Today I attended IBM’s ceremony announcing the opening of the first IBM Cloud Computing Laboratory in Hong Kong. The event was well attended by industry leaders, media, analysts, IBM’s major partners, and senior government including Mr John Tsang, Financial Secretary of the HKSAR Government. As Mr Tsang put it in his speech, the lab is a significant development:

IBM has Cloud Labs in cities across five continents and we are delighted that Hong Kong has been added to this distinguished list. This marks a new milestone for the development of R&D and information and communications technology (ICT) in our city. It is also testimony to our strength as a centre for ICT innovation and our strong fundamentals, including a sound legal system, vigorous regime for protecting intellectual property rights and world-class ICT infrastructure.

The IBM Lab is a strategic investment built on the technology and expertise of the Outblaze messaging business, which IBM acquired in April 2009 (note that IBM acquired some Outblaze assets, and not Outblaze itself). All of us at Outblaze are honoured to have demonstrated Hong Kong’s advantages as a centre for R&D, innovation, and talent in information technology.

Outblaze CEO Yat Siu had a few words for the occasion, though unfortunately he was overseas at the time of the launch and was unable to attend. In his blog he writes:

I congratulate IBM for officially opening this Cloud Computing Lab, this is a strategic investment to IBM and is only one of a few such centers world wide. I am happy to hear that IBM will continue to invest and grow this Lab and lead the way of large multinational technology companies to grow and build some real R&D effort in Hong Kong. This is a subject that I have been talking about before and I hope more multinational companies will emulate.

I congratulate Hong Kong because it demonstrates that Hong Kong has the stuff to develop leading and cutting edge technology with a global reach. Lotuslive iNotes is made in Hong Kong!

and last but certainly not least I wish to congratulate everyone at Outblaze who have made this possible through their effort, dedication and passion. You have demonstrated what is possible in Hong Kong and that will continue to foster and grow the spirit of research and development  in the field of technology here in Hong Kong.

Which sums it up nicely. Congratulations to IBM, Outblaze, and Hong Kong!

We’ve thrown together an impromptu event in honour of Marko Ahtisaari, who will be here in Hong Kong Tuesday evening (June 23). Marko is the CEO of the business travel social network Dopplr, which helps users take advantage of collective and current intelligence on travel destinations. Marko is an ex philosophy professor, a blogger, Web 2.0 visionary, author on digital matters, and Grammy award winner, already.

Marko will also be previewing (for the first time) the upcoming Dopplr iPhone app. If you are not yet familiar with the service, sign up to Dopplr and have a look - it is both clever and useful. Make sure to check out the Dopplr Social Atlas project.

Please join us for informal drinks with Marko Ahtisaari at Mozart Stub’n, located at 8 Glenealy road (just up the hill from Lan Kwai Fong), from 6:30 to 8:30 pm, on Tuesday June 23.

http://www.mozartstubn.com/

There will be complimentary beer and finger food (limited supplies).

Thanks to Thomas Crampton for blogging and tweeting this gathering!

More Links:

Really interesting Dopplr blog entry about how the Dopplr community travels

http://ahtisaari.typepad.com/about.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marko_Ahtisaari
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dopplr

Leading media company Axel Springer AG today launched autobild.com.cn, the Chinese online edition of AUTO BILD. Axel Springer is one of the largest publishers in Europe, and AUTO BILD is one of the world’s most popular automobile publications by market and circulation. Outblaze is the technology partner for AUTO BILD China, and we are developing some nice web toys for this project, some of which are already available on the newly launched portal.

autobild.com.cn is a Chinese Web 2.0 driven platform with rich media, social networking and social media services all powered by Outblaze. The primary design goal for this portal was to provide a rich online media experience for automobile enthusiasts in China. Chinese Internet users are increasingly tech-savvy, and static images simply don’t let enthusiasts really explore a car. This meant that Outblaze had to provide solutions not just for standard video content, but also for interactive 3D animations that support user customization.

After all, if you’re looking through a database of cars, wouldn’t you want to be able to view them from multiple angles and in any shade conceivable? Consider how stylish the Lamborghini LP 560-4 looks in pink.

As well as car exteriors, the site also allows you to look around inside 3D interiors - especially useful if you are concerned about leg and head room.

Web sites providing 3D viewing and manipulation of products offer better insight to consumers looking to decide on a purchase, because they let the user get a better feel for the product. And the advertising potential for any web site skyrockets when you give users customization options.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a car portal without plenty of video content, powered by the award-winning OutblazeVideo engine.

In addition to rich media features, autobild.com.cn also allows users to interact and exchange knowledge and ideas among themselves and with the editors of AUTO BILD China. There are user blogs, personal profiles, friends lists, discussion boards, and of course all the regular content you would expect from a seasoned publication like AUTO BILD: a car database, reviews, hints & tips, articles, and much more.

Here’s a few more images. See the action yourself at autobild.com.cn.

Come, speak and learn at BarCamp Hong Kong! The user-generated conference is back in the city that really never sleeps. This event will be bigger and better than the first one, held last December, so don’t miss it. As was the case with the first BarCamp Hong Kong, Outblaze is a proud sponsor and supporter. This time, the venue is provided by Turner.

This is not your average technology conference. Do you get bored out of existence attending run-of-the-mill events? Are you tired of being herded in and out of auditoriums like an over-dressed schoolchild? Have you had it up to here with sales pitches when all you are looking for is genuine information? Has a speaker at a traditional conference ever said something that made you want to ask a crucial question right away, and not 45 minutes later? Are you ever so slightly annoyed at the jumping through hoops required three months in advance just to speak at an event?

If the answers to the above are yes, BarCamp is just what you need. BarCamp is an unstructured, inexpensive, down-to-earth gathering of technologists who get together to share and learn. I said “inexpensive”, but in fact it’s completely free of charge. And if you consider that you get free food and drink, and a chance to win prizes, it’s almost as if BarCamp were paying you to attend.

Without further ado, here are the BarCamp rules and relevant details.

BarCamp Hong Kong web site

BarCamp Hong Kong Wiki

BarCamp Hong Kong FaceBook page

Location of current event: Turner International Asia Pacific Ltd.

Address: 30/F, Oxford House, Taikoo Place, Quarry Bay, Hong Kong

What if Internet access on your mobile phone for one month cost you HK$ 14,000, or about US$ 1,800? The following story occurred in Hong Kong, but this is a problem common over much of the planet. As recently reported by the South China Morning Post (SCMP):

Mobile-phone users are facing big bills for internet services they thought were free, the consumer watchdog [Hong Kong Consumer Council] warned yesterday. One customer ran up a HK$14,000 bill in a month.

…

The complainant hit with a HK$14,000 bill told the watchdog he thought he was using free Wi-fi services to access the internet.

However, he claims his service provider connected him to the Net through its fee-paying service without warning him first.

“Charges for Web surfing catch out phone users”

South China Morning Post, June 17, 2008

Mobile networks face an important self-imposed obstacle: metered data service charges that are unclear, unrealistic, and often rather opaque to the consumer. While most companies now understand that promoting third generation mobile services requires clear and friendly flat rates, some operators still extract value from their customers the hard way, by selling them voice service plans with Internet access charged extra by the *byte. This is supposed to be the Internet age; regardless of whether the user in question understood he was on Wi-Fi or 3G or 2.5G, a 14,000 dollar bill is exorbitant from any point of view.

This is not a new occurrence. In the April 1, 2003 issue of the SCMP [unfortunately, the SCMP does not support direct linking to articles and requires a subscription] Neil Taylor reported on much the same topic:

… operators know that if their customers were to actually use data services to their fullest capacity, they might suddenly notice what over-priced luxuries these things are.

Last week, I spent three days with Sony Ericsson’s P800 smartphone….

And after three days of happy surfing, I received my phone bill.

If that HK$400 [US$ 51.41] GPRS charge had been for a month’s downloads, I might have been irritated. But I was appalled at what I was charged for three days of sporadic surfing.

By any measure, GPRS charges are extortionate. They are also confusing. Just as we saw with voice and Internet services, the operators appear to have conspired to make their charges as hard to compare as possible.

“Guinea-pig users losers with punishing GPRS charges”

South China Morning Post, April 1, 2003

Neil Taylor was writing about GPRS, the forerunner of 3G, but the business model sounds depressingly similar. Where is the incentive to get a 3G handset and subscription, one may ask? In the July 2005 issue of Receiver Magazine, Outblaze founder and CEO Yat Siu spelled out his view:

The 3G incentive
Serious mass usage of 3G applications will occur when service fees become fixed and subscriptions become attractive and affordable for most users. In Japan, for example, 3G brought about the development of a vibrant and active content download culture that emerged following attractive consumer pricing of 3G bandwidth. Some telecoms may resist the idea, but ultimately they should pay heed to the lesson learned from broadband: charging a service on a usage basis discourages subscription, and will generally limit utilization to early adopters and technophiles.

Many operators who rolled out 3G services erred in setting exorbitant pricing, thus discouraging regular consumers from utilizing expensive 3G bandwidth services. 3G downloads of products such as video streaming, applications, or large emails are fairly substantial and therefore incur a greater cost on a pay-per-use bandwidth model; clearly, this is discouraging to potential customers.

Yat Siu, in Receiver Magazine, July 2005

There is the argument that 3G network operators were fleeced by their governments, but regardless of who bears responsibility for high 3G prices, several operators used confusing metered pricing to transfer the high 3G entry costs to their customers. And that’s not the only way in which the consumer loses: the high and often confusing costs of 3G services keep adoption rates low and indirectly hamper 3G technology. Until the majority of operators offer attractive flat rate data usage plans as well as “common sense” plans that prevent gigantic Internet access charges, consumers in most of the world will continue to be confused and outraged at the end of the month. That is, if they make use of data services in the first place, which is something many people avoid.

This brings us to Wi-Fi: it’s cheap, available across a growing multitude of devices, supported by just about all operating systems, and growing fast. Consider FON, a network of hundreds of thousands of members around the world who share their bandwidth with other FON members. In Hong Kong FON coverage is getting quite good, and you’ll find a free FON signal at Starbucks, McDonald’s, and major shopping malls just to name a few. FON has even been reviewed by the government of Hong Kong.

Outblaze operates FON in Hong Kong and we might have a slight bias, but there are local alternatives in most cities. Although FON is a global service, in Hong Kong Y5Zone is fairly prevalent and well organized, with over 800 hotspots. PCCW also offers Wi-Fi around the city.

Service plans with hidden or secret rates simply cannot compete with affordable flat rates. We’ve seen the shift from metered to flat charges in traditional telephony, television, and fixed line Internet access; isn’t it time the latest generation mobile network operators modernized all their fee structures to match their handset line-ups? You too can help discourage those network operators who maintain confusing charges: just have your mobile device connect via Wi-Fi when you need the Internet, and avoid data service charges entirely. In a city like Hong Kong Wi-Fi is available at most locations, so you’ll avoid astronomical bills while sending an important message to your provider.

The 2007 Hong Kong ICT Awards ceremony and gala was a lavish affair held at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre last night, January 21st, 2008. Outblaze competed in the Best Business (Product) stream, and took home the Gold Award with our white label social video service, OutblazeVideo. It was a pretty positive start to the new year. As you may remember, just last November OutblazeVideo won the APICTA award for the Tools and Infrastructure category, so it’s almost time for us to buy a new display cabinet.

The Hong Kong ICT Awards were established in 2006 as a collaborative effort among industry support organizations, ICT professional bodies, academia and the Government to establish a large scale and internationally recognized brand of ICT awards for Hong Kong. By the way, congratulations to our affiliates Dream Cortex and Sanrio Digital, who took home a Merit Award in the Digital Entertainment award category (read the press release on their web site).

You can peruse the Outblaze entry to learn more about OutblazeVideo, or browse through the other winners of Best Business awards. The winners for Best Business not only show the tremendous breadth of Hong Kong expertise and potential, but also indicate a few of the things Hong Kongers are passionate about. OutblazeVideo needs no explanation since Hong Kong has always been crazy about movies - especially free ones.

Not to be missed is Team and Concepts Limited, who won a Gold for EditGrid, their fantastic online spreadsheet. This clearly suggests that Hong Kong people put great value on efficiency and organization, and we all know that is the case. (more…)

Social media presents a rather attractive business proposition: provide your users with social services and let them generate content, traffic, and exposure for you. Last week (November 26-30) in Singapore I was restating this case in Outblaze’s bid for the Asia Pacific Information & Communication Technology Alliance Awards, one of the best and most comprehensive technology award schemes in the region and known more briefly as the APICTA Awards (see this site for more information). Our entry in the competition was OutblazeVideo, a white label hosted social video platform for portals and media companies.

To make a long story short - this event lasted most of the week - Outblaze won the APICTA Award in the category Tools & Infrastructure Application. I was there solo, and between all the cocktail receptions, networking events, exhibits, presentations, judging sessions and the excitement of victory I completely forgot to take photographs. I do have a picture of me with the award kindly sent in by Janice AuYeung and Karman Li of the Hong Kong Computer society (Janice and Karman, also in the picture, did a great job coordinating the Hong Kong delegation activities):

APICTA is a network of 16 Asian and Australasian countries and economies whose common goal is to increase awareness of information & communication technologies, stimulate ICT innovation and creativity, promote economic and trade relations, facilitate technology transfer, etc. Their yearly awards are among the most coveted by all manner of IT firms in the Eastern hemisphere.

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On November 24 I attended the Creative Commons Workshop organized by University of Hong Kong’s Centre for Development and Resources for Students (CEDAR). The workshop provided a wealth of information on the increasingly popular Creative Commons licenses, which allow for sharing of work without the fears and concerns of infringing on copyright. You can see a Creative Commons license on our blog, just glance to the right and look down.

This event was highly informative and I hope Creative Commons becomes the preferred system for the participatory Web community. CC strikes a balance between copyright and public domain, it is a license that helps to preserve copyright on your work while also inviting certain uses of that work - something that is much more difficult to do with a traditional copyright. CC is ideal for the blogosphere and beyond. I am thus very happy to provide the following videos and podcasts for those who were not able to attend the event. (more…)

Yet one more interview from my visit to the 3rd Chinese Blogger Conference in Beijing November 3-4, 2007. BlogBus launched in late 2002 and was one of the first blog service providers (BSP) in China. BlogBus offers free blog hosting and charges premium service fees of less than $15 a year. According to the Baidu Blog Development Report China has 52,300,000 blogs and 1460 BSPs. BlogBus is one of the top 20 BSPs in China. The interesting thing is that the company is only a couple dozen people, but competes against organizations with hundreds of employees.
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It’s time for another Chinese Blogger Conference update. I met Ms Ying Xue in Beijing at the 3rd Chinese Blogger conference. Tangos Chan (see his interview) introduced us and told me that I absolutely must interview her.

Ying Xue is an investment analyst who provides research and analysis to overseas Venture Capital firms. She is one of the volunteers behind CnBloggerCon, and since she speaks fluent English Isaac Mao (see his interview) asked her to provide simultaneous interpretation for the foreign media who didn’t speak Mandarin.

Hong Kong has had more and more IT startups these past few years, but obviously compared with China the scale is completely different. China has a very highly active and diverse community of IT startups (see “China Web2.0 Review” by Tangos Chan), and because of the huge market size (and other factors), they obtain VC funding much more easily than Hong Kong’s IT startups. So I was really interested to know what Ying Xue thinks of the situation.

Ying said she is not representing her company, but just sharing her own personal thoughts with us - thanks Ying!

cnbloggercon, outblaze, cbc2007

It’s a marketing term.

That was the reply of Outblaze founder and CEO Yat Siu when asked what he thought of “Web 2.0″, a term that is over-used, over-hyped, and often associated with obscure companies. The idea behind Web 2.0 - interlinked platforms, social software, and online services that encourage user contribution - is one of the most powerful, promising, and appealing aspects of the evolving Internet, but surely we must retain some perspective. Let us not forget the late ’90s bubble heyday of the prefix “e-”.

Yat was being interviewed at the sixth Web Wednesday, held at Lotus on Pottinger Street in Hong Kong on Wednesday November 7, 2007, for an audience of 130 or so hailing from diverse technology and marketing backgrounds.

The podcast of the interview will be available shortly on the Web Wednesday web site. We’ll update with a direct link as soon as possible.

More material from the 3rd Chinese Blogger Conference that I attended last week-end! Today we have Tangos Chan, I know him from his Chinese blog 未完成 - Incomplete, and first met him at the 1st Chinese Blogger Conference, in Shanghai.

Tangos also has an English blog called China Web 2.0 Review, which tracks web 2.0 development, and reviews and profiles web2.0 applications, businesses and services in China. He wants foreigners to pay more attention to new IT start ups, and not just at the famous portal sites.

Besides English (as you see in the interview) and Mandarin, Tangos also speak Cantonese which made me feel more at home. He took good care of me at the Blogger Conference, helping me to find more people to interview. Tangos, thank you very much!

Next up we have Jeremy Goldkorn, founder and editor of Danwei.org, a hugely popular site that covers Chinese media, marketing, advertising and urban life. Jeremy has been in Beijing for 12 years, and speaks fluent Mandarin. He just wrote a blog post called ” Chinese Blogger Conference 2007 - some thoughts. Here is the video interview with Jeremy Goldkorn:

cnbloggercon, outblaze, cbc2007, denwei

From the wikipedia entry:

Isaac Mao is one of the pioneers of blogs in the People’s Republic of China. He is co-founder of CNBlog.org and a researcher in social learning…
As one of the earliest bloggers in the Chinese community, Isaac is not only co-founder of CNBlog.org which is the earliest evangelizing site in China on grassroots publishing, but also the co-organizer of Chinese Blogger Conference (2005 in Shanghai, 2006 in Hangzhou).

Isaac Mao is the co-organizer of the 3rd Chinese Blogger Conference in Beijing that I attended this past week-end on November 3-4. I was lucky enough to be able to do a video interview of him.

I have known Isaac Mao for over 3 years. When I started blogging, I found CNBlog.org and meet a lot of Chinese bloggers there, including Isaac, and I began to learn more about China’s issues through blogging, in addition to newspapers and magazines and similar media.

In the interview Isaac introduces the concept of CnBloggerCon; this is a good chance to understand why Isaac and other volunteers worked so hard to form and maintain the conference the last 3 years. I admire them very much for it.

Note: people referred tongue-in-cheek to Isaac Mao, as “Chairman Mao.” (via Rebecca McKinnon), so I named this post “The interview with Chairman Mao”.

cnbloggercon, outblaze, isaac mao

Outblaze is proud to be a major sponsor of the 3rd annual Chinese Blogger Conference, which was held in Beijing on November 3-4 2007.

Fon Hong Kong and Outblaze’s new service Blogarate are major sponsors.

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You may remember Forrester Research senior analyst Jeremiah Owyang’s visit to Hong Kong last month and particularly his photographs and commentaries on the ultra spicy Szechuan dinner he enjoyed his first night here. At the time Jeremiah interviewed Outblaze CEO Yat Siu on the state of the Web industry in Hong Kong and the video is now available - go to Jeremiah’s video post to watch it (or click the screenshot below).

Jeremiah is clearly a fan of the Cyberport, the high-tech facility where Outblaze has its headquarters. Take a look at his write-up and photographs.