Bjorn Lee

My Own Domain at Bjornlee.com

2007-02-26T11:20:00.000-08:00

Blog Migration

2006-02-20T01:31:00.000-08:00

It was good while it lasted but you always move on to something better.

Cooler. Slicker. Snazzier. (Hopefully!)

Guns, Alcohol and Murder (Almost) --Dick Cheney Hunting Chronicles 2006

2006-02-19T04:08:00.000-08:00

Truly, these Republicans sure know how to stir shit up, they are done shooting them up in Afghanistan and Iraq, almost complete racking up huge debts on the National Treasury to pay for their extravagant armies, and now with not much spare cash for another war, Dick Cheney, resident hawk in the Administration, couldn't bear the lull and decided to shoot his friend. lolz...

This one was quirkily funny. He mistakes a human for quail. Jon Stewart got all the comdeic elements of this covered though...

I love the reference in the video by Rob Corddry of the similarities in the hunting misfire incident to the Admin's policies on terrorism. These guys always take aim and shoot at the wrong target. Afghanistan was fine, Iraq? hallo?? anyone still rem where the WMDs are?

Another gem in a line of comedic drama to come from the greatest country's government on Earth. These guys are on a roll, and just can't stop being making fools out of themselves.

In a new peek into the weekend hunting activities of Dick, he mistakes his hunting buddy for a quail. Apparently, he drank beer too before his hunting trip. No big deal, just a small fact that this guy just had multiple heart operations before.

PR Disaster

So it seems that the communications strategy for this mishap took 18 hrs or more before the press and world media were properly let in on the details. Read more on the media clampdown here. Why, you might ask, for all the fancy gadgetry and well-oiled PR machinery of the White House, they had to take such a long time to reveal details of this incident that happened to the 2nd most powerful person in America? Did they have somethign to hide there? Huffington Post has a theory that since beer takes time to cleanse from the human system, the long time delay was quick thinking by the Veep's men on damage control to avoid embarrassing tests.

Lets also not ignore the fact the Vice-President actually thought it appropriate for Katharine Armstrong, a private citizen and also a ranchowner of the hunting ground, to be the first person to break the news to a local paper.

Found this off another blog:

Hunting party included Vice President + U.S. ambassador to Switzerland + American lobbyist for vaccine company in Switzerland + big fat Republican lawyer, and took place on the ranch of the American lobbyist for the vaccine company in Switzerland who also happens to be a huge Republican contributor.

Technorati Tags: Dick Cheney, hunting, Jon Stewart

The Brrreeeport Report

2006-02-14T04:21:00.000-08:00

Just read Scoble's blog. I am taking part in his experiment. This is a test of the search engines to test how fast and comprehensive their search capabilities of the word "brrreeeport" are.

So, here’s the brrreeeport report. You can participate. Just add the word “brrreeeport” to your blog. Or, even better, do that and then give it a tag too. So, anyway, it’s 7:57 p.m. Pacific Time so let’s look at what the search engines have found so far.

Now for my own experiment at upping my web rankings:
Brrreeeport Brrreeeport Brrreeeport Brrreeeport Brrreeeport Brrreeeport Brrreeeport Brrreeeport Brrreeeport Brrreeeport Brrreeeport Brrreeeport Brrreeeport Brrreeeport Brrreeeport Brrreeeport Brrreeeport Brrreeeport Brrreeeport Brrreeeport Brrreeeport

Technorati tags: Brrreeeport

More on the "Real" Video iPod

2006-02-13T05:56:00.000-08:00

Just read that Apple will be celebrating its 30th anniversary this coming April 1st and might find it opportune to launch some new products too. Rumor has it that it could be a new iBook so that it makes it in time for the May K-12 school-buying season or a full-screen video iPod.

I wouldn't have paid much attention to such speculatio except for this comment:

In addition, he noted reports of Apple shutting down production of the current generation of the video-iPod.

"The other event that could signal the imminent arrival of the video iPod are reports coming out of Asia that Apple has materially reduced its orders of the iPod with video viewing capabilities that it introduced last October. One hypothesis is that sales of this model have fallen below Apple’s previous expectations for he quarter. An equally plausible hypothesis is that Apple is draining inventories of the iPod from the distribution channel in advance of its introduction of the new model."

Wtf. Maybe I shouldn't have bought that 1G video iPod last December. It doesn't pay to be a first-mover in Apple's Universe.

Some iPods with your Slurpees?

2006-02-13T05:31:00.000-08:00

Are they trying too hard? Apple has apparently thought it to be a good decision to sell iPods in 7-11 convenience store. Exclusively only in Japan for now, it seems.

I don't know much about Japanese 7-11 stores, but its sounds like a great diminishment of the Apple brand for iPods to be placed next to candy.Have iPods started becoming a commodity? Lets start selling them in gas stations across those freeways, maybe its high time truckers start getting cool and wear those white earphones...

Here's more from a commenter on Digg, where i found this news from. Apparently, iPods have been sold in Japanese 7-11s since last year.

I currently live and work in Japan and can cofirm that the boxes are empty. Also the iPod + iPod Display has a message that mentions that you bring the empty boxes up to the counter so that they can scan the price and then they'll hand you the Actual "Well Designed" Apple Package with the item you have purchased. About the cash issue, it is popular for Japanese to carry large sums of money on them due to the low crime rate but this is increasingly being replaced the EDDY system, which allows you to wave your Cell Phone over an Electronic Plate, which automatically treats your Electronic Cell Phone Wallet like a Debit Card. It's really cool living in a country that actually has all this technology actually being used instead of just being showcased at shows as Prototypes.... posted by CLIFFosakaJAPAN (150)

Web-Traffic Stock Exchange

2006-02-13T05:01:00.000-08:00

This is damn addictive! (only for those Web 2.0 trackers) Alexadex is an online stock exchange for listing the stocks of all web companies. The "stock" price fluctuates up and down based on their latest Alexa traffic rankings. You are given $10,000 to begin trading and forming your own Web-stock portfolio. I just started using the app and already found it immensely fun and wanted to blog about it, ahha... Its a great app for those who are into both investing and tracking internet news. I am curious as to what revenue model Alexadex might have, which appears to be none so far except for Adsense, and i am reckoning its just another of those hype-based, fad-reliant cool web service. Was recommended to this site by Techcrunch.

Click on the screenshot below if you want to try it out as well. I get an additional $1,000 for every referral! ;)

Blogging Pharma from Singapore

2006-02-12T00:45:00.000-08:00

Thought I should give a shout-out on the blogosphere to my NUS dorm buddy Bronson. Bronson's a final-year NUS Pharmacy student who's patiently put up with so much of my evangelizing abotu Web 2.0 that he's fearing for the loss of his pharmaceutical heritage. hence, he took action decided to do something very Web 2.0 about it -- blogging. Pharmer was started 2 days ago and Bronson will be blogging about the pharmaceutical industry from a Singaporean perspective.

For the uninitiated, the Singapore government is making a big push into the life sciences, biomedical and pharmaceutical sectors, aiming to make Singapore the Asia-Pacific hub for research and business in this fast-growing industries by investing heavily in human talent, physical infrastructure and fostering closer collaboration between academia and industry.

Bronson will be aggregating a group of people with similar interests to blog about the industry. Lets support him on this endeavor!

ScreenHead -- The Web's Answer to Comedy Central?

2006-02-12T00:03:00.000-08:00

Another blog from Gawker Media - the guys who gave us Gizmodo, Wonkette, ValleyWag and are competing head to head with WeblogsInc (WBI) for domination of the web-publishing sector. Personally, I like the philosophy and see immense potential for such a blog network to disrupt the offline magazine publising sector. Reader-attention/ eyeballs are shifting from offline to the web without a corresponding shift in terms of advertising dollars. That is bound to happen as companies like WBI and Gawker improve content and develop a model that harness the advantages of web-mased media presentation platforms such as vsocial.com and youtube.com to present an interactive media-reading experience for their audience.

I still remember talking to a friend from Columbia during my time in Berkeley attending the PlayConference last year. He flew from the East Coast, (says he came specfically for this event but i didn't really buy that) and simply loved the fact there was so much disruptive innovation for web and media startups in the Bay Area. He wanted to create his own Next-Generation Movie Studio creating straight-to-internet video content leveraging on lowered movie-making gadgetry and advanced software that made editing and producing much cheaper. How he intends to find the acting talent to do so at shoestring budgets remains unknown to me but it surely sounds exciting! After all, magazines can never carry more than photos and text but on the web, u can carry much more than that and deliver a whole new experience.

Localizing that, how can I create my own web media publishing enterprise? I believe the market here is under-developed for this new content publishing model. But the money is there and advertisers around the world are always looking for bang in their buck. As awareness, understanding and recognition of such new marketing channels take off, I must ensure I am ready to ride this wave/ tsunami when it comes. Are you a content creator, budding movie-maker or have i struck a chord with your brainwaves? Drop me a mail at lee.bjorn@gmail.com if you concur with my thoughts. =)

Technorati Tags: Gawker, screenhead, gizmodo, wonkette, valleywag, web publishing, nick denton, weblogsinc

Great Article on India vs China

2006-02-11T05:19:00.000-08:00

The tortoise vs the hare:

Here's my favourite line that probably summed it up:

that China’s growth is coming via flashy financing (foreign direct investment, the equivalent of VC financing at a startup) while India’s is coming through organic, sustainable growth (the equivalent of revenues).

Click here for link.

Technorati tag: India, China, venture capital, Asia, economic growth

The REAL Video iPod?

2006-02-11T01:44:00.000-08:00

Apple always launches significant changes to its iPod offering every year. Now that we are past the 2005 hype of the "video-or-not" iPod evolution, 2006 is no different as the marketing guys start building market buzz on what they "may" release this 2006 holiday season for the 6G iPod.

Here's a teaser:

Yup, a full-screen display that is controlled by multi-digit/(finger) touchpad interface. Think of a tablet PC with touchscreen controls by the user and apply that to the iPod. I own a video iPod myself and yes, although the screen is 2.5 inches small, i can live with it, but I will kick myself if they launch a souped-up iPod with 3.5 inch full-screen video capabilities this year. Just exactly when will the Mp3 player stop innovating so i have the best digital device out there to watch videos and listen to music? lolz.. Great innovation fuels even greater revenue models, some part of me wishes they keep doing this forever... hhaha (but please hire me!)

Digg has been raving the past weeks about the new multi-digit-touchscreen-control patent Apple submitted to the authorities. TIME OUT: For engineers, more info can be found here on the actual patent application. In addition, Apple also submitted a patent for the Apple Tablet Mac that was reported in August 2005 here. You can sort of see how the innovations sequentially build up to a 6G iPod that has full-screen video.

Otherwise: here's a simpler demonstration of how you use the 6G iPod.

In stores X'mas 2006? I wun bet my money on it NOT happening...

Technorati tags: Video iPod, 6G iPod, MP3 Player

Brutal Consequences for Cracking the Great Firewall of China

2006-02-11T00:33:00.000-08:00

Falungong, an outlawed political-spiritual organization outlawed in China, has resorted to high-tech means to spreading its philosophies in CHina via the Internet. Forbes reports more on how the chief tech specialist was bound, gagged and assaulted in his home in Georgia by Asian men.

"NEW YORK - Peter Yuan Li--a key figure in the Falun Gong's technologically sophisticated attempt to undermine the Chinese Communist Party--was brutally attacked and beaten in his home in Duluth, Ga., as Forbes was going to press with its cover story on how the spiritual movement is penetrating the Chinese government's hi-tech censorship. At 11:15 A.M. on Feb. 8, according to the Fulton County Police Department Incident Report, Asian men stormed the house of the Princeton-educated information technology technician, bound and gagged and beat him, before fleeing with two 16-inch Sony laptop computers, Li's wallet and yet unknown material from his files."

It appears this Firewall really mirrors what the real Great Wall of China was intended to do -- fend off foreign invaders that endanger CHinese territorial (in this case, virtual) interests. There's a price to pay for subverting the Chinese government and US-owned search engines such as Google should do well to toe the line if they want to survive in this walled garden. But will Google hence be deemed as "committing evil" and becoming fait accompli in the CHinese government's clampdown on civil liberties and right to free speech? I think so, and with more of such articles that demonstrate the backlash against individuals/ organizations who attempt to crack the "Digital Iron Curtain" of China, even if they are not sponsored by the Chinese government, Google's "Do No Evil" rhetoric will wear thin. As akin to what has happened in the wake of Google stock falling back from stratospheric numbers to more decent numbers.... Ahhhh... how the mighty always succumb to reality...

Found: Singapore Web 2.0 Community

2006-02-08T10:43:00.000-08:00

In a correction to my previous blog: (which proves I should do some research first before i write off the top of my head next time, and also how valuable Google is)

here is a simple search result of the miniscule Web 2.0 community so far thrown up by Google.

Blogs:

* Nick Pan
* Kevin
* Adrian Lee (Adrian started up on Feb 9, 2006 to form an internet marketing company specializing in SEO, something like what i wanted to do last time, except this guy, before Feb 9, was the MSN Head of Marketing in Singapore =D )
* Yanime - who built this

Companies:
* Bezurk - a travel search engine
* PetValley (hopefully a dogster.com competitor, proudly started by my friend and ex-colleague from NOC Silicon Valley, Sheryl Chen)

Still searching for more to compile a Web 2.0 Singapore directory... Back to Google...

The Sad State of the Internet Sector in Singapore

2006-02-08T07:24:00.000-08:00

It is depressing sometimes to be reminded how backwards Singapore is compared to Silicon Valley in terms of our awareness and innovation in the Web2.0 space. There are almost no Web 2.0 startups, it seems in Singapore, nor are they many pple who even know what Web 2.0 means. I have become numbed to blank looks from many of my fellow S'poreans.

Web 2.0 may be a fluffy concept hard to be understood by the uninitiated, and there are many others who have explained this better than I do, such as Don Hinchcliffe, Bill Graham, Scoble, Arrington, Schwartz, whatever, but contextually, with regards to Singapore, I will venture an explanation (critique if u want to, but applaud the effort, for i am a business student, lolz):

Web 2.0 is a conceptual re-positioning of the web from an "information repository" to a community space. It focuses on the idea that web-surfing is an activity best done in groups/ web communities. Web 2.0 incorporates innovative approaches toward web programming, user interface design and feature sets. These innovations are intended to deliver a better user experience through social-sharing features that enable users to share their web experiences with their friends, family, colleagues and the wider global internet community. Examples of such features include tagging Flickr, social bookmarking del.icio.us .

Many internet startups have also targeted the consumer space and integrated web 2.0 features into useful applications such as online video-viewing at Youtube, online news service such as Digg, Reddit, peer-to-peer financial management, Billmonk, music-recommendation service (amazing! highly recommend!) Pandora, online document collaboration ( i never fail to amaze anyone i recommend what this svc can do, click on it, u r missing out!) Writely among others. For more examples on Web2.0 startups, visit Mike Arrington's amazing Techcrunch, a blog that tracks and profiles all exciting Web2.0 startups in this world that have come across his attention.

As I lament on the sad state of Web 2.0 in Singapore, I decided to do something about it. Hence, after much discussion with Justin and Billy, and with the kind help rendered by our friend from Silicon Valley who founded the Entrepreneur27 network, Noah Kagan, we have launched what we believe to be the first Web 2.0 community meetup in Singapore -- Entrepreneur 27 Singapore.

E27 SG, for short, will focus on the convergence of youth entrepreneurship and Web 2.0 internet technology within Singapore. We hope to promote awareness of Web2.0 among web developers within Singapore, through greater interaction with Web2.0-savvy individuals, startups, corporations, in an effort to put our nation at the forefront of this next wave of internet Revolution that will inherently impact our social evolution. E27 SG is intended to be a community-powered, collaboratively-organized event that will tap on the vibrant energies of our young, web-and-mobile-savvy generation and hopefully contribute to the emergence of successful enterprises out of our lil' island Singapore. I truly believe Singapore is well-positioned to take advantage of our nation's connectivity to the digital world and I will be testing the government's (particulary the Media Development Authority and People Association) resolve over the next week as i attempt to get funding for this project.

In the mean time, for more information and to RSVP for our inaugural E27 SG event, click on this wiki.

For more information on what Noah Kagan's Entrepreneur27 network is about, click here.

E27 SG does not have a website here, but dun worry, we are pushing to get it rolled out ASAP!

Thoughts...

2006-01-28T01:01:00.000-08:00

Was contemplating.... Just been thinking why my web traffic is so low and ruminating about the long tail of web economics... maybe some of my blog posts are pretty lameass, i dun have anything sensational, like sex, chicks, parties or anything ridiculously hedonistic... I am basically re-publishing links.. But hey, some other sites do make a lot of money re-publishing stuff, guess you call that luck..

I am not gonna change my blogging style, anyway, its good to keep it simple and not think too much abt the web traffic. It may bring some extra cash but also lotsa unwanted attention, and anyway i am 990,000 visitors away from any significant revenue contribution.

Back to luck, i found this quote from Okdork. It was an interview with Dustin Moskovitz, co-founder of Facebook. (I met him before! lol)

“Success is very much the intersection of luck and hard work. First, you have to find an opportunity, and then you need to man up to the work necessary to make it something good. Having just one or the other won’t result in anything at all.”

Its been 3 weeks since i came back from the Bay Area aka Silicon Valley. I realized the main difference between these two localities is really the social environment -- the people, the conversation, the activities such as TechCrunch events, Stanford ETL talks...". I guess you could call this culture as well. Or if you crystallize it further, its the people. In Singapore, as I have always been critiquing about, young Singaporeans are not open-minded, we know too little of the world beyond our local spheres of knowledge. We lack understanding of different cultures and mindsets. How many of your friends know whats going on in Palestine, Samuel Alito or even who's the prime minister/ president of the neighboring Southeast Asian countries... How many times have we reached out to the foreigners such as the Chinese, Indian and Vietnamese scholars amongst us in NUS? I used to get blank stares from friends every time I start commenting on the politics in US, China, Malaysia, people would ask me wy I even care about whats going on in some place so far away and has no direct relevance to our daily lives. These are the same people who do not see value in interacting with foreign students sitting next to them in classes, tutorials seminars... I admit i did not do that too much either, in terms of talking to the foreign students in NUS. One important thing i learnt from the Valley is the value within every human being, how interesting every single one of them can be once you interact with them, the Russians, the Indians, the Taiwanese, Chinese, Palestinians, Jordanians, Brazilians...

I have this theory that Singaporeans have this "big-nation" mentality that we are big and do not need to care about everyone around us because we can survive on our won and do not need them. The cushy, relatively affluent lifestyles of Singaporeans may have fostered that. We trust too much on efficiency of our government systems. We complain alot, knowing that someone, somewhere will do something about it. We take alot of things for granted, the thousand-strong maid contingent that throng Orchard Road on Sundays can attest to that, so do the thousands of Indians that throng Little India and the Thais that throng Beach Road and.... We rely alot on foreign labor in order to sustain our chronic lack of human labor and at the same time, contributing to an "invisible" workforce that does all the dirty work that lubricates our chushy existence. Dirty dishes disappear, buses always come on time thanks to hardworking Malaysians, new buildings pop up in light speed housing more multinational corporations and contributing to the economy's growth. Singapore is great in tapping on the advantages of outsourcing, but are we remembering to focus on concentrating what little local Singaporean workforce we have on the high-value services so we do not get overwhelmed by hungrier, more driven and ambitious foreigners and immigrants?

Singapore is a great case study for Thomas Friedman's World is Flat philosophy. In that book, i remember him mentioning that nations today are competing for citizens. The capitalistic fundamentals and commitment towards free markets underpin the need for competition for greater resource efficiency. Singapore, a developed economy, has to stay at the forefront of economic innovation. Not only that, our small geogrpahical size and small populace merit "national innovation" as well. We need to innovate as a country. We need to master the science of harnessing external resources to contribute to internal benefits and build up our intrinsic value as a significant player on the global economic chess-game. Our educational policy in attracting bright young students from the region, complemented by an insidious social programme of integrating them into our society, hoping they will marry here and make Singapore home after they complete their studies and are obliged by a 6-year bond is a masterstroke. I see this as an evolution of our old stratey of attracting MNCs to invest in Singapore in the '60s and '70s through danling economic carrots such as tax breaks, pioneer status. Just that, we no longer can attract corporations today as effectively as yesteryear, but we surely can drill down and attract the components of corporations - the humans. From Corporations to Humans.

Where does this leave Singaporeans? We are faced with ever increasing competition in all aspects of society from all levels of education to all sectors of economic contribution. I think this is good. It keeps us on our toes. We have 3 basic types of responses:
- turn a blind eye to changing global realities,
- learn to compete and beat the new entrants,
- complain and give up.

In America, there is this phenomenon called "white flight". This is due to competitive asian immigrants besting the local american white kids in math,s cience and almost everything else ins chools. As a result, American parents pull their kids out of school, leave these newly competitive educational battlegorunds and migrate their families and kids to less competitive school where they think their kids will grow up normally in a "supportive" atmosphere of learnig.

One word. Bullshit.

I hope Singapore doesn't learn this American trend. We should not turn a blind eye and ignore our new foreign friends either, as in Scenario 1. We have to globalize our thinking and understand that competition is here to stay. We have to interact more with our foreign friends, learn what they think of Singapore, how we can improve, learn about their home nations and cultures and appreciate the intricacies of diversity of our global village. Singaporeans think that exchange programs broaden their scope and exposure and they willingly pay 7000 bucks for that experience. I say most of these affluent families can save their money, they can have that same perception-broadening experience right in our backyards within NUS, or for a peek into the other less-educated spectrum of foreign society, go to Orchard Road, Little India, Beach road on weekends to learn about foreign culture.

Shit, i wrote too much. What started as a rambling extended far too long. Maybe I can use this essay for other purposes by turning in as an assignment somewhere.. haha.. Hopefully it made sense, otherwise, go click on that "next blog" button on top of this page and thanks for your attention. Till next time..

Will Kosmix be the nemesis of Google?

2006-01-28T00:24:00.000-08:00

Boasting of the same PhD heritage as Sergey and Larry of Google, these 2 Indian guys Anand Rajarama and Venky Harinarayan aim to best their former Stanford classmates at search.

Now, Kosmix has raised $7.4 million in venture capital as these folks embark on the next Holy Grial of search -- the "aboutness"/ meaning/ context of your keyword searches. Google's pagerank currently organizes search results by the gross popularity of links to a particular webpage, Kosmix attempts to do a deeper level of this by attempting to decipher the "meaning" of a page by analyzing those very links that leads to a webpage in order to understand the context of that page better.Anand and Venky, according to this article at SiliconBeat, used to own Junglee, the first Internet company founded out of their Stanford department and hence supposedly role models for other folks, including Sergey and Larry. It is noteworthy that Junglee also boasts Ram Shriram, the early investor and director of Google from Sherpalo Ventures.

Its admirable that more are challenging the status quo of Google's domination over the search industry. Competition is needed especially as Google is looking invincible, however, there doesn;t appear to be too much revenue model innovation at Kosmix yet. I would be interested to know if there is any disruption in this business model which Google is overly reliant on. With the first decade of the Internet industry looing to its conclusion, we have seen Google taking over the mantle of search leadership from Yahoo and drawing attention from the Microsoft empire along with a slew of bandwagon jumpers.. Kosmix and the rest of the Google-killer-wannabes has history on their side in the seemingly cyclical nature of the internet industry. I believe that with the increasing democratization of the internet witnessed through user-created content and the Web 2.0 hype, whoever manages to sift through all these cyber-junk to deliver valuable content will win.

Voyeur Paradise

2006-01-26T09:37:00.000-08:00

Check out this website which has obtained access to thousand of live webcams all over the world. You can see slices of daily lives from all around the world.

I pity this poor guy working at the trustee's office in California who has a webcam spying on him 24/7 right at his desk. His whole life is up for scrutiny. You can see him taking calls, eating lunch, picking his nose etc... Those who you who have webcams better beware... Another demo of the omnipresent internet...

2006-01-23T11:11:00.000-08:00

Reading Guy Kawasaki's blog and found this apt description of a blogger:

Blogger. n. Someone with nothing to say writing for someone with nothing to do.

So sarcasm and self-deprecation aside, Guy has a great guide to cutting the crap out of tedious business plans. Click here.

Who will own Disney's soul?

2006-01-22T10:25:00.000-08:00

Great news for Silicon Valley. The revoultion of the traditional media industry continues as Apple CEO Steve Jobs' will be installed as the company's largest single shareholder in the $7 billion takeover by Disney.

Steve Jobs has successfully revoutionized how the music and TV industry embraces and adopts the internet medium into their business model REMOTELY through his other vehicle Apple's iTunes and proliferant iPods. Now, with a seat on the decision-making roundtable of Disney, one of tech's most celebrated personalities will have a crack at media domination from within "Old Media" industry itself.

With Pixar, Disney hopes to secure one of its most lucrative revenue drivers for the long term and stay at the forefront of the movie industry. With theatre attendances plunging for the whole of 2005, it is gratifying to see that at least one major movie studio is taking on the problems, related to changing consumer/ movie-watcher habits, head-on. Pixar's creative production team, with their proven tack record of success, will definitely invigorate the flagging fortunes of Disney in its multiple ventures. However, pardon me for my lack of knowledge, movie-making to me, is still a rather risky business and highly dependent on transient consumer tastes. Pixar is a relatively young movie studio and there is no guarantee that they will continue their track record of success over the long term. What Pixar is different is that tey take a rather technological approach to movie-making, relying on computer animation and voices rather than real, actual human characters in all of their hits. This wil definitely play into the digital media tsunami. I like to emphasise again that this to me, looks like Disney wants to consolidate its position within the internet media, especially in their relationship with Steve Job's Apple. With closer integration at the management level, we should see all of Disney's media archives being digitalized and available for sale on iTunes very soon. Such close collaboration with a traditional media titan wis definitely good for Apple, and for once, Steve Job's latest foray at digital entertainment surely looks like a win, at this point of time against the Evil Empire of Microsoft.

Taking a step back, it all depends on how much influence Steve Jobs wants to play within Disney. But he has already gotten through the door, and the world should once again wait for the Wizard of Cupertino to again weave his magic wand and hopefully sprinkle stardust over Disneyland again.

Office Employee Motivation -- NFL-style

2006-01-21T20:22:00.000-08:00

Check out Terry Tate, your "friendly" manager with a kick-ass motivational style!

Google - Our Savior (for now)

2006-01-19T23:47:00.000-08:00

Read this article and understand that MSN, Yahoo, AOL and all the other small search engines have sold you out to the Feds.

Thanks to Boing Boing, this is a follow up piece good for background information:

Feds demand user data from Google: Battelle's analysis
In light of today's SJ Merc report that the Department of Justice has demanded user search records from Google, this excerpt from John Battelle's The Search seems worth reading again:

As we move our data to the servers at Amazon.com, Hotmail.com, Yahoo.com, and Gmail.com, we are making an implicit bargain, one that the public at large is either entirely content with, or, more likely, one that most have not taken much to heart.

That bargain is this: we trust you to not do evil things with our information. We trust that you will keep it secure, free from unlaw- ful government or private search and seizure, and under our control at all times. We understand that you might use our data in aggregate to provide us better and more useful services, but we trust that you will not identify individuals personally through our data, nor use our personal data in a manner that would violate our own sense of privacy and freedom.

That’s a pretty large helping of trust we’re asking companies to ladle onto their corporate plate. And I’m not sure either we or they are entirely sure what to do with the implications of such a transfer. Just thinking about these implications makes a reasonable person’s head hurt.

Top 10 trends to Watch in 2006

2006-01-19T23:29:00.000-08:00

This is just too good not to share. Its from McKinsey.

Will probably flout some legal tape that still hasn't got its arms around the internet model of information propagantion yet, but those legal hacks should go catch the big fish, as of now, i still have no google ads anyway.

________________________________________________________________________

Ten trends to watch in 2006

Macroeconomic factors, environmental and social issues, and business and industry developments will all profoundly shape the corporate landscape in the coming years.

Ian Davis and Elizabeth Stephenson

Web exclusive, January 2006

Those who say that business success is all about execution are wrong. The right product markets, technology, and geography are critical components of long-term economic performance. Bad industries usually trump good management, however: in sectors such as banking, telecommunications, and technology, almost two-thirds of the organic growth of listed Western companies can be attributed to being in the right markets and geographies. Companies that ride the currents succeed; those that swim against them usually struggle. Identifying these currents and developing strategies to navigate them are vital to corporate success.

What are the currents that will make the world of 2015 a very different place to do business from the world of today? Predicting short-term changes or shocks is often a fool's errand. But forecasting long-term directional change is possible by identifying trends through an analysis of deep history rather than of the shallow past. Even the Internet took more than 30 years to become an overnight phenomenon.
Macroeconomic trends

We would highlight ten trends that will change the business landscape. First, we have identified three macroeconomic trends that will deeply transform the underlying global economy.

1. Centers of economic activity will shift profoundly, not just globally, but also regionally. As a consequence of economic liberalization, technological advances, capital market developments, and demographic shifts, the world has embarked on a massive realignment of economic activity. Although there will undoubtedly be shocks and setbacks, this realignment will persist. Today, Asia (excluding Japan) accounts for 13 percent of world GDP, while Western Europe accounts for more than 30 percent. Within the next 20 years the two will nearly converge. Some industries and functions—manufacturing and IT services, for example—will shift even more dramatically. The story is not simply the march to Asia. Shifts within regions are as significant as those occurring across regions. The United States will still account for the largest share of absolute economic growth in the next two decades.

Further reading:
China and India: The race to growth (for access to links like these, click here and register)
Mapping the global capital markets

2. Public-sector activities will balloon, making productivity gains essential. The unprecedented aging of populations across the developed world will call for new levels of efficiency and creativity from the public sector. Without clear productivity gains, the pension and health care burden will drive taxes to stifling proportions.

Nor is the problem confined to the developed economies. Many emerging-market governments will have to decide what level of social services to provide to citizens who increasingly demand state-provided protections such as health care and retirement security. The adoption of proven private-sector approaches will likely become pervasive in the provision of social services in both the developed and the developing worlds.

Further reading:
The demographic deficit: How aging will reduce global wealth
Boosting government productivity

3. The consumer landscape will change and expand significantly. Almost a billion new consumers will enter the global marketplace in the next decade as economic growth in emerging markets pushes them beyond the threshold level of $5,000 in annual household income—a point when people generally begin to spend on discretionary goods. From now to 2015, the consumer's spending power in emerging economies will increase from $4 trillion to more than $9 trillion—nearly the current spending power of Western Europe.

Shifts within consumer segments in developed economies will also be profound. Populations are not only aging, of course, but changing in other ways too: for example, by 2015 the Hispanic population in the United States will have spending power equivalent to that of 60 percent of all Chinese consumers. And consumers, wherever they live, will increasingly have information about and access to the same products and brands.

Further reading:
Premium marketing to the masses: An interview with LG Electronics India's managing director
New strategies for consumer goods
Social and environmental trends

Next, we have identified four social and environmental trends. Although they are less predictable and their impact on the business world is less certain, they will fundamentally change how we live and work.

4. Technological connectivity will transform the way people live and interact. The technology revolution has been just that. Yet we are at the early, not mature, stage of this revolution. Individuals, public sectors, and businesses are learning how to make the best use of IT in designing processes and in developing and accessing knowledge. New developments in fields such as biotechnology, laser technology, and nanotechnology are moving well beyond the realm of products and services.

More transformational than technology itself is the shift in behavior that it enables. We work not just globally but also instantaneously. We are forming communities and relationships in new ways (indeed, 12 percent of US newlyweds last year met online). More than two billion people now use cell phones. We send nine trillion e-mails a year. We do a billion Google searches a day, more than half in languages other than English. For perhaps the first time in history, geography is not the primary constraint on the limits of social and economic organization.

Further reading:
The next revolution in interactions
The McKinsey Global Survey of Business Executives, July 2005

5. The battlefield for talent will shift. Ongoing shifts in labor and talent will be far more profound than the widely observed migration of jobs to low-wage countries. The shift to knowledge-intensive industries highlights the importance and scarcity of well-trained talent. The increasing integration of global labor markets, however, is opening up vast new talent sources. The 33 million university-educated young professionals in developing countries is more than double the number in developed ones. For many companies and governments, global labor and talent strategies will become as important as global sourcing and manufacturing strategies.

Further reading:
China's looming talent shortage
Sizing the emerging global labor market

6. The role and behavior of big business will come under increasingly sharp scrutiny. As businesses expand their global reach, and as the economic demands on the environment intensify, the level of societal suspicion about big business is likely to increase. The tenets of current global business ideology—for example, shareholder value, free trade, intellectual-property rights, and profit repatriation—are not understood, let alone accepted, in many parts of the world. Scandals and environmental mishaps seem as inevitable as the likelihood that these incidents will be subsequently blown out of proportion, thereby fueling resentment and creating a political and regulatory backlash. This trend is not just of the past 5 years but of the past 250 years. The increasing pace and extent of global business, and the emergence of truly giant global corporations, will exacerbate the pressures over the next 10 years.

Business, particularly big business, will never be loved. It can, however, be more appreciated. Business leaders need to argue and demonstrate more forcefully the intellectual, social, and economic case for business in society and the massive contributions business makes to social welfare.

Further reading:
What is the business of business?
The role of regulation in strategy

7. Demand for natural resources will grow, as will the strain on the environment. As economic growth accelerates—particularly in emerging markets—we are using natural resources at unprecedented rates. Oil demand is projected to grow by 50 percent in the next two decades, and without large new discoveries or radical innovations supply is unlikely to keep up. We are seeing similar surges in demand across a broad range of commodities. In China, for example, demand for copper, steel, and aluminum has nearly tripled in the past decade.

The world's resources are increasingly constrained. Water shortages will be the key constraint to growth in many countries. And one of our scarcest natural resources—the atmosphere—will require dramatic shifts in human behavior to keep it from being depleted further. Innovation in technology, regulation, and the use of resources will be central to creating a world that can both drive robust economic growth and sustain environmental demands.

Further reading:
Preparing for a low-carbon future
What's next for Big Oil?
Business and industry trends

Finally, we have identified a third set of trends: business and industry trends, which are driving change at the company level.

8. New global industry structures are emerging. In response to changing market regulation and the advent of new technologies, nontraditional business models are flourishing, often coexisting in the same market and sector space.

In many industries, a barbell-like structure is appearing, with a few giants on top, a narrow middle, and then a flourish of smaller, fast-moving players on the bottom. Similarly, corporate borders are becoming blurrier as interlinked "ecosystems" of suppliers, producers, and customers emerge. Even basic structural assumptions are being upended: for example, the emergence of robust private equity financing is changing corporate ownership, life cycles, and performance expectations. Winning companies, using efficiencies gained by new structural possibilities, will capitalize on these transformations.

Further reading:
Strategy in an era of global giants
Loosening up: How process networks unlock the power of specialization

9. Management will go from art to science. Bigger, more complex companies demand new tools to run and manage them. Indeed, improved technology and statistical-control tools have given rise to new management approaches that make even mega-institutions viable.

Long gone is the day of the "gut instinct" management style. Today's business leaders are adopting algorithmic decision-making techniques and using highly sophisticated software to run their organizations. Scientific management is moving from a skill that creates competitive advantage to an ante that gives companies the right to play the game.

Further reading:
Do you know who your experts are?
Matching people and jobs

10. Ubiquitous access to information is changing the economics of knowledge. Knowledge is increasingly available and, at the same time, increasingly specialized. The most obvious manifestation of this trend is the rise of search engines (such as Google), which make an almost infinite amount of information available instantaneously. Access to knowledge has become almost universal. Yet the transformation is much more profound than simply broad access.

New models of knowledge production, access, distribution, and ownership are emerging. We are seeing the rise of open-source approaches to knowledge development as communities, not individuals, become responsible for innovations. Knowledge production itself is growing: worldwide patent applications, for example, rose from 1990 to 2004 at a rate of 20 percent annually. Companies will need to learn how to leverage this new knowledge universe—or risk drowning in a flood of too much information.

Further reading:
The 21st-century organization
Making a market in knowledge

Companies need to understand the implications of these trends alongside customer needs and competitive developments. Executives who align their company's strategy with these factors will be the best placed to succeed. Reflecting on these trends will be time well spent.

2006-01-19T23:16:00.000-08:00

People who read my blog will know I blog sporadically and in spurts/ waves. Here I go again.

So here's something that I have been reading regularly besides all that usual news articles I read all the time (i found a better way to capture good news articles i visit -- the del.icio.us service, click here to access webpages i read and capture for posterity.

Back to the point, Noah Kagan is a friend who happens to work at Facebook, a social network I like very much amidst the Myspace-ish and Friendsterish clutter that are jamming the online social fabric of our digital, virtual generation. He happens to be churning out phenomenal ideas all the time and websites to accompany them, which all happen to fit right within my scope of interest. Check out his personal blog , his "consulting firm", E27 network, his latest collaborative blog for (what he calls) "YoPos" (sounds Japanese, but well, this guy has an Asian girlfriend)

The Real Man who was first in Space: Joe Kittinger

2006-01-19T23:09:00.000-08:00

This is amazing. In 1955, before Yuri Gagarin, this man skydived from an altitude 3 times that of a jet airliner today, broke the sound barrier without any mechanical help, and lived to indirectly pass us this tale through video.

Attributes owed to this blog.

WARNING!: BUSH VS GOOGLE

2006-01-19T00:56:00.000-08:00

911 was an immense tragedy for thousands of Americans and their families. It also marked a significant milestone in American policy, engaging in the war on terror. One direct post-911 defense mechanism implemented by the US government was the Patriot Act.

The Patriot Act is intended to safeguard the national security interests of Americans. It also has a component that grants the government immense sweeping powers to access private records held by any American organization, such as your cell phone records or your Google search history records. This is a massive blow to civil libertise and privacy concerns. The recently released news that Bush had approved wiretapping of Americans under the guise of national security has promopted certain sectors to call for his impeachment. No doubt if Bush had legitimate and justifiable reasons to back his decision, the rational people will grungingly agree with such an extreme move. However, this is also the same Bush who tried without success to fool the United Natins and the world to attack Iraq, based on false intelligence that Iraq had WMDs.

I say, great credibility Bush has.

Now, he is pitting his lawyers against Google, and intends to exercise the Child Protection Act, another anti-privacy law akin to the same philosophy the Patriot Act subscribes to, to access the search records of private individuals all of whom will run the risk of having their civil liberties taken away from them by a President that has exhausted his "political capital" and is desperately trying to fulfill whatever responsibilities he has left of his job. It may be child protection this time, but this creates a precedent once the government gains access to Google search records. I fear to imagine the day Feds abuse the Patriot Act and their noble duties under the name of national security.

Read the article. I will blog more about this when i get the chance.

Plunging Tech Stocks

2006-01-19T00:37:00.000-08:00

Monitors and followers of the US tech industry will notice that Yahoo and Intel's earnings release have been met with unfavorable stock fluctuations by the general markets. It is amazing how short-term some investors are thinking to sell off their shares based on quarterly earning results that hold little, if any, long-term insight into the corporate strategies of these 2 companies. As of now, Yahoo stocks have plunged by approximately 20% since the results were announced. There is a spillover effect on other tech giants such as Apple and Google (the latter of which has retreated by close to $30) since their record high last week. Nothing has changed fundamentally in terms of strategy or operations over the past fortnight, but expectations level built into the share price of these tech companies, by humans beings, are creating volatility. Irrational exuberance. This caused the meteoric rise of GOOG shares, and should unfavorable news continue, will also be responsible for its fall. There has to come a day when the excitement of random press releases by GOOG announcing their entries into new advertising markets wear off and the financial analysts and seat-of-the-pants investors stop their adolescent fad-based tendencies of buying stocks and finally grow up.

I would buy Yahoo! stocks if I had the money now. I see immense potential in Yahoo's strategic moves to consoidate their position as the No. 1 trafficked destination site on the Internet. THeir moves to acquire the online communities of Flickr, Upcoming, WebJay, del.icio.us amidst a grander goal of leading the Social Media wave may seem like a haphazard way to consolidate the "Web2.0" industry. Particularly, the chronic hazy and bewildering concept of revenue models of these Web 2.0 startups may have also been looked upon unfavorably by financial analysts with no modicum of understanding of the disruptive wave of media and content creation sweeping across the Internet now. Yahoo's stock rise is also riding on the coattails of Google. If we assume that Google's share price is priced reasonably based on the expected boom and crossover from traditional offline advertising to the Internet, then Yahoo is unfairly being cut out from their share of the online advertising profit pie. TIme will tell if Yahoo is successful and I surely am keeping my fingers crossed that Yahoo is right.

Relevant article can be found here.

2006-01-12T18:51:00.000-08:00

Everyday, someone finds something new to describe Google, which is changing our world so rapidly people are finding it a hard time documenting and explaining their meteoric rise to power.

So here's something new: Google is a religion masquerading as a company.

An excerpt from the article: "Whereas Yahoo! was started by two Stanford students who turned a hobby into a business, Google was started by two Stanford students who turned an intellectual obsession into a quest, says Mr Moritz."

An Article about the Cultural Phenom Craigslist and How It is killing the Newspapers of our world. Click here.

Norway's building a vault in the mountains to store seeds of main agricultural crops in the event of Armageddon. Take note, fellas, know where to go when you are the last surviving human on this planet. Click here.

This is cool. Know more about prejudices around the world. Click here.

Elevator Pitches. Shanghai-style.

Blackberry jumps on the bandwagon of GTalk. Click here.

And my favorite notion of the day. Lets IMPEACH BUSH.

2006-01-12T01:12:00.000-08:00

The Great Firewall of China

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jan2006/tc20060112_749447.htm

Calling for those in Singapore!

2006-01-11T19:57:00.000-08:00

Exclusively for existing and aspiring entrepreneurs in SIngapore,

Great venue. Amazing people. Mind-blowing ideas.

Come rock with us tomorrow evening!

RSVP HERE.

2006-01-09T17:14:00.000-08:00

Cops using Facebook to fight crime gets Punk'd! hahaha.. great party labelled a "beer-blast" on Facebook with "cake-pong" and "cake-stand" disses college cops looking for evidence of underage drinking. Click on article Here.

Check out the face of this cop. He's gonna be infamous!

Here's the latest fad. Move over, keg-stands, meet "cake-stands"!

And it doesn;t stop there, fuck off with beer-pong, we have "cake-pong" now!

Zombies in Hollywood

2006-01-09T16:42:00.000-08:00

In view of recent public announcements at the CES show by GOogle and Yahoo, the content distribution landscape is going to be shaken up over the next few years, with the Web juggernauts of Google-Yahoo-MSN-iTunes snapping away at the huge profit pie that Hollywood studios had dominated for decades. Sad thing for the studios is, there's not much they can do to prevent their demise, because they simple didn;t get IT fast enough.

Whats "IT"? Its the digital revoultion, spearheaded by the Internet medium as the most efficient distribution channel of the products of these Hollywood studios - their movies, documentaries, short films, cartoons and any other copyrighted content they have been naively protecting through MPAA these couple of years.

Online P2P file-sharing or the "Napster Effect", heralded a shift in consumer needs for media content. Consumers did not really want it free, their primary objective for downloading illegal music was not because of a conscious (or criminal) intent to steal copyrighted content. No, all they wanted was the media file, anytime, anywhere. They were still the same type of customers that the Hollywood studios have been targetting for decades. But the key difference was: they had new tools -- the Computer and the Internet. The Hollywood stiffs didn;t get that, they thought this new breed of downloaders was DA ENEMY, hence, they railed and fumed with fire and brimstone at every opportunity at them, bringing upon tsunamis of lawsuits in a futile attempt to stem the ever-growing tide of illegal media downloaders through the digital universe. Napster died, then Kazaa came, Grokster, Bittorrent, Aries, eDonkey.. the list never stops... Digital democracy is here to stay, like it or not, the tech-punks from Silicon Valley (SV) have crossed over from their hardware-software wizardry to create disruption in the Internet services realm. SV is the savior to the consumers, the same old customers that Hollywood thought they had wrapped up in their vaults for centuries to come and were worth gadzillions in future revenue.

It took a tech-punk in the form of Apple's Steve Jobs with iTunes to make Hollywood sit up from their delusional bubbles of reality that music and movie lovers were not evil at all. NO, they still wanted the same content and were willing to pay for it. This must have been a seismic moment for them. Rupert Murdoch, ever the opportunist, jumped right on the bandwagon with the re-organization of FOX, creating an interactive media unit that would explore and push the frontiers of distributing their content over the Internet. Of course, they also bought MySpace, a popular social network, that would bring them into control over a major piece of virtual Internet estate that has millions of users returning everyday for snippets of gossip, music, some video and whatsnot.

We know the story later, iTunes paired up with Disney and ABC. The tipping point was reached. Fools rushed in. CBS, NBC, WB all frantically signed their deals with the technoracy, signing away lucrative deals that also ceded away property they used to own exclusively. Its just a moment of time before the movie studios begin selling their content online. There's always Google Video Store or iTunes or whatever will arrive to shake up the industry in a few years time. Change will now pervade through the Jurassic-esque Hollywood circles. Welcome to the tech revolution and its tumultous cycles that gave us the 2001 tech bust! What dominates today, such as Google and Apple, may dramatically wither and fall in the next decade. Look at the fumbling juggernaut that is Microsoft scramble in the wake of tech heir-apparent Google's meteoric rise to power.

The digital revolution is not complete yet, we still have not conquered the mobile realm, where Internet is freely available on handheld devices that frees humans from wires, clunky desktops/ laptops.

Welcome to the Brave New World, powered by Silicon Valley and Goodbye to the Hollywood Zombies.

Was reading this article.

HomeComing

2006-01-09T16:09:00.000-08:00

EVerything looks similar AND different at the same time.

Quite a paradoxical statement but thats what I felt in the 20 hours since i touched down. I touched down, unpacked and went to school 8 hours after I arrived. It was somewhat of an out-of-the-body experience, to some extent, as I walked around the campus full of unknown faces. I was constantly scouring the landscape for familiarity and they were few and far between. Nevertheless, I caught up with some old friends, and NOC alumni buds who were still brimming with fire and enthusiasm in their bellies. Its good to see thst some things dun change after 6 months in entrepreneurially staid Singapore.

I was chatting with Anubhav and came to a conclusion that the culture in Singapore, among NUS students, is pscyhologically draining in the entrepreneurial sense . People here are drifters, they do not have a keen sense of direction in their lives nor have real self-actualiztion needs. I qualify my statement by saying that there are passionate people out there bu these are the minority. For NOC alums returning from a Valley with entrepreneurs and wannabes in almost every strata of society espousing the virtues of entrepreneurship/ self-determination, we were surrounded by orbs of energy radiating, diffusing and positively influencing the NOC community. On the contrary, Singapore has too many "black holes", orbs of dark matter that suck up positive energy streams and endanger the flame of entrepreneurship in all of us. The latters' minds are not open, kinda like a Matrix blue pill-red pill moment. I saw what a real world should be, now I have difficulty readjusting back to fabricated reality in Singapore. hahaha....

I wanted to blog because of this picture I saw from this course I took on my first day back in my college. Before you stare at the pic (you might already have and I dun care, read on first), Now, this is not porn.This course I am taking is called Special Topics in Arts: Exploring Chinese Visual and Material Culture. The pic is taken from the 25 Peaces Project, a government-sponsored art project that cost taxpayers millions of dollars and was plastered on hundreds of billboards across Austria. Now, this art piece is causing multiple storms of controversy amongst the neo-cons and feminists across Europe. Look at it with an open eye and try and think what the artist was trying to convey. I assure you its worth your while and might deepen your understanding of contemporary art. At least, mine did. =)

Disclaimaer: This piece has nothing to do with Chinese art. The lecturer wanted to use something totally different to arouse our senses of pictorial perception.

For the impatient, know the meaning of this pic by clicking here

2006-01-07T05:13:00.000-08:00

Its been a long while since i returned to dust the cobwebs off my blog. So much has been happening as I gear up to end my Californian adventure after 18 months. I was ending work, then headed to Tahoe for snowboarding, followed by a 5 day trip to New York CIty for New Year's celebration, in between trying to wrap up my life here such as selling my car, packing up my junk accumulated over the past 18 months...

I just finished packing my universe of stuff collected over the year. Its amazing that I managed to consolidate them into 110 pounds of mass jammed into my Samsonite and my backpack.

This frenetic pace of life over the past fortnight has also seen me fall beind in my "quasi-religious" schedule of keeping up with the news and blogs. And it was only when I read about the "virgin" podcast of Nicolas Sarkozy, a French presidential hopeful, did I muster the motivation to return here and blog again.

I remember reading smething from Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat, about the politicians of the future reorienting their ideologies, or possibly reorganizing their political parties through splinters/ mergers, along the technology and globalization trends that impact our society today. Nicolas Sarkozy kind of embodies the type of politician who is beginning to "get it" and understand that the new electorate today requires a new form of medium to reach out to them effectively. In this article , Sarkozy's innovative approach of granting a podcast interview may or may not have endeared to a younger audience, but it definitely alerted the political spectrum,, left, right or centrist, to seek gretaer effectiveness of their communication by leveraging on Internet technology. This internet tech, could be blogs, or podcasts, or whatever other moniker or forms they will appear in future. This adoption of podcasting as a new political communication tool has granted the podcasting world legitimacy and endorsed it as a viable media outlet.

Will we see more money pumped into podcasting startups as a result??

Veering off-track, Blake Ross (of Firefox fame) speculate humorously on what to look out for in the 2006 tech world.

Calling for Skiiers and Party-pple!!!

2005-12-15T19:00:00.000-08:00

Tahoe. Ski. Parties. Booze. Just Bring Yourself.

Cutting the Crap

2005-12-13T21:38:00.000-08:00

I was just reading a new friend (Mohammad Musa)'s blog and decided to blog about something i totally agree with and understand.

""If you find yourself talking more than walking, shut up, cut the vision in half, and launch it. You can always fill in the gaps later. In fact, you’ll know more about what gaps need to be filled after you’ve launched “half a feature” than if you tried to fill them in before launching anything."

I think it was Newton's First Law or some physical law i studied before (I am not an engineer, and am lazy to check wikipedia) that theorized about inertia and the significant physical force required to overcome it. I am glad i snapped out of my inertia and am working on something (anything!) now. It feels great to be DOING something for a change instead of hypothesizing and rambling on about it without any commitment.

Deja Vu? Terminator castigated for killing

2005-12-13T18:01:00.000-08:00

Arnie's getting crap from Europeans for California's decision to execute crook Stanley Tookie Williams (convicted killer and co-founder of Crips gang). Doesn't this mirror the Australian outcry when Singapore decided to execute another crook in Nguyen Van Tuong for drug smuggling? The Pope and his cronies are shouting out for respect of human dignity and right to redemption. Suddenly, we witness mass amnesia and the type of selective justice again demanded by certain sectors of our society. For crying out loud, THESE GUYS COMMITTED SERIOUS CRIMES.

Here's what i thought was funny:

"Rome's Colosseum, once the arena for deadly gladiator combat and executions, has become a symbol of Italy's anti-death penalty stance. Since 1999, the monument has been bathed in golden light every time a death sentence is commuted somewhere in the world or a country abolishes capital punishment."

Are we kidding here? The Colosseum is not too far from where Caesar and his other Roman warriors once thrived. I bet they are turning in their graves at the follies of their descendants right now. I might appear to be in favor of capital punishment but i also am willing to compromise on the circumstances it should be practised. We need a strong deterrent for hardcore criminals. If we believe in the independency and effectiveness of judicial systems, we should trust them with the responsibility of purging society of our wayward citizens and upholding the sacred role of maintaining order in mainstream society. This is not because I do not believe that these criminals cannot be reformed, they might. But we also have to realize the importance of sending out a message to the rest of society, particularly those who endanger the majority, that there is zero tolerance for certain crimes.

I thought this topped the list:

"In Schwarzenegger's hometown of Graz, local Greens said they would file a petition to remove his name from the southern city's sports stadium. A Christian political group went even further, suggesting it be renamed the "Stanley Tookie Williams Stadium.""

Sure, name it Stanley Tookie Williams Stadium, I thought some sectors of society could go no lower but I am wrong. Perhaps some political group, (where's Hansen-clones in Aussie?) could name some street or monument after Nguyen Van Tuong and join the Austrians in the "Hall of Shame" for celebrity crooks. They can commercialize this and make it a tourism attraction. I can visualize it. Let me attempt.

"From Australia to Austria -- United in Our Celebration of Shame".

2005-12-13T12:45:00.000-08:00

Bear Stearns on Google
Here's news on monetization moves by Google, through its hiring trends, on Google Video.

Cheesecake Factory on a Roll
Cheesecake Factory diversifys its revenue model. Click here.

Treo 650 Voted Best Converged Device.. Again
Head-to-head, Treo 650 beat the RIM BlackBerry 7100, the Samsung SCH-i730 and the UTStarcomm PPC6600. Click here.

Amazon Opens Up Alexa
Inexpensive access to an industrial-scale web crawler avaliable to any Google-wannabe... 100 terabytes of data at instant disposal. Siliconbeat is reporting on it too. And for the original link from Yahoo! News, click here.

Blog Network Rankings
From Mike Arrington's TechCrunch., one of the blogs i read religiously everyday if i get the time.

For the article, click here.

Random Blogs:
Joel on Software
Delivering web experiences

How to Invest like a Billionaire

2005-12-13T12:40:00.000-08:00

Read blogs.
Never follow market convention. Wait for the market blowout, then invest. (NOT the other way round)

Read here.

The Town of Boiled Beans

2005-12-13T00:28:00.000-08:00

Another indian city's name bites the dust.

India -- world's 2ndlargest economy in the future, changes the name of yet another of its cities again. Say bye to the global capital of Bangalore and hi to Bengalaru or "town of boiled beans".

From Madras to Chennai, Bombay to Mumbai, Calbutta to Kolkata, we should be braced for a tsunami of name changes from this country.

For more, click here.

Lessons from GOOG

2005-12-08T13:04:00.000-08:00

Something I saw off Xooglers They have a pretty good blog there recounting their experiences from the GREATEST COMPANY ON EARTH (trying to get a job there, haha)

Eric Schmidt (CEO GOOG) and this dude called Hal Varian came up with 10 Golden RUles for ruling knowledge workers such as those at Planet Google. The link is here, but since i read my own blog 'cos i use it as a repository of sorts, i will write down the rules here:

Hire by committee./ 360-degree interview method
Cater to their every need.
Pack them in./ Spatial proximity of workers
Make coordination easy./ Mailing your work group
Eat your own dog food./ Use your own products.
Encourage creativity./ 20 % personal time
Strive to reach consensus.
Don't be evil.
Data drive decisions.
Communicate effectively.

Something else here from Xooglers: "I knew the flavor of leadership that would not proceed without consensus, and I knew the flavor of leadership that weighed unpopular decisions before cautiously stepping forward to test the waters in some limited fashion. I had not experienced leadership infused with such heartfelt conviction that united opposition was simply brushed aside and the risk fully embraced without fear or hesitation."

3 different leadership models are articulated here:
The Dictator -- No consensus nor opinion-soliciting from underlings. Authoritarian "My-word-is-law" concept.
The Diplomat -- Everyone has their say, everybody feels part of the decision-making process. The aim is to make everyone happy but the reality is everyone is NOT due to dilution of opinions and a weak compromise that seeks to pass off as a concensual collection decision. Leadership is weak here, i regard this as pure democracy where the leader looks spineless.
The Visionary -- For lack of a better word. There is sufficient feedback collected, there is exchange of intellectual perspectives resulting in a very comprehensive understanding achieved by all parties leading to a decision juncture, required by the leader. The leader is one that commands respect from his team members (owing to some distinguishing character trait or academic pedigree), who retain varying degrees of faith in the leader despite any opinion differences and importantly, any variant decision eventually made. I prefer this sort of leadership. A culture that encourages multilateral consensus-seeking process but tolerates unilateral decision-making by an opinion-leader.

More about Social Networks

2005-12-08T12:46:00.000-08:00

Here's a blog on social networks I enjoyed.

Blogs in Singapore

2005-12-08T11:29:00.000-08:00

Beginning to slowly realize that blogs in Singapore are increasingly being criticised by the establishment. Sedition Act, Dawn Yang, Daphne Teo. (putting in top keywords so this post might be picked up by Technorati and other blog search engines, might have to take down this post because of heightened profile, hence proving my point)

I was reading this blog which referenced an article from The New Paper. The newspaper article talked about the cluelessness of Singaporean bloggers who did not understand the implications of their blogging habits. The article did not portray blogs as tools of personal expression but instead subtly focused on the naivety and immaturity of bloggers. I see this as an insidious implication that bloggers should be clamped down on, again with relation to the Sedition Act, as dangerous propaganda machines that have highly negative influences on public opinion. There is this other article highlighting the negative effects of a teacher's blog who had chosen to parody her students' mistakes on her blog. This teacher had intended her blog to be fun and educational (?) and adopt a humoristic stance. A straw poll was then conducted (by The New Paper? not clear in the article) on a statistically inaccurate sample size to prove that no one agreed with the teacher's opinions on her blog.

What is the New Paper trying to prove with articles like that? A simple search with the keyword "blog" on The New Paper main page throws up many articles with a majority putting down blogs. Now, The New Paper has a responsibility to educating a majority of Singaporeans that constitute its high readership audience, by portraying blogs in such a bad light, it does not help in fostering a favorable impression of blogs, particularly in the context of bloggers being prosecuted under Sedition Acts and such by thre government. IS The New Paper toeing the government line? IS ourSingaporean media really taking such a pro-government stance, based on the ideology of their articles, none of which seek to provide an alternative, balanced perspective of how blogs are beneficial to general society?

In SIlicon Valley, blogs like Siliconbeat.com, Techcrunch, YPulse, that profiles teen trends in America, are all very successful examples of how blogs have been used to benefit entrepreneurs, investors, tech enthusiasts, corporate marketers et al.. Granted, for every good blog like that, there are thousands of blogs that gravitate to the other extreme in terms of social benefit. So? For Singapore to be engaged in a increasingly booming consumer Internet industry/ Web 2.0, blogs will form an integral part of this new economic engine. It does make sense to educate Singaporeans on how blogging is practised benefically and commercially in other countries and not just focus on the unsavory aspects of it.

In many Asian countries, Singapore included, the Internet industry is very undeveloped, there needs to exist a massive education drive that could be spearheaded by mainstream media like newspapers that still have great influence in society. Newspapers need to embrace new technology and new internet habits, not fear it and put it down. To me, the newspaper articles mentioned above do not show a media establishment that understands its role in society nor an open attitude towards new ideas (such as blogging).

Flame me if I am wrong, but do not reply me to ask me to remove my post. I believe blogs are an outlet for expression of independent thought. If Singapore is to aspire to become a mature society, in line with our economically advanced status, we have to be exposed to alternative ideas and thoughts of the countless individuals in the world,that broaden our view of the world, let the readers individually judge my piece, but let not one party decide what's good and what's bad for the majority.

GeekLand - Silicon Valley

2005-12-07T11:03:00.000-08:00

I have been looking for an image to describe the place I live in. This comes real close.

Silicon Valley - where geekdom rules and software can replace sex??? (wtf!?!) Too many hours with the computer makes you think you wife IS your computer.

I prefer the other "Silicon Valley" down in LA/ San Fernando, where silicon goes into humans anot not computers. lolz

The New Blair?

2005-12-07T00:28:00.000-08:00

David Cameron has been appointed the new party leader of the stagnating Tories in Britain. The Tories has decided to vote for vigor and youth, shedding the staid image that probably caused them to languish on the opposition benches for the past 3 elections, kicked in the a** by a rejuvenated Labor party under the increasingly weak reign and fast-expiring political mandate of a certain Tony Blair.

Will youth work again (as they did when they voted a youthful Blair into office last century?) in convincing the British electorate to vote Conservative in the next election? The battle begins in tomorrow's verbal sparring match between Blair and Cameron at the weekly Prime Minister's Questions. Lets stay tuned..

Nationalism 101 - Taught by Foreigners

2005-12-06T15:49:00.000-08:00

2 great articles, here, and here,from TIME magazine today, on the founding father of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, re-aligned my nationalistic understanding. In one hour, two articles written by 2 American journalists made me patriotic in no way that decades of living in Singapore and undergoing years of a "national education" syllabus designed by Singapore, could have done.

I was born in Singapore, a third-generation Singaporean descendant of Chinese grandparents, who had emigrated from southern China in the 1940s to escape their strife-laden lives back in their ancestral homes, and made Singapore their new home. I was educated in English-speaking Singaporean schools (albeit aligned with British education systems), taught with Singaporean-adapted syllabuses that aimed to imbue me with the most relevant knowledge of science, math and humanities but infused with traditional Asian values updated with modern Western ideologies. In my belief through my adolescent years, I had rejected Asian values, gradually strengthening and coalescing my personal belief systems around a core of Western beliefs and values. I aspired to break free of my Singaporean roots, a country that had given me a peek into Western society from within the cloistered confines of Asia. Singapore, with strong economic ties to US and Europe throughout its economic rise, had been a highly metropolitan city that could be considered where East-meets-West in a highly symbiotic fashion.

Today, I read 2 articles that rattle my belief systems and may have begun a new introspective re-examination of my ideological foundations. Lee Kuan Yew, founder of modern Singapore, had in an article written by 2 American journalists, successfully crystallized the nuances of geopolitics and history, the ironies of the conflicting cultural, political and social systems of Eastern & Western schools of thought that existed in my cognitive database. Not only does he explain and articulate his thoughts better, but he also integrated it with contextual, time-based realities that had affected many of his decisions at many dilemmatic junctures of his life, that coincided with the growth of modern Singapore.

This integration of thought systems with irrefutable realities has brought forth a highly pragmatic, logical and sentiment-free vision of my world. I would not say that this integration has caused a seismic shift in my understanding of the world, but it certainly marks a new milestone in what I thought i believed and learnt to re-analyze it with a more critical eye.

Too much thoughts in my brain, just thought i wanted to capture the immediate reactions of my brain to this new information. It feels like that scene from the Matrix in some sense, that another version of reality did exist. Will blog more on this later after i have had more time to think through.

The Internet Revolution Continues

2005-12-06T15:05:00.000-08:00

From The Connectivity Phase to the Participation Phase, read here.

A Razr-Sharp CEO of the Year

2005-12-06T14:42:00.000-08:00

Doesn't he look like Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian premier and owner of AC Milan FC?
Meet the man responsible for the turnaround job at Motorola from Prince of the Drab to King of Cool in the mobile phone business. He is the 2005 CEO of the year, awarded by Marketwatch.com and is credited for the sleekness and innovation that has pervaded the Motorola design culture and churned out the wildly popular Razr. Read the article here. On why the Razr is the rave of town and making other wannabes eat its dust, read this.

The Womb of Silicon Valley

2005-12-06T14:19:00.000-08:00

Garages are near-mythical representations of the innovation and technology in Silicon Valley. A great many startups have emerged from these oft-ignored spaces ina typical house and spawned new industries, multi-million dollar companies that have coem to define and revolutionize the way human beings lived, are living and will live in the centuries to come. Here's an article referencing how the garage-originated startup, by the innocuous moniker of HP, was used by David Packard and Bill Hewlett in 1939. This garage, located at 367 Addison Ave, Palo Alto, CA, is now almost a shrine for HP employees to pay homage to on of the many shrines around Silicon Valley today.

More examples of garage-inspired great Silicon Valley enterprises include Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak's darling -- Apple Inc --> currently basking in the universal infatuation inspired by their iconic iPods. Of course, we cannot forget Google's late infancy stage (as they were born first in another mythical birthplace of startups- the college dorm) in Susan Wojcicki's garage too, further adding another aura of mystique.

GET REAL, AUSTRALIA

2005-12-01T14:26:00.000-08:00

Singapore's ruling the zeitgeist of the day. We are everywhere on the major newswires on the internet. Singapore's hanging of heroin smuggler Nguyen has caused the small island-nation to be cast as a draconian nation with strict laws. Here's some screenshots from CNN and Google News as of this hour (1430hrs PST) reporting on this piece of news as their major headline of the hour on Planet Earth. Scroll down to the bottom of this post to see the screen shots.

My opinion:

GET REAL, AUSTRALIA. The REAL issue here is drug smuggling, an universally condemned crime that pollutes our global society down to its roots, NOT how a young man's life is about to be terminated by a momentous act of folly. Nguyen screwed up big time, period. If he went undetected, 400 grams of heroin will endanger 26,000 doses/ lives, Who then will answer to the families, relatives and friends of these 26,000 ++++ pple who suffer?

Heroin is a hardcore drug. The message should be narcotic containment and prevention, not capital punishment. Yes, i admit Singapore is strict, but principles have to stand firm. There's too many pansies out there sitting in goverments across the world who do not send out strong messages enough to drug traffickers. Let Singapore take the brunt of that but show the world a message to future generations why drug trafficking is so serious one developed nation's government believes that punishment by death is justifiable.

Google Store?

2005-12-01T13:33:00.000-08:00

Here's a piece of news about Google opening a brick-and-mortar "store-front" in Heathrow Airport. The project is called Google Space.

Free internet is available at this airport lounge/ hangout, mostlikely going to be useful for the millions that get stranded there. According to the report above, Brits spend nine hours a year "waiting at airports, looking for things to do," Sounds like the perfect audience to pitch almost any product to for any advertiser around the world. Google Space's objective is to enhance international expansion of Google-related services to the physical world, the mainstream laggards that are not diving with blind abandon to the virtual wonders of our magical Internet realm. Hence, 10 laptops with focuses on different Google services, such as Maps, Picasa, etc.. aim to speed up the world's adoption of Google into their daily lifestyles.

I managed to find a picture of the lounge. The design's not very space-age as my mind-eye imagined it to be.

This next picture below is better though, nice customer service provided by nice blondes. More my cup o' tea, if you ask me eh.

I didn;t go to Heathrow, and these pictures are courtesy of this site.

Reinventing the way we search online

2005-12-01T13:13:00.000-08:00

I just read this article about a new initiative happenning within the halls of the original search supremo- Yahoo! They have a new guy on board - Bradley Horowitz, an entrepreneur with pedigree from MIT Media Lab. Tasked as the new technology director, his job is to restore the pizazz of Yahoo in web search and he has suggested to do that viA "SOCIAL SEARCH", where search results, in my opinion, is not by the bots and algos of GoogleSoft (Google and Microsoft), but by disrupting the whole search experience throught the collective effort of the whole Internet user community. Hmmm, not a very revolutionary concept philosophically, but it may be technically. Hey, i am not a tech guy, but i would like to see how this search concept will differ from the way "BackRub"/ Google sorts out results.

Google

2005-11-23T17:52:00.000-08:00

2005-11-23T11:54:00.000-08:00

Building an Internet Empire

Cleaning Up On The Web With AJAX

2005-11-22T16:11:00.000-08:00

Blake Ross of Firefox and Drew Lustro of Makeshiftonline are on this organization for budding entrepreneurs under 27. Check it out here.

Here's something on blogs in our world today. Its a quote taken out of the blog. Click on the quotes below to view it.

"That means that almost 2/3 of blog readers don't realize they are reading a blog. It is a fairly common theory amongst folks analyzing the blogosphere that blog readership is underreported in surveys - but Charlie's team found a way to quantify that with staggering results."

My New Role Model Julien Codorniou

2005-11-21T17:31:00.000-08:00

Name: Julien Codorniou

Year 2000 --> Intern in a Paris incubator company
--> Joined Business School
--> Became a VC after Biz School
--> Joined Ernst & Young as an auditor to learn about numbers

--> Wrote a book

--> joined Microsoft France to bridge the VC and the entrepreneur world because he felt the French was not entrepreneurial enough
--> 3 months after joining MS France, he organized a 500-attendee conference for Microsoft
--> The CEO of Microsoft France has credited Julien for being the single go-to guy for hooking up Microsoft's engagement with the VC world.

And here's the punch: his age???

27.

Find his blog here.

2005-11-21T11:05:00.000-08:00

Innovate or Die
Fox Gets it.

Ben Bernanke.
Name rings a bell? He is the new Fed Chairman, replacing the legendary Alan Greenspan. And Bernanke has one stock in his portfolio. Yes! Only one. To know what it is, click here.

Lets Chat via IM. Not with people but Bots.
Check out AOL's new feature.

Tivo Gets in Bed with Apple.
TV Shows on your iPod. From Tivo with Love.

Google's Stranglehold on Online Advertising
Click here.

2005-11-20T23:16:00.000-08:00

Email is the most popular activity of Internet users. Now, that position is fast being endangered by the next challenger -- search. Read here.

Related news:

Shopping Online, made easier by search.

More about Blogs entering mainstream internet usage

Other News:
Internet at 10 Megabits/ second -> An ubiquitous platform for delivery of ALL services?

Watch this Company Change the World

2005-11-19T04:32:00.000-08:00

Well, at least for photos.

First, lets start by asking how you take photos. Analogue or digital?

Second, how many hundreds/ thousands/ gazillions pictures do you have throughout your life so far ? PRetty damn much, if you answer "digital" to the first question.

Now, lets say you want to look for this photo you remember you took before, could be an ex-boy/girlfriend, family member, friend, (maybe in future?) that picture of Eiffel Tower, a childhood photo... How are you going to search for that?

Enter Riya, an image search engine based on facial and text-recognition technology. Google is rumored to be thinking of buying them, and Riya has not even publicly launced yet! They are still in Alpha phase...

By the way, Riya is named after one of the kids in the photo. According to what I heard at the TechCrunch party, that seems to be the daughter of the VP of Engineering.

I have a gut feeling that if Google does this deal, Riya may just turn out to revolutionize image search the same way the Keyhole's satellite photos did to direction-finding and online maps.

Google $500 anyone? ;)

Internet Boom 2.0

2005-11-19T03:47:00.000-08:00

The focus will be on digital media companies involved in:
- content creation
- delivery channel

The Internet has proven to be a great disruptor to the delivery of media content over the past years and it has indeed revolutionized the way people interact with media. Look at the proliferation of online music file-sharing and movie-viewing and how RIAA and MPAA have camped out in the legal courts in a frantic, and possibly futile battle to fight the tsunami of innovation endangering their revenue bases. The notion of paying for music albums or even going to the cinema will be antiquated concepts to the newer generations born and bred through their youth with their familiarity to the Internet and their cellphones.

The game has changed, no way can a 10++ compilation of songs on a CD be useful to ipod or MP3 player toting users, they will simply rip and copy the music to MPs so they can lay it on these MP3 players, if so, why bother selling them as songs on CDs? Who carries CD players anyway? Sony's dead, embrace iPods and their clones. I think it was Carly Fiorina who first mentioned this: "Digital, Mobile, Personal and Virtual". That is how people will interact with all their data, photos, videos and whatnots in the future. Think movies and ask why anyone will consciously go to a cinema, run through the hassle of queueing, squeezing with other thousands of pple to watch it in a cinema when the non-social activity of movie-watching can be replicated in any who owns a high-end HDTV set hooked up to a computer with a broadband connection and a good-quality high end system all at affordable prices and equitable to the cinema experience, albeit with more privacy. My point for movies is:

since it is a non-social activity (when was the last time you spoke to a fellow movie-goer that is not a date nor family member DURING a show?)

- understand the technology available that would best present the same experience to the potential movie watcher (i.e. HDTV, sound system, computer, broadband) and find a way to deliver the same content to him/ her.

- i am not smart, but a simple investigation of the current product delivery process of a movie from the studio to the eyes of the audience requires multiple parties to be paid, racking up huge costs to the eventual customer that create ZERO value to the customer, based on the current state of technology.

Industry titans, of course, have recognized that. The Internet Revolution have permeated not just songs and movies but also games and created new online communities that interact amongst themselves. NewsCorp gets it, and are changing themselves rapidly with multiple internet-based acquisitions (e.e. Intermix Media, IGN Entertainment). So does Dow Jones with the purchase of Marketwatch.com, and New York Times who bought About.com.

Here's what the new Internet Boom will be based on:

- Sustainable Revenue Model (Online Advertising, look at the rocketing sales figures of Google, Yahoo! and MSN)
- A rapidly-expanding Global Internet-savvy population (broadband penetration is key)
- Content Democracy --> Self-published independent content generated by individuals around the world, not companies/ studios/ conglomerates.

These 3 forces are mutually-reinforcing, highly scalable and thus present endless new commercial opportunities for Internet enterprises.
The third-party externalities of the Internet boom will also directly and positively impact the wireless cellphone industry, consumer hardware industry, infrastructure providers, broadband service providers etc.

The whole physical universe, as we know it in the history of mankind, is migrating to the digital realm of bits and bytes. This is natural progression of our society, in terms of productivity, efficiency and convenience. There is no turning back of this wave of progress.

References:
The Second Dot-coming of Our World
NewsCorp Zeroes in on Internet
One Search Engine to Rule Them (NewsCorp-related companies) All

November 17

2005-11-17T07:04:00.000-08:00

It finally happened. Google surges past $400, another psychological milestone for investors, Google-ites alike. Click here to know more. Could this stock really be the Microsoft-killer? My postulation is that it will take till the launch of Windows Vista to seriously ask some real questions of Google's sustainability. That, however, is also a tricky issue. Google is stomping on the lawns of many tech titans from EBay, Amazon, Yahoo that this lateral diversification of its services may dilute its strategic focus. Not to mention its single-source of revenue from online advertising, a highly risky pillar of financial dependence. The point is, Google stock will suffer a crumble and how the company reacts, in terms of its response to Wall Street and also to its own employees, will determine their long-term attractiveness as a stock. Google's anti-establishment stance towards Wall Street, e.g. its reluctance to announce quarterly figures, among other non-conformist actions, will be tested by the market during a plunge.

Enjoy it while it lasts, Google.

Here's another article. on the rumored interest of Google on Riya, a photo facial-recognition software company. They are having a TechCrunch Launch party tomorrow. More info on the party found here. Just how cool is this bit of technology? I have not had the chance to test its beta version yet but an user can basically use the software to train the algorithm to recognize faces from your pictures, allowin you to search across yur pictures, not just for topics, tags, but your friends. More info found here.

Tech-Savvy Politicians

2005-11-16T22:58:00.000-08:00

Was reading this article on businessweek. A groupof tech execs are lobbying for more innovation-friendly initiatives in government and public services. No doubt those are rational, socially-beneficial sugestions, but i have a feeling that see the government as their next big customer too.

In any case, the point i wanted to make was that I am waiting for a tech-savvy engineer, probably from the Valley and from the Internet boom generation take reins of American government. That will really ensure the trickling down of technology innovation over the past few years into every facet of the public domain. Lawyers are predominantly over-represented in the main chambers of power, why not engineers and geeks from the Valley in the Presidential Elections 2 decades later?

Undervalued Media Stocks

2005-11-16T21:31:00.000-08:00

Motley Fool has an article on the current value of media stocks and why they are good buys. An excerpt below.

"Digital distribution is here. The market has talked up Apple Computer (Nasdaq: AAPL), Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN), and Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) as the three online behemoths that will make it happen -- but where do you think their content will come from?

Priming the digital pipeline
Amazon and Google are each working on initiatives to deliver the written word digitally. Whether it's actual downloads or value-added rentals, the end result is the same. Publishers are about to cash in on incremental revenue streams thanks to the margin-rich waters of digital distribution."

This author will also be profiling the freshest ideas in several other sectors such as nanotechnology, biotec et al. I will be keeping a lookout on these new columns.

Internet Usage and Traffic Stats

2005-11-16T21:27:00.000-08:00

Internet users

Region % of world users
Asia 33.9
Europe 29.4
North America 23.2
Latin America/Caribbean 7.5
Africa 2.5
Oceania/Australia 1.8
Middle East 1.6
DId Tim Berners Lee even dream about this? I do, when i create my Internet media empire. :)

Top Internet user countries

Country Number of users % of world users
US 202.9m 21.6
China 103.0m 11.0
Japan 78.0m 8.3
Germany 47.1m 5.0
India 39.2m 4.2
Britain 35.8m 3.8
South Korea 31.6m 3.4
Italy 28.6m 3.0
France 25.6m 2.7
Brazil 22.3m 2.4

Courtesy of WWW.INTERNETWORLDSTATS.COM

have you wondered about the most popular sites out on the Internet? Here's a Top 10 list taken off this wonderful site.

1. Yahoo!

2. Microsoft Network (MSN)

3. Google

4. EBay

5. Passport.net

6. Microsoft Corporation

7. Amazon.com

8. Myspace.com

9. Google UK

10. AOL

Here's a link to the top blogs on the WWW.

Soros Jumps on the Tech Bandwagon

2005-11-16T20:55:00.000-08:00

Even George Soros is ploughing his money heavily in the tech sector. Read here.

Another Crack in the Newspaper Industry

2005-11-16T20:48:00.000-08:00

The demise of print media has been jailed for a long time since the bubble of the late 1990s. Then came the bust, and some thought the newspaper industry, as with other Old Media stakeholders would survive. With the current rave over Google's rising stock, it is a matter of time before Old Media start shutting down one by one. Here's an article. that talks about some prominent papers engaging in cost-cutting moves, omens of impending doom, if you ask me.

To quote directly from the article,
"Last month, Chicago-based Tribune, whose holdings include 11 daily newspapers, 26 television stations and the Chicago Cubs, said third-quarter profits tumbled 82 percent because of an adverse tax ruling that forced it to take a huge charge.

The media company's results also showed continuing sluggishness in advertising sales and lower revenue from newspaper circulation, although Tribune executives said recent circulation trends show improvement."

Reporters liad off, face up to reality. Gettin laid off is not a bad thing. Join the blogoshphere and create your own outlet of journalistic expression. For more info, you can always contact me. ;)

TV Companies, who's next in line for the guillotine?

News from the Internet Industry

2005-11-16T10:06:00.000-08:00

LAunch of Google Base. P.S. It sucks.

Are Newspapers aka OLD MEDIA still worth Investing?

Facebook.com --> Web 2.0 Company Evolving to a Bubble 2.0 Company?

Yahoo Integrates more Content from Blogs (e.g. Gawker etc)

Wall Street's Infatuation wit Tivo

Are AOL's assets worth $15 billion???

The Digital Divide between Silicon Valley and Yahoo!

2005-11-15T22:38:00.000-08:00

Yahoo's Internal Dilemma" Registration may be required

Today in Social Networks

2005-11-15T15:01:00.000-08:00

Myspace usage continues to accelerate after NewsCorp's acquisition.

And then there's Friendster. The old favourite and darling of VCs a few years back have fallen from the pedestal of grace and favor in the eyes of investors today. According to this link, Friendster is going to be sold, at an astronomical valuation in my opinion of upwards of $15 million or even more. Its just a crazy pricing considerng how easy and how competitive the social networking industry is today, with every John Doe out there trying to create one. Just how much is "eyeballs" and buzz worth today? Yes, Friendster may be big in some Asian countries, read this, but someone has to be insane to pay that price without a clear strategy. Friendster's interface sucks, to change it would alienate its current users, depreciating one of the key selling points.

Today from Bjorn

2005-11-10T10:03:00.000-08:00

The New Corvette

An American goes to China. This is one of the popular blogs out there on the Net. He just went to CHina, i believe. Would be interesting to see what he thinks of the Middle Kingdom from his American perspective.
Click to read article

The New Blackberry

One of my fave topics: how Internet is increasingly getting customized and individualized by Internet users around the world. This happens to also the the primary premise why the cliched Web2.0 trend is fuelling a revival of Silicon Valley geeks in launching new enterprises, some trivial, some world-beating.
Click to read article

E Commerce Boom in China

There's big money going on the online gaming world. SOme dude paid $100,000 for a virtual space station on the game Project Entropia - a string of binary code, literally. He's going to convert it into a Jurassic Park-cum disco after buying this piece of virtual (sic: real) estate. Virtual economies are going to be my next fave topic of interest. What particularly intrigues me is the possible revenue-generating opportunities from this seemingly obsentatious purchase.
Click to read article
Here's more on the virtual economy thriving in the online gaming world.

Another sign of the times, blogging takes hold in senior citizenry.

Skype, in my opinion, will disrupt the telecomm companies in no way any other industry has seen upheaval. Here's a peek into how this revolution is already taking place. You just have to wonder, how will the lives of generations after us differ from us, or even during the 1980s?
The VOIP Wave

Here's Round 2 of Microsoft vs Google, (after Round 1 of Lee Kai Fu)
Yahoo Gives Up on Race for AOL

IS Amazon making the right decisions?

Microsoft Web 2.0 Charge - A Rallying Call for Arms by the New Lieutenant

After San Francisco, Its Free Wifi for Mountain View now from Google

Here's one of the online music services I like-Pandora. They have this Music Genome Project where they analyze the similarities in terms of music style between the million songs on the planet. Used to only allow a fixed trial period but now a free version is available. Yet to check it out, but will do so soon.
Free Personalized Radio Station -- Pandora.com

Events Post

2005-11-09T15:26:00.000-08:00

DATE: Tuesday, November 15, 2005
Venue: Stanford Business School

A Brave New (Virtual) World:
Commerce and Community in Virtual Societies

To an increasing degree, personal self-expression and social interaction are migrating from the physical world to on-line virtual worlds. By breaking down geographic limitations and providing greater control of how one is perceived by other users, virtual societies have proven an increasingly appealing environment for social interaction.

Numerous business models have emerged to capitalize on this virtual interaction and character personalization. Key questions this panel will explore include what opportunities exist to monetize this shift, what are the underlying social implications for increasingly living in virtual worlds, and what tensions are likely to arise as a larger percentage of social interaction and commerce moves to the virtual domain?

More info about the event here

Best Entrepreneurs Under 25 and News I read

2005-11-09T11:59:00.000-08:00

Profiled by BusinessWeek: Entrepreneurs under 25

Bill Gates FINALLY understands the Internet.

Steve Ballmer at his best in drumming up Investor Enthusiasm

Google tries to diversify beyond a single-revenue stream model.

Search Engine War Heats Up in China. Yahoo-Alibaba VS Baidu.com

The New SlashDot -- Digg

Outsourcing 101 for IT Startups

Crossing the Great OS Chasm: Windows to MAC

Internet Community Uses Google to Support Nicolas Sarkozy's Hardline Stance on Paris Riots

Blogging for Fun and Profit

GOTHIC HALLOWEEN

2005-10-31T15:25:00.000-08:00

Thoughts on Silicon Valley and the search-based Web 2.0 industry

2005-10-23T17:07:00.000-07:00

Pit stop at the 15 month mark of my Silicon Valley race.

Team profile:
Race started July 22, 2004. It was a furious start at a computer hardware startup, BitMicro, which resulted in a vehicular failure at the 4 month mark. I swapped the metaphorical vehicle and crossed over seamlessly, with no time lost to my fellow competitors, to a new team in the life science research instrumentation industry, Alpha Innotech. Continued to plough the tracks with my new racing team till today.

If there is one big change in me, i would say its a mentality shift and fervent embracing of the technology industry, especially the Internet industry. I can still remember myself a year ago involved in a school project to write a business plan for the Entrepreneurship Centre of NUS (my college in Singapore). and thinking that the Centre's focus on technology was unfounded as i was not convinced of its commerical potential and priority over traditional sectors of the economy.

Well, i was wrong, and glad for it. Over the past 15 months, i have come to realize the tremendous technological improvements made in the home of the technology sector here in the Bay Area and how far behind the rest of the world is in catching up with this new wave. If the Industrial Revolution has led to economic and social benefits to the world's civilization, the IT revolution that started with the advent of the PC and now, the Internet era, will continue on that path of technological advancement of our human race.

Now, i have to mention Google. Their stock, for those in the unbeknownst, rose by 10% in after-hours trading last week. Their current stock value have almost quadrupled since their initial offer price of $85 about a year ago. Where does this company get their mojo? Online advertising. It propels an overwhelming majority of their revenues. Why are people so caught up in search? And my personal question is, are Google users really clicking on the ads in such huge numbers to justify this explosion in Google's financials? Or is it a case of click fraud sprouting its ugly head and artifically inflating the numbers?

Whether Google's revenue figures are natural or fraudulent, we cannot discount the immense impact they have and insight into how the world has changed. The eternal quest for information will always be with every one of us. I see Google, or rather search, as the trail blazer of the Internet industry. I stick close to developments of Google, and then the rest of the search industry, such as Yahoo, MSN, and then maybe Ask, (as an afterthought) because i believe search is going to be the platform of many other web applications and services that will either co-exist or displace many other offline businesses in the next 10 years as the technology gap shrinks between the developed and developing economies and societies. Some call this the Web 2.0 industry. The natural economic advantages and characteristics of the Internet will change communication the way we knew it in the past 20 centuries and is a tide we all have to embrace and not reject.

Hear this, Old Media, RIAA and MPAA, for your doom is nigh if you do not embrace the Internet as a new distribution channel of your content.

Impulse to Blog

2005-10-23T16:45:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to blog at this very moment. Something that suddenly made a lot of sense to what i am doing now.

What makes a successful entrepreneur:

1. CLEAR VISION of where the company is going.
2. PASSION and genuine desire to create amazing products/ services.
3. MAKE DIFFERENCE --> A strong personal conviction that one's product/ service will so so in the customers' lives.

I actually got the above 3 points off Evan Williams' blog . Naveen had been the original content creator. Trying to attribute this to the right person in an attemot to respect copyright laws, ahhaa..

Anubhav shared this with me yesterday from his own personal experience.

My main learnings from them were:
(1) Make sure your dynamic in the people is AWSOME
(2) Talk to the End-Users and confirm viability of your plan.

These are common sense, but these were my prime mistakes in my first attempt.

All this sounds regurgitative from what i had read and read on all mgmt books everywhere. But they make a lot of sense suddenly.

I am ENTP

2005-10-04T17:09:00.000-07:00

A result from the Myers-Briggs Test. I am doing this for the 2nd time since i forgot what personality type i was when i did it the first time during this Stanford GEL class i took last year.

Extraverted, iNtuitive, Thinking, Perceiving

"Clever describes ENTPs best. They deal imaginatively with social relationships as well as physical and mechanical relationships. They are alert to what is apt to occur next, and sensitive to possibilities. ENTPs are the engineers of human relationships and human systems.

Verbally as well as cerebrally quick, ENTPs enjoy arguing: for its own sake, and to show off their impressive verbal skills. They often have a perverse sense of humour, and play devil's advocate regardless of consequence. They sometimes confuse, even hurt, those who cannot understand the concept of argument as a sport.

Innovative and ingenious at problem-solving, they sometimes manage to outsmart themselves. ENTPs have been known to cut corners without regard to the rules if it's expedient - or it might be the collapse of an over-ambitious juggling act.

ENTPs are optimists. They tend to regard problems as personal challenges, and have little patience with those they consider wrong or unintelligent. However, they are often extremely genial and quite charming, when not being harassed by life in general.

Good at analysis, especially functional analysis, ENTPs have a tolerance for, and enjoyment of the complex. Enthusiastic, ENTPs are apt to express interest in everything, and thus unwittingly inspire others who find themselves caught up in an ENTP idea. The ENTP is the most reluctant of all types to do things in a traditional manner.

Non-conformists, ENTPs enjoy outwitting the system and use rules and regulations within the system to win the game - whatever it may be. ENTPs are good at innovative projects and can administer them well if dull routine is not involved. For ENTPs to be manipulated by another is humiliating.

During youth, the ENTP may be diagnosed with a variety of ailments and conditions which often emerge as a lack of intellectual engagement. Boredom is the bane of the junior ENTP. Generally immature until their late 30s or early 40s, the young ENTP is a socially awkward animal since they rarely fit in with the herd, and require 40 years to comprehend why this is and what to do about it.

Great friends or silent adversary; Court jester or Builder of bridges, the ENTP is difficult to overlook."

Quote from Typelogic.com, Copyright Typelogic.Com.
Used with permission.
Check out: Typelogic.com for more great Meyers Briggs information

Here's one for Eerie Coincidences

2005-10-01T01:32:00.000-07:00

Not sure how much of this factually correct, will do a Wikipedia fine-tooth comb through it when i get the chance..

Abraham Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1846.
John F. Kennedy was elected to Congress in 1946.

Abraham Lincoln was elected President in 1860.
John F. Kennedy was elected President in 1960.

Both were particularly concerned with civil rights.
Both wives lost their children while living in the White House.

Both Presidents were shot on a Friday.
Both Presidents were shot in the head.

Now it gets really weird.

Lincoln 's secretary was named Kennedy.
Kennedy's Secretary was named Lincoln.

Both were assassinated by Southerners.
Both were succeeded by Southerners named Johnson.

Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Lincoln, was born in 1808.
Lyndon Johnson, who succeeded Kennedy, was born in 1908.

John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated Lincoln, was born in 1839.
Lee Harvey Oswald, who assassinated Kennedy, was born in 1939.

Both assassins were known by their three names.
Both names are composed of fifteen letters.

Now hang on to your seat.

Lincoln was shot at the theater named 'Ford.'
Kennedy was shot in a car called ' Lincoln' made by 'Ford.'

Lincoln was shot in a theater and his assassin ran and hid in a warehouse.
Kennedy was shot from a warehouse and his assassin ran and hid in a theater.

Booth and Oswald were assassinated before their trials.

And here's the kicker...

A week before Lincoln was shot, he was in Monroe, Maryland
A week before Kennedy was shot, he was with (in?) Marilyn Monroe.

My Attempt at Desktop Modding

2005-09-30T23:33:00.000-07:00

Quite pleased with my latest attempt, i eradicated utterly all signs of Windows. heh heh heh..

Drugged and unconscious for 17 hours

2005-09-30T15:59:00.000-07:00

Writing this after i lost almost a day of my life. Don;t be alarmed by my title, i was not on drugs, not the illegal kind. I have a bloody &^$@! cold, and some crap i bought from Safeway just conked me out since last night. Just for future reference, it is NyQuil from Vicks, makes you helluva drowsy. I took 6 pills over the past 18hours and hell, its really takes effect fast, within 15 minutes of taking, i was totally out! This must be the longest i have slept for years, 15 hours straight!

At least, people, you know what pills to buy next time you want a good nap.

Anyway, i did not go to work today, big deal you say, but that got me thinking on something i read the other day. Some guy actually stopped working and concentrated fulltime on blogging and depending on his content to generate readers that will fuel his financial freedom. Possible? I say, this is another manifestation of Web 2.0 IS it really possible to generate enough money to sustain yourself just by being yourself and propagating your thought to the WorldWideWeb?? Well, Google AdSense made that possible, a blogger just has to put up ads on his site, visitors to the site click on them and voila! multiply that thousands, millions of time and u have it --> your monthly allowance to pay for your broadband, meals, gas and more.

The question is, how does Google make this an honest business for their advertisers? WHere is the line drawn, in their Google search infrastructural farm, that determines honest visitors clicking on ads they really want, and malicious bloggers who are looking for social welfare handouts from the larget and currently most successful tech company in the world?

I do not know the answer, they (i mean all the major search engines) must be working on this problem. Click fraud is a menace to their bottomline, and the trick is to really distinguish between the commercial big-time frauders and those amateur, your-daily-Joe-or-Jane blogger who just doesn;t want to work.

Pretty interesting paragraph i typed there (despite being sick and drugged), i did not think of that beforehand, the thought just came as i was typing. Maybe typing is now beginning to stimulate my brainwaves, hahaha.. Or Vicks NyQuil actually boosts grey matter??

Here's the blog of the guy who does it for a living, there must be many more like him..

http://www.kottke.org/

Google and NASA Tie-Up??

2005-09-28T13:00:00.000-07:00

Friends of mine have been remarking i am crazy about Google. Some others will also know i am crazy about space exploration since an even younger age. Well, this piece of news today seems to place the icing on the cake by combining my two crazes together. Read on by clicking the links. This could be related to Larry Page's fascination with space exploration too. By the way, another meaningless fact, Larry Page is also a fellow admirer of Nikola Tesla's genius, guess great minds think alike eh?? Hahaha... Read:

Googling for Space

Space: Google's Final Frontier

Google Intends to Build 1 million-sq-foot campus on NASA property

On a separate note, the following link talks about giant-killers of our generation -- Netflix, Google and Craigslist and their audacity in stealing market share from under the noses of once-dominant/ all-conquering market leaders.

3 Giant-Killers to Watch

Conflict in an Organization

2005-09-28T00:17:00.000-07:00

Had a brainwave so i decided to just let it simmer out in a blog..

Gotta talk about this book i hv been trying to finish .. The Search by John Battelle. You can click on it on the right column.. His book is basically about the search industry and how Google and its rivals are leading the technology wave that is fast changing our social and cultural fabric. Just look at this, students these days rely on the internet for school work, be it research for projects, essays, ideas for presentations, images for your Powepoint slides. We interact alot on cyberspace too, we IM, (when not texting SMSes on our cellphones), we look at other pple's profiles on the social networks like Friendster (popular in Singapore), MySpace (popular mong the music lovers in US especially), Orkut (very popular in Brazil), TheFaceBook (a the No. 1 collegiate networking site for US) et al.. IF not, pple read blogs. This is the New World. I don;t know about the generations younger than me, but if they are born and raised in a world where they relay primarily on the Internet for people-to-people interaction, they r going to be even more plugged into the web. It reminds me of Science fiction i read when i was young, but i am digressing.

So anyway, i was talking about John Battelle's book. There was this segment on how Larry Page and Sergey Brin met for the first time. They are smart-asses and they verbally challenged each other's brains like hell (helps too since they didn;t like each other very much at first sight, though the other guy was too pompous) Well, you know the story later on how they worked together and founded the most successful search company ever since. But they retained that seemingly constructively confrontational style of intellectual discourse throughout their process of building Google. Now, how many of us are comfortable with such a confrontational style at work or study? Can you handle constructive criticism well or even see where the line is drawn between being a team player or being constructively critical? I will be honest by saying that I am still trying to learn where that line is. Truth is, I think an oranization that fosters and is able to manage constructive and intellectual conflict is one that would succeed. You don;t want to work with too many yes-men or hire too many of them. They breed familiarity and familiarity breeds complacence and ultimately incompetence over a long period of time. You want people who think different, people who are able to complement your weaknesses but still have strengths that are able to be useful in a team environment. I think watching sports helps people to identify how to build teams. You can't have a team of offensive-minded people who dun watch their defense, yes defense is boring but somebody needs to do that in order for offense to work and create a victory. The defense and offense components won;t always see eye to eye, and conflict results, but thats not their job, thats the job of a the manager. Somebody needs to watch the bottomline.

I must qualify my statement by saying that you want pple who understand the process of intellectual discourse in the right context as well. That is, after arguing, a deciison has to be made to move forward, and then the team has to act as a team, i.e rally behind the decision made by the team and be supportive of the decision after the open criticism and intellectual exploration stage is completed. Otherwise, nothing will ever get done and the organization might as well enrol itself in debate competitions where they stand a much better chance of commercially exploiting their strengths.

Didn't think i was arguing to point, i will think abt it and maybe make some changes later, if you have your own views, do share them.. Lets embrace conflict.

Microsoft -- Limping and hobbling

2005-09-27T00:38:00.000-07:00

This is not new news, but it seems Google's really pissing off someone by being a good search engine and serving the world's information needs exceedingly well. Check out the guy's face above. Mind you,thats not a happy one if you know whose face that is.

Here's another pic in case you have seen too many people recently and can;t read faces well. Click on the image if you still do not know who this dude is. I wouldn;t want to cross his path if I were CEO Google. There'a reason Microsoft's stock has not climbed above $30 for more than a couple of years and it has something to do with corporate stagnation, not being clairvoyant enough about the trend on the web and computer users' wants, needs and desires.

The "Search Engine Wars" have returned. Does anyone still remember the days when YAhoo, Altavista, Lycos ruled the internet bandwidths anymore? Those days were gone, pretenders crumbled, some of these sites exist as phantoms now, just another line of words being googled by the usurper to the throne of Search. Its not only about search anymore but everything from blogs, instant messaging (IM), email, photo-sharing, music, video, anything people could possibly do on the internet or their desktop/ laptop/ TREO/ iPaQ/ BlackBerry/ RaspBerry/ BlueBerry... IF you are able to make enough people come to your blog, you make big bucks, simple as that.. You can quit your job and essentially earn money off Google's advertising programs that pays sites that host their ads and have enough pple (or bots for that matter but click fraud is another issue altogether) clicking on them.

I am a MSN user, despite my rather ironic post, i still prefer that svc above others, well i have no choice, all my friends use that svc and it is pretty darn good, but check out the pic below. Some new feature (near the bottom of the pic) those guys in Redmond, WA added on the IM client really began to grate on my nerves.

P.S. its the search button next to the "send" button. Seems like an act of desperation, are they working on including a "Search" button on our keyboards too?

Fast Times at Hero High

2005-09-27T00:25:00.000-07:00

There was a time when our superheroes were losers too... in high school at Hero High

http://www.ifilm.com/top100/shorts/comedy

My Green Day Wkend

2005-09-26T00:39:00.000-07:00

yes, losing momentum here on my blogging habits.. was intending to do some awesome blogging on my weekend but dilly-dallied for quite a while as i contemplated the best way to pen down my thoughts. Darn! its tough to blog well as well, i wonder how others manage to keep up such detailed blogs..

Just wasted 30 minutes writing a comprehensive blog entry and lost it all due to some "log-in failure". ^%#*&!@!

Its Love Parade in SF this weekend. Love PArade is basically a celebration of love, freedom and techno/ trance. It had its roote from the Berlin Love Parade. Held in Civiv Centre of SF, i got there late at 6pm. Here's some pics.

And here's the Spundae float.. Tis is the same Spundae for which I attended the Love Parade after-party later in the night.

And here's the Pink Mammoth float.

Talking about coincidences, i met up with my ex-colleagues from Bitmicro at the Love Parade too -- Martin, Aileen, Alex. I thought these coincidences only happen in tiny countries in Sigapore but it goes to show the popularity of Love Parade. Yes, the organizers predicted abt 30,000 people showed up for this event. It is (if ou believe the parade's marketers) one of the world's biggest parties, and no American party is complete without lots of booze, music, dance, girls flashing and in SF (gays flouting their freedom).

Here's to the main event of my night -- the Green DAyyy concert.

I had to go on a mad rush from SF to SBC Park where the concert was held, battling the chronic lack of cabs in SF during the peak hour time of 7pm. By the time i got to SBC park at 745, i was already 45 minutes late but thankfully, Jimmy Eat world 9the opening act) was still crooning away so i didn't miss anything at all and coudl still hv time to grab my compulsory doses of beer.

I had bought a ticket for staning space in the field. I was in the second layer of space, about 20 feet from the stage, if i fought my way to the front of the barricades, and that was what i did, charging my way with streams of other pple trying to get the best space in the house. Green Day had a large fanbase out here and it seems the Californians had turned out in full force to celebrate the return of their native sons (Green Day was from the Easy Bay).

Like a band befitting their repuatation and status in the music world right now, Green Day only started their gig at 830pm, and fuck, they absoutely rocked the house. The music was good, Billie Joe had a generous amount of showmanship as he worked the crowd into a frenzy. At one time, he even hand-picked certain audience members from the crowd to come on stage and take over each member of the band as he sought to create a historical first by creating a band during his concert. Compared to my previous concert i attended (which was the Dave MAtthews Band), this one was worth every cent of my 57 bucks in terms of entertainment and atmosphere. Alcohol and drugs always co-operated well to create enough crazy pple, free without inhibitions, and there was a whole lot of screaming, hollering, and rabid dancing during the many climaxes of the concert. It was truly helluva experience to see the bodysurfing that goes on at these concerts and i am abolutely a convert now to the punk rock genre.

The third leg of my seemingly never-ending night was to go to the Spundae Love Parade after-party. Thanks to Justin;s friend, May who worked as a promoter for Spundae, he had a guest list pass which used to my advantage to get in free to the party by confusing this easy-going, but blur, lady wo manned the guest list entries. It pays to be a Chinese sometimes, since Americans have no idea how your names are constucted and why Lee can be Li and Justin can be my name too although none of it appears on my California driving license. Haha, i saved myself 50 bucks there by not paying for the normal ticket.

THe after-party was held in 3 cavernous halls in the concert theater. Markus Schulz and God of Trance Himself _ Ferry Corsten was there to preside over the event. You won;lt be able to belive the amount, or lack thereof of policing at this event as it resembled more of a junkie;s paradise at time with the multitudes of stoned people. These, i say ARE THE REAL PARTIES! HAHHA...

I HAVE TO GO TO PRAGUE!

2005-09-21T19:22:00.000-07:00

Saw this castle a few years back in pictures and god, is it fucking amazing or wat?!

Thought i had to mention this after i read their blog, it seems this couple really saw some amazing places during their time straddling around Planet Earth, I feel obliged to advertise their blog now, so click on the image above if you haven't.

Sex is a Big Deal .. in the workplace!

2005-09-21T18:33:00.000-07:00

How interesting could it be to learn about sex @ work?

Well, its not really sex, but sexual harassment, so all you perverts there could click on "next blog" upstairs if this is getting boring. My company had a sexual harassment training course today. It was meant to educate us on the new rules governing this law in US. Frankly, it was a bore. I can;t believe someone doing this in SIngapore but apparently, it really is a big deal in US.

Some lessons i learnt from the Big Bore-Fest:

- the laws are really a bunch of common-sense. You don;t cross the line between humor and bad taste/ off-color comments.
- Oh, something as trivial as commenting on someone's new dress or shirt could get you in trouble. This is, if such comments are suggestive or the pther person is a prude.
- Be safe when commenting, treat ALL your colleagues, (this sounds ridiculous) as genderless creatures.
- Californian laws are very friendly to cross-dressers, homosexuals and those with dubious or confused sexual orientation, explaining the point above.
- there are 2 categories - sexual harassment and sexual discrimination
- apparently, excessive abuse, even if not of a sexual nature can amount to some form of sexual harassment due to the fact that it contributes to a hostile work environment.
- there are alot of gray areas. sexual harassment laws are apparently the field of dreams for budding lawyer-bloodsuckers out to make fast and big bucks.
- AND CHECK this out. There's this true factual tale about a new MALE hire in a company that showed up on his first day at work in full female-attire regalia. Heels, dress and the works... Obviously, this sounded like harassment to me, of the visual kind. Who wants someone dressed that wrongly strutting around the office? And you haven;t heard the best part, this new guy was employed as a ... LAWYER.

Spotlight: Deutschland

2005-09-21T02:34:00.000-07:00

Shooting from the hip here again, thought i might blog some more to keep up my new-found momentum and since i had just slept 4 hours and disrupted my sleep routine for the night.
Germany has successfully demonstrated the failings of democracy for the world in their recent elections, much to the ire and anguish of many Germans, I believe, if anyone still hold belief that their politicians possess enough competency to rescue the country.

Is democracy still relevant in today's world? That is a multi-layered question that depends on national contexts. A simplistic conclusion is that democracy has increasingly created politically polarized nations, see the Red-Blue divide in America, the "blame-game" played out in the halls and corridors of power in Congress and Senate in the wake of Katrina. In the case of Germany, we have Angela Merkel winnin mathmatically but failing to muster any form of ruling mandate over her opponent Gerhard Schroeder. She is most likely to end up joining arms in a "strange bedfellows" relationship with Schroeder and form an impotent government that will spend more of taxpayers' money in a very public verbal debate on words with little or no action being done to improve the welfare of the nation. If developed, First World and relatively industrialized and well-educated nations like US and Germany have succumbed to the democracy malaise, what chance does democracy hold for less developed and less-educated nations where the social facilities for democracy are more lacking and people lack the judgmental abilities to make the right decisions for their countries' futures? Read Iraq and Afghanistan, you do not hand power to the people, although it might seem better than handing them to dictatorial despots or terrorist-friendly regimes. However, as we can see, the situation in both countries are really a result of errant US foreign policy makers who seem to prefer internal chaos contained within the countries, rendering them harmless to US national interests, than an agenda-driven country that poses a national threat to US.

Bjorn's Pensieve (Alpha)

2005-09-20T17:00:00.000-07:00

Finally got to my first post, my first blog. I like to think of it as my own Pensieve (one there for all you closet Harry Potter fans out there)

This is not gonna be one of those &^%$* blogs where you expect outpourings of angst-filled emotions, fluffy musings of romance, cute pictures posted by adults refusing to snap out of their adolescence. It will be my personal opinion on all things relevant in this world fit for my comments. Well, at least those fit for my comments considering my academic and experiential knowledge. I shall not seek to impose my opinions on people as you should be intelligent enough to discern right from wrong, black from white and learn to navigate the grey world we live in. Yes, I am anti-Bushism as well. And may i let it be known that anyone who appoints their cosy, familair acquaintances/ friends/ fat-cat donor friends to positions of power and influence over common folk, be no better than the scum that besieges my bathroom floor.

I should get a lawyer friend one day to write a legal disclaimer some day and post it on this site, so no agenda-driven fool try to sue me for my comments. I refer to the War on Blogging recently waged by my home country, borne out of the government's concern on racial sensitivities rupturing the social fabric of Singapore.

The intention is good, no doubt, but in view of the fact that Singapore's culture has been -- that of a general public been mollycoddled by a patriarchical, top-down ruling class whose word has historically been interpreted as law, the recent clampdown on online race-sensitive blogs does not bode well for Singaporean bloggers. One perspective is that civil liberties and free speech have taken a direct hit after the public put-down by the Prime Minister, that the government desires to exert influence over the New Media on the blogosphere as well. I agree to a certain extent with that. It is culturally difficult for Singaporeans to defy the word of their patriarchical government, there is a mental block that limits the distance Singaporeans will go in criticizing the policies of their government.

The Singapore government may have recognized the importance in liberalizing the views of the public and incorporating their opinions into policy-making in recent years, especially through their main vehicle -- the "Remaking Singapore" initiative. This initiative was hailed, by many quarters, as the end of "Nuclear Winter" of free speech in Singapore, as a new government sought to co-operate together with their people to draft a national blueprint for the small nation in the new era of globalization and technology. Sadly, globalized Singapore may be, technology-friendly we are not if the "Race-Blog" issue becomes a festering thorn in the government's policy towards free speech on the Internet. I am not against the decision to condemn racially-insensitive elements of hatred, but the draconian laws and punishment meted out to the culprits reek of unfairness and extremism considering the young ages of the offenders (one was 17 years). If we censure politically incorrectness on the Internet so flagrantly and harshly, we send a very negative message out to the outside world - one of intolerance.

On a separate note, its amazing how my boss, Sia, dishes out gems of wisdom even when he is down with flu.

The role of management is to manage people.

The role of employees is to manage the business.

Do not micro-manage. Give people the infrastructure and let them loose with the resources to manage within their personal scope of abilities.