Hi, thanks for visiting! This site started out as a simple page with a couple of screen shots to help out a few friends. I never thought it would become so popular all around the world, but then again I still don't know why Microsoft makes this so hard for us.

I became fanatic about pinyin input methods when I had the opportunity to market and support the TianMa system for DOS in the mid-eighties. With the best pinyin phrase-based systems, you can type incredibly fast while the system guesses what you mean with well over 90% accuracy, rising to 100% as it learns from you.

Waiguoren?!

After creating this site, I began receiving e-mail from Chinese readers asking "What do you mean when you say on your home page that you're a waiguoren? You're overseas Chinese, right?" Nope, sorry, I am a 100% large-nosed foreigner. I am a third-generation American, born in New York and currently living in California's Silicon Valley. My grandparents arrived in America from various parts of Europe in the early twentieth century.

I began learning Mandarin in college around 1980 or so, and eventually achieved a professional proficiency that I put to use in industry and government in both the US and China. I first studied the language in the CU Asian Studies Program in Boulder, Colorado, where I concentrated on Chinese and computing (and minored in t'ai-chi and Birkenstocks up in the mountains...). Then there was the Middlebury Language School immersion program, some self-study in Taiwan, and ten years later a Cal State MBA.

"You're learning Chinese? What kind of job will that get you?"

What kind of career did all that lead to? Not that I ever thought that far ahead, but it did lead to some fun and interesting work, some of which might have even made a difference in the world. My career began at China Books and multilingual software distributor Pacific Rim Connections. Then there were several years of US government international trade work, including a brief chance to play commercial diplomat at the US Embassy in Beijing, followed by management of a joint venture software company in Zhuhai near Macau and Hong Kong formed by Apple Computer and the Chinese government.

During the dot-com boom I was jetting to Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hong Kong, New York, London, Glasgow and everywhere in-between, evangelizing mobile e-mail devices. I became a vice president of marketing, and even a CEO for awhile. Over the last few years I've been based in the famous Chinese city of Cupertino, California, where I've built a business consulting on marketing strategy for software startups and other small companies with big ideas.

My wife is from Hong Kong and I enjoy correcting her Mandarin when she lets me. <<Ouch, sorry honey.>> OK, actually her Mandarin is great. In fact, when we met in California at an AAMA business event in 1995, the first thing I thought was "Wow, she's got the best Mandarin I've ever heard from a Heung Gong Yahn!" (OK maybe that was the second thing on my mind at the time...or maybe the third thing. OK so I'm a guy gimme a break.)

We have two children, and they are in a great Mandarin-language immersion program. Any day now they will be ready to take over this site.

Thanks for visiting!

Pinyin Joe