i.justrealized

Random note: Don’t buy newspapers, queue up at 7 a.m. and get it for free. And don’t bring home newspaper; disposing them is a hassle. Better yet, get news online and hug some trees at the park.

The amount of hassle involved in obtaining newspaper such is not that worth it if you think about it. How many times do you make an informed decision based on a news event? Hardly for me. I don’t mind getting my news one week late or view a consolidation of news since newspapers are a day late anyway.

My only issue with getting late news is that I end up missing out on the beginning since the news article report only the progression of the event; this makes the news article difficult to understand. I probably need something like a recap that typically isn’t available in newspaper. What I want is probably a news magazine and not a newspaper. We do not have localized news magazines like the fortnightly-published Newsweek.

Furthermore, newspaper reports can be bias; Singapore is ranked 147 out of 167 in the Annual Worldwide Press Freedom Index for 2004. In Singapore, since we only have one English non-tabloid newspaper, there is little competition on who can provide better news coverage. Also, there’s no way to see how objective a newspaper is if there is no other local newspaper to compare with.

These days, I just wait for local news to come to me.

Friendster next target for an acquisition, sources close to Reuters reveal. I would think this is the end of the Friendster.

Friendster to be sold by month’s end -source

SHANGHAI, Dec 4 (Reuters) – Friendster, one of the world’s earliest social networking sites, will be sold to an Asian buyer by the end of December for at least $100 million, a source familiar with the matter said.

Friendster, which predates Facebook and MySpace in the social networking space was founded in 2002. But it quickly lost ground to other social networking sites in the United States. Friendster is now mostly used in Asia where more than half of its registered 100 million users are from.

Friendster will be sold to an Asian listed firm for more than $100 million in a deal set to be announced by the end of the month, said a source who declined to be identified as the information was not yet public.

Headquartered in California, Friendster had turned down a $30 million buyout offer from Google Inc (GOOG.O) six years ago, according to newspaper reports.

Tencent Holdings (0700.HK), China’s largest Internet firm by market value at $35 billion, was among the short-listed bidders, while Facebook also showed interest but was turned down due to competition and intellectual property issues, the source said. (Source: Reuters)

Thanks for pioneering the idea of how social network should be but you will not be missed.

This isn’t exactly the latest news but — Amazon Web Services expands to Singapore. Expansion to Singapore would keep Singapore web hosting prices a lot more competitive. Amazon is bringing to Singapore:

• Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2),
• Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3),
• Amazon SimpleDB,
• Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS),
• Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS),
• Amazon Elastic MapReduce,
• Amazon CloudFront.

Yes EC2 is coming to Singapore over the second half of 2010. I am considering migrating some stuff over to Amazon due to its pricing.

Amazon Web Services Announces Expansion into Asia in the First Half of 2010

Amazon Web Services LLC, an Amazon.com company (NASDAQ:AMZN), today announced an expansion of its services into an Asia-Pacific region in the first half of 2010, enabling businesses to deploy compute and storage resources in close proximity to their end-users in the region. Software developers and businesses will be able to access AWS’s infrastructure services from multiple Availability Zones in Singapore in the first half of 2010, then in other Availability Zones within Asia over the second half of 2010. AWS services available at the launch of the Asia-Pacific region will include Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon SimpleDB, Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS), Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS), Amazon Elastic MapReduce, and Amazon CloudFront. (Source: Amazon)

Amazon has yet to release the pricing for Singapore but I’m guessing it would cost about USD0.20 per hour. Hosting hasn’t been that cheap in Singapore currently. If they charge less than USD$0.14 per hour for a small Linux EC2 instance, I would start advocating people to switch. Currently in US, Amazon charges USD$0.085 per hour. VPS hosting in Singapore is still kinda expensive for whatever reasons. Running a website really shouldn’t be that costly.

Here’s the news:

SourceForge, Inc. Changes its Name to Geeknet, Inc.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, California, Nov. 4, 2009 – SourceForge, Inc. (NASDAQ: LNUX) today announced that it has changed its name to Geeknet, Inc. to more accurately reflect the company’s business and the growing market it serves. The name change also supports the company’s intention to expand the reach of its online advertising services into new categories.

“Renaming the company Geeknet is the latest step in our rapid transformation,” said Scott L. Kauffman, President & CEO of Geeknet. “Our new name is a more accurate articulation of our business. With Geeknet as our calling card on Madison Avenue, we are now able to clearly define the audience we serve and more effectively capture the business opportunity that we are addressing.”

The Geeknet network, which includes SourceForge, Slashdot, ThinkGeek and Ohloh, among others, serves a global community of nearly 40 million geeks each month. These tech-savvy professionals and enthusiasts are affluent, well-educated and command significant spending power. (Source: Geeknet)

SourceForge is a more widely known name as compared to Geeknet. I don’t really see how it would be better to change the company name to Geeknet.

There’s new development to the Honduras political situation:

Manuel Zelaya

Honduran Congress names provisional president

Hours after the sitting president was deposed by a military-led coup, a new president of Honduras was sworn in Sunday.

But the former president was not ready to give up his powers.

The political developments that swept Honduras over the past weeks and led up to Sunday’s coup had the makings of a crisis, but the situation in the Central American nation of 8 million people was calm.

Roberto Micheletti was sworn in as provisional president to the applause of members of Congress, who chanted, “Honduras! Honduras!” Outside the building, supporters of ousted President Jose Manuel Zelaya protested, but their numbers were limited, and the streets remained mostly peaceful. Micheletti told CNN en Español Sunday evening that he has imposed an “indefinite” curfew. (Source: CNN)

Also after reading much of the English comments here, I got a better picture and it appeared that the people are generally in favor of President Zelaya being removed.

Military coup in Honduras, president is arrested and sent to Costa Rica.

President Jose Manuel Zelaya was arrested at his residence by the military on Sunday June 28, 2009 and flown to Costa Rica. He had promised to put a referendum on the ballot that would change Honduras’ laws, allowing him to run for another term. The Supreme Court had previously ruled that the referendum was illegal. Around 100 Zelaya supporters protested the arrest by blocking the gates to the presidential palace and throwing stones at soldiers. It is not clear who has control of the executive branch at this time, but the constitution of Honduras says the head of congress would succeed the president. (From Wiki)

CNN has more information.

Woah, Ubuntu is aiming for a 10-second boot time. Nobody would complain for a faster operating system.

Ubuntu aims for ten-second boot time with 10.04

The growing adoption of the Linux operating system on netbook devices has compelled Linux distributors to focus on improving startup performance. Ubuntu 9.04, which was released last month, is one distribution where these improvements are particularly noticeable.

The developers behind the Ubuntu Linux distribution aim to significantly improve boot performance. Their ambitious goal for 2010 is to reduce total boot time to 10 seconds. (Source: Ars)

On a side note, I just ordered a MacBook Pro.