blogs

The huge news is Google is planning to pull out of China. Is Google going to pull out every service? Here's the big picture of Google ecosystem in China:

Adwords

Lots of companies(eg: export/import biz) in China rely on Adwords to drive traffic and get leads from Google outside of China via Google search and Google's content network. There are companies/agencies in China that provide training/consulting/reseller services on Google Adwords.

AdSenses

Lots of small/personal websites in China rely on Google Adsense to generate a few bucks.

Google Analytics

Lots of sites in China use Goolge Analytics because it's free. There are companies in China that provide training/consultingj/reseller services on Google Analytics.

Google's nexus one is coming out this week. While most of attentions have been focusing on Android-based phones vs iPhone, Flurry shined some lights on the not-so-secret weapon of Apple - iPod Touch(which I own one): iPod Touch Downloads Explode on Christmas Day, Surpassing iPhone for the First Time!

iPod Touch is a great device for anyone that doesn't need a phone or can't afford all the expenses(monthly data/voice plans) associated with a phone. I am talking about teenagers/college students here. I bet many teenagers get their first tastes of apps through the App Store on iPod Touch. I am still waiting for companies to come up with a Andorid-based iPod Touch-like device(zii is supposed to be the one, but it's not yet ready for consumer).

Tags: google apple iphone android nexus-one app-store ipod-touch

Android Development - the good

• Easy to extend/customize existing functions - a few examples:
  • You can write a new dialer to handle calling - in fact, I am using StartContact because the default dialer sucks(no contact search function, need to scroll).
  • Add your application to contextual menu of native functions(eg: handling the calling of a number)
  • You can override the home screen lock. see FlyScreen
• With the backing of Google, Android SDK evolves very quickly( this is really a double-edged sword).

Tags: google android android-market apple-app-store android-development

Recently, there have been a couple of companies(primarily based in China) emailing me about having existing Android mobile apps list on their app stores.

Their proposals are that I submit free apps to their app stores, they'd localize them for free and distribute to millions of users so that I can make a lot of money. Sounds fishy? There are also to other fishy things:

• Use CC instead of BCC in email - so everyone knows who else is being contacted(or spammed).
• Claim to represent a legit and well-known company, but use an Gmail address to send the email. This is so unprofessional. Then I emailed back and asked why they'd use Gmail. Their response is that they have problems with their email system. Oh, good. If you can't ensure that your corporate email to work properly, how am I going to trust your app store?

Tags: email android professionalism sales

Here are my notes from the meetup "Non-Profit, Rural Development, Land Right, Microfinance in China" on Oct 7th, 2009 in Redwood City, California:

A common theme is that the two presenting organizations are foreign NGOs(non-profit organization) in China, so they are not required to partner with local governments. They hand-pick their local partners and provide better transparency on their funds and operations in China. In contract, local NGOs have to work with local governments which have little accountability. Also, there's no tax saving for donors in China for charity-giving.

Tags: china meetup wokai rdi land right microfinance non-profit

G1's shortcoming:

• need to mount SD-card to access its content when connecting via USB. This should be done automatically like iPhone
• no built-in file manager/browser even though it comes with a SD-card
• why does the "red" end call buttom lock the phone? that's so unintuitive as I am used to use it to "cancel" things.
• the screen lock timeout setting is hidden under settings -> Sound & Display
• why isn't there a Google Reader app?
• no auto-complete when I search apps in Android Market
• store all downloaded apps in tiny 74MB internal storage. No way to store them in a SD card(unless you root your phone). A game app can demand 10+ MB storage!

Tags: android t-mobile g1

I organized the meetup Importing/Sourcing from China – Gotchas/Lessons on Aug 27th. The speakers Wensheng Li and Andrew Rizzo shared great insights, many tips, gotchas and stories. Be sure to check out their presentation.

Here are my notes:

Sub-contracting is dangerous as you don't know about the actual supplier, thus cannot ensure quality.

Alibaba has a gold supplier certification programwhere each gold supplier is inspected thoroughly by Alibaba's inspectors.

Tags: china meetup import business

Google Reader just came out a flurry of features.

I don't understand why Google Reader can't have a filtering/recommendation feature that gives me what I want to read based on my current interests.

Stop giving me all the articles in my feeds. There are way too many(1000+). Let me tell Google Reader what my current interests are(say mobile apps, iphone, marketing). Then Google Reader should recommend the articles from my feeds that match my interests. My interests change over time. I don't want to spend my valuable time scan through feeds to find items that I am interested in. Can Google Reader be smarter? How can it be this dumb? Isn't that Google supposedly really understands content, index them and bring us relevant results?

Tags: recommendation google-reader rss

I just went through the process of jailbreaking iPhone 3GS 3.0 and 3.0.1. Here are the resources and notes:

• for 3.0 OS, use super-easy purplera1n to jailbreak iPhone
• for 3.0.1 OS, follow instructions. Just make sure that you download the correct and select the correct 3.0 firmware(3GS vs. 3G) when you jailbreak.
• List of firmwares for iPhone and iPod Touch

Notes

• Install MobileTerminal if you want to drop into a shell to issue some shell commands. You can do a search of "MobileTerminal" via Cydia to find it.

Tags: iphone jailbreak cydia skype ssh

On July 31st, 2009, Sina Tech presented some images of iPhone that will be sold through China Unicom in China. There are lots of English news coverage. But all the news focus on iPhone of not having Wi-Fi.

Hello? That's not the only news! The China Unicom iPhone does NOT come with iTunes or the App Store.

• One reason can be that iPhone(already) mandates anything over 10MB(lots of gaming apps exceeding 10MB) needs to be downloaded via Wi-Fi which won't be present in iPhones sold through China Unicom.

Tags: china mobile iphone china-unicom wifi appstore itunes