A wedding photographer in Sichuan captured the before and after moments: (Source: http://www.chinareviewnews.com)
May 12 - A couple just took some lovely outdoor wedding shots outside of a beautiful church in Pongzho, Sichuan
When the major quake hit, lots of stones fell off the church buildings all of a sudden. Since there was no where to hide, everyone except the photographer who captured this precious moment, got down on their knee and held their head down.
Shaking stopped and dust settled. Everyone gradually stood up and looked around what a destructive force Mother Earth had just released.
What’s left of this 100 year old church.
The bride full of dust and shaken, but very blessed that everyone is all right.
These past few weeks have certainly been eventful & “earthshaking” … Diigo is a global company with our HQ in Reno, NV, USA and our R&D center in China (not outsourced, but an integral part of our team.) About 3 weeks ago, the Reno area experienced a 4.7 earthquake, and in a private conversation someone from out of the area joked that’s “shaking” on how well received the latest Diigo release has been.
On Monday, May 12, at 2:28pm Beijing time (6:28 GMT), a major earthquake, measuring 7.9 on the Richter scale, jolted southwestern China’s Sichuan Province. To give some perspective on how severe 7.9 magnitude is on the Richter scale: according to wikipedia, it’s equivalent to 600 megatons of TNT explosive, or energy released by the 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption! Mother Earth has lot of unsettling energy!
Our R&D center is based in Chengdu, only 90 km from the epicenter. When the quake hit, our whole team was still in a heated discussion on features in our regular international conference meeting (yes, we work very long and odd hours, and skype / gtalk are wonderful must-have tools …) All of a sudden, very loud rattling sound came through. Our team in Chengdu said calmly over skype, “There is an earthquake, we have to get out of here.” So I thought, well, it must be another one of those small tremors, so I kept skype connected, hoping to hear from them again soon.
Shortly, news broke - a major earthquake, measuring 7.9 on the Richter scale, hit the area, and Chengdu is only 90 kilometers from the epicenter! That got our US team really worried. Fortunately, we were able to connect with our Chengdu team a few hours later, and learned they are all safe and sound.
And it looks like they all had a unforgettable experience. One team member recalled, “As I ran down the stairs from the 27th floor of the 33-story highrise, the building twisted and turned, bubbled up and down, for a few minutes which really felt like forever. The building was making those scary cracking sound, making me think that it would just fall any minute before I got out.”
While our team members are all fine, their office and apartment buildings have suffered some damage, and being such tall buildings, we judged that it would not be safe to stay there while there are after-shocks still happening daily. So they are now temporarily housed in the ground floor of a hotel, with a rather unstable internet connection. So until they settle down more comfortably, our new development work will be slowed down quite a bit.
Our latest upgrade happened in the midst of communication interruption, so we had to temporarily roll back. All very bad timing and sorry about any temporary inconvenience. The good thing is that our operation is all based in the US, so that our service is not interrupted. Some of our teammates are certainly a bit shaken up, but knock on wood, everyone is all fine, and we will all be back to full swing in no time!
The earthquake was so strong and devastating, it was felt throughout very widespread areas, destroyed many buildings, as well as infrastructure like roads, bridges, communication towers, etc. There are also tons of after shocks, the highest one measuring at 6.1 magnitude. According to the latest official report, over 14,000 people have died, over 25,000 people still buried under collapsed buildings, and many more have been injured or are missing. Most sadly, many children were in school at the time, got buried under the rubble of their collapsed school buildings, and precious moments are escaping for their rescue. A Major calamity indeed!
The past few days have not been easy for me, as I have been traveling on the road, and just have a chance to sit down and write this blog post now. Our prayers are with all the people impacted by this tragedy. We’re doing Diigo because we thought we could make some difference to the world of internet users… Given the severity of this Sichuan earthquake, and at time like this, one realizes how precious our life is and what our loved ones, friends, and families mean to us. We are sharing our story, and doing what we can as individuals and as a company for each other, and for people of the affected community. We’d also like to appeal and urge people to consider donating & helping the needy. Please share this news. For more information, please visit the American Red Cross.
Thank you very much, and we appreciate your kind support!
We had a blast meeting with David LaPlante, chairman of the State of Nevada’s Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology and CEO of Twelve Horses and his crew, Mike Henderson, Earl Spriggs & Leilani Schweitzer. Twelve Horses is a full-service relationship marketing and messaging company specializing in designing interactive communication solutions.
It’s great knowing that many workgroups and companies are discovering and finding Diigo to be quite useful for both personal productivity and effective collaborative research… reasons that inspire us to create Diigo in the very first place. Besides “What is / Why Diigo”, we also chatted about “Why Reno / Tahoe”
To find out the inside scoop, be sure to check out our interview and podcast
One concern of Diigo 3.0 users we hear about is this: ” I already have trouble keeping up with all the other social networks such as Linkedin and Facebook. Why should I maintain yet another social network on Diigo?”
First of all, it is completely ok to be anti-social on Diigo. In this “anti-social mode”, Diigo as simply a great research tool that can really enhance your productivity ~ it is the best web bookmarking and annotation tool you will find. No other social network can make the same claim.
Second, and more importantly, most of the “social” things happening on Diigo do not require any extra effort from you — they are just there to augment your information discovery and sharing. Say for example, you are now browsing the web to learn more about the subject of elearning. You found a few resources on the subject, which you annotated and tagged “elearning”, and now reviewing your findings by the tag “elearning”, you see that you can also view the popular and most recent resources on e-learning from the entire Diigo community. You can also see who are the top contributors on this subject, and what groups are interested in this subject. You can then add these top contributors as your friends or to your watch lists so you will automatically get the latest information they find on elearning. Think of how powerful a “knowledge filter” this aspect can be given the quality of content searched.
If you choose to invite some friends to Diigo, you can keep in touch with them without any extra effort. You will automatically see what their latest interests are from their most recent public bookmarks, which of course can also be an excellent source of information for you. If any associate makes any comment on pages you also bookmarked, you will be notified, giving you a chance to learn their opinion and interact with them as you choose.
In a sense, Diigo is more like “unintentional social networking” that requires minimal effort, as opposed to “intentional social networking” such as Linkedin and Facebook, which do require a lot of effort to maintain. Diigo simply integrates people and knowledge seamlessly making socializing a choice rather than a condition.
With the launch of Diigo 3.0 to rave reviews, some people also wonder if Diigo has become too social, too “facebookish.” Regarding this concern, we would like to make the following points:
Facebook is about “who you know”, while Diigo is about “what you know”. Diigo is a community centered around information and knowledge sharing - all social features in Diigo are designed to serve the purpose of better collaboration and knowledge-sharing.
Facebook connects people based on their existing relationships and affiliations, while Diigo connects people based on common interests in information and content.
Diigo gives users broader latitude in terms of “being social” or not. At one extreme, you can be completely “anti-social” and use Diigo mainly as a research tool for personal productivity — surely you cannot be completely anti-social on Facebook! Diigo provides users with many options on how to share information with others and how to get information from others and the community, involving varying degrees of effort and intrusiveness. This point has been explained very well in a recent blog post at ehub.
Bottomline? Diigo is a new kind of social network centered around information and knowledge, and is perhaps best referred to as a “social information network“.
Diigo is evolving and innovating rapidly. So stay tuned, as lots more exciting things will be forthcoming!
PS: In this new V3 release, we do provide a Facebook widget. For those who have a Facebook account, click here to check it out!
Here is a good overview for the new Diigo, a powerful research tool and a knowledge sharing community. “Don’t just read. Highlight, Annotate and Share the Web!”
Please let us know what you think of the new video. If you like it, please help us spread the words and share it with your friends. Thanks!
The entire Diigo team is pleased to announce to our readers, and the rest of the world, the new Diigo Version 3 goes live today! In our passion to make Diigo the best in its class, we’ve added features, made our existing features easier to use, and come up with what we think you’ll find is an even more incredible platform than before. Before we give you a peek at all Diigo now has to offer, though, we want to thank each and every one of our users and fans, especially those who helped so much in our beta testing phase.
Thank you Diigo Community!
Despite all that we’ve done to make Diigo really useful, it wouldn’t be what it is today without every one of you. Your help, encouragement, suggestions, ideas, and even the bug reports all helped us make sure we stayed on the right track. We added tons of cool features & new innovations, but we needed you to help us make sure those features were easy to figure out and simple to use. So, in a very real sense, all of you who take an interest in Diigo are a valuable part of the Diigo team, and you have as much reason to be proud of today’s launch of Version 3 as we do.
Diigo puts the Social into Bookmarking
We’ve also made a lot of new friends, which, of course, is part of what Version 3 is all about, connecting with people through knowledge and common interests. From the beginning, Diigo has been about more than just social bookmarking, but with this version we also put a real emphasis on the “Social” in “Social Bookmarking” or “Social Annotation”. Social is a big buzz word these days. But different from the typical social networks, Diigo is going “social”, not just for the pure sake of being “social”. In fact, the uniqueness of Diigo’s new social features is the fact that you don’t necessarily need to have a lot of friends to begin deriving the benefits of Diigo. While our users can actively interact with other users if they choose, Diigo’s advanced algorithms and carefully thought-out UI design unobtrusively harness the power of the Diigo community for each individual user and give you the benefit of social information networking with no extra effort on your part!
Our goal was to enable our users to enjoy a greatly increased potential for meaningful and productive discussions anywhere on the Web, and to fully unleash the power of the “writable Web”. We have built upon Diigo’s foundation as a powerful personal research tool with features designed to improve the ease and productivity of collaboration within the office or even across continents to offer our users all the benefits of social networking without the drawbacks.
Harness Collective Wisdom
With every Diigo user tagging and annotating resources online, the Diigo community has collectively created a repository of filtered, annotated content on nearly every subject imaginable. In many cases, you may be able to find resources on a specific subject more quickly by searching Diigo than by using one of the major search engines. In addition, you will have the opportunity to gain unique insight from the public notes and comments of others interested in the subject. Finally, our system recommends news and resources based on your personal interests. This makes it simple for you to keep up to date in any areas of special interest to you.
Share & Discover
When you find something interesting, funny or amazing on the Internet what do you do? You forward it to friends. Diigo offers several methods for sharing bookmarks and notes, so you can also keep in touch and connect with friends effortlessly. And, whenever you want to, Diigo offers multiple ways to help you find people with common interests as well. You can easily form your own community within the larger Diigo community, one focused on the ideas and issues you care about. Whether you hope to increase your productivity at work, promote a cause that is special to you, or just pursue a hobby or passion, a community of users dedicated to the same goal can help you.
You are what you annotate
Remember, you are what you annotate. The sites you find interesting, the public highlights and notes you leave, all these help show your interests and expertise. That helps you to connect with exactly those people who are most like you. Once you’ve found others who share similar interests, you can share resources, benefit each other, and make everyone’s life easier. In other words, Diigo provides social information networking through knowledge-sharing, letting you benefit in a real and practical way.
So with this new release, going beyond web annotation, social bookmarking, and existing social networks such as MySpace, Linkedin, etc, the new Diigo provides a uniquely knowledge-centric social network facilitating knowledge management, sharing and discovery, as well as building social connections and community through content and knowledge. This is just the tip of the iceberg, and we are excited about the possibilities. Going forward, we will relentlessly continue to innovate to make Diigo the best knowledge sharing and management platform for individuals, work groups, and companies.
How to start Diigo-ing
There is a lot to explore in the new Diigo. So make sure you check out our new intro video, what’s new, install the latest toolbar and check out the cool new sidebar, and of course, delve into the new site. Also if somehow you cannot find your favorite feature right away, don’t worry. It has probably been re-arranged somehow. Just check out our new Help section, or come join us in our user forum. Bugs reporting - we’ve tried hard to test through the system as thoroughly as possible. Please do let us know if we have overlooked something. Also, let us know your first impression, likes / dislikes, feedback and suggestion. Lastly, if you like what you see, make sure to help us spread the word!
That’s it for now. Enjoy! And thank you for your continued support to help us make Diigo better and better!
We’re delighted to learn that blogger, and one of our enthusiastic users, Daniel Hope, has been invited to present at SXSW Interactive and will be featuring Diigo in his talk this Sunday. The SXSW Interactive Festival features five days of exciting panel content and amazing parties, and it certainly has become THE event to watch…
Daniel’s session is called Blog on Company Time Without Getting Dooced (note: Dooced = getting fired for your blog) and it will be in Ballroom E at 11:30am, more details here. Daniel and co-presenter, Matt Gierhart, will discuss the various ways they use Diigo’s tools on their personal and client blogs.
A sampling of what will be featured can be found in these articles:
How to Use Diigo: In this article he shows us the many ways he and his team use Diigo to collaborate on stories. In it he demonstrates how a team can use the Daily Blog Post to create stories and link lists simply by browsing and bookmarking the Internet.
We’re excited that more and more users are sharing their Diigo experience in various workshops / conferences! if you’re going to be at SXSWi and you would like to see Diigo in action, then drop by Daniel’s discussion.
Although this blog has not received some “tender loving care” for a while, you can still see us active in user forums (a great place to interact with us.) In fact, for the past many months, the entire Diigo team has been working hard on developing the next generation Diigo, which features substantially improved user experience, and a slew of innovative and powerful functionalities. The new site has incredible amount of details. For those who participate in our closed alpha, million thanks to all of your kind help, constant feedback and encouragement! You guys are awesome!
Just a few more finishing touches. we cannot wait to unveil and share the new Diigo with you all soon!
We are starting to make a whole series of Diigo videos. And we’ve got “attitude” ~ the Diigo’s way
This is an overview of what Diigo is today. There will be a lot more coming as Diigo continues to evolve. Let us know what you think. If you like it, please help us spread the words and share it with your friends. Thanks!
Daniel’s session is called