It wasn’t until the past week or so, with a new digital camera, and a ton of shots piling up on the SD card from this China trip, that I really have come to appreciate the sheer genius of Flickr.
I love it so much I will probably upgrade upgraded to a Pro account. I haven’t had much experience in the community functions, but I am receiving notifications of people adding my photo stream to their accounts, and that, as Martha Steward would say, is a good thing.
You don’t have to blog to love it, but if you blog, you will definitely love it. From uploading photos taken off my Treo, to managing hundreds of digital snaps from the Canon IXUS — Flickr is now a “core” application for me.
I like the presentation on this dish. Basically spare ribs with the spare ribs included to remind you what you’re eating. Which is actually very useful as I had to turn to my colleague Fei Hongxing every other spin of the lazy-susan to ask him what was coming around the bend.
Spent the day learning about the China mobile phone market. 80 vendors duking it out for one billion potential customers, a third of whom have already signed up and plunked down some serious disposable income to get connected.
It’s a GSM world over here, but it’s moving to a China specific 3G standard called TS-SCDMA by 2008, with the push starting next year to get the Tier One cities signed on by the Summer Olympics in ’08. The market is young, professional, and concerned either with price or fashion. I went to a trendy nightclub earlier in the week and people were wearing their phones around their necks on leashes like ID badges. Phones are jewelry and will be the way the Chinese get online and stay online, since Internet penetration is only around 8 percent. When 3G hits I think that trend will intensify as broadband content starts streaming to the devices.
Before dinner I visited a Chinese version of Best Buy which was total electronics heaven. Bazillions of phones, PDAs, phones, USB memory sticks.
Then off to dinner. Chinese hospitality is humbling. Very gracious hosts and many toasts made for a late evening and tired blogging. More to come when there is time to process it all.
