From ABC news.
Maybe I will visit that place sometime.
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China’s Fountain of Youth
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Category: Web
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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.
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Walt Mossberg talks about his overall impression of the conference, Walt is the conference organizor, and he is also the tech writer for WSJ besides his involvement to AllThingsD and D conferece (both owned by WSJ, I think).
(both videos from Yahoo Tech-ticker)
And his comments on Palm Pre (this one could cause some anxiety on Palm shareholders 🙂
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Internet safety became an hot issue recently because incident the Craigslist Ad. and Boston Med student. Enough publicity has been given to that case, but here is another incident drawed my attention today (concertforkatherine; Background).
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Install software (web hosting)
Drupal, WordPress and phpBB. Had problems with the Chinese input (display). Found the solution to WordPress problem from web. Re-install the phpBB with Chinese langugage pack manualy, because I could not add Chinese langugage after the fantastico automatic installation. I will fight the Drupal problem later on (with the confidence installing phpBB manually).
John McCain event
Attended John McCain road to convention Rally at O’Fallon. Don’t get me wrong. I am not endorsing any candidate in this election, nor can I vote because I am not US citizen. I am interested in the election politics and have my own opinion though.
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GSeeker no longer update
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I am a tech guy, and not surprisingly I like Google. A while ago I found this gseeker blog which talks extensively about Google products in Chinese. Although I shifted my interest to finance in recent years, I read gseeker almost everyday, and it was like a friend to me. Now this relationship comes to an end. Creative Weblogging, which owns gseeker domain name and the content, decided to cease its Chinese operation. It’s sad.
The good thing is KenWong, the author of gseeker and gseeker vision, still maintains a personal blog here. To be honest, I found out gseeker vision just today. It was cool.
Another interesting thing I notice is CW asked $20 k for the GSeeker domain name and the content, when Ken and his friend asked to buy. Not a small sum for Ken. (quote gseeker, CW对GSeeker域名及内容的开价是20K，美元。我肯定是没这么多钱买了，但我也远没有想到我的blog竟然能值十几万人民币。)
PS, another blog which I like but no longer up-to-date is letsthinkchina, written by my friend Zhong Siwei.
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These days “Virtualization” and virtualization software maker VMware are hot in both IT world and the Wallstreet. Jim Cramer pumped it as next Google on his “Mad Money” show on CNBC; guys at “Fast Money” (also CNBC) touted it as the next big thing. Both of them encouraging people buy the EMC (parent co. of VMware) stocks. My take is: whenever someone touted something as the next big thing, be very careful.
So what is virtulization exactly? In simple English, it let a computer to simulate many computers for testing new software, configuration, before formal deployment. This will cut the cost of buying all the servers, setting up a big testing lab etc. I read about the software from a book talking about “how to set up software small business”. This is relevant to small business because their budget is more tight compared to big IT giants like IBM.
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Here is the definition from Per Dohler, a software localization guru: Localization is the process of adapting a product, in our context a software program, to a specific locale, i.e., to its language, standards and cultural norms as well as to the needs and expectations of a specific target market. A properly localized product also meets all the legal requirements in force in the user’s region. Wikipedia also has a good description. GiltWorld is a Chinese site dedicated to the software localization in China.
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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).
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Conference Call over the Internet
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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 !!!