stlplace

Category: Fun

  • iPhone first impression

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    I tried the real iPhone this afternoon at West County Apple Store. Obviously the store is more crowded because of all the iPhone craziness. I played the “photo”, and “phone” functions, the Youtube and iPod seemed not working very well.

    To use the phone to call somebody, I need to hit the only “home” button, touch the “phone” icon, then get the keypad on touch screen. Yes, I dialed my own cell phone. It worked. Interestingly, I found that demo phone’s area code is 408, the area code of San Jose 🙂

    Keso had a good comment about Steve’s “iPhone stategy”, he said amid all the competitions (other cell phone makers add MP3 player to phones), the best defense is offense. I think Steve at least won the “most hype” award for this product launch 🙂

  • Yahoo Photos service to close

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    I read it from Keso’s blog, although I have not got mail from Yahoo itself. Guess Keso is a much important customer to Yahoo 🙂

    Anyway, Yahoo graciously offers serveral migration tools to other sites, such its very own Flickr and Shutterfly.

    So guys (gals), hurry up, don’t want until Sept. 20 to migrate your precious photos.

  • Yi Jianlian Goes to Milwaukee

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    (Update June 29) It’s not surprising that Team Yi (Yi Jianlian, his agent and advisors) are not happy with being selected by Milwaukee, accoring to this Chinese news. They even threatened “not come to Milwaukee”. Duh? Please note in this business of NBA, even super star like Steve Nash does not get to choose the team, he was traded from Dallas to Phoenix couple years ago, unwillingly. My advice to Yi is “be professional” about this basketball thing.

    (Original June 28) That’s a city 80 miles north of Chicago. I saw the short interview after NBA draft at ESPN, it appears Yi can speak some English. I did watch couple of his games in this April (CBA final, against Wang Zhizhi’s Ba’yi Rocket), Yi’s team Guangdong tiger lost to Wang Zhizhi and Co. Yi is a few years younger than Yao, more agile, and Yi is power forward (7 inches).

    I bet most Chinese are not familar with Milwaukee. It’s a decent size city in Wisconsin, the diary land of USA (so consider it as Inner Mongolia or Hei Long Jiang of China). It has two products kind famous: Harley Davidson motor cycle and Miller beer (the No. 2 US brewer after Budweiser). So in a way it’s very similar to St. Louis, which has Budweiser and used to make McDonald Douglass aircraft.

    harley davidson
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  • Fail to launch: Heelys withdraws secondary

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    (Update June 29) Motley fool ran an article on this. I agree what they said.

    (Original June 28) Yeah, they decided to withdraw the already-cut-in-half secondary offering, according to Business Wire.

    This is the first time I saw a company withdraw a secondary offering, because of lack of interest (from buyers). I did see some companies withhold IPO due to market conditions.

  • Getting Married: US version

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    In about a month, I am going to come back to China and get married. Since I have been in the US for almost 10 years, attended couple weddings, I have some ideas about the financial side of the wedding here.

    Registry: when I first heard of it in 2000, I thought this is probably one of the best ideas about “giving gifts”. Here is how it works: the bride and groom made up a “wish list” of the things they want, give it to Wal-Mart, Target, Macy’s or Amazon, also they notify their friends about this. Their friends will buy the stuff from the list. But on second thought, after I made to couple weddings, I feel Chinese way of giving “red envelop with money inside” is better. Because sometimes the couple really don’t know what they want, also they can not expect everyone pay $100 for gifts, so they end up with many $20 things which are not really useful. On the other hand, with the cash (small amount putting together), a couple can do the things they want.

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  • Deal at Shoebuy: 20% off

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    Follow this link to get 20% off at shoebuy.com, I believe it does not have restrictions on the type of shoes (hint: Crocs) you can buy. This is not an affiliate link (a.k.a., I am not receiving any referral fee from this).

  • T-Shirt Refresh

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    Got some new T-shirts lately. My current T-shirts are mostly a few years old, some can even date back to my college years at Rolla, that’s almost 8 or 9 years old! I decided to retire some of those that no longer fit.

    I got my first new shirt shortly after I came back (in May), at Banana Republic. It was $9.99. It felt very comfortable. While I stop by BR after that, I intentionally hold it because I saw plenty of same shirts there and they will further discount. Today (a month later) I went there the same thing cost $5.99, so I bought two more. It’s made in Singapore, by the way.

    Last few weeks I also bought some shirts at Aeropostale (ARO), for $5.99 a piece. This evening at Galleria I stepped into Jimmy’Z the first time, they have some nice shirts on sale, so I bought 2 again, at $9.99 per piece. Note Jimmy’Z is subsidiay of Aero, while Aero core customers are 11 to 18, Jimmy’Z focus on 18 to 25 years old (as you can read the Summary of Aero at Google Finance).

    Aeropostale logo

  • More about Nike NKE

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    I wrote about Nike (NKE) a while ago during NBA finals. I joked about Nike is the loser in this NBA finals because their super star James’ team lost. Obviously in the real world Nike is doing very well, especially internationally (Europe and Asia, specificialy China). Here is their quarterly report. This is not surpising consider my mom, who is not into fashions or sports, asked me “buy a pair of Nike shoes” for my 12 years old niece. Note when she talked about the Nike shoes, she was referring to the shoes in sneakers category. Just like when people talked about “google something”, they are referring to “search something on the web”.

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  • St. Louis water tastes best

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    From Associated Press: “Raise your glass and celebrate. A glass of tap water, that is.

    The US Conference of Mayors says St. Louis has the best tasting city water in America. More than 90 American cities submitted tap water to be judged on taste, clarity and aroma.

    The conference reduced the field to 15. Celebrity judges performed a blind taste test. And then hundreds of mayors chose from among five finalists.

    St. Louis came out on top today, besting Toledo; Colorado Springs (in Colorado); Long Beach and Anaheim in California.”

  • Another Milestone for GOOG

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    Today marks another milestone for the search giant Google, its market capital (outstanding shares times the stock price) exceeded Warren Buffett’s good old Berkshire Hathaway’s market cap $165.71 B at one point (when Google stock hit today’s high at $534.99), GOOG closed at $527.42 (with a market cap of $164.32 B).

    BRK.A is a holding companies of some well known companies, such as Geico and Diary Queen. Just think Wall Street values Google as valuable as all these (50?) very well managed traditional companies putting together, are we seeing another bubble here?