Friday, April 26, 2013

辛晓琪的《领悟》

第一次听辛晓琪的《领悟》,应该是1994年或1995年。 那时候广播电台每天晚上有个叫阿瑞的主持的流行歌曲节目,会介绍一些新歌。 当时讲的是辛晓琪感情不顺,由李宗盛大哥亲自提笔创作了这首歌。 听说辛晓琪录制此歌的时候痛哭不已,根本唱不完整,可以说《领悟》对她的内心世界诠释得很透。 第一次听《领悟》,就觉得很好听,结果此歌在大陆一炮而红,代表了太多女人对不顺爱情的无奈和领悟。




下面是我在网上找来的《领悟》的创作背景故事:


辛晓琪1987年至今出道26年,凭借《领悟》、《味道》、《女人何苦为难女人》等经典情歌陪伴了一代人的成长,她的歌淋漓尽致的诠释世间百态的爱情,总能把情歌唱得直抵人心,让听歌的男人女人一次又一次得以灵魂共鸣,人们总是能在她的歌曲里找到自己的故事,印证自己的爱情。
而对于《领悟》这首歌,辛晓琪说:“这首歌改变了我的一生,一般的演出我是绝对不唱这首歌,这首歌是个妖怪,演唱的时候,人生一幕一幕会不断的涌现在眼前,所以我每次唱这首歌唱到一半的时候就会流泪......
19年前的1994年,李宗盛听了辛晓琪的心情故事,然后为辛晓琪写下了《领悟》这首歌,该歌发行后第一天便狂卖2万张,辛晓琪一夜成名,之后不到半年,就趁热打铁推出了《味道》专辑,牢固了辛晓琪在华语乐坛的天后地位。
辛晓琪说其实从未跟李宗盛过自己的心事,“他只是知道我不开心”,李宗盛写的,是当时他自己的感情纠葛,但歌词却正好碰对了辛晓琪的心事。因为那个时候她刚刚结束了一段他达10年的感情,对方是一个远方亲戚,家族聚会的时候一见钟情,他当时已经是一个大学生,年龄差距蛮大的,他帅帅的,弹得一手好吉他,是当时很多小女生心目中的白马王子。毕业之后,两个人决定要携手共度一生,但却没想到结婚才一年多,男方竟然外遇了
这段感情结束辛晓琪痛苦了好长一段时间,虽然演绎《领悟》已经是两年后了,但是记忆仍然很深刻,拍《领悟》MV的时候,本来没有哭的镜头,但是当时一想起那些美好的时光,眼泪就控制不住了一个劲的往下掉,导演临时抢拍了一组后来我们在MV里看到晓琪哭着唱歌的那些感人镜头。 
一段失败婚姻,伤得辛晓琪好痛,当时她正面临事业上的低潮,加上先生的背叛,让她一度很自闭,辛晓琪把自己关在家里头疗伤,两三年之后,李宗盛为她写了这首《领悟》,她重新走出来,但是绝口不提曾经有过这一段婚姻。1999年辛晓琪和小她15岁的歌迷陷入热恋,交往了3年,发现这个小男友居然也劈腿.....
谈起这些情事,辛晓琪并没有过多留恋,反而用一种“感恩”的心态来谢谢那些年她爱过的男人,辛晓琪说:“我其实很感谢有这样的经历,让我可以体验人生。情感这个东西,你有经历的话,可以把自己的感受放在歌里,这样有自己的灵魂放在里面,但如果是"一张白纸"来演唱的话,可能没有办法唱到心里头去。”而对于未来的感情,辛晓琪更愿意相信“顺其自然”,“我现在挺幸福的,有工作可以忙,朋友相聚的时候也很快乐,其实除了感情,这个世界上还有很多值得珍惜的东西。”

Thursday, April 25, 2013

Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket Offers Several Features That an iPhone 4S Cannot Match

I got an AT&T Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket LTE with Ice Cream Sandwich a few months back and I recently updated it with the official Jelly Bean release from Samsung last week. After a few months of usage, I discovered several cool features of the Galaxy SII that my iPhone 4S just cannot offer:
  • The Galaxy SII can function as a heater. When I feel cold, I simply turn on the phone, play a couple of apps or make a couple of phone calls. In about 5 minutes, the phone will heat itself to a temperature warm enough to make my hands comfortable. 
  • The Galaxy SII takes a solid >6 hours to charge from 0% to 100% battery life, with very light usage during this period (NO phone call or Internet surfing – only standby mode with wifi and network connected). This means if I hates someone, I can retaliate the person by charging my phone at their house. Surely they would really hate me after staying their house for 6 hours, and their electricity bill will drive them crazy. 
  • Occasionally, with the phone fully charged, the Galaxy S II likes to reset its battery by completely draining to 0% and shutting itself during a night of standby. This happened a few times on the nights right before my business trips. That made my morning departs more adventures than the boring, 99% charged iPhone 4S. 
  • After fully charged, the Galaxy S II can lose over 10% of its battery power in 1 hour, just in standby mode. In heavy usage, the phone can drain out its battery in about 2.5 hours. When the Galaxy S II is plugged in, with Google Map turned on, it can draw more power than the power supplied from my car’s cigarette lighter or a laptops USB port (500mA). When I commute outside the office, I can excuse myself to attend only one conference call in the morning, or I can refuse to attend any conference call scheduled in the afternoon because the phone will only last about half a day with light usage. 


  • Thanks to all the Android apps with “back door” data access, I started receiving more and more Spam emails, SMS text messages, robot phone calls, pop up App and subscription recommendations and other weird stuff through the phone. That just makes my life more interesting when periodically a stranger calls and says hello. 
  • Surely Google has made Jelly Bean a lot more stable, compared to the phone’s original Ice Cream Sandwich when I just had it. Ice Cream Sandwich was actually more fun because sometimes it likes to focus in a particular thought for a moment and refuses to answer me. A kick-in-the-ass (i.e. reboot) once in a while is necessary. 
  • When I travel to Asia offices, the Galaxy S II cannot see some of our offices' Wifi networks in range. It’s a perfect opportunity for me to show off that my phone supports 4G and has international roaming plans. 
  • Compared to the iPhone 4S, which is considered by many as “boring” and “no innovation”, I like to think that the Galaxy SII is a Beta operating system (after the Jelly Bean update) running on an Alpha hardware build, that fully satisfies my ego as a gadget enthusiast. 

Friday, February 22, 2013

Google Pixel Chromebook is a Product Marketing Failure


Abstract – Product marketing defines the “value of existence” for a product. Bad product marketing usually leads to a product failure measured by performance, industrial design and/or customer adoption rate. Google engineers made a marvelous hardware, the Pixel, with no marketing IQ inside. The result is a beautiful hardware that few consumers want to pay for.

Google just announced a high-end Chromebook that costs $1299USD as a “base” model. From an industrial design perspective, this notebook is well made. Looking at the hardware, the Chromebook Pixel is a strong contender to Apple’s Macbook Pro. Yet, I believe the Pixel will sell even less units than the Microsoft Surface. This is NOT just because the Pixel costs $1299 as a starting price – every product has a price tag, high or low, what matters is if the product’s price justifies the values it brings to the customer. This is a fundamental question when a product is defined – what is the product’s value proposition? The Pixel is good example of Google’s Product Marketing failure – as an engineering-driven company, I felt good product marketing practices was not applied to the Pixel’s definition. Someone inside Google had the ego of making a beautiful Chromebook to compete against Apple, only to forget the purpose of existence or a Chrome, and who the product was made for. 


Chromebook’s “product philosophy” is to let users live in the Cloud – reducing the overhead for a localized computing system and run everything off a browser or a simple operation system. This results a much simplified hardware system with fast bootup, higher mobility and even longer battery life. The Chromebook’s value proposition is much stronger than a Netbook because a Netbook relies on localized computation power, which is never enough when the Netbook wave was high. A Chromebook is simply a hardware user interface. To some extent, the Chromebook hardware is disposable – the hardware facilitates tasks, but it has “no value” as a standalone unit. The damage of losing a Chromebook is little, as the user’s data all sits in the Cloud – grab a new Chromebook, and off you go.

If you believe this product value proposition stated above, then you would also realize and agree that the Google Pixel is on the wrong path. Using an analogy, if a Chromebook is a facilitator, like a taxi that hauls people around and is disposable (i.e. you don’t have to always ride the same taxi), then why would you need a taxi that is based off a Ferrari or Lamborghini?

If we ditch the “philosophy” and consider the Pixel as a laptop computer, we then need another candidate to compare to, the Apple Macbook Pro. Imagine you are given the budget to choose only one device, the Pixel or the Macbook Pro, and the purpose of selecting one of these devices is to use it for both work and personal leisure, which one would you select? I believe a “logical” person would choose the Macbook Pro. Being “logical”, that person chooses Macbook Pro because it is more useful than the Pixel, not because that the Macbook Pro is made by Apple. The Macbook Pro is a real personal computer with a complete operating system. There are many productivity software designed for this operating system. It is well construction, relatively light weight (thus mobility), and has a good battery life. The Macbook Pro does NOT rely on Internet connection and the Cloud to “survive”, and is a fully functional standalone unit. On the other hand, the Pixel or most Chromebook require Internet connections to work, and try that when you travel to a region with slow or no Internet connectivity.

I should point out that a Macbook Pro is not cheap. There are many alternatives (Windows or Mac OS) that deliver comparable usefulness at lower prices. So the Macbook Pro is certainly targeted at “power users” that has the budget and need the performances it can deliver. If the Macbook Pro is stripped to its operation system with few compatible software to choose from (e.g. Adobe Photoshop), there will be very few people buy the Macbook Pro, no matter how beautiful it is – Does this sound like a Google Pixel?

Forget about philosophy and productivity, how about “cool factor”? Sure, the Pixel is very well made. It has a display resolution higher than the Macbook Pro’s Retina display. It has a good hinge (try to impress your girlfriend with that – “honey, check out this Pixel’s hinge”) and a fancy blink color LED one the back of its lid – would you buy it if you are again given the choice of a Google Pixel or the Macbook Pro. I think if you want a date picked up at a local Starbucks, carrying a Macbook Pro would give you higher chance.

So who will use the Google Pixel, on a daily basis? In my opinion, those are Google employees – they make a lot of money, and they get the Chromebook for free. After all, they don’t want to carry a Macbook Pro in their office, they hate the $299 Chromebook products that do not deliver enough computation performance and sex appeals, and they do not need to pony up $1299 from their pockets to get a well-made hardware (the company pays for your PC, right?). Indeed, I believe if Google asks their employees to pay for their computers, most people would select a Windows or Mac PC – only those developed the Pixel might choose the Pixel. There you have it – Google employs 37,544 employees at the end of Q4 2014, and that’s the total number of Pixel that Google will “sell” in my opinion. Of course, not everyone working at Google will use the Pixel, so the difference is made up by some Nerds who don’t work at Google but have enough spare money to pay for it.

In a nutshell, for $1299, the Pixel is a well-made laptop hardware that is only productive with an Internet connection. For true mobility, the user needs to pay more for a LTE-enabled device, in addition to the monthly fees charged by the carriers. At this price, the Pixel is arguably the most expensive laptop in the market today, measured by productivity or mobility or even sex appeal.

Imagine you’re the product marketing manager for Pixel, how will you justify the above to a group of audiences that review your business case? Wait, this is Google, maybe they don’t need product marketing or business case.

Tuesday, January 15, 2013