All talks in town about whether Meg Whitman can run HP, and questions about her portfolio came out. While those are good questions for starters, nobody seems to recognize that HP needs a change agent from an external perspective.
Lou Gerstner also did not come from an IT background, but he has the vision and ability to find the appreciate the company’s strengths.
We should not dismiss Meg too early. But HP is reaching the point of all talk no action recently, perhaps in desperation. What is the point of announcing intentions without actions?
http://m.cnet.com/Article.rbml?&nid=20110022&cid=null&bcid=&bid=-92
Delicious has moved to a new owner
Dear Delicious User,
This is our final notice to let you know that Delicious is transitioning to a new owner, AVOS. To continue using Delicious, you must agree to let Yahoo! transfer your bookmarks and Delicious account information to AVOS by September 23, 2011. After your bookmarks and account information have been transferred, you will be subject to the AVOS terms of service and privacy policy.
Details:
Delicious has been acquired by the founders of YouTube, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen. As creators of the world's largest video site, Chad and Steve have enabled millions of people to share their interests and experiences with the world. Delicious will become part of their new company, AVOS, and retain its own brand and website, Delicious.com.
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Continue uninterrupted use of Delicious.
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Keep your Delicious username, account information, and all your bookmarks.
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Enjoy innovative new features that enhance your Delicious experience.
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Delicious in its current form will be available until September 23, 2011.
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After September 23, 2011, you will not be able to access your existing
Delicious account, including all bookmarks and account information.
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AVOS is a new Internet company led by Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, who founded YouTube, the world's largest video site. Before YouTube, Chad and Steve were early employees at PayPal, a leading online payment service that is now part of eBay. AVOS is based in San Mateo, California.
Learn more about moving your bookmarks. If you would like, you may export or download your bookmarks before the transition.
Thank you for using Delicious. Yahoo! has appreciated having you with us, and we are pleased to
be able to transfer Delicious to an incredible new owner – you're in good hands.
be able to transfer Delicious to an incredible new owner – you're in good hands.
The Yahoo! Delicious Team
Posted in Uncategorized.
– September 16, 2011
BofA Ordered to Pay $930,000 to Whistleblower – Bloomberg
Bank of America Corp. (BAC) must pay $930,000 to an employee who uncovered fraud at Countrywide Financial Corp. and was fired in violation of whistleblower protections, the U.S. Department of Labor said.http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-14/bofa-ordered-to-pay-930-000-to-whistleblower.html?cmpid=bit
Posted in Uncategorized.
– September 15, 2011
Online Photo Storage Review – Smugmug vs Picasa
My photos are taking too much space on my computer hard disk space. The plan is for me to offload my photos onto a reliable photo storage site, so that I can clear up the free space on my hard disk. I had a hard time deciding between Smugmug and Picasa, but I think Smugmug seems to be the better choice for me until Picasa can resolve my problems. Let me share my evaluation and thought process with you.
My Problems:
- Huge volume of photos on my computers and other devices that made it difficult for me to appreciate the photos I have previously taken.
- I do not find external USB drives reliable for long term storage and tend to keep multiple copies of the same set of photos on at least 2 different drives (on top of what I already have on my PC).
- I am looking to free up 20-30GB of photo storage on my PC to work on other stuff.
Drivers for finding online photo storage:
- I find myself getting out of touch with the online tools over the past 3 years while concentrating on my work.
- Facebook disabling my account without evidence of me violating their terms of services made me lose all my photos tagged of me overnight. This made me re-think about whether photos
- I was looking for a way to synchronize media from multiple devices (mobile devices, PCs from different sources, web pictures) onto the same storage platform,
Considerations:
- Credibility of long term backup storage, ie do I think the company’s business model is feasible for it to survive?
- Ability to mass download/export the photos on my local drive when needed.
- Security and Privacy with fine-grained gallery/photo based access control
- Decent navigation and good user interface capabilities.
Smugmug
I actually wanted to get a SmugMug account back in 2008, but I just graduated and did not want to commit to a monthly expense that can take potentially up to infinity. I’m also not a professional photographer, and I’m not sure how much I will be using Smugmug.
Smugmug Pros:
- -Fine-grained access control that allows users to password protect their galleries and specific photos. People who are invited to view your photos need not register an account with Smugmug.
- Beautiful organization of photos with different themes for the display of photos.
- Single application provider which provides iOS applications themselves, and their willingness to open up their APIs provides for a lot of third party tools to be created.
- It does not compress your photos upon upload, but retains the full resolution of the photo.
Smugmug Cons:
- It’s relatively expensive compared to Picasa (difference of US$20-US$35 a year for basic users with less than 20GB photo storage).
- Their iPad application seems to be a little unstable. I can’t pin-point it exactly, but it seems to keep crashing on me when I use it.
Picasa 3.8 (as of Sep 2011)
Picasa Pros
- It’s cheap, and operates on a pay-as-you go basis. This means that light users will not be penalized for what other users are using.
- It helps that photos up to 2048 x 2048 pixels and videos up to 15 minutes will not count towards your free storage.
- It is functional and the photos are relatively well-organized with minimal frills.
- It has some good third party iPad applications.
Picasa Cons:
- Lack of fine grained access control for individual albums and users.
- Privileged users has to register a Google account just to view photos (not everyone has a Google account)
- It is not optimized for a single source of backup despite what it mentions.
- The web sync is a uni-directional sync. Users who are not careful might end up losing their photos for good if they delete the photos on their local drives, thinking that their web copy will stay intact. It’s not very nice to know that Google is unlikely to restore photos that you have removed from Picasa Web Album.
- I am not convinced about Google’s roadmap and direction for Picasa web albums since they are too highly diversified. It didn’t help that the roadmap I see so far is only on the Picasa web client.
My decision:
While I’m really attracted to the pricing of Google Picasa, and finds that Picasa has its technical merits – it does not help that I’m not confident in data privacy when it comes to storing my data with them.
Because of Picasa’s lack of fine-grained access control for photo viewing/sharing, and that I do not think it functions well as a single online photo backup solution – I have decided to go ahead with SmugMug. I’m uploading my photos to test out their trial account now, and will probably purchase the application once the 14 days trial is over.
Posted in E-Stores, Review, Technology.
– September 11, 2011
Inside the Dignitas house | Society | The Guardian
I was just sharing with my closed one today that living to the age of 100 in 2050 may no longer be a luxury. We agree that at this point in time, we don’t see why we want to live beyond 70-80. Why add further to the country’s medical expenses, and also deprive the world of further resources beyond what is necessary?
What if, at some point in the future – The concept of assisted suicide is made possible. An option where people can choose not to wait till “that day comes”, but rather make a proactive approach to end your life in a hassle-free and convenient way?
It’s ironic that I just came across this article unintentionally about the concept of assisted suicide in Sweden. It looks a pretty attractive option, especially for countries with aging population. I believe that there is a limit to how much developed country should continue to increase their average life expectancy, except for a select few who wants to live as long as they possibly could given the technologies available. What I’m thinking however, is that there’s an increasing number of people who has opt out of longevity beyond retirement age.
You might want to read this article, and assess whether this is relevant for you. 
Inside the Dignitas house | Society | The Guardian .
– November 22, 2009
A special report on business in America: : Life is expensive | The Economist
A special report on business in America: : Life is expensive | The Economist.
If there’s anything I appreciated about Singapore – It’s the relentless efforts of the government to keep healthcare costs down and managable, without affecting the long term sustainability of the nation’s health care plans. Not many locals can appreciate how hard the government is working to keep healthcare costs from escalating. Be it through means testing or through shifting the medical burdens of a patient to their family. It is certainly not nice to have these burdens shifted to your own family (when you are one of the “victims”, but it is one way of ensuring the long term sustainability of our nations to cope with the increasing health-care costs.
If there’s anything worth mentioning in this article, it’s this one -
Employers can buy health insurance with pre-tax dollars. Individuals cannot. This creates an agency problem. When a typical patient goes to the doctor, he has no idea what anything costs. He pays only about 15% of the bill, so if the doctor recommends something he will probably say yes. The doctor gets paid for everything he does, so he has a powerful incentive to perform costly, unnecessary procedures. Besides, he may be socked for damages if he omits a test that a lawyer subsequently convinces a jury might have been useful. The costs are passed on to insurers, who pass them on to employers in the form of higher premiums, who then pass them on to workers in the form of lower pay.
My personal feel of the insurance coverage policies in Singapore – They are pretty sub-standard for the policy owners. I remembered my insurance coverage back in the States for a premium plan was based on an exclusion policy – ie the policies stated upfront which medical expenses they will not cover. The Singapore insurance industry policies only states which policies they will cover, leaving the policy owner to handle the whole universe of medical expenses. This is probably one way to contain the healthcare costs for the insurers. However, it led me to be really skeptical on the value of acquiring insurance in Singapore.
There are many reasons why American health care costs so much. Americans love fancy new medical technology. New drugs, for example, are prescribed a year or two earlier in America than in Europe, and do not come cheap. American doctors pay a fortune to insure themselves against frivolous lawsuits. A study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that even in cases where no medical error was found, plaintiffs received payments a quarter of the time. And half of medical malpractice payments were gobbled up by lawyers and overheads.
We always believed America to be on the fore-front of technology innovations, and these innovations are supposed to be driving down costs. But are they doing what they claim? There are times I’ve felt that the high level of entrepreneurial activities is actually caused by the number of internal problems that the country has. Lawsuits, insurance, and government regulations has raised the costs of doing business to an extent that the consumers are the ones who suffer. The lack of a proper public transport infrastructure makes it difficult for the lower class to continue on with their daily activities. The poor goes into a deep downward spiral of being poor always. Check these two articles out on the high costs of being poor in America.
By DeNeen L. Brown.Washington Post Staff Writer
2. Being Poor:
By John Scalzi, Sep 2005
Posted in Economics, Entrepreneurship, Lifestyle.
– May 31, 2009
5 months into my career
It’s been sometime since I’ve last blogged. An update for my career – I’m still an account manager in IBM, but I have been transferred (in Jan 2009) to serve the mid-market segment in Singapore for the industrial sector (manufacturing, electronics, construction, property) firms. I think I prefer serving that industry better – There’s more areas for potential innovation within it.
Generally people have the perception that IBM is still a hardware/PC/laptop company, even till date. I believe it is part of my role to change that perception. I have not touched the IBM AS400 before, but feedback from my customers has led me to believe that it is one of the most stable/robust servers ever created. I want to own this machine one day.
Although hardware is an easy sell (in terms of sales cycle), it is no longer profitable with all the vendors being engaged in price wars. If I have the chance to meet you one day, I can probably share with you IBM’s acquisitions over the years. The company’s vision of building a smarter planet (http://www.asmarterplanet.com/) is pretty much in-line with my vision of “digitizing the world”, and working in ways where technology can help make the world a slightly better place.
As time moves on, I’m gradually begin to appreciate the company for what it is, and has built a love-hate relationship with this firm. It will take me months to share with you the journey and learning experience I’ve went through over here the past 5 months. Till date, I have been involved in a few global projects, and have customers calling me in from overseas to share with me their requirements after going through my repsite. .
More updates to come as we go along – There’s too much on my mind that I like to share with the world.
Posted in Updates.
– May 31, 2009
Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source
I can’t believe the level of innovation going on at Apple. It’s really a breakthrough technology – Another whole new level.
Apple stands for electronic devices, what Google stands for web innovation. No further comments.
Posted in Technology.
– January 18, 2009
YouTube – Mac vs PC Transformers Version
Amazing creativity shown in this video – However, I was expecting the PCs to gang up on the Mac, and not the Macs to gang up on the PCs since there are still more PCs than Macs.
Posted in Fun.
– December 26, 2008
YouTube – Benoit Mandelbrot thinks we’re all screwed
YouTube – Benoit Mandelbrot thinks we’re all screwed.
It gets into this situation. I am skeptical of any good news regarding the current crisis the world is in, and is tired of hearing more Doomsday news and call-outs.
In the end, there’s so many directions the future can lead us to from this crisis. Nobody have the confidence to predict what will happen to the entire market. There might be wars, riots, jobless rates etc. But somehow or rather, people will survive it. That’s where our world starts all over again.
The advice I follow is – Be yourself and live life normally. Live within your means. You are not safe hoarding up on cash because inflation rates might shoot up. Your currency may devalue. There may be chaos and unrest.
You are not safe spending all your money either – I won’t need to elaborate more on that. You might think it’s a good time to buy stocks cheap, but this crisis is unlike any other crisis – The confidence in financial markets, and financial institutions are at an all-time low.
Posted in Society.
– December 23, 2008
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