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In a few more hours time, Hungarian-American Charles Simonyi becomes the next man to go into space on April 6-7 (today), after the last private space “tourist”/ explorer Anousheh Ansari. Charles is a legend for developing the Microsoft Word and Excel applications that have gone on to revolutionize the working lives of millions of people (or, if you are a sceptic, to “terrorize” thousands of Word-and-Excel-slaves in corporate cubicles worldwide).

Charles will be another ex-Microsoftie, after Paul Allen of SpaceShipOne fame, who has taken up the space frontier as his new challenge.

Like Anousheh, Charles will be blogging his adventures to communicate his experience and thoughts with children over the world. I really like how such a simple act will inspire young kids to envision a future for mankind in space when they grow up. Check out his blog Charles In Space from tomorrow onwards.

A ham radio enthusiast, Charles will also be attempting to connect with several schools during time in orbit. He is also reportedly dating Martha Stewart who will designing what could be the fanciest meal in space ever (via CNN):

… quail roasted in Madiran wine, duck breast confit with capers, shredded chicken parmentier, apple fondant pieces, rice pudding with candied fruit, and semolina cake with dried apricots.

I wonder if Martha intends to freeze-dry them. Hmm..

For those who are into trivia, Wikipedia says that the next in line for the space tourism customer queue includes a Japanese, Daisuke Enomoto, whose original flight plan was taken over by Anousheh due to his health problems.

I depart on a new adventure for Vietnam, the land where i hear 60% are below 24 years old which means I should be considered a middle-aged expat when I arrive. Lets hope the kids in Ho Chi Minh City will be kind to the elderly.

If all things work out, I will be helping a friend in a venture cap firm that is working on a new fund for digital media investments. It will be interesting to cross the fence and look through the lens from different perspectives on how startups are funded within the trenches of the VCs. I will be entering this short stint with no high expectations but only to get some good exposure of the Vietnamese startup scene plus some cheap beer in an exotic land 2 hours away from Singapore.

Having never been to Vietnam, I have miraculously worked closely with quite a number of Vietnamese in my course of work in the SF Bay Area. I also hear much of Vietnam’s investment potential and booming economy but this being an Easter Friday holiday, I shouldn’t bore with your dry economics… WHO also seems to be giving Vietnam pressure for their bird flu cases which brings me to thank concerned friends and family who had prepared me with their doomsday prophecies..  Of course, Russell Peters also provide more comedic views of the place which had really psyched me about visiting this place some time back, such as how motorbikes are used as vans there..

Boy, I can’t wait..

.. and the award goes to.. *drum roll* Victoria Junior College! And their 3 blogs at Cosiety, SecondLifeVJC and an unverified GeneralPaper.

Ok, i expect an uproar of controversy and conspiracies out there if I am wrong. Truth to be told, I read so much these days I hardly have time to explore every nook and cranny of the blogosphere. Hence, whenever I can connect the dots, I try to hail it as a “trend” and hope my readers or friends either validate it or debunk me.

Victoria Junior College (VJC for short) has had its student-run blog for a year now! Hurrah for the students who made this happen, their site “Cosiety” has improved by leaps and bound and you can see improvements made to the site design, useability and reader-oriented articles and coverage. I like their Subjectif section:

Subjectif is Victoria JC’s weblog of student opinion, mindless ramblings, colourful ideas and chic talk. It’s your finger on the pulse of the life of the college, and is updated weekly by irregular wits, specialist columnists, flowery tongues and sizeable speakers.

In terms of student participation, vibrancy of content and the authenticity of its bloggers, Cosiety beats any varsity-run online bulletin/ magazine , especially my alma mater’s Hooked, which is a sorry study of old-media-thinking transplanted forcibly on the internet platform. Sorry to its original founder and my friend Justin but more blogger-scrutiny might do it some good. Perhaps Justin could blog and shed some light separately..

SecondLifeVJC is really new and started its virgin post this month of April 2007. It taps on the enthusiasm of the local community’s growing Sl interest and our Lion City project inside and also appears to be aggregating relevant moves by local enterprises such as PR firm Text 100 in this area.GeneralPaper is much more established and also celebrates one year of blogging last month, same time as VJC’s cosiety. Their blogroll also gives prominence to SecondLifeVJC and you can see where my deductive skills is implying here. Helmed by an true educationer, Gimster aka Hoe Kim Yau, its intention to be a blog-based learning resource for General Paper (a test on English writing skills for the GCE A levels high school examination) students is clear. I think its a really cool idea to expose high school/ JC students to new ideas and concepts on the web and do it through a blog. I really wished I learnt this way during my time in JC too because I would definitely have learnt much more from my GP teachers.And there you have it, VJC leads the way in blogging, moving aggressively in entertainment (Cosiety), innovation (SecondLife incarnation of an actual VJC college in Lion City?) and education (GeneralPaper).Anyone contesting this claim?

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.. for the business folks and website owners, at least.

If you are a Adwords consultant or rely on Google Analytics for your bread and butter, salvation is here. Google launched their “third leg in the stool” called the Google Website Optimizer.

Google considers Website Optimizer the third leg of the proverbial stool with AdWords dedicated to driving Web traffic and Google Analytics focused on measuring Web activity… (It is ) a product designed to help Web site owners test drive different landing pages in order to determine which designs drive the most conversions.

Is it me or is Google getting more uninspiring with their naming? Google “Docs and Spreadsheets” anyone? In any case, I need to get to a website with real stuff to sell or pitch to try out this stuff..