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Tech Blog Entries Summary

Technology makes communication amazing!

From the following ten topics I covered, we can not only amaze how technology has changed the communication, but also are excited to have fun with different new tech or apps.

#1: Mobile Broadcast TV

#2: Apple Daily’s Action News

#3: Six-Sense Technology

#4: Independent Media

#5: Microblogs

#6: E-book Reader

#7: Search Engine's future

#8: CNN’s Satellite-fed Communication

#9: Skype 3G App

#10: Youtube Mobile Add Ads

Some other topics I am interested but not covered such as Second life game, the social responsible-related apps of Google.org etc.

Within over one last month, every day seems to have a new thing to excite us, such as iPad, Google Buzz, Skype 3G app, Microsoft’s Skinput etc. As a communication professional like me, so many new tools make the situation more complicated, but also create new digital tactics to reach out target audience. So challenges and opportunities combine. In the coming future when I go back to Shanghai, do hope all of those tools can be implemented effectively in the mainland market.

Internet Auction Report #3: Results

 On March 11 2010, we finally sold out the first Sock Doll for White Day.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=220566094519&ssPageName=STRK:MESOX:IT

Besides, the product awareness was also spread through the online campaign. The result is displayed as follows:

Items	No. of Views	No. of Comments
Valentine’s Day Promotion on Facebook	22	11
Valentine’s Day Promotion on Renren.com	14	9
Ebay shop: White Day Pink Bear	22	1
Ebay shop: Valentine’s Day Red Rabbit	14	1
Total	72	22

Campaign Highlights:

• Online social media such as Facebook or Renren.com is a good Word of Mouth Marketing channel.
• The product off-line display should be considered to attract target audience.When we brought the Sock Doll to the class, many classmates liked it or even took a picture by cell phones to post on Facebook or wrote comments on Facebook/renre.com.
• Interaction is important! In the Valentine’s Day promotion, winner’s photo display of their DIY process attracted not only the original friends’ but also many other new friends’ active participation on the online discussion.

Key Learning:

• Price should be lower. Some classmates who liked the doll complained to us that our price is a little high. So cheaper, more sales!
• Product off-line display should be considered to do more in the campus such as half-day product show outside of the campus canteen.
• Yahoo is a popular auction site than ebay in Hong Kong. Some friends just complained it took time to register account on ebay.com.

Appendix:
1. Valentine’s Day Promotion on Facebook

2. Valentine's Day Promotion on Renren.com

Tech Blog #10: YouTube Mobile Adds Ads

Do you see the Mazda’s ad picture on the left? Yes! It is a video ad on YouTube mobile site. This latest ad offering has attracted three large advertisers’ investments including Mazda, Kia Motors and Sony Pictures.

According to the statistics, YouTube’s mobile app has "tens of millions" of views per day and has grown 160% in 2009. So, how big cake it will be? However, making ads viewable on mobile phones is not as easily as imagined since those video ads should be encoded in a mobile-friendly format while most mobile browsers can't handle Adobe's Flash. So YouTube is still on the way to fix a universal mobile app for different smart mobile phone handsets. I am not a tech guy but I believe this kind of technology problem is just nothing for the smart YouTube guys.

What really get me to have a further thought are two findings.

Firstly, mobile offers advertisers many attractive possibilities. No other device is as personal, interactive and constantly within reach as a cell phone. And cell phones get advertisers more accurate ad targeting due to its parameters such as device type, mobile channel, location or even demographic information. But, how does mobile ad go far? Although mobile provide advertisers different formats including messages, banner and full-page ads on mobile Internet sites etc, advertisers seem still not to prefer it a lot. According to the latest statistics from OUTSELL (see the below picture), mobile ads not only occupy just a small amount (i.e. $1.1B) in the total ad spending but also face the spending decline (i.e. 15.9% down from 2009). So will YouTube’s new app change the situation? Will more advertisers except for those three ones above be involved? Let’s wait and see.

Secondly, from Facebook, Twitter, Skype to Kindle, YouTube, it seems that every popular tech app is rushing into the 3G world and being mobilized. SmarTone, the new iPhone operator in Hong Kong just developed a print ad with the proposition of “140,000 apps to be amazed” (see ad picture as follows). I think this is not just iPhone’s case. Other mobile phone manufacturers are also using a variety of apps offering as a selling point. Just like the ad saying, APPS REALLY MAKES OUR COMMUNICATION LIFE AMAZING!

Tech Blog #9: Skype 3G app

Early in 2009, Skype has just launched a lit version of Skype™, for mobile phones such as Blackberry etc. It helps to cut down the overseas phone cost as Skype mobile users are only charged by their mobile operator for local air time and data usage based on the type of calling service and data plan they have purchased. But many operators still blocked its calls, prohibited its customers from downloading Skype’s software or imposed fees to undermine Skype’s attraction.

So, what’s going on in 2010?

Fortunately in February, Skype has announced its partnership with Verizon from March to bring a new Skype app to Verizon's 3G service, which means the app will be more easily accessible on the fly. Besides, Skype 3G app will allow free and unlimited Skype-to-Skype calls only if your cell phone’s unlimited data package.

So how big of a deal is this Skype announcement? Let’s see Henry McCracken’s comment from PC World:

There's nothing inherently historic about Skype being available on phones -- it's on the iPhone (albeit over Wi-Fi only right now) and I first used the service on a Windows Mobile handset years ago. (Only briefly, though -- it taxed the phone to the breaking point, and voice quality was pretty miserable.) But a major carrier such as Verizon not only grudgingly permitting Skype but buddying up with it as a selling point for its phones is an interesting twist.

(source from http://www.csmonitor.com/Innovation/Horizons/2010/0217/Skype-3G-app-to-hit-Verizon-phones-in-March)

Tech Blog #8: What Made CNN a Global Reputation?

Everyone knows about CNN. But what made CNN so famous in the world? Someone maybe knows it is the first Gulf War! Definitely, during the initial hours of the Coalition bombing campaign in 1991, CNN became the only news outlet with the ability to communicate from inside Iraq, with live reports. At that time the bombing destroyed all of the usual communication channels including military ones. No wonder even President George H. W. Bush said he depended on CNN's news to decide what was the next step would be during the media interviews.

But why it is CNN instead of other media who can control the exclusive news source? It is the power of Satellite-fed communication! CNN just rented several Satellite Phones for its 24-hour live news broadcast. When this advanced and military-focused technology was applied for journalism, all the news became real-time. Besides, other media also depended on CNN’s source to cover stories about the Gulf War.

Even nowadays, satellite-fed technology is still the key or exclusive communication channel in disasters. Take an example for Sichuan Earthquake in 2008. Earthquake could easily destroy the cell phone and Internet communication except for Satellite-fed communication. The live TV news host utilized satellite phones to interview with the onsite reporters about the latest information.

From this point of view, it is not the news content but the amazing communication technology made media success!

Microsoft's Skinput

Just watched the following video on Youtube. Microsoft also developed a state-of-the-art touchscreen technology similar to Six-Sense Technology. Does that really mean we no longer need to bring the cell phone, PSP, camera or even netbook for a trip? Skinput or Six-sense Technology will be our another brain to help us solve everything.  Exciting!

Tech Blog #7: Are you ready for Search Engine’s Future?

Do you agree that we are now living in a Google world? It means the Search Engine technology world to get you to know anything you want to know. That’s why so many companies are willing to pay for several thousand US$ per month (at least in HK) to hire a SEO agency to improve their product or brand ranking on Internet. But since this technology is getting more involved in multimedia such as Google image, Google video or even Google audio index etc, what can marketing communication professionals do besides adding SEO related html language in their websites? Before any action taken, Let’s first have a look at how two new multimedia search engines work.

1. Visual Identification

More and more image search sites are gaining capabilities of facial recognition by vector point analysis and color hue. We can even read the text on the image, see its colors and classify it based on its form, shape and textures.

Besides, VideoSurf, another popular video search engine, conducts its searches based on visual identification rather than strictly text or meta-data. VideoSurf allows consumers to visually navigate through their results to easily find the specific scenes, people or moments they most want to see. Users can now spend less time searching and more time being entertained.

How this will change SEO and Internet marketing:

Internet marketers will have to be more cognitive of the content of the images and video than the actual meta-data, tags, titles, and descriptions they embed and/or apply to it.

It will be harder for black hat SEOs to get away with labeling false tags on a video in order for it to appear in the search results for that keyword.

2. Speech Recognition

YouTube, for the political channel, rolled out speech recognition capabilities, called Google Audio Indexing, which allows users to find keywords in politician’s video speeches. This is only the beginning for this technology, soon users will be able to search for keywords and mentions within all video.

How this will change SEO and Internet marketing:

Internet marketers will be forced to put much more stock into the audio content of their videos. Audio indexing combined with visual identification will vastly change the game of Video SEO.

Although the tech development will make our communication practitioners’ job more complicated or stressed, I am still quite expected on the SE technology’s future. After all, no pain, no gain.

Tech Blog #6: E-book Reader - A Revolution Occurring in Publishing Industry

Just like Apple’s iTunes changed people’s music buying behavior many years ago, Amazon’s Kindle is now also transforming people’s reading habits. This new E-book Reader device has made fabulous sales of over 300 million units in December 2009, making Amazon be the world’s largest supplier of E-book Reader terminals.

I am not its owner yet, but once had a chance to touch a course lecturer’s last semester. Fashionable looking, a screen size similar to a general book and just 1 cm thickness. What’s more amazing are those following unique features:

•  An E Ink brand electronic paper display to eliminate eyestrain
•  16-level grayscale display to read in sunlight
•  1,500 non-illustrated books’ storage
•  Bookmarks and Annotation to easily highlight, add a note and clip an entire page
•  A technology termed "Whispersync," getting customers to synchronize reading progress, bookmarks, and other information across Kindle hardware devices and other mobile devices.

Compared to a US$27 price for a New York Times best seller, would you reject to pay less than US$9.99 for an e-book version? It’s cheaper and no need to go to book store or await the book shipment any more.

 

This human-oriented and state-of-the-art device should be the most “in” in 2010. No wonder why Sony or HW (China brand) is also making their efforts to eat this delicious cake. In response, Kindle just arrives free on BlackBerry this month after its software application for iPhone users last year. By cooperation with these two most popular and high-end cell phones in the world, Kindle is now accessing to business audience with a great spending power.

As a consumer, I don’t care how fierce manufacturers’ competition is. What I actually care is a more reasonable device price for me to afford. But more competition, cheaper and better the product is. By then, there will be billions of device users, which as a result change the public’s reading habits.

As for publishers, it may be a nightmare. No need for print books, newspapers and magazines. No need for bookstores. So a revolution is coming!

If you would like to know more about e-book readers, please watch the following demo video

Tech Blog #5: Do You Have Many Followers or just Following in Microblogs?

Sina, the No. 1 portal in China just launched its microblog (http://t.sina.com.cn) in September 2009. Several weeks ago, Google also unveiled Google Buzz to challenge Twitter and Facebook. It seems that microblogs exist everywhere. It gets me to wonder two questions:

1. Why microblogs are so popular?
2. What is its role in our daily life?

It is early in 2005 when the world’s first microblog, Tumbleblogs was set up. But at that time, since 3G mobile phones were not as popular as nowadays, the widespread wireless technology was still unavailable for users to share instant information and generate a quick social buzz. That’s maybe why Sina didn’t launch its microblog service until September 2009 just after China Mobile started its 3G business in China. So thanks for 3G mobile phone’s wireless tech, microblogging, a good app of Web 2.0 is now becoming another killer app of Internet.

As we all are microblog users now, how much daily time you spend on it? How many followers do you have? Or what you do more in microblogs is just following others? According to Sysomos' Inside Twitter survey, based on more than 11 million users, it shows that 10% of Twitter users account for 86% of all activity. So there is a small group of active users contributing to most of the activity. This also matches Sina microblog’s case. Sina started a test version by inviting celebrities to use its microblog service including movie stars, singers, famous journalists and writers etc. By doing so, it satisfied fans’ curiosity about their stars’ daily social life and really attracted millions public users to register in. A good marketing research and business strategy, right? 

Fighting!

Fighting 4 Tech Blogs! Fighting 4 PS! Fighting 4 GOD!!

Tech Blog #4: Independent Media: Citizen’s Involvement in Journalism?

You will donate money for Obama Campaign, you will donate money for Heidi Earthquake, but would you like to donate money to journalists to cover big news?

Independent Media (IM) is rising quickly in the world in recently years. According to Indymedia, the world’s largest independent media center (www.indymedia.org), hundreds of journalists have participated in over one hundred IM organizations. In pursuit of absolute media freedom and telling truths, they are offering grassroots, non-corporate, radical and more feature coverage.

But in my opinion, freedom is not free. How those reporting costs of feature stories are covered? Only by donations? If so, how to make a priority to decide which projects would go head for interviews? As you know, there are so many projects proposed by IM journalists on their website.

Some IM post the project details about different categories and different regions including the topic background, situation and even the project plan for interviews.  By doing so, audience would have an initial idea on each project. If it interested you a lot, just click the donation button to support them. From this point, the public is now gatekeepers! They help journalists to select the news topic and the process is like the online shopping or supermarket.

It is definitely not a communication technology, but it leverages the online payment technology to create the tailor-made journalism. We cannot always expect a technology revolution or killer app. But what we can is to be as creative as scientists by transforming Internet applications to the business or lifestyle world, just like Independent Media’s operation. This kind of new operation model of journalism will bring two main impacts.

First, audience can now being involved in the journalism production process. They have rights to determine what would be covered. They are GATEKEEPERS!

Second, IM is the outcome of fierce competitions among traditional media. Traditional media always have to make a balance on press cost and quality and thereby have to give up some interesting but time-consuming or cost-consuming news stories. It also means journalists could not write what they want. But IM solves the problem! I even believe that maybe traditional media would adopt IM’s operation mode someday. As we know, due to challenges from digitalization, what traditional media can do is either to be digitalized (just like Apple Daily’s Action News) or to be tailor-made style. So IM’s model is not a bad idea.

Tech Blog #3: Sixth-Sense Technology Realizes Future

What is the digital world? It is the digitalized presentation of the real world in some special machines such as computer. Due to the invention of the computer technology, our world has been divided into tow parts: the real world and digital one. People are now used to communicate through the digital world by transforming signals from one to another. But, why cannot we break the boundary among the two worlds and combine into the only one? That is the future!

(Source From http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUdDhWfpqxg)

The Sixth-Sense technology utilizes some simple equipment to realize the control between the real world and digital one which is first established by Pranav Mistry in MIT 2009. Sensors, cameras, projectors, wireless communication module, processor and some memories are employed in the Sixth-Sense technology. The sensors and cameras can pick up information from real world directly or by the finger movements. A processor then receives information from the real world and recognizes pictures by fuzzy intelligent technology. It controls the projectors to present the information from digital world at any surface such as a paper, a wall or even human skin. A mass of information is stored in the mass memory and the wireless module is employed to renew signals and communicate with each other.

Just take an example of my recent trip in Thailand. When I visited to the Grand Palace in Bangkok, the beautiful palace impressed me a lot. I could use the Sixth-Sense technology to take photos just by framing the scene by our fingers. The camera and sensors then would identify the boundary of our fingers, while the processor would control the camera to take photos. Meanwhile, the camera would also transfer the scene to the fuzzy intelligent processor so as to search the venue information stored in the mass memory. Finally, information would be projected by the projector to any surface. Thus, when I was walking around the Palace, I could conveniently review the palace history information projected onto the ground. It would also be possible for me to share my instant photos with friends only if I accessed to internet with a wireless communication module. So amazing, right? So, with the Six-Sense technology, we can easily get any information about any place we go to.

Originally, the real world is interlinked with the digital world through communication equipments. However, the Six-Sense Technology liberates us from computers and makes people shuttle free between real world and digital world. It is definitely the KILLER APP if any enterprise can combine these hardware and software together and launch it with a reasonable price. By then, The Sixth-Sense Technology which could only be seen in the Sci-fi movie must be a mainstream communication technology in the next century. And now the future is coming!

Tech Blog #2" Apple Daily’s Action News - Infographic News Goes Far

In December 2009, a piece of “Action News” of the Tiger Woods’ car accident story was produced by Apple Daily Taiwan and soon got widespread international attention and soon republished by many other western media. (click here to see the news)

What is “Action News”? It is the breaking news produced by animations. It is said by Apple Daily that their Animated News Department has recruited over 160 people to product the animation videos as soon as the news happen. They aim to produce 20 videos each day, whose audience is willing to pay a small fee to watch. What’s more, cell phone users only need to scan a 2D bar code printed on the newspaper (also known as quick response (QR) code) to immediately watch the animated news clips on their mobile phones.

Some critics have questioned its accuracy and violent content, but it still cannot affect its significant meaning for infographic news, that is, GOING FROM 2D TO 3D VISUALIZATION.

For audience, the animated news will attract the younger generation who prefer graphics to words and thus may be help traditional print media to overcome the great challenge of the circulation decline. On the other hand, for the communication technology, animated news is nothing innovative but a technology integration of animation and internet, a journalism format innovation rather than technology per se.

Actually New York Times has also once produced the similar animated news to recover the bombing scenario happened in Iraq. But why it is Apple Daily rather than New York Times who first officially operates the new business? Perhaps 3G mobile phones were still not as popular at that time as today? Indeed, 3G’s wide-are wireless service can help the animation news to achieve the widespread usage issue. From this point, we can expect that it will be a new trend for breaking news, as well as a new outlet for traditional print media’s future development.

However, there is also a social debate about the animation news contents, which all focus on domestic violence, sexual abuse and murder etc. In Taiwan, some activists even made the street protest about its media social responsibility. To be honest, I was not quite surprised at the news stories. It is just another format for Apple Daily’s scandalous and salacious style of news presentation. In response, Apple Daily has set up a rating system for its animated news, which divides its news contents into two categories: restricted and unrestricted, with the restricted contents labeled with a warning against viewing by underage audience.

Meanwhile, Next Media, the owner of Apple Daily, is also exploring ways to interact with Internet users more effectively. Would we imagine if we could have an online donation through cell phones immediately after watching the animated news about Heidi earthquake?

Every new trend will meet resistance in the beginning - some will evolve and learn from the critics, while still retaining some originality. That is what I hope will happen with the animated news. Let’s wait together.

Tech Blog #1: MBT - A Technology Revolution for the Public Communication

Since Maxwell predicted the existence of electromagnetic wave in 1865, people had been studying the wireless technology for over 200 years to find more flexible, smooth and real communication. This dream came true when the movie was invented in the early 1900s. Then while integrated circuits technology made a great development in the late 1900s, the portable communication equipments were becoming smaller and smaller. By the year of 2000, scientists finally achieved to combine the three technologies above into a novel system and equipment, called Mobile Broadcast TV (MBT).

MBT makes it possible to provide the public information or entertainments at anywhere. This flexible, smooth and real communication technology gets the public to watch broadcast TV in hand and floating. Now over 10 million audience watch MBT everyday in Shanghai by cell-phone, PDA, mobile computer and mobile TV in the subway, bus and taxi. The industrial chain makes over $1 billion profit for MBT. It has become one of the most rapidly developing technologies in the 21st century. Moreover, it is definitely making a technology revolution for the public communication as the technology released the fixed TV to mobile and transformed the voice-only communication into the complex multimedia broadcast.

However, although MBT is one of the most attractive technologies at present, it still does not have a killer app partly due to two following factors.

One is the establishment difficulty of the broadcast TV system, which is the basis for MBT application. Thus, the government should allow the operators for legitimize use of the frequency, control the signal source/contents and monitor their operations. But the hardware construction is expensive and time-consuming. It needs to set up satellites, terrestrial broadcasting stations and many broadcasting towers in the city to strengthen the signal so as to get the communication smooth. Besides, the system establishment also requires contribution of the large amount of new broadcasting programs. All of these require a great powerful financial support from and administrative control by the government. The broadcasting systems require government has a powerful dominant and national power. So only few developed countries have established the MBT broadcasting system such as USA, China, Japan and EU.

Another factor is the popularization of the mobile equipment in the public. Firstly, the equipment should be cheap but still with a high quality. Only if the mobile equipment is small enough to carry around and simple enough to control by everyone, customers will be attracted to buy one. Secondly, the service fee should also be cheap enough but still with a good quality.

When both factors are mature someday, I believe the MBT will become a killer app as no one would refuse to watch TV he/she is interested at anywhere and anytime. By then, this kind of powerful multimedia communication technology will become as popular as mobile phones.

Auction Report #2: About Marketing

After posting the product Sock doll one week at ebay.com, the result is not as good as we expect. Only 6 persons visited the shop but gave few comments. 4 of them were those who had joined the initial online survey. So the status quo is as follows:

• The product is not popular at ebay.com.hk.
•  The CNY and Valentine’s Day promotion opportunity would be missed.
• BUT…
• White Day on March 14 will be another promotion point!
• Birthday gift is also a good value proposition for promotion.

Therefore, we decided to develop a marketing strategy to sell the product.

Objectives:	To sell the product by early March
Target Audience:	Who have Picses friends and are preparing a birthday gift	Who have single female friends
Products:
Value Propositions:	A cute birthday gift	A festival gift for your single friends
Strategies:	Prelaunch Increase the product awareness through a "FREE VALENTINE'S DAY GIFT FOR YOU" activity Create/participate in the ONLINE DISCUSSION about White Day or Birthday gift on Facebook or some popular forums to create a hot topic about the product
	Launching Increase product exposure by SOE Send the product eDM Post on Facebook
	Post Launch Interaction with shop visitors through online comments, emails etc.

Accordingly, relating marketing tactics will be developed as follows:

 Free Valentine’s Day Gift for YOU

1.         To send the activity eDM through both emails and Facebook messages

-       Facebook messages instead of wall posting to ensure every recipient will read the eDM

2.         Key message to be delivered in the eDM:

-         Go to visit our Sock Doll shop and comment “ WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE & WHY” to win a surprising DIY gift for Valentines’ Day.

3.         Result:

-         Three participants will be selected to present the DIY MATERIAL PACKAGE of his/her favorite Sock doll

4.         To show your DIY on Facebook

-       Ask for the winner to show his/her DIY process and finished works by posting pictures on Facebook so as to get more friends to know the product.

Prelaunch about the two product

1.         To start an online discussion about White Day and birthday gift on BBS and Facebook

2.         To participate in ebay forum to promote our shop

 Launching

1.     Send another eDM through emails and Facebook messages

2.     Posting on the discussion page as a customer instead of the shop owner (Hey! I found this cute gift!)
3.     Increase the product exposure on ebay.com by adding the product category, joining the home page promotion etc.

Thai, I'm coming!

Cool! Will start my CNY trip this Sat! A little early? Maybe. Will miss one week class. That's why some classmate said I am lazy. But anyway, this trip is kind of honeymoon for me although I got married in May last year. We will go to Thai firstly and then fly to Guilin. Two weeks long, the longest for me up to now.

But trip doesn't mean relax. These days too busy to have a good sleep at night. Got up at 530am to rush for a coursework. A little crazy? Now still stay in the campus information center to rush for another two reports. Why so busy this semester? I don't know if other classmates think so.

Later will be in the lab to continue the Photoshop session. I think i am not kind of creative person although I have learned by myself three years ago just for a better cooperation with my designer colleague. The lecturer asked us to prepare some pictures for this evening. I occasionally found this one done by me two years ago. If you once went to Shanghai, you would recognize the place is Pudong. Actually, it means my husband and I are in a boat from Puxi to Pudong and will have our own home there. A little funny, right? But the dream has come true. So what's my dream now? why not paint it out for the course exercise?

Auction Report #1

By M&M Sock Doll (Maggie & Monica)

Shop Link:  http://myworld.ebay.com.hk/maggiezhu8301/
 
About Product:

• What we sell is Sock Doll, a new and popular DIY animal in mainland China, especially on Taobao.com. It can be made by various kinds of socks, cotton as well as clothes buttons. It averagely takes 3 or 4 hours for someone to design and sewing a sock doll exclusively for yourself. Girls can enjoy fun of DIY and happiness of the completion of works. It is also a sweet and exclusive gift for friends.

Target Audience:

1. Demographic: Young Girls, from 15 to 30 years old, university students and young white collars/office ladies
2. Lifestyle: Who use animal dolls as pen bags, bag pendants or mobile pendants and so on/ Who have online shopping experience
3. Psychographic: Who always like lovely dolls whenever

Product Concept: DIY for friends’ gifts

• Sock Doll DIY is a girl’s childhood dream. Not only fun you will get, but friends will also feel surprise and happiness from your DIY gift.

Product Categories

• Step 1: View Taobao.com to have an initial selection of 18 preferred products.
• Step 2: Make product categories by gift types including

              o CNY’s gift
              o Valentine’s Day gift

              o Friend’s birthday gift

• Step 3: In order to have an initial understanding of customer preferences in Hong Kong, an online survey was conducted during the last 4 days, which is helpful for both product purchase and pricing.(to see questionnaire, pls click https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dGctWjdDamVXRS1IRFdzWVNmQ180dGc6MA)
• Step 4: Select the most two popular ones for each product category based on 20 questionnaires’ result and create an attractive name and description for each item.

                  o CNY’s gift:

                  o Valentine’s Day gift:

                  o Friend’s birthday gift:

Product Source

• Two Taobao.com shop in mainland
• For copyright issue, we have talked with and gotten agreement from the shop owners that part of their products will be sold on ebay.com.hk for a coursework only
• 6 selected products will be bought in this week to ensure the deal success

Pricing

• Pricing is partly based on the online survey and partly based on the wanted margin
• For sock doll’s material package, price is set between HK$50 - HK$100
• For a finished sock doll, price is set between HK$120 – HK$160
• An opening promotion of 10% discount is also published to attract potential customers

Placement

• Yahoo.com.hk is originally a preferred online channel due to its high popularity in HK
• However, as we don’t have HK Visa Credit Card (it is required by Yahoo), we choose ebay.com.hk instead. We only focus on the Hong Kong local market considering the complication of global deals.

Everything is new for us. Let's move on!

Blog Restarts

If I do not select new media workshop this semester, I thought I would not restart to write blog articles after I graduated from university four years ago.

At that time, Web 2.0 just came to China. Blogs became very popular at one night. I still remember all my roommates and I worked hard to edit our blogs at every night. We were very young. Blog was a good place for us to imagine romance, to have dreams about our future life...... But after graduation, everything went. We were under pressure about our job. We didn't want to write anything about our hard and boring working life.

So it is a restart now. I don't know how long I can insist. Anyway, it is a good new start to record my last half-year life in Hong Kong. After that, i will go back to Shanghai, to my normal working life.

I think our lecturer Russell does not mind that we write some Chinese entries about our personal life. While English ones are just for coursework. So half for study, half for entertainment.

- Written before the evening class