Disqus - Latest Comments for Alex Le

Re: obscurely famous

Alex Le — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 23:23:14 -0000

a film when no caption is needed. Brilliant

Re: Friday fish wrap

Alex Le — Fri, 12 May 2006 12:29:21 -0000

http://www.google.com/search?q=define%3A+Yokel&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official

Yes, Yokel == not very intelligent or interested in culture

Re: eBay in a funk, shuffles management, bans Google Checkout

Alex Le — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 08:32:36 -0000

Does the track-back URL work? It seems that I cannot trackback my post to your blog...

Re: Digg’s Kevin Rose can’t afford a couch

Alex Le — Sat, 12 Aug 2006 18:55:54 -0000

What a fascinating article and the truth behind it. I myself haven't read the article yet but I was pretty amazed to read about the Digg guy. So it turns out to be just another FUD. Too bad.

Actually I don't know how much money Digg can make by selling Adsense or TShirts on the site. And most of the revenue will go into servers cost -- that's for sure. I don't know if Digg have raised any money or not but a google search for "Digg raise money" didn't return any good answer. So I guess Digg are pretty self-support financially. So I would say that the $60 mil is paper-money calculated by the BW writers to show how much the potentials of a popular web2.0 service worths.

Anyway, it's really fascinating. My dad sometimes said that don't be lieve in the books you read. That's so true. I love the old man's wisdom.

Re: VentureBeat Launches

Alex Le — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 19:33:44 -0000

It's sad that SiliconBeat has been closed down because it was my most regularly visited site, and it means that I have to update my bookmark. But every end opens up new begining. I'm glad that VentureBeat does have the posts from SiliconBeat and the same entreprenuer spirit still remains.

Please keep up the good work. You guys are doing an amazing job.

"words are cheap" - what a great line!. Matt, you are the man

Re: Fliqz raises $1 million…for yet another video site

Alex Le — Sat, 16 Sep 2006 23:15:33 -0000

Oh man ... YAVS (yet another video site).

This is probably one of the most ugly looking video sites. Look at the color theme -- so 1996! Well, if this Fliqz site wants to get more attraction, a complete redesign is a must. And hire someone with a decent artistic skill, please.

Re: Amazon’s vision? What vision?

Alex Le — Sun, 05 Nov 2006 22:56:26 -0000

John McSpadden,

I have to disagree with you when you say Amazon is just hype. I think Amazon will do just fine in the long run. It's true when you say that increasing transportation and labor costs will affect Amazon's bottom line, but I think it's Walmart that have to face that risk first. Do you also say that Walmart will be doomed in the long run too? I think both companies will do fine. If there is still a demand for online shopping, there is still Amazon and other online stores.

Also, Amazon relies greatly on its technology to help run the company, especially with the invetory management. I am still amazed on how Amazon and Newegg do their shipping trick, and both are doing well on sales.

I think you are suspecting the Amazon's Prime programm doesn't work. Lets say it's $80/ year, it costs Amazon roughly $5 to have an item shipped. That's 16 orders per year. That's one order per month for an avarage person and that's reasonable for Amazon to fulfil without affecting their profit too too much. They've been having the free shipping for orders over $25 for a long time, so Prime may just lower their profit margin a bit. In my opinion, Prime is like an insurance plan or an all-you-can-eat buffet place. Amazon is still making money of each and every order that goes through.

Re: MySpace founders shortchanged, Yahoo’s binge over, Timebridge, Mashery, FON, Workday

Alex Le — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 12:13:14 -0000

"If Myspace founders got $5million each when they sold it for $580 million, then that means they are in a big lose! That is too bad for them to get that amount of moneyâ€¦such a chicken feed!!!!lol
I pity themâ€¦Too bad."

The above news is still very much a rumour so Smiley, why do you have to "pity them", the myspace founders? If you are that easy to sell, then let me know where you are. I have this nice thing called "earth" for sales...

Re: Roundup: All Hail Google, WiFi in cars, Wallop walloped, Ahnold’s funding

Alex Le — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 01:49:10 -0000

Thatâ€™s because Gmail stores its contacts in *javascrpit* (?) files. Details here.

Re: The hidden engineering gender gap

Alex Le — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 02:04:54 -0000

http://tinyurl.com/tmrpd

Well, I just finished reading this book and the authors may have already provided us with the answer.

Re: Roundup: Rumor mill churns on Plaxo, Bebo, Google Phone, and more

Alex Le — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 00:25:43 -0000

Matt, I'm a regular reader of VentureBeat. I find it pretty surprising (and a bit disappointing) to first see your summary list, then when it comes to the actual news item, there is merely a link "details" here. Can you just write a short descriptive summary like what you have always done nicely?

Re: All quiet on the Yahoo! front, time for alternative ideas

Alex Le — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 00:32:33 -0000

"can anybody really say that Google consistently provides better results than Yahoo and Ask"

Yes.

Re: VentureBeat raises $320,000 seed round, traffic growing

Alex Le — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 01:13:11 -0000

Congrats!

However, my concern is about the quality of the posts. I've been reading since VentureBeat was still SiliconBeat. My personal opinion is the post quality back then was higher. The articles were more in depth, better coverage, better analysis, and reflected the personalities of the staff writers. Most readers of VentureBeat are pretty tech-savvy. I don't think we come here to read some short paragraphs that seem to be more like PR pieces that we can easily find other places. I'd prefer Digg for that.

Anyway, still congrats on this new milestone. Keep up the good work!

Alex

Re: YUI’s “Module Pattern” vs. Prototype’s Class Function

Alex Le — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 00:46:49 -0000

"I’d rather work with someone who is a bit green with Javascript but can learn, rather than someone who is an expert with Prototype or Dojo. The more time someone spends building applications with a library like Prototype, the further they get from Javascript, and the more dependent they become on the library. By contrast, time spent using YUI tends to breed developers who are experts in Javascript, and that skill is far more useful than being an expert in a particular library."

Truthfully, I started with YUI and later switched to Prototype.js. I just love the brevity and flexibility that comes from Prototype. With prototype I can code in a similar fashion as in standard OOPs. Basically my thoughts and style are the same while I'm coding JavaScript or in C#, Prototype makes programming JavaScript ... standard again while remains very JavaScript. I value consistency and easy to follow so that a year later I can still pick up my old code and understand it. With tricks like module pattern, do you think somebody who are new or even got some experiences to JavaScript can just look at the code and know what's going on?

I wrote the the editor of TubeCaption.com with 100% prototypeJs (http://tubecaption.com/captions/demo). I did not even have to worry about differences between browsers. The first time I ran my code, it worked across all the browsers: FireFox, Safari, and Internet Explorer. I was really surprised too. Some thousand lines of codes later, Prototype is still saving me hours and hours of coding and frustration.

I don't think I am getting away from JavaScript by using Prototype at all. In fact, I'm learning from the framework and JavaScript in general quite a bit while peeking through the code. PrototypeJS is a work of art with lots of craftsmanship in the code. I can't praise it high-enough. The 1% percent that I need something else, I can fairly comfortably modify or tweak Prototype and Scriptaculous to suite my needs.

Of course I still look into YUI for inspiration and for the controls suite that YUI offers. Still, Prototype is my Swiss knife for web development.

Alex

Re: fools

Alex Le — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 13:35:27 -0000

Nice post.

Nonetheless, being a "fool" at the time can save you a lot of money too. Think about the time when you were about to invest in something then got cold feet towards the end and flaked out. It turned out that the "opportunity" was a flop and you could have lost tons of money. Not just money but it occurs almost everyday in your life. That's why you take chances.

I think the only way to attack this is to constantly think and evaluate your options and what you are having. Not being greedy is good, and so is being greedy. Not thinking is bad though, and not realizing that you were only a fool earlier is the worst!

Re: 15 reasons why you might not want to be a consultant

Alex Le — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 15:46:51 -0000

I highly recommend the book "The Secrets of Consulting" by Gerald M. Weinberg (ISBN 0932633013). I'm myself a web developer and do quite a bit of consulting work besides my main job. The principles and advices in the book is very helpful and give my a much better idea of how to offer my service at higher quality, making more money while keeping both parties happy. I strongly believe that your work reflects the efforts you put in it. Your relationship with the clients depends on the communications and the level of trust that you can build. The more you invest in, the more you will get out of it.

Re: The startup sound in Vista …

Alex Le — Sat, 02 Sep 2006 22:43:18 -0000

default sound? sounds bullshit to me.

this is just an attempt to copy the sound of Mac. Admit it microsoft, you do use mac and like its startup sound.

too bad. stupid people do stupid thing. use your sanity on some other more useful things like how to make vista work on older computers. a debate over the default stupid sound? sounds like lots of bullshit are going around.