Where did Wallop go?

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="455" caption="image from Techcrunch"]

I am very curious about where did Wallop go? Did Microsoft just decide to snap it?

Back to 2005, I just had my first personal blog on some blog service platform for shortly several months. After some low-satisfaction moments with the service, I decided to move all the content to Blogger. The process was annoying and exhausting. It was basically just copy-paste. But after the moving, I did feel much comfortable of what Blogger was offering and got excited about the social media phenomenon. Well, I would totally laugh at that excitement when compare to what we have at present, twitter, facebook, foursquare, and a lot of more, uncountable social media services

Then I bumped into Wallop (I don't remember how I started to use it), a Microsoft-proclaimed blog service which heavily incorporate "the social aspect" by visually displaying all your blog activities, friends' activities, and some interrelationship between. Since Wallop can automatically import my blog's RSS feeds and display the content on its website, so I just decided to keep two weblogs running at the same time.

Like all other forgotten social networking website, after a while I just don't remember to log in Wallop anymore. Not until recently, I remember there was such a thing and decided to look out where it went.

Sadly, it seems Microsoft decided to end Wallop in 2007. The whole Wallop team/company went through organization restructuring and became an iPhone-accessory design company.

Microsoft social app co. Wallop rebrands as Coveroo
Coveroo

Wallop wasn't something very user friendly in services but it did have a fancy concept of why it should display visually what you and your friends are doing in social networking. That interface is still very fresh and inspiring even compare to what we have right now in 2010.

Well, I feel kind of ironic about the answer I found out. But all I can say is that "hope you have a good life in another world, Wallop." "And, try to take care of your new friends, discontinued Bloglines, Delicious, and maybe Flickr in the future."

Just finished my thesis

I started my master thesis last December, and approximately after one year I finally finished it. It was such a long journey. In fact, I was informed this opportunity of writing thesis for a Finnish company in the beginning of last summer. After the long waiting of meetings, writing the thesis plan, and looking for tutors, it eventually started in last December.

In a bright side, exclude summer vacations (Finnish companies have famous long summer vacation), my trip to Shanghai, and parents visiting Helsinki, I guess I wasn't out of the track that much.

Anyway, I couldn't be happier and more relieved to see my thesis has been completed. I even tried to crack a joke on my thesis when I was designing the book cover for it.

True story :)

That's it for year 2010!! I wish to explore more in life and in career in the coming year! Yup!! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

New writing plan

I had just finished my thesis writing around two weeks ago. That's probably the heaviest writing tasks I have ever done (even compared to all different Chinese articles I wrote in the past).

I started to write on blogs in Chinese since 2004, and I'm always thinking of writing some of my thoughts in English as well. However, this idea has never been realized.

To celebrate that I'll receive my master degree in Industrial and Strategic Design from Aalto university in the coming season. I'm going to realize this long waiting wish. (Well, in another hand, it's also because I'm much more comfortable to write in English now.)

So, two main ideas in this new writing plan. First, I will try to write new post at least once a month. Second, the main focus of this blog (compared to my Chinese blog site) will be design, no matter from industrial design field, design thinking, or interface/interaction design. I will try to cover the subjects I'm interested in in each post with a little personal thought and try to avoid introduction/newsletter style writing.

All right, let's start from here.

This week's favorite interface design findings

Facebook new profile
Blogger new edit interface.