Amazon’s Dynamo

Don’t know why I like to torture myself by reading dense academic papers but this paper about Amazon.com’s Dynamo was quite interesting.

Check it out: http://www.allthingsdistributed.com/2007/10/amazons_dynamo.html 

S$6.3b to be invested in building world’s largest solar cell manufacturing complex in Singapore.

From making transistors, cpus and electronics to Solar Cells, Singapore is in transition. This news of Norway’s REC building a S$6.3b plant in Singapore nearly went off the radar.

How big is this deal? The last major deal from EDB was ExxonMobil’s $4b+ oil refinery. This has nearly eclipsed it.

It is also close to the size of the two $5b casinos.

Of course, most people wouldn’t bother too much about it since there wouldn’t be much media hype about this.

I think it’s a good move to turn existing wafer expertise that we have into new sectors of clean energy.

It’s same same…. but different.

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Zuck is officially a Billionaire

Simple analysis of yesterday’s FB announcement will tell you that the young Mr Zuck is now a billionaire on paper.

If he still has 10% of the company, it’s worth $1.5B now.

Assuming he has 30% which isn’t too far off the mark usually, it is about $4.5B. Microsoft has awarded him a big fortune with the new valuation.

I think this is already more than the Google Founder’s valuation at Google’s IPO.

Is it possible to pirate Facebook Apps?

I was thinking, since the Facebook API is publicly available, is it possible to reverse engineer it?

For example, if you run a smaller network like Multiply, is it possible to create a kind of wrapper API that allows Facebook Applications to run on Multiply.com?

This came about after thinking about how you can run “linux” on Windows (co-linux) and Windows Apps on Mac and run old games using emulator, why can’t a competing social network develop a reversed engineered API?

That way application devs can expand the market share of their apps quickly.

The New Marketing Rules: The 4Es?

From the OgilvyONE Worldwide CEO:

• Moving from Product to Experience
• Moving from Place to Everyplace
• Moving from Price to Exchange
• Moving from Promotion to Evangelism

Read more from Kaiser Kuo

FriendCSV

FriendCSV is yet another great app that just needs to be done.

Now I can use it to compile a list of my friend’s emails and phone numbers and update my contact database.

Sounds like Singapore…

“The next big internet service wouldn’t come from Korea”

Same same here…

Do you agree?

FaceForce is Good Stuff

FaceForce is a new Salesforce AppExchange application that combines Facebook info into Salesforce CRM.

It’s good because this idea is long due: mashing up Social Networks with CRM tools.

Social networks like Facebook has excellent data inherent in the social graph.

With the opening up of the API, companies will be seeking ways to mine the data for better information.

If only the Facebook Inbox and newsfeed actions can hook directly into such application. I.e. allow you to answer Facebook inbox messages, wall postings, discussion from within a CRM application. With more apps and more users, marketing support/analytics tools like these should be able to deliver immediate business ROI.

(InfoNugget: I had a coffee with FaceForce creator Clara some time back when I was in Palo Alto. She’s a really amazing woman.)

Full Moon on the Quad

One of the highlights of Stanford life:

FYI: Bjorn and I had the record for our batch.

Listerine was available.

If you had opportunity sitting right in front of you, why not go all out?

Tripit.. How simple can things get?

How simple can software go?

Tripit is a new service that can help you organize your travel.

All you have to do is email all your travel confirmation emails to plans@tripit.com and you’re done. It will automatically sort out your itinerary and create a travel plan for you that includes google maps, directions, booking details and your own notes.

I love software that is just so simple to use. You don’t even need to register to use an application like this. Today’s technology is sufficient to build more of such apps that can automatically parse incoming input and sort them to the right users. Developers should think of ways to make their software as easy as this.

From: Reddit Blog