Google in China

Google omits controversial news stories in China? Is it something new? News and information have been censored for years. We all know that Google has no choice but to obey the rules and regulations if they want to do business in China.

We often find unreasonable rules and regulations but we have no choice but to obey. Even in a democratic government, the only thing you can do is to choose another government during election. However, you have no right to change anything during non-election time. This is typical case of releasing little power to the public in exchange of a bigger political power. We just keep silent because this is what we can tolerate.

Most information is controlled from the source. If you have a say on the source, you can easily “filter” the information without letting anybody finding a trace and thus will not cause any controversy. If you do not have the control on the source, you can only filter out the information. This is obviously the only choice for most third world country governments.

For those of you, who still think there is uncensored information, feel free to visit this site and blame Google.

Visual Studio Express Editions

The Express Editions are an expansion of the Visual Studio and SQL Server product line to include lightweight, easy-to-use, and easy-to-learn tools for hobbyists, students, and novice developers who want to build dynamic Windows applications, Web sites, and Web services. The Express products consist of:

> Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition
> Visual Basic 2005 Express Edition
> Visual C# 2005 Express Edition
> Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition
> Visual J# 2005 Express Edition
> SQL Server 2005 Express Edition

It is superb if you just want to learn new .NET language like C# or want to evaluate the .NET 2.0 features.

For the first year after the products launch on November 7th, 2005, you can download your copy of Visual Studio Express free! The usual price is US49. There is no limitation of this free offer; you can even use Visual Studio Express in commercial deployments. The dateline is 7th November 2006.

Download your copy today.

More about DoS

There are three generic DoS attack methods stand out as particularly dangerous:

Smurf or Fraggle
Smurf attacks are one of the most devastating DoS attacks. In the Smurf (ICMP Packet Magnification) attack, the attackers send a large amount of ICMP echo (ping) traffic at IP broadcast addresses. Smurf attack uses bandwidth consumption to disable a system's network resources. The Fraggle (UDP Packet Magnification) attack is the cousin of smurf attack, fraggle attack uses UDP echo packets in the same fashion as the ICMP echo packets.

SYN Flood
The SYN flood attack uses resource starvation to achieve the DoS attack. During a normal TCP handshake, a client sends a SYN request to the server on step one; on step two, the server responds with a SYN/ACK to the client, and the client sends a final ACK back to the server. In a SYN flood attack, the attacker sends multiple SYN requests to the victim with spoofed source addresses for the return address. The spoofed addresses are nonexistent on network. The victim's server then responds with a SYN/ACK back to the nonexistent address. Because no address receives this SYN/ACK, the victim's system just waits for the ACK from the client. The ACK never arrives, and the victim's server eventually times out. If the attacker sends SYN requests often enough, the victim's available resources for setting up a connection will be consumed waiting for these bogus ACKs.

DNS Attacks
On earlier versions of BIND (Berkeley Internet Name Domain), attackers could effectively poison the cache on a DNS server that was using recursion to look up a zone not served by the name server. Once the cache was poisoned, a potential legitimate user would be directed to the attacker's network or a nonexistent network. This problem has been corrected with later versions of BIND.

Source: DDoS Protection

Scratch-less CD-R?

Not quite. The way it resists scratches is through a combination of bumps, ridges, and a hard coating. In other words, avoiding contacts as much as possible is the key.

Scratch-Less inventor Todd Kuchman experimented with partial ridges, eventually finding success with small bumps - 20, to be exact - around the rim of the disc. These bumps, in addition to a full ridge in the inner portion of the disc, solved most of the drive compatibility problem. The hard, scratch-resistant coatings further prevent data lost if someone intentionally scratches the disc.

The bad news is some CD-ROM drives still cannot read his discs, but adds that a list of those drives are on the Scratch-Less Disc Web site.

Beyond Java

Evans Data had a study showing that use of Java has been going down in North America for the past two-and-a-half years, although it has been going up in Asia. PHP and other scripting languages are getting more popular and robust. Moreover, if you look at Web 2.0 companies, it seems that lot of them are using AJAX, which involves scripting.

Scripting languages such as PHP and Python are simpler to learn than Java and are a popular choice among developers, particularly for building Web pages. Many people, including former Java devotees, contend that the rising use of scripting languages and the so-called LAMP stack of open-source components comes at the expense of Java.

The so-called LAMP stack of open-source software - which includes the Linux operating system, Apache Web server, MySQL database and scripting languages PHP, Perl or Python--is pushing its way into mainstream corporate computing.

I think at the end of the day Java will still be the language that you can "learn once and use everywhere". Java can run from handheld gadgets to desktops, enterprise servers and up to mainframes.

This is not something that the LAMP stack software can cater for. They are just a little subset of what Java is capable. However, they are particularly good for quick prototyping.

2005 Weblog Awards

The 2005 Weblog Awards is based on 444,548 votes cast in all categories over 10 days.

To open the eyes of those who still believe that blog is only limited to personal ones, there are over 20 categories awarded, from technology blog to video blog and even parenting blog.

I am particularly interested in the best Asian blog, Xiaxue. The blog received 14,716 votes out of 29,623, a whopping 49.68%. Best of all, it is hosted on blogger.com.

Again, it proves that regardless of the domain name chosen, you still can attract visitors if your content is good enough. The blog owner Wendy Cheng is a Singaporean Chinese. She is another full time blogger with 10,000 readers everyday. I guess that's the maximum number you can get for any blog.

The other blog that interested me is the technology blog. Engadget, Slashdot and Gizmodo are the top threes. Both Engadget and Gizmodo are gadget blogs (ya, who do not like gadgets these days?); Slashdot covers everything, from books, developers to politics and science.

Alex Tew is in Trouble

After being hit by a DoS attack that downed the Million Dollar Homepage site, British student Alex Tew now faces a lawsuit from one of the advertisers on the site.

A denial-of-service attack (also, DoS attack) is an attack on a computer system or network that causes a loss of service to users, typically the loss of network connectivity and services by consuming the bandwidth of the victim network or overloading the computational resources of the victim system.

In this case, the major problem is that the advertisement did not go up in time. The Million Dollar Homepage is responsible to make sure that the advertisement is up according to the contract and guarantee certain amounts of uptime after that. The failure to get the advertisement up during the DoS attack is clearly negligence by Alex Tew.

However, there is not much Alex can do to provide an optimum level of service to his advertisers. His quality of service is heavily dependant on the hosting service provider he has chosen. It is a common pitfall for a site owner to concentrate too much, on how to attract enough traffic without knowing the risk of the business model he is in. Excessively many site owners are unaware of their business model and blindly follow others.

It may be true that you have nothing to lose in earning from your personal site. However, you will soon realize that there are hidden costs that you do not anticipate without knowing the business model.

Content, Community

There are two types of Internet users - information processors or social beings.

The first type of users is acting like information processors. These people are passive surfers waiting for publishers to feed them with information. They have no interest in interacting with other users other than gaining knowledge. For this type of users, the content is the most important. They are often willing to pay for the content.

Bronfman (2000)
“What would the Internet be without content? It would be a valueless collection of silent machines with gray screens. It would be electronic equivalent of a marine desert – lovely elements, nice colors, no life. It would be nothing”

Internet users as social beings are the other type of users. These people want to relate to other users in the Internet. They usually have high level of self-disclosures.

The development of portals is a direct response to the needs of these users. They can chat, join a common interest group, interact with others in a forum etc. They are often willing to pay to be part of the community even though there is no meaningful content. Psychology is the key to successful gathering of these users.

Spend on New Technology?

According to Changi Express the Asian consumers that are most willing to spend on new technology listed by country.

Thailand 40%
Indonesia 29%
Hong Kong 27%
Singapore 25%
Philippines 25%
Malaysia 16%

The result is part of ACNielsen regional customer survey.

Who look after your domain name?

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is responsible for managing and coordinating the Domain Name System (DNS) to ensure that every address is unique and that all users of the Internet can find all valid addresses.

ICANN is a California non-profit corporation that was created on September 18, 1998 in order to oversee a number of Internet-related tasks previously performed directly on behalf of the U.S. Government by other organizations, notably IANA. The technical work of ICANN is referred to as the IANA function

ICANN's role is very limited, and it is not responsible for many issues associated with the Internet, such as financial transactions, Internet content control, spam (unsolicited commercial email), Internet gambling, or data protection and privacy.

There are two types of top-level domains, generic and country code, plus a special top-level domain (.arpa) for Internet infrastructure. Generic domains were created for use by the Internet public, while country code domains were created to be used by individual countries as they deemed necessary.

Sponsored gTLD includes .aero, .cat, .coop, .jobs, .mobi, .museum and .travel. Un-sponsored gTLD includes the more familiar .biz, .com, .info, .name, .net, .org and .pro. Registrations in the domains listed above may be made through dozens of competitive registrars.

There are domains that are exclusive to US government and between governments. The US exclusive domains are .gov, .edu and .mil. The .int domain is used only for registering organizations established by international treaties between governments.

Personalized Start Page & RSS

Start your day each morning with your own personalized start page. Get news, stock quotes, comics, weather and more when you open your browser. How are all these possible? The answer is Really Simple Syndication (RSS).

If you use one of the following services: My AOL, My Yahoo, My MSN, Google Personalized Home, Google Desktop and etc, you have a personalized start page. If you have a personalized start page, then you have an RSS reader.

Most internet users are using RSS indirectly without knowing the technology behind RSS. However, these users fully benefit from RSS because it enables them to subscribe to content very much like subscribing a magazine. The content will be delivered to the RSS reader the same way email is delivered to your inbox. It is really an enhanced bookmark for you browser which Firefox conveniently calls it Live Bookmark.

Recent research conducted by Yahoo! and Ipsos reveal that only 31% of the US Online population use RSS directly or indirectly. The number is not that bad, given that all major search engines are pushing the use of the technology. It might be true that majority of internet users do not care what RSS is all about, there is no doubt that they will join the 31% without even aware they are using it.

The Internet experience powered by RSS will be as simple as checking your email. The multitude of technologies may make them ignorant for a while but they will soon find their way into personalized start page and finally RSS.

For the techies

Alternative Web Browsing

Ever thought about another way of browsing the web? Here is one of the many.

PageGetter.com, the email portal to the World Wide Web is especially useful when you want to make and save a copy of a webpage that has been blocked by your company or service provider. In a way, it is very similar to a proxy server.

Unfortunately, you may only request 15 webpages or 4.8 megabytes of downloaded webpages per month at no charge. You will need to subscribe to the service if you need more. I have not tried the service personally. Therefore, I cannot comment on the quality of service.

The basic idea is to send a URL to a designated email; PageGetter.com will then email you back the content in the format you have requested. The content that you received could be HTML, plain text, files as attachments etc.

Search Engine is now Personal

"Search only the sites you trust" is the catch phrase that Rollyo tries to enlighten you.

Rollyo introduces a concept called SearchRoll. A Searchroll is a personalized search engine that provides results from a hand selected collection of trusted sites on any given topic.

Yahoo powers the search engine. Yahoo provides the engine and Rollyo puts you behind the steering wheel. Rollyo even supports searching a subdomain of the site you have chosen.

With Site Search already built into Google for quite a while, the success of Rollyo is not going to be easy. They are betting on the less technical internet users who rely on search engines heavily.

Vertical Search Engines

Google's eye-popping success in making its search engine an attractive advertising platform has prompted many companies to try their luck in this space.

Unlike their general-purpose cousins, such as the ones run by Google and Yahoo, vertical search engines contain information in their indexes about a specific topic. Consequently, they are aimed only at people interested in a particular area, and deliver a narrow and very focused audience to the companies that advertise on them. It is like a shortcut to enter the search engine market.

Vertical search hasn't escaped the radar of Google, Yahoo and the other leaders in general Web search. They all let users search through local business directories and provide driving directions and maps. Some have job engines. Others provide different levels of multimedia content search. But these search engines aren't generally considered to go deep enough into specific areas, which is where others are finding the opportunity.

However, that could change.

Examples of vertical search engines are,
Indeed | one search. all jobs
SourceTool.com
The Plastics Web

Podcasting and Podjacking

According to Podcast Alley, there are 13,049 registered podcasts with 335,480 episodes. The popularity of podcasting has exploded since the first podcast in late 2004.

Podcasting, a portmanteau of Apple's "iPod" and "broadcasting", is a method of publishing files to the Internet, allowing users to subscribe to a feed and receive new files automatically by subscription, usually at no cost. The files can be downloaded to iPod automatically using iTunes and other tools.

Podjacking is a problem that arises lately and will cause a serious threat to the growth of podcasting. As a podcaster, the URL you create for your RSS feed becomes the doorway through which your entire listenership arrives. Every single one of your listeners will come in through this doorway. Moreover, it is this URL that iTunes, Yahoo, Podcast Alley, and all the other podcast search engines will use in order to bring listeners to your show.

As in the case blogging, podcasters rely heavily on search engines to reach millions of audience. If another URL which is own by third party is pointing to your show, you have been podjacked!

Erik Marcus wrote an article on the problem.

Will Click Fraud Ruin the Internet Economy?

Pay-per-click is the fastest-growing segment of all advertising, reports the Interactive Advertising Bureau.

Last year, Yahoo! alone ran more than 250 million individual listings, according to Michael Egan, the company's search-marketing director of content strategy. Yahoo! doesn't break out PPC earnings separately in its financial statements, but Goldman Sachs analyst Anthony Noto believes that keyword advertising accounted for about half of the company's estimated $3.7 billion in revenue for 2005.

PPC is even more lucrative for Google. According to Noto, Google will end 2005 with $6.1 billion in revenue. About 99 percent of that revenue comes from keyword ads (over 56 percent from AdWords, according to the company's most recent quarterly financial statement, and 43 percent from AdSense), making Google a bigger recipient of ad dollars than any television network or newspaper chain.

All of which is to say that little blue text links, a type of advertising that barely existed five years ago, are poised to become the single most important form of marketing in the US - unless click fraud ruins it.

Reveal the Mysteries behind Search Engines

Do you think that all major search engines are using their own technology to provide the listings of a web search? Think again.

You would be surprised how many major search engines are buying listings from other sources. MSN Search, AOL Search, AltaVista, Ask Jeeves, just to name a few, is all using either Google or Yahoo/Overture.

You would be shocked to know that many of these search engines provide paid listings. In order words if you are rich enough, you can pay a search engine company to be listed on a better position in a search result.

You would be puzzled why only Yahoo provides directory listing and all others including Google relies on Open Directory.

Open you eye now.

What will Kill the Internet?

Your first guess is most likely spam, viruses or hackers. Well, they are all on the list. However, they only add up to about 14% of what 57,550 people think.

The biggest worries are in the area of control and restrictions. 39% of the people think that patent law and copyright law have the most possibility. 15% of them believe that Microsoft will be the culprit while another 14% blames the users.

The last is the most surprising, have a look at my picture.



Yeah. That's me, a backhoe!

With our underground heavily wired, any construction work could have cause a serious reliability problem of the Internet.

Source: Slashdot Poll

The Malaysian IT Initiative

Initiated by the Malaysian Government to address the critical shortage of IT professionals at all levels in Malaysia and the region, Asia Pacific Institute of Information Technology (APIIT) was tasked with producing IT professionals equipped with necessary skills required by the fast-growing multibillion-ringgit IT industry in Malaysia. The institute was established in 1993.

The R&D team was established in late 1998 for the purpose of using APIIT's academic resources to create commercial applications and associated intellectual property. They have completed five major projects.

-Realistic Talking Head Models
-Signature Recognition Engine (SIROX)
-Anti-Porn Solutions
-iSMART
-Car License Plate Extraction and Recognition Technology (C.A.R.P.E.T)

Is EMF a Health Hazard?

Everyone in our modern society is exposed to the electric and magnetic fields (EMFs) that surround all electric devices. Recently, scientific studies have raised questions about the possible health effects of EMFs.

EMFs are simply Electromagnetic Radiations, energy waves produced by the oscillation or acceleration of an electric charge. Computer workers can be exposed up to an average of 1.2 milligauss of EMFs while the normal exposure off the job is only 0.9 milligauss. The 33% increase of EMFs exposure could be lethal. Many studies found significantly higher cancer rates for men with average workday exposures above 4 milligauss. Given the fact that computer workers generally stay long hours in front of a computer, the workday exposures could well be above 4 milligauss.

With the popularity of laptops and Wi-Fi, the exposure level could be even bigger. One should certainly avoid having the laptop on his lap when using laptop. Although there is no proof of EMFs as being hazardous, perhaps the fact that researchers are still finding the answer will reveal a tip of an iceberg.

A Reflection on BPM

In a typical enterprise IT project, we spend a lot of time justifying the hardware procurement. The justification process can be time consuming and political. Often we need to establish some kind of key performance indicators (KPIs) to monitor the success of a project, be it useful or not useful. We need to identify measurable data in order to compute the KPIs.

It is very common that the establishment of KPIs is not possible due to the nature of the business processes. A business process that makes a company successful in the market is not always probeable. The process is not always generating sufficient data for it to be probed.

Therefore, we need to model the entire business process in order to identify the probe points. This is the process of Business Process Modeling (BPM). By identifying the sub processes that are not compatible to the IT framework, we are able to reengineer the business process into a form that is not only manageable by software but also continue to drive the business success. This process is called Business Process Reengineering (BPR).

Everything seems to be logical as far as answering the question as to why we are doing BPM/BPR. However, the actual reasons behind these activities are complex. The establishment of KPIs gives a picture of how the business is doing in real-time to the managers. The modeling and documentation of business process make the company less vulnerable to changing staff. The core business knowledge is always kept with the company instead of leaving with a previous staff. The management of the company is able to portray the value proposition easily in the case of acquisition. The accountants can record the book values of business process just like any other tangible form of assets.

All these add up to the popularity of BPM among the corporate. However, not all BPM is successful. The reason is very simple. Some businesses simply do not know exactly why they are profiting. A BPM done to this kind of company will reveal the wrong value proposition and hence monitoring the wrong KPIs. It is often lethal for these companies to embrace BPM.

Interesting Figures

Who has the most image-based and sponsored link advertisements on the Internet? Who has the most searches among the search engines?

Surprisingly Yahoo is the unrivaled king of image-based advertising while Google tops the list of sponsored link advertising. Overall, Yahoo is the biggest in terms of advertising on the Internet with a quarter of the market share. MSN is on par with Google if adding everything up.

As usual, Google dominates the search engine market with almost half of the market share. Yahoo is about half of the size of Google and MSN is another half the size of Yahoo.

Source: The Seattle Times

Can We Trust the Internet?

Are you an idiot? Not everybody will say yes. However, you certainly have the right to be an idiot on the Internet.

The Internet contains too much information that not a single person can claim to have read all of them. With so much information flooded to our eyes, our mind tends to stop thinking. Without going through the critical thinking process, we are vulnerable to any unethical information providers.

Ever since we know how to speak, the tendency of lying grows with age. It is sometimes impossible not to tell lies. The world is full of lies and we as part of the participants have no choice but to lie. A lie before the Information Age has limited impact and always target to specific audiences. However, a lie in Information Age can potentially ruins the lives of an entire generation. The reader may accidentally fall into the trap for which he is not a targeted audience of the lie.

Should we protect these people from falling into the trap? Should we do nothing for the sake of freedom of speech? Should we return the judgments of what is right and what is wrong to the readers? This article suggests we should. This is after all the age where encyclopedia can be an illegitimate information source. Whom should we start to protect?

The Age of InfoTerror

It is a means of spreading heretical philosophies in a democratic society. It explains why Hitler remains potent historical figure even decades after his “defeat”.

InfoTerrorism works by attaching information "objects" to basic impulses of all living things: terror and opportunity. Info-terrorist target the sheep like audience that includes you and me by inserting doubt into our mind, hence influences our decisions. They also convince people that there are new opportunities if we make radical changes.

The use of InfoTerrorism is all over the Internet, from UseNet, web sites to blogs. All Internet addicts should be aware of this.

To know more about InfoTerrorism, visit InfoTerrorism – a Premier or watch the documentary that tracks the emergence of an Age of InfoTerror from the September 11 terrorist attack to the war with Iraq.

The Ajax Miracle

With the advent of Ajax, the same level of user experience on desktop is possible on the web platform. All of a sudden, company like Google not only emerges as the leader of the new web platform (aka Web 2.0), but a serious treat to Microsoft, the monopoly of desktop platform.

Why is Ajax able to change the IT landscape over night? Why did Bill Gates shout aloud we are entering into the “live era” of software?

Ajax needs only XMLHttpRequest object to function. The first web browser that implements the object is the Internet Explorer 5.0 as an ActiveX object. (Yes! It is from Microsoft :0) It is the simplicity of the implementation that one after another web browser starts to support the object. With so many browsers supporting the object, developing web application incorporating Ajax is a breeze. The application will work not only on Windows platform but also Mac and UNIX platforms.

Microsoft unplanned contributions to Ajax make it possible for Google to popularize the technology among the web developers. Microsoft managers finally realize that maybe they are betting the company’s future on the wrong product. The .NET architecture has always being the bet of the company’s future. Albeit heavy investments on .NET, the success of the architecture is mediocre. On the other hand, the desktop market segment that Microsoft has so much confidence in is now facing challenges from Google.

Where is Microsoft planning to go? I think Microsoft has no choice but to continue the .NET commitment at the same time play the catch-up game in the Web 2.0 platform. With the strong financial position that Microsoft has been enjoying, it is very likely that we will see another success from the company.

Pentium Will be a Thing of the Past?

Rebranding is just one of the strategies many companies use to market new product. The mighty Intel is no exception.

Often, rebranding is necessary when the sales of a product fail to increase after several intensive marketing campaigns or the image of a product could not match up against competitors. The company would have no choice but to rebrand the product in the hope to get a fresh start. It involves not only changing name but also a brand new marketing strategy targeting another or additional segment of the market.


Source: Intel drops "Pentium" brand TG Daily

Web 2.0? Was there a Web 1.0?

I have to admit that I am a bit slow in getting aware of this new movement. Once again Microsoft risks being left behind in the Web 2.0 movement. Google has the lead in this movement.

To know more about exactly what is Web 2.0, here are some of the insightful articles.

- What is Web 2.0?
- Web 2.0 Conference 2005
- Microsoft Responses to the Movement.

The movement reminds me of the browser war in which Microsoft retains the crown until today. Will history repeat itself?

“Smart Living”

Oregon Scientific, a symbol of smart living, has a simple definition of smart living. Smart living advocates the pursuit of a new perspective and attitude towards life and lifestyle enhancement.

The editor of Intelligent Life, a publication from The Economists further elaborates the idea of smart living to the question of how best to spend our own limited resources as we fend increasingly for ourselves.

Oregon Scientific is talking about what a smart living person is pursuing while Intelligent Life is justifying the need of having smart living. There are also minor differences in the way they define the term SMART. Oregon Scientific is advocating people who have multidimensional thinking and therefore smart people. Intelligent Life offers the trend-spotting skill to the readers for them to achieve a better social position in the future. These readers are at least trying to play smart in life. The magazine targets readers who feel that understanding the workings of the world is an essential first step towards nudging the whims of nature in their own favor for which I agree completely.

The pursuit of a new perspective towards life is a way to achieve smart living. The strategy of how best to spend our resources in the pursuit of a better living is a difficult problem. Smart living may just be one of the choices for a better living. At the end of the day, you have to think outside the existing life styles, believing there is another living style that is better and therefore smarter.

Top Companies in China

According to Hizonkey, a China based market research company, The Most Influential Multinational Corporations in China for the year 2005 sorted by ranking are,

1. Microsoft
2. McDonald’s
3. Coca Cola
4. Nokia
5. KFC
6. Sony
7. Panasonic

Ironically, none of them is from China.

Tired of Search Engines?

The Internet has a wealth of information. Unfortunately, you always need a navigator to help you on the way to locate the most relevant information.

Search engines are the online navigators. The way search engines collect data is through a search bot. A search bot crawls the Internet by links and maps the links to keywords. Because a search bot is a piece of software, it is inevitable that the bot has no knowledge of what it is collecting. The direct consequence is the level of noise in the form of junk links is very high. The user can get roughly the idea of a topic but not in the form of knowledge tree. This is the intrinsic weakness of search engines.

Encyclopedia was developed in 18th century from dictionary. The primary focus of an encyclopedia is the building of knowledge tree. It enables a reader to relate a term to the broader field of knowledge. This is extremely useful if the reader has absolute no knowledge in the term he is trying to find out.

The most useful open encyclopedia resources on the Internet are Answers.com and Wikipedia.

- Answers.com (founded by Bob Rosenschein, listed on NASDAQ)
- Wikipedia (founded by Jimmy Wales, non-profit corporation)

Is Open Source a Revolution?

We know that in every stable system, there are always two forces competing with each other trying to gain dominance. The dominant force will retire after a period because of the existence of the other force. The dominant force can retire because there is a second force, a second choice.

The majority part of the history of software industry is a history of open source computing. The code was readily given out between users in order to promote the use of the computer hardware. In the early days, companies like IBM actively organized programmer support groups to promote hardware sales. The programmers at that time had great skills in Mathematics and Science. The majority efforts were put in the area of algorithm optimizations. It was an art to be able to write efficient code.

With the advent of the so-called mass-market software products, the user base is expanding to non-technical users. These users are not concerned about how the software is written. They are more concerned about the usability of the software. Because of this industry trend, more and more programmers are trained to develop interactive user interface. The focus of most software vendors is no longer, in how efficient the code is running. The core libraries of software are only a small percentage of the total lines of code. They are hidden deep inside and becoming a lost art.

Because it is a lost art, majority of software vendors highly value the core libraries and apply for patents to protect them. This is the start of the so-called Intellectual Properties protected software products. The core libraries are buried so deep inside the software that it is becoming all right not to disclose anything but the user interface layer even to the most demanding users. The competition is focus on how to streamline the user learning curve. The situation is further worsening by the introduction of more powerful hardware every 3 months and the industry support of OOD.

The direct consequence of this industry trend is heavy vendor lock-in. Heavy vendor lock-in promotes the emergence of some of the largest software companies in the history. The absolute monopoly of these companies causes the dormant force inside the software industry to awake. In 1998, the Open Source Initiative was formed to provide a platform to address the problem.

The new political force in software industry helps to force some of the world largest companies to give up the IP right of a portion of the core libraries. Thousands of new open source projects are started to absorb the knowledge of the forgotten core libraries. Many open source software with features comparable to its commercial counterparts are readily available without cost. More and more people start to think that finally we all have a choice to leave expensive commercial software in the dust.

Unfortunately, the reality is the opposite. Commercial vendors continue to charge a premium for their software. Open source software is only dominant in non-mission critical deployments.

IT Ain’t Playing Catch-up

This IT catch-up game is a common pitfall of developing countries trying to enter the so-called Digital Age.

The Status quo

Governments of the developing countries are spending a lot of money building up the so-called IT infrastructure. They spend millions if not billions just to equip the government agencies with PCs, servers, networking devices and telecommunication networks. The next phase is to spend on software infrastructure tools such as application servers, web servers, portal servers, enterprise integration framework etc. At the end of the day, after depleting all the budgets, there is still no application running on the infrastructure.

All of these come about because these governments accept the advice from the US consulting firms. Having gone through the entire evolution cycles of IT, knowing the lessons learnt, these consulting firms provide the governments of the developing countries with plans that the US has gone through in the past 50 years, believing it will equally benefit them. This started a typical IT catch-up game.

The high cost that US pay during the start of the evolution of IT industry should not be repeated elsewhere in the world. Developing countries cannot afford wastage. The idea of building the infrastructure before thinking about how to use it is a cold war legacy.

What should be done?

The essence of Digital Age is there will be less human-based information exchange. The information is open and ready to be accessed by selected group of people anytime anywhere. Anybody can join the group upon meeting certain basic requirements. It is advancement from the age where information is exclusive to selected group of people because of all types of constraints.

One of the basic requirements is a PC with an Internet connection. This basic requirement is no longer an issue with the introduction of sub-$500 or even sub-$100 PC and heavily subsidized internet connection. The other requirement is to provide every citizen of the country with an identity passport account along with a unique email address that replaces the physical location based home address. The email is the Digital Age Identity Card Number or Social Security Number. It is law binding. This is all you need to get a start. The target of this stage is a stable telecommunication network and the infrastructure related to the identity service provided by the government. The next stage of the plan is to start providing a government payment gateway and roll out e-Services. The target of this stage is the infrastructure related to the e-Services that can be hosted in a national level data centre. This should be the end of the tangible items expenditure.

The third stage involves spending on the intangible items. For example, to encourage the use of the Internet based e-Services, the government can pay incentives to citizens that use the online service. In addition, the government can also make some of the services available online only e.g. getting queue ticket for the application of business license. With enough innovations on how to encourage the use of e-Services, the government can slowly educate its citizens to move forward to the Digital Age.

Blogs Provide Insights

As an IT professional, I always find direct interaction with the people behind the success of the world most respectable companies more interesting than dealing with the sales people at the front-end. These people behind the scene are the corner stone of the company. I do not hate sales people but I do not like them either. One of the way for these techies behind the scene to emerge to the public view is through blogs.

Two of the most successfully company Google and Microsoft offers a list of their employees’ blogs officially in their website.

Microsoft Community Blogs
http://www.microsoft.com/communities/blogs/PortalHome.mspx

Official Google Blog
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/

The emergence of corporate blogs enables a company to start interacting with potential customers along the way when the product is still in the drawing board. The company can concentrate on product that has wide market interest and acceptance. The customers can anticipate a smooth transition to the new product because they move along the way with the development of the product per se.

I believe many more companies will see the value of blogs just as Google and Microsoft did. It is also very interesting to read what the company culture behind that makes them big.

Blogger's Puzzle

The most difficult part in stating a Blog is the C.o.n.t.e.n.t.

I have tried a couple of Blog and quickly come to realize that the only way to provide enough content is to write something about your own life. You are unique in this world and nobody can be you. The most difficult part about writing your life is the struggle between privacy and uniqueness. The more you value the uniqueness, the more you have to ease on privacy.

Obviously writing about your life is not a good idea after all. What else can you write? You can write stories about another person. This may sound like a good idea at first thought. The fact is no man is happy about another man writing about him. You will end up in deteriorating the relationship with the person. As a precaution, never write anything about a woman, you will end up in misery.

What else can you write? Do you have a skill that everybody admires? As one of the six billion human beings I have no extraordinary skills. Yes, I earn a living with a set of skills. However, that does not imply I am a very skillful man.

How about your interest? As an Internet Addict I learn a lot from the Internet. I might be able to write something about it. But … hang on … Isn’t it true the knowledge I learn from the Net is readily available?

The above scenario is just one of the many examples of the thinking process of a blogger. At the end of the day, only those bloggers who are willing to spend time writing anything are likely to start blogging. There is no cure for this puzzle.

The Evolution of Search Engine

I am going to talk a bit about how I see Yahoo and Google search engine evolve.

My first search engine was Yahoo. At that time, Yahoo was the only thing I knew about the Net. It was resourceful and effective. It provided directory listing as well as searching and served very much of my needs. Unfortunately, it was not very late that I discovered the search was not fulfilling my ever demanding keywords. At first, I tried to accept the fact that this is the limitation of search engine and for a time I relied on the links in the pages that I visited to crawl unknown pages. Later, I found out there was something called web ring. This is one of the more effective ways of finding related sites.

My first encounter of Google was at the university. One day, I noticed those top students in my class were having fun trying out a mysterious site. I sneak peeked from the back and realized it was Google. The first 3 months of using Google was not very pleasing. The new search engine returned way too many junks. It was virtually impossible to get any high quality sites. I exploited the strength of both Yahoo and Google. Yahoo was used for high quality site search and Google was used if Yahoo returned nothing on the keyword.

Things were getting alright for a while. When I noticed I used Google more often than Yahoo, I was migrating to Google without knowing. Google started to get more publicity and was extremely popular among the users at the academic world. Google became the valuable tools for them because Yahoo failed to index enough keywords to serve them well.

With enough hits per day, Google started to introduce more and more services just like what Yahoo has been doing for years. However, there were major differences in the approach. The first service that caught my eyes was the Google Groups. It was a Holy Grail to me as I need to find out known technical solutions in the Usenet. By combining the Web and the Usenet search, I was able to get answers of almost anything.

The subsequent services were boring until Google Earth and Google Desktop came into picture. Once again it caught my eyes because Microsoft was beginning to realize the power of Google. This was the time when Google took the search engine crown and overtook Yahoo as the most popular search engine of all time. This was the time when most of the world media started to report on Google matters.

Thinking Style

Ever try to design something based on product marketing literature?

That is what I am doing right now at work. I am not saying this is something that everybody must look at me respectfully. What I am trying to say is precisely how this work drives me crazy.

My mind cannot work in an unstructured manner. But things do not always have a framework. I have been thinking about it for a long time. Finally I realize it is simply because I always try to work in the Lego mode. In other words, I try so hard to gather the pieces, build up something with those pieces collected and make sense of what it is about.

What is the strength of this thinking style? It is very powerful when you need to come back and work on a different configuration of the same pieces. In fact, it is so powerful that I stick to this thinking style for more than 10 years.

What is the weakness of this thinking style? Well, you name it. The Achilles’ heel of this thinking style is the inability to recognize the situation once the pieces are not gathered complete.

99% of humanity activities are about managing risk, going against the God. What differentiate a high risk activity to a low risk activity? It’s the cost! How do we calculate the cost? It’s the amount of uncertainty within a boundary. Who draw the boundary? That is anything outside the Lego pieces.

Mind the word “outside”. Therefore in order to manage risk, one has to switch in and out of the Lego pieces and redraws the boundary all the time. This is extremely painful if you have a structure already built using the existing Lego pieces.

…

God bless me!

How did we get addict to the Internet?

There are different sites out there in the Internet that actually attract people. These sites can be briefly categorized as follow:

Online Presence of Established Companies: e.g. IBM, Microsoft, CNN, Citibank
Keyword: What do the company online sites offer?

Common Interest Interaction: e.g. product reviews, forum, IRC
Keyword: What do others think about XYZ?

Online Tools: e.g search engine, online news, directories
Keyword: Where do I find XYZ?

Resource Sharing: e.g music & video sharing, pirated software
Keyword: Where do I download XYZ?

This is the full evolution cycle of an Internet addict.

Let’s think about how a typical web surfer learns about the Internet. Everybody starts with Online Helping Tools such as Yahoo. At this stage, the main focus is to find why Internet is so interesting. Once this person justifies the fun of surfing, he will start to look for sites that match his interest. At this stage, his radar of known sites will expand to Common Interest Interaction sites. The typical symptoms are long hours of surfing and unable to concentrate on activities outside the Net. This period is typically 1-3 months. He may switch to different interest during that period rapidly. He quickly realizes that he can get many things free of charge, regardless of legal issues. He starts to dive into Resource Sharing sites. The most notable symptom at this stage is 24-hour broadband connection with endless network activity and buying hard disk or optical storage media once a week. This stage is the longest of all and most people continue to do so for years. The last stage is the final stage of evolution. He starts to realize that the Internet is very useful not only to kill leisure time but offer helps on his work/study. He starts to link Internet to his daily life as much as possible. Without Internet connection at home or at work, he starts to feel he is unable to complete anything successfully.

Oops! He is addicted!

It's 2:59AM local time

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Am I the only one alone?

Half of the other planet is still busy. I guess the answer is No.

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Things were a bit ironic. While my friends were busy finding hosting service to earn from Google Adsense, I was a bit skeptical of what they were doing. I just don't think that it is necessary to pay for the hosting fee. There are plenty of free blog sites out there, you just need to go and get one. In the end, I ended up with Blogger. To my surprise, I could actually use Google Adsense right here in Blogger.

Oops! They should have looked more.

I still do not believe Google Adsense will bring me any noticeable income, so I have decided to hide it at the bottom of my page.

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