Month: June 2009

Categories
China

Who is Sichuan Tengzhong?

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Last Updated on June 3, 2009 by stlplace

四川腾中重工(in Chinese, Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Machinery) The little known Chinese Co. who bought Hummer brand from GM yesterday (News: Bloomberg; Reuters; Tengzhong web site). Quote Reuters:

Tengzhong, formed in 2005 through several mergers, makes special-use vehicles such as dump trucks and fuel tankers, as well as construction machinery, energy equipment, and structural components for highways and bridges.

It has 4,800 employees, according to its website, about the same as Changfeng. The site does not disclose any financial data.

Special Vehical made by Sichuan Tengzhong
(Special Vehical made by Sichuan Tengzhong, full size pic here. From the pic it appears Tengzhong is OEM maker for SinoTruk 中国重汽)

Why Tengzhong bought Hummer?

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Categories
gadgets

Blackberry or iPhone

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Last Updated on June 2, 2009 by stlplace

Blackberry or iPhone?
I used both BB and iPhone. I think BB is better for “Email/text messaging” (dedicated keypad). It takes a few days to get used to the touch screen keypad on iPhone. It’s still not as easy as the BB keypad in my opinion. BB also has strong push technology which pushes email to your blackberry (sometimes you will get email from BB, before it shows up in your Outlook). Overall BB has very reliable email technology (except a few high profile glitches), as that’s where they got started.

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Categories
Life Tips Windows

Amazon used book, COM, Juggle

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Last Updated on June 4, 2009 by stlplace

I bought a used book “Inside COM” from Amazon Marketplace recently. This is my second Amazon Marketplace buy this year. I found for used (a little out of dated) computer books, Amazon Marketplace offers a great value.

Why I need to buy the COM book?
I found in order to really understand the .NET stuff, one needs to learn the COM. This is just like in order to be a good value investor, one really needs to pick up Graham’s “Intelligent Investor”. Reading the blogs by Buffett followers are fine, but definitely not sufficient. Because those second handed materials don’t precisely convey the ideas of the masters.

Google search not working on Internet Explorer?

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Categories
Stocks

Today change of Dow Jones Industrial

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Last Updated on June 2, 2009 by stlplace

GM was replaced by Cisco; Citi replaced by Travellers. Source: WSJ. (you may need to get the full article via Google).

Interesing part (for me), quote WSJ:

Why choose a tech company, Cisco, to replace an automaker?

We did not need another consumer goods company after adding Kraft Foods when we removed AIG. In looking around, we were struck by the fact that Cisco makes products that pave the Information Highway – computer networking equipment, things that enable high-speed data and video transmission, and so on. We saw Cisco helping the economy and culture adjust to the digital age, much as automobiles influenced economic and social changes in the 20th Century.

Well, why not Apple (AAPL) or Google (GOOG)?

Those companies certainly qualify as blue chips, but we chose Cisco this time.

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Categories
video Web

From Live to Bing

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Last Updated on June 1, 2009 by stlplace

Microsoft Bing, the new search engine which represents the high hope of Microsoft executives, goes alive today (incidentally today marks another big event in US corp history: General Motor files for bankruptcy). Underneath the Bing, it is really the re-brand of Microsoft Live search, plus some new features, as shown last week at D7. (Actually I verified this by typing live.com, and it brought me to the Bing page).

I did couple searches such as “Air France”, “Pizza Hut”, the result was OK, although similar to Google search. I don’t know who will want to switch to “mostly fine” google search to the unproven Bing. To make things worse, Microsoft did not release a toolbar with bing, they still have the good old live toolbar though.

Don’t overlook this IE toolbar thing, personally I used it quite a bit, because it saved me one more type “www.google.com”. But interestingly for today, the Google Toolbar in Internet Explorer is not responsive as usual. Maybe the guys at Redmond did something to slowdown Google on this Bing’s birthday? The toolbar on Firefox works fine as usual.