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I’m not a big fan of MS. If anything, the WPF developer kit installation process was so long that it irked me. That being said, I’m a big fan of Bill Gates and his work nowadays. While the Internet, or more specifically, tools such as Facebook Causes has given arms and legs to the various causes that we stand for, there’re just some problems that are gigantic, but are only being solved slowly due to the lack of market motivation.

Enter visionaries like Bill Gates and Peter Diamandis. Extremely successful people, with significant influence in both public and private sectors across various geographies, they identify the significant problems faced by the world, and am willing to put in not just money, but time and effort influencing others to focus on solving the problems that the world faces.

In the latest talk given by Gates as part of TED 2009, which is an annual conference that brings together thought leaders from the Technology, Entertainment, Design worlds and more, he share about 2 problems that he is currently passionate about solving:
1. How do you stop a deadly disease that is spread by mosquitos?
2. How do you make a teacher great?

Interesting Notes
- More money put into baldness drug development than malaria as the rich man are bald
- Malaria control requires skills from all areas (math, computing, pharma, etc.)
- If US had top tier teachers, gap between US & Asia in Math & Sci would go away in 2 years
- Masters degree doesn’t correlate with teaching quality – Past performance does
- Slightly better teachers leave the system, not the lousy teachers
- Check out KIPP teaching styles through the book “Work Hard Be Nice”

For all current and aspiring leaders out there, What are you doing today (to change the world)?

Side-note: Check out the multi-inbox view on Gmail! Love it!

Original Post at http://blog.wonghongting.com

There must be a streak of the contrarian in the Friedman family. Patri Friedman’s grandfather was Milton Friedman, who contributed heavily to the school of thought now called the Chicago school of economics. Patri himself was a former googler who has unconventional views on everything from diet to libertarianism.

If you had to pick a project of Patri’s to be considered as the height of insanity, that must most certainly be the Seasteading Institute. In the latest issue of Wired magazine, a feature on Patri speaks of the dream that the Seasteading Institute was founded for, to establish a cheap (relatively), mobile oceangoing platform that is self-sustaining and possibly a sovereign country. The idea of a tiny but rich nation surely won’t seem alien to anyone from Singapore, Monaco or Vatican City, but at 160,000 square feet, even Singapore seems like China by comparison. Of course, Singapore or China can’t achieve what the Seasteading mission states, that is:

Mind-blowing stuff. What is even more remarkable, for those who feel by numbers, is that 160,000 square feet of lawless paradise can be bought for an estimated 3 million USD. That’s peanuts for having your own country. I certainly wouldn’t mind forking out money for a mobile country that I can live on with like-minded individuals in the seas between East and West Malaysia during the off-Monsoon season.

Ah talk about the power of dreams.

PS. For those who wonder how such a country would earn enough money to be self-sustaining outside of just tourism, check this and this out.

Digital media is a funny business. No really I mean it. Let me tell you just what the grand old doyens of British comedy have done to their material. For the uninitiated, Monty Python is the name of a group of 6 comedians widely acknowledged as the funniest group of comedians ever.

No amount of writing can do justice to their comedic brilliance so I won’t try. However, the interesting story behind their Youtube adventure is this. So brilliant were the Pythons’ comedy that die-hard fans were posting much of their best performances on Youtube for all the world to see. As the music industry has already learned, suing filesharers alienates your customer and hardly makes a dent in the overall number of so-called pirates out on the www. You simply can’t sue enough quickly enough to make a difference.

The solution to this problem is of course to do the Python-esque thing.

Of course, this does seem like a trend. Radiohead pioneered online digital distribution with their album “In Rainbows”. Rock band Nine Inch Nails also tried their hand at it with their new album “Ghosts”. Radiohead made more off online distribution than they did with traditional media for their previous album “Hail to the Thief” even though users could download “In Rainbows” for free. This success is duplicated, no, exceeded, by Monty Python. They increased their DVD sales on Amazon by 23,000 percent after they unveiled their Monty Python channel.

Despite the seemingly outrageous success of online distribution, enthusiasm for this form of distribution doesn’t seem to be taking hold. Trent Reznor, lead singer for Nine Inch Nails, even claims that Radiohead was ‘insincere‘ about web distribution taking over as the new form of media distribution. What is stopping digital distribution from turning the tables on traditional brick and mortar distributors? Whoever knows the answer to that could well be the next Mark Zuckerberg, Larry&Sergei et al.

What to know how Alibaba will survive from the economic downturn?
See the most recent interview from FT.com at www.ft.com/jackma

I happened to chance upon this report today. Click on the link if you’ve never seen an uber-adorable Prada Panda before. I dare you not to.
Once you get past the panda though, the report by Liana Cafolla is an absorbing one.

There is a great deal of disagreement among economists whether China’s phenomenal economic growth rate is inflated by overzealous party officials. However, for luxury goods, there is no such ambiguity. Montblanc Asia’s chief executive Jim Siano is quoted as saying growth is ‘phenomenal’. Liana goes so far as to say that a “desire for status and embedded gift-giving culture” create “frantic levels of spending.”

Curious, I searched and found a KPMG report on luxury. KPMG conducted a survey of Chinese consumers in 15 mainland cities. The report states, “On average, survey participants in the report recognised 64 different luxury brands compared to 52 in the 2006 survey. In Shanghai, this rose to 73 brands, while the figure for tier-two cities stood at 62 brands.” The full, fascinating report can be read free here.

A report on Chinese website ic98.com states, in 2007, Chinese consumption of luxury goods reached 8 billion USD, representing 18% of the world market. 13% of the chinese population are luxury goods consumers.
The report continues, in China, the luxury consumer is usually an educated yuppie between the ages of 25-40, with monthly income of between 5-50 thousand yuan. This is in stark contrast to the west where Forecast, a Shanghai-based think tank, claims that luxury consumers are middle-class individuals between 40-60 years of age.

Why is this fascinating from an entrepreneurial point of view? The answer is startlingly simple. Name me just one Chinese luxury brand. Can you? I thought not. It’s just a vacuum waiting to be filled.

When an article recently stated that Apple is joining the campaign for real breasts, there was always only going to be one outcome. A geek’s love for technology and boobies (not necesarily in that order) knows no bounds and I quickly discovered the wonders that the iPhone is capable of.

Just how big a success is this wonderfully jiggly smartphone? Steve Jobs of course believes that he’s got a big hit on his hands. And there is in fact very good reason to believe that claim, even a google spreadsheet by the MacObserver that shows, through tracking the IMEI numbers of 3G iPhones sold, that Apple probably have exceeded their target. There are of course, doubters who, not without reason, claim that the dropoff in sales numbers after an initial high raise doubts about the iPhone’s sales momentum.

Hardware though, is not what is on my mind. More interesting for any aspiring entrepreneur is this litte tidbit. 500 million App Store downloads is nothing to laugh at, except if you’re the cash-laden owner of a certain jiggly App called Wobble. If you’re a software developer writing for a software platform that is mobile, has 10 million users, with potential to go up to 45 million in 2009, and has the processing power of a Sega Dreamcast, there is a lot of potential for games development.

In 2008, Google was once again selected as the 100 Best Companies to Work For, which reflects results from a 57 question survey of employees in companies in US. So it was absolutely interesting to see this post on Techcrunch. In short, the general complains of the ex-Googlers as shown in the post were relatively lower pay, fringe benefits disappearing, and usual stuff like “too much bureaucracy, poor management, poor mentoring, and a hiring process that took months”.

While I think that these are the minority in Google, this brings up a conversation that I had with Ed a year back about Web2.0 companies. What is the optimal level of benefits that a company should give out to its employees and how much marketing (for the lack of a better word) should be done using these benefits to attract and retain talents?

The premise for the discussion: During the Dot com days, the remuneration packages and more observably, fringe benefits such as free food, free drinks, gaming rooms all around the office. Ignoring the “Home-run” companies for the reason that they are the outliers and not the norm, when the dot com bust happened, the companies that didn’t have the fringe benefits seemed to be more capable of retaining its employees while the “cool” companies that had to cut the fringe benefits due to cost cutting, had employees fleeting once they sensed that the company is not doing well.

From the emails and the various complaints that the ex-Googlers listed, it seems as though a similar thing is happening. People come in looking forward to being part of the “cool culture” in Google that is so well documented and advertised, but when it doesn’t happen as promised, employees start leaving and bitch about it.

Expectations Setting
This is nothing new, and I guess it boils down to the age old lesson of setting of expectations on a couple of fronts:

1. Manage Expectations of Employees: Instead of over-peppering potential employees and attract them with fringe benefits (which they assimilate to be necessities and forgetting that they’re just benefits), let them know about the reality from other employees.
1a. Set High Expectations, then Exceed Them: As an auxiliary to the previous point, it would yield you instant evangelists out of employees immediately when you exceed their expectations. So do this.
2. Manage Your Own Expectation: It is hard to do this, but seriously, when we choose a wrong company to work for, it is our own fault isn’t it? So instead of going in with too high an expectation and coming out complaining, won’t it be wiser to go in hoping to contribute (instead of them benefitting you), and let them sweep you off your feet with great HR plans?

As I close, I just realized that I unknowingly had a major headfake doing this post: Either be a HR expert, or hire one if you want to run a company. While there will be people that come out unhappy about the company, only then would a successful balancing act help you attract and retain your best talents. Like Google.

Original Posting at: http://blog.wonghongting.com

My previous article seemed a tad depressing, considering that its a new year upon us. As such, I’ll tell a happier story today and also share a link to some really good deals.
Lets begin with the story first.

Winzip is a great program. If there were a list of programs that recognized the most important software in the history of the internet, Winzip would be on it, along with such luminaries as Netscape (Navigator), Mirabilis (ICQ) and mIRC. However, as with all things on the internet, users prefer not to pay for a full-featured version if they can avoid it.

Alex Rampell hit upon an idea to make Winzip more profitable. His company, Trialpay, gives Winzip users more incentive to pay for the full version. He does this by linking potential buyers to other good deals on the internet. A potential buyer for Winzip might not be willing to fork out $29.95 for Winzip alone, but together with a sweet discount deal for books on Amazon.com, the user just might be willing to buy both products. Amazon then pays Winzip (and Trialpay) a small fee for directing customers to them, and everyone is happy.

The logic contained therein is a fairly simple one. However, I believe that it just hasn’t been done online before. In retail stores, the tactic is common. Rather than offer straight discounts on items, some retailers offer for example a 30% discount on purchases of single items but 50% if you buy 3 items or more. The difference is retail stores can have many items that a buyer wants whereas online, Winzip stands alone.

I categorize the brilliance of this idea as “So good I wish I thought of it first!” Now you may commence shopping.