December 23, 2007

  • Web 3.0

    (This is a thought I wanted to post since Dec of 2006.)

    My prediction for web 3.0 is a shift from the knowledge of the many to the knowledge of the wise.  Wisdom of the crowds?  Only the right crowd.  Lets look at what happened with the world of web 2.0.

    • Blogs.  Lets face it.  Most people’s writing isn’t all that interesting.  More walls and superpokes.
    • Wikipedia is already restricting access to many articles due to vandalism.
    • Youtube.  How many of the top  videos are homemade ?  I only see three home videos out of sixteen at Youtube’s most viewed videos of the week.

    (Its the same with reality TV shows.  If you didn’t know, that’s scripted too.)

    I see a future where trusted users (humans or AI), those who have earned credibility with the community, contribut the majority of the new web content.  If you’re interested in web 3.0 startups, start figuring out ways to attract trusted users to contribute content.

December 9, 2006

  • 1 Dollar = 1 Cent

    So this guy was quoted .002 cents per kilobyte and Verizon charged him .002 dollars per kilobyte.  Five Verizon reps, including the supervisor and manager didn’t understand the difference and insisted that the customer was wrong.  How can you blame them.  They’re “not mathematicians”.

    Unfortunately, America does not know how to do math.  I suppose it could be an honest mistake, but the supervisor and manager were so obstinate how right they are.  This is gonna make Verizon look bad for a long time to come.

    Verizon, welcome to the age of blogging, where knowledge of bad customer service travels faster than the speed of light.

    http://verizonmath.blogspot.com/

    http://verizonfails.ytmnd.com/

November 22, 2006

  • This is Dean Kao, Signing Off.

    “Goodbyes.”  “Good luck.”  “I wish you well.”

    I dont like saying goodbye.  Its always a bit sad, even if it means its the beginning of something good.  I do hope everyone at Drys well and I hope that good things will find them.

    Happy Turkey Day Everyone.

November 16, 2006

  • Deprecated: New Opportunity

    Hey guys,

    I wanted to tell you all that I found a new opportunity at a startup that
    I will be taking. Unfortunately, it's still in stealth mode so I cannot
    disclose to you what company it is. By late Feb, I hope I can let you
    guys in on what we're doing =).

    I'll be starting at the company in the new year but my last day will be
    Nov 22nd, 2006. In the five and a half years that I've been here, I'm
    glad to have worked with you. I thank you for the many laughs and the
    many stressful power and network outages. It's been my pleasure to have
    worked with you. I wish everyone well and by Gods grace, maybe we'll work
    together again.

    Many thanks
    Dean

November 8, 2006

October 24, 2006

October 22, 2006

October 19, 2006

  • Ecommerce 2.0

    People are saying that ecommerce 2.0 is web 2.0 technologies applied to ecommerce.  I think that totally ignores the driving force behind web 2.0, which is the social contributions behind it.  Youtube is the poster child for web 2.0 (so is myspace but I think its ugly and we wont really address it).  The content is contributed by individual users and individual users determine which videos are popular, based on what’s most viewed (We’re ignoring manipulation for now).

    Of course, when you talk about web 2.0, you have to pay homage to flickr, delicious and digg.  Flickr and delicious popularized tagging and digg popularized user submitted content.

    Ecommerce 2.0 will not just be ecommerce with flash whiz bang interfaces (ajax).  Also ecommerce 2.0 will go beyond just user’s recommendation on a product, like Amazon reviews.  Ecommerce 2.0 will have customization of products to the users.

    One clear example is purchasing clothes.  If I’m buying a new pair of shoes, I shouldn’t have to browse through selections that are not my size.  I don’t care browse through the new Nike Airs if they don’t have them in 12 wide.  An ecommerce 2.0 site should show me what I can wear because that’s what I’m going to buy.  This is idea is just the tip of the iceberg and I think there’s quite the opportunity here.

    *edit*  Another good thought:

    ckcheng: your shopping analogy should be expanded
    ckcheng: to use community usage to offer suggestions
    ckcheng: “similar patrons were interested in _____”
    ckcheng: then have products that rise and fall in popularity displayed

  • Addicted

    So I wonder what is it about leading a healthy life that makes it not “addicting”.  This thought comes from reading an article about addiction to World of Warcraft.  Its easy to get addicted to many things in life but for some reason, leading a healthy life is not one of them. 

    First, I’d like to split up addiction into two categories.  The first category of addictions are ones that easily hook people with very little effort on the user’s part.  An example of this would be an addiction to caffeine or chocolate.  These items are really easy to obtain and they have highly addictive properties to them.  These kind of addictions are easy to understand.

    However, there’s another class of addiction that takes a lot of work.  For instance, running.  Running takes a lot of time and effort.  For those of us who’s tried and failed, we know how much work it is.  I’d like to also comment that running is boring.  I don’t care how much you enjoy it, but it’s not exciting.  I do understand why people are addicted to it but it doesn’t change the fact that it takes a lot of effort.  Another example is work.  For those who are workaholics, no matter how fun work is, work is work.  Work is also hard.  Work is work.  You rarely hear anybody say “Lets take two weeks of vacation to do work.”  Enough said.

    I bring this up because World of Warcraft is addictive and its a lot of work.  If you ever ask the typical WoW player what he/she spends most of their time on, its not socializing, its not adventure nor is it anything “fun”.  Most WoW players “grind”, which means they do a repetitive action to get a reward.  Without going into too much detail, playing WoW takes a lot of work.

    I wonder why leading a healthy, balanced life isn’t “addicting”.  Yes, it takes a lot of work.  Everyone knows that there are plenty of rewards to be had.  You’ll get more out of life.  You’re happier.  You live longer.  etc.  So what is it about leading a healthy life that it doesn’t have the same addictive properties as these other things?  Any thoughts?

August 24, 2006

  • Something Was Left Behind

    http://www.leftbehindgames.com/

    “Play multiplayer games as Tribulation Force or the AntiChrist’s Global Community Peacekeepers with up to eight players via LAN or over the internet!”

    I dont know about you but I’d play as the AntiChrist’s Global Community Peacekeepers.  I think they’d get the bigger guns. (Eudemonia will not be getting 36 copies of this game.)