Scrapblog, The best thing since sliced cheese (and i love my cheese)

I feel like a little school kid waiting for arts and crafts so that I can cut and paste and decorate my little piece of art with scraps of nice lookin things. Thats exactly the kinda feeling I got after seeing screenshots of it… I’m not even a user yet and I love it! Its like what Apple meant to do with iPhoto but just never got around to…. and now its free and online, no downloads! Isnt it simply amazing… Just look at what’s possible today with web 2.0 technologies and a lil bit of creativity (and some code junkies). I see it as a no brainer for Yahoo to buy them out.. It would merge soooo nicely with flickr. If scrapblog remains independant for longer, I see huge revenue potentials with printing… Its like what Aperture allows you to do only better and free… and if they can get it for cheaper! people would love it! I wouldnt think twice about doing up an album for my roadtrip and printing it into a photobook…

I was discussing this very same idea with a friend about 2 weeks ago and the main bottleneck was the fact that there wernt and talented coders easily available… The problem with talented coders in Singapore is that they’re all head hunted even before they graduate and they look forward to a stable job with a good pay… Its totally unlike Stanford where half the people have ambitions of starting up or wanna work in a startup they love…

If there are any talented coders reading my blog, hit me up!

Billmonk (and me) on the New Paper

I’m quoted on the new paper… woo hoo!

Some of the best lessons learned from Google

Marissa Mayer (VP of Search Products and User Experience) shared her top 9 list with a bunch of Stanford students. I recently managed to catch the podcast because I wasnt able to attend the talk when I was there. Here are some of my personal favorites

1. Macs and Madonna Theory

Look at both of them… They’ve been in the limelight for more that 20 years and they’re still going strong. What about them made them stay while others faded away? They were able to constantly reinvent themselves to change with the times…

2. Innovation comes from constraints

Though it sounds counter intuitive, real creativity is born when there are constraints.. Thats when you challenge people to think outside the box to come up with new and innovative solutions

3. Share all you can

Its important to create a knowledge eco system so that everyone can learn from everyone else… Its only when you tap on other people’s expertise will ideas grow and blossom.

4. If you build it they will come

This is the heart of Google’s strategy, of course it does help that they have a huge ass group of users. But the real intention of this statement is that they dont focus on making money, they focus on the users. And if there are users, there will somehow be a way to monetize it.

5. Do things you’re not comfortable with to find your boundaries

Its important to get out of your comfort zone from time to time so that you can push your limits and gradually improve… If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you always got.

6. When you’re stuck when trying to make a decision, look at the best decisions you’ve made and try to find what they have in common.

E27 Singapore Featured in The New Paper

E27 Singapore managed to get a little press coverage from the local tabloid. I shall say no further… Read it yourself!

What makes a New Media Champion?

New media is highly dependent on the active user. Active users are your champions, they are the content providers and evangelists.

The notion of an active user:

• Who is able to make decisions
• Who can control the media he uses
• Who can understand the media
• Who knows what they want

But what makes someone an active user? Its important to know what active users seek so that your site can design around these fundemental concepts to promote the development of the online community.

One site that incorporates the decision making of the users is digg.com. Digg is a social news site that featured popular stories that its community “diggs”. This give users a sense of gratification whe they see an article they dugg on the front page. This also incorporates the notion that users are given control of the media they use.

Keeping with the example of digg, active users of digg who are able to understand it well, know what people are interested in. Secrets, rumours, interesting facts etc… All these make people curious and what to uncover what the story is about, and if they did learn something they didnt know, they will digg it.

Users have to also know what they want, this is where the splitting of headings come handy to segregate active users who know what they what they want.

E27 3.0: Startup Republic

Ok its time for my long overdue post on the extremely successful event held this past Wed @ SMU. Attendance has doubled compared to last event and we’re really picking up momentum. Its very difficult to explain to people the value of unconferences and much less convince them to come down when there’s no program sheet on agenda for the event.

We had 4 of our very own Web 2.0 Startups presenting Ping.sg, Woolert, Bookjetty and blurbme. The casual and down to earth nature of the presentations was felt as soon at the presenters took stage and everyone was at ease and participated in the discussions.

At the same time, there was a Web 2.0 brainstorming session held in one of the other rooms. Led by one of the INSEAD MBA students Bruno (who happens to have led the development of iTunes at Apple). Dmitry from Yahoo! also joined him and helped facilitate the discussion. I really wish I could say more about the brainstorming, but I had to move around too much, so I couldnt really get much from the session from the 5 mins that I was there… But I heard pretty good comments about those that did attend that track.

Coen led another brainstorming track on Online Education and participants were discussing on how entrepreneurs could capitalize on innovations to make money through online education.

Then there were some who were’nt really interested in anything going on in the rooms and were more into networking with the people outside and having pizza (which required 3 Canadian Pizza bikes) to be delivered. We literally had to be chased out of SMU. The guard was not too happy that we overstayed our welcome, and even after getting chased out people sat down right outside the SMU gantry and continued their conversations which later move to the kopitiam across the street. Amazing! For those who could not attend, we have podcasts of the Company presentations section of it.

Podcast: http://www.forward2you.com/e27/

My Flickr Pics: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mambo69

I’d like to thank everyone who attended and everyone who made it possible by contributing in one way or another. Spread the word and lets make the next one even better! A poolside party perhaps?

E27 3.0 Kicked Ass!

Thanks guys for coming down for the event. This has been the biggest E27 event so far! We couldnt have done it without you. I’ll do a proper post-event write up tmr, when i’m better rested… Til then keep the spirit going!