we live in a beautiful world

April Bibliography

crystal — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 09:50:43 +0000

Damm, Jens (2006). Chinese Cyberspaces Technological Changes and Political Effects.

Zhen, Yongnian (2008). Technological Empowerment.

Zhou, Yongming (2006). Historicizing Online Politics: Telegraphy, the Internet, and Political Participation in China. Stanford University Press.

Cornstarch Spoon

crystal — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 07:35:00 +0000

I love (and have been hoarding) the cornstarch spoons and forks that are used by Govinda’s restaurant in the Sustainability Courtyard on campus. They feel much sturdier than plasticware and have a nice tan color. The best part of it is that they are biodegradeable and compostable, meaning that even if they miss the recyclers (and most do here in Hawaii), they won’t be sitting around in landfills a thousand years from now. I’d like to see an across-the-board switch to this standard. Using these is another small way of taking responsibility.

Chana Dal Made Simple

crystal — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 07:04:40 +0000

chana dal
pinches of cayenne, turmeric powder, cumin powder, coriander powder
1 T. tamarind pulp (or 1 T. lemon juice & 1 t. sugar)
1 T. vegetable oil
black mustard seeds

Clean and soak the chana dal in water for 2-3 hours, then drain.
Bring a pot of water with salt to boil.
Add the chana dal and wait for the water to begin its second boil, then cover the pot and cook over medium-to-low heat for 30 min.
Remove the cover and stir up the dal.
Add the cayenne, turmeric, cumin, coriander and the tamarind pulp.
Stir well and allow to simmer uncovered while you prepare the next step.

In a separate pan, heat the vegetble oil over low heat and add the mustard seeds. When they have ceased popping, add the oil mixture to the simmering pot of dal. Immediately cover the pot and keep covered for 2 min. while the dal continues to simmer.

Then remove the cover and stir once with a spoon to mix in the seeds. Cook uncovered for another 5 min. and the dal is ready to be served.

Wednesday Evening Seminars

crystal — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 06:46:45 +0000

As part of the Affiliate Program, I now attend Wednesday Evening Seminars which are two hour programs which include a presentation, discussion, and Q&A. The Seminars include all the Fellows, Affliliates, and are also open to the public as well. Tonight’s speaker was a scholar who spoke on sustainability in the Pacific Islands. He told stories from his native island of Tonga and addressed issues of moral responsibility in sustainability. He also introduced models for sustainability with markets, governments, and local communities as the actors.

Kaiser / Tytn II / Tilt

crystal — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 21:32:17 +0000

Since June, I have been on the prowl for a new cell phone. After much research, including a lot of pdadb.net comparisons, I found the HTC Kaiser had everything I wanted, a 3MP digicam, Windows Mobile 6, 3G capability, and GPS to boot. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t be coming out in the US til September. In Taiwan, it was already discontinued as last year’s model so I had no luck there.
The Kaiser eventually came out in October via AT&T as the Tilt, minus the front facing camera. Honolulu got 3G in November and Amazon had a great deal going on for it in December. When I checked last week, it was $149.99 with a new 2-year contract. The Tilt blows the pants off the iPhone, which is $399 and doesn’t carry half the capabilities of the Tilt. The iPhone does have a sexy UI, but UI in this case, that’s just not compelling enough.

I have to wait a week for it due to the holidays, but I am really looking forward to being connected again with the best mobile technology can offer.

The Lhasa Train

crystal — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 06:08:33 +0000

From Lhasa to Guangzhou
56 hours
via Golmud, Xining, Xi’an, etc.
Departs at 10 AM on Day 1 and arrives at 6:15 PM on Day 3
Soft sleeper price: about 1500 RMB
From Lhasa to Xining
24 hours
via Golmud
Departs at 10 AM on Day 1 and arriving at 10 AM on Day 2

From Lhasa to Chengdu
46 hours

Doing Fieldwork in China

crystal — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 17:28:51 +0000

http://www.amazon.com/Doing-Fieldwork-China-Maria-Heimer/dp/0824830709

A must read for anyone who is about to do fieldwork in China. In particular, Chapter 3, “Fieldwork as Coping and Learning” by Elin Soether, wasÂ written especially with the graduate student/first-time researcher in mind. ThisÂ bookÂ illuminates many China-specific problems faced by researchers which aren’tÂ typically revealed in the final published papers.

Google Translate expands Chinese options

crystal — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 16:23:39 +0000

I noticed a small, but extraordinarily significant, change to Google Translate. They now have a wider variety of translation options for Chinese.

Previous:

English to Simplified Chinese (beta)
Simplified Chinese to English (beta)

Current:

Chinese to English (beta)

Traditional Chinese to English (beta)
Traditional Chinese to Simplified Chinese (beta)

Simplified Chinese to English (beta)
Simplified Chinese to Traditional Chinese (beta)

Foreigners Blogging in Taiwan

crystal — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 05:14:37 +0000

Taipei Times reported a story about foreigners maintaining blogs/websites in Taiwan. The article features Michael Turton, a foreigner living in Taiwan, who has created a blog in reaction to the toxic news environment there. I think voices like his are doing a great job at filling the gaps in understanding by westerners about what is going on in Taiwan,

User Friendly 2006 - Hangzhou, China

crystal — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 13:15:22 +0000

Day 1 of the conference was by and large the best day of the entire conference and well worth attending. The presentations are a great chance to see what the industry is up to and meet all kinds of people involved in usability.Registration A large, red helium arc greeted attendees at the entrance to the Yellow Dragon Hotel in Hangzhou, “Welcome to User Friendly 2006″. Check-in/registration was well-organized but quite overwhelmed since people were not standing in proper lines, but rather, in a mob. After checking in, I wandered towards a small room where companies had set up their tables. Quite a few Shanghai-based usability companies were present. I also noticed a Google table, but it had no representatives, just job listing flyers.I sat down in my assigned chair in the rear-righthand side of the presentation hall. The man sitting behind me introduced himself as the VP of com.cn. He mentioned his company was the biggest webhost provider in China. (That’s a lot of mp3s!). Two young women from the Academy of Sciences also sat behind me.Presentations The presentation began with a keynote by Daniel Rosenberg from SAP. He kept his presentation short and sweet and spoke about the ultimate goal for the user experience as an automated solution which requires no user interface at all. He gave two examples. 1) networking, which was originally a task which required cables and a floppy disk in 1988 to DHCP today 2) inventory and sales, which initially relied on price tags stuck on a product, to the RFID technology being developed today.Next was Jason Huang, UPA China President. He gave an overall summary of the impressive growth of UPA China within the last 3 years, as well as the direction the organization would be heading in the next year. He predicted the start of local meetings in China as well as User Friendly 2007 being held either in Beijing or Shenzhen. In my naivete, I was surprised to hear that UPA China was a government organization.Paul Sherman gave a very interesting case study of how usability and user-interface design was incorporated into Peachtree Accounting software. He was very honest in presenting how un-userfriendly the application had been. No rose-colored glasses for the past in this presentation.Jinsoo Kim, the Director for user experience for Yahoo! Korea gave an academic-type of presentation grounded by examples from the Yahoo! Korea site. His presentation really broke down what made for good design and how it was tested and how it then emerged onto the main page.Giles Colborne discussed web communities and broke down the various key personality types within web communities and how to nourish them so that a web community could flourish.The most popular speaker among Chinese listeners was Yu Guo from Baidu.I think this was mostly due to the fact that he spoke in Chinese, kept the pace quick and interesting, and really expressed Baidu’s attention towards the Chinese market (and maybe not much else).The MSN speaker, Annie Chang, also spoke in Chinese, but the speech felt like a pitch for MSN Live. Annie did talk about their user experience team though.I think the least effective speaker might have been Google. Only because he spoke in English (while the other foreign companies had Chinese speakers present) and because his message was fairly generic with no mention whatsoever of China. This may have been a strategic move on Google’s part given the “competitors” who were present. The impression I received from Google was, “We’re doing everything great just the way we’re doing it and because we believe in our way, we’re going to keep pushing our message.”Apala Charan gave a very engaging and informative presentation which wasn’t as directly connected to usability as it was to addressing a key component of usability, cross-cultural communication and being aware of cultural differences in usability testing.Qifeng Yan also spoke on the same topic using his PhD model as a basis for his presentation rather than anything he had gleaned from Nokia, which I believe was a bit disappointing as that was how he was presented.After the 9th hour of presentations, my attention spanned declined a bit…so I can’t quite summarize on the last couple speakers.The presentations in English were all translated into Chinese and vice versa via headphones, which was incredibly valuable. I can’t begin to emphasize how key the presence of those headphones were.And candidly, I would say on speaking ability, I would say that Jason Huang, Apala Chavan, and Yu Guo made a strong impression with the audience.Day 2For the Day 2 workshops, I selected the Hands-On Usability Workshop and the Cross-Cultural Workshop. The Hand-On Usability was quite good and I would recommend it to first-time attendees of the conference.Unfortunately, the Cross-Cultural workshop was very poorly organized and run, which was completely the fault of the workshop leader and not the conference.