Image via Wikipedia

There are four ways in which you can spend money. You can spend your own money on yourself. When you do that, why then you really watch out what you’re doing, and you try to get the most for your money. Then you can spend your own money on somebody else. For example, I buy a birthday present for someone. Well, then I’m not so careful about the content of the present, but I’m very careful about the cost. Then, I can spend somebody else’s money on myself. And if I spend somebody else’s money on myself, then I’m sure going to have a good lunch! Finally, I can spend somebody else’s money on somebody else. And if I spend somebody else’s money on somebody else, I’m not concerned about how much it is, and I’m not concerned about what I get. And that’s government. And that’s close to 40% of our national income.

• Fox News interview (May 2004)

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

I don’t care if you’re a billionaire. If you haven’t started a company, really gambled your resume and your money and maybe even your marriage to just go crazy and try something on your own, you’re no pirate and you aren’t in the club.

-Michael Arrington, founder of TechCrunch

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.

When you don’t lock down the hardware it’s very hard to make the UI perfect. Which is why Apple’s Macs, with locked down hardware, have always been a better experience than the hugely hardware-flexible Windows operating system.

-Michael Arrington, TechCrunch from his blog post on 6/16/10.

So Zappos.com sent me two advance reading copies of the upcoming book, Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh. They suggested that I use the second copy as a prize to the readers of my blog.

So here it is. If anyone is interested, just email me here or you can just tweet me @cho_ak. It’s FREE!!!

Also, Check out the website http://deliveringhappinessbook.com

Damn. It’s been 4 years, already.
University of Southern California, Class of 2010.

Even though I vowed to make this blog not about my personal life, but something greater as Joel Spolsky once described, forgive me for just one day. Tomorrow is my college graduation.

4 years ago, one kid from a small town in Maryland arrived at USC as a pre-med concentration. After two changes in major, and one failed attempt at dropping out, the kid fell in love with technology, web, and video game production. I know it sounds as if the kid just turned into a geek over the past 4 years, but no, he found out what he wanted to do with his life.

Tomorrow marks the first day of the second phase in his life. Audentes Fortuna Iuvat. Wish me luck.

I found this quote on the first page of “Delivering Happiness” by Tony Hsieh, CEO, Zappos. (just got it today, currently reading the first chapter.)

There’s a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.

-Morpheus, The Matrix

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.