Innovative Idea 2.0

Best Firefox Yet - Download Firefox 3

2008-06-18T12:26:00.005+08:00

As previously mention on creating a world record for the most downloaded software in 1 day from Firefox, now Mozilla has released Firefox 3.o. Go download it and set the world record.

Learn more on - Firefox head up against the I.E.

Want to know more about new features of firefox ? Go dria.org- Field Guide to Firefox 3.

Shifting to new Marketing Paradigm

2008-06-12T22:50:00.002+08:00

Image via WikipediaIn older days, if you ask the people what is marketing? and they will tell you about how about advertisement, branding, voucher, attracting visitor using mass media, and in conclusion: "Let people know about your offer and how good is your product and services" and the keyword here is "how good is your product".

That means, telling people "as compare to my competitor, we have these advantages and lower price", "our product has this, this and this features which others don't", "we are giving away 50% discount during this New Year, come and grab it". This will be the typical marketing words.

Now, the consumer or buyer are more aware of these, the effectiveness of this marketing style has been decrease for the following reasons.

Consumer is more intelligent and choosy now.
Too many product or services is using the same techniques, so yours don't stand out from the crowd.

If the marketing campaign is good, then your sales effort will be decrease in order to achieve sales target. Marketing is the amplifier to sales effort.

If your marketing effectiveness score 5, and your sales effort is 10, then your sales revenue will be 5x10 = 50.
Thus, by increasing your marketing effectiveness to 10, and maintain the sales effort on 10, your sales revenue will increase to 10x10=100.

So, let's introduce two new marketing concepts: Permission Marketing & Educational Marketing.

Permission Marketing
Definition: Buyer is giving you the permission to market to them. (Previously it was push marketing where you push your TV ads to them, you push your insurance policy to them, you push the radio ads to them.)
Application: Google AdWords. Google Adwords is using permission marketing to the core. Let's say you are looking for a new house in Malaysia, and you typed in house in Malaysia. Not only you get the natural search result from Google, but you also get relevant ads from them. When you found the ads is interesting and applicable to you, and thus clicked the ads. This means that you are giving permission to the advertiser to market to you. They didn't find you, you found them, and you are ready to accept their offers.

Educational Marketing
Definition: Giving your potential valuable information by educating them about your business. (Previously it was hard selling, you hard sell your advantages and features, you hard sell with your low price.. ect)
Application: Instead of telling them your benefits, you teach them how to choose a good product, how to use your product to achieve something or how your services works in term of details. For example, some food advertiser are teaching how to live a healthy life, by balancing your work, exercise and healthy food, and of course they are using their own product in this. Educational marketing is very powerful because consumer are more interested in viewing it because it gave them valuable information, and they tends to like your product more and believe that it can help them.

More example:

If you are selling English learning course, give them some free tools or tips that teach them how to write a good letter.
If you are selling cars, give them tips on how to save fuel or maintain their car performance for free.
If you are selling camera, teach them how to snap a great photo, design a free mini course for them.

Why McDonalds is in property business?

2008-06-11T00:05:00.004+08:00

Think about this, business model is more important than product or services you sell. Why? Because business model is where you differentiate from the crowd.

A very simple example, what is McDonald selling ? Answer: Burger. So, is there anybody else selling burger? Yes, of course. So, McDonald is no different the the stall on the street selling burger if we look at the product they sell.

So, what is the business model of McDonald? Answer: Franchise. Yeah, you get it. This is how McDonald differentiate themselves from the crowd of selling burger.

Furthermore, many may not notice that McDonald is also in the property business. Look at their location, you will notice that most of the McDonald is located at the premium location, the heart of the city, shopping complex.. etc. They are able to buy the location then rent the location to the franchise owner with the condition that McDonald is allow to increase the rental every few years. Fantastic business model!

Another interesting example, electronics devices manufacturer in China is able to sell their product to other country at their cost price. Some even lower than their cost price!! You heard it right. So, are they losing money? No, they are earning, because china have 17% tax rebate on the export product. When the manufacturer export the product, they are actually earning from the rebate. This is an innovative business model !!

More example to think about:

Dell - selling computer. Business model = allow the customer to built their own PC in their own room.
Amazon - selling books (and other stuff). Business model = online bookstore with neutral review.

Do you know how other business model operate? Please comment.

Business Model for Open Source

2008-06-10T00:56:00.003+08:00

There are a lot of people wondering how open souce technology make money, as they are giving out their most valuable technology to other people. Here are some business model for open source:

Support - This is normally how people think open source business is all about. Enterprise user need proffesional support, if not they will not use the technology, they can't afford to have breakdown and can't fix it. Microsoft (proprietary technology) offer support, so does Java.
Customization of software - Another form of open source business model is to allow the developer to build customization of the software on top of open source technology. Some user will outsource their development, and it's (normally) cheaper to use open source technology. So, these people that work with open source technology will offer their expertise to build the customized software. Example, LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL andPHP) is used for a lot of web application development.
Vertical component - Some open source software suite is quite general, it is not suitable for some industry unless there are some plugin or module built speciafically for them. For example, CRM is the general software suite, so the developer can build a specific module for a construction company and sell the solution to these companies.
Selling accessories/hardware - There are open source company that offer their sofware as open source and selling the hardware that support it. For example, Digium has created Asterisk (open source PBX system), and sell the hardware.
Built then sell it - You built an open source technology with the help of community and attract the big boys to buy it. Yahoo bought Zimbra for $350 millions, Sun acquire MySQL for $1 billion, Citrix bought XenSource for %500 millions. You can see that are a lot of money involed in open source technology.
Get Hired - If you work as open source developer, your chance of getting hired is very high as you has proven yourself.
Training - Provide necessary training on how to use or develop open source technology. Some people rather pay for training than use expensive technology and pay for training too. ;-)

There and many more ways you can make money from open source technology. However, I don't think proprietary technology will fade away, there are still a lot of people prefer to use proprietary technology because of the completeness of support, documentation, and ease to use, mainly due to open source is updated more often and this also means that are more version to support. Both of them will coexist for a long time and have their own supporters.

I am sure there more ways to make money from open source, please leave your comment.

How to have power without wire? Wireless Power

2008-06-08T22:07:00.006+08:00

A lot of things has gone wireless.

We have phone going wireless - which is mobile phone nowadays.
We have internet service going wireless - and becomes WIFI, 3G, WiMax now.
We have speaker going wireless - Wireless Headphone.
We have game console going wireless - Wii.
We have scanner going wireless - RFID.
We have memory card going wireless - Eye-Fi.
We even have BOOKS going wireless !! - Amazon Kindle.

Now can we have power going wireless? Imagine if we can have power without wire.

Your computer table doesn't need to have clutter of wire.
You no need to install extension power plug anywhere in your house.
You no need to plug in your mobile phone to recharge battery, you can put anywhere and it can be recharged once enter the wireless power zone.
Your laptop is not going to run out of power since it can recharge when enter the wireless power zone.

Isn't it perfect? I believe it will not be long before we can have wireless power. Look at the following diagram. The power is transfered wirelessly and go through a wall to the other side to light up a bulb. Explanation as below.

Resonant copper coil attached to frequency converter and plugged into outlet
Wall outlet
Obstacle
Resonant copper coil attached to light bulb

Scientist is experimenting with magnetic resonance coupling to power a 60-watt light bulb. When the frequency is tuned to the same frequency, two 60-centimeter copper coils can transmit electricity over a distance of two meters, through the air and around an obstacle. Though the efficiency is only around 50% now, but they are looking to boost the efficiency up to 70% ~ 80%.

Wireless power zone:

Some applications available - wireless desktop charger:

More information at
How Stuff Works: How wireless power works
Wikipedia: Wireless Power

Why friendster is not as popular as facebook or myspace?

2008-06-07T10:00:00.000+08:00

I wonder why? Because friendster is one of the earliest social networking site. However, in most of the countries, it's not as popular as the other like facebook and myspace.

Although friendster is still the most popular social networking site in Malaysia but I can see a lot of my friends in Malaysia starting to use facebook. I can see facebook taking over in near time.

I've found this during the search for the answer, it is taken from Crunch base.

Founded in 2002, Friendster is one of the web’s older social networking services. Adults, 18 and up can join and connect with friends, family, school, groups, activities and interests. The site currently has over 50 million users.

It’s rumored that Google offered $30M to buy Friendster in 2003 (when the company looked very promising), but was turned down. Things have somewhat changed since then though. Friendster failed to become what MySpace and Facebook are today largely because of its inability to scale with the growing demand. Since 2004, Friendster has gone through five different CEOs.

Friendster was the 2007 recipient of the Webware 100 Award for best community site. The company has also been granted a number of social networking focused patents.

Inability to scale with the growing demand (means that their server or architecture can't afford to serve their growing user) is the main reason according to CrunchBase.

Lesson that I've learn: First mover advantages is not always there, technology have to keep on updating and they need to listen to market trends. New comer can overcome the first player easily by taking advantages of their inability.

Twitter is also having the same problem right now (a lot of down time due to scalability), will Twitter able to overcome this and not become the second friendster?

Who are you in the world of internet?

2008-06-07T02:47:00.006+08:00

So, I did search for myself. I search for tzewei on Google, and found myself ranked no 1. Yeah!! Thanks to MyBlogLog, it's the my profile page on MyBlogLog.

Here is the screen shots of the search result - "tzewei"

So how about Yahoo? I performed the same search and get this.
It's ranked #3 on the first page, but under my blogger's profile. Not bad though.

It's just something fun to check your popularity on the web/internet. Hopefully one day I would have got my own wikipedia profile written like one of the blogger, politician in Malaysia - Jeff Ooi and many more.

Good software is less feature

2008-06-04T23:10:00.006+08:00

If you are software developer, programmer please listen to this guy - David Heinemeier Hansson the creator of Ruby on Rails. If you often frustrated by your user complaint - "The people writing software just don't know what is the real world, they are living in their own software world !!" , and your user keep on adding features, changing the way it behave, how it looks.. etc. and they wanted the software to run or perform like how their mind is thinking, David will let you know what is a great software, he has his own unique point of view and I agree with him - totally.

These are taken from David Heinemeier Hansson interview in the recent railsconf 2008.

That's a good question, I think great software is often less software. I think too much software has too many fatures. I think that more people should be trying to write less. They should be trying to write less feature, the feature should be less complex and I think that enable to do what users want. They may say they wants lots of features, that' a trick. The trick is that what people tell you is not necessarily what they need. So, you need to be able to distinguish between obeying and acting on user behalf. I think people write great software acting on user behalf instead of just obeying their commands.

Technology in Plain English

2008-06-03T16:04:00.007+08:00

I love these video, they explain technology or term in very interesting way (plain english?). I think every grandfather and grandmother will understand technology after watching this. :-P These videos are produced by commoncraft.com

If you wonder, what is social media? How to use social media or social networking? Here you go: Social Media in Plain English.

If you want to know what is rss? What I can do with rss? How can I use rss? Here you go: RSS in plain english.

Even wonder what is wiki all about? How wiki is created? What you can do with wiki? Here it is: wiki in plain english.

Don't know what is twitter? Why is everybody using twitter now? What is the different between twitter and blog? Here you go: Twitter in plain english.

What is blog? What is the definition of blog? Why blog is a personal news station? Here: Blog in Plain English.

How to organize your bookmark? Why use bookmarking can be social? What is the benefit of social bookmarking? How to start your social bookmarking? Social Bookmarking in Plain English

Social Networking in Plain English

Have you ever lost your digital photo when your computer crash? How online photo sharing can help this? How to easily organize your photo? Why online photo sharing has become the social media? Go go go: Online Photo Sharing in Plain English

What is podcasting? Why iPod owner love podcasting? Why podcasting is the personal radio station with on demand features? Find out here: Podcasting in Plain English

What is Google docs? Why use Google docs? How to collaborate documents on the new? Yeah! Go here: Google docs in Plain English

Why you need PR Web to market your new ideas or product? How to make use of PR Web to increase visibility of your news? Why PR Web? Here: PR Web in Plain English

Last but not least. Our own Malaysian mobile operator Maxis advertisements on flickr mobile in plain english. Enjoy!

A million hits within 1 month blogging!!

2008-05-31T03:15:00.003+08:00

Who is the super blogger that can achieve one million hits within one month of blogging and less than 20 post?

This is a blogger dream. As a blogger we always wanted a lot of traffic, so how does this blogger did that? This is simply amazing!!

Check it out.

Phone from Google. An iPhone killer?

2008-05-31T00:56:00.005+08:00

Just in case you haven't realize that Google has been rolling out the android platform for mobile phone sometimes back. Now you can more appreciate after you watch the demo video. The demonstration was features in the recent Google I/O.

The android platform is an open source OS for mobile phone and is supported by a lot of major player in the industry -Open Handset Alliance. It has a lot of built in function and SDK to help you develop the applications. Java developer, you are allow to built your own handphone applications.

Can't wait for the phone to hit the market. I am sure it will be a frenzy and a great competitor to iPhone. You will know why after you watch it. A must watch video !!!

Be part of the Guinness world record! Set a Firefox World Record!

2008-05-30T14:32:00.003+08:00

Firefox 3 is going to release soon. They wanted to set a world record on the most downloaded in 24 hours. So, if you are firefox fanatic like me. Go and support firefox 3!!

The are currently 714 (and counting) people from Malaysia already pledge for it. They will send you an email to let you know when is the download date.

I have a high hope on the new release, and tested the beta version already, it's great. Looking forward to the day! Go go go!

How to subscribe and read news from your homepage by using rss?

2008-05-29T11:50:00.001+08:00

Sometimes ago, I was aware of RSS or Atom, I know it is kind of a news feed and a lot of people is using it to read news. However, I wasn't sure how to use it to my convenience. Normally I will browse to the news website or blog to read the news.

But there is another easier way, where you can have all the news from different source combine into 1 page.

Here is the step-by-step guide:

Key in your google account username and passoword.

Then, it will lead to iGoogle page. Here is the screen shot of my iGoogle homepage.

Click to add a new tab by following steps below. Check the box "I'm feeling lucky. Automatically add stuff based on the tab name." if you want Google to search for you all the news related to your tab name.

Go to your favourite blog or news station. In this case, I use Tun Mahathir Blog as an example. Log in to www.chedet.com.

Scroll down to the page and look for the atom/rss to subsribe.

It will lead you to this page, select Google from the drop down list and click subsribe now.

Select "Add to Google homepage" in this case.

Here is the result that we get. Click on the '+' sign to expand the news.

If you want to subscribe to my blog, click on the "subscribe in reader" as below

Good luck and have fun.

Photoshop on the web? Splashup

2008-05-27T23:09:00.004+08:00

Ever wanted to edit your image when you are using a public computer where your favorite photo editing software is not around?

Have a look on Splashup. Splashup offer an online photo editing tools that mimic photoshop in terms of interface, but of course it offers much less than the powerful photoshop.

You don't need registration to test out the application, just click on the "Jump right In" image on the home page. I expected the Splashup application to take a longer time to load, but it does load quite fast to my surprise.

Here are my result using Splashup and webcam image capture capability offer by them.

Other than the photo editing capabilities, such as basic tools, layering, filter, crop, resize.. etc. Splashup also offer various ways to save your image. Including saving to:

Your own hard drive
Picasa
Flickr
Facebook

The experience of using it is quite fun, I almost forgot that I am using a web application, I feel like I am using a desktop application. The down side of this is it doesn't support right click and keyboard shortcut, but what can you ask more. This can be very useful, especially when I'm on travel and need to upload and edit some photo.

Give it a try!

How to print large image to several paper: DIY your own poster

2008-05-26T23:54:00.006+08:00

Let's say you have a large photo and would want to print it to several paper and combine as a poster like this one.

You can go to this website, The Sect of Homokaasu. They offer two choices for you to do that.

Online services - You can upload your photo and they will split your file into several pdf, you can then print out to A4 paper can combine it like the poster above. You need to have Macromedia Flash plugin installed.
Software - They offer a software which is similar to the online services. You can always do it without the internet connection, and of course faster. .NET Framework 1.1 is required.

More importantly, it's FREE !!!

Use your imagination, a lot of creative project has been posted on their website. Here are some example:

Malaysian Own Chat Widget/Shoutbox !!

2008-05-25T23:18:00.002+08:00

I've just installed a shoutbox on my blog. It's called shoutmix, and more importantly it's a Award Winning Malaysian made widget.

I've been selecting among few chat widget to install, namely meebo, cbox, shoutmix, plugoo, zoho chat.

cbox - this is the first one that I found, the website looks too simple to me. So I proceed to find the next alternative.
plugoo - I thinks it looks promising, because it can link to my IM, I installed with linked to my gtalk. But after I tested, it's more a IM than shoutbox, I wanted the message to left on my blog instead.
zoho chat - So, I move on to the next this one. Anyway, I don't like it because it needs visitor to put in their name first before posting and looking at previous post. I prefer those allow direct put in name and chat.
meebo & shoutmix - meebo and shoutmix is the last two options for me. I choose shoutmix mainly because it's made by Malaysian, but it does offer all the features that I need. Simple interface, shoutbox (that stored previous message), fast loading time.

So, please leave your message there, I will definitely reply you.

Which website is the hottest among Malaysian?

2008-05-24T23:35:00.001+08:00

I love to explore what is the hottest website for each country. This give me an insight of how the trends is moving. I found a lot of website that I never been and a lot of new and innovative ideas from there.

Here are the top 5 website visited by Malaysian.

Which social networking website are you using? Here are the ranking in Malaysia.

Friendster (rank: 3)
Myspace (rank: 9)
Facebook (rank: 11)

The most preferred news station in Malaysia?

The star online (rank: 16)
Utusan online (rank: 19)
Malaysiakini.com (rank: 21)

Blogging tools/website:

Blogger.com (rank: 6)
Wordpress.com (rank: 15)
Livejournal (rank: 37)

Top Malaysia's banking services, Public Bank, Hong Leong Bank, AmBank.. etc is not in the top 100 list:

Maybank2u.com (rank: 14)
Cimbclicks.com.my (rank: 62)

Sports: I guess favorite sports in Malaysia must be English Premier League. Look at the website they went:

LiveScore (rank: 50)
PremierLeague.com (rank: 75)
MUFC (rank: 77)

Buy and sell, Online Auction: Malaysian is patriotic!! Local based auction website Lelong.com beaten Ebay by far.

Lelong (rank: 32)
Mudah.com.my (rank: 54)
Ebay.com (rank: 83)

The only goverment website, I think is because it's time to pay your tax:

hasil.org.my

We also can conclude that Malaysian is somehow sane or normal, or dirty minded:

adultfriendster (rank:27)
youporn (rank: 44)
redtube (rank: 31)
Thegutterpost.blogspot.com (rank: 85)
adultadword.com (rank 93)

If you like to know more about the top 100 website in Malaysia, please visit alexa.com

Alert!! Your daily news is arriving

2008-05-23T15:00:00.003+08:00

Imagine this, you are following the news of Earthquake in China, and every morning when you open up your email, there are latest news/blogs of your choice arriving.

You want to know the latest release of Justin Timberlake, and you got your mail instantly once there are latest news and press release on him.

You are studying the technology of Ruby on Rails, and you get the summary of what's happening with the technology everyday. You are updated with the truly latest happening news, blogs, opinions related to this technology.

Below are the screen shot taken from my GMail - showing the news on Ruby on Rails.

Sometimes, you might found that some company is hiring peoples to work with the technology, and sometimes you get free ebook recommended in some blogs. Yeah, it's a lot of fun and rewards!!

So, you want to setup you personalized daily or instant news alert?
Follow these simple steps:

Go to Google Alert website.
Put in the search term. That means the keywords of your news. Eg: "Andy Roddicks"
Choose the type (of the alerts). Choose "comprehensive" for maximum coverage.
Choose how often you want to received it.
Finally key in your email address. The alerts will be sent to this email.

Free book from the popular Sitepoint.com

2008-05-22T18:15:00.005+08:00

The ever popular site Sitepoint.com is giving out their latest book [ The Photoshop Anthology: 101 Web Design Tips, Tricks & Techniques ] for free. It's a complete book not a sample chapter and it cost USD 29.95 to buy. It's will expire soon, so get it fast!

The Principles of Beautiful Web Design is the iconic book that Sitepoint had been release. It has influence many of the website existed today. You might want to refer to this book when you are designing your new website. If you are struggle to make your website looks good, buy a copy of this and you will know why.

A quote from the website about this book:

If you’re working on the Web today, you need a copy of this book to understand exactly why some designs work, while others don’t. It covers graphic design principles in a very straightforward and easy-to-follow way: you don’t need to have had any formal art or design training to benefit from this book.

Are you powered by Google?

2008-05-21T23:10:00.000+08:00

How much do you know about Google free service? Please help me complete this survey. Just 2 question. The result will be share out.

Some of you might have already know Google Docs, where you can create words document and excel spreadsheet and share it for free. However, instead of inviting your friends or colleagues to collaborate and write on a topics, you can create a survey forms and ask the public answer it. The answer will be stored into the spreadsheet and can be edited or downloaded. Just like what I did with this.

Here is a screen shot of how you can create a new form.

This can be a marketing tools to collect the data you need. For example, you are going to launch a new product, and you not sure what is the right price. So, create a simple survey form and email to all your customer and collect the data so that you can make the best decision.

Tips: Keep your survey short and simple. Most people won't spend more than 10 minutes to complete it. They will just browse away. Keep it to less than 5 question with at least 3 question on MCQ instead of asking them to write.

Form are great to collect data, it's not just used in survey. For instance, you and your groups is doing a research on collecting website that are related to pets, and you want to categorize your collection into groups such as Dogs, Cats, Bird, Fish, Turtle and others. What you can do is create a form with 2 questions,

Enter the website (text)
Groups (Multiple choice or choose from list)

Dogs
Cats
Bird
Fish

Thus, everyone in your groups can key in the data once they found the a website related to pets.

By using this form, you can collaborate with your group member instantly instead of combining data after that. Moreover, you do not need to key in each entry manually, because you can just click on the multiple choice answer or choose from the drop down list. collaboration

It's very easy to create the form, what you need is a Google Account, and then click on this link spreadsheets.google.com/newform.

Introducing Sandy, my new personal assistant.

2008-05-20T18:49:00.000+08:00

Dear friends, please meet my personal assistant Ms. Sandy. Now, I can afford to have my own personal assistant to help me organizing my schedule, contact, reminding me for appointment.. etc.

Look at the following scenario.

=====================
To: someone@email.com
CC: ms-sandy

Dear Someone,

We shall discuss the matter over the lunch on next Monday. See you then!

Regards,

Leow Tze Wei

ps:
Sandy, please remind me the meeting with Mr. Someone on next monday 1pm.
=====================

Thus, Sandy got my mail and she will remind me about this meeting through email, sms or twitter.

Cool! How much do I pay for her services? Free. Yes, it's free.
How can you have it? Just shout "I Want Sandy!!" and log on to iwantsandy.com

The concept is simple, I just need to email to her and ask her to remind or remember for me. More example how Sandy can help me organizing.

Reminder:

Remind me about yoga class on Friday at 8am
Remember to pick up dry cleaning in 3 days

Contact:

Remember Jack's number is 012-012012021 and address is 3-1, Jln Malaysia, Tmn Malaysia.

Birthday:

Remember Jeff's birthday 8 June @birthday

Make a list:

remember groceries @weekly
* eggs
* milk
* bread

and a lot of interesting stuff... find out more at iwantsandy.com

Earthquake relief - Find your relatives through google

2008-05-18T01:48:00.000+08:00

Google is helping you to find your relatives in China. It's actually gives some result that is related to the earthquake victims.

I tried using the search a random name - "刘明", and I get some forum actually looking for this girl, with her picture attached.

There are a lot of other interesting links on this website. You can even view the maps where you can see how the relief operation is operating and of course picture and news from this tragedy.

If you want to help them, please check this out

援助中国抗震救灾

Google is connecting your friends

2008-05-17T15:25:00.000+08:00

Google is bringing social networking to another level, where you can have Myspace, Facebook, hi5, orkut, Plaxo...etc on your own website (without any programming).

Look at the video on how it functions.

I've already send in the request to be one of the early preview user. Hope that they will approve my request. I will share with you on this blog, once I have it.

ShapeWriter

2008-05-17T14:34:00.000+08:00

Take a look at this touch screen writing methods. There are always a problem when I was using my PDA to type. The screen was too small to poke at individual key on the screen keyboard. The hand-writing recognition on windows mobile was awful, I couldn't get the correct words most of the time. May be this is the solutions to touch screen input. Not sure whether they support "1 hand typing", which I only need to use 1 hand in order to type.

They are also one of the finalist for Google Android challenge.
Download.com Blog on Google Android 50 Finalist.