Like I said in a post in this forum, I am not very keen on the Shanghai Expo, as the 400,000,000,000 RMB spent on it could have been spent somewhere else for better purposes.

Anyway, for the ordinary people, especially those who haven't traveled to too many places in the world, it is a good way to see the world without having to travel all over the world.

The two pavilions we want to see the most are the China Pavilion, which has been having so much hype for the past half a year till now, and the Saudi Arabia Pavilion, which is the most expensive pavilion in this expo and boasts the world's largest IMAX cinema in it.

Performances (the pavilion you see beside the road is the Luxembourg Pavilion).


Holland Pavilion.


Inside the Spain Pavilion, the "big baby" who can smile and cry and move his head receives a lot of attention and applause. It is one of the highlights of this visit.


Spain Pavilion, which is made of a lot of wicker. We didn't know what it was, when I saw it on a bus from the Asian zone to the European zone. When we came back, we visited it. This photo was taken when we were lining up for the Belgium-EU Pavilion.


Belgium-EU Pavilion. Have you noticed one is a man, and the other is a woman?


Chocolate beans, inside the Belgium-EU Pavilion.


Chocolate, inside the Belgium-EU Pavilion.


Machine that cuts the diamond, inside the Belgium-EU Pavilion. It is said that diamonds were given for free to lucky visitors there, and that's one of the reasons we visited it. Unluckily, all we got was a small cookie, not even a chocolate bar, but anyone, it is still the only freebie we got in the expo.


India Pavilion.


Saudi Arabia Pavilion. We didn't have the chance to see what's inside. I guess this is the most popular pavilion of this expo. More than three hours wait to get in - that's crazy! When we first got there, it was before lunch. Seeing so many people there in line, we decided to go somewhere else first. When we came back at 5:30 pm, there were as many people as before. So we decided to give up. Maybe I can see it some other time, if I come here again.


China Pavilion. It is the only position that requires reservation, and you can only get it very early the day of your visit. When we arrived, it was about 9:30, and we didn't have the chance to get the reservation. One of my American friends received an interview from a local news station, in which he expressed his regret for being unable to see it. As it will still be open after the expo, so I can visit it some time at my own convenience.


More pictures will be uploaded...

Click here.

The Shanghai Expo is going to start on May 1. Who are coming here to have a visit?

If you are planning to come here, remember to book a hotel first. Hotel prices will increase by a big amount if you book during the expo (May 1 to October 31). May 1 to May 3 is the Labor Day holiday in China, and October 1 to October 7 is the National Day holiday in China. So you'd better not come here during these two holidays, unless you like being surrounded by a lot of people.

China Pavilion

On March 23, 2010, Google (Guge in Chinese pinyin, meaning song in/of the valley) finally decided to stop its search services in Mainland China, redirecting Mainland Chinese users to Google Hong Kong site.

When people type www.google.cn or www.g.cn, they will be redirected to www.google.com.hk, where they can switch to Traditional Chinese or English.

I am uploading some videos showing the life of the Chinese people.

Double-click the video to get more information, e.g. description of the video.

Wudang Kung Fu



Taichi



Ground Calligraphy

Google Mobile App 3.5.48 was released on January 14.

In this version, the search by voice feature finally works for mandarin. Despite the dispute over whether Google should pull out from China, Google updated its applications for mobile phones.

I had dinner with a friend of mine today. I told him that many Chinese netizens left flowers in Google sites in China, and he said that he seldom uses Google. Then I gave a short demo of Google Mobile App in my cell phone, and then helped him install Google Maps. It works! Then he joked that probably he would send flowers to Google, too.

Picture from the Economist:


Good luck, Google!

HP and Microsoft Simplify Technology Environments With Solutions Built on New Infrastructure-to-Application Model

What a world!

Has anyone ever tried Google Wave? I think it is one of Google most successful applications.

It is both a "new online communications tool" and a "document collaboration tool". Actually it is more of the latter to me. You can find many video tutorials, some of them last several hours.

There is a very short introductory video to Google Wave. Search "Google Wave Overview" by "Google" on Youtube. You will learn the basics of it.

A user guide is also available at http://completewaveguide.com/.

Is anyone using Google Voice?

It is amazing!

Cool features:



Now, I can talk with friends from the U.S. without worrying about costs. And I can send SMS to all the numbers worldwide.

If you have a Google Voice number, call me.

In the past, when I replaced my cell phone, I had to manually input the numbers of my contacts to the new phone.

Now with Google Sync, I can synchronize my contacts in the phone with my Google contacts. Even if I lose my phone, I can download the information of my contacts from Google to my phone.

There is a synchronization feature in BlackBerry Desktop Manager, too. However, I exported the contacts as a CSV file, made some changes to the contacts, and then tried to imported the contacts back to my phone. After I did this, there was no contact in my phone at all. Everything contact in my phone was gone.

Then I remember that I have synchronized my phone contacts with my Google contacts. I logged in to my Google account, and then exported the accounts as a CSV file. I didn't try to synchronize my Google contacts with my BlackBerry accounts, as if I had done that, there would have been no way to get back my contacts. My Google contacts would be deleted, too.

So what I did was to export the contacts as a CSV file to my computer first, and then used some Excel tricks to make the changes that I wanted. Then I imported the CSV file into my Google account. After that, I did a synchronization between my phone and Google. Every contact was back in my phone.

Neither the BlackBerry Desktop Device nor the Google Sync documentation is clear enough. I'm going to write a short user manual for Google Sync and send it to Google.

There are some challenges that you might meet when you use Google Sync or Synchronization in BlackBerry Desktop Manager.

1. Long phone numbers, especially those with country and area code, will be converted to scientific notation in the CSV file. You can imagine what will happen after you reimport the CSV file to Google or BlackBerry.

2. Sometimes, the first name and last name are in the wrong order. In Chinese, people put their family name before their given name, therefore, if a person is called Li Kaifu, Kaifu is his family name, and Li is his family name. When I copied these numbers into my BlackBerry address book, this contact's family name became Kaifu, and his given name became Li. If you have more than 200 contacts, manually correcting the names will drive you crazy.