New Year, New Blog

New Year, New Blog

Look, it's a big muck shot of your editor. That's a caricature of me drawn by an artist from CPU magazine for an interview I did in 2005 regarding IGN's acquisition of Rotten Tomatoes. It's an interesting read, in light of today's announcement, because it talks about the struggles during the internet crash, the IGN acquisition, and the future plans for Rotten Tomatoes (and myself). Rotten Tomatoes has user ratings now, but still no critics matching, and film school for me is still being pushed back.

And in the wink of an eye, It's 2010 - new year, new goals, new opportunities.

One of the things I want to do more of in 2010 is blog. That's why I'm sprucing up this page up a little bit. I've added a sidebar with an image, an intro, social buttons, and topics - all in hope that you would feel more comfortable with me. Although on Facebook, one of my friends told me the picture is disturbing. Anyway, the navigation still needs work, but this is a start.

Like the sidebar says, I'll blog primarily about Wopular's development and a bit here and there about the internet industry, cell phones, and web design. Wopular's development includes the usual stuff on what it takes to turn a website into a legitimate business. I'm a stay-at-home dad, so I'm NOT aiming for big business, but small business. I'm going for the internet equivalent of a mom-and-pop shop - something I can do at home, earn enough to pay the bills, and watch my kid grow up. That's good enough for me.

I also have a new gig starting today. I'm heading the U.S. operations for BookTeller.com, a destination for interactive children's books. It's a subscription service. You pay $9.99/month for a growing selection of over 200 children's books so far - some in Chinese, some in English. The books are animated with narration for viewing on the computer. The art and animation are gorgeous. I can see myself using it with my kid when he's old enough. Being a Chinese-American, I like the selection of Chinese and English books. It's also the first time I'm working on a site using a subscription model. I look forward to the challenge of building up paying memberships.

That's it. Have a happy new year!

Sections:  note from the editor   
SENH'S LATEST BLOG ENTRIES
  • "Storm The Gates" Mobile Game
    My friends just launched a mobile game called "Storm the Gates"! It's available on both Android and iOS. I'm not much of a gamer, so I didn't know what to do when I started it. But my 9-year-old son turned it on and knew exactly what to do. More
  • "Ip Man 3" Has New Release Date in China and Posters to Prove It
    Over at MoviesWithButter.com, I’ve written two articles regarding “Ip Man 3,” the film that’s holding its own in Asian territories against “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.” If you’re not familiar with Asian cinema,”Ip Man” one of the most popular franchises in that area of the world. More
  • Live-Blogged The Golden Globes at MWB
    Yesterday, I live-blogged The Golden Globes -- for various reasons. First, it gets traffic. Second, I might as well do something useful while watching TV. Lastly, I was looking forward to seeing Ricky Gervais host the event again. Nothing against Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, but he’s my favorite. A google search revealed that the last time I did this for this award show was More
  • Kings vs. Mavs: Ominous Stats, News for Sacramento Before Game
    The preview on NBA.com and the injury report from SactownRoyalty.com don’t look good for the Sacramento Kings going into tonight’s game against the playoff-bound Dallas Mavericks. More
  • What?! Kings Beat Thunder, 116-104
    (Image from the Sacramento Bee. Click here to view more images from the game.) What a win. It was a wild one, especially in the first half. We [Sacramento Kings] were down by 17 in the first quarter. In frustration, I was about to turn off the TV, but the teaml called a timeout. More
SENH'S RELATED BLOG ENTRIES
  • Ad Revenue Trends for the Four Seasons
    Working at Rotten Tomatoes kinda messed up my general view of advertising trends. The movie season peaks during Summer, takes a nosedive during Fall, heads back up during the Winter arounds Oscars, and levels off again during Spring. It’s a bit different from what I’ve experienced so far with Wopular, which is probably more in tune with the average website. More
  • My Take on the Flixster Acquisition of Rotten Tomatoes
    Like most, I originally thought News Corp was acquiring Flixster. Instead, it was Flixster acquiring Rotten Tomatoes. I think it's a great fit. Rotten Tomatoes's aggregated critics ratings combined with Flixster's user ratings, Rotten Tomatoes's premium content combined with Flixster's user-generated content. More
  • Oy, Time to Get Back to Work
    For the past three years (especially 2015), I’ve been neglecting my two websites: Wopular.com and MoviesWithButter.com. During that peroid, I worked in spurts: there were months when I was very active and others when I just disappeared. I’ll get into the why in the future. More
  • Moved SimplePie File Caching to Database
    A while back, My ISP told me my backups took half a day to complete, which is too long. If anything goes wrong during that period, the process would have to start all over again, which happened quite often. The customer rep told me that my server had too many files, and even though they didn’t take up much disk space when added up, the process of copying each one of them takes a lot of time. More
  • Weekend Edition
    After updating the site for seven days a week since the site was started years ago, I will be hands off during the weekends from now on. Because I don’t want the site to look too static, I’ve decided to redesign the “Most Fed Articles” block from the top right area of the site and moving it the top left just for the weekends and calling it “Weekend Edition.” If you came to the site this past weekend, you may have noticed the change and relocation. That’s just a start. More

 

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