My Internet Notebook

a journal on software, mobile, marketing

Archive for December, 2005

Reliability: Baidu v.s. Google

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I have been wondering what sets Google apart from its competitors. Especially of interest to me is how Baidu stacks up against Google. There are obvisouly many aspects from which I can compare this two search engines. But reliability is going to be the first aspect I am going to comment on, in light of recent reports of all those Web 2.0 outages associated with del.icio.us and Moveable Type.

I was searching for some real estate definition in Chinese which both Google and Baidu gave me satisfactory results (more in another post). But when I clicked on one of Baidu’s sponsored links, I got a connection timeout on sf.baidu.com. Ouch! This may not indicate an outage with Baidu’s servers in the US, but it does mean Baidu probably just lost a revenue opportunity. Not good!

To be fair to Baidu, I am located in the US, which is not their major focus at this point. Further, I can’t do a similar research in China w.r.t. Google’s performance. But still, being listed on Nasdaq, there is just no execuse for Baidu to be a ‘slacker’ on its service’s reliability.

Below is the traceroute info for sf.baidu.com and google.com:


C:\>tracert sf.baidu.com

Tracing route to sf.a.shifen.com [202.108.22.189]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 4 ms 3 ms 3 ms homeportal.gateway.2wire.net [172.16.0.1]
2 21 ms 15 ms 17 ms 69.106.51.254
3 21 ms 17 ms 17 ms dist2-vlan50.pltn13.pbi.net [64.164.97.67]
4 53 ms 19 ms 17 ms bb2-g3-0.pltnca.sbcglobal.net [151.164.43.56]
5 51 ms 23 ms 27 ms bb1-p5-0.crscca.sbcglobal.net [151.164.240.137]
6 41 ms 15 ms 18 ms core1-p4-0.crscca.sbcglobal.net [151.164.40.57]
7 35 ms 31 ms 29 ms core1-p3-0.cranca.sbcglobal.net [151.164.242.186]
8 34 ms 30 ms 29 ms bb1-p8-0.cranca.sbcglobal.net [151.164.40.94]
9 37 ms 31 ms 58 ms ex1-p15-0.eqlaca.sbcglobal.net [151.164.41.29]
10 32 ms 29 ms 29 ms ex2-p9-0.eqlaca.sbcglobal.net [151.164.40.162]
11 49 ms 36 ms 43 ms 151.164.248.194
12 45 ms 39 ms 40 ms 217.239.40.22
13 366 ms 338 ms 329 ms 212.184.26.234
14 332 ms 334 ms 334 ms 219.158.25.117
15 336 ms 354 ms 332 ms 219.158.3.69
16 248 ms 242 ms 245 ms 219.158.4.49
17 * 240 ms 255 ms 202.96.12.14
18 243 ms 244 ms 275 ms 61.148.3.58
19 * 244 ms 250 ms xd-22-239-a8.bta.net.cn [202.108.22.239]
20 229 ms 252 ms 228 ms xd-22-189-a8.bta.net.cn [202.108.22.189]

Trace complete.

C:\>tracert google.com

Tracing route to google.com [64.233.187.99]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 4 ms 2 ms 3 ms homeportal.gateway.2wire.net [172.16.0.1]
2 16 ms 17 ms 15 ms 69.106.51.254
3 15 ms 15 ms 15 ms dist1-vlan50.pltn13.pbi.net [64.164.97.66]
4 20 ms 16 ms 17 ms bb1-g3-0.pltnca.sbcglobal.net [151.164.43.54]
5 21 ms 15 ms 19 ms bb1-p4-0.crsfca.sbcglobal.net [151.164.41.5]
6 17 ms 19 ms 19 ms ex1-p9-0.pxpaca.sbcglobal.net [151.164.240.17]
7 23 ms 19 ms 19 ms asn15169-google-2.pxpaca.sbcglobal.net [151.164.250.134]
8 23 ms 19 ms 17 ms 66.249.94.14
9 17 ms 17 ms 17 ms 66.249.94.227
10 25 ms 76 ms 21 ms 72.14.236.11
11 115 ms 76 ms 80 ms 66.249.95.125
12 204 ms 74 ms 80 ms 216.239.49.222
13 77 ms 78 ms 76 ms 72.14.236.15
14 82 ms 74 ms 82 ms 216.239.49.222
15 82 ms 78 ms 76 ms 64.233.187.99

Trace complete.

Written by Y.

December 29th, 2005 at 7:18 pm

Posted in Internet,Testing

Mike Davidson: Make Your Site Mobile-Friendly

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Mike Davidson: Make Your Site Mobile-Friendly in Two Minutes

By pulling out everything a mobile device can possibly choke on before it even gets to the mobile device, we can create a mobile version of our site which is not only viewable on more devices but is much quicker to download as well.

Written by Y.

December 29th, 2005 at 6:55 pm

Posted in Internet

Another Music Player – Open Source

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Rob Lord and his team is working an open-source project called Songbird, in which the team will create music-playing software that will work naturally with the growing number of music sites and services on the Web. Given that this new software will be based on open-source Mozilla technology, it would be really cool to make this also a conduit between your mobile mp3 gadgets and web-based mp3 stores (even your personal storage of mp3 files.)

Rob’s past credential is pretty impressive: a co-founder of the Internet Underground Music Archive, an online music site predating the MP3 boom, as well as one of the first employees at Winamp creator Nullsoft, he was most recently a product manager for the launch of Yahoo’s music software and subscription service, after his last start-up, Mediacode, was purchased by the portal.

A Firefox for music? | CNET News.com

Written by Y.

December 22nd, 2005 at 11:58 pm

Posted in Business

ABC News: China Increases Official Size of Economy

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Now China is officially the 6th largest economy in the world, which output $1.98 trillion of goods and services in 2004. An important note is that the services segment of the economy increased to 40.7 percent of the pie.

This new data essentially puts the portion of China’s export industry at a lower percentage of around 30%. The shear size of the service economy also means there is fundamental demand for new houses and commercial properties.

ABC News: China Increases Official Size of Economy

Written by Y.

December 19th, 2005 at 11:06 pm

Posted in Business

Translate Advice to Action

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I was reading the Sand Hill Group’s newsletter, which at the end quoted management guru Peter Drucker: “Don’t tell me you had a wonderful meeting with me. Tell me what you’re going to do on Monday that’s different.”

The essence of the quote is that you will get good advices and ideas everyday from interacting with people around you, but what really matters is how you are going to put those advice into action. In the same spirit, I should start writing down good advices I got and thinking about how to act upon them.

By the way, if you have not do so, it is highly recommended that you subscribe to the free newsletter on Software from Sand Hill Group.

Written by Y.

December 14th, 2005 at 10:27 am

Posted in Business