Nuo Yan : 9. Other (Non-technical)

No way to join the social – Is the lack of global languages support on Zune a problem, or not at all?

Nuo Yan — Fri, 16 May 2008 17:39:00 GMT

It’s been a pretty long time since the first generation of Zune came out. Microsoft wants to attract us as potential users to join the social – they made pretty good media sharing and community features so that to distinct from similar products made by other companies.

However, Zune has a very serious usability problem that even though a huge amount of users have been complaining all the time, it’s never been solved. It is the lack of support for most of the global languages.

It’s true that Zune has not yet been available globally. However, the assumption of people in North America only listen to English, French, and Spanish songs just does not make sense. There’re people originally from almost anywhere in the world reside in North America temporarily or permanently. They speak different languages and they have their entertainment needs as well. They listen to English songs, but they also listen to songs on their own languages.

You will be able to see the demand of global languages support by just doing a simple search on the Internet. You will see a huge number of complains from the date the first generation of Zune came out all the way up to the present time.

The users do not even need Microsoft to have Zune menus displayed in their languages. They just need Zune to have the ability to show their song information correctly on the device. Technically, this is really a simple task for Microsoft to do. So it’s become a do-or-not-do decision for Microsoft. But provided the fact that until the newly released version 2.5, Zune still doesn’t support most global languages, I guess Microsoft made the not-do decision. But I still hope in the upcoming third generation, they can do it.

If you now think that Microsoft has done nothing about this issue, you are wrong. In order for the users to solve this design or usability problem, Microsoft published a Knowledge Base article (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/928210/en-us?sd=zune). It simply asks the user to change all the song information in other languages to their equivalent English representation. Well, does anybody like to find some spare time to translate and change the name, album, and artist information of 10,000 songs in the media library? Or do you, as a user, want to just simply buy an ipod, iriver, or Creative zen? Microsoft tried to ask the customers to solve their own design issues. This will not work out in this user centric era!

As the result, people have songs in foreign languages are in a frustrating situation. They may like their Zunes; they may like the social; but they don’t want to see the boxes showing in the device instead of the correct characters or languages anymore! Finally, they decide to switch, they either buy a much cheaper music player but supports 20 languages including their own, or go to use an ipod.

Microsoft should really do something to solve this – provided it’s really just a matter of whether or not putting some font files in the system partition with just a little extra work.

Who are you talking to on the Internet - Your next girlfriend, or her dog?

Nuo Yan — Thu, 15 May 2008 18:00:00 GMT

Social networking web sites like MySpace are more and more popular in young people’s everyday life in recent years. People have the desire to make new friends on the Internet for various reasons, such as dating, for a relationship, for friendship, or for business networking; people also like to re-connect with old friend through such web sites.

However, identity issues have never been completely solved for years. Years ago, everybody on the Internet can claim himself or herself to be anyone (without any technical restrictions). One person can steal pictures from another person’s web site and claim to be that person. Even in the present time, there’re a lot of profiles on web sites like MySpaces are fake ones. They claim (appear) to be pretty girls or handsome boys, and attract large amounts of people to add them into their friend lists.

I’ve never done any research on this, but personally I think they may have the following goals in mind when stealing those identities and making those fake profiles.

1.    Collect relatively a large number of users’ information for various illegal business purposes (i.e. but not limited to send Junk messages or any form of advertisements). They attract a lot of users in their desired genders to be in their friend lists, so that they can more or less get some personal information from them. There are, and actually quite a few young people provide real information in this kind of web sites.

2.    To get their psychological satisfactions. Some people with psychological issues have the desire to be a completely different person online and get a lot of followers. They enjoy doing so and get the satisfactions they desire to have by doing so.

3.    Just for fun. Yes. Many people make a fake profiles just for fun.

I believe there are many other reasons that I yet to know. But this is truly a problem. How can you ensure you are chatting with your potential date but not her dog on the Internet?

Some new social network systems like Facebook provide ways to verify users identity. For example, if you want to register as a college student, you may have to use your college email address; if you want to register as a company employee, you may have to use your work email address; etc. But even so, you can still find several Bill Gates, several Steve Ballmer’s and etc in the system. People can still register for a profile freely and use a fake identity.

As the result, this kind of identity issue is really a human issue, but not a technological issue. Indeed, my answer to the previous question I posed is “ to be careful.” Know your goal when you are using these web sites and don’t abuse. Try to verify whom you are really talking to before disclosing too much information. Learn to protect yourself. Young people like teenagers usually don’t protect themselves enough when trying to get to know new people. They should take more care. And parents should provide more education to their children about protecting themselves online.

In fact, even in an ideal environment that everyone uses their own identity (can be real or imaginary but need to be their own, not stolen), there are still issues. For example, boyfriend may know girlfriend’s password so when you are talking to someone online, it’s possible that you’re really talking to her boyfriend; in the same sense, wife may know husband’s password, too.

As the result, these issues are not likely to be technically solved, at least in a short time. Think about what information you want the others to know before disclosing; and think about if there’s any unexpected person who may potentially know this information as well before disclosing. Do some verification to make sure the one you’re talking to is the one you want to talk to. If you do all these carefully, I’m positive that you won’t email me and tell me that you’re in a relationship with a dog any more.

Xiaonei and Facebook - Huge differences, but who cares?

Nuo Yan — Mon, 12 May 2008 18:01:00 GMT

Xiaonei, which is called “the Facebook of China,” has a very similar user interface as Facebook. It provides similar but simplified functionalities. While western media often compare the two and discuss about the potential competitions they may have, I don’t think in recent time there will be any big competition between them.

In many senses Xiaonei and Facebook do the same thing. They are both social network systems and are both platforms designed mainly for people who already know each other to get connected or reconnected. However, there’s really a long way to go for both of them to have a real competition with each other.

Xiaonei has absolute advantage in China. They started in as early as 2005 and accumulated a huge number of Chinese users. According to the recent news reports, they also raised a lot of money. But Facebook, on the other hand, has not even officially entered China (or just started to do so). As the result, even with the assumption Facebook gets started to enter the big Chinese market, they still need a lot of efforts to get the users to them. And many Xiaonei users may even think that Facebook copies Xiaonei, since they’ve never known Facebook before.

However, Facebook currently has absolute advantage in technology. Although Xiaonei looks really like Facebook, they don’t get the same underlying technology, even for basic features. Every single software system has problems and bugs, but Xiaonei still has enough technical problems (bugs) to give users a bad experience. They need a long way to go to be technically comparable to Facebook. As a user, I hope Xiaonei will invest more to the development team and create software with better quality. In addition to the quality issue, Facebook makes itself an open platform. They provide Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to third party. Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) can develop their own applications or plug-ins for Facebook. By doing so, the contents of Facebook have been dramatically enriched. This also help creates a better user experience.

Now you may realize why I make the point that Xiaonei and Facebook will not even in competition in a short time. They both have advantages that the other can’t catch up in a short time. Xiaonei will get more and more users and eventually succeed within China, while Facebook will continue their success in other parts of the world. I, as a user of both systems, just hope both of them can get better and provide us a great user experience. I hope Xiaonei can continually improve their technology; and Facebook can continue their efforts on globalization.

It will be fun to see what the situation is again in 5 years.

Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) Summit 2008

Nuo Yan — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 17:27:00 GMT

The upcoming summit, April 14-17, will feature a keynote from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and closing by Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie, in addition to several sessions, including topics ranging from social media for peer-to-peer support to new developments such as Silverlight mobile to Skydrive. Nearly 1,800 MVPs are planning to attend.

In conjunction with the summit, the Code Trip (www.thecodetrip.com), which launched from MIX and has been traveling around the western U.S., is an RV housed with Microsoft developer evangelists spreading the word about new technologies and meeting MVPs at each stop. The final destination of the 21 city trip is the MVP summit.

As an MVP, I'm looking forward to attending the event. I am sure that it will be great, and I can't wait to meet other attendees, including technical experts from around the world and people from Microsoft product groups.

P.S.

Data points the significant role MVPs play.

Worldwide there are more than 100 million participants in technical communities.
Of these participants there are only 4,000 MVPs located across 93 countries, spanning more than 30 languages and more than 90 Microsoft technologies.
There has been a 10 percent to 15 percent MVP audience growth in countries such as China, Russia and Korea.
Over the past few years new regions with MVPs include the Republic of Congo, Ghana, Nepal, Macedonia and Macao
In recent years, a handful of MVPs have been awarded in new categories such as MSN, Xbox, Visual Studio Tools for Office, Microsoft Dynamics and Visual Studio Team System.
MVPs are a diverse group that includes accountants, teachers, artists, government workers, engineers and technologists.

Some Thinkings In Software Piracy

Nuo Yan — Fri, 04 May 2007 17:05:00 GMT

Last Friday when I was visiting an internet portal consisting of a chat room of a specific group of people, I saw the following conversation:

A: How can I configure the system to prevent keeping getting the messages which notify me that the software I use is not genuine?

B: Just ignore the messages, as you still can use the software.

It just doesn't make sense why somebody wants to ask such question, and why the other answers like that. The answer should be "go to buy and use a genuine copy."

We all know the fact that in many places in the world there are still a lot of people using pirate software, but we realy need to think further about the reason. Are they really just can't afford to buy genuine software? No, I don't think so. The answer is not that easy. Many of the people can spend hundreds of dollars for dinner, for clothes, etc, but they just don't want to spend the same amount for a genuine copy of software.

I don't know anything about psychology, but I guess such people are using a way of thinking which is in the wrong logic. They may probably think that there's no reason to spend money to buy something which can be found elsewhere for free. But they may not know (hopefully) that doing so is just like somebody steals something and give to them to use. By doing so in a long time, this has become a using habit and people don't want to buy genuine software anymore.

As the result, software piracy is not just a problem of rich or poor. It's true that decreasing software price in specific places of the world may increase the sale; However, proper education and time are also quite necessary. This should be a collaboration of different parties. Schools should provide such kind of education in a very early stage so people know that using priate software is a kind of guilt from their early ages. People has enough money should begin using genuine software, to enjoy better services. Softwre companies should increase the quality of software, and increase the quality of the services provided for genuine users. If the users who are currently using pirate software get same functionality and same level of services or support when they are using genuine software, they would probably continue using pirate software because it's free. Governments also need to provide support on policies for genuine software. Pirate software will not disappear in a minute, so we also need some time. If you know some of your friends may be using pirate software, tell them why using genuine software is important; and tell them how they can benefit from doing so. If they can't afford using genuine copy, there are also a lot of free software and evaluation software available. Pirate one are not their only choice.

All the things above are just some personal ideas, the concepts are not new and most people may already know. My intend is just to let even more people, especially those who are currently using pirate software but actually can afford genuine software, know the importance and benefits of using genuine software. Using pirate software is not free, but it costs much (guilt, illegal in some places, etc). As the result, let's help everyone around us stop using pirate software; let's help make the software industry better.

Some Media Interviews

Nuo Yan — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 05:28:00 GMT

On Technet Blog IT Managers Connection:

http://blogs.technet.com/cdnitmanagers/archive/2007/04/17/interview-part-1-nuo-yan-windows-shell-user-mvp.aspx

http://blogs.technet.com/cdnitmanagers/archive/2007/04/18/interview-part-2-nuo-yan-windows-shell-user-mvp.aspx

http://blogs.technet.com/cdnitmanagers/archive/2007/04/19/interview-part-3-nuo-yan-windows-shell-user-mvp.aspx

Also can be found at:

http://www.stephenibaraki.com/cips/v47/nuo_yan.html

http://www.npanet.org/public/interviews/careers_interview_267.cfm

On Microsoft.com:

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/events/mvpsummit/docs/MVPYanNCS.doc

Microsoft Recognizes Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs) at 2007 MVP Global Summit

Nuo Yan — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 06:46:00 GMT

Below is the news release from Microsoft PressPass. I will be at the conference in March. I also look forward to seeing my fellow MVPs.

About 10 years ago when I first had a computer, MVPs in the technical communities helped me a lot for learning how to use a computer. About 5 years ago I thought I had enough knowledge to help others, then I did so and was later awarded as an MVP.

For about 4 years as an MVP, I have been given great support by Microsoft for my technical knowledge enrichment, educations and careers. I've attended every Global Summit ever since I became an MVP. I love the conference a lot. In the Summit, there are usually a lot of opportunities of seeing new technology, meeting corporate executives and networking with peer MVPs.

See you in the Summit!

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Microsoft Recognizes Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs)
at 2007 MVP Global Summit

Gathering acknowledges the technical community contributions of more than 3,500 individuals

REDMOND, Wash. —Feb. 20, 2007 — In the wake of the largest product launch in the company’s history, Windows Vista, 2007 Office system and Exchange Server 2007, Microsoft Corp. will host the 2007 MVP Global Summit. This annual event recognizes the value that Microsoft designated MVPs around the world provide in helping to make its products successful while honoring their contributions to the objective exchange of knowledge and their dedication to enriching the Microsoft user experience.

MVPs are individuals recognized by Microsoft as outstanding technical community leaders who make an exceptional impact on the IT industry by actively, and voluntarily, sharing their expertise in technical communities worldwide. Recent examples of the MVP influence on Microsoft’s products and technology users include:

· More than 2000 MVPs participated in the Windows Vista beta program

· On average, a newsgroup posting by an MVP will receive more than 43,000 views

· In 2006, the MVP community contributed more than 300 Knowledge Base (KB) articles in 7 languages across all Microsoft products.

“Every year, the MVP Award program continues to evolve to reflect the diversity in today’s technical communities,” said Sean O’Driscoll, general manager of Community Support and MVP, Microsoft. “This year is no different. The MVPs serve as an inspiration, sharing their expertise and passion for technology communities with an unyielding drive to help others.”

Scheduled for March 12 – 15, the 2007 MVP Global Summit will be held in Seattle, WA at the Washington State Convention Center and at Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond, WA. The event will kick off with a keynote address by Microsoft Chairman, Bill Gates. More information can be found at http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/MVPsummit.

About the Microsoft MVP Program

Microsoft began the MVP Awards in 1993 as a way to recognize members of the general public who devoted their time and technical expertise to helping users in various online technical forums. Over time the program evolved, and today awards are given to members of technical communities worldwide for their contributions to traditional communities (such as public newsgroups, forums, third-party websites, user groups, book authors, event speakers) and emerging forums (such as web boards, blogs, and wikis). More information about the MVP Award and the 2007 MVPs can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/mvp. More information on Microsoft technical communities can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/communities.

About Microsoft

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

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Windows Vista and 2007 Office System RTM

Nuo Yan — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 13:09:00 GMT

Get ready to them!

2007 Office System is Golden: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2006/nov06/11-062007OfficeRTMPR.mspx

Windows Vista Express Upgrade: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/getready/expressupgrade.mspx