Ok, sure, I’m a bit biased, but here are some pointers as to why the Apple iPad is not going to be a huge success.

First off, “iPad”, really?!? What kind of name is that. I remember looking at early “renditions” of the fabled Apple Tablet with names including iSlate and iPad. At some point, there was a Borders survey that mentioned and iPad, and I immediately scoffed at the name.

For all this time, people were imagining some amazing device that would be somewhere in the field between smartphones and laptops, not just a huge iPod Touch.

Really, I don’t see why you would spend $499 or more on a device that basically does what an iPod does, but with a larger (multitouch) screen which is supposed to make reading book, browsing the web, and the such easier.

You could buy a netbook for a cheaper price and it would come with a keyboard as well as more functionality. Not to mention you could get one with a touchscreen as well.

Granted, the iPad does have some good points such as weighing 1.5 lbs and a 10 hour battery life, but really that is about it. Look at how stupid the device looks in Steve Job’s hands, being just a huge iPod:

You’ll be able to run all the iPhone/iPod apps on the iPad. Though there is still no multitasking, giving further reason as to the little benefit between the iPod Touch and iPad.

People who want to have an excellent on the go reading device should get a Kindle (which gives you a very paper-life experience), those who want to get a great multimedia device, get something along the lines of an iPod (I’m only saying this to prove a point), if you want to have a cheap portable computing device, get a netbook. So tell me, why would you get an iPad?

So, $499 for the 16GB model, $599 for the 32 GB model, and $699 for the 64GB model. 3G adds $130. The Wi-Fi only model will come out in 60 days, and the 3G one in 90 days.

Images from Apple.Com and Engadget.com

Gizmodo article: http://i.gizmodo.com/5458292/apple-ipad-everything-you-need-to-know

Gizmodo has a great guide to all the rumors that sprung up regarding the Apple Tablet:http://gizmodo.com/5434566/the-exhaustive-guide-to-apple-tablet-rumors

Specs: http://www.apple.com/ipad/specs/

Engadget Article: http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/27/the-apple-ipad/

Engadget Apple Tablet History: http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/26/the-apple-tablet-a-complete-history-supposedly/

The Standard (agrees with me!): http://www.thestandard.com/news/2010/01/27/early-ipad-reaction-its-just-giant-ipod-touch?source=nlt_weekly

Guess what domain I just got? EricOuyang.Com!

I’ve been working on a separate website to just be a front page to my online self. It will have some info about me, links to all my various online accounts, resources that I think should be helpful to others, and info about my web-design services.

As of this writing, the domain isn’t completely ready, but it should be ready soon. Usually, it takes 24-48 hours for the domain to be ready.

Also, Blog Action Day is coming up, but I’ve been really busy, so I’m not sure I can get in a nice lengthy one, but I’ll be sure to get one in.

UPDATE: The site is finally online. I heard it was working earlier in some other areas, but I’m pretty sure anyone can go to EricOuyang.Com now and find my under construction page.

Recently, I’ve had the experience of buying some stuff online in China (In particular, two electronic dictionaries),while I was in China, on the website TaoBao, which is similar to eBay here in the States. And I have to say…. it was more complicated then I expected.

First, to go through this process, you have to have a banking account with online banking enabled, which involves going to the bank and getting forms signed to enable it. According to my uncle, in the past, you didn’t have to go through this to get online banking, but because of security issues, this extra step was put in.

Next, I assumed that I was all set to go ahead to purchase something on TaoBao, like in the U.S., but I was wrong. In case you haven’t purchased something online before, basically you go to a secure website (with https at the front of the URL) and enter in your name, credit card number, your credit card’s expiration date, and then the security code (the 3 digit code on the back), to send money to the online store. I tried this, but I received an error message. I first had to go to the online banking account website for the card to configure things over there.

For this particular bank, which was the Bank of Communication, you had to enter in your card number and then your PIN (which we set up when we created our card) to log in and create an account. Then you had to enter in a cell phone number. At this point, I was really questioning if buying something online was worth the trouble (it was quite a bit cheaper though, 150 yuan each). I typed in my cell phone number (a temporary pay-as-you-go one that I used for the two months I was there) and then it said that it would send a confirmation number to it. So in a few seconds my phone beeped to tell me I received a text message. Following that, I had to enter this pin into the website. On the form it also made me put in some “verification phrase”, and I wasn’t sure what this was. Clicking on the help button revealed that it was a phrase that I put in that would be displayed during every transaction so I would be confident that the website was not a fraudulent one. Finally, online banking was all set for me.

Though the process wasn’t quite done yet. Next, on Taobao, I clicked on the button for the banking company that I was using, then it brought me to the bank’s website to complete the transaction, and sure enough my verification phrase was there. There, it sent my cell phone another confirmation number to type in as well as my card number and pin. After clicking “confirm”, I was brought back to the TaoBao website where it told me that my purchase was successful.

A few days later,  I received a package with my stuff, and then I had one last step to complete. On the TaoBao website, I had to confirm that I had received the package (in case the seller was a fraud) so it would send the money to the selling person.

Whew. That was quite a bit of work! Well it goes to show that Chinese online shopping is quite secure. But still, many Chinese are not completely sure of buying things online. They worry that their card number would be stolen, or they are sent fake products or defective ones, so most people just continue to buy things at actual stores. And even with this long process to securely setup and purchase something online, there are still stories of getting your money stolen online in China.

It might take a while, but I do think that with time people in China will slowly start getting accustomed to online shopping and make more of their purchases with a few clicks of a mouse.

Not too long ago, Microsoft changed it’s Live Search to Bing, and has really stepped on the pedal to face it’s major competitor, Google (which, by the way, has about 65% of the market share)

Now, Yahoo will likely be pairing up with Microsoft to face Google in its domination of the search market. Bing will become the search engine on Yahoo, and Yahoo would deal with most of the search ad work.

I’ve used Bing quite a bit now, and I think it is definitely worthy to compete with Google. In particular, I’m fond of the daily picture on the homepage everyday and overall interface, though I’m not sure its results are as accurate to what I’m searching for as Google. Microsoft is pouring a lot of money into Bing’s, and if done properly will likely take a chunk of Google’s domination. Together, Microsoft and Yahoo will have 30% of the market.

Any thoughts on this Microsoft+Yahoo combo? Leave a comment!

More reading:

BusinessWeek

Article on AdAge

BoomTown

Also, as a side note, some photos I took in China are uploaded onto Flickr here. And a probably more interesting note that I just discovered is that Bing is blocked in China for some reason as well as sites like Flickr and Blogger.

Image from Wikipedia.Com.

CNET recently posted up the 2009 Webware Top 100 and I just wanted to highlight some cool webapps! (Images are from CNET Webware)

JamLegend

I’m sure many of you are familiar with the game Guitar Hero, this is similar in the idea, but online style complete with social networking features like profiles, commenting, and a easy to use interface.

Xmarks

A browser plugin that enables you to sync bookmarks across computers as well as discover new websites though your bookmarks. Also handy as a bookmark backup tool.

Digsby

This program connects together your online accounts (Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Gmail, Yahoo, AIM, Google Talk, etc.) in one program.

Elance

An online system to hire  (basically outsource) people and manage these connections. The website also handles the money as well which is convenient.

Tripit

It combines all your travel info (which you forward to it by email) in an organized location and provides additional information to help your trip go more smoothly. There is also an iPhone app for Tripit.

Interested to see the rest of the top 100? Go to http://www.webware.com/100/.

I recently just read this article in the local newspaper about this initiative “One Day” started by Bethany Needham, a Northboro citizen, and a lot of interesting details in this article struck me. We all use the internet for so many things from Facebook to emailing to research, but it is also an amazing promotion tool, and “One Day” is a great example of this in action. “One Day” encourages people to donate one day of their pay (on July 8th, 2009 to be exact) to a charitable organization.

According to this article, what suddenly made this “explode” was that Needham decided to create a Facebook page for her initiative, and although the page is only about a month old, she has already received 470 pledges to join her cause. Combined with this as well as the word of mouth and her own website, people from across the country are joining in on the cause.

Just think about that for a second, in just over a month, one person with the help and support of a few others were able to get almost 500 people to give up a day’s pay even in these hard times. That is what the internet can help us do, tell that to someone 20 years ago and they would think you are nuts.

Coincidentally, I’ve been working with a group of friends to create a website that helps people do just that: harness the power of the world wide web to promote initiatives in their community. I’ll bring up more on that in the future, but I just would like to commend Needham on her work to make her cause known by using the internet. Also, I’m very fond of the overall design of her website: clean, to the point, and informative.

To learn more about this, go to http://www.onedaygive.com/, see the newspaper article (here), and check out the Facebook page as well (here).

After being picked on a lot by Apple with its “I’m a Mac” ads, Microsoft is now getting back with its “I’m a PC” ads. These are nowhere the same as the Mac ads. They focus on destroying the stereotype that Apple has created and show how easy to use Windows is, rather than pushing down its competitors.

Here are a few of them. You can check them all out at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/watchtheads/

Also, Microsoft did the Mojave Experiment where they told people that Mojave was the new Windows, where in fact it was Vista to show people that what they thought Vista was isn’t actually true.

There are also a few other ads with Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates in them which are funny, but I’m not sure they are very good ads:

I found this awesome video of Microsoft’s vision of the future. A longer version is available at istartedsomething.com. Enjoy!

Adding to the e-book “revolution”, Amazon updated its Kindle to version 2.0. In case you don’t know, the Kindle is an e-book reader that uses E-Ink technology to closely imitate the properties of a real book. Among these include really crisp text, no glare, readability under the sun, and no backlight.

The new Kindle is slimmer than the first generation, has a better screen with 16 shades of gray, a longer battery, faster page turns (20% faster), more storage (2GB), and weighs 10.2 ounces. Like the previous version, the new Kindle allows you to download books over the Whispernet connection (via Sprint’s 3G network) in less than 60 seconds and though the same connection, you also have free access to Wikipedia. The design of the new Kindle is much better than the old one which sometimes turned pages accidentally. It also as an experimental feature that allows the Kindle to read text to you through text to speech technology. Although the voice is quite robotic, it is kind of nice to have if you are on a car and you want to listen to a book, but this isn’t nearly as good as a real audiobook. On the Kindle, you can also listen to music and podcasts as well as view images and PDFs, though the PDFs need to be converted first.

Although I’m not extremely fond of e-books, the idea is great as you can just carry the one device in replacement of all the books and other text that you carry around.

CNET Video of the Kindle:

More info:

Official Kindle information from Amazon (Includes videos)

CNET Review

Kindle Review on Engadget

Images from Amazon.Com

Today, Google released a new version of its popular world browsing software, Google Earth. Some new features that was included in this update is being able to look at historical images, explore the ocean, and record your own tours. You also are able to explore Mars through Google Earth in addition to seeing the Earth and Sky. The ocean layer allows you to see the bottom of the ocean and 3-D models of shipwrecks. The recording feature is quite simple and you can add narration to it too. The new version is available at the Official Google Earth Page.

Tour of Google Earth 5.0

Demo of Google Ocean (I know this one looks similar to the video above, but it is a different one)

More Info:

Google Earth Blog (Unofficial)

• Google Mars Info
• Google Ocean Info
• Historical Imagery Info

Official Google Earth Site

• Tour of Google Earth