Meng Yan (孟岩) @ SUN Personal Opinions Only

Thunderbird 1.0 has landed

It's really a good news. Download it from Mozilla.org. ( 2004年12月08日, 12:24:22 下午 GMT+08:00 ) Permalink

IBM Selling PC Unit to China's Lenovo

I don't know it's a good or bad news :-). Here is the news from Yahoo. ( 2004年12月08日, 12:22:27 下午 GMT+08:00 ) Permalink

The Swing Connection: Swing Sightings

"Over the years we've collected many links to this information. In fact, if you walked down the hallways here you would see the walls plastered with hundreds of screenshots from applications developed outside of Sun. Therefore, we have decided to launch a Swing Connection feature to share this bounty. Don't expect a comprehensive survey; these are applications that we bumped into or that found us." - Abstracted an article here to these who said swing are slow and ugly.
I mentioned YongZhong office in my previous blog, and so glad to see so many excellent application using Swing. If you boss are hesitate about whether to use Swing in their desktop java application, give him this link :P
( 2004年11月30日, 06:09:16 下午 GMT+08:00 ) Permalink 评论 [1]

New regular expression feature of Java 5.0

I found this article about the new regular expression feature in David Flanagan's blog. ( 2004年11月27日, 03:18:52 下午 GMT+08:00 ) Permalink

Why Blogging?

I have blogged about half a year, and today I suddenly raise a question to myself, why blogging?

Below is some feedback from my friends when I ask them this question:

1) "To express my self."

2) "For me, blog is just a habit, I am use to record my daily life in my blog."

3) "My blog is for my friends, so, they can know what I am doing and what I am thinking."

4) "Blog is my diray."

5) "Sometimes show the talent of mine and sometimes cater my friends..."

6) "All my friends are blogging, so do I."

... ...

Then why am I bloging? To be frank, I have two blogs. This one is my prime blog, I give this blog's feed to my friends and my colleagues. The reason I blog here is I wanna to share my idea, my knowledge, my feelings, my happiness and my sadness with my friends. I blog my interest, technology, discussion and also my story with others here, and sure it's my true feelings. But I think everybody has some feeling and story that he can not tell others. In the movie "2046" (directed by the famous Chinese director Jiawei Wang), when people feel something can not tell others, he can talk with the old tree in the mountain. As for me, I talk this with my another blog, and it's really a secret diray of mine. Also there's many friends there, but, they don't know me much :P.

And, my friends, what's your reason for blog?

( 2004年11月26日, 11:54:16 下午 GMT+08:00 ) Permalink 评论 [3]

Another Knowledge based system like iAsk

I have bloged one article about sina's knowledge based system - iAsk a few days before. And today I found another one launched by yahoo. So interesting~
( 2004年11月26日, 03:44:47 下午 GMT+08:00 ) Permalink

I got a wallop invitation

Today I got the famous SNS(social network software) - wallop's invitation from my friend, it's really suprise me. With it, you can share your blog, music, photo with your friends and your friend's friend. Sounds interesting, right?

( 2004年11月26日, 12:00:46 上午 GMT+08:00 ) Permalink

Thanks giving

I have no habit to live the west holidays, how ever, thanks giving day is special.

I like it's name - "Thanks giving". So, at the end of the year, I'd like to express my thanks to my parent, my friends, my colleagues, and all of you. Thanks for your care and help, trust me, you will be proud of me. :P

( 2004年11月25日, 05:17:04 下午 GMT+08:00 ) Permalink

Some articles about JDK 1.5

Some friends of mine ask me to write some code to demonstrate the new feature in J2SDK 5.0. I'd like to recommend some articles instead, I think this would really help.

1) J2SE 5.0 in a Nutshell : Take a glance at all the new features in J2SE 5.0.

2) Programming with the New Language Features in J2SE 5.0 : This article looks at the new language features, the motivation behind them, and discusses how using them can help you to improve your programs.

3) Generics in the Java Programming Language : How to develop with genirics in Java.

( 2004年11月24日, 04:30:51 下午 GMT+08:00 ) Permalink 评论 [2]

Feeling about IAsk - user experience based search engine

These days, one of the Chinese Portal - Sina's knowledge base search engine IAsk debut.

I am really interested in this new launched program. Their rules is very simple and straight forward. People can raise any kind of question here, and give some mark to that question to award the person who give the right(or appropriate) answers. Other people will try to solve the question and get the award. People who raised the question will give the mark according to the reply. Of course, the higher mark the people give, the more exposure the question will have. In China, there's many website who provided such kind of service before, but none of them combined it with a powerful search engine.

Now, more and more people are interested in the "game". And I often try to get what I wanna to know from it, when I encounter some problem, I even directly goto iAsk but not Google :P.

So, is it another search engine? Absolutely yes. Nowadays, there's more and more search engines, but how to get the knowledge is the most important thing I think. Google will crawler billions of web pages, but are all of these pages useful? I don't think so. I don't think we must give user as many as result they searched, but should give them what they really want. I think user's experience and knowledge is more valuable than these web pages. 80% people will care the same thing about one specfic question. For example, when talking about the word "mortagage", you and I maybe will has the same puzzle and will raise the similar question. And my experience maybe is just what you wanna to know. Without question, if more and more users take part in this program and contribute their wisdom and experience, the knowledge base will be more and more rich and valuable and this search engine will be more and more clear and can will give the user what they wanna to know.

So I think, in this .search period (related to .com) , how to attract the user, collecting their data and experience is the most important. Contrast to the search technique, the knowledge base is more important.

To summarize, I think what we can learn from iAsk is:
1) Use award mark to attract user to take part in and contribute their knowledge;
2) Combine the user knowledge base with the powerful search engine.

Just my cents. ( 2004年11月23日, 02:36:12 下午 GMT+08:00 ) Permalink 评论 [6]

A good CMS site

Today, I found Magnolia - A good, free, open-source content management system "which has been built from scratch to support JSR-170". Blog here. ( 2004年11月23日, 12:20:38 下午 GMT+08:00 ) Permalink

My blog in Chinese

Here's my blog in Chinese, really interesting! ( 2004年11月20日, 10:57:17 下午 GMT+08:00 ) Permalink

Google's Scholar Search

Google launched its Scholar search, Google Scholar ( 2004年11月20日, 10:48:24 下午 GMT+08:00 ) Permalink

Take me to your heart

It's really a long time I have not been moved by a song, until I heard this song today - Take me to your heart, by Mike learns to rock. The famous HongKong singer Jacky Zhang ever sing the Chinese version - 《吻别》.

"

Trying to forget but I won't let go
Looking at a crowded street
Listening to my own heart beat

So many people all around the world
Tell me where do I find someone like you girl

(Chorus)
Take me to your heart take me to your soul
Give me your hand before I'm old
Show me what love is - haven't got a clue
Show me that wonders can be true

They say nothing lasts forever
We're only here today
Love is now\or\never
Bring me far away

Take me to your heart take me to your soul
Give me your hand and hold me
Show me what love is - be my guiding star
It's easy take me to your heart

Standing on a mountain high
Looking at the moon through a clear blue sky
I should go and see some friends
But they don't really comprehend

Don't need too much talking without saying anything
All I need is someone who makes me wanna sing

"

I decide to learn the English version and show my talent with it next time~. By the way, this monday, I won the first place in the karaoke match. :P

 

( 2004年11月20日, 01:06:26 上午 GMT+08:00 ) Permalink

Can I live without the computer?

My laptop had encounter some problems and I can not use it last night.
Then the whole night, I had nothing to do. No TV, No book, and go to bed at 22:00 aclock. I am a little sad and ask my self : can I live without computer and network? ( 2004年10月22日, 09:53:11 上午 GMT+08:00 ) Permalink 评论 [2]