VoIP Censoring in China
12/31/2010 | 
Author The Chinese regulator has declared Internet phone services other than those provided by China Telecom and China Unicom as illegal, which is expected to make services like Skype unavailable in the country.
The decision was criticized as a measure to protect the duopoly of state-owned telecom carriers, media reports said yesterday.
Two birds with one stone. Monitoring is now easier and the international invasion of VoIP services are gone.
Smart move. Looks like this new law will feed more anti-government services.
Posted in CityVille’s Advertising
A lot of the talk around Facebook enthuses wildly about the social graph and virality as being great drivers of engagement, but I believe these effects are being wildly over-estimated. They exist, and are a factor, but actually only a small factor in how games spread. How Facebook really works is visibility.
The Facebook interface induces a high degree of user blindness. It does not do a great job of exposing new games and applications, and lacks a directory or a ‘Featured in the App Store’ style of editorial (as Apple does for the iPhone), which means that for most developers there are huge problems in getting their games in front of users’ eyeballs.
With all of the free advertising channels on the platform now constrained or dead, this has meant that the Facebook economy has been acquiring an increasingly Darwinian shape.
Where it used to be an egalitarian environment in which any developer could strike it big, over the last year it has become top-heavy with larger developers accruing exponential success, and cutting off oxygen to smaller companies by default.
Leeching off bigger companies may be a good idea at times. It is not always easy when the host realizes these intentions and starts cutting off pests. Zynga’s reputation certainly helps push out new products, but its advertisement designers are one of a kind. The number of places to advertise is key but the level of visibility is of crucial concern. Eye-catchers without the annoying pop-ups are the best.
Companies like Zynga that survive on the huge-user-base-free-service model need to spend a gigantic amount of money to reach out – which is also what AlphaCoding needs. We mustn’t be stingy on these campaigns – after all, the Facebook-like social model is proven successful into the 21st century.
Alphaline Movie Download Service
After Wal-mart, Best Buy and Amazon jumped on the digital delivery bandwagon it’s clearly evident that just offering discs for sale isn’t enough, and right on schedule Sears and Kmart are launching Alphaline Entertainment, a new venture created for the sole purpose of selling downloadable movies online.
The era of digital download has officially begun. First softwares, then books, now converting movies, there is no doubt the future lies in a fast, widely-connected Internet, where no physical hardware is necessary other than the bare minimum. We need to ride the trend and help structure a better computing future.
Microsoft The Most Innovative 2010
First off, after slimming its Xbox 360 hardware and just about eliminating the “red circle of death” failures that cost gamers hundreds of dollars in console investment, Microsoft snagged the console sales lead from Nintendo’s Wii and has held it for months. Also, after years of taking a back seat to the Wii’s fun little motion controllers and Miis and getting beaten to market by Sony’s PlayStation Move motion device, Microsoft sold 1 million versions of its $150 controller-free Kinect motion-capture device within 10 days of its Nov. 4 release and 2.5 million before the end of November. By all accounts, that should have been a tough sell, considering the console itself goes for as little as $199, but a good concept and great third-party partner products such as Viacom’s infectious Dance Central remind us what Microsoft is capable of when its back is to the wall.
It looks like TheStreet has confused the terms “Innovation” and “Revenue”. Certainly, an innovative product usually gets good reviews and customer attraction, but a well-selling product may just be the same old trick, useful nonetheless. Same logic with movies: many rotten ones still rock the box office because of (previously successful) famous actors.
We have to ask ourselves: how much impact does an invention make? People buy, use and forget – is it still considered innovative? What about the case of hear, praise and extend? If the criterion for evaluation is simply the number of users coerced, Microsoft is clearly the big winner.
Employee Rebels
Many computer engineers consider a job offer from Google as the golden ticket.
Outdoor volleyball courts, free gourmet food, on-site haircuts, massages and laundry are among the perks Google has offered its employees at its main campus in Mountain View, California.
But some of the people who do leave are challenging the company in the best way an engineer knows how: by developing programs that could detract from Google’s core business.
It may not be everyday news former employees make a living out of the knowledge obtained from previous positions. But cautions must be made – as long as there are weaknesses to be exploited, such as privacy concerns, there will be groups eying the profit. We must take users’ opinions into consideration to avoid such possible embarrassments/losses. Customers are always gods.
Anti-Theft CPU
Intel’s new Sandy Bridge processors have a new feature that the chip giant is calling Anti-Theft 3.0. The processor can be disabled even if the computer has no Internet connection or isn’t even turned on, over a 3G network. With Intel anti-theft technology built into Sandy Bridge, David Allen, director of distribution sales at Intel North America, told ITBusiness that users have the option to set up their processor so that if their computer is lost or stolen, it can be shut down remotely.
Isn’t this an overkill? I’m sure the payment to Verizon outweighs the “expected loss” due to computer theft. An interesting approach to business security nonetheless.
State of Digital Gaming
An analysis of videogame purchasing habits by market research firm The NPD Group has found that 29 per cent of games bought in the last three months were done so digitally.
Of those surveyed, 47 per cent of digital buyers said they made their purchases using online gaming sites and services, such as BigFishGames and Steam. 42 per cent bought through app stores or mobile phone carriers, with thirty per cent using console services such as Xbox Live and PSN.
These figures look promising. In 5 years it will be more 50% or more as digital content is taking over physical media (another born-and-kill).
We should have at least one solid plan taking over some of this digital market.
All-You-Can-Eat Movie Box
Creative Technology Ltd. today introduced the revolutionary ZiiEagle Movie Box that contains The Complete Celestial’s Shaw Brothers Film Collection of 668 fully restored and digitally re-mastered movies priced lower than pirated DVDs. First of its kind, the ZiiEagle Movie Box is a state-of-the-art single home entertainment device designed to contain entire collections of high definition digital content for easy, safe and prudent viewing through viewers’ home entertainment systems.
In the form of an ultra-compact media playback device, the ZiiEagle Movie Box is the direct result of Creative’s years of research and development on its Zii StemCell Computing™ Technology. It is also the result of Creative’s collaborative efforts with its content partner, Celestial Pictures, through Vue Networks, an associated company of Creative and a regional content creation and media technology company.
This marketing campaign sounds suspicious but looks legitimate. How do you sell below pirated prices? Just like Groupon, Zii is trying to make profit with the mass-production-low-cost strategy.
One thing I do not understand is the price determination of intellectual properties. I can see there is always a projected revenue, which should be more than the production costs. But how do you know if a lower price would result in more profit because interested people could all afford? Unlike hardware sales where parts have to be bought, digital products have a near-zero base cost plus some sort of labor hours. Unless you are a successful game studio like Infinity Ward, I do not believe a high starting market price would be wise for startup products. When the prize is good and price is right, users would come handing over their tributes in no time.
Internet vs. TV
Americans are now spending as much time using the Internet as they are watching television, and the amount of time people spend on the Internet has increased 121 percent over the last five years, according to a survey published Monday by Forrester Research.
While people younger than 30 years old have spent more time with the Internet than television for several years, Forrester’s survey shows that this is the first year that people in older age groups are also doing so. The amount of time spent on the Internet for personal uses tails off among older groups, ranging from about 12 hours a week for adults under 30 to about eight hours for people over 66 years old.
I don’t understand why stubborn TV supporters would not give up. TV killed radio, and Internet is here to terminate TV. The technologies are here, but the (government) management has not made the switch yet.
This reminds me that Google is again the leader in technology trends. Google TV is the exact concept we need as we head into the next decade. When other companies realize the huge market couch potatoes have opened up, Google will be way ahead in the race.
网络投票
“眼看着人家的票数，三两天就增加了10多万票，心里真的凉飕飕的。” 昨天，正在参加某摄影比赛的周先生看着网上公布的票数，很有点“目瞪口呆”的感觉。“票数增长很不正常的那几个，估计是雇佣了刷票公司。” 周先生告诉记者。据周先生说，如今越来越泛滥的网上投票，催生出了一个全新的生意—— “刷票业”。只要付费，刷票公司就能保证让你在最短时间内投出大量的票数，让“客户”轻松获得名次。由于这一灰色产业的存在，使得网络投票越来越不被人信任。
刷票公司，现在真是干什么的都能想出来。显然，如果网络投票的系统可以更好的运用CAPTCHA，这种情况会减缓很多，因为这些公司得真的雇人去一票一票识别和点击。不过，也许GCD已经解决了CAPTCHA这个问题，只是闷声不响而已。当然，就算图片识别哪天真的被解决了，总会出现更好的区分人和机器的系统，当然这样就会养活更多的公司和研究生。所以我们也要与时俱进，时时关心这个市场需要的，和我们有能力竞争的。