UPC number 036000250015

Posted on January 15, 2004 by Jian Shuo Wang

The Facts

Google Weblog is my favorite weblog.
I guess it generates huge traffic to Google with its samples.

What Happened?

Aaron talked about the UPC code search function and provided a sample search: 036000250015
I was curious to see how many people follow that link.

What I Did

I posted an entry (this page) with 036000250015 in title.
I put a hit counter here: FastCounter by bCentral

I Hope…

I hope this page is indexed by Google in the next few days. It should be around January 20, 2004.
I hope this page is #1 in the result list. Google likes keywords in title.
I hope you also get some idea about how many people clicked the link.

More

The actual number should be 300% of the hit counter number. I suppose less than one out of three people will click on my link after checking the genuine result.
This is just for fun.
Relax. Don’t throw eggs to me.
Actual search result is here: Kimberly-Clark’s Kleenex 2-ply 8.6×8.4 in tissue

Write Better Weblog

Posted on January 14, 2004 by Jian Shuo Wang

When I started writing my blog in late 2002, I read the Mark Bernstein‘s 10 Tips on Writing the Living Web from A List Apart. At that time, not many people run bloggers, especially in China – actually, people say 911 event is the push power for the popularity of blog since people began to stop the work on their hand and to start thinking and recording about their own lives. It is the same as Muzimei’s role in the Chinese blog world – the one of the important tipping points of the popularity in Chinese blogging world.

Mark’s article was the guideline for my blog writing. In his article, there are some important rules I’d like to recommend to everyone to follow.

Write for a Reason

“If you don’t really care, don’t write.”

“Show us the details, teach us why they matter. ”

“Write for yourself; you are, in the end, your most important reader.”

“Write honestly. Don’t hide, and don’t stop short. ”

Write Open

“If you don’t write for a few days, you are unfaithful to the readers who come to visit. Missing an update is a small thing ?rudeness, not betrayal ?and readers will excuse the occasional lapse.”

“If you cannot write for a time, and the reason for your absence is interesting, write about it.”

Write Tight

“Omit unnecessary words.”

Make good friends

“Read widely and well, on the web and off, and in your web writing take special care to acknowledge the good work and good ideas of other writers. ”

“Weblog writers and other participants in the Living Web gain readers by exchanging links and ideas.”

Find good enemies

I didn’t under this rule at the very beginning, but later, I found an enemy is good to better clarify the nature of the idea. The anti-spam effort and SARS events report are good samples.

“Disagreement is exciting. Everyone loves a fight, and by witnessing the contest of competing ideas we can better understand what they imply.”

Relax

“Don’t take yourself too seriously.”

“Don’t worry about the size of your audience.”

“Do let your work on the Living Web flow from your passion and your play, your work life and your life at home. ”

Note: All sentences in quotes are cited from Mark’s original article 10 Tips on Writing the Living Web.

My Practices

Owen from T i M E aNd T i D E (Chinese site and blocked in China. Why?) posted an article: Be True. He quoted Scobleizer‘s quote of my post Living Cost in Shanghai (Ops. What a wired sentence). Owen suggested to focus on small things. I was flattered by his article. Actually, focusing on details is a great way to amuse the writer him/herself, and the readers as well. I often check my previous posts and only those with great details about the day – the weather, the grass or some details attract my own eyes. These posts act as a training to bring me back to the old days via a time tunnel….

I do have a lot of friends. I feel guilty that I didn’t put link to their articles as often as I should. This is the problem to have an English weblog – I am aware more than half my reader cannot read Chinese and putting a link to Chinese site may be difficult for them to continue reading. I do want to share the good ideas generated by them. :-D BTW, Billy Qiu started English blog site: HitHat. He shares something similar with my blog: focusing on the small things in the city of Shanghai. He just posted an article 24-Hour Self-service Banks: Can We Really Count On Them?. Worth reading…

More Blogs

The largest list of blogs in China is Sinosplice’s China Blog List. According to Sinosplice’s description, “Many of them are written by foreigners in China, although a few are written by non-Chinese elsewhere or by Chinese people.”

At the Age of 27

Posted on January 13, 2004 by Jian Shuo Wang

There is not much change in my life recently. The weather is still cold and became colder these days. It seems the cold weather has frozen my life too. I no longer think about going out and won’t do crazy things like cycling to Taihu or visiting a degree confluence point. The city life is the same – wake up, rush to crowded metro, step into office and sit down. The world is as small as a computer screen. The connection to the out side world are two lines – one network cable and one telephone line. Friends become smiley faces in my MSN Messenger. A dinner at a hot pot restaurant is not expensive and can always please two of us. :-) Life at the age of 27 is not as exciting as that in younger ages. — I still remember a dinner at KFC needed two weeks’ planning when I was in university. Now KFC has became the last place I will go for dinner. That is progress. That is also the lose of fun.

Super Cool Moving Advertisement

Posted on January 12, 2004 by Jian Shuo Wang

I saw two astronauts under the big ball of Metro City in Xujiahui. It is around 6:30 PM. It is almost dark and the area become very crowded. These two men wear silver clothes and black glasses and was walking around without any emotion on their faces. There is a large LCD display on their back. Of cause, they are very eye catching.

shanghai-astronaut.ad-back.jpg

shanghai-astronaut.ad-walking.jpg

shanghai-astronaut.side-walking.jpg

So interesting. I thought they were advertising for LCD. It turned out that they are advertising for the Xuhui Police Office. The characters were so small that I don’t know what they wanted to say. It is said they will appear in Xujiahui from 5:30 to 9:30 PM.

Spring Festival is Coming

Red lanterns hung everywhere in the area.

shanghai-red.lattern-before.pacific.jpg

Newspaper Store

I took some random shot at the Metro Station. Here are the magazines and newspaper at a store. Do you see your favorite magazines there? :-D

Any Advice for Smiling Library

Posted on January 11, 2004 by Jian Shuo Wang

Last Friday, talked with breeze and stonesee on the smiling library project. It is a very nice charity organization to gather old books and send it to very poor schools in the less developed areas in China. It started with an idea and now has less than 7 organizers. However, they have successfully setup 6 libraries in Yun Nan.

Breeze asked about the operation practices to run such a charity program. This kind of Non Government Organization (NGO) is not a common practice. They are very interested to learn how people in other countries run this kind of organization? What is the organizational structure? Who make the final call for decisions? How to ensure the quality of the libraries… there are many questions there. I shared my thoughts with them, but definitely need to learn more. Do you have any advice to make the project more successful?

My Name is on Mars

Posted on January 9, 2004 by Jian Shuo Wang

Everyone knows the explorer rover “spirit” has landed on Mars successfully. It is expect to explore the surface of Mars in the following days, after it overcome the barriers before it.

Image courtesy of NASA

I am feeling connected with this little robot since it carried my name, Jian Shuo Wang, to the remote red planet.

Send Your Name to Mars Project

On December 10, 2001, I signed up the project and entered my name into it. Then my name has been burned into a DVD along with other participants?name. The disk bearing my name has been sent to Mars already.

I happily printed and kept my Mars Exploration Rover-2003 Mission Participation Certificate. The certificate is also available via NASA’s name query page.

screen-jian.shuo.wang-mars.jpg

The DVD is There!!!

Here is the latest image transmitted from the rover. It clearly shows the DVD.

screen-dvd.on.mars-b.w.bmp

A picture of the DVD from Mars! Credit: NASA

Here is the closer look of the DVD.

screen-the.name.dvd-color.jpg

Image courtesy of NASA

Below is the same disk before it was mounted to the lander. You see there is a robot there and Hello. Around its rim is a message, written in a secret code of dots and lines. I didn’t try to decode it.

screen-the.name.dvd-on.earth.jpg

Image courtesy of Red Rover Goes to Mars

Below is the picture taken when the disk is installed onto “spirit?

screen-mars.rover.DVD-installation.jpg

Image Credit: NASA

“The red arrow above points to one of the DVDs containing the 3,551,645 names that are being sent to Mars on both of the Mars Exploration Rover. Click here to see a much higher resolution image disk! Learn how the DVD was packaged for space flight. Both landers will carry a copy of the Name Disk! “, the website announced.

Of cause, this project stopped taking names already. If you haven’t signed your name by November 15, 2002, midnight EST, you already missed the very good chance.

Now, there is a similar project: Deep Impact: Send Your Name to a Comet! I have got my certificate. Why not go there and sign up today?

P.S. It inspired me of a similar project – Send Your Name to Jian Shuo Wang’s Kitchen. Do you want your name to be sticked to somewhere in the heart of the city of Shanghai? You can sign your name on this page, and I will write it down (instead of burning a DVD) with my own handwriting and posted to the refrigerator in my kitchen. Two pictures will be taken and posted when the paper successfully lands on the surface of my refrigerator. The deadline for sign up is December 20, 2004, Shanghai Time. :-D Just kidding.

Satellite Dishes Still Forbidden in China

Posted on January 8, 2004 by Jian Shuo Wang

To be honest, I am frustrated that I cannot install a satellite dish to receive foreign programs like CNN, NBC in my home. It is explicit illegal to use it at home.

The State Council issued a decree in 1993 saying only hotels, media outlets, and apartment buildings housing foreigners are allowed to use satellite dishes. It seems the ban is out of date since any one can access CNN.com or MSNBC.com via Internet to get the lastest report, if they are not blocked by the Great Firewall at that time.

“The object of the system is to ensure stable social order and the right direction for cultural and ideological progress; it is also expected to help foster our own radio and TV industry” said Hu Zhanfan, deputy director of State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) in a recent interview with China Central Television, according to Shanghai Star.

Many people in my residential garden installed the dishes one or two years ago. From outside the building, I see the small dish pointing to the sky clearly. No one ever tried to say any word about it. I get one or two flyers advertising to install satellite dishes everyday in my mailbox (physical mailbox in my house). They offer the dish at 3000 RMB to 6000 RMB. Price varis according to the satellite you choose.

The regulation itself does not make sense. Just like the ICP filing regulation. My site is still illegal since I haven’t registered it at the communication adminstration. Also, I don’t want to pay the 510 RMB registration fee in addition to my hosting/domain name fee. I dont’ want to hire a people with a “security expert certification”. I don’t want to hire another two decidated persons to monitor the comment system. I also don’t want to shutdown the site for two months and wait for the filing to be approved. Even if I get registered, my site still breaks the regulation since this site contains links to site that is not registered. Refer to My Site Remains Illegal in Chian for details.

The Satellite Dish ban is facing the same situation. The rule itself is not realistic so it is not enforced. Then the rule becomes a rule that can be broken….

MSN Messenger Virus Jitux.A

Posted on January 7, 2004 by Jian Shuo Wang

Warninig! Virus Alert!

According to MSN Messenger newsgroup (microsoft.public.msn.messenger), a new virus is found.

2003 is ending with another computer virus causing havoc on the net.

Anti-virus company Panda Software has warned net users to watch out for a new virus, a worm called Jitux.A, which is spread via MSN Messenger.

Jitux.A is an aggressive code that contains a link to the web page www.home.no/ / jituxramon.exe. Once open, the file JITUXRAMON.EXE automatically downloads, infecting your computer. The worm file stores itself in the computer’s memory and sends new infected

messages every five minutes to all contacts in your Messenger’s Contact List. Panda Software advises web users to update their anti-virus patch as soon as possible. Users can also download the free online anti-virus PandaActiveScan available at the company website.

More info here:

http://www.pandasoftware.com/virus_info/encyclopedia/overview.aspx?IdVirus=43211&sind=0

Panda software online virus scanner:

http://www.pandasoftware.com/activescan/com/activescan_principal.htm

Also, don’t accept invitation from dar0nb0y187@hotmail.com.

Thanks for Linda‘s reminder.

My City, My Bus Stop Project

Posted on January 7, 2004 by Jian Shuo Wang

I started the My City, My Bus Stop project last weekend. It is inspired by the Degree Confluence Project – a project aiming to visit and take picture of each of the latitude and longitude integer degree intersections in the world. I am thinking of a project to visit all the bus stops in Shanghai, take a picture and write simple description about it. The temporiy home page is hosted here.

You may have noticed that I put a small icon on my home page. It links to the nearest bus stop of where I live.

I believe it is a great idea if many people (especially bloggers) join in to take pictures of the bus stop and add themselves to the database. They will form local communities around each bus stop…

The system is currently hosted on Wiki engine. It is a good way for online collaboration. Any one, yes, anyone who can see the page, can edit the page and add their own comment on the page. That is the power of Wiki.

Salary in Shanghai

Posted on January 6, 2004 by Jian Shuo Wang

Before talking about salary, check the Living Cost in Shanghai (and Part II).

Average salary is very hard to tell, since it varies greatly based on lots of factors.

The Enterprise Type You Work For

Nation Owned Enterprises pays very low, something around 1000 – 2000 RMB. For people looking for salary information on Internet, you don’t need to take it into consideration since you don’t like them (for the low salary) and they don’t like people like you (since they don’t has the flexibility to hire you). :-D Of cause, they are changing these days.

Most higher salary jobs exist in foreign owned company and private held companies. According to this report, the average annual salary for white-collar workers in Shanghai is 38,447 RMB (US$ 4,632).

For Fortune 500 companies, like Intel, Microsoft, HP, IBM, people are paid higher. Should be 100K to 200K RMB / year for employees.

Executives are paid very high. I heard a GM position of an IT company is 2 million RMB per year.

A lot of foreigner get U.S. or Europe local pay and dispatched to Shanghai to work. For them, Shanghai will be paradise considering the exchange rate. Foods and drinks are labeled almost the same number (or 50%) higher than that in U.S. The difference is, in U.S, the unit is USD and in Shanghai, it is RMB. The exchange rate is around 8 RMB = 1 USD.

People coming here from U.S should expect lower income since the living cost is much more lower than in U.S. The low living cost has been nominated as top 10 things expats love about Shanghai.

Tax…

According to the last regulation (Chinese site)

Monthly income:

<500 5% 500-2000 10% 2000-5000 15% 5,000-20,000 20%

20,000-40,000 25%

40,000-60,000 30%

60,000-80,000 35%

80,000-100,000 40%

>100,000 45%

The portion below 1000 RMB in Shanghai do not need to pay tax. (It is 1000 RMB for Beijing, 1600 RMB for Shenzhen and 800 RMB for the rest part of China).

Example

For example, if someone get 100K annual salary (already pretty good), that is 8333 RMB/month. (Some companies pay salaries in 13 months with one month double pay.) ~~After tax (20%), he/she gets 6666 RMB~~. Update: Run corrected me that the tax is not calculated as 20% of salary directly.

The portion of salary you need to pay tax = 8333 – 1000 = 7333 RMB

The tax you need to pay = 500 * 5% + (2000 – 500) * 10% + (5000 – 2000) * 15% + (7333 – 5000) * 20% = 1091.6 RMB

You get 6242 RMB. (Thanks goes to Run, Ginn and JH to help me correct all the errors. I believe this version is the correct one)

How he/she will spend the money?

Rent. Typically, he/she will need to pay of rent of 1000 – 1200 RMB – a typical room people from this salary rage will choose.
Transportation. 3 RMB for single way Metro –> 6 RMB per day –> 180 RMB per month. Should also consider occasional taxi – additional 50 RMB.
Mobile and Internet. Should be 200 RMB in total if the person is not too talkative.
Utilities. Utilities is nothing compared to other expense. 100 RMB or so.

So he/she should still have some money (around 4000 RMB) for eating out, shopping, and clothes… That is life of a well-paid white collar in Shanghai.

Bring Your Mobile and Internet to Shanghai

Posted on January 5, 2004 by Jian Shuo Wang

Alf sent me a wonderful email containing questions that first time travelers to Shanghai will definitely face. It gave me good idea about what I need to write to help them.

How to Access Internet?

Can I buy an Internet card to connect to the internet from my hotel room using my laptop? What different cards are there? Where can you buy them? What is the policy of the hotels? etc.

There are some kinds of Internet cards on the market that allow you to dial a number to gain Internet access. As a traveler, however, you don’t need to bother buy a card. You can dial up to the Shanghai Telecom directly for Internet access via any phone line.

The access number is 16300
Username: 16300
Password: 16300

It charges 0.05 RMB per minute for the Internet access fee and 0.02 RMB per minute for the phone line fee. The fee will be included in the telephone bill to the telephone owner.

Based on my experience, I can access Internet via 16300 in hotels. But don’t forget to input 9,16300 in the phone number field in your dial up connection. 9 is for external line and the comma is for pause. Adjust it according to your hotel setting.

The hotel may charge you higher than the standard charge from Shanghai Telecom.

Can I Use My Mobile?

The mobile you have in Europe or U.S. may not work in China. China is using GSM 900 Mhz while it is GSM 1800 MHz in Europe and 1900 MHz in U.S. You need a mobile that support 900 Mhz to access the local network. Pre-paid card is available: Mobiles in China – My Personal Perspective and Difference Between Quanqiutong and Shenzhouxing. You can buy these cards at the International Arrival Hall in Pudong Airport.

Transportation

“Which bus should I take to go from Pudong Airport to ….?” Not surprisingly, this is the top question I received. I hope the following articles will be useful:

You may be also interested in alternatives besides bus.

MagLev
Taxi. Do read this article before you take taxi: Watch Out Bad Shanghai Taxi Drivers

In particular, if you want to go to Pujiang Youth Hostel, one of two Youth Hotstel in Shanghai. You can take Pudong Airport Bus #2 (19 RMB) to People’s Square and take taxi there (10 – 15 RMB).

Got Flu and Went to Hospital

Posted on January 4, 2004 by Jian Shuo Wang

The official news said No Sign for Flu Outbreak in Shanghai. But flu out broke in my home. 100% of the two citizens in this family – Wendy and I – got flu these days. We went to hospital these days to get injection…

PmWiki Successfully Installed on Windows 2000

Posted on January 3, 2004 by Jian Shuo Wang

I finally decided to use PmWiki as my Wiki engine, just like choosing MovableType for my blog. Before choosing PmWiki, I also successfully installed UseModWiki and OpenWikie on my server, and did some research on MediaWiki. OpenWiki are not so reliable since I frequently meet 500 Server Internal Error。 UseMod is definitely a good choice since the revision function works greatly immediately after installation, but the documentation part is not as good as PmWiki. I specially like the WikiTrails feature, which is not available from other engines.

Environment

Windows 2000

Internet Information Server

I hosted my site with my ISP. They have configured PHP for me already.

Install PHP on Windows

Although I didn’t do it for this installation, I have successfully installed PHP engine onto my Windows XP.

Download PHP binary for Windows IIS at PHP‘s website: http://cn2.php.net/get/php-4.3.4-installer.exe/from/a/mirror
After download, directly double click to run the Windows Installer program.
Click Next>, Next> and Next>…. accept all the default setting, except the SMTP screen.
Click OK to confirm the success of the PHP installation.

Well. PHP is successfully installed. It is easier and smoother than I expected.

Download PmWiki Code

Go to http://www.pmichaud.com/pub/pmwiki/ to download the latest version of PmWiki. I downloaded the pmwiki-0.5.26.zip (153k).
Extract the files into a folder.
Upload the whole folder to the web server. There is even no need to edit the configuration files before it works. I am using https://home.wangjianshuo.com/scripts/pmwiki/ as the destination folder.
After upload, just visit the URL of the file pmwiki.php. It is https://home.wangjianshuo.com/scripts/pmwiki/pmwiki.php for my case. It simplely works well. This surprised me a lot

Configure PmWiki

Although it does not take any extra effort to let PmWiki up and running, some important steps are neccessary for PmWiki to work on Windows flatform.

Diff and Patch

By default, everything in PmWiki works on Windows except the page revisions (sample). This problem is not obvious, so you may need the following reproduce steps:

Open any page in your installation.
Make any changes by clicking the Edit Page and save it.
Click Page Revisions at the end of the page. It should show the difference betwee the two versions. However, most user will see blank lines and some Restore links. The Restore link does not work since all the versions are shown as the final version – the history of the editing is not perserved as the sample revision page shows.

Solution

DiffAndPatchForWindows offers some directions to solve the problem. PmWiki relies on external command of diff and patch for version control. Neither of the command are natively available on Windows. The easiest way, as stated in the article, is to download GNUWin32 diff and patch tools.

Download the two Windows setup files. The SourceForge site of GNUWin32 offers too many choices and it is not strait forward for our installation propose. This is the shortcut:
- diffutils
- patch
Double-click each of them to run the setup program.
Accept all the default settings during the setup.
You should find the following files under C:\program files\GnuWin32\bin folder, if you used the default setting:

46,080 cmp.exe

92,160 diff.exe

46,080 diff3.exe

926,123 libiconv-2.dll

72,261 libintl-2.dll

117,760 patch.exe

48,793 regex.dll

51,712 sdiff.exe
Upload these files to a folder on your server. I used /scripts/bin. Actually, sdiff.exe, diff3.exe and cmp.exe are optional. The other three .dll are required for diff.exe and patch.exe to run.
Create a local.php at the same folder as PmWiki.php if it is not there yet.

$SysDiffCmd = ‘E:\\Customer\\Wangjianshuo\\scripts\\bin\\diff.exe ‘;

$SysPatchCmd = ‘E:\\customer\\wangjianshuo\\scripts\\bin\\patch.exe –silent’;

Replace the my path with your own path.
Now your blog should support the revision feature. Please note that all pages modified before diff and patch will permennantly lose the function of roll-back since the diff history was not preserved.

Chinese Support

Chinese is not completely supported in PmWiki, so does other Asia languages. It is because PmWiki, like other Wiki engines, use \xB0 as new line seperator, which falls into the Chinese GB2312 encoding area. So characters with \xB0 as the first byte will be considered as newline and cause problem. Here is the solution (in Chinese).

After the applying the patch, I also downloaded the interface localizatino pack.

Do you know why they are using i18n? It is Internationalization. There is exactly 18 characters between i and n and few people want to spell it out. LOL.

My Speech and Training Record

Posted on January 2, 2004 by Jian Shuo Wang

By the year end, I summarized some kep speeches and training I have delivered in the last three years, just as I did in Jan last year. I never been a full time trainer, but my passion for training is always there.


Format

Date			Speech Title

Event or audience


Conferences

August 10, 2000		BizTalk Server in .COM Ages

China CEO/CIO Summit

September 19, 2000	BizTalk - Beyond the Limitation of Enterprise Application

Microsoft .NET Launch (1500+ attendants)

September 28, 2000	Microsoft BizTalk Integration Practices

China CEO/CIO Summit (CIOs from Sina, Sohu?

September 7, 2000	Microsoft BizTalk Preview

Microsoft TechEd. Shanghai (400+ attendants)

October 11, 2000	Achieving Highest Availability with Microsoft Solutions

Microsoft/Intel Banner Exchange Conference (250+ attendants)

November 26, 2000	BizTalk Architecture and ebXML

National Standard Committee Conference on eCommerce

November 28, 2000	Developing BizTalk Solutions

DevDays, Shanghai (300+ attendants)

November 11, 2000	Logistic and eCommerce

PGL Logistic Technology and Management Conference

December 8, 2000	Next Generation Internet

Microsoft/Intel Banner Exchange Conference (250+ attendants)

June 1, 2001		Microsoft .NET

Intel APAC Summit (Internal Event) (Intel's key IT staff in APAC region)

October 30, 2001	Microsoft .NET Scenarios

Siemens Global IT Summit

April 22, 2002		Understanding .NET (General Session) EN

Microsoft Asia MVP Summit (200 attendants from around Asia)

December 5, 2002	Designing for Usability

Microsoft Developer Community Summit

Microsoft University Relationship Program

December 8, 2000	Microsoft .NET in Universities

Shanghai Tong Ji University

April 19, 2001		XML - The Corner Stone of Next Generation of Internet

Shanghai Jiao Tong University Min Hang Campus

April 24, 2001		The Road to eCommerce

Shanghai Jiao Tong University Min Hang Campus

April 25, 2001		Microsoft .NET and Its Components

Shanghai Jiao Tong University Min Hang Campus

May 11, 2001		Secrets of Microsoft's Success

Shanghai Jiao Tong Unv. / East China Normal Univ.

June 6, 2001		Microsoft .NET Framework Startup Camp

Shanghai Jiao Tong University Xu Hui Campus

Enterprise Customer Training

December 1, 2000	Microsoft .NET, SOAP and Web Services EN

Microsoft Premier Customers ( from Thailand/Singapore/India)

September 22, 2000	Microsoft .NET Overview

Siemens (China)

Octomber 12, 2000	BizTalk

Guangzhou Sigma Software Co.

April 2, 2001		Enabling Smoother B2B Transaction with BizTalk

Alibaba

May 5, 2002		Microsoft Development Team Practices

Shanghai Shock Exchange

Internal Training

July 4, 2003		XML for Support Engineers

Windows Online Support Team, GTEC, Microsoft

April 1, 2001		Learning XML via Demos

Service Camp 2001, GTEC, Microsoft

August 8, 2000		What A Support Engineer Needs to Know about XML

Office Online Support Division, GTEC, Microsoft

April 25, 2000		XML in Depth

ME Charlie Team, GTEC, Microsoft

May 31, 2001		XML for Non-Technical People EN

Communication Specialists Technical Education, GTEC

Jun 28, 200		BizTalk Training

Microsoft (China) Sales and Marketing Team Training

September 22, 2000	Jswang's Perspective on Microsoft .NET EN

Company-Wide Tech Talk, GTEC, Microsoft

November 1, 2001	Microsoft .NET

Microsoft Service Camp XP (Best Trainer Award)

November 1, 2001	The Minimums you Need to Know about Microsoft .NET

Wicresoft New Hire Training

July 10, 2003		Microsoft .NET ?What the Video is Talking About

Microsoft Technical Festival, WOD, GTEC

October 13, 2000	SOAP and BizTalk Overview

Guangzhou Office, Microsfot(China)

Support Services Operation

December 19, 2001	Microsoft Call Center Operation

SHEAC

April 15, 2003		Understanding Customer Service

Wicresoft ESS Camp III

December 9, 2003	Processes, Metrics and Best Practices Behind GTEC Operation

Guangzhou Unicom

Presentation and Training Skills

October 21, 2002 	Facilitating Interactive Workshop

GTEC, Microsoft

March 1, 2003		Facilitating Interactive Workshop

Wicresoft

July 30, 2002		Presentation Skills

Orchestra Camp, GTEC, Microsoft

Development Management Training

Microsoft Development Management Training, covering the team model,

bugs tracking, source control, team coding facilities, and culture building.

Sept 28 - 29, 2001	Guangzhou, Guangzhou

December 3 ?6, 2001	Changsha, Hunan

January 30, 2002	Nanjing, Jiangsu

May 22 ?26, 2002	Wuhan, Hubei

July 6 ?10, 2002	Suzhou, Jiangsu

August 22, 2002		Suzhou, Jiangsu

Sept 24 ?28, 2002	Chengdu, Sichuan

January 21 ?22, 2003	Shanghai

I tried very hard not to mix the professional life and the personal life in this blog. I avoided posting anything related to my employer or the job I am doing.

This post is an exception. Why? I justed joined the LinkedIn.com network per Isaac‘s (Chinese site) invitation. It is a good professional network focusing on business and employeement opportunities. ThenI begin to build up my profile (requires free membership to view). I also invited some of my best friends and asked them to give me endoresement on the position I have ever been. Among them, I listed Speaker and Trainer as a position. To make sure I have evidence that I was qualified for this position, I took about one hour to create a summary of major events I spoke or training I facilicated. The result is amazing. I’d like to share how frequently I attended all kinds of events in the last three years.

Oh. I also listed another funny position – Founder and Major Contributor of Wangjianshuo.com. Haha. If you’d like help to endorse my work on this site, please also join the LinkedIn.com and add me as your connection. My display name at LinkedIn.com is Jian Shuo Wang.

Happy New Year 2004

Posted on January 1, 2004 by Jian Shuo Wang

Happy New Year, 2004!!

Do you still remember the fireworks picture I posted the same day at the beginning of 2003? Here is my routine work to post the nice fireworks. The difference is, the pictures of this year is much better since I realized the fireworks mode of my Sony P8.

shanghai-fireworks.best-2004.eve.jpg

shanghai-fireworks.three-2004.eve.jpg

shanghai-fireworks.red.explosion-2004.eve.jpg

shanghai-fireworks.white.green-2004.eve.jpg

shanghai-fireworks.large-2004.eve.jpg

All the pictures were taken between 0:00 – 0:10 AM, Jan 1, 2003 from my reading room. The fireworks is at Shanghai Ever Bright Exhibition Center.

Happy New Year!

Top Commenter of the Month / Year

Although it is the holiday time, I still didn’t forget to announce the top commenter of the month for December, 2004.

The Top Commenter of the Month Award of December 2003 goes to

Carroll 14

WilliamW 10

Xu 8

Top 10 list:

Jian Shuo Wang 101

Carroll 14

WilliamW 10

Xu 8

tutu 6

Vesna 5

dodo 5

Bethune 5

Hailey 4

Zhang 3

sophie 3

Jason 3

erhuyou 3

elizabeth 3

History

This is the history of the Top Commenter Award for the year of 2003.

I started the Top Commenter Award from May of this year. At the beginning of every month, I will select the Top 3 Commenter in the past month and give the Top Commenter Award. I also list the top 10 Commenter.

April 2003

anna

Caroline

Luo

May 2003

Caroline

Luo

annie

July 2003

Nick

Kme

Yoda

Johnny

Gary Soup

Euthenics

June 2003

Nick

cuanyu

andrea

Augest 2003

toufu

Dan

Carroll

September 2003

william

tutu

Pete

October 2003

tutu

WilliamW(combined with previous nickname william)

Carroll

November 2003

WilliamW

tutu

dodo

December 2003

Carroll

WilliamW

Readers with Most Comments

If you are interested in who are the most active participants on this blog, here is the complete list of all readers who has posted more than 10 comments in the year of 2003.

Jian Shuo Wang 878

Caroline 59

luo 54

David 37

Xu 36

tutu 34

Carroll 33

WilliamW 32

anna 31

Nick 27

cuanyu 24

annie 23

Isaac 18

toufu 16

John 15

Mainlander 14

dodo 14

Carol 14

Vivian 13

William 12

Steve 12

Zhang 11

Tim 11

Shanghai Knight 11

Johnny 11

dave 11

Andrea 11

I am trying to add links to people on the list if I know they have a website. Let me know if I missed you

Just as I stated in Thank You For Your Comments, I appreciate everyone’s participation and your comments have been a more and more important part in this blog.

I want to thank everyone for commenting on my blog. I didn’t expect that so many people were involved. At the very beginning, when I have about 50 blog entries, I got about 10 comments. Later, when I completed my first 100 entries, there were about 100 comments. Now this is the 198th article in this blog and I got 478 comments, doubling the number of the blog entries. These comments shows sparkling ideas and timely information about the world. I appreciate everyone’s contribution on this blog which is the source of my passion to continue writing.

Now I have 419 entries and 3312 comments on this blog – the number of comments are almost 8 times of the entries. That means, there are about 8 comments on every entry by average. Wow. I am overwhelmed by your contribution to add your ideas into the thread of my thinking. Thank you for your contribution!

Last Day of 2003

Posted on December 31, 2003 by Jian Shuo Wang

It is the last day of 2003. After 6:00 PM, I went out to dinner at Gino at the Grand Gateway. Nice soup and bread.

shanghai-dishes.soup-gino.jpg

Then we took metro to Hua Hai Road, hoping to see some special activities at the new year’s eve. Many buildings are decorated with lights. Here is the Rui An Tower.

shanghai-rui.an.tower-2004.eve.jpg

shanghai-shining.tower-huaihai.jpg

shanghai-x.mas.balls-huaihai.jpg

Cool Stuffs at Amazon

Posted on December 30, 2003 by Jian Shuo Wang

I like companies like Amazon. They always have cool ideas to do traditional business with high-tech ways. Here are some examples.

Search Inside

Amazon is offering the “Search Inside” feature. It allows customers to search every word inside a book. To me, it means more like a feature of “READ inside”. I can quickly search a keyword in a book, and read the sample pages containing the word. I hope one day, when most books offer Search Inside feature, I can simply visit Amazon to search for a word that is in a book on my hand – just the F3 key of my hard copy book.

This service will add more values to both publisher and reader. It generates interest to buy the book. I wanted to buy after I read some sample chapters.

Update More on Search Inside December 31, 2003

Xu asked:

And you just tickled me, I became eager to know how you quickly search a keyword in a book, and read the sample pages containing the word.

Here are the steps.

Choose a topic. Since not all books offer Search Inside feature, some topics, like weblogs, are more likely to offre books with Search Inside features than other topics like cooking. Let’s take weblog as the topic.
Search for books with the keyword using the search box on the left of home page.
In search result, look for Search Inside! mark on the book. Here are an example for We Blog.

Image courtesy of Amazon.com
Click on the book for the book details page. You need to continue to click on the book cover with Search Inside! mark for the second time to come to the Book Preview page.
You will see a green box titled Search inside this book,

Screen shot courtesy of Amazon.com
Enter a keyword into the box – you can find the keyword you are interested in the Index Page. Then you will see the sample pages – typically 5 pages are shown once.

You will be prompted to enter your credit card if you didn’t do so before. I dont’ know the limit of sample pages I can see – I didn’t reach the limit yet.

Purchase Circles

Amazon can list the best sellers according to many different groups. For example, this is a list of best sellers shipped to China and here is the top books Sun employees buy.

This is how it is made:

We group the items we send to particular zip and postal codes, and the items ordered from each domain name. We then aggregate this anonymous data and apply an algorithm that constructs bestseller lists of items that are more popular with each specific group than with the general population. No personally identifiable information is used to create Purchase Circle lists. The regularity with which a Purchase Circle is updated depends on its size and activity of a Purchase Circle group. Large Purchase Circles are updated weekly; smaller ones are updated monthly. [Source: Purchase Circle FAQ from Amazon.com

Any provider with data is the king…

P.S. Another Blog Award Begins

End of 2003 sees many votes and awards. Year-end is the time to review the year and find out something big to be memorized.

The Asia Weblog Award just ended. The result will come out soon. It is a pity that many good blogs are not nominated under the “anyone can vote but no one takes care of quality and coverage” mechanism. There should be a clear and verifiable way to ensure the quality of result.

Voting itself is not a good way to identify good blog. The review of a reputable committee based on voting results may be better.

Now the Best China English Blog voting started. It is organized by major blog service providers and players. I definitely support it since it is a very good initiative to bring awareness to blog world and identity those good blogs. However, I still didn’t see the logic behind why the blog with most votes is best. I’d like to thank those who worked very hard to make it happen. I know it is not easy.

WilliamW is very kind to vote for me. Thanks for your effort. I really appreciate it.

Wendy Became a Writer

Another interesting thing in life is that I just discovered that Wendy is a good writer. She posted an article named The Era of Post-Growth (Chinese). Very good article. I like it.

My Alexa Traffic Ranking Improved

Posted on December 29, 2003 by Jian Shuo Wang

My Alexa web traffic ranking improves. Today, wangjianshuo.com, including both home… and www… is ranked as the 92,392nd largest site in terms of traffic. It is the first time it jumps into top 100,000.

screen-alexa.rank-92392.png

Credit: Alexa.com

If the trend continues, the site will be top 30,000 largest site in three months. :-D

This is my current ranking (may be different than the one I stated above)

Alexa Toolbar

The positive change is not reflecting the real situation. The page view does not improve dramatically. The truth is, I installed the Alexa toolbar on my computer. As the most frequent visitor of the site, my visits greatly impacted the ranking. The lower a site’s rank is, the lower the accuracy the rank is. Don’t take it seriously.

Directory Improvement

Yesterday, when I am home alone, I dig into Perl scripts and finally managed to replace my old MTRelatedEntries plugin with MTLinksRelatedEntries I wrote.

I have more than 400 entries and there are about 70 entries for each category. The links listed under Related Entries section are no longer related to each other since the current category is too generic. So I implemented Links 2.0 and built a directory. In this hierarchy, entries can be put into smaller categories and there is only two to seven entries per category. Items in the same category are related to each other better.

After the category is built, I put other links under the same category to the Related Entries section. I hope people get better experience with this site after the change.

Summary of the Year of 2003

Posted on December 28, 2003 by Jian Shuo Wang

The year of 2003 is passing by.

Personal

In this year, I got married, held the big fat wedding ceremony. I didn’t have any long trip (like Daocheng of last year), but I paid short trips to nearby areas. It sounds crazy to cycle to Taihu, Chongming, Tongli, and Pudong Airport. I also visited some unuasual places like seashore, 30N 119E. There are still some Starbucks stores I didn’t visit this year yet. Maybe next year…

I learnt to drive and got my driver’s license this year. I had good time to drive in this large city.

Domestic

This year is a bad year for China. SARS, fire, the taiwan’s election and the blowout of natural gas… all claimed many people’s life.

screen-blow.out-news.jpg

Image courtesy of Xinhua via Sina.com

International

The year of 2003 is also a bad year internationally. The Iraq war, mad cows, the Iran earthquake… bad news after bad news.

screen-iran.earth.quake-news.jpg

Image courtesy of MSNBC.com

2003 is a year of change…. Isaac’s post confirmed that widely spread saying “2003 is a bad year”. I hope the new start of 2004 will bring more good news to us.

Wonderful MeetUp on Dec 26

Posted on December 27, 2003 by Jian Shuo Wang

I am excited about the successful meet-up yesterday in Starbucks Metro City Store. Eight persons including me attended the casual talk. We played a game of writing three statements about everyone him/her selves with two true and one false statement. It gave everyone the opportunity to tell others about his/her life, personality, and interests. It is a good ice breaking game.

Attendants

Vicky

Jian Shuo Wang

shanghai.meetup- vicky.stonesee.teh.etc-together.jpg

Final group photo. Used with permission.

Note: The order of the names are different from the order in the photo in case they don’t what others to recognize them. :-D

Topics

We had great fun to guess which one was the wrong statement. The exploration of the stories behind the true statements were equally interesting. Stonesee shared his fantastic travel experience to Southeast Asia countries. Tutu just returned from her trip to Lijiang and mentioned the kind host of a local guide Zhaxi. I explained more about my incomplete visit to 30N 119E. It seemed we were all interested in such kind of adventure.

We were happy to have Teh in the meet up during his short stay in Shanghai. He talked about his experience in financial industry. We all burst into laughter when Vicky described her statement “I have two dogs?

We found we know each other by friends. The six degree of separation (or the small world theory) is proved again. Xiao-Jing is a friend of Isaac. :-D Stonesee recorded the instinct of women in his blog. Xiao-Jing had the ability to always pick up the right answer with her sixth-sense while Stonesee and me were almost always wrong.

shanghai.meetup-tutu-alone.jpg shanghai.meetup-vicky.stonesee.jpg

Why Meet up

One of my accomplishment of 2003 is to continue to add more content into my blog everyday no matter how busy I am. The response from my friends and readers is the reason I keep it up. I always wanted to meet my friends I already know from their comments.

The Internet is a great way to people to get connected, but face to face communication can never be replaced. We cherish the opportunity to be at the same city and the POSSIBLITY to meet and have a cup of coffee. I also gathered feedback about their most interested parts of Wangjianshuo’s blog. Teh and Vicky are interested in my how-to parts and others are more interested in funny projects like 30N 119E…

Thanks for coming! I am looking forward the next meet-up. I hope to see more people in person.

P.S. As the lucky draw, I will give one week of free promotion for attendants with a blog.

Wangjianshuo's Blog

Events (in Shanghai) that affect my life (and others')

UPC number 036000250015

Write Better Weblog

At the Age of 27

Super Cool Moving Advertisement

Any Advice for Smiling Library

My Name is on Mars

Satellite Dishes Still Forbidden in China

MSN Messenger Virus Jitux.A

My City, My Bus Stop Project

Salary in Shanghai

Bring Your Mobile and Internet to Shanghai

Got Flu and Went to Hospital

PmWiki Successfully Installed on Windows 2000

My Speech and Training Record

Happy New Year 2004

Top Commenter of the Month / Year

Last Day of 2003

Cool Stuffs at Amazon

P.S. Another Blog Award Begins

My Alexa Traffic Ranking Improved

Directory Improvement

Summary of the Year of 2003

Wonderful MeetUp on Dec 26