Quick Exam Studies Recap_1

The 7 principles of Web 2.0 is as followed:
1. The Web as a Platform
Delivering( or allowing user using) application entirely through an internet browser. A very good example is Web Operation System (WebOS) whereby internet user can conduct simple computer application using a browser.

The Lesson: leverage customer-self service and algorithmic data management to reach out to the entire web, to the edges and not just the center, to the long tail and not just the head.

2. Harnessing Collective Intelligence
Allowing user to provide the content of the service. Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki."Under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably intelligent, are often smarter than the smartest people in the team"

The lesson: Network effects from user contributions are the key to market dominance in the Web 2.0 era.

3. Data is the Next Intel Inside
Every significant internet application to date has been backed by a specialized database: Google's web crawl, Yahoo!'s directory (and web crawl), Amazon's database of products, eBay's database of products and sellers, MapQuest's map databases, Napster's distributed song database. Database management is a core competency of Web 2.0 companies, so much so that we have sometimes referred to these applications as "infoware" rather than merely software.


The race is on to own certain classes of core data: location, identity, calendaring of public events, product identifiers and namespaces. In many cases, where there is significant cost to create the data, there may be an opportunity for an Intel Inside style play, with a single source for the data. In others, the winner will be the company that first reaches critical mass via user aggregation, and turns that aggregated data into a system service.

4. End of the Software Release Cycle
As noted above in the discussion of Google vs. Netscape, one of the defining characteristics of internet era software is that it is delivered as a service, not as a product. This fact leads to a number of fundamental changes in the business model of such a company:

- Operations must become a core competency
- Users must be treated as co-developers

5. Lightweight Programming Models
- simplicity
- Support lightweight programming models that allow for loosely coupled systems
- Think syndication, not coordination
- Design for "hackability" and remixability (open source)

6. Software above the Level of a Single Device
- software built not just for computers and servers but also for other devices such as phone, game console and othr mobile devices

7. Rich Users Experience
- one key feature is PC-equivalent interactivity

Core Competency of Web 2.0 Companies
- Services, not packaged software, with cost-effective scalability
- Control over unique, hard-to-recreate data sources that get richer as more people use them
- Trusting users as co-developers
- Harnessing collective intelligence
- Leveraging the long tail through customer self-service
- Software above the level of a single device
- Lightweight user interfaces, development models, AND business models

"What is Web2.0?" by Tim O'Reilly

Final Show Down!

Our design Engineer!



Our multimedia Guy!











Well Done, guys! Although, we didn't win the presentation. I have back up plan for our idea. Stay in touch after exam! It is an exciting learning journey with you guys!

Finally Presentation Soon!

Guys, sorry for not been updating my blogs for sometime. Busy with assignment and projects! However, I did manage to squeeze some time to go for NEXUS 2007 at NTUC building. I'm going to say this loud..."It was GREAT!" The event was very informal and the speakers are COOL! They talk about Web 2.0, future of the web and how disruptive the web can be in the media industry. The one that impressed me the most is Nathan Torkington.

Nat Torkington comes from O’Reilly, the very company that coined the term “Web 2.0″. Since 1978, O’Reilly has been a catalyst of cutting-edge development, homing in on technology trends that really matter and in turn spurring their adoption. Nat is a long time pioneer in the technology space, having chaired the O’Reilly Open Source Convention and other O’Reilly conferences for over a decade. He co-wrote the best-selling Perl Cookbook and was one of the founding O’Reilly Radar bloggers. Few people are as plugged in as he is to the Web and the open source community. Want to listen to his talk on WEB 2.0? Go to Web 2.0 podcast

BM362 module is coming to the end soon and we have to go for our final showdown on coming this Thursday. This module is really useful. Minor in Entrepreneurship has changed my mindsets about setting up business and teaches me how to think-out-of-the-box but it is purely generating of crazy ideas but BM362 is slightly different. Beside coming out with crazy ideas, Prof Lee shared with us his deep thoughts and experience. He imparted us on how to think in a logical manner yet it is still daring and creative! Strategic mindset and presentation skills are the attributes that I'm weak in but Prof Lee has taught us well in this aspect. Lastly, I need to say this to Prof Lee. I can't believe that such a veteran person can know much more on new mobile technology development than youngsters like us! I feel that it is time for me to learn to be more tech-savvy. I don't want to lose to an old man. Opps! I hope I didn't offend any of my visitors by using the word "old"! Haha!

Jokes aside... Need to concentrate on the biz plan presentation. Btw, my dear friends, if you happen to be reading my blog now, I will be having my presentation on coming Thursday (5 April), 4.30pm at SA IT Lab 2. There will a lot of wireless application biz plan presentation on that day, i believee you can get to see some innovative ideas and learn something from there. Most importantly, come and support Neo! Thank you!

Week 9

Oh man...it is already Week 9! Time is pressing hard on me! Use case video, technology plan and ultimately business plan!! Oh my God! However, I really enjoy this module unlike my Economics module which doesn't simulate my thinking while in the class. Well, my school is still running in a typical type of Singapore education system! Come on! we should be moving on to Education 2.0 phenomenon! There are so many web 2.0 sites for the lecturers or students as the new learning platform and I personnally like the Slideshare where user can upload and browsed other people's slides. A very good form of information sharing! Erm...the design is simple and easy to use! Well, there is a website that collates many web 2.0 sites that targeted at education. Click here if you want to know more.

Design...hmm that's the core topic of the lecture! It is extremely important. I believe all of us have bad experience of buying products that are very hard to use and make you very frustrated! Although the product is using very advance technology, people might not want to use it because it is not easy to use. Therefore, commercial value drops. I think Apple Ipod and Creative MP3 players cases are very good illustration on the portable MP3 market. Creative is the one that invented portable MP3 player but it is actually Apple that created a shock in the market. Why? it is because of design. The circular motion controlled by the thumb makes music scrolling easier as compared to other portable MP3 players. Oh man...Steve Job is an Icon!

When we talk about designing the product, we talk about drafting of use case. Well, I'm sort of doing my use case (this is the first time I'm doing! Guys, remember? I'm Economics student!) Hmm...manage to get some templates over the web and I've done some modification here and there. It was a bit hard initially but after some time, just get used to it. In fact, i learnt that use case can actually help you to think through how the operation should go rather than just an idea. At least, it starts to simulate me to think much more than the marketing point of view. For my uDrive travel service, we start to make some changes here and there so that it can help us to solve some internal problems that intially we didn't think of. Guys, i also found some people actually produce a use case video for their product(See youtube ). After you watch it, can someone tell me what's the difference between use case video and proof-of-concept video?

That's all for the day! I feel tired. Before I end this, just want to share some findings with you guys. All the while, we have been talking about application of web 2.0 like business 2.0, real estate 2.0 and health 2.0. I found this article over the web. To my surprise, even US military intelligence goes for Web 2.0! Guys, for your reference click here.

Week 8 - remember the privacy issue?

This is the interesting video i found over the web. I remember discussing over privacy issue in class and this video actually talks about the so-called "Master plan of Google". To a certain extent, I think the video maker is trying to convey a message in such as way about Google's dominace over the web and its capability of collecting information. Well nevertheless, this is to let u guys think about the possibility of our future! Stay objective!


Video: Google Master Plan

Steve Jobs

Week 7

Finally, uploaded the video elevator pitch! Thank God! Yeah! So far, the feedback from friends about the pitch is not too bad...Anyway, it is the only the first day...still have to see response from other users whom we don't know.

This week lesson is about podcasting. I'm don't quite familiar with podcasting so, this time round have to write some lecture stuff to help me remember better. The term 'podcasting' is actually derived from Apple's Ipod illustrating the idea of audio broadcasting to a container or some sort. The value to the users is the provision of platform to broadcast at a cheap cost. This form of value has creates several application of the technology that cater not only for the consumers market but also to the business environment.

The introduction of podcasting has changed the consumer behaviour as broadcasting is not longer a dream to the normal commoner with help of internet. All you need is a microphone (which is really low cost)and a audio editing software(which is free!)to record the audio and upload to any podcasting website and you are done! In fact, there are some website that collate all the popular podcasting websites to make it easier for users to search for their desire podcasting website. For instance, Podcast Alley is one of a kind of podcast directory.

Erm...let's get to the real business application. Very obvious, podcasting technology has created new avenue for businesses to advertise their products and services. It can also be integrated to the organisation management to sort of increasing the efficiency of the organisation. Prof Lee mentioned in the lecture that the good thing about podcasting in an organisation is that staff can actually receive information through podcasting while they are doing their work at the same time. This helps to save time and also convey motivational messages effectively from the very top of the top management to the very bottom of the workforce. There is a video advertisment by Podcast Media Service that illustrates the values and application of Podcast. Perhaps you guys can take a look at it(haha! ignore the marketing gimmicks that the organisation use...look at how they explain Podcast).

Hmm...let's link Podcast back to the business plan that my team intend to propose to the tourism industry people. I have kept on emphasizing the market problem of language barrier in Singapore and I think the idea of getting personalised drivers to interact with the tourists who have specific language need is not going to cause any big disruption in the industry. Instead, we should include podcasting concept to our tourists who are the end-users of our service. This is because language communication is audio in nature! It will become another value-added services. So what i mean? Although our drivers can communicate with the visitors while on the road, within a specific location for instance, Singapore Zoo, vistors will be left alone to move around the Zoo without travel guide. The solution for this is to use digital audio like MP3 that provides information of the animals. This digital audio file can be transferred via USB port of our uDrive computer devices (that are installed at the back of the seat) to their Ipod or portable MP3 players before they even reach the designation.

uDrive

Week 6

Wish all of you a happy Chinese New Year. Yeah..Thank god. This week, there is no need to do any presentation preparation. Haha...However, we need to do one business case for the ASEAN Food Safety Initiative using wireless infrastructure. Hmm…initially, don’t feel any excitement on doing business case maybe because I have did once during Entrepreneurship minor. However, this time is slightly different.

What I did during minor was more like preparing another report that illustrated the business strategies and pin point all the mistakes made by the company (the business case I did for minor was Hour Glass Watch) which everything was already spelled out in the report given. However, what is given in BM362 is more analytical and requires more thinking processes in other do the reporting because you need to be sharp to pin point the possible problems in the organization. I think it is a better form of training as compared to Entrepreneurship minor perhaps I will feedback this to Nanyang Technopreneurship Centre (NTC) to adopt this teaching method to the subsequent batch of Entrepreneurship Minor students. At the same time, I learn that through business case studies, it will train me to be a sharper person.

Under the encouragement of Prof Lee, I took part in Citibank Business Case Competition organized by SMU. I joined KANIKA’s group for this competition. While it is a good experience...The last meeting was very intensive discussion in fact, right now I am doing business case discussion now. Haha...Oh... I have to say this…the team is very dynamic and motivated...Let’s do our best and give SMU a hard time.

P.S. Any master of his craft knows that it is not his oponent he is fighting. It is himself.

Week 5

Time flies. It is already week 5! This week we are supposed to present our elevator pitch video. This is the first time I was doing a pitch in front of camera. During the entrepreneurship minor, I was asked to do an elevator pitch in front of the class. Well it turned out to be not-so-good. That's why I was trying to make a better one over the video.

For this video project, I have worked out all the necessary information that I think a potential investor wants to know because I was afraid that within the time limit, I might not be able to convey the idea well. To solve that problem, I got an outsider to actually watch the video without telling her in the first place what's the project is all about. To my surprise, she did manage to understand 60%-70% of what our idea is all about. After the presentation, the general comment is to improve the overall design of the video and working on the value preposition and the revenue model which we did mention but didn't convey it clearly over the pitch.

For this week presentation, 3 groups presented their videos. The video presented are rather interesting but to be very frank, I think the business ideas presented by other groups were not really special. I mean I can't find any differential point from the services they provide. There is already a lot of Electronic travel guide in the Internet market. For example, the Florida's travel website: http://www.visitflorida.com/experience/podcasts/# which not only provide necessary tourism information but also makes use of current technology such as podcast to help to convey message to their potential clients. From my point of view, the tourism industry is already highly competitive. In order to snatch a share of the market, it is necessary to differentiate ourselves from the rest. Do something different and make it as our core competency. From my personal view, I think all the groups are good in integrating technology and hospitality services but lack of business innovation to market the product or service. I believe ther is a key thing we need to look into if we really want to design a good product that caters for everyone's need.

Back to the lecture proper! Well, I really appreciate that the emerging of e-commerce and m-commerce has indeed improved our standard of living. However, the question about 'Freedom' in the society is still bothering me. Yes, I agree that users can provide the contents over the web shows that people are generally freely to convey the message they want to express. Interactivity in e-commerce and m-commerce does mean that people will have more choice and freedom over the things they want to do. However at the same time, with the technology infracturture, it is also not hard to trace anybody in any part of the world and it is highly possible now to detect the actions too as long he/she is carrying a mobile device. Your privacy can be intruded with the available technology. This is subjective and perhaps I should link back this to the earlier part of the lecture proper. Technology is able to create new behaviour among the human races and laggers will be left behind if they cannot adopte to the change in technology. From my own perspective, instead of asking should human begins accept the lost of privacy, why not ask yourself whether are you ready to change to a new habit?

Week 4

Week 4 is cool! We had our presentation on the Jurong Bird Park and the move of using toy as the wireless device has received a very positive feedback! Thanks Tian Yi for proposing of such idea! On the other hand, other teams also had presented very innovative ideas. The use of radio for audio messages and the idea of electronic travel guide are very interesting business opportunities. At the same time, the discussion of these business ideas has stimulated my thoughts more for the current business idea that I mentioned last week in my blog.

Coincidentally, this week seminar focuses more on the business model. Thank God! This is something I should be good at as an Economic-Major student! Haha! However, this week seminar brought us even deeper into the value chain of the hospitality industry. What I am very glad of is that our toy that is used for the Bird Park Project seems to be the only viable product that can create value to the users at the retirement stage out of all the other teams which used better and more advanced technology.

This reminds me on the disruptive technology that was taught in the 1st lecture. There is no need to invent revolutionary technology in other to be an entrepreneur. What’s more important is how to improve and use the existing technology to create an entirely new experience to the users. Commercial value is always the key for the market! Technology alone is not enough. Business model is necessary to finance the organization operation.

Last week, my business idea was very brief and doesn’t really look deeply into the whole value chain of the industry. Week 4 helped me to think in a much more strategic manner as I have exposed many innovative business ideas from other teams. I have to say this…Although seminar size is very small; all teams’ ideas are uniquely different from one another. This made the whole learning experience so interactive. From others’ business plans, I can identify each individual team’s strength and weakness and further improve on my own business idea.

Continue from last week business idea, I decided to look into very specific market segments. Language barrier is seriously a problem in Singapore tourism industry especially for Korean and Chinese tourists which account for a huge percentage of our tourism market. We can work along this problem and come out with personalized language services on our mobile devices. At the moment, I have already told the team to start designing the product. So, audience! Stand-by for more information!!! Yo!

Week 3

Now then i have the time to write about week 3 lecture. Lecture 3 is interesting as the concept of 'Wisdom of Crowd' is being discussed in class. Kind of amazed that the aggregation of information from many individuals are often better than a single individual (even though the particular individual might be very intelligent). I think that is the part of the reason of the rising trend of Wiki (Web 2.0)

During the lesson, there also discussion about business opportunities that can be viable in the mobile industry. At the same time, it also simulated me to think of more business ideas. One of the ideas that I shared with my teammates is to provide advertising services for the hospitality industries. So what is the idea?

We will be using 3G technology integrated with transportation service to provide this advertising service. Target audience will be definately the tourists and the transportation will be logically Cabs. Right now, tourists usually have problems receiving information of tourist attraction, hotels and etc when they visit in Singapore.

All we need to include is a communication device with 3G capability that can be installed in taxi and the websites will be restricted to the sponsors that provide the advertising contents. Of course the revenue model will be from the sponsors. I am still exploring the operation chain that is required. I believe this business is quite scalable as more other services can be included that specifically targetted to local as well.

P.S Guys, if you are interested about e-commerce, pls visit Nexus 2007 - Leading in Times of Disruptive Change!

Guys, i think this is a very interesting technology. Very interactive! I think it will be very interesting business if it can be integrated with 3G!

2nd week Starhub case study and HTML

After one week preparation, our group finally go for Starhub case presentation. It turned out to be GREAT! Although some minor mistakes here and there, it was still considered a good presentation given the time we have! Tian Yi, thanks for the Power Point preparation! Cris, thanks for bringing down Hip Hop 'uniform' and the time to dress up yourself! Well done, Team! Next time we should video record our presentation and preparation process. haha!!

After this case study, I really amazed by Starhub's capabilities and her potential which initially I think that Starhub is there just to compete with Singtel. However, it turns out to be not entirely correct. To a certain extent, it is Singtel who is in the offensive mode (especially during the bid for the EPL boadcast rights) trying to have a cut in the paid-TV market. However after Starhub won the bid, Singtel seems to tone down and focus more on retaining her own customer base by providing more integral services like "Mio" which is to integrate mobile, fix-line and broadband package to the consumers.

I believe the reason that Starhub was awarded for the EPL rights is also they have a stronger technological infrastruture (the cable of course) to deliver TV program services to the customers. I think this is important in the e-commerce and m-commerce. In this industry, high fix cost is required for the infrastructure. In other to increase Internet access speed for their customers, Starhub has pumped in $600m just on upgrading. However, it is still profitable if you got many customers (Economics of scale)because the cost of deliver the service is almost $0(variable cost is low)since the transfer of data per cable is being fully utilised. Well, it all talks about scale and NUMBERS!


This week lesson is a bit 'techy'! Well, I will still try to follow the lesson. Well we talk about usual matter like the origin of WWW and its application etc. I think what is more important here is the understanding of the technology available; its strength and its limitation. First of all, Prof Gilbert bring in the topic on TCP/IP. He had actually explain to us as simple as it is but I think I need to understand better by gathering more information. I googled to this website http://www.yale.edu/pclt/comm/tcpip.htm to have a better understanding of the technology. In short, TCP is meant for packaging and IP is meant for addressing

The TCP/IP is described as robust and able to automatically recover from any node or phoneline failure. This design allows the construction of very large networks with less central management. Although the recent Taiwan earthquak was serious, network was affected but the fact is we still can go online. This illustrates the robustness of TCP/IP protocol. The technology behind is Internet Ptotocol version 4 (32-bit number of addresses) which allows data packages to deroute if any catastrophic event happens that damage the network cables. However, this will be compensated by a slower speed as the 'flow' of the data will not be steady because the packages are scatter around everywhere in the network.

In accord to the limitation of IPv4, IPv6 is using 128-bit number of addresses which implies that it is faster due to the larger data packages can be transferred in the network. However, it also mean that it will be harder to deroute the data packages. So what we really want? Actually it is depends more on the industry. Industries like TV and stock information require real-time data streaming. Therefore, these industries will need IPv6 more as compared to other industries.


The good news is that TCP/IP can allow both versions to co-exist. TCP/IP serves as a standard for the Internet industry. As the diagram has shown , TCP/IP can do a lot more. Having a better understanding of the technology, I undestand why Starhub is willing to spend $600m to upgrade their infrastruture to DOCSIS3.0 for their cable TV and gaming.

In the lesson, we also discussed about email. It is not a complicated technology but it has indeed change the way how communication is being done. Email is a lousely-coupled form of communication as compared to phone-to-phone verbal communication which is tighly-coupled. I think this is an important attribute especially to the business users as what is more important are the delivery of the message rather than immediacy(moment of greatest value)

End of the day, I think the most beneficial part is to be able to write some simple html scripting. Haha! Anyway, I still got a lot more stuff to know about technology. It's really about self-learning!

Week 1

Well, i'm back to school! Yeah. Taking another tech-business module after entreprenuership minor! I have heard a lot of times about disruptive technology but the true understandings of that theory only after the class (I hope I get it right this time round.). Disruptive technology: An innovation that overturns the existing dominant technology in the market and most of the time, the disruptive technology might not be anything better in term of quality as compared to the existing dominant technology. In fact, I feel that it is more like business strategies that create the 'disruptive' impact as disruptive technology is like filling up the holes in the value chain of the market that are previously not filled by the big players. The diagram below shows the capability of a disrupter, who initially supplies the low-end consumers, increasing their profit margin to meet the demand of the high-end consumers.



In the lecture, Prof Gilbert has mentioned 5 key disruptions in the network industry (e-commerce).
1. Digitalization
2. Globalization
3. personalization
4. Mobility
5. Convergence

Personally, i think most people agree that digitalisation and globalisation have changed the way people gather and process information. Today, we talk about global industry, we are actually referring to the information-based or knowledge-based industry. We need information/knowledge to help us make critical business decision. People are searching information over the web because the information are not restricted by physical location (there is no need for you to go to National Library to borrow the book) and they are always there for you to access (no need to worry that the library book you want is being borrowed by someone else). A very good example to illustrate the 2 phenomenon is Amazon.com.

I see the last 3 disruptions as the recent trends that are happening in our today information economy. Nowadays, telcom providers can actually detect the location of you based on the signal that is transmitted by your mobile phones. This form of information is essential as it is about to tell the customer’s income pattern by the place they frequently go or their residential areas. From there on, businesses can actually customize their products or services to suit the needs of the consumers rather than standardizing their products to meet the general public. This is what we call personalization. This form of business behavior has ever become more prominent especially the rise of Internet.

Mobility is another big disruption in the technology market. Today, mobile phone is used as a standard for distant verbal communication rather then a fixed line phone. I call my mum through her mobile not through the home line. This is because the one I called is my mum (not my home!). As observed, fixed-line phone industry is greatly affected by the shift of consumer preference.

Lastly, we talk about convergence. A very good example is the use of wireless technology. Mobile phone today has many build-in features. I use my phone as an organizer, MP3 player and checking emails. These are some convergences happen in the mobile industry. The reading on Fixed Mobile Convergence (StarHub) has made me understand more on technology convergence and the necessary management reshuffling to meet the demand of such convergence.

In my own point of view, the disruptions that we talked about in the lecture suggest that all 5 of them are inter-linked with one another and by putting all 5 of them together, it suggests that e-commerce today is highly interactive i.e. a system of immediate two-way communication rather than a system of one-way communication in a schedule basis. This brings to the next big thing in the e-commerce: Web 2.0.

Web 2.0 is a concept of delivering highly-personalized web application to the end-user. Blogs and wikis are some of the Web 2.0 tools. To put it simply, Web 2.0 is all about YOU! The end-user! From my own point of view, the true potential is the capability of executing computing application using internet browser. Example: Meebo.com, a company that collates many instant messengers such as MSN and Yahoo! Messenger into one website. In another words, there is no need to download any messenger software to do instant messaging. I believe this will pose possible disruption in software industry.

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