economy is pretty unstable

Nothing much to update lately. Economy seems to be very unstable lately. Wall Street had a couple days loss then up and downs. Over all pretty bad performance on stock market.

London has suffered from riots all over the city. My colleague who moved to California last year told me he and his wife used to go to some of the places where riots happened.

Summer is almost over. A couple of interns last year returned as full-time employees. Current interns will be going back to school soon. We'll have enough snacks and food in the cafeteria soon :).

I've hit my one year mark at Google in July. So far so good. Interesting projects, smart people. I've learned a lot, especially in internet and mobile advertising space. I like this space because a lot of innovation can happen. The barriers to entry is still not very high. I often tell people that :" you & I can sit down for a few hours and start an internet advertising business.". It's not rocket science, publisher sends a request for an ad and ad server respond with a creative. Real ad serving is not that simple ( you have to deal with tracking, reporting, frequency capping, targeting etc). But you get my point.

Rumor says iPhone 5 or 4GS will launch next month. My AT&T iphone4 still has 1 year contract. So I'll skip a generation as planned.

Things move relatively fast. So we'll see what happens in a year.

HBO channel showed Katherine Heigl's movie "life as we know it" on Sunday afternoon. I watched a little but didn't finish it. Her last movie I saw was "the ugly truth". She seems to be good at playing sweet yet kinda tough girls. 

Summer time (some news updates and thoughts)

As more and more attention shift from traditional media to new media, it's no surprise to see some old media companies struggle  from recent earnings announcements.  There's no question that mobile ads will grow as more and more people adopts smart phones. some recent news that caught my eye
Is Apple's iAd dying a slow death? 7/8/2011
Steve Jobs Says 'Most Mobile Advertising Really Sucks' 4/8/2010
It doesn't seem like Jobs has figured out this one. But Apple's recent financial performance has sent the company on the trajectory to be the highest market cap company. The #1 right now is  Exxon Mobile ($419B). Apple right now is $364B. Google right now is $199B.

Here is Google's very own Vic Gundotra's Mercedes-Benz ad:

A few interesting articles

• if you only advertise on iAd, you're only reaching 27% of the market according to tech crunch.
• No body is buying your app now what? 
• For as little $50, you can test out names with AdMob
• What do Warren Buffett and Marisa Mayer have in common? They both invested in getaround according to WSJ

p.s. if you haven't read in the plex, Charlie Munger recommended it at Berkshire's annual meeting. 

bonus video Jawbone boombox. It's a really good portable speaker. I tested one out at San Jose airport.

Android gaining ground

I was surprised by Android's success a few times this week. One is from a youtube video visualizing activations over time.




Another one is after Gingerbread release hit my Nexus One Android phone, I posted a twitter message. Within a day, a few people replied my tweet. I've never got much response from my hundreds of past tweets. I was surprised to find out there're people out there who cared about Android OS releases on Nexus One.

I've also played around the Xoom tablet. It's pretty sleek. However, I'm still gonna buy an iPad2 when it comes out next week. Pretty similar reason why even though I have 2 Android phones (Nexus One and Nexus S), I still use iphone 4 on a daily basis.

Google TV thoughts

There is one thing I agree with Steve Job's talk this Wednesday. That is listen to the users. I really liked the new Apple TV from the demo. It's small and simple. It does HD streaming for movies and TV shows that's it.  There're only power cable, HDMI, Ethernet connections at the back with built-in wifi. What Apple learned in the past 4 years is that people don't need another computer on their TV. I hope Google TV gets that.

I think Google is trying to catch up on user-friendliness. Unfortunately, people tends to hire people who share similar traits. Collectively, it's hard for Google to design products that are very easy to use, good quality and elegant. Because Google engineers are hired to solve difficult problems not to listen to the users:).

I'm turning into an Apple fanboy

I got my first Mac computer a couple of weeks ago after my friend Rahim described me what a versatile platform it is. I ordered my ipad online because it's sold out in 4 stores near Sunnyvale. I even called a store today to make sure they had it in stock. But when I got there 1.5 hours later, they were sold out.

I use Nexus One Android phone and really want Iphone 4. However, I liked Tethering support on Froyo (Android 2.2). It helped a lot when I first moved to the bay area since there was no internet in my apartment. I could just use my laptop's wifi and my Nexus One as an AP. I got decent Internet speed for browsing and chat. Also, when I visit countries outside the US, unlocked Android will really help my phone bills. Because I can basically buy a local pay-as-you-go plan and not pay outragous International roaming.

Before I started my job at Google, I went to Yellowstone national park in Wyoming. It was a very good experience. I camped by the lake with a few friends. We even rented a moter boat and had a fun ride on the lake.