What is a good business idea? Before answering the question, What is a good business idea? Let me ask you this question, do you need a good business idea to start your business? A long time back, my MBA professor once told me that...
Budgeting for Cradle pre-seed grant I’ve been meaning to write more about the entrepreneur scene in Malaysia, but I just can’t seems to find the time to do that. But I would like to share with any budding entrepreneurs that wants to...
Budgeting for Cradle pre-seed grant I’ve been meaning to write more about the entrepreneur scene in Malaysia, but I just can’t seems to find the time to do that. But I would like to share with any budding entrepreneurs that wants to...
Is Friendster better off with MOL?
In the last post, i had talked about losing mind share in US. However, Friendster is still very strong in Asia, especially in Malaysia and Philippines. Friendster is the #11 site in Malaysia and #6...
Friendster is losing mind share in the US – Try searching...
Friendster is now Malaysian. Malaysia’s MOL has just bought Friendster a couple of weeks back for an undisclosed sum. It was rumored to be at the region of USD 26 million, a large sum of money considering...
I was at echelon 2010 in Singapore and attended the Dave McClure’s keynote presentation where Dave McClure shared his thoughts on the future of internet start-ups (which is getting better and better) and why large VCs are not suitable for internet start-ups. Here are his slides.
The most intriguing points about his presentation are what an entrepreneur should avoid and focus on in his/her venture. Here are good points that I’ve picked up:
Design and marketing skills are often lacking – Hire someone if your team do not have the skills.
Focus on user experience and distributing your product/services
Less is more – Focus on what your customer wants and use that as a basis to get feedback.
Early market validation – don’t wait for a year before you introduce your product to your customer.
Frequent customer feedback – have short development cycle to get frequent customer feedback
The detailed summary of the presentation is published here.
A friend of mine, Bugs Tan has a great way for inventors and entrepreneurs to evaluate good business ideas. Bugs Tan is an award winning inventor who is very passionate in the field of innovation and entrepreneurship.
Based on his experience, he came out with a practical series of questions to help entrepreneurs and inventors to evaluate their ideas. I like these questions as it provides a very good perspective on how an entrepreneur should review the viability of their idea.
An effort by Microsoft to promote Office 2010 movie style. So far so good, its the top 5 viral video for the past 24 hours (as at 10 July 09 by Unruly Media) with 66,000 views and 112 blog post.
Read a insightful survey that I found on the net about a study about Malaysian’s Gen Y(millennials) workforce by PwC. This reports summarize the “turn-ons” and “turn-offs” of a Malaysian Gen-Y worker. This report provides some clues on how a manager especially from the Gen-X and Baby Boomer era should manage a Gen-Y worker.
After reading it, I find that this report is also very useful for any marketer who wants to sell to Gen-Ys. Like it or not, Gen-Ys are going to contribute the bulk of consumer spending in the near future. Understanding what they turn them on is key for any marketer.
I compile some of the highlights of the report but to read more click here to Download survey
Highlights of a Global Gen-Y Worker
Consistency gets stale. They want mobility throughout their career lifetime, preferably involving overseas stints.
Job-hopping is overrated. Debunking the portfolio careers myth, our Gen Y will remain loyal to their employer – as long as they feel fulfilled in their role, that is.
Green is in. Issues of sustainability and climate change are of major concern, and will affect their career choices.
Can’t live without gadgets. They’ve grown up with technology – it is part and parcel of their lives, which includes the work they do for a living.
The term work-life balance is passe. Employers can’t just encourage a balance but should provide the means for this balance through more flexible work hours.
Respect my space, please. The Gen Y maintain clear separation between their work and personal lives, and are unwilling to share too much personal information with their employers.
Coaching welcomed here. They prefer on-the-job development rather than formalised training, especially working with strong coaches and mentors.
Cash is king. When it comes to benefits, cash bonuses are valued higher than training and development.
We are all made the same. They believe in gender equality, where they and their partners will contribute an equal amount of financial support for their households.
I rely on me. They will take personal responsibility for funding their retirement
The key findings reflect the views and opinions of our Malaysian Gen-Y worker, which for the most part mirror that of their global counterparts:
The majority hope to experience work life overseas – 88% expressed the desire to work abroad.
Corporate responsibility (CR) plays a big role for millennials in their choice of employer with 86% choosing employers with similar corporate responsibility values and 77% stating they would leave an employer whose values no longer matched their expectations.
Strong coaches and mentors are key to development – 98% of the respondents stated working with strong coaches and mentors was important to their personal development.
65% indicated that they plan to self-fund their retirement while only 22% expected their retirement to be funded by their employers’ retirement scheme.
68% of millennials believe that by 2020, China, Russia and India will have more economic influence than Europe and the USA.
Job hopping in a portfolio working arrangement is not likely. 86% of millennials believe they will only have between two and five employers and only 3% believe they will have 10 or more employers
Our millennials are hoping for a shift from traditional Asian work practices. 58% expect to work traditional work hours with some flexible hours and 57% selected flexi-hours as the most highly valued employee benefit.
Our millennials value privacy – only 29% are willing to share more personal information with their employers.
Cash is king for millennials – 49% value cash bonuses as one of the most preferred employee benefits.
Our millennials are on the fence on the current Malaysian economic health. However, almost three-quarters (72%) feel that the global economy is worse off.
They believe in gender equality. Two-thirds (66%) believe that they and their partners will contribute an equal amount of financial support to support the household.
If you are a Microsoft ® Outlook ® user, you probably have it open all the time. Now you can have a fully-featured, powerful Twitter client at your fingertips without having to open any other applications. TwInbox seamlessly integrates Twitter into Outlook. It is a perfect Twitter client for any Outlook user, from a Twitter newbie to a business professional.
Here are some of the features provided by TwInbox
Features
Update your Twitter status directly from Outlook.
Receive your friend updates in Outlook.
Archive, manage, group and search your tweets the
same way you manage your email (details).
Search, track keywords. TwInbox will automatically download ALL tweets matching the keywords you specify, even if you are not following the tweet sender. This feature is perfect for keeping up to date with the Twitter buzz on your name, brand, interests, etc.
Group tweets by sender, topic, etc using the Search feature.
Upload and post picture files and Outlook email attachments.
Bing is out and available for everyone to try. I personally don’t agree with the name “Bing” but oh well, let’s see what the rest of the folks thinks of the search experience.
Office 2010 has its own website for anyone who wants to know more about what Office 2010 has to offer. They even created a preview video (transformer style) to promote it.
Also for anyone who’s looking into testing the new Office 2010 can sign up for the technical preview. Here’s some explanation about the technical preview
The Microsoft Office 2010 Technical Preview is a limited, invitation only program which will provide you with the opportunity to experience early, pre-release versions of Office 2010 which will include the following applications: Word 2010, Excel 2010, Outlook 2010, PowerPoint 2010, OneNote 2010, Access 2010, InfoPath 2010 and Publisher 2010.
By registering you are signing up to be considered for the Technical Preview Program, you will be waitlisted for consideration to be invited into the Technical Preview Program. We will notify invitees in early to mid July.
Windows 7 RC (Release Candidate) is out, this is the version where no more new features will be added. This is as near as the original that you will get when Windows 7 is out. So try it out. I’m a fan of Windows 7 beta and I’m excited to hear that they made quite some improvements to it.
Some of the things i heard from friends who tried it out are:
Faster performance. A friend claim that its 30-40% faster than the beta
XP mode which i blog about previously. Now you can use your legacy application in XP mode.
For those of you who is using Windows 7 beta, there is no easy direct upgrade from beta to RC. However, there is a workaround and I tried it out and it works. Here are the step to it
Download the ISO as you did previously and burn the ISO to a DVD.
Copy the whole image to a storage location you wish to run the upgrade from (a bootable flash drive or a directory on any partition on the machine running the pre-release build).
Browse to the sources directory.
Open the file cversion.ini in a text editor like Notepad.
Modify the MinClient build number to a value lower than the down-level build. For example, change 7100 to 7000 (pictured below).
Save the file in place with the same name.
Run setup like you would normally from this modified copy of the image and the version check will be bypassed.
Buffet and Gates talk a little about Google towards the end of the interview. Near the end (skip to the 6:10 mark of the 2nd video) Fox’s Liz Claman talks about Buffett’s love of Google, quoting him: “Their moat of competitiveness is so wide and what they do is so tough to compare and to compete with that in that moat are sharks and crocodiles that no one can get near.”
Gates fires back, saying that Microsoft is undeterred: “Well, technology companies do for a period get in these wonderful positions and, you know, it’s great that there’s somebody willing to attack those moats. Microsoft is undeterred. We look at each one of those crocodiles and we say charge!”
Buffet responds “No shark wants to come up against him,” and Gates ends with “So, it is, it is a daunting thing, but consumers benefit when somebody’s willing to take that on and say, hey, we can do a better search product.”
