28
Jan 10

Intel Youth Rock Stars Summit: The Preblog

I’ll be in Santa Clara later this evening and all day tomorrow for the Intel Youth Rock Stars Summit held at the Intel headquarters. Other bloggers attending include:

Stay tuned as we liveblog throughout the entire event via the Dell Mini netbooks provided by Intel and OgilvyPR. We will be touring Intel’s museum as well as the tera-scale lab, learning about the 2010 core processor family along with new gadgets and tech including the much-gossiped WiDi, and of course, talking to true rockstars, like Mario Paniccia. I know you’re jealous.

That’s Paniccia. [edit] I’m listening to him speak right now…that’s not him.


That’s the cake we had at the Uber10 Awards event a few months ago.


and that’s the video you’ve all seen before.

(now getting ready to rock out.)


21
Jan 10

What’s In New York?

Forgive me for disappearing again; I spent the end of November and all of December in Taipei, Hangzhou, and Shanghai and then last-last weekend in LA and last week in New York and Boston…I know. I know nothing about the tech/startup scene in Taiwan and China (nor could I really sense its presence on either shores…or even in LA), but I did get to meet up with a few friends in New York who are truly making things happen.

Only two days ago, this article on “Why Tumblr is Kicking Posterous’s Ass” became all the rage, as the author’s reason was, “Tumblr is a New York company and Posterous is a Silicon Valley company.” In his other words, “Posterous is an engineered product, while Tumblr is a designed product.” Gobry makes two audacious points:

  1. “New York has truly come of age as a startup hub, with its own “style”, its own way of doing things, its own mindset, which can sometimes — not always, but sometimes — kick Silicon Valley’s ass.”
  2. “For consumer web apps today, design matters more than technology” because “technology is no longer what differentiates most consumer web apps”, it’s design (UI/UX design, social design, business model design).

He goes on to prove why Tumblr is better designed than Posterous.

As someone with a design background and continued interests in design, I find this fascinating, because 1. The Bay Area is also a major design hub home to the world’s best design consultancies like IDEO, Smart Design, Frog Design, Fuse Project, and 2. New York is known for fashion design and media, but…tech? So I did a little research and surprise, surprise, my favorite artsy communities & companies really are based in New York: Behance, Carbonmade, Etsy, Squarespace (to name a few)…and all you thought of besides Tumblr was Vimeo and Foursquare (all equally “cute” and well-designed).

I think I need to move to SoHo.

The main reason for my New York trip was simply to say hi to my friend and attend his startup party for Postabon. Postabon hasn’t really picked up anywhere outside of New York City yet (although you may post your own bons and start a trend!), but it has been featured in PCWorld as one of the “10 Sites and Services That Will Matter in 2010” and on TechRadar as one of the “8 Really Useful Websites You’ve Never Heard of“—yet. Postabon has even been picked up in China and Brazil—impressive for something that has been around for less than a year.

postabonCheck it out and download the iPhone app!

I also got to meet up with another friend who’s launching another startup in TWO WEEKS, SO STAY TUNED. (I’ll probably do a blog feature then.)

For those interested in learning more about New York’s startup scene, subscribe to the Startup Digest! My friend curates for the NYC newsletter and lists out weekly events.


17
Nov 09

My First Impressions of TypePad Micro

As someone who is an avid tweeter and tumblelogger, I’m really into the latest microblogging services. For the record, I once had Pownce, Plurk, and Identi.ca accounts in addition to Twitter, and as much as I love Tumblr, I plan on using Posterous to update Twitter and Facebook for me while I’m in China. I also believe that many bloggers are shifting from traditional blogs to tumblelogs for convenience’s sake.

Today, Six Apart came out with TypePad Micro, a free microblogging service that’s nearly identical to Tumblr, so I figured I’d give it a shot.

Upon login, here’s what the dashboard looks like:
dashboardThere’s a “Quick Compose” for Twitterlike updates, a stream of “Recent Activity” including friend’s upates, important links under “Manage my Blog” in the top right corner with a simple graph of my stats, a bookmarklet, and an extremely long and unmemorable private email address. (I like how I can just email Twitter@Posterous.com…so easy! I don’t want to both copy/pasting/saving c1b3d…@typepad.com.)

I like the “Quick Compose”, I like the “Recent Activity” stream which also shows the number of favorites and comments each post has received, but I don’t like how unobvious the links are under “Manage my Blog”. Perhaps I’m just used to Tumblr’s giant visual icons for updating or perhaps I expected something like Wordpress’s intuitive column, but those links might fare better being up in the bar on top as well (or just as they are when I’m composing, checking overview, comments, etc. — screenshots coming right up).

When I scroll down, there’s a “Question of the Day” that I can answer, an ad, and most unobvious of all…featured bloggers/recommendations.
bottom1After I click “Find out more…” I get:

bottom2which doesn’t even show me any of their content.

I guess since TypePad Micro just launched today, they can’t do much, but it’s defnitely lacking some “social community” aspect to it. Tumblr does a great job of showing popular posts visually along with what’s “on their radar” and worth reading.

When you click on one of the featured bloggers, you end up at that person’s profile, not his/her blog, which is also a little bit different:
profileIt’s very…FriendFeedy.

Now to the features!

composevery traditional textbox/compose screen, no specific photo/audio/video uploading screens like those on Tumblr…you have to insert/embed via the tiny media buttons which auto-format the html. This can get annoying if all I want to post is media and no text. Cool feature: I can add Technorati tags (separate from keywords), although I might just end up copy/pasting from keywords to tags, which can also get annoying after a while. I guess this makes the service feel more…traditional than “micro” and simplified. [edit] I can add photo and video via the “Quick Compose”, but that’s about it.

overview

I really like the built-in analytics, which is what a lot of microblogging platforms don’t provide. I’m so used to using Google Analytics that it surprises me to see stats right away. Tumblr has their “Tumblarity” which only shows my number of posts, followers, likes and reblogs — and that’s about it.

The “posts” and “comments” tabs are very intuitive, just not very…pretty, but that’s not the point. (I could also say, I hate olive green and that completely doesn’t matter.) There are only two themes to choose from right now, but after I upload a banner image, TypePad suggests three new color schemes that all match my upload, which is nice. My past themes are also saved in a list, so I can change back to an older design whenever I want to. (I’ve had problems with saving Tumblr themes as html files and then losing them later.)

settingsUnder settings, there’s built in SEO for entering in meta data, I can enter in my Google Analytics UA identification under “stats”, and I can import a blog from TypePad, Moveable Type, or Wordpress.

Overall, TypePad Micro feels like a more traditional blogging service with newer “micro/social” features, like an activity stream, a reblog button, a favorites button, email updating…with oldschool features like a profile page and one textbox for all. I would still prefer Tumblr and Posterous over TypePad for their simplicity and design aesthetics, but TypePad could potentially become more powerful, since it integrates features I keep my Wordpress for — SEO, analytics, posts & comments management. We’ll see how popular Micro gets within the next few months.

Addendum
Hmm, no meta links! (log in/out, admin, dashboard…) from my blog. There should at least be little buttons like those in Tumblr’s top right corner. I had to click on my missing avatar to get to my profile to get to my dashboard or click on “powered by TypePad”.


10
Nov 09

Spotlight: Outspokes by Arthur Klepchukov and Jerry Cheung

outspokes

What started out as a class project at Cal for Professor Brewer soon turned into reality the summer following graduation. Arthur Klepchukov, one of the seven original projectmates, decided he’d take the project a little further with the help of his good friend, Jerry Cheung.

Arthur and I had met a few times at ST@B mixers, and then I briefly saw him again at the DropBox party two weeks ago, so last week, I decided to interview him regarding his pet project, Outspokes.

Arthur, since you were one of the original team members, how did you guys think of the initial idea and what were some features the team thought of but threw out or modified and built into the final product? What were some of Professor Brewer’s reactions and feedback?

The initial idea was inspired by the freelance web design experience of the original team members on the project. We wanted to create a better way to get feedback on your web site. So, when you have something to show to your client or boss, they can visit the site and easily make comments, right in our widget at the bottom of each page. We thought this was much easier than writing long, ambiguous emails or trying to do a call or meeting.

Our original vision included a separate tool to get feedback on images (like mockups or wireframes) but we dropped that because of time constraints.

At the end of the semester, Professor Brewer encouraged us to add a way to actually edit things on a web page. This became our current designs feature and Brewer was impressed that we got it done in the last 2 weeks.

We became a company this summer because I had Jerry and Sean, great friends who believed in the vision, to help me as soon as I graduated. They idea clicked as soon as I showed them a demo.

Introduce the team! When did Jerry, Sean, and Nikki join in and what were everyone’s contributions? (Sean told me a while back that he was working on a startup with you, but he never told me any details.)

Jerry’s our rockstar engineer (I’m an engineer too but a ninja, not a rockstar). He’s been involved part-time since early summer and came on full-time in mid-September after quitting his job at Coupa.com, just in time for TechCrunch50!

Sean’s done everything from business development to interaction design to dealing with our lawyers to perfecting our deck. He graduated when I did (this May) and came on full-time in early July. Sean’s been great but is unfortunately reducing his involvement because he’s in a different place financially than the rest of us.

I couldn’t have turned a class project into a company without Jerry and Sean.

Nikki just joined as our marketing intern and she’s currently trying to drum up some press for us in other blogs.

And I’ve been here the longest, doing a lot of coding & design as well as anything else that absolutely needs to get done.

Awesome! I see Outspokes as a valuable widget if I’m designing a brand new website with bugs, navigation issues, organizational inefficiencies, but once I’ve finished my last iteration and reached a final design that everyone is satisfied with, I no longer see the need for Outspokes. Because Outspokes charges a monthly fee, do you guys plan to keep the same clients or do you see this as more of a one-time product that people pay for only when they need it?

Great question. Like you noticed, most changes happen when creating a new site (or radically redesigning an old one). So who regularly builds new sites and redesigns old ones? Freelancers and consulting firms, which is exactly why we’re targeting them. We think there are directions our technology can go to help people throughout the entire lifecycle of a web site but right now we’re staying focused on who we know we can help month after month: people building great web sites for others.

The hardest part of every startup is to develop its user base. I understand that Outspokes has presented at SF New Tech and demo’d at TC50 this year. Were you guys able to get any funding and what was the general feedback from the public? How else do you plan to market Outspokes?

We were thrilled to be in the TechCrunch50 DemoPit and on stage at SF New Tech! I’ve never pitched that much in my life. We actually weren’t looking for funding then but we found our first paying customer at TC50 and got some great feedback on where to go next. We learned it definitely wasn’t a product for everyone but Outspokes clicked with people who worked on web sites for others like freelancers and web consulting agencies.

We’re experimenting with a bunch of social media marketing at the moment: Twitter, a Facebook page, and blog posts like this one. Word-of-mouth is more genuine than ads and fits our bootstrapping budget.

So what do you envision for the future of Outspokes, and where would you like to see Outspokes five years from now? Any last comments?

In the immediate future, we’d love to be part of Y Combinator for their Winter 2010 season. We applied and have an interview scheduled, so wish us luck!

Long term, I’d love to wake up one morning knowing that our tool plays an essential role in our customers’ success. I want our tool to be so helpful in their daily workflow that “Outspokes” will be the first word that comes to mind when they start building a new web site. We want to create something so useful that our customers forget how horrible web development collaboration was before Outspokes existed.

Readers, I’m sure you’ll also love to wake up one morning and realize…OUTSPOKES IS GIVING AWAY FREE PREMIUM ACCOUNTS! Outspokes just tweeted a few minutes ago, now it’s your turn to retweet! Here are the details:

Outspokes Tweet-a-palooza: Free Premium Accounts!

Get a $10/mo premium Outspokes account for free through January 2010!

Outspokes is a great new collaboration tool for anyone involved in creating or managing a web site. Whether you’re a freelancer with an outspoken client, a consulting firm dealing with design by committee, or just a remote team all producing the next great web application, Outspokes can help you communicate faster and more clearly.

Just follow @Outspokes and tweet the following:

Excited to get my free premium @Outspokes account, thanks to this tweet!
RT to get yours: http://bit.ly/3RSgrP

Then we’ll message you to confirm your account and get you on the premium plan!

What happens in January? If you love us, please stay on our paid premium plan. Otherwise, we’d be happy to provide you with our current free plan.


8
Nov 09

Mobile Technologies in Asia

Yesterday morning, my dad forwarded my mom a chain-mail with an year-old article on mobile trends, which my mom forwarded to me with this email:

email

  1. If we’re talking about mobile web browsers, Flash doesn’t even work. (Websites for mobile browsers are just stripped down versions of regular websites though.) If we’re talking about mobile apps, I wouldn’t know but I heard the iPhone SDK is fairly easy to learn (for coders, at least). If I wanted to learn how graphics/multimedia worked for apps, I could easily ask one of 10293824 friends who builds iPhone apps for fun.
  2. Still debating; would rather stay in the Bay though. (I don’t think tech anywhere else beats tech here in the Bay Area—err, unless we’re talking about Japan’s mobile technologies. Nothing beats our social media craze and database of iPhone apps though.)

I spent some time translating the outdated article anyway, so here it is:

手機廣告終於起飛,全球成長3倍!
Mobile advertising finally takes off, tripling growth globally!

行銷業過去常常表示,行動電話廣告正在興起,但這次他們可能是對的。行動廣告業龍頭AdMob表示,過去12個月裡,它們在全球發送的廣告成長達3倍。主要原因在於,很多行動廣告的阻礙都消失了。
Marketers in the past constantly say that mobile advertising is on the rise, but they might be right this time. Mobile advertising giant, AdMob, has tripled their company globally these past twelve months, since many roadblocks for mobile advertising have disappeared.

硬體是其中之一。許多年來,手機上網非常麻煩,螢幕太小且操作不易。但新一代的智慧電話,例如iPhone、Google的G1和黑莓機已經解決了這個問題,它們擁有夠大的觸碰式螢幕,可以完整的呈現網頁和廣告。
Hardware is only one aspect. For many years, it was really difficult to go online via a cell phone, because screens were too small and interfaces were difficult to use. Now, those problems no longer exist; we have a new generation of smart phones such as the iPhone, Google’s G1, and Blackberry phones, which have large enough touch screens to display webpages and advertisements effectively.

網路速度提升,費率下降也有幫助。下載廣告的時間長,而且還得付費,很難讓人對廣告裡的產品留下好印象。速度提升,加上「上到飽」的付費方案,使行動服務和應用更受歡迎,也更能靠廣告資金來營運。
Internet speeds have increased while fees have decreased, which also helps. [In the past], downloading ads took a while and you had to pay a fee, which left users a bad impression of what was actually advertised. With faster [internet] speed and “pay as you go” plans, mobile services and applications are becoming more popular, so companies can continue to operate with advertising revenue.

最重要因素,也許是行銷業者開始找出何種廣告方式最適合手機。新成立的公司Amobee,讓客戶可以在手機遊戲等其他軟體中放入廣告。
The most important factor is, perhaps the sales industry is also looking for the most suitable mobile advertising platforms out there. The new startup, Amobee, lets clients [advertisers] display ads in the middle of mobile games and other software.

另一個方式,則是提供服務來吸引注意。行動業者Blyk,也對16到24歲的用戶提供每個月217封免費訊息和43分鐘的通話,條件則是每天收6封廣告。方案在英國推出1年後,用戶達20萬人,是Blyk目標的兩倍。
Another method is to offer services to attract attention. Mobile company, Blyk, provides 16-24 year-olds 217 free [characters for?] text messages and 43 free minutes every month, the catch being that users receive 6 ads per day. After using this strategy for a year in the UK, the company reached 200k users, which was twice their original goal.

還有一個方式,就是整合行動服務和真實世界裡的事件。行動行銷仲介Phonevally,在今年夏天推出了一項服務,讓朋友間可以在他們支持的足球隊得分時,進行電話會議,這項服務則是由運動用品商Puma贊助。
There’s yet another method, which is to combine mobile services with realtime events. Mobile marketing company, Phonevally (pretty sure they meant Phonevalley…), came out with a new service this summer, which lets friends conference call when their favorite soccer team scores. This service is sponsored by the sports brand, Puma.

行動廣告和社交網站一樣,有風險但也充滿機會。風險在於它會出現在非常私人的情境之中,可能會讓人有被侵犯的感覺,但這也是它吸引廣告商的地方──前提是廣告商必須展現同理心。
Mobile advertising is like social networking, it’s dangerous yet full of opportunities. The risk lies in that they [ads] appear in very personal settings [on a user's personal phone], which could make the user feel violated, but this also attracts the advertising market—the prerequisite is that these ad companies must be sensitive to people’s needs.

(original source here)

I remember having a discussion about Asian mobile technologies in my Haas marketing class a while ago. The lure is, China has 1.3 billion people, 20% of the world’s population. (New York City has what, 8 million people? Shanghai has 20 million.) One out of every five people is Chinese—yet not every Chinese person can afford his/her own personal computer. However, many Chinese do carry around cellphones, and that’s why everyone wants to tap the Chinese mobile industry. (I was in Taiwan all summer, and my phone bill was something like $8/month with some first-time registration discount. Still ridiculously cheap for a basic plan with no internet. Taiwan’s standard of living is also much higher than that of China’s.)

Apparently, mobile advertising is completely insane in Asia. Our professor said that in Japan, once you walked near a restaurant, you’d receive a coupon via SMS right away. (That’s obviously a complete invasion of one’s privacy. Imagine walking along a strip mall, lol. And you thought voluntarily notifying others of your location on foursquare was bad.) On the other hand, Japan also has some pretty cool mobile technologies, such as purchasing vending machine drinks via one’s phone—we’re finally catching up with the Starbucks Card Mobile app, sort of. Here, we just have innocuous ads embedded in free apps, which we can get rid of if we buy the premium versions of the apps—not bad, not invasive, not even that noticeable. In Taiwan, I constantly received ads via texts at odd hours, which got pretty annoying after just a week. Blatant text spamming would never fly in the US—but I guess it’s lucrative in Asia (although do consider the last line in that article: be sensitive!).

When in doubt, think like Americans (heh). Smartphones are inevitable. How many desktop users do you know who still don’t have laptops by now? None? How many people will be without smartphones five? ten? years from now? None? If mobile advertising is getting out of hand, “hide” the ads in applications like we do and stop spamming people with texts! The iPhone didn’t seem that popular in Taiwan while I was there (it also costs 3x more…); but then again, Taiwanese people aren’t very Apple-friendly in general and youngsters aren’t as obsessed with tweeting and facebooking 24/7. However, my boss had some HTC smartphone, which seemed equally powerful. Taiwan is only a tiny island; China, on the other hand, is not. China has produced clones like iiPhones, iPhons, TPhones, liPhones, EPhones, and many more…they know what’s up. Asians really like Sony Ericsson, Nokia, HTC and Samsung smartphones, in my opinion. (I traveled to six major Asian cities this summer, although I’m sure a simple Google search would reveal some actual stats. Hmm, CNET Asia says people really like the Sony Aino.)

Since my parents have apparently invested 15k in some Taiwanese mobile tech company, I might as well pimp the company, right?! From my limited understanding, 行動 104 creates software applications for Microsoft’s Windows Mobile, Nokia’s S60 platform, and Sony Ericsson’s (and Motorola’s?) UIQ platform. According to them, this accounts for 65% of the Taiwanese mobile market. (This makes sense since I said the iPhone wasn’t popular in Taiwan.) Some of their paid apps include GPS maps to train timetables to zodiac constellations fortunetellers…while free apps include sudoku, iChing divination, and the Bible…I have no clue.

My only major concern is, why are they focusing on Windows Mobile?! (Read their blog.) Perhaps the market is different in Taiwan, but usually the US market is a pretty good indicator for the rest of the world (particularly since Microsoft is an American company…). Microsoft’s mobile marketshare keeps dropping (here are some pie-charts). Palm doesn’t like Windows Mobile anymore and neither does Acer. Good luck. Project Pink sounds ambitious, but I haven’t heard much about its promise—a comeback seems unlikely, in my opinion.

I guess if HTC smartphones remain popular in Asia, Windows Mobile will be okay, but HTC is also warming up to Google’s Android. The T-Mobile G1 (HTC Dream) uses Android, obviously. If HTC decides to shift all of their future products to Android only, I think Windows Mobile (and this company my parents just invested in) will be screwed, lol. The brand-new Droid just came out two days ago, and it’s already Dave Winer’s favorite phone. Uh-oh. (Honestly, no one should compete with Google anymore. The end.)

(I missed the bottom line…the bottom line is, Taiwan is a small island, China is not! …so figure out what the Chinese like. They seem to know how to copy Americans very well. Americans love Microsoft…but not IE, not Outlook, and not Windows Mobile. Americans love Google products though. If the Android OS really is like old-school Microsoft according to Scobleizer行動 104 should shift towards the Android without too much difficulty.)

My last 2 cents, Taiwanese companies should also consider building Facebook apps, because I see that catching on even faster than smartphones. In the entire Living 3.0 office, my boss was the only other person with a smartphone. However, I convinced everyone else to create a Facebook account, and somehow, they all got addicted to ELEX’s 開心農場 on their own. (The game is a ripoff of Zynga’s FarmVille, the #1 game on Facebook right now.) The younger Taiwanese consumers probably can’t all afford smartphones just yet, but they sure play a lot of social games. Taiwanese people are also extremely viral. One of my past colleagues “liked” someone’s note, so it appeared in my NewsFeed. The person who posted the note had only 320 Facebook friends, but that one note on a divorce story(?!) received 114,484 likes and 29,641 comments (within one month). WHAT THE HECK?! (I’m sure Zuckerberg’s own Facebook doesn’t even get that much attention!) I thought some spammer (or multiple spammers) had gone through and ruined her note, but no, they are all authentic comments. (I’d hate to receive nearly 1,000 email notifications per day (42 per hour), LOL.)

As if that weren’t convincing enough, I am Facebook friends with four uncles, one aunt, even one great-aunt—all residing in Taiwan. (What, your parents are on Facebook? Well, so are mine, but so are my Taiwanese relatives—some twice-removed.)

Addendum
Apparently, reports of Window’s Mobile’s death are greatly exaggerated and I also failed to catch one MAJOR DETAIL, HTC is Taiwanese, which means they will always remain popular in Taiwan (which also explains why I thought I saw so many HTC phones in Taiwan, LOL). D’oh.

The author of the crazy popular Facebook note is “anonymous”.