If you can do them all, you are one web2.0 super cool urban-geek.

• Instead of doing things silently, record whatever you are doing on Twitter, Facebook and other status sharing services so that your friends know, in case they are bored and have no thing else to do. If you get used to it, you can even make your own slice-of-life novel out of your tweets!
• Instead of reading newspapers and printed books, read them with the Amazon Kindle.
• Instead of reading comics, magazines and color printed books, read them with the Apple iPad.
• Instead of listening to the radio, go to NPR (National Public Radio), Last.fm and several other online radio services. To listen to radio on the go, just use any mobile device that has 3G capability.
• Instead of buying music CD, go to iTunes Store to purchase and download songs, or go to Spotify to listen to music for free.
• Instead of going to a store to buy gifts for your friends’ birthdays, purchase some virtual gifts and send to them on Facebook. If you prefer physical gifts, there are plenty of online stores where you can find unique gifts for your friends, such as Etsy.
• Instead of looking at a recipe book to cook a great meal, it’s faster and easier to browse through social cooking sites such as Allrecipes, TastyPlanner. Remember to take pictures of your cooking and share on Flickr!
• Instead of taking notes of school lectures on the paper, record the whole thing with a hand camera and upload to YouTube. Oh, and do you know that you can add notes into your online videos with YouTube? There are also some online video sharing services that allow you and your friends to make notes on the same video.
• Instead of asking friends for advices about dating, finding new music etc, post them on Yahoo Answer or Mahalo Answer and invite your friends to answer them there. You’ll love the game point ranking system of these services.
• Instead of taking sleeping pills, read CSS tutorials until your mind unconciously tells you that it needs to rest. w3schools is a good place to start. Remember to bookmark your progress on Twitter!

I’ve always respected those who can both work hard and keep themselves visible to others on social networks, forums and blogs. They are just simply incredibly good at managing their time and disciplining themselves.

Keeping up with countless piles of school/company tasks while maintaining a continuous timetable for blogging requires a highly effective self-management. So, after the first month of this year, I’ve come to the point where both my mental and physical state are good enough to do what I want to do with my own blog, while still able to finish my responsibilities.

Next post will be about the lessons I have learned doing public speakings.

Lately I’ve been into playing Poker with my friends in the weekends. And the more I play it, the more I think of how similar it is between Poker and building up a business. I keep seeing those cards being placed down the table as people and opportunities around a startup company.

"The poker strategizing experience would prove helpful when I got into business." - Bill Gates

CC attribution niallkennedy

Bill Gates once said: “In poker, a player collects different pieces of information—who’s betting boldly, what cards are showing, what this guy’s pattern of betting and bluffing is—and then crunches all that data together to devise a plan for his own hand… The poker strategizing experience would prove helpful when I got into business.”

I don’t know how much that is true, or Bill Gates was just bluffing :P. One thing I do know, that if you look at Poker with a startup perspective, it’s pretty damn correct!

There are many way to compare playing Poker with building a Startup. But this is how I see it:

1. At the start of each round, each player receives two cards. Think of them as the team you have. One card represents business side and one card represents technical side. The stronger your cards are, the better. Just like the more talented and experienced team members you have, the higher your success rate is.

Having high cards on your hand is equal to having good team members

CC attribution rosswebsdale

2. When the 5 other cards are placed down on the table, think of them as potential partners, resources and chances on the market. The more powerful your combination is, the better. Just like the more relevant you put all the pieces of opportunity, facility and people together, the higher your success rate is.

3. With the above 2 basic ideas, we can derive even more details:

- Even if you have an Ace (really good team members, e.g. in technology side), when the other card is weak (not quite good team member in business side) the chance of winning / your success rate is some how lower.

- Even if you have a pair of Ace (either from the beginning, or from the whole combination), it loses to any 2 pairs. This means even if you have an all-star team in the beginning or there is a very good execution, it can not beat a relatively good execution with the right marketing at the right time, in the right place.

- Also, the more money you have, the more advantageous you are. You can put in higher bets to prevent others from pursuing the pod to the end of a round. The rule, in general, is that you have a good insurance (a good pair or high cards in the beginning, a good combination in the Flop - 3 out of 5 cards on the table are revealed), and guts! It’s quite similar to how investors (sometimes founders) would put in more cash and resources (time/energy) to raise the startup’ competitiveness. Of course, if the other player (competitors) have the same financial/resource capability, the competition will also be based on luck.

In general, we can understand why having the 2 high cards (highly talented/experienced founders) in the beginning is more preferable, even though that is not always a golden rule to win. The risk is still pretty high if the other pieces (opportunity, facility and people elements) are just not right.

The "dream team" and the "perfect combination". Still, it cannot beat a 'straight flush'. (Also, Google can be considered a "Royal Straight Flush")

CC attribution eduardo_inflames

This way of thinking may be useful to those who are building a startup, or even investing in a startup. I wonder how good VC folks play Poker, but if they are good at what they do (calculating risk vs. chance and understand people’s behavior), they should play Poker well! For startup folks, it may as well be fun as a team activity.

Just stumbled upon a nice book of HTML, CSS and XHTML . Have to admit that sometimes reading about something you’ve already known in a different angle / book may bring in some new perspective!

Q: Who decides what is “supported?”

A: There are standards committees that worry about the elements and attributes of HTML. These committees are made up of people with nothing better to do who generously give their time and energy to make sure there’s a common HTML roadmap that all companies can use to implement their browsers…

“With nothing better to do”. Simply hilarious

We can imagine just how a perfect hard worker in today’s web industry would look like.

The original idea came from the Guy. Notice anything interesting?

Last week was one hell of an experience. First of all, I sleepwalked and stepped on my laptop, crushing the poor thing. It was…unexpected of me. But at least it cost me only 98 dollars to change the screen. Now the second thing is an expected one.

It took me half a day in order to find an “honest” repairing service to change my laptop’s screen in Ho Chi Minh city. And this was the first time I’ve ever had a chance to compare the different “layers of services’ quality” in my own home town.

Normally, it’d take only half an hour to do the work. However, at the first building I came into, the one who’s in charge tried to take advantage of the situation. He mumbled “Hmmm… I wonder what size this screen is.” and took my laptop upstairs. I was told by a friend before, that in this kind of situation, most likely the guy is trying to cheat you (aka. take the good components inside your stuffs and replace them with cheaper or broken ones). And to my surprise, when I told him that I’d come upstairs with him, he refused immediately, returned my laptop, and said: “Sorry, we don’t have this screen size here.”!!!!

I thought to myself: “If you’d known there hasn’t been any spare here in the first place, then why the hell did you want to bring my laptop upstairs?”, but couldn’t say it out loud. I took my leave and went to the second building.

There’s a young guy who threw an ice-cold statement at me: “Leave it here for 1 day, or we don’t take the job.”!! Oh, now this one is much, much more obvious. “Noob. I’ve seen worse. Bye bye then.”. Again, I thought to myself and said to the guy “Ok, then I’ll take my leave.”

The third one I came into was on a different street. This is a real honest firm. 40 minutes, 3 months guarantee, no tricks, no pretenses, just plain laptop preparing service. Here’s a shot of this lovable firm.

In the end, I think it’s true that my home town still has many vicious firms like the 1st and 2nd ones I visited that day. But there are always good and honest businesses here. We just need a better system (online, most likely) to record and inform each other. For now, if you ever visit Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam; and if your laptop ever need some repairing or upgrading, remember to come to this one.

I met a (really nice) US family on a trip from Helsinki to Frankfurt. They have 2 really energetic daughters. Most interesting was Isabelle, 8 years old. I think she has a smile of a little angel. Hope that the world is round enough so I can meet them again some day.

He was one of the greatest singers I’ve ever known. He brought a lot of emotion to me ever since the first time I saw him.

He made me cry

He made me thrilled

He made loathe

He even made me laugh

But now he’s dead. Even though I feel sad, I think that it is best. At least he will live on as a legendary singer/dancer, not a legendary scandal maker/child molester.

The Urban Legends: Entrepreneurs can…

1. sleep 4 hours per day.
2. work 72 hours straight without any sleep.
3. eat nothing but beans for a whole week.
4. sleep, eat and work inside a space of 3 square meters.
5. work continuously without any means of entertainment.

… and a lot more of such legends. In my opinion, there may be certain people who are physically and mentally capable of achieving such feats. But is it true that anyone who do exactly like that would become a successful entrepreneur? I don’t really know.

CC attribution MichaelMarlatt@flickr

I, also, yearn for being able to do just like those urban legends. There are times that I really did the same things. Even now, sometimes I might end up becoming an ultra workaholic. But most of the time, I find these to be much more common practices:

Real Life Practices:

1. Sleeping 4 hours a day can make one becomes more cranky than usual. This can affect human relations in&out-side the startup. Not something to do daily and for a long time.
2. 24 hours without sleep would damage thinking ability, 48 hours without sleep would cause heavy headaches and 72 hours without sleep would damage the brain pretty much.
3. With too little nutrition in the body, everything around you looks more eatable than they normally do.
4. Too little space can prevent the mind from thinking creatively.
5. Too little relaxation can cause deep depression and stress.

In the end, I think there are always balance in life. It’s important to live life to the fullest and sometimes get into a frenzy of working and thinking. But generally, there must be times when we need to reward ourselves and get back to the balanced state of body and mind. For almost anyone, this sounds pretty normal. But I believe for entrepreneurs and entrepreneur minded folks, this can be a hard learnt lesson.

How much communication is enough to keep your team members be emotionally stable and don’t become emotionally anxious?

For me the answer is: “It’s never enough!”

The reason why human is human, simply put, is because we have emotion. And because we have emotion, working together, no matter in what professional field, means communicating with each other. If information flow is streamlined, everyone is happy. Team members know their purposes, what others are doing and the value of each one’s work. If information flow is stuck, everyone becomes worried. “Why am I here?” “Why the others seem to work less than me?” “Why am I getting paid the same as them?” are possible questions that would come up times after time.

CC attribution miscpix@flickr

In the past I’ve made mistakes in communication, hence I’ve lost valuable members. I didn’t tell them enough about my expectation, about the business situation, what I were contributing for the whole success and such. I was easily angered by what would be understandable unexpected errors. As a result, they became anxious and somewhat under-motivated to carry on. I’ve learned my lesson, and I’m trying my best to make change in our team’s communication.

As a team leader, I want to be open and share my status through any mean possible (including Twitter, Facebook and Blog). Except for confidential & sensitive information, I want everyone in my team to know where I am, how is my condition what I’m doing, thinking and playing. By sharing, I want everyone in the team to know and understand that I am committed to this ultimate goal: to bring wealth (either in knowledge, money or fame) to every team member.

As a team member, I want to know my other team mates’ statuses and thinking. The more information they share with me, the better our understanding would be. So if you are working or going to work with me, I expect you to be as open to me and others as I am open to you.