Google Street View Confirmed for Taipei

A while back I wrote about seeing a van with cameras on the top. I thought it was Google's.

http://blog.islaformosa.com/2008/10/google-street-view-coming-to-taipei.html

Turns out I was wrong BUT Google Street View is coming to Taipei anyhow!

This car was spotted roaming the streets and there's a video to go with it to boot.  

I can't wait for Street View to come here.  Taipei, as anyone knows who's been lost here, really needs it.

Wiki says "As of March 2009 the Google Street View camera car was seen roaming the streets of Taipei, Taiwan." wiki

eeePC for free... kind of...

There has already been some talk about other companies giving away eeePCs to people who sign up for services but this is the first I have heard of it in Canada.

It actually is questionable whether they are really 'free' as the service costs often are high. Sometime the service fees can increase the actual cost drastically.

skillet

I was watching an TV ad in Canada for the Royal Bank of Canada that offered this:
"To get your FREE^† ASUS Eee PC, just open a new RBC Signature No Limit Banking^® Account or RBC VIP Banking^® account by September 12, 2008"

However, upon further reading they really come to the point:
"Take a closer look at this all-inclusive account. For just $13.95 a month with no minimum balance required"

rbc

$13.95 is quite a but of a bank account fee! The true free eeePC remains elusive!

At least the eeePC seems to be riding high though.

Taiwan is (still) Yahoo country

PC World writes that Yahoo has been 'dethroned' in Taiwan as top portal. Well... sort of...

Taiwan has been one of Yahoo's gems for at least seven years. The reasons are that Yahoo initially combined with local portal Kimo here and quickly built up its Chinese services. Google on the other hand has been slow to do this but may be catching up.

This makes me think of Facebook as well as, although popular for expats living here, it is out of touch with locals need to have a Chinese version (BTW, Facebook noticed that I had Mandarin written in my profile and sent me a message to help translate their features so I assume that a Chinese version is in the works).

Yahoo's portal provides Taiwanese with such popular things as (duh!) searching but also translation and dictionary tools, shopping and the auction sections (which beat Ebay in Taiwan as well). I guess it pays to be first in line with Chinese services since locals are not too keen on learning the English interfaces, which became all too apparent when I tried to introduce my brother-in-law to Google's wide array of services in Beta that have not been translated to Chinese. He scratched his head and proclaimed it too hard to understand (although he'll gladly buy and read a Chinese magazine that will walk him through his Japanese language menus and dialog in his PS2 and Wii games!!!)

I guess people get turned off the English instructions and menus in much the same way as Americans dislike foreign language films with subtitles unless it is unavoidable or there is some kind of overriding incentive to it all (read 'be the first to know and use the knowledge').

According to the article, Yahoo has been unseated by Wretch. Not much of a victory though since Yahoo had the foresight to purchase Wretch last year. What's interesting is that it is still at a .cc address which I have written about here:

internet domains

Interestingly:
"In video posting sites, Taiwan's I'm TV beat out YouTube for the top spot in Taiwan."
Maybe I shouldn't be suprised. Once again, it needs to be translated into Chinese in order to get locals' attention in a big way.

Talking purely about search engines, the article had this to say:
"The U.S. version of Google ranked first among search engines, and 14th overall, while Google Taiwan came in second."

Look out Yahoo. Guess who's aiming for #1.

pc world article

eee PC has some serious supply problems!

I ordered my 8GB version of the eee PC on December 23, 2007 and it still hasn't come into the store yet. What the #$%^? It's been over 2 weeks now!

I have gotten all kinds of stories from the retailers. Out of stock, doing inventory, whatever...

3C and Best even list it in the stores with a price around $14500 but I have yet to see even one on the shelves. They claim that they had some 8GB versions before but they sold out. Can anyone confirm that the 8GB versions have even come out yet?

In fact, I believe there's a huge supply problem in China. The prime culprit may be Apple. Apple is already pissed at Asus for beating it to the bullet with this computer. It has it's own plans for flash memory computers, as does Dell.

See:The Most Hated Company In the PC Industry

And although some have pointed to the hard time securing 7" LCD monitors, in fact I believe Asus is competing with Apple to secure a supply of 8GB flash memory. A quick scan of store flyers will tell you that Apple iPod Touch and iPhone are the only other top selling tech to carry an 8GB flash memory card internally.

Well, these are my suspicions. Can anyone confirm or deny this? Damn the dealers lousy excuses!

The Eee PC is here!

In case you have been living on Mars (oh yeah, living in Taiwan is a bit like that), then you are aware that the future is here. And it is the ASUS eee PC!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASUS_Eee_PC
http://eeepc.asus.com/global/product.htm

It's roughly half the size of a regular laptop and it's totally stripped down to basics. 7" monitor, no cd player and, this is the clincher, no hard drive. That's right! This is a computer with a flash drive!

As such, this is the computer that everyone is talking about and looking at in stores and at computer shows. CNET has pronounced it one of the most likely gifts under the tree this Xmas. Asus thinks it can sell an amazing 3.8 million units too! They may just be right as the Eee PC has been selling like hotcakes and is sold out in many places.

There are some limitations due to the fact that it uses Linux and not Windows but the flavor of Linux used is very easy to use, with icons and easy tools. Also, there are two main models with 4GB and 8GB storage space respectively. With an OS on the flash drive as well occupying 2.5 GB then that doesn't leave a lot of space.

However, it comes equipped for what many people say the direction of things are going. Instead of storing your files locally, you can upload them to the web using such things as Google Docs.

Personally, I see this as a truly mobile laptop at only .92kg (no more lugging around hefty laptop with a sore shoulder). All the rest of that stuff like drive space, playing games, cd player, bluetooth are really all unecessary on a stripped down laptop.

I would use it to surf the net around the house (ie. move it around). I would also use it for teaching privates at WIFI hotspots. also, i could use it as a light presentation tool (usign the pre-installed Open Office suite with a program similar to Powerpoint) for the classroom or business classes. Finally, I could use it to watch downloaded movies on our flat screen TV. Or I could put a few movies on it for the road...

In the end, the Eee PC represents the first major move away from moving parts (CD, HD) in computers. The result will be lighter and less power consuming (hot) portables from now on...

Here's a great review:
http://www.linuxlinks.com/article/20071204141457291/Asus-701-Introduction.html

Taiwan's LED move

Taiwan has made a sensible move to LED lighting. the evidence is the pixelated traffic lights. Had you noticed yet?

The country's Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) has budgeted roughly NT$229 million ($7 million) for the project, which is set to begin in 2008, and will convert 420,000 traffic lights to the LED standard (350,000 have already been changed over). The MOEA claims the total savings in power consumption will be close to 85%.

engadget

Good move! God knows Taiwan needs to save power what with all the open doors in stores blowing air con outside.

Some more advantages:

• LEDs produce more light per watt than do incandescent bulbs; this is useful in battery powered or energy-saving devices.
• LEDs can emit light of an intended color without the use of color filters that traditional lighting methods require. This is more efficient and can lower initial costs.
• LEDs, being solid state components, are difficult to damage with external shock. Fluorescent and incandescent bulbs are easily broken if dropped on the ground.
• LEDs have an extremely long life span. One manufacturer has calculated the ETTF (Estimated Time To Failure) for their LEDs to be between 100,000 and 1,000,000 hours. Fluorescent tubes typically are rated at about 30,000 hours, and incandescent light bulbs at 1,000-2,000 hours.
• LEDs can be very small and are easily populated onto printed circuit boards. Everything from laptops to cellphones can apply them which is important considering the importance of extending their battery life through power savings. (WIKI)
  

I think it's time for an LED stock play on my part. BTW, some Taiwan companies are playing a lead role in LED design and production.

I'm nursing my Wii Elbow

Got a Wii taste of the Wii over the weekend. My brother-in-law succumbed to buying a Japan model.

As you may know, Wii is currently only available in select markets. Therefore, for Taiwanese to own one they need to import the consoles from other markets. The practice is a little shady but people tend to turn a blind eye to it.

The only drawback is that most of the menus are in Japanese which is fine if you can get by. I had my brother-in-law to help. For most of the games you can muddle your way through.

I tried all of the Wii sports. Pretty fun except tennis and baseball will definitely give you a case of Wii elbow! We also got a chance to play Day of Defeat. Awesome game and hard to master. Great gameplay although the screen scrolling made me a little oozy (I had drank a couple cans of beer). There are some cool sequences where German soldiers butt you with their guns and then try and strangle you. To shake them off you have to do a punching action and then a butting action to hit them with your rifle. Exhausting!

Try it out! Any other Taiwan Wii experiences?

Exotic Domain Names .CC .TO .TV : Cocos Islands, Tonga and Tuvalu etc.

I've written a little about www.wretch.cc and www.1421.tv before but I have just recently discovered why a lot of sites are registering with exotic domain names.

Last I wrote, I speculated that sites register in these exotic domains to avoid laws that limit what can be shown in any given country. It turns out to be a little more complicated...

First, some domains like this like .to "[do] not maintain a whois database that provides registrant information, as many of our customers consider the public display of this information invasive of their privacy" Interesting, anonymous...

Second, "There's .tv from the Pacific island of Tuvalu, .to from Tonga, and .cc from the Cocos Islands. Or how about .md from the former Soviet republic of Moldova or .tm from Turkmenistan?

[...] some small nations have already cashed in on their digital assets.

They are selling their surplus addresses in deals that have netted them millions of dollars enough to pay for schools, medical care, even free or subsidized Internet access via satellite to islands that cables cannot reach.

For some countries, Internet domain names have proved more lucrative than coconuts or vanilla."

It seems that although "the two-letter country suffixes are meant for residents and businesses in a particular country [...] [,] no one has stopped governments from allowing them to become unofficial global suffixes."

Take some examples. "The .tv suffix is being targeted at TV stations and video-heavy Web sites major league baseball and Columbia TriStar are among clients. Moldova is limiting foreign registrations of .md to health-related names and sites. And .to is being marketed as a jumping-off point to another site with a name more difficult to remember.

For Tuvalu, with 10,500 people and a land mass of 26 square miles, the marketing deal gave it money to join the United Nations."

And for the Cocos Islands, "[Brian] Cartmell, a Seattleite, has secured exclusive rights to manage the domain name registry for the Cocos Islands, a 5.4-square-mile territory of Australia, population: 650, domain name: .cc."

"He claims to have sold more than 60,000 .cc addresses so far through his Web site, enic.cc, and says he expects to reach a half-million this year." [2000]

"Cartmell says he has never visited the Indian Ocean islands that are his domain's namesake—they're reachable only by once-a-week flights from Perth, Australia. He has a contact in New Zealand who serves as his go-between. The Islands, whose main export is coconut meat, do not receive a cut from the .cc registration fees; but Cartmell says the country has received other benefits from its partnership with his firm, such as being wired with satellite-linked Internet service."

In the end it truly is a marketing strategy linking the suffixes to real world domains:
"Another private company is hoping to make .md (Moldova) a destination domain for medical-related sites. A San Diego firm is about to launch WorldSite.ws, on behalf of Western Samoa. Perhaps the lamest effort to date has been the repeated attempts to market Web addresses from Christmas Island (.cx) as a holiday gift item.

These new domain sales efforts are not only intended to open up new Web real estate, as the marketing materials suggest, but also to give obscure domain names sufficient prominence so that thousands of established Web businesses feel obliged to buy them."

It makes me wonder if Taiwan could successfully market .tw since it is also an island nation. God knows it could use a little more recognition. But since wretch.cc, a taiwanese outfit, has already set up in .cc, what does that tell you about the internet domain business in Taiwan?

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