Isaac Mao

Many Chinese Skypers reported login problem with Skype this afternoon from Twitter sphere. Though not all people met the problem, we are sure that there are some problems with Skype logon services. “Flypig” told that “(I found) only 870,000 online users when I tried with proxy“. Carol, my friend in Taiwan, also can’t login Skype so I think it’s not the problem of China censorship(though its always possible, hehe). After searching blogosphere, it seems that the VoIP service is under global turbulence. Hopefully, it can be found an recovered soon.

update:

1. From Skype Heartbeat site, we found such message:

   Some of you may be having problems logging in to Skype. Our engineering team has determined that it’s a software issue and hopes to have this resolved quickly. Meanwhile, you can simply leave your Skype client running and as soon as the issue is resolved, you will be logged in. We apologize for the inconvenience.

2. From “The Resigister“:
   

   Skype’s peer-to-peer technology appears to be to blame for a large-scale network outage, with users around the world experiencing connection problems.

   The scale of the SNAFU isn’t known, but users are reporting problems connecting to the Skype network, or being disconnected within moments of connecting.

One of my best friends, Stephen Kovats, who ever coordinated unstable media in _V2, is now directing TRANSMEDIALE in Berlin. He calls for Chinese art works to enter Transmediale Award 2008.
I just copied their submission rules here and will translate it onto my Chinese blog. I would like to see any Chinese artist to participate this international contest. Whether they can win, it’s a great opportunity to get more exposures of contemporary Chinese arts.
—————————————————————–

*Invite your Entries to the Transmediale Award 2008*

:: Deadline: 7 September 2007
:: Award Ceremony: 2 February 2008

As one of the leading international festivals for art and digital
culture, transmediale presents and pursues the advancement of
artistic positions reflecting on the socio-cultural, political and
economic impact of new technologies. As such, transmediale
understands media technologies as cultural techniques that need to be
embraced in order to comprehend, critique, and shape global
societies. transmediale.08 seeks out the speculative realms of
conspiratorial practice to question, subvert, undermine and bypass
the unspoken rules, hidden codes of conduct and assumed truths
entrenched within our information driven communication cultures and
ideological belief structures. In the form of a creative act of
intense and directed collaboration (reflecting on the Latin root of
the word, con spirare, to breath together…), we call upon the
artistic and cultural media technological community to
‘Conspire … !’ with us in this event.

Please find the complete call and submission form for download at:
http://transmediale.de/08/pdf/tmctm08_call

Together, transmediale and club transmediale invite the submission of
works and projects for the festival 2008. Submissions for both
festivals participate in the transmediale Award 2008, for which the
jury, comprised of Nicole Gingras, Olga Goriunova, Nat Muller, Wonil
Rhee and Florian Wüst will award prizes totalling ca. 10 000 EUR.
Abstracts and papers for a proposed Vilém Flusser Theory Award are
also being invited.

transmediale is a project of the Kulturprojekte Berlin in cooperation
with Haus der Kulturen der Welt.
transmediale is funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation.
club transmediale is funded by Hauptstadtkulturfonds.

******************************

帮助自己的一个项目推荐了一个网络管理人员，公司的CTO说，给我简历吧。我把这个人的Blog给了CTO，“这个比简历更有效”。把信任的Blogger推荐给值得信任的企业，是我这两年常做的事情。而过去常常采用的简历阅读似乎已经让我感到厌倦。其实手边还有一个朋友推荐的人选，不过我有点1.0歧视地放在了一旁，只是转发给了相关的方向，没有办法做特别推荐，更不用说还要用书信投递简历的方式了(0.0)。

重点推荐一些Blogger，并非是因为和我同好。而是Blogger本身所创建的“优势”，至少他们愿意表达和交流。另外坚持时间比较长的Blogger，都可能经历过争论和辨析的情景，所以更知道如何建设性地解决问题，学会尊重别人的看法，或者找到不同的思维角度。更不用说面对技术障碍的时候（例如面对功夫网），他们也都慢慢地经历了自己挑战自己的隐性拓展训练。相对于唐突的应聘简历，我更愿意相信Blogger之间相互推荐的人才，因为这是社会性网络(Social Networking)中信任的传递价值。那些有丰富社会网络的Blogger，不但可以把自己的思维方式融入到创新的企业中，还能够给企业带来很多潜在的人脉资源，这就更是企业难得的“意外之财”了。

当然，我也会继续建议还在1.0世界中的人们去开始自己的Blog历程（尤其是一些CEO们）。今天能够Blog的方法很多，不只是文字，还可以用图片、视频、语音等方式，社会性资本(Social Captial)的积累，当然越早越好，越丰富越好。而反应迟钝者，可能会越来越吃亏哦。

Ian 说订阅我的Lifelog Feed发现都是别人的评论，看上去很自恋。所以决定重新烧制这里的Feed，只提供3个主要Blog的内容(Life 2.0, Meta 和Venture)，对图片(Flickr)、书签(Del.icio.us)就不必了，而Twitter就更免了，要不然订阅者还不疯掉。其实还有一些其他的个人Feed（例如单词学习笔记等），就更属于半私有的Life log 内容了，不过可以罗列出来让大家玩玩：

• Isaac’s Vacabulary (有趣的单词)
• Isaac’s Highlight Readings (用Diigo 作的文摘)

已经订阅Isaac Lifelog的用户可以重新订阅，减少被骚扰的可能，;)

第二天一早赶去听Haidong Pan的演讲。他是中国大陆来的第二位演讲者，从前了解Hoodong是从别人的嘴里面。直到上次在IBM的Web 2.0 圆桌会议上才有机会直接面谈交流。海东看上去瘦瘦小小的样子，人却很直率。他的演讲也吸引了一些人的兴趣，尤其谈到中国互联网的一些特色“无知、无聊、无耻”，竟然有人大笑起来。他也谈了百度对维基百科的内容抄袭问题，其实是中国的普遍现象。不过我得赶紧去准备我的主题，所以提问后就赶紧去Rm. 328 配置投影等设备（不知道海东有没有分享他的Slide）。不过开始的时候，发现都是朋友们来捧场，反倒没有了听众的表现欲望。全当是Meetup交流吧：

我讲的是一直在思考中的知识尺度(Granularity) 问题，当信息存储于头脑中的时候，他们是非常小的化学电讯号。而经过复杂的神经网络存储和计算后，就会形成人的决策。信息模式(Information Pattern)变成了知识。所以当Wiki/Blog出现的时候，人们发现了难以捕获的知识开始有形化，能够用不同尺度呈现出来。而Twitter之类的Meme工具又一次将尺度缩小。所以我特地在幻灯片中展示了这个知识频谱(Knowledge Spectrum) ，希望引起Wikipedian的关注，Wiki并非是知识的唯一聚合形式。对于Wikipedian社区，Twitter/Blog/Discussion也许都是必要的。

我还担心Wikipedia 的未来，是否会在狂热的知识积累后走向“S”曲线的热寂？所以信息熵（Information Entropy）也是我当日希望和大家探讨的一个话题。除了维基百科，其他维基项目似乎都在长尾末端，是否需要有更实用的知识空间来填补，而让它更开放？

没有太多争论，听众的问题集中于中国的信息封锁，这是我司空见惯的。于是大家相视而笑，尽在不言中。乔老大的问题倒不错，他提出了一些“渐进”的观点，并关心在中国如何用撕裂的技术（Disruptive Technology）去改变社会。我想还是很多人有同样的兴趣和热情，只是一个主题是包含不了的，也许答案就在知识建构中，所以我的建议是多去贡献内容，Twitter是一种方式，Blog是一种方式，Wikipedia是一种方式，草莓也是一种方式，还有那么多2.0的方式，都是在改变和推动世界。

听说晚间要去西门町红楼有Wikimania的大趴踢(Party)，兴奋地赶紧回去睡个觉… （未完待续）

I was in a ebb and flow this morning by Google. The first message came from Twitter that a friend said Gmail is testing some 9G storage by random selection of testers. I was happy to see that becasue I was annoyed by deleting many emails in these days to keep my Gmail quota under 99% to ensure normal email sending function. Each time I go to trash box, Gmail touted me that “No conversations in the Trash. Who needs to delete when you have over 2000 MB of storage?!“. I would say, “Hey, Google, are you becoming out of fashion that 2000MB is only 2GB, the world is calculating in Giga unit now”. Now seems they are confessing to change?

However, it’s not the end of hoax from Google. I opened my Gmail after reading the message. A big two-line banner appeared on top of the pane.

It a big drop of feeling to me. I have to buy extra quota from the boasting “never-deleting” gmail? It’s really a deal, to Google, not to me. I would like to buy GDrive spaces if they tell me in advance it’s not a free service. However, I hate such business tricks that link one’s trust with business benefit. I won’t suggest our portfolio businesses to do such “Evil” things in the future.

Now should I seriously question the decentness of Google’s future behaviors.