"Your goal is to learn, not to shut your ears and raise your nose." - Boss Hugo

"My body gets me from A to B, but the real journey is in my mind." - Oasics Athletics slogan

Apple products that never made through the light

http://www.yankodesign.com/2009/05/13/ten-creative-and-unique-apple-concepts/

Life

"When the voice and the vision on the inside [mind] become more profound, and more clear and loud than the opinions on the outside, you've mastered your life." - Dr. John F. Demartini

Reasons to Believe

"Anyone that ever accomplishes anything did not know how they were going to do it. They only knew they were going to do it." - Bob Proctor, philosopher

"All that we are is the result of what we have thought." - Buddha

You are the only one who creates your reality. You are the architect of your own life.

"An affirmative thought is hundreds of times more powerful than a negative thought." - Rev. Dr. Michael Beckworth

'Google'nomics: paid by the hour replaced by paid by the quality /quantity of ideas

Google provides platforms for everyone online to organizes themselves into specific communities for free using links, tags, widgets, emails and other tools on interfaces owned by Google, like Blogger, Youtube, Gmail, etc, then target its advertisement accurately and efficiently to those communities created by the users : a win/win/win situation for Google/its ad clients/its users - the users get to blog, post videos, connect and form communities at no cost using online tools provided by Google. Once the communities reached a larger volume of traffic, Google then allows its ad clients to post ads onto these communities' websites/blogs. This way, the ads clients succeeds in exposing their product/service to a targeted audience, in return Google gets to charge its ad clients for posting. Hence, the more blogs, videos, traffic, communities that are generated under Google's platforms (blogger, youtube, gmail, etc), the more ad clients Google will be able to attract, and the more ad revenue they will able to earn.

More content/ more traffic = more profit. Abundance replaces scarcity as the new principle of economics in the era of Web 2.0

Google's interfaces allow for self-organizing opportunities to occur. They provide links between content & people. The link is whats valuable.

What does design have to do with all this?
As more projects & paper projects are being produced, more aesthetic styles being promoted, more construction technologies being tested and adopted, more software and production techniques become available, more people who become interested in design, and more people who are calling themselves 'designers' (myself included); design firms must learn, accept, and use these abundance towards their interests via collaboration with the interfaces & people. Managing abundance is the new business model in running design (more contents & participants can yield more profit), while open-source collective intelligence is the new method of designing. The key is finding way to build content with the public, while designers become the editors of those content.

Google way of making mistakes well

"...if you launch things and iterate really quickly, people forget about those mistakes and have a lot of respect for how quickly you build the product up and make it better.....Innovation, not instant perfection" - Marissa Mayers, Vice-President

"I want to run a company where we are moving too quickly and doing too much, not being too cautious and doing too little." - Larry Page, Co-Founder

"Please fail very quickly - so that you can try again." Eric Schmidt, CEO



*Jarvis, Jeff, What Would Google Do? (New York: HarperCollins Press, 2009)

California Dreaming

Mid May, Calgary snowed ...again. Reminds me of where I spent a year in last year.

All the leaves are brown
All the leaves are brown
And the sky is grey
And the sky is grey
Ive been for a walk
Ive been for a walk
On a winters day
On a winters day
Id be safe and warm
Id be safe and warm
If I was in L.A.
If I was in L.A.
California dreamin'
California dreamin'
On such a winters day

Stopped into a church
I passed along the way
Well, I got down on my knees
Got down on my knees
And I pretend to pray
I pretend to pray
You know the preacher likes the cold
Preacher likes the cold
He knows Im gonna stay Im
Knows Im gonna stay
California dreamin
California dreamin
On such a winters day

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dN3GbF9Bx6E

How would Google run a design firm...?

1. Like Google, the firm needs to become a platform: the platform that has network to many other designers (not only architects, but designers) out there who are subscribed under the firm's network.

2. The main focus of the firm is to gather project commissions from everywhere and auction them out to its subscribed designers. The subscribed designers would then bid for the specific projects they wish to get. Bidding is based on talent (portfolio of past work, performance, experience, etc) as well as rates (fees). Best bid wins the job.

3.

Google's new competitor

StumbleUpon acts much like a search engine, but introduces a new way to browse the web in "social networking" style...think of Twitter or Facebook + Google. StumbleUpon allows searchers to search and browse websites via previews of sites' homepages compare to reading through lines of texts displayed on Google search results, giving searchers a quicker and better visual experience when searching online. Searchers can also recommend interesting websites of similar topic to each other, making searching on web more socially engaging, fast, and personal.

Lyrics as tunes

"刻意咬字不清，重點是在以念詞的律動去搭配音樂的節奏" - 周董

"Simplicity is complexity resolved." - Constantin Brancusi, Sculptor

"Simplicity means saying no." - Steve Jobs

Think dfferent, think beyond

"If I'd asked my customers what they wanted, they'd have said a faster horse" - Henry Ford

Innovation does not come from asking a focus group what they want.

Steve Jobs in 5

1. "Creativity is just connecting things."

2. "People don't know what they want until you show it to them."

3. "Dylan and Picasso were always risking failure."

4. "Software is the user experience."

5. "We made the buttons on the screen look so good you'll want to lick them."

A Smarter car....with a much needed software update

Finally, the US auto giant listens to consumer demands by allowing cell phones and ipods to be connected (wirelessly) to your vehicles....SYNC is a new media player developed in collaboration with Microsoft which allows drivers and passengers to hook up their portable hand-held gadgets (phones, ipods, GPS, etc) to their cars via bluetooth. This player works similar to an iphone in a way that also allows you to download third-party apllications which you could get access the latest weather reports, your favorite radios, check movie showtimes, monitoring vehicle performance, restaurant listings, traffic directions, news, etc. But instead of a touch screen, its voice-activated,..one more [better] reason to buy an American car.

Check out SYNC, equipped with 2010 version of Ford owned vehicles.