The Zen of Web

Today I got an e-mail from a company called WebNameSolution.com (according to the WHOIS record, it’s in Montreal, Canada) trying to sell me a domain name for $199.95. It’s not a random offer, you see. It’s for a domain name that I owned and decided not to renew. And now they are trying to sell it back to me!? Do they think I’m an idiot?

Actually I checked with the company that I originally registered the domain with. I could get it back for $8.88 which is what I paid for it the first time. This makes their unsolicited offer even all the more ridiculous!

It can happen to anyone to forget renewing a domain. It’s no surprise that a company would exploit a situation like that. But it’s even more amazing because in this case I would be a total moron not to try getting back the domain with my registrar first.

Simply unbelievable… But maybe not… Even Network Solutions, who manages .com, .net and .org, abused the domain registration grace period that domain registrars enjoy (but when regular consumers register a domain, they cannot change their mind and ask for a refund…).

written by Allen

I want a camera that can make phone calls. Hehehe……..

Back at the end of 2006 I was making a new phone purchase. I was choosing between Nokia’s N73 and SonyEricsson’s K800i. I ended up with getting the N73… and hating it. I sold it half a year later.

Obviously it works fine as a phone. But as a camera, it was horrible. Never mind that it used the famous Zeiss lense. It simply didn’t get the job done. First of all, being an urban young professional, I take a lot of pictures indoor. N73’s pictures quality just isn’t very good indoor. When it’s a little dark, it becomes simply bad. It’s not much better with the built-in flash light…

Then there’s the worst problem — a problem other camera phones have, too (just to a lesser degree). When you flip open N73’s camera, it’s probably 20 seconds later before you can take the picture. You know what, the moment’s gone by then or the people you’re taking the picture of are annoyed already. This is just not acceptable!!! Not acceptable!

So there, I don’t want a phone that takes pictures. I want a camera that works as a phone. I’ve never had a SonyEricsson phone before. I should really give it a shot. In fact, I’m kinda waiting for the new C905, due out in Q4 this year. See picture below:

All I really want is to flip open my camera phone and then take the picture right away. Is that really that much to ask? It shouldn’t be….

written by Allen \\ tags: SonyEricsson

I’m totally speculating here, of course — I’m not somebody who’d have any such insider information. But I think what I’m suggesting now does seem somewhat possible…

Could Microsoft never really intend to buy Yahoo from the start?

Before Microsoft publicly announced their bid to buy Yahoo, people (as in shareholders) weren’t happy with its declining share price. And for sure people were saying that Yahoo needed to better compete with Google in search advertising (but I actually don’t necessary feel that way myself). But what people weren’t saying back then was that Yahoo didn’t have a future as an independent company. People saw Yahoo as a powerful brand and understand its position as the Internet company with the most aggregated pageviews. Somehow after Microsoft came into the picture, people suddenly said Yahoo needed to be acquired.

Why? All for maximizing shareholder value? Whatever…

I’m just thinking… Maybe someone foresaw the tailspinning Yahoo would be in today and advised Steve Ballmer to make a move. The purpose would not be to actually buy Yahoo but to put it in a situation where it would be busy regrouping and could no longer compete effectively with Microsoft. As we have found out now, the #1 got bigger, but at least Microsoft has a chance becoming #2…

We may not ever find out. But could this be possible? Most definitely!!!

written by Allen \\ tags: Microsoft, Yahoo

I consider myself an aspiring Internet entrepreneur. I think I qualify because back 2006 I launched a web service. Even though it flopped but at least I tried and I’m again trying now. The thing is… even though I’m almost always online (I’m not necessarily proud of that), I’m not necessary the best target customer of a web service myself. I’m pretty fixed on how I use the Internet and my “user behavior” is hard to change.

See… I want to be in this Internet industry but I don’t always eat my own dog food. Should I be concerned? What gives?

Like most people on the Internet, I use e-mail (Gamil and Lotus Notes for work) and instant messengers (MSN and Skype) to communicate with others. I’m grateful for them making the world smaller as I can stay in touch with friends and family easily. And thanks to Facebook, I’ve managed to reconnect with some lost friends lately. Recently I’ve also started to follow closely activity streaming/lifestreaming on Facebook and Windows Live Space (since a lot of people on my MSN list also have a Space and their activities are aggregated).

And like many others, I get my news from the Internet (I hardly turn on the TV now…). I read NYTimes.com, BusinessWeek.com and ESPN.com religiously and occasionally CNN.com, too. (Sometimes I feel guilty not reading more local news often enough, ’cause after all I don’t live in the US anymore…) And I keep up with many Internet industry focused blogs like TechCrunch and others.

So beyond communication and news, what do I really use the Internet for? What web services and applications do I use?

To start, I do contribute content on the web as I blog (on many sites — in the event that I run the site all by myself, I use WordPress) and upload pictures (Windows Live Space) to share with others. And besides Facebook, I also have a profile on LinkedIn and a couple of Chinese SNS. I don’t have a lot of time to watch video online. But when I do, I occasionally browse stuff on YouTube and watch longer clips on Tudou.com, which is great because it lets you download the files to your computer. I have an account on Twitter and FriendFeed but I don’t really update them and don’t go there often to check on others’ updates. I do use online banking and I use Google to search for stuff all the time. Let’s see what else… I use Baidu to find mp3 files sometimes and when necessary, I use Google Map to find a location that I need to go to. Oh and I use del.icio.us to bookmark interesting stuff online but mostly that’s ’cause I wanna share those links on my blogs. As in I don’t really use it to go back to those sites later on, as a bookmark is supposed to help you do.

There you have it… That may not include everything I use, but is probably close to all I do and use online…

New web services and applications come out everyday. I often find out about them early. Sometimes I would sign up to just take a look. But for the most part, I’m not what you’d call a “heavy user.” I’m probably not a “early adopter” either in most cases.

So why is that? Someone like myself who is fascinated by the power and possibilities that come with the Internet and yet I don’t seem to use it as much as I probably could.

One reason is that I’m definitely too busy to mess around on the Internet and a lot of stuff online are really just fun, silly things for people to mess around with (see all those stupid Facebook apps). But really, I don’t use many of the Web2.0 sites as much as you might imagine because I don’t find most of them worthwhile enough to spend much time with. I think that’s scary to say and should probably serve a constant reminder to myself that a good idea is truly hard to come by.

Sites like YouTube, Digg or others succeed because they give their users a reason, whatever that may be, to change or adopt a new behavior. That is not easy to accomplish. I tend to think that in order for something on the Internet to stick, you need to provide some concrete value to the users. My dad would say I’m too serious and up-tight and that “it” will stick, too, if you could also provide fun (although some people might say there’s a lot of value in “fun” as well).

In any case, as I sit here and think about the way I use the Internet myself, I just really appreciate to live in this day and age when technology is making more things possible everyday!

written by Allen

Companies do shady things to survive in bad economic times. That’s bound to happen. Like the airlines that begin to charge passengers for their luggage. If the ticket price shouldn’t already cover the costs of transporting the luggage, does that mean airlines actually believe that people would normally travel without any luggage?

Lately the ISP’s have started talking about a metered fee structure for their broadband Internet customers. They argue that this is only fair because heavy usage by some customers will affect the others who don’t transfer a huge amount of data over their connections. I think that’s a load of bull and just a way for them to squeeze more money out of their customers.

The way we use the Internet is changing everyday. In the early days, people wouldn’t be transferring a huge load of data because there’s no YouTube or BitTorrent for them to use. But surely today we have all kinds of new way to use the Internet that will require a huge data transfer. And it’s not just an issue on the user side. Content providers are creating more games and video content that will require more data transfer. So the way I see it, it is the ISP’s that are not catching up with the time. The issue at hand is not the customers using up too much bandwidth. It’s them not upgrading their network fast enough to adjust to the market needs.

And yet, they want the customers to pick up the bill for that network upgrade. If every company from all the different industries charges more just so they can improve their product offerings, what kind of penny pinching life will we all end up living in? This is just a pathetic attempt for the ISP’s to pick on the everyday consumers in tough time.

Comcast on the other is putting in some technology that slows down people who use up a lot of bandwidth with P2P file transfering. That’s even worse! These people pay their monthly bill and are now getting a second-tiered service. They should move to a new provider immediately!

A while back ISP’s talked about charging major Internet content providers a premium for priority data transfer over their network. This, as many would remember, sparked a huge “Net Neutrality” debate. With congress involved, ISP’s got nowhere, of course, and that’s how we arrived at this point. Shame on the ISP. They couldn’t pick on the big Internet companies, so they decided to pick on us…

written by Allen

The story everyone focuses on now is obviously Yahoo’s breaking off talks with Microsoft and entering an advertising partnership with Google instead. In trying to make itself more relevent through acquisition, Microsoft got the worst case scenario that was possible and drove Yahoo to Google.

Yeah, so the big winner here obviously is Google. The partnership with Yahoo allows it to grab an even bigger share of the online advertising market (assuming the deal can gain approval from the government). As for Yahoo, it did ok, too. It once again fended off Microsoft’s overture (though this may not be the end of it) and, for the immediate future, could boost its revenue from the deal. Best yet, the deal allows Yahoo to have a lot of control how Google’s ads are displayed. I say that’s not bad at all.

But what do Steve Ballmer and Co. have to show for after all the drama that went down over the last few months? Not much. They announced to the world that they desperately needed help to compete with Google and couldn’t pull off what was their master plan. Sad. Very sad. What were they thinking anyway?

I’ve sided with Yahoo from the beginning. I’d very much like to see them remain as an independent company. A lot of people are on Yahoo’s case for destroying shareholder value. Whatever… There are many positions you can take in looking at this whole thing. I don’t know why Michael Arrington keeps bashing Yahoo and Jerry Yang (see here and here). Is he among the shareholders losing money now??? How about see this from the perspective of the end users? Or from the perspective of the rest of the Web industry? Do we really want Yahoo under Microsoft’s control at all? (I know I don’t.)

Arrington says execuitive level departures now are because these execuitives don’t feel there’s a future in Yahoo anymore. Well… if Microsoft didn’t decide to mess with Yahoo in the first place and subsequently put Yahoo in a really difficult position, would they feel this way?

Anyway… especially considering some of the exit clauses in the Yahoo-Google deal, Microsoft’s continuous posturing publicly (which kind of signals they may still have desire to deal with Yahoo after all) and the upcoming shareholder meeting which involves a proxy fight with Carl C. Icahn (the asshole “activist” investor, as I’d call him), a lot more can still happen and this remains very very intersting…

written by Allen \\ tags: Microsfot, Yahoo

I like my cell phone to be small and slim, so Apple’s iPhone doesn’t really get any style points from me as it would from most people. Quite frankly I’m simply just not a fan and introduction of the 3G iPhone hasn’t changed that one bit.

When the original iPhone was launched, I was working on a consulting project for a certain American cell phone maker (you know who that is). So I think it’s fair to suggest that I know the “mobile device” industry more than the average Joe. Anyway, the point I’m getting at is that I thought that the original iPhone did not really introduce anything out of the ordinary. Nothing that you couldn’t already find on other phones. You could argue that Apple put together a nice package of these functionality and features. But “nice” really couldn’t justify all the hype and excitement around it.

You know what? That’s still the case with the new 3G iPhone. 3G speed? Yeah, other companies started making 3G phones years ago. Embedded GPS? Yawn… Support for MS Exchange? That’s why people have their BlackBerry. And even the open platform for 3rd party software developers is not really a new idea. Palm’s smartphones always had that going for them, even if today Palm has become an after-thought.

I think Steve Jobs and Apple are incredible in getting people excited about their products. Indeed the Mac/iPod/iPhone users are very much like a cult. They are simply fascinated and obsessed with every move Apple makes now. But iPhone thus far is nothing special to me. I won’t be getting one.

To be fair, I own an iPod Nano and like it a lot. Some people complain about having to using iTunes to put songs on the iPod but I don’t mind it so much. And still some others think iPod devices are overpriced. That I agreed with and that’s why I waited so long before getting the 3rd Generation Nano. And the latest piece of news I read about Apple is on how the next version of the Mac operation system will have “parallel computing” capabilities to truly take advantage of the multiple-CUP chips that chip makers have introduced over the recent years. That sounds pretty cool if it could really take computing power to a new level. But still… I never like any cult – the Apple cult included.

PS. The phone I currently use now is the Samsung U600. It’s a slider that’s rather thin and slim. Just the way I like my phone!

written by Allen \\ tags: Apple, iPhone