Chinese Merchant Suicide on Mattel's recall

The head of the factory who supply toys to Mattel had hung himself after receiving the news that nearly 1 million of his toy is returned. I just think this is a sad story. Zhang Shuhong of Lee Der Industrial Co. Ltd cannot carry the financial burden, thus, decided to take his own life. Not only is Mattel heavily affected, so is the Chinese export industry, along with the suppliers of the Lee Der Industrial Co. Ltd. This will have a chain of effects in the Hong Kong and China's toy manufacturer.

Panda Virus in China

[photo:xinhua]

The recent Panda Virus (熊猫烧香) is creating quite a stir in China. Our factory is heavily hit by this virus and it is very costly for us. A portion of our ERP is down and cleaning is very complicated. A source code of the virus can be found in akykia's blog. The virus was originally started in mid Feburary before the Chinese New Year, and it has spread very quickly around China. Some reported that the virus has undergone mutation to an even more deadly virus. It is believed that the virus will expand itself from the port 139/145 on the same network. Therefore please block those ports appropriately. There are independent fix for this virus on most of the big china anti virus websites. However, make sure to disconnect your computer before trying to fix it.

Installation of SugarCRM on cPanel

Recently I was looking at different ERP services for our company, and I came across this open Source CRM program, as many of you know SugarCRM is a powerful Open Source CRM. So I took the chance to try to set it up on public hosting services with cPanel. It is actually quite simple, I am not an internet GURU, but it took me less than an hour to install it. Here are the steps

1. Download SugarCRM from SugarCRM. Make sure to download the full installation package (not the one with the bitRock Installer).

2. Goto your cPanel setup screen. If you want your sugar to be a subdomain (e.g. sugar.yourdomain.com) then you can first add a subdomain. Goto your cPanel login screen, and click on "subdomains" under "Domain". I have one setup under sugar, so I type in
"sugar" in the empty box where you can add subdomains, and select the domain where you want to add this under. Click on the add button and you will see a successful message.

3. When that is done you need to setup a MySQL account, go back to the login screen for cPanel, and goto "MySQL" under "database". goto the empty box where it says "Db:________Add Db" and add the database, for this you might want to use something like sugarCRM. After that you will need to Add user, type in the username and password you want to use for your database, this is the master password for the MySQL database(we call it the Database_username, and Database_password). Hold on, we are not done yet, we need one more step, we need to add that user to that specific database you have just recently created. Look under the under the "Database" label and local "User:_____ Db:_____", select the user and database name that you have just created and click on the "Add user to DB" button. Remember that the way cPanel labels the database is yourdomain.com_yourDBName, in this case it is yourdomain.com_sugarCRM. Now you are ready for installation.

4. The reason we download the SugarOS without the installer is cPanel already has MySQL installed, so we can just create it there. Now we need to upload the Sugar to the FTP server onto cPanel, there is a few ways to do this. You can either setup a user account for the site's FTP and upload with an FTP agent, or you can upload with the built in Java FTP agent. I went with the second option, which was quick and easy. Goto "Ftp Manager" under "Site Management" and choose "UnlimitedFTP". Now you can upload the unpacked content to the FTP server. Adding the subdomain should create a default directory under your "public_html" directory, go there and unload all your content. For my installation, I used sugar.yourdomain.com, so I just uploaded all the content to public_html/sugar/

5. After the long wait of the upload, goto http://yourdomain.com/sugar/. The installation is now more than half way. Skip the default welcome page and The system will perform a system check, if they are all green then you can just click next. On the next page (step:3) you will be quizzed of the recent names that you just made up. Let's first start with the questions:

Host name : localhost
Database Name : yourdomain.com_sugarCRM
Username for SugarCRM: Yourdoma_sugarcr
The user name only takes the first 8 char and the last 7 char for database username. You should always verify the user name and database name in the "MySQL" menu under "Database", make sure to include the full name, a copy and paste can ensure that you got the full name with the _ in between.
Password for SugarCRM: Database_Password

These are nothing more than the names that you have created before. Next is a few clicks on if you needed demo data. I wanted a clean install, so I went with only the privileged user choice.



6. The next page asks you of more question, you need to type the URL of the subdomain to make this work. The URL should be sugar.yourdomain.com. Then you have to decide an administrative password. Type that twice and click on next to goto the confirm page. Make sure everything is typed correctly and you can wrap up the installation with the "finish" button. Installation will start and will only take a mater of seconds. After the installation finish you are asked if you want to register. Answer all questions and you will be redirected to the default login page.

Congratulations! you have just installed SugarCRM on your domain!

ERP decision on our Factory

We manufacture PCBs, for those of you that doesn't know what this stands for, it's Printed Circuit Board. It is basically the piece of board that you see, usually green, when you open any electronic device. We have a factory in China and Office in Hong Kong. And recently we want to improve our efficiency by installing ERP (or catch up with the 20th century). And we are going thru the decision phase, there is the good old famour Oracle, SAP and the PCB industry favorite Paradigm. All the big shots knows how to make a good ERP, but they might not fit our industry. Paradigm is famous, but the user feedback from our buddies in the industry doesn't seem promising. There's a great gap between what you want and what they are offering, they are rather big, thus doesn't give you much support if you are a small company. Changes has to be made by their headquarter, and you have to pay a premium to get that service. That's why we search for other local sources. To our surprises, one of the local ERP makers has a solution for PCB ERP. And we are thrilled to see that they have a very flexible system, plus they are of a similar size to us, which probably means that we are one of their bigger customer. They also have consultants that knows the PCB industry, their software is designed specifically for the PCB industry. They are also offering to Consultant services for our PCB production. These guys at Welcome ERP 迎新集团 are showing that they know what they are doing. Their references seem to respond well to their product. They do have very competitive pricing, and they know businesses that spreads across the boarder like us, so it should be a good fit. I will update more on the decision process.

Yahoo has screwed me over with their domain registration service

Hi,

I know this isn't exactly the right place to fuel this, but I felt that I had to write this somewhere, and this is the only blog I have, so here goes,

I had always been a victim of domain registration. I was a dissatisfied godaddy customer before. It all started from the day when I borrowed a friend's computer to check on my domain settings and paid the domain registration on his computer. I registered some domains because I felt that I wanted to have my name as the domain site. So I never got to the point of building my site, I just paid to get my name reserved. However, in the next year when my renewal fee is due, I was ready to pay for my renewal. I then found out that I don't hold my domains anymore, all the domains are held with my friend's account with godaddy along with his own domains. It was very strange how something like that could happen, maybe the mix and match of cookies within the browser, or the logging of the IP address when you are paying that result in something like that. I called godaddy with both of us on the phone and they said they couldn't transfer back the accounts, it had to be that way. The only way they can do it is to cancel the domains and then register it with my own account. Being a not so happy customer, I jumped ship to yahoo. At the time it was offering $9.95 domain registration, so I jumped even though my year on godaddy still had a few months left. Then I realize it's a good time to register all the family members in my family for their domain names too, they might be worth something later. That was in 2004.


It is now 2006, by now most of you would probably have heard of Google (the provider of this free blog space). And most of us are aware of the new service they provide, Google Applications service. As a domain holder ( or as I thought I was ) I wanted to give it a try, since all my domains are hosted in yahoo, and I don't want to pay an extra dime to get extra email services. Google is offering service so that I can use it with my domain name(free), and they give you free email (with 2 GB) and some free service like calendar, webpage hosting design, etc. I followed all their instruction on how to setup email and www, I changed the C Name record and MX record on server. It was very simple cause Google gave instruction specifically for Yahoo Small Business Domain. I waited a few days then went back to check. It wasn't working, so I checked the MX records, maybe I didn't add the dot at the end of the records which is causing all these confusion. I added it and it says it needs 48 hours to update. So I waited another 2 days. I thought Google should've given better instructions, it's not a very difficult task, how come it's taken me 4 days. Then I checked in today.

And then the bad news strike.

I asked my colleague to check on why it's not working, and he found out that in fact the domain that was registered with Yahoo is in fact not taken. Then I check all my other domains of my family members, some of it shows that they are registered to OTHER people. I thought it might have been an hacker attempt on my domains. However, when I search the domain information, I found them not specifically located to a specific company or country. Some of it seems legit because of my family name SO, only a handful in the world would get it. And seeing some of the address are actually in Hong Kong makes me believe that it might not be of hacker attempt.

I then go onto the Yahoo domain name service to see if my domains are available, they are in fact available. But all this time my account in Yahoo Small Business has been telling me that I own those domains. Even up till now. I paid for the service 2 years ago, and I renewed a few of them last year. They had taken the money from my credit card, and it's a legit transaction. There are a few sites that are still under my name, but that's because these sites are registered within the last year. I simply can't believe how a big company like Yahoo cannot do something as simple as registering domain names, I sincerely hope that this is some kind of hack, otherwise I will probably take some legal action against yahoo. I really do like most of those names cause they are of my family's firstlastname.com. Which is hard to come by. A few of them are already taken and that really sucks. I was thinking of giving the domain names to them as their birthday present or something in the future, plus I've been paying all that money to them, it's not a lot, but still.....

I have captured all the necessary screens and I have sent them an email to "remind" them about my domain. I am waiting for their email right now and thinking of what I will do in the future. Anyone any suggestions? I doubt if I will get it back, cause there are people using those domains already.

Personal hygiene in China

This is actually a common topic among all travelers, this also goes for any travelers going to any other countries.

• Do not drink water from tap, drink bottled water only
• Avoid exotic food, especially when you are new to the local time zone
• Do not eat at food stands, eat at reputable places
• DO NOT USE HAND TOWEL GIVEN AT RESTAURANTS- An absolute no no in China.
• Wash your hands frequently
• Plan your bathroom trips, do not drink too much water if you know you are in for a long trip
• Wash eating ware before you eat at each restaurants, for China, it includes,
• chopstick
• Spoons
• Bowl
• Plate
  
• Glass/Tea Cup
• Never let the part of your silverware touch the food table, e.g. folk never leave it touching the table, place it on top of your plate. For chopstick users, NEVER let it touch the table, put it on top of your plate or bowl.
  
• Chinese culture shares each dish of food, and each person will dig into the dish with their own chopstick. Ask for a pair of "gon fai", which is a pair of sharing chopstick used to take food to your plate. Avoid other's saliva.
• If chopstick packet are not plastic sealed, be prepared to rinse it again. They might be recycled chopstick.
  

Feel free to add comments

Credit Cards in HK/China

Seems like banks in HK requires permanent residency to get credit cards. Out of all the internation banks in HK, only HSBC can successfully issue a new credit card to non HK residence working in HK with 3 months salary proof and proof of address. American Express is also a choice. And make sure you don't leave too much balance on your account, interest rates can kill.


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HOW-TO catch a Taxi Cab in Shanghai

For any countries, it seems like it's a simple thing to catch a taxi cab. But in Shanghai it is really not that easy. One of the main difficulty is there's no order. There's no line, no form of queue and no courtesy even if you've been waiting for a long time in front of others. So to a catch a cab, you must,

• Find a cab
• If there are current customers, rush to the door to wait for the riding to come out
• If there are others who tries to push in before you, pull them out physically
• If that person happens to be a chinese women who shouts "ladies' First!", then tell her " You are obviously not a lady"
• Go on happily to where you want to go in the cab

Matters are worse during rush hours or popular places.

The reason I want to write this is because I see people (foreginers, including myself) who stands in the taxi stand expecting people will obey the queue system. However that's not how the Chinese system works. I don't want to see all the foreigners waiting in line and all the Chinese taking all the cab. You have to play by the local rules.

Business Practice and all you need to know to do Business in China

Welcome Everyone. This is a new blog for people who are looking for information on doing business in China.

With the introduction of the WTO and all that good stuff, everyone is trying to figure out a way to capitalize the uprise of the China nation. This page serves as a purpose for those who are/will be traveling to China and could use a little advice in terms of all the different things in life. I myself is Chinese, I was born in Hong Kong, and spent most of my life trying to learn things the western way. I too need to know how to survive in China.