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Monthly Archive for August, 2005

Google Talk

Published on 31 August, 2005 in Business Models and Online. 0 Comments

The talk of the town right now is of course
Google Talk. Just like Yahoo and Amazon did with the extra cash, Google is going into everything. From email to news, shopping search, blog, photo, desktop search, map, local, and now voice.

Skype had been having a good time without much competition, capturing a big chunk of the free-talk client market. I was just introduced to SIP Phone which is based on the open SIP standard. And now Google Talk.

Google Talk is also based on open stardard and Google stated their commitment to open standard. This is a very smart move on the part Google.

One of the strategy that Google played effectively and to full advantage is declaring support for open stardard. This captures the open standard fanatics who often are techies and early adoptors. By championing openness, they are viewed as the good guy and worthy of support. These fanatics will then go on to tell their less techie friends and soon everyone talks about it. Smart.

Thinking like Go

Published on 30 August, 2005 in Entrepreneur. 0 Comments

Recently I learned to play the game Go. A game that is surprisingly simple to learn yet impossible to master (at least for me).

It occurred to me how similar the actions in Go is to starting a business. Of course this idea is not novel. The concept of Go had been used in warfare for ages. Since business was already linked to warfare (via for example, Sun Tzu Art of War), linking Go to business is simply joining the dots.

The basic idea of Go is to spread out, consolidate, grow and define areas. The winner is the one with the largest area defined.

How is that similar to starting a business? Plenty.

The beginning is very similar to what I am doing now. Pieces are places and connected  in order to capture areas. I’m now doing many small things because I’m not sure where the areas will grow. But eventually I need to consolidate those with good chances and grow those areas.

When that happened I also need to defend the areas. Very much like in Go. When a big area is surrounded, the opponent will attack.

Interestingly, a very important concept of Go is sharing the area. Now this is profound concept. There is no way a person can win capture the whole chess board for themselves. So one must be willing to give away area in order to hold area. Trying to bite more than you can chew is a sure recipe to end up with nothing to eat.

In business, especially for small businesses, do not think of winning the whole chess board. Share the pie. In fact in Go, the losing party often also holds some areas. What does that mean? It mean the losing party does not go away empty handed. And yes in business, there is no absolute failure. One go away gaining something - experience, friends, knowledge - to be use again in another game.

So just like doing business, the basic rules are simple. But it takes practice and determination to master.

A game of Go anyone?

Investment in Knowledge

Published on 28 August, 2005 in Investing and Quotes. 0 Comments

"If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest."

- Benjamin Franklin

When on this topic, I think the portfolio theory of investment applies to knowledge investment as well. My current current problem is getting the portfolio mix right. As one can see from the blog topics, I suffers from spreading my capital too thin. Jack-of-all-trades I am, master of some I aimed to be.

Bootstrapper’s Bible

Published on 28 August, 2005 in Entrepreneur, Readings and Startup. 0 Comments


The Bootstrapper’s Bible by Seth Godin

A quick, easy and inspiring read for anyone wishing to start a business without any money.

That’s said, I guess one still need to have sufficient to last those drought period where there is no income. Especially if you believe in the long haul.

Don’t give up. Surviving is succeeding. This is the main thrust of the book and it goes on to discuss ways of surviving. Indeed as many entrepreneurs (bootstrappers) had came to learn that many failures are giving up close to success.

An excellent book to check against your business ideas or model. Download from Amazon.

Use CD without a drive

Published on 25 August, 2005 in Free Desktop. 0 Comments

Imagine this, you have two CD that you need to alternately access data from. You have only one CD drive. Now, what if you have programs that need to run from these CDs?

Frustrating.

Not anymore for me. Daemon Tools comes to the rescue.

Daemon-Tools is a virtual CD emulator or a CD imag mounter. Sounds techy, what does it do? Well, it does a two things that might be very interesting to a user.

  1. It allows reading a CD without a CD drive
  2. It allows reading multiple CDs without CD drive

But in order to do that, first a CD image had to be created. A CD image is, well, an image of a CD. Simply, it is a digital copy of the CD stored on the harddisk. To create it a tool like Nero is needed. There might be an open source program for that but I do not know any.

"Mount" is a term used quite frequently in unix but a Windows user may not know what it means. It roughly means "connecting to read it". So mounting a CD drive means connecting to the drive so that the system can read information from it.

Similarly mounting a CD image means connecting to the image so that information on the image file can be read. If it is a data disk, think if the image as a big zip file and Daemon-Tool as a program that will allow you to access the files in the zip file.

Effectively, Daemon-Tools emulate ("pretend to be") a CD drive. With it and the CD images you can read the content of a CD without a drive. The mounted image will appear as a drive letter just like a normal CD. Programs can files can be access on it like a normal CD.

What more interesting is that multiple images can be mounted at the same time. Now you how the original frustrating problem can be solved. Just mount the 2 CD images (or create one image and put the other CD in the drive) and youcan access data from both disc at the same time. No swapping.

What I like about ?

  • mount multiple CD
  • support many formats

Room for improvement

  • if only it could create the CD image as well

Where to get it?

http://www.daemon-tools.cc/

Current version: 3.47
Function: Virtual CD/DVD emulator

laconic

Published on 24 August, 2005 in Vocabulary. 0 Comments

laconic - short, brief, terse, to the point.

The laconic reply; ‘yes’.

software product’s life

Published on 24 August, 2005 in Entrepreneur and Quotes. 0 Comments

Much of a software product’s life is spent in specification, design and maintenance, and not in programming.

Can’t remember where I saw this but I was reminded of it again when recently a bad design backfired. One of the clients decided to do things fast by cutting back on design time. I’m not sure the time and money now they have to spend is worth the time they imagined would had been saved.

Presenting … SinoEthos

Published on 24 August, 2005 in China, Entrepreneur and Startup. 0 Comments

After some months of preparation and false start, me and my partner is finally launching SinoEthos Consulting.

SinoEthos focuses on leveraging our core strength of China and business knowledge to help companies start up, survive, strengthen and succeed in this fledging China environment.

My partner George had been in China for more than 10 years, holding position as financial controller and CFO in various private and government related companies. As for myself, my experiences are mainly in Internet startups and technology.

A right partner is important as I had learned over the years. It is then God’s blessing that we met, see eyes-to-eyes on our aspiration and the complementary of our skills. A prefect meeting of the old economy and new economy, of brick and motar and the virtual, just to borrow terms over-used in the dotcom era.

After some still-borns, false-starts and failed attempts over the past year, morale had wore thin. This launch had been a morale booster as well as setting a platform for growth.

Head over to SinoEthos where we constantly share information on business-related issues in China.

How should Singapore react to China?

Published on 22 August, 2005 in China. 0 Comments

Read It’s Stupid to be Afraid, an interview with Lee Kuan Yew on raising Asia.

The part about sending people to China to look at the factory is such a sweet move. If only more "complainy" people start looking where the threats are coming from. Then again, people in China are getting comfortable as well, so the threat might just be equalized. Still the number of hungry people far outnumber the complacent ones.

Reminiscence the old times

Published on 22 August, 2005 in Entrepreneur and Online. 0 Comments

Spent a good deal time reading Imagethief’s Report From Singapore. An interesting "Ang Mo" (a little search should tell you what it means) account of working in Singapore.

It was era too familar to me and it was intrigued to learned of the insider story. It was the early days of Internet in Singapore and Sembawang Media was perceived as a company that "gets it" (at least to me). I wished to quickly get out of school then, while building my cyber dream out of university hostel.

What held me was the perhap the fact that it brought back the all too similar experiences. Of grandiose dream, investors and deal, the evental disintegration and that we eventually move on.

Nice diving photos. I wished I had dived more…