Philip Wen’s Virtual Residence

New BMW Z4 spotted

Those of you who know me also knows that I am a fan and owner of the BMW Z4.  Although BMW won’t release official pics of the new beast until the 15th, enterprising fans have already leaked a pic of it from a movie set.

Read more about it here.

What do you think of the new face?

Tags: bmw, z4

Google Lay Offs or Google Rumor?

News have been traveling around the circles recently that Google is looking to shave down some expenses.  Today, this article floated up to the top.

Considering the rate that Google have expanded over the past few years, this one wouldn’t sound too surprising to me.  The way they would go about those lay offs don’t sound too far fetched either.  Google has accrued an army of System experts, whether Computer Systems or the Legal System.  But to think that they would lay off approximately half of their workers is a hard to imagine– the Google today is an Android compared to its RoboSapien past. Having ½ of Googlers running the show would be a bit too skeletal.  Then again, with GOOG losing more than half of its Market Cap over the past year, only the brainiac Googly bean counters would know best just how many heads would need to roll.

Internet Ad spending has been contracting at a rapid race, not just because of the economy, but the direction that the ‘net is going toward. (I will talk about this topic some other time)  I wonder if Google Trends is picking this up?

Regardless of its validity, it will be interesting to see how Eric, Larry and Sergey have in store to steer the Googlybot through this downturn.

Tags: Business, google, lay offs

Death of the AIM Phoneline

Somehow I knew this was inevitable.  A feature on AIM that I’ve used for a while now is its free AIM Phoneline feature.  It assigns you a free DID which enables the AIM client as a softphone.  It is convenient to give out to spammers and such, and an occasional long call.

I just got an email earlier this morning from AOL that they are shutting down the service next year.  While unfortunate, I understand their plight as their conversion rate of users to their paid version is probably miniscule at best.

If Skype is having problems with profitability, I can’t see how AIM was going to turn this into a cash positive proposition.

Good thing I never even thought about relying on it for professional purposes.  Sad really, because I think it’s long overdue for AOL to something right again.  Too bad it’s not this one.

Here is the email they sent out:

Tags: AIM, Phoneline, VOIP