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  What will happen after Baidu acquires PPS?

One month ago there was some news that Ai Qiyi would acquire PPS through Baidu Now this has been confirmed, Baidu will spend $400,000,000 on acquiring Shanghai Public Source Network Co., Ltd. (PPS). After completion of the acquisition, Ai Qiyi will likely change the overall content and production line of PPS so that they can complement each other's shortages. Many people are optimistic about this merger, Ai Qiyi can complement its shortage on PC side and PPS can also get more copyrighted film an...

   Ai Qiyi,Sohu,Youku,PPS,acquisition     2013-04-26 22:53:12

  Jack Ma : Where are you going during the weekends?

Jack Ma, the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba founder and executive chairman, was reported to show up in a night club named Dragon-i in Hong Kong on 17th August night (Beijing Time).  It became the headline in China soon after this news was reported as many people thought it was quite unusual that a successful and super rich business man like him would show up in night clubs. Jack Ma explained on his Weibo(China's Twitter) on this and he posted a question to people as well which ...

   Alibaba, Jack Ma, Night club, Bar, Hong Kong     2015-08-23 02:42:59

  The future of IT will be reduced to three kinds of jobs

Takeaway: The IT profession and the IT job market are in the midst of seismic changes that are going to shift the focus to three types of jobs. There’s a general anxiety that has settled over much of the IT profession in recent years. It’s a stark contrast to the situation just over a decade ago. At the end of the 1990s, IT pros were the belles of the ball. The IT labor shortage regularly made headlines and IT pros were able to command excellent salar...

   IT,Potential,Consultant,Developer,Projec     2011-07-27 08:46:59

  The business of software

Inspired by a talk I gave yesterday at the BOS conference. This is long, feel free to skip!My first real job was leading a team that created five massive computer games for the Commodore 64. The games were so big they needed four floppy disks each, and the project was so complex (and the hardware systems so sketchy) that on more than one occasion, smoke started coming out of the drives.Success was a product that didn't crash, start a fire or lead to a nervous breakdown.Writing software...

   Software,Design,Business,Software design     2011-10-29 07:22:09

  Google Allo - Changing the way people chat

Google released a new smart messaging application a couple of weeks ago -- Google Allo. At first glance, it has no much difference than other mature messaging applications on the market such as What's App, Line, WeChat. It has a concise and easy to use user interface and comes with stickers, doodles, and HUGE emojis & text. But do we really need a new messaging application which is similar to others in most aspects? The answer is MAYBE. From its description, it claims it's a SMAR...

   GOOGLE,AI,GOOGLE ALLO,GOOGLE ASSISTANT     2016-10-03 09:44:51

  What Separates Good Designers from Great Ones

Most of the design books you read, including my own, are about how to be a good, competent designer. They are about how to make strong, reasoned design decisions and about design methods and tools. But what they won’t—can’t—teach you is how to become a great designer. The only way to be a great designer is to produce great products. Everything else is…well, everything else. I’m convinced that the people who are great designers, while assure...

   Designer,Feature,Great designer,Good designer,Comparison     2011-12-06 02:25:17

  Why you don’t need a programmer

Once or twice a month I get the question from an aspiring entrepreneur that’s been pushing their idea forward in hopes to (very soon) create a company out of what they’ve been working so hard on.  They’ve spent countless hours working through all the details of what this new product will do, who they’re going to partner with and what they’re going to charge for it. They may even be on the Lean Startup bandwagon and actually talked with potential custo...

   Programmer,Necessary,No need     2012-03-30 07:37:39

  How to tell if this idea is a good idea.

Good Idea or Bad Idea?I’ve got an idea for a product. I’ve talked to some people. I know some people in the industry. I have been cold calling others. The idea is promising. The price point people have agreed with is about where I would like it to be. I’ve shown some mockups around and iterated on them. Now, I feel the need to start writing code because, well, I like writing code. And I’m comfortable writing code.But I see lean people.Steve Blank, Eric ...

   Idea,Good,Bad,Distinguish,Feature,Coding     2011-11-24 09:19:01

  What, exactly, is a Product Manager?

I often get asked what a product manager is. What do they do? Where do they come from? Why do they like sharpies so much?In his book Inspired, Marty Cagan describes the job of the product manager as “to discover a product that is valuable, usable and feasible”. Similarly, I’ve always defined product management as the intersection between business, technology and user experience (hint – only a product manager would define themselves in a venn diagram). A good produc...

   Product manager,Definition,Features,Career     2011-10-12 11:42:15

  PHP Sucks! But I Like It!

I read a rather interesting post yesterday called PHP: a fractal of bad design. It's been getting a lot of traffic among the PHP community lately because it's rather inflammatory. But to be honest, it does make a lot of really good points. It also makes a lot of mistakes and misses a bigger picture. A Few Mistakes The post makes quite a few mistakes and odd apples to oranges comparisons. Let me point out the major ones that I saw. No Debugger - PHP has xdebug which works quite...

   PHP,Bad design,Like     2012-04-12 06:15:42