Tag: Facebook

co-ding

It’s been an amazing contest. Netflix 1 million dollar prize was awarded to the first team of coders.

The second team came in, with equally good stuff, just 20 minutes after the deadline.

Data rule.

Organized and monetized data, that is.

The information age is here to stay. Symbol recognition and manipulation.

Pretty soon, we won’t have to tell websites what we want . They will have the ability to hold up the mirror, and help us see ourselves, our preferences, remote or immediate .

Concierge Age. Both for advertisers and for shoppers.

“Those who shop for this, tends to buy that”. Agent of influence.

I had my share of buying Amazon popped up suggestions.

In the age of Long Tail, companies like Netflix base their models solely on buyer’s known preferences.

There is no need to pay for store front, stocks are almost at zero cost if you consider Digital publishing or DVD copying (just-in-time.)

With Red Box, I feel sorry for the video pirates. It’s already a dollar for each new release. Who need to go to the alley,

risking an arrest, to purchase a poor quality (perhaps made out of home videotaping in the theater) pirated copy?

Back to our winning team. At the end of Market Place interview, they said they wanted to catch some sleep.

These guys don’t go to Disneyland. They like to code.

What I learned from the interview was that they collaborated with people from a different team, as long as they

can generate new ideas and together, come up with solutions. The runner-up also said that while working on the project, they already applied their new learning to help their clients. The reward had already been reaped before they handed in their project 20 minutes after the deadline.

These guys must be made of a different cloth. Their concept of teaming, winning is as radical as their approach to coding. I mean, since when people came up with Open Source, i.e. letting others see their recipe.

The answer lies in what Chris Anderson said all along in Wired: it’s the abundance mentality whose Tail is long.

Come and join us. Share the land since  the harvest is abundant. 24/7 around the globe. Just code.

 

facebook lite

On Facebook Lite, people with mobile devices can just send a quick comment and get on with hearing the President Speech.

http://features.csmonitor.com/innovation/2009/09/11/with-facebook-lite-a-step-deeper-into-twitter-terrain/

Social networking not “for here” but “to go”.

It’s the equivalent of talking to friends while on a moving train or automobile, or  while paying at the cash register.

We are a society in a hurry. Real hurry!

And I must admit, Twitter did give Facebook a run for the money.

Snappy attention. Shorter bursts of data stream. Get to the point and in your face.

“You lie”.

It’s common for us to go about all our lives, doing a million things, good , bad and ugly, only to be remembered by one short burst or comment.

The President warned Wakefield High School Students to be careful of what they post on Facebook.

I might add, especially be mindful when commenting on Facebook Lite. The nature of mobile device might fool one into thinking that it’s just a short text message. No it’s not. It’s micro-blogging. And it meant to post, not sent and be received by an intended audience of one.

Back to consumer sentiment.

According to the latest poll, people (80%) are still bewildered, the state of a deer caught by an incoming head light.

Despite Bernanke being a student of the late Great Depression, he couldn’t make the problems go away.

We need to send someone to jail. We did. We need to get people  a new set of wheels. We did.

We need small wins, consistently. Well, we haven’t. Cash for (rusty) appliances? Cash for bulbs? Cash for clunkers?

I propose Cash for old phones. That way, we are stimulated to move on to Smart phones wired with Facebook Lite.

Nurse a Miller Lite while at it. Friday afternoon, on White House or any house lawn, thumbing your key pad . Can we all get along? But I still am careful about what I post. We got enough to deal with these days, from ID theft to IOU. Who need unwarranted short bursts that will come back and haunt us digitally, and eternally.

You see, bad comments are now so democratized that they don’t belong in the purview of public figures, just like

blogging wouldn’t be just for Martha Stewart or Huffington. Just being at Wakefield High will do. And it’s not the word count that counts. Short bursts, like “you lie”, will do. My short comment is “you win, I win, win-win”.

 

Heroes in our eyes

We got some footage about those Japanese astronauts now.

This brings me back to those endless summers when I watched all sorts of movies: French, American, Chinese and Japanese. Among the Japanese ones, the most memorable is the “blind Samurai”, who exemplifies the spirit of quiet strength.

We self-project, so our heroes tend to reflect our inner psychological make-ups. And of course, the spirit of the time

has something to do with it: Bogart’s line “frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn” probably propelled him to the all-time

Hollywood endearment (but he smokes). While our Stallone of the Rocky series could barely utter a few lines, most memorable was his Rambo’s line “where they call Hell, I call Home”.

Another mesmerized experience was the Who in Woodstock concert film, where at the end of their performance, Pete Townsend, the lead guitarist, smashed his instrument to get the reverberation from the speakers (must be quite a buzz for those who were on drug at the scene).  The Japanese Samurai do more with less, while his Western counterparts do less with more ( over consumption and property destruction).

No wonder I was made to read those “Small is beautiful” titles when in college. It was right after the Oil embargo, and the social critics were having a field day. Some scholars even predicted the end of cheap oil as imminent, and this was in later part of the 70’s (I was more inclined to revisit their premises last summer when oil was up around the $150 mark).

Back to our heroes. To the millennial generation, those two guys at Google who rolled out their G Phones on roller blades, or the Facebook founder who refused to sell. These are today’s heroes: working from dorm rooms, and piggyback the University backbones. The next generation of heroes will be more likely to wear a turban or glasses

(slanted eyes). Mine, I must admit, are more feminine (my mother for one): O, J.K Rowling, Hillary and Swimsuit models (must be hard to keep up with the appearance for the shoot). See, I happen to be entrepreneurial, sociable and creative. My heroes got to possess all three attributes to make the list. Branson of the Virgin group made the profile also.

In seeking your heroes, you found your very self. We all live in a cave, and look up to our own shadows on the wall, that is, if we can make a fire. Sadly, I don’t find that many heroes in today’s business world . That is why they make the graduating class of MBA to take the oath (before they turn Wolves on Wall Street). At least, the biz schools finally own a bible or two, just for ceremonial reason.