test

testtest

DSC00488

Test.

Beijing, we are ready.

or are we...?

Smog bad? Just postpone the race. [1]

Links:
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[1]
http://washingtonbureau.typepad.com/china/2007/08/smog-bad-just-p.html

It has been a while...

Web 2.x and Beyond - Multiple languages design

I should not say multiple languages design, multiple languages feature is more appropriate.

The World Wide Web is not for english only anymore. More people who speak other than English has access to the Internet the same way other people access to the Internet. So why not build a website that support more than one languages?

The previous approach of the multiple language was to develop a site with one language. When it is finished, copy the entire content and put it under another folder best fit with the language itself and then translate the content word by word to the targeted language.

One problem quickly surface: The pain of update.

While we have more powerful computers and database driven website, to implement multiple languages website become much easier.

How much more visitors will there be when a website can serve more than one languages? It surely will be more.

Web 2.x and Beyond - Community oriented.

How do you feel when you have a million of people around the world working as a group working together to make the site information accurate and up to date?

It is what drives site lik <a href="http://www.wikipedia.org/">Wikipedia</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/">YouTube</a> so successful. The content was checked frequently in Wikipedia by many to make sure each entry is truthful and unbias. YouTube was able to protect itself away from offensive material by users themselves to make sure the video were not offensive. The information were so much that it is hard to keep track of by just a few people, or even a hundred of them. It is better to maintain by the people who view or create the material. Similiar to open source software, the more eyeballs on the source code, the easier to point out security risk.

Of course, it comes a cost.

Wikipedia has recently suffer from inaccurate reports. Changes in those report were made so frequent that Wikipedia has to limit who can change the content.

YouTube has million of copyrighted material like TV shows hosted on the site. When the users _think_ it is OK to share those video, then it is up to the copyright agency to control it. Again, the copyright agency has just so many employee to control what material should available on YouTube.

After all, why does this community oriented site become a trend? I personally think that was related to more people receive education. Back then, only a priviledge fews receive education. There are only a small group of people in their little circle exchanging information or able to teach. Corrupted few would even prevent teaching others in order to keep their "superior status". However, as education become more accessible to more people, many learn that sharing information was the key to improve themselves and the society. Internet becomes a tunnel to access to obtain or provide infomation as a website becomes a marketplace to anyone who wants to know about anything.

It is a win-win situation when information are available to view by many and update by many.

Web 2.x and Beyond

When building a website nowaday, there are certain things in my mind that I thought it has to be a must-have. Other than those W3C standard and database driven standard things, I came across a list of things that _I_ thought was important.

1. Community oriented.
2. Multiple languages design.
3. RSS feed included.
4. API access.
5. Instant response. (XMLHttp).

Rethinking About the Web Management

Recently, I had a brief conversation with my co-developer of my fellowship's website.

Yes, we are re-developing it, but this time around, we will take a different approach.

We started off with a 5 people committe on managing and designing the web site. We did not have much to develop on, but collabroating to update material is time consuming.

So we decided to change the way it works to Web 2.0 style. Instead of just a few of us responsible to the materials of the website, we let the fellowship member to decide what should be there.

It will be a bit change, but now the responsibility of the content material will not fall solely on a few people, rather, it will fall onto those who want to make the fellowship site better.

10 Degree Change

Yesterday, I visited the <a href="http://saddleback.org/">Saddleback church</a>. I was very impressed with the church. It is not the usual church building that I have thought, instead, there were few office building like buildings, tents, and a convention center like meeting place.

The convention center like meeting place is the santuary where people worship and speaker gave message. I enjoy the message and I thought it was a good reminder.

The speaker said he did not expect a 180 degree change instantly, instead, we should try to change at least for 10 degree. It was true that it was hard for a person to change 180 degree in a short amount of time, but the 10 degree change will be very different over time when comparing to the original way of doing things.

I was glad to be there to hear about it.