Young Steve Jobs's Business Acumen

Wozniak (Apple co-founder) wanted to give his design away so that other people could build their own personal computer.

Jobs knew people were either too busy or not smart enough to do so. He knew they would pay for convenience.

And Paul Terrell, the owner of a computer store, also knew that. That's Steve Jobs's genius and savvy.

How to Inspire Poor Treps, and How to Inspire Poor Kids to Take up Programming

If you are curious and ambitious, you will find opportunities that fit your budget no matter how small that budget is.






See more such insights at   candopi.com 

Foresight ala Jeff Walker

Elsewhere I've read that at extreme high speed, race car drivers "drive for the daylight," ( meaning they get their orientation from the far horizon ) and "drive through their windshields."

Here's a similar idea by Jeff Walker in "Launch," page: 151.

... when you're on a bike hurtling down a steep mountain single track, you dont' want to look at the trail directly in front of your wheel. That's a recipe for disaster. It means you'll always be reacting at the last second. Sooner or later you'll come to an obstacle where you won't be able to react quickly enough.

Therefore, the author advises: extend your vision as far out as possible. Look beyond any corner/bend. Look through or above trees that may be blocking your view.

Jeck Welch, of GE, once remarked that all successful CEO's have sort of a sixth sense that help them "see what is around the corner."

All great brains think alike? ;-)

Vision Flanking

Are you feeling a lot of pain?

Often I instinctively use what I call "vision flanking." "Flanking" is a military term, meaning avoiding the other side and going around it. In vision flanking, you stop seeing the other side, and they do not even belong in your sphere of existence.

For example, in 20 hours after I got the transfer order to move from Yangon to Maw La Myaing, the English Department or the English Major not longer exists in my Universe. The Dept/Major can no longer help me or harm me, it felt very cool! It still feels cool.

Yes, I still love it and its people, I still owe lots of gratitude, I still keep fond memories. Still we live in different Universes.

For example, some online programmers' groups in Singapore were full of hostile souls. It was hard for me to participate there. Their method seemed to be to subscribe to Google Alert, then post those links back to their Groups. No serious, substantial discussions or collaborations were possible, at least during my time there.

And the programmers still owe me something for my "serious" posts ;-) I can patiently wait for the pay back ;-)

For a non-attacking type, it is lucky that I was born with this "vision flanking." I'll flank to better universes whenever I was made to feel whatever pain.

Role of IT and Software in Education, Learning and Training

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

This is the voice of the customer.

Things we now have but  didn't a few years ago:

1.  iPad, iPhone, Facebook, Bing. 
2. 3GL, 4GL programming languages such as Python, Ruby, Lua, Erlang, Scala etc. 
3. multi-core, virtualizations, ec2, data centers, etc either. 

Technologies -- hardware as well as software -- are making headway by leaps and bounds.

But what about the applications, the products? Why are they lagging behind so pathetically?

Let's narrow our interest to just learning applications. Are they making a real difference to real people's lives? Have they tackled the fundamental desires, whims, needs, wants, concerns, worries, anxieties, fears, insecurities of the potential users of such applications and services?

Fundamental Questions

1. How can such an application help companies achieve and retain their competitiveness, save them time, effort and money?
2. How can such an application help teachers increase their effectiveness, save them time and effort?
3. How can such a service help trainers increase their productivity?
4. How can such a product help students and learners raise and keep high scores?
5. How can such an application help employees and professionals solve their problems in a better way?

Fundamental Issues

What does a student expects from her/his education?

What does a trainee wants from her/his training?

This has not changed much throughout our history e.g. Read Ma`ha`ba´ra`ta, or Journey to the West, or Arabian Nights.

Industrial Revolution liberated us from the limitations of our physique and we thus no longer marvel at derricks and cranes moving heavy containers.

Isn't I.T. Revolution supposed to release us from the limitations of our minds and memories, or at least enhance our learning, thinking, reasoning and problem-solving abilities?

The revolution is not over, it's just unfinished.

If you want to carry on with this revolution, please join us.

Vision for Our Business

In the middle of the 1990s, I started my IT career with the following visions. At that time, I was a greenhorn, a noobi, a rookie in IT matters.

1. Extract information and create knowledge from unstructured data.
2. Represent human beings in computer/virtual worlds, all in terms of BDI (beliefs, desires, intentions), model/world-views, and approaches."

Now they look too academic, too broad, too ambitious, too out of touch with real lives, real users, real problems, and real money.

It's as if I am setting up myself and my team for failure, by over-extending too far.

Can We Set Up Ourselves For Success?

1. We can divide each vision to dozens of small products, services or applications. Such a web application does not need many man-months, and such resources are not beyond our means.
2. Each such application must solve some real problems for some real users. For instance, blogging, tweeting, searching etc have proved useful to real lives. We are not doing such services here, I show them as examples only.
3. If we can go viral, we may not need a large budget for marketing and promoting our apps.
4. How many applications do we need to sacrifice, let others copy, before we make money, get big enough to fight back?

We are getting there.