GMail in China

I wrote about GMail a while ago. In that post I complained GMail is not reliable in China. One reason I can think of is that Google has not moved its servers to China. It has no plan to do so in the near future according to CnAnalyst. In this Chinese post Keso says the China’s contribution to Google’s revenue is not material at this time. This could partly explains why they have not moved the servers. Google is still building traffic (not monetizing) in China because they have plenty of cash now. Another reason is they want to protect their IP (intellectual property).

Conference Call over the Internet

I found a new trend about the companies’ quarterly earning Conference Call lately. Usually a company will do the conference on the Internet and on the phone at the same time. But Crocs (CROX) and Heelys (HLYS), two shoe makers (I have shares for both), lead the fashion again by doing the call exclusively over the Internet. I hope they don’t srewed up the call by technical reasons. I do notice they have two servers so in case one server is busy, the analysts and curious investors like me can still connect.

It’s amazing to think how far Internet has been in the past 10 years. It definitely changed and continue to change the way we communicate, work and entertain, etc.

(Update 16Feb07) On the other hand, Mindray (NYSE:MR), which I have a few shares, is going to announce its earning solely on the phone.

Also, cnanalyst put together an earning report table for Chinese companies listed in US. Good job cnanalyst !!!

RedHat is moving to NYSE

It’s not news any more. There are many discussions on the Yahoo message board. Basically Redhat, which is traded on NASDAQ under “RHAT”, is applying the move to NYSE, the good old New York Stock Exchange, under ticker symbol “RHT” on Dec 12. I think it’s a proactive and smart move from RedHat management. Generally NASDAQ is a more volatile market than NYSE; and it’s especially true for RedHat stocks lately because of all these news. This move won’t get rid of all the day traders or short sellers, but it should help.

Of course, the most important things of all, is continue to provide the product and service the customers want. Here is a survey of CIOs and RedHat ranked No. 1 overall.

You can see the news here.

Disclosure: I do own RedHat stocks.

Its the capitalism

Larry Ellison, the CEO of Oracle, surprised the IT/software world again yesterday with the Unbreakable Linux annoucement of “support of Red Hat Linux support and charge less than Red Hat does”. That news crushed the Red Hat stock today, it went down 24%. There are many good technical blogs explains and discusses Oracle’s move. Here is blog one and two. I am going to put it in plain English terms and share some of my thoughts on Open Source and Linux movement.

So Oracle is the guy who sells beer at baseball stadium, and Redhat sells peanuts. Sometimes they work together (parter) because a customer needs both beer and peanuts. They are happy because they both make money; Oracle makes more money because it has a higher sales revenue and profit margin. One day this Oracle guy decides to roll out its “Larry” brand peanuts, at half the price Redhat guy sells. As much as customers like Rehat’s personality, many customers decided to buy peanuts from Oracle.

Seriously, I think this is a big blow to the Open Source and Linux movement. Open source and linux have been buzz words in the technology world in recent years, partly because of people don’t want to see Microsoft taking all the market share, partly because its superior technology. Note many innovations are made by volunteering programmers all over the world, for the benefit of the technology community. IBM, the big blue, also put great effort behind Linux development for competition reasons (hint, to compete with Microsoft). To be fair, Oracle also contributed the Linux development in the past. Of course Redhat is the biggest player in the Open Source world: unlike all the proprietary software companies keep the source code inside company and derive revenues from software licensing, Redhat shares its source code with the community and solely derives its revenue from support and service. Now with Oracle’s jump into the ring, where is Redhat’s future? The following is what I saw from Redhat web site.

Do because believe self

Saw this word from a Chinese blog, and I liked it. Recently I started to work on a web project I thought about for a long time but did not do too much about it. This past weekend I started working on it again, and I did learn something. Now I know why I need Ajax (why HTML and PHP are not enough) and what is Ajax, the buzz word (technology) of this web 2.0 arena.

Last few days I also found two interesting web sites (or search engine for vertical market), they are kooxoo (in China) and propsmart (house listings with google map). They are just startups. But I believe they are solving real problems for consumers and will have bright future.

Since I am working on my project, I will probablly scale down on the blog for the moment, which I think may worked out better because I don’t think I can come up interesting things everyday, and there are lots of interesting blogs out there (hint, the links at the side bar).

So, for the moment, I will do what I believe.   

Delicious

There are a lot of hype about Web 2.0 lately. As I learned more about it and I believe some are not just hypes, e.g., the RSS, XML, and the del.icio.us bookmarking site with social networking and tagging capabilities. I have 5 computers (3 at home, and 2 at work), and I used 3 of them frequently. I would like to have the same bookmarks (or favorites in Internet Explorer). del.icio.us solved this problem for me. And its registration, install and use are fairly staightforward.

Besides keeping all my bookmarks (or good article) in one place. I can add “tags” which helps me to identify the content. So far I don’t have anyone in my network. But from the bookmark I can find out people with similar interest, etc.   

del.icio.us is currently owned by Yahoo, as is the flickr photo sharing web site (also features the tags). Don’t overlook this “tag” thing, it’s like put your own key word for the content (the alternate way is let computer figure out), which I believe is more semantically correct in most cases.

Be careful

The following is a faked email I received today. I found it out by
“show full headers” in my Yahoo email. I believe you can do it in
other mail clients. The lesson here is don’t click on the link from
your email unless you are absolutely sure it’s from a trusted source.

=========================
To: my email address (msgid-XXX-XXX-XXX)
From: Paypal-XXX-XXX-XXX
Subject: Resolution Center Notice: (PP-XXX-XXX-XXX)
————————————————————
We recently reviewed your account, and we need more information about your business to allow us to provide uninterrupted service. Until we can collect this information, your access to sensitive account features will be limited. We would like to restore your access as soon as possible. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Why is my account access limited?

Your account access has been limited for the following reason(s):

Jan. 19, 2006: We have observed activity in this account that is unusual or potentially high risk.

(Your case ID for this reason is PP-XXX-XXX-XXX)

How can I restore my account access?

Please visit the Resolution Center (here is a faked link) and complete the “Steps to Remove Limitations.”

Once you complete all of the checklist items, your case will be reviewed by one of our Account Specialists. We will send you an email with the outcome of the review.
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