Chris Thoughts

Conducting an email takes time, but it is better than making a live phone call most of the time. Simply, in an email, people will state things in a more logical way. We would prefer to get 50 emails per day than to receive 50 phone calls.

Good business is predicated on clear and effective communication and email is the primary mode by which business is conducted. Yet corporations, government agencies and educational institutions stand on the sidelines and do little to train workers and students on the fundamentals of email etiquette.

So before sending out your next email, spare one minute on the 10 checks I come up with,

1. Have you customized your First Name & your family name, your company info and etc in a more standard form?

This helps people to put you in outlook contact without editing, and know the first glance whom the email is from.

2. Are you only using plain text, or only black and white color in your content?

Use rich html, and use dark blue or other color to make others think your attention to detail. Life is good, you will be remembered even by this.

Added bonus: some people only use plain text to read email, meaning your effort of using html is ignored. To play it safe under some circumstance, avoid using too much html as it would creat a mass, if not more under the plain text content.

3. How much time do you waste decoding a poorly written email?

Step in others’ shoes and think what’s your first impression while reading the first line of the email. So do it like doing a standard press release for your own company. The tag line, the first sense, and the first paragraph raises your readers’ interest.

Added bonus: also think about doing a phone call though email is normally a good starting point.

4. You did think about splitting content into different paragraphs, but have you thought about also using a few bullet points (also with the key sentence in bold font weight) to tell your content?

Use a consulting mindset over this. Think your receivers are your clients and they have only one minute to hear your pitch. That’s your email.

5. How often do you use email to say one or two words, such as “OK”, “fine” or one or two lines?

This is not professional, and not nice to your buddies. You’d better enrich your content.

6. How often do you proofread an email before sending it?

Modern email system has made things easier, for example, use Gmail’s “check” function. If you don’t have this in your mail system, copy & paste it somewhere to proofread.

7. How often do you send a email with 5+ attachments without zipping it? Would it be better if your attached files are in PDF format?

Meaning the receiver would have to download it for 5+ times. Do you enjoy clicking on the attachment files for 5+ times. But, if attachments have different usages and some are optional for downloading, do the 5+ attachments.

PDF avoid that your receiver will suffer from font missing problem, and PDF looks neater in a way that people would prefer to open than any  other file type.

Added bonus: be sure that some file converted by higher version PDF software can not be open by normal version PDF software. So check the compatibility if possible.

8. Do you reply to a message within 24 hours? What if you can’t do it within 24 hours?

You may not carry a BlackBerry, but it is not a good excuse to skip or reply email late. 95% of people might reply late. You are going to make a difference, so do it within 24 hours, 1 hour or even sooner if possible.  In a lot of scenarios, it even means the “live” or “dead” of a potential deal.

If you can do it in time, Tim Ferriss’ s tip might help. Go check it out.

9. Have you considered when to add contact information, and how to structure it?

Rich contact could lead to unexpected business, but addressing it underneath every email might look dull. You can consider by 5-fold of send and reply, the contact plus the disclaimer info would make the content hard to read by others.

So do two things,

1) Be wise and selective to use rich contact info and disclaimer

2) Use horizontal format instead of vertical one. For example,

Use:

Your Name | Job Title | Division | Company Name

Phone: ### | Email: ###

Instead of:

Your Name

Job Title

Division, Company

Contact Info

You know what it means.

10. How often do you receive an email with an attachment without a properly structured title, or with no text in the email body?

Self-explanatory.

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This post is a stream of the Career101 topics, for which understanding I believe is essential to some. So the illustrated example here floats,

In the start of a product life cycle, there would be a prototype of model being tested and incubated in the campus of Stanford near the famous Sands Hill Rd, where most VCs are located. The start-up process is hard. One out of thousands of prototypes might be proved with a good business model that can jump ahead to receive further Seed Investment (by angel investor) then Serial A-B (or fewer) VC/PE investment and progress to pre-IPO level (1-2 years before a public share offering).

A Private Equity (say Carlyle II Growth fund, Venture Capital as VC normally would not pay for a third party to conduct Due Diligence during the relatively early stage) would show up and say, hey, why not let us finance you before IPO to make everything look great? Without indepth knowledge of the firm at a glance, the PE would rely on a consulting firm (say LEK) for firm/industry wide analysis to ensure it is a good investment with at least 25% IRR; if the product happens to be a high-tech, or new energy type products that even an industrial consultant expert with a Ph.d from Princeton doesn’t know, some other guy from the industry might be hired to deal with this range of task in the future. So here value of an industry expert adds up. The same applies to VC and PE investment. In the meantime, a Big Four accounting firm (say KPMG) would collaborate with the consulting firm to do commercial analysis, while the law professionals deal with all legal things to make sure it does not violate any governmental laws, business law (SEC filing and etc) and ensure multiple parties are protected.

When everything work correctly in the previous stage, the PE/VC will be happy to sign a term sheet with the company (whether it be early stage or late stage, similar process. VC is a early cycle investment of PE anyway). Since this post serves as illustration only, for specific information on term sheet, please go to , the term sheet archives from Feld would help.

You may also have one question just now, where does the money of PE/VC come from and how can they raise that large sum of fund? The source of funding mainly from institutional investors, endowment fund and HNWIs (high net worth individual). Fund raising is about GPs’ wide reach with LPs, track record and multiple got from previous investments or industrial involvement. The way of pitching involves long and exhausting process. GPs raising fund from overseas institutions or other parties might have to fly across cities, Atlantic for the road show. GPs quality of contacts or GPs’ ability to arrange LPs meeting or individual talks is instrumental as well.

However, there are also some PEs/VCs with well-above industry average returm multiple that are always over-subscribed when it comes to fund raising. It really depends on the portion that the GPs are willing to assign to PE A, other than PE B, C, and D. By the way, FOF (Fund of Fund) is an investment vehicle that investment in PE/VC because you could say there are times when those happliy living HNWIs do not have time to look at the credentials of a PE/VC. So they just directly invest in FOF to let them deal with this. All are big-time business.

When the company matures, an investment bank (int’l or boutique local bank like China eCapital) will serve as “CFO” of the company to deal with institutional relationship (Road Show), and make them aware that the business of the “Company” is a great value for investment. Believing in that, the company will be under the spot light with a AAA rating for buy upon the public offering.

When the company go IPO, the CEO’s net-worth boosts, he sell his chunk of stocks (upon the lockup period) to another international group (synergy effect), say P&G, cashes out and happily live his life in the a beautiful countryside of China. The company then becomes a subsidiary of the larger buyer P&G. So the public see a new shampoo brand under P&G (assume P&G acquired the “Company” who specializes in Shampoo) out in the market yelling for sales. At this time, another party might believe they could do a better job than the “Company”, so they invent another kind of product to tackle the market demand.

The process goes on and on like this.

BTW, looking at the topic of the post, there is also a company called zero2ipo in China.

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Further to the last post on From Blogging to Evangelizing (1)

ii Capital Today (今日资本) & Ying Zai Zhong Guo （赢在中国）

Capital Today Group’s recent investment includes a highly rated TV-show Ying Zai Zhong Guo (Win in China, similar to the BBC hit show Dragon’s Den) features a feast of business ideas, pitches and all sexy components of venture business. Indeed, we Chinese all love to build and create but just a handful of entrepreneurs know how to sell and pitch.

The show leads the table and shows the insights and logics of venture business, which has notably evoked entrepreneurs’ guts to build their own enterprise, especially in such a gloomy market place where lots of people losing job or being fired. Indeed, the firm’s investment in consumer market (what the founder Cathy Xu remarked as “we invest in the”吃喝玩乐” business to gain stable return even in the downturn of economy. Because eventually people need to eat, drink, play and entertain as “吃喝玩乐” defines) has generated handsome multiple for the Venture Capital firm which just started in 2005.

iii China eCapital （易凯资本）

Another key figure who uses his sina blog to communicate with the public is China eCapital’s CEO Ran Wang. I believe most people in business have more or less read across his viewpoints on the investment and even entertainment business in China. The blog has been clicked through and with page views of more than 10 million times according to the counter. The quotings of his viewpoints in other places or public press has been ten-fold.

The impact that the ex-Investment Banker (now running a leading Chinese Financial Advisory firm – what we call Boutique Chinese Investment Bank) created has been tremendous, has educated lots of his readers and have transformed many targeted companies. But different from Western VCs, if the celebrity CEO could lay more focus on the norm of venture investment and the way they deal with business case by case, it will be making more sense to bring us Chinese (entrepreneurs and VCs) a more healthy and efficient direct investment.

Summing Up

Featuring by leading media is far from enough. A media clip of a speech or a 30-min interview are short-lived, as there are too many of the same kinds, and those seriously reading it might not be as targeted as the a blog reader will be (simply because their readers will evangelize what they read to a third party and vise versus). In addition, those similarly famous business celebrities are out there competing to draw attention.

The internal blogging system helps on a business standpoint and also form a more harmonious corporate environment. There are more to come and the perfect storm of the new century is scaling up now.

Nowadays, there are hundred of million of blogs existing and proliferating around the globe and the sup-products like Twitter and many other similar applications based on WordPress, FireFox, FaceBook or Google continue being developed and applied by F500 corporates. In the Chinese New Fortune Magzine, the Twitter effect has been featured and would populize China as a whole in the foreseeable future. I will blog about it perspective later.

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Evangelizing, a word pretty well used nowadays in regard of marketing that in essence brings profound impact to people’s attention. From the classical marketing book, we have classified “Sales” and “Marketing” while “evanelizing” has not gained its position yet, at least not in the marketing book I read.

In a broader sense, “blogging” gives a perfect meaning of it.

Western Best Practice

In field of Venture Capital, blogging has eroded to be a core way of delivering firm investment methodology, criteria and preferred way of communication since its inception. Most western VC websites have Incorporated with a featured partner or affiliated blog, evangelizing their business prospects and depth of experience. This practices has not yet well adapted by our Chinese VC firms, which harms business.

The Chinese Way

Adapting the Western concept, we Chinese are no bad player on adapting this.

In China, there are just as many breakthrough ideas as it is in the western world, and the effect of the booming economy cannot be ignored. The conservative culture of Chinese curbs most fleshy idea from being known, not to mention pitching it to a real and potential Venture Capitalist. It’s true that a good deal will not lack pursuers, but ONLY when it becomes publicly known and possibly bring out a revenue model.

The norm (best practice) of Westerm way is to be adapted and make its way into Chinese Entrepreneur-Venture Capitalist community, so that they could learn, exchange and improve idea right within a tribe (aka blog) or under a syndicated system. This accelerates the speed of execution and lead the right people to the right place.

Feature Chinese VC Evangelists

There are STILL a handful of Venture Capitalists in China that blog and this group generally share one point – either being educated or have lived in a Western world. This massively helps them to win business, even when their business just started in China. It does not matter.

i A new comer: DragonVest Partners

I first saw DragonVest Partners, who has just started direct investment business in China, in Chinese Venture (a Chinese Venture Capital journal), which has featured the co-partner Jesse Parker’s insights of tech deals in China. This brings okay publicity as a whole.

But this would not be enough regarding the limited readership of the hard copy magazine. To illustrate, another featured blogger I am here to mention is the firm’s co-founder Cha Li, who have recently been featured as a core bloggers in the VC community. And he skillfully wrote interesting topics (with eye-catching titles of course) that amaze lots of people in all ranges of business, including me. So we wish the firm is gaining lots of momentum with the efforts of communicating with the entrepreneurs and business community. By word-of-mouth, the business community would surely collaborate with entrepreneurs and hence enhance the quality of deal flow.

More will be found on the next post From Blogging to Evangelizing (2)

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There are times we feel a state of release and pure happiness when giving help, knowing our contribution on making our community a better place, letting your beloved ones smile.

We have so many things to achive, however,  life is too short. And probably, there are different classes in Heaven when we get there, probably Coach, Business, and First Class.

The easiest people to help are those whom you think you will need someday. But, this point is the least valuable as the motivation isn’t pure. Many people don’t even bother doing this.

The big points, and what seperates a mensch from a good schemer, comes from helping people who cannot help you. We might have the following three reasons to help others.

You never know-they might be able to help you someday.

You want to be sure to help whatsoever just because the above theories are right

You derive intrisic joy from helping your fellow man

Those natually go with the third reason will get into First Class on Singapore Airlines.

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(To those who are in search of job or have been through the same process back then)

Every now and then there is a voice saying getting hired is a no-no under such a market situation. Yes, it is hard, but there is a way. Successful job seekers (well, job hunter to be pricise in this situation) know even in tough economic times, there is opportunity. You just have to dig it a bit deeper, or just one inch deeper than your peers. The following threads shows how it is going to work.

The following sessions are divided into four core parts (bulletpoint clickable).

• Part I – explains basic things to avoid, and basic skillsets to acquire before a real job searching process
• Part II – tells some most frequent situation to which most graduates encounter. Making the right decision would end up saving a ton of time and progress towards your career goal
• Part III – dives into the evangelizing some of the most innovative tool for career advancement, over a long term basis. The immediately effect could also be seen in the short term
• Part IV – advance and jump to another curve by effectively planning your career right from the very start, from being an undergrad to aspiring for an MBA, from MBA to an ex-MBA career path, and etc

Here, based on a variety of tricks, techniques and solid skills most in the college or even working should know, I would use my favorite Top 10 methods to ensure you won’t miss the focus and save time by jumping ahead of the curve or going backwards. The table of content would also help to locate where the focus lies, dependant on your career goal and how you look at it in the near/long term.

Typically, the following content applies based on my understanding of Finance, Consulting and Fortune 500 types of job. If there is any discrepancy, you are welcome to email me or comment following thread below.

Below is a more concise table of content.

#10 The most ineffective – blindly send out 100+ CVs (with fewer than 5 responses)

#9 The most common  -  Google + job board + forum

#8 The longest process – part-time/freelance work/internship first if you can get a relevant one

#7 The biggest dilemma -  master? delay graduation date to catch another hiring season?

#6 The best way to stand out of your peers over a short period -  pay to win –

#5 The most direct – cold call  +  email

#4 The bravest – get your feet in the company + elevator pitch

#3 The most innovative – think social networking tool

#2 The quickest response  – insider referral

#1 The most solid – stack up your belt from the very start

Table of Content

PART I

#10 The most ineffective – blindly send out 100+ CVs (with fewer than 5 responses)

• Basic things to avoid
• Target few, and aim high

#9 The most common  -  Google + job board + forum

• Use Google
  • How Google differentiates from other search engines
  • Search Tricks
  • Things beyond
  • A test
• Boil the Ocean
• Added Component: from Zero to IPO to exit (worth further research)

#8 The longest process – part-time/freelance work/internship first if you can get a relevant one

• The “Myth”
  • Q1: When is a good timing for application? (apply to both FT role & internship)
  • Q2: It is not a hiring season yet, where and how can I find a job?
  • Q3: My CV looks great, and I come from a target school. But, why I am not selected even for the first round?
  • Q4: What are the sourcing processes? I am not from a target school, is that a loophole still?
  • Q5: What makes a perfect resume?
• The “Good”
  • Life is flexible, life is good
  • You will be a well-rounded person
• The “Bad & the Ugly”
  • You are quarantined from people (but you are not an SARS carrier)
  • My workload vs my payroll
  • Work hard, work hard and work hard
  • Network, network and network

PART II

#7 The biggest dilemma -  master? delay graduation date to catch another hiring season?

• Is Master really for you, or are you really ready for a Master?
• Master still good
  • Q1: Is it worthwhile to delay my education just to catch another hiring season? This way it makes me look like an fresh grad and my opportunity will be boosted?
  • Q2: Location matters?
    • I am a native Chinese/other nationalities, I just graduated or on the process to graduation in the US/UK/AU/Other countries, should I come back to work in my home country or try to stay when the opportunity from both sides look slim.
    • I am a Chinese, does location matter alot? What’s my advantage?
    • What else to consider?

#6 The best way to stand out of your peers over a short period -  pay to win

• Know your competitive advantage
  • Q1: What I am lacking, and how to accrue my possibility of getting hired when time is short
  • Q2: When the market is not hiring, where else exists the opening
  • Q3: Should I use career service
• Which is worthwhile to take? My pick

PART III

#5 The most direct – cold call  +  email

• Be in the know
• Where to find the company list
• Where do those headhunters live
• Why headhunters are hated by most
• How to live with headhunters in your early career

#4 The bravest – get your feet in the company + elevator pitch

• What makes a successful elevator pitch
• What make you a seemingly acquaitance to the relevant insider
• What topics to talk about
• How to make up, and to link things together

#3 The most innovative – think social networking tool

• Blog yourself, and build your visual CV
• Open you up to the world
• Your email address matters
• Email management and resource sourcing
• Domino effect. Everything added up and EXPLODE

PART IV

#2 The quickest response  – insider referral

• Where to find your referral
• Who can refer
• What is Email Etiquette? (important across all sections)
• If you fail even with the referral, then what

#1 The most solid – stack up your belt from the very start

• How to prepare
• What to read
• What to put in the CV
• How to combine the above to transform your life
• and etc…

(click on the above link to find post content)

Disclaimer: I am neither an HR nor a career advisor. What I say is my own stuff and not affiliated with any of the companies I worked or am working for. All the thoughts on this site are mine. My company and its affiliated and personnel are not affiliated with this blog in any way. If you appreciate and would like to forward the content, please kindly link back to the original source.

Any other thought? If yes, please feel free to email me or reply on this thread below.

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Here I just want to share a link to a recent speech from Jack Ma, the Chairman & CEO of Alibaba Group,

http://www.asiasociety.org/resources/090312_jackma_complete.html

In the talk, Jack highlighted the power of fit for enterprise growth, while pursuing after top-notch MBA won’t really work for Chinese enterprise. Current year has seen lots of job losses or graduates failed to locate proper opportunity. It seems the market is playing a joke but on the other hand it poses lots of opportunity. If you are a piece of gold mine, you will shine in any organization then.

If you are a fan of Alibaba or Taobao.com, don’t miss out this DHgate.com that is recently funded by TDF Capital, an affiliate investment arm of KPCB, the top2 VC in the world.

PS: here’s a recent move from Alibaba that might change the era of online business: http://www.cnker.com/hyzx/03-4077.shtml

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We had been sticking to Internet Explorer along the way before FireFox emerged and took over 40% of the market share. FireFox is great because it is Open Source and there are many tailor-made functions for particular purposes and that sparked mass collaboration, which I also discussed in another blog post earlier. I have been a huge fan of FireFox but recently, I spotted a start-up problem when many applications are loading in one time – the start-up speed was too slow.

Now there is a possible solve that I have also fully tested and would recommend to those seeking a China based, portable , and secured mini browser called IQ Smart Browser. I referred it as “mini” because its speed and low ram required. The tailor-made functions are nearly spot on.

PS: the smartie is developed by Chinese but invested by a famous internet-focused investment firm called Koolanoo group. The company aims to develpe a vertical model that integrates SNS and all other relatives down the stream and its another investment 360quan.com is somehow a would-be Chinese FaceBook that focused on post-90s generation market.

Let’s keep an eye on this. Now here we go with a debut clip of IQ Browser first,

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(Steal the title of Guy’s book)

For these days I have been recollecting thoughts and hard-learned lessons. I try to make up with something that ticks, something that could virus across the border and be influential. But I haven’t yet.

The market is volatile, a brand with good book value could be out of market overnight without properly handling its market, or beaten out by its fellow “start-up” competitor only because of improper marketing, loose organizational culture and unproven operations management.

To pick up a few things that I value,

Motivation

Every person is indifferent, and everyone has their own motivations, values and individualities. For some time I have been taken it for granted that if given proper career motivations, proper potential business opportunity in the MID-TERM, one would strike towards it as hard as I do. The fact is far from that because most are valuing things on a short-term basis, on cash equivalents.

Rule of thumb: The above naturally applies to short-term contract based business most of the time.

Partnership

If you believe one is a good fit for your organization, you can pay him even twice the market rate, or reward him with equity. If in your early years, you found one that crashes with you, he/she might be your partner tomorrow.

Great minds think alike, but 99% of those great minds are recruited out in those so-called Greatest Professions (what are they?) on earth. Grab them before they are gone. Considering the opportunity costs, once they are gone, only a handful of them would opt to join your start-up freeze.

Rule of thumb: in business, there are two types of people. One should be rewarded only with real-time cash – they hate uncertainty; some should be rewarded only with equity – they will sleep with you in the desk when work is undone.

Marketing

Focus group’s first instinct on seeing your products and your services, how do they feel, are most important thing to look at. If they want something else, you change it, or drop it.

A story that sticks needs to be well thought and tested with customers. Good minds won’t come up with the most profound ideas. Customers do. Marketing is based on practices. Anyone could test marketing strategy by setting up a virtual store online.

Rule of thumb: Learning marketing is a life-time effort. You would find yourself ignorant of marketing when looking back tomorrow; you will find yourself even more ignorant at a certain point in time.

Appetites

Venture Capitalists are switching their appetites on grass root (bootstrapping) business models that are hard-founded, market-based and standstill under upcoming price war or competition. Their instincts are always correct.

Rule of thumb: If you want to build a business, whether it be a IPO, trade sales, or doing it for just doing it, whet your lovely VC’s appetites. It will save your time and you are on track.

We love start-up, we love building long-lasting enterprise, we love making impact. If not,  lives are incomplete. So the game has just started.

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This book is by far the only one that I would read twice, or even three times during the course of thinking, conducting business or even blogging. Its rule applies to any states of your life. Simply put, the best resource to make your idea stick and become a phenomenon.

Before reading this, you might also know Malcolm Gladwell’s bestselling The Tipping Point, which I have published in an early post.

Editorial Reviews

Starred Review. Unabashedly inspired by Malcolm Gladwell’s bestselling The Tipping Point, the brothers Heath—Chip a professor at Stanford’s business school, Dan a teacher and textbook publisher—offer an entertaining, practical guide to effective communication. Drawing extensively on psychosocial studies on memory, emotion and motivation, their study is couched in terms of “stickiness”—that is, the art of making ideas unforgettable. They start by relating the gruesome urban legend about a man who succumbs to a barroom flirtation only to wake up in a tub of ice, victim of an organ-harvesting ring. What makes such stories memorable and ensures their spread around the globe? The authors credit six key principles: simplicity, unexpectedness, concreteness, credibility, emotions and stories. (The initial letters spell out “success”—well, almost.) They illustrate these principles with a host of stories, some familiar (Kennedy’s stirring call to “land a man on the moon and return him safely to the earth” within a decade) and others very funny (Nora Ephron’s anecdote of how her high school journalism teacher used a simple, embarrassing trick to teach her how not to “bury the lead”). Throughout the book, sidebars show how bland messages can be made intriguing. Fun to read and solidly researched, this book deserves a wide readership. (Jan. 16)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

There are 2 parts altogether. Ground rule: they are all free. But let me know if the link doesn’t work any more.

Audio Book:

E-book:

(will publish the e-book later and keep you updated when I get a clearer version)

» Read the Time Magazine article.
» Read the U.S. News & World Report article.
» See the authors on The Today Show.
» Listen to the Morning Edition interview.

For those who have not used RapidShare (the free upload/download) too, please click here.

From time to time, I would publish some PDF or Audio version of the books I love.  If you need an RSS update for future upcoming, register with this link

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The blog has been deserted for a while due to my busy timetable recently. But the rumour that Google is soon to acquire Twitter really brought me back on board with quite a few thoughts awaiting to share.

Twitter is a universally famous mini-blog with user based comparable to FaceBook, MySpace from my understanding, but it is so handy that people can do update only with the cell, while FB probably could not by its more complex platform.

That said, this makes its content much more reliable and up-to-date.  Of course there are lots of other features that attracts its large user base, these 2 features put the company up for sales to Goolge at a higher valuation (my congratulations to Twitter for spotting b-model). The newbie is search.twitter.com. You just give it a few sample searches and would find it just as amazing as Google and your return result is expressed by real person real-time. If you wanna know the ongoing topics in Davos Economic Forum, try it. If you wanna know what’s the gossip of your schoolmate on the upcoming anniversary, try it.

For a start-up firm like Twitter (and many others) that receives million-level registrants, it hardly could generate revenue. YouTube and Hotmail didn’t have profit while being acquired by Google & MS respectively, but their outreach and potential brand extension capability could boost its valuation. Now, Hotmail (invested by DFL) might pose to be the best acquisition by MS (amongst many others). Counting the Blogger deal back in 2003, Google really buys the babies from the same team twice – a full-content Blogger, and probably now a mini-content Twitter.

The history has seen a few rounds of innovations by leading companies. The first round led by Microsoft, Oracle; second round led by Google, Yahoo and CISCO. What about the third? Followed by Suntech, LDK and quite a few star Chinese companies, the third round would probably take place in China with core focus on new (convertible) energy!

Though the financial turmoil dampens growth and squeeze stock price, technology companies with good fundamentals will survive and thrive.  Tecent, Alibaba are proving these and I can’t feel more excited on seeing and probably testing this out today in China.

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I have watched the clip for many many times before sharing it here. A truly touching story!

If you also enjoy it, please help spread the words to your beloved ones…

Intro

Christian was a lion originally purchased by Australians John Rendall and Anthony ‘Ace’ Bourke from Harrods department store of London in 1969 and ultimately reintroduced to the wild by conservationist George Adamson. One year after George Adamson released Christian to the wild, his former owners decided to go looking for him in Africa to see whether Christian would remember them. Surprisingly, he did and with him were other lions in the pride which were also friendly.

China may restrict the broadcast below. If you are in China, please follow this link: 

http://v.youku.com/v_playlist/f2758596o1p0.html

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Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

Well, Malcolm Gladwell’s books are with no doubt my all time love ever since the his first hit Tipping Point. Back then the Tipping Point was recommended by my mentor and she would also recommend the TP to anyone with ambition of achieving great stuff. The ahthor is very cautious at catching the poinst which most of us ignore and he formulate a series of logics to prove it, to make you believe and follow the way.

Mr Gladwell’s indepth knowledge of his field is paralelled to Jim Collion of management, and Seth Godin of marketing. Another great read.

But his latest book Outlier: The Sotory of Success seems not receiving universal love. I will check it out later. Here is the official review,

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Blink is about the first two seconds of looking–the decisive glance that knows in an instant. Gladwell, the best-selling author of The Tipping Point, campaigns for snap judgments and mind reading with a gift for translating research into splendid storytelling. Building his case with scenes from a marriage, heart attack triage, speed dating, choking on the golf course, selling cars, and military maneuvers, he persuades readers to think small and focus on the meaning of “thin slices” of behavior. The key is to rely on our “adaptive unconscious”–a 24/7 mental valet–that provides us with instant and sophisticated information to warn of danger, read a stranger, or react to a new idea. Gladwell includes caveats about leaping to conclusions: marketers can manipulate our first impressions, high arousal moments make us “mind blind,” focusing on the wrong cue leaves us vulnerable to “the Warren Harding Effect” (i.e., voting for a handsome but hapless president). In a provocative chapter that exposes the “dark side of blink,” he illuminates the failure of rapid cognition in the tragic stakeout and murder of Amadou Diallo in the Bronx. He underlines studies about autism, facial reading and cardio uptick to urge training that enhances high-stakes decision-making. In this brilliant, cage-rattling book, one can only wish for a thicker slice of Gladwell’s ideas about what Blink Camp might look like. –Barbara Mackoff

There are 2 parts altogether. Ground rule: they are all free.

Audio Book:

E-book:

For those who have not used RapidShare (the free upload/download) too, please click here.

From time to time, I would publish some PDF or Audio version of the books I love.  If you need an RSS update for future upcoming, here is the link

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FireFox’s high performing capability is no secret to us. Its open-source platform has enabled the company to surpass IE and its other competitor by at least two folds. There is more to expected in the future. Below is a good pitch for the new interface and ubiquity for Firefox.

I like the first few mins presentation style a lot. It looks a bit hard to command though. Looking forwards to more from FireFox.

Ubiquity for Firefox from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

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