Quick video of the Pearl Market. Famous shopping place. Great quality rolex for $30...

Riding in style

Saw these around the Forbidden City exit the other day. Interesting concept, not so safe. Our very astute guide recommended against riding in one. She said "They were meant for home use only - pick your kids up from school, etc."

-Kris

Who knew

One of my esteemed collegues caught this shot and titled it "Kris chasing an ambulance"

For the record, I wasn't chasing it, just trying to get out of the way so it didn't run me over. Anyone who has seen drivers in China knows what that means.

-Kris

Spot finally hits the spot

My satelite tracking device has not been working well downtown due to high rises, etc. and I had little time to get out in the open for testing.

I was pleasantly suprised yesterday when I turned the device on in the forbidden city that it actually picked up. The location is about 50 yards off or so as we are a bit to the right inside the city vs. on the road outside but it is close enough for purposes of finding someone.



My spot sharing page is here.

As you've likely noticed, my blog also has a Google latitude widget (which since I have installed on two phones - 1 in the US and 1 in china, is currently bouncing between the two - literally making me appear in two places at once). The Google software is very cool, very accurate and can be used anywhere a cell signal is available. Since many of our programs travel outside cell ranges, the Spot is a good device for these trips.

Spot folks - if you are listening, make your next rev of the device handle updates via Google Latitude while in cell range and Satelite when not. I'm even fine carrying two devices (e.g. let the device talk to my phone so it knows when I'm out of range).

-Kris

A bit of site seeing

Work has kept me very busy in Beijing but I was able to get out briefly this afternoon to view some sites.

We went to Tiananmen square and the Forbidden City. These pictures are of the square and a monument to the people in the middle of the square.





After spending a bit walking around the square (and trying to get the image of the tank out my head), we went across (under) the street to visit the Forbidden City or the home of many supreme rulers of the chinese empire.

The city is huge and photos don't do it justice. It is ~ 200 acres of beautifully crafted buildings with over 9000 rooms. Amazing.

Misc Pictures

Taken over the last few days.

We briefly toured an area known to be the up and coming art district. Its named after the factory that used to there: 798. The picture of the dinosaurs in the cages was from there and the cages measured about 40 feet long and 12 feet high.

The birds nest and watercube were awesome to behold. The birdsnest is huge! We didn't get a chance to visit due to the server farm disaster but were able to see them quickly from the outside. We took the subway to get there and at 2 yuan, its rediculously cheap and was clean and air conditioned (which was good because they pack you in like sardines...)

-Kris

Video Test

Quick video test that I shot a few days ago testing out the Flip Mino HD recorder.

Beijing Airport (PEK)

Beijing is a beautiful city and their airport is very large. I grabbed this photo from my phone while waiting for a delegation of students from California to arrive yesterday. Good news is that everyone made it past the health screening area and were on their way to the hotel. I will bring the Flip today to take some video of today’s delegation arriving to test out the quality of the device.

-Kris

Arrived with no issues

I arrived in Beijing yesterday with no issues. Officials scanned our foreheads for signs of elevated temps and everyone left ok. No secondary screening for me so glad for that. The airport was not very busy for a Tuesday.

I'm headed to meet a delegation later this morning and will post a picture then.

Update on trial equipment:
HP Mini - Like the size factor and quickness
SPOT - Don't like that it needs a pretty unobstructed view to transmit (not urban friendly).

-Kris

At the airport

Picture of the awesome 3 story view in the central hub at Seatac. Glad I got to the airport early as I was informed that they put me on an earlier flight to Seattle. Not sure how there systems are working as I didn't get notified of the change until I arrived at the airport and no one from work was notified either. Hmm

Hello!

I'm starting this blog and my journey to China from Spokane, WA headquarters of People to People Ambassador Programs.

I'm off to china in the morning and will be posting quick updates, pictures and video to the site during my brief stay in Beijing.

My role at Ambassadors is the head of our technology department. In this role I get the opportunity to see how we can deploy technology to make our trips more fun and increase the safety factor. I have a few things I'm testing on this trip :

1) An HP mini netbook. At just over 2 lbs its small and light and mine has a built in Verizon WLan card so I'm never far from an internet connection. Look forward to blogging on this and using it to upload photos and video.
2) A Flip Mino HD. This is a very small and sleek HD capable video camera. I'm curious to see how it performs for both video and some still shots. I love the size factor of this thing. At a little more than 1/2 inch thick this thing is ultra portable and if the quality is decent it will definitely be high on the must have for travel list.
3) A SPOT device. This is a portable satellite messaging device. Similar to GPS enabled cell phones but because it uses satellite messaging it doesn't require a cellphone signal. This is a cool deal for us as we are constantly pushing areas in Australia or Africa that don't have reliable cellphone coverage and we can still keep tabs on where our students and leaders are. They also have a cool sharing page using Google maps so more on this one shortly. I will turn it on once I'm in Beijing.

Time for some sleep. See you on Tuesday! (a little international date line joke)...

-Kris