a million dollar question

Why this software run so slow on this machine?

If your answer is, the hardware is too old, you should not continue reading this.

If you are still reading this, congratulation! The above question is not the million dollar question, you have to keep reading till the end for the million dollar question and answer.

The software is running slow because the software has performance issue.

The next question will be, how to improve the software performance?

This is the million dollar question.

There are many ways to solve it, upgrade the hardware is one of it. If one cpu can't perform, buy a two cpu machine. If money is not a problem, you can buy a Sun E10000 (e10k) computer which support up to 64 cpu.

E10k is a few years old product, I am sure they have a much better product now (check here). E10k is not my solution.

I don't like java and java script, because the performance is slow. Even today's hardware can boost up the software performance, but is not my prefer solution. That is the reason they invented Java Just In Time technology, with JIT, Java application can perform as good as a native application.

(Note: Java application was compile as byte code binaries, which need an interpreter environment to run it. Normally application which need an interpreter can't perform as good as the native application compile by C, C++ or the other computer language)

To bring down the cost of the hardware, some CPU was build without the floating point unit, it is common for embedded cpu. The drawback is, software which need extensive floating point calculation can't perform, eg. mpg123 for audio playback.

You are still able to bring down the hardware cost after added in the floating point unit in the hardware, but that's Intel's job, not for us. There are people invented algorithm which do the same job as mpg123, with integer calculation only, which is mpg321.

There is more than one answer for a million dollar question, is either cost you a million or save you a million. You just make your choice.

The new venture capitalist

For me, Google, Yahoo, and some other established web company are venture capitalist.

The story for a typical internet new startup company, get venture capitalist like Sequoia, later sell to Yahoo/Google like company, which have strong financial support and expanding their business.

Here are some of the recent news.

Yahoo may buy bebo, for one billion.

Yahoo buy Right Media, for $680M.

Google buy feedburner?, for $100 million.

Google invest in 23andMe, a bioinformatics startup founded by Sergey Brin's just married wife Anne Wojcicki.

Microsoft acquired aQuantive, for 6 billion.

AOL acquires Third Screen Media. Seems like these big players are competing in speed on acquire new startup company, and with a lot of money, so they are the new venture capitalist.

Reference:
Google vs. the venture capitalists

iGoogle name official

Google personalize page change the name to iGoogle.

I can't really remember what is the original name of Google personalize page, it always end with ig like this:

www.google.com/ig

I seldom access to Google personalize page, I believe a lot of people doesn't access Google personal page as well, because they like Google for its simplicity, not a page crowded with a lot of information.

iGoogle Screenshoot

Google's personalize page is a better and easier to use compare with Yahoo!'s personalize page, iGoogle is like netvibes.

iGoogle remind me of Apple Mac OS X's dashboard. I don't agree with the dashboard idea, or iGoogle or netvibes. Web application is popular because we can use the browser as a common platform access to web services. Dashboard is using a different client access to the same web services. Why don't we just launch a browser? People who like the dashboard idea, will still like it, same for iGoogle.

When a web services information can be displayed as a iGoogle module, it should work on PDA, right?