Skype prime, and networked China

For aspiring freelancers and knowledge workers this looks to have a lot of potential: Skype Prime apparently allows you to advertise your expertise on specific topics, and to charge people for your advice. What a pity that I know nothing of value to anyone – only a vast amount of useless trivia!

I found out about this via a post on Preetam’s blog, which has other interesting snippets. For example he finds that the Chinese he meets usually put their chat address on their business cards. I wondered about this when I printed my own personal cards: should I include MSN and Skype information? In the end, I didn’t – I already go through periods of being invited to join the friends list of Chinese people I’ve never met, and I usually refuse. Perhaps I should set up accounts that I only advertise on my cards, though. Not sure, I’ll have to think about that: Preetam is right when he says “This chat thing is changing the way we work and learn and maybe even earn”. I need to think a bit more about my positioning first, though.

That reminds me of two articles I saw recently on Web Worker Daily:

• Three steps to introduce social software to your employer
•  The dangerous myth of the dream job

Additions to my library

I recently mentioned that Borders were offering a 40% discount to their email list subscribers. I bought a lot of books, but most of them are more relevant to my other blog, so I’ve talked about them there. However, in the same period I’ve also bought a number of books from the second-hand shops in the Bras Basah Complex, and the bargain books stack in Carrefour, so here’s the list:

• Someone comes to town, someone leaves town by Boing Boing editor Cory Doctorow. I was looking for something geeky, and eventually settled on this. It’s a very odd novel, the story of a man whose father is a mountain and mother is a washing machine, his struggles with his very odd siblings, and his romance with a girl with wings. It’s a neat parable of geek alienation, but I found the resolution of the main storyline to be ultimately unsatisfying. From Borders.
• The Diamond Age, by Neal Stephenson. A fantastic novel, with lots of themes that are currently very relevant to my life. I’m going to talk about this book in more detail in a future post. From Borders.
• The Many-Headed Hydra, by Linebaugh and Reider. A hefty book on the roots of the modern world, and the growth of the Atlantic trade and the Americas, seen from the viewpoint of the ordinary people who did the dirty work, and whose voice is rarely heard in histories. I haven’t read much of this yet; I plan to take it on holiday. From Borders.
• Samurai William, by Giles Milton. The true story of the English adventurer fictionalised in James Clavell’s Shogun. Set in a slightly earlier period than the Many Headed Hydra (William Adams, the central character, died in 1620 – the year the Mayflower sailed to America), it describes the early period of Northern European discovery of, and interaction with, Japan and Indochina. From Carrefour.
• The Play Ethic by Pat Kane. I’ve been reading his blog for a long time, but haven’t ever gotten around to reading this exploration of the need to re-evaluate our approach to work and personal motivation. Another one that I’ll be taking on holiday. From Carrefour.
• The Hacker Ethic by Himanen, Torvalds, and Castells. Another that I’ve been meaning to read for years but never got around to. From Carrefour.
• A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink. I have read, and written about, this one before, but I wanted to get a copy of my own; it will be useful once I start my new job. From Bras Basah.
  
• Genetically Yours, by Hwa A. Lim. A massively wide-ranging discussion of the life sciences industry, covering the science, innovation, marketing and management, amongst many other topics. Written by a Malaysian entrepreneur, this is one of the most detailed and informative books I’ve seen on the industry, and one that I’m surprised isn’t better known – bear in mind that I took a course on managing the Life Sciences during my MBA, plus another on the management of innovation. I wish I’d had this book then! This is another one that’s likely to be useful when I start my new job. From Bras Basah.

Added 29 Jan:

I forgot to add these to the list:

• Creativity by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Anybody who;s been involved in an activity they really enjoy has experienced the sensation of ‘flow’; I used to get absorbed in programming, for example. I often referenced Csikszentmihalyi’s concept while I was doing my MBA based on articles, but I haven’t actually read one of his own books. That will now change. From Bras Basah.
• The Path of Least Resistance: Learning to Become the Creative Force in Your Own Life, by Robert Fritz. Actually, this was just an impulse buy, but looks interesting. From Bras Basah.

The Devil wears Prada…

but does he make calls with a Prada phone?

The new Apple iPhone (am I allowed to call it that? Please don’t sue me, Cisco) has caused quite a stir, but of course its biggest failing from a Singaporean POV is that it won’t be available here for a year at least.

However, for cool-phone enthusiasts, check out the news that LG Electronics and Prada have collaborated to produce a phone – one with many resemblances to the erm, Apple Phone. According to the reviews, the Prada phone is technically less impressive than Apple’s – but it still looks damn good, and at least it will be available in Singapore in the near future. Not that I would buy one anyway, of course. Ahem.

Update:

Aha, the Apple Blog has a post about this, giving a link to a YouTube demonstration of the Prada phone, plus a link to more pictures and details.

Free money!

Well, not quite. But almost. Borders in Singapore are making me happy.

A digression: since I’ve been talking about web design and marketing recently, it’s odd to note that when I go to www.borders.com.sg  the home page defaults to an announcement that the ‘ “Win a Bookcase to Brag About” competition is now closed’. And that’s it. Nothing more.  Since I knew nothing about the competition and don’t care that it’s closed… how about putting some actual useful information there?

However: I don’t really care – because Borders are effectively giving me money…. Some time ago I was buying a book, and while I was at the cashdesk I signed up to join the email list. Turns out that this sends out discount vouchers to print and claim. The latest, valid until late January, gives 40% off the price of a single book. I assumed that this offer could be used once only – that is, I could buy a total of one book at the discounted rate. I decided to use mine to buy The Many Headed Hydra, which I’ve been wanting to get since it came out (but it isn’t often on the shelves). The girl at the till assured me, though, that I could print out as many copies of the voucher as I liked, anduse them all. Someone had just done that.

Wow. Perhaps this is meant to be an experiment in viral marketing, like the Threshers Christmas offer that Hugh McCloud promoted. Well, now I know where I’m going to buy that new copy of The Diamond Age… and a few more books…

Just do it

Today’s train of thought is…

Marketing, Unix, and Abe

No, not that Abe, this Abe. He’s got me hooked. Best politician evah? Well, too early to say, really. But really: not only did he break precedent by making his first overseas trip to China rather than the USA, and not only has he so far successfully obfuscated the Yakasuni shrine issue to the point that soon anyone who raises the issue will find their own eyes crossing in confusion so that they just give up on the whole issue, he’s making an effort to win over the foreign-geek-who-can’t-vote-in-Japan demographic, a task so stupendously, heroically pointless that only an uber-politician would even try. Or maybe he had another motivation, but it escapes me. Hmm. Could be the second one, really.

So what’s brought on this fanboy frenzy? Well, inspired by a Wired article by Momus, I wrote about this previously – Abe’s website and its Unix backdrop. Since then, he’s been elected and is now Prime Minister of Japan. And his site has changed too. Not so much. Not the picture of him, not even a new tie. Same Apple Powerbook. But, but, BUT the code in the background has changed. Dammit, my Unix shell programming skills are old and rusty, I’m going to have to check the manual for a couple of those commands…. but there’s a hidden message there that he’s sending to the world, and obsessive geeks with an interest in Japanese politics will be his prophets. This is so fiendishly clever! I’m hooked. I just know that now I’ve realized this I’m going to have to keep on revisiting his site….

Here’s the new image:

Compare it to the old one. This is so William Gibson it must be intentional, and that’s a very scary thought.

Unix in politics and cartoons

This is very cool – via iMomus‘ column in Wired, Robots Wrote This, I wound up at the home page of Shinzo Abe, lead runner to become the next Prime Minister of Japan. It seems he might continue the visits to Yakasuni if he does become PM, which is Not Cool At All, but I want to talk about something much more trivial and frivolous. In the article, Momus notes

The splash page of Abe’s website shows him operating an Apple laptop. On the wall behind, though, is a series of instructions in what looks like some ancient computer language; COBOL or FORTRAN, perhaps .

In fact, it’s from a Unix command line, recognisable to anyone who uses Linux/BSD/Darwin, and it is indeed a set of instructions, modelled on those used to install a new software package. In this case, it’s indicating that he plans to install policies to create a ‘proud Japan’. The first few lines indicate the preparation; the switch to superuser status anticipates his election, and the rest show that he will go on to implement those policies. Very clever, very funny to me as a geek, but I wonder how they came to the decision to put this on his home page? Who are they sending a message to? Also, given that (as far as I understand) he’s on the conservative side, I wonder what those policies for a ‘proud Japan’ might be grounds for some concern, if he continue Koizumi’s style of antagonising China and Korea. Anyway, since the site won’t last for ever, here’s the picture:

Another Unix-based reference that popped up today is via Tom Coates’ plasticbag blog: he links to a sudo make me a sandwich cartoon at xkcd. Hehehe, it made me laugh, anyway!