New Alternative DSL/Phone Service in Seattle

"Atlanta, April 15, 2008 – Seattle has been selected as the market for the re-introduction of EarthLink’s (Nasdaq: ELNK) DSL and Home Phone Service, which combines convenient, low-cost telephone service and ultra-fast high-speed Internet access all on one bill."

- Earthlink Official Press Release

I am going to give it a try and see how well it works. If it covers all my needs like my current setup does, it may mean cost savings for a lot of small businesses in the area like mine without compromising quality of service. I have high hopes. =)

Here are their prices:

"With a basic plan starting at $49.95 a month, including 500 minutes of long-distance and local calling, DSL and Home Phone Service offers deep savings over most competitors. The premium plan, at $69.95 a month, offers unlimited long-distance and local calling and the fastest DSL Internet access in the Seattle area."

Find out more here.

I will keep everyone posted once I have had a chance to see this service in action!

Facebook Chat Part 2

Looks like Facebook has fully launched chat and I have been hearing a lot of feedback from FB users around me. Although a lot of them were negative like I suspected, there were still some good feedback and I personally thought that the new bar that chat sits in is pretty nice. I can now check the latest notifications through this little AJAX bar without having to navigate away from the homepage. That's something that I think is a good improvement in FB's usability. I am also not as opposed to having chat around anymore since it's not obtrusive at all. All in all, I think it's nicely done. However, with all that said, I am still skeptical on how successful this feature will be. I guess we'll just have to let time do its magic.

I would love to hear more on what everyone thinks of this new feature. =)

A True International Traveler's Phone?

There has been a lot of noise coming from my Asia contacts lately about a new Skype based phone that will allow a fixed cost plan for making and receiving calls from anywhere in the world. This means that roaming charges may no longer apply or so I was told anyway. I am thinking this might be it?



It sounds like a very interesting solution for international businesses or even the retired who's traveling all over the world. With that said, I have a few questions about this new phone if any of my HK readers are familiar with this product in an attempt to clear up some confusion:

1. Besides the "3 Skype phone," are there any other similar products in HK right now that fits the description?

2. Does this phone's creator or carrier have contracts with carriers in each country they don't have coverage in so that there won't be any extra charges for roaming on their data networks when used outside of the country it was purchased from and hence making it a true international mobile phone solution? Or is this stuck to only certain areas that the carrier has coverage in as most of the news coverage I have read suggested?

3. How does it perform compared to the traditional cell phones? (speed of msg delivery, voice quality, video functionality?, etc)

I am personally quite excited about this product even though it might not meet all of my requirements. The reason why I say this is because this product is a sign of progression towards a product that I will most likely eventually love. I think what would even kick it up yet another notch is if you can get up to 3 Skype-in numbers from the countries that you visit most as part of the package. Maybe I am too idealistic though. Here's a TechCrunch article about the Skype phone which makes me think that we are far from a truly international low/fixed-cost mobile solution as I had initially hoped for after briefly hearing about it from my contacts. With all that said, the looks of the "3 Skype Phone" is not all that impressive either which is kind of disappointing. =/ Regardless, I will definitely follow up on this later.

Startup Recruitment

My friend Leo recently wrote a pretty good post on recruitment and gave a few tips that I thought was valuable to share. My favorite tip was "Don’t stop recruiting until you have someone on board." That is such good piece of advice in my opinion because it's often too easy for hiring managers to get excited too early on and loose sight of potential fall-outs and better fitting candidates that might be out there. Like the book "Good to Great" by Jim Collins suggests, you always want the best of the best on the bus and should never settle for just good enough.



In any case, here are my additional thoughts that I left as a comment to his post:

START of QUOTE

One thing I would like to add is that prior to interviewing a candidate, it’s always a good idea to first formulate some relevant questions and then evaluate the questions’ alignment with what you want to find out about your candidates either on your own or if possible, with your team. Keep in mind that these questions will serve as a framework rather than something to read off to a candidate. The idea is to have high level questions that will facilitate a more focused free-flow conversation between the interviewer and the candidate during the interview.

I have in the past managed a good number of hiring managers that make the mistake of walking into interviews without any well thought out framework resulting in a hire based on a falsely positive feeling of the candidate. More often than not, they soon realize that he/she is not a good match only a few weeks to a month after the candidate was hired. What a costly mistake that is. When you think about it, between energy spent managing him/her, employee benefits, sign on paid vacation or bonus, and salary, you have just lost a good chunk of money over close to zero ROI.

Lastly, I want to point out that although it’s important to have a pitch. It’s even more important that it’s short and concise. The last thing you want to do is sit in an interview and end up blabbing away about your business the entire time which then looses focus on the real reason behind the interview. It sounds silly but a lot of hiring managers make the very same mistake.

END of QUOTE

Recruitment often seems like such an easy thing but in fact, it's really a science and an art in and of itself.

The End of Microsoft?

According to Venture Beat, Gartner did a presentation recently on "why they think Microsoft’s Windows operating system is on the verge of dying." If they are right, it will be an interesting day to see when a bunch of regular non-techie users are running around with OS X and Linux regardless of the purpose of usage. ;) Unfortunately, I don't think it will be that easy. I have a hard time believing that the Redmond software giant hasn't already put their brightest minds on strategically digging themselves out of this Vista hole that they are currently in. On top of that, there's MS Office and Exchange that most businesses cannot live with out. I mean, even though I am an opensource enthusiast, I still wouldn't replace Exchange in a corporate environment as exciting as some of the opensource alternatives are out there. Nonetheless, I think Gartner has an interesting theory and I am definitely not denying the possibility of that things will eventually go the way they predict. After all, what goes up, must go down right?

Facebook Chat Limited Launch

Tech Crunch says Facebook Chat Launches, For Some. What does that mean for Digsby?

Personally, I think Facebook doesn't need anymore extra features to clutter it up more than it already is but that's just me.

Google App Engine VS Amazon Web Services

Last night, the search engine giant, Google announced its App Engine product which is a rival service of Amazon's Web Services. Here's more coverage on it at Venture Beat. It's too early to say how much of a threat they are to Amazon based on unknown pricing factors and the duration of the lack of support in other languages besides Python. However, I must say that my knees would be a little shaky at this point if I was Amazon.

It seems that a lot of startups now-a-days are leaning towards running their apps on Amazon's, and now also Google's infrastructure for just a fraction of the cost of dedicated hosting or co-location. Easy and cost effective scaling is also a reason why these services are so popular. All in all, from a pure business perspective, I really don't see much of a compelling reason to not go with them especially when it also dramatically reduces infrastructure maintenance costs. However, it goes without to say that there are yet also some cons to this type of hosting. What I see as cons or more specifically, barriers would be that you are subject to their security practices, downtimes, and customization policies. Now, what I would really like to do is to be able to give these services a whirl on my own to see how it feels. My extent of experience in this area has really only been Amazon's S3 which I don't even play much with because where my engagements use S3, someone else is in-charge of the management of it. The other thing that I am really interested in is to hear the personal opinions and reactions to this new hosting paradigm from authorities that are in the colo/DH business.

With all that said though, something inside of me still prefers to run my own servers and manage my own infrastructure probably largely due to my IT and security background. The ability to customize my system architecture and retain data on dedicated locations has always been a perk that I valued more than anything else. I am also concerned about the compliance related implications to using something like AWS and GAE. I would even go as far as to argue that the extra cost of hosting your own infrastructure ends up being a worth while investment in the long run. We'll have to see if I will change my mind though as AWS and GAE matures over time.

Couple Sues Google for Invasion of Privacy

Since my Google Street View post was such a popular one, here's yet another interesting ValleyWag story on it not too long after I replied to a reader about how it would probably be a privacy issue if Google Street View actually gave live views to our streets. ;)

Couple sues Google over Street View pics of their house

Likeminded Local

Growing up in the suburbs in rainy Seattle during my teenage years always made me feel like I was the odd one out unlike say a place like LA. My peers around me always seemed a bit too laid back and with not enough career ambition. Of course, there are always exceptions like anything else. But even so, it always seemed like it was hard for me to find likeminded individuals with similar life experiences. With that said, interestingly enough, I ran into a blog today with some posts that I can really identify with like this one. It reminds me of the time when I finally left Vigilos after having spent 4 crazy years with them which I enjoyed more than any other time in my career before.

It turns out that the author lives in Seattle and has some very similar attributes as me. Furthermore, I seem to be able to identify with most of the content he writes about. This doesn't really happen a lot. It actually makes me want to reach out and meet the guy.

VoIP Bridging for Non-3G / Wifi Capable Phones

This is a pretty cool idea but sounds all too complex to use. Sure they are trying to iron out the inconveniences but I am perfectly fine with my 3G enabled smartphone running Skype natively. ;) After all, the perk of running Skype on a phone for me is so that I can get in touch with my international clients when I am on the run and possibly without my laptop. Of course, I am probably not the general user as they put it. However, I would think that most people that are aware of such technologies would already be unable to live life without a phone hooked up on a nice data plan which would mean they would run Skype natively as well?

Top 10 Legal Mistakes made by Entrepreneurs

A good friend of mine sent me this HBS article earlier this morning and told me that he would have loved to have had the chance to read this prior to some of his previous partnership fallouts. It definitely is a must read for all of you out there that are trying to do your first startup. You will definitely feel the importance of it if anything ever goes wrong which happens more often than most people expect. In my opinion, these precautions should always be taken into consideration and in most cases, as standard practices no matter how much you trust your partners and others.