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Monthly Archive for May, 2005

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Blogging in China

Published on 18 May, 2005 in China. 0 Comments

A friend casually cautioned that I better watch what I blog since I’m now in China. One wrong comment could land me in who knows where. Worst, access to my site would simply be blocked. What could be worst then losing net connection for a netizen?

I’m indeed worried. Come from a country like Singapore, I have some notion of what "big brother" policies and tactics is like. But China is a much bigger brother.

But it is not like blogging is banned in China. Blogging is hot. One just has to be careful of the content, I reasoned. Now, if big brother buy the reason.

I was surprised to find site like The Horses Mouth which seems to be walking on a tight rope. The China related content seems somewhat sensitive to me (or I’m too sensitive). Of course the è€Â?外1might have some high up connections which I do not have.

Within China, blogging sites like Blogcn, Blogchina probably command a user based comparable in size to sites like Blogger. Technical content site CSDN also recently introduced a blog.

User blogging in Chinese (but not necessary from China) is significant. In fact, I noticed recently that Blogger spots a chinese interface when view with a Chinese-based browser. Though I had not tried, I believe other blogging sites has similar chinese interface.

All the open source blog applications I know has a translated chinese interface and can support Chinese input. So sites can runs the own blog application hosted on their own domain (like my).

This is where things get slightly trickly. Some time this April, China passed a regulation that all personal websites in China must be registered (备案). This includes all the blogs that are individually maintained. I’m not sure whether I fall into that category since my blog is hosted outside of the country. But no matter how virtual the net is, I’m physically in China. So there is genuine cause for concern.

1 Old foreigner, a term use to describe westerner as opposed to foreigner of Asian origin.

The “Be Your Own Boss” model

Published on 16 May, 2005 in Business Models. 0 Comments

Many friends ask me about those "be your own boss", "retire early", "work at home", "get wealth" websites. They are everywhere - you will find them in your mailbox, in your search result, masquerading as bona fide websites, masquerading as providing advice, masquerading as softwares. Just about every where on the internet, you will find them.

Most of the time people ignored them. But once in a while, someone’s heartstring gets tugged by a moving script - a call to get out of the rut and hold our destiny in our own hand.

Really that’s the name of the game. These people had so mastered marketing and the internet. They know how to sell to the reader, go for the deepest needs and desire. They know what typical internet user will do and they had all the ambushes ready, waiting to spring on the next unwarily victim.

There is no free lunch in the world. Work hard, reap reward, that’s my belief.

But… these people did worked hard. OR at least I believed some did.

Anyone that had tried running proper internet business will know it is hard work getting to the top of search engines, sending out marketing emails, writting marketing scripts, creating content, driving traffic, getting visitors, turning visitors to customers. Repeat.

Because of these sites the hard work of internet marketing are getting tougher. Sending good signal above all these noise is a huge challenge. Experienced Internet users know the scam from the real McCoy. But to novice users, these sites often did a much better job marketing and appealled to them.

Ever wonder why smart outlaws are rich and hardworking people are, well, still working hard? 

Serendipity the blog

Published on 15 May, 2005 in Free Desktop. 0 Comments

Not technically a desktop application but a web-application. Serendipity is the blog application that’s behind this site.

By web application, it simply means the program runs remotely on the web server that host this site. When you use the browser (Firefox or Internet Explorer, for example) to access this site, the program runs behind the scene to generates the pages you are reading now. The application also provides functions that allow me to update entries, add pictures, change layout and many other tasks.

I just upgraded Serendipity to the latest version and was pleasantly delighted. For the simplicity in upgrading and using, it deserves a mention here.

Adding a little plug, if you like to have a blog site like Simple Business, give Fusion Flux a visit. Fusion Flux is the hosting service that hosts this site.

The de-pegging of the Chinese Yuan against Dollars

Published on 14 May, 2005 in China, Investing and Startup. 0 Comments

The Chinese yuan exchange rate against Singapore dollars is something I monitor quite closely to me since I spent my Singapore dollars here in China.

Recently there is a heightened expectation that the Chinese will soon de-peg or at least loosen the peg of the Yuan to the US dollars. Many people know that the yuan is in reality stronger than what the current value suggests. So it is expected to raise once the peg is release.

Now, I’m now a big time investor nor do I have millions being transferred. But the implication is no less significant.

Buy Low, Sell High

Published on 11 May, 2005 in Quotes and Startup. 0 Comments

"Buy Low, Sell High, Collect Early and Pay Late" - D. Levin from his book with the same title.

Seemingly simple, utterly difficult to achieve for a small businesses.

Buy low - with no bargaining power, hardly anyone is willing to discount. Small businesses are mostly price takers.

Sell high - cut-throat competition drive price lower than ever. Forget about providing better service to command a premium. Service is a given, not a paid for. Brand? Got to build it first.

Collect early - probably the most workable among the four. Be daring to ask. Most of the time I found that customers at least pays on time. Be creative to structure payment schedule.

Pay late - to maintain good working relationship, there is a limit to how long payment can be dragged.

Living in China, embracing chin-na

Published on 11 May, 2005 in China. 0 Comments

When a Singaporean use the term "chin-na" to describe chinese-like, it usually has a demeaning connotation.

Consider style, the javanese, balinese, thai style are hip, stylish and in while the chin-na style stood out as being "obiang" - meaning untrendy or downright lack of taste. Dare a Singaporean to deco his home chin-na style, he might rather be homeless.

Style aside, the term encompass more just "look" but also "feel" - the behaviour, way of doing things.

Strangely, despite being chinese by race, most Singaporean chinese are quick to distance themselves from the mainland chinese. Admittedly I belonged to this camp, especially during the school days.

Now, more then a year now since I first set foot and stayed in China, I think otherwise.

Agast! I am getting more and more like a China man. I suspect friends will soon start commenting on my chin-na hair style, chin-na clothes, china-na speech, chin-na behaviours…

I had grew sympathetic, or even to appreciate the chin-na way. Underneath the unrefined behaviourism is a civilisation proud of its thousand years heritage. Still, to the "cilivised" foreigners, many of the Chinese behaviours are just that, uncilivised.

With the rapid growth and the eagerness to enter this country, the chinese might just get away with it. Horrors of horrors, the danger lies herewith. Simply by its vastness and populousness, China is assimilating foreigners before the foreigners can impress on theirs. "Thank you very much foreigners, we will just take what’s beneficial and do it the Chinese way."

It is like swimming against a torrent. Me? I’m keeping afloat. I selectively be chin-na while holding back the undesiables influences. I believe after the torrent is the sea of tranquility. China is a jade being craved and polished. Before the brilliance can shine through, the rough and the undesiable had to be smoothen and chipped away.

China car license plate

Published on 9 May, 2005 in China. 0 Comments

One thing that facinates me while travelling around China is the car license plate. Each license plate has a chinese character that signifies which province (or city/region/zone) the vehicle is from. Of course this is similar to Malaysia for example, where cars from different states are denoted by different starting alphabets.

What so interesting is that not all the characters are not directly derived from the name. Often they are also words which I couldn’t attach a sound to.

Here’s a round up of the characters.

  1. Anhui 皖 (wǎn)
  2. Beijin 京 (jīng)
  3. Chongqin � (yú)
  4. Fujian 闽 (mÇ�n)
  5. Gansu 甘 (gÄ�n)
  6. Guangdong 粤 (yuè)
  7. Guangxi 桂 (guì)
  8. Guizhou 贵 (guì)
  9. Hainan � (qióng)
  10. Hebei 冀 (jì)
  11. Heilongjiang 黑 (hēi)
  12. Henan 豫 (yù)
  13. Hubei 鄂 (è)
  14. Hunan 湘 (xiÄ�ng)
  15. Jiangxi 赣 (gàn)
  16. Jilin � (ji)
  17. Liaoning 辽 (liáo)
  18. Inner Mongolia 蒙 (měng)
  19. Ningxia � (níng)
  20. Qinghai � (qīng)
  21. Shaanxi 陕 (shǎn)
  22. Shandong é²� (lǔ)
  23. Shanghai 沪 (hù)
  24. Shanxi 晋 (jìn)
  25. Sichuan � (chu�n)
  26. Suzhou � (sū)
  27. Tianjin 津 (jīn)
  28. Tibet è—� (zàng)
  29. Xinjiang 新 (xīn)
  30. Yunnan 云 (yún)
  31. Zhejiang 浙 (zhè)

For more in-depth infomation, refer to the reference.

reference: Mainland Chinese licence plates

Free Anti-Virus programs - ClamWin

Published on 2 May, 2005 in Free Desktop. 0 Comments

This article is updated at FreeBizWare

One class of software which I thought will remain the stronghold of commercial companies are the Anti-Virus softwares.

ClamWin Antivirus is one of the better open source anti-virus program invading that
stronghold. I decided to check it out after reinstall Win XP on my
desktop.

My first impression after looking at the main screen of the program is that it still have a long way to catch up with commercial equivalents.

There is a insecure feeling that it might not catch that virus that will wipe out my system. But with nothing to lose on this desktop system, it gets to stay on as the system’s virus sentry.

On its first try, it spotted a vb virus on a friends usb thumbdrive, so it works!

Despite the spartan look it is has fairly complete features.

  • file scanning
    speed is rather slow (no quantitiave data though but does seems slower)
    Nice animation.
  • online virus database update
    initial database took a while to download, subsequent updates are fast and simple.
  • Nice set of preference

Wish List

  • scanning on file access, download
  • clean, recover file
  • integration with email scanning
    There is a another project on Sourceforge that provides this but it is not sure if they work together

ClamWin is based on the ClamAV antivirus engine. Harnessing the power of the community, the concept of an opensource virus directory look set to takeover the commercial counterpart.

Where to get it?

http://www.clamwin.com/
Current version: 0.83
Function: Windows Anti virus scanner

Too many things too little time

Published on 1 May, 2005 in Entrepreneur. 0 Comments

A common problem of entrepreneur. Wanting to do many things or thinking that there are many things that can be done.

This week was a terrible one. Went into a new portal project with a partner, planning a accounting application product (still in planning and design). Two more friends contacted me for a possible link up, so spent time discussing with them and thinking. On top of that one existing project is giving problem - design specification was not clarified (sounds familar?), so had to work extra hard to get client and designer on the same page.

It’s all in a week’s work, but definitely have to watch out for overstretching myself and spreading too thin.

Oh well, I am spending the next week which is a holiday week working out the details.