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Binzy's blog

Outsourcing and risk

| Filed under PM

Risk, normally is defined as undesired result, and may bring positive or negative result. IT projects are having a nature of complexity, and software project as one of the IT projects, Armour states in his article that “every software project involves some degree of risk” (Armour, 2005).

Generally speaking, there are two major purposes of IT project outsourcing, 1) for cost and 2) for expertise. Microsoft as one of the biggest software companies is using outsourcing in many projects and products development. And I used to directly work with vendor teams together in several projects for years. There were many successful deliveries made by our vendor teams during past several years and overall we are satisfied with their work. But I have to admit there are always many risks in these outsourced projects and sometime the negative impacts of these risks do cause economic loss.

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Measuring Operational Performance

| Filed under Others

Financial measurement

Typically and traditionally most of the business companies are using financial measurement of their performance particularly the financial output: revenue and profit. And this normally is extended to the executive management level and individual employee level. While these still remains true and important in many scenarios, the non-financial operational performance measurement are becoming more and more important especially when we entered into the information age. The companies are running different and new business models in this relative new circumstance, particularly the software companies and online service companies. Financial measurement normally focuses on,

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The Super OS – Internet

| Filed under Cloud Mobile Mobile Web Search Web

Note: this is one of discussion questions from the programme I am current learning. This is a very interesting topic, hence I think probably can post here to record my current thoughts.

In Brookshear’s book, the definition of an operating system is “software that controls the overall operation of a computer” (Brookshear, 2008, p.122).If we strictly follow this definition, we cannot simply agree on the “Super Net OS”. But from a different perspective, I will consider the internet itself as an operating system which provides the operations to data and services via the internet. The “Super OS” is the combination of internet and its infrastructure, protocols, web, server, client, and other technologies.

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Windows Phone 7, Hammock, OAuth and Sina Weibo’s API

| Filed under Mobile Programming

OK, I am developing a windows phone 7 app for Sina Weibo. I just simply don’t like the basic authorisation… And OAuth is much better since once you get the access token, you can use it all the time rather than always passing the username and password around. though there are already two Sina Weibo client apps (1 free and 1 is asking for $0.99) in marketplace, my friend Remy and I still want to develop a new app which will be free and open source.

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Windows Phone Marketplace Tip for 5.6 Technical Support Information

| Filed under Mobile Programming

OK, it turns out that Microsoft is forcing this policy from the new year, I mean from 2011. My little simple free app’s update was failed the certification at 5.6, which simply requires you to expose your app’s version number and your contact information to end users. So if your app has just single page, probably just put it in some corner and set the opacity lower. If you have multiple pages, adding an about page will be a good idea.

So how about contact info? I tried to add my twitter link to the app, and it just works. From some internal discussion, I would think following information will be OK (not guaranteed…) since in basic, it just requires you to provide a contact approach for end user to contact/feedback to you.

  • twitter link
  • a webpage/website
  • embedded contact form page
  • email
  • anything else can find you…

Hope this helps…

在英国看电视

| Filed under TV

在英国看电视，首先要交TV License (当然首先要有电视机，TV license按每电视机收)，目前1年145磅。可分月，季度及年度交。虽然我还是没有搞明白，但月交似乎会预交一部分，也就是最初的几个月不是真的145/12。按季度交会一年多5磅，但没有预交。所以我选择了季度的DD。关于更多，http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/。

然后是看电视基本有3种：Freeview，Cable和Freesat。一般电视机可以自带Freeview和Freesat。Freeview有40多个台可以免费看，挺好的，如果没有对电视节目有什么要求，就默认这个挺好。提供Cabel的很多，比如BT, Sky, Virgin, Talktalk, etc. 我装Virgin宽带的时候顺便选了电视。最便宜的那种，一共65个台，比freeview多了几个美国频道可以看看美剧，但当然没有什么热门的。Glee, Big Bang Theory, ugly Betty, drop dead diva, etc… 还有几个少儿台。激活HD频道要付49磅的费用，先免了吧… Freesat看上去非常诱人，我租的公寓正好是有装锅子的，有电视机自带Freesat或者可以买设备，argos上就几十磅吧。等virgin过期了我肯定要买个试试，反正不能用我就拿去退，哈。2个网站如下。