Taiwan Blog Feed

Photo by MJ Klein

I love to ride bicycles.  The problem is that I am too big for conventional type bikes.  I own a Giant mountain bike, and while where is nothing wrong with the design of the bicycle, I am in quite a bit of pain and discomfort after about 15 minutes on it.  Therefore, I cant ride it for very long.  Plus because I can’t ride for very long, I don’t ride it very often either because it’s not worth the effort to take it out for 15 minutes.  This means that I haven’t been enjoying bicycle riding as much as I would like to because basically I hate riding my diamond frame.  The design just doesn’t make any sense for me.  I want something different.  Something comfortable and something that I can put a lot of distance on and not cause problems that outweigh the health benefits of riding.

My friend Kevin Kao makes recumbent bicycles.  In simple terms, this design allows the rider to recline and pedal with the feet forward (and usually) pedal with the feet roughly at the same height as the hips.  The seat on a recumbent bicycle is actually a seat (as opposed to a saddle on a diamond frame) and is designed to support the riders weight.  The riding positing of the recumbent allows the rider to lay back, in a manner of speaking.  There is no pressure on the handlebars (my main problem) and one doesn’t have to ride hunched over with the neck craning up in order to see ahead (another of my problems).

I’m also too large for nearly all recumbent designs.  Actually, I’m too heavy, I should say.  But, there is one design that I can ride, and it’s an absolutely blast!  Here it is:

This is a recumbent tricycle of a design known as a “tadpole” which refers to 2 wheels up front.

For some reason, recumbents are looked down up by “real” bicycle riders, and as such, there is a great deal of folklore about recumbents, and most of it pure bullshit I might add.  One of the first things you will hear diamond frame riders say is “You can’t climb hills on a recumbent.”  My response to that would be “Neither can you.”  This is because diamond frame riders stand up when climbing hills, and use their body weight and gravity plus the additional power derived by pulling up on the handlebars.  You can’t stand up on a recumbent so you have to use your muscles to push against the seat.  You most certainly can climb hills on a recument, and the rider who does so, does it on sheer muscle power and not by using their weight on the pedals.  One could argue that the recumbent rider gets where he is going based on his ability to power the bike directly.  The truth is, there are very many strong recumbent riders who keep up with diamond frame riders rather easily.  But the best part of hill climbing is that you will beat the pants off your diamond frame riders on the way down because of the superior areodymanic positioning of the recumbent rider.  The Wikipedia article gives further information in a very balanced manner.  I recommend reading it.

This model is called the Artifice and it’s brand new from TW Bents.  Notice the headrest and the open mesh seat.  This seat is amazingly comfortable and has an adequate range of adjustment.

I saw quite a few models, and it was great being around so many cool bicycle designs.  I saw some top-secret new product designs that I can’t tell you about yet, but someday soon!

This is Mr. Kevin Kao talking business with Hui-chen.

This model sports fenders and a versitile accessory holder, shown here with a bottle holder on the right side as viewed from the cockpit.

The other side sports a GPS (yeah!) and a mirror (this shot is reverse angle).  Notice the disc brakes.  Each brake has a lock for parking.  One of the great things about riding a trike is that you can just park it on the side of the road and take a break without taking your feet off the pedals - it’s that comfortable.

I had a lot of fun riding these trikes and I hope you enjoyed reading about them too!

There is quite a backlash against Chinese produce at the moment, and it is effecting the well-known scare stories like eggs and milk, but also spilling over into other products that I suppose the marketers believe can get some traction with. Hence, batteries; the sticker says "Not Made in China" (非中國： fei zhong guo).


Made in Singapore, none the less - I didn't even know they had any factories there.

I’m proud to say that I was one of the nine BlueIQ Ambassadors mentioned (not by name) in this article Inverting the Pyramid at Interactive Knowhow.  It was a great buzz to be with such clever people and not to boast about IBM too much, work for a company that is far ahead of so [...]

A couple of interesting pieces out this week on the problems Taiwan is facing in the global economy. First Businessweek has an article discussing the problems Taiwanese makers in branding and innovation...

"If you look at the semiconductor industry in Taiwan, it is very competitive globally with a gross margin of between 30% and 50%," says Peter Tsao, vice chairman of Deutsche Bank's global technology group. Taiwanese semiconductor design is so effective, he says, that it has allowed Taiwan to take away market share from the US, reversing the direction of business migration: whereas US companies would set up their manufacturing centres in Taiwan, it is now the case that Taiwanese semiconductor companies are establishing their own design centres in Silicon Valley.

The situation is tougher when it comes to electronics assembly, or original equipment manufacturing (OEM), which comes with a gross margin of only around 10% – the vast majority of the value-added going to the owner of the finished-branded product, rather than to the manufacturer.

Companies that operate in this area – such as mobile phone manufacturer Foxconn – have not only faced a slowdown in demand, but also a less favourable environment in their main manufacturing base, China. Wages have crept up thanks to a new labour law and tax concessions have been removed, putting Taiwanese companies on a more level playing field with their Chinese competitors.

One thing that makes Taiwan stick out from its technological neighbours is the lack of big brands – Japan has Sony, Korea has Samsung and China has Lenovo. Taiwan does however have some companies that have gone beyond assembly to target the consumer directly.

Computer-maker Asustek Computers has recently gained some success with its Eee PC, a scaled-down notebook computer that was popular in the US last Christmas. Acer has been focusing on developing its own brand. But even though it is one of the world's biggest notebook companies, it is not obvious how much of that is due to the brand rather than the company's low prices.

"Acer is one of the only Taiwanese brands that has been recognised. But does it have brand equity? Are you willing to pay more for an Acer than for another computer? No!" says one Taiwanese tech specialist.

The article is quite interesting, and one expert cited opines that the best route to take is for Taiwanese firms to be bought up by Chinese firms interested in globalizing themselves.

Meanwhile the always excellent Jon Adams writes on Taiwan's manufacturers as they fight falling exports (Ma save us!) with small PCS:

An upstart Taiwanese company blazed the trail. Now, the world's top three computer makers are hot on its heels. The prize: dominance of the emerging market for low-end, mini-laptop computers.

The big three — the American companies Hewlett-Packard and Dell, and Acer of Taiwan — are betting that such products will have broad appeal. They are offering these laptops, also known as netbooks, in the developing world as an affordable alternative to desktops and high-price laptops, and advertising them in the United States and other advanced markets as a second or third computer used mostly with the Internet.

And in belt-tightening times like now, they are hoping consumers in mature markets will also snatch them up as a more affordable option.

"It's a potentially exciting area, particularly when people worry about the U.S. economic outlook, in which people might want to cut spending," said Steven Tseng, an analyst at ABN AMRO in Taipei. "So it fits into the macro trends quite well."

There is no clear-cut definition for the segment, and analysts say the lines get blurry. But most of the new crop of minicomputers have screens that are less than 10 inches, or 25 centimeters, across diagonally and priced from about $300 to $600, but still have full operating systems like Windows XP or Linux that can support third-party applications.

The new market reflects a broad shift toward mobile devices and away from desktop computers, and changing tastes in mature markets like the United States and Europe, analysts say.

"Three or four years ago, this kind of product couldn't have had such a big success, because people were still purchasing their first laptop," said Eszter Morvay, a researcher at the technology consulting company IDC in London. "Now, their needs are becoming more sophisticated — the consumer has evolved. They might just need an Internet device, or a second or third laptop for work, or for mom or the kids. So this is giving a boost to the market."

Until recently, the big computer makers paid scant attention to this niche. They had built mini-laptops — like Toshiba's Libretto — but they were either too expensive (the Libretto costs about $2,000) or poorly designed to catch on in the mass market.

Then, about a year ago, Asustek, a Taiwanese computer maker little known outside the country, introduced the Eee PC. Priced under $300, the first version featured a seven-inch screen and used the Linux operating system. The idea was simple: Consumers are increasingly using laptops for surfing the web, checking e-mail messages and viewing photographs, and do not need all the bells and whistles of a full-blown computer. The Eee PC was also an attempt to offer a commercial version of the XO laptop, the product of the nonprofit One Laptop Per Child project, which aims to distribute computers in the developing world.

The Eee PC was a surprise success. Last year, it hit the top of the "most wished for" laptop list on Amazon.com. That got the industry's attention. Now, the three leading computer makers have released mini-laptops.

Actually, Taiwan's firms are very innovative in technology, but the problem is that many of the small and medium sized firms that drive Taiwan's economy lack similar innovativeness in financing, management, and administrative practices. Though I hear they are quite clever in the accounting department....

[Taiwan]

This month, I review two electronic learning aids developed for people learning Chinese. This time, however, they are produced by Asian companies.

Read the reviews here:

XCome Dictionary for Asus EeePC & Dr Eye Han Easy (html page) (pdf)

Enjoy!

A while ago I wrote about how the Internet could eventually be combined with our physical reality in some fashion, overlaid so that our surroundings would basically gain all of the features of the Internet, including searchability and physical context-related information. At that point, a few mobile devices had GPS, but now that the new iPhone 3G is out and apparently selling like hotcakes, there are a slew of applications being made available these days that take advantage of the phone’s GPS to bring the virtual world of the Internet closer to our physical world. Basically, these devices know where you are (yes, I know it’s a scary thought, but I wonder if people might not be as frightened of this as it becomes more common), so information about everything around you is available through the device, a real-world Wikipedia: That interesting building across the street was built in 1903 and was the scene of a political assassination. There’s a tea house up this alley, but people say the Oolong is bit dodgy. Some got a really good picture of this empty house. There’s a squall moving in, we’d better get inside. That kind of thing.

Another aspect of this is that your phone not only knows about the physical world around you and your place in it, it will, through such (still rather sub-par) programs as Fire Eagle, Buddy Beacon, MyLoki, Britekite and the like, know where other people are, where they’ve been, even where they’re headed. This is a cool application, but I’m pretty sure I would lose a few friends when they see how I turn off my location beacon or hop on a bus as soon as they approach. Another strike against this will be not being able to send a text message I often send to people I’ve got appointments saying, “I’m almost there, just a few minutes!” when they can plainly see I’m still at home, in the bathtub, and I haven’t even scrubbed behind my ears.

Those little pixelated badges I’ve seen in the corners of a few websites recently confused me for a while. It turns out that they’re scannable QR codes that point your mobile device to a certain place on the Internet. Apparently they’re often used in Japan, and you can even make a badge to wear with such codes on it. If this kind of technology takes off, and it seems that businesses are designing these things into graphics, it will be another way the physical world is connected to the virtual.

Most of this interaction, so far, has been one-way, of the physical world being described and adjusted to by the virtual, but with the advent of 3D scanners, touch screens, interactive displays and even shape-shifting buildings, I wonder when and if the balance will tilt the other way, making the physical world “programmable” to a certain extent.

Every square foot of this planet has a history, whether people figure into it or not. Choose any street corner in your city and try to imagine all of the things that happened to all of the people standing in that very spot over the years. Now that we’re in a position to actually record these things and make them known, sooner or later a filter will be needed to deal with all of the massive amount of information that piles up. A good example of this is Panoramio on Google Earth: Eventually maps will be so covered in blue dots that you won’t be able to see the actual places unless you turn them off. Who will become the arbiter of such information? Who will decide what gets seen and what doesn’t? Now that’s the scary part, especially given the frightening, ongoing crackdown on personal photography in places like the US and UK, even as more and more CCTV cameras are put in place for the “official” version of the world. Give it 20 years, and the virtual world people have come to rely on overlaid onto and even able to change the physical world will be completely manipulable by those in control of the resources to do it. When that point comes, which reality will you believe?

We hear a lot about issues on censorship on Global Voices Online and our Advocacy Project, and most of the cases come from Government policies or business self-censorship because of the Government policies. However, fierce business competition can sometimes result in censorship… or a kind of.

Famous Taiwan infotech blogger Briian recently protested against Yahoo Taiwan (Yahoo Kimo) filtering search results, calling Yahoo!Kimo “evil”.

In his post “Protest! Yahoo!Kimo's ‘Combined Search' monopolizes information! (抗議！Yahoo!奇摩「綜合搜尋」資訊壟斷)”, he pointed out that Yahoo Kimo's new search function, “Combined Search”, gives out web links, news, video clips, blogs results… only from Yahoo's own services.

首先，先看一下原本的Yahoo奇摩搜尋結果長怎樣，頁面最上面除了廣告跟新聞區塊，中間一大塊都是網頁的自然搜尋結果，最下面是知識+的內容。

First, let's take a look at the original look of search result page in Yahoo!Kimo. The upper part of the page is ads and news, the middle part is natural search result of web pages, and the bottom part is from Yahoo's Knowledge+.

下面這個Yahoo!奇摩新推的「綜合搜尋」的搜尋頁面：

And below is the search result using newly invented “Combined Search” from Yahoo!Kimo:

仔細看他的搜尋結果，新聞區塊全部只收錄有刊登在Yahoo奇摩新聞網站的新聞內容就算了（一直都是這樣），其他不受Yahoo青睞的媒體內容如果沒機會登上Yahoo!奇摩的新聞頻道，只能默默無名的在某個網路的黑洞裡呼吸新鮮空氣。

Look carefully at the result page. The news area contains news stories only from Yahoo!Kimo News (which seems like always), and other media outlets who are not favored by Yahoo and have no chance to get into Yahoo!Kimo News Channel would stay in some kind of unnoticeable Internet Blackhole.

最主要是「知識+」區塊下面的那個「部落格」搜尋結果列出來的全部都只有「Yahoo!奇摩部落格」跟「無名小站部落格」中的內容，意思是使用Yahoo的人全部都沒法藉由這個「綜合搜尋」的功能找到「奇摩」跟「無名小站」以外的部落格文章，全世界的部落格都不是部落格，只有寫在Yahoo所屬網站裡的才算是。

What's more important is the area of “Blog search result” under “Knowledge+” area, where all the results are from “Yahoo!Kimo Blog” and “Wretch Blog” (note: Wretch is the biggest blog service in Taiwan, also owned by Yahoo!Kimo). And that means people who search with this “Combined Search” cannot find anything other than blogs from “Kimo” and “Wretch”. Blogs all around the world are not count as blogs, while only blogs under Yahoo Services are counted as blogs.

The same situation happens when searching video clips with Yahoo!Kimo search. All videos showed in search result are from “Wretch Video”.

This hot post got 192 comments and soon was noticed by ZDNet Taiwan. ZDNet interviewed Briian on this issue and then he put whole 3 parts of Q&A on his new blogpost, which has 75 supporting comments when I write this report. I quote part of the Q&A below:

1) 你在重灌狂人上抗議雅虎奇摩綜合搜尋有資訊壟斷之虞，作為一個網路使用者與知名部落客，你期待看到雅虎奇摩會有怎樣的改變？

1) You protest Yahoo!Kimo Combined Search for its information monopoly on Reinstall Mad Man. As a web user and a famous blogger, what changes do you expect to see from Yahoo!Kimo?

以前我還以為美國Yahoo的「YST技術」是為了更快、更準確的找到更多東西，不過現在Yahoo!奇摩的作法看起來是要讓使用者找到最少的 blog跟影片，無名影音裡面的影片有比YouTube多嗎？可以囊括全世界的影片嗎？當越來越多使用者發現他在Yahoo!奇摩找不到想要的東西之後，大家轉往其他網站的速度會越快。

Previously I thought that Yahoo!USA's “YST” technology is to find information faster and more precisely, however, it seems like Yahoo!Kimo is trying to prevent their users to find more blogs and more video clips. Are there more clips in Wretch Video than Youtube? Can it cover the whole world's video? Once more and more users are aware of the fact that they can't find what he wants with Yahoo!Kimo, they will turn away quickly and decide to use other search engines.

2) 在我訪問過雅虎奇摩搜尋與工程部門主管後，他們告知我沒有作到全面性搜尋的理由，在於企業資源有限，因此是以先推出新功能為主要考量，並會再逐步增加搜尋來源，他們並認為無名加上雅虎部落格已是台灣大多數的部落格，在搜尋結果上已能滿足大多數使用者的需求，你怎麼看他們的回應？

2) After my interview with directors of Yahoo!Kimo Search and Engineer department, they told me that the reason they don't search comprehensively is due to limited corporate resources, so they decide to present new functions first and then step by step increase search resources. They also believe that Wretch Blog and Yahoo Blog represent most blogs in Taiwan, so the search result can already meet the need of most users. What do you think about their feedback?

這問題就得問他們自己囉，大家覺得這會是「技術能力」或「最賺錢卻資源有限」的問題嗎？

如果無名+雅虎已經可以滿足大多數使用者的需求，那Blogger、Xuite、Pixnet、微軟Spaces跟Yam天空、癮科技裡面的內容大概都是不重要的資訊吧？更別說是中文以外的語言與最愛寫BLOG的日本跟美國、歐洲、中國…等各地的各式資訊。

This question should be directed to them. Do people think this is a problem because of “technology capability” or “limited resources… while being the most profitable company”?

If Wretch and Yahoo can satisfy most users, then I guess contents in Blogger, Xuite, Pixnet, Windows Live Spaces, Yam Sky, and Engadget are all trivial wrecks? Not to mention languages other than Chinese and information from the most bloggy Japan, US, Europe, China….

3) 有一個很有趣的現象我不曉得你會怎麼解讀，像是Google在美國擁有很高的市佔率，搜尋並超越雅虎多年，不過雅虎在台灣近乎壟斷市場，Google的使用者仍以power-user為主，Google的開放策略似乎還無法吸引到台灣很多用戶的關注，尤其是20歲以下的用戶。對這些非power-user 來說，他們可能真的不關心雅虎有沒有壟斷的問題，你怎樣看這個現象？

3) Here's a very interesting phenomenon which I am curious about how you decode it: Google has very high market share in US, and its search has surpassed Yahoo for years. However, Yahoo seems to monopolize the market, while Google is still embraced only by power users. It seems that Google's open strategy does not attract many Taiwan users' attention, especially users under 20 years old. To these non power users, they perhaps don't care about the monopoly problem of Yahoo. What do you think about it?

Google的很多東西都比Yahoo!奇摩的好用，譬如說搜尋跟Gmail，但一般使用者並不知道有其他選擇。我可以在台灣的電視、報紙、雜誌、廣播甚至是外面跑的公車上看到Yahoo!奇摩的廣告，但是看不到Google的任何廣告，雖然在台灣的愛用者很多，但Google並不重視台灣市場。

Google很多產品在其他國家可能很受歡迎，可到台灣就幾乎很少人用，網站是給人用的，除了語言之外，還有很多文化、習慣與民族性或族群習性的差異，Google中國做了很多努力、併購了很多當地的網站，可是Google並不在乎台灣的使用者，全部就只有中文化而已。

Most of Google's services are much better than Yahoo!Kimo, such as search engine and Gmail, but normal users don't know they have other choices. I notice that Yahoo!Kimo's commercials and advertisements are everywhere on TV, newspapers, magazines, radio, or even buses riding on the streets in Taiwan, but I've never see any ads from Google. Although there are many Google lovers in Taiwan, but Google does not care about the Taiwan Market actually.

Google's huge amount of products might be very popular in other countries, but they are seldom used by Taiwanese. Websites are made for people to use, and there are a forest of differences around culture, habits, nationality or ethnicity, other than language waiting to be discovered. Google China has done a lot of efforts such as merging local websites, but Google just don't care about Taiwanese users while all Google Taiwan has done is having translated its services into Traditional Chinese.

What do you think? Do you consider it a kind of censorship? Do you find the same situation in your country? Please leave comment under after reading this report.

I believe Twitter have a similar set-up

Shigeru Miyamoto of Nintendo Expands His Empire :

“Given that its roster of characters includes not only Mario and Donkey Kong but also Princess Peach, Zelda, Bowser and Link, it’s easy to imagine that Mr. Miyamoto designs his games around those characters.

The truth is exactly the opposite. According to Mr. Miyamoto, gameplay systems and mechanics have always come first, while the characters are created and deployed in the service of the overall design. That means a focus on the seemingly prosaic basic elements of game design: movement, setting, goals to accomplish and obstacles to overcome.

‘I feel that people like Mario and people like Link and the other characters we’ve created not for the characters themselves, but because the games they appear in are fun,’ he said. ‘And because people enjoy playing those games first, they come to love the characters as well.’”

Great write-up of the greatest video game designer ever.

The Guardian, a British newspaper, yesterday reported:

British buildings equipped with solar, wind and other micro power equipment could generate as much electricity in a year as five nuclear power stations, a government-backed industry report showed today.

Commissioned by the Department for Business, Energy and Regulatory Reform (DBERR), the report says that if government chose to be as ambitious as some other countries, a combination of loans, grants and incentives could lead to nearly 10m microgeneration systems being installed by 2020.

Such a large scale switch to microrenewable energy could save 30m tonnes of CO2 – the equivalent of nearly 5% of all UK electricity.

The report estimates that there are nearly 100,000 microgeneration units already installed in Britain. Nearly 90,000 of these are solar water heaters, with limited numbers of biomass boilers, photovoltaic panels, heat pumps, fuel cells, and small-scale hydroelectric and windpower schemes.

Likewise, the vast majority of microgeneration systems installed here in Taiwan are solar water heaters. There's not the space for private wind turbines, but as photovoltaic cells become cheaper and more efficient, the government should make it easy for homeowners to set up net metering systems.

South Taiwan is very suitable: Kaohsiung gets 2,139 hours of sunshine per year; Tainan enjoys 2,649 hours. Many apartment buildings have flat roofs, and residents will likely be interested in a scheme that means, instead of paying a monthly management fee for building upkeep, they earn a few dollars every once in a while.