If hype were to be believed, the Motorola DROID is the pièce de résistance of the mobile world; the conclusive creation sent down by the Great Smartphone in the sky to rid us of our woes. It would prepare your breakfast promptly each morning, tuck you in at night, and, maybe — just maybe — knock the iPhone down a notch or two.
Beginning about a week before its launch (largely due to Verizon’s incredibly intense marketing campaign) I began getting calls and tweets from friends and colleagues asking about the Droid. They always had two questions: the first would be something like “What do you think of the Droid?”, followed by “Would you recommend it over the iPhone?” Same questions, each.. and.. every.. time.
I’ve been using the Droid as my primary phone for a few days now, and I think I’m finally ready to answer them.
A bit about the reviewer:
Being that I’m only human, it is absolutely impossible for me to be 100% objective when comparing two phones. Thus, my only option is to be as transparent as possible. Going into this review, I had used an iPhone (which, for disclosures sake, I pay for in full) as my primary device for around 2 years. I also regularly use a Palm Pre, Nokia N97, BlackBerry Tour, T-Mobile G1, and an HTC Touch2 to ensure a general knowledge of all the major platforms. I am an iPhone developer by hobby. This Droid unit was provided by Motorola for review.
The Looks:
Comparing the aesthetics of the iPhone and the Droid is.. ludicrous, if not impossible. It’d be like having a heated argument over whether Angelina Jolie was more or less gorgeous than Halle Berry. Each is stunning for their own reasons. Same deal here; the iPhone is engulfed in glistening curves that give it a softer, friendlier look, while the Droid is wrapped in tight, clean angles that make it a shining example of great industrial design.
If we were to consider the overall designs par-for-par, all we’d have left to nitpick is the details. In the Droid’s case, the gold details on the camera button, 5-way D-Pad, and rear casing lose it some points for looking like something straight out of a bad 70’s bachelor pad. The iPhone then loses its ground for the fact that the glossy back casing is damned near impossible to keep clean and free of fingerprints.
The Winner: It’s a tie. Both are drop dead gorgeous, and the only flaws of each are downright trivial.
On-Screen Keyboards:
In preparation for the onslaught of candybar Touchscreens that were sure to follow after the success of the iPhone, Android earned on-screen keyboard support shortly after the launch of the G1. At first, it.. well, it sucked. A lot.
It has gotten better since, however – on the stock build of Android 2.0 I’ve got running on this Droid, I’m able to blast about at nearly the same rate as I can on my iPhone. That’s impressive for Android’s sake, considering that I’ve spent considerably more time on the iPhone keyboard.
That said, the iPhone’s autocorrect seems a bit better at properly attending to my typos, primarily on shorter words that have more potential alternatives.
The Winner: iPhone, by a very slim margin. It just does a better job at guessing what I’m trying to type as I poke my way around a sea of glass. That said..
Physical Keyboard:
For many, a physical keyboard is a must-have. Every smartphone I had prior to an iPhone had a physical keyboard, and I still prefer a physical keyboard after two years. The Droid has one, and the iPhone doesn’t – so it wins this one by default.
That’s not to say the Droid keyboard is all that great – nor is it terrible. It is decidedly average. The buttons are practically flush with each other, and it’s quite easy to jam down on two buttons at once.
To rank it amongst some of the more well known keyboarded handsets of the past few years: the Droid keyboard is better than that of the G1, Helio Ocean, and the BlackBerry Curve, but not nearly as good as anything from the Danger Sidekick line, the BlackBerry Tour, or the HTC Touch Pro 2.
The Winner: Droid, by default.
The Browser:
On the popular web-standards test known as Acid3, the iPhone scores a 100/100 while the Droid caps out at 93/100. Thus, if we’re going purely by measurable standards here, the iPhone browser wins. That said, we’re not robots – standards schmandards, we like what we like.
With that said, I still prefer the iPhone browser. It tends to render pages pixel perfect (as implied by the Acid3 test results), while the Droid would occasionally fall short. Oddly, it renders pages more accurately when they’re being viewed in landscape mode than in portrait mode. What really sealed the deal, however, was multi-touch in the browser. Once you’ve grown accustomed to pinch-zooming, the level of accuracy provided by tap-zooming alone simply doesn’t cut it.
The iPhone browser is also considerably faster, with page loads completing anywhere from 15-30% more quickly with both handsets on WiFi.
The Winner: iPhone, thanks to multitouch, faster pageloads and web standards compliance.
Navigation:
When it comes to the standard mapping/directions stuff, the two phones are about on par. Turn-by-turn voice navigation is a whole different matter, however.
Out of the box, the iPhone 3GS has Google Maps, which does not currently do turn-by-turn voice navigation. The App Store provides a bunch of solutions for this, ranging from a few bucks a month all the way up to a one-time payment of $99 bucks.
The Droid also has Google Maps, but it’s Google Maps with Navigation – and it really, really rocks. It does nearly everything the iPhone Maps app does, with the addition of toggleable layers (show/hide traffic, satellite views, Wikipedia entries, and transit lines), support for Google’s Latitude location-sharing service and, most notably, completely free turn-by-turn voice navigation. You can also search for locations by voice, something we were surprised was absent when Apple added voice recognition to the iPhone.
Like with the browser, we miss the multi-touch support – but we’d gladly give that up for the free voice navigation.
The Winner: Droid. None of the for-pay apps we’ve used come close to the ease of use and functionality Google provides in their free app.
Lock Screen:
On both the iPhone and the Droid, the lock screen is essentially just that: a screen which shows when your handset is locked. The Droid has one small (but clever) bonus feature thrown in which allows you to quickly silence the handset with a single swipe – but considering that the iPhone has a physical silence switch on the side, this isn’t a defining feature. Out of the box, both handset’s lockscreens are equally meh.
Yet, this is still somewhere the Droid manages to outshine the iPhone, by playing on the open nature of Android. Right within the Android Market, you can download applications which greatly expand the functionality of the lockscreen, such as the widget-based Flyscreen.
You can do similar things on an iPhone – but not without jailbreaking. Considering that Apple wanted to make jailbreaking illegal, it’s hard to consider things that require jailbreaking as fair equivalents to things that come straight from Google’s own catalog.
The Winner: Droid.
Battery Life:
I’ll be honest: I haven’t done a formal battery life test with the Droid. Hell, I’ve never done one with the iPhone, either. That said, I’ve been using both devices equally throughout the day, and they’re both hovering around a 50% charge. This holds true with what I’ve seen for the last few days of testing; the Droid’s battery life is right around par with the iPhone’s. The Droid’s 1400 mAh battery is slightly larger than the iPhone 3GS’ at 1150mAh, but the battery hungry multi-tasking probably cancels that out. Without any formal testing, I’ve got to declare it a tie.
The Winner: Tie (With a slight lean in Droid’s direction as it has a swappable battery – but really, what percentage of the population carries one?)
App Stores:
Google’s got around 10,000 apps in their collection. Apple’s got somewhere around 10x that, with the App Store currently floating right around 100,000 items.
Of course, quantity does not equal quality. As anyone who’s really spent a ton of time in either App Store would agree, the majority of applications in both range from bad to horrible, and their are plenty of gems in both. Both have a great application (and a handful of not so great alternatives) for nearly every common need.
The primary strength of the Android market is its openness. Google has stood quite true to their original promise of allowing anything outside of what was undeniably illegal or malicious. This is something members of the tech industry like to tout about as a killer feature – but in the end, it simply doesn’t matter. The only way to gauge the success of an App Store is to try to view it as an average consumer — you know, the ones spending the most money — would. By and large, the average consumer would not care about any of the things Apple has thus far banned. To make an argument that could go on for many pages very, very short: your grandma does not care about Google Voice.
After spending a lot of time in both stores, I feel that I can honestly say that the selection and overall quality of the App Store is significantly better. Everything we’ve seen and all conversations we’ve had with big development houses indicates that they’re putting much, much more effort in iPhone app development than they are with Android.
The iPhone has a tremendous lead here, both in quantity and quality. In time, as Android handsets flood the market and hopefully do away with the feature phone all together, it may very well catch up – but that’s simply not the case in the foreseeable feature.
Winner: iPhone.
Customization:
The smartphone is the fifth limb we never knew we needed. It goes with us wherever we go, helps us function from day to day, and serves countless purposes. Where as many turn to body art to customize their original limbs to express themselves and claim ownership, many will customize their smartphone for all the same reasons.
Customization on the iPhone is depressingly limited. You can customize wallpaper of the lock screen, change your ringtone, and.. well, that’s it. Want to add your own text alert sound? Nope. E-mail alert sound? Nope. That would be absolutely okay be it that the iPhone was a Nokia from 1998.
The flexibility of Android customization is still somewhat limited, but it at least has the basics covered. You can change e-mail and text alerts, app icons, and your ringtone/wallpaper.
The Winner: Droid
Camera Quality Samples:
Photos on the left are from the iPhone; photos on right are from the Droid. Click through to see bigger samples.
The Winner: Based off these photos alone, we can’t say. We had a hard time getting the Droid to focus, especially in lower light. While the iPhone was focusing just fine, the details kept getting lost. We’re not ready to make to make that call yet – we’ll snap some more shots tomorrow and make the final call.
The Screen:
The iPhone rocks a 3.5″, 480×320 touchscreen display, while the Droid has a 3.7″ 854×480 touchscreen display. While the Droid’s screen isn’t that much bigger, they’ve crammed over 160% more pixels onto that tiny little screen. The result? The Droid screen is absolutely, jaw-droppingly stunning.
Now, no one was complaining that the iPhone’s screen was junk. Given more than 10 seconds from device to device, most people probably wouldn’t even notice a difference. When you’ve got both devices side-by-side, however, the difference is clear. Text is that much clearer; curves just that much curvier.
The Winner: Droid
Interface:
This is a huge point, and one that often goes overlooked in reviews. For the past 10 years, Apple has really only done one thing, over and over: they’ve taken something we thought worked fine, and then simplified the hell out of it while maintaining the feature set. That’s exactly what they did to the idea of the smartphone with the iPhone, and it turned the damned market on its head. Windows Mobile suddenly looks like a hot mess by comparison, and most people would go into shock if they tried to screw with S60.
Even in version 2.0, Android does not match the intuitiveness of the iPhone. If you need to change a setting on the iPhone, you always know where to go: the Settings app. On Android, it can be in one of any number of places.
You can hand an iPhone to a toddler, and they’ll figure out the general gist of things in an instant. (No, really – we’ve done it.) That ease of use is one of the things that makes the iPhone so damned appealing.
The Winner: iPhone
Multi-Tasking:
I can listen to Pandora on the Droid while I peruse around the Facebook App. I can’t on the iPhone. Enough said.
The Winner: Droid
Conclusion:
There are really many, many, many dozens of categories we could dive in to – hell, I’ve got 10 more scratched out in my head alone. But we’d be avoiding an inevitable truth: apples-to-apples, the Droid tends to beat or meet the iPhone. Remote wipe and GPS location? Droid. On-device search? Droid wins. Voice control, contacts, coverage, and call quality? Droid, droid, droid, droid.
Now, back to the two questions we had at the beginning:
Get it? He's on the fence. HAH.
What do I think of the Droid? It is incredible. It is, hands down, the nicest Android handset on the market. A very significant chunk of this is not so much the Droid’s doing as it is Android 2.0’s, but the hardware is also leaps and bounds better than anything we’ve seen so far.Would I recommend it over the iPhone? Two thousand plus words later, you might be a bit sad to read: Nope. But I wouldn’t recommend the iPhone over the Droid, either – and that’s the Droid’s real win here. This is the very first phone in over two years that I would consider carrying for day-to-day use instead of my iPhone, but that doesn’t mean I would recommend it whole heartedly to everyone.
Each phone platform has such tremendous merits. Androids got better navigation; the iPhone has a better browser. Androids got unbeatable expandability and flexibility; the iPhone OS is mind-numbingly easy to use and the rate of growth and drive behind the App Store is simply explosive.
With Android 2.0, we’ve come to a very difficult crossroad. No longer can we recommend one handset over the other simply by its feature set. At this point, it’s all about the person who will be carrying it. For you, dearest TechCrunch Network reader: Yes, I’d probably recommend the Droid over an iPhone. Would I recommend it for your mother, father, or little sister? Nope. If you want a phone that just works and does damned near everything you could want and don’t mind Apple’s closed garden: by all means, get the iPhone. If you can handle a bit of complexity for the sake of flexibility and don’t mind having to tinker a bit: by all means, get the Droid. At this point, I honestly feel that either choice would make any sane person incredibly happy.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Smartphone Showdown: iPhone 3GS vs Motorola Droid - blog by MobileCrunch
![Screen shot 2009-10-30 at [ October 30 ] 7.28.42 PM](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_uPan2RKaZASc11UGx5hdlqBMbLZfnI3RpWRxbo5Kzaf54EnG6siDeP3gGpaxFffUrU1ljWmce9VUVPDwnc555n9d24GyIg8bEkCb-kXKCDkfuAx-MF68ecGLCNIfeuBu6VrV5_WpH__xDMk3Z0iM5Yalg3R8sE_j01wXoTvz2aABjLLhCLtJGUc5flZK5UPYDy9lNHAw=s0-d "Screen shot 2009-10-30 at [ October 30 ] 7.28.42 PM")
Smartphone Showdown: iPhone 3GS vs Motorola Droid
Interesting... very interesting... Iphone there is a contender! (But I LOVE my Iphone!)
LJj Speaks: Ghosts only scare you if you keep them hidden in the closet and forget about them.
Friday, October 30, 2009
Lynne is reading Dr Paul Schempp's "5 Steps To Expert" - very well done and makes so much sense - must read for all!
It's Friday so from the Can't Make this Up File... "Flying Banners on FLIES!" #Mashable
At Mashable, we constantly hear about innovative and unique advertising campaigns. Some of them have inspired us (like the #BeatCancer campaign) while others just made us scratch our heads (like the Bingathon). However, a new method of advertising we came across today just has us dumbfounded.
A German book company, Eichborn, decided to think beyond the booth at the 2009 Frankfurt Book Fair. The advertising stunt they concocted though is something that, uh, flies in the face of convention.
Eichborn’s “smallest commercial gimmick in the world” was simple: attach physical banner ads to actual flies. Yes, they somehow tied small red Eichborn banner ads to flies and let them loose in the Frankfurt Book Fair. The result was flying advertising that nobody could miss.While we’re sure that the flies didn’t appreciate the extra weight, you have to give it to Eichborn for its creativity. Still, we’re hope fly ads don’t become a trend; we don’t attend conferences just to be pestered by branded insects. The amazing video is below:
[via Wired]
Honest Abe Said...
"I do the very best I know how - the very best I can. And I mean to keep on doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me won't mean anything. If the end brings me out wrong, 10 angels swearing I was right would make no difference." ~ Abraham Lincoln
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Thought you might like to see this very simple to read chart on cold vs. flu!
Found Here: http://www.covenanthealth.org/News/CovenantNews/H1N1_VS_Cold
Ljj Speaks: When you walk into a room today, hold your head up high and look people in the eye while greeting them. Connect!
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Brenda Moore with The Grand Rapids Urban League opened a door today...
Way cool Brenda!
Ljj Speaks: All it takes to change your day is a smile and an open door. Open the door for someone today -watch as a smile comes your way!
Monday, October 26, 2009
The Horror Of It All & The BOO of Business!
Sunday, October 25, 2009
How Cool! USA Today - Artprize Article
| Grand Rapids stunned by success of ArtPrize festival |
| ||||||||||
The ArtPrize event became an instant hit and appeared to provide at least a temporary boost to local businesses and to Grand Rapids' cachet as an art destination.
The 18-day ArtPrize competition that began Sept. 23 attracted tens of thousands of visitors. Locals were surprised by the throngs of people of all ages who spent hours or even days walking from one venue to another.
Unprepared for the surge in ArtPrize visitors, some restaurants ran out of food and were forced to close early.
"Nobody had any clue this would happen," Doug Small, president of the Grand Rapids/Kent County Convention & Visitors Bureau, said.
Because the summer travel season was over and no other major events were taking place in the area, he said it's likely many extra hotel guests were also in town because of ArtPrize, Small said.
Paul Isely, economics department chairman at Grand Valley State University, said many businesses in downtown Grand Rapids received a strong "short-term bump" from ArtPrize.
"The energy and the enthusiasm and the intensity of it all will leave behind a broader, more favorable and hopefully more enlightened appreciation of the visual arts in west Michigan," said Joseph Becherer, director of exhibitions and curator of the sculpture program at Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park outside Grand Rapids.
ArtPrize had 1,262 entries — works of every size, shape and medium installed in lobbies, on bridges, in parking lots and even in the Grand River that winds through downtown Grand Rapids.
The ArtPrize winners were chosen American Idol style by the voting public, who made their picks through the event's website or by sending text messages from cellphones. There were 37,264 voters.
Ran Ortner of Brooklyn, N.Y., won first place with his 19-foot-wide oil painting, Open Water No. 24. Tracy Van Duinen of Chicago placed second and won $100,000; Eric Daigh of Traverse City, Mich., won $50,000 for third. The remaining seven finalists each received $7,000.
Ortner loaned his painting to the Grand Rapids Art Museum, where it will remain through January.
Van Duinen created his mosaic mural, Imagine That!, on the Grand Rapids Children's Museum, where it will remain permanently. Van Duinen donated the mural to the museum.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Facebook's Redesign Is Live - Mashable Article
Facebook’s Live Feed Redesign Goes Live Today
OEarlier this week we brought you exclusive screenshots of a new Facebook homepage design featuring, among other things, a “Top News” filter for your news feed.
This morning Facebook announced those changes will be rolling out today, and broke down the reasoning behind the updates, which it says were largely a result of user feedback.
As we reported earlier, when you log in you’ll now be able to toggle between two views: your News Feed, which is essentially what used to live in the Highlights section, and the Live Feed, which is the same real-time feed from your friends that you’re used to. You can edit what appears in that feed via an “Edit Options” link at the bottom of the page.
Your News Feed is now a “summary view of the most interesting activity that’s happened in the last day,” powered by the stories Facebook (
Also as reported previously, older items have been added back to the News Feed based on user feedback, including when your friends have been tagged in photos or become fans of Pages. Birthdays and events have also been made more prominent again in the right column of your home page.
Mashable: Facebook’s Live Feed Redesign Goes Live Today
You are commenting as a Guest. Optional: Login below.
Friday, October 23, 2009
Look at my
Blogging .... it's making money ... many people calling it journalism
Technorati's regular "State of the Blogosphere" analysis of the business is just out, and among the stats is the incredible fact that bloggers are being paid more than ever. Is it time to rethink the definition of blogging? Yes.
First, the stats. Technorati's killer finding is that among the professional bloggers they surveyed who fall into the "full time" worker category, the average salary works out at $122,222--an enormous figure. Those full-timers equate to 46% of the respondees, which means that the majority of bloggers are part-timers--but these guys still take home some $14,777 per year, which isn't to be sniffed at. That means the average blogger salary is about $42,548. The money isn't primarily coming from employers (14% of bloggers work for corporations). Nor is it pouring in from ads on self-published blog pages--the financial meltdown put a massive dent in Internet ad revenues. Instead, bloggers are leveraging their popularity and expertise into speaking engagements, "traditional media" assignments, and setting up and running conferences, as VentureBeat notes.
In other words, blogging is now a diverse, popular and successful enterprise that covers a multiplicity of online writers, from extensive Twitterers to self-described Mommybloggers to tightly written, up-to-the-minute, smartly edited online publications like this one--a "professional blog" by Technorati standards. And it's in that last sense that blogging is becoming a farm system for future journalists, who are apparently riding out the economic downturn pretty well (on average, at least). Think about that for a moment, and then remember how many traditional journalism jobs have been lost over the same period.
So here's the radical suggestion: Let's redefine what blogging means. If you're writing self-absorbed or inexpert opinions about the minutiae of daily life, without hyperlinks, fact checks or any pretence at engaging with the news, you're a blogger. You probably fall into the lower categories of pay in the Technorati survey if you in fact make any money at all. But if you're a writer for an online publication, one that takes real-time stories, updates them as events unfold, reference your quoted facts, break stories and produce original writing then shall we just say you're a journalist? An online one, but a journalist all the same.
And when you maneuver your thinking in this direction, you come to a strange new conclusion: Journalists who write for online versions of their (perhaps historic, perhaps not) newspapers are the same as journalists who write for totally different online news portals. Even the Pulitzer committee has said online entities can consider themselves eligible for its prestigious prize, with some limitations.
If the FTC would only figure this out, it would likely scrap its insidious plans to regulate how bloggers behave--an action that many are labeling as unfair, and possibly motivated by behind-the-scenes lobbying and cronyism from newspaper moguls. The FTC has moved back from its aggressive stance a little, but it certainly targets bloggers as a workforce while leaving traditional journalists unmentioned. That's a position often reflected in opinionated but ill-informed commenters on blogs whenever traditional media is downplayed.
But no matter how vehemently the FTC or old guard media moguls reject the coming change, it's still coming. If the advent of ubiquitous mobile Web technology and imminent graphics-rich tablet PCs hasn't signaled the change strongly enough, Technorati's data on blogger income should. Blogging's about to shed its ugly caterpillar stage and emerge as journalism's future.
[Via VentureBeat]
Related Stories:
Topics:
Innovation, Technology, Blogging Journalists, blogs, publishing, journalism, Writers, technorati, professionals, online, advertising, Salaries, Newspapers, Blogs and Blogging, Science and Technology, Technology, Internet, Technorati Inc.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Small businesses party simply: No DJs, iPods OK! What are YOUR plans this year?
NEW YORK – With Thanksgiving and the start of the holiday season weeks away, many small business owners are planning holiday parties for employees and clients despite the still wobbly economy. But the celebrations are expected to be low-key, frugal and, some say, much more fun.
Even owners whose businesses are doing better say they're sticking to simpler events this year.
"We could afford to have a catered event, something fancy, but it's not in our DNA" given the events of the past year, said Ginny Pitcher, president of Kel & Partners, a marketing and public relations firm based in Boston.
"In the past we always have had a holiday celebration and we've always either gone out to a restaurant with workers and spouses or we hosted a party at our house and have it catered," Pitcher said. "Last year, we decided it just wasn't the right thing to do to have a catered affair, so we decided to have a potluck. We found it was the best holiday party we've had to date.
"People were there till the wee hours of morning, talking and getting to know each other better."
Pitcher said the company has been affected by the recession, although "we've managed the last 18 months very well."
Now, she said, "we're seeing things turning a corner and we're very confident about the next 18 months," but that doesn't mean it's back to the days of a big party.
Tom Lee has had a similar experience with at his Boston-based marketing firm, 451 Marketing. Two years ago, the company rented out an entire restaurant, brought in a DJ and had 250 people including employees and their families, clients and friends. Lee, who called the event "a really elaborate party," estimates it cost between $10,000 and $12,000.
"Last year, like everyone else, we were feeling the recession for sure," Lee said. So the firm held a party for about 100 people at its offices, the DJ was replaced by an iPod and the tab came to about $1,500.
And everyone had a much better time. This year, the company is in better shape and could go back to the big affair, but Lee and his partners asked the staff what they wanted to do.
"Everyone decided that the smaller event that we did last year was more fun," he said.
Even when companies decide to hold their parties in restaurants or catering halls, they're going for simpler and cheaper. Restaurant owners and caterers say companies are booking at off-peak times, such as lunch rather than dinner, or Monday and Tuesday instead of Wednesday-Friday. And while they're looking for good food, they also want less expensive menus.
Simone Parisi, owner of Firenze a Tavola, a Denver restaurant, said his business customers "want to do something for their employees, but they're a little more careful about what they're spending."
Parisi said he'll be doing many more lunch parties than in the past, and booking events that start at a previously unpopular hour, 4:30 p.m. They're also having shorter parties, for example, two hours rather than an entire night.
Parisi said the changes in party planning are dramatic. "We never had anything like that before," he said.
He's also seeing owners booking parties later than they did the past two years. "By this point of the year, we were pretty much already booked," he said.
At Olana, a Manhattan restaurant, managing partner Patrick Resk, said small businesses that last year were canceling parties are booking for this December.
Small businesses "want to have their employees celebrate a very tough year and the economy is coming back and it seems like it's no longer a bad perception to have something for the employees," Resk said.
But, like Parisi, he's seeing some dramatic changes.
Two years ago Olana was able to book parties at $130 to $150 a head, but now businesses are only willing to pay $100, and many, looking to save more, are asking for off-peak times that cost $75 a head. The parties are smaller, and employees aren't bringing spouses, Resk said.
At the same time, some owners don't want employees to think they're skimping on what should be a happy occasion. Resk said these owners are splurging on things like super-premium vodkas.
"It's Grey Goose as opposed to Absolut," he said.
Are you turning up the fun or turning down the volume?
Mandarin Eclipses Cantonese, Changing the Sound of Chinatown (Forest Hills Has Mandarin Immersion)
He grew up playing in the narrow, crowded streets of Manhattan’s Chinatown. He has lived and worked there for all his 61 years. But as Wee Wong walks the neighborhood these days, he cannot understand half the Chinese conversations he hears.
Skip to next paragraph
Ozier Muhammad/The New York TimesPaul Lee, a longtime resident of Chinatown, near his home on Mott Street. He said that Cantonese “may be a dying language.”
Readers' Comments
Readers shared their thoughts on this article.Cantonese, a dialect from southern China that has dominated the Chinatowns of North America for decades, is being rapidly swept aside by Mandarin, the national language of China and the lingua franca of most of the latest Chinese immigrants.
The change can be heard in the neighborhood’s lively restaurants and solemn church services, in parks, street markets and language schools. It has been accelerated by Chinese-American parents, including many who speak Cantonese at home, as they press their children to learn Mandarin for the advantages it could bring as China’s influence grows in the world.
But the eclipse of Cantonese — in New York, China and around the world — has become a challenge for older people who speak only that dialect and face increasing isolation unless they learn Mandarin or English. Though Cantonese and Mandarin share nearly all the same written characters, the pronunciations are vastly different; when spoken, Mandarin may be incomprehensible to a Cantonese speaker, and vice versa.
Mr. Wong, a retired sign maker who speaks English, can still get by with his Cantonese, which remains the preferred language in his circle of friends and in Chinatown’s historic core. A bit defiantly, he said that if he enters a shop and finds the staff does not speak his dialect, “I go to another store.”
Like many others, however, he is resigned to the likelihood that Cantonese — and the people who speak it — will soon become just another facet of a polyglot neighborhood. “In 10 years,” Mr. Wong said, “it will be totally different.”
With Mandarin’s ascent has come a realignment of power in Chinese-American communities, where the recent immigrants are gaining economic and political clout, said Peter Kwong, a professor of Asian-American studies at Hunter College.
“The fact of the matter is that you have a whole generation switch, with very few people speaking only Cantonese,” he said. The Cantonese-speaking populace, he added, “is not the player anymore.”
The switch mirrors a sea change under way in China, where Mandarin, as the official language, is becoming the default tongue everywhere.
In North America, its rise also reflects a major shift in immigration. For much of the last century, most Chinese living in the United States and Canada traced their ancestry to a region in the Pearl River Delta that included the district of Taishan. They spoke the Taishanese dialect, which is derived from and somewhat similar to Cantonese.
Immigration reform in 1965 opened the door to a huge influx of Cantonese speakers from Hong Kong, and Cantonese became the dominant tongue. But since the 1990s, the vast majority of new Chinese immigrants have come from mainland China, especially Fujian Province, and tend to speak Mandarin along with their regional dialects.
In New York, many Mandarin speakers have flocked to Sunset Park, Brooklyn, and Flushing, Queens, which now rivals Chinatown as a center of Chinese-American business and political might, as well as culture and cuisine. In Chinatown, most of the newer immigrants have settled outside the historic core west of the Bowery, clustering instead around East Broadway.
“I can’t even order food on East Broadway,” said Jan Lee, 44, a furniture designer who has lived all his life in Chinatown and speaks Cantonese. “They don’t speak English; I don’t speak Mandarin. I’m just as lost as everyone else.”
Now Mandarin is pushing into Chinatown’s heart.
For most of the 100 years that the New York Chinese School, on Mott Street, has offered language classes, nearly all have taught Cantonese. Last year, the numbers of Cantonese and Mandarin classes were roughly equal. And this year, Mandarin classes outnumber Cantonese three to one, even though most students are from homes where Cantonese is spoken, said the principal, Kin S. Wong.
Some Cantonese-speaking parents are deciding it is more important to point their children toward the future than the past — their family’s native dialect — even if that leaves them unable to communicate well with relatives in China.
“I figure if they have to acquire a language, I wanted them to have Mandarin because it makes it easier when they go into the workplace,” said Jennifer Ng, whose 5-year-old daughter studies Mandarin at the language school of the Church of the Transfiguration, a Roman Catholic parish on Mott Street where nearly half the classes are devoted to Mandarin. Her 8-year-old son takes Cantonese, but only because there is no English-speaking Mandarin teacher for his age group.
Next Page »
- 1
- 2
Sign in to Recommend Next Article in New York Region (1 of 18) » A version of this article appeared in print on October 22, 2009, on page A1 of the New York edition.
Forest Hills is the only district in Michigan with Mandarin language immersion.
Interesting based on this article showcasing the global implications. Forward thinking...
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Gen Y Says: You Can Take Facebook, but Please Don't Take our Email!
Gen Y Chooses to Keep Email, Text Messaging over Social Networks
PMN asked 203 panel members about their day-to-day behavior including the time they spent visiting social networks, reading and writing email, texting, talking on the phone, watching TV, reading magazines and surfing the web (visiting non-social networking sites).
When asked what activity they would be least willing to give up for an entire week, only 9% responded with "social networks." However, 26% responded "email." Another 26% said they wouldn't give up texting, although that finding is less surprising and fits in with other known behavioral traits of this particular demographic.
The report also notes that the time spent on social networks is now nearly the same as the time spent emailing. Panelists reported spending 33 hours per month on social networks and 31 hours per month on email. The difference of 2 hours per month is somewhat negligible. What's unexpected is how close those two numbers are to each other.
Questionable Findings?
According to Michael Della Penna, PMN co-founder and Executive Chairman, Gen Y finds email more critical because it remains the central hub for "social networking updates, including alerts around new followers, discussion updates and friend requests." While that may be true to a point, if the only reason Gen Y desired email access was for the social networking updates, it seems they would just go to the source instead: the social networks themselves. Given a choice between the two, it would be likely that they would have chosen to give up email and not their Facebook accounts. Something else must be going on here.
These findings also somewhat contradict a wider study done by Pew Internet and American Life earlier this year which more deeply examined how the different generations use the Internet. At that time, the study showed that email was still "for old people," so to speak, and email usage among teens had dropped from 89% in 2004 to 73% in 2009. Meanwhile, Pew also found that out of all the demographic groups surveyed, Gen Y was the most likely to use social networks.
Then last month, the Online Publishers Association revealed that web surfers' use of social networking sites like Facebook had become so rampant that it was actually causing a decline in email use.
While neither study specifically compares Gen Y's use of email against that of social networking sites, both seem to imply that email use is trending down thanks to the impact of social networking. That's why it's odd to find that one of the more "connected" generations would be quicker to abandon those social sites in favor of the more antiquated medium.
So Why Would Gen Y Give Up Facebook, but Not Email?
The answer to that question could be something as simple as how the survey question was worded. After all, the survey asked which activity they would give up for a week. Ask them again which one they could give up permanently and you may get a different answer.
Another theory is that all the hype about how Generation Y doesn't care for email is just an overblown stereotype about a demographic that, in reality, isn't all that different from the rest of us...at least when it comes to our inbox addiction.
Or perhaps Gen Y is starting to grow up a bit. Now that a large majority of them have exited their "teen" years and have entered the job market, they have begun to learn the importance of email communications. And no, they aren't just for receiving Facebook updates and friend requests. Email may now involve business-critical messages which jobs depend upon.
Finally, it could be that Gen Y has just a touch of Facebook ennui. The network, which used to be an exclusive hang out, has now been overrun by Baby Boomers and other "old folks" including bosses, parents, and sometimes even grandparents. Meanwhile, many have "aged out" of MySpace, finding themselves no longer as interested in the glittery profiles and loud music that seemed much more attractive in their high school days.
In addition, although we don't have any hard data yet, there are reports that Gen Y users are finding solace in alternative, niche social media sites like FML, Failblog, TextsFromLastNight, and Sporcle. Though not typical "social networks," these timewaster sites skew heavily towards young, college-aged adults says Carol Phillips, president of Brand Amplitude, a marketing firm that focuses heavily on the millennial demographic.
In any event, there's no need to take the PMN's study as gospel, especially given its relatively small sample set. Still, it raises the question whether this purported change in behavior deserves further study. Has Gen Y succumbed to email addiction like the rest of us? Or have they always felt this way? We hope some more in-depth research will reveal those answers in the future.
Image credit: Mac guy via Apple
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Monday, October 19, 2009
Punk Rock HR
It’s October 19th and the emails are starting to pour in about Halloween office parties and costumes.
- What’s acceptable?
- Can you provide examples of costumes that cross the lines?
- Should we skip the pot-luck lunch with these flu concerns?
I don’t care if you celebrate Halloween at work, but for the love of god, please do not ask your Human Resources team to plan the party. They have better things to do. Every minute spent planning a party is a minute that could be spent saving your company from implosion. Do you want your HR team focused on the profitability of your organization, or do you want them worried about who’s bringing potato salad to the party? Should we break out a spreadsheet so we don’t have duplicate cupcakes?
Here’s my spooky advice. If you work in HR, please do not send out a memo on the appropriateness of Halloween costumes. If someone comes to work looking like a sexy goth cheerleader or a pimp, send that idiot home.
If you are an employee, use some common sense. Don’t wear a diaper, a white t-shirt, and a bonnet as your Halloween costume. I speak from experience on this one. It’s just creepy.
{ 7 comments }
This is a very fun website that focuses on employees/employers in a very open, honest and direct manner.
54% of companies ban social networking sites
54% of companies ban social networking sites
Elliot Harrison
on 12 October 2009 - 17:15, updated 12 October 2009 - 20:42 · 31 comments & 3007 views no trackbacks -->
What Happens If the Dollar Crashes - BusinessWeek
What Happens If the Dollar Crashes
Trade wars could break out. Overexposed banks might collapse. And that's just for starters The financial crisis taught us that markets can drop further and faster than anyone expects. Housing prices, for example, fell for three straight years starting in 2006, even though the conventional wisdom right up until the bust began was that prices would not fall even a little bit.Let's apply some of our hard-won knowledge to the dollar, which is also supposed to be resistant to a bust. After weakening gradually since 2002, the greenback rose during the financial crisis last year. It has fallen roughly 15% since March as investors moved to higher-yielding currencies. The conventional wisdom is that at these levels the dollar is cheap and, if anything, due for a rebound. "Currencies don't go much more than 20% from their long-term averages in real [inflation-adjusted] terms. We're there already," says Michael Dooley, an economist who is co-founder and research chief of Cabezon Capital Management, a San Francisco investment firm.
But it's worth at least thinking about the possibility of a dollar bust. The reason the housing bust had such devastating consequences was a failure of imagination: Lenders, regulators, credit raters, and others simply couldn't believe that house prices would ever fall the way they did, so they were blindsided.
Bank Blowups Possible
Let's imagine the dollar quickly dropped by a further 25% against each major world currency, roughly parallel to housing's unprecedented 30% decline. That would mean it would take $2 to buy a single euro. On the good side, U.S. manufacturers would find it easier to compete globally, and foreign tourism would boom in the U.S. On the bad side, inflation in the U.S. would zoom because of the rising cost of imported products. Americans would have even more trouble getting a loan as foreign buyers pull out of the debt market.
Abroad, the cheap dollar would make it harder for other nations to export to the U.S., hurting their growth. China could face social unrest. Trade wars could break out. And there could be blowups at overexposed banks whose risk managers were sure no such dollar bust could happen. As investor Warren Buffett once said: "You only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out."
Federal regulators are monitoring banks for a wide variety of risks, including the threat of a dollar bust: "We're not looking quarter to quarter, we're looking hour to hour and minute to minute at what those risks are," says one regulator who requested anonymity.
From its spring peak, the dollar is down 11% against the Japanese yen, 16% against the euro, 21% against the Canadian dollar, and about 30% against the Brazilian and Australian currencies, which are benefiting from a commodity price spike. Against a broad market basket of all U.S. trading partners, and adjusted for inflation, the dollar has fallen 15% from its spring high.
Deficits Depress Dollar
Behind the dollar's weakness are near-zero short-term U.S. interest rates. As they once did with yen, investors are borrowing dollars cheaply, then selling them to buy currencies of countries whose stocks and bonds promise better returns. The Federal Reserve is keeping the federal funds rate at a rock-bottom zero to 0.25% to stimulate the U.S. economy and heal the banks, but a side result is the dollar has turned into the preferred fuel for an international speculative play that is weighing down the greenback.
Another force driving down the dollar: continued U.S. trade deficits, which the U.S. is paying for by borrowing from the rest of the world. Some economists and traders believe that eventually the U.S. will be forced to devalue its own currency to make its global debt more affordable. While the trade gap has narrowed to less than 3% of gross domestic product in the second quarter from 6% at its peak in 2006, it is still high by historical standards.
Now, some of the foreign central banks that have propped up the dollar seem to be getting cold feet. Instead of buying just dollars for their foreign-exchange reserves, they're diversifying into other currencies. The countries that reveal the composition of their reserve holdings put 63% of their new reserves into euros and yen in the second quarter, according to an analysis by Barclays Capital (BCS). Says Steven Englander, Barclays' chief U.S. currency strategist: "Their incentive is to try to do stealth diversification, not 'get me out of here at any price.' " (China, with more than $2 trillion worth of reserves, doesn't reveal what currencies in which it holds the funds.)
A little light reading to start your day...
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Balloons or Bust... It's Up To Us!
