yandao.com - Memoirs of a player wannabe

I woke up at 5.10AM this morning to the sound of banglade… I mean, foreign music blasted from a radio somewhere, probably downstairs, or upstairs, or the block next door, or, well, somewhere.

Honestly, it wasn’t very nice, nor could I comprehende the meaning of the words/lyrics in which the, er, foreign talent sang. (at least if it was French, Spanish, or some other common European language with derivatives from English, can attempt to figure it out - but this? NO WAY :()

So, as usual, I got back to my (job), perfecting projects, and making visual eyecandy plausible for my clients - and probably thats the reason why the most of them love me, until I decide to screw something up in one way or another on purpose =X

Besides the like, say, 8gb folder of work-related stuff on my desktop, lies the 80gb “Downloaded Magic” folder - where I keep all my super-secret magic trick stash. Please, if you get to use my MacBook Pro, do NOT open the folder and let the chicken out of the bag (correct right? the animal is chicken? or was it cow?)

..and, you already know - I started watching more “how-to-perform-tricks” and drifted into my dreamy magical mode. Ya lah, I cannot be compared to those gurus who do magic full-time, but, how many programmers cum designers cum project managers cum photographer cum blogger cum hacker security-guru wannabe can do magic?

Almost none, right? HAHAHA too bad then. (but then again.. maybe the Truth is Out There =x)

Okay, so i saw this sexy deck(s) of cards from the Ellusionist store, and my first impression was..:

..ok, my first impression is probably the same as yours - you help me fill in the blanks, can?

(Yes, the cards are black, and the pips - hearts, spades, etc, are white and red. Sexy?)

The only problem was, Singapore was probably too insignificant a country for them to ship this pack/combo bundle to.

But we cannot blame them what, after all, Singapore’s a small country with only a few million people.

How to compare, right?

So naturally, I went to this website which our local newspaper claims to help us ship stuff from the US to Singapore at affordable rates (FYI: vPostUSA is NOT affordable. its SO bloody expensive):

Oh, so clever. Service only applicable for Citibank card holders. How nice. Drive you to desperation into the market so you *will* have to use them (because they’re the only affordable ones), and then say that you NEED to use CitiBank Credit Cards.

I call this business strategy, man.

So, off I go then, to CitiBank’s website - to get a credit card applied, ANY credit card!

Wow, am I dreaming?

They have online signups, no minimum income required, and 24/7 priviledges? I wonder if they have priviledge discounts at hotel rooms, massage parlours, and 7-11 to enjoy 24/7 discounts. What else would you be doing with 24/7 discounts anyway besides opening room (kai1 fang2 - in chinese) or something? And better still, free waiver of fees!

So, obviously, in my heart, I thought to myself: Citibank (Singapore) damn powerful man, super high-tech, like their US counterparts who have some superpowered banking infrastructure and all (PS: I design systems too, hence, I know a good system when I see one)

And then I tried to sign up….

..and after 30 minutes of form filling - they generated a bloody form, and asked me to PRINT it out, and FAX IT IN OR MAIL IT INTO THEM.

KNN! THIS ONE CALLED ONLINE SIGNUP? YOU ONLINE MAKE ME FILL UP THE BOXES, THEN ASK ME PRINT OUT AND MAIL/FAX IN. WHERES THE ONLINE FORM SUBMISSION PROCESS LEH? THIS IS NONSENSE!

Hence, that said, I hereby award Citibank (Singapore)’s technologically advanced online signup/banking system… a…. FAIL! Sorry, you have lost one potentially loyal customer. I shall continue being loyal to my UOB Platinum card

FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL

Well, I saw this on Mr Brown’s blog, and thought to myself:

“Wah, our gahmen has super powerful letter writers. Even I, myself, also cannot write such a short yet sweet and strong letter apparently looking neutral - I’m impressed, man!”

For those of you who’re NOT in the loop, it’s actually due to the fact that the Police turned down a request for an opposition political party, the Workers’ Party to have a mass cycling event in East Coast, but recently allowed the PAP (ruling party) to have a mass cycling event in West Coast! - and of course.. the irony behind it!

However, since Mr Brown didn’t dissect the letter for us, here, I shall dissect for you:

Okay, steady. Its really powerful ok.

My angmoh so powerful also cannot write so touching letter.

Oh yes, iPhone jailbreaking is free. Please don’t pay Dexter $40 to do it. That’s just daylight robbery.

Alternatively, you can ask anyone else, including me. I charge the price of two Teh-o Peng and one Kaya Toast?

No really, what’s a starting salary for anyone out of a polytechnic, or say, a university?

One of my clients (super-rich guy earning 6-figures monthly) asks me not to work for any company who pays me below $6k a month. I laughed it off… but really - what’s a “proper” starting salary?

When I saw this:

..over at this blog, I thought to myself - Wah, this fella’s gonna get screwed *SO* badly man.

Why so?

From what I’ve *heard* from friends who’ve been to the UAE and certain other countries in the Middle East, they base their courts on religious beliefs - meaning that, religion takes precedence above all (care to correct me if I’m wrong?).

And that introduce several points for discussion, but that’s beyond the scope of this article.

Then, they also mentioned about the death penalty being applicable for quite a few other things - If I recall, in Dubai, you can get your hands chopped off for touching a lady - or something like that. And in Saudi Arabia, you can get executed with a knife to your throat infront of *EVERYONE* in public - in the town square, I think.

I think they call this execution, literally. Head-knife-floor.

So, there’s already in thread in STOMP for this, but no matter what, I’ll say he’s screwed big time if he’s convicted - maybe loss of one arm, or one leg, or something… but who knows? I’m no middle-eastern law expert =X

Too bad, dude. Enjoy your stay in Abu Dhabi while you’re alive! (..and, you idiot, there’s the plane, there’s Singapore, and there’re MANY other countries. Why were you dumb enough to do it in a religious country?)

I know this probably hasn’t hit us back home here in Singapore yet, but, well, essentially, Microsoft had this $300,000,000 Ad Campaign rolling on TV screens and all in the US (and Canada, it would seem).

Edit: I missed out two zeros, it’s 300 millionn, not 3 million.

Okay, for those of you who didn’t hear about it at all, this clip inside features Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld (some angmoh comedian which apparently is famous in the US). So, it might be worth watching

Well, essentially, every other website called it a, let me quote:

“I’m… I don’t know… um… WHAT THE FUCK? Intelligent response in maybe 15 minutes when I’ve recovered.” - as seen in one SlashDot (a super mega huge site where I get my news from)

..and others: “I thought that Seinfeld was acting like he just smoked a whole bag full of weed and Gates was just annoyed with him.” - and that’s just one of the bazillion of comments which were posted.

Hell, even my favourite Venture Capitalist/Startup review site, TechCrunch said that it sucked.. in a way: “These ads can’t be all tech or they’ll lose the audience. But I can’t imagine this will sell software, either.”

Wah, Microsoft can’t be *that* dumb, right?

Okay, let’s cut to the chase and well, I’ll be nice and post a clip of the ad below:

Go on, stop reading for a while and… watch it! I’m serious, just watch the damned thing, and tell me if it’s *THAT* bad, or if you even caught anything from it.

Here, now these are my thoughts:

The very first time I watched this clip via some blog, my reaction was.. “Uh, WTF is this? Microsoft spent $300 million dollars on this shit? Sheesh, they must be crazy!” - so, I re-played the video, and watched it again.. trying to spot missing details.

When that didn’t work, (because apparently, it *really is* crappy enough) - I tried scrolling down to look at the comments, and saw like close to 200 comments at once, commenting on how BAD this clip was, and how Microsoft was throwing money for no apparent reason into the drain.

I checked SlashDot, and saw 400+ comments on a single page - wow! And other tech blogs had in the excess of hundreds of comments, and MILLIONS of views! ALL OF THEM WERE CRITIZING MICROSOFT’S AD!

Now, let me make a wager that the newspaper will specially even come up with a column to say how much the ad sucks, and that Bill Gates screwed up big time. Anyone wanna bet?

In fact, a Microsoft guy even sent out an email to internal Microsoft staff to boost their morale! It *honestly* can’t be that bad, can it?

The sad thing is that, unfortunately, it is that bad.

That said, I will flip the story apart, and tell you that if you think Bill Gates/Microsoft was stupid, you are WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG, and that you have limited foresight, like what the rest of the news agencies, blogs, and review sites have.

Yes, but Microsoft spent $300 million dollars on that crap? True, Microsoft spent $300 million for the whole campaign, but that was just the TIP of the iceberg! It was, as Microsoft said, a “teaser” to get “conversation going” - but.. er, how?

LIKE THIS! PRECISELY LIKE THIS! Microsoft is employing reverse psychology on everyone - critics, reviewers, bloggers, and us, the general public. They *want* you to think it’s SO bad, such that you will tell EVERYONE that Microsoft’s stupid, and that their ad sucks, and so that… people will *try* to figure out what it says, but fail miserably - and post their interpretations up!

This creates Residual Branding, my dear friends - and no, I didn’t take the module on Marketing in school. Honestly, it’s amazing how fast I picked such stuff up (and my eyes widened) while working together with seasoned professionals in the marketing industry

How so? Allow me to explain:

a) Should Microsoft run a “usual” campaign like what Apple did with their Mac vs PC ads, it would be silly - because everyone expects a huge company with alot of money, to attempt to “whack” back Apple’s ads (you do know that it *really* is Microsoft vs Apple now, don’t you?) - this strifles the campaign life/viral effect of the videos - because it’s no big deal if Microsoft makes a perfect ad!

Oh yes, might as well let you guys watch one of Apple’s Mac vs PC ad - yes, got hot girl inside - GO WATCH!

b) The age old adege - “Bad news spread like wildfire“: Guess what! EVERYONE fell for it, those who even thought to themselves that it sucked, and had that thought suckered into their head, all fell for it. Microsoft wants you to *remember* that it sucked, so that you’ll tell your friends, and then THEY will check the videos out and stuff - How else do you explain the millions of comments and countless people trying to decipher the video? Remember kids, this is a super powderful method - Let’s take a local example: Remember Tammy from NYP?

Scandals, bad news, and all the bad stuff, spread like wildfire - nobody can stop it, not even the Government, or any newspaper or whatsoever! - come on, porn is illegal in Singapore but I’m sure you probably knew (many) friends who Bluetooth’ed the clips over, or talked about it, and stuff.

Now, think of it like this:

Windows (and Microsoft products) are targeted at decision makers (FYI: Microsoft earns more money thru corporate sales [selling to companies] than they earn from us, home users) - those who decide what their offices should use, and what they should get, and how much MONEY there is to throw in.

How certain would any business decision maker be if they read about Microsoft’s apparent “screwup” in the papers? Would they discuss with their associates on this? OF COURSE THEY WOULD - and in turn, remind them that they *should* be using Windows!

c) Don’t take my word for this, see REAL statistics - I doubt anyone made a comparison yet, so I’ll do it:

Oh look, 2,930,000 pages talked about the advertisement! That’s like.. wow, alot!

Let’s pull out the calculator and do some basic math:

Assume that this ad costed $5 million to produce, because it’s one super expensive advertisement with Bill Gates in it, and this is just part one of many, and assume that each of the 2.93 million pages each has say, 10,000 pageviews a day (this is a fair number, considering that the big blogs have millions of views per day and smaller ones less than 100).

(2 930 000 * 10 000) / 5 000 000 = 5 860

Hence, each dollar (spent by Microsoft) would buy you 5860 views, and not only that, these views are GURANTEED to leave residual thoughts in people’s heads, start conversations, and make people TALK and get hyped over the whole company!

Damn, that’s cheap lah! Considering that “buying” your own spot in the local and international papers will come naturally.. too…

Well, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the new age of Social Media and viral video marketing! Microsoft *wanted* people to copy this video, they wanted people to upload it, and they wanted people to be dumbfounded and blurry, and most imporantly, they wanted people to COMMENT on the video.

It’s all about the hype, darlings - and we’ve all fallen dumbly into it!

..Don’t EVER put more than half quarter a teaspoon of Green Tea Powder (if you’re not drinking green tea by the sachet of tea leaves, but rather, by those powder-form ones) no matter how “diluted” the powdery mixture seems to look.”

Really lah, after I added one teaspoon of Green Tea Powder, thinking that this was cheap (and prolly flour mixed or something) powder to water.. The water turned a DARK green, like… Fungi-green. Ew. And you can even taste the powder, I think…

I’m currently diluting my one cup of mixture into.. like 6 cups - and apparently, I think it has the potential to dilute till twelve cups and still retain its taste. BRRRR! (after drinking like four cups.. the detox effect comes - the one where your tummy feels abit runny, and you feel like….)

That reminds me of my secondary school science term “React completely XXX compound with Oxygen till no precipitate is seen”. Gosh, I miss Science lessons where I get to screw everything up…

..thank god I’m in IT now. *evil laugh*

It’s 8.13AM, and I’m actually in the midst of drawing cum scribbling nice graphics for one of my clients, but let it be said that I’m not an artist *at all* - I’m more of the composition guy who decides what’s acceptable, and what is the kind of stuff to throw in the wastecan.

My designer, Hong Yi, however, is like super amazing. Allow me to, well, illustrate by putting up one of his works:

Chio right? (I must repeat, this is Hong Yi’s drawing, not mine!) - Everytime I look at the sketch again, somehow, there’s this really, really classy look to it. NICE!

He’s not from RP, so don’t search for him in the database even if you want his number. Bwahahaha. Oh, then again, we were good buddies back in secondary school - I sat right infront of the Teacher’s Table, and slept while the teacher was talking, and he was sitting right at the BACK of the classroom sleeping also.

See, that’s why we’re good buddies. Nobody else slept during lesson time in my secondary school class.

You know, there are some facilitators who truly care - and by caring, I do mean like the ones in your (secondary) school who actually BOTHER guiding you properly, and explaining stuff to you. And also the ones who buy the class chocolate gummies and whatnot when everyone does well.

Oh, now you realise it’s a whole different ballpark in Republic Polytechnic - because they have so *many* hired staff, that well, probably people don’t know each other - and of course, more staff means.. more positions for filling up (i.e, more managerial positions).

That said, there are of course, people who deserve to be up there (holding higher positions), but apparently not - maybe because they don’t want to, by choice, or because, they simply work for the passion, not for the position, and the cash.

You can, if you open your eyes big big, tell them apart - they’ll scold you, and give you hell (for a few moments), but at the end of the day, it’s just a very nice reminder for perking things up. These are the people who are good, and I must say that one of the best whom I know, has already left for greener fields, and to get out of politics in this silly “educational” environment.

And then you meet the other side of the game: The idiots who give everyone else a bad rep, and of course, talk only. Those, I might say, are what we call the “Cover Ka-Chng Kings” (in Hokkien, which literally translates to “Cover Butt/Backside King”) of our micro-environment.

Nevermind, those are still tolerable - because, if you don’t give them a reason to cover their backside, they won’t bother you.

Then there are the other kinds who’re after the cash - *SLAPS FOREHEAD* - OF COURSE you work for the cash lah! Then why you work if you don’t want the cash? These can be typically identified as your suckers, which typically do the bare minimal to get wherever they want (and a promotion, of course..), and suck carry balls favours infront of their bosses (oops, there’re kids reading this blog, too).

Nevermind, it’s understandable - as long as we throw money on the table, got an understanding. Fair enough. It’s probably known in this society as, er, Peer Usefulness - in Chinese, “Hu Xiang Li Yong“.

Now, let’s come to the part which is absolutely intolerable, because these buggers can’t pick a side. They want to be both sides, because they’re undecided as to which path they wanna take - either that, or maybe they’re just pure assholes.

They’re the kind who’re after the cash, and of course, also after the fame and rank which comes along, and.. to top it up: They also wanna cover their backside!

That, boys and girls, is the most tok-kong kind, and luckily, there’re only a few in our school. I think even the Big Bad Wolf is better than such…. such… [expletive]

So, my question is:

Your faci got like that also? (or your friend’s faci, or your FYP supervisor, or.. well, something!)

Well, so, the full page ads I was running (as a trial on this site) was so bloody irritating. Irritating enough such that after viewing 3 ads, I cannot tahan, and went to close it, er, well, terminate the bloody full page ads from Adbrite, an advertising company.

Apparently, after pissing around 12,000 people who viewed this blog within the past week (yes, it’s 12,000 *different* people, not 12,000 pageviews. You wanna count pageviews, have to add a few zeroes at the back), I only earned, or rather, recouped a super huge sum of:

“Wow”, I said to myself, that’s so fucking much. So much for pissing off 12,000 people for $2.78 (though it’s in US dollars..). Is one person viewing really worth *SO* little? - or maybe the ad company’s sucking the majority of the $$$ spent - we’ll never know.

Hence, as an appeal, please *DON’T* use AdBrite full page ads on your blog, it’s so irritating and worthless.

Now, NuffNang on the other hand, owes me….

*Ruffles his NuffNang account for the password. GRR. WHERE IS IT LUH!*

Oh, they owe me $189.84!

Honestly, is that *alot* of money? Sure, it is, compared to the measly two dollars from adbrite, but then hor, this amount was accumulated since.. (*clicks around page again* - can you use your imagination? or do I have to describe my actions, guys and gals?)

..erm, since 18th of May 2008? Isn’t that like, 3 and a half months? Okay, that’s not fair, let’s do some math here, with Google Calculator.. and the total nett income Yandao.com makes (*clears throat* the website itself, NOT me) would be…

$54.24/month? That’s… absolutely… pathetic. I mean, I could pretty much work in some $5/hour part-time job and make more than that in a day! Sheesh, who pay’s that kinda crap amounts anyway? (Ya, I know, some of you will argue saying that a blog is free, and stuff.. but did you know that this site costs on the average $200/month to upkeep? :P)

Hence, the moral of the story would be that: Ad companys suck. They’re the ones making all the money, not us, bloggers, unfortunately.

Oh yes, I’m keen to know, how much does your blog make from ads? SHARE LAH!

Okay guys and gals, been abit busy lately (have a client who needs his stuff up by like, tomorrow) and hence, didn’t really get to work on the photo database. Probably put in like, erm, 40 minutes of work this morning from say, 5.30am to 6.10am. =X

Still, something’s viewable for you guys, and yes, I know that features haven’t been implemented - but real work comes first, alright?

It’s viewable via the button in the menu above or at http://phototemp.yandao.com - No login required… for now

PS: I am *not* a staff at RP (and probably will never be - hah!) so please don’t ask me for your friends grades and all I don’t have it, really. Just ask your friend, lah.