Harry Chen Thinks Aloud

Kodak and HP have a lot in common. They are both in the market of digital photo printing, digital cameras and digital photo sharing. A key difference between these two, from my perspective, is that HP can adapt itself better in a fast changing market and knows how to cease golden opportunities.

At present, in-store digital photo printing is a key business for Kodak. Kodak has kiosks all over the large retail stores such as Wal-Mart and Target. You go to a store. Insert your memory sticks into one of those kiosks. After few clicks, prints of your favorite pictures will be ready in minutes.

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To mobile Internet users, connection is everything. At present, users have two choices: connect to a Wi-Fi hotspot or connect to a cellular network. As technology advances, we now have a third choice: mobile Wi-Fi.

NYTimes reports a new kind of mobile gadgets that allows users to bring Wi-Fi networks with them anywhere they go. How does it work?

[A mobile Wi-Fi box] requires the insertion of a PC laptop card provided by a cellular carrier like Verizon, Sprint or Cingular. The card provides the Internet connection, courtesy of those companies’ 3G (”third generation”) high-speed cellular data networks. The box just rebroadcasts that connection as a Wi-Fi signal so that all nearby computers — not just one privileged laptop — can go online.

I think this is a really cool idea. For a single user, the monthly fee for a dedicated 3G connection can be expensive. Using a mobile Wi-Fi box, multiple users can share a single connection and thus lower the average connection cost.

Nevertheless, there can be some negative side effects to mobile Wi-Fi box, e.g. network security. While many people have wireless networks at home, but many of them are not secured. If people are to “carry” their wireless networks with them everywhere they go, unsecured networks will be easy targets for cyber criminals.

As baby boomers gray, hundreds of thousands of family-owned businesses are facing a major decision: What will they do with the business? BusinessWeek’s top story of the week is “The Bommer Handoff“.

Part of this week’s special is a presentation of America’s Oldest Business Heirlooms — from bells and brews to canvas and food, here are 10 of the longest-lived family businesses in the country.

Josh Hosler has a website that allows you to lookup the #1 song in the U.S.A. on any date since 1940.

#1 Song on

• My birthday: “Tonight’s the Night (Gonna Be Alright)” by Rod Stewart
• Gigi’s birthday: “You Light Up My Life” by Debby Boone

Hum… I wonder if our parents remember listening to those songs when we were born.

From Google Earth Blog: Cheney Shooting in Google Earth,

Someone at the Google Earth Community who calls himself ‘DickCheney’ took the time to create a rather graphic 3D model of Vice President Dick Cheney shooting his friend in a hunting accident which happened a little over a week ago. I’m not sure if you call this political commentary, or crime scene investigation. But, it’s interesting to see Google Earth used in this way.

It’s amazing to see open software systems such as Google Earth can have usages that are beyond the wildest imagination of their original developers.

To Google Earth developers: well done!

I’m a big fan of the TV show CSI. It reminds us the power of science. I know forensic scientists can gather much information about a person from a single DNA sample, but I would never guess that they can also use DNA information to predict the last name of a person!

The method exploits genetic likenesses between men who share the same surname.

The technique is based on work comparing the Y chromosomes of men with the same surname. The Y chromosome is a package of genetic material found only in males.

It is passed down from father to son, just like a surname.

Details of the research from the University of Leicester, UK, appear in the latest edition of Current Biology.

And of course, this method has it limitation. Based on an initial study, “[Researchers] found the approach was most useful for less common names, with a 34% chance of prediction in the 80 least common surnames from the 150-name sample.”

• Source: DNA ‘could predict your surname’, BBC News, February 21 2006.
• Original Paper: Genetic Signatures of Coancestry within Surnames, Turi E. King et. al., Current Biology, Volume 16, Issue 4, February 21, 2006

Following the footsteps of Philadelphia and San Francisco, Chicago plans to offer citywide Wi-Fi access. How this network will operate is still under discussion. Nevertheless, according to one report, city may charge a wholesale rate of $9 a month to ISP that would resell access to the public.

Chicago has hundreds of Wi-Fi hotspots in places like coffee shops, bookstores and libraries, where anyone can walk in, sit down and connect to the Web. Hoping to extend that wireless blanket to all 228 square miles, the city plans to ask technology companies this spring to submit proposals for the project.

Source: Chicago planning for citywide Wi-Fi, CNN, Feb. 20, 2006

Today I finished filing our 2005 federal and state taxes. Few tips I want to share with the readers.

1. E-file your taxes. Filing you tax online can save you time and money. This year I filed our federal tax using the TaxCut Online Premium service. The regular price of this service is $19.95. I took advantage of this promotion link to file for free. Note this promotion doesn’t include any free state e-file.
2. Exploit free e-files offered by the state governments. I didn’t use TaxCut Online Premium to file our Maryland state tax. I’ve used the iFile online service provided by the Comptroller of Maryland. Although iFile is not as user friendly as TaxCut, but it’s free. I suspect other states also offer similar services. Check them out if you want to save $24.95 — this is how much TaxCut wants to charge you for filing state tax online.
3. Ask for direct deposit if the government owes you a refund. Should you expect tax refunds, have the refunds directly wired to your checking or saving account. Not only you will get the money back faster, but also you avoid the chance of losing refund checks in the mail.

Other helpful tax-filing tips:

• 12 tax-filing tips for college students, BankRate.Com
• Charitable Donation Rules Are Changing, Yahoo! Taxes
• Correct filing status can make a difference in your tax bills, BankRate.Com
• 15 tax-filing mistakes that you can avoid, BankRate.com (if you paper file)

Update: a reader kindly informs us that a desktop version of the TaxCut can be downloaded for free. It seems to work well for those who want to switch from TurboTax to TaxCut.