For those who follows Internet in China, one of the most interesting thing going on these days is the fight between Tencent QQ (the instant messenger and 3rd largest Internet Company World Wide) vs 360 Safeguard.  Nowadays the fight has escalated to the point where both companies announced that they MUST only use their own product and cannot have both QQ AND 360 coexist in one’s machine.

ChinaHush did a really good piece, and I found plenty more interesting things on the Chinese social networks.

One is a poll that is surveying which software people would choose to keep and which will uninstall.  35% of the poll (12488 people) chose to uninstall QQ! while only 4% chose to uninstall 360.

Furthermore, people are a lot more upset with QQ (over 50% of the people surveyed.

Here is a screenshot of the poll taken between Nov 2 to Nov 4.

QQ vs 360 poll (Repost from Kaixin001)

Another post circulates on Kaixin001 is about all the technologies that Tencent has borrowed from other companies.  Well that’s why we know Tencent is a powerful company!

Accusations of Tencent copying other technology (Repost from Kaixin001)

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Tech Startup scene in Vancouver seems to be very promising these days.  The past long weekend there were TWO events that drew great crowds for working on some cool projects. The more famous one of the two is Startup Vancouver, which seemed to get quite a buzz from local social media. The one that I went to was called Vancouver Hackathon (#hackyvr) – and  was hosted by The Network Hub.

Apparently the two events had quite a different crowd –  hackyvr being a free event and was promoted in the local hacker community (which I must admit I never knew too much about), got many independent programmers, and bright students in the audience.

Over 50 people signed up, and over 25 showed up on a rainy Friday night.  After some beer and networking, each person went around and introduced themselves, and at the same time pitched their projects to the crowd.  Some projects were currently in development, while some were great ideas that the group helped refined.

Some of the cool ideas/projects discussed:

• Mr Toad – Remote console for mobile devices
• A remote management software for consultants and trainers
• Video pitching platform for startups
• education management software similar (but WAY BETTER) to webCT
• Facecred – that’s the project I worked on!

The magic happened after all individuals pitched their ideas – people were supposed to form groups to help out in different projects.   However, staying true to the name of the event, I think most people there had a very strong mind of what they wanted to do already, and hence we see many small teams had formed and most people just worked on their own project that they had started with.

photo courtesy of  @hummingbird604

A few of us – Sean, Paul, Tim, and I – were discussing in the lobby of The Network Hub, pondering what projects to join.  Several ideas were pitched – travel deals curation service (haha that’s mine), and then Sean was like, is there anyway to display achievements?

Hence, the basic idea of  Facecred was born.  The idea is that,

Everybody has some achievement – whether it’s being the MVP of  your volleyball league,  or being a volunteer with the Cancer Society  - and having these achievement awards hidden in a bookshelf or in the basement is not very cool.  We create a service that lets any individuals or organizations to create their awards and recognitions, and be able to award to the person.  The person can then choose to display it on the  Facebook wall and profile.

So with that idea in mind – it was white board time. We spent the rest of the night discussing the architecture, use cases, and how to split up the work.  Sean is a superstar – he took care of most of the backend logic.  Paul is great with Facebook application designs so he was in charged of that.  Tim and I work on the UI that allows the front end website that acts as a dashboard for sending out awards.

Because the past few years I was involved into more business development, my technical skills has actually been quite outdated –  so I wasn’t much help besides the big picture white board diagram and UI design.  I did get some chance to mug around with the JQuery stuff – which is really cool since the last bit of tech work I have done was mostly WordPress or Drupal and some CSS.

So my long weekend was spent with my team mates – Friday night until midnight, Saturday from 10am – 11pm, Sunday from 10am-7pm.  At the end of the weekend, we were able to give a demo of how it works, and everybody who lasted until 7pm got a HackYVR Badge to display on their facebook profile!

I want to thank Mike (@yurechko) for organizing the event, Minna (@thenetworkhub) for hosting us and sponsoring coffee (I think I have half the cannister), Adrian (@AdrianEden) for buying us pizza, and HoweSound Beer (@howesoundbeer) for providing us beverages!  Also nice to meet some cool speakers: Kenshi from Thinking Ape and Colin (@cperciva) from Tarsnap.

At the end of the weekend, great friendship was forged and we will continue to work on this project.  So keep a close eye on  Facecred! (@facecred)

Related posts:

1. The Concept of Appswap meetups
2. The State of Online Travel Industry (Part 1 of 3): The Typical Booking Experience

So, we’ve all heard about the official blog that Google is threatening to move out of China.  Being raised in Canada, and been living in China the past 2 years learning to understand the rule to play in China, this news really shocked me.

Initial Reactions:

So far, I have heard of two major schools of thoughts. One thought originates from China, and the other originates from the rest of the world.

1. China thoughts: Yes, we have Baidu. We don’t really need Google’s search.  Gmail has the equivalent 163.com, GTalk has the equivalent MSN messenger/QQ,  GoogleDoc has the equivalent OpenOffice/pirated MS Office.  In fact even if the Chinese blocked off 7 out of Alexa’s top 15 websites, life will be the same in China because most of the services has the equivalent service in China.

2. TROTW thoughts: Great play, Google. Live up to the “Do no Evil”  motto. Don’t give in because Google thinks that some Chinese-government sponsored hackers hacked into their infrastructure and got access to their intellectual property.  Fight the communist government like the cold war.  China market was only 200M 600M last year and that is peanuts. Google can let go of this market since it’s not the leader anyways.

3. My reactions: Living in Beijing the past 2 years, I have access to many different news in HK – particularly the ones that got blocked.  Witnessing the H1N1 outbreak,Sichuan earthquake, 6-4 20 year anniversary, I can objectively compare between news coverage in the mainland vs outside world.  I must say,  that I was happy to see great improvement the past few years in how the media is beginning to open up, particularly in the run-up of 2008 Beijing Olympics.  I was happy to be in Beijing because I could see the direction of media, or even government is willing to open up.

Responding to the Chinese school of thoughts – yes I don’t think the withdrawal of Google will affect daily life in China.  But think about it, only recently (last 6 months) that we FINALLY saw Baidu moved away from the price-bidding keyword on the first 10 pages of its search result, and added more organically generated results.  If it wasn’t for Google’s “small influence” of 35% 20%, according to FT.com (I read conflicting reports- are they trying to downplay the political reasoning and stressing that it’s mostly financial reasons?) usage rate in China, I can assure you that Baidu’s first 50 pages of results will be all purchased sponsors.

Responding to the rest of the world’s thoughts – if most people think that it was because of financial reasons prompting Google to leave – that’s the most outrageous thoughts I have heard so far – especially that it was the view that Financial Times seems to be taking.  Yes, currently China market provides very little for Google’s revenue – but WHAT FOREIGN COMPANY IS MAKING MONEY IN THE FIRST 10 YEARS IN CHINA? No matter what company it is, what country it is in – when it comes to operating in a new market it takes time, money, and patience.  I think given Google’s office of 800 people,  getting 600M revenue and 35% of search, along with lots of Chinese-tailored innovations  (maps, voice search, music) itself is quite a feat. Good work, Lee Kai Fu!

What it means in the near and long term

I’m worried. As search results in China becomes uncensored, Chinese government can only do one thing: block Google and anything Google-related.

1. Gmail outage – mail.google.com will be the most impacting service.  Many people in China uses gmail. I’m  pondering how I move all my mail off the server now.

2. Google Maps – I don’t have an official statistic of how many web services uses Google Maps as its base, but there are quite a  few.  There are alternatives in China (MapABC, Microsoft, etc) but it still takes some time for companies to switch over.

3. Search – yes, eventhough there are only 35% of Chinese internet users using Google, these 35% are really the people  who are more educated, higher income – urban, young people, professionals. (Sorry I can’t find any studies regarding this,  I wonder if I can find something  like this once I do a google search with a VPN on, or heck, when I google now).

4. Music – no, Google is not a big player in music in China and there are MANY other alternatives.  However, with Google shutting down the music service, it may terminate a testing ground for other companies to step in, and offer the free-music model to the rest of the world.

5. Android – yes, Android. With Google’s plan to release more phones and better software, and China’s strategy to provide cheap, unbranded phones running the Android service, the open-source software was set  to explode in the next few years.  Now, if Google pulls out – does it even allow the phone to turn on?  Or do  phone manufacturers in China embed a VPN into the phone so people can login?

6. Internet industry overall – it’s actually not a bad thing – that Google cannot dominate the world.  I do get scared that Google has grown so big,  and that its services reach to everyone so deeply.  It’s good to be able to have a 2nd competitor to come in – but I’m just not sure if Baidu is the player I want to see competing.

What it means to international businesses intended to go into China

What bothers me most, is what it signals to international businesses. It’s not the first time that a major business pulls out of China siting inappropriate business climates.  However, whenever the industry leader does this,  it signals to the world that, “China is not ready”.  Whatever China was trying to do,  like joining the WTO, climate  conferences,  just seems to go down the drain.  In fact, it seems as if China just turned backwards 20 years, if China blocks out Google.  As a Chinese-Canadian, I am torned about the fight between the borderless Internet giant and China.

So why, why would google say such a thing?

Why is Google doing this? Is it the beginning of another Cold War? Google knew about hackers all along, but what really prompted Google to pull out?

It may think that because it is #1 company in the world, it has the bargaining power.  But my dear Google, who are you trying to bargain with? CHINA! There is no way that the government will budge, especially recently China showed its strong approach in the execution of the British drug smuggler, and even the showing at the Coppenhagen Climate conference.

More interestingly,  the US Government seems to want to get into the action, by announcing tools to help people around the world to get pass their respective countries’ firewalls (FYI, China is not the only country that filters its internet).

a few reasonings that I can think of:

1. Google has strong evidence that Chinese government is behind all the hacking attacks,  and showed it to Hilary Clinton.

2. Google wants to play the “Do No Evil” rule, in order to win over the consumers and governnents in the rest of the world – so they can own more of your data. (Now that’s EVVVILL)

3. The US government fully supports this action – although knowing that their involvement will turn into quite a international scene that will eventually turn into a cold war.  US government assure that they will  use their treasury to support Google’s stock price and future profit. (Which is already true, since many US State governments uses Google services)

What will be the best outcome?

China – we will investigate about the hackers. In the mean time, if Google intends to continue the uncensored search, after some warning, we will have to shut it down, and you will need to move out of China.  So make up your decision within the next  N months.

Google – we realize that our decision is very immature, and we respect different culture has different needs/rules.  We will re-examine our decision and adhere to government rule within the next N months.

US government – don’t intervene.

Worst case?

Cold war all over again – foreign investments/companies/personnels moving out of China – there will be two separate worlds.

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I went to the Cloudcamp Vancouver event last Saturday – a little bit technnical to my taste – but here are what I learned for the day:

• cloud computing has existed as long as the internet existed. Gmail, hotmail are long using the cloud technology.
• Why was it called Cloud computing? Because in any network maps, we don’t really care how the data outside of our world is like, and we always draw a  big cloud indicating that “things just works!”
• There are 3 layers of the cloud  computing:

1. Infrastructure as a service (Amazon S3, Rackspace)
2. Platform as a service (Google App Engine, Chrome OS?)
3. Software as a service (Gmail, facebook)

• Things do blur between infrastructure, platform, and software.  For example, Facebook provides API, so  it technically can be  called Platform  as a  service too.

Here are the following meeting notes from the organizers:

Meeting Notes

We have put together a Google doc containing the flip charts and we need your help to fill in the notes. To read them, you can view this document. To edit the document, click here. We’ll give you permission and we’d love it if you’d share your notes with the rest of us by putting them into the appropriate place in the Google document.

Other resources:

Here are some other relevant links:

• View the Flip Chart Notes
  • ask for permission to edit the notes here
• Flickr Search
• Twitter Search
• Troy Angrignon’s Comprehensive BC Cloud Computing Ecosystem article is here
  • the associated list is here
• Boris Mann (@bmann) is collecting cloud companies in this wiki

User Group:

There was some discussion of how to “keep the energy going” after the fact. For those of you who would like to discuss setting up a cloud computing user group here in Vancouver, why not sign up for the Cloudcamp Vancouver Google grouphere.

Bonus Gartner report

For those of you who attended, you can download a free not-for-redistribution-or-copying-a-zillion-times PPT presentation by Gartner’s David Michael Smith. This is an excellent high-value deck that I think you’ll all get a lot more out of now that you’ve been through Cloudcamp.

OPTION 1 EXPIRES MARCH 21, 2010. You can watch and/or download it here. Please do not share, redistribute, reupload, or republish that link anywhere. This was provided free of charge by Gartner to our attendees.

OPTION 2: GOOGLE GROUP: We have also uploaded it into the Google Group for longer-term storage so you can sign into that here.

Donate to help Cloudcamp

Thanks to those of you who donated during registration. If you haven’t yet donated but would like to do so, you can still do sohere. Anything you can donate helps to keep the events going. 

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It has been almost 2 years since I have updated my blog.

These two years are very much like transformation from being an  Engineer to an Entrepreneur – hence it was called “The Life of an Enginpreneur”. Now that two years has past, and I have had a great experience in working with some of  the best people in the industry.

I want to take a new direction in my entrepreneurship – focusing on technology, sustainability, and also myself.  So this is what this blog is about.

For technology – I want to be able to talk about the recent news, discoveries, ideas, reviews,  and provide a broader view of what technology means to different people.

For sustainability – this is a relatively new topic to me.  I blogged about sustainability for business before, and that turned out to be one of the most popular posts of all time!  With this topic, I am interested to discuss about making the world a greener place with energy conservation, alternative energy, and many more.

For personal development – I want to talk about the recent books that I have read, events I attended, etc. Overall I want to  make  this a more involved page than before.

Oh, there is a polls section now – so look out for any interesting topics and join in the fun!

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