江上天空

今天看了《曲苑杂谈》的《功夫传奇》，感觉很是不错，建议可以作为2008奥运开幕的节目。

http://www.cctv.com/program/qyzt/20060728/101281.shtml

等有时间，搜集更多的内容

另外，兵马俑也是不错的候选。

http://www.szrbs.net/misc/2006-09/18/content_7463786.htm

http://www.safevegs.com/NewsShow.asp?id=351

德国男子在西安秦兵马俑一号坑上演“人俑秀”，被警方带走

    16日下午，一名德国青年游客Pablo自制秦俑服装，脸抹秦俑肤色，装扮成秦俑并跳入一号坑修复区，被秦俑馆公安干警及时发现。所幸文物没有被损坏。男子跳进坑内被抬出16日下午2时02分，秦始皇兵马俑博物馆兵马俑展坑内有个人影一闪而过，引起了正在巡逻的执勤公安人员注意。

http://www.nnwb.com/newsimages/2006/0918/gnxw/24-1.jpg

 结果发现在一号坑修复区内，一尊“秦俑”好像是真人打扮而成，于是这尊“秦俑”被公安干警抬出。这时民警才发现这是个外国人。经过了解，这名名叫Pablo的德国人现在杭州一所艺术学院学习行为艺术。由于他对秦始皇兵马俑如痴如狂，所以自己设计了一身服装，跑进秦俑坑里找感觉，并让同伴拍下他和兵马俑的合影。

http://www.nnwb.com/newsimages/2006/0918/gnxw/24-2.jpg

“现在我不知道怎么办，我的行为太愚蠢了。”德国小伙Pablo用英语重复着。16日下午，Pablo坐在兵马俑博物馆公安科办公室里，低着头，脚上还穿着仿制的秦俑鞋。他说，之所以跳下俑坑和秦俑站在一起，只是出于对“他们”的喜爱。受到批评教育后离开Pablo虽然是秦俑馆建馆26年来首个跳入俑坑的游客，但他最后只是受到了批评教育。对此，博物馆公安科副科长姜波认为，对跃入俑坑事件的处罚结果，要依据其造成的后果而定。

http://www.nnwb.com/newsimages/2006/0918/gnxw/24-3.jpg

姜波表示，这种处罚结果比较合理。Pablo出于对兵马俑的喜爱，才会做出跳进俑坑的事。他真正的目的是和秦俑拍照，并不是要故意扰乱秩序，破坏文物。从实际情况看，秦俑也确实没被损坏，所以Pablo不会受到严厉处罚。

    由于16日是周末，恰值游览高峰。事发时现场很多有人认为Pablo的行为荒唐。当晚，他已乘坐火车前往杭州。

据《华商报》

呵呵！这也说明兵马俑的影响力！

北京
政治文化中心，拼命的和上海争经济中心的位置，本身不产什么，企业靠搜刮全国的资源为生，木材，石油，钢铁等等，就向一个weishengjin,只要能用的，北京全要，而且不花钱，城市建设一塌糊涂，被人美其名曰：“大屯子”除了“大”之外，一点特点都没有，要高不高，要美不美，人均收入靠中央个部委，机关的办公人员来支撑，北京人很富吗？未必！空气质量及差，要举办奥运会，看来又要在全国掀起第二轮搜刮浪潮


石家庄
一个小城市，比较注重外表的修饰，经过几年的城市建设，就觉得自己是个大城市了，自认为比天津，郑州强了，更有人狂称本城建设可以进全国前十，没有什么知名的工业，GDP不高，收入不高，就向一个穿着西装，身无分文的乞丐，坐北京的小弟弟很适合，这些年得了不少好处


保定
保定人谈起保定来，总喜欢说：“曾经是省会，高教实力全国地级市第一”，强烈要求别人想起他，农村人口快千万了，GDP过千亿了，还想东山再起，总认为自己是个强者，默默的、抬起头来，猛然发现自己在省内是个矮子


唐山
北京和天津的卫星城，老工业城市，最近进年喜欢玩点钢铁，水泥什么的，经济虽然高上去了，但重度污染，就连脏西西的北京人都喜欢称唐山是京城的厕所

廊坊
北京天津之间的一个村，喜欢搞点大学什么的，狂建大学城，高中城市，还定了目标：“10年内建成两所全国知名大学”，可见此城人之荒诞，地靠京津中央，靠收点过桥费为生

秦皇岛
沿海城市比较落后的那种城市，80年代大搞形象工程，建高层建筑，花园别墅，至今烂尾楼占有率全国第一。

天津
滨海超过浦东了，人口超过北京了，新港超过鹿特丹了，南开超过北大了，看看天津人的口号，自以为是中国第三城？重工业城市，一个没有特点的大城市，就向大邱庄一样，被人淡忘许久了

济南
一个靠泉水为生的城市，总在省里装老大，好自称是华北第三大城市，特别嫉妒省内的青岛，烟台发展时常过去拍个马屁，修个公路，交流感情，声怕被挤出山东，泉城广场是山东一景，除了大气之，一点特点都没有。本城最近几年没什么太大的作为，恨不得把黄河决口冲刷一下自己，也漏漏脸

青岛
小城市，工业城市，和济南争大小，和大连争强弱，满腔热血，意气风发，到处碰壁，打遍北方，让人恶心，在招商中，论坛上总喜欢给别人看青岛破乱丑陋的天际线，总以为自己很美，很高，还说青岛国贸是北方第一高楼，可仔细一看，一根天线占了50米，半幕墙，逼着别人要说美要说高。08年要举办奥运会帆船赛，到时候欢迎世界各地的朋友欣赏青岛黄色，带有淤泥的美丽外海

潍坊
风筝城，最近几年发展的不错，靠几个爱吹牛的老板出了名，总爱说第一，风筝第一，玻璃钢第一，轻纺第一，就是马桶也要说成第一，潍坊人的原则：“只要第一就好，出名就好”。潍坊的经济和市民的素质简直是天壤之别，大大呼哧，不拘小节，不愧外地人称潍坊人农民。

威海
海滨小城市，最近几年发展好了，硬要拉着别人问自己的城市大比大？好不好？美不美？爱弄也写海滨地区的照片给别人，显示自己是大城市，真不知道威海除了一般的海滨之外还有什么？

临沂
一个用“智能ABC输入法”拼不出来的千亿城市，一个农村堆积起来经济总量，是啊，人口都1000万了，再不创造出点经济来对的起谁？

淄博
古都，工业城市，石化城市，总喜欢争省内的老三，这几年经济搞上去了，翅膀就硬了，想给大家一个惊喜，想要大家认可它，宣传方法错误，经常被省内人称为“农村”

太原
看看漫天弥漫的黄沙，二氧化硫严重超标的天空，人们不经要问：‘这是古都？以前的太原喜欢和济南争华北老三，现在蔫了，不得不一心一意的搞建设了，可看看自己的经济结构，煤炭，钢铁等睁化工污染工业多如牦牛，不得不对老天长叹：“饶了太原吧”！

呼和浩特
碧绿的草原，黑压压的一座城，杂乱的街道被被地人称为长安大街，破乱的寺庙被其称为中国宗教胜地，彪汗的民风，注定这里的发展只能是草原

包头
千里大草原崛起的一座强大的钢城，四面不通，商品靠空运，铁路是外出的唯一途径，这样的城市消失是早晚的事情

沈阳
一个靠政绩靠形象为生的贫困大城市，经济衰的直不起腰来，铁西是本城的暗点，B社会，腐败是本城的代名词，不一心一意为贫困的百姓办实事，办好事，还在弄一些没有的，园博会，大兴旅游事业，建高楼，种草地，可怜那几百万的下岗职工

大连
花瓶，城市建的象欧洲，农村建的向非洲，政绩工程一大堆，足球，广场，草坪，没一件是和百姓生活挂钩的，出名了，美了，大了，大连成了全国的笑柄

鞍山
一个靠钢铁吃饭的城市，沈阳的卫星城市，除了钢铁和千山，中国人对这个城市一无所知，听说环境不错，没想到这样一个污染城市也能评上国家卫生城？难道钢水都扔到天上去了吗？

本溪
一个连美国卫星都看不到的城市，可见此城之神秘，以煤炭和钢铁出名，最糟不过类似本溪的城市，奉献了一辈子，都头来还得国家救济，一个没有生机的城市，不提也罢

丹东
靠着无赖国家--朝鲜，就如采着地雷，不知道中国这样的城市什么时候才能从地球上消失？

抚顺
一个较大城市，一个人口过百万的城市，煤炭，枯竭，贫穷是这个城市名片，缺乏生机，早晚被同样艰苦的大哥--沈阳兼并

铁岭
大城市，提到东北，不得不说铁岭，要不是本山在央视春节晚会上提过，还以为是个农村，以铁岭和本山做东北的代表是再好不过了

营口
小城市，小港口，大嘴巴，江南人知道东北人能吹，一般都是从营口身上得出的结论，什么轻工业超过无锡了，港口吞吐量超过大连等等，无不代表了东北人的愚味

长春
一个嘴能吞吐汽车的城市，一个高教科技实力强大的城市，一个弱小的副省级城市，一个不被人重视的省会城市，计划经济年代被人尊敬城市，市场经济男带被人鄙夷的城市，长春--一个悲哀的城市

吉林市
背靠着一条松花江，就戏称江城？看似丑陋的大桥也被人拿来当风景炫耀？距离长春太近，早晚被兼并

延吉
一个朝汉两族聚集的地区，被人视为蛮夷，百姓生活窘迫，contraband猖狂，跨境越货的事情在这里很正常，适合开发赌场妓院

哈尔滨
有几幢欧式建筑就称自己是“小巴黎”，能采些冰，就认为自己是冰城，弄个铁架子称其为龙塔，总认为自己很与众不同，中西合壁，沿海这样的西式建筑数都数不清，地处东北内陆，适合做兵工厂

大庆
把石油枯竭称为战略递减，把计划经济的强大说成是新经济的强大，大庆乳品发达，看来这里的人比较适合养牛，总把中俄关系说成和大庆的黑金有关，总之大庆人能把黑的说成白的，这就是大庆

齐齐哈尔
贫穷的城市，低调城市，邻居还经常在其疮口上撒盐，内外交迫，苦不其寒，这里的人把振兴东北看的很重，作梦都想国家来振兴自己。得过小奖--魅力城市，把这里的人牙都高兴碎了

牡丹江
做梦都想成为东北的深圳，进来个世界500强就以为拓荒开始了，没什么大发展，收点边境交易税水牡丹江最大的成就

郑州
地处中国的心脏地带，交通发达，铁路局被收，亚细亚ST了，唯一的出路被封死了，这里的人喜欢大，为了扩大城市人口，把500公里之外的小山村的村民都编为城市户口，事过两年对外宣布，郑州城市人口以突破400万，请认可其为大城市，可见此城人之心理

洛阳
古都，污染，落后是这个城市的特点，上比西安，下比郑州，别想让别人认可自己的地位，可除了九朝古都，别人还能认可你什么？

开封
没落的城市，没看过焦玉录，都不知道这里是沙漠？经过千年的过度开发，这里已经不适合人类居住

新乡
与焦作争着做豫北地区的老大，除了有一个新飞电器，中国人还真不知道有新乡这个城市，这里有“中原土匪”之称，可见次地人的素质

合肥
小城市，由于中国科技大学的文明，合肥的地位可见一般？这里是大别山区最大的城市，也是中国最被人看不起的省会城市之一，斗不过武汉，南京，就喜欢拿小弟弟--芜湖撒气

阜阳
这里的铁路像蜘蛛网一样的密集，这里是交通中心，这里是皖北，豫西，鲁南的物资集散地，但这里也很贫穷也很落后，阜阳搓澡工文明天下，搓澡中还要咬着牙告诉顾客：“阜阳是个大城市”。

芜湖
长江岸边的一座小城市，以奇瑞汽车打天下，拼装货，仿制品，冲其量是个组装厂，大水一来就要关门，江南首邑是芜湖的精神支柱，自嘲是芜湖人最大的特点，再说自己是安徽第二大城市的同时，自己都在笑

马鞍山
小城市，靠炼钢为生，总以安徽人为耻，做梦都想投入江苏的怀抱，哪怕是做南京的一县，它也心甘情愿高傲的南京人戏称马鞍山人为“乡下人”

安庆
以前和无湖齐头并进，以前是安徽的省会，自省会搬到合肥，便一蹶不振，整天谈跨越试发展，安庆，该醒醒了。

武汉
黄色的长江水，破烂的黄鹤楼，瘦如钢筋的长江二桥，武汉地位江河如下，现在只能靠几所大学来维持正常的运转，中国的东方芝加哥就是样子，经常说自己很有辐射力，现在看来也就不到100平方公里，小南昌还时来武汉吐口痰，去九宫山思过是武汉的唯一出路

宜昌
鄂西山区的一个小县城，当年长江上缺少桥梁的时候，这里的人经常喜欢把葛州坝上的观光道称为为桥，以显示自己的地位，如果没有涪利铁路，宜昌人还没见过火车，加入成都重庆经济区是宜昌人的梦想，看看距离，需要跨过5000座高山，800条河流，做火车需要三天，宜昌人，梦该醒了

长沙
电视台大力宣传，电视上几个美女，弄几个精心安排的感人事件，长沙确实诱惑。踩着南昌的臂膀和武汉争老大，戏彻骨内户中南大学全国十强，橘子洲是中国做大的江心岛等等，长沙人，收手，全国人民都在笑你

湘潭
一个湖南经济带上最穷的城市，宁可地不种，课不上，也要翘首启盼长株谭 经济区的建立，湘潭人有个梦想，就是在一夜之间暴富

株州
江南唯一的一个中国十大污染城市，给江南丢了脸面，围着小河流，还自称鱼米之乡，株州的铁路机车确实很出名，这也是株州人自大的原因，时常在长沙面前指手画脚，倍受湘人的指责。

南昌
红色的城市，同样也是落后的城市，扶贫铁路--京九线上的大站,南昌市长常说的一句话就是:"南昌,三年后赶上长沙" ,可见南昌人的口气,南昌生产飞机,汽车,发动机,但就是缺少核心竞争力,三产省会城市中最弱,甚至不如银川,看来南昌也要经济起义了

九江
长江岸边的一座小城市,长江沿岸名气很大,但由于是江西城市,经常受人贬低,身感吴楚文化之精髓,所以潜心发展经济,但由于经常发洪水,所以一直没发展起来,老百姓走的走逃的逃,看新时代的九省通衢要编制为县了

赣州
中国中部最落后的城市,红色的发源地,由于赣江水严重污染,本地百姓各个面黄肌瘦,吃顿饺子还需要6块钱去买纯净水,只有在央视播放天气预报的时候,赣州市民才能打起精神---我们是特殊城市,看,我们在天气预报中和大连,青岛,厦门并列!

南京
经过改革开放的洗礼,南京的地位每况愈下,加在南京身上的名誉只有省会这个名词了,中国五大城的地位一去不复,经济强市被无锡苏州拿去了,值得骄傲的是南京还有几座桥,可现在的人们去上海已经走镇江了

苏州
一个旅游城市,一个车间,一个产品没有中文标识的城市,近千万的苏州市民征着抢这要做外国人的白领,用以证明苏州人的高智商,高文化,还有无数的苏州人在华北东北做最下限的建筑工人,苏州模式,值得思考

无锡
旅游与工业加为一身,高不可攀的GDP,太湖最大的污染源,孤僻高傲的性格,是此城的特点,有时数年被人遗忘,有时一名惊人,这就是无锡,喜欢和苏州比强弱,经常被贬的一无事处,喜欢和南京比大小,经常被骂的狗血喷头,但在上海面前还是比较乖

徐州
一个江苏的弃子,地处苏北,落后地区,除了会议之外,与江苏接触的频率很少,自甘做苏北的第一城,也不愿做江苏的第二城,名不副实,徐州悲哀

上海
大城市,大经济,大手笔,大气魄,吸血量仅次于北京,小到一盆水,大到一吨金强行虏掠,到处搜刮,以全国之精华集为一身,上海人高傲,因为它是强者,上海人排外,因为它抽干了被压迫地区的血,外地人纷纷入沪,也难掩盖大上海注定的孤僻!

杭州
小城市,大很强大,不被人注意,但高速发展,经常和南京比个头,和宁波比经济,还不时骚扰一下上海,丑陋的市区面貌,等待驱淤的西湖,一个作梦都想进十大城市的杭州,终于缘了自己10强城市美梦

宁波
小城市,最不被人关注的副省级城市,可自己不甘被人看贬,拉着外地人去参观自认为很出名的天一广场,看完之后还要大说一翻宁波如何大?如何强?经常昧心的去和苏州比经济,去和宁波比大小,总认为自己很强很大,其实在长三角地区,宁波想进前五确实很难

金华
一个耻辱的城市,只有地级市的驻地还带在身上,下辖小县城义乌、东阳、永康撕碎了遮羞布,金华的命运注定被人吞并

温州
一个很富有的城市,一个市民很有创新意识的城市,同样是一个交通闭塞的城市,一个受人排挤的城市,靠海而没有大港口,一个百姓做过飞机但没看过火车的城市,温州人很精明,这里的人被人戏称"温州小偷",因为它们可以套**身上所有的钱财

福州
一个六等残废似的城市,一个GDP还没一个县高的城市,贫困的闽北山区的交通,政治经济文化中心,城市建设比上海还疯狂,由于本地人口较少,经济上商业上,难以形成规模,导致福州的建筑空置率,烂尾率全国前列,既生渝,和生亮?有厦门在,福州的路算走到了尽头

厦门
发展最落后的特区,卫生环境好,得过联合国人居奖,出过赖昌星等一些勒塞之外,再小金门的炮口下,厦门还能走多远?

广州
中国新鲜事物的接收地,既遭人唾骂又遭人嫉妒的城市,黄赌毒是此地的名片,本城人的祖先在鸦片战争年代稀释viper过量,导致市民瘦小如柴,最近几年除了忙着搞三产,没见过其有多大作为,吸血量仅次于北京,上海,深圳

海口
大特区,小城市,建设的向花园,由于最近几年被人淡忘,经济发展缓慢,客商纷纷撤资,导致商务楼空室率全国第一,最近大搞旅游业,难成的啊器

深圳
中国第三大吸血城市,在拓荒牛的背影下,内地的资源不断的换成美金来供给深圳,造就了中国最大勒塞城市,市民来自全国各地,由于缺乏城市文化,本地除了在经济上给人一名惊人的之外,在刑事案件上也是遥遥领先全国各大城市

东莞
一个城,宛如一个工厂,在没发迹之前本地人基本为农民,10年过去了,在世界500强其中打工,就认为自己是个技术工人,满口夹杂着广东土话,抽着汗烟的东莞人是中国廉价劳动力的代表

西安
如同一个大县城,又向一个饱经沧桑的老人,中国第10大城市的经济总量刚刚1000亿,这就是西安,一个不求上进而颓废的城市,市民打扮如同黄土高原的放牧者

咸阳
小西安,西北比较富裕的地区.小城市,站在山顶,望眼欲穿,在集成电路芯片高速发展的今天,咸阳的电子人还在研究二极管的构造

延安
贫困的陕北地区,一个只能在三个代表会议上能提到的城市,城市建设如同非洲,1000万建设的彩虹大桥经常被延安人拿来炫耀,可见延安人的见识面之狭
乌鲁木齐
天山脚下一个倍受排挤的城市,一个社会秩序糟糕的城市,百姓生活小康,但缺乏安全感,经常汽车BoB!!!,袭击派出所.长期享受国家特殊经济政策,钱多的不知道怎么花,正在打造中亚第一城

银川
一个名字响亮但缺乏内容的城市,除了是个首府之外,还能让它做什么?

兰州
夕日大城市,今日小城市,环境严重污染,自然环境恶劣,黄河流经市区,夕阳工业一柱青天,改革开放奖金三十年,未见起有多大起色,反而退步

成都
位于盆地,后面是大雪山,荒凉地带,号称中国第四城市,可见此城人之嚣张,号称西部最大车工那时,可见此城人人之脸皮,发展了近千年的成都人,什么时候才能爬出盆地出来转一转?

绵阳
一个比县还小的城市,争着抢着要做西部地区第三大城市,长虹也江河日下了,绵阳人还能做点什么值得大家信服的?

广安
经济落后,但出名人的地方,喜欢和绵阳德阳争省内的老二,经济受贬低,势力手压迫,在迫不得已的时候经常用名人的效应来收场

德阳
落后地区,号称西部明珠,名不符实,喜欢宣传自己,是爱家乡的那种城市,一座自认为很雄伟的彩虹桥被本城人说成是西部第一,中国二重--本城人的杀手剪.
重庆
中国最大的花瓶城市,一个被千万贫困人口包围的大城市,直辖之前甘做第7,直之后挣着要做老三,渝中半岛高楼入云,百里之外茅屋漫山遍野,重庆人只谈时尚,从来都对如何脱贫不屑一故,中国最有潜力的吸血城市,吸血量一鸣惊人

贵阳
西部第一贫困城市，高楼遍地，遮不住，贫困落后的城市，贵恙未来来的发展基本为零

昆明
一个不要生活也要名气的城市，破乱不堪的街道，让人恶心的viper基地，只有这些,四季如春天,早上吹棉衣,中午穿裤头,这就是春城

南宁
一个非常喜欢打扮自己的贫困城市，总喜欢打肿脸冲胖子，经常说自己有异国风情，除了弄几个落大腿的越南姑娘，还能弄些什么花样？

西宁
落后地区,盐碱滩上的一个城市,四秒众多,由于地地广袤,缺乏生机,向来是不被人重视的地区

拉萨
极度落后地区,每当回归庆典,拉萨人就要暴富,一个20几万的小城市不产,不做.只是棉衣一穿等着来支援,拉萨,一个寄生虫似的小镇

• Add to Google lets publishers create a custom “Add to Google” button for their RSS feeds. When a user clicks the button, they can choose to either add the feed to Google Reader, or the Google Homepage service.
• Blogger is Google’s blog-hosting and creation service which seems to be very popular on the web because of the price (free) and ease of use.
• Froogle is Google’s product search engine that you can use to find the cheapest price for a product.
• GMail (or Google Mail) is Google’s popular email service, that gives you over 2 gigabytes of storage.
• Google AdSense is Google’s contextual advertising service, popular among many websites. Google also released Onsite Advertiser Sign-Up on November 21, 2005 which lets advertisers buy ads on a site directly from the Google Ads on that page.
• Google AdWords is the other side of AdSense. While AdSense lets publishers put ads on their site, someone has to pay for those ads, and AdWords connects companies with publishers so you can make a little bit of money.
• Google Alerts are e-mail updates to particular searches you do on Google. Pretty useful for monitoring websites or news.
• Google Analytics crawls your website and keeps track of your visitors through a small piece of Javascript. Great tool for webmasters trying to improve their stats and AdSense revenue.
• Google Answers lets you hire someone to research a topic or answer a question for you.
• Google Base looks like its going to be Google’s massive content library, with all sorts of content, uploadable by anyone. Oddly enough, it sounds like EPIC and Google Grid mentioned in this video. Many people are comparing this service to Craigslist.
• Google Blog Search is very much like the web search service but letting search only through various blogs around the web.
• Google Book Search allows you to search though books that Google has scanned into their database.
• Google Catalogs is a search engine for mail-order catalogs.
• Google Click-to-Call lets users call advertisers directly from Google search results, for free, at Google’s expense.
• Google Code is Google’s effort to promote and contribute to Open Source software.
• Google Compute exists as a part of the Google Toolbar and uses your computer’s idle time (when you’re not using it) to compute data from distributed computing projects like Folding@Home.
• Google Deskbar is essentially an embedded IE window in your Window Taskbar that you can search Google from.
• Google Desktop is similar to apps like Konfabulator or Dashboard but not as attractive. It offers various widgets and a sidebar which let you do things like searches, aggregate feeds, write notes, check weather, and more.
• Google Directory which is similiar to Yahoo’s and dmoz’s services, letting you search by category.
• Google Earth is a desktop application which is basically Google Local on steroids.
• Google Groups allows you to create a mailing list, read Usenet posts, and generally collaborate with others who share a similar interest.
• Google Homepage is a webpage which lets you add various widgets like weather, news, horoscopes and more, much like Netvibes.
• Google Image Search is Google’s slightly-lesser-known service to search for images.
• Google Labs highlights all the projects Google is working on for future release.
• Google Local combines data from Google Maps with information on local businesses and venues.
• Google Maps is a mapping service which also provides driving directions to and from different locations. The service is only available in a few countries (mainly the U.S.) but support for other countries is expected in the future. Google Maps has become quite popular lately thanks to a readily available API which lets people create their own maps.
• Google Mobile is similiar to Google SMS, but using WAP instead.
• Google Movie Showtimes lets you type in a zip code or address, and it will find movie theaters and showtimes near that area.
• Google News is a news portal, aggregated by Google’s computers. Everything is done by machines, so no human interaction.
• Google Reader is a new product which acts as a web-based RSS reader.
• Google Ridefinder lets you easily find taxis in some of the major cities around the United States.
• Google Scholar searches things such as theses, papers, and other research and technical information.
• Google Search History is technically part of the Google Homepage service, but does have its own page so it warrants a mention. Basically, if you sign in with a Google account, Google will keep track of all your searches done via its web search engine.
• Google Send to Phone is a little Firefox extension which lets you send text messages to mobile phones via SMS.
• Google Sitemap helps create particular searches for a web address which can be very useful for webmasters looking to index their own site, or see who is linking to it.
• Google SMS allows you to access many Google services through your mobile phone through text messaging (message GOOGL to learn more).
• Google Store isn’t really a service, but rather a place to buy some cool Google merchandise.
• Google Suggest is just an extension to the normal Google web search engine, but with autocomplete functionality to your searches making it a little easier to find what you need. There is also a Firefox extension available.
• Google Talk is Google’s IM and VoIP program running on the Jabber network. You need a Gmail account to use this.
• Google Toolbar is the swiss army knife of toolbars, if ever there was one letting your use the various Google web services from your toolbar, as well as offering other interesting information like a site’s PageRank and more.
• Google Language Tools lets you translate a phrase or entire website, as well as giving you access to web search in different languages, or the ability to search for a particular something in just one language.
• Google Video and Google Video Upload offer an archive of freely available video clips.
• Google Web Accelerator supposedly helps load web pages faster, but there have been security and privacy issues raised about this application.
• Google Web Search is the familiar web search. It also allows you to access certain functions like a calculator, a stock tracker, word definitions, travel information, weather, and more by simply searching for that information (for example, define onomatopoeia or weather 90210). These are not standalone services but a part of web search, which is why I’ve added them here and not into their own section. Additionally, there is the Advanced Search feature for…well…advanced searches which could be more precise than normal searches.
• Hello is a small IM client which is used in conjunction with Picasa to share pictures with family and friends.
• Orkut is a networking site similar to Frienster or MySpace, except it is invite only, so if you want to join it, you’ll have to know a guy, who knows a guy.
• Picasa is a fantastic digital photo organizer application for your desktop. 

To do something well you have to like it. That idea is not exactly novel. We've got it down to four words: "Do what you love." But it's not enough just to tell people that. Doing what you love is complicated.

The very idea is foreign to what most of us learn as kids. When I was a kid, it seemed as if work and fun were opposites by definition. Life had two states: some of the time adults were making you do things, and that was called work; the rest of the time you could do what you wanted, and that was called playing. Occasionally the things adults made you do were fun, just as, occasionally, playing wasn't-- for example, if you fell and hurt yourself. But except for these few anomalous cases, work was pretty much defined as not-fun.

And it did not seem to be an accident. School, it was implied, was tedious because it was preparation for grownup work.

The world then was divided into two groups, grownups and kids. Grownups, like some kind of cursed race, had to work. Kids didn't, but they did have to go to school, which was a dilute version of work meant to prepare us for the real thing. Much as we disliked school, the grownups all agreed that grownup work was worse, and that we had it easy.

Teachers in particular all seemed to believe implicitly that work was not fun. Which is not surprising: work wasn't fun for most of them. Why did we have to memorize state capitals instead of playing dodgeball? For the same reason they had to watch over a bunch of kids instead of lying on a beach. You couldn't just do what you wanted.

I'm not saying we should let little kids do whatever they want. They may have to be made to work on certain things. But if we make kids work on dull stuff, it might be wise to tell them that tediousness is not the defining quality of work, and indeed that the reason they have to work on dull stuff now is so they can work on more interesting stuff later. [1]

Once, when I was about 9 or 10, my father told me I could be whatever I wanted when I grew up, so long as I enjoyed it. I remember that precisely because it seemed so anomalous. It was like being told to use dry water. Whatever I thought he meant, I didn't think he meant work could literally be fun-- fun like playing. It took me years to grasp that.

Jobs

By high school, the prospect of an actual job was on the horizon. Adults would sometimes come to speak to us about their work, or we would go to see them at work. It was always understood that they enjoyed what they did. In retrospect I think one may have: the private jet pilot. But I don't think the bank manager really did.

The main reason they all acted as if they enjoyed their work was presumably the upper-middle class convention that you're supposed to. It would not merely be bad for your career to say that you despised your job, but a social faux-pas.

Why is it conventional to pretend to like what you do? The first sentence of this essay explains that. If you have to like something to do it well, then the most successful people will all like what they do. That's where the upper-middle class tradition comes from. Just as houses all over America are full of chairs that are, without the owners even knowing it, nth-degree imitations of chairs designed 250 years ago for French kings, conventional attitudes about work are, without the owners even knowing it, nth-degree imitations of the attitudes of people who've done great things.

What a recipe for alienation. By the time they reach an age to think about what they'd like to do, most kids have been thoroughly misled about the idea of loving one's work. School has trained them to regard work as an unpleasant duty. Having a job is said to be even more onerous than schoolwork. And yet all the adults claim to like what they do. You can't blame kids for thinking "I am not like these people; I am not suited to this world."

Actually they've been told three lies: the stuff they've been taught to regard as work in school is not real work; grownup work is not (necessarily) worse than schoolwork; and many of the adults around them are lying when they say they like what they do.

The most dangerous liars can be the kids' own parents. If you take a boring job to give your family a high standard of living, as so many people do, you risk infecting your kids with the idea that work is boring. [2] Maybe it would be better for kids in this one case if parents were not so unselfish. A parent who set an example of loving their work might help their kids more than an expensive house. [3]

It was not till I was in college that the idea of work finally broke free from the idea of making a living. Then the important question became not how to make money, but what to work on. Ideally these coincided, but some spectacular boundary cases (like Einstein in the patent office) proved they weren't identical.

The definition of work was now to make some original contribution to the world, and in the process not to starve. But after the habit of so many years my idea of work still included a large component of pain. Work still seemed to require discipline, because only hard problems yielded grand results, and hard problems couldn't literally be fun. Surely one had to force oneself to work on them.

If you think something's supposed to hurt, you're less likely to notice if you're doing it wrong. That about sums up my experience of graduate school.

Bounds

How much are you supposed to like what you do? Unless you know that, you don't know when to stop searching. And if, like most people, you underestimate it, you'll tend to stop searching too early. You'll end up doing something chosen for you by your parents, or the desire to make money, or prestige-- or sheer inertia.

Here's an upper bound: Do what you love doesn't mean, do what you would like to do most this second. Even Einstein probably had moments when he wanted to have a cup of coffee, but told himself he ought to finish what he was working on first.

It used to perplex me when I read about people who liked what they did so much that there was nothing they'd rather do. There didn't seem to be any sort of work I liked that much. If I had a choice of (a) spending the next hour working on something or (b) be teleported to Rome and spend the next hour wandering about, was there any sort of work I'd prefer? Honestly, no.

But the fact is, almost anyone would rather, at any given moment, float about in the Carribbean, or have sex, or eat some delicious food, than work on hard problems. The rule about doing what you love assumes a certain length of time. It doesn't mean, do what will make you happiest this second, but what will make you happiest over some longer period, like a week or a month.

Unproductive pleasures pall eventually. After a while you get tired of lying on the beach. If you want to stay happy, you have to do something.

As a lower bound, you have to like your work more than any unproductive pleasure. You have to like what you do enough that the concept of "spare time" seems mistaken. Which is not to say you have to spend all your time working. You can only work so much before you get tired and start to screw up. Then you want to do something else-- even something mindless. But you don't regard this time as the prize and the time you spend working as the pain you endure to earn it.

I put the lower bound there for practical reasons. If your work is not your favorite thing to do, you'll have terrible problems with procrastination. You'll have to force yourself to work, and when you resort to that the results are distinctly inferior.

To be happy I think you have to be doing something you not only enjoy, but admire. You have to be able to say, at the end, wow, that's pretty cool. This doesn't mean you have to make something. If you learn how to hang glide, or to speak a foreign language fluently, that will be enough to make you say, for a while at least, wow, that's pretty cool. What there has to be is a test.

So one thing that falls just short of the standard, I think, is reading books. Except for some books in math and the hard sciences, there's no test of how well you've read a book, and that's why merely reading books doesn't quite feel like work. You have to do something with what you've read to feel productive.

I think the best test is one Gino Lee taught me: to try to do things that would make your friends say wow. But it probably wouldn't start to work properly till about age 22, because most people haven't had a big enough sample to pick friends from before then.

Sirens

What you should not do, I think, is worry about the opinion of anyone beyond your friends. You shouldn't worry about prestige. Prestige is the opinion of the rest of the world. When you can ask the opinions of people whose judgement you respect, what does it add to consider the opinions of people you don't even know? [4]

This is easy advice to give. It's hard to follow, especially when you're young. [5] Prestige is like a powerful magnet that warps even your beliefs about what you enjoy. It causes you to work not on what you like, but what you'd like to like.

That's what leads people to try to write novels, for example. They like reading novels. They notice that people who write them win Nobel prizes. What could be more wonderful, they think, than to be a novelist? But liking the idea of being a novelist is not enough; you have to like the actual work of novel-writing if you're going to be good at it; you have to like making up elaborate lies.

Prestige is just fossilized inspiration. If you do anything well enough, you'll make it prestigious. Plenty of things we now consider prestigious were anything but at first. Jazz comes to mind-- though almost any established art form would do. So just do what you like, and let prestige take care of itself.

Prestige is especially dangerous to the ambitious. If you want to make ambitious people waste their time on errands, the way to do it is to bait the hook with prestige. That's the recipe for getting people to give talks, write forewords, serve on committees, be department heads, and so on. It might be a good rule simply to avoid any prestigious task. If it didn't suck, they wouldn't have had to make it prestigious.

Similarly, if you admire two kinds of work equally, but one is more prestigious, you should probably choose the other. Your opinions about what's admirable are always going to be slightly influenced by prestige, so if the two seem equal to you, you probably have more genuine admiration for the less prestigious one.

The other big force leading people astray is money. Money by itself is not that dangerous. When something pays well but is regarded with contempt, like telemarketing, or prostitution, or personal injury litigation, ambitious people aren't tempted by it. That kind of work ends up being done by people who are "just trying to make a living." (Tip: avoid any field whose practitioners say this.) The danger is when money is combined with prestige, as in, say, corporate law, or medicine. A comparatively safe and prosperous career with some automatic baseline prestige is dangerously tempting to someone young, who hasn't thought much about what they really like.

The test of whether people love what they do is whether they'd do it even if they weren't paid for it-- even if they had to work at another job to make a living. How many corporate lawyers would do their current work if they had to do it for free, in their spare time, and take day jobs as waiters to support themselves?

This test is especially helpful in deciding between different kinds of academic work, because fields vary greatly in this respect. Most good mathematicians would work on math even if there were no jobs as math professors, whereas in the departments at the other end of the spectrum, the availability of teaching jobs is the driver: people would rather be English professors than work in ad agencies, and publishing papers is the way you compete for such jobs. Math would happen without math departments, but it is the existence of English majors, and therefore jobs teaching them, that calls into being all those thousands of dreary papers about gender and identity in the novels of Conrad. No one does that kind of thing for fun.

The advice of parents will tend to err on the side of money. It seems safe to say there are more undergrads who want to be novelists and whose parents want them to be doctors than who want to be doctors and whose parents want them to be novelists. The kids think their parents are "materialistic." Not necessarily. All parents tend to be more conservative for their kids than they would for themselves, simply because, as parents, they share risks more than rewards. If your eight year old son decides to climb a tall tree, or your teenage daughter decides to date the local bad boy, you won't get a share in the excitement, but if your son falls, or your daughter gets pregnant, you'll have to deal with the consequences.

Discipline

With such powerful forces leading us astray, it's not surprising we find it so hard to discover what we like to work on. Most people are doomed in childhood by accepting the axiom that work = pain. Those who escape this are nearly all lured onto the rocks by prestige or money. How many even discover something they love to work on? A few hundred thousand, perhaps, out of billions.

It's hard to find work you love; it must be, if so few do. So don't underestimate this task. And don't feel bad if you haven't succeeded yet. In fact, if you admit to yourself that you're discontented, you're a step ahead of most people, who are still in denial. If you're surrounded by colleagues who claim to enjoy work that you find contemptible, odds are they're lying to themselves. Not necessarily, but probably.

Although doing great work takes less discipline than people think-- because the way to do great work is to find something you like so much that you don't have to force yourself to do it-- finding work you love does usually require discipline. Some people are lucky enough to know what they want to do when they're 12, and just glide along as if they were on railroad tracks. But this seems the exception. More often people who do great things have careers with the trajectory of a ping-pong ball. They go to school to study A, drop out and get a job doing B, and then become famous for C after taking it up on the side.

Sometimes jumping from one sort of work to another is a sign of energy, and sometimes it's a sign of laziness. Are you dropping out, or boldly carving a new path? You often can't tell yourself. Plenty of people who will later do great things seem to be disappointments early on, when they're trying to find their niche.

Is there some test you can use to keep yourself honest? One is to try to do a good job at whatever you're doing, even if you don't like it. Then at least you'll know you're not using dissatisfaction as an excuse for being lazy. Perhaps more importantly, you'll get into the habit of doing things well.

Another test you can use is: always produce. For example, if you have a day job you don't take seriously because you plan to be a novelist, are you producing? Are you writing pages of fiction, however bad? As long as you're producing, you'll know you're not merely using the hazy vision of the grand novel you plan to write one day as an opiate. The view of it will be obstructed by the all too palpably flawed one you're actually writing.

"Always produce" is also a heuristic for finding the work you love. If you subject yourself to that constraint, it will automatically push you away from things you think you're supposed to work on, toward things you actually like. "Always produce" will discover your life's work the way water, with the aid of gravity, finds the hole in your roof.

Of course, figuring out what you like to work on doesn't mean you get to work on it. That's a separate question. And if you're ambitious you have to keep them separate: you have to make a conscious effort to keep your ideas about what you want from being contaminated by what seems possible. [6]

It's painful to keep them apart, because it's painful to observe the gap between them. So most people pre-emptively lower their expectations. For example, if you asked random people on the street if they'd like to be able to draw like Leonardo, you'd find most would say something like "Oh, I can't draw." This is more a statement of intention than fact; it means, I'm not going to try. Because the fact is, if you took a random person off the street and somehow got them to work as hard as they possibly could at drawing for the next twenty years, they'd get surprisingly far. But it would require a great moral effort; it would mean staring failure in the eye every day for years. And so to protect themselves people say "I can't."

Another related line you often hear is that not everyone can do work they love-- that someone has to do the unpleasant jobs. Really? How do you make them? In the US the only mechanism for forcing people to do unpleasant jobs is the draft, and that hasn't been invoked for over 30 years. All we can do is encourage people to do unpleasant work, with money and prestige.

If there's something people still won't do, it seems as if society just has to make do without. That's what happened with domestic servants. For millennia that was the canonical example of a job "someone had to do." And yet in the mid twentieth century servants practically disappeared in rich countries, and the rich have just had to do without.

So while there may be some things someone has to do, there's a good chance anyone saying that about any particular job is mistaken. Most unpleasant jobs would either get automated or go undone if no one were willing to do them.

Two Routes

There's another sense of "not everyone can do work they love" that's all too true, however. One has to make a living, and it's hard to get paid for doing work you love. There are two routes to that destination:

the organic route: as you become more eminent, gradually to increase the parts of your job that you like at the expense of those you don't.

the two-job route: to work at things you don't like to get money to work on things you do.

The organic route is more common. It happens naturally to anyone who does good work. A young architect has to take whatever work he can get, but if he does well he'll gradually be in a position to pick and choose among projects. The disadvantage of this route is that it's slow and uncertain. Even tenure is not real freedom.

The two-job route has several variants depending on how long you work for money at a time. At one extreme is the "day job," where you work regular hours at one job to make money, and work on what you love in your spare time. At the other extreme you work at something till you make enough not to have to work for money again.

The two-job route is less common than the organic route, because it requires a deliberate choice. It's also more dangerous. Life tends to get more expensive as you get older, so it's easy to get sucked into working longer than you expected at the money job. Worse still, anything you work on changes you. If you work too long on tedious stuff, it will rot your brain. And the best paying jobs are most dangerous, because they require your full attention.

The advantage of the two-job route is that it lets you jump over obstacles. The landscape of possible jobs isn't flat; there are walls of varying heights between different kinds of work. [7] The trick of maximizing the parts of your job that you like can get you from architecture to product design, but not, probably, to music. If you make money doing one thing and then work on another, you have more freedom of choice.

Which route should you take? That depends on how sure you are of what you want to do, how good you are at taking orders, how much risk you can stand, and the odds that anyone will pay (in your lifetime) for what you want to do. If you're sure of the general area you want to work in and it's something people are likely to pay you for, then you should probably take the organic route. But if you don't know what you want to work on, or don't like to take orders, you may want to take the two-job route, if you can stand the risk.

Don't decide too soon. Kids who know early what they want to do seem impressive, as if they got the answer to some math question before the other kids. They have an answer, certainly, but odds are it's wrong.

A friend of mine who is a quite successful doctor complains constantly about her job. When people applying to medical school ask her for advice, she wants to shake them and yell "Don't do it!" (But she never does.) How did she get into this fix? In high school she already wanted to be a doctor. And she is so ambitious and determined that she overcame every obstacle along the way-- including, unfortunately, not liking it.

Now she has a life chosen for her by a high-school kid.

When you're young, you're given the impression that you'll get enough information to make each choice before you need to make it. But this is certainly not so with work. When you're deciding what to do, you have to operate on ridiculously incomplete information. Even in college you get little idea what various types of work are like. At best you may have a couple internships, but not all jobs offer internships, and those that do don't teach you much more about the work than being a batboy teaches you about playing baseball.

In the design of lives, as in the design of most other things, you get better results if you use flexible media. So unless you're fairly sure what you want to do, your best bet may be to choose a type of work that could turn into either an organic or two-job career. That was probably part of the reason I chose computers. You can be a professor, or make a lot of money, or morph it into any number of other kinds of work.

It's also wise, early on, to seek jobs that let you do many different things, so you can learn faster what various kinds of work are like. Conversely, the extreme version of the two-job route is dangerous because it teaches you so little about what you like. If you work hard at being a bond trader for ten years, thinking that you'll quit and write novels when you have enough money, what happens when you quit and then discover that you don't actually like writing novels?

Most people would say, I'd take that problem. Give me a million dollars and I'll figure out what to do. But it's harder than it looks. Constraints give your life shape. Remove them and most people have no idea what to do: look at what happens to those who win lotteries or inherit money. Much as everyone thinks they want financial security, the happiest people are not those who have it, but those who like what they do. So a plan that promises freedom at the expense of knowing what to do with it may not be as good as it seems.

Whichever route you take, expect a struggle. Finding work you love is very difficult. Most people fail. Even if you succeed, it's rare to be free to work on what you want till your thirties or forties. But if you have the destination in sight you'll be more likely to arrive at it. If you know you can love work, you're in the home stretch, and if you know what work you love, you're practically there.



Notes

[1] Currently we do the opposite: when we make kids do boring work, like arithmetic drills, instead of admitting frankly that it's boring, we try to disguise it with superficial decorations.

[2] One father told me about a related phenomenon: he found himself concealing from his family how much he liked his work. When he wanted to go to work on a saturday, he found it easier to say that it was because he "had to" for some reason, rather than admitting he preferred to work than stay home with them.

[3] Something similar happens with suburbs. Parents move to suburbs to raise their kids in a safe environment, but suburbs are so dull and artificial that by the time they're fifteen the kids are convinced the whole world is boring.

[4] I'm not saying friends should be the only audience for your work. The more people you can help, the better. But friends should be your compass.

[5] Donald Hall said young would-be poets were mistaken to be so obsessed with being published. But you can imagine what it would do for a 24 year old to get a poem published in The New Yorker. Now to people he meets at parties he's a real poet. Actually he's no better or worse than he was before, but to a clueless audience like that, the approval of an official authority makes all the difference. So it's a harder problem than Hall realizes. The reason the young care so much about prestige is that the people they want to impress are not very discerning.

[6] This is isomorphic to the principle that you should prevent your beliefs about how things are from being contaminated by how you wish they were. Most people let them mix pretty promiscuously. The continuing popularity of religion is the most visible index of that.

[7] A more accurate metaphor would be to say that the graph of jobs is not very well connected.

Thanks to Trevor Blackwell, Dan Friedman, Sarah Harlin, Jessica Livingston, Jackie McDonough, Robert Morris, Peter Norvig, David Sloo, and Aaron Swartz for reading drafts of this.