Google wave, the stanford model works, Serendipity

Seems like Google is coming up with a new web 2.0 platform again, this time specifically targeted at communications online.

It works pretty much like the winword document in the gmail except that this time you could also rewind time and see what was actually being written or edited at specific time intervals.

A video goes on to show that this algorithm has been originally been an area of academic research for the past 10 years before finally being commercialized in the form of Google Wave recently.

Seems like the Stanford model is working very nicely over in the States. What started as research in academies upon maturity gets rolled out commercially as spin offs.

The advantage that Google has is that fact that the whole company started out via this model as well. They are experienced in this.

In Singapore we do have something like this, but it seems owing to the general risk aversive culture of the place, this model is not taking off as well. Hey look, even my dad and mom has been nagging at me to get a stable job instead of constantly going through this process of trail and error that is inherent in technological ventures.

But hey no way am I going to call it quits that easily. I am still surviving so far am I not?

The other thing also is the lack of funding for start ups. Ironically, while lots of funds have been put in place to support start ups, fund managers are not really willing to seed start ups unless they are really confidant that their business model will be commercially viable.

Who’s to be sure anyway? Half of the really cool technologies around that were thought to have the potential to make a big bang when they hit the market never really did when they finally did arrive. Others that were thought to be flops magically succeeded at becoming dominant features on the internet without much explanation.

It is like choosing to play safe in an arena where the way to success contradicts the idea of playing safe. Hence most of these public funds get squandered off by companies who are good with paperwork to do stuff that is not aligned with the main objectives for the existence of these funds. The model is just not working.

Face it, success usually requires a certain amount of serendipity and the thing is such a thing is usually hard to predict. Mostly we are in the hands of God. It is like a leap of faith.

Kudos to that.

Every one has something to say – use a blog!

Recently I met a religio while on the bus on my way home. She took my contact number and started sending me lots of religious messages. Being a free thinker, most of these messages just came into my phone and went into the trash folder. It was just too long to read over an SMS. and I hate longs SMS s over the phone.

Then it occurred to me, I thought hey all these efforts by her should not be going to waste. so what happens immediately after that was that I set up a blog for her at adonis.name1price.com for her to send her message out to the world.

Now, my phone avoids getting overloaded with mesages not related to my essential day to day operations and at the same time she gains access to the whole world’s audience. And the whole world’s audiences may finally get themselves some salvation if indeed they are looking for some.

Who knows she with her vigor might just turn out to be the next Anthony Robbins or Robert Kiyosaki!

Owned by the Web

Seems like second joint on the fourth finger on my right hand is starting to ache lately. Perhaps i have been spending too long a time with my fingers on the keyboard of late.

Funny seems like I have been using more keyboard than the pen recently, considering the fact that majority of my time is spent on the web and in front of the computer more than anything else.

Ten years ago when the internet first came into Singapore. Life was so different. And then all of a sudden before you know it. Boom! We have all been taken over by the web. The internet and computer is like a black swan. Who would have known we would be living our lives the way we are living today back ten years ago.

One can never really predict the future accurately that is a fact.

Jump!

Seriously I am feeling so stuck recently. I am neither advance nor retreat. Advancing in the path ahead means betraying my own beliefs about the way, retreating backwards means betraying my own integrity.

I am stuck so badly stuck. If there were an enemy without I would have been able to easily solve this problem by conquering him. However the enemy seems to be no where and everywhere at the sametime. How does one attempt at fighting such an enemy like this?

I need to find him. That is what I will need to do. There is nothing like being stuck helplessly unable to identify the enemy while taing continous onslaughts from god knows where.

I finally arrive along East Coast Beach. I dumped my bag and jumped right into the sea. I couldn’t take it anymore.

There I stayed alone, floating in the sea, bobbing along with the tide, staring out at the vast open waters. Evening was coming. The sun was setting. There were no other sounds except the occasional crashing of waves on the white sandy beach. I felt so free all of a sudden. Life is supposed to be like this. Then I suddenly recalled!

My greatest love mother nature, I have neglected you for so long being distracted with all these meaningless urban life. Please forgive me.

Slowly I crawled back to shore, all wet. Now I have to think of a way to dry myself with neither towel nor a change of clothes.

Success needs no explanation and Failures have no excuses

I was going through the blog by Chris Anderson the author of the long tail in that blog he was commenting on the recent crash of one of the new comer Newspaper companies Nyhedsavisen to the iceland market owned by Skype Investor Morten Lund.

What previously was a perfectly planned attempt at out competiting all other newspaper companies in Iceland through an extreme price war strategy exploded in the face. A black swan (unknown unknown) was not accounted for. Morten Lund was blinded sided. Who would have known that the economic recession would hit the world end of 2008, thus affecting advertising revenue of all newspaper companies and causing the Nyhedsavisen to scrap bottom in terms of its cash flow.

What followed thereafter was a whole series of attempts by Morten Lund to dissolve the company in exchange for enough funds to pay off his debtors and employees. He will be down for a while I think before he comes back up into the radar again.

This scenario does sound familiar. After having read the book that cousin Johson recommended me, I seem to see Black Swans everywhere and also the Grey Swans. More than that I have experienced first hand how a business model when not structured properly to mitigate the risk of potential negative black swans could blow up in your face in a very terrible way.

Lesson learned: Always be extremely pessimistic when trashing out a business model. Always think of the worst case scenario that could happen. Once done, with your very best effort mitigate your risk and expose yourself to as much positive Black Swans as possible. Thereafter go with faith and have God for guidance.

Cold reading

Recently having gotten interested with astrology services on the internet, I decided to put my particulars into one particular site. The message I received was so convincing that I wandered the truth behind it.

Then again I recalled the fact that given a statement without anything to disprove it, the brain will automatically search for evidences to villify the truth of this statement.

Deciding to see how the actual system works on the internet I proceeded to the site of the fortune teller and started messing around with the site.

Pretty smart actually, the message, the only thing though is that it is a standard message for all to read except you are the one reading it and being convinced by it.

Click the refresh button or change the query string alittle and you will have either a different message from the whole collection of them or the same message again but with no name. Try it out yourself.

https://secure-astro.com/cgi-bin/request.cgi?p=request.cgi&r=2b&c=uht0s&f=tnel

In Transit

Depiction of Lady Fortuna
Depiction of Lady Fortuna

Lady Fortuna

It would have been really easy had all three elements, the mind, the heart and the soul been after the same thing. Apparently it seems not the case, these past few weeks. It was a time of trial indeed.

The mind says for money and security, the heart says to go for love, while the soul says all the prior are not important, the quest for the truth ever beckons.

Here I stand stuck at the fork of the road in my journey. While most parts of the journey prior to this were clear and simple as the path in which the soul demanded, the heart and mind both concurred; this once was different. They each beckoned their own way.

I stand here at this junction examining all three paths, they all looked equally promising while at the same time seemingly disastrous. No amount of foresight I have seem to allow me the ability of sight to penetrate this fog of destiny.

Perhaps none of all three paths is the one, the true path lies hidden still. I could only wait and be patient meanwhile, before Fortuna deals me another card from her Deck of Fates which brings me to the true path.

Wait I shall then.

Massive Community sustains Technology

Yes Php as a programming language is really cool.

While it may not be as powerful as its substitues like JSP and ASP.net, there is actually a very large community of developers working on the PHP language. Lots of free open source applications have been developed for industrial use that a person with some background in programming could easily configure to his own needs.

A great example is WordPress a blogging software. I have been using it for quite a few years on friendster for personal blogging. Recently I setup my own new blogging site at a new location blog.name1price.com but still using the same open source software WordPress. Now with FTP access to my wordpress script, I could easily extend my WordPress blog to include more impressive features.

If you are a technie, without hosting space or domain name but would really like a playground to test out these open source system., I could easily provide you with one free of charge.

Another cool system which I have been using for quite a while is Joomla. It has already reached version 1.5. I consider it to be quite a mature content management technology by now. You could also have it downloaded free off the net. All you need is just a hosting space to test it out. Samething if you need a play ground to test out this site tell me about it.

Recently I was out with my friend who is a trader. Apparently he was having problems keep tracking of his stocks. So I thought I should help him out by creating a online inventory system. However rather than creating one from scratch I just searched on google and found once again a free fully running inventory management system that is written in PHP.

That is the cool thing about PHP there is such a large community working on it that you can easily find an already written software system in that language to fit your needs with just slight modifications.

Cool Islam site

Recently while surfing the web I came across this Islam site built by a Singaporean company. I found it to be very impressive. The way the visual elements of the site positioned the image of the religion. But more specifically the sound tracks of the site are what attracted me. I have been listening around Pop and Jazz music recently. While Jazz harmonies remains still interesting for me, pop songs in general are nothing something to listen to when attempting to look for new unique progressions.

Islamic music however is a different breed of its own, with its scale that steps out of the traditional half steps tones normally used in the main stream genere.

Find out for yourself if you will

Here is the site

http://simplyislam.com.sg/new/simplyislam-jukebox/

The world is turning topsy turvy

I climbed to the top of bus 197 feeling exhausted, having walked for 6hours straight from City Hall to Marine Parade and back to Kallang. I was in my kampong attire (my shorts, slippers and singlet) an attire I normally would be in when I want to be really comfortable and casual.

I sat occupying two places on the seats as usual owing to my size and built. Across me on the other side of the bus was this guy probably in his late twenties well groomed, dressed fashionably, eyeing me in the most funny of ways. I met his stare head on for a while, thinking it at first to be a normal challenge between males. I ignored him thereafter. That stare was not even in the realms of anger provoking, it was just plain weird. I looked out of the bus through the windows on my side. Losing interest I looked back to the floor of bus on the other side, spacing out. Resting my body and mind.

It was then that I notice the most crazy of things. He obviously knew he was in my line of vision, despite my obvious spacing out, so he started rubbing his crouch and then followed the action by rubbing his nipples. Despite the fact these actions were out of sight of those sitting behind and those infront, it was so blatant. What the Fuck!?!

This guy is obviously trying attempting to fornicate himself in front of me, just to gain my attention. He then tried making eye contact with me, I rolled my eye balls and looked away feeling really disgusted. Finally, god have mercy, he dropped off at the bus stop beside Bugis Junction. Off to meet his gay buddies perhaps.

Bloody maniacs, why can’t they stick to girls? Nowadays it seems more and more of guys are targeting guys, losing interest in boobs and discovering new-found hobbies with dicks. And it seems the same is true for girls as well. Singapore is turning Gay and Lesbo alrite. Personally I have nothing against anyone’s sexual preferences, just please mind you, keep your harassments away from me.

And this, apparently is not the first episode of its kind that I encountered in public. Let’s see…

Once at China Town area, I was looking for a new office space and then I was bloody stalked by this well built and dressed hunk, first on the streets, then around in the shopping center for a full 15mins. It was not until through the use of my wit, I came up with a strategy that gave him the slip.

The other time I was standing in the queue in front of the POSB atm in bras basah complex, and there was this well built guy in his forties dressed in body hugging jeans, singlet and a dangling cross for a ear ring, who first walked past in front of the queue, and then came back a second time and then a third time. Finally managing to make eye contact with me the third, he wriggled with eye brow and smile that lecherous smile of his before disappearing around the corner. Fuck! Is that supposed to be a tactic to lead someone on? No wonder he failed so terribly with the opposite and had to finally resort to preying on the same sex.

The final and most crazy time happened during a evening. After much partying at club Double O with the rest of the guys, I started feeling hungry. I left the rest of the folks and started walking alone towards Maxwell market for supper. I was craving for the porridge they sold there. Apparently I took this alittle alley that past through Ann Xiang Hill, behind the rolls of shop houses, which was supposed to be a short cut. On the other side coming down the stairs well was this well built guy, tall rather well groomed too. One look from him and I knew there might be some trouble.

He soon joined me on the alley, walking by my side. I ignored his presence. He seemed drunk. He tried starting a conversation. I patronized him a little. And then he decided to lean in to get flesh. Bloody bastard, I could have killed there and then, had I not restrained myself. This is after all the 21st century, where the use of diplomacy is more desirable then all out warfare.

“Perhaps you are going for the wrong target. I think you should head into that pub over there. It will definitely be much better for your health.” I said pointing at the entrance of a pub we were approaching. But obviously if my recollections were not wrong, that pub was still the wrong pub for him. It was normally populated by Filippino working girls whose normal clientele are middle to old aged local Chinese men or old foreign white men, not young good looking chap only interested in dicks. This hybrid of a specimen I have walking beside me obviously has wandered way out of range of his species’ normal haunts; clubs like Play, Taboo and Tantric which were supposed to be further down the Tanjong Pagar stretch but not here.

Damned, and I thought getting myself a crew cut for a hair style and to dress down when not required would reduce the level of my presence on such radars. Apparently not!

Hmmm.. there must apparently be something seriously wrong that I am doing unkowingly, time to head back to the drawing tables to rework my game plan.

Thinking about it while I was out with Jayan last night, he did mention Aware the women’s assocation in Singapore is attempting to come up a petition to ban gays in Singapore. While I personally dislike being harassed, I do not think such a petition is going to be of much effect other than driving this alternative crowd activity under ground.

Moreover, being a great believer in Voltair’s philospohy, liberty and freedom of choice for the individuals must be and should be protected from the tyranny of the state. Furthermore considering the kind of state we have with us, all the more we should double effort.

Curing the symptom aids not in curing the source of the problem sometimes, and I believe it is true in this case. What then might be the cause of this phenomenon? Local men losing their manhood, while local women increasingly losing their pool of potential local mates to other local men or the existing pool of foreign women in Singapore.