Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon

(Read Last Post for class, this one is just extra extra)
Well I've been meaning to do this, especially since my blog subject is about six degrees.
Anyhow, here we go...

Peter Chow -> Kevin Bacon

- Peter Chow is the son of Edvin Chow, CEO of Exact Grow Ltd.

- Edvin Chow is friends with and partner of William Stokes, founder of Stokes Publishing Company.

- Stokes Publishing Company published and produced books for children book writer Betsy Franco. This connection would've been a stretch, if not for the fact that the books Stokes Publishing published for Mrs. Franco are books paired with calculators (these books teaches kids how to count and do math), and the calculators were produced by my father's company. Through Stokes, my dad met Mrs. Franco, and they became friends.

- Betsy Franco is the mother of actor James Franco (Green Goblin of Spiderman 3 (2007)).

- James Franco was in The Wicker Man (2006) with Diane Delano.

- and...Diano Delano was in The Wild River (1994) with none other than the extraordinary Kevin Bacon.

There we have it! 6 degrees to Kevin Bacon!

Now how did I come upon this fabulous but trivial connection? Well during spring cleaning one day at Chow's residence (spring of 2003?), I happened to stumble upon an old Christmas card. The ones with the family photo on it. This one has 3 guys on it, next to I think a Christmas tree. When I saw it I thought it was an advertisement until I saw it was addressed to my dad.

"Dear Edvin, Merry Christmas from us and the boys. Betsy & Doug Franco." (paraphrased, because I don't remember if it said Merry Christmas, best wishes, Happy holiday, or a combination of)

Now it wouldn't have been anything, if the guy in the middle didn't look awfully like James Franco. At the time Spiderman (2002) is still fresh in my head ya see, especially since I'm, though I don't like to admit it in public, a fanboy. So I hustled over to my dad and was like:

Me: "who're these people."
Dad nonchalantly responds: "Oh, that's Betsy's boys."
Me: "Is one of her son an actor?"
Dad: "Yeah, I think Betsy mentioned it once, is he famous?"
Me: "he was just in a movie that grossed more than $400 million"
Dad: "Oh" (goes back to doing whatever he was doing)

Now I knew my dad has a friend named Betsy from California that he did business with, I never knew she was James Franco's mom. At this point I'm pretty much in full fanboy mode, and went online and told all my fanboy friends. "HA, I is connected to Green Goblin yo! BOOYAH!" (This was 5 years ago btw, I'm slightly more mature now. At least I don't say booyah as loudly anymore.)

As for proof? I'll need to find the card, which is in the abyss known as my closet, but when I do, I'll update this blog post or something.

That's it for now, back to the grind. Happy October 29th everyone.

Virtual Handshake

I'm terribly sorry for this late post. My broadband connection has been ADHDing the entire weekend, and then BANG! the power adapter to the router decided to take a dirt nap. Its a miracle that I can even write this blog in time.

Moving on...

I used to belong to an underground Japanese manga translation group, maximum7. We all met online from different corners of the world every week to translate and produce English versions of Japanese comics. Most of us, if not all, never met face to face. The recruitment was done online, the work was done at home and sent out to an editor through the web, who then releases it online.

Everything was done virtually. Everything can be done virtually, and now-a-days, that includes networking.

This leads to me to the article I was reading about virtual networking. The Six Degrees of Cooperation by Yasmin Gharemani, which reminds me a lot about this article about Lois Weisberg that I read earlier this semester. It's all about who you know. And Now-a-days, that doesn't always mean you've met face-to-face.

Sites like LinkedIn, and Facebooks are now the future of networking. Just like search engines, these will and some already are integrated into major corporations. These applications can maximize firm wide resources. Contacts and buyers can be shared. Talents can be found. There won't be redundant hirings, because someone within a firm may already have the skills to do a job. It saves money and increase revenue. Theoretically of course.

Why only theoretically? because this is still untested water. Sure networking sites has been around for a while now. Everyone knows how to use them, and everyone do use them. However, business networking is in a totally different ballpark. There needs to be guidelines, and incentives. The application must be able to protect contacts as well as share them. Concerns of the employees must be addressed. The potentials of these apps are great, but these points must be taken into considerations before implementations.

Okay...onto other topics.

Redskins. Holy crap did they get reamed today. I hope they finally realize how bad they are and finally shape up, instead of continuing to coast, like the last 7 games. (I'm still a fan! for now anyway)

Well that's it for now, hopefully next week I won't have as much trouble getting my blog published. =P

*edited 10:00am 10/29
because I published the wrong draft v_v; GIVE ME A BREAK virtual GOD...sheesh

AVENGERS ASSEMBLE!

Whenever Captain America utters that famous line in the Marvel comic world, its usually followed by members of the Avengers instantly appearing out of the woodworks to battle whatever current baddies is in town. As if magically Captain America's voice brings forth these members from everywhere around the world.

Of course its probably just a communication device Iron Man built for him, and the magically appearing might be because the Avengers are all superpowered heroes.

It used to seem fantastic being able to communicate to people from around the globe instantly, without delay and without a phone, its stuff only reality in comic books or films. The technology was there, its just expensive and usually unwieldy. Bluetooth? Wifi? Skype? They didn't exist.

Now I can do video conferencing with my friends in Hong Kong, Australia, California, Canada all at once, and all from the comfort of my room. I'm not Captain America, or some ridiculously paid CEO. I'm just a in between job, 23 years old college student with a laptop.

VoIP programs like Skypes and other similar programs are bringing communication to the next level, from boardrooms to the battlefields. Creating real life situation where a military commander can call upon his troops and "assemble" them in a matter of minutes via video screens and/or speakers. While at the same time businesses can conduct their negotiation from different continents using the same technology.

I'm just in awe of what technology can allow us to do today, and what it can lead to in the future.

Now if only I can get my hands on Captain America's Shield and I'll be set.

Ego Surfing

I didn't know there was a term for it, but that's just me being naive. We're in the internet age. There's a term for everything, whether you need one or not. Just look at UrbanDictionary.com, you get everything from "pwn" to "leave-britney-alone." Which kinda already prove the point I'm gonna try to make in this post. You can find everything on the internet, E-VE-RY-thing.

Which brings me back to ego surfing or googling yourself. Anyone who's proficient enough to type a search query in any search engine has done this before. It's pretty fun to find out what people with your name are doing out there in the world. I share my name with doctors, a martial art master, CTOs, an actor, an artist, a professor, and the list goes on. I remember when I first googled myself, around 1999?, there was no more than a handful of Peter Chow's on the internet and maybe 10 pages of search result. 8 years later? Google throws me a hefty number of 2,280,000 search results and shows me that someone has registered both the domain name http://www.peterchow.com/ and http://www.peterchow.org/. That's a huge leap, that's mind-boggling expansion. That's the kind of growth in information we're facing today, where everything is becoming searchable. Our lives are now being digitally documented. Pictures, blogs, videos, and profiles.

During the NBA season I probably will never agree with him, but Mark Cuban makes an excellent observation that I found humorous. "By the time [my daughter] starts dating, I won't need to greet her dates at the door with a shotgun, I will have a digital history of the poor kid and know pretty much everything about him, before I meet him."

That's the truth. Anyone who's determining enough can find just about anything you or I have ever put on the internet. That includes anything ranging from what you bought last on eBay to a topographical rendering of your neighborhood made from the address you entered into one of those stupid "Get free Ipod" advertisement (I'm almost 100% sure 80-90% of internet user have done this once in their internet usage lifetime).

Which is why I don't agree with the article Seth Godin of Fast Company wrote about privacy. There's a reason for anonymity. I don't want everyone and their mama to look at anything of mine even if I can see who they were. That's like saying, sure anyone can look into my house because their credential is for all to see. Plus most of the argument he makes about auctions, newsgroup, email and information exchange can be said the same of their offline counterpart. All anyone need is a little common sense. Here's a little list to help people with a little less C.S. than some.

- Ignore morons who can't make good arguments, or make a counter argument so good that it leave them speechless. (If that doesn't work, go back to ignoring)
- Don't give out your internet address too freely to avoid spam (Seriously, you probably won't get that IPhone, so stop submitting those forms that want not only your email address but your home address)
- Make rational judgment before believing what you read on the internet.

As for privacy, just remember this one simple rule one of my classmate told me: "If you don't want your mama to see it, don't put it on the internet."

To Digg or Not to Digg

I've been "digging" a lot lately. Its great watching the newest dugged links. From viral videos, reports of police brutality, biased political blogs and another blog piece defending PC or praising Mac.

Ok I'm being sarcastic. Not that great, but I can't seem to stop myself from checking Digg.com every time I open my web browser. Heck Digg.com is one of my home tabs and so are a couple other link ranking sites. However, the ranking systems on all of these link-ranking sites are really bothering me.

I keep asking myself every time I go onto Digg, "Why aren’t there undigg buttons for the links?" There's an undigg button for comments, but not one for links. There are so many rankings on the web that no one knows whose number 1! Doc Searls of Linux Journal and The Cluetrain Manifesto made a good point about how its "odd not to see BoingBoing, long #1 on Technorati’s list, not present at all on Techmeme’s. Same with the new #1, Huffington Post. Not technical enough, perhaps? One can only guess."

What's really getting to me in addition to the ranking is how link-ranking sites are now getting bought. Reddit.com last year was bought out by the owner of Wired.com, Conde Nast. Just today, Newsvine to my surprise was acquired by MSNBC.com.

My independent news source has just been acquired by a major news corporation. While I'm glad that Mike D and the rest of his staff will get the help to expand the site, how independent will it remain? How will ranking of news be affected in the future? Will the restraints come up against biased articles?

A Second Universe

I read an article in Times last year where the reporter took a virtual tour of Second Life. After reading it, I went and checked out what the fuss was all about. Aside from being taken back by how rampant the virtual sex part is within Second Life, the rest of Second Life is absolutely astounding.

A virtual social network equipped with a fully functional capitalist system that is connected to the real world. Virtual concerts, speeches, movie screenings and debates. Real estates to user created applications, and of course just a place to network.

While all these amazed me, and was intellectually stimulating, I made the mistake of thinking Second Life was a game. It wasn't, and if you think it is, you'll be absolutely bored to tears if that's how you're approaching it. I haven't been on since the day I downloaded it.

However since finding out Second Life is on my Social Network curriculum, I have since made a new account, and explored Second Life in a new light this time. "How can I use Second Life as I use Facebook or Myspace?"

I'm not sure yet. All I know is its going to be time consuming and seems to me, it's going to make me more antisocial in real life than social in Second Life.