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	Friday, January 20, 2006

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. 7:12:26 PM     comment []   trackback []

	Saturday, January 14, 2006

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. 6:19:24 AM     comment []   trackback []

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. 6:14:33 AM     comment []   trackback []

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. 6:09:09 AM     comment []   trackback []

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. 6:03:09 AM     comment []   trackback []

	Tuesday, November 29, 2005

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 … 6:12:59 AM     comment []   trackback []

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…) 6:06:03 AM     comment []   trackback []

	Monday, November 07, 2005

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   7:42:05 AM     comment []   trackback []

	Wednesday, October 12, 2005

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…) 10:56:08 PM     comment []   trackback []

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…) 10:55:25 PM     comment []   trackback []

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…) 10:53:16 PM     comment []   trackback []

	Sunday, October 09, 2005

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.   11:04:59 PM     comment []   trackback []

	Saturday, October 08, 2005

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…) 9:50:54 AM     comment []   trackback []