Eliminating Email

I’ve been trying to eliminate email.

For one of the company email account. I keep the inbox at: ZERO mails.

I feel less stressed w/o anything in the inbox.

Everything that needs to be done immediately has been done.

Everything else that needs longer time has been transferred to my todo list.

Keeping mails archived and the inbox count to ZERO is a fantastic stress reliver.

You should try it too!

Dim Dim

DimDim.com: free, open-source web conferencing.

Says it all. Pretty disruptive business tool.

You need it!

And it has Mac desktop sharing even.

You can also deploy within your own corporate environment.

A little buggy on the interface but otherwise it’s good stuff.

Asus EEEBox PC

Just bought a set of teh EEEBox PC at the office today. It’s quite cute. Not very powerful but fairly easy to use and it comes with WinXP licensed on it. Fairly fast. Good for office work, school work kinda stuff. I mounted it behind a new 19″ monitor so you can’t see the CPU. It’s like an iMac. It could be something I could bring around to different places i.e. hackathons, friend’s houses, friend’s companies because it is very very light.

Singapore’s Pretty Vibrant Lately

Somehow despite the gloom and doom, Singapore city seems to be abit more vibrant lately.

This summer there has been so many music festivals, mall activities that I must say you can’t really be bored if you bothered to look out for stuff to do.

Only problem is that I work later and when it’s time to chill after 11pm lots of things are closed already.

Also not sure if you’ve heard of the Dove shower challenge. In this shower challenge, Dove (the shampoo brand) created a shower stall in a mall where they challenged girls to “sing in the shower”. 

On one hand I’m laughing at how crazy marketers are getting to stand out from the crowd. On the other hand I must say it’s pretty good way to go viral on the web. And I’ve noticed that brand marketers are increasingly engaging the web by creating branded blogs, microsites, seeding sponsored posts and inviting bloggers to PR events. Oh well, things have really changed in this small little island huh?

Ahh.. the UnConference is Back! UnConference 2008

Hey everyone, the e27 team is back with our biggest ever UnConference! Titled the “UnConference Singapore 2008″ the event now has a new branding!!!

Designed by our in-house designer, the idea is to emphasize the “un” in a free-from kind of way. We went through so many iterations on the branding but finally this one stuck as it was so clear. The colors also blend nicely with our Green/Black theme.

We decided to add on the Singapore 2008 because for the first time, we’re publicizing the event way beyond the Singapore community. Our E27 blog recently joined the OpenWeb.Asia. grouping and in the spirit of promoting greater awareness of the action in the Asian startup scene.

We’ve got a sterling line up of startups from Singapore and lots of user-generated breakout sessions. Microsoft, our Platinum Sponsor is even sponsoring a Guitar Hero contest where you can Win an XBox!

We’re really thankful to all the startup, volunteers, partners, sponsors and of course the organizing team for helping out to pull off this effort. This is going to be the definitive Web 2.0 mega event in Singapore for the year to date and we hope you will be able to support us!

For more info check out this banner:

And of course go to the Event Website:

http://unconference.e27.sg/

And the Event Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=15489117085

A note on Tickets:

This time round we’re not going to be doing the event for Free. Free events have too many no-shows and it’s difficult to ascertain the quality of the audience. Just like the previous Garag3 party last October, we’re doing this through EventBrite which is one of the world’s best ticketing systems. Our E27/Community Next team does a fantastic job of using it for their Silicon Valley events so we’re using too. It has made event management wayyyy easier for us too.

Having said that, this event is primarily financed by our Sponsors and we’ve made a great effort of pressing down the prices to be only $10 if you buy before July 12. Yes it’s $15 at the door!

$10 gets you a t-shirts (Limited to first 300), and of course wonderful food at our catered lunch that’s going to cost close to $10 per head. So it’s a best buy, mega steal event!

See you sat!

Ticketing website: http://e27unconference-jcurve.eventbrite.com

DSLR with SpeedLight Flash

My sis bought a new Nikon Speedlight SB-600 to complement our Nikon D40X DSLR. Now we have a proper flash with a proper diffuser to capture our images. 

A lot of our photography takes place in indoor and night situations and the stock flash in the D40X just wasn’t good enough as the angle could not be adjusted to get the right bounce.

Was practicing at my cousin’s wedding over the weekend. Got a hang of the flash and its capabilities. 

But I’m still a long way to go from being able to do really high quality images. I think one thing that is limiting me is the use of the kit-lens. Somehow the glass not very good la. Images not sharp enough even with all the tuning.

Gotta save up for some power lenses. This is becoming expensive!

Outdoor WIFI continually evades me!

Wifi out of home is sometimes pretty difficult to get even in technologically advanced Singapore. Wireless@Sg sill logs me out every 15 mins. Today I thought I could get a nice cup of coffee at Coffee Bean and use the ACCESS-STARHUB but I was so wrong. DHCP totally didn’t work. Couldn’t get an IP at all. My Huawei E270 3G modem never works with my MAC OSX Leopard. Drivers fail! All the uninstall-reinstall cycles were to no avail. Let’s see if iPhone 3G or even a 3G MacBook (if it is on the cards) would be able to help with my external connectivity issues? 

Stacks and Stacks of Email

Been so busy with last week’s speaking engagement and the eBay event and post event reports and various what nots that I now have 620 emails stacked up in the various inboxes over the course of a few days. Die la!

IDC Asia/Pacific Web 2.0 Conference - Speaking there, See you!

Hey everyone! I’ll be speaking at the IDC Asia/Pacific Web 2.0 Conference next week.

My topic will be about the Web 2.0 landscape in Asia. The conference is pretty high-profile with the attendees mainly being CXOs ad information technology managers.

From the list of signups, it does seem as though Web 2.0 is really getting into the corporate meme as more executives are beginning to have the idea sink in that Web2 is here to stay and while there are many opportunities, there will also be many threats.

Nothing too insurmountable though

It’s not easy to prepare for a bunch of seasoned execs. The topic is just broad. With just 30 minutes to speak, I’ll probably have to laser speed my way through it. But I’ll make it fun.

I personally don’t like to sit through boring lectures so I’ll crack my head to make sure no one falls asleep!

In early April, I flew up to Hong Kong to speak to some corporate head-honchos about Facebook. The questions they shoot are definitely not the easy peasy kind but it was excellent opportunity to train up.

I live by the philosophy that the harder it is the better. The more I can stretch myself the better. Otherwise, no fun la!

Prof Wong’s Blog

Professor Wong Poh Kam has started blogging on his blog. (If you are not familiar with Prof Wong, you can read his intro post here.)

Prof Wong has been very supportive of us young people. In many ways I really admire his far-sighted vision.

He helped to formulate the NOC program which has definitely changed my life along with hundreds of others. It gave me the opportunity to see beyond the usual career choice to choose the path of entrepreneurship with gumption.

I don’t look back nowadays and put in my 120% week-in-week out. It stretches me but not a day has passed with out its challenging moments yet it’s still so fun.

Also, Prof Wong saw how important it was to really engage young entrepreneurs and provided us with the support to begin the Garag3.

So it’s really nice to have Zack from SgStartups write about the energy at the Garag3. We didn’t pay him to write about it. It’s 100% authentic. Many in part due to the young founders at the Garag3 and also the interns working there. Over 50 people work full-time in the startups at the Garag3 this summer.

It’s an electrifying experience to be there. So fast-paced, so intellectually-challenging.

But back to Prof Wong. He’s joined the Blogosphere only now, but being the Prof, I’m pretty sure he’ll have some interesting stories to share!

If you’re looking for angel investments, engaging Prof Wong through his blog could be a very good way to begin conversations. I’m not sure how many other angel investors or VCs in this region blog but it seems like Prof Wong is one of few. Bernie still blogs fervently of course