The BBC will today screen remarkable footage of penguins flying as part of its new natural history series, Miracles of Evolution. They don’t need to huddle together anymore in the cold winter, they just fly to a warmer place! Check out the video below:
It’s a shame that any good popular hosting service seems to be doomed by their popularity. Dreamhost has once again disappointed me. The day after I discover my site’s newly gained popularity, the server went down for 5 hours! Argh! That’s it, I can’t take this anymore, goodbye Dreamhost, I’m looking for a replacement!
On a lighter note, check out this hosting service: http://www.nouptime.com/
I did it! After about a year of promoting and improving the site’s content, CG Art World is finally on the top of the list for the search term “CG Art” beating high-caliber CG sites such as www.cgart.com, www.3dtotal.com and www.deviantart.com! Wow! I couldn’t believe my own eyes, I didn’t even know this was possible in such short period of time. I guess the real battle is to hold the fort and defend the throne. Time to get to work! 
Happy Chinese New Year everyone! Welcome to the year of Rats! May the new year brings prosperity and harmony to everyone. (especially the guys in the picture above :))
As usual, Los Angeles is boring as ever when it comes to Chinese New Year. Even on the Internet, there is hardly a mention of today, which is the biggest celebration for Chinese.
Been itching to blog about this, if not because of that NDA I signed
Yahoo! Music Unlimited (YMU) is now Rhapsody! I think this is one of the right move that Yahoo! made. We really shouldn’t be in the application business that compete head-to-head with iTunes. There had been several setbacks in this direction, particularly the acquisition of MusicMatch, which app ended up being cannibalized and its users alienated. I am glad we finally got out of this messy and unrewarding business and focus on what we do best. And suffice it to say that we (the Y! Media Player team) have got a lot of work ahead of us to integrate our player with Rhapsody.
You can read more about this announcement here. Seems like the media couldn’t get enough of Yahoo! these days.
I was shocked (though it is not entirely unexpected) by the news this morning about Microsoft proposing to takeover Yahoo! for $31 per share, which comes to $42 billion. I am both ecstatic and a little confused. I am happy that the stock shot up almost 48% today; I have about 1/3 of my money in YHOO (don’t ask why). So it’s a HUGE relief to be able to unload them with some profit. On the other hand, I am worried about the future direction of this company is headed to. Microsoft is not really a favorite among yahoos. We try to get away from their product as much as possible and use open source code. Heck, we have the inventor of PHP working for us! If the deal goes through, what kind of change would Microsoft make?
But I guess for a lowly developer like me, all I really care about is the money it brings to my table. The news article mentioned “…the company [Microsoft] emphasized retention packages will be offered to Yahoo engineers and other key employees”. Great! I am ready to welcome our new Microsoft overlord. Resistance is futile!
A huge win for OpenID project, Yahoo! announced support for the OpenID 2.0 digital identity framework for all 248 million active registered Yahoo! users worldwide. OpenID, an open framework based on proven Internet technologies, enables users to consolidate their Internet identity, eliminating the need to create separate IDs and logins at all of the various websites, blogs, photostreams, and profile pages they may visit in the course of their online session. In addition to the many leading Yahoo! services users already enjoy, anyone with a Yahoo! ID will be able to use the same ID for easy access to any sites that support OpenID 2.0.
Yahoo!’s initial OpenID service, which will be available in public beta on January 30, enables a seamless and transparent web experience by allowing users to use their custom OpenID identifier on me.yahoo.com or to simply type in “www.yahoo.com” or “www.flickr.com” on any site that supports OpenID 2.0. Alternatively, web sites that accept OpenID 2.0 will be able to add a simple “Sign-in with Your Yahoo! ID” button to their login pages that will make it even easier for their users. Yahoo! is working with several partners, including Plaxo and JanRain, to make it possible for users to access these sites with their Yahoo! ID from the first day of the public beta.
For more info, visit: http://openid.yahoo.com/
Apparently a lot of people like how Yahoo! sites look like. The latest string of copycat: Nhac360 is a Vietnamese music site which design clearly resembles that of the new Yahoo! Music site. What surprised me was why they didn’t just use Yahoo!’s CSS to do their site, instead they resorted to their own code that looks like something from the late 90s (tables, image map, etc). Here is a screenshot, click on it to go to their site:
And here’s Yahoo! Music:
They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. I guess Yahoo! should send them a thank you note.
We just got back from watching Cloverfield and we are still feeling a bit queezy from the shaky amateurish camera that is the entire movie. I get the art direction that the director is trying to get to, but I feel ripped off spending $10 watching something that looks like a Youtube video but less entertaining. It’s basically a sci-fi take on Blair Witch Project. Note to self: next time, wait a week and read the review…
And here I present to you the Cloverfield monster. Go watch it on DVD.
I have been working on this player for a while now along with 2 other team members and last week it is finally released! Soon after, it got featured on CNET, Wired and TechCrunch! Yahoo! Media Player enhances your web site or blog by creating an embedded player for each audio link. All the links can be played with one click, turning the page into a playlist.
It’s really exciting to see a product you had a hand on being used by other people out there! If you haven’t seen this player head to Aurgasm.us, a music blog with very nice collection of eclectic songs. I think I might do my own music blog soon.
If your hands start to get itchy and you want to try this player out, head to http://mediaplayer.yahoo.com. It really is as simple as adding one Javascript line!
I have created a Flex forum dedicated to helping people get through the initial learning curve (which is not much). So drop by anytime and ask anything, I’ll try my best to answer or help look for the answer you are looking for.
Besides the big developer community like Y! Groups flexcoders and Adobe’s own devnet, there are not many Flex communities out there yet, being an emerging technology. Search results for Flex issue often come up fruitless. So I’ll try my best to fill the gap.
I was at the Adobe Max conference in Chicago last week and as I was enjoying the various delicacies, I ran into…guess who…Bono! But wait a minute, is he a look-alike? Why would Bono look-alike attend a geeky conference? But then again, why would the real Bono do that? (Unless I miss the part where he was a web developer in his previous career)
So I went and asked him if he is really Bono. He answered in a thick Irish accent, “No, I am Shaquille O’neal”.
I was gonna start interogating him, but crowds started to gather, so I took a picture with him instead and I’ll let you guys decide if he’s for real.
Another shot from a distant
A friend of mine did some research that night and found a photo of him about 2 days old. As you can see, he’s got a much shorter hair then. There goes my dream of meeting a real rockstar…
_wa.jpg "Bon")
Meet my new bestfriend, the CEO of Yahoo! Inc, Mr. Jerry Yang! Yes, it’s official, we are BFF! 
William Khoe is a kick-ass Web Developer at Yahoo! specializing in Flex, Javascript, DHTML and CSS.