Its already more than a month in the new job and still I get confused with names.  Just this morning, I realize that two person, a guy and a girl with the same first name, and the last name is only displaced by two character.  One is Lim, and another is Lee, and both have the same first name.  Now a days, names are unisex. I would reserve the sex association till I the actual person.  Yet, sometimes, even with the actual person in front of you, there are still doubt if that is a girl or guy.  I recall in my past job, I had a colleague that loves to see Transvestite photos, especially the ones that looks prettier than a girl.  Back to the names, it will be a challenge for me to remember them all… struggling everyday, and everyday, there are surprises.. that’s what makes life interesting…

The basic expectation of a $50 gift voucher is that the voucher are treated as if it were cash. If you were to load $50 on a gift card, the card store value for purchase is $50. For Hush Puppies Gift Voucher, on the other hand, the $50 values comes with a list of terms and conditions that render the gift voucher severely unattractive and an utter disappointment. Firstly, there are restrictions to use the vouchers on any sale item. If you want to purchase an item on sale, you will have to pay full price if you use the voucher. This is the most ridiculous T&C I’ve ever encountered. You buy a Gift Voucher for $50, then you give it to your brother, and your brother can only purchase items in full price, and if there are any sale or discounts, your brother have to pay full price. Isn’t it better to just give your brother the cash? So, who would in their right mind buy a gift voucher that has such a T&C. In addition the voucher can only be used in the footwear outlets, it can’t be used in the apparel shop. Another limitation of choices to the consumer. Hush Puppies make great shoes, but some of their business practice makes no sense at all. As a consumer, I am better off to buy a Scholl or Timberland gift vouchers for my loved ones. So this Christmas, if you are thinking of getting a Hush Puppies Gift Voucher for your beloved companion, you are better off giving them cash, the gift voucher does not worth a single dime.

I got peanuts from them anyway, without me, there is also not much impact, also, I would rather focus on Adsense and Nuffnag solely and not to have too many bells and whistle around. So, farewell, till we meet again, good luck and all the best. Bye Bye Adverlets…

The future of social networking is through the hands of Intel and Apple.  If they can make UMPC – Ultra Mobile PC and Wimax work, anyone can now go online anywhere.  People can do that now with their cell phone, but cell phone is so tiny and only a handful of sites support cell phones tiny browsers today.  With UMPC, one can bring their “Origami” along to where ever they go and with WiMax, they could be connected 24hrs a day, even they are in the lavatory in the middle of nowhere on I5 freeway.  So, what does this means for application developers? A huge market of addictions left untap.  Games and Social Networking are the two current addictions that could be easily ported over.  Developers just need to make the current applications light weight, using new technologies like Ajax, etc, developers could make a feature rich application that could create a new form of addiction to the Internet.  A while ago I was hooked on simple Internet MMORPG games that took 10 hours of my time away.  This is only because I could not carry my laptop with me where ever I go.  With Wimax and UMPC, one could do that, and imagine the level of addiction.  One could go to war with the Orges while sitting in a Can crapping all the junk food consumed while hacking away a tiny little slug.  The market for this is huge and the best thing is, that this is totally not radical.  It is not a long short, it is an existing addiction platform that just need a little ingenuity for the UMPC.  UMPC today is powered at 1-2W and some could even run Vista.  These low power processors could not take heavy apps like Warcraft.  This is where the money is, which is to make a game like warcraft, but based on Ajax, and runs online and not that graphically rich.  This is my wild idea… 

internet advertising

As I came home, I whip out my tiny little HP nc4010 and looked for the power cord.  The laptop was already 3 years old and the battery was already flat.  “Duh!” screamed the Homer in my head.  I forgot to bring home the power cord.  All I have was < 30 minutes of computing time.  Ah, should be fine, I though to my self.  It took a few minutes to power up, I didn’t notice as I was using the time to clean some dishes and when I was done, the laptop was all fired up and running.  I opened up my mail box and there were tons of free beer and french fires flying around in my facebook.  After replying my last mail, which is to Philip from University of Liverpool, declining his invitation to do MBA there as it was too expensive.  I jump over to Facebook. I was surprise to find two friends of mine who knew each other, one was a friend from high school days and another was a car pool friend when I was working in Intel.  That’s the nice thing about facebook for me.  I detest all those senseless apps and never ending invitation to do something just for the sake of doing it.  I have found a few old friends over facebook and I am keeping it alive and looking for more old friends over there.  I hope to connect up with some of my university old friends, who I have lost contact for over 10 years.  I wonder what they are doing now or where they are laying their eggs.  Where am I rambling too, back to the story, once I was done with facebook, which is a good 15 minutes in, I started to browse over to Pay Per Post.  I usually check if there are interesting opportunities that is worth > $10 per post, something that is worth my time in writing.  I found one, and this one was really interesting, not only it met my monetary requirement, it also promise to give a 5 star tac rating for a good post. Hooked on this sale pitch, I started to write the post.  As I was already almost close to the laptop closing time, I decided to get my post in first then only reserve for the opportunity.  Half way through typing my post, the screen went blank.  The laptop decided to close shop early today, without any warning.  Feeling a little disrupted for missing this opportunity, I turn to my PSP for some distraction.  A day over the opportunity is still there, and today, I did bring my power cord home.  This money is mine… hehehe…