Here in southern China gathered leaders of world's open-source community. GuangZhou city (广州: great foods, hospitable people, and warm climate) hosted this year's China OSS summit. A couple China Academy of Science Fellows graced this conference and heightened its prestige level (government and press attention). In the wake of China's standardization of UOF and ISO ODF, Microsoft's submission of yet another one became the lightening rod in a fierce storm.

I am one of those sad global business travelers. We eat airline foods, sleep in unfamiliar beds, participate family events via international phone calls, get confused on time-zones, go to an exotic city to see only the hotel room and its gym. (Simon does not even get to see the gym.)

We are trained to travel light: only the necessities of toiletry, change of clothes, and medicines for emergencies. We carry a bag of cables, chargers, and the all-important universal plug adapter. Countries around the world have different electricity and shapes of the electric plug. Without this dongle, your plug cannot mate the socket on the wall. It feels like dying from thirst in front of a vending machine that does not take your money.

Every time I use this dongle, I sigh silently. What a mess!

There is no international standard for the shape of electric plugs. Some countries, later in development cycle, adopt more than one shapes (even for normal appliances). The result is a tremendous waste of money. A converter industry spawned! Some houses (I am living in one) installed multiple kinds just in case. This is an annoyance we are forced to accept. Really. What a mess.

Once a society adopts a standard, people innovate above or below. If a country chooses a shape for electric plugs. Companies can still innovate on electricity generation; they can also create new electrical gadgets. The standard guarantees inter-operatibility, which increases the market size and leads to more innovations. The world needs choices of solutions that are exchangeable, not choices of standards.

On May 2nd, ODF became an international (ISO) standard of office file format. Few weeks later, UOF became a China office file format standard. Quickly, China and OpenOffice.org, started to work to unify them. Today, I invited Microsoft to join this effort.
China government knows more than one such standards is not a good thing. Let's hope the world feels the same.

No more dongles.

Which excites you more, the sight of thousand-year old Great Wall or Starbucks at the street corner of Beijing city? People travel far to seek experiences at home. Familarity of caves is key to our survival.
It is genetic that I always pattern a new city to wherever I have been to before. QingDao (青岛, a city at the tip of a north-eastern China peninsula) makes it easy: it is San Francisco. They are geographically similar. Both enjoy mild climate, clean air from the sea, and vibrant lifestyles of foods, pace, and outdoor activities. Sangri-La hotel is right next to the famous May 4th Square, where people jog, roller-blade, hang-out, and eat. A few elderly rigged light-emitting devices on kites and fly them high after dark. It is a cool sight to admire.

I flew here to speak to 150 or so deans of Information Science or Technology colleges — merger of Computer Science, Network Technologies, Information Science, Computer Engineering, etc. departments as well as an incubator branch for high-tech entrepreneurship. This is the 3rd time they have met. I spoke on Sun's roles in China, particularly for academia. The thesis is obvious: our open technologies are perfect matches, our high-touch approach creates strong bonds, and our engineering presence strengthens our programs.

Germany occupied QingDao, now more than 8 million in population, for 17 years (1897—1914) and started the beer industry. You know this city from its namesake drink, spelled slightly differently as TsingDao Beer. The company established a Beer Museum next to its headquarters. The same street has been commercialized into QingDao Beer Street on which every restaurant serves freshly brewed beers of many, many varieties. This street offers good beers, fresh seafood, nice weather, brisk crowd, eager and friendly merchants. I ordered cask-conditioned and stout beers, grilled fish, stir fried veggies, some clams. Just sat back to take this all in nicely.

Chinese know this city as its adjacency to LaoShan (崂山), one of the origins of Taoism. (That sounds strange, but this religion is over 3,000 years old.) The famous fable described a Taoist demi-god who lived here. A mere mortal tried to learn from him but could not deal with the disciplines. One day, after lots of whining and begging, the master demonstrated how to walk through walls. When the mortal returned home and tried, all he got was a big bump on the forehead.

The tour guide told the fable and pointed out the very wall the mortal demonstrated his stupidity.

I knew TwinMOS as a Flash memory company: SD, CompactFlash, USB stick, flash-based MP3 player, etc. Before that, they made other hot electronic commodities. Like many other HsinChu companies, they are big enough for efficient manufacuring and small enough to be nimble. The success, or demise, of such companies depends on the judgement of a few who decide when to abandon an ageing product and retool the factory for the next wave of successes.

TwinMOS runs a mean and efficient IT department. They find something that works and stick to that system for years. Not for loyalty, but the costs of retooling. Or, as Jonathan said, they cannot afford the cost of exit. Let's just say that Sun has not yet penetrated TwinMOS (I am working on it). For now, they are one of my feelers to HsinChu science park and this versatile island of Taiwan.

And what product line they most prominently showed in CompuTex? Yes, like about 20 other booths, iPod speakers. All of them save a slot at the center to proudly up-stand an iPod, whatever model. The rest is the show-off of industrial designers: candy-colored sub-woofer of a space-age shape, speakers arranged in a creative way, a LCD screen, knobs or touch buttons, a remote control, and a back-panel of some connectors or wires.

Yes, like PC-AT few decades ago, iPod has started an industry. Apple today controls the specifications of the connector, the FairPlay technology, and a primary conduit to lots of contents. All amateur PC industry historians are predicting on what will happen in the next few years.

And guessing what Apple will do.

20 minutes of rain flooded Taipei. TV news showed people wading through thigh-high water, rescuing their things on make-shift floatation platforms. Undeterred, taxis packed the adjacent streets of the exhibit halls. It took 20 minutes to advance probably 100 meters that lead to the entrance. If it was not the pouring rain, I would have walked 20 minutes ago.

Rain kept on pouring during my week-long stay in Taipei. The alternative, 37°C of muggy sunny days few days prior to my arrival, is probably worse.

Remember that Las Vegas mega-conference CES? CompuTex is approaching its magnitude. Isles and isles of vendors touting their wares and services. scantily clad young girls danced, posed, smiled, and walked in formation with signs. It works. Crowd gathered wherever. They also made the already jammed isles ever harder to navigate. This is only the “buyers-only” part of the conference. I cannot imagine Saturday when it opens to the public.

To prove that no niche is too small, one company sells water-cooling system for game console. It reminisces the over-sized carburetor and exposed radiator in hot-rod cars in the deserts of Arizona. People will do this just to be cool. (”Look, I can kill more monsters with 2 extra megahertz of speed enabled by this super-cooling system.”) Another vendor showed the electricity sequencer for cars. This device distributes electricity, in sequence, to various components in a car: starter motor first, the on-board computer next, stereo system follows, GPS or OnStar next, etc.

Every isle has something for iPod or USB. This industry seems to be differentiating with fashion and style more than functionality and costs.

The exhibit halls scattered into 4 areas connected with sheltered walkway that protrude in and out glittering shopping malls. Foods, entertainments, and shopping gave the crowd a change of pace, needed distraction, and places to conduct business away from the show floors. Advertisers, ever sensitive to opportunities, tried hard to impress your casual eye-balls. Right next to McDonald's, Intel managed to have blue-backgrounded logos displayed for all passers-by. A green stand in the midst of this sea of Intel logos lonely displays AMD.

This is where to feel the pulse of the industry and when to meet vendors, customers, and even competitors. Just be patient with the traffic and wear comfortable shoes.

Ever since I came to China, I have a chauffeur. Mr. Bai is nothing like Sabrina Fairchild’s father or Kato for Green Hornet. He is quiet, reliable, and knowledgeable of this city. With him doing the point A to point B, I enjoy attending to conference calls, working on my email, getting dropped off at the entrance, or dozing off with my iPod; somehow, I miss driving.

I remember, when I drove everyday, getting despaired of my appointment, fighting with fatigue, or looking for the non-existent parking spot. I am more than happy not to have those ever again. I miss having a private conversation with someone close, singing out along the radio, being alone with my own thoughts, exploring the new route, and the romantic spontaneity that is possible when I am behind the wheel.

Nine months after I got my driver’s license, I drove the first time in Beijing this weekend: and liked it.

Many of Beijing’s drivers are professional. They move like predators in a prairie — weaving through cars, pushing across lanes, and gobbling up safety margins to the heart-attack level. You swallow the anger, shake your head on these bullies, and try to let it go.

Parking in-town is as maddening as San Francisco, Manhattan, or London. Curb-side parking spaces are all managed. As you approach, the attendant telepathically sense your intention to park. He, or she, will quickly point out the spot for you, usually possible only for the master parallel parkers. No matter, the attendant will stop the traffic and give you all kinds of helps. He will magically appear the moment you intend to leave and politely collect the fees: about 1 to 5 rmbs per hour.

Passengers in my car are frequently bewildered, “You don’t yield to pedestrians here. The driver behind you will get mad at you. And you will never get across.”
I heard many people from all over the world will visit Beijing soon. I bet they are used to cars yielding to pedestrians wherever they came from.

Changes begin with one individual. And I got across. Didn’t I?