Stone Soup of an Online Business

What is business Blog? Usually, it refers to the second website after the main official website of a business. Perhaps, Iit is a hard decision to replace official website with a Blog. Therefore, setting the business Blog sounds like more tolerate and ‘unofficial’ alternative.

Just look at Stemlife & Stemlife Blog or Malaysia Airlines and its Malaysia Airlines Blog, this growing trend means you will see more business owner adding Blog to their main menu in the website.

Google treat everyone as personal. That is why you are not asked to enter your company information. See, one can work for more than one company, or even own a few companies. How many times you are asked to answer your income range or your age or your area of interest in those drop down forms? It is, in another words of saying - your age and income will never change. Or, what is the point of asking?

Well, behind business Blog, I’m sure you can find someone, or a group of people who is managing it. They are real people and the business Blog is actually personal to them, so as the official website :)

Pei Lee visited my office last week, to check out how was Agnes and Eunice doing, both of them are in their 3-months internship training. We have a great talk. I shared with her about my plan to setup an incubator for young entrepreneurs. And, come to know that Pei Lee has published a paper related to the technopreneurship programs of MMU.

She is kind enough to send me a copy of the paper. Include here is the abstract of the paper. If you are looking for the fulltext paper, please check with Pei Lee.

Multimedia University’s experience in fostering and supporting undergraduate student technopreneurship programs in a triple helix model (Abstract)

The purpose of this paper is to examine the first three dimensions of the triple helix model. The focus of this paper is to study and develop a model for the role and functions performed by a university to nurture undergraduate student technopreneur development.

This study provides a comprehensive understanding of the process of the technopreneurship program undertaken by Multimedia University (MMU) in 1999-2005. The analysis is based on the self-administered questionnaires, qualitative interviews, internal documents, web sites and direct observation. Electronic questionnaires are e-mailed to 24 founders of start-ups to explore their views on the entrepreneurial support structures in MMU.

The success of MMU in undertaking the technopreneurship programs is the result of the organization structure, management’s policies and priorities which are concentrated on creating and sustaining the necessary support structures to foster undergraduate student entrepreneurial activities.

A very interesting and useful information and impartial for new university planning to establish a culture of new enterprise creation within a university. It should be noted that though this is a study of various aspects of the success of MMU in undertaking technopreneurship programs, however, this will have an implication of how triple helix strategic model can be implemented in China.

Many universities have focused more on linkages of entrepreneurship and commercial-valued research involving academic staff and postgraduate students rather than undergraduate student entrepreneurship. It is believed that MMU is one of the few entrepreneurial universities which focuses on undergraduate students, who, from enrollment to graduation, are offered constant encouragement, training and support for their efforts to conceive and start up business enterprises. This paper is intended to share the experiences of MMU in fostering and supporting undergraduate student technopreneurship programs in a triple helix model. This paper is intended to share the experiences of MMU in fostering and supporting undergraduate student technopreneurship programs in a triple helix model with readers in China and out of China who have interest on the effective implementation of the university - government - industry strategic partnership.

Source: Teh Pei-Lee and Yong Chen-Chen (2008), “Multimedia University’s experience in fostering and supporting undergraduate student technopreneurship programs in a triple helix model”, Journal of Technology Management in China, Vol. 3 No. 1, 2008, pp. 94-108.

You need nothing but Passion and a Blog :)

I must admit, we don’t have golden finger - but just some down-to-earth experience which we have went through and which we think you might be interested.

You’ve chosen the off-the-beaten path. You’ve thousand of decisions to make from now on, from choosing a name for your Blog, to how to generate your first quotation. How important is your namecard design and is it worth to spend your bullet banging on billboard? How about business model and sustaining your business in the coming days…

Yes, my partner Yowchuan and I, wish to have a cuppa with you, sit down and listen to you. The reason for us to do so, because we believe through sharing, we learn - we learn from you too!

My busineses friends always told me that the people working for them are their greatest assets. If you do a search, I bet you can find lot of companies here are including this in their corporate mission too. But how many of them are practicing this, in heart?

IKEA know how to make good use of free empty advertising space, and the real way of valuing their team members!

Most of you could have signed up with a web hosting package and install the WordPress yourself. Updating on new WordPress release can be something a nice experience which I would like to do it myself as well.

Yet, businesses who want to focus on their business may not mind to pay few hundred dollars to get someone or their web hosting company to do this for them. Therefore, signing up a WordPress hosting that promise timely upgrade on new release of WordPress is important!

Multiple Blogs in single installation

Steve Jobs said he never listens to people. People would have said they want a faster horse (Henry Ford). Companies do it more as gestures, more than mining people for their ideas.

Lot of time, people don’t know what they want until you have get put the final product in front of them! If Akio Morita listen to their customers, we will never get the Walkman today.

Why? Steve and Akio Morita doesn’t spend time to study their users, because they themselves are already the best user experience expert!

When asked why iTunes works? Steve explained that illegal download through is free but taking some time to find the right song. iTunes, provides a better User Experience and you are assured with song quality and reliability. We can’t talk someone to stop downloading songs illegally, but we can give you Carrot. “Our carrot is, better User Experience… and that will cost you USD1 only,” said Steve.

Recently, we are revamping our travel guidebook. It is not rocket science or any marketing research on age-group of our travelers, or any ‘convenient’ information to fill in the guidebook - it is User Experience, to spent less than 3USD before the trip.

“I want a ‘car’!,” said Pin

Some other reading on User Experience:
How Not to Receive Feedback from Your Customer
Upload your picture to complete order?
What is the word?

My partner, Yowchuan was one of the few entrepreneurs invited to MMU’s Centre for Commercialization and Technopreneur Development (CCTD) 8 years ago. Through it was merely a 300 sqf of space, but was already big enough for our dream to wonder far. Having the first office there, we never look back again.

If I’m not wrong, there are few incubators in Malaysia, check out the full list of MSC Malaysia status incubators. Looking back, some incubators are just like another MSC, both work like The Real Estate Corridor.

Not only this, some trying to confuse our technopreneur to make them believe that all big dream need some big funding. Yet, at many times, they can’t even tell you if your business model is right? You spent lot of your time attending entrepreneur-related talk and meet up with those ’successful’ businessman who shows you where they are now, but not how to get there!

Working with my interns over the years, I believe we have talented graduates for sure. They are lacking of confident, instead of funding and cubicle space. Talking about this, schools should actually allow them to pursue their dream as early as during their final year project stage, than working on those impractical project to look good in GPA/CPA. If they start earlier, they save more time and prepare themselves better before graduating!

What entrepreneurs want?

The physical space of where they work is never bigger than their dream. When you’re the only one to go off the beaten road after graduating, you need more than the incubator to realize your dream!

Long Way Home of a Web Developer
Decide Your Business Model Today!
Classified Companies
Google’s Web Design Company

To have a recurring revenue for a business is kinda important. Same goes to empty vases in your office. We are lucky enough to have Ammie to refill it for us just when our first two roses quit.

Who says flower arrangement is easy? There are few things to make this works (ignore the girl in the picture). Ammie added a lily and match it with two beautiful roses. Some addictive (Flower food?) was added to make them stay alert for few more days in your office.

8 roses with lilies in vase. This was placed in the meeting room - order one for your office today! It makes some changes, without pain! :)

5 Reasons Why You Should Send Flowers in a Vase
What is Guardian Petals?

I used to think of how those amazing company still indulged themselves in their own sweet dream of having many years of existence, in decades. It doesn’t take Friendster or WordPress long to become successful. If you need a more solid example, check out Google.

I was talking to one of the biggest property developer in Malaysia recently, over the revamp of their website. This is the second revamp after 4 years time, and I expect them to have clearer understanding on the importance of what to achieve now. Change is pain, and when every web developers walk in and tell you the same thing about mockup, fancy flash animation, they have finally chosen to measure something unmeasurable - branding.

They have chosen Leo Burnett, one of the famous creative company. I’m not sure how much opportunity cost will be lost to this property developer after visiting Leo Burnett’s website. My mouse turned into a big pencil, to match with their tag line ‘All big ideas come out from big pencil’. What has this to do with me? The website is in ALL-Flash version. The navigation does not impress me at all (perhaps, to the group’s decision maker, yes).

Creative agencies are in the market for many years, long before any web design company. In those days, TV, Radio and other non-online media are the main advertising channel. Over the years, creative agencies are moving into the online channel and this directly put themselves as the role of web developers, without knowing what and how website can really help - another example of Meatball Sundae.

It is not that you are big and the golden words ’starting since 18xx’..’ that makes you outstanding. It is about change!

Nokia wants to transform itself into a next-generation entertainment company. Last August, Nokia, the world’s largest cellphone maker, created Ovi, an Internet service and online music store. Its intent, analysts say, is to compete directly against Apple.

This is unfamiliar territory for Nokia, which got its start in the mid-1800s as a paper maker. But as Mr. Ojanpera explained, companies like his have no choice. “Change is painful, but you have to figure this out in order to be successful,” said Mr. Ojanpera, who is based in White Plains. “The question is, are you willing to play by the new rules?”

Further Reading: Criteria for selecting good web developer

If outsourcing is subcontracting a process, ‘noisesourching’ view the process as noise and can eventually affecting the subcontractors in long term. Outsourcing will die one day!

(I’ve talked to another lawyer today, it seems life of a lawyer is always busy. A lawyer works like a web designer. It’s a project after project lifestyles. Who says lawyer can’t change their business model and apply their experience, skills and knowledge into something that can benefit them in a recurring way, without much noise.)

Just like Michelin (yes, the famous tyre manufacturer) with its annual guide books ‘The Michelin Guide‘, Mercedes-Benz also has their tradition of presenting ten handpicked tracks by international newcomers as a free download compilation called Mixed Tape.

What is Mixed Tape to do with Automotive giant? Just like every successful online business has their story, I believe Mixed Tape is the story of offline business… :)

What’s next? I asked myself after we switch to 4 day work week last week.

My Glande Latte reminds me something. It’s possible to move an office to Starbucks? Occupying a corner with glass partition, from walk-in customer. This fixed and dedicated location with private LAN/WIFI - sounds like a reality show :)

“Starbucks in Malaysia is jointly owned by Starbucks Coffee International and Berjaya Group Berhad. The first Starbucks retail store in Malaysia was opened in KL Plaza since 1998. Today, we have 109 stores through out Malaysia.”

If this is possible, what would be the values of story to Starbucks and that company?

Just received a quick email from Karen, inviting us to check out the pictures taken during her recent trip to Cameron Highland. Cosmic Favorite, I never get it right to be frank, but I can never forget those amazing pictures in it. Must ask Karen why use this name next time? :)

I love the way how Karen compose each picture. I been to some of the places visited by Karen, you will be surprised how great photographer see from different angles. I particularly like those Black and White pictures!

When talk about Eco-Friendly Floral Boutique, you can always check out Ammie’s LeFiores online florist for various tips and reason why roses in vase express more than just love!

I got myself two roses and a small beautiful vase from IKEA today, thinking of brighten no-one’s day, but to make the meeting room a nicer place than just discussion. The simple two roses arrangement is sure to leave a lasting impression.

Imported roses from China. Cost RM2 each. Certainly, they are not the best roses, compared to those super-grade-A roses from Ammie last two weeks.

The vase is small, and you need one or two roses.

The vase cost RM3. Suits small office table. I’m sure you would love to have one on your desk. See, vase bouquet means you can share it and look at it while you work, I bet you will like it far more than a hand bouquet!

Arrange the roses in this simple arrangement, it helps you to mark the cutting point.

Mark the cutting point with maker pen. If you can skip this if you are a Pro :)

Cut the unwanted stern off

Remove guard petals.

Fill in the water, about half of the vase.

I wasn’t able to sort out few things lately! Yet, I felt they are some formulas hidden inside this three facts, just that I couldn’t able to link them out.

Working for others

Our graduates love this for sure, climbing corporate ladder. The higher you’re, the lower risk you can take. Is this comfort zone a permanent one, I doubt!

Yet, if not this, what else? It’s a highway. You are told it is fastest, closest and the most comfortable one. Except one thing, the high price to pay. Your parents, lecturers, buddies and our society shape this road and you are just following, what’s wrong with it?

Graduate, find a good job, get your first pay check, buy your first car and follow by a house. Pay your loans and when you’ve little money in your bank - almost the time to get married. Sounds familiar? Indeed, it is just another NKVE.

Start your own business - Type A

I always believe everyone has their own dream. I interviewed some, digging from their memory deep inside and yes - from cycling to setting up bakery. Many of these dreams are buried, less important than getting higher GPA and busy fighting to secure the best job in the most ‘well-known’ company with highest salary.

Only few of them, make the hard decision to roam the trunk road than going straight to the highway. It isn’t easy at all. You have spent your crucial 3 or 4 years in University, learning how to complete your final year project without a business model, without knowing how to market it, managing people, applying your MSC…

What’s Type A? Type A entrepreneurs, through not working for others, but decide to venture into business model that providing customized service, such as web design. They accumulate skills and experience, but sadly to say, this is a dead-end business model after 3 to 5 years. You find yourself getting busier, having lot of noise, probably a bigger team but also mean you have to make sure projects keep coming in every month, in time!

Start your own business - Type B

Type B entrepreneurs decide to start their own project. This can be, for example an online florist selling just roses. It starts small and no one sure how far this can go. This single project get 100% attention from the founder.

Put it this way, Type A’s business is to setup and take care of a garden for someone. It is an example of outsource. Type A, at the same time, taking care of more other gardens.

Type B, setup his own garden and plant just one tree in the garden. It is nothing but the tree. All focus, resources, time are investing into it.

Let’s fast forward to 5 years later. All trees in both garden yield fruits, but who owns it? In fact, the owner of the garden managed by Type A, are type B too. Type B has more time to think to grow his business while Type A busy managing garden after garden.

By the way, do you know who are those working in the garden, climbing up to the tree? You’re right, those in ‘Working-for-others’ with good climbing skills after years of training :)

If you are graduating soon, can I talk to you?

I was talking to my friend who worked in a Classified company. His company is into producing an inche thick printed classified and distributed free to businesses. The revenue model is simple, to get more companies to advertise, the better. You can choose from point form listing to full-page color advertisement, as long as you can pay for it.

We both agreed that this industries won’t last long. My friend estimating it would last for another 10 years and will start to go down. Why?

1. Customers are getting smarter now. See, you can’t pay Google for a clean high listing, but you can do it in Classified. Google use several method to find out the most useful and popular website and list them high, in a more technical term, PageRank. Yet, Classified companies spent more time to recruit more sales rep to sell more ads than focusing in improving their Classified.

2. It wasn’t hany. Printed classifed is thick and heavy. It requires you to go through the whole Klang Valley to find one Plumber who is near your house. Search engines solved this problem, presenting you with a weight-less solution, as long as you are connected. You get information you need, most targetted and updated.

3. There are too many medias now. Google will not be as successful if they start their company as one that sell and allow people to subscribe to their pay per click model. See, you need a story, a story that is truly benefiting your visitors.

At least there are few things Classified companies can do to improve this

Colored and box listing are free for those who deserve it, those with lot of good testimonials, those offering responsible customer support service. Companies who advertised should somehow find a way to prove their are qualified for a listing of their rank. In fact, all listing should be free!

Then, how to keep this Classified company survive if not selling advertisement? I don’t know actually, it can be many ways. Think about how to make your product useful to your customers and the readers of the Classified. Who knows, one day, the revenue could be from the selling of the Classified? Subscription fee? Adsense?

If you’re sure what will happen in the 10 years time, why not change today? Afraid of short-term pains?

Think about this:

Group A: Hair stylists, web developers, lawyers, doctors, accountants, teacher, contractor, media planner, photographer, graphic designer…

(Group A’s customers want a customize solution. The solution is unique to each of them. Skill of Group A improved but limited to the person who is offering the service. The value of that person who offer the solution increases)

Group B: Online florist, broadband service provider, medical supplier, Google, Jobstreet, housing developers, scientist…

(Group B come out with their solution first. They customers made their decision to choose or reject the solution. The solution itself get improved and the values of the solution increases.)

Decide today! You don’t have many 5 or 10 years to change your business model!

Share with us your experience, post it here

1. Agreement should always be the very first thing before any project starts. Most disputes happen after a project is generating revenue.

2. No verbal agreement. When putting it to words, you’ll find it more serious. I’d agree that it was not easy to put everything into writing, especially things like expectation. There must be certain kind of measurement. If there is no, how would you be able to value the performance of someone? The harder it is, the more important an agreement to be signed.

3. Agreement must be offer-to-offer. This means, it supposes to sound ‘you are getting xxx% of share for xxx amount of work done’ or ‘I will work xxx amount of work to get xxx% of share’. I found this missing in most of Chinaman’s ageement, it’s more like a offer-to-accept or accept-to-offer. I blame ‘儒家思想‘ on this matter!

Looking back - 10 years, from one project to another, we have completed countless project for our customers, big and small. I’m glad we did. Through I found them to certain extend becoming noise, but noise is good.

We was once occupied by web design projects. We spent most of our time solving problems for our customers. It keeps us really busy. To cope with it, we get more staff. And when we realize we have more mouth to feed every month, we struggle to get more projects. This can be done only if your team never fall sick, your sales persons close deal timely, your designer produce the same good quality on every project, you have same less-fussy customers every time…

While your customers happily passing all the noises to you in their so-called outsource process, you are scratching your head to manage unnecessary noise over and over. You engage more staff than automating the process, you use your time to help your customers grow than your own.

Not only this, you find the red ocean spreading across in front of you. Web design firms fighting each other from getting drown. You try to find out why customers pay little on their website, when you think you should deserve more? You’re no longer satisfied been paid of your time spent, instead of values created.

Never underestimate your values. We can create wonders if we start something today, together.

I was skeptical at first especially after we sent an email informing all our existing customers about decision we have made last week.

When asked why? This is definitely not another be-the-first kind of Malaysia Boleh campaign. It’s also not the Meatball Sundae like what Seth’s said in this book.

The change just happened. I can remember this suggestion was raised last year. We find no solid answers to how are we going to handle calls coming in on Friday, how our team members are able to check their email when they are not in the office, how to access the file servers without a VPN - We are not ready!

Again, change is pain but we are not afraid of it. Yet, to take every measure to make sure all our customers & team members will be benefited from this process.

I must admit that I’m the fan of National Geographic magazine. My earlier NI collection mainly on those featuring animals. Well, everything changed when I am getting older (older, serious…), I’d love to read more on places and people with different cultures. It was no more Savana lion’s picture with teeth dig into a wild buffalo’s back that attracted me now :)

I usually bought those outdated NI magazines, most of them dated 1980 - 2000, cost about RM8 each. I would consider them my little weekend retreat, besides cycling! Then it comes, last weekend. I was in Cineleisure looking for a gift for Shirley, our Langkawi writer. You won’t believe the number of NI magazines spread in 4 10-metre long table, full of them. They are really old magaizines, anything between 192x to 193x. You name it!

I picked one - an oldest I can find there! It wasn’t RM8 each, but RM80!

One of the reason I have decided to buy one, is to find out how advertisement looks like in those days. Here, some of the interesting advertisement I wish to share,

In the dead of night? Who would has think of that this is an advertisment from Bell Company. Yes, the one who invented Telephone. I couldn’t find any telephone numbers in all advertisements, perhaps this explains telephone still remains as for emergency use only.

New joys for Radio - What happen if they have an IPOP?

Colgate, still a dental cream

Sedan for $1,075??

Camera?

Modern bathroon has a shower?

To answer your question, yes, there are people who speak Latin, but we are few, possibly numbering in the low thousands. Many more know it as a written language, a few hundred thousand fluent readers worldwide. Millions of current and former students, again worldwide. All of us speak another language as our mother tongue. It’s a fabulous equalizer that way: no one is speaking their mother tongue at a spoken Latin conference.

Spanish on the other hand is one of the most spoken languages on Earth. Hundreds of millions of native speakers in dozens of countries. Even more as a second language. The confusion between Latin and Spanish arises because the part of the Americas where Spanish is spoken is usually called Latin America.

Thanks to Peter Sipes. In his recent talk to our team member Eunice, we have finally got a clearer view of how to make our website even more localize for all.

“Changing the water for the roses is becoming the very first thing we wanted to do before we start our daily morning meeting. Never we know this little change bring so much difference!” Said Pin

“Also, thanks Ammie for the lovely roses. They really light up our day!” Said Wanching

5 Reasons you should order one for your office:
- 8 freshly choosen grade A roses by Le Fiores florist
- Beautiful IKEA vase carefully wrapped in box
- Eco friendly, ready to put into vase
- Free delivery within Klang Valley
- Quick design guide from Ammie

To order, email ammie@lefiores.com with your company name, address and contact numbers. The flowers will be delivered to you in less than 3 working days and please write your check payable to Chua Sok Wei with amount RM80. Check will be collected on delivery. No-question-asked refund policy. Please download the invoice here.

In sweden, online buyers are so used to getting the product first before paying. Well, most of their e-commerce websites support two payment options, Faktura and credit card. Faktura remains as the preferred one where the owners value the return rights of their customer more than anything. Invoices are sent together with the products. Buyers will have to just pay the invoice through their local bank account.

Another thing I might it interesting is the introduction of additional fee for a greener-packaging method. Yes, paying extra to have the website owner wrap your product in a more eco-friendly way. It costs 10 kr extra, but makes huge difference. So, opt in for MILJO next time :)

Thanks to Jian for sharing this. Jian just returned from Sweden, he was sent there to do research on how Nordic countries run their online business sustainable environmental…

I found this interesting post from SlowCatchUpKuan in her post on this small pitiful little stray dog. Read more.

I found this particularly interesting. Is that chooing priority ‘Low’ also means I will get my responce slower? If everyone goes for priority ‘High’, then why bother to ask?

This reminds me the one of a song from Shakira, Illegal - “question my own questions on and on..”

It takes you 2-minutes to listen to a real customer about how should the form looks like. I bet almost all customers will prefer a simple one than above.

1. Instruction kills creativity, makes people think less. The person who built this form is probably just want to get work done than how this form can help those who use it.

2. Change is pain. The original paper-based form could look exactly like this online form. Why bother to change it?

3. Users are passive. The form is viewed by countless visitors, yet no change has been done. Design of a building is done first than its construction. When the building is done, it is often too late to change, and suggestions are limited to what is already there.

You are in a book business for 30 years. Story of Amazon.com motivates you to extend your business online. You start to build a website and sell your books online. Your marketing manager busy adopting new marketing ideas including Blog, email newsletter, pay-per-click, etc.

But after a while, you start to think why the result was not as expected. Your cost acquiring new visitors is high, the Blog is not active, no one seems to use the tell-a-friend box in your website…

But, someone next door - without any experience in selling books, started an online book store. They have some funny story and people are spreading the news for them, their CEO can be reached anytime by an email, the way they reply the customer support email is fun.

Start an online business, never extend it from a conventional one!

With Internet flatten the world, you can now take an order from your website without meeting your customer. They are required to fill in a boring and long order form (all the way from first name to where they stay).

You have them all kept in a customer database. A literate society comes to believe that everything can be explained in words. What you’ve just seen is an example of how great a fallacy that is.

I bet the name of customer means nothing to you, especially if you have thousand of orders a day. They are just another must-have record in your customer database, because all online forms are designed the same!

I’m surprised! Most of us only add a friend from Meetic when a picture was attached with a profile, same goes to facebook and frienster! Same goes to the fact that you will never fall in love with someone by just their name!

I wish I don’t have to fill in anything while making an order. Instead, just to upload my picture, why not? At least, I don’t become ‘another record’ in the database, but becoming a friend to the online store owner.

A customer database made up of faces, indexed by nick name! I would love to have this!

When it comes to annual event, what is the best domain to be used? By including the year 2008 after the domain (yes, someone may already registered wcit.com), it is therefore a must to register a new name wcit2009 next year. New domain means you have to start all over again and build your ranking in search engine again! To solve this, if you are using a Blog, you can create categories like 2007, 2008, 2009, etc and assign your post respectively.

An unfair post had recently got us an interview with The Star writer to interview us - about our experience working with our internship students.

What is the most memorable experience?

A nice framed picture, from Henny, Jingkai and Alex!

Do you feel that you are sacrificing a lot when training the students?

We may be spending about couple hours for their training, but they are spending their eight hours here, finding a temporarily stay for just three months, get here by bus.. you realize it is unfair if they can’t learn anything here.

Say you buy a camera with 1 year warranty. The serial number doesn’t hold the date of your actual purchase. That is why, you are asked to send back the Warranty card, which most of us never do.

It is unfair to say that manufacturer do not wish to get the actual purchase date. If they do, they won’t include the Postal-paid thingy on the card. So, where goes wrong?

No one say you must follow the long-winded template of warranty-card design. Make the change!

We’re here! we’re here!

It is until Jo-jo make the final addtion of his voice to save “Whoville” city on a tiny planet, as small as a dusk. If you have not watched this movie, check this out.

This credit card payment page was taken from a famous online hotel booking website. I wish to collect 100 suggestion of improvements about this page (Yes, only this page!). I will send this post to the CEO of this website when the challenge met! I will compile your suggestion and come out with one page mock and included here.

Check this WWF wallpaper to light up your desktop!

What happen if your fridge is not working? You turn off the power, remove everything and send it to repair. You got it back, working perfectly after two days.

You will notice one thing, your fridge is cleaner now, with all rubbish clear and things are in order! I bet you won’t clean it if the fridge doens’t go wrong.

How to apply this to online business?

Create problem virtually! Assumming your customer complaint at you, someone hacking into your website, broken link, page whacked, etc - all these bring positive result!

Yahoo suspend your Yahoo Mail account if you don’t login for long. While, Gmail - reward you to stay longer and login more frequent by counting and increase your email storage while you are logging in!

Can you tell me what is the word of the picture above?

I just had a very interesting talk to three students (Chekey, Chailee and Ryanne), having their internship training here. Well, they are asked to think of the main page interface for one of the new system we want to develop soon. Through they are new, but I would say that they perform really very well in this task!

When come to interface, it is not best programmer or best designer can do the best job. It is one who can think from many different angles, making less choice for your visitors. Best possible, a Physiologist!

A lot of time, the intuitiveness of a system is achieved by understanding how human reacts and interpretes a design, I found this very interesting! Bill gates invented the best intuitive interface at his time, he deserves what he get today!

Post your answer as comment below

“All Marketers are Liars” - Seth Godin speaks at Google. Seth’s interesting presentation will tell you why technology won’t help, and why my parents will not come back bothering me if I send them to Google than Yahoo! :)

It would be the best if every party in the loop go beyond their own scope!

What is noise? When you have hundred of products but only one which is selling well, the rest are noise. When you want to indulge yourself to do something, any interruption is considering noise, as well!

Outsourcing seems to be one of the way to cut off noise. Sony or IKEA will not be of what they are today if they choose not to outsource. Raw materials, production and logistics are examples of noise.

Noise can be passing around. Consumers buy rice from supermarkets, supermakets from distributors, distributors tfrom rice mill owners, and farmers lastly. Each level trying to get rid of noise.

What is the effect of noise? Farmers spent most of their time working in the paddy field to produce rice. In this case, farmers are bearing the noise from consumers, under the hot sun. The digested noise are now turning into experience of how to grow paddy!

Skill is a result of noise!

If Google creates the most amazing website, why not they start their web design business?

When we work for someone, we get paid and at the same time we get the chance to acquire new skills. For example, a web designer creates an online store for someone and get paid for the time spent and the quality of work. Such relationship provides a very good platform for someone to learn.

The owner of the online store will not share the revenue with you. Everyday, values is built into the project and this has nothing to do with you (The very most you get a portfolio). The web designer goes project after project, having bad time during year end when all companies had finished their budget, etc.

This does not happen to only individual, but businesses as well. Most successful companies change their business direction to have recurring sales than one-off profit. All these involve applying their skills in different ways.

Web designers venture into their own online business; contractors builld their own housing project; programmer develop their own software for sale, etc. Remember, the moment you start, you are accumulating your values into somewhere. When you wake up tomorrow, it still still with you, Through you have much more to worry such as operation & marketing.

If you are Google now, would you want to start your web design business?

When you are in another country, and the hard drive of the file server in your company crashed. Working remotely comes to a real test, where:

1. Restoration must be done quickly! Getting ready with second hard drive, moving backup files into the new server, re-install the Linux platform…

2. Tools to get you connected to your office, both voice and video. We use Skype. Broadband connection, power supply, cup of coffee - Starbucks, if only you can be there in time!

3. A team of people back in the office to work as your hands. This also means the whole set of infra for both voice and video must also be steadily available back in your office. I am lucky to have both, infra and a very capable team!

Beginning 19th March 2008, Cradle will now provide conditional grants of up to RM150,000 in the pre-seed level to groups of innovative individuals with great technology-oriented ideas, subject to terms and conditions.

The new amount has been tripled because the categories of funded items using the grant money have been expanded to include market research and access, IP (Intellectual Property) search and registration, product testing and certification, and product packaging on top of the presently funded categories of development of prototypes, proofs of concept and business plans.

A resource centre for innovative ideas, Cradle provides funding, assistance and guidance to help technology entrepreneurs turn their ideas into reality.

In order to pay via Paypal, buyers are required to sign-up for a Paypal account before they can submit the payment. In fact, the Paypal registration process is not as straight forward as it claims. Most of the time, seller will receive questions/complaints from buyer as following.

What is a Paypal Expended Number Program?

Why am I required to enter my bank details?

Why was I been charged for USD1? Is this a hidden charges from you?

First of all, it is absolutely Free for buyer to signup for Paypal account.

To prevent fraud cases, Paypal will require buyers to verify their account via the Expanded Use Program. To prove the ownership of the credit card/bank account, Paypal will charge/deposit a small amount of money to buyers’ credit card/bank that they’ve registered with Paypal. Buyers will have to check their credit card statement/bank statement to retrieve a secret code from that transaction and enter back to Paypal system for verification purpose.

As an Unverified member of PayPal, buyers’ payments are subject to a Sending Limit. By becoming Verified, buyers will be able to send unlimited funds with their PayPal account.

Paypal will refund money back to buyers’ account after they verifiy with Paypal.

The domain pizza.com was acquired by an annonymous bidder for 2.6 million dollars after 14 years. The owner, Chris Clark bought the name pizza.com in 1994, never thought that this can fetch to such a higher price, after he saw an opportunity of the acquisition for vodka.com!

Driving Visitors

If a website is new, without much traffic and returning visitors - a ‘good’ website should be simple and take less time to develop. More time should be spent on the marketing, to drive more visitors to your website.

Increase Conversion

Once a website is getting enough traffic (in our terms, above 500 visitors a day), you should have enough feedback to build a website closer to what your visitors want. In this case, ‘good’ websites are those with initutive layout, content what your visitors like, etc! In one word, higher conversion rate!

If you have any end-of-life or spoilt PC, you can send it to this drop-off centre near Taman Mayang, Petaling Jaya. They pay cash (RM1 - RM10) for your recyclables.

Pls contact Micol 016-2828366 or visit website hebatpages.com. Or, you can send your contact info by fax to them at 03-78806252 to request pickup.

Maintaining more than one Blog can be time consuming, endless patches, new WordPress upgrade (to enjoy the new features in the recent launch of WordPress 2.5), fine-tuning can keep you really busy!

We have decided to use single WordPress installation for all Blogs. Well, we explore WordPress Mu but it is just way too bulky and complicated. WP Mu is like a layer of control panel in front of WP core engine. Yet, due to this fact, it is hard to configure and having problem catching up with latest WP releases.

You can try the Multiblogs solution to work this out. This single WP installation works for everyone by loading a different config file. As usual, these are few issues to be taken note on:

1) Unicode_start, this is one way to show Unicode characters in your Linux Terminal. This is interesting, we thot Unicode filename in Linux was not well supported, looks we are wrong!

2) Symlink, this allows creation of folder structure in our approach to archieve something like /lang/country/destination. The command ln -s . Make sure this command is run in the folder where you are creating the symlink.

3) The clean vuser function in mb-functions.php in multiblogs seems do not support non-ascii language well. It replaces all non-ascii to _, creating problem in the database Prefix name.

Was working on our travel guide business and Weikiat told me a about this… Apparently, the main page of WikiTravel Chinese version was hacked.

My friend asked me, “how to make a website appears on the top of search engines?”

The very first thing I can answer to her is, there is no quick for of doing this! Well, More than 50% of site visitors are directed from search engines.

Passive
Passive in a way, this is nothing new but a lot of passion needed, and often can and must be done on your end. There are unlimited kind of keywords which people used to find your website. In the simplest way, keywords are used by search engines to match content on your website. Now, do you think using keyword ‘石头汤’ can find my Blog, no way! Simply because I don’t have the Chinese translation. What about ‘石头羹’, ‘石頭湯’?

Active
Google sorts website using their patent-pending-never-disclose methodology. One of them, the PageRank, remain mistery but you can always interprete it to ‘the more links pointing to your website, the more popular your website is, eventually you deserve a higher seat’. Question, how to many many website pointing to you? This again, nothing new, not rocket science but a long term effort of making this to happen.

This first-class seat is not available for quick booking, you can only make your way to it!

Buying electronic components online is not something new. RS Malaysia, one of the pioneer in Malaysia who setup their first online store many years ago, are improving from time to time. I am happy to see that as they gradually gather users feedback and improve the website.

Just one thing, I received their email newsletter today. Sadly, I can’t find any link from the email to their website. In Analytics, we refer clicks from email newsletter as Referral. With the link properly implemented, it can give us a better ideas of how effective is this channel in bringing traffic to your site.

It’s been said many times and I shall say this again:

Conversion rate is inversely related to the clicks required to get things done.

Though simplicity is not a necessity, it’s definitely a virtue when attention span is getting shorter every second.

Show your customers you are sincere in helping them out.

Another giant online deal was struck between DoubleClick and Google.

Via Reuters

SAN FRANCISCO, April 13 (Reuters) - Google Inc. said on Friday it would pay $3.1 billion for Web ad supplier DoubleClick Inc., its biggest acquisition, accelerating a push into the graphic ad market led by Yahoo Inc.

The juggernaut of Web search-based advertising beat out suitors Microsoft Corp. (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) and Yahoo in the final stages, sources familiar with the negotiations said. Time Warner Inc.’s AOL online unit had earlier considered a bid.

The agreed price represents a huge payday for San Francisco private equity firm Hellman & Friedman, DoubleClick’s majority owner, which 21 months ago paid $335 million for the assets acquired by Google, a source familiar with the deals said.

With this new acquisition, Google will further strenghten their leadership role in the world of web advertising.

Here’s the official press release from Google…

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., April 13, 2007 - Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) announced today a definitive agreement to acquire DoubleClick Inc., a global leader in digital marketing technology and services, for $3.1 billion in cash from San Francisco-based private equity firm Hellman & Friedman along with JMI Equity and management. The acquisition will combine DoubleClick’s expertise in ad management technology for media buyers and sellers with Google’s leading advertising platform and publisher monetization services.

The combination of Google and DoubleClick will offer superior tools for targeting, serving and analyzing online ads of all types, significantly benefiting customers and consumers:

* For users, the combined company will deliver an improved experience on the web, by increasing the relevancy and the quality of the ads they see.
* For online publishers, the combination provides access to new advertisers, which creates a powerful opportunity to monetize their inventory more efficiently.
* For agencies and advertisers, Google and DoubleClick will provide an easy and efficient way to manage both search and display ads in one place. They will be able to optimize their ad spending across different online media using a common set of metrics.

“It has been our vision to make Internet advertising better - less intrusive, more effective, and more useful. Together with DoubleClick, Google will make the Internet more efficient for end users, advertisers, and publishers,” said Sergey Brin, Google’s Co-Founder and President, Technology.

“DoubleClick’s technology is widely adopted by leading advertisers, publishers and agencies, and the combination of the two companies will accelerate the adoption of Google’s innovative advances in display advertising,” said Eric Schmidt, Chief Executive Officer of Google.

“This transaction will strengthen our advertising network by expanding our access to publisher inventory and enabling us to serve the needs of a broader set of advertisers and ad agencies,” said Tim Armstrong, Google’s President, Advertising and Commerce, North America.

“Google is the absolute perfect partner for us,” said David Rosenblatt, Chief Executive Officer of DoubleClick. “Combining DoubleClick’s cutting edge digital solutions for both media buyers and sellers with Google’s scale and innovative resources will bring tremendous value to both our employees and clients.”

“When we acquired DoubleClick in July 2005, we saw an opportunity to partner with a great management team to further enhance the company’s capabilities and growth trajectory,” said Philip Hammarskjold, Managing Director of Hellman & Friedman. “This transaction affirms the successful transformation of DoubleClick, positions the firm for the future, and greatly benefits our investors.”

Both companies have approved the transaction, which is subject to customary closing conditions, and is expected to close by the end of the year.

Of course, not everyone is happy with what Google is doing with the customer profiles they will be taking over from DoubleClick.

Via Washingtonpost.com

“Google will operate with virtually no legal obligation to ensure the privacy, security and accuracy of the personal data that it collects. At this time, there is simply no consumer privacy issue more pressing for the commission to consider than Google’s plan to combine the search histories and Web site visit records of Internet users,” the complaint says.

In 1999, DoubleClick drew criticism when it announced a plan to merge an offline database of consumer records with its online user-history database. The ensuing uproar and a 2000 FTC complaint filed by EPIC led DoubleClick to cancel the plan, but since then, the online ad industry has become more sophisticated.

The consumer groups also want the FTC to order DoubleClick and Google to destroy cookies that can identify users and to order Google to give people access to the personally identifiable data the company keeps on them.

Of course, with Yahoo and Microsoft eyeing for web dominance, this new acquisition might just land Google with lots of anti-trust lawsuits…

Finally, VPN for our office was in place. This means we are another step closer to working from office. VPN allows me to access to our LAN remotely!

We use OpenVPN. It comes with VPN server & client together. VPN server was installed in our Linux box inside LAN. Since most of the clients connecting to the VPN server are notebooks running Win XP, therefore will use Windows GUI version of OpenVPN.

If you are interested to setup one, you can refer to this HOWTO, which I feel it is most helpful! Few things, remember to allow port forwarding in your router, and also make sure no firewall blocking the client and server.

Including multiple machines on the server side
http://openvpn.net/archive/openvpn-users/2006-02/msg00252.html