frankly at a glance.

First all, Happy New Year to all! This is the first post of 2012, and I want to give my 2 cents on why tech stock, especially new IPOs aren’t doing so hot.

Market not understanding value of tech?
This is a common excuse tech companies use to explain their lukewarm stock performance. Just look at Zynga (NASDAQ: ZNGA); their IPO was 100 million shares for $10 but the stock has been trading below the IPO price at around $9. Groupon’s IPO (NASDAQ: GRPN)  was also fairly flat. Initially the stock was priced at $20 raising the company more than $700 million but the price is hovering around the IPO price. So why have these new IPOs not taken off like Google or Yahoo back in the days?

I think the problem is not that investors don’t understand tech companies, but simply that they do not trust them to be profitable in the long term. We look at the business model of Zynga – games are web-based, free to play, simplistic game-play, and lead-gen supported. The gamer doesn’t have to actually pay for the game unless they need special game currency to be more successful in the game. In this case, they can  either take out a credit card, or fill in a bunch of offers from lead-gen sources to pay. The only innovation Zynga brings to the table is the idea of a social game where you can connect with your friends on Facebook. This does add major value to the game, but it is nothing new. In fact this has been done on consoles in years, Facebook is just a more convenient place than XBOX Live or PSN. Therefore, Zynga is surviving on a shoestring of an idea that is incomparable to the value that companies like Google, Apple and Microsoft brought to the market. How can investors get excited about Zynga?

I don’t think the investors are not understanding tech, they have seen so much change in tech over the past 10 years. It is simply getting more difficult to wow them.  Continue reading →

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Irrelevant Prologue: It’s been a while since my last post, and just want to reassure everyone that I am still planning to do another build of my poor man’s drobo NAS. So please stay tuned and follow me on Twitter to get updates.

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Now let’s talk about the main topic – ISP/Carriers. I recently graduated from the University of Waterloo, and relocated to San Francisco, California for a job opportunity. I love this city, the people and the cultural dynamics. However, my 3 year contract with Canadian wireless carrier Fido still have 2 more years left to go. Don’t get me wrong, I’d be very happy if I could stay with Fido because of the deal they gave me for my iPhone 4. They just don’t do business here in the US. Therefore, I started researching about carriers that serve the Bay Area.

American vs. Canadian Carriers/ISP
Carriers are ISPs these days because they provide an Internet uplink for your mobile device. Unlike Rogers/Fido, Bell, and Telus in Canada, some of these carriers don’t provide residential wired services, either cable or DSL. For example, Verizon and T-Mobile are solely wireless carriers. Other than the difference in market coverage, the technologies these companies use across the border are completely compatible. It is either GSM or CDMA with equivalent 4G class technologies for speed boost. This means that an unlocked phone purchased from either country can work across the border. Just remember that if you bought a phone from a local carrier, it is probably locked to their network, in which case you can only roam and are unable to switch to another carrier.

International Roaming
There are a lot of people buying the new iPhone 4S because it can support both CDMA and GSM bands, which means you have more options to roam aboard if your phone is unlocked. Carriers like O2, Vodafone, Virgin and Orange have some great prepaid deals for travelers, and they have begun to ship GSM cards in microGSM form factor.

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This was an insanely well-written biography for Steve Jobs that covered everything from the history of his adoptive parents, his early days at school to the eventual success he had with the companies he built. Walter Isaacson did a great job to recreate the past events and more importantly the emotions and struggles of the person – Steve Jobs.

I was extremely impressed with the detail and the openness that Steve gave to Isaacson, knowing he was an extremely private person. However, as the cancer complications became fatal, I guess Steve wanted to passed on his true legacy to his kids and the rest of the world. He was no longer the private and maybe a bit selfish person he once was.

In addition to the stories, there were never before seen photos of his family; interviews from his friends, former colleagues and even enemies. What surprised me the most was the never before told flaws of the great person we all came to love.

Steve was perhaps the worst manager to work for!

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Steve Jobs - a leader, an icon, a legend.

Upon hearing the news that Steve Jobs has passed away, my  reaction was to check every news source I could to make sure it wasn’t some mistake like last time. Sadly, this time the news came directly from Apple’s board of directors and Steve’s wife Laurene. The world lost one of the most creative, ambitious and charismatic person of all time. However, the legacy and the inspiration of Steve Jobs must live on.

Live for the future, not the past. Steve always said “we always look forward”, and that’s exactly what he built at Apple – a forward looking company that does not just deliver what consumers need, but more importantly what they WILL need.

Live for doing what you love. Steve often spoke openly about death, and using death as a reminder to not waste your life doing something again you own intuition. “Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked, there is no reason not to follow your heart.” I think this is perhaps the greatest advice he has given me. You have to love what you do, or any rational person will eventually give up. Continue reading →

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No support for legacy authentication method in SMB or AFP

As previously mentioned, OS X Lion does not support logging into NAS boxes running Samba or AFP servers that employ the DHCAST128 authentication method. Apple documented this as a security update, in which they outright disabled DHCAST128 in Lion.

People who are running type of NAS system – FreeNAS or store bought boxes will not work in Lion!

Now some people have figured out a workaround to manually enable DHCAST128 in Lion, so if you don’t mind a little hacking in the system go ahead and use it. Otherwise try to enable NFS on your NAS. NFS is support by most NAS boxes running Linux. However, note that NFS does not provide any option for user authentication.

Option 1 – Hacking the OS

SMB/CIFS solution:

1. Upgrade FreeNAS to the latest stable build.
2. Setup your SMB/CIFS shares accordingly.
3. Go to Finder, click on Go->Connect to Server  or simply press command + K.
4. Connect to your server by typing smb://your.ip/hostname or use cifs://your.ip/hostname
5. Login, and you should be good to go.
6. If you don’t see the login pop-up, connect to smb://user:pass@ip  instead.

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Hello y’all! It’s been a while since my last post. but it looks like there is still steady traffic to the site, which is pleasantly surprising! So thank you all very much!

Mac OS X Lion

Today, Apple shipped MacOS X Lion via the Mac AppStore. It sells for $29.99 USD, and it is topping the charts at the store.
This is the first time Apple went with a complete Internet-based approach to dealing with an OS upgrade. In fact, it’s the only time I have ever heard of an OS being sold strictly via digital download. Words on the street seem to suggest that if you go to an Apple retail store, they will install Lion for you through a local cached version of the OS. Thus, saving you the hassle of downloading 3.5GB over the net. It’s not really a life saver if you ask me, but it’s interesting to see how Apple is handling things for now, and the days to come.

My initial impression of Lion was fairly positive, but not overly impressed with the changes.

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There’s something to celebrate this month – release of FreeNAS 8.0

Previously, the FreeNAS project has stuck with the decimal 0.x scheme for build numbers. the latest nightly build we used for the DIY storage appliance was 0.7.2. Since then, the number jumped from 0.x to 8.0, with 8.1 baking in the oven.

Taking a deeper look inside, FreeNAS 8.0 is certainly miles apart from its 0.7.2 release, both in the OS architecture and the front end GUI.

• Based on FreeBSD 8.0
• Modular system design, allow for 3rd-party plug-ins Continue reading →

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