08:00

Shall I bargain for service fee?

2006-10-11T23:15:00.000+08:00

I was very exciting since the last week. It was not because we had a 7-day "Golden Week" National Day (Oct. 1) holiday, but because I did an very expensive shopping: shopped an apartment.

Congratulations, Grigo!

Rumor said the real estate bubble in Shanghai would break since the former Shanghai No.1 political figure Mr. Chen was broken. We consulted friends, read news online and offline brainstormed each other (with Grigo's Mr. Right) on the trend.

Our findings were: 1) people are more conservative on buying new apartments; 2) people are even more conservative on investing in real estates; 3) More used apartments were listed for sale (Later we found a plausible reason: start from Aug. 1 2006, new national tax regulation requires people to pay 20% tax of non-regular income, but this regulation hasn’t been effect in Shanghai. Rumor said it would be in very near future.) . Thus, our conclusion is: we didn't plan to buy a new apartment, nor as an investment. We should have more advantage to bargain in a buyer's market.

We contacted 4 real estate agencies, picked 10 apartments to check out, considered locations in 3 districts and closed to 4 metro stations, but turns out that we only visited 3 apartments since most landlords went out for vacations.

We made an offer within less than 24 hours and our agents helped us to bargin the deal to our offer also with 24 hours. The efficiency was amazing and unbelievable. (It is a Taiwanese company.)

Let's see what I need to pay besides the price of the apartment:

1% - service fee to my agent
1.5% - tax to house management department
2.5 rmb * the area of the apartment -forgot what kind of charge
0.05% - another tax to a government department

We signed the title transfer contact and I paid the 1% service charge to my agent afterwards but before I get the apartment title (of course before I pay for the apartment.)

My aunt, a Cantonese who lives in Shanghai longer than her stay in Guangdong, found out that we paid 100% service fee and felt very very upset. Her argument was: NEVER PAY BEFORE YOU GET THE STUFF! BE SURE TO BARGAIN FOR EVERYTHING.

It's a motto of living in China. People believe if you don't fight to bargain, you would get rip off. If you trust others too easily, you would be cheated. I agree/disagree!

My concern is shall I bargain for service fee? If I am buying some tangible stuff, I can see and feel the quality. But what if I am buying something called SERVICE? You can't tell the quality before you make the decision.

We read stories about people fighting too hard to bargain for the apartment renovation labor fee resulted in getting a very very bad quality renovation. So far, we were very satisfied about the service quality and we were evaluating the "trust-worth index" of the agent from the very beginning. The company is No.1 in my district and I can tell why they make the No.1.

We were labeled by my Shanghainese aunt that we have "a different way of thinking", i.e. "lack of Chinese experience". But, honestly, we really hope we can survive without being "defensive" every day!

Wish me good luck in the following transations.

要去“中文网志年会”

2006-10-09T22:32:00.000+08:00

老板转发来链接，问我要不要去参加CNBloggerCon (Chinese Blogger Conference), 我还一头雾水，原来是“中文网志年会”，今年是第二届了，在西湖畔上的杭州.

时间： 28-10-2006 28-10-2006 28-10-2006 28-10-2006

地点中国浙江杭州余杭塘路388号浙大紫金港校区国际会议中心 310058

浏览了一下官方网页，似乎都是由志愿者组织的，内容还在陆续更新中。找了半天也没有找到开会的费用，结果只能发电邮问了，答复是：在线注册现场交费100元每人，现场注册现场交费150元每人，包括两顿饭，不包住宿。其实对这些公布与￥有关的信息也不必那么害羞，开会交费，天经地义啊。

我参会的目标是什么呢？

1）Grigo 开始blog也一年多，前半年跟着AMTeam在blogspere 里好像也认识不少人发生了不少事，后半年开始荒废了。借这次机会可以重新看看blog和blogger的发展；

2）中文博客到底都喜欢blog什么内容呢？浏览了报名的147个人的档案，当中有前辈有新人，发现有三大主流：a) Web 2.0 及科技发展的信息评论，此类文章以翻译编写国外新闻为主；b) 不同的关注领域，类似管理知识的AMTeam, 有个做天文地理教学的教师blog让人印象深刻；3）针砭时弊类，特别是博客/网络社区的各种行为，例如 Daniel Chan 说了自己要报名参加博客大赛，竟然因为报名邮箱爆满了，而无法递报名表的故事，有意思。

3）对网络社区（Wiki, social search 等）很感兴趣，想了解更多的知识：如何建立一个社区，如何活跃社区，需要什么样的人才技术资源，一切一切的细节，期待各种交流。

有同去的朋友吗？

Grigo @ YellowStone NP

2006-10-03T00:06:00.000+08:00

Blog. Or die.

2006-02-21T04:19:00.000+08:00

'Blog. Or die." 英文版的“不在沉默中爆发，就在沉默中死亡。”这么有力的话不是我说的，是Tom Peters 为一本新书写续的时候说的；该新书名为《Naked Conversations》（非常有创意且传神的书名，简直就是“blog”的代名词），幅标题为：How blogs are changing the way businesses talk with customers. （告诉那些看到黄色封面开始胡思乱想的人这本书真正是关于什么的。）

blog先锋把这些战略战策集书出版至少说明一个道理：一个个人blog的的访问量无论有多大，blogger终究无法抵挡用传统的方式传播他的理念的诱惑。据说本书作者Robert Scoble 从2000年就开始blogging，每年的访问量超过300万；但是他的书是否能卖到300万册呢？

从另一作者Shel Israel的blog看来，这个叫Bruce Curley的techincal writer 对这本书赞赏有加，他的blog里有很多关于这本书的介绍。摘一段：

Successful Blog Traits...Scobele and Israel give five tips for blogs that succeed:
Talk...don't sell
Post often...and be interesting
Write about issues you know...and care about
Blogging saves money...but costs time
You get smarter by listening to what people tell you

简单的介绍一下作者：Robert Scoble 是一个“微软博客怪侠”（Microsoft Geek Blogger，这样翻译不知道是否妥当），现在负责微软的Channel 9，一个微软内部开发人员的交流平台，不同的开发小组可以介绍自己的产品，组员可以发表意见，可是通过文字的方式，也可以通过视频采访的形式。

（Channel 9 is a Microsoft website aimed at developers. The major goal of Channel 9 is to embrace and extend some of the ideas in the Cluetrain Manifesto; "market are conversations", not a one-way road paved by advertisers. Channel 9 features interviews with Microsoft developers about their products, a forum to discuss the videos and other topics, and a wiki ), which has been adopted by various Microsoft teams as a way to aggregate feedback and respond to issues. ）

Shel Israel 是一个有20多年经验的创新战略专家，成功推动了若干十个大公司的创新计划。
这是一本商业书籍，也许其原理不适合一些名人的blog，但是应该适用于AMTeam。