Personal Blog of Carl Pei

Tired of reviewing products and taking pictures with a crappy mobile phone camera, I’ve been looking for a new digital camera for quite a while. Initially I looked at the Samsung NV10, a very nice retro styled camera but then settled for its younger and cheaper brother, the Samsung NV3 - which still is a nice camera. It features a 7.2 MPx lens, a MP3 and video player and all the regular features. The NV3 is very slim, sleek, sexy and has two speakers to playback your MP3 music, or sounds from the videos you record. In this price segment, this is probably the best camera you will find.


Below are a few photos and a video taken with this camera.

Graduation Hat

Called Student Mössa in Swedish, this is what we wear when we wreck havoc in the city after graduation. On mine it says Carl Pei -07 on the left side and Sthlm Sweden on the right.

Meizu Music Card Hands On

A video of the Meizu M3 Music Card digital audio player. The quality was pretty good, but once uploaded onto YouTube it’s a whole other story.

Macro Mode

Something I really like about this camera is its macro mode (ability to take pictures of objects close to lens). See for yourself in the below pictures.

I think I’m gonna spend a lot of time with this camera in the future since I’m going to do a lot of traveling. If you’re looking to buy a compact digital camera, have a look at the Samsung NV3!

John Chow maintains a blog that helps you make money online. In addition, he is running a campaign and will link your blog if you review his blog. Mr. Chow is definitely a dot com mogul. He started before the original crash back in the late nineties, and for mogulness evidence, his blog alone grossed over $7,000 USD in February 2007!

I logged in to JohnChow.com this morning and noticed that he had written a farewell post, saying that he sold his company be taking a permanent vacation living on the interest from the sale. I was stunned for a few moments and then proceeded to check out the comments. April fools, or so it seems. I always fall for April fools.

Anyway, if you haven’t already, John Chow’s blog is definitely one you should check out if your interested in making money online - that is, if the last blog post was an April fools joke. If not, I’m sure mine will be just as good in a couple of… er.. years.

A week ago, during the world’s largest electronics fair, CeBIT in Hannover Germany, Charbax interviewed the Meizu representatives. Charbax is a great video blogger covering many events and fairs, he can be found at www.cebitvideo.com. The best thing is, when Charbax asked if their chief designer had heard of my site Meizu Me, he said that he knows Meizu Me very well and visits every day! It made my day - no, it made my week/month/year! See the interview below, the best part comes when there’s 2:18 minutes left of the video.

History

Meizu is a Chinese manufacturer of digital audio players. In 2006, they released a product called the Meizu Mini Player which caused a storm of interest on the internet. Around Q3 2006, I got myself two of these players on a trip to China and quickly fell in love. They were different from other Chinese products, actually using name brand components from Samsung, Toshiba and Phillips. This difference was reflected in the price too.

I quickly noticed international interest, the very small amount of people outside China who had managed to get their hands on these players started noticing problems. Meizu has an English support forum, but it was very slow for international traffic. Also, when I saw titles such as “Hey guy! MEIZU M6 mini player is coming!!” I had to do something. There was clearly demand for something better.

Not long after, I borrowed some web space from a friend, got a free redirected domain and installed the free phpBB forums and called the website Meizu Me. After a while things went pretty well and I purchased the domain “meizume.com”. Not long after, the friend got banned from his web host and my site was down. We had just hit the 1000-member mark. I didn’t have any backup, that night I didn’t sleep well. The next day, I excused myself from school, bought a hosting package from the same web host that banned him, Host Monster and got the site online again. I had no backup. Starting from scratch, many members left or lost interest and stopped visiting.

Sometime here, Meizu made a deal with French memory giant Dane-Elec to distribute their products in Europe and North America. Shortly after, Meizu products were showing up in large European chains such as Media Markt. Needless to say, things went up from there on.

Today, Meizu Me receives around 2200 unique hits daily, around 30% of them from France. It has become more or less the definite source for Meizu information and discussion.

What type of brand makes the hottest headphones? Is it an American brand like Grado, a Japanese brand like Sony or a German brand like Sennheiser? No. The hottest headphones are actually made by a Swedish brand, JAYS. Unlike the giants JAYS is specialized in producing in-ear monitors, the type of small headphone that have silicone buds that isolate you from outer ambient noises.

Their latest product - the j-JAYS (junior JAYS) really give competitors at the same price level a fair fight. They provide great sound, with smooth bass and balanced highs & lows to a reasonable price. The j-JAYS make some of its main competitors that I own(ed), like Sony MDR-EX71 sound murky and dull in comparison and while the Sennheiser CX300s fare better, the j-JAYS still outperforms in terms of an overall better bass experience.

Apart from the aural experience, the visual is not forgotten - the j-JAYS feature a really nice design as well. So if you’re still stuck with the default headphones, perhaps it’s time to consider a change? For casual listeners, the j-JAYS are perfect. True audiophiles might be happy to know that their quad driver IEMs, the q-JAYS, are set to be released this month.