Andrew Cho.NET

Wrong.

ANYONE who’s telling you this, wants you to FAIL.

Some business principles by Phil Libin, CEO, Evernote:

- It always pays off to invest all your money on product, because if you’ve got a great product, almost everything else comes for free.

- Make an amazingly great product.

- Charge money for it.

A good idea is a clever solution to a problem, one that I have never seen before. But if an idea is not taken up and used as a solution to a problem, it has no value. It becomes a non-idea.

-Paul Arden, author of the world’s bestselling book

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

It’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve carried around my iPad around everywhere. My Macbook Pro has been reduced to, rather demoted to something that I use only if I have to do some writing, or programming. For the past 3 weeks, I only carried around my laptop once, which is a huge shift from having to carry it around almost every day.

So, in this post, I would like to talk about the iPad apps that I would actually love to pay for. It has been said, in some statistics, that 70% of the iPad apps are paid apps, ranging from $2.99-$49.99 depending on the types of the applications. However, most of these apps that I find in the App Store these days disappoint me in many ways:

A. They don’t take advantage of the bigger screen. The new “iPad” apps currently in the store tend to be just a larger version of the iPhone apps that developers have previously published on the iPhone. Over time, I believe that this problem would be solved as developers become used to the bigger screen real estate.

B. Viewing angles. Some of these apps only support certain directions when it comes to using their programs. I find so many of these in various applications. This problem is prevalent in many game apps, and it become a huge pain in the ass if you are using the Apple Case with it.

C. Overpriced. I do understand the reason why so many developers thought it was a great time to increase their price on the iPad. They must have thought “Well, bigger screen= higher price.” But guess what. Consumers are not dumb. Well, not that dumb. Just because I get to play doodle jump on the big screen doesn’t mean I’ll automatically pay $4.99 for the same game all of a sudden. Produce something enjoyable and native to the iPad platform, fully utilizing the experience. And then, I might think about paying so much.

I was trying to write a more refined and formal version of this, but since this idea’s been stuck in my head for so long, I’ll just let it out.

So it’s been a couple weeks since Twitter rolled out its newest feature, locations-based trending topics. I have set my location to Los Angeles, CA and tried to see if it added any real value to my Twitter stream. Just to be clear, the only reason why I adopted and avidly supported Twitter over Facebook is not because it was simple and easy to use. (For some people, Twitter is TOO simple for them to ‘get’ it. Or at least, that’s what I hear from those who don’t tweet. ) The only reason why I joined Twitter is because of its real-time information stream. It allows me to create, share, deliver, and consume what is happening RIGHT NOW with others.

As Evan Williams said at Web 2.0 Summit in November 2009, “What we have to do is deliver to people the best and freshest most relevant information possible. We think of Twitter as it’s not a social network but it’s an information network. It tells people what they care about as it is happening in the world.”

Hence, as he mentioned above, the most phenomenal and compelling feature that differentiated Twitter from other social networks is that it enables people to share real-time information of current events anywhere in the world. It allowed people to filter & customize the real-time information by letting them follow news, people, places, and companies that they genuinely care about. In addition, it publishes the most talked about or the ‘hottest’ topics on the bottom right corner of the homepage so that its users can see what is going on at the moment. It is the core strength of Twitter that contributed so much to its mainstream adoption.

However, is Twitter really living up to its mission statement defined by Evan Williams? At least in its current form, I doubt it. With the addition of location-based trending topics, it just seems like Twitter is jumping on the location-based social networking bandwagon just like everyone else in Silicon Valley (Foursquare, Gowalla, Yelp, Geodelic, etc. you name it). And the biggest problem with the introduction of location-based trending topics is that it adds absolutely no value to neither Twitter as an information network nor its user experience.

I mean, how many times have you seen useless, pointless, and irrelevant trending topics such as #goodnight, #omgthatssotrue, #thisdateisover (these are displayed on Twitter as I write this post) on Twitter trending topics? Twitter’s core strength is in its real-time delivery of relevant and accurate information to its users. Twitter was faster at delivering Tiger Woods’ being involved in a car accident than CNN was.

But seriously, for FAWK’s sake, do we really need to know what the HELL you’re #nowplaying?? Just last week, there was a false rumor being spread on Twitter regarding Johnny Depp’s death and ‘RIP Johnny Depp’ was a trending topic for almost the entire day. By indiscriminately displaying the most talked about or most hashtagged words, Twitter is downgrading its quality as the world’s biggest real-time information repository.

Just imagine what Twitter can do with relevant and current real-time information combined with location-specific trending topics. For example, by filtering out the unnecessary and useless things that people say, Twitter can display location-specific advertisements about the ‘hottest’ and most talked about topics when they click on one of the trending topics. Think about how high click-through rate and conversion rate would be for those ads.

The result? “Seamless CPC advertisements with super high conversion rate for which Twitter can charge premium rate” that does not disturb Twitter’s current user experience or downgrade user’s authority like in-stream advertising does”.

This is just one thing that Twitter can do by simply filtering out the trending topics to deliver more relevant information for its users. And Twitter can create a revenue model without distorting the current user experience and make $$ at the same time. How great is that?

I recently read an e-book called “What Matters Now” by Seth Godin and figured it was a good idea to share my thoughts on the book.

For those of you who have not heard of Seth Godin, he is one of the most famous and influential marketers/bloggers of our time. I am a big fan of his blog and encourage you to check out his profile featured on TED. He has written numerous books on marketing and entrepreneurship, including free e-books that he publishes from time to time, and all of his books have been and still are top sellers under Amazon.com’s business books category.

Personally, I think he is just as skilled as Steve Jobs when it comes to presentations and public speaking. If you have not seen any of his talks/lectures, please check out his video from TED at which he talked about standing out.

Recently, he wrote a book called “What Matters Now” in which he interviewed more than 70 big thinkers including Tim O’Reilly, Kevin Kelly, Jason Fried, Guy Kawasaki, Chip and Dan Heath, etc. If you have not heard of any of these guys, it might be a good idea to check out their blogs or profiles as each one of them is considered a leader/pioneer in his or her field. The book is FREE. Just download it here.

My favorite chapter in the book is called “Technology” by Phobe Espiritu where she talks about why relevant technology and design let humans be human, instead of making us feel stupid, helpless, and less human. I recommend it to those of you who are interested in creating/developing/building technology-based products as she emphasizes why we should pay tremendous attention on humanist design.

What do you guys think about the book? If you’ve read/heard of the book before, let’s share our favorite chapters from the book here. =)

Oh yeah, and enjoy your long weekend =)

Just reviewing stuff from ITP499 from Spring 2009. I’ll be TAing for the same class next semester. YAY!

Conclusion: F**king listen to your customer.

Just saw this funny post on theoatmeal.com couple days ago. Decided to keep it for my own sake.