Entry March 16, 2007

Thought: Google’s YouTube headache, or there is still no model for social media sites

Last year, I wrote a block entry indicating that there was no good business model behind the social network sites. yet. Recent events, including Viacom and CBS’s pulling videos from YouTube and recent news that Viacom filed a $1B lawsuit against Google. Apparently, only deep-pocket, fast-growing companies like Google would pay such a price for a tiny revenue and no investor even cared. However, the share of attention that Google executives paying to YouTube may be too much. If it had been acquired by a media company, YouTube might have had less legal cases, but the business model is still not clear how copyrighted materials to be tracked and revenue to be shared with the owner.

Thought: Social networking will soon go mainstream

New wave of social network is changing the way employees communicate and collaborate. Small and distributed IT companies are pioneers in this area, in both usage and technology development. Big companies have been recently awaken. Among the examples are: IBM’s global meetings on SecondLife, Oracle’s inclusion of Web 2.0 into portal product, SAP’s alumni network, etc. Recently Cisco acquired Utah Street Networks just for its software knowhow in social networking and aimed at blending it into its Media Solution Group. Clearly, all signs point toward social networking’s going main stream not far in future, I believe.

Interesting stuffs: Social Network Shapes from Valdi Krebs

Thought: Anything-on-the-go and the iPod economy

I was amazed to know that my colleagues at SAP could bring the whole contents of a demo scenario on a Linux server blade to a big drive, then dump it on any standard PC and start immediately. Recently, RingCube has commercialized its software to allow mirroring software into a small storage device and start it again in a Windows-based machine. It seems that mobile computing may not only bring computing devices around, but also as simple as a small storage device… and one of the popular device that people bring along anyway is iPod.

Talking about iPod, on my trip to Vienna, I stayed in le Meridien and guess what, I saw iPod rental on the wall. Strolling last week in Saturn, a electronics chain similar to Circuit City or CompUSA in Germany, I encountered dictionaries for iPod, which are similar to Merriam-Webster’s here.

What I can see from these two different sets of events is the iPod-economy no longer stops at music- or video-on-the-go. It has been and will be more as new technologies enable anything go mobile, from telephone, PC, dictionary to map, calendar, and God knows what next… Welcome to the new world, where anything is on-the-go, and how many devices do you still have? I see some day, human will carry only a single tiny, easy-to-use, lightweight device with smart (but no need to be powerful) computing capability and a lot of storage. Maybe, I will go and buy Apple’s share now.

Uploaded in Heidelberg.

Entry March 13, 2007

What’s I been doing recently

I’ve been in such a crazy time, skipping lunch almost every day, waking up early and still feel not getting anywhere. I want to get it out of my chest… and here are the things I did:
- Did mock interview for 4-5 students applying for US MBA program. Time-consuming to understand the person, read about school so that I can play well the role. Have to skip lunches to do this since it’s the only good time slot and avoid interfering with other obligations. I think it was helpful but no one even came back to me about what really happened in the real interview. Too sad.
- Connected to my classmates, colleagues and mentors through LinkedIn. Amazing result, lot’s of potentials and I have to think me what I can do with it. Will have to encourage my contacts to be on LinkedIn.
- Helped a couple of students to prepare for US graduate school. One of my best students, someone I always consider my younger brother, has a chance now to be there in Fall. Helped him to see the possibilities but skipped lunch again – his bike broke down and I was just waiting on Skype. Anyway, it well worth it. Go brother, go!
- Jotted down a lot of ideas and observations around me about organizational actions need to be done in my works, but still don’t know how to start selling it.
- Did a project for Connek to review its vision. A good project but not appreciated by many because it’s intangible and has long-term impact only. Will do something short-term, but will continue.
- Went for an enterprise SOA roadshow in Vienna. Success as expected. Walked around in town and got to know a couple of interesting colleagues and topics.
- Worked on some aspects of marketing and brand at works. No breakthrough because.

Things I plan to do next
- Get back to normal life, no more lunch skipping, no Internet in the evening.
- Create a career assistance service for Connek student members. Will have to involve all my contacts and old Connek members to do this.
- Make study-overseas sessions and arrange mentorship between Connek members in and out-side of Vietnam around this topic.
- Think about designing global organization before reading a new book on this topic. It has just arrived.
- Prepare for my vacation in April in Vietnam.
- Find a couple of friends also interested in Web 2.0, social networking to test tools, explore virtual collaboration and think if there is something we can do, maybe a business idea?
- Write to blog more about many ideas I have in my idea notes now.