The talks on Monday lecture all were extraordinary. We were told about the real life of entrepreneurs, which shared the common traits.
First thing is that you must be passionate about the business that you are running, and believe that it works. It is extremely crucial in the first years as you wouldn't likely to make any profit, and faced a lot of disillusions and/or discouragement. At the first year, Mr. Chin Leng from SingaporeBrides.com not only faced countless rejections, financial difficulties, but also discouragement from friends. If his belief is not strong enough, can he carry on until the day of success? The same thing happened to Mr Hoong An with HungryGoWhere, who made 4000$ revenue at the first year! It actually happened everywhere. It is fierce, it is cruel. But it's life. Through the sieve of belief, businesses and entrepreneurs are tested, and only the best ones can survive.
Preparing mentally alone is never enough for business, you also need capital, resources, at least enough to carry you until the day of break even and making profit. Talking about this, it is suggested by Hoong An from Hungry Go Where that we should work for several years to accumulate experience, capital and networking. "It's excellent way to learn while you're being paid!" he said. Later Mr. Leslie from Redsport also talked about his past experiences that eventually built up him and led to the creation of RedSport. Well? I guess NUS will not be able to catch up with Harvard then. Haha. Just kidding. (It's even a fault in logic. Who said we can't work when still in school?).
I think no one can make a successful business out of the air. It actually requires a deep understanding of the (area of ) business itself, knowing what is the bad point(s) and coming up with a better solution. Normally, by working on a specific job help us understanding the thing deeper and can see the wrong things happening. Reuben mentioned that Mr. Ash Singh saw the potential in Tshirt and set up a business for that, but I am sure he did a lot of researches and analyses before he actually enter the market.
There are still a lot of vague thoughts bouncing in my mind. I have been reflecting and writing this entries since the lecture ends, but somehow I still can't think and write everything down clearly. Partly is because I want to write down my experience / emotion after the talks. But let's just take it as it is for now. I will continue thinking about it and write more.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Rambling about the last lecture
First half of the lecture is Zit Seng giving us very informative session about web performance. I dare not to say I understand and remember everything, but it gives me a sense of what happens with our app normally and what thing might go wrong. The closest to us web developer is making lesser http requests, haha.
Done with growing, lets talk about the thing that happen before that. It is very common sense how normally people can vision a beautiful (and money-full) future of our app. For that far vision, some will go and plan ahead all the matters / problems that might happen if his app caught attention and million eyeballs. However, often it's not the case. What we should really do is concentrate on the most appealing features and make it excellent. Actually prof has repeatedly tell us to reduce the workload, come up with something and release early. We are also very serious about this issue, and continually reducing the amount of work to be done.
A great blog post about the similar issue: http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2010/02/if-your-product-is-great-it-doesnt-need.html
The second part, which most people must agree that it is more entertaining, is about Grades, Scholarship, Meritocracy. The most intriguing idea for me is the explanation of prof about innate ability and chance to raise higher in the pyramid of (?) society. I totally agree with it and actually used a similar idea to persuade myself to be happy with what I have achieved. Thinking about it, I grew up in a countryside of Vietnam. Before entering high school, I had almost no idea about the world outside, and never thought about winning a medal in an international contest. Well, my life changed a lot after entering high school. Yet, at some points I wasn't very happy with what I got, and felt so envious with many others, who grew up in a better background and environment. I thought and thought a lot about this, and eventually persuaded myself to be happy that I have made this far from what I got at the beginning.
P/S: This whole thing reminded me of Pip and the Great Expectation.
Done with growing, lets talk about the thing that happen before that. It is very common sense how normally people can vision a beautiful (and money-full) future of our app. For that far vision, some will go and plan ahead all the matters / problems that might happen if his app caught attention and million eyeballs. However, often it's not the case. What we should really do is concentrate on the most appealing features and make it excellent. Actually prof has repeatedly tell us to reduce the workload, come up with something and release early. We are also very serious about this issue, and continually reducing the amount of work to be done.
A great blog post about the similar issue: http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2010/02/if-your-product-is-great-it-doesnt-need.html
The second part, which most people must agree that it is more entertaining, is about Grades, Scholarship, Meritocracy. The most intriguing idea for me is the explanation of prof about innate ability and chance to raise higher in the pyramid of (?) society. I totally agree with it and actually used a similar idea to persuade myself to be happy with what I have achieved. Thinking about it, I grew up in a countryside of Vietnam. Before entering high school, I had almost no idea about the world outside, and never thought about winning a medal in an international contest. Well, my life changed a lot after entering high school. Yet, at some points I wasn't very happy with what I got, and felt so envious with many others, who grew up in a better background and environment. I thought and thought a lot about this, and eventually persuaded myself to be happy that I have made this far from what I got at the beginning.
P/S: This whole thing reminded me of Pip and the Great Expectation.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Continent? You're not a Global yet
Now I can somehow understand the reason why Caleb "The Continent" didn't want his teammates to touch his code. It is very reasonable from a view of a programmer: thinking about all the stuff like combining code of two people, reading code of others, dependencies of components, etc. You will always wonder if you can do it faster by doing all by yourself.
But well, a continent is not yet a global, and is far from a galaxy. The ability of 1 programmer is yet limited to some scope. Only by combining the skills of all people can we achieve a greater goal. Problems and obstacles are there not to be avoided but to be solved. If now we are not really excellent at team programming, consider all these project as a chance to develop the ability.
But well, a continent is not yet a global, and is far from a galaxy. The ability of 1 programmer is yet limited to some scope. Only by combining the skills of all people can we achieve a greater goal. Problems and obstacles are there not to be avoided but to be solved. If now we are not really excellent at team programming, consider all these project as a chance to develop the ability.
Friday, March 19, 2010
10 things that annoy programmers
http://www.kevinwilliampang.com/2008/08/28/top-10-things-that-annoy-programmers/
This is a very interesting article about programmers. You will easily nod your head in agreement with what is written. Me too. But as a programmer, I also realize how easy it is to fail to fix these problems.
Follow is the point I'm most interested in
Haha, that all is to say apology to anyone that feel being annoyed by me, I will try to not do that next time. For others, the article may help you in dealing with (other) programmers in your groups!
Nice day!
This is a very interesting article about programmers. You will easily nod your head in agreement with what is written. Me too. But as a programmer, I also realize how easy it is to fail to fix these problems.
Follow is the point I'm most interested in
The reason being recently I noticed how I could get to my nerves by all people talking around me while I was coding, and also that I might several times annoyed my fellow teammates during their working.9. Interruptions
Very few programmers can go from 0 to code at the drop of a hat. In general, we tend to be more akin to locomotives than ferraris; it may take us awhile to get started, but once we hit our stride we can get an impressive amount of work done. Unfortunately, it’s very hard to get into a programming zone when your train of thought is constantly being derailed by clients, managers, and fellow programmers.
Haha, that all is to say apology to anyone that feel being annoyed by me, I will try to not do that next time. For others, the article may help you in dealing with (other) programmers in your groups!
Nice day!
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Game requires IQ > 40 in Facebook??
PoxNora is a game newly launched by Sony in Facebook.
Inside Social Games - PoxNora
http://apps.facebook.com/poxnora/
Requires IQ over 100 for sure. How far do you think this game can go in facebook? Given that it is quite popular outside facebook alr?
Inside Social Games - PoxNora
http://apps.facebook.com/poxnora/
Requires IQ over 100 for sure. How far do you think this game can go in facebook? Given that it is quite popular outside facebook alr?
Sunday, March 7, 2010
MouseHunt - why is it different?
Facebook profile: http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=10337532241
Its name suggest that MouseHunt is the game that you will have to hunt mouse. How? Setting your trap, your bait and check the trap every 15 minutes. Plus excellent design and drawings, it gets around 500K MAU and 40% DAU/ MAU (meaning the returning players rate is quite high). The game is super addictive, but I guess the market for it is smaller compared to Farmville and other games.
500K MAU? grain of sand compared to 70K of Farmville. So why talking about MouseHunt? I think it is very successful in connecting users with users and users with developers. I did a research on other popular games but what I found was only disappointment. What are they doing?
- Every Friday they have Feedback Friday session, in which users and developers chat with each other (via broadcasting): http://www.ustream.tv/channel/mousehunt-live! In this session, the developers will listen to users feedbacks, comments, talk about improvement or upcoming updates, and sometimes chit-chat with users. I think this is the most distinguishing feature they have.
- They have a newspaper for themselves. Here is the external version: http://mousehuntnews.blogspot.com/. The newspaper summarizes interesting stories happens in the community, updates users of new content in the games, interview players, etc. I found it quite informative and interesting. Must check everyday!
- The forum. Very well participated by users. They had a sub-forum called Suggestions, where users can put their suggestions of new adversaries or tools. The suggestions are actually used by the developers some times, like the famous hydra mouse. Sometimes they made changes to the games mechanic based on users feedback. That's why users participate in that section very actively.
- The community. Users have formed various groups to help support new users, develop the system of mentors and mentees by themselves. etc. Many users are very active in the community.
Take a look at Farmville forum, http://forums.zynga.com/forumdisplay.php?f=91 and Mafia wars, http://forums.zynga.com/forumdisplay.php?f=36. The forum and community of Mousehunt is much more effective and developed. Mousehunt is doing much better work in connecting with users, which is an advantage of social network. We should learn from them when developing games/apps on a social network like Facebook!
People ARE like you!!!
While (Mr.) Chewy and Prof are implanting this thought into our unconscious mind that 'people are not like you', I am now trying a different approach.
I was musing for days how to put this the best way, as everything I am to write is all common sense, even more universally accepted than the idea of people being different. It is sooo normal, natural and common sense that it seems very trivial (as you will see) and people (normally) might not even pay attention to it. Because of that, I couldn't come up with any good idea to introduce this topic. However, considering I have learned it a hard way, I decided to give it a shot.
So well? We are well persuaded that we think differently, and greatly different from other people out there. But do you realize also that we are similar in many ways? We think differently but we all think. We feel differently but we all have feelings. We all have dreams, ambitions, happy moment, sad time, up and down.
What can this help?
- Respect. Seeing that every single one around me is filled up with dreams and ambitions, having talents in this way or another way, understanding that they are trying and facing difficulties to advance in life, I come to respect them and never look down to anyone.
- Understanding. I start to think about reasons and feelings of others before blaming them for anything. Is it their nature to behave like that? Or they are not in a good mood? Are they getting some difficulty that affect the work? Then you will naturally start to think about solution: How you can understand his real thinking and feeling, How you can solve or support him.
- Understanding 2: While you are doing something to others, be well prepared that they might be thinking or doing the same thing to you. I'm not totally clear about this point myself. Explain more later.
An interesting example, you are constantly inspecting and judging the ones around you. Not only so, you use your qualities to measure theirs. Say, while I think Tomithy is aiming to too many things, he'd say I should be more daring. While I think Laurence is not serious about a project, and aiming for too simple things, he'd say I'm aiming too high at the same time.
From here you can easily see that we are different on how we think and feel.
- Reflection: It's surprisingly easy to spot others weaknesses and bad points, while you can equally easily neglect your own problems.Think, you can also make these mistakes. So whenever you see something wrong, you can reflect it into yourself, to see if you have done it well or not.
- Confidence. Extremely useful when you doubt your own ability or have to struggle difficulties. You see all these figures leaders of the world? Thinking about them at young age. I'm sure at some points they were full of doubt, their abilities weren't appreciated. And at many points, they had to face great difficulties. So? They could overcome difficulties, why cant you? Understanding that, you can be more confidence and have more strength to keep going on.
“I wasn’t getting very far. Most of the time I was struggling to keep my job. I’d see other people my age, such as Simon Donaldson (1986 Fields Medallist), being considerably more successful, and I thought I’m obviously not all that good. There were times when I thought of dropping out.”
http://www.simonsingh.net/Fields_Medallist.html
I was musing for days how to put this the best way, as everything I am to write is all common sense, even more universally accepted than the idea of people being different. It is sooo normal, natural and common sense that it seems very trivial (as you will see) and people (normally) might not even pay attention to it. Because of that, I couldn't come up with any good idea to introduce this topic. However, considering I have learned it a hard way, I decided to give it a shot.
So well? We are well persuaded that we think differently, and greatly different from other people out there. But do you realize also that we are similar in many ways? We think differently but we all think. We feel differently but we all have feelings. We all have dreams, ambitions, happy moment, sad time, up and down.
What can this help?
- Respect. Seeing that every single one around me is filled up with dreams and ambitions, having talents in this way or another way, understanding that they are trying and facing difficulties to advance in life, I come to respect them and never look down to anyone.
- Understanding. I start to think about reasons and feelings of others before blaming them for anything. Is it their nature to behave like that? Or they are not in a good mood? Are they getting some difficulty that affect the work? Then you will naturally start to think about solution: How you can understand his real thinking and feeling, How you can solve or support him.
- Understanding 2: While you are doing something to others, be well prepared that they might be thinking or doing the same thing to you. I'm not totally clear about this point myself. Explain more later.
An interesting example, you are constantly inspecting and judging the ones around you. Not only so, you use your qualities to measure theirs. Say, while I think Tomithy is aiming to too many things, he'd say I should be more daring. While I think Laurence is not serious about a project, and aiming for too simple things, he'd say I'm aiming too high at the same time.
From here you can easily see that we are different on how we think and feel.
- Reflection: It's surprisingly easy to spot others weaknesses and bad points, while you can equally easily neglect your own problems.Think, you can also make these mistakes. So whenever you see something wrong, you can reflect it into yourself, to see if you have done it well or not.
- Reminder: Great minds think alike. Always be alert that many people are aiming for the same thing as you, so don't ever neglect your work and always work hard. If you are joining a competition and working hard for it, be well prepared that many others are aiming to it and doing the same level, if not more rigorous, training as you are. If you are having a great ideas, there well be many others have the same ones, so do it fast and hard.
- Confidence. Extremely useful when you doubt your own ability or have to struggle difficulties. You see all these figures leaders of the world? Thinking about them at young age. I'm sure at some points they were full of doubt, their abilities weren't appreciated. And at many points, they had to face great difficulties. So? They could overcome difficulties, why cant you? Understanding that, you can be more confidence and have more strength to keep going on.
“I wasn’t getting very far. Most of the time I was struggling to keep my job. I’d see other people my age, such as Simon Donaldson (1986 Fields Medallist), being considerably more successful, and I thought I’m obviously not all that good. There were times when I thought of dropping out.”
http://www.simonsingh.net/Fields_Medallist.html
Saturday, March 6, 2010
From Win Vista to iPad: is it a strategy?
I just had an interesting conversation with my friends.
- Maybe iPad is also published to test the market?
- No way, Apple is famous for the quality of their product! No way it will sacrifice its reputation.
- True. Compared to Microsoft and its products, ha ha.
- Now people expects a lot of any product from Apple. Even a standard product will be considered a failure.
(ranting about expectation and real value of products)
.....
- Hey, what if iPad is really a Dev Product? Steve Jobs knows that he will die soon so he published it!
- Why? it will destroy (deteriorate/decrease) his reputation?
- So that the next ones to succeed him can provide a perfect product that will gain him some reputation! Steve knows that customers think Apple depends on him greatly, so by playing fail customers will lower their expectation of Apple's product. When the real thing come out, it will succeed and customers will trust the ability of the successors!
- Wow. Interesting. Maybe? Maybe!
- What do you think will happen to Apple if Steve Jobs dies?
- Yeah. Apple depends on Steve Jobs too heavily.
- After Bill Gates leaves the heading position, Microsoft still runs well. That Ozzie guy and another person were quite famous priorly right? And Win 7's success showed some good work from them.
- Ha ha, maybe Bill Gates knew that Win Vista will failed so he ran away beforehand.
- Hey, btw, I read somewhere that people suspected that Win Vista might be a dev product Microsoft published for people to test it for them? Win 7 is very similar to vista, and it's even lighter.- Maybe iPad is also published to test the market?
- No way, Apple is famous for the quality of their product! No way it will sacrifice its reputation.
- True. Compared to Microsoft and its products, ha ha.
- Now people expects a lot of any product from Apple. Even a standard product will be considered a failure.
(ranting about expectation and real value of products)
.....
- Hey, what if iPad is really a Dev Product? Steve Jobs knows that he will die soon so he published it!
- Why? it will destroy (deteriorate/decrease) his reputation?
- So that the next ones to succeed him can provide a perfect product that will gain him some reputation! Steve knows that customers think Apple depends on him greatly, so by playing fail customers will lower their expectation of Apple's product. When the real thing come out, it will succeed and customers will trust the ability of the successors!
- Wow. Interesting. Maybe? Maybe!
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