ThinkingNectar

To establish a place of work where engineers can feel the joy of technological innovation, be aware of their mission to society, and work to their heart’s content.

Masaru Ibuka

Why did I not come across such a tool eariler?

Just Ping

just-ping.com provide a very nice service of pinging a domain/IP address  from 35 network point worldwide.

The countries include:

Singapore, Japan, South Africa, China, USA, Denmark, Israel, India, Australia and even New Zealand.

It should give webmaster a clue on how much latency global users are experiencing while accessing their particular site or service.

The service checks for network access speed. Not the server response time. After all, it is a ping service from what I can understand.  The will go a long way in helping webmasters to decide where to site the new server to best serve the current overseas user base.

Some guys over at hacker news are really funny.

First, PG cited that the site is slow due to “coverage” in more mainstream media. Hence there is higher traffic. He too requested that the regulars to make the site “extra boring” to tone down the traffic. In his own words:

We’ve had a huge spike in traffic lately, from roughly 24k daily uniques to 33k. This is a result of being mentioned on more mainstream sites. I hope this spike will subside, like past ones have. In the meantime I may temporarily hack a few things to make the site faster, like putting fewer results on threads pages.

You can help the spike subside by making HN look extra boring. For the next couple days it would be better to have posts about the innards of Erlang than women who create sites to get hired by Twitter.

And the hacker news community responsed and the following was really funny! (click for bigger image)

Erlang Shen. WTF!

The link here.

The next talk I went too was organised on the spot at barcamp and will be the most interesting and controversial. Well, at least part 2 of it. Previous coverage of part 1 here and part 2 here.

The talk was title Non-profit 2.0 and Religion 2.0. Seems to me the title is to game some attention but I feel it is more like due to the lack of a better title.

Jointly presented by Kelvin Quee and Meng Weng Wong for non-profit and religion respectively.

Kelvin Quee in Action and Meng getting Ready

Non-profit 2.0

Kelvin Quee is known for running Interesthink in Singapore and in his own words:

A cheap TED copycat

His presentation centers around the inability of non-profit in Singapore to gain substainable traction in terms of having sufficient volunteers to run the different programs.

He highlighted some pointers on achieveing something substainable:

• Go Volunteer: Have to start somewhere
• Don’t do direct service: Do not do the ground work unless you are good at it. Do what you are professional capable of and see how of service can you contribute
• Set Direct Goal: Goals that is beyond direct services
• See it through: Execute the goal

He cited an example of creating a Craiglist for non-profits where service providers and volunteer can find non-profits to service. The Craiglist style site will start with listing to match services and needs, followed by a starting pad for events organisation and finally moving on to projects.

Religion 2.0

Meng presentation on Religion 2.0 is a mix mash of less conventional business ideas from a VC point of view. Please read on with an open mind and plenty of objectivity. And yes, despite the chatter around room one and Meng rather soft voice, the audience were very much captured by Meng’s presentation from what I observe.

To start, there was a concept presented that school taught people to be rule. There are some teachings that encourage students to engage in socratic dialogue. Which in other words, to be disagreeable.

I did not get the core idea of the first part and that is my bad.

But moving on, Meng topic turn interesting as he explains how different religion seems to be selling the “same product”. And citing Christianity, Islam and Buddishism as examples. With a number of religion having a “God” figure while a number without. The main take away here is to appreciate that religion to a certain and certainly extend, defines the ethnics of a believer. And this is fundamental to the business idea that he is going to proposed.

He compared submitting of tithes to churches as equivalent to paying of taxes to a state. And with this comparision, the churches seems to enjoy “tremendous vendor lock in“. Much to the laughter of some members of the crowd.

Next pictures of Anthony Robbins and David Allen of GTD fame were shown. The take away here is that such “Guru” advocate a type of lifestyle for consumers to engage in. Such lifestyle in turn governs certain ethnics of the consumers who bought into the idea.

Self Help + Guru + Lifestyle

Now, imagine that such characters enjoy guru-ish status and attract a following will be able to fly under the radar of some countries that are sensitive to religious movement. The followers will gladly pay year in year out for conferences conducted by such guru when they are on speaking engagement tour. It is a business model worth considering and it pays to be on the lookout for the next trendy and guru-ish personality to invest in.

Speaking of taxation and the state, Meng also mention that if the Internet is a state, it is a failed state. As a state collect tax to pay for public good, like infrastructure, security and education. The internet on the other hand, have spam and such  which is not in the control of any. Who pay for antispam then?

Still on the concept of a failed state. If a child is born into a failed state. Let say a corrupted African nation where the child is unlikely to lived to the age of 18, and if so, do so without access to proper education, water and basic medication vaccination. The question here is to explore the possibilities of such child to have a contract with an alternative supplier of public goods?

Imagine an organisation that can securitize a portion of this child future income. And the child in return gets access to modern medical vaccination, water, education shelter that ensure that he become a economical viable entity. The child enjoys a longer life with a better standard of living. While the organisation gets a viable source of income, much like a state collecting taxes.

After giving it some thoughts, it does sounds like slavery? Also no child can legally or morally made such a decision to securitize his life income to an organisation, not at a young age. And if the decision is not made earlier, the child might not lived to be old enough to make that decision, or too old to be educated to make the whole venture economically viable. It is a tough world.

I believe I not doing justise to Meng’s presentation but that is the best I can recall, from both my memory and my trusty blue notebook.

Following the first part of my Barcamp Singapore 3 writeup, after lunch, I jumped onto the first talk there is which is a rather fun discussion of what April Fool joke should Google play the year.

There were several interesting one and funny one too. Of course I will not spoil any by blogging about it, just in case the Big G implement any of those.

Following it was a quick talk on the “other” Google API. A technical track and very quickly, the content can be summarise by two links:

• creativebreakfast08.appspot.com
• code.google.com/more

Interestingly the very day, a coupon API was release and no one, even the speaker have an idea of what is it. What interest me is the iGoogle Theme Creator. I might just get my hands on that one nice day.

I jumped to the next room where Coleman Yee have attracted a crowd to his talk:

How to bluff your way through information architecture by Coleman Yee

Coleman Presenting

In short, the goal of IA is to

• Make user friendly website
• Easy to access information

In the redesign of a website to achieve the above, consider 3 factors which are Content, Context and Users.

• Context is about the goal of the website and can be derived by talking to the stakholders.
• Content are the information on the site. Which then requires a content audit to capture the inventory and what is what.
• For Users, it is the audience of the site and attention is to be given via survey and focus group to understand how the users used the site and the difficulties encountered. Seek to resolve these difficulties.

With the understanding of the site taken care of, then is the design of the site structure and hierarchy. Use wireframes to test both layout and functionality and test both only using wireframes.

The presentation style of Coleman was entertaining and educational. I give him a two thumbs up. And of course, he already given himself 2 thumbs up pointing at himself everytime he mention “Good Information Architect”

Just go easy on the high blood pressure. Another coverage of this outstanding presentation.

I caught Coleman after the talk and asked about the differences between information architecture and site usability and it seems that there is a growing overlap between the 2. But the differences are secondary as it is essential to appreciate the benefit both brings to the eventual success of a site.

Spend the good part of Saturday at Barcamp 3 held in Ngee Ann Polytechnic.

Was there fairly early just before any talk started. Saw usual faces and of course some new faces as wel.

First thing in the morning was a presentation by Bernard Leong, covering for the first time, in his own words, a non-venture funding presentaton on some technologocial ideas which he feels will have an impact.

Bernard presentating at Barcamp singapore 3

2 items will be covered and the first being a weighted connector implementation of social network. Currently most social network are implemented via a binary concept. A friend (a connection) or not a friend (no connection).  Such a connection does not measure or captured the value of the relationship. Be it a siblings, friends only, mentor/student.

The concept presentated in in a simple form. An implementation of 1 to 10 was presentated. Such a weighted and directed (some computing jargon but do bear with me) will offer insight to the strength of a particular connection between 2 entities in a social network. And such insight can helps people in both personal and business to make introduction for a connection. Getting a introduction or recommendation from a close friend will yield more mileage than from someone who is just an acquaintance.

Bernard added that such a network should offer some form of calibration to prevent gaming.

Having such a weighted network will bear more value than the current social network. To add to the concept, a major concern to consider is the transitional state of relationship. For example I may rate a college friend highly with a 9, but after graduation, the value should “decay” as we do not keep in touch and are generally busy with our professional life. That is the general scenario. Then for a more drastic scenario when a business partnership suddenly turn south, such weight in the network graph may not be updated and will offer misleading dimensional data.

The perils in modelling imperfect relationship between humans.

The second item that was cover was voice recognition on mobile devices, primarily handphone. Mobile devices with it lesser computing power will require a more elegant solution. Bernard proposal was a open source project for such a particular need. In addition, the solution will also include localisation of local accent of different people across different countries. He mentioned too that localised accent is a major problem facing voice recognition at the moment.

In addition, the solution will also individual to upload their voice profile to a centralise database to form a global pool of voice data which can then be processed (by who ever needs it) for accent profiling and such. The central database can also be alternatively used as the OpenID for voice.

Next talk which I attended was one of Social Media Marking for business which personally sound too guruish and I do not buy much into it. Guess I should be avoiding how-to talks in Barcamp.

The effects of upper management have on my inner poet.

Monkey See, Monkey Wants, Developers Do.

They Surfed, They Saw, Developers Coded.

From elections.gov.sg

The Registers of Electors are currently being revised. The revised Registers will contain the names of all Singapore citizens who are qualified to be electors as of 1 February 2009.

Announcement will be made (expected in about two weeks’ time) when the revision is completed and the related online services are resumed.

The notice to the election office was made on the 16th of Feb 2009.

Meanwhile, do sign up for elections/registers of electors update via sms with myecitizen.sg.

Sign up for SMS alerts

Sitepoint was a the starting point for many developers. And I am one of them.

Sitepoint is now doing a sale for bush fire victims. With 5 pdf for the price of one. All proceedings will go to the victims.

Bush Fire Sale from Sitepoint

The offer is for a limited time and I really hope it can be extended that more help can be generated.

Also, for those who wants to one pdf title only, kindly drop me a mail. I will pool in some titles to hit the numbers if need be.

BTW, the Koala picture on the sales page really says a lot that the real victim is Mother Nature.

resilience package

The Jobs Credit Scheme was discussed by the MPs and some did question the effectiveness of the Scheme. The scheme intention and purpose is good, as voiced by most. I have reservations on the implementation.

Thinking from a business point of view, most business owners will welcome the scheme. It offers some help, little it migh be, to tide over difficult times. And that was the view offered by several MPs.

Now, thinking from a jobs holder point of view, (it is Jobs credit after all), the implemetation of the scheme may not come across as that attractive.

For a company in the verge of retrenching, the scheme will offer some lifeline. How much nobody can offer concrete number. For a profitable company, the scheme will offer extra cash to the company, with no guaranty that the job holder will benefit from scheme. Will the company offer the money as bonus at the end of the year?

Or will the money from the scheme enters some top executive pocket as bonus?

Maybe the alternative implementation is to give the job holder the money directly, instead of channeling via their employer. For example, some one who earn $2500 per month will get $900 at the end of each 3 months stated period. And the employers be notified of this. Should the employer face hardship in cash flow to keep the company afloat, the company can, with a ease of mind, cut the pay of the employee by $300.

It the company is profitable, then it will have no good reason to cut the pay of the employee who receive the job credit payout. Yes, some might say why does employee who face no risk of retrenchment be given the money? It is the same as asking why companies that face no risk of hardship be given the money too?

This implementation will make sure that the money reaches the people instead of dropping into some corporate blackhole.  It might not be the best implementation. It just defines the line between a job giver credit scheme vs a job holder credit scheme.