Facebook and Google Plus Rants --- Profitable Software Business --- Part 3

Great skills can still lead to weak or nearly useless products.

How ?

When you don't understand your domain properly, or if you don't plan ahead for changes.

I don't make money teaching design. But developers, software business owners should listen to Hoare, David Parnas, Dijskstra (small head), Eric Evans, Peter Coad, Richard Feynman, Rasmus Lerdof, Linus Torvald, Charles Simonyi (MS Word, Intentional software). Scott Bain, Kent Beck etc.

If they don't know them or won't listen, they should not be in software business, right? Can anyone claim to be wiser( streetwise or worldly wise or whatever) than their collective wisdom?

On bitbucket, google code repository, GitHub, I find a lot of django/GoogleAppEnginePython codes for almost anything: social network, forum, message board, LMS(learning mgmt system), ERP, CMS(content mgmt system), wiki, quizz, collaborative writing, shared whiteboard, mobile app etc.

Shouldn't we extract some value from them?

As we all know, Python is not Perl/PHP or even Java. It's very good-natured language.

Log-in, log-out from App1, quiz from App2, friendship invite from App3 etc are there for us to mix and match as our kids play with Lego.

If some of us can find a business model to go with that Lego-style app, we may make some money for us.

Does anyone have some guide/advice for that kind of not-cut-and-paste but rip-off-and-rebuild development? HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I asked a Singaporean programmers group this:

"Ok. Find me something that looks like this. (1) It's free and online. (2) I type main question, then choices, including if necessary, images too. And the answer. (3) I can add as many question I like. (4) I can print it out, and it comes out nicely. (5) I can let my students practice there. (6) There can be tip/hints for students. (7) Answers are graded. (8) I can edit them. (9) I can download my question sets. They work offline too! (10) I can go on, but this should be enough. This is 1 of 1000 things we can do for education/training etc. So I have no need to protect this. ... Please don't mention SCORM, IMS, Moodle, Atutor, Coursera, hot potatoes, whatever. If a nice thing is there, why would I code or ask others to code."

They cannot find. Mine is world's first and very good. Still they don't want to work for me for 8 hrs * 15 days for free. They cannot see the benefits.

Facebook and Google Plus Rants --- Profitable Software Business --- Part 2

Recurring Revenue Streams

What are we going to do about education?

Every newborn fish can swim. But every newborn Myanmar doesn't read or like Nat Shin Naung/Nawaday right away. Every newborn Singaporean doesn't read or like Water Margins, Han Fei Tzu etc.

Education is an ongoing business for every new generation. A lot like tax-prep software business.

Every new year is a new business.

Little Knowledge and Sophisticated Goals

The title is a phrase from Peter Small's writings.

I could not and did not bother to pronounce English correctly. I ignored phonetics and phonology because I lacked ability. But that has not prevented me ( so far, at least)to do anything I want with English.

Now I want to get big in software business. I cannot do phonology-like coding.

Will that prevent me from expressing my self?

Do I need phonemes /a/ vs /o/ vs /u/ to express my romantic love in sonnets? my patriotic love in dramas? my sense of humor in Seinfeld-like, Keaton-like, Bean-like acts? my observations in Lamb-like, Thurber-like essays?

What You Admire You already Have

Lightning-fast swoops and cloud-splitting soars inspire young eagles ... because they get it, have it already, at least in small measures

Product Development: Sum is More Than the Parts

Are you thirsty?

I have a bottle of H and another bottle of O and a kit with which you can combine that H and that O?

Will you be quenched and satisfied?

Or would you like just a bottle of high quality water at the cheapest price in town from me?

Education is a bit more complex than H2O. Yet many pieces are there, almost free. Who will mix them into A drinkable, usable form? Why not us?

Magic in Software

I read lots of silly stuff and had/have strange role models. One favorite theme : a kid was surrounded by real or rival-witch-created snakes/or some other obstacles. The kid took out a piece of paper, tore it into pieces, threw them onto the ground, OR fanned some leaves on the ground with that paper, and they turned into fierce birds etc , snatched away all those snakes etc. .... Silly? ...

What about Gmail, Hotmail, Filckr, Facebook, Salesforce.com? ....

They all started on a piece of paper, they are still a roll of characters/words and lines. Modern abracadabra, right? ....

My heart sings with software. Software is my heart. I live or die with it. One day, you just whisper into a screen and my Abracadabra will come out to serve you like the Genie of Aladdin's Lamp.

Inciting Google Plus Communities

Hi Everyone,

I want to reinvent Moodle. I want to retain about one-fifth of its features and do it in Django.

The problem is I am weak in coding. Is there anyone who wants to do this as an open source project? I can promise only 2 things :

1. It will be better than Moodle 
2. It will be better than Khan Academy on Google App Engine! Cheers!

Facebook and Google Plus Rants --- Profitable Software Business

Recruitment on Facebook

When our team grows, of course, our receptionists and canteen staff will have PhD's and know Hadoop, Cassandra, MapReduce, R and lots of Big Data statistical packages.

But for the time being, others have been making good money with Excel!!! Yes, Excel!!! In Myanmar, in Singapore, and in New York (and in Wall Street ) !!!

From Hadoop to Excel, the space is a bit very wide. Our team hope to score some nice goals.

Any one, who has learned Excel or Hadoop or WHATEVER for 2 or 3 days, are encourage to join us! For the time being, we accept candidates without PhD, so hurry.

Adaptability, Flexibility or even Luck, but not the Ability to Predict

One of my friends gave university tuition while he was still a university student. Only very good students could do that. And I also did that. But then, since he has far better social skills than me, I sometimes asked him for advice. On one occasion, I said, "Some of my students do not like my best works/essays at all. What do I do?" He replied, "That happens to me too. What is good for me, they may not like it. Some shoddy works, they liked them a lot."

That lesson still stays with me. So, for my software business, I rely more on my adaptability, flexibility or even luck than on my ability to predict. So, though I have 20,000 features in mind, I intend to fight with 2 or 3 features first. ;-)

Software Development Business

Ancient China: population--> training to be soldiers --> forming into corps--> launching wars

Modern software follow similar steps.

1.  You create commodity software or use them for free. 
2. You turn them into building blocks(Lego-like pieces) of your application.
3. You weave. mesh, gel  the Lego pieces into useful apps. 
4. Then you sell these apps.

Easy Winning , as in TOEFL, IELTS

In 1995, I checked 7 TOEFL/IELTS brands, not books, and knew right away it is easy to do World Best classes there.

Last 3 days, we checked 5 world best online education sites' database schemas and became relieved and happy. Data models, domain models are heart and brains of web software. Our team is happy in this area.

How High-tech do you want to go?

I am starting a "very-very-very-hi tech" software company. And I am recruiting ordinary programmers (though I won't reject anyone as "over-qualified.") These 2 facts are not contradictory.

A CFO of Dell once asked, "How much techno do you need to own to compete? "

As students, you yourself might have asked, How many books do I need to read to compete well in the exams?

Even in high-tech business, you can compete well without relying on technology. Let's see.

Recruitment on Facebook

I predict 100 Instagram's from Myanmar and Singapore each. And when you predict something, you must also know when/how it can go wrong.    

Instagram came from another bigger app by Kevin Systrom, called Burbn, according to this month Fast Company magazine. Burbn is a clone of all popular app features at that time.

Singapore programmer Chang Sau Sheong, in "Cloning Internet Applications with Ruby" book, has done a Burbn like app already. There are many equally capable developers in Myanmar and Singapore.

But will they reduce their bigger clone app into a smaller, more useful app like Instagram? If they do, my predictions will be true. If not, well we will get 200 clone apps, including 2 of mine ;-(

Recruitment on Facebook

You can pay for 6-dollars-per-hour staff with 3 or 4 days of training. But to become a McDonald, you need a system.

Do I have a system to play in big league of software with ordinary programmers?

I think so. I'm recruiting. Let everyone know. No experience required. No commitment required. Only these requirements - you live in Singapore, you can read and type. You can work about 4 hours per week at home and 1 hour per week at our place. If you are over-qualified, that's better. We are not afraid of any talent

Recruitment on Facebook

I admire the source code of Django, Tornado, NLTK, boto, etc. As many of world greatest coders in history advise, their logic/code is "dumb" and therefore good. When I coded shopping cart, CRUD etc, my logic/code stayed "dumb" and good.

But when I moved even a bit farther, e.g. FSM with Pygame, an expert system etc, my logic/code became "clever," complex and unstable. I've thought about and studied this for years.

Our team is training to be a world leader in software -- both biz-wise and techno-wise.

Anyone interested in becoming better programmers are welcome. We are humble to learn and generous to share. Love and Thanks to all.

Some Unsued Assets

1. Good reading and note-taking, domain modeling, good and fast understanding of requirements of an industry, good and fast understanding of a user's job/task/process/activity 
2. Clean, small, flexible code/software.

If salesforec.com is not that combo, what is that?

If Flickr is not that combo, what is that? If Evernote is not that combo, what is that?

I have given you proofs, please join us. Even if with half a man, we will get to our goal. But, still we want you. Join us!

Discipline is Remembering What You Want

David Campbell, the founder of Saks Fifth Avenue, said, “Discipline is remembering what you want.”

Your Self-discipline

1. What do you want?
2. How do you keep remembering that? 

If you can answer both clearly, you can be confident that you have discipline.

Also remember how Steve Jobs once prevented his engineers from taking  notes during one of their meetings, insisting that engineers would not forget whatever was really important. True, we seldom forget our true priorities.

1. If your desires are strong, they will reveal themselves to you clearly.
2. And you don't forget any of your strong desires that easily.

Just watch yourself a bit more closely.

Craig Mundie,Microsoft, and Expensive Business Lessons

Craig Mundie, Microsoft's chief research and strategy officer, during a recent visit to Singapore, shares these pithy business and technology lessons with us.

Before I discuss his lessons, I suggest he/MS change his job title to "chief strategy and research officer". That they have not done so already implies that they haven't learned or taken their own lessons seriously.

1. MS has 900 Ph D scientists., "the world's largest R and D unit."
2. It has many very strong and cutting edge technologies.
3. MS was sort of the first to invent tablets and smartphones.

1. MS failed to exploit their pioneering inventions of  tablets and smartphones in early 2000s. The products were "heavy" or "cumbersome."
2. MS failed to do "great execution in some categories " of their product lines.
3. Specifically MS failed to  coordinate different research groups, to design lusty products, to market well.

Now, why is Mundie still called "chief research and strategy officer"? Is research still more respectable than strategy in our beloved Microsoft?

Patents, Competition, and Securing Your Intellectual Properties

I've been reading Guy Kawasaki's books recently, in particular, Enchantment, Reality Check and Rules for the Revolutionaries. He has only disdain for patents. He believes that entrepreneurs who rely their defence on patents alone are "clueless," and that patents are good only to impress one's parents.

Even before that, I've read that patents is a game only for big corps with deep pockets to fight their litigation wars.

I almost despaired whenever I read such stuffs because I had so many things to patent, to protect ;-)

On the other hand, if you choose to play in stealth mode, holding all your cards close to your chest, all the gurus say you will see a corpse in any mirror. That is, your business is not breathing at all.

In this dilemma, I was relieved to read an interview with the founder of NeuSoft of China.

He said that as soon as he put his software to the market, the rivals copy-catted it in no time.

Gradually, he wised up.

Now he no longer tries to protect a huge idea but produces a multitude of ideas both big and small.

Now he no longer worries about protection but concentrates on monetization of his ideas and faster execution of them.

Since China is one of the most competitive markets in the world, we all may be able to learn from their experience.

Courage of Simplicity and Big Data Science

General Patton may be the first to initiate this trend of Speed, Simplicity and Boldness.

Jack Welch later customized this to business world as Speed, Simplicity and Self-Confidence. In that HBR interview, he ridiculed people with 4-inch thick books, full of what every 5th grader knows.


Now Philipp K. Janert talks about his experience in data analysis field, in the book Data Analysis with Open Source Tools.

Once he noted a team trying to solve a case by running a neural network on a computer cluster. Yet, a working solution would take a mere 1-line calculation of some very simple techniques. He saw "an excess of sophistication" everywhere.

Before he recommends his cure, he diagnoses the cause as discomfort arising from unfamiliarity and uncertainty. In a new domain or problem space, people become unsure as to how to proceed and thus begin looking for silver bullets and miracle cures. The more impressive, the more expensive, the more hyped, the more complicated, the better for them.

His recommendat‭ions:

1. Methods you know for sure, methods you understand fully
2. Simple, transparent approaches and methods, because they are cheaper, less error-prone, and more revealing of insights.
3. Stay with the simple methods until they prove insufficient

He then goes on to say :

1. "Big Data" is often small, small enough to reside in Excel of the Finance Departments.
2. "Big Data" is not always better since the classical statistics's concept of sampling obviates "the need to examine every single member of a population ..."

Big data, and therefore "Big Guns"?

You decide.

JIT Learning, Kid Learning

Peter Small, in Entrepreneurial Web, marvels at how his average-nerd or non-nerd son acquired skills to use a presentation software without his help, without reading manuals, or without any special training or courses. You too may have noticed how quickly your kids master their smartphones in no time!

He then generalizes this observation to how modern kids are coping with the complexity of their modern, gadget-filled world. He theorizes that this is the way for adults too to live with the complexity of today's technologies.

In a previous section in the book, he relates how in his youth in the post-War Britain, he and a few young men were thrown into the deep end to find their way around in the world of science, technology and engineering. That experience convinced him that JIT (Just in Time) learning is the right way to master a complex array of challenging subjects, and that a small amount of knowledge can help you realize an impressive, sophisticated goal.

I'd also recommend hands-on, immersive learning especially with science and technology.

JIT learning, or Kid learning is cool. Cool because you don't stress yourself out with unnecessary theoretical conjectures and wild goose chases. And because you get your feedback and validation at every post along the way.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle maintenance has also depicted how cool a Buddha would be with the innards of modern motorcycle engines.

So next time when you need to reset your smartphone's date format or email spam filters, etc, remember to behave like a kid.

Stay cool. Just do it. Get your hands dirty.

Above all else, go incremental, take baby steps, and dont' forget to have fun along the way.