Naked Corporation by Don Tapscott and David Ticoll

I been taking the train to work lately. Standing in the train and typing this in my Zaurus, I begin to wonder how long will it take for the Internet to be really perversive.

I mean, the technologies are already here. We have Wifi (802.11), 802.16, 3G etc. But getting companies to invest and deploy these infrastructure is still a problem. Getting such services to the consumers at an affordable price is a bigger one.
Read the rest of this entry »

I been thinking about something Joi told me over lunch last week: “Power company is making tons of money off data center”.

Power is something we take for granted. We assumed it is there whenever we need it. We don’t even factor it in our network design. Yet, in a discussion of Internet business model, here, the most boring of all business is making money from the Internet!

Now, many smart people has already said how Internet is going to be like power, about how Internet is going to be ubitquous, always on and anywhere. No doubt about the trend, but that’s not what’s interest me.

I been thinking about vertical integration vs horizontal layering and what’s that means for businesses and consumers. I am also thinking about the effect of such fundamental changes. And most important of all, I been thinking what the telecommunication industry can learn from the power industry.
Read the rest of this entry »

Broadband pentration in Japan rise to 13.6M or 29% of the household at the end of Dec 2003, according to MPHPT. This means there are nearly 5.8M new subscribers in the last 12 months. Following the trend, we are seeing about 1/2M new subscribers per month.

The main driver for this growth apparently are Broadband Phone and File Sharing. Broadband Phone, as you know, allows subscribers to make free phone calls to another fellow subscribers, even if you are calling from Tokyo to Kyoto.

File Sharing, on the other hand, is a more interesting trend. The poliferation of Personal Video Recorder (PVR) especially those that have external harddisk coupled with the Japan legistration that allows sharing of recorded shows with “members of the same household” means more people are getting Broadband so they can share these files.

Read the rest of this entry »

That’s one big question which has been bugging a lot of people: What happened? There are a lot of theory but I got the most interesting one today from Dave’s IPer. It is an article by Dr. Carl Jensen title “The Unmaking of a President – 2004”.

What is scary is that the media company has take it upon themselves to be the “King Maker”.
Read the rest of this entry »

Oh boy…I almost thought I couldn’t walk back from the station. My legs are dead. I did a lot of walking today and my shoes aren’t really suited for that. Somehow, I made back to my hotel in one piece.

My first appointment is 10am at Hotel New Otani. I reached Nagata-cho station at 9:50am with (supposingly) enough time to walk across the road to the hotel. But I went to the wrong exit and got lost :P. After wandering around for 15mins, I panic and jump into a cab. The cab driver asked me twice to confirm where I am going, make two quick turns and happily collect my 660 yen. *sigh*
Read the rest of this entry »

Today is an easy meeting too. We spend some time to go through the resolution one by one to clean it up. Then we pass the resolutions fairly easily and wrap up the meeting by noon! Yeap!

Oh, I also got a pleasant surprising getting an invitation to hook by from Theodore Ts’o who is part of the US delegation. Ts’o is a well-known Linux kernel hacker and fellow IETF’er among other things. Always nice to meet cool people.
Read the rest of this entry »

Meeting today was smooth, much smoother and faster then what I expected. In fact, it went so well that we finish at 3pm. I stayed on to help to draft the resolutions but otherwise, things goes well. We also conclude that there is no need to meet again.

This is our first participation in SC22-LRG and they conclude the meeting to say “Okay, we are done!”. Haha.
Read the rest of this entry »

I have a bit of trouble waking up this morning after a late night. I was suppose to have breakfast with Michael Clark (part of Singapore delegation) and I got more then I bargain for. I ended up having breakfast with both Michael and Scott McNeil, the Executive Director for the FreeStandards, whom I havent seen since last Nov. After breakfast, we head towards Waseda University for our meeting.

John Hill (SUN) was the rapporteur of this JTC1-SC22-LRG meeting and we spend the first half of the meeting on administrative issues. Boring (but neccessary) task of rollcalls, agenda, JTC1 procedure. During which I made some noise about admitting documents during meeting (and not before). Some folks thinks I am trying to create trouble.
Read the rest of this entry »

I am flying to Tokyo in a few hours time for the ISO/ITC JTC1/SC22 Linux Rapporteur Group. As the name suggest, the group is going to create ISO standards for Linux.

I couldn’t wrap my head around this initially, considering most people prefer Linux to be on ISO disk instead. But I think there is value to bring LSB into ISO, and ISO standards are recongized in WTO.

Anyway, I will be there for an week and will be meeting some incredible fun people. More about it to come :-)