Posted: January 5th, 2010 | Author: Chim | Filed under: Food for thoughts, Tools, Web 2.0 | Tags: Business, Entrepreneurs, Food for thoughts, Google, Interesting, Internet, Web | No Comments »
The smartphone industry is moving to follow the same path of the personal computer (PC). Both industries have a lot of manufacturers. For example, Dell for computers and Motorola for smartphone. PC and smartphones have operating systems. For PC, the major OS is Windows and for smartphone, there are more than one major operating system. There are iPhone OS, Blackberry and Android (Google). It seems that there is a platform war among the manufacturers and Google. Imagine that a company can implement a system that is used by most of the cellphone manufacturers. This company will be able to control the smartphone industry, just as Microsoft controls the PC industry.
Nexus One Homepage
Google launched its official cellphone with Android operating system today. It is entering the smartphone market by providing a free OS to cellphone and aligning with manufacturer to provide a better user experience through better applications and superior hardware.
Google may reach a dominance in the smartphone market if it can have more manufacturers using its OS. However, manufacturers are not going to rely 100% in one software company. At the same time, most industry players do not have core competency in software development, thus they may rely on Google Android this time.
Meanwhile, iPhone is growing and Blackberry is responding to the new threats in the market. Nokia and other cellphones company are losing ground. It is an interesting time for this fast changing industry.
My 2 cents.
Posted: December 27th, 2009 | Author: Chim | Filed under: Entrepreneurship, Food for thoughts, Tools, Web 2.0 | Tags: Startups, Tools, Useful, Web | No Comments »
It is so hard to come up with a nice name for startup or new blog when most of the basic names are all registered. Then, most people come up with strange or too creative names to their website which are hard to search. But imagine that you can search for domain names with prefix and suffix easily and Nomaine can provide that type of domain name search. I will use this tool and some others (Google Insight for Search) for domain name registration.
http://nomaine.com/
Posted: December 23rd, 2009 | Author: Chim | Filed under: Food for thoughts, Fun, Startups, Tools, Web 2.0 | Tags: Books, Internet, Productivity, Startups, Useful, Web | No Comments »
Bookhu is a book review website that shows if a book is read more by men or women. It is a food for thought website. It shows if I have more male or female preference. In my searches, most of my books related to entrepreneurship, venture capital and languages are read more by men. However, my books related to culture are read more by women.
Posted: December 17th, 2009 | Author: Chim | Filed under: Education, Entrepreneurship, Finance, Links, Startups, Venture Capital, Web 2.0 | Tags: Entrepreneurs, Entrepreneurship, Facebook, Food for thoughts, Internet, Private Equity, Social Network, Startups, Valuation, Venture Capital, Web | No Comments »
Zynga is the company responsible for all those spam like games, such as FarmVille or MafiaWars. All these games are targeted to Facebook and they make money by showing advertisements. All these social type of games target the very basic human emotion of achievement. Most people play these games because they want to receive a higher status or position in their character or their skill level. In Facebook, players can show off their “new virtual and acquired ability” and get recognition from friends and other players. This is a big driver for the success of these games.
Zynga
I wonder why Facebook doesn’t merger or buy these game companies. It is part of Facebook anyway. It should acquire and get the game revenue. Currently, game companies can show ads from AdSense or any other place. Facebook loses ads revenue because of this.
The impressive thing is that the company is receiving more $180 million. I wonder what they are going to use that money for.
More at http://www.businessinsider.com/zynga-takes-180-million-venture-round-from-dst-others-cue-russian-mafia-jokes-2009-12
Posted: December 13th, 2009 | Author: Chim | Filed under: Education, Readings, Web 2.0 | Tags: Articles, Education, Food for thoughts, Google, Interesting, Internet, News, Trends, Web | No Comments »
Times Skimmer
I was reading this news Google Faces A Different World in Italy from the New York Times and it is about Google’s criminal charges related to privacy in Italy. A senior executive in Italy may get to jail because of an outcry over an online video involving an autistic boy.
The implication if Google loses is that opens the discussion of who should be liable for information in the internet platforms, such as YouTube and even Google Search, in Europe. In the US, most of this discussions were solved by the Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act that creates a safe harbor for online service providers. Basically, people can only sue internet companies if it’s proven that the company hasn’t done anything to stop the offence (copyright or other legal offences). I’m impressed that Europe does not have such laws protecting online service providers yet.
It reminds me of a similar situation when the Google Brasil’s managing director was being held accountable for pedophile pictures on Orkut. Google Brasil and US created huge task-force to curb the infestation of that problem with people and new tools for the federal police. The initiative went really well and the government abandoned the charges. However, there is still no laws defining clearly what the responsibilities are for online service providers regarding about illegal or offensive material in their websites in Brazil.
I’m worried if governments start demanding companies to act as a censor for information flow. The cornerstone of Internet as we know is sharing information. When companies and government start blocking access to information, the internet will not be the same. Consequently, the way we use and do business on the Internet may also change.
