Apr 272012
 

Late night thoughts:

Man, why does search suck so bad in social?

Both Facebook and Twitter really does a horrible job at search – can never find what I need, here are some examples:
- Trying to find a person on twitter
- Trying to find your own old tweet (say, your first tweet?)
- Trying to find the right person to include in your tweet (auto complete sucks majorly here, try it)
- Trying to find find someone using their phone number on Facebook (got a missed call, do I know the person? let me check – oh wait I can’t)
- … and the list goes on and on

Oh, and here’s a complaint for GOOGLE, who should’ve mastered this by now. Google Contacts – why are there so many damn duplication in here? Should be able to say, parse a number entry and compare and match contacts with the same numbers, no? Or similar names? E.g. Tiff = Tiffany? For the search giant, sure hasn’t put any effort into creating a good contacts program.

Completely understand the amount of data and processing that goes into these things, but come on! Maybe you put a cap in time frame or something, but sigh….

There’s no way that the twitters of the world will open up their door to let Google power their search – these data is how they make money, so they need to figure out these kind of things fast… I’m looking at you, Facebook, all those information and could’ve capitalized a lot more on advertising and personalized customizations.

If someone cracks social search, please please let me know.

/end rant.

 Posted by at 2:54 am
Jan 292012
 

It’s hard to believe it’s only been one week since I participated in Startup Weekend Mobile, NYC.

For those of you unfamiliar with Startup Weekend, head on over to StartupWeekend.org to learn more. Basically, you pitch an idea, people vote for the idea they like, teams are formed, concept gets built, and product get demo’d – all within a weekend.

I pitched my “EventBuddy” idea on Friday night and managed to get in the top 10 idea list. The idea is to have one central database that keeps track of events that happen and the attendees at those events. When you “check-in” to an event (instead of a place), you will be able to see who at the venue have attended events with you in the past. It will be particularly useful to people who network on a regular basis, or at least for me, super useful as I go to an increasing amount of tech events.

Other folks joined the team, and for the next 2 days we worked on refining the concept and building out a prototype. We weren’t able to finish in time for the presentation and was only to get the back-end working (no front-end), but it was a great experience never the less. It was awesome to have presented to Naveen from foursquare, where the idea of the now-renamed “ConnectBear” really came from.

Three things I’ve marked down as “must know” for next time:

  1. Come w/ a structured/refined idea:  We spent a lot of hours debating over app functionality, hours of which we could’ve been using toward app development. Time is short, should start building as soon as you can.
  2. Designers! Like developers, good designers are hard to come by. Must attract them w/ pretty concepts and again, point 3…
  3. Pretty girls gets lots of help: One of our problem was not having enough dev people on the team. I’m going to bring a girl next time, make her pitch, and take up all the devs in the room.

What’s next? Stanley and I have been hard at work to evaluate if this is a doable concept, while continuing to build on what momentum we’ve gained from the event. Stay tuned!

P.S. Here’s the deck I went through for demo night.

If you get a chance, definitely participate in a Startup Weekend near you! It’ll be worth it!

 Posted by at 12:21 am
Jan 092012
 

Why don’t banks or credit card companies offer OAuth/API functionality for the growing amount of apps and sites that are emerging each day?

For sites like Mint or any other sites powered by the likes of Yodlee, when you go to the site to add your bank / credit card information, you’re prompted to fork over your user name and password. Now, knowing on a high-level how Yodlee works, I know that the data is being passed through a secure way to the banks to authorize the site; but I am (and I’m sure many others are) uncomfortable with handing over my very important and sensitive information!

As more applications like Mint emerges, it is time for banks to seriously re-evaluate the way that they allow customer information to be accessed. Why can’t banks develop OAuth-like functionalities, like Twitter, that allows for a more secure authorization?

Today, for most sites that says “use Twitter to login”, or “Login w/ Facebook”, what happens is you’re taken from a third party site back to say, a Twitter, to login and authorize the app. Twitter then sends a token back to the third party site to authenticate you, removing the need for you to exchange sensitive info such as name and passwords directly w/ the third party site. Knowing that my verification is being done at Twitter, where the information is being held anyway, means much more security to me than entering the information directly on the site. By opening up more APIs, banks will be able to allow developers to come up w/ innovative solutions – who knows what else can be created?

Innovate or go bust! I wonder when banks will wake up and realize that in this day and age, information mobility is king, and just you wait – when there’s a new “bank” (and there will be, I’m counting on you, Simple) that has taken all the best practices of the “web 2.0″ world and integrate all that into their operation, it will take off easily. Look at what ZocDoc is doing w/ making appointments w/ doctors – it’s the oldest tasks in the book, but they’re doing it in an innovative web 2.0 way that is making their sites super awesome. I am predicting that whichever bank go down this route will shape the future of banking.

I like the answer on this Quora thread:

Q: Why don’t banks offer oauth? Why do they instead let their users give their passwords to Yodlee?
A: Answers suggest, in a very humble and politically correct fashion, that banks are retarded.

 Posted by at 11:59 pm
Jan 092012
 

I signed up for my first Startup Weekend last night.  I went to the last one as an observer, and was impressed with the energy, idea, and general awesomeness from the participants, so I thought, why not participate?

I’m not a designer or developer by any means, but I think I’ve got some pretty cool ideas that I want to pitch to see if there will be other people interested (esp w/ the theme around “Mobile” this time around). I can’t wait!

You can learn more about the event here.

NY Startup Weekend Mobile

 Posted by at 11:30 am
Jan 082012
 

Came across the below on my computer as I was organizing my folders. I used to get these kind of emails from friends and family and would file away the funny ones. I’m going to start one of these “From the Archives” series to post some of them. Enjoy!

“Capitalism & Cows”

Traditional Capitalism: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull. Your herd multiplies, and the economy grows. You sell them and retire on the income.

French Capitalism: You have two cows. You go on strike because you want three cows.

Japanese Capitalism: You have two cows. You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk. You then create cow cartoon images called Cowkimon and market them World-Wide.

German Capitalism: You have two cows. You reengineer them so they live for 100 years, eat once a month, and milk themselves.

Italian Capitalism: You have two cows, but you don’t know where they are. You break for lunch.

British Capitalism: You have two cows. Both are mad.

Russian Capitalism: You have two cows. You count them and learn you have five cows. You count them again and learn you have 42 cows. You count them again and learn you have 12 cows. You stop counting cows and open another bottle of vodka.

Arkansas Capitalism: You have two cows. That one on the left is kinda cute…

Hindu Capitalism: You have two cows. You worship them.

Swiss Capitalism: You have 5000 cows, none of which belong to you. You charge others for storing them.

Canadian Capitalism: You have two cows. Let’s make a hockey team, eh?

Chinese Capitalism: You have two cows. You have 300 people milking them. You claim full employment, high bovine productivity, and arrest the newsman who reported the numbers.

Irish Capitalism: You have two cows. You feed them potatoes and wonder why they emigrate.

Israeli Capitalism: So, there are these two Jewish cows, right? They open a milk factory, an ice cream store, and then sell the movie rights. They send their calves to Harvard to become doctors. So, who needs people?

Cuban Capitalism: You have two cows. They try to swim to Florida.

Disney Capitalism: You have two cows. They dance & sing.

Microsoft Capitalism: You have two cows. You patent them and sue anyone else who has them.

Hollywood Capitalism: You have two cows. You give them utter implants and also teach them to bullet-dodge, wall climb and shoot milk out of their utters on command.

Clinton Capitalism: You have two cows. You deny any knowledge of them.

Gore Capitalism: You have two cows. You claim you invented them.

Iraqi Capitalism: You have two cows. They are biochemical weapons.

Jewish Capitalism: You have two cows. You set them on fire and they burn for 8 days.

Cambodian Capitalism: You have two cows. The government takes both and shoots you.

Texan Capitalism: You have two cows. You teach them to fire guns.

Nevadan Capitalism: You have two cows. You charge lonely men from Arkansas to spend the night with them.

Jehovah’s Witness Capitalism: You have two cows. You go door to door telling people that you do.

Surreal Capitalism: You have two giraffes. The government requires you to take harmonica lessons.

Californian Capitalism: You have two cows. They are happy.

Martha Stewart Capitalism: You have two cows. After decorating them, you sell them because a farmer told you the price of milk might go down.

 Posted by at 4:22 pm