Wilson Ng: The Techology Driven Life

Fri, 20 Jan 2006 11:12:26 GMT

Who is Holier: Bill Gates or Mother Teresa

An exciting post in the Dilbert Blog, whom many of you are familiar.

He asks the question who is holier? and presents some facts: Tip: He thinks Bill Gates’ philanthropy will save at least a hundred million lives ….

Business has always not been viewed as being philanthropic or as a vehicle of doing good. But at the end, a business well managed is probably the best weapon to lift people out of poverty. As Thomas Friedman says, Entrepreneurship is probably the fastest way to lift hundreds of millions of people into the 21st century age.

Fri, 13 Jan 2006 22:19:24 GMT

Knowledge Revolution Gems

Here are some great excerpts from Newsweek 2006 special Issue, the Knowledge Revolution.

1. Given the ease with which capital can move to the smartest, most efficient, most reliable work force, having more skilled and capable workers than the next country becomes essential for attracting and holding the best jobs for the longest time. - Tom Friedman, author of “The World is flat: A Brief History of the Twenty First Century”.

2. The Popular Idea that America is one step smarter and more sophisticated than its rivals is a dangerous myth …. the United States not only has a deficit on commodities and cheap manufactured goods, it also has a deficit on agricultural products and high tech products…. From a surplus of $30 billion in 1998, the high tech trade currently runs at a deficit of $40 billion. - Clyde Prestowitz, president of Economic Strategy Institute.

3. We have to understand that competition can’t be shut out. In the end, it can only be beaten…. Success will go to those companies and countries which are swift to adapt, slow to complain, open and willing to change. - Tony Blair, UK Prime Minister

4. Amid a great information explosion, the share of knowledge that the world puts to good use is falling. History tells us this will end badly. - Danny Quah, professor of economics at London School of Economics.

Fri, 13 Jan 2006 22:14:33 GMT

Newsweek’s Knowledge Revolution 1

Newsweek has come out with an excellent 2006 special edition entitled Knowledge Revolution. In it , you will find various article penned by such leading thinkers, statesmen and businessmen as Thomas Friedman, Tony Blair, Bill Gates, Craig Barrett, Tim Berners Lee, John Chambers, Lou Gerstner, Jeff Immelt, Lee Hsien Loong, Sam Palmisano, Eric Schmidt and others. I will put in snippets of their observations in the coming days.

Fri, 13 Jan 2006 22:09:09 GMT

Tech Weblogs

Here are some of the blogs of leading tech people that I follow:

Ray Ozzie, developer of Lotus Notes and Groove, and now Chief Technology Officer of Microsoft, has a new blog , and it is just in Spaces of MSN.

Joel Spolsky, founder of Fog Creek Software, and famous author, has always some insightful things to say about the art of developing software.

Jonathan Schwartz, is the current president of Sun Microsystems, and is always on his combative self as he brings insights into the industry practices and competition.

Robert Scoble, Microsft tech evangelist, and its most famous blogger, has a new blog here.

Why SQL Server 2005

Fri, 13 Jan 2006 22:03:09 GMT

Here are some take homes after I attended the Microsoft SQL Server 2005 launch. This is obviously for only those readers who are technology-inclined.

- SQL Server 2005 has 40% performance improvement over SQL Server 2000
- SQL Server 2005 has built-in data mining and business intelligence at no extra cost.
- SQL Server can scale better. Largest install for SQL Server 2000- 26,000 users. Largest install test so far for SQL Server 2005 - 93,000 Concurrent users in SAP
- SQL Server 2005 has a 50% off for licenses for competitive database upgrade for a limited time.
- SQL Server 2005 will not charge for licenses for the passive cluster in a high availability active-passive cluster.
- SQL Server 2005 charges by CPU, not by core. So if you use Dual or Multicore CPUs, you only need to pay for 1 server license.
- SQL Server Express 2005 is available for free.

What do People do Online?

Mon, 28 Nov 2005 22:12:59 GMT

On average, over 94 million Americans go online every day this autumn of 2005.

According to this study, the three most popular things they do is:

77 percent do email, 63 percent access a search engine, and 46 percent read news. More …

A Very Important Skill

Mon, 28 Nov 2005 22:06:03 GMT

I could still remember that time when I was in high school when during one summer vacation, my parents enrolled me in typing class. It has probably been over twenty years since then, but that was probably one of the most productive summers for me, and my typing skills are still serving me to this day.

In this time and age, when I am asked the question– what is the best business to invest in these days, my answer is (more…)

Email and Information Overflow

Sun, 06 Nov 2005 23:42:05 GMT

I was talking to two business friends. They have been travelling, and they were panicking where they could check their emails. One of the things that almost every technology executive ( or a busy executive for that matter) could not afford is not to be in touch.

We were comparing notes, and trying to compare who have more

Wed, 12 Oct 2005 14:56:08 GMT

How IT Companies got their Names

I just received an interesting email which probably is being circulated. It shows the story behind how the IT companies got their names.

Included in the list was Adobe, Apache, Apple, Cisco, Google, Hotmail, HP, Lotus, Intel , Microsoft, Motorola, Oracle, Red Hat, SAP, Sony, Sun, Xerox and Yahoo got their names. I have read about other stories, or versions of it ( so we don’t know which is correct).

It is great to know that SUN was used to mean Stanford University Network, and that Motorola ( which started making radios for motor cars) was so named because the most popular radio company at that time was Victrola. Apache got its name because it was a ‘patchy’ server. Read on…. (more…)

Wed, 12 Oct 2005 14:55:25 GMT

No Region Code for HD DVD

According to EnGadget, there has been announcements that the new HD DVD will not have regional codes.

This is a welcome development, and is a huge consumer convenience. (more…)

Wed, 12 Oct 2005 14:53:16 GMT

Is Anonymous Blogging Commendable?

BusinessWeek portrayed Microsoft in an unflattering light in an article two weeks ago with the assertion that morale in the company is low, and that people were disserting. It justifies its position because of the popularity of a blog by an anonymous Microsoft insider who has been writing a blog called MiniMicrosoft who talks about the gripes of employees inside, and highlights the problems of the company in the guise of improving things. (more…)

Sun, 09 Oct 2005 15:04:59 GMT

Moving Bizdrivenlife

I am now updating and moving to the new bizdrivenlife site here.

I will still maintain this site as a mirror site for some days and weeks, but most of my new posts will be at the new site. In the next few days, I will also transfer the www.bizdrivenlife.net so that if you are using this as your marker, you will be redirected there.

If you are using my feedburner RSS to download my posts, which is as follows:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/ReflectionsOfABusiness-drivenLife, then I have redirected it to download from the new site, so you don't need to do anything. However, if you are not downloading anything new, pls. go to my new site, and subscribe to the Feedburner RSS on the upper left corner of the blog.

I hope that by moving my blog into WordPress, I can be more flexible, and it will be easier for you to search, locate the information you want, as well as notice the better organization of the new site.

The same 8 subcategories will still be there, and I have taken also the liberty of transferring some of the top posts the last few weeks there. My selected writings for the last one year is also there.

I am hoping with this new setup, I will be able to more easily communicate with you, and scale even better heights.

As usual, thank you for your support, and your comments are always welcome.

Sat, 08 Oct 2005 01:50:54 GMT

MVP Summit 2005 "on technology"

The Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional) Summit was held in Seattle , Washington from Sept 28 to Oct 1. This year, over 1,500 of Microsoft’s MVP were there to attend various sessions and conference. Speakers include Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, Microsoft Group VP’s Kevin Johnson and Jim Allchin. Here are some pictures.

That’s me in the Experimental Music Project Museum ( EMP Museum) in Seattle where the MVP Dinner was held.
(more…)

Wed, 05 Oct 2005 23:28:57 GMT

Gains of Microsoft " on technology"

The last few weeks, there has been a lot of press that Microsoft is ceasing to be competitive. When you read news like this, your opinions becomes changed, but then many times, articles are usually one sided. They have a point to make, and they only present facts that support their point.

After attending a series of demoes and talks with Microsoft engineers over last week, I can say this -- there is always a nagging feeling that microsoft is becoming a dinosaur, and is having difficulty competing with smaller and nimbler competitors, like google, and it is going downhill.

The thing I want to say is that it is a feeling, but is nowhere near what is the truth -- my feeling is Microsoft continues to be very competitive, and continues to turn out cool technologies.

After seeing the demoes of Vista ( awesome! -- many of the great things are still not being reported), SQL Server 2005, Visual Studio 2005, Data Protection Manager, SMS Manager Ver. 4, Office 12 and Sharepoint, you not only get a sense that things are moving, but things are being integrated in a way never done before.

Also witness that Microsoft continues to make impressive gains the last 18 months on competition.

- Exchange continues to beat Lotus.
- Xbox continues to gain on PS2, and Xbox 360 is acknowledge to lead PS3.
- Windows Mobile overtakes Palm.
- .NET overtakes Java
- Windows Media Center continues to gain market share, as do the Tablet
- SQL Server continues to gain market share.
- MS project is by far the only significant contender for PM.
- the relevance of MS search vs. Google search is narrowing.
- Sharepoint is making impressive gains.

and while MS Win Server 2003 did not gain market share last year, it did not lose either.

Would you like to add on this? Pls. do comment.

Wed, 05 Oct 2005 23:26:16 GMT

The Billionaires of IT "on technology"

Four out of Five richest men in the planet earned it through IT. In total, based on the reports of Forbes Magazine, there are 34 billionaires who made it through information technology.

1. Bill Gates, Microsoft, $51 billion
3. Paul Allen, Microsoft, $22.5 billion
4. Michael Dell, Dell computers , $18 billion
5. Larry Ellison, Oracle, $17 billion
11. Steve Ballmer, Microsoft, $14 billion (more…)

Wed, 05 Oct 2005 23:24:15 GMT

Asia' Top IT Users

This is fromMIS magazine, which surveys the top IT users in asia.

there are 2 stats there. first is the number of screens ( most likely desktops), the second is the size of the IS department

1. Ministry of finance in indonesia , 305000 , 260
2. Hong Kong Jockey club, 118814, 436
3. Singapore ministry of education, 100000, 80
4. HongKong Bank, 38469, 3800
5. IBM, 30000, 273
6. Hong Kong Hospita Authority, 30000, 600
7. Bank Rakyat Indonesia, 30000, 160
8. National University of Singapore, 32000, 180
9. Telekomunikasi Indonesia , 28000, 900
10. Nanyang Univeristy, Singapore, 22000, 3842

Biggest IT user in Philippine is no. 16. Surprise, is the AMA Education System.

18,000 screens, 150 IS department size.

Next is no. 28 - pLDT. 8250 screens, 200 size of IS department

Fri, 30 Sep 2005 14:30:28 GMT

Fun Facts about Microsoft

I am now in Microsoft main headquarters in Redmond area ( Puget Sound), Washington attending a summit. The following fun facts were distributed to the attendees:

People:
- Total number of employees worldwide : over 55,000
- Average number of visitors greeted in a month in its offices : 29,000
- Average age of employees : 35
- Number of employees in the United States : 35,000
- Number of employees in the main HQ in Puget Sound : 25,000
- Number of resumes received by Microsoft in 2004: 347,206

Facilities :
- Total square footage of buildings owned and leased worldwide in 2004: 16,900,635
- Total number of buildings occupied by Microsoft in Main HQ, Puget Sound: 87
- Total number of copies processed by the Copy Center: 70 million (more…)

Fri, 30 Sep 2005 14:29:03 GMT

IT Executive Pays

How much did the top executives of IT companies earned? Oracle’s Larry Ellison was one of the top. Last year, he got $7.48 million in salary and another $66.89 million for exercising his stock options.

IBM’s top executive, Sam Palmisano, got $6.84 million, plus another $2.81 million in stock options vested.

Microsoft’s top too executives were very cheap in comparison. Both Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer (more…)

Wed, 28 Sep 2005 08:18:39 GMT

5 Reasons Why Palm Slide (techdrivenlife) (selected articles in bizdrivenlife compiled)

In addition to my own analysis of Palm's colorful history and its slide, here is another take from CNET.

Wed, 28 Sep 2005 07:04:16 GMT

Palm goes to Microsoft (on business) (selected articles in bizdrivenlife compiled)

( and Lessons on Competing with Microsoft)

Last week, one of the bigger news in the tech industry was that two archrivals, Palm and Microsoft has teamed up, and Palm would soon be licensing Windows Mobile for its future Treo Cell phones. Thus the end of the intense rivalry between these two companies which has been running for nearly 8 years. I have used more than 7 PDAs going back a few years, and feel qualified to tell you my version of this colorful story which I have closely followed…

Ever since I far back as I could remember, I have been using organizers to try to work out my schedules, my contacts, and my to do list, as well as meeting notes. I was a user of Casio and Sharp organizers back when it could store no more than 200 phone numbers. But it just did not work out, and every year, I would try to get one of those executive planners to start out my year, and it would be a hell of a time trying to transfer some of my contacts, and appointments.

Then almost 9 years ago, around April 1996, there was this organizer called the Palm Pilot. Instantly it took the world by storm. It was handy, it was easy to use, and it had enough memory to actually be useful. And it had a handwriting recognition system that was which was fondly called Graffiti.

Palm practically popularized the devices we now fondly called the PDA. Within 18 months, it sold over a million devices. And for a while, it was almost a near monopoly. Microsoft then had its play also on these devices and it was called the Windows CE. I had both, and Palm was the easier to use. Microsoft CE devices were clunky, and did not integrate with the computer very well. Most of all, Palms was not only faster and simpler, it had batteries that lasted for weeks, while Windows CE would conk out after a day or two.

It was cool to have a Palm, much like it is cool now to have an IPod. Thus started Palm’s amazingly colorful history ( where it changed names, merged, spun off, merged, spun off a couple of times). Palm was sold to US Robotics, which later was sold to 3Com Corporation. It was part of the company till Palm became a sensation, and 3Com decided to spin it off. For a while, Palm Corporation had an enormous IPO, and it was even valued much higher than 3Com itself. Of course, that time, Microsoft was just entering the market, but Palm was confident. One of the top executives, Ed Colligan ( who is now Palm’s CEO) said in an interview with Fast Company Magazine, that he has only one job – to kick Microsoft’s butt.

Meanwhile, the founders of Palm, Jeff Hawkins and Donna Dubinsky, exited the corporation, and went on to organize HandSpring, which produced the Visor, which was also running the Palm Operating System.

Later, the founders rejoined the company when HandSpring and merged to form PalmOne. Then they decided to split the company to a software group ( PalmSource), and the hardware (PalmOne). PalmOne went on to also make cellular phones, the Treo series, and now is licensing Microsoft mobile for its phone business.

If this sounds confusing, it is, and in my opinion, this confusion could have been also the reason of the slow decline of Palm where it used to hold more than 90% market share five years back to slightly lower than Microsoft’s Windows Mobile since last year.

However, this is not only a story about Palm’s rise and fall, but notwithstanding it also gives us important lessons in technology competition, particularly with Microsoft. Did Palm do something right, or was it Microsoft’s positioning that eventually allowed it to gain, for now, victory of the PDA OS wars?

Competing with Microsoft is certainly not easy – the industry is full of once proud companies that is now victim of it – from WordPerfect in Word processing, Lotus in Spreadsheets and email servers, Novell in network software, IBM’s OS2 in operating systems, Go in Pen Computing, Corel in Desktop publishing, Primavera in Project management, Borland in development tools and dBase, and Netscape in browsers. Still fighting are probably Sony in gaming, Oracle in databases, Google and Yahoo in portals, email, and search, and QuickBooks in small business accounting.

So now, Palm embraces Microsoft, which together with Apple now using Intel processors are two of the biggest partner change for this year.

For sure, Microsoft is a formidable competitor, not because it is so focused, but because it also has almost infinite resources to keep throwing up the ante until you practically run out of bullets. However, I think also one of the things doing Palm in was also that it did not sense much the development of changing consumer taste.

It won the hearts of customers initially because it was easy to use, but they should not have stopped there. Continuing to develop new features and parameterization is almost a must, and this is what Microsoft almost excels in. Most of their products had been clunky at the start, and seemingly too much preoccupation on backward compatibility, product cross integration as well as future expansion may mean that it will be off at the slow start, but competition on tech is not about who blazes the fastest, but who endures, and Microsoft is certainly a competitor that plans for a marathon, and it is important that you should too.

The Palm OS should have transitioned from ease of use to multitask, which after several years, it still is not able to do well. When coupled with a cell phone, when you want to make a call, and check your appointment, or write a memo at the same time, it just loses out to Windows Mobile which is a more powerful counterpart. The software development tools needed to continually make more sophisticated software for it was also not available.

I have also used some open source software, and this might be something that would compete with Microsoft again over a long term. However , most of these software are made by small teams which focuses on the now, instead of the future, and many of these utilities lack the sophistication or adequate testing or the long term commitment ( save for a few applications) to handle really mission critical task, widely diverging use, or to bet the company on. I think the software future will continually depend on the winning company being able to continually add the sophistication , while still making it easier to use which is something that up to this moment, most companies still don’t have the experience and focus that Microsoft does. Many open source applications are developed, but not maintained very well. Some versions have not been touched, or upgraded for some years, except for some minor tweaks by users. Evidently, software that is not maintained will lose out in the long term – just like a marathoner who do not replenish their energy or water in the body.

The tech industry is a marathon, and he who endures, win. In an industry where the next quarter is too much of a preoccupation, Microsoft is one company that gives comfort that it still has a five and 10 year vision, something which is very important for users.

Tue, 27 Sep 2005 19:59:44 GMT

Blogging "on technology"

Blogging can be addictive, and just like in sports or business, once you get the hang of it, you want to beat yesterday's records. How do I get more pageviews? How do I interact more?

And the more you blog, the more possibilities you see, and the more things you thought about which is outside the confines of the parameters you have set about when you started blogging.

I have learned a lot not only from the interaction, but from the numerous technologies available on how to share information, and how to pubish and manage content.

I definitely would have earned a hundred times more if I put my efforts on other things but I have an advantage some other bloggers don't. Our company is relatively a major player in the computer technology arena in our place, and even if it is not earning, I can easily justify the various web sites in terms of branding, and user mind share. It certainly can be a better payoff than direct advertising. And definitely understanding how web sites work, interact, and in the future, generate commerce is also something we believe our company should collectively learn.

It was a learning process that I wanted to undertake, specifically being in the IT industry. My goal was to understand the processes to organize, publish, retrieve and discover semi-structured and unstructured information inside or outside the organization, and present it in an organized, relevant, and context-appropriate manner. It is also understanding the technology and interfaces that support collaboration and the identification, formation and ongoing support of communities.

As of today, our company has now the following web sites: ( except for this blog, done within the space of the last two months).

These are blogs: one personal ( for myself) , one company blog ( promote the products of the company) , and one community blog ( to promote the place where we live).

Ng Khai Blog . A collection of tech-related posts to update users on the latest technologies and products the company carries - particularly Microsoft, HP, IBM, Cisco, 3com, Lexmark, Symantec, and other leading products.

CeBu CeBoom CeBlog. A blog by volunteers to promote the vibrancy, culture, history, and people of Cebu, a Treasure Island in the Pacific.

Reflections of a Business Driven Life. A personal blog of Ng Khai's president, which talks about how to win in business... and in life! It also presents his views on entrepreneurship and on technology.

The next two are photoblogs. This is another kind of content which I thought would be great to experiment. The first one is a photo gallery to promote our city, and the other is a photo gallery to promote the lifestyle products of my wife.

Cebu Photo Gallery. A collection of hundreds of pictures that show in pictures everything about Cebu - its culture, festivities, people, infrastructure etc.

Premium Concepts Gallery. A collection of hundreds of pictures showcasing gifts, novelties, home decors and other fashion ideas by a leading lifestyle store.

The last 4 are some sort of bulletin boards , less formal ways to share information, plus create some sense of community and interaction.

NGenius Gadgets n Gizmos. A bulletin board forum to support Ng Khai's retail stores, NGenius which showcases gadgets, gizmos, audio/video players.

Cell Talk. A bulletin Board forum which is a discussion board for communication technologies, particularly cell phones, internet services, VOIP and instant messaging.

Entrepreneurs Forum. A Bulletin board that talks about the business software solutions Esprint Software, and also discuss about entrepreneurship, small business, and other management issues.

Car Lovers. A bulletin board that talks about cars, SUVs, driving, bikes, and accessories. A hobbyist place for car owners and enthusiasts.

It certainly has been taking a lot of my time, but hopefully now, I can go back to my personal blog, and will be wiser to share more of my experiences in organizing information, and creating communities.

Tue, 27 Sep 2005 19:46:04 GMT

Blogging vs. Company WebSites "on technology"

For the last 8 years, we have been religiously maintaing our company web site.Ng Khai Development Corporation ( as well as its sister company Esprnt Software).

As with most company web sites, we probably update it once or twice a month. I guess nobody, not even your most loyal customers go to the company website, unless there is much change, more than a few times.

Then I started blogging which is this blog wherein I talked about life, management, and entrepreneurship. I began to update it more than a dozen times a month. It received a good response, and over a month ago, I decided that it would be good to get the company blogging as well.

Thus formed the creation of Ng Khai Computer Solutions blog, which talked about the company's products in an informal way. The blog has gotten a tremendous response from its readers and customers, and in just one month had over 25,000 page views, and also became the leading technical blog in our country. It is great that we have more readership in a month than a year in our former FORMAL company website.

Then I started the creation of CeBu CeBoom CeBlog, which is a volunteer blog of some employees to promote my place, Cebu and its vibrant people.

The last 2 projects was the Premium Concepts Photo Blog as well as the Cebu Photo Gallery, both of which now has over 200 pictures have also been getting good responses.

People go to websites that are dynamic, informal, informative. YOu need to put something there about yourself, and also something that wants people to keep coming back. Doesn't it need to be said?

Currently, these sites are receiving a few thousand visits a day combined, and is a good instrument of communication as well as gotten also more people blogging.

Sun, 25 Sep 2005 17:43:39 GMT

Getting Traffic (techdrivenlife) (selected articles in bizdrivenlife compiled)

These are some of my loose recollections of what to do in order to get traffic. This is just a beginners guide. Many fine articles are available in the web on how to get better traffic. One of the best ways is to put a search on Search Engine Optimization.

What is the purpose of maintaining a website? Normally, for a business site, to enhance your business. Nobody wants to be a webmaster of a website where there are no visitors. Much like opening a store, the more people who visit the better. Even if it is a personal website, or a personal blog page, you want more people to visit. That, after all, is the promise of the internet. With almost a billion people now surfing daily, why can't we even get a hundred visitors to visit us per day?

So things like properly designing a website, making it 'sticky' so people want to return, are important. Of course, one way to get more visitors to visit is to make sure that all your company documents and correspondence carry your web site address, and you advertise or let as many people know as much as possible. The other is trying to make sure people want to come back – and that is to make sure your website is interesting and up to date. Who wants to go to the website, when you visit last quarter, and yesterday, it was exactly the same? That is the reason why merchants change their shop windows every few weeks, or every so often. You want to inform people that you have something new always to offer.

The other way to build up traffic is through search engines. Evidently, over a hundred million engine searches are made everyday, some say even more than two hundred million. So, being properly listed in search engines, and make sure that when people search the directory they will find you -- much akin as you advertise in the yellow pages . If you are a computer company in Manila, you want to make sure that when people go to the Manila yellow pages directory, and search for computers, you would come out prominently and visibly.

Currently, there are over a thousand search engines, but estimates that only three search engines handle over 90% of all searches – and that is Google, Yahoo and MSN Search. So you want to know how to be prominent there. Let us talk about Google, which is the number 1 search engine currently.

There are 2 ways to do this -- first is you want to get prominent ranking, and second is you want to advertise. When you do a search on google, on let us say, computers, you will find two answers. First on the left are the websites that google feels is most relevant to your search. This is not paid , but google ranks you based on the relevance of your website to the person's search. The right side will also presents some websites that deals with computers, but this time, in the form of advertisements.

Google allows you to advertise your website through www.google.com/adwords. In here, you choose how you plan to advertise, what kind of keywords you want to bid on ( how much you are willing to pay to be clicked), and other features.

So it goes without saying that if you are willing to pay a lot of money, the higher you get into the advertisers ranking, and the more frequent you will come out. However, you have to pay everytime you come out, or everytime your link is clicked. This can get very expensive.

If you want free advertising, then what you need to do is to try to work out your site so that it will come out prominently in the ranking. This is desirable, because of 2 things. First, is most people will not click on advertisements, but rather on the results of the search. And second of course, is that it does not cost money. And of course, it is important to be ahead in the search, since most people ( even with thousands of results) will most likely see the first 20 or 30 results only.

For your website to be well ahead in this search will bring enormous new traffic to your site. Needless to say, there are thousands of debates and thousands of offers in the internet on how to do this. All you have to do is to a search on SEO which is the acronym of Search Engine Optimization, and you will find thousands of theories, and thousands of offerings on how to come out ahead on Google and Other searches.

The way google does this is complex, but there is one thing though that we know for a fact – Google, and now increasingly almost every search engines scour all web sites, and rank them. The higher your rank, the more higher you go on the search. And the basic principle is one—your web site will rank higher the more people connect to your site . This was the fundamental principle the founder of Google, Larry Page and Sergei Bren learned while they were studying in Stanford. If you have good academic material, you would be cited a lot in academic journals, something like a reference. The more famous and authoritative your work, the more other writers will quote you. They brought that to the internet world and therefore rank websites and pages depending on how many sites connect to it. So, we do know ( but there are many) that the more websites connect to you, the higher your ranking will be.

The way to optimize the ranking is quite complex, but hopefully at least, you know the most important one. Try to make your websites as well researched, and authoritative as possible, and people who think your website is cool or relevant, will link to you, and that will increase your rankings.

At the end, there is the tricks of the trade, and there is learning the trade. Designing websites is just like any other activity. The best way to get people interested in you is to be interested in them. This is another way to get traffic that is increasingly not being recognized. It is simply to visit and link to other web sites. Visit them, read them, and give them good comments to show that you are interested in their topic. You do that a couple of times, and it is more likely than not that these bloggers will come visiting your site.

Wed, 24 Aug 2005 14:18:53 GMT

Domain Name Hijack (techdrivenlife) (selected articles in bizdrivenlife compiled)

I just went through an issue that I think more people should know about. As you may know, there are many companies that register a lot of domain names, and sometimes it is very difficult to keep track. But domain names are normally paid for every year, and you have to renew it to keep it.

Sometimes, if you are not careful, you let the domain name expire. But on other times, you may also forget. It did happened to us as well. One of the domain names expired. When we found out a few days later because the web site was not registering or could not be accessed, we hastily tried to register. To our dismay, it could not be found anymore, and before long, we found out that somebody has registered it!

Of course, they cannot use our domain name, so what is the purpose for them to register what is ours? Of course to make money. There are companies that do nothing but scour around the internet trying to get data on which domain name expired-- and there are many domain names that expire because the owner forgot to renew it. These people will then try to look at the website -- if the website has a lot of activities, or if the internet site is comprehensive, and looks important, what they will do is they will try to register and divert your domain name.

Then when the owner finds out, they will be asked to contact these companies. These companies will then demand a huge amount of money to have the domain name sold back to the original owners. Sometimes, it can be from few hundreds to a few thousand dollars. This is almost like blackmarket scalping. But these companies purportedly are legitimate and performing a function -- after all, they do offer you a chance to get your domain back, albeit at a high price. They say if they were not there, and somebody else took it, then the owner will have no more remedy to get it back even if he is willing to pay high money.

Would anybody care to comment on this?

Wed, 24 Aug 2005 01:05:55 GMT

Blogging as a Tool (techdrivenlife) (selected articles in bizdrivenlife compiled)

In many ways, blogging has changed the way I work a lot, and as I looked at my counter in UserLand now, it is 18 days before my first anniversary in blogging. In some ways, I have learned more about how the internet works at a deeper level, and have a better idea on how the internet can help business.

The last few weeks have been hectic, as in addition to putting up a blog site for my wife, and my company, I have also put up a community blog site now to promote our city. But before that, what is so significant about blogging?

The point about blogging is that numerous bloggers and tech forums have changed the way that we gather information. For instance, when I was new to blogging, I was looking for a blogging tool. I did not do my research well. I went into Radio Userland's website, and they claim to be a pioneer in blogging, and it was founded by Dave Winer, a pioneer in blogs and RSS. So I signed up. Later, I began to understood that Userland was actually a not very significant player in blogging with market share of less than 3%. They pioneered, but they have not been able to maintain their leadership position. Had I bothered to check on numerous forums, I would have known that. Now I am stucked with a tool that in many ways is not optimal, or have been keeping up.

The point is that companies keep websites, but people don't trust company websites very well for information anymore. I have used 7 Nokia phones over the last 14 years, and I don't recall once visiting the Nokia website other than looking for downloads or patches. Even as a Microsoft partner, I don't log in too much to Microsoft's site. But I do subscribe into a lot of their other sites and forums. How about you? If you wanted to buy a new HP notebook, where do you get the market information to make the purchasing decision? In the various blogs and forums? from comparison sites? Or from the official websites?

That was one of the reasons that while I asked our webmasters to maintain our 'official' site, we have to reach out on other means to have a better touch with customers as I did note that visits to our websites was not necessarily growing, or even declining. Blogging is one of the most significant ways you can get your customers ' to be involved' and to keep coming back.

Our new company site, and the community blog site uses WordPress. If you haven't tried it, you should. I looked for a tool that was flexible ( after so many months, I know the features this time on what I was looking) , that would allow multiple authors ( and thus the submission and approval of drafts), as well as an open ended way to add new things -- new themes, new features like comments and statistics, polling and the like, and WordPress delivered very well.

Next post, I will talk about Coppermine, a new photo gallery tool that I am finding to be very powerful that I am using to set up a photoblog.