Jean-Francois’ posterous

Jean-Francois’ posterous

Jean-Francois Amadei  //  大家好！

My name is Jean-François Amadei, I'm a 24 years old guy living between Hong Kong and Taipei. I'm a former Technology Evangelist at Toro-Asia.com and Digital Media Strategist at Ogilvy Digital Influence HK. I'm currently working on a new Taipei based venture in the mobile application business.

Jul 2 / 5:26am

寧夏夜市

To be a geek not necesseraly means that you only use and enjoy the latest technologies but all of them! I enjoy watching BRD as well as Betamax, LD or VCD. I love playing with a XBOX 360 but don't get me wrong, the Super Famicom still and will forever rules.
 
Another "simple" thing I like when I go to some Taiwanese night market, beside the amazingly good and cheap food, is too play to these old but so funny little pinball or fish games :)
 
The "Taiwan" touch on this pictures is that just beside the pinball stands (thus with a lot of kids around) you can see (you can't, but I tell you) a guy selling...porn DVD & VCD...don't ask me why, I have no idea.
 
PS: I actually wrote this post to try the new "multiple images sending" fonction introduced by the iPhoneOS 3.0

         
Click here to download:
untitled.zip (989 KB)

Envoyé de mon iPhone

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Jul 2 / 2:53am

My life as an Internet ascetic is starting...

跟你們說, the day before yesterday I had the immense "unpleasure" to find out (in middle of a new course) that my MacBook Pro's GPU (Nvidia 8600GT) has once again grilled (happened once last January). Can you believe that this #@&% machine costs me 2000€ in January 2008 and already failed twice ? You can't imagine how angry I was, especially that :

  • it happened only two hours before I had to submit an important report (thanks him, the teacher delayed for few days the deadline)
  • I (and my family) really have no more money to spend on this Apple Macintosh (that would amount at almost 800€ in repair in only six months...)
  • It's my main working tool at Ogilvy.

Hopefully, thanks to the TMD method I could easily retrieve important files! After some research, I found out that my problem's quite common and that Nvidia/Apple replace the logicboard for free! I just brought the computer to a repair center, until then I have very few access to the internet...I shall focus on books I haven't finished yet and the shortcoming exams (what a pious lie...)

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Jun 28 / 4:12pm

I want you back



I know I'm quite late on this but during the W-E I was on a private+business trip in Taiwan, with no access to Internet. I won't write here what you can read anywhere on the Internet but Michael Jackson's death has been a great sorrow to me. A lot of souvenir suddenly came back to me (when I was listening MJ in the late 80's, 90's and 00's, when my mom used to buy me CD's when I had good grades at school, the wait until 4am to watch concerts on tv...etc) and I had a Taiwan trip with a knot in the stomack and "Billie Jean" out loud in my Popod.

sigh...

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Jun 25 / 7:13pm

View from HK Airport

Even if I know perfectly how a plane fly, I keep wondering...

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Jun 25 / 3:05am

Green or Blue ? Your brain is cheating on you !

No no no don't worry, I'm not talking about Taiwanese politics, but about the most incredible optical illusion I've ever seen. It's so well done that even if when you know the tricks, you keep on being cheated! Look at the image, you are seeing one spiral in green and another one in blue, right? Actually both spirals are totally the same color! You don't believe me? How that thing could be possible? Read the explanation on Buzzhunt.



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Jun 23 / 9:46am

Dopplr.com Private Lunch and David Ogilvy Day

It was 09:30 when Thomas Crampton first call me. Not to yell at me (because I was 30 mins late -_- ) but to announce me that Tim and I were invited to the Dopplr.com Private Lunch at the (AMAZING) Shangri-La Island Hotel.

We were really excited because quite important (from CNN, Turner, Shangri-La...) people attended and the lunch was conducted by quite a famous and important entrepreneur called Marko Ahtisaari (Dopplr.com's CEO, son of the former UN diplomat, president of Finland, and recipient of the 2008 Nobel Peace Prize Martti Ahtisaari).

This event is a unique occasion for us (mere students and entrepreneur wannabe) to simply listen...and learn ! For two hour we witnessed very interesting discussions about the future of Dopplr.com (expansion, new strategy) and social media used as travel purpose as well.

Once the lunch finished, I ranhome to change my formal dress (by the way, what do you think? :p) into some more casual one because today is the "David Ogilvy Day". We were all transported by bus to the Gold Coast Hotel where the employees, from the top managers to the simple (and highly appreciated, she even knows my name !) receptionist, had fun by playing (social) games, followed by a huge buffet and the first episode of "Ogilvy's Got Talent" (Some employees (including Shiren) performed some nice songs!)

It was a great day, I really look forward to seeing the "official" pictures and videos.

                                                           
Click here to download:
Dopplr.com_Private_Lunch_and_D.zip (15700 KB)

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Jun 19 / 9:55pm

Yes yes, it's Hong Kong

Feewwww, what a heat ! I feel like I'm back on some Corsica's beaches !
 
Now it's time to chill all day long under the sun with books, magazines, iPhone and iPod !

Envoyé de mon iPhone

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Jun 17 / 4:23am

Thought about ChineseTeachers.com

I mentioned in my earlier post that I sometime use ChineseTeachers.com (I have so few spare time these days...) and I thought I would explain why (beside the fact that it's operated by friends of mine). 


My Mandarin Chinese is not too bad in general - I can actually read, write and understand quite a few traditional characters (1500 to 2000) - but my biggest problem is SPEAKING Mandarin (and since I live in Hong Kong it's not getting better at all!). Even though I can (think) I have enough vocabulary to have conversation (and KTV!), I'm was simply blocked! 

This is why I was curious to try ChineseTeachers.com when my friend Nicolas Sauvage told me about it. Actually I was doubtful they could help me much (I'd prefer have a phisical tacher, but at the same time, they were the only solution I could find to really practice speaking Chinese that fits my life => anytime I want (i.e. never have to book in advance - this is not my style:), and for however long I want (sometimes, I only can only  'afford' 15 minutes after a long day, sometimes I am ok for a full hour).

I have to say that ALL my doubts disappeared after the FIRST lesson. Although it was a much earlier beta version, I really felt that it would help me to improve my speaking and allow me to practice with my own learning material (the one i used when I was at NCCU) To be honest, the best part about this platform is that you only remember having a good lesson with a very nice teacher (and get the teacher's feedback / documents afterwards), which I think means they have nicely achieved to make the platform transparent to the learning experience, and not get in the way with unnecessary functions. Actually, some improvements over the last 3 months they made was following my suggestions (heh :) ) they listen to comments and take them into accounts fast! (this is why I gave a testimonial too - I like companies that listen to their users carefully).

After all, these kind of websites that provide Chinese teachers can only really work if they bring a smooth (i.e. transparent) user experience and great Chinese teachers anytime anywhere. I think they just got both right and this is why I keep using them.

Oh, I nearly forgot, on the technical side (after all, I am geek), I really like the fact I can login onto any browser (i.e. not even from my own computer) and can start a lesson from THAT browser in the less than one minute! And I can see all my previous lessons notes and share my learning documents during that lesson, all like if this was my computer. Of course, after I logout, it is like I was never on that computer - all in the cloud (and in my brain) :)

In a next post i'll talk about a good complement to ChineseTeachers.com and one of the most amazing tool to learn how to write Chinese (and soon japanese), Skritter.com !

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Jun 16 / 12:51am

Tethering with iPhoneOS 3.0

Some people see the adjective "Geek" as bad thing, almost an insult. Personally I haven't had the slightest problem with it, I'm a pure geek and it's because of this that my life is now so exciting with some great ongoing projects. Anyway, geeks are ruling the world, don't they? I have strong tendencies to the early adopting thing, is it ugly, flawed and only in Aramean ? I don't mind, I try, I help and give feedback's/advice if needed and I often become friend with the team (Producteev.com, Skritter.com, ChineseTeachers.com...etc).

Therefore, as soon as the WWDC (where we discovered the "new" iPhone 3GS and the iPhoneOS 3.0 that comes along) closed its doors, I quickly found a way to install the iPhone 3.0 to try "en avant-premiere" the functionality. I won't bother to tell you how to do and what's new as the iPhoneOS 3.0 release is scheduled for tomorrow, I'll just quickly talk about the new option that I'm really fond of: The Tethering!

Remember before (i.e today...), if you wanted to share your 3G connection with your laptop (I have a Mac) you needed to jailbreak your phone, buy a specific app on Cydia and to have a nervous breakdown by trying to set up the proxy system. Now, with the new tethering (i.e 3G connection sharing with your phone as a modem) option, it takes less than 10 seconds to be online, via USB or Bluetooth :

- You connect the Phone

- Activate the option

- For the 1st time you just have to "accept" when OSX is creating the interface

I'm really impressed by the ease of the process ! I don't know how carrier will react to that but that option is definitely a killer one that I now use quite often (especially in HK where 3G connection is virtually available everywhere).

   
Click here to download:
Tethering_with_iPhoneOS_3.0.zip (84 KB)

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Jun 11 / 7:49pm

What's Happening in South Korea?

Since the death of the former president Roh Moo-Hyun, South Korea is going through yet another political turmoil. Some people start to think that democracy is in danger and Korea in now becoming a police state (I hear that quite often nowadays...).

"SNAFU : Situation Normal All Fucked Up" is the first documentary of people at "Bakery of Things", they hurriedly made documentary to let people know about the current situation in Korea. they mention that is not yet perfectly edited and that further research and investigation on things mentioned in this film are needed.



Jean-François Amadei | www.jfamadei.me
Twitter | www.twitter.com/tortue
Hong-Kong | +852 5199 2410
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