I had a crazy month traveling across Shanghai, Hong Kong, New York, Chicago, Seattle, Palo Alto, Los Angeles and finally back in Singapore. It was great trip, mostly business but in between some personal stuff, catching up with ex-boss, old friends and making new ones. A great evening with Marc Canter and his family (love the Canter’s song! :-)

It was also a great time traveling in US as a Chinese. Taxi drivers rave non-stop about the amazing Chinese Olympic openings and for the first time, see China differently. (Well, I wasn’t born in China but still I am a Chinese :-)

On my way back to Singapore, AIMS published the recommendation on the changes to media policy in Singapore. I was one of the stakeholder they consulted early in the process so I got swamp by reporters who got an early preview of the document. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to read the final version before them so I couldn’t really answer most of their questions. Anyway, suffice to say, I was happy with the progress. It is a much bigger step in media liberalization that I expected.

So I was back in Singapore and I met a fund manager yesterday. She asked an interesting question:

“Why are there so many P2P companies in China and not in US?”

It is worthy to reflect on that question because in some ways it is true. In US, we have bittorrent.com but other than that, most P2P applications have pretty much gone. Napster, Kazaa, etc, gone.

Wait, what about Skype? Firstly, Skype is not US company. Secondly, Skype P2P is actually very simple – connect A to B, both behind NAT, via a supernode C. In fact, their Kazaa background has more complexity than Skype architecture.

Now compared it to China, the land of P2P Streaming with PPLive, PPStream and UUSee. There are numerous P2P downloads the most famous being Xunlei (backed by Google). And all of them are very successful : PPLive has over 100M installation based, 34M active users monthly.

So what happened?

I think it has to go back to the early 2000 when music industry decided to clamp down Napster. The defining moment was when Napster was shutdown by the court after years of lawsuit. Since then, anyone with a bizplan that even has the word “P2P” is unlikely to get funded. Innovation in P2P basically stop dead, with the exception of bittorrent and Skype, but both become relatively successful without VC backings.

On the other hand, P2P has no such stigma in China. Investments in P2P continues to flourish and today China can claim to have one of the most advance P2P technology in the world. To the extend that when people are finally trying to do video these days, people are looking towards China and see how video are being delivered in the number 1 broadband country in the world by number of subscribers but probably one of the worst by quality.

Look at the Olympics numbers. PPLive alone has more peak concurrent viewers (1.6M) than NBC (600k) and BBC (200k) add together.

There is a lesson to be learned: The unintended consequences of slapping a “evil” label on a technology where in reality, technology is neither good or evil, but rather the use of it.

Disclosure: I am associated with PPLive.

On the left is Pindar Wong, one of the pioneer of Internet in Hong Kong in the late 80s. When I first met Pindar in 1992, I was still merely a student whereas Pindar just sold his company, HKNet. Anyway had lunch with him two days ago. I couldn’t believe my eye when he hold up his mobile phone, an ancient Nokia phone (Nokia 3310) which does nothing else but just makes phone calls and maybe SMS.

And he is extremely proud of it :-) “It works!”, said Pindar, “it is the best phone made by Nokia”.

Which brings me to one of the latest Nokia, Nokia N810. The PR guys for Nokia offered a set for me to play with 2 months ago just before my crazy trip. Half way through the trip, my macbook dead which force me to really use the N810.

N810 isn’t really a phone. It is more an ultra-portable Internet tablet (Linux). It makes phone calls, yes, but via Skype but it is mostly a browser, IM and email device.

What I likes about the N810,

1. The form factor is perfect. It is a tablet and it has a slide out full keyboard. It is big enough to type with thumb yet small enough to fit into my pocket.

2. The concept, of browser, IM, email and skype all in one small device. If I don’t have a laptop (which I don’t have half way through my trip), those are the stuff I cannot live without.

3. There is an eco-system of developers porting other Linux applications onto N810.

But these are nothing new. I had it 3 years ago on my Zaurus, except N810 has a bigger screen.

Onto the bad stuff about N810,

1. The touch screen is horrible. I don’t need multi-touch but when I click on something, I expect it to click, and I expect the UI to indicate I click. Very often, I find myself tap…tap tap…tap tap tap…and still no respond.

There is a reason interface designers allocate the highest CPU priority to interface since the beginning of computing.

2. Installation of apps is complicated. There are probably like 3-4 ways I can get apps onto the device. Each of them involve multiple steps like, visit a website, click on the download, which will fire up installer, which would ask me if I want to install a repository, which would take a while, and then a confirmation of the application I wanted, which is likely to promote another warning that it is unsigned, and finally I get to download it…and no, one more click to install.

I just want an app onto the device. I want to click that app, please do the rest.

3. The touch screen is horrible (did I mention that?). It is a small screen so the the icons are already very small. If I click one icon, i get the one next to it. argh. back/cancel, reload, click, wrong again. arghh.

You either figure out a way to make the button bigger or you make a more fine-resolution touch screen. You don’t make a device which has small button and lousy resolution touch screen, without providing alternative.

iPhone touch screen is also at the bad resolution level but it works. It works because very often it makes the button big, or it allows you to zoom it to be big, and if it is not zoomable, you can hold it down, move it a bit until you get the right one.

I could go on more (out of memory, slow apps respond, the keyboard layout, camera for video conferencing that skype don’t support etc) but here is the one and one reason that I leave N810 at home these days.

4. The web browser do not work with Gmail.

“Wait, it works”, you said. Yes, go to gmail.com, and it load up fine. It even render gmail as you expected. Now, try using it.

Not the UAT of “does the browser render gmail.com?” but really use it for your daily use. Try using it for an hour. I did. Within 5 mins, the browser slow down. Any clicks would take ages to register. Even scrolling up and down is retarded.

But no, thats not the worst; wait till you try to compose/reply. As you type your email, the letters you type appears 30-60sec after you press it. So yep, you could either press a letter, wait 60 sec, and then type another. Or you could just type it blindly and …. until you made a typo then god help you.

Yes, it renders fine but no, it does not work. Any Internet tablet that does not work with one of the most popular web email today is not acceptable. Asking me to use the native Email application is not an option. You are out of your mind when you ask me if I would switch to another web email. I like gmail and I had everything setup there. I am not going to switch web email just to use N810. If N810 don’t work with Gmail, it stays at home with the pile of other gadgets I had but no longer use.

I feel really sad for the problems I have with N810. Nokia is famous for its UI engineering. People like Pindar and myself like buy those early Nokia phones because “it works!”. I was a loyal Nokia phone users for nearly 8 years, including the failed N-Gage. These UI problems I have with N810 is not something I expected from Nokia.

Maybe Pindar is right. The best Nokia phone is the Nokia 3650. My favorite Nokia phone is still the 88X0 (I bought at least 5×8850 and 2×8890). It is downhill since then.

Awesome!

via Marc

We set off on 24th early morning. We did our immigration clearance on the west side of Sentosa. We set off immediately to the east. Wind condition was bad so we were on our engine assisted sailing. Along the way, we saw a Malaysia police marine heading towards Pedra Branca, for the first time in 30 years allowed to be near there since the Malaysia now owns two (strategic) rocks. We also saw the Singapore stealth ship (I think) near there.

I done my fair bit of sailing but this is my first extended trip. The difference is like playing golf at the range and at the green – similar yet dramatically different. When you are out in the sea, no land nor ship in sight, you suddenly realised you are so insignificant. Your life is really in the hand of God, regardless of how much planning you do.

When the sunset, it sea sparkled and shimmered across the horizon, quietly, only the sound of the wind and the splashing of the waves.

Nightfall is the time to find a place to anchor, flipping through maps, wind and tide forecast and using GPS as a guide, you wonder how the heck sailors in the past did it without all the modern technologies.

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I was asked to introduce and moderate this evening session with Vint Cerf in Singapore jointly organized by The Digital Movement and IDA.

I didn’t take much notes but I managed to twitter a bit here and there during the session.

Vint Cerf is a great speaker and therefore really needs very little moderating nor prompting. On the other hand, I find myself fumbling quite a bit…looks like I am getting rusty at public speaking and presentation. But hey, the star of the show is Vint and he definitely took it!

Okay enough fun for the evening and time to pack my stuff. I am going sailing for the next couple of days to Tioman, hopefully coming back alive. Wish me luck!

Goodbye lands of the Vikings.

Waiting for the plane to go back to Singapore for a short transit (a warm bath and change of cloths) before flying to Shanghai. See you on the other side of the globe.

I think this is my first trip to Copenhagen but I am not sure. Small city (about 1M people) but lovely town. And gosh, they love their hotdogs!

Wrapping up my vacation in, erm, I can’t remember how long but must have being several years. Vacation for me means staying in my bed and playing World of Warcraft for 3 days. As my sis-in-law getting married in France, my wife insist we take a short vacation through Swiss Alps, thru Geneva and end in Paris.

Anyway, time to go back to work. Boarding now. See you in Copenhagen.