My Internet Notebook

a journal on software, mobile, marketing

Archive for February, 2006

Can A Poem Fend Off Hackers

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Apple Computers is reportedly to have embedded a poem in the code of its OS X that warns hackers not to hack the OS X.

There once was a user that whined
his existing OS was so blind
he’d do better to pirate
an OS that ran great
but found his hardware declined.
Please don’t steal Mac OS!
Really, that’s way uncool.
© Apple Computer, Inc.”

Written by Y.

February 16th, 2006 at 6:53 pm

Posted in Security

Some Macro Economics Data Points from China

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Everyone is interested in China these days, and almost everyone is also interested in China’s real estate as well. Here are some macro economics data I gathered from Chinese news articles.

The one says that in 2005 GDP of the Yangtz Delta economical body surpassed Zhujian (Pearl River) delta and Beijing, Tianjing combined:

发改委8月30日发布的数据显示,今年(i.e. 2005)上半年,长江三角洲的经济总量30994.28亿元,已经超过珠江三角洲(7312.22亿元)和京津唐环渤海经济带(7559亿元)经济GDP总和。

This one says in 2005 disposable income per capita reached US$2,000 in Suzhou.

2005年底,我市(Suzhou)人均GDP按户籍人口计算达到66826元(按现行汇率折算超过8000美元),比省目标值高1.8倍,按常住人口计算达到54143元(按现行汇率折算超过6000美元),比省目标值高1.3倍。全市城镇居民人均可支配收入达到16276元,农民人均纯收入达到8393元,分别比省目标值高276元、393元。

Written by Y.

February 14th, 2006 at 2:19 pm

Posted in Business,China

Open Source Services Business

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Since my last post touched on this open source service provider as a viable business model, I might as well find and list a couple of prominent companies in this space.

SpikeSource – Business-Ready Open Source Infrastructure has a celebrity CEO Kim Polese.

SourceLabs | Dependable Open Source Systems is in the business of providing no-charge, certified stacks of Open Source infrastructure software, and charging for service.

OpSource – The Software as a Service (SaaS) Experts is in the OSS for SaaS areana.

Written by Y.

February 10th, 2006 at 2:54 pm

Posted in Business,Software

Free Software: What Have You Got to Lose?

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Whenever people are touting free stuff, either open source or closed-source free software, the tagline is almost always, what have you got to lose?

Bragging nature of that tagline aside, this is a miss-leading question. The proper question to ask, of yourself if you are tempted to try out the free software, is that what have you got to GAIN?

I know the cost of acquiring the free software is $0, but how about the time you spend evaluating the software. There are just so many choices out there, especially in the open source software arena. To use content management system as an example, there are PhpNuke, DotNetNuke, Mambo, etc. etc. On top of that you got tons of plug-ins for each that you have to individually evaluate. In the non-free software arena, the vendor would probably be happy to explain to you all the features they can offer, albeit in a biased tone. I am a fan of open source, but the time I spent on evaluating them is just enormous. I don’t know how that will make sense to a for-profit organizations.

Another point is that while OSS are generally stable, they are not certified to be scalable and all that. The good news is that there are now companies that specialize in certifying the OSS stacks.

More: whenever there is pain, there will be business opportunities. Case in point, SourceLab created a business around certifying OSS stacks, such as its Spring, Apache Axis, Struts and Hibernate (SASH) distribution, and AMP stack. And there are numerous open source service companies already out there. Maybe the big outsourcing company would eventually jump into this space as well pretty soon.

Written by Y.

February 10th, 2006 at 12:44 pm

Posted in Software

SAP Debuts Hosted CRM Service

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SAP debuts hosted CRM service | News.com to go | CNET News.com

The initial service costs about $75 per user per month, but only has the Sales management functionality. On-demand Marketing and Call center etc would come later this year.

So by now, every major software companies (including Microsoft, Oracle) already has an On-Demand CRM offering. By some estimates, the total market for on-demand CRM was $600 million in 2005. But it is a market that is expected to grow 30% for the next five years. No other software segment can match this level of projected growth. No wonder everyone wants to get onto the on-demand CRM train.

In its last issue, Business 2.0 profiled a hosted CRM startup called Entellium, which has some interesting features and low prices.

Written by Y.

February 3rd, 2006 at 12:22 am

Posted in Internet,Software