I’m not surprised that this article over at All Things Digital points out that Twitter is having a hard time maintaining user loyalty. It seems that up to 60% of people who register for Twitter don’t come back after the first month.

The article does mention that a large percentage of that could be due to people accessing Twitter via a variety of 3rd party clients rather than visits to Twitter’s web site. (Though to me, one of the things that says is that it is going to be next to impossible to make money off this service, if people who use it don’t even visit the web site.)

Look at the spikes on Twitter’s line, whereas usage on Facebook and MySpace is clearly more consistent.

I stopped using Twitter after a month, but after a few months I returned. I’ve got Twinkle on my iPhone and have TweetDeck installed on my PC. My stats say that I’m following 37 people and that 34 are following me.

The thing is, 99% of what I’m getting in tweets from the people I follow is of no interest to me. I don’t follow anyone who’s tweeting stuff like “just had breakfast” or “going to bed now”. And I try not to tweet nonsense like that as well. But most of what I’m getting isn’t really grabbing me, stuff like: KPMG’s global chair of comms & mobile, sean Collins: “mobile users are willing to take ads in exchange for free music downloads.” Little one line micro-blogging attempts with no commentary or analysis? I’ll pass. At this point, when someone adds me, I’ll check out their feed to see if what they’ve been tweeting is of potential interest to me.

The fact remains, I get more useful information via comments to my blog.

I can see how I might use it to promote myself – if more people were following me – by linking to the blog, to my pieces in BC, my upcoming job search or attempt to start a business, etc. But with just 34 followers, I ain’t gonna be setting the world on fire any time soon.

I don’t think Twitter provides tools to make it intuitive to find people whom I ought to follow. A list of people they suggest I follow includes the Dell Outlet Store, JetBlue Airways, Al Gore and Alison (hi there, i’m ali. i’m in a band called a fine frenzy. life is funny. let’s have a laugh).

And, as you’ve no doubt read, the current swine flu scare has created an incredible amount of misinformation circulating on Twitter.

So I don’t get it.

But feel free to suggest Twitter tools or people you think I should follow to get more practical use from the thing.

The SCMP reports that a 12 year old girl is in serious condition – she was riding a bicycle, was in a pedestrian crossing, and was hit by a drunk driver. This happened at 7 AM in Sheung Shui on Wednesday. The motorist, who suffered no injuries, failed a breath test, but was released without being charged and on $5,000 bail.

Apparently this is being seen as the fault of the girl or her mother, because they were crossing against a red light and (it’s hard to tell from the article) the mother may have been riding as a passenger on the bicycle, which is illegal in Hong Kong.

Assuming for the moment that traffic was light, it was 7 AM, and they felt safe in crossing, one thing that should be clear to anyone is that if the driver had not been drinking, his reflexes would have been in good enough shape to avoid a collision. One might also ask (though SCMP reporter Clifford Lo does not) if the mother and daughter thought it was clear to cross, and then got hit by a car, was this drunk driver also speeding?

And one might also ask how successful our government’s public education campaigns are if statistics show that bicycle accidents and drunk driving accidents are both higher so far this year than last year.

In the first three months of this year, three cyclists were killed and 289 injured in 333 accidents. In the same period of last year, 321 cyclists were hurt in 351 accidents but there were no fatalities.

The police figures showed that 45 people were killed in 38 fatal traffic accidents in the first three months of this year. There were 37 people killed in 37 fatal traffic accidents in the same period last year.

Gradually clawing my way back to health. I’m sure I will be fine in time for the holiday on Friday, at which point I’m also sure that it will rain again.

For lack of anything better to post, here’s a web site dedicated to selling a single house, which happens to be in my neck o’ the woods. (It looks much better in IE than Firefox.) But the contact numbers are in China and the email address is yahoo.com.cn.

Looks real pretty from the outside:

A chandelier in the frigging bathroom?

Oh, I find this furniture so depressing:

The Chinese furniture seems much nicer

Japanese garden

Outside barbecue for serious barbecue (though that’s a tiny little grill for such a setup, isn’t it?)

The pool:

The interior of the house is 8,000 square feet. It includes 5 bedrooms, 5 full baths, 2 half baths, 3 kitchens! “this is an one and only prestigious 3-stories mansion is situated in Hong Kong’s New Territories Sai Kung”

Full description of all floors is given, including this one:

• The 3rd Level houses 5 bedroom suites each behind a prestigious entry including a large Master Bedroom Suite with Sitting Area and Balcony; Each of the Bedroom Suites has its Private Full Baths, decorated with French Draperies and Teakwood Closet; The Master bedroom has a partial ocean view, and a balcony and bathroom that overlook the Japanese landscape. The Master bedroom has an area of 380 sq. ft., a corridor of Teak closet upon entry, and a luxurious bathroom equipped with Swedish Sauna, Jacuzzi bathtub w/LCD TV, and Separate Shower with complete view of Japanese landscape.

And as for the garden area, a small gotcha:

Under New Grant No. 3896, Section 6, this estate’s garden and swimming pool area of 18,406 sq. ft. is held under the term of government lease commencing from July 1, 1898 extending to June 30, 2047 (Term of 99 years). Annual lease of HK$104,800. Although under government lease, this land is exclusively used by this property, and the owner has invested at lease $20,000,000 on the improvement of landscape. Designed by renowned landscape designer, Miyamoto Taro, during his visit to Hong Kong in 1982. This authentic Japanese Landscape features unique hardscape and species, including a priceless 100+ year old Buddhist Pine and other exquisite trees and shrubs. Other features include Fish pond, waterfall, swimming pool & spa, and impressive iron fence surrounding the property.

The government leased lands values at approximately HK$50,000,000, unlikely to be purchased by any third party as it is only suitable for this property’s landscaping purpose.

Anyway, they’ve figured that the house and garden, including renovations, ought to be worth approx HK$120 million, but they’re asking just HK$78 million. Furniture, antiques, rugs, lighting fixtures not included but negotiable.

If any of my readers wants to grab this on my behalf, I promise you’ll be invited to all parties thrown there.

Wasn’t feeling great Thursday, Friday and Saturday night. By Sunday afternoon had a temp of 38.4. (I need use my iphone to do temp conversions to figure out what this is, even after all these years.)

Monday I made an appointment at the Mona Fong clinic, operated by Tseung Kwan O hospital, in Sai Kung town. HK$45 (less than US$6) covers seeing a doctor and medications. Hooray for HK’s medical system.

Except … was the doctor under orders to NOT diagnose people with flu? It’s not beyond the realm of possibility, is it? I told him I had all the classic flu symptoms – fever, dizziness, nausea – and he told me that I had a cold with a slight fever. So even though I don’t have a runny nose he gave me antihistamine. And even though the only time I’m coughing is when I smoke (and my smoking is down 80% right now) he gave me cough syrup. For the fever, he prescribed Panadol. No anti-biotics.

So one day later, I still have a fever. Basically slept last night from 5 PM till 9 AM, got up a couple of times to look at email only, and this morning temp is holding steady at 37.9. Can’t decide if my next step should be to go to the emergency room at Tseung Kwan O hospital or see my regular doctor – who’s in Central, a bit more of a trip than I feel up to at the moment. Or just go back to the same place and say, “hey, you see?”

The rain yesterday and today has just been wreaking havoc on my mood. Not in a mood to sit home, not in a mood to go out, not in a mood. And a small health issue for the past few days. Almost went to emergency today but seem to have gotten past it, but a doctor’s visit may be called for shortly.

In the meantime, have dug the CPAP machine out of storage and fired it up. I have 4 different masks and they’re all fucking uncomfortable. Woke up after 3 hours and almost literally tore the mask off my face. My gf says that if I do it every night, maybe I’ll get used to it eventually.

One “benefit” is that today I smoked only about 10 cigarettes instead of my usual 2 packs. I think I’ve hit the point where I need to stop. Let’s see, in the past I’ve tried cold turkey, acupuncture, hypnosis, the patch … what else is out there?

I’ll have what will likely be my last business trip to Tokyo next month (at least for this job). I’ve been going to Tokyo since 1994, up to six times per year, but aside from a one day trip to Fuji and Hakone and a day spent at a concert at the Fuji Speedway, I’ve never traveled anywhere in Japan. So this time I’m planning to extend my visit by 2 days and take a quick tour of Kyoto. Any recommendations?

Today, in bed most of the day, watched several things ….

Blu-Ray disc of Jeff Beck Live at Ronnie Scott’s. Filmed last year at the legendary jazz club in London, this captures Beck in a rare small club, playing at the top of his form with a great band (including Vinnie Colaiuta on drums). Clapton comes out to duet on two songs; Jimmy Page is clearly visible in the audience but doesn’t come up on stage. Fabulous video, audio and performance. Also some very nice interview footage as part of the bonus features. Unbelievable that bassist Tal Wilkenfeld is just 21 years old (and has already played with Allman Bros, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock as well as Beck).

The other was the Criterion Blu-Ray of The Last Metro, one of the few Truffaut films that I hadn’t seen up till now. I did not know that this was the 2nd part of a planned trilogy, with Day for Night being part 1 and part 3 never completed. But some of the character types in Day and Metro are quite similar, even though the circumstances in the 2nd film are much darker. Truffaut plays the director in Day, an obsessed man in love with movies even though the film he’s directing is a trifle. And Steiner, the director in Metro, is similarly obsessed and even bears a physical resemblence to Truffaut. Bisset in the first and Deneuve in the 2nd have some similarities, ditto Leaud in the first and Gepardieu in the second.

Set in Paris during the German occupation, it details the efforts of a theater group to do the “the show must go on!” bit, with a surprising emphasis on the plight of French Jews during that era. Catherine Deneuve is radiant as always and a young Gerard Depardieu as a young actor who moonlights with the Resistance seems to slip into his role effortlessly. Great line in there, Deneuve’s husband, a Jewish director whom she keeps hidden in the cellar of the theater, reading to his wife from a book of propaganda, something along the lines of, “in addition to usurping our theater and films, the Jews take all the best looking women.” And ain’t it the truth?

This man is Ian. Ian is British and lives in Sai Kung and claims to have a pregnant wife girlfriend in the Philippines. He took a girl out from a bar in Wanchai on Friday afternoon and agreed to pay her money for her time. At 6 AM Saturday morning, they left his house, he told her to wait in front of the house and that he would get a taxi. After he didn’t return, the girl went to the road to find that he was gone. Despite promising to give her money, he gave her nothing, not even taxi fare, but did give her a phony phone number and left her outside stranded in the rain. He knows the girl cannot go to the police.

Well, I finally heard from Aurora, with a link to download a trial version that won’t expire until May 8th. So download and install. Works. Except it doesn’t handle RAW – only JPEG. I suppose that’s to be expected for a program that costs only US$20.

Anyway, here’s an image of Edwin from the band Icebox:

And here’s the same photo after running it through Aurora:

Could be worth $20. Wish it handled RAW.

Previously blogged about the release of photo editing/management software Aurora from Lightcrafts. I downloaded the 7 day trial version. Installed and ran it. Needed to change its default directory, so I did, at which point I was told to restart the program to have the change take effect. After restarting, I was informed that my 7 day free trial period had ended and that I now need to buy the software – 5 minutes after the initial install! Sent two emails to their tech support address; 36 hours later still no reply. At this rate, I don’t think I’m gonna be yanking out my credit card to buy this.
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One of those bits of Chinglish or Hong Konglish that drives me nuts: stores and restaurants that advertise “Buy 1 Get 1″. Well, duh, yeah, if I buy one, I damn well expect to get one. Oh, wait, you mean to say “Buy 1 Get 1 Free?” Apparently the word “Free” doesn’t exist in Hong Kong.

(Photo above from engrish.com apparently from a Carrefour sales brochure in China.)
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Google Maps and Google Earth still show Tamar back when the carnival was in town. (Such a better use for that site, too.)

And HK Disneyland is still shown as a construction site. (Or maybe it still looks that way. I still haven’t been there.)

The 3D effect for buildings and terrain is kinda cool though.

(definitely click on that one for full size.)

Looking at that list of 50 top restaurants again, on a web site put together by a British firm:

William Reed Business Media Ltd 2008. All rights reserved. William Reed Business Media Ltd. Registered Office: Broadfield Park, Crawley RH11 9RT.

I noticed this:

Last year’s Chef’s Choice, Mugaritz, retains it’s highest ever position at number 4

And while the writer or editor went overboard with the use of apostrophes, as if there was a sale on them at the corner grocery, it seems that they ran short on commas and completely forgot that there is such a thing as a semi-colon.

The art of proofreading is dead. Or perhaps it was out-sourced to a call center in Mumbai.

(Yeah yeah yeah, I gots lots of bad grammars throughout my postings too, but I’m not some professional firm charging they’re clients big moneys.)
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Via various sources, a new study indicates that people who download “free” music via P2P sources (such as BitTorrent) spend 10 times more money on legal digital downloads than those who are squeaky clean.
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More on Jackie Chan from today’s SCMP:

Several Taiwanese groups have launched a campaign to boycott Jackie Chan’s new movie, saying the freedom-loving island would not welcome him.

In Hong Kong, the number of complaints to the Tourism Board against Chan’s ambassador role also jumped to 121 yesterday, up from 17 on Monday.

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Marble cake? A type of cake. Also something quite different, as I learned this morning reading about how members of online bulletin board 4chan (which claims to have originated rickrolling and lolcatz) manipulated voting for Time’s top 100 something or other. I followed this link. I’m not gonna put the results here. Check it out yourself. Or just rest assured that it has several other meanings as well.