The Richter Scale^®

Last December (2006) I needed to get about 15,000 more miles on my American Airlines account so I could requalify for Executive Platinum status for this year, as I like the free first class upgrades AA offers its top level frequent flyers. As I was going to be in San Francisco for a patent conference at the end of November 2006, I figured I could use the west coast as a launching point to do a so-called “mileage run” and rack up some miles by doing a quick trip across the Pacific.

The original plan had been to visit Tokyo for a full week of both sightseeing and business prospecting, and then head home to Bonaire. However after I had already made all my plans I was informed I needed to go to Taipei, Taiwan, for a business meeting, right in the middle of my Tokyo stay. That basically ate almost 3 days out of my Tokyo plans, but it turned out to be a fun adventure.

For two of the two and half days I spent in Tokyo, I hired a private tour guide, Junko Matsuda, to take me around. Junko, who runs Jun’s Tokyo Discovery Tours, had been recommended to me by someone at http://www.FlyerTalk.com, and what a treasure she was! If anyone wants a personal tour and explanation of everywhere and anywhere in Tokyo, consider hiring Junko - she can be reached by e-mail at me2@gb3.so-net.ne.jp or phone at +81-3-5477-6021 (or mobile at +81-90-7734-0079). In the links below to my photos, Junko is the Japanese woman that appears in them with some frequency. I also gave her a camera to use during our tour to take photos of me (since I rarely ever appear in photos as I am always taking them).

I also hired another set of guides - Naoto Nakamura and Eizaburo Yoshino (see their page here) - as part of a group tour of the famed Tsukiji Fish Market. As my body had not yet adjusted to the time zone, a 4am meeting for that tour worked out fine, and we had only one other participant on the tour. The fish market tour was excellent, with both Naoto and Eizaburo highly knowledgeable of the workings at the fish market.

I spent nearly a full day in transit between Tokyo and Taipei and back for a 1 hour meeting, but we (my friends/business associates and I) had a good local guide in our off time in Taipei, and got to visit Taipei 101 (the tallest building in the world at that time) and a Taipei night market, as well as several local dining establishments where we feasted on all sorts of delights, including pig’s intestines (tasted a lot better than it sounds).

I am nearly a half year late getting the 946 hand-selected pictures from my travels posted on-line because I had grand aspirations of annotating each one of them with a description.

I was off to a good start (see here and here) using the Photo Gallery software that came with my blogging system, but the scope of the effort, which involved both getting the photos to the right size as well as upload and annotate them, quickly overwhelmed me. I got about half way through my first full day in Tokyo doing that (again, look here and here) - so only about 150 photos out of 946 annotated.

But with a holiday weekend on Bonaire this weekend, and the mostly enjoyable use of Adobe’s Lightroom software, I decided to make simple web-based photo galleries instead and finally get the photos where folks could see them before they became too outdated. They don’t have any contextual annotation other than camera and exposure information, but hopefully those viewing the images will enjoy the subjects almost as much for their sheer interest (and in some cases, beauty or novelty) without the commentary I have not had time to add.

Here are the links to the photos:

- Traveling From California to Tokyo and Arriving in Tokyo - December 2-3, 2006

- Touring Tokyo with Junko (Asakusa, Kitchen District, Akihabara, Imperial Palace, Ginza) - December 4, 2006

- Tsukiji Fish Market in Tokyo - December 5, 2006

- Taipei, Taiwan with friends/business associates Eric, Isabelle, Bryan, and Ivan - December 5-6, 2006

- Return from Taipei to Tokyo (Roppongi) followed by another day in Tokyo with Junko (Harajuku, Meiji, Shibuya, War Memorial) - December 7-8, 2006

If you have any questions about any of them, give a link to the photo in the comments on this blog entry with your question, and I will answer you.

Well, in addition to now being closely associated with discussions on the future of HD-DVD and Blu-ray standards, in particular with respect to the adult entertainment industry, a recent interview of mine has made it to the web (not YouTube yet, though).

Take a look at this clip, shot during a media luncheon at Pat Meier-Johnson’s Lunch@Piero’s event. It’s a five minute interview dealing with commentary on multimedia convergence and the future of tangible media (e.g. CDs, DVDs).

Outsiders often don’t quite understand the relation of Bonaire to Holland. Some assume our island is part of Holland, but it isn’t at present. But it will be next year as the Netherlands Antilles get dissolved.

What Bonaire is at present is one of five islands in the country of the Netherlands Antilles (the other four being Curacao, Sint Maarten, Saba, and St. Eustatius), and the Netherlands Antilles are in turn part of the Dutch kingdom (or more appropriately, Queendom).

And our monarch here is Her Royal Majesty, Queen Beatrix of the Royal House of Oranje (hope I got that all right).

Queen Beatrix is paying Aruba (another country under the Dutch kingdom) and the Netherlands Antilles a visit this week.

A couple of days ago she arrived with much fanfare on Bonaire - her first stop in the Netherlands Antilles. She was greeted by members of the Antillean government as well as Bonaire’s own Lt. Governor. Because of my work on Bonaire Insider, my partner Susan Davis and I were granted a press pass and were able to take a fair number of pictures (see here and here) and trail along with her entourage for several of her stops on the island. And then yesterday, I met the Queen personally as one of the artists whose works were on display at the exhibition she opened at Kas di Arte.

That’s me handing the Queen a small token of appreciation from Linda and myself (photo by Herman Leeuwen).

What struck me the most about the Queen’s visit is the genuine love, admiration, and enthusiasm her subjects on Bonaire have for her. There was regular cheering whereever she showed up, and a real sense of pride among all the people that yes, this was their Queen.

I must say that Queen Beatrix certainly exuded an amazing amount of charm and friendliness. One look at her and her warm smile, and you just sensed that she was a nice person. Or at least that was my first gut reaction. But our Dutch house guests (one of whom is a big fan of the Queen) say that perception is very true. What also amazed our house guests and us alike was how freely she mingled with the crowds. While there were body guards in evidence, they were typically at a distance, giving the Queen free reign (pun intended).

My daugter Krystyana (holding the flag) was one of many of the local school children greeting the Queen at the airport when she arrived. The Queen just walked out of the airport luggage area by herself before Krystyana had time to register who it was, apparently (photo by Susan Davis).

Certainly Queen Beatrix does not have the power of someone like my (as an American) president, George W. Bush, but she does seem to have nearly universal approval, something Bush does not, and for me that was a very stark contrast.

Queen Beatrix left Bonaire for Sint Maarten this morning and life is returning to normal here on Bonaire once again.

I’ve been busy the last couple of weeks with my latest project - a news blog called Bonaire Insider. The idea for Bonaire Insider came about over a month ago when my business partner in NetTech N.V., Susan Davis, and I decided we wanted to get fresher news on the home page of the Bonaire tourism information web site, InfoBonaire, which we own and operate.

It took some intense programming, as well as a lot of exploratory work with the same blogging software which I use for this blog (Expression Engine from pMachine), but two days ago we launched Bonaire Insider.

Among the cool features are the ability for people to sign up to get automatic copies of new posts to the Bonaire Insider news blog, integration of the RSS news feed from the site on the InfoBonaire home page, and integration with Google for running context sensitive ads (to help at least partially offset the costs of running the new site).

We’re still working on generating our internal style guide for news items, but it seems to be coming along well - we’ve had over 10,000 page views in just the first couple of days. Not a bad start for a small site about a small Caribbean island.

While I am getting fonder of Expression Engine, the software which drives this blog, the RSS/ATOM feeds the software generates leave a lot to be desired. I have therefore taken the bold plunge to syndicate The Richter Scale Blog and The Richter Scale Articles via FeedBurner.

If you are looking at my site right now, scroll down and you’ll see a much expanded list of blog readers and aggregators now supported at the end of the column on the left side of the web page.

The other thing that FeedBurner offers is the ability to subscribe to a blog via e-mail - that feature too can be found at left. Not sure how well it works, but as I post here in bursts, that might be a good way for casual blog readers to keep up with the latest posts.

Links to my blogs at FeedBurner can be found at:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheRichterScale (this blog)

and

http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheRichterScaleArticles (my articles)

At many tradeshows, vendors are often willing to give away samples of their products or at least sell them at a much reduced price, for a variety of reasons.

For example, when it’s the end of the show and they don’t want to lug everything back to the office or even have to pack it all back up. In this category, I happened to stop by the stand of MCA / Manhattan Cellular, a French company which makes incredibly nice looking leather cases for mobile phones, iPods, and Sony PSPs. After admiring their wares (which they were slowly packing away since the show was closing in less than a half hour, and getting ready to walk away, the beautiful French woman doing the packing asked me if I wanted one or more of the cases. I ended up walking away with a great white leather case for my video iPod, and several PSP cases (one for each of the kids and PSPs in my family - mine, my son’s, and my daughter’s). I am staring at that nice iPod case here in my hotel room as I write this entry.

I also ended up buying a collection of Pelican (hardened plastic) cases that Pelican staff didn’t want to ship back to their office, at about 60% off list.

Another reason a company might part with their wares is because you have a need, and ask for a sample.

Again, I experienced this twice. My issue was that my new Sony VAIO TX-690P notebook needed to have its system restore data backed up onto two DVD discs, and I only had one in my hotel room. At an evening event I came across Imation, a well known maker of computer media. When I explained my plight they were nice enough to open up a package of DVD-R media and give me a disc. They also gave me their press kit on one of the cool USB flash wristbands they are now producing, as well as a sample of their new scratch proof CD-R media. And yes, the Imation ForceField CD-R media really does appear to be scratch proof.

However, I found I goofed - what was back in my room was a DVD+R blank, and not a DVD-R as I originally thought. While it might not make a difference, I figured the Sony DVD writing software for generating the restore discs would prefer consistent media types, so the following day I stumbled across Sky Media Manufacturing, which produces color displays (LCD and Plasma) as well as blank optical media, under the Swisstec name (CompUSA sells their products, although I had never heard of them before). I asked if they might have a loose DVD-R disc, and they just gave me a package of 20 of them instead. Greatly appreciated. And thanks to Imation and Sky Media, I was able to safely back-up my new notebook that same evening.

Exhibitors also give away product for special performances, typically during presentations they are giving. Such performances including yelling the loudest, jump up and down the most, parroting answers to posed questions, or doing other embarassing things. Occasionally just being at the right place at the right time works too, but that’s rare. There’s also the not-so-rare raffle drawing.

Finally, folks might just give you a product because they are giving everyone products. Typically this only works if you’re among the first ones there, as no matter what the product is, if it’s free, it’s soon gone. I don’t recall having good enough timing for anything like

And all that is in addition to other interesting hand outs, like pens, prop-up plastic things to hold up your PMP or MP3 device, the occasional t-shirt (not so many of those this year), pins, buttons, and notepads, never mind bags to carry brochures and stuff in. I hesitantly accepted a $5 Starbucks gift card from one vendor at a press event, and completely bypassed another stand where cash bribes (not much, just a few dollars) were being proffered - cash crosses the line into the tasteless and unethical if you ask me.

So, here I was, a couple of weeks ago or so, starting to get ready for the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2006), mapping out all the things I want to see and follow up on, and the Consumer Electronics Association sends out a notice that it has pretty much discovered out all the cool products at CES 2006.

The problem with this is the show doesn’t even start for another two weeks, and even then, the CEA is basing its decision based on written and photographic materials submitted by the so-called Honorees, not actual product, as best I can tell. Better yet, entrants (who can submit nominations as early as August 29th) have to pay a program fee to submit their “innovative” product information - fees run from $225 to $950 per entry, depending on CEA membership status, date of submission, and whether the company will be exhibiting at CES.

The entries are judging in early October, and the so-called “honorees” announced on November 15th. Considering that most new products announced at such shows are not immediately ready to ship, this seems awfully premature. The whole process is suspect if you take into account the fee structures and submission dates.

But these are not the only Awards related to the show. There are others too.... For example, there’s something called the Technology Is A Girl’s Best Friend Diamond Showcase. Ahem?

And let’s not forget the “CNET’s Best of CES Awards 2006” (submission deadline of December 1st - a scant four and half WEEKS before the show even starts).

Used to be, you would go to a show, and then learn a week or two later what the best products shown were. Contenders for the honors did not have to pay fees other than exhibit fees, and judging could be based on tangible products instead of promotional puff pieces on paper. Not any more apparently.

The closest to a during or post-show award is the “Scientific American Innovations People’s Choice Award” for which attendees can vote on the show floor, but the rules page for this award appears particularly void of information (at least to me).

My suggestion to people who may actually care what the best new products are: Avoid all these pre-show awards judging farces, and wait for the post show summary from sources which: 1) do not derive revenue from submissions and 2) have also touched the products in question before issuing their proclamations of greatness for particular products.

This one is simple. While it’s interesting sometimes to see who else is being sent the press release I just received, I’d much rather not having to scroll through pages of addressees to see the press release or message I’ve just been sent.

Please learn to use the BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) address line in your e-mail software if you are sending out a press release to a list of people. Friends don’t let friends mass e-mail on the CC: or To: lines of e-mails.

Perhaps this is a really an issue with all incoming e-mail, but when one gets hundreds of press releases and product announcements the information overload is significant. As is the data volume.

I want to quickly peruse an e-mail and figure out what to do with it. For that reason, as well as because of system security, I use Qualcomm’s Eudora e-mail software, with the Internet Explorer HTML rendering function turned off. I have seen too often with friends and clients and associates where using Microsoft’s Outlook and Outlook Express or Internet Explorer have resulted in them getting infected with a virus or infested with spyware or malware.

This also means, however, that in my e-mail software, I will not see any remotely referenced images (nor will my opening of messages automatically tell some marketer out there that I have seen their e-mail). Eudora also has very basic HTML rendering capability. While it will typically show me formatted (italic, bold, etc.) text, it doesn’t do JavaScript or embedded graphics, and HTML-embedded images with graphical text messages are pretty much completely non-viewable.

The benefit of this is I can quickly read an e-mail without having to wait for images to load. The downside is that if some feels that they need to present their material to me in a way which emphasizes style (pretty looking text and images) over substance (just the facts, using text), I won’t see it. In a way this is actually a good filter - if there’s no text I can read because the entire message is pure HTML, then I typically assume the sender has nothing much to really say and I ignore the e-mail. I also manage to avoid a lot of pr0n spam this way - I just don’t get to see the pictures because Eudora does not show them.

So, if you want to get a message across to me, do it in plain text, not with whiz-bang graphics and pizzazz - that is lost on me and my simple e-mail software. And, text messages are also much, much smaller - saves on storage and bandwidth. And if you really need to send me a product image instead of a link to a page with such content, then send me an attachment, and keep it small.