What I missed in a Windows Phone (after switching to iPhone)

I have been using a Windows Phone 7.5 (HTC Radar) for about 9 months before I made the switch to iPhone 5 yesterday. Since the switch (I changed the carrier also, from T-Mo to VZ), I have enjoyed and cherished every single minute. The vastly improved UI, large number of apps, and much faster network speed represent a revolutionary improvement in user experience. However, I did find myself missing a few things from the crappy Windows Phone. The HTC Radar itself is solidly built phone, a well made, stable piece of hardware. I believe all the frustrations with this phone are rooted solely in the OS.

I will save my rant against the poor OS. here are the a few things I actually liked (unfortunately they are not available on iPhone)

1. native integration of social network/email accounts with Contact. On the Windows Phone, the Contact not only contains the basic info such as phone #, address, and name, the Contact function also pulls in (after your setting up respective accounts of course) your contacts' profile information from social networks such as LinkedIn, FB, and Twitter. Therefore in Contact, you get a much fun glimpse of a person's background (updates, career, and photos). Also, it comes very handy when your original entry only has an email address, and then Contact includes the person's phone number disclosed on LinkedIn, or the other way around. Very useful when you want to reach out to someone you just acquainted with.

2. Chinese pinyin input on Windows Phone is so much more intelligent than the one on iPhone. I can get most of the more recent and trendy phrases correct the first time, on the Windows Phone. Also it remembers my personal phrases and words very faithfully. I have none of that on the iPhone. iPhone's input seems to have a tiny dictionary, even some of the most traditional idioms are included.

3. Office apps: needless to say, for work, a native office app and respective file formats (doc, xls) can be transferred seamlessly to my work desktop.

I will save my words on how wonderful iPhone 5 is, as I will save my anger to say what crappy job MS has done in its mobile phone OS.

Tiny Things Do Add Up

Via Joel

So that's what days were like. A bunch of tiny frustrations, and a bunch of tiny successes. But they added up. Even something which seems like a tiny, inconsequential frustration affects your mood. Your emotions don't seem to care about the magnitude of the event, only the quality.

Of Tech Media

The constant flow of news articles in major tech networks such as TechCrunch, VentureBeat, GigaOM is mostly worthless. It provides background noise for those working in tech. only once in a quarter or a year do they break out some true newsworthy events. Other times, they get away with replicating stories of minimum importance for the sake of occupying blank space on the web page. After all, these are media outlets, they are in the business of producing news articles and sell ads. They are in equivalent of MC and KFC in the online world, churning out tasteless blobs of words to satisfy the attention deficit office workers.

Profiling Chinese Low-cost Smartphone Vendors - Innos

Today marks the beginning of a series of (hopefully I can hang on to it till at least the 2nd profile) profiles of lesser internationally known Chinese smartphone vendors. The purpose of this series is to document the growing popularity of $100-$200 smartphones coming out of China. I believe this is a multi-year trend that will greatly benefit consumers, service providers, software developers, and hardware manufacturers.

The term "1000 RMB" smartphone has been in the media for over 2 quarters. We talk about often but rarely do we see a capable model on the market yet. Right now. perhaps the "1,500 RMB smartphone" is the better name for those low-cost smartphones that are equipped with more than adequate chipsets, small innovative designs (more to discuss later), and rapid design cycles. Further, if you are willing to spend double the 1,000 RMB, you get a powerful "2,000 RMB smartphone" with performance on par with middle-upper tier major brands. Of course, user experience and design quality are often lacking comparing to leading OEMs such as Samsung or Apple. But we should nevertheless note that some major OEMs are paying attention to this segment: mostly notably mainland powerhouse such as ZTE, Lenovo and Huawei. Samsung also participate with its Galaxy Y using Broadcom's reference design. (technically Galaxy Y is not participating; but its use of reference design and other cost-conscious specs are very typical of 1,000 RMB smartphone group).

There comes the Innos, a lesser known mainland brand. (your humble writer got to know this name about 12 hours before starting to write this piece). The brand is targeting the university students, each of the three models (low end, mid end, and high end) has its own features that differentiated the model and caters to the needs of the target customers.

The beginning level a35 uses the Qualcomm MSM 7227t platform with 800MHz (Snapdragon S-1, entry level SoC based on ARM11). 7227 is a much older chipset in the Snapdragon family. Released in 2008, it is perhaps one of the most popular Snapdragons. Notable models that also have 7227 are HTC Legend, HTC Wildfire S, Huawei Sonic, Palm Pixi, T-Mobile MyTouch Slide, ZTE Blade, Galaxy Ace. But the 7227t is a much up-to-date, improved version of 7227 released in the second half of 2011. As a QRD (Qualcomm Reference Design) platform, it corrected a lot of the flaws in 7227, and added the support for Flash 10. It also preceded 7227a (in I5) by about a quarter.

The popularity of 7227 and its improvement 7227t has made Innos i35 a relatively low risk model to take on. i35 features lossless audio playback and dual headphone outlet - a rather fitting feature considering how often college students couple listening music together when they spend time together in the library or the self-study rooms. This gentle emphasis on music playback ability and quality is universal across all three Innos models.Also notably is that even this low end model has both front and back facing cameras. Perhaps again catering to the need of college sweethearts. At roughly $125 (799RMB), this value proposition is hardly matched.

Next in line is I5 with 7227a. Now 7227a is a major upgrade to 7227. It is based on Cortex A5 and has a much better GPU. I5 looks like a sufficiently powerful "smartphone": with all the usual bells and whistles: a nice, large screen (comparable in resolution to HTC Evo 4G - 217 ppi), powerful AP, thin form, dual cameras, 3-axis accelerometer, upgradable to Ice cream Sandwich. Surprisingly, this is a dual-model phone. In my opinion, if Innos made it single mode phone and cut the price down further more, this would be the ideal "1,000RMB" phone. The music feature on the phone is a better speaker and Yamaha DSP.

The top-of-the-line D9 is an insane model. Snapdragon S4, OGS 4.3-inch Sharp screen (256ppi, equivalent to Droid Bionic), 8MP rear camera, dual mode, and behold! a battery with 4160mAh! enough juice to standby for 1000 hours (or talk for 40 hours). The missing spec you normally found elsewhere on higher-end models are: better front facing camera (D9 has a VGA .3MP camera), gyroscopes (important for gaming), and bigger NAND storage. But at $285 (1799RMB), I guess none of these lacking features is a deal breaker.

I have not laid my hands on any of these phones. Therefore all comments are pure speculations on my part, based on the very limited knowledge I have. I merely want to illustrate how far some 2-tier and 3-tier Chinese vendors have gone to make affordable and capable smartphones. This is truly the spirit of our time. It reminds me of how Chinese have brought low cost home appliance, (CRT TVs, microwave, DVD players, notebook computers) to the world.

造句练习 - 事关gadgets的发展

We live in an interesting period of technological development, the benefits of broadband and connected devices are blooming into their full strengths, after the disillusions of tech bubble. The tech bubble laid a wonderful infrastructure for broadband access, which is all set for some major overhaul. Now data centers are processing more data people 10 years ago could ever image. Enterprises and service providers are starving for faster, larger, and more flexible processing power. There is an invisible (to average consumers) evolution going on in these data centers and server rooms. Faster, more energy efficient solid state drives are replacing chunky hard disks. Their prices are fallen dramatically - I was sincerely surprised to see the price of an consumer grade 128G SSD fallen below $80 - way less than the 1$/G psychological threshold. Outside the data centers and server rooms, faster (again) optical fibers are replacing dumb and slow copper wires leading to our homes and offices. We are heading into an age of connectivity. Not only our cellphones and notebooks are "always-on", not also our homes, appliances, and everyday items.

The role of individuals has changed slightly in this age of connectivity. We were receptacles and less often hubs of information in the age of internet, searching, receiving, and perhaps passing over (during the days of social networks) information from online. Now we are becoming sources of information. Every single move, no matter online or "offline" (there is seldom true offline status anymore), are recorded, aggregated, analyzed, and then fed back to us through targeted ads, personalized medical services, or more business-oriented productive analytical services. We are no longer islands of information, we are satellites orbiting around a couple gigantic data centers.

Amazon's CEO can't be more correct in positioning Kindle Fire as a content-consuming device, as opposed to a device people "consume". In the end, the user interface and software experience, no matter how superior Apple's advantages are, can and will be replicated. People will become more "tablet-agnostic", like people are with washing machines and cars. There will be few cars and washing machines that are capable of offering truly unique experience. And even if they could, the served demographic would be negligible comparing to the mass.

In this age of connectivity, devices and their specs are becoming irrelevant  faster than anyone would think. More computing powers and access capabilities (bigger pipes for information flow) are migrating to "invisible" places. Our smartphones and tablets and whatever connected gadgets are all but taps ready to utilize the massive computing and distribution powers of the cloud.

I believe the next step in consumer devices would be a general sharp decline in price, whereas specs remains constant, enough spec to provide reasonable connections and computation.

Thoughts on Lumia launch

Nokia recently launched its 4G capable smartphone flagship: Lumia 900. A large of reviews are now available at major media outlets such as CNET, WSJ, TheVerge, Forbes (Forbes consolidated others' reviews), and NYTimes. So far the opinions are quite uniform: it's not as good as an iPhone or high-end Android (such as Galaxy SII) but the phone is fast, sleek, and does the jobs it is supposed to do well most of the time. And it's $100 cheaper than the usual $200 price tag for the usual flagship models.

Most reviewers deplore at the shockingly primitive stage that Windows Marketplace is in right now. Of course, for those well versed in the Appstore with 600,000+ apps or Android Market with 450,000+ apps, Windows Marketplace is nothing (only 70,000+). However, for first time smartphone users, not getting Instagram on his or her phone may not be a problem. With Lumia 900, one gets lightening fast 4G, very pleasantly looking Windows Phone 7.5, intuitive interface, and strong, integrated social network platform "People".

With that, I think Nokia and Windows Phone 7.5 will enjoy a victory bigger than most anticipated. The later half of 2012, when more powerful dual core Windows phones enters the market with backing of more vendors (HTC and Samsung), the Windows ecosystem may truly be a valid competitor against Android and iPhone.

Windows phone - thoughts on apps

The windows phone market place, despite its smaller total number of apps, is showing quite a bit promise. The ease of use is pleasant overall (or not annoying if i may). I just found an app dedicated for Google. Blogger and already like the simplicity.

Pros and Cons of HTC Radar -1

Pros:

• Smooth - the interface is smooth and reasonably fast. As one of the five people on earth who have ever purchased a Zune, I had no trouble navigating among and inside apps. It is intuitive enough for someone who has never used a smartphone.

 Cons:

• Calendar - initial view is Agenda, unlike the monthly view of iPhone. One needs to press the menu at the bottom of the screen to switch to monthly view. The crazy thing is, even though each day's events are shown on the monthly view, it is impossible to see what they actually are because they are displayed in tiny fonts to fit into the grid. Therefore all you can tell from the monthly view is that on a certain day, there are a number of tiny black lines implying that you have something to do for that day. Such design is not only inconsiderate, but illogical - if you are not letting users see what the events are, why not simply replacing them with symbols (like dots on iPhone calendar)? It is a major work of stupidity in my opinion. 
• Integration Issues - the OS can't automatically identify an address in an email, therefore I can't click on the address to view it on the map. Moreover, I can't even copy the text in the email! I may read it, but that's it. I can't copy the text in the email!

Why I got a Windows Phone 7 Smartphoe (HTC Radar)

I had a Blackberry Curve for three and an half years - since I arrived in the U.S.. It a piece of tough plastic wonder - extremely reliable, rugged, always performing to its standard. I loved it for its simple key stroke shortcuts and full keyboard. I thought I would always stick to Blackberrys until my girlfriend gave me a iPod Touch 4. It is a thing a beauty - by its appearance and software design - its is built for brainless idiots and I love products designed for brainless idiots because they are so fast and simple to use.

But iPod Touch has a couple major draw backs: the Chinese Pinyin input sucks. The auto completion is a joke. Also, it is quite inconvenient (or should I say ridiculous) to separate letters and basic punctuations such as comma and period. Also, obviously iPod is a MP3 player after all, I won't have the always-on network - and hopping from Starbucks to Starbucks (or McDonald's) is just impossible. After salivating at my girlfriend's iPhone is and its wonderful use as a map and mobile PC, I made a decision: I needed a iPhone.

Due to some timing issues with my work and cash flows, I decided to drop 4S and wait for the rumored iPhone 5, because it was rumored to be a complete revamp - the true child of the Job's vision of the next gen iPhone. I patiently waited since the release date of iPhone 4S. I bore the pain of my now obsolete and irrelevant Blackberry Curve until I could stand the frustration anymore. I needed some phone "smarter" to fill the void between now and the iPhone 5 release date. I needed an Android.

So I began to screen Craigslist for used, unlocked Android. Two sellers were chosen and I went out to meet both. The first was selling an HTC Inspire - very reasonably priced comparing to other sellers. The phone was rooted and unlocked - the OS has been reinstalled so that all the bloatware could be do away with. But despite the obvious benefit of rooting, OS was a bit screwed up - even from the eyes of untrained Android users. The Market Place was crippled with incomplete list of apps. So I backed out of the deal with a low ball price - the seller must have felt insulted. And I searched on.

The second seller had two phones on sale: one is HTC Inspire and the other is HTC Radar. It was not until I met him did I know that his Inspire only has 2G network if working on my network. So I was left without choice - I thought since I was here I might as well give the Windows Phone a chance.

The first impression was really good. The phone is well-built. The screen is, of course, decades ahead of my BB Curve. OS is fairly smooth and responsive. The phone was almost brand new but was sold at 2/3 of the lowest price (of a new phone). The value buyer inside me was sold. I bought a Windows Phone after spending the whole week research Android options!

On Tech Media - yet another departure at TechCrunch

So Erick Schonfeld, the chief editor of Tech Crunch left yesterday. His incompetency as a leader was clear when he spoke on the stage of Crunchies Award, insecure, nerves, lacking proper posture for a public figure. 

Michael Arrington wrote about it. Interesting piece. 

Michael Arrington's distinct style and Tech Crunch's lean structure has make it hard for outsiders to maintain the blog's flair once Michael left. And its flair and insider scoop are its life blood. The drama and personnel changes

erode the blog day in and day out. Sooner than we know readers will look for alternatives (or have they already done so?), then everything else goes with it.

 

Is it too late to start a TechCrunch Death Watch here? 

On Tech Media - away with the old guards

The rise of The Verge corresponds with the slow death of Engadget and other tech blogs who had glorious days. The Verge is founded by ex-Editor-in-Chief of Engadget and other Engadet’s core members in November 2011. New as it is, I am already checking it everyday for new reviews and long-forms features. The website is beautiful, showcasing Flip-like designs, putting each article in distinct, variant squares instead of text-based hyperlinks. The product review page is quite refreshing too – I love the tiny links on the left side of the page that can take me to different sections within the article (e.g. hardware, software, display…). Most importantly, it’s a visual driven website with large, hi-def pictures and videos. The pages are not 100% reader friendly though – you will find the disgusting “1, 2, 3” at the bottom of some long articles that break one article into many to boost the number of clicks.

Perhaps it is not coincidence that AOL is the headmaster of both Engadget and TechCrunch, both of which are failing and overtaken by new ventures formed by its departing employees. Makes you wonder about the timing of yesterday giant’s final fall. But I am not expecting an ear-piecing thud there, I would image the subtle sound of wind slowing blowing away the ashes of whatever is remained of the giant.

Also, Brian Lam, the former editor of Gizmodo, founded a new gadget website called Wirecutter last year. It is the opposite of Gizmodo – bullshit-free, clean, to the point. I am happy to see the demise of Gizmodo (and all the filth and noise it brings) quickened by likes of Wirecutter.

On Blackberry

The new king of tech blog The Verge had a wonderful piece on RIM last week. It was a thoughtful reflection on its past and introduces glimpse into the future of the company made famous by Blackberry phones.

My main take-away from that piece is that Blackberry’s success is attributed to the founder – Mike Lazaridis. His philosophy defined the product and its development over the years. While it is still too early to call RIM a failed company, the declining market share and street credit of Blackberry are also Mike Lazaridis’ fault.

I believe one should look at a product for its own merit, but not how close it (could) resemble the best-in-class product in roughly the same vertical. Along this logic, I think it is unfair to blame Blackberry for not being an iPhone because it is not an iPhone. Its declining market share was due to poor managerial judgment, failing to meet new customer demand. It is not so much about not jumping on the bandwagon of Android or creating an ecosystem around apps. There is always room for prosperity being an alternative products - as long as you are meeting both the need and expectation of your customers. 

Blackberry has done well meeting the needs of its business customers with few significant changes to its operating system and basic features. Its simplicity and keyboards are well-regarded. However, Apple changed  customer expectation in a number of important ways: 


 - touch screen: intuitive control and faster navigation between functions 
 - larger display: making web browsing and infrequent video viewing enjoyable on a cell phone
 - apps, creating a true "ecosystem"
 - "sexy design"


When business people realize that they can type reasonably well on a touch screen and when IT departments at corporations find it easy and secure to sync corporate email on iPhones, Blackberry lost all of its appeal. It is essentially a nice, easy to use device, not the package of experience iPhone and its apps bring to the customers. But RIM still has a second chance, its longer battery life, lower price point, and full keyboards still have tremendous potential in the emerging markets. With a revamped software platform and a better services to its third-party developers, we may see a good comeback some time in 2013.

On Display Technologies - Samsung and its competitors

I made the following table in my blog in Chinese, here are the English version:

Smartphone Display Technology Comparison

Also, lazy as I am, I removed the footnotes (“注”) in the English version because I don't want to translate them. It's Sunday after all and the weather is really really nice.

On ARM, Windows, and semis industry

This is the first of a series I intend to do on semiconductors industry. The purpose is to educate myself on a number of key trends this year in the semiconductor space and their historical roots.

What is ARM?

• ARM stands for many things. It can be the company behind ARM architecture, the ARM architecture itself, or ARM chips produced by one of the many licensees of the ARM architecture. Here are the answers to the first two questions, and the third question is very relevant to development of Windows on ARM and Microsoft’s future. 
• ARM Holdings, according to its own words, is a British semiconductor intellectual property supplier founded in 1990. In layman’s terms, the company designs a basic structure of computer chips then sells the designs to other companies who make actual computer chips. Here are two things to be noted, one is that ARM does not manufacture computer chips like Intel does; two is that the chip designs from ARM Holdings largely determined the kind of devices (hardware) and operating systems (software) the resulting chips work with.
• Due to its business model, ARM’s name does not appear on devices (as opposed to “Intel Inside” label). Therefore it is far lesser known than Intel. However, ARM architecture chips have universal presence in the world of consumer electronics, most notably, Smartphones (almost 100% market share!). The main reason for its dominance in the smartphone space is its low power consumption, which translates directly to longer battery life and better user experience.
• ARM architecture, is a 32-bit instruction set architecture developed by ARM Holdings. An instruction set, simply put, defines how computer “compute”. It affects both hardware and software design of an electronic device. Another common instruction set is x86, which is the foundation for most Intel and AMD CPUs. ARM architecture, those lesser known, is much more prevalent in our daily lives because it is used in phones, tablets, cameras, media players, GPS, cars, telecom equipments, and many many more.

What is the difference between Intel and ARM Holdings?

• Intel has actual factories (called “fab”, short for “fabrication plant”) manufacturing chips only for itself. ARM Holdings license its technologies to other semiconductor companies who make their own chips. For example, most tablets and smartphones today have Nividia’s Tegra (Samsung Galaxy Tab, Moto Droid X2), ST-Ericsson’s NovaThor (Nokia’s windows phones), Qualcomm’s Snapdragon (HTC Evo 4G, Samsung Galaxy SII), Texas Instruments’ OMAP (Barnes & Noble Nook Color, Nokia N9) , Samsung’s Hummingbird (Samsung Galaxy S), or Apple’s A5 (iPhone 4S).

What is Windows on ARM (“WOA”)?

According to Steven Sinofsky, the President of the Windows Division at Microsoft, WOA is “a new member of the Windows family that builds on the foundation of Windows, has a very high degree of commonality and very significant shared code with Windows 8.” Also according to Steven, WOA was “created to enable a new class of PC with unique capabilities and form factors, supported by a new set of partners that expand the ecosystem of which Windows is part.”

On tech media - TechCrunch brain drain continues

Today, Jason Kincaid joined the series of "high regarded writers" who used to work for TechCrunch but somehow moved on to seek other ventures. In Jason, no next step is disclosed. I could only image that he is fed up with the deteriorating TechCrunch of today and just wanted out. Reading Erick Schonfeld's insincere and half-assed post on Jason's departure convinced me that the article quality of this once-glorious blog is one step closer to the scribble of a gorilla.

On Display Technologies

I got my first cell phone in 2001, a Philips Xenium DB GSM phone. It is the first of its Xenium line that continued to this day, after a good 12 years. The model was top of the line, targeting at business customers (it has voice control for God’s sake…). Its design was sleek, operation was smooth with the 3-way dial (“Pilot Key”), the OS was a cute one Philips newly designed for the model. Released in 2000, the same year as the blockbuster Nokia 3310, Xenium’s larger, more “refined” display almost has 1.5 more dots (my guess) than the 84*84 on 3310’s. But those monochrome dots (or squares if you look close enough) are still dots nonetheless, visible even from a distance. It was as hard to image iPhone’s “retina display” back then as visualizing a tablet computer in 1940. 

Philips Xenium

Nokia 3310

But in mass market’s eye, technology changes over night, merely a year later in 2001, Sharp was already marketing the first camera phone in Japan. 7 years later when I got my Blackberry Curve 8310, the display was 320*240 with 160 ppi pixel density (“retina display” has little more than twice the density). When I view pictures on 8310, there is no noticeable difference from viewing them on most desktop monitors. However, I can still see the little “dots” on the screen. Then comes iPhone 4 and iPod Touch 4 and their “retina display” – it finally becomes almost impossible to see the rough edges and squares on the screens. I remember playing with my new iPod Touch for the first a couple days solely to enjoy its beautiful display. It was perfect. 

Blackberry Curve 8310

This piece was originally intended to compare and contrast the current day display technologies on smartphones. Apparently my nostalgic digression has taken too much of my time, leaving little energy in me to continue the quest. So here is the much abridged version:

The basic display technologies on most smartphone today are either TFT-LCD or AMOLED. iPhone 4S uses TFT-LCD, which has lower manufacturing cost and higher resolution. Samsung’s Galaxy Nexus uses AMOLED, which boasts better color and wider viewing angle. Also, the AMOLED used in Galaxy Nexus almost has the same pixel density as iPhone 4S (316 vs 320, who could tell the difference…remember Galaxy Nexus has a larger screen).

The not-so-well-written article by CNET Asia somehow categorized the different technologies except for the most advanced one used on Samsung Galaxy Nexus. I may write a better one if I had the time – it gets frustrating if you dig into the details. For example, Samsung’s AMOLED displays can be broken down by display quality into AMOLED (Samsung Captivate), Super AMOLED (Samsung Galaxy S), Super AMOLED Advanced (Moto Droid RAZR), Super AMOLED Plus (Galaxy S II), HD Super AMOLED (Galaxy Nexus and Galaxy Note), and potentially HD Super AMOLED Plus (for next gen OLED TVs). Perhaps 24 months later we will see Samsung calling its display “Ultra Super Fantastic Extreme Premium Terrific HD AMOLED Plus Multiply Exponentiate Supreme Deluxe”

Below are seriously metaphorical illustration of the different aptitudes of display technologies

If Nokia 3310 had color display...

 

Blackberry Curve 8310 display

 

                                              The wonderful world of HD Super AMOLED

The Case with Management Meetings

One of the key functions at my job is management meetings. These are meeting with company management such as CEO or CFO, but more often than not, investor relations people. Investor relations personnel is unique to public companies, who are dedicated to communicate company information to institutional investors (portfolio managers, fund analyst, etc) and research analysts (sell-side analysts).

One wonderful thing about management meetings is that you get to know a very human side of the company. You sit face to face with the CEO, monitoring his posture, speech, and responses to your questions. You get a real sense of the person, instead of the vague image you form through earnings calls or industry conferences, where the delivered speeches are previously crafted.

The other benefit of such meetings, for analysts with no prior knowledge of the industry and technology, is the in-depth view of these technical aspects. Management meetings provide a narrowed-down version of industry jargon and terms, helping one to focus on what are really affecting the business (as opposed to numbers on the financial statements). Also, the comments on the competitors are always the highlights - the management is generally more open with talking about the competitors than about themselves.

On tech media

My current job and personal interest have me read tech blogs such as TechCrunch ("TC") and VentureBeat ("VB") almost on a daily basis. As people in a similar situation may notice, TC has gone through a lot of drama in the past year with its editor Michael Arrington departing and then a series of other highly-regarded writers. With the exodus of competent writers, the deterioration in overall quality is appalling. TC used to be quick but yet insightful. It was able to break the news fast and reveal information no one else could. The articles, the longer ones, are thoughtful and precise. However, all of that are lost to some degree. The current TC has successfully brought itself down to the level of Gizmodo -  a illiterate blog with an addiction on number of posts it comes up every day. I have observed the writer in person (their speak and posture), I can confidently say they don't look like their more competent counterparts at other media outlets.

Was I wrong about Twitter?

(Still 7 posts behind my other blog, damn, I should have shut up about my workout schedules...）

If you asked me what Twitter is in 2009 and 2010, I would not be able to give you any remotely informed answer other than "I don't know." "This thing doesn't make any money and will not make money." "It doesn't make sense to me."

If you ask me the same question now. My answer is the following (no I am giving a definition, but I think a scattered description is a little better than "I don't know.") :

- Twitter is public media
- Twitter is real time information flow
- Twitter is an open social media
- Twitter is the biggest and the most effective mass broadcasting tool
- Twitter is a diary
- Twitter is a trend setter
- Twitter is  personal media outlet

2010/2011 - a number of things I was wrong about

1. Cleantech: just because the godfather of cleantech investing said 2011 for cleantech companies will be the same as 1999 for internet companies does not mean it would really happen. And seeking evidence from rosy pictures depicted by some would-be portfolio companies did not help. They merely enhanced a man's erroneous view with confirmation bias. When I reviewed the cleantech companies my previous employer was looking at, I was basically cherry-picking evidence for a prediction I already formed in my head: cleantech will go big in 2011. It was not an objective observation, but a opinion without ample support. I underestimated the tremendous price decline of raw material (therefore ASP decline for module makers) and overestimated the capital market's appetite for solar companies. If the IPO had been strong for 2H11, a number of our portfolio companies could have gone public. But of course, one can never catch the right pulse of the market.

2. Facebook: I remember the day I sat in weekly meetings with the investment committee of my previous employer giving social network updates. I gathered the latest and hottest news in the social network space and invoke small scale contempt. We followed SecondMarket and SharesPost closely for private share transactions of these hot start-up companies to get a sense of their valuations. Every time I announced a new valuation high of Facebook, the meeting room was echoed with a round of suppressed contemptuous giggle and most people had that type of "this is ridiculous" impression. That was the when Facebook was valued at $10 billion. Later, when late stage investors rushed in for $35 or even $50 billion valuation, we still secretly have that "this is ridiculous" impression. As an intern my lesson cost less - I came away knowing that: 1) you don't bet against mega trend; 2) respect the "smart" money; 3) stay removed from your personal feeling on the product/service. You don't get it doesn't mean it sucks (seek professional assistance!!). My ex-employer suffered more damage, at least from a marketing / future fund raising prospective. A similar fund with similar strategy and philosophy invested in Facebook and Twitter, and the fund's share trading on Nasdaq doubled at the news of Facebook's filing. Now you can simply go to investors and tell them that "we invested in FB when it is valued at ### (a price way lower than its market cap).  The position in its portfolio may be too small to make once-in-a-life-time return but the leverage for marketing is tremendous. Image Accel Partners having difficulty raising funds!

Apple and TV, Round 1

Some time ago I promised myself that I will keep pace updating this blog with my other one, as a way to develop my thinking on investment and technology.

Yesterday a survey leaked from Best Buy regarding a smart TV that sports iCloud service and Netflix. The 40-inch, 1080p LED TV costs, hypothetically, $1499. Apple, as usual, declined to comment. Best Buy lamely described the survey as "hypothetical".  Well, to make my following observations work, let's first assume that the Best Buy leak is unintentional and not at all "hypothetical".

The leaked spec of the iTV shouldn't have surprised us highly informed, rumor-hungry followers of tech news. If Apple were to have a TV in its product line then of course it would feature web service, iOS, iTunes, apps, and commands a premium pricing to its competitors (a 46-inch smart TV from Sony cost about $1,000 on Amazon). Such is expected from Apple. And what has not been expected, will be exactly why people will pay that premium (be it 50% or 100%) for the product.

So where will that surprise come from?

Here are a few of my guesses:

Control: controlling by Apple's hand held family (iPod, iPhone, iPad) will not be news. Existing apps such as Apple's official "Remote" will work just fine. The intriguing question is whether iTV will have a native remote at all, like the thin white stick bundled with Apple TV. Will Apple actually incorporate some guesture-based control mechanism and do away with a physical remote all together? It is possible, but that would require a technology faster and more accurate than Kinect. Otherwise user experience will deteriorate because we are all too accustomed to the immediate feedback of a ordinary TV remote, or the sleek feel of an iOS handheld. Assuming not all iTV buyers has a Apple handheld before (almost impossible), it follows that iTV will be equipped with a physical remote control to replicate and hopefully surpass the usual TV control experience. 

So what is this physical remote like? I think it will not have much bells and whistles on itself. Much fewer keys than the terrible and confusing "normal" remote controls. I would image it to include some browsing/playing functions such as "back" and "forward". It may also also include a mic so that voice commands can be clearly communicated to the TV set (I have no doubt Siri will be included and play a major role). As I mentioned above, it is not likely to be a wii control type of remote. I think a small piece of touchpad on the remote is more probable, utilizing similar user experience of the Magic Mouse and Magic Trackpad: multi-touch, gesture command, accuracy guaranteed. Also, with a trackpad of some sort, user can have similar touch experience to using a iPad or iPhone. However, typing could be an issue with my above speculation of a minimalist voice-enabled trackpad. And very importantly, typing function is almost a must for a smart TV (note that the Sony smart TV linked above did come with a keyboard remote). It is somewhat hard for me to think that Apple would: 1. furnish iTV with a iPod touch/iPad like remote to type on and, 2. give a large and clunky full-size keyboard to iTV. I have to admit I am at my wit's end on this. Perhaps all input by voice? (good luck with your thick accent....)

(update: Or, we can let third-party accessory makers to deal with the "no-physical-keyboard complaints".

Advice from a quantum physicist

3. (a). Advice to people at the beginning of their careers: do not imagine that you have to know everything before you can do anything. My own best work was done when I was most ignorant. Grab every opportunity to take responsibility and do things for which you are unqualified.
(b). Advice to people at the middle of their careers: do not be afraid to switch careers and try something new. As my friend the physicist Leo Szilard said (number nine in his list of ten commandments): “Do your work for six years; but in the seventh, go into solitude or among strangers, so that the memory of your friends does not hinder you from being what you have become.”

Via interview with Freeman Dyson

Freeman Dyson的女儿Esther Dyson是业内人士，非常牛。

So It Is 2012 Now

2012 will be a year of humble existence for me. I have slowly come to know the damage done by my very bias and narrow vision on things. The world as I saw it couldn't be further from what the world really has been. And I decide to try my best to perceive things as they are. There was a certain pride in the way I perceive things in my own biased ways. The exact reason is hidden somewhere in my unconsciousness.

2012 marks my first year completely exposed in the adult world. It will be a challenging year pitted with failures and mistakes. Also I shall embrace them with enthusiasm and persistence. I will go back to the basic skills and learn about them with fresh eyes: speaking, reading, writing, listening, and socializing. If there were a "reset" button on me, I shall press it everyday before sleep.

Software Productivity

From “What Happened to The Future” by Founders Fund

“the exponential growth of computational power (represented by Moore’s law), storage capacity (Kryder’s law), data transmission (e.g., Butters’ law), and other physical embodiments of computing is familiar. What is equally familiar is the somewhat slower rate of development in the utility of computers – software has gotten more powerful, but the rateof improvement doesn’t seem to be as swift as in hardware, though measuring improvements in software is somewhat impressionistic. Never theless, as anyone who has used a Bloomberg or Lexis can attest the amount of data we collect clearly outstrips out ability to make easy use of it. One way to look at this is to compare increases in computing power (as measured by the density of transistors on a chip) versus the change in productivity. Few technologies have ever improved as quickly and consistently as computer processors and yet the impact of computing is the (admittedly wildly onverdetermined) productivity statistics is difficult to detect. This suggests that however fast hardware imporves, software might be running behind. We certainly don’t have anything approaching a general artificial intelligence, a lack many futurists 30 years ago would have found rather surprising. Indeed, until fairly recently, it was difficult to find a stable operating system."

My thoughts: Perhaps the next great leap forward in productivity (for average consumers) lies in the development of new user interface technologies. Keyboard and mouse, despite their extremely long product lives, are not the perfect fit for our input needs. They are far from doing a good job (time, accuracy) at helping us getting what we need with a PC. Voice, touch, eyeball-tracking seem all promising but how quickly will these technologies be deployed at average consumers’ disposal with reasonable cost?

True Grit

via Farnam Street

We speculate that individual differences in the intensity dimension of effort are salient and, therefore, described by many adjectives in the English language (e.g., energetic, conscientious, dutiful, responsible, lazy). Whereas the amount of energy one invests in a particular task at a given moment in time is readily apparent both to oneself and to others, the consistency of one’s long-term goals and the stamina with which one pursues those goals over years may be less obvious. Similarly, whereas the importance of working harder is easily apprehended, the importance of working longer without switching objectives may be less perceptible.

总结一下：什么难练习什么，坚持做很久很久  (isolate the most difficult part and keep correcting them with deliberate practice)

Brilliantly said, on Wall Street analyst

via Asymco

independent analysts are theorists who make observations while professionals are data gatherers who make predictions.

 Wall Street sell side analysts are rewarded for making Buy/Sell recommendations that cause clients to retain the services of the firm they work for. They are not paid to be accurate with specific forecasts in fundamentals. They are paid to predict how stocks move. The objective is not to be accurate in the quarterly but to support the “call” or prediction. The disconnect from accuracy comes in trying to sustain the call with a “conservative” forecast.

By dampening expectations, the stock rises on the “surprise”.
Because an analyst sells predictions, he self-censors what he believes.

So here is the difference: Analysts have an incentive to put forth a version of the future that supports their call on the stock. Bloggers have an incentive to put forth the most accurate version of the future.

Word(s) of the Year

2011 - Patience
2012 - Ideal over Desire