Is Facebook on it's way down?

I don't really use Facebook very much anymore. Why? It's kind of become a little unwieldly- with all the advertisements, the applications, all these new features, etc. And as people's friends lists get longer, we just don't have the time to keep track of everyone. I don't need to see the news feed about everybody I know and everything they did. The only real useful application is the photo-sharing, and keeping a "wall". I think Facebook needs to simplify and to focus just on photos and its core business of managing friends list.. anything additional is going to eventually backfire. 

Google, on the other hand, seems to know how to do it well. Gmail is a wonderful invention that combines instant messaging and easy-to-use email in the same window. Their new browser- Google Chrome- is fantastic. I still use Google Finance, GoogleApps, iGoogle, Google Earth.. all these things are innovative, very useful, and fun to use.. 

Microsoft's strange new ad campaign..

Just watched a 5 min advertisement on the Microsoft site. Looks like they are trying to re-spin their image, which was so successfully trampled upon by Apple. But it is weird to watch two of the most famous people in the world  (Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates) do ordinary things, like buying shoes, fighting over a plastic giraffe, and having dinner with a typical suburban family. The strange juxtaposition isn't really that funny, and only emphasizes the point that they are both kind of irrelevant. 

I remember seeing a Mac in Jerry's apartment on Seinfeld. I wonder what happened that made him switch?

“Our beds are empty two-thirds of the time.
Our living rooms are empty seven-eighths of the time.
Our office buildings are empty one-half of the time.
It’s time we gave this some thought.”

R. Buckminster Fuller

Cuandixia

Last Saturday, I went to Cuandixia- a Ming-dynasty village 90 km west of Beijing. A great place to escape the city to a different world.