Happy Year of the Dog

DFNN.COM

Master Rao of Astrology.com says, "The Dog is an ethical and idealistic sign, and the year that bears its name will also bring increased social awareness and interest in society’s less powerful members. Any tendencies to take, take, take will be replaced by a widespread sentiment of generosity and selflessness. In general, we will all be imbued with the Dog’s keen sense of right and wrong."

Even as we celebrate the New Year of the Dog, we need to say a little prayer for some lost souls. At least 74 of our countrymen just passed away in the recent tragedy at the ULTRA. Another thousand Egyptian Muslims drowned when their ferry sank as they were coming home from their Haj, their once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage to Mecca.

The ULTRA incident can only be described as a lack of political will to impose safety rules on crowd control. The capacity of the stadium was for an audience of less than 20,000 whereas the crowd that day was estimated to be more than 30,000. There is enough blame to go around. I only blame our culture where our security guards and/or police are not able to say no to "pakiusap" (friendly pleadings) and focus on strict enforcement.

My Two Cents: I do hope that this year will be a year of self-sacrificing political leaders who have the welfare of the greater good of the Filipino over their own personal and selfish agenda. We can always hope for the best!

Some tech trends for 2006

An excerpt from an article in Mercury News, a Silicon Valley newspaper, shows two strong trends: Wi-Fi and clean technologies.

Wi-Fi. I wrote about WiMax a few months back and this technology is now getting extensive application. Wi-Fi brought about hot spots; WiMax brings about a blanket of wireless access over the city. Wireless access to the Internet will be ubiquitous. From a technology point of view and consumer point of view, this is a wonderful event; however, I still wonder how giving it away is a valid business model that I can take to my shareholders. As a city project, wireless access makes sense as the town fathers bridge the digital divide. But as a business, I don’t see it unless I have content revenue.

Clean tech. The growing evidence of global warming, the stubbornly high price of oil and environmental disasters such as the chemical spill this month in China’s southern Guangdong province are all forces driving demand for cleaner energy, better monitoring of energy and other chemical use, and easier ways to clean water.

In fact, a small circle of my friends has been tossing around a waste management project that would help solve the landfill problem. It is not a huge project but we get very excited when we can figure out using or rather reusing waste for another purpose.

My Two Cents: Taking care of the environment just makes sense as a business. A wise man once told me: "Do the right thing, and the numbers will follow."

New look and feel for IM client interface

Dickson Co is the CFO (C is for cheap) for Dfnn, Intelligent Wave Philippines and HatchAsia.com. For comments or suggestions, e-mail [email protected].