Android vs WM, iPhone out!

Don't doubt my title. It's my prediction for the mobile market next year and YES, iPhone will be knocked out from the market. Why? you may ask. iPhone is so popular right now and most people favor its fancy and smooth UI a lot. It is hard to believe Apple will lose the support from its clients. However, the current situation looks familiar to me. It just likes the famous historical battle between Apple and IBM PC long time ago but Apple faces a new competitor this time, Google Android.

A good stock share predictor won't follow how majority said, he will monitor latest trend and forecast the future by their own analysis. So what I am doing here is trying to forget all the comments made by loyal fans of Apple (Actually I think they are already anesthetized by psychedelic Apple mark) and use some statistic data to make a reasonable evaluation.

Basically, Apple does not learn from its history. They did a bad job when they were facing IBM PC army and lost the battle due to their closed standard. Now they adopt the same strategy again in iPhone. If they want to extend the life of iPhone, they should not only release the SDK for developers but also open the source code of iPhone OS. In my eyes, Android means another IBM PC army and Apple is doomed to face its failure once more despite the tons apps in their online store and many fans they attracted. I believe their advantages and superiority will be eroded inch by inch.

Within only one season, 2008 Q4, Android phone even captured 4% US market share with only one pioneering device, HTC G1, and in the time of hard economic situation. It's hard to image how much market share that Android could take over in the near future because what they could get is probably an amazing one. I should make a bold prediction that Android will replace iPhone position at the end of 2010 and confront the WM directly in 2011. We will witness it happens!

One of the most successful media franchise: Star Trek

"to boldly go where no man has gone before", is the famous slogan of Star Trek episodes. This month, a new movie with the original name "Star Trek" would try to capture all the trekkers once more. Debuted in 1966, Star Trek episodes were credit with a perfect reflection of contemporary human society such as racism, religion, sexism, feminism and human rights, having a totally different view which emphasized future government and society evolution comparing to the other famous science fiction movie, Star War.

Beside the fiction story stimulating our imagination to the future, Star Trek also brought up some ideas about ideal human society and technologies. The United Federation of Planets in Star Trek represents the model civilization in cosmic space. Basically, it is the Utopia of mankind and was injected with many American values. And after almost 40 years later, its story and adventure spirit behind the scenes still fascinate many people.

The episodes evolved to many different series since the premier edition. However, the television channels in Taiwan have not introduced any new series since "Star Trek: The Next Generation" series, which is a pity to all fans. It is why the most of Trekkers in Taiwan are not familiar with the latest characters showed up in "Deep Space Nine", "voyager" and "Enterprise" series. For aged fans, boldly Kirk, smart Spock and nervous Dr. "Bones" McCoy are always legendary and un-replaceable. As for young fans, they probably love captain "Picard" and Data instead due to their era. Now, its time for these new generations to know what is true legend and what is the real meaning of "Star Trek" by the new movie.

Autodesk ObjectARX

Like any professional software, AutoCAD, the famous 3D modeling software developing by Autodesk Inc., provides APIs support for developers who want to make contribution on this platform. They named the APIs "Autodesk ObjectARX". Unfortunately, there is no any published book talking about this subject in Madarin Chinese. For developers in Taiwan, it seems the only way to gather information and technical resources is visiting the official website of autodesk.

As a software developer with over 3 years experience in Microsoft .NET solution, I am pleased that Autodesk made "ObjectARX" intergate with .NET framework. And here are some relevant links:

1. Developer center of AutoCAD
2. SDK download
3. ObjectARX

Happy learning!

Google is building a network

For many investors, Google represented a company which collects tons of genius engineers and produces many creativites. However, how to transfer these cool services into business profit was a big question. By continuously launching cross services API and cooperating with third party hardware device manufacturers, Google now shows his true ambition and strong combat ability. I can say it is obviously that Google will knock out Apple and Microsoft within next 10 years.

Google provided tons of free online services from video sharing platform, the YouTube, to geographic social platform, the Latitude. Moreover, it extended the battle field into hardware device. Google's smart move was step in mobile phone market with its open source operation system Andriod which immediately attracted many curious developers around the world to contribute more fantastic software applications to it. Different from the Apple iPhone and the Microsoft SmartPhone, developers could touch the system core direclty with no boundary.

Each time that Google intersects two of its services brings out enormous positive response and potential business profit. With such tempo and progress, the growing rate of Google is just like a geometric prograssion and it seems nobody could stop it. Recently, Google gave us another amazing service called Google Power Meter which could record, moniter and analyse the power consumption of your eletricities in real time. It seems that in the future, we would give more and more personal information and privacy to Google and let it control our normal life! For more details about Google Power Meter, check the news report below:

Kiva, a online platform for Microfinance Institutions

In order to support the poor people in developing countries around the world, many microfinance institutions have been established. Different from the massive banks or global financial organizations, microfinance institutions are usually local and only provide small loan to poor people.

I guess the most people have the same experience with me, heard about "microfinance institution" this words due to a news about the banker "Muhammad Yunus". He advocated the concept of microloan and hope it could help more people out of poverty in his country, which successfully gave rise to the attention from public. Such institutions focus on local region, accept requests from poor people and did not seek for high profit. Of course, to maintain and keep organization running needs a basic level of profit but they do their best to keep the balance by offering low interest rate to their loan.

You may ask: is it high risky to lend money to poor people? Microfinance Institutions do not supply their loan without any condition. They have their way to judge the status of each case and try to avoid any potential risk. Whatever, The idea of microfiance institution is very cool and would make our world better. The question is how do we encourage more establishment of microfiance institutions in our world? For example, people like us who have limited capital but would like to involve themselves into this field, they probably don't have enough fund to support the operation.

What if there is a online platform for these microfinance institutions to gather fund from Internet users? The only thing they need to do is to reveal the accommodator brief backgound they have on the web platform and wait for the funding from Internet users. The role of Internet users is a kind of philanthropist. The interest guarantee for them is 0%. However, all funding activities would be recorded and published on the web pages to honor their contribution. For microfinance institutions, they still offer the low interest rate loan to poor people when they receive funding from Internet users but have responsibility to monitor borrower's repayment and notice the Internet users who provide the fund. Although there are still some conditions for microfinance institutions which want to coorperate with this web platform, it is comparatively heavily reduce the finance barrier for them to operate. Sounds great right? That's Kiva! A truely social enterprise based on web 2.0 concept.

What are we waiting for? lets do our best to make this world better!


PS.

If you are not familiar with Enlgish and only want to focus on Taiwan region, there is another option for you to join social activities or involve yourself into social enterprise:

1. Flow, Inc., founded by Steve Chang, Chairman of Trend Micro, Inc., and Tom Wang, the famours writer in Taiwan. Their goal is to fund valuable social enterprise project in Taiwan.
2. Public welfare 2.0, established by online jobs service "104" in Taiwan. A very similar one to Kiva but only allows Internet users to donate.