10/17/2014

他找到工作了

刚刚接到他电话,称他找到工作了!真心替他高兴!

这几个月,虽然他每天乐呵呵的,可想想都知道,他背负着多么大的压力。自费来美国上学,毕业几个月了一直在找工作。或许几度萌生退意,终于咬牙坚持下来。如今如愿找到工作,可以继续在美国发展,还有什么比这个更让人高兴的呢!

高兴之余,我竟忍不住哭了。这是我在美国最好的朋友啊!他找到工作了,也意味着他也要走了。几个月前想到他要毕业要走,心里就挺难过的。结果他工作迟迟未定,这事也就放下了,似乎忘记了他迟早要先走这事。每周嘻嘻哈哈吃饭打牌不亦乐乎。如今这一天突然就来了…

祝福你吧,我的好兄弟。假以时日,你肯定会成大事!

7/21/2014

Yo? Yo!

I read an article recently that top managers of Tencent such as Ma Huateng invested in Yo, a plain mobile app. It is really astonishing that such a boring app could involve so many users and raise so much investment. It is said to be launched on April Fool's day as a joke, and it turned out to be so popular. Basically, it could do nothing but send your friends a signal 'Yo!' So if you miss your boyfriend, you send him a 'Yo!'; if you try to wake up someone, you continuously send him 'Yo!'... You can send a "Yo!" whenever you want to draw attention without saying anything.

The phenomenon raises two questions: 1. why people like it? 2. Why business invests in it?

That people like it seems to indicate a trend that the social media is getting lighter. From long blogs to 140-character-limit Twitter, and to the no-word-at-all Yo, people are getting lazier in typing and outputting. It is like a hand wave or a 'hi' greeting in real life; people do not need to say anything essential to appear friendly. However, I doubt how far people would go with it as they cannot customize their message. Sometimes people do want to chat after greetings, right? Maybe the function should be integrated into an IM app, say, by tapping the portrait of a friend, you send him a "Yo"? Isn't it similar to QQ's function ‘shaking your friend'?

Then why business is optimistic about it? The article I read contributes it to the notification system. Yo has the potential to take over the notification system of the cell phone. Indeed, the notification is the first see when a phone is waked. The notification is able to push key information to the user. For instance, markets could push sales information by sending a 'Yo'. It is like a horn signal or a sales banner in reality. The signal succeeds to convey the necessary information without requiring response. This is important as it does not necessarily interrupt the user's on-going activity. The idea is similar to activity awareness. On the one hand, you need to keep your collaborators aware of your activity; on the other hand, you do not want to be interruptive. The design of notification is part of the design of technological support of activity awareness.

I forgot to mention that we moved into our new home last week. It is a two-floor townhouse, with two bedrooms. This place is really perfect for us, and for our coming baby. We put a lot of efforts in designing and decorating our new home. Actually we should enjoy the process much more than the result itself. To design is to imagine the sweet scene we will be in the future. This is, perhaps, similar to the design of technology.