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Monthly Archive for January, 2006

Free domain give away idea

Published
by
Ken
on 23 January, 2006
in ideas and my ideas
. 3 Comments

Ran across this simple idea today on another blog.

Everyone likes a free gift. Giving away stuff is a good way to gain some online karma and visitors.

I’m interested to try this idea out to see how efficient is the blogosphere in spreading free giveaway news. I don’t get that much traffic anyway, let’s see how many entries I get.

Free domain giveaway

Simple rules

  • No strings attached (though a link would certainly be nice)
  • Leave a comment and email
  • Leave out the domain name if you wish, the eventual winner will be contacted
  • only .com, .net, .org
  • Number of winners:
    • 20 or less comments: 1
    • each additional 25 comments: 1
  • One comment per person (check your conscience)
  • Winner selected by my undisclosed, patented methology is final
  • Closing date: Undecided, until this exercise costs me too much to maintain.

So spread the word!

The orignial comments are here

A second look at Lexxe

Published
by
on 22 January, 2006
in idea sites and thoughts
. 0 Comments

I couldn’t recall some information and I remembered Lexxe was good at this kind of information lookup. So I tried,

Who is the author of harry potter?

Look at the suggested answer:

Lexxe - Who is the author of Harry Potter?

Now try this with Goggle.

Metroblogging Shanghai

Published
by
on 16 January, 2006
in my ideas
. 0 Comments

Metroblogging

Not exactly an idea, but I signed up for Metroblogging to start a new city - Shanghai. According to Sean, I’m the only one to sign up for Shanghai.

There are quite a few high profile Shanghai blogs already. In particular I hope we will eventually give Shanghaiist a run for their money. ;)

So, if you are in Shanghai and like to blog together, sign up. We need 10 people to start.

Hurry!

BaiGoo

Published
by
on 16 January, 2006
in idea sites and ideas
. 0 Comments

BaiGoo

BaiGoo is a meta search engine for Baidu and Google in Chinese. Baidu is a very popular search engine in China. We all know Google of course.

The idea is simple and nothing new. I like the split result screen down the center showing result from both search engine side by side.

Apparent many people use it. I learn of it from from my new staff today.

Surely someone must have done something like this for search engines in the English world.

egoSurf

Published
by
on 15 January, 2006
in idea sites and ideas
. 1 Comment

egoSurf

Now, this is precisely what I meant by Rapid Idea Prototyping. Simply amazing, an idea researched and coded in 9 hours!

Have some fun with it, boost (or deflate) your ego.

Lexxe - natural language search

Published
by
on 14 January, 2006
in beta, idea sites, ideas and startup
. 0 Comments

lexxe.com

A quick guage of an ideas’s attractiveness is when someone tells someone about it and it gets pick-up by yet someone else. That’s how I came across Lexxe today. (Thanks to Dorai.)

My first few tests were

Quite amusing. Either my questions are not well asked or the search engine still have some way to go.

In particular the last question. The answer made me think that the search engine just do string matching of text on webpages and return the answer.

A technology like this has big potential for SEO abuse, like the last example. My gut feel is that such technology is very interesting in the academic setting. But to be deployed commercially, much more work had to be put in to circumvent abuse.

The about page of Lexxe did not mention any names. Obvious a technology like this requires huge academic background. It would lend a strong support if the founder can list their background in this field.

Wait! I pulled the trigger too fast. The founder can be found here and he does has huge background. It is also noteworthy that they mention about using the technology for Chinese.

An very interesting idea to watch out indeed.

Rapid Idea Prototyping - a core competence?

Published
by
on 13 January, 2006
in my ideas and thoughts
. 1 Comment

The eternal question of balance:

Focus or Diversification?

To focus on one idea or to diversify with many ideas? No prize for guessing which side I’m on with a name like 59ideas.

Rapid Idea Prototyping aptly describes what I am trying to do this year with my 0 to independence project.

My premise is simple. Any one idea may not be a sure winner. But many lesser ideas may very well add up.

For many schooled in traditional business school thoughts, nothing less than full focus is acceptable. They are right, for I am hard-pressed to find an example of a company that succeed by focusing on diverse ideas.

But wait! Focusing on diverse ideas? What an oxymoron!

Yes! Focusing on rapid idea prototyping. That’s what I’m focusing on. Think of an idea, get it off the ground fast, get it noticed, sustain it, make some revenue. Repeat for another idea. Keep it going.

Now that’s core competence.

Ad packaging - an idea

Published
by
Ken
on 11 January, 2006
in my ideas, offline and products
. 0 Comments

Here is my idea of an offline version of Google Ads. I had this in mind for a while.

Think about this…

  • How many things you buy daily use packaging?
    Package for burger, carrier bag for shopping, disposable cup for coffee, containers for takeaways…
  • What is on them?
    Nothing much. Company log, slogan, instructions. Branding.
  • Empty space?
    Lots.
  • Would companies like to save on these disposable packaging?
    Almost certainly.
  • How about making money from them?
    Tell me about it!

Consider this…

  • A company (say, 59oo9le) prints and provides the packaging to all these company
  • Branding still intact
  • Condition: allow 59oo9le to sell and print ads on selected space.
  • Revenue from ads shared (in some way) with packaging buyer.

Further consider…

  • Add an “advertise on this package”
    Self-cannibalization. No problem as Amazon.com proved. A startup burger shop might advertise on packaging of an establised burger chain.
  • Bidding to buy on hot packaging
  • More effective than other form of offline ads?

What’s needed?

  • brave soul to try
  • money to drive
  • mindset to modify

You thoughts?