11.19.06

Infrastructure change

Posted in Technology Ventures at 6:26 am by Ray Wu

I noticed that my site became slower and slower during the last few months. So recently, I finally decided to bite the bullet and transfer my blog to this new hosting provider called Bluehost. This is not an easy transfer as I need to use the phpadmin to export all of my wordpress blogs from my old provider and then imported into the new mysql database on this new hosting site. It took me a while to figure out the process as this is not as simple as FTP all files over. Now everything seem to be in place, I can get back to blog more…

I found Bluehost’s server to be fast, SSH enabled and provide a lot of open source tools that I can quick install and use. When I performed round trip testing from various global locations to the old site, I used to get close to 5s - 9s of round trip time, now the delay drops to between 1s - 3s. A much better performance. I guess my previous assumption that cheap hosting providers are pretty much the same is probably wrong, but during this process, I did find a comparison chart on hosting providers that is quite useful.

11.07.06

P2P Video

Posted in Technology Ventures at 1:41 am by Ray Wu

With YouTube’s lofty price, everyone is talking about Video distribution. Given the high bandwidth requirement of a video content vs html and voice, many people start to target P2P as a distribution mechanism. Businessweek has a blog on this topic recently regarding the Venice Project, a P2P startup from the Skype and Kazaa founders. This might not be as successful as the spype for the following reasons:

  1. Venice is kind of late given there are a bunch of startups in this space already such as Voeh, NeoEdge, Red Swoosh, and skyrider. Of course, none of them has the same influence as Skype and Kazaa, but it would not take long before one or two of these vendors get acquired by large media vendors and then the space become crowded quickly.
  2. Infrastructure vendors like Cisco is now working on P2P content distribution on its router and blades, so in a way, people will get the 80% of the cost benefits without downloading a client because the cost of the infrastructure will fall quickly once this is in place.
  3. There is no better player on P2P than Microsoft given its global reach and ubiquitous installation. All Microsoft needs to do is to put P2P technology (either its own or from a acquisition) into the Vista platform, it would change the landscape overnight. Extending this logic, all it takes is a large PC vendor (ie. HP, Dell, Levono) to endorse and distribute with one P2P vendor, the landscape will change permanently.

In my mind, P2P is no longer a technology play as the technology is maturing, this is more of a marketing, sizing, and content play.

11.04.06

Good startup resources

Posted in Technology Ventures at 2:56 pm by Ray Wu

Here are a few good startup resource sites:

How about suggest some of your favorites?

11.03.06

Retail Innovation

Posted in Technology Ventures at 2:56 pm by Ray Wu

Given the low margin in retail business, it is interesting to see a new wave of technology spending from retailers. Here are some new innovations coming up in the retail space:

  • According to business week, a Little Rock marketing company, called EnVision, is deploying a solution in several southern food chains to place ads on the conveyance belt. Essentially, EnVision would print ads on custom-made plastic belts, and find a new way to claim a real estate that was not used effectively before.
  • Video surveillance technology seem to be pretty popular these days as a new way to fight “shrinkage” (a word for theft in retail) and inventory management
  • RFID on the case level is picking up, item level deployment is still challenging till we solve some the technology shortcomings and pricing issue
  • As bandwidth increases in branch office, VoIP deployment is on its way up
  • Location based ads printing and coupon offerings to cell phones is definitely picking up interests

10.26.06

Cisco Empire

Posted in Technology Ventures at 3:48 am by Ray Wu

Cisco’s acquisition of Orative is a smart move by extending its Unified Communications portfolio to mobile devices such as cell and PDAs, Little by little, Cisco is building up a strong portfolio that is really going to change the overall IT space. Cisco is now not only pushing hard on data center backend consolidation among server (ie. Nuova, TopSpin), storage (ie. Andiamo) and network (ie. Actona, Fineground), but also combining various media such as voice, data, video and pumping these through a set of diverse front end channels: data network, cable and set-top boxes, wireless, fiber and other delivery infrastructure such as power line.

From a VC side, even though Mayfield and Diamondhead did OK on this deal since they got in early for the $6M series A, I agree with Matt that this is just a so-so outcome for investors.

10.23.06

US venture investment

Posted in Technology Ventures at 4:06 am by Ray Wu

According to Dow Jones VentureOne and Ernst & Young LLP, venture investments in 2006 is the biggest since 2001

  • in Q3, venture capital investors directed $6.36 billion into 611 deals focused on alternative energy and Web 2.0. 38% of this funding goes into seed or first-stage financings
  • So far, $19.45 billion invested this year, 5.4% increase from 2005. Overall, the U.S. venture industry is on track to spend around $25 billion in 2006
  • More than $35 billion in new funds has been raised over the last 18 months

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