My Internet Notebook

a journal on software, mobile, marketing

Archive for January, 2006

长沙国家高新区创业服务中心

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Every major city in China has a High-tech Industrial Development Zone. Here is the one from my home province – Hunan:

长沙国家高新技术产业开发区

长沙国家高新区创业服务中心

湖南高新网

Written by Y.

January 30th, 2006 at 11:03 am

Posted in China

Silicon Valley Philanthropy

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The greater San Francisco Bay Area has a long tradition of createing non-profit organizations. Now companies in Silicon Valley can get very specific help in setting up philanthropy programs, through non-profit organizations such as the Entrepreneurs Foundation. Link http://www.efbayarea.org/

Social entrepreneurship is catching on, not only here in the silicon valley, but also in other parts of the world.

I recall that Yale even hosts an annual Business Plan competition for for-profit ventures of non-profit organizations.

Written by Y.

January 28th, 2006 at 1:47 am

Posted in Business

Secure M-Business Anywhere Sync Server

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To enable SSL on sync server on Linux, you need to run the utility avantgoserver/openssl/bin/reqcert.sh to generate a cert request. VeriSign then issues a cert per request. You put three certs in a single file in this directory avantgoserver/conf in the right order. Remember that the order is very important as it won’t work if the order is incorrect.

SSLLoadLocalIdentity: Public/Private keys don't match!
createMasterContext: SSLLoadLocalIdentity returned -6981
(2156) error: Security Error: There was an error loading your RSA certificate: SSLBadParameterErr (-6981)

The order of various certificates in the final cert file:


—–BEGIN CERTIFICATE—–
VeriSign Intermediate CA Certificate
—–END CERTIFICATE—–
—–BEGIN CERTIFICATE—–
VeriSign Signed Certificate
—–END CERTIFICATE—–
—–BEGIN CERTIFICATE—–
Your Private Certificate
—–END CERTIFICATE—–

Written by Y.

January 26th, 2006 at 4:25 pm

Posted in AvantGo Tips,Testing

Increased Security but Blocked My Login

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I was trying to login to one of my online brokerage account but got the dreaded ‘invalid password’ error. Did I become the latest victim of identity theft – someone stole my login and changed my password without my knowing? Out of panic, I started dialing the 800 service number. After 5 minutes on the phone with a rep, I figured out that they changed the password security policy in the last couple of weeks during which I never logged in. My original password was only 6 digits long, but now they require minimum of 7. Ouch!

As a professional in software testing, I think there are a couple of lessons learned here.

First and foremost, communication failure. I don’t recall there were any communication that eluded to the new policy and asked me to login and change my password. This is one of the biggest online broker and just went thru a merger. I can see how this failure could happen in such a situation.

Secondly, their web development / testing team should have tested this scenario where logging in with an old password should be allowed and prompted to change the password to abide by the new policy.

With either of the above implemented, they could have saved the 5 minutes of their reps’s time and avoided a valued customer’s frustration.

As the enterprise software also moves to the SaaS (Software as a Service) model, I can see how we could run into these similar issues again and again.

Written by Y.

January 26th, 2006 at 12:59 am

Posted in Internet,Testing

Growing Venture Capital in China

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Totally missed this news last week (1/9/2006):

China’s fast growing economy is expected to help the nation’s private equity market to double over the next three years to $10 billion, but competition is also rising.

Silicon Valley-based early-stage venture capital firm Doll Capital Management said on Monday it would expand in China with 4 billion yuan ($500 million) of planned investment there over the next decade. “China is an agent of change for (global) technological innovation,” said David Chao, a co-founder and managing general partner of DCM. Hurst Lin, COO of Sina will join DCM as a general partner, extending a trend where successful Chinsese entrepreneurs move to venture capital industry.

DCM will target Chinese companies involved in wireless services, outsourcing, semiconductors and digital media, said Chao.

Written by Y.

January 18th, 2006 at 2:56 pm

Posted in Business,China