Long Nguyen

You’re at the wrong place, my website is at http://longzero.com/

Long Nguyen — Thu, 20 May 2010 15:33:32 +0000

You’re at the wrong place, my blog is at http://longzero.com/blog/ and my portfolio is at http://longzero.com/

I didn’t see Long coming

Long Nguyen — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 11:13:50 +0000

I have been credited on a photo as Long. The first thought that came to my mind was "Oh crap, people will never find me with Long. It should be Longzero." It turns out that when you search for long on the .com version of Google, I'm only second at the time of this writing. There are 1,490,000,000 results for long and I'm second! I don't drop my jaw a lot, but it definitely dropped for this one. This is incredible! I can see myself becoming arrogant. Arrogance is such a natural response.

I should mention that it's still better to search for longzero on Google, since that will not only bring up my website, but also a list of social networks to which I have subscribed.

Now, my only question is what could possibly prompt people to search for long…

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My to-do list

Long Nguyen — Thu, 21 May 2009 13:12:29 +0000

We all know what to-do lists look like. I was looking for an application that would synchronize on the web, on my computer and my iPhone. It turned out that stickies are what works for me. Orange is for project titles. Green is for tasks related to projects. Pink for life related insights.

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The most inspiring people on Flickr

Long Nguyen — Wed, 06 May 2009 17:03:21 +0000

When I saw the title of this article, The 5 Most Inspiring People on Flickr , I was only interested in one thing: Is Rebekka Guðleifsdóttir in the list? Why that name? Because I created her website, of course! I am totally biased. Not only is she in the list, but her name is the first one to appear.

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You shouldn’t care to call me at 3 A.M.

Long Nguyen — Tue, 05 May 2009 15:50:11 +0000

Some people don't call me late or early for fear that they will wake me up, but that fear is inapplicable since my sleep behavior is highly irregular. Sometimes, I sleep in the middle of the afternoon or the evening, so if you try to call then, you would be waking me up. I pretty much sleep at any hour of the day. Indeed, I usually sleep between 0:00 and 6:00, but it doesn't mean that I won't sleep again at 10:00 and again at 18:00. Irregularity keeps me functioning at any hour of the day. My sleep behavior is probably a reason why I don't get jet lagged.

The bottom line is that nobody should care about when they call me. I am more annoyed by people's hesitation than their calls.

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I want this bike. Make it real!

Long Nguyen — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 13:53:18 +0000

This is a very cool concept bike from Bradford Waugh. While it looks very cool, I think it's missing the brakes. I would also like to know more about the materials he has in mind since those wheels would be very easy to bend. The handlebar should also be developed further; it feels disconnected from the rest of the design. I still want this bike though.

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5 very detailed reasons why anybody should use a Mac

Long Nguyen — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 14:17:25 +0000

The five reasons:

Mac OS X
Intel Inside
Less Hassle
Microsoft
Design and Minimalism

These reasons are accompanied by very good arguments on why anybody should use Mac in this article. The article targets developers, but it's really for anybody, just forget about things like Ruby on Rails if you don't know what that is. The arguments remain valid for anybody.

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What can you do with Twitter?

Long Nguyen — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 17:41:31 +0000

I am writing this for friends as well as all the people who have asked me why I use Twitter and why they should or shouldn't.

Three years ago, Twitter was born. The website asked people "What are you doing?" The audience at the time were mostly tech-savvy people who just used the service to communicate.

Over the past few months, companies have started to use Twitter as a tool to get closer to their customers. Even celebrities such as Kanye West, Jon Favreau, Ashton Kutcher and Oprah Winfrey are "twittering". Everybody has decided to turn into a geek or geekette. Those people and companies are all big shots, so how can Twitter benefit us, the little people?

If you are using Facebook and you comment on people's statuses, videos, photos, etc, then you should find that Twitter is no different. Only the interface is different. Facebook lives by its interface while Twitter doesn't need that. If you have a device or software in which you can type 140 characters, then you can use Twitter.

These are only a few things that can make Twitter useful.

Spread opinions – Twitter is useless/useful. Facebook's new design rules/sucks. I hate Internet Explorer!
Notify people – Your baby was just born and you're so happy, so spread the joy. Or a bridge just collapse, let people know, so that they don't take that route or perhaps someone they know is involved.
Read the news – Media companies have joined Twitter and they tweet healines and link to full articles. Twitter lets the news come to you so you never have to pick up a news paper or regularly visit news websites.
Make new friends – Many people on Twitter have common interest to yours and some of them have information that can help you, the kind of information that your real life friends don't have.
Create a network
Receive traffic/accident warnings – In Montreal, the metro isn't very reliable. There are moments when I save time because I got alerted that the metro was down. It allowed to seek alternative routes without even wasting the time to find out on my own.
Receive customer service – You bought a computer with Windows and something weird just happened. Believe me, random people on Twitter are way more helpful than customer service representatives.
Become more social – Twitter is a social network, you are allowed to joke around with people.
Find or post a job – I've had a few freelance web design contracts through Twitter.
Find feedback/Get reviews/Get advice on any topic – You can ask anything from "Should I dump him/her?" or "Which movie do you recommend?"
Search like you would on Google – http://search.twitter.com – There are many interesting, up-to-date content on the web that even Google doesn't put on the first page of search results.

Twitter is a communication tool and it should be used as such.

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