Software business is uncertain. So?

March 15, 2015

Software business is uncertain.

Then how can we make it certain?

No need to spend lots of  money. ...

we can embed very certain things inside it.

That way,  it can become more certain.

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.

I am at a dead end

This was written a few weeks ago. This doesn't reflect our current situation.

I am at a dead end. I never thought things could be this tough on this front.

But I am lucky because I can see irony/humor/joke in every situation, including this one. My usual trouble is I see and SAY things about 5 years ahead. I cannot/ will not wait to say what I've seen.

1.  "Math is easy," I said, even when I was struggling with simple sine and cosine etc.
2.  "Chemistry is easy," I said, even when I was struggling with periodic table and valencies.
3.  "Literature is easy," I said, even when I was struggling with the question of whether to use "aim to win" or "aim at winning." 
4. "Linguistic is easy," I said, even when I was struggling with John Lyons's summary of Chomsky.
5. "Software is easy," I said, even when I was struggling with how to switch on a PC, how to print 1 to 10 line by line !!! 
6. "A software business is easy," I say, even when I am struggling with how to run an EC2 instance etc.

People see my sweat, my shaky fingers, my grim face etc.

People see I was having lots of fun.

They didn't see what I saw in my mind. They didn't see the hard work I put in, though the working time may be short ;-)

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!

Real Fun Begins -- The Customers -- Part 1

Learning is easy, you are just window-shopping what others are up to and consuming what you fancy.  Producing is different, there you have to make some effort and what you produce may not have any taker. Endowed with an almost inexhaustible amount of laziness, our team never suffers from solutions that then need to go looking for problems.

Maybe Relentless, maybe some other books on Japanese marketing. It says that a small market segment you've found in your locale, most likely exist in other parts of the Globe as well.

Guy Kawaski, maybe in The Art of the Start,  keeps saying that the customer of One is a lot better than 100 market research reports!

Muhammad Yunus, the founder of the Grameen Bank, a Nobel Peace Prize winning microfinance organization and community development bank, was once asked in an entrepreneurial program by an aspiring social entrepreneur, about where to begin with her rather ambitious project. He replied that his gradually-big project began with just "one woman who was trying to escape from loan sharks"!

I, by instincts and by hard-won experience, know  that if one person truly enjoys your snacks, they stand a very good chance of doing well town-wide, then region-wide and so on.

This is exciting and fun! I've got more than one customer!

Of course, I won't be able to satisfy even this one customer completely, right now. ( My resources will have to grow in response. They will.)

But, who, which company  has satisfied you completely? Google? Apple?

This is exciting and fun!

We're Having Fun -- The Competitions

We are having fun despite the numerous competitions. Conventional wisdom has it that when you are small, you choose what others can but will not do, and when your have grown big, you do what others cannot do. We are blurred about what others will or will not do. We are only clear that so many teams can easily do whatever we are planning to do. Encouraging?

We think so and we are having fun, right now.

A few 4 or 5 years back, I met a skinny, nerd-looking kid browsing the Computer book shelves in the Jurong East library, holding a big red book (Wrox Professional series) on PHP in his chest. I chatted up with him and learned that he's been doing some programming for his CCA, sort of hobby/club-like thing in primary and secondary schools in Singapore. Since then, I cannot count how many school kids I've seen with iPad programming,  iPhone programming, C, C++, Java, javascript, HTML5, Python etc.

A few 4 or 5 years back, I read in the newspapers about an app that an ITE team had done to win a competition. That app integrated so many different mobile technologies! To give a big picture for those outside Singapore, the pecking order of Education here in Singapore is like:

secondary schools -> ITE -> junior college or polytechnic --> university and so on
secondary schools ----------> junior college or polytechnic --> university and so on

The kids are a lot savvier than me about tech!!!

The same holds true for kids in Myanmar! Malaysia! Vietnam! Indonesia! Huh ...

They can easily do whatever we are planning to do. Encouraging?

Let's Consider Another "Friendlier" Competition

My son's English seems a lot better than mine in many aspects. He's a funny kid with interest in lots of things --- time machine, time travels included. His dad, I am funny in my own ways and with my own funny interests --- thought experiments included.

So let's put my son in our English major honors class about 20 years back. 20 years back, my English must have been really poor, my "cultural deficit"(one of our teachers' remark on my lack of knowledge about English songs and movies!) was about 99.99%, listening and speaking may be about 25% and so on.

So, what will be his total scores? I am a bit harsh, I gave him F+p9.

Our teachers, Professor Daw EJ Kangyi,  , Professor U Han Tin, , Professor U Thi Ha, Professor Daw Khin Lay Myint, and other lecturers are all noted for their "generosity of spirit". Still with their personal and professional integrity, they wouldn't give him more than F+p3 or F+p5.

"F+p5" means "Fail but with potential to pass in 5 years' time."

His English is good. But he won't understand why Othello was so prone to jealousy, why Mrs Bennett was so eager to marry off her girls to rich gents, why Milton lost and regained paradise, how so easily Mark Antony could turn a population against Caesar's assassins, why Lamb dreamed of "Dream Children," why langauge policy cannot be decided with Chomsky and Halliday and science alone, and so on.

In techno field too, we have apps to sort one's necktie collection, games where one tries to unroll a toilet roll faster than another player, apps which help you count how many pets you have and so on.

Just last month, we read in Harvard Business Review about Big Bang Disruption. Hey, this is in HBR, written and vetted mostly by business profs.

Are such disruptions so fast and furious?

At least Peter Drucker, Steve Jobs, and Amazon disagree. According to these bumpkins and simpletons and ignoramus, we have about 20 to 30 to wait till such disruptions catch up with us!

So, we are having fun. If we chose, we could even wait. We won't wait though ;-)

Even primary kids can do what we do better than us. To feel it really, take a foreign language class, and see that all native pree-teens and early teens talk far better than you do. But don't stretch your conversational topics beyond Girls Generation, Psy, Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus, Halo, Crysis, Transformers etc. 

Mastery of a language means a lot more than fluency. Are all English men and women and girls and boys Shakespeare or Jane Austen or Arthur Conan Doyle or Bernard Shaw?

You get it now.

So, we are having fun.

We're Having Fun -- Talented Human Resources

We are having fun. Previously we had problems in this area. But once we stopped blaming and instead took responsibility, owned the problem and planted ourselves in the driver's seat, the problem seemed to downsize itself and almost solved itself. Then we started having fun.

Previous Thinking

A PhD in tree studies, a PhD in vine studies, a PhD in flower studies, a PhD in soil studies, a PhD in water studies, a PhD in weather studies, a PhD in sun and wind studies, a PhD in rain studies --- all just to decorate the Headquarter? But before Facebook became Facebook, even if we gave them a tree for free, they may not have room to plant it in their Harvard dorm.

A PhD in food sciences, Five-Star Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean chefs, a PhD in diet studies, a PhD in hygiene studies --- all just for the company canteen? But before Google became Google, the two co-founders may not be able to eat all that these cooks can whip up everyday.

Current Thinking

We may not be able to architect our HQ, but we may be able rent a nice room in a nice neighborhood.

We may not be able to provide international cuisines at our canteen, but we may  be able take buses and cabs to a nice restaurant once in a while.

Honda may now be making Honda Jets but when they started their Engineering Dept was more or less a bicycle shed.

After this pivot in our thinking, we started having fun!

We're Having Fun -- Cruising Levels

We are having fun at cruising altitudes. What we are doing is fun-easy for us and for our customers as well. Join us! We have an exciting journey ahead.

Aviation Analogy

Don't let turbulence freak you out says

Airplanes pass through turbulence all day, every day, and how often have you heard of an airplane actually crashing because of it? At cruising altitude, it just doesn't happen. And in other stages of flight it's, at most, very, very rare. It takes a lot more than bumps along the way to down a plane.

When you're in a turbulence, you get out of it by getting to your cruising altitude. To get there, you may go up or down.

We're now at our realistic, pragmatic altitude, and therefore having fun making meaning.

Investment Analogy

J.P. Morgan’s “The Sleeping Point” says:

A worried investor asked J. P. Morgan this question in the early days of the Depression: “What should I do about my stocks. I can’t sleep nights.”

Morgan replied: “I’d sell down to the sleeping point.”
 

That doesn't mean we are reducing our stake. We have just reduced our unnecessary emotional baggage. As cognitive psychologists like to say, when emotional involvement becomes balanced, when you become relaxed and loose, your cognitive immersion can go up and so can your creativity.

We're now at our realistic, pragmatic "point", and therefore having fun making meaning.

Please join us!

It's fun --- useful meaningful profitable fun!

We're Having Fun --- Meaningfully

We are having fun meaningfully. We are doing meaningful stuffs: meaningful for ourselves and meaningful for our customers. Please join us!

Millions of kids in the developing world (or the so-called emerging markets) do not use English well. They may not need English for literary, cultural, moral/character development purposes since their mother tongues can serve those purposes really well.

But they do need English to learn science, technology, business and to expand their social world.

We help them learn English better, faster, more cheaply --- online.

After English, when we have "earned" the right for expansion, we'll expand to other subjects crucial for their livelihood.

Isn't it noble to share or give away "tickets out of poverty" to these kids?

To those cynical folks, the book Succeeding When You're Supposed to Fail: The 6 Enduring Principles of High Achievement  has confirmed my long-held suspicion that working without a purpose or meaning gives us a higher chance of developing Alzheimer's in our brains when we grow really old.

1. A brain with a meaning,
2. A life with a purpose,
3. A heart with a vision,
4. A spirit with generosity

... that's what we endow our co-workers with at our team!

We're Having Fun In Spite of and Because Of Serious Problems

We are having fun. We are doing fun stuffs: fun for us and fun for our customers. Join us!


You wonder: Why can you have so much fun? Don't you have serious problems? Are you geniuses?

We do and we still have fun. No, we are just plain normal average common folks!

You wonder: How much programming do you need to write a useful software?

Basically, we don't know.

We'd like to pose our own question: How much English do you need to win a war?

We just have a clue. According some published documents, maybe for the Six Day War, the Egyptian command needed about 18 pages for instructions to their forces while the Israeli command needed about 3 pages. Actually, the Israeli command did not give instructions, they just talked about some "intent" which is about 6 or 10 words in English.

We'd like to pose our own question: How much English do you need to win wars?

Maybe more than the Egyptian command and the Israeli command needed together.

We'd like to pose our own question: How much English do you need to write about war?

Sun Tzu wrote on a bamboo scroll as shown below. The English translations, without commentaries, are all very short. So, the answer is, "It cannot be very much."

Conclusion

Deep thoughts or conscientious domain knowledge or customer insights do not need purple prose and complex language to express.

So we're having fun. With honesty, with confidence, with lots of love for our customers!

Education Software, Meaning and Cry Babies

Yesterday, a kid's mother asked me to help his son with Math.

My son solved them all, I solved them all, both in many different ways. ... Then we wonder, "Will the kid get it?"

1. Millions of people can solve such problems, faster and better than our father and son team.
2. And thousands of websites.

None of these people, none of these websites ... become really helpful to this kid. If they are, I'll tell his mother about such sites. Maybe they did not know Gandhi's Lucky Charm.

In one of his last letters, he told Indian politicians to visualize the most pitiful face in India, and to ask themselves how what they are going to do will help that face.

My website, if I do one, will be world best, not because I am clever. Because I am kind and honestly want to help.

Birds never find food in riverbeds. Crocs never find food in mountain tops. It's not about brains, it's about desires.

I desire to help. So I find helpful solutions. I have stumbled upon hundreds of such solutions.

Thus, I cannot and will not relax. I must stay the course; to drive away misery of such nice kids, like Levine, which is his name.

Rip-off and Rebuild Software Development

On bitbucket, google code repository, GitHub, I find a lot of django/GoogleAppEngine-Python codes for almost anything: social network, forum, message board, LMS(learning mgmt system), 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 a very good-natured langauge.

Login, logout from App1, quiz from App2, friendship invite from App3 etc are there for us to mix and match as our kids play with Lego kits.

My trainees have lots of experience for this kind of not-cut-and-paste but rip-off-and-rebuild development.

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

My Visions for Software

I'm referring to IT's Great Power to Spark Changes by Nayan Chanda. Because I have taken time, this post will be very short.

1. Collaboration is getting better. Soon, we will be able to teleport ourselves to any part of the world for a few cents
2. Distribution is getting better. You just write your content/app on your PC, phone, pad, watch, or shirt. Then, just press a button, and the world's population can see/use your stuff in a few seconds in their own devices.
3. Even content may be getting better despite what Rupert Murdoch said here “Devices and platforms are proliferating but this clever technology is merely an empty vessel without any great content.” Since NewCorps alone does not have monopoly on content creation genius, content costs will come down.

Our Opportunities

Imagine you can teleport your son/daughter to any library anywhere in the world, swiftly, safely, and cheaply.

Imagine your kid can use all the library services/apps there for free.

Will that make him/her any wiser, any more employable?

What else is needed?

Startup Wing Chun - Intent

I once read in Wing Chun Compendium that Intent is more important than force, muscle pressure, energy etc. The book explains the concept of intent (in my paraphrase) as

"Just think about it. The hand will hit the target, the foot will raise and kick the target, all by themselves."

Doesn't it sound as magical as the Law of Attraction folks?

The I recalled what I often see in TV documentaries on wild life.

Fish flying from holes to holes in their muddy banks. Fish climbing walls, scaling mountains.

Birds diving deep into waters. Birds swimming across waves.

But fish remain fish and never leave the essence of fish. So do birds.

Apple engineers did study Jelly bean factories. But they are not turning Apple into Food and Beverage business. They were there to study how to make Jelly bean colors of their iMacs enticing.

Adaptability doesn't mean scattering, splintering, dispersing one's time, attention and resources.

E-learning, the Skills Training Angle

I'm summarizing an article in The Straits Times on January 19, 2013: "Teaching Know-How, Vocational Skills Can Trump Varsity Education" by Ayesha Khanna.

Why Vocational Training?

1. New technologies happen, and spawn new industries. e.g Robotics, Big Data
2. Workers need to acquire new skills to "manage robots and analytic products."

How We Can Do Vocational Training

1. Vocational education can provide "critical thinking skills" too.
2. We need to digitize vocational learning.

Possible Digitization Tools

1. demonstration videos
2. interactive games
3. simulations
4. "haptic touch sensors"
5. holographic and gestural interfaces

My Concern 1

Somewhere in some MIT Technology review articles, I've read that humans should specialize in what machines could not do:

1. Taking initiative, this includes entrepreneurship as well
2. Asking/ formulating the questions, defining the problems to solve
3. Programming the machines since they cannot program themselves right now or in near future

My Concern 2

Then, I 'am a bit worried about costs in producing educational games, simulations etc.

Movie-Like Software and Our Chances

People and organisation seem to have an incurable amnesia. One day they say, "Software is king". The next day they say, "Software is commodity". And this pendulum swings go on and on. What is the truth behind this hype and reverse-hype?

Drucker's Predictions

Drucker has famously said that the IT Revolution has not even started yet. He described how printing business gave rise to publishing and other businesses and predicted that IT will give rise to many unforeseen industries.

Drucker also believes that IT will become like movie industry. By extension, it will be like publishing industry too.

Then, I want to ask:

1. Do we, small guys, still have a chance? 
2. Do we get access to technology, market and capital?

1. Can we mount a realistic challenge to Hollywood? e.g. Hong Kong, Bollywood, K Pop, J Pop, etc.
2. Can we pose a challenge to New York Times, Wall Street Journal? 
3. Or do we need something like Chinese Government's multi-billion media initiatives to make any inroads?

Since software is becoming more and more like writing novels and making a movie,

1. Can the next Harry Porter occur in Indonesia? 
2. Can the next Avatar come from Vietnam? 
3. Do we need a Silicon Valley or a Chinese Government to do well in the software market place?

I still believe we have a chance to become major players in software business.

1. Because change is a constant and it is our friend.
2. Or as our friend, Ko Moe Thu suggested, because we create changes that will stack the odds in our favour.

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.

jQuery and Online Learning, e-Learning

While in class, a teacher is watching her students at all critical times such as when she is explaining some key concepts, demonstrating some important procedures, trouble-shooting some common mistakes and so on.

In online learning, what could function as such a teacher's eyes? Some in-text quizzes to check on their grasp? Some webcam or screen-sharing technique?

When a critical mass of students are not paying proper attention to what she's presenting, she has means to direct or redirect their attention.

In online learning, what could work like such a teacher's mouth? Skype? Some audio clip, or alert boxes, or banner scrolls?

How do we answer such typical teacher's concerns as:

What are the students listening?

What are the students hearing?

What are the students imagining?

How can we track the students' eyes, gestures, and thoughts?

Don't think that I'm pointing you to some cutting/bleeding edge AI's. Maybe some cool PHP/Ruby/Python or javascript codes can achieve this with some well-thought out heuristics on your part.

I recommend jQuery & co.

Inventing the Medium and Digital Innovation

In Inventing the Medium, the author states that the digital medium is different from other media in possessing the four affordances:

1. Procedural. The digital medium can execute conditional behaviors whereas other media cannot.
2. Participatory. The digital medium can "script both sides of interaction so that each's actions become meaningful to the other side."
3. Encyclopedic. The digital medium has huge memory storage like an encyclopedia.
4. Spatial. The digital medium's space is virtual and navigable.

She goes on to match various disciplines to each affordance.

1. procedural affordance with Computer Science
2. participatory affordance with HCI(Human Computer Interaction)
3. encyclopedic affordance with Information Science
4. spatial affordance with Visual Design

Then she goes on to map each affordance to a well-known web application or service.

1. procedural affordance with Google
2. participatory affordance with Flickr
3. encyclopedic affordance with Wiki
4. spatial affordance with I-cannot-see-clearly-what

This is impressive, the only trouble is that I don't understand all this well.

For me, the digital medium

1. can execute very complex instructions, steps, decisions etc. My chair, my doormat, even my TV cannot match this, not yet at least. (a) This is the ability to organize, mobilize, rally, orchestrate people at a distance. (b) This is the software agents' ability to decide on their own, or on behalf of other people or systems.(c) This is the robot's ability to sense its environment, to create it sown environment, to make sense of its environment etc.
2. can store lots of data and can search, retrieve, sort, and rearrange this data very well. My dictionaries, my book shelves, my encyclopedias cannot match this right now.
3. can represent space abstractly. My newspapers cannot grow larger and shrink smaller right now. Neither can my libraries, our football fields, or our local bazaars.

Will these 3 points, help me innovate in this medium better? You bet.