了解我的人一定知道我喜欢什么，我非常乐于表达自己的喜爱。我喜欢零度可乐，几乎每天都要喝一罐。我喜欢赛百味三明治（我也几乎每天都要吃一个！）。我喜欢读书，我喜欢帽衫（你知道那些拉链卫衣）。我喜欢Google。我的老板将我称为“品牌托儿”，也就是非常喜欢说服他人喜欢上自己喜爱的品牌那类。我们进行了很多关于中国的“品牌托儿”们的研究，他们与谁交流、聊些什么，他们怎样彼此之间获得信息。真的是很奇妙的一件事情。我要把这个话题保留下来，以备博客的不时之需，因为我可以一直不停的讲下去。

所以我们回到Google，来讲讲他们的新点子为何总是让我敬佩不已。

大家都知道，Google的gmail引起了免费网络邮件的革命。Gmail在2007年向公众推出（实际上他们的beta版本在04年就已经开始测试），短短几年内，人们已经无法想象没有gmail该怎么办（也许只有我一个人是这样）。他们是首个推出了账户内“搜索”功能的邮件服务商，并且开发了很多让邮件更易读的功能。他们一直在Google Labs内添加新奇而且酷的功能，比如Google chat的添加和删除以及屏蔽等功能（他们说，这个功能是为了喝醉酒的夜里煲email粥用的。你知道，如果你醉酒后不再煲电话粥，而是煲email粥，那说明你已经进化成了一个科技潮人），以及Google的手机、主题等等。

现在Google推出了Google Wave，文档和信息与他人分享变得更轻松。我试用了beta版，到目前为止，我看到大量的用户都在使用Wave。尽管目前还没有共享日程的功能，所以我期盼他们能读到我发给他的邮件，并且真的按我的建议添加这个功能！

好吧，这也许已经不是新鲜事了。Google即将要发布一系列新的工具，加强网络搜索的关联性。我们都了解社交媒体的力量，Facebook和Twitter都是我们熟悉的名字。那些忽视这些媒体的人同样也忽视了他们的力量和影响力。但是Google的聪明之处在于他们完全接纳了社交媒体，并且将他们纳入自己的搜索功能。所以Google的搜索结果中不再仅仅是网站和文章，而是实时更新中的Twitter、MySpace和Facebook。为什么这点很重要？好吧，其中的一个原因在于，人们玩Twitter是因为大家都想在第一时间了解新闻。他们从广泛的网络社交网络中获取新闻，而不再等待传统的肥体发布或通过老式搜索寻找。现在，Google的用户则可以在新闻发生的第一时间就搜索到相关信息，聪明！

看下面的截图，我们可以搜索到Twitter上第一时间发布的爆料。

“Google能Google”

实时搜索是google正在引进的新技术，另外一项创新就是现实增强功能。还记得现实增强么？我早些时候写过一篇介绍它的 文章，可以再读读重温。

这个功能叫做“Google能Google”，是应用于Android手机操作系统平台上的，我把它比作一个加强版的维基百科，你在搜索信息的时候需要做的就是将搜索要求拍一张照片，那些google的小淘气们就会通过视觉算法为你寻找答案（尽管我还不知道其中的原理），将你的搜索与索引中几十亿的照片做对比，告诉你你想知道的一切。你可以搜索书、红酒商标、产品、艺术品等等，我想唯一的缺点就是不能搜索天空（比如，你拍一张天空的照片，Google的结果是：蓝色，云，今天的天气是27度，风力是……）

但是通过拍照搜索真的是个很酷的点子，Google让我了解到其中的妙处。这与苹果的iPhone能够通过曲子搜索到歌名和歌手的功能类似（看，这个功能一推出来的时候我就认为它很棒），Benjamin Moore的色彩搜索手机应用也具有异曲同工之妙，只要拍一张照片，他们就可以告诉你照片颜色的色号，或者告诉你系统里是否存有这种颜色信息。

我必须说，我激动的期待着接下来会出现什么。

Quite a few discussion forums (especially the techie ones!) have been buzzing recently about the Japanese man who married an anime game character.  Boing Boing reported that “a man named Sal9000 married the love of his life. Her name is Nene Anegasaki, and she lives inside of a Nintendo DS video game called Love Plus.”

See Boing Boing’s recap of it on YouTube:

It’s clear that people are fascinated by this, as this YouTube video received well over 1.5 million hits!

A few months ago, the New York Times had published a telling article about this phenomenon called “Love in 2-D”, describing a thriving subculture of men and women in Japan who indulge in real relationships with imaginary characters.

Featured was a man named Nisan, who fell in love with an anime character (named Nemutan)  printed on a body pillow (pictured below). Says the NY Times reporter who spent a day interviewing him:  ”He treats her the way any decent man would treat a girlfriend — he takes her out on the weekends to sing karaoke or take purikura, photo-booth pictures imprinted on a sheet of tiny stickers.”

There’s a name for the obsessive fandom surrounding the anime, manga and video game culture: Otaku.

Continues the reporter: “It’s impossible to say exactly what portion of otaku are 2-D lovers, because the distinction between the two can be blurry. Like most otaku, the majority of 2-D lovers go to work, pay rent, hang out with friends (some are even married). Unlike most otaku, though, they have real romantic feelings for their toys. The less extreme might have a hidden collection of figurines based on anime characters that they go on “dates” with during off hours. A more serious 2-D lover, like Nisan, actually believes that a lumpy pillow with a drawing of an anime character on it is his girlfriend.

According to many who study the phenomenon, the rise of 2-D love can be attributed in part to the difficulty many young Japanese have in navigating modern romantic life.”

To read the entire fascinating NYtimes article, click here.

I started thinking about the way Chinese people express affection.  I have never heard a Chinese person say “I love you” before!  It was my dad’s birthday a few days ago and I wanted to tell him that I love him and appreciate him.  But it was actually kind of hard to say “I love you”.  It ended up coming out in a “hey dad… you know … you’re a pretty good dad” kinda way.  It wasn’t because I don’t love my dad – I LOVE my parents.  But actually saying it out loud and in person is harder.  I’ve noticed that I’ve started to say it more lately, as I grow older, because I genuinely want to tell them I love them.  But growing up, I never said it, and they never told me they love me either (one way my dad expressed it was to pat me on the head and tell me to “be good”).  I know they did, very much, but that elusive “I love you” is always implicit.  This seems to be the case universally for Chinese people.

It’s implied in the actions they do.  They give me the best piece of chicken, or the very last shrimp on the plate. They serve me first, putting food in my bowl before they serve themselves (so I’ve always associated serving others as a sign of caring).  They would pack my lunch, cut up my fruit into bite-sized bits, make sure I take vitamins, make the most nutritious soup for me (ones that have to be boiled for hours on end and which contain the most expensive and obscure ingredients, such as snow fungus, essence of chicken, ginseng… I actually don’t know what else my mom uses)…
Hmm… all these ways appear food-related.

But, as you know, food is an extremely important part of the Chinese culture. Out of curiosity, I asked our research associate Nova in Shanghai to post questions on a Shanghai chat forum about how Chinese youth view this topic.

We received replies within an hour or two of posting and, surprise surprise, the majority of them involved … you guessed it – food!

They talked about how it is a very common saying in Western cultures and how they always see people saying it to each other in Western TV shows and movies, but they have not been able to say it themselves.  Here are a couple examples in answer to the question: what do you say to your mom or dad to tell them you love them?

Nova explained it to me like this:

Nelson in our Hong Kong office said that he has never once told his parents he loves them (and probably never will!) because by nature of being family, there is love.  Showing them respect is love.   He also admits to being too embarrassed/shy to say it!  He also said that he rarely tells his wife that also, as once again, it is implied in what he does for her.