DEDLOG

Google Chrome OS will kill Windows.. but thats not the point.

dedlam — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 07:03:43 +0000

I've written before about the World being taken over by Google and the latest announcement about Google's plan to launch their Chrome OS seems to be another step in that direction. What I am am finding though is that because of the OS aspect of the name, many commentators are automatically putting this dark horse in the race with Windows 7 and seem to be downplaying the Chrome aspect of the equation. (Other Chrome vs Windows posts here and here) If you take a scan down the list of products that Google have in their stables, you will find that generally anything that is released to the public is done with a great deal of forethought. For instance, when Gmail was launched with one gig of storage space, it wasn't because they were generous or charitable. It was a means to an end, and that end was to change the way we use email. Over the years since the launch of Gmail the way we related to email did change. No longer did we connect to our email account via a client like Eudora or Outlook and download our messages onto our computer, but we kept the emails on the Google server so we could store and search them in the future. Other players like Yahoo and Hotmail also followed suit to offer a lot (if not unlimited) online storage for emails online. As we became more internet reliant, we began to connect to our email account in more than just through our browser. We started to use our mobile devices and we are increasingly become less reliant on one machine that stores all our data but we can now access our data through any machine with an internet browser. The point is that who dominated the webmail market didn't matter for Google, all they wanted was for email users to be more reliant on an email storage service provider. They wanted us to begin to live in the cloud.

As time went on, Google not only developed their master plan through innovation but also through acquisition, buying up startups to build their empire. Putting in place the foundation for moving not only email but documents, spreadsheets, presentations, gps maps, images and video into the cloud. Bit by bit, Google has chipped away at how we compute. Where once upon a time we used to bulk up on processing power so that we could run applications on our machine, we are now slimming down to netbooks, iPhones and Androids that can do as much as what an average computer user was doing on their own PC. Google Chrome OS is therefore not only a clever move by Google but it is the only move.

From a business strategy standpoint, what looks like a move to go head to head with Microsoft is actually the finishing touches on a battle that already won. Google Chrome OS is not a new venture for Google but the end game for a strategy that has taken years to achieve. Google Chrome OS is actually a strategy to move downstream on the internet value chain. What does that mean? To illustrate, lets take a non-internet based example.

Imagine you make lemonade. You make damn good lemonade that people like to drink but you just make it and sell it to people who come to your lemonade stand. Other people in your neighbourhood also less lemonade but it's nowhere as good or as cheap as yours so over time, they come to you and ask if they can be bought out by you so that they can play a part in your lemonade superiority. Pretty soon all the lemonade that is sold in your neighbourhood is yours and the people that sell it work for you, but the stands from which they are selling from are not controlled. Some sell from crates on the driveway, some sell from refrigerated carts outside the shopping mall, some sell from dispensing guns strapped to the someone's back at football matched. Sometimes, the lemonade is perfectly served with ice cubes in glass tumblers and sometimes it's served warm into plastic cups. So the natural way to control the quality of your product is to start by vertically integrating your near-monopolistic business to supply all your lemonade through refrigerated mobile outlets. This is not about building a better mouse-trap but it is about controlling your supply chain.

The other strategy you could have considered was to start buying up lemon trees and sugar cane plantations but in the case of Google's supply chain, they already own the servers in which the entire internet is gradually being downloaded and stored. Comparing Google Chrome OS with Microsoft Windows is like comparing a lemonade stand with a chain for shoe stores. It's no comparison. Sure they both serve customers and sell product, in the same way that GCOS and MS Windows both let you work on a spreadsheet but one is providing you access to the "cloud" that Google has been building for the last decade and the other provides you access to the information that is stored on your computer.

Google Chrome OS for the time being has no competition. It is a browser that has decided that it no longer needs someone else's operating system to exist and to let it's users achieve what it needs to achieve on a computer. The closest thing that it really would compete with is Adobe Air or a browser app that is written in Java, and even these are only cross platform applications rather than something that does not require a platform at all. (on the assumption that GCOS is actually platform independent.)

Where will this all lead? I would imagine that sooner than we think we will be doing complex computing through devices that have the same built-in computing power as the Amazon Kindle that connects us to the computing power of billions of servers spread across the planet. I predict that as newspapers slowly die off in their current form, it will be gradually replaced by something that looks similar (and is equally disposable) but was evolved from the netbooks of today.

It’s finally happened. Twitter has been blocked! #gfwlist

dedlam — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 11:23:53 +0000

The end of the world is nigh

The Battle in the Cloud

dedlam — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 06:31:35 +0000

First of all, I'd like to apologise to my readers for not posting for quite a while. It seems that the good folk at the Golden Shield project have been working overtime after the Olympics because the internet freedom we experienced last year has all but been taken away from us poor sods based in China. For the last couple of months, we poor expatriates in China have been deprived of YouTube, Blogspot, WordPress and it seems that even much of the stuff that is going to my Google Reader has been hobbled.

My plan to develop my own personal blogging empire has therefore been thwarted and I am reduced to posting via Posterous for all my blogs. Sigh!

A shame because in the internet world is in the brink of revolution. Well at least there is a concerted effort to do so. Only last week, the internets have been all a flutter about bing.com, Microsofts new search engine which I imagine is a serious effort by the Redmond gang to topple the reign of Google. So far I've seen that bing has had a mixed reception but it will be hard to tell until people start to adopt. Of course bing is much prettier than Google so some people might prefer it to Google as a start page in their browser.

The Google camp have in their strategic move announced Google Wave. My interpretation of this is it is essentially Google Profile on steroids. This could be seen as an attack on the MSN Live front. I won't go to much into this theory (because it's just too convoluted and I am continually interrupted by pretty girls walking by and the noisy table of Hongkies on the table next to me at the Coffee Bean in XinTianDi where I am writing this) but it seems to me that the two juggernauts of cyberspace are in for an epic battle for the evolving cloud.

I'll be first to say that when I first heard about cloud computing it seemed a little sci-fi and brought to mind images of The Matrix and the Lawnmower Man but as the months rolled on it has become more and more viable. As we approached the holy grail of decentralised processing power, the peaces are falling in place for our computing lives to go online and these latest campaign by the two major combatants indicate the changing winds.

Both Microsoft and Google are vying for the dominant position in the future of computing by assembling the battalions most suited to occupy the cloud when the corpses are buried and the gun smoke clears. Take Google for example. If you imagine how Google Wave will work when it is launched, it is an amalgamation of pretty much everything that currently exists. It allow you to post messages, images, video, much like Facebook, FriendFeed and to a lesser degree Twitter. It will then integrate documents for collaboration much like what Google Docs already does and I imagine it provides some kind of control as to how you share all this information which has the potential to replace every other social network in existence. By connecting various components of cloud together it can act like Google Profiles on steriods. The good thing though is that with a public API if Wave takes off it could create a whole new ecosystem of smaller online business that would plug into Waves functionality making Google the essential glue that binds the cloud together.

In the other corner is Microsoft. Almost hiding in plain sight is their Live suite. Document sharing, instant messaging, spaces, photo sharing, MS has been quietly amassing the firepower to create it's own cloud within the cloud. Now the culture of MS is not the most open source and should the victor come from the Ballmer camp then the future of the cloud could be dark, stormy and possible expensive. Sure all the MSN live stuff is free now but because of the closed nature of anything that MS releases, that could all change in a second.

So what does the future hold for the average netizen? On the one hand we may have a cloud occupied by many service providers but held together by Google that (if the wind changes) could tax the web businesses that rely on it to connect to the end user. I liken this to the Chinese government who provides you with certain freedoms but at a moments notice could "disappear" you in the middle of the night. The alternative is Microsoft. A fascist dictator who controls everything you own from day one.

My friends! Understand that your future under threat. Heed this warning because cyberspace needs a saviour. The internet is fast becoming a bipartisan organism with no geographic borders. Who will that saviour be? Who can we trust with our virtual existence?

Disclaimer: Please read this post as you would the scratchings on the walls of a prison cell of GFW penitentiary.

China Media Project » Blog Archive » Looking back on Chinese media reporting of school collapses

dedlam — Fri, 08 May 2009 08:45:57 +0000

For the record.
What happened to the Sichuan Schools 360 days ago.

http://cmp.hku.hk/2009/05/07/1599/

Don’t forget

dedlam — Tue, 05 May 2009 16:42:29 +0000

Today, I was reminded that next week on the 12th May marks the anniversary of the Great Sichuan Quake. It doesn't feel like a year and even from the safety of Shanghai as I morbidly watched this disaster unfold , I was moved on a daily basis by stories of tragedy, bravery, unity and cowardice. I could not believe that such an event could happen and even now I cannot fathom how, so easily, millions of people were displaced and nearly 70,000 men, women and children lost their lives.

I still feel outrage at the disproportionate number of schools that crumbled and the loss of an entire generation of children. I am still impressed at the speed at which aid was deployed and yet disappointed at the governments refusal to accept all assistance from those with the equipment and know-how to save more lives. I still feel pride when I think of Chinese children breaking open their piggy banks to give what they could help those left homeless by the quake.

Most of all I am reminded that life is as precious as it is fragile and I write this to remind you on the 12th May to remember. To remember the humanity that this tragedy brought out in all of us and to celebrate life.

2.28pm, 12th May – Lean on your horn!

See and download the full gallery on posterous

More freaky Han Solo Shanghainese

dedlam — Tue, 05 May 2009 04:14:23 +0000

Here’s another example of life sized imitation people.

Shanghai gives me the creeps sometimes.

dedlam — Mon, 04 May 2009 01:57:23 +0000

If you travel around Shanghai you’ll often run into life size realistic statues of people doing random things like walking the dog or in this case reading books. It’s as if the city is getting ready to be put into a time capsule or an episode of the Planet of the Apes.

Perhaps a throwback from the Xi’an tomb?

This shot was taken outside a primary school near Zhongshan Park.

Apple launches an iPhone flip phone… not

dedlam — Sun, 03 May 2009 10:58:08 +0000

I was strolling through Carrefour Gubei when I saw this. Is it a breach of trademark when it is obvious that the product bearing the offending logo is not from the trademark holder?

Rationalizing my personal blogging

dedlam — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 23:11:02 +0000

I recently took a look at my blogging presence on the web and realized that the last couple of posts that I have echoed over my blogs have been, well pretty boring to be honest. Somewhat like being forced to watch a holiday slideshow of someone you neither know nor really care about. When I looked further back to some of my earlier stuff it was less personal and more insightful and actually better to read.

So in my effort to compartmentalize my cyber personality I have decided to separate my blogging over a couple of different places.

First of all is my Blogger blog. This as my first blog and even though it is the ugliest it shall remain about non-personal issues, be it technology, China or politics, it will most likely end up there. (dedlog.blogspot.com)

My other blog is dedlam.wordpress.com which will I will try to turn into my mobile blog. Inevitably the posts will be shorter and will hopefully contain more dodgy photos from my phone and give you a peek at what I see day to day.

Lastly, as I try to improve my photography skills I have just set up dedlog.dedlam.com (which is still under construction). Hopefully this will become like a gallery. Don’t expect to see happy snaps there because I have Flickr and Picasa to fill those needs. Hopefully this will be more of an artistic experience rather than picture of my son’s new haircut.

So that’s my online persona rationalized. Eventually as my Chinese improves I’ll make use of my Blogbus account but until then, depending on what you as interested in I’ll be posting on those 3 personal spaces plus the occasional Shanghaiist.com piece and of course random brain dumps on twitter.com/dedlam. I realize this is a big commitment so bear with me over the next couple of post and I’ll see you on the other side.

Easter Weekend in Beijing

dedlam — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 06:14:20 +0000

Having spend most of the last nine years in Shanghai, I’ve taken countless trips to Beijing over the years, but this last Easter weekend was the first time I ever went there as a tourist. To be honest (and I hate to admit it as I have grown to love Shanghai) Beijing has a lot to offer. It’s not only the cultural sites that Shanghai can’t offer but being such city that is so spread out, it is much easier to find the local people and how they live.

In Shanghai it is easy to never really feel that you’re in China but in Beijing you can’t avoid it. Over the long weekend we managed to visit the Great Wall, Forbidden City, Temple of Heaven. For a three day trip with two kids in tow that was enough. Here are some of the images I managed to capture while I was there. Enjoy!

See and download the full gallery on posterous