Edwin J. Nimpuno, the former Indonesian banker I met in Shanghai.

He is now retired in Shanghai but still actively investing in property in Shanghai as well as helping various groups like Tuan Sing (another Indonesian group which is investing big in Shanghai).

With permission :-)

My new toy, Nokia E61, the supposingly Blackberry-killer from Nokia. Got this yesterday and took sometime to play with it :-)

I love the full keyboard. It is actually usable! (and does not take too long to get used to)

I also like the big screen. I feels really good to read email on such big screen.

Aboveall, I love the unlimited data plan. I realised the impedence to use data disappear!

How about pulling all my gmails onto the phone? Why not? Set to auto-retrieve too!

The cool AgileMessager IM client that I wanted to try for a while? Sure, lets play with it. Keep the connection on too!

Or why not use Nokia Podcast to subscribe and download some podcast like mrbrownshow.com? The latest show is 12mb? Heck, why not!

Someone once told me that if you want some service to be popular, then just reduce the number of buying decision (not neccessary the price). Pay per use = decision every use vs Unlimited usage = one decision every month. Guess which wins?

A question I got quite often lately that is particularly not easy to answer.

The first thing to establish is what do the person mean by WiMAX? Because there are actually two kind of WiMAX, Fixed (802.16d) and Mobile (802.16e). The former is often used in point-to-point links whereas the latter is a point-to-multi-point configuration. Often, both tends to lump the two together as if it is the same but really, other than both are using OFDM, they are very different beast when it comes to deployment.

Fixed WiMAX is established whereas Mobile WiMAX is far newer and less tested in the field. However, the one which got everyone excited right now, e.g. Softbank, Sprint, ClearWire/Intel etc.

The main reason why everyone is excited about Mobile WiMAX is that it has the potential to be a competitor to other broadband last-mile technology, current dominated by DSL and Cable. Vendors are also beating the drum of how good the technology is, how it is able to serve 100mbps in a 10km radius which adds to the hype.

Sadly, that’s it: Hype and Hype.
Read the rest of this entry »

This isn’t the first time I was in Shanghai. Yet, Shanghai is a new city to me every trip. The more I come, the less I seem to know about the city.

Shanghai development is still going fast. You can still see a lot of buildings being built. The streets are packed and people are rushing from one point to another constantly, just like any other cosmopolitian city. But friends told me behind this exciting front, the development is saturated and people can feel the the growth rate is slowing down as compared to the last few years.

I also had several meetings that sadly I cant blog about yet. But suffice to say, it was an eye opener for me. I can really sense that the young people are in charge! I feel old! :-P

I suppose I can share this anecdote: I had two dinner last night (man I am still stuff!). Met some really interesting young people in Shanghai over dinner. The pretty young lady sat beside me was really surprised when I asked her name. I suppose when you are 李小路 (picture), you don’t go unrecognized here. Gosh I was embrassed. :P (btw, I learnt that she started acting when she was three…)

I am back in Beijing for a lunch appointment and will be flying back to Singapore tonight.

Overall, this was a very useful trip for me. I should do this more often.

Trying to catch up with my RSS but I am going to point out the talk by by James Enck at Telco 2.0 called : Ten things I hate about you.

Some of the ten things he mention arent new, stuff many people including myself have blog about in the last two years but heck, it is James Enck! When he speaks, CNN Money listen.

He said these at a conference full of telco executives at their face : telco can’t innovate and telco shouldn’t try to innovate :-)

I remember one of the things Singtel executives was pretty proud of is how they weather through the dotcom bust*. They love to say “we don’t have R&D. we buy product.” And given that Singtel has done excellently in the last couple of years, I think James Enck wasn’t too far off but damn, it is irriating being a technologist in Singapore trying to get the largest local telco interested in anything remotely in R&D.

Anyway, read his article. No wait, download his speech (torrent). :-) (I will do that when I am back home in Singapore).

* hush hush on C2C…”no really, we didn’t lost money during the dotcom bust”

Last year, I wrote about AJAX: “Oh, for programmers, I am sure AJAX programmers is going to be in demand.”

Now, I am writing to look for AJAX programmers to work with me on a project. It will be a 1-2 month project that you can do your own free time. Yes, you will be paid.

(Since we are on this topic, I am also looking for good J2ME & Symbian programmers)

If you are interested, drop me an email at james@seng.sg.

ps: Please don’t ask whats the project. Will tell you after you sign the NDA.

Got into Xiamen at 1am in the morning, catch some sleep before going for my 9am meeting. Before I went to Xiamen (my first trip btw), a friend told me Xiamen is one of the best city in China.

It is not as well developed as Shanghai or Beijing and it is a much smaller city (about 1M people). But the roads are not jam, people are more friendly and relax. Above all, yep, it is beautiful little island, very nice beach and a great weather. It is the “Hawaii of China”.

I wish I have more time to explore Xiamen (perhaps next trip) but I have to catch a 4pm flight to Shanghai for a dinner appointment with a friend. I know he reads my blog (hi! :-) and I am not certain if he minds me mentioning his name here. Anyway, he was one of the most influential banker in Indonesia before 1997 (financial crisis) but now retired in Shanghai (but still invest in Shanghai properties). And gosh, he is really funny and I really enjoyed hanging out with him :-)

After a long day, I managed to wiggle my way back to Pudong and now settled down in Andy’s apartment for the night. Thank god he has proper wireless here…but I probably should get some sleep. Another long day tomorrow.

A bit late but still interesting enough to repost here: Scienists found a way to squeeze more bits onto the copper that it is as fast as fiber. See Copper wire as fast as fiber?

The group hopes that the answer will be found in the use of Dynamic Spectrum Management (DSM) to boost DSL speeds. “The main obstacle for the advancement of DSL technology is the interference (“crosstalk”) generated from different DSL lines that share the same telephone cable binder,” said Professor John Cioffi, Professor of Engineering at Stanford University, a pioneer of DSM research. “DSM is a promising technology for the future evolution of broadband access networks using existing copper infrastructure.”

“Boss,” you begin, “about that $18 billion we just spent? Well, turns out it wasn’t strictly necessary…” – hehe :-)

Arrived in Beijing yesterday. After a long jam, finally arrived in Haidian District (海淀区), put down my lungage and then head off to Minzu Hotel for dinner with Andy Jacobs who happens to be in Beijing for a company party at the Great Wall tonight.

Went to CNNIC this morning to catch up with catch up with Mao Wei and bang into Shen Yang (沈阳), the editor of the QianLong. Havent met Shen Yang since Kyoto two years ago but he got a new title now: Comittee member for WG for Blog, Internet Society of China (ISC). Apparently, they are having a meeting to discuss the “policy for blogs in China”. Wow, I want to be in that meeting! But damn, Shen Yang said ‘No way!’.

Regardless, I spend a wonderful morning with Mao Wei who gave me an update of what they are doing. They just launched a mobile keyword service, a service where you can search and look things up using SMS on mobile phone. Pretty cool but it is not making a lot of money yet. Speaking of making money, I was pleasantly surprised when Mao Wei said that Chinese IDN under .cn is making as much money for CNNIC as the English domain names. The numbers are still small (~300,000) but Chinese IDN is fetching a prenium (~20USD chinese over 3USD for english). This is mostly thanks to the support of IDN in IE7. :-)

After that, I rushed to Beijing University to have lunch with Dr. Charles Lee who is giving lecture here this week. I met up with the team of MBAs who is working with him on his new venture fund. Young and smart folks! How smart? Statistically, the chance for someone to enter Beijing University is equal to the chance for someone in Singapore to win the President Scholarship. So go figure.

After a wonderful lunch, I went over to PayEase. I think I can finally blog about this now since the deal is closed – we invested in PayEase last month. PayEase is the oldest (>7 years) e-Payment company in China supported by Beijing government with one of the largest transaction volume. It was one of the award winners of Red Herring 100 Asia 2006. I was asked to keep an eye on this investment so I catch up with the management to get a progress update. They did good this quarter! :-)

24 hours in Beijing and now I am back in the airport flying to Xiamen. Going to spend a night there before flying to Shanghai tomorrow.

A friend just pointed me to this article: ICBC’s indicative price range offers discount versus peers

Price range indicates pre-greenshoe deal size of $15.9 billion to $19.1 billion for combined H and A share offering. The offering has the potential to become the world’s largest IPO.

Industrial and Commercial Bank of China has set a price range for its mega-size initial public offering. The range will value the stock at a discount of 10-22% to China Construction Bank – which is widely viewed as the bank’s closest comparable, sources familiar with the offering said yesterday. Based on current market prices it will also offer a discount to Bank of China, albeit a smaller one.

This was brewing for a while while touted as the largest IPO in the world. Now the figure is out, it looks like it may indeed be the largest one.

Read the rest of the article too as it contains very useful stats. If the report is true, the assets are extremely attractive.

Oh yea, I burst out laughing in the Krisflyer lounge when I read this (I got a few werid stares right now *glump*)

At the end of June, the bank had over 150 million personal customers – equal to the entire population of Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines combined – and 2.5 million corporate customers. The number of domestic branches totalled more than 18,000.

Unbelievable!

Oh yea, I am on my way to Beijing right now and perhaps over to Shanghai over the weekend.