Topic of the day: Roll 'n Roll Power!

Next time when you hear people blasting the music by Led Zeppelin or Rolling Stones, don't just tell them to turn it down 'coz they might be using the music to drive crickets away! That's what people in Nevada use to defend against the onslaught of crickets.

Topic of the day: animation and age discrimination

Political correctness police striked again! Here is the story: Movie critics have been singing praises for the new Pixar animated movie "Up," which breaks the tradition by featuring an old guy as the main character. However, some analysts suggest investors to dump the stock of Disney (owner of Pixar) because it is hard to sell merchandises related to this movie. (Believe it or not. Kids fall for merchandises related to animations BIG TIME! Toys, clothing, lunch bags, cups...... the possibility is limitless) And those analysts were accused of age discrimination! I think that's BS. Do you think senior people will really get offended by such comments?

Topic of the day: Boycott Pocket God

Imagine you are a minority in your country and there is a game of which the object is to kill and torture people of your race. Will you be offended? I would be furious!

And that's what the iPhone game Pocket God did to Pacific Islanders. I thought Apple has a high standard on approving apps to be sold at their App store. Well, probably not.

The sad thing is: the maker of this game is going to make even more money because of this publicity (for example, idiots like this are encouraging people to buy and try the game.) It proves once again no publicity is bad publicity. Shame on them!

Tech of the day: ex-Facebook exec replaced departed MySpace CEO

I don't have the experience of being a top dog and then slowly overtaken by another up and comer (I went out on top! :P) but I could imagine it gotta hurt. Think IBM->Microsoft. Or more recently, Yahoo->Google. Add another from the tech world: MySpace->Facebook. I still remember when MySpace was king, many commenters think Facebook only appeals to the college crowd and being too elitist. When MySpace fell behind Facebook in US, people still said MySpace was the worldwide leader. Well, MySpace has lost that crown too. Perhaps it's time to play the game my son likes: "Follow the leader" Or better yet, hire someone who used to work for the leader/competitor! Is this desperation act? I won't call it that 'coz MySpace is still THE place for bands to promote themselves. On the other hand, it is hard to reverse a trend in the tech world. Just ask Yahoo.

Tech of the day: Fate of a cloud pioneer

Before I talk about this pioneer, I gotta admit I hate the term "cloud." It has become yet another hype like "Web 2.0." Running Web application and storing data on the internet are nothing new. Case in point: GeoCities was started 15 years ago. And that's what they did (well, they are more well-known for offering free website hosting.) Ironically, it will be shutdown later this year even though the hype of cloud is higher than ever.

Recommended by a friend, I started using GeoCities one year after it was launched, i.e., 1995, because I need to migrate my old web page hosted by my grad school's computer science department (they were not going to host my page much longer after I graduated!) Like most people of that generation, that's where I honed my HTML skills! One thing unique about GeoCities was that it organized web pages into "neighborhoods." Users could choose the neighborhood that represents the contents or reflects the personalities. I still remember my neighborhood was "Broadway!"

The memory associated with GeoCities was not all great though: after hosting my personal web site for 7+ years, it was lost all of a sudden and Yahoo couldn't bring it back. Not a big loss for me 'coz I left it outdated anyway. I had "outgrown" static web pages and spent most of my energy on 00zine.com those days.

Still, it is really sad to see it go. With such a brand name and large number of users, I just don't understand why Yahoo couldn't make a ton of money out of it. In fact, this is just one of many cases where Yahoo was unable to take advantage of its vast user base (those uses Yahoo mail, My Yahoo, Yahoo Answers......)

Musicians of the day: American Idol, classical edition

That's basically what the KDFC Classical Star Search is about. They are cutting down to 3 finalists in the 2 groups (adult and youth) Check out the videos of the 10 semifinalists in each group. All are so impressive that I have no idea who to vote for!

每週一噏：千人諾諾，不如一士諤諤

本文標題的意思，相信大家不難理解，諷刺的是，令筆者想到這標題的人和事，竟與之完全相反！所講的當然是上週提過的港大學生會長陳一諤為當權者六四暴行開脫，或者應說：一諤大言炎炎，不敵千人投票罷免！

平心而論，今次陳一諤成為眾矢之的，坊間的報導其實算不上客觀，不信的話且看看此博客轉載陳全部發言，不難發現傳媒的確有斷章取義之嫌，不過陳偏袒政府也是無庸置疑。

發生這件事亦非全無正面影響，首先，此事激發起一向政治冷感甚至對學生會也極冷淡的港大生不再沉默，而六四事件發生於二十年前，被淡忘也是無可避免，更遑論深入探討，這次風波倒令大家激辯一番，真相越辯越明，陳如果一心想偏幫政府恐怕是越幫越忙，難怪有人質疑陳並非官方欽點的打手！

[按：舊零零誌的冷飯已炒得七七八八，留下一些待將來適當時候再翻炒！取而代之的是每週一噏，靈感當然是來自不喜歡鬥噏的香港特首煲呔曾！]