The Internet Entrepreneur Diary

There is a news on News.com about western companies in China.
“Who from the West is doing well in China?”

It mentioned many of the top 100 IT companies such as Apple, Yahoo, Microsoft, Amazon, IBM, Dell and Google, but none of them are doing as good as they expect. As a native Chinese, I have to say that the leaders in those companies don’t fully understand Chinese culture and the shopping habits. It’s a totally different worlds. Most western companies are thinking China as big pie and a big market. They have not thought trough what’s on Chinese’s mind and how they think about Western world and culture? Forget about the government. Doesn’t matter how government control their internet and information, the government is always the last one to know the new tips and tricks to get the good stuff.

Popularity: 19% [?]

For every small business owners, cost and recovery are one of the important keys to succeed in their small business operation. Most of the small business now have high speed Internet access from their small office or home office. A cost-effective way to operate the day to day jobs are also important. Can you do it with as little as no cost?

Google has the answers.

Popularity: 10% [?]

Why do I like Yahoo mail? #1 free web based email - Yahoo Mail - Unlimited Disk Space

Since Yahoo announce the new. Yahoo! Mail goes to infinity and beyond . It supposed to be available in Summar 2007.

Just few minutes ago, my Yahoo mailbox has gone beyond GMAIL’s limited. It’s unlimited storage now. WOW! Now I have too much space to store all my junk mails and …. How do I know how much space I have taken? How many email I have? Do I actually need that much space?

Will people ever wondering what unlimited storage actually mean? I don’t know. We will see! Since it’s free! Why not?

Popularity: 5% [?]

My blog site was down for about 3 hours without web access and 5 hours without FTP access. I have post the problem when it started on my blog more blog.
ANHosting.com - Power Outage for 2+ hours
I Called them 5 times and was getting “All circuit are curently busy” message and hung me up. Tried chat online and finally got hold with someone. “Power Outage” the excuse this time. It was “Cooling system failure” less than 5 days ago. I am wondering where are their backup power generator? Don’t they have any? I check their datacenter information, they seem to be very capable. How come their server is crashing twice in 5 days?

According to their status blog there was few servers affected by the outage.

ans08, backup10k, esc105, esc108, esc111, esc89, ans09, esc91, esc92, esc93, win04

Now what happens? Only the following server are up at this moment.

ans06 - Update 10:45pm CST: Server is up.
ans08 - Update 7:47pm CST: Server is up.
ans09 - Update 8:01pm CST: Server is up.
esc89 - Update 7:47pm CST: Server is up.
esc91 - Update 9:12pm CST: Server is up
esc92 - Update 8:50pm CST: Server is up.
esc93 - Update 8:01pm CST: Server is up.

What about the rest of servers?

After researching for 2 months prior switching to ANHosting.com, I truly believe that their server should well fit my currently web site need. I have been with the following SHARED web hosting company and none of them satisfied my need at this point. So I don’t have much to lose.

crystaltech.com - ColdFusion MX hosting - More expensive and less diskspace
GoDaddy.com - Small web site and email hosting - Slow. Good domain services.
Globat.com - limited MySQL connection.
1and1.com - limited MySQL connection and very slow sometimes
Hostingzoom.com shared hosting - limited disk …

Popularity: 10% [?]

A 6 foot tall Terra-cotta soldier and his horse. Can you believe that Chinese’s ancestors are 6 foot tall? This is one of the amazing historical site you have to see it to believe it. It’s not supposed to be found. Some old guy was digging a well in 1970s, and found the place. It was amazing how huge the area is. China government stop digging on #2 and #3 tomb, due to the damage they found. Once the tomb is opened, the color of the objects are fading away. and they dry out and collapse.

You have to see it by yourself and listen the story about the history of China. It’s amazing how it were built and how it was not supposed to be found few hundred years after it was built. One thing worth to mention is that none of the soldiers are smiling. Each single soldiers are different. There were made by the slave, who look at each other and made the faces of others. They don’t smile, because they all know that they will be buried with the soldiers after they finished the works. They will also be executed if they made mistake. It’s a brutal world.

You can see the slideshow here!

Popularity: 8% [?]

First of all, click here to see the slide show. Yellow Mountain Slide Show

If you are a hiker and you have never hiked to this number one mountain in China, you will be shame on yourself. The mountain is called Huang Shan (Yellow Mountain in Chinese). It’s one of the most known mountains in the Chinese painting. It’s one of the most weird and beautiful mountain in the world too. The weather in the mountain could change four seasons in one day. You can have Spring in the morning, Summer at noon, Autumn in the afternoon and winter at night.There are only few hotels (about 5) in the mountain. If you decide to stay in the mountain, you’d better book the hotel when you arrival in the village though your hostel host or hotel manager. The only reason you will stay in the mountain is to watch the cloud sea and sun rise. The hotel price in the mountain is very expensive and you sometimes have to share room with 6+ other strengers. You are recommend to carry as little items as possible and leave your luggage in the hotel in the village. These are some people who just don’t listen. So they have to turn around and back down to the village. Shame on them! I will tell you why!

Popularity: 22% [?]

Last year, My wife and I took 7 months off and travel to Asia (Taiwan, Hong Kong and China). That was a peaceful moment in our life that we have no worry, no fear, no job and no regrets. We have waited for that vacation for years. We went to many many places and decided to stop at Yang Shuo, China for about two weeks. We were so relaxe and relieve, just like we were in the heaven. I took many photos with my Nikon D70s. The weather was cloudy, but perfect for summer vacation. Click here to view the slideshow.

We plan to go there again this summer, we have more places to go. 50% of the people there are foreigner. That is one of the famous places in China. If you look at the Chinese painting, you will know what I am talking about.You can see more photos/slide shows from my photography page.

Popularity: 8% [?]

The new iGoogle home page is getting my attention. It automatically change the theme to night theme after dark. This is cool features. I like it a lot. This feature is way bettet than My Yahoo’s boring theme. You can clearly see the object in the them are moved and the sun becomes moon. I am wondering if Google will make this an video or animation behind the scene. If will be cool if the object moved dynamically based on the user’s activity. For example, it will be extremely cool to show that the fishing fox hold a sign with search keywords or something the user just type in the search box or in the gadget. Am I crazy?

Updated: Just found out that it changed based on the time and weather. I bet it will show a rainy day based on my the weather of my location. This is so cool. It’s getting close to what I dream off.

Before Dark

After Dark

Midnight

Popularity: 7% [?]