Super Sales Lesson

在一通電話搞定供應商的老板後：

要跟上流、下流廠商持續培養關係。到可以打電話搞定事情的程度。關係真是要長時間培育的，有時候是上一份工作給的Case。

親自拜訪是非常有效的，就算非常Senior的前輩，仍是會說＂我可以登門親自來說明這一件事＂。你自己有多看重這一件事，別人就會多看重。親自拜訪的萬用話術是：＂我可以過來嘛，我人剛好在附件，幾分鐘就可以到了。＂

顧客最容易被打動的拜訪時間：外面下著大雨的時候。

Air Swimmers

這就是魔法，把某種不可能實現了。就算只是很簡單的東西。

前輩離職

今天突然得知中國大陸的前輩要離職了，覺得惆悵。雖然跟前輩也只有兩次見面的因緣，但曾經聽到過一些有趣的故事，並親眼見識前輩在公司豎立了制度，治軍嚴謹。整個中國大陸的通路，幾乎是前輩一手打下來的江湖。對此我感到相當的敬佩。

前輩解釋，辭職是為了曾經疏忽某些事業的開發，到今已對生意造成不可收拾的影響，而不得不走。

總令人感嘆，假如像前輩這樣的人也沒有辦法的事情，自己是不是真有一天可以勝任，一個帶頭的角色。

Fabian Hemmert: The shape-shifting future of the mobile phone

An update on Google Health and Google PowerMeter

An update on Google Health and Google PowerMeter

6/24/2011 11:01:00 AM

In the coming months, we’re going to retire two products that didn’t catch on the way we would have hoped, but did serve as influential models: Google Health (retiring January 1, 2012; data available for download through January 1, 2013) and Google PowerMeter (retiring September 16, 2011). Both were based on the idea that with more and better information, people can make smarter choices, whether in regard to managing personal health and wellness, or saving money and conserving energy at home. While they didn't scale as we had hoped, we believe they did highlight the importance of access to information in areas where it’s traditionally been difficult.

We’re making this announcement well in advance to give you plenty of time to download the information you might have stored in either product or to transfer it to another service, and we’re making it easy for you to do it in a variety of formats. More on how that works below.

More broadly, we remain committed as always to helping people around the world access and use information pertinent to them. We’ll continue to pursue this goal and to encourage government and industry to do the same.

Google Health
When we launched Google Health, our goal was to create a service that would give people access to their personal health and wellness information. We wanted to translate our successful consumer-centered approach from other domains to healthcare and have a real impact on the day-to-day health experiences of millions of our users.

Now, with a few years of experience, we’ve observed that Google Health is not having the broad impact that we hoped it would. There has been adoption among certain groups of users like tech-savvy patients and their caregivers, and more recently fitness and wellness enthusiasts. But we haven’t found a way to translate that limited usage into widespread adoption in the daily health routines of millions of people. That’s why we’ve made the difficult decision to discontinue the Google Health service. We’ll continue to operate the Google Health site as usual through January 1, 2012, and we’ll provide an ongoing way for people to download their health data for an additional year beyond that, through January 1, 2013. Any data that remains in Google Health after that point will be permanently deleted.

If you’re a Google Health user, we’ve made it easy for you to retrieve your data from Google Health any time before January 1, 2013. Just go to the site to download your information in any of several formats: you can print and save it, or transfer it to other services that support industry-standard data formats. Available formats include:

• Printable PDF including all the records in your Google Health profile
• Industry-standard Continuity of Care Record (CCR) XML that can be imported into other personal health tools such as Microsoft® HealthVault™
• Comma-separated value (CSV) files that can be imported into spreadsheets and database programs for ongoing tracking and graphing
• HTML and XML versions of the original “data notices” sent to your Google Health profile by linked data providers
• A unified ZIP archive that includes all files you’ve uploaded to your profile, plus all of the formats above

Over the coming weeks we’ll also be adding the ability to directly transfer your health data to other services that support the Direct Project protocol, an emerging open standard for efficient health data exchange. And while we’ll discontinue the Google Health service at the beginning of 2012, we’ll keep these download options available for one more year, through the start of 2013. This approach to download and transfer capability is part of Google’s strong commitment to data liberation principles: providing free and easy ways for users to maintain control of their data and move it out of Google’s services at any time.

In the end, while we weren’t able to create the impact we wanted with Google Health, we hope it has raised the visibility of the role of the empowered consumer in their own care. We continue to be strong believers in the role information plays in healthcare and in improving the way people manage their health, and we’re always working to improve our search quality for the millions of users who come to Google every day to get answers to their health and wellness queries.

Google PowerMeter
We first launched Google PowerMeter as a Google.org project to raise awareness about the importance of giving people access to data surrounding their energy usage. Studies show that having simple access to such information helps consumers reduce their energy use by up to 15%; of course, even broader access to this information could help reduce energy use worldwide.

Since our launch, there’s been more attention given to this notion of people easily accessing their energy data. The installation of smart meters and other home energy devices is picking up steam, and states like California and Texas are moving forward to finalize policies and programs in this area. Earlier this month, the White House announced a goal of giving all consumers access to their energy usage in computer-friendly formats as part of a national plan for modernizing the electricity grid.

We’re pleased that PowerMeter has helped demonstrate the importance of this access and created something of a model. However, our efforts have not scaled as quickly as we would like, so we are retiring the service. PowerMeter users will have access to the tool until September 16, 2011. We have made it easy for you to download your data: simply log in to your account and go to "Account Settings” to export to a CSV (Comma Separated Values) file. We will be contacting users directly with more information on this process.

Momentum is building toward making energy information more readily accessible, and it’s exciting to see others drive innovation and pursue opportunities in this important new market. We’re proud of what we’ve accomplished with PowerMeter and look forward to what will develop next in this space.

By helping people make more informed decisions through greater access to more information, we believe Google Health and PowerMeter have been trailblazers in their respective categories. Ultimately though, we want to satisfy the most pressing needs for the greatest number of people. In the case of these two products, our inability to scale has led us to focus our priorities elsewhere.

As always, we welcome your feedback; please share your thoughts and opinions with us at health-feedback@google.com or powermeter-feedback@google.com. We won’t be able to respond to every email, but we promise we’ll listen.

Posted by Aaron Brown, Senior Product Manager, Google Health and Bill Weihl, Green Energy Czar

Daniel Tammet: Different ways of knowing

 Daniel Tammet has high-functioning autistic savant syndrome, he perceived the world in a different way that normal people do: he is ultra sensitive with words and numbers. He showed how he perceived the world, and wished that we can have the curiosity to open new eyes. 

Book Born on a Blue Day
Embracing the Wide Sky: A Tour Across the Horizons of the Mind is a personal and scientific exploration of how the brain works and the differences and similarities between savant and non-savant minds.


Tammet reminds me of the Grand Design by Stephen Hawking: A few years ago the city council of Monza, Italy, barred pet owners from keeping goldfish in curved bowls. The measure's sponsor explained the measure in part by saying that it is cruel to keep a fish in a bowl with curved sides because, gazing out, the fish would have a distorted view of reality. But how do we know we have the true, undistorted picture of reality?

The goldfish view is not the same as our own, but goldfish could still formulate scientific laws governing the motion of the objects they observe outside their bowl. For example, due to the distortion, a freely moving object would be observed by the goldfish to move along a curved path. Nevertheless, the goldfish could formulate laws from their distorted frame of reference that would always hold true. Their laws would be more complicated than the laws in our frame, but simplicity is a matter of taste.

 how do we know we have the true, undistorted picture of reality?

Emiliano Salinas: A civil response to violence

The son of the former president of Mexico speaks about the greatest crisis the Mexicans are having is denial and apathy(冷漠), fear. "It's like someone who has a serious illness, and pretends that it's the flu, and that it goes away. But it doesn't. Mexican has cancer."

He also mentioned the example of the brothers Benjamin, Julian and Eric: two of the brothers mobilize the whole village to rescue one of their kidnapped sibling.

We're facing a very powerful opponent. But we are many more. They can take a man's life. Anyone can kill me, or you, or you. But no one can kill the spirit of true Mexicans. "