Month: October 2005

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Who is the New Evil Empire?

In the past year I had signed up for services that are now no longer independent.

First it was Blogger which was purchased by Google.

Next it was Skype, which everyone knows was purchased by eBay. I personally feel that the future of Skype is numbered with eBay at the helm.

A few months ago Flickr was purchased by Yahoo. Like Skype I hope Flickr will not be destroyed by Yahoo.

Today the creator, of Upcoming announced on his blog that it will be purchased by Yahoo.

What is happening? Is everything I signup for going to be gobble up by the big guys?

There are many who thinks of Microsoft as the evil empire who tries to take over the world from the technology perspective.

Others who falls into this category are: Starbucks, Disney and Virgin. Although these other three are not as commonly regarded as Mr. Gates’ company.

At least for the software industry there are new kid(s) on the block trying to take the title from Microsoft; namely Google.

Although I cannot totally disagree with the critics about their new label for Google. I personally do not have as much dislike for Google as I have for Microsoft. I like Google, except for their recent decisions to keep releasing services that are platform specific (Windows). Rather than developing service that are based on Open Standards, which is what the Internet is.

Will the new “Evil Empire” be Google or Yahoo. I guess we will soon know.

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The “Geese” Effect

GeeseEffect

Why do groups of women speaking at the same time?

I am sure everyone has experienced this before. This phenomenon is most apparent with older women.

Although recently I encountered this with men. In one case it was a group of all men, which was a Podcast (“This Week in Tech”) and the other was a morning radio show on RTHK in Hong Kong.

I personally find this behaviour very annoying, since there are so many person speaking at the same time, making it very difficult to understand or hear any one conversation.

I call this phenomenon, the “Geese” effect. You know it sounds like a family of geese in a pond.

This “Geese” effect is also annoying when I am not involved in the conversation nor trying to listen to it. That is because when a group of individuals in the “geese” effect, are usually very loud and would be extremely interruptive if they were sitting over at the next table in Starbucks.

So a word to those individuals practicing the “geese” effect, please be considerate of your surroundings, and remember the saying:

“A fool chatters, while a wise man listens.“