buzaza's weblog

buzaza - tracking tech news & deals

2006-05-08T15:45:00.000-07:00

I haven't updated my blog for a LONG LONG time. I would like to announce that I have started a website focusing on the latest tech news & deals. Guess what it is called, Yup, you guessed right, of course it is called "buzaza". The site is still under constant refining. Check it out! www.buzaza.info

Yahoo’s New Home Page

2006-02-09T11:19:00.000-08:00

Apparently Yahoo is testing a new home page according to Cnet. Here is a snapshot of the new home page. I think it looks pretty cool.

SBC/AT&T Yahoo DSL Slashed Its DSL Price To $12.99

2006-02-07T16:43:00.000-08:00

Last June, when SBC Yahoo DSL slashed its rate to $14.95 a month, I immediately called SBC and successfully rerated to $14.95. Now SBC/AT&T Yahoo DSL has slashed its rate again to $12.99 for the basic plan and $17.99 for the pro plan. This time, I called them to upgrade my plan from the basic plan to the pro plan for only $3 more. The new plan supposes to take effective in a week and it is supposed to be twice as fast as the basic plan.

Stop Badware

2006-01-25T17:33:00.000-08:00

So what is badware? According to StopBadware.org, badware is the broad range of malicious software that is sneaking onto people's computers, including spyware and deceptive adware. So what is StopBadware.org? It is an initiative leaded by Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society and Oxford University's Oxford Internet Institute to provide accurate and objective information about badware as well as how to fight these malicious software. And this organization is sponsored by Google, Lenovo and Sun Microsystems. I really like the idea of this site since I personally had been a victim of spyware and adware infection and therefore hate them. And I believe there are tens of thousands regular innocent computer users whose computers have been infected with some kind of spyware or adware.

TechCrunch.com – a blog for Web 2.0

2006-01-25T16:33:00.000-08:00

As I was my local newspaper a few days ago, I came across with an article that talked about this blog site called TechCrunch.com. This blog site specializes in tracking news and trends in the so called Web 2.0 companies. The founder of this site, Michael Arrington, hosts Barbeque parties at his rented house in Atherton for people who are in the Web 2.0 startup companies or interested in Web 2.0 to network and share their ideas. The most recent party had over 200 people, hitting the limit of the people can actually fit in his house. So, if you are interested in Web 2.0 technologies, trends, companies, or anything about Web 2.0. I think this is a site you might be interested in visiting. And if you happen to be located in the Bay area, perhaps you might want to go to his next party.

2005 -> 2006

2006-01-09T18:11:00.000-08:00

I can’t believe it has been more than a month since I last updated my blog. Oh well, this is my first post of 2006 then. I had a really busy 2005, so I haven’t had a chance to take any real vacation. So, when I finally took 3 weeks off at the end of 2005, it rained almost continuously for the entire 3 weeks. When I was working my butt off in my office, the weather had been perfectly good. Perhaps this is what irony is.

A big thing today is the Dow Jones industrial average crossed above 11000 mark for the first time since before the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorists attack. So, I am anxious to see what 2006 has in store for me…

My First Jury Duty Experience

2005-12-02T17:24:00.000-08:00

I have been in the court room for the last 4 days going through jury selection for a trial. This is my first time to participate in the jury selection process. It was a mixed feeling. The process ended with a surprise and many people there felt it was a total waste of 4 days. To me, I think it was not a total waste because I got to see what the process was like and how the justice system works in the U.S. But I certainly would not like to be picked and here is why. This is a murder case and it would be a 3 week trial if it did get started. Here is what happened: this man named Robert Mays killed another man called Peter Bianco, who was a drug dealer. He then framed his best friend, Rick Reinhardt by leaving the murder weapon and keys to Bianco’s home at Rick Reinhardt’s property. Rick Reinhardt was arrested and spent nine months in jail until the authority eventually figured out they caught the wrong guy and released him. Robert Mays was subsequently arrested on charges of first degree murder and I was assigned to the judge who was overseeing this trial. After 4 days of questioning potential jurors in the jury pool and booting out the ones they saw as not good fit for this trial. Finally, they finalized on all 12 primary jurors and were ready to start the selection process for 3 alternate jurors. At that moment, defendant Robert Mays decided that there was no chance for him to win the case and pleaded guilty. So we were all dismissed since no more judgment was needed from us. By the way, Robert Mays was scheduled to return to court for sentencing on Jan. 23. He is facing 50 to life in prison.

Here is a link to a newspaper article on this case

Special Election

2005-11-08T22:59:00.000-08:00

I have been so busy for the last three weeks or so that I have not published any new entries on my blog. Today is California’s special election day. It has been two and half hours since the polls were closed. So far, the result indicates that the voters are rejecting measures promoted by Governor Schwarzenegger. I was planning to vote, however, it turned out to be another hectic day for me, so I didn’t get a chance to go out to my local poll place and cast my ballot. To me, it looks like many voters voted no simply because they dislike Governor Schwarzenegger, and not by looking at the measures objectively. This special election defeat should serve as a wake up call for Schwarzenegger who is trying to seek a second term.

The Motorola RAZR V3 Killer, NEC L1

2005-09-28T11:23:00.000-07:00

NEC last week announced the launch of the NEC L1, also known as the e949. Measuring at just 90.8 x 47.9 x 11.9 mm and weighs 94G, it is the world’s thinnest clamshell cellphone. This handset is a GSM tri-band phone(GSM 900/1800/1900 MHz) with a 1.3Megapixel camera and an external OLED display. Its internal display is a decent 1.9-inch 65K color with 176 x 220 pixels. It also features Bluetooth, MP3 playback capabilities and 64-tone polyphonic ringtones. Its downside is the battery life, only up to 100 hours of standby and up to 140 minutes of talk time. What really impressed me was the design and look of this phone. When I saw the pictures of this new phone, I was like “WOW, this one looks a lot better than the popular Motorola RAZR.” Anyway, a picture is worth a thousand words. So, here it is, enjoy!

NEC L1 Shot 1

NEC L1 Shot 2

The New Gillette Fusion Power with 5 Blades

2005-09-15T00:00:00.000-07:00

Gillette today announced the launch of the Gillette Fusion and Gillette Fusion Power, its new generation of shaving razors. According to Gillette, both razors have 5 blades, yes, you heard me right, 5 blades! First, there was the good old single blade razor blade, then comes the 2 blades razor, then 3, now the 5 blades is out. What’s next? A shaving razor with 10 blades? Is Gillette trying to prove the Moore’s law for shaving razors? Well, let’s first see what does a razor with 5 blades do for us. From reading the endless marketing pitches from the Gillette press release, it boils down to this: it creates a “Shaving Surface” that results in less irritation and more comfort.

In case you want to know, both of these razors will be available 1Q 2006 with a price tag of $9.99 for the Gillette Fusion and $11.99 for the battery powered Gillette Fusion Power.

And if you still interested in knowing more about these new 5-blade shaving systems from Gillette, visit Gillette’s site.

The Han Dynasty

2005-09-11T00:47:00.000-07:00

The History channel has been showing programs about the Roman Empire throughout this week, they called it the “When in Rome” week. At the same time, I have been watching a popular Chinese TV series called “Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty” on one of the local international channels, which, as the name implies, talks about the great emperor Wu of the Han dynasty. The Han dynasty was established in 202B.C. by a man named Liu Bang, and the dynasty lasted for about 400 years until it collipased in 220AD. The Han dynasty is considered to be one of the greatest periods in the entire history of China. At its peak under the leadership of emperor Wu(140-87B.C), the empire’s territories stretched westward as far as the rim of the Tarim Basin. During reign of the Han emperors, the empire extended its political and cultural influences over regions like Vietnam, Central Asia, Mongolia and Korea. One of the greatest Chinese invention, paper, dates from the Han dynasty. The members of ethnic majority of Chinese people today still call themselves “people of Han”. It was an Empire as mighty as the Romans were in the west.

As I was watching these shows about these two mighty empires that ruled the known world at around the same period, I couldn’t help but to ask “had people from both empires ever met”? So, I started searching for the answer, and the answer I got was yes, they did meet. According to the account of Hou Hanshu(History of the Later Han), Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius(161–80 A.D.) sent out an emissary that reached the Han Capital in 166AD and was greeted by Emperor Huan. They brought ivory, rhinoceros horn, and tortoiseshell as gifts for the Han emperor. The famous “Silk Road” was also established during the Han period to export Chinese goods, mainly silk to the west.

"Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty" Poster

Marcus Aurelius

Hurricane Katrina’s Economic Impact

2005-09-05T23:47:00.000-07:00

Today is the seventh day since Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf coast and made itself one of the worst natural disasters in U.S history. 80% of the city of New Orleans is under water, hundreds of people, if not thousands died. In addition to the heavy human toll, the full economic impact is yet to be seen. Although I am by no means a professional economist, but simply applying common sense, we should have some pretty reasonable prediction about how big the economic impact will be. As we have already seen, Hurricane Katrina’s devastation has crippled the oil refinery business in the Gulf coast region and as a result the gas price has risen sharply since Monday. As a matter of fact, the average unleaded gas in California has hit $2.95 a gallon, a new record. This is only the immediate impact of this horrible disaster. The long term or the rippling effects of Hurricane Katrina will spread into many industries including, but not limited to transportation, retail, construction, tourism, and gambling. As far as unemployment is concerned, the August four year low 4.9% national unemployment rate will be over before we know it because practically everybody in New Orleans has lost their job. The hardest hit group is actually the middle class folks. The really poor people have nothing more to lose anyway, and the really rich ones have enough money to recover quickly. However, the folks that live on a medium range salary are in real trouble, because they have a lot to lose if that salary ceases to exist. When I logged on to my Citi Bank credit card account on its website today, I discovered that there is a message on the page saying the customers who live in regions affected by Hurricane Katrina have no payments due for this month. Well, I am glad that Citi Bank is generous enough to offer the people affected by Hurricane Katrina a break, and I am pretty sure many other creditors and lenders in the nation are also doing the similar thing. However, the creditors and lenders can not and will not wait for the people affected by Hurricane Katrina to get their life back before resuming the regular bill cycle, because we all know with a disaster of this magnitude, it will take these people very long time to get their jobs back, even some of these people may be lucky enough to manage to find some jobs quickly, the pay may be lower if not much lower than before. Therefore, as we will see, the default and bankruptcy rate in the Gulf coast region will skyrocket soon. Very soon, the whole collection industry will be mobilized to grow their industry to a new level, doing everything they can, either legal or illegal, to squeeze every penny they can out of these people. The sad thing is that in this country, many times, a person is not judged as a human being, but rather by a number, or to be more specific, the FICO score. So, as the FICO scores of these people are trashed by creditors and collection industry because they no longer can manage to pay their bills on time, the ability of them to recover from this disaster is further reduced. One thing is pretty certain, Hurricane Katrina will be the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history so far.

With everything said, I urge everybody to contribute to the helping of Katrina’s victims, donate whatever you can. Once again, no donation is too big and no donation is too small. One warning though, make sure you denote to a legitimate organization because I am sure every scam artist in this country is now rushing to take advantages of these people. Finally, I want to say my heart goes out to these people affected by Hurricane Katrina.

Will the Housing Boom Bust?

2005-08-25T17:54:00.000-07:00

I have been so busy at work, I didn’t get a chance to post any new entries for quiet long time. Lately, I have been hearing a lot about the situation facing the record making real estate boom in history. Some economists predict that the current boom created a bubble and is destined to bust. Some of the people that believe in this predication have sold their homes and moved into apartments hoping for bust to arrive so that they can buy again at bargain price. But some people say the current boom won’t necessary bust. These argue that historical data has shown us that many housing booms in history didn’t end up with bust. For me, I think I agree with the latter opinion that a housing boom does not necessary end up with a bust. And for areas like where I live, the San Francisco bay area, where land is scarce but is also a desired location to live-with mild temperature all year long and the Pacific Ocean is only a short drive away. In addition, it has some of the best schools in the country from elementary schools to universities. Therefore, I believe although the bay area is already one of the most expensive real estate markets in the country, the home price won’t really decline, but I guess that the appreciation will slow down and may even flat out. So, for those people that have sold their house and started renting again hoping for the bust will probably wait for a long time or I should just say it will probably never happen.

People’s Bank of China Revalued RMB

2005-07-22T16:22:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, the people’s bank of China, with no previous warnings, lifted its fixed dollar peg to a managed exchange policy against a basket of currencies. Although China did not say what currencies are in the basket, but are widely assumed to be the euros, the dollar and the Japanese yen. The new dollar vs. RMB exchange rate is 1:8.11 instead of the old 1:8.27. For me, that is not a good thing, that means next time I go to China, I can’t get as much RMB as before because the appreciation of RMB against the dollar. But I seriously doubt it will have any deep impact on the U.S-China trade deficit.

600 Years ago in China

2005-07-12T17:31:00.000-07:00

600 years ago yesterday, a grand fleet consisted of 300 plus ships and some 28000 sailors and soldiers from China started its first of seven epic voyages throughout the China Seas and Indian Ocean. The armada fleet was under the command of the eunuch admiral Zheng He. Their mission was to establish the trade route for the Ming Empire and to scary away any nations that were hostile to China by displaying its mighty naval power. The largest of these ships were 400 foot long, nine-masted giant ships called the treasure ships. When the Portuguese fleet lead by Vasco Da Gama reached East Africa on their way to India 80 years later, the largest of his ships was only close to 100 foot. However, after the Ming YongLe emperor Zhu Di, the emperor that ordered these voyages, died in 1433, the new emperor, his son, chose to close all China’s coastal borders and the isolationism lasted for the next 500 years.

China could become a great colonial power. But China didn’t. The Chinese government recently made July 11 to be the official “Navigation Day” in remembrance of Zheng He’s epic voyages 600 years ago. The significance of this is that China wants to demonstrate to the world that its recent rise as a new world power is a peaceful one as it always did in its history. So, that being said, when you see the grand Chinese naval armada passes your port 20 or 30 years later, don’t forget to say Hi!

My July 4th

2005-07-11T17:39:00.000-07:00

I was pretty tied up at work last week. Finally, I am updating my blog again. Now, back to the topic! I went on a trip to Santa Barbara, Solvang and Hearst Castle over the July 4^th long weekend. I liked Santa Barbara a lot as it is a very nice beach town. The atmosphere is relaxed and laid back. The beach area is beautiful and of course, the mansions on the hills overlooking the Pacific Ocean are spectacular. Unfortunately, we didn’t have enough time to explore more of Santa Barbara. The second stop of our trip was Solvang, a Danish themed village about 30 miles north of Santa Barbara. We felt we were in Denmark when we entered the village. There were many tourists though so the main streets of the village were very crowded, filled with tourists. To my surprise, this tiny 5000 people town has a Chinese restaurant and the food was also to my surprise, eatable. Once again, we didn’t have enough time to hang around in Solvang so we drove to our third stop, also the last stop before heading home, the Hearst Castle in San Simeon. Hearst Castle was built by William Randolph Hearst, the news publication giant who lived a lavish life. I learned from stunning numbers from our tour guide about the Hearst Castle. It cost William Hearst 9 million dollars to build the Hearst Castle. 9 Million in the late 20s and early 30s were an astronomical number considering the Great Depression, and 10 cents back then could buy you a decent meal. The ceilings of the two guest houses, or what William Hearst called them, the “cottages”, are covered with 24K gold. The main house is 54000 square feet. The whole castle has 2 swimming pools: one outdoor and one indoor. Even more astonishing, it has its own airstrip. Although the Hearst Castle is impressive in every way, I wouldn’t want to live there even I had the money because the dark and Gothic theme.

Just One Day After Google’s Release of its Map API, Yahoo Follows Suit

2005-06-30T15:45:00.000-07:00

As some of you already know, Google released its Maps API yesterday to allow web developers to customize Google Maps and embed it on their web sites. Well, today, Yahoo followed Google’s suit and also released the API for its map service. Let’s see which API will attract more web developers. For me, I go for the Google Maps.

Free Ice Cream From Starbucks

2005-06-29T12:08:00.000-07:00

Starbucks is giving away free ice cream this afternoon. For details, check out http://www.starbucks.com/retail/icecreamsocial.asp. Enjoy!!!

Nokia N90 Own It First Sweepstakes

2005-06-23T14:59:00.000-07:00

Nokia N90 sweepstakes

Nokia N90

Nokia is having a sweepstakes for its upcoming high-end N90 mobile phone according to Gizmodo. To enter, go to www.nokia.com/n90/ownitfirst and register your information. 50 winners will get a brand new Nokia N90 multimedia phone and a prepaid T-mobile SIM card worth $50.

Key features of the Nokia N90:
- Carl Zeiss optics
- 2 megapixel camera with autofocus
- Shoot high quality VHS video up to one hour
- MPEG-4 video compression
- on-phone video editing

Ebay, Google’s Next Target?

2005-06-23T11:34:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, Google CEO Eric Schmidt confirmed Google’s plan to launch online payment services. Although Eric Schmidt insisted that the new service will not be in direct competition with Ebay’s Paypal, but I believe Google is aiming at Ebay as its next target. First of all, Google can leverage its huge traffic to link customers to advertisers who paid Google to get their ads displayed on the search results with its new Google Wallet service. Going further, Google can eventually evolve to become a platform for any individuals who want to sell anything from used clothes to cars and houses. They can pay Google some amount of fee to put their ads on Google search results and use Google Wallet as the method of payment. Once that happens, Google has become the replacement for Ebay and Ebay should be very worried. With all things said, Paypal is tough to compete with. It is already the dominant online payment company in the market. Big players like Yahoo have tried before and failed, even Ebay itself couldn’t compete with Paypal and had to acquire it. Let’s see if Google can pull this one off after big players like Yahoo and even Ebay have failed.

Microsoft and AOL Hoax

2005-06-21T13:02:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I received a forwarded email from one of my buddies. The email claimed that because a merger, Microsoft and AOL are running an email “beta” test. As part of the test, these two companies will pay you a fixed amount of money for each copy of the email forwarded. I laughed at it after I read it but before deleting it, I decided to prove this had to be a hoax. So I googled “Microsoft and AOL” and found out it indeed was a hoax as confirmed by about.com. So, in case you get one, don’t get too excited and start forwarding to all of your friends and families. Following is an example of the email:

Subject: PLEEEEEEASE READ!!!! it was on the news!
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>This thing is for real. Rest assured AOL and Intel will follow through
with their promises for fear of facing a multimillion-dollar class
action suit similar to the one filed by PepsiCo against General
Electric not too long ago.
>
>
>
>Dear Friends; Please do not take this for a junk letter. Bill Gates
sharing his fortune. If you ignore this, You will repent later.
Microsoft and AOL are now the largest Internet companies and in an
effort to make sure that Internet Explorer remains the most widely used
program, Microsoft and AOL are running an e-mail beta test.
>
>
>
>When you forward this e-mail to friends, Microsoft can and will track
it ( If you are a Microsoft Windows user)?For a two weeks time period.
>
>
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>For every person that you forward this e-mail to, Microsoft will pay
you $245.00 For every person that you sent it to that forwards it on,
Microsoft will pay you $243.00 and for every third person that receives
it, You will be paid $241.00. Within two weeks, Microsoft will contact
you for your address and then send you a check.

Spurs’ Humiliating Defeat

2005-06-17T13:01:00.000-07:00

I turned to ABC last night to watch the fourth game of the Spurs vs. Pistons NBA final. It was the middle of the third quarter and the Pistons was leading by 15 points. I watched for about 5 minutes and I already knew Spurs would lose the game big time. The game was so boring because the Spurs played terrible. They couldn’t dribble right, pass right, shoot right, and rebound right. On the other hand, the Pistons played a stunning game. Everybody played very well including the bench players. As it turns out, 7 Pistons players scored double digits. This is amazing. This proves again the Pistons are not to be messed at home. I just hope the next game will be a closer game.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith

2005-06-15T12:05:00.000-07:00

I went to see Mr. and Mrs. Smith last Saturday. I thought it was a very good summer popcorn movie. I knew roughly what this movie was about before going to it. So, I had my expectation made up and turns out, it actually exceeded my expectation. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie teamed up wonderfully and they had great chemistry. Great visual work plus lots of eye candies. So, overall, I think this movie is fun, action packed and most of all, Angelina Jolie, she is worth every penny of the $7 I paid to go to the theatre. By the way, did I forget to mention that I really think Brad and Angelina would make a lovely couple in real life?

The Dragon Sabre Murder

2005-06-10T14:22:00.000-07:00

According to the Chinese press yesterday, a Shanghai player of a popular online game known as The Legend of Mir 3 stabbed fellow gamer to death after he found out his virtual Dragon sabre was sold by the victim. This news did not surprise me because I know how addictive these games are the way these types of online games have become. But I didn’t know until last December, when I was in Shanghai for vacation.

I was having dinner with some of my friends in Shanghai and one of us started talking about the online games that he play, and The Legend of Mir 3 is his favorite game. He told me the game has attracted millions of players in China and he is one of the addicted gamers. But what he was about to tell me next really shocked. He told me since the game is popular and have such huge subscriber base. Many people have decided to make money off the game. They sell the virtual weapons they acquired in the game to other gamers who desperately need them. And they are willing to pay a fortune to get it. My friend told me the prices of many of these virtual properties can easily top hundreds of dollars if not thousands. The bigger virtual property dealers hire other players to play the game for 24 hours a day(three shifts) nonstop in order to acquire the “expensive” virtual weapons. To me, they are becoming an industry of their own.

Well, perhaps it is the time to check out the stock quote of Shanda…

Greeting in China

2005-06-08T10:33:00.000-07:00

Over here in the U.S, people usually say hi to other pedestrians on the streets with the exception of big cities like New York or Chicago. This is almost never the case in China. Some people think it is because the cultural difference between the China and the western world. Other people think it is due to the lack of quality education in rural areas of China. But let’s ask ourselves a question, is it actually feasible to greet everybody as you walk down the streets of China? The answer is probably no. As everybody knows, China has the world’s largest population. For big cities like Shanghai or Beijing, there are tens of thousands of people on the streets at any given time. If you want greet everybody as you walk, you probably won’t last a city block. Anyway, it is just one of my random crazy thoughts.

Valuable Blogging Insights From Wang Jianshuo

2005-06-07T12:46:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, Wang Jianshuo published a blog entry about how he started blogging and shared his experience and suggestions after 999 days of blogging. I think it is an excellent article because it provides very valuable suggestions and recommendations for people who are thinking about starting their own blogs or new bloggers like myself from someone who has been a very successful blogger. Unfortunately, this article published by Wang Jianshuo is written in Chinese. For those of you who don’t read Chinese, I have translated a few tips that I couldn’t agree more with him to English:

Content: Write your own feelings and thoughts and be honest. Don’t write if you don’t feel comfortable writing about something, it is better than lying.

Frequency: Write regularly and maintain certain frequency. For example, one article per day or a few days. This way, your readers know how frequently you write and when to come back for new articles.

Style: Write with passion! If you feel something is really important to you, share that with your readers; tell them why you feel it is important.

Attitude: Don’t lose your style and originality when you have more readers. People tend to sound like a big newspaper editor when they have more readers.

In addition, if you like to start your blog under your own domain name, Wang Jianshuo also recommended MoveableType, an excellent blogging software, and AXS Tracking for traffic monitoring.

Yet Another Cool Google Map Based Web Application

2005-06-03T16:43:00.000-07:00

This one was designed and developed by Adrian Holovaty and Wilson Miner. It pulls data from a database called Citizen ICAM which is maintained by Chicago Police Department and displays the location of recently reported crimes using Google Maps. Check it out, it is really cool because you can visually see which street corners of Chicago that recent crimes took place. It allows you to search the crimes by location, crime type, date, police district, time, and zip code.

Dual Interface Radeon X800 From MSI

2005-06-02T13:47:00.000-07:00

MSI Dual Interface Radeon X800 Video Card

This new graphic card from MSI has AGP on one side and PCI-express on the other side. I think this is a brilliant design-making it compatible with both AGP motherboards and PCI-express motherboards. Most of all, someone doesn’t have to upgrade their AGP motherboard to PCI-express motherboard in order to enjoy the ATI Radeon X800 graphic chip. For more details, check out TrustedReviews.

SBC Slashed Its DSL Rate to $14.95

2005-06-01T15:51:00.000-07:00

After learning SBC has just reduced its DSL rate to $14.95 from $19.99 today, I immediately called SBC and successfully had my DSL plan rerated to $14.95.

Here is what I did:

Dialed 1-800-579-7861(for CA)

After two minutes of music, the customer service representative answered, “Hi, This is Eric(I made up this name, couldn’t remember the person’s real name), How can I make you a very satisfiying customer today?”

Me: Hi, Can you please transfer me to your DSL retention department?

CSR: Sure.

music.. music.. and more music…

After roughly 18 minutes, I guess they were swamped with calls today.

CSR(retention department): Hi, your phone number starting with the area code please.

Me: my phone number.

CSR(retention department): Your name please.

Me: buzaza

CSR(retention department): What can I help you today?

Me: I would like to get my DSL service rerated to the $14.95 plan that came out today.

CSR(retention department): Umm… I need to get an approval for this change because this is supposed to be for the new customers that order online only. I don’t know if I can do it for existing customers. Can I put you on hold please?

Me: Sure. (I already waited 20 minutes, I guess few extra minutes won’t hurt.)

After 2 more minutes of music

CSR(retention department): I apologize for the delay and appreciate your patience. I was able to get an approval to go ahead and change your DSL rate to $14.95 a month. In order to make this change, we have renewed your contract with us. Your new contract starts on 6/8/05 and ends on 6/8/06.

Me: Wonderful! Thanks a lot!

After that, it was sales pitch after another sales pitch, but I was being patient and listened to all of them. I guess nothing is completely free and it was worth it for the $60 saving.

If you don’t have SBC DSL right now, this might be the time to make the switch, because I think this is by far the cheapest broadband rate in the U.S. If you already have SBC DSL, you can try to follow what I did and try your luck.

By the way, the $14.95 SBC DSL Express plan has download speed of 1.5Mbps and upload speed of 384Kbps.

Become.com raised $7.2 Million for Second Round

2005-05-31T18:14:00.000-07:00

Become.com is yet another start-up company that has successfully raised venture capital fund, $7.2 million to be exact for its second round of funding. The Mountain View, CA start-up provides a search engine dedicated for shopping. Its crawler indexes all shopping related web pages and so far it claims it had already indexed 3.2 billion pages from 40 million sites.

I checked out their site and it has a clean interface just like Google. The two founders of this company were two Korean Americans and it was interesting to learn that they were the founders of mySimon.com, a shopping service site. The biography of the founders says that they grew mySimon.com from two employees to 60 employees in less than a year-quiet impressive. mySimon.com was later acquired by CNET for $700 million.

One side note, one of the founders, Michael Yang also holds a third degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do. No wonder the guy kicks ass!

13 Million For Thefacebook.com

2005-05-27T10:50:00.000-07:00

Thefacebook.com was started by three Harvard students in their dorm room in February of 2004. So far, it has attracted 2.8 million registered users from more than 800 campuses around the country according to The New York Times. Thefacebook.com is basically a huge online college directory site. Students can sign up and find out who is in their classes, look up friends’ friends and visualize their social network. Their success certainly grabbed the attention from seasoned Silicon Valley venture capitalist Jim Breyer, who yesterday announced a 13 million investment in the start-up company according to The New York Times.

From what I see, Thefacebook.com’s success is not because it has developed new cutting edge technology but the right business model and perhaps some devotion. It created a way to let college students network with each other from within their own campuses or other campuses. One interesting observation is that it seems like most of these successful student entrepreneurs never got to finish their degrees including Google’s founders Larry Page and Sergey Brinn. In Thefacebook’s case, the three founders are currently on leave from Harvard and two of them actually live in Palo Alto where they have an office. The two plan to return to Harvard this fall to nurture their company according to The New York Times. I guess it is hard to study and run a company at the same time at the same time, especially if your company is this successful.

Yahoo’s New PhotoMail Service

2005-05-26T15:10:00.000-07:00

Yahoo today launched a new service called PhotoMail that allows users to insert up to 300 pictures as part of their email messages. The photos send and received by the users can be saved on Yahoo Photo for free and the storage is unlimited. This new service, currently in beta, breaks the limitation of regular email attachements as they are limited in size and number. However, the drawback at least at this moment is that it only supports Internet Explorer version 5.5 or higher and does not support Firefox, Opera or Macs.

Future Shanghai Metro Plan

2005-05-25T15:56:00.000-07:00

Map of Current Shanghai Metro Lines

Map of Future Shanghai Metro Lines

Shanghai plans to have 20 metro lines by 2010 World Expo. So far it has three plus one extension metro lines built and two currently under construction. As you can see from the future map, metro will cover almost every part of Shanghai including its suburban areas by 2010. I can't wait for this metro plan to be complete. But on the other side, will Shanghai be able to handle the weight of 4000 skyscrapers on top of all those tunnels underneath? Let's just hope it will.

MBA Hiring On the Rise

2005-05-24T16:45:00.000-07:00

For someone who is studying to become a MBA or planning to become a MBA student, here is a good news for them. According to Fortune Magazine’s Anne Fisher, MBA hiring is way up from the recession few years ago. “The number of companies looking to hire is up 40% to 50%”, says Julie Morton, associate dean of career services at the University of Chicago's Business school. In addition, MBA graduates are more confident than before, students turn down offers in the fall and wait for the spring hiring hoping to get a better offer according to the MBA career management office at UCLA’s Anderson School. For more details, check out Anne Fisher’s article “Why It's a Good Time to Be an MBA”.

Also, "100 Most Desirable MBA Employers".

Need to take the GMAT? Two preparation books that I am using:

Kaplan GMAT 2005 with CD-ROM

Cracking the GMAT with Practice Tests on CD-ROM, 2005 Edition

Unusual Weather

2005-05-23T17:20:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday, a couple friends of mine and I decided to go cherry picking in Coyote Valley of San Jose since the weather was very nice and warm. When we got there, there were not any signs in the front of house indicating they were open. I knocked on the door and asked the old lady if they were open or not, the lady told us that cherries were not ripe yet because there had been too much rain this year. That’s right, too much rain! The bay area had always been known for lots of sunshine and rarely rains. Normally, late-December through mid-February is the rain season for the bay area. However, this year had been totally different-we had on and off rains until last weekend. It was starting to feel more like Seattle than the bay area. Finally, according to the weather forecast, it looks like there will not be any rains in the bay area for the next 10 days. Perhaps summer has finally arrived! In addition, I guess I have no more excuse not to wash my cars.

Shanghai Real Estate Market Showing Signs of Slowing Down

2005-05-20T15:23:00.000-07:00

After waves and waves of new real estate regulations from the Chinese government as it was trying to cool down the overheating real estate market in Shanghai, the market is finally showing signs of slowing down. According to sources in Shanghai, one of the top 10 best selling new development complex has been selling at a pace of one unit a day for a week now. Selling at this rate was considered very low end of selling rank just two months ago. Back then, probably 90% of all new development releases were sold out in its first day. When I was in Shanghai in the beginning of April, I saw with my very own eyes that real estate brokerage offices were there on almost every street corner. The government is trying to keep the average housing price at mid 2004 level or 6000-7000RMB per square meter. Therefore, if the average housing price in Shanghai does not come down significantly, I am sure there will be more regulations coming.

If the selling pace does not pick up which I seriously doubt it will, many of these brokerage firms will be out of business. One thing that is interesting though is while the local Chinese real estate investors are retreating from the Shanghai market, many of the foreign investors are still jumping in. But hey, if the housing price in Shanghai does come down to the mid 2004 level like the government is hoping for, I will seriously think about jumping in.

The Chinese Currency

2005-05-19T12:18:00.000-07:00

Recently, the U.S. Treasury said in a report that China’s foreign exchange policies are “highly distortionary and pose a risk to China's economy, its trading partners, and global economic growth". This is the harshest statement ever by the U.S government over the currently fixed Chinese foreign exchange policies. Congress is proposing a bill that would slap an extra 27.5% tariff over imported goods from China if China does not flex its currency exchange policies in the next six months.

Will China flex its foreign exchange policies just because the mounting pressure from the U.S? My opinion is a solid no. Will China ever flex its foreign exchange policies? I believe it is a yes, but not when the U.S is pressuring China. Back in March of this year, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said in a statement that the appreciation of the RMB(the name of the Chinese currency) will come at a surprising time, implying that China is ready to let its currency appreciate if the timing is right. When is the timing right? Well, the answer is when nobody is pressuring China into changing its foreign exchange policies. You may not agree with what China is planning to do, but this is at least what I see how China will do it.

Few last words, I personally don’t like the appreciation of the RMB simply because it reduces my purchase power when I go to China.

Free Xbox 360 Give Away Every 10 Minutes

2005-05-18T12:23:00.000-07:00

Free Xbox 360 Give Away

According to Microsoft, Pepsi Cola's Mountain Dew and Microsoft just announced a U.S. promotional contest to give away a free Xbox 360 to a lucky winner every 10 minutes beginning Aug. 28. Microsoft and Mountain Dew will give away one Xbox 360 console every 10 minutes, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for 9 weeks. This will put thousands of free Xbox 360 consoles in the hands of lucky consumers before they officially hit the store shelves.

In order to play, consumers will need to collect codes found under the caps of Mountain Dew and other participating Pepsi beverages, and enter the codes in a personal account at www.every10minutes.com. They can then pick which 10 minutes drawing to enter, spread the codes across different drawings or put all codes into one drawing.

For more information, you can visit Microsoft Press Release.

Victim of Malicious Spyware

2005-05-17T16:37:00.000-07:00

Last Friday, my IBM Thinkpad T40 was mysteriously infected with a few really nasty spyware. It obviously installed itself without my knowledge. Everytime my laptop is connected to the internet, it pops out an advertisement window every few seconds. I tried three different anti-spyware tools: Search & Destroy Spybot, Ad-Aware by Lavasoft and Microsoft AntiSpyware Beta. All three tools claimed they found the spyware and removed them. However, these nasty, sneaky spyware just kept reappearing. I tried to find a way to completely remove them on the web, but none worked. I finally gave up and reformatted the hard drive and reinstalled Windows XP after hours of hours unsuccessful removal attempts.

By the way, the names of these spyware are aBetterInternet and Elite.bar. Be aware of them for they surely made my life miserable for a few days.

Nintendo's Next Generation Game Console

2005-05-17T12:21:00.000-07:00

Nintendo Revolution

Here is a picture of Nintendo's upcoming new game console, code named Revolution. It will be available sometimes in 2006.

Nintendo Gameboy Micro Announced

2005-05-17T12:20:00.000-07:00

Nintendo Gameboy Micro

According to Reuters, Nintendo announced the a new handheld game console called Gameboy Micro. Weighing at 2.8oz, this sleek tiny device also comes with removable face plate so that you can customize it to suit your taste.

More PlayStation 3 Pictures

2005-05-16T22:56:00.000-07:00

PlayStation 3 Picture 3

PlayStation 3 Picture 4

PlayStation 3 Pictures Revealed

2005-05-16T20:57:00.000-07:00

PlayStation 3 Picture 1

PlayStation 3 Picture 2

According to Gizmodo, these are the official pictures for the highly anticipated Sony Playstation 3.

Xbox 360 Offically Unveiled

2005-05-12T21:24:00.000-07:00

Offical Xbox 360 Picture Released by Microsoft

According to Reuters, Microsoft just offically unveiled its second generation game console, the Xbox 360. The components inside its sleek concave shell are very impressive including three 3.2Ghz cores with 1MB L2 cache. a custom ATI graphic processor and 512MB of GDDR 3 RAM running at 700Mhz. kotaku has the offical Xbox 360 specs for download.

Firefox 1.0.4 Released

2005-05-12T10:46:00.000-07:00

Firefox 1.0.4 is out today. According to Mozilla, this new secruity patch is aimed at addressing three critical security vulnerabilties. This is the fourth patch update since the offical launch of Firefox 1.0. Does this sound familiar to the IE users? Is Firefox getting more and more like IE?

Google China

2005-05-11T12:17:00.000-07:00

According to Reuters, Google has recently acquired www.google.com.cn domain name and a license to operate in China. So far, Google does not have a physical presence in China. Google now has 21% market share in China comparing to Baidu’s 36% and Yahoo’s 22%. It will be interesting to see if having a physical presence in China will help Google better compete with other search sites in China.

So far users who try to access the .cn domain are redirected to the Chinese language section of Google's main site, www.google.com.

Yahoo To Launch New Music Service

2005-05-10T22:24:00.000-07:00

I just heard from my local radio station that Yahoo is going to offically launch a subscription music service tomorrow(5/11/05). So far I only know that if you sign up for one year subscription, it is only $60, that is $5 a month for unlimited access to their one million songs library. The songs are in WMA format and they will stop working if you cancel your subscription. In addition, Yahoo Music doesn't support ipod. But at least the $5 a month subscription fee is quiet attractive.

Chang Kaige’s new movie, Wu Ji/The Promise

2005-05-10T22:11:00.000-07:00

Wu Ji/The Promise Poster 1

Wu Ji/The Promise Poster 2

Wu Ji/The Promise Poster 3

These are the posters of Director/Producer Chang Kaige(Farewell My Concubine)’s upcoming fantasy epic movie Wu Ji/The Promise. This movie claims to be the most expensive Chinese movie ever made with total investment over 30 million dollars. 30 million dollars is nothing compared to big budget Hollywood movies. But hey! Even Hollywood is seriously exploring future opportunities to shoot movies in China simply because the cost is so much lower than any western countries.

There has not been much reporting on the script of this movie as the director is trying to keep it as a secret until it is released to the general public. All I know so far is it involves some kind of love affair between a royal concubine and a slave. This movie features a very strong international cast including popular Chinese, Japanese and Korean actors.

There is no word on the official release date yet, but I believe it is sometimes next year. Until then, I will keep my expectation high for this movie. Perhaps, just perhaps, it will be the Lord of the Rings of China? We’ll see!

Main Cast:
Cecilia Cheung(Hong Kong) – Shaolin Soccer
Jang Dong Kun(Korea) – Lost Memories
Hiroyuki Sanada(Japan) – Last Samurai
Nicholas Tse (Hong Kong) – Time and Tide
Liu Ye(China) – Purple Butterfly

Director: Chang Kaige

Producer: Chang Kaige, Cheng Hong

Cinematography: Peter Pau

Costume and Makeup: Masago Kimiya

25 FREE Full Length Songs Every Month

2005-05-10T10:57:00.000-07:00

The recently launched Rhapsody.com is giving every user 25 free songs from their 1,000,000+ song library every month. In addition, you also get 25 premium radio stations every month for free. The good thing about it is that not only the registration is free, you don't even need to leave a credit card on file. So, no commitment at all!

All you need to do is register an account and download a free music jukebox software(about 8MB) from Rhapsody. There is a counter that decrements itself every time you play a song. When the counter reaches zero, you have to wait until next month to get your next 25 free songs.

By the way, did I mention that if you have multiple e-mail addresses, you can register multiple accounts. At least at this moment, Rhapsody is not disallowing users to do that. If you have more questions, you can visit their faq section. Enjoy!

Million Dollar House

2005-05-07T18:16:00.000-07:00

What kind of house can you expect to buy with a million nowadays? A 5000-square-foot mansion with 5 bedrooms and marble tubs? Well, you might need to lower your expectation, because according to Forbes, in some regions, one million dollar can only buy you a two-bedroom condo, sometimes not even with a view. Why has the power of a million dropped so much? According to the U.S. Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, U.S. home price increased 48% from 1999 to 2004 and in some areas such as California(almost 100%) and New York(68%), prices of home have gone through the roof.

Here in San Francisco bay area(where I live), “hot” is not even the right word to describe the current real estate market. Two weeks ago in San Jose, over 1000 people showed up to participate in a lottery drawing of just 14 new release townhomes built by a popular local builder. You probably think these new townhomes are cheap, well, they start at $600,000 for 1400sq.ft, 2-bedroom, at least for me, they are no way near cheap. In addition, a builder in the city of Walnut Creek released about a dozen new 2-bedroom townhomes last week, people lined up for days trying to buy them.

With mortgage interest rates still low and the weak dollar, I believe the real estate market in the U.S will remain strong for few more years. In fact, according to the news, mortgage rates have been declining for the last few weeks. So, just like what Forbes says, “in nearly every corner of the U.S., the days of million-dollar mansions are, sadly, over”.

Craigslist and Google-Maps Combo Site

2005-05-06T15:38:00.000-07:00

I was browsing the Google Open Source Project site today and this feature project caught my attention. It is called HousingMaps and this person named Paul Rademacher built it. I was very impressed when I saw the landing page-just wonderful integration of Google Maps and Craigslist.

The homepage looks just like the Google Maps home page with a big U.S map on it. It currently has four categories: For Rent, For Sale, Rooms, and Sublets. The Rooms category is for people who are looking to rent single rooms or shared housing. You can either pick a city from the pull down menu on the top or simply click on the map. The cities that have this service available are indicated by green icons on the map. Once you have selected a city, the map will display the locations of all the houses that are currently on the market for rent, sale, sublet or simply renting out rooms in that particular city. In addition, you can switch between regular map view and satellite view with a click of a button just like Google Maps.

Try it out and if you like it, send him a nice feedback. The guy deserves some recognition.

Freedom Tower at Ground Zero Design Change

2005-05-05T22:28:00.000-07:00

I was reading today's New York Times and it reported that the current Freedom Tower design needs to have major modifications concerning security issues. For those of you that like the current Freedom Tower design, myself being one, we certainly hope the new design will still look cool and not a "fortress-like bunker".

Google Web Accelerator Review

2005-05-05T21:42:00.000-07:00

Today I tried the Google Web Accelerator and it worked pretty good. I didn't notice too much difference for major U.S web sites such as yahoo or msn. However, there was very obvious improvement in loading sites that reside on foreign servers. Therefore, it is very useful for people that have been experiencing slow loading foreign web sites that they visit regularly.

I liked the option to disable acceleration for certain user specified websites and the ability to highlight links to prefetched pages. Disabling acceleration for certain websites gives the user the option to excludes non-https pages that they don't want to be cached by Google. Highlighting links to prefetched pages let some users who are interested in knowing which pages are prefetched.

In short, this is another good if not great free product from Google.

Google Web Accelerator

2005-05-04T16:46:00.000-07:00

I was reading betanews.com and came across this interesting news article about Google's recent beta release of its Web Accelerator. How does it work? Well, according to Google, it uses a separate cache from the web browser on the client side and it can be emptied at any time. Google will only reload the page if the page has been updated since last visit.

Now, the question to ask is whether it actually works? Google says it works and can prove it by providng Performance Statistics page that shows the number of pages loaded and the amount of time it would take to load these pages if the acceleration features is disabled.

By the way, the currently beta version automatically works with Internet Exploer and Firefox on Windows XP and Windows 2000. It also support other web browsers but the program has to be manually configured for HTTP connection.

I am going to try it myself and see if it lives up to its claims. I will update again after I test it out. Meanwhile, if you are interested trying it out too. Here is the link: http://webaccelerator.google.com/ Enjoy!!!

2005-05-04T13:15:00.000-07:00

A picture of Shanghai Pudong Finacial District

2005-05-04T13:11:00.000-07:00

Shanghai, the financial center of China has a fiancial district 8 times the size of London's new financial district, Canary Wharf, and only slightly smaller than Chicago according to Newsweek.

China’s Century

2005-05-04T13:08:00.000-07:00

My topic is also this week’s Newsweek special topic. Newsweek dedicated almost half of its pages to this topic. It had the popular Chinese actress Zhang ziyi(Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) on the cover. According to the feature article “Does the Future Belong to China?” by Fareed Zakaria, China now is the largest producer of coal, steel and cement, the second largest consumer of energy and the third largest importer of oil in the world. So, how is the rise of China going to affect the rest of the world in the future? Is it going to be a threat to the world’s currently only superpower, the United States, or it will turn out to be beneficial to the U.S and the rest of the world as well?

Personally, I agree with the Author that “America and China will be friends one day, rivals another, cooperate in one area, compete in another.” U.S needs China in its global war against terror yet U.S and China are also competing in global trade as well as oil. In addition, according to the article, the rapid growth of China has benefited the world, and in particular for U.S. One Morgan Stanley report shows that cheap goods imported from China have saved American consumers more than $600 billion in the past decade.

The rise of China is prompting the U.S to react with new proposals such as the Chinese K-16 Flagship Project. According to the San Jose Mercury News, this new program is part of “National Flagship Language Initiative”. Under this new program, students in kindergarten through college will be offered comprehensive Chinese language instruction classes. I’ve also heard from various news sources that more and more Caucasian, African American or even Hispanic students are enrolled in the Chinese classes. According to Zakaria’s article, 2,400 high schools plan to offer AP Chinese classes in 2007-10 times the number that plan to offer AP Italian.

My favorite blog

2005-02-07T17:30:00.000-08:00

There is a blog site that I visit almost everyday. I personally think it is probably the best blog site about living in Shanghai.

http://home.wangjianshuo.com/

3 more days to chinese new year

2005-02-05T22:50:00.000-08:00

I will probably end up not celebrating chinese new year this time because in America, there is just not enough motivation to celebrate it. Still gotta work!!!

Started selling on Ebay

2005-02-05T22:43:00.000-08:00

I recently started selling on ebay. Anyone interested can check out my ebay listings:

http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZexcellent_dealz