Posted: February 12th, 2010 | Author: Chim | Filed under: BRIC, Food for thoughts, Fun | Tags: Fun, Google, Internet, Links | 2 Comments »
Today is a special day for Google’s Doodle team. It had to create and publish three different doodles. Except in Brazil and China, Google is showing the Winter Olympics doodle. In Brazil, Google is showing a Carnaval doodle and in China, it is showing the Chinese new year doodle.
Although not as popular and well known as the summer Olympics, the winter Olympics is being held in the beautiful city of Vancouver. Canadians are very excited for this big event.
I was curious to know that there are some athletes representing Brazil in the winter Olympics. We do not have snow in 99% of the Brazilian territory and the winter is not as harsh as in Canada. It is quite hard to develop a strong winter sport team in Brazil due to the climate. It would be very expensive to maintain artificial winter conditions in such a hot country.
I guess the Brazilian athletes train in Canada.
The Brazilian Carnaval happens once a year and it usually starts on a Friday and it goes until the mid-day of Wednesday. Carnaval dates change according to lunar calendar, which is the same one used for the Chinese new year.
Chinese new year happens according the the lunar calendar. The new year can happen at the end of January or the end of March depending on the lunar cycle.
The Google China website is slightly different from the traditional minimalist look of Google. I think that the minimalist concept is very challenging for the Chinese aesthetic point of view. Take a look at one of the most popular website in China. If you compare Google’s homepage and Sina.com.cn’s website, you can see that Google may give an impression that something is missing in the eyes of a Chinese.
However, nothing beats the cuteness and fluffiness of a typical Japanese website (http://lolipop.jp).
Happy new year (year of tiger), Carnaval and Winter Olympics!
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Posted: February 7th, 2010 | Author: Chim | Filed under: Education, Food for thoughts, Fun, Startups | Tags: Business, Business plan, Education, Entrepreneurs, Fun, Interesting, Internet, Money, Social Network, Startups | No Comments »
Kwedit is a strange name for a payment company. This is a startup that offers a new form of payment to social and interactive games that allows people to buy virtual goods. The strange thing is that it allows people to “promise” to pay for a virtual good and the user can pay the promise later with a bar code in a 7eleven store.
Even though this seems to be a great innovation, the idea of printing a bar code and pay it in a retail store is nothing new to date. The strong differentiator of Kwedit is the idea of promising to pay later. I wonder what would happen if everybody promises to pay but none of the actually pays anything. I believe that the CFO of the company would be scare of the increase in the account payable of the balance sheet.
This type of payment for virtual goods reminded me of Habbo Hotel. Habbo is a Finnish company that started its virtual goods operations before the internet boom. It is probably the first company to have a business model based on selling virtual goodies to users. Interesting enough, Habbo targeted in a very narrow market segment. Its targets on teenagers that love to chat in pixel-lated environment.
Habbo and its many forms of payments.
Habbo offers 7eleven payments too. OK, they sell pre-paid cards and Kwedit doesn’t.
In my humble opinion, Sulake could have grown much more if it had focused on the virtual good market as a whole market instead of just that niche teenager segment. It could have created a strategic plan of reaching all types of games and services based on virtual goods. Well, other companies grew upon this model and they are newer than Habbo. C’est tant pis.
Posted: December 23rd, 2009 | Author: Chim | Filed under: Food for thoughts, Fun, Startups, Tools, Web 2.0 | Tags: Books, Internet, Productivity, Startups, Useful, Web | No Comments »
Bookhu is a book review website that shows if a book is read more by men or women. It is a food for thought website. It shows if I have more male or female preference. In my searches, most of my books related to entrepreneurship, venture capital and languages are read more by men. However, my books related to culture are read more by women.
Posted: December 19th, 2009 | Author: Chim | Filed under: Fun, Groups, Startups, Tools, Web 2.0 | Tags: Entrepreneurs, Entrepreneurship, Fun, Interesting, Social Network, Startups, Tools | No Comments »
http://tinychat.com/
Tinychat provides free video and audio chatroom for the mass. People can use this tool as a DJ room, virtual meeting presentation room or live interactive TV. I like this website because it’s free and for startups, this tool can connect our team member even if they are in different parts of the world. I think this is a Webex competitor only that Webex is focused on corporate customers and Tinychat is focused on the consumer customers.
If this service catches on, it would be a great acquisition target for big companies like Cisco, Google, Microsoft and even Yahoo. I believe that with the adoption of higher speed internet network and the integration of video and audio into gadgets, the reality is that people will prefer to use video and audio to communicate rather than writing, SMS or IM.
Posted: December 8th, 2009 | Author: Chim | Filed under: Entrepreneurship, Food for thoughts, Fun, Shopping, Startups | Tags: Business, Canada, Entrepreneurs, Entrepreneurship, Food for thoughts, Fun, Internet, Startups, Tools, Trends | No Comments »
It is hard to make money on the Internet. Currently, there are two famous ways to monetize on the Internet: advertising and e-commerce. In the advertising side, we have Google AdWords, Yahoo Marketing or Microsoft Advertising. These companies make money by having big audience that attracts advertisers’ money. For instance, Google gets money when users click ads. In the e-commerce side, we have eBay, Amazon, Newegg, etc. They gain profit from buying low and selling high price. They have strong brands and first-mover advantage. It is almost impossible to create a company to compete against these behemoths.
However, that did not stop entrepreneurs to come up with more startups. A lot of entrepreneurs created other viable ways to make money on the internet. One of the most interesting way is the Make-Your-Own-Stuff Web 2.0 companies. They are characterized by Ajax site structure with big buttons and fonts and crowdsourcing or customization features in their websites. They make money by selling cool things that a lot of people like. Some companies sell t-shirts, mugs or print arts for your iPhone.
I’m going to present four companies that fit in this Make-Your-Own-Stuff Web 2.0 category:
Threadless home page 2009 winter
Threadless is a company that sells crowdsourcing designed t-shirts (from Chicago). Simply, people send their t-shirt designs; other people vote for the best and cool designs; Threadless make t-shirts from those winning designs to the mass. People buy them. [This is a classic successful web 2.0 company that relies on crowdsourcing and social interaction.]
Gelaskins Canada Startup Homepage 2009
Gelaskins is a Canadian company that sells cellphone and other electronic gadget special skin protection with very interesting design. They have a lot of designers that create cool designs for all those cellphone protectors. The protectors are made of a special plastic-rubber easy to remove and glue that not only make your iPhone or Blackberry more beautiful, but also protect your gadget from scratches. [Great potential to grow.]
Scarfmaker an Estonian startup
Scarfmaker.com is a startup from Estonia and it allows users to customize scarf with their own designs. I think the idea is great and it may grow very very fast. Currently, I think the company is backed by Swedish VCs. I will be watching the developing of this company.
Crazy Custom Caps Home page 2009
Crazy Customs Caps is a typical company that offers customized caps. There are many many companies that allow people to create customized caps but not many of them set up a website. Although, the idea of this company may not be original, the business framework of allowing users to customize their products is definitely catching on in the web 2.0 landscape.
All these companies belong to the e-commerce category of money making website, but they are able to compete against big players because they have a special value proposition to customers. Most of them offer unique items created by the crowd or by user’s customization of the product. Interesting niche market.
