A Beginner’s Guide To China

China 101 – a fantastic introduction to the country, its people and its cultures

Thanks to JuanMarketing for sharing.

Introducing #SataySocial

Last month’s #beersphere event in Singapore (organised by the globe-trotting Willem) was a great success, and it was wonderful to meet so many interesting and inspiring people.

In fact, I enjoyed it so much that I thought we’d try making it a regular event.

However, in typical Singaporean style, it seems sensible to combine the #tweetup concept with another local passion: street food.

So I’m delighted to announce the launch of #SataySocial.

As the name suggests, it’s intended to be a highly social event, s0 it’s open to anyone who’d like to join, but it should be particularly relevant to anyone who’s interested in social and digital media, technology, and strategy.

The first event will be on Thursday November 10th at Lau Pa Sat‘s legendary Satay Street, starting at 7pm.

You’ll find full details of the event at this Facebook page.

I’ll do my best to arrange a table that’s big enough for everyone, so please let me know in advance if you’re coming by clicking the ‘I’m attending‘ button.

And if you’d like to attend future events too, be sure to join the #SataySocial Facebook page.

I look forward to seeing you there!

Photo credit: esimpraim on flickr

serendipedia

Today has been one of those days, so this post is a  little break from the norm.

Serendipedia is a game that occurred to me while reading this great article that suggests the internet has been the death of serendipity.

The article raises a number of great points, but even a 10-minute session of Serendipedia should be enough to show that reports of serendipity’s death have been greatly exaggerated.

Beware, though: there’s a real chance that this game will eat up much more of your time than you anticipate.

The concept is very simple: start by clicking this link to load a random Wikipedia article – here’s the article it brought up for me today:

Read through the whole of this random article, and then, once you’ve finished reading it and learning about its subject, return to the beginning of the page and click the very first link within the article’s main text (i.e. ignore any links to disambiguation or Wikipedia style guides – in the above case the link you’d click would be ‘genus‘):

This brings up a whole new Wikipedia article, with a whole new world of serendipitous learning:

Once you’ve finished this second article, go back to its beginning and click the first link within that article’s main body text – in this second example, the link would be ‘biology‘:

From there, simply keep repeating until you run out of time, you fall asleep, or your brain runs out of space.

Welcome back serendipity.

always learning, never failing

Learn from your mistakes and you’ll never fail.

Simple.

inklings

Thiago Krafzik used a quote from brand interpreters on his não esquece blog, illustrating it with a beautiful video that I couldn’t resist reposting here:

Stunning…

Many thanks to Thiago Krafzik for the intro.

killer app

Skype is coming to the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Are the days of the network service providers numbered?

More here and here | Image from WSJ

super folding

This video has been around for a while, but I keep referring back to it.

Feels like something that might work for a brand like Uniqlo.