hsu ken ooi

via TechFlash.com

The trick to being an entrepreuner is to know when to be stubborn and when to be flexible. My rule of thumb on that is to be stubborn on the big things and very flexible on the details.

I always find it interesting to see video interviews of heavyweight entrepreneurs like Bezos. I find a lot of value in being able to read their body language, gives me a better idea of how they think about stuff.

Why do people commit their life to blaming their genes for not granting them that talent they desire with their soul?

from apologeticwriting.blogspot via garry.posterous.cm

I think there is such thing as talent but far too often people use it as an excuse to not do something. They desire certain skills and admire the "talented" few that possess them. Assuming that they were born with such unobtainable "talent" that no matter how hard they work they could never obtain, it's something you're born with they say. 

Bullshit.

Talent is a crutch people use to simultaneously say they desire a skill greatly but won't exert the necessary effort to obtain it. I always hear people say this about math. That they aren't math people. No, you just haven't sat down and really worked at it. Your ability in math is directly proportional to your ability to sit down for extended periods of time and stubbornly think about things you don't understand. 

You can get good at anything.

It could require an enormous amount of work, you'll have to make sacrifices, it probably won't be much fun but if you want to be good at something you can be. Taking the position that you can't be serves you no purpose, you're condemned only to those things that you are "talented" in. You won't know challenge, defeat or failure.

How dreadful.

.. remember who made that rule: Goliath. And let’s remember why Goliath made that rule: when the world has to play on Goliath’s terms, Goliath wins.

via How David Beats Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell

A really insightful commentary on the struggle between so called David's (un-established, under-resourced) and Goliaths (well-established, well-resourced) in War and in Sports. I actualy think the lessons are even better applied to businesses. I kept thinking about the old adage - "turn your weaknesses into your strength" - which you can do in one of two ways.

1. Identify your weaknesses and drastically improve on them
2. Change the necessary parts of your environment such that your weaknesses are no longer weaknesses but in fact strengths

The latter is really what they're talking about and often times the easier thing to do. I think that's why many times startups are successful against seeminly well-established players, they change the game.

via AvvoBlog

Having just spent the past two days fighting with IE bugs, I can totally relate. However IE8 seems to be pretty standards compliant. Now if we could only get people to update..

In other words, if a paper book sells 10,000 copies on Amazon, it will sell an additional 3,500 digital copies on the Kindle. Let me repeat that, digital books via the Kindle are selling at 35 percent the level of physical books 18 months after launch.

via techcrunch

That is insane. Every print publisher on the planet should be running through the halls yelling and screaming this to everyone at their company. Think about it only a small minority of the population has a Kindle. I've never even seen one. Yet it still manages to sell at 35% the level of physical books.

Anyone know what these numbers are for the music industry?

• Government Expenditures - US Government spends a LOT more money than China despite having a quarter of the people
• External Debt - Haha, it's funny because the debt that the US has is actually owed to China
• Trade Balance - Not surprising just interesting to see by what factor
  

• Migrate - Not a lot of people moving to China
• Urbanization / Rate of Urbanization - They are still very much a rural country but it's changing quickly
  
• Homicide - Significantly lower in China I'm guessing as a result of our right to bear arms
• Growth - United States is growing faster than 
• HIV / AIDS - Less people in China have HIV/AIDS but more of them die, interesting

• Budget - Well now we know where all the US government expenditures went
• Nuclear Weapons - Our stick is very large indeed

       

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China_vs_United_States_A_Visua.zip (414 KB)