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2011-01-20T21:32:55.000Z

**[1] How to Survive Other People’s Expectations**

Author’s Note: This is the first chapter of my upcoming ebook, Survival Guide for "Slow Start" Entrepreneurs. It is based on an earlier essay which was first published in September 2007.

http://www.startupforless.org/2007/09/why-startups-fail-and-why-we-shouldve-too-by-denny-k-miu.html

--

My last startup was a tremendous success. Two years after we launched our product in 2005, we were able to acquire our 150th enterprise customer. We made enough money through cash-flow that I was able to convince my business partners to buy me out in 2007 so I could take an early retirement.

This was a remarkable achievement consider that we had taken no VC money. Like so many entrepreneurs before us, we built our company the old fashion way, one customer at a time as opposed to puffing and huffing for a lottery win. We bootstrapped the initial product development effort by dipping into our own pockets (or more accurately, our wives’ pockets) and by not taking salaries for two years.

When the product was ready, we secured minimal but adequate amount of working capital from a single angel investor in exchange for the promise that we would continue to not take salaries until we are profitable.

Having spent more than a decade as a struggling entrepreneur, I understand all too well the twin ironies of accidental genius and reluctant warriors. Nothing out-performs good execution better than good fortune.

In all honesty, the fact that we took no VC money was not part of my original financing plan. For eighteen months prior to the launch of our product, I had visited nearly 50 VC’s, all of whom had turned me down. So my company succeeded in spite of my initial failing.

Keep in mind that I was not unfamiliar with raising VC money (I raised $65 million for my first startup) and I was mentally prepared that 2003 was probably the worst time to raise money, having just endured the rolling catastrophes of Asian financial crisis, Y2K, dotcom bomb, telecom burst, stock market crash, 9/11 attack, war in Afghanistan, SARS, launch of the Iraq invasion, outbreak of avian flu, etc..

But the uniformity and the abruptness of how I was turned down by every single potential investor I spoke with still startled me. After being turned down for the 50th time, it was abundantly clear that our company did not fit with other people’s expectations.

Looking back, I have learned that the first necessary step towards succeeding in a startup is to figure out how to survive during the formative stage in spite of persistent negative opinions from others, especially from experts such as professional investors and industrial analysts.

--

In summary, in my twenty years experience as an entrepreneur, the following are the top three areas where the so-called experts have a definitive expectation on what they would consider to be a winning startup.

1) Winning startups should have a rock star CEO
2) Winning startups should have at least one non-technical co-founder
3) Winning startups should have a vision consistent with industry trend

Often start-ups do not conform to these attributes so we need to figure out how to survive in spite of such shortcomings, especially in the early stage of our company.

--

1) How to survive other people's expectation if you don’t have a rock star CEO

Experience really matters in a startup.

This explains why VC’s prefer to bank on an experienced CEO in a startup, particularly if the Founder/CEO has a successful track record and is touted a “Serial Entrepreneur”.

The reasoning is simple. Although past success does not guarantee future performance, it does make it easier for the VC’s to quantify the probability of success. Since the VC’s business is to reduce unknowns and the unknowables, avoiding inexperienced and ineffective CEO’s is a no brainer.

However, as it turns out, experience is important but judgment is too, and everyone can be a victim of his/her experience (which ironically could often cloud their judgment). Much of a startup’s success and much of the difference that a CEO can bring to a startup have to do with his/her ability to make the right decision (at the right time).

But there are two kinds of decisions, one that is life-and-death and one that is not.

Life-and-death decision is very easy to make. And this is where experience comes in. It is really just real-time signal processing and pattern recognition. Anyone who is capable of trusting his or her own instinct tends to make the right life-and-death decision.

But making the right life-and-death decision is like avoiding a car accident that never happens. Your only material reward is that you get to live.

Decisions that are not life-and-death are much more difficult to make in a startup. They are actually much more important to the success of a startup. So the question is how does a startup CEO go about making the right non-life-and-death decision.

It turns out that there is no such thing as the “right” decision. In order to make the “perfect” decision, one has to have “perfect” data. In a startup, having perfect data (or even the right amount of data) is a luxury that we could not afford.

Typically, in a startup, there are two ways to compensate for the lack of adequate data. One is to wait for more data and one is to seek consensus. In my opinion, both kill startups.

CEO who procrastinates hoping to get incremental data is as deadly as a CEO who jumps to the wrong conclusion before enough data is in. Similarly, a CEO who is afraid to make tough and unpopular decisions and hides behind the shield of consensus will almost always lead a startup to the proverbial cliff.

In a startup, it is not about making the right decision but about making the decision right. In other words, it is about the CEO truly accepting the awesome responsibility of being the ultimate “decider” while refusing the temptation of being a dictator.

Avoiding consensus is not the same as avoiding consultation.

In other words, a CEO must have conviction or there is no way to lead a company. But a CEO must know the difference between “temporary” conviction and “permanent” conviction.

Lack of temporary conviction will kill a startup but so would permanent conviction. As Stephen Colbert once said, “Staying-the-course basically means doing the same thing on Wednesday as you did on Monday no matter what happens on Tuesday.”

So being a successful CEO in a startup requires experience but it also requires good judgment.

And good judgment has to do with when and how to build up creditability with the team and the shareholders, and when and how to cash in your political earned capital in order to mobilize the company behind an unpopular decision that you have already made based on imperfect data.

More importantly, good judgment has to do with maintaining a positive feedback loop to constantly re-up your credibility with your constituents so that you do not inadvertently over-extend your reserves because you can be sure that you will need them again (and again).

Unfortunately for me, I was not a successful “Serial Entrepreneur.” But fortunately, I was a “Serial First-Timer”.

While I did not have a successful track record since I had yet made any money for my former VCs (in my previous startup), I was stubborn, I was hungry and I was experienced.

In summary, experience is necessary for a startup but not sufficient. On the other hand, paradoxically, as I have learned the hard way, as a CEO for a startup, having a strong will to succeed and the tenacity to follow through on difficult decision is sufficient but not enough.

You need a little of both (and a whole lot of luck).

In other words, a rock star CEO could not guarantee your success and lack of one would not guarantee failure.

--

2) How to survive other people's expectation if you were all engineers

A startup has the same set of constituents (employees, customers, vendors, etc.) as any other companies and what ties these disparate pieces into a puzzle is a marketable and revenue-generating product (or in case of startups, the "pursue" of a marketable and revenue-generating product).

But interestingly, from the VC’s perspective, the startup itself is their product. They are interested in the company’s product (as a means to an end) but ultimately they are only interested in the company itself as a marketable product.

But unlike our customers who consume our product, VC is similar to a distributor since they do not consume but rather they resell.

VC purchased a sizable piece of a startup at a very low price with the pure and simple intent of reselling it at a very high price (sooner rather than later), hence the importance of an “exit strategy”.

So it is reasonable that when a VC makes an investment, they look for an A-Team consists of technical co-founders who can help build and sell a product but also non-technical co-founders who can help build and sell a company. So it is reasonable that it would bother them a great deal if your co-founders were just a bunch of engineers (or former engineers who knew only to sell products but not companies).

Fortunately for us, in 2005 there was very little market demand for the VC’s product (i.e., no liquidity and no near-term exit for our company). Therefore, had we built our company based on the assumption that we would have a quick flip, we would have failed miserably because we would have either run out of fuel or run out of runway.

So we did the right thing (and the only thing that we knew how to do) which was to act as our own “surrogate” customer. We trusted our gut and we built a product based on what we wished we had in our previous career.

It turns out that being our own “surrogate” customer was the most important ingredient for our success.

My fellow co-founders had worked in the network monitoring side of the networking business for many years. They knew about their customers' pain first-hand because as a monitoring tool vendor, they knew how hard it was to deploy network tools. So in a sense, they were frustrated that their ecosystem was broken and our product was their dream tool.

Had they not been long-time veterans of their own industry (which they helped built in the past 20 years), we couldn’t have gotten that important insight by just talking to our customers.

Customers know what to object and what to improve when you present them with an imperfect product but not when you present them with a perfect PowerPoint. Henry Ford had said that if he had listened to his customers, he would have built a faster horse because that was what his customers wanted.

It is sort of like Steve Jobs and his iPod (and iPhone/iPad). It is hard to imagine how things could have become what they are had Steve not been a music fanatic (not just a fanatic). Steve didn't rely solely on his customers neither to define his dream toy. Instead he listened to his gut because he believed he was the perfect surrogate customer.

And that is what you have to do. You have to learn to listen to your guts (even though you are just a bunch of engineers).

In summary, you could be a solution looking for a problem or you could be a problem looking for a solution. Either way, you have to find the perfect match before your startup could be a success. And it has little to do with whether or not someone on your founding team has a MBA.

--

3) How to survive other people's expectation if your business idea contradicts the experts

Fund-raising for a startup is an art form and a process. From the VC’s standpoint, the process is about establishment of credibility and mitigation of risk.

An experienced CEO would know how to “do the dance” and would engage potential VC’s with the proper tempo (i.e., first meeting to get to know each other and to do a soft sell, second or third meeting to meet the team and lay down some measurable markers, a few more meetings to update on progress punctuated with right amount of dissonance to be sure that everyone knows that you are shopping but still keep everyone within arms length so that no one would accuse you of being promiscuous, etc.).

The last thing a CEO needs is an unknown introduced by a third party. In 2003, we had such a bombshell.

Gartner released a detailed analyst report stating that IDS (intrusion detection systems) was an obsolete technology and would soon be replaced by IPS (intrusion prevention systems).

An IDS is an “out-of-band” passive appliance that sits on a SPAN port or a TAP and “listens” to activities in a network (it is equivalent to a surveillance camera).

An IPS is an “in-line” active network element that can shut down illegal activities much like a firewall (equivalent to a security guard with gun and real bullets).

The point was not which was better (IDS or IPS), or whether or not Gartner was right (it turns out that IDS/IPS are apples-and-oranges and Gartner was wrong, or at least misguided). The point was that we had a reputable analyst firm (an expert) making a bold statement that “out-of-band” solutions would be replaced by “in-line” solutions.

In other words, in the eyes of the VC’s, our proposed product which was a data access switch to facilitate “out-of-band” monitoring was at best a temporary bandaid since they rightfully inferred from Gartner’s assertion that there would be no long-term demand for “non-intrusive” network monitoring and therefore no possibility for our product to gain a meaningful and permanent footprint in the emerging enterprise networks.

Now our problem was not just that the CEO was inexperienced or the founding team had limited skills, our problem was that our vision was wrong.

This posed a dilemma for us.

On one hand, we knew that business reality was contradicting Gartner.

As battle-scarred veterans, we understood that not only was it important to sell solution and not technology, it was important to sell solution to solve customer problems that fit within the constraint of their “current” job description.

In other words, the initial success of any startup will depend on finding opportunities where customers could buy the product without changing their career. That's obvious.

What Garner did not understand is that IDS and IPS were two different product categories targeting two different sets of customers.

The customers that we were talking to were monitoring people who would only buy monitoring products. When an IDS becomes an IPS, it is no longer monitoring and would be purchased by a different team with a different budget (in fact, one could argue that IPS would never be a permanent footprint since its functionality would ultimately be absorbed by the firewalls).

On the other hand, we had to wonder because Gartner is smart people and how could they be wrong.

So we spend the next six months architecting a product that would allow IDS to become IPS by letting an attached passive appliance send back “kill” packets into the network. We conjured up a beautiful concept that we called “asymmetric” switching.

When properly implemented, our switch would act as a cross-connect in the forward path to deliver replica traffic to the monitoring tools and when needed, would behalf as a packet switch in the reverse path so that we could deliver the payload back into the originating network element in order to shut down an illegal conversation.

However, the problem we had was that we didn’t have any money. So to survive (and to avoid going back to our wives for more money), we decided that we had no choice but to go to the market with only “half” a product and to introduce the “backflow” feature only after we have made some sales.

Had we had money, we would have preferred to stay stealthy and take another eighteen months to fully bake the ultimate killer product.

At the beginning of 2005, as soon as the beta unit of the “crippled” product was ready, we took it to our first customer and it was a gigantic hit. The customer loved it and wanted to buy one right away even though it was preproduction and it was the wrong color (black, not orange).

We were excited and since it was such an easy sell, we needed something else to talk about so we started to talk about the next feature release which would turn our product into a “bidirectional” switch.

Then the most unthinkable thing happened.

The customer stopped us mid-sentence and told us that he would only buy our product if we could guarantee that we would never implement the “backflow” feature. So we asked him why. And his answer was astonishing. He told us that Sarbanes Oxley has changed everything.

With SOX, network monitoring has become tantamount to financial auditing and an important tool of his corporate arsenal to ensure adequate “Internal Control” as required by Section 404 of newly enacted regulation. Just like an auditor who had to do their job off of a “copy” of the book, not the book itself, our customer had to do their job on a “copy” of the packet and not the packet itself.

So the customers actually “needed” a one-way valve and could not have purchased our product if there was any possibility that we would perturb the production network. In other words, for the same reason that if an auditor were to have their finger prints on the actual book, he would be disqualified as an auditor, our customer was told that by his bosses that if he could touch the network, he was no longer monitoring.

How ironic could it be that not having VC money to build the perfect product as championed by the expert (Gartner) was the primary reason for our success.

The lesson here is that it is OK to have imperfect vision as long as you make it up with peripheral vision.

In other words, all experts formulate their expert opinions based on what has already happened, extrapolating historical data to predict the future.

First of all, experts are often wrong because they don't have all the data.

Secondly, by the very nature of what we do, entrepreneurs tend to change the course of history, thereby making the experts' prediction irrelevant.

Entrepreneurs are the thermometers that change the temperature of the bath.

--

In summary, as an entrepreneur, you need to get used to the idea that everything that you do or about to do will upset somebody, including the so-called experts.

In fact, if what you do does not contradict the conventional wisdom, or that you do not have the courage to stand up to OPE (Other People’s Expectations), then it is perhaps God’s polite way of telling you that you are in the wrong line of business.

So the solution is already embedded in the problem.

All entrepreneurs must remember that when it comes to other people's expectations or opinions ... don't trust, but verified.

Good luck everyone.

--
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2011-01-06T23:03:09.000Z

**Finding Fat Eddie**

Looking back at my forty years living in America, starting as a teenager, the one person whom I would attribute most of my success is my cousin, Eddie.

When I arrived San Francisco in 1971, United States was a very different place. For one thing, Chinese was not considered an acceptable foreign language in high school. If you were an FOB (Fresh-off-the-Boat) as I was and could speak fluent Cantonese or Mandarin, you still had to take French, German or Latin in order to satisfy the foreign language requirement if you wanted to apply to Universities.

Unlike my own children whom I am very proud that they could speak some Chinese even though they were born Americans, back then, being able to speak Chinese was not considered honorable, or at least not useful. To put it another way, not being to able speak perfect English was a major handicap, culturally and financially.

As it turned out, my first summer in America was spend in San Leandro, a tiny suburb 45 minutes East of San Francisco where my uncle and his brothers ran a Chop Suey restaurant. San Leandro reminded me of the wonder bread town featured in the Archie comics, filled with white picket fenced bungalow houses and neighborhood baseball fields. I think my family was the only non-white family in town and everyone tried so desperately to fit in.

So in some way (and I am stretching here a bit), among my many cousins who were not FOB’s but ABC’s (American Born Chinese), my English accent was sort of equivalent to having darker skin tone. To them, I was different. In fact, when we walked to summer school every morning, they would even walk on the opposite side of the street just to stay away from me.

The only cousin whom I enjoyed spending time with was Eddie (I called him Fat Eddie because he was) who was only four years old (more than 10 years younger than I was). As soon as I got home from school, I would play with Eddie in the backyard. I would practice my broken English on him because I knew he was too young to look down on me. And if he did, who cared.

It was win-win because no one else would play with Eddie and no one except Eddie would speak with me in English.

--

I have been an entrepreneur for the last fifteen years and the one thing that I have learned that contributes more than anything else to the success of a startup is the ability to find “Fat Eddie”.

Engineers prefer perfection. It is difficult for engineers to engage customers unless we have finalized the perfect product. In a way, it is a disease. Engineers just don’t like rejection. If we bring a prototype to a potential customer and they don’t like it, we blame ourselves. We think it is unprofessional and it hurts our ego.

But that’s wrong. We can learn a great deal from rejection. In my own experience, it is never too early to talk to potential customers. But obviously you have to be careful, hence the concept of “Fat Eddie”.

--

All customers are important but some are more important than others. Identify your verticals and identify within each vertical the important must-have customers. They are the ones whom you cannot afford to talk to too early because if you make a mistake, it is hard to ask for a second date.

But there are always potential customers that are smaller, less well known and are more inclined to take risk in order to compete. These are your “Fat Eddies”.

Talk to them early but treat them with respect. Let them know that they are doing you a big favor by talking to you and let them know that you are not here to sell, but to learn.

In fact, you need to treat them like your investors. But instead of investing money, they are investing their careers. They are taking risks but they also see something in you and in your product that could help them. It's win-win.

In my last company, after months of talking to my “Fat Eddie”, I finally hand delivered our product. As I was walking out of lobby, he leaned over and said, “I am proud of you”.

--

I never saw my cousin again. I hope Eddie is equally proud of me. I am definitely grateful to him. Thanks, Eddie.

--
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2010-12-30T23:31:27.000Z

**Life Is Not Always Differentiable**

When I was running my first company in the late 90’s, I had lots of opportunities to visit Singapore. I was broke and I owed months of unpaid salaries to my only three employees at the time. I needed investors and I tried to find them in Singapore.

Twenty years ago, Singapore was just starting to look beyond its island border. It first found America but quickly shifted its attention to China and never look back. Before it accepted its destiny as the sino-centric “Manager of Asia”, it once had an aspiration to be the US-centric “Technopreneur of Asia.”

Every time I was there, my to-be-investors would introduce me to various government officials who were eager to learn from entrepreneurs like me what it would take to build the “Silicon Valley of the East.”

I did my part to explain the secret sauce, until I realized that they were merely looking to clone the perfect DNA sequence in order to stamp out a nation of identical super race entrepreneurs.

One day as I was talking to them inside a taxi cab. I pointed to the high risers along the expressway and I said, “You want to know how to promote entrepreneurship, you start by tearing these down”.

They were not amused.

---

In Singapore, public housing was provided by the Housing and Development Board. And those high risers are commonly known as HDB flats.

About 85% of Singaporeans live in such government housing.

HDB flats are subsidized and their purchase are financed through the Central Provident Fund (CPF or 公积金), a compulsory comprehensive social security savings plan similar to our 401K, with mandatory contributions from both employers and employees but managed by the government.

So if you don’t have a job (i.e., you are a struggling entrepreneur), you would have no access to CPF and therefore HDB flats which are the only affordable and independent housing.

If you don’t have a job, you have no choice but to live with your aging parents (who are most likely living in their own HDB flats).

In other words, if you don’t have a job, there is no chance that you could ever build a family because if you don’t have a job, no one would ever date your sorry ass because no one would ever want to spend the rest of their life living with their future in-laws in a cramped apartment.

My outburst to my host was based on my observation that Singapore could never support entrepreneurship because it has already institutionalized success.

---

Having lived in the United States for the past forty years, I come to appreciate a simple fact. In America, failure is not a death sentence. We have not criminalized failure because we have not institutionalized success.

It is OK to fail.

I have failed many times and I am still here.

But the key to failure is to survive.

The key to survival is to understand that life is a continuous process.

Life is continuous (until you die) but it has kinks.

Those kinks are your occasional failures and they are not smooth (i.e., life before and life after are connected but the emotions are disjointed). In mathematical terms, life is continuous but only "piecewise" differentiable because of the kinks.

---

Surviving failures is similar to surviving a violent fall on your bike. You must get up first and you must peddle like hell. You must also keep your eyes on the road. You need to learn from your mistakes but you should not try to re-open your old wounds. You must let them heal.

The past is prologue but it is only the past.

Grind your teeth and bite your tongue, get over these kinks and you will slowly find yourself journeyed to a new life and a new experience.

Just take it one day at a time. Some days are tougher than others but fortunately, even the worst day of my life only lasted one day (until the next worst day).

Good luck and wish everyone a very prosperous 2011.

--
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2010-12-29T17:45:54.000Z

**What Is Left of A Startup Failure**

I walked out of my last startup three years ago, a few months before the world economy came crashing down. I staged a sequence of events such that my former partners felt obliged to cash me out to prevent me from being a bigger jackass than I already was. I didn't have enough time to immediately reinvest my net worth so I was one of the few accidental geniuses who escaped the tsunami with completely liquid assets.

That's the good news.

For the last three years, I was able to devote all my energy to my parents and my children who are now in college. My parents are nursed back to reasonably good health and my kids are learning to live as independent young adults.

That's the better news.

With just a few days left of 2010, I am ready for the game again. I missed being with really smart and dedicated people. I feel like someone who ate half a bowl of ramen on the way to a Chinese banquet.

I am not starving anymore, but I am still hungry.

As I dust off my resume, I realized that I have nothing tangible to write about for my first startup (the one prior to the aforementioned mild success), except for this video.

I haven't seen this video for ten years. It brought back lots of emotion.

There were no actors in this video, everyone who spoke in front of camera were dedicated employees and every piece of hardware worked. We poured our heart out for this one.

It was the best of time. It was the worst of time.

I had squandered $65M on this dream, enough to pay off the national debt of a small country. I had also wasted lots of good people's life.

I am not ashamed, just embarrassed.

Look forward to a great 2011.

--
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2010-07-07T20:21:51.000Z

**Climbing Kilimanjaro ... A Year Later**

A year ago last summer, my son and I climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. Now we are watching the World Cup Semi-Final rooting for Spain hoping that they will win in time for our visit on Saturday.

Since I will be off-the-grid for a while, I decide to post the following ... hope you like.

Kilimanjaro is a non-active volcano located inside Tanzania near the Kenya border. It is the tallest mountain in Africa (19,331 ft from sea level and 15,100 ft from its base). Although it is the fourth tallest mountain in the World measured from sea level (after Mount Everest at 29,028 ft, Cerro Aconcagua of Argentina at 22,841 ft and Mount McKinley of Alaska at 20,320 ft), it is in fact the tallest "free standing" mountain.

Kilimanjaro also has the additional distinction that among the tallest mountains of the World, it is the only one that is "non-technical" meaning that it is accessible to novices (like me) requiring no mountaineering skills and safety equipments. In other words, anyone could walk up to the summit provided that they are reasonably fit and possess extraordinary determination.

Shown below is a video excerpt taken from a well made IMAX movie (which you can purchase from Amazon for less than $5). I highly recommend this DVD if you are interested in learning more about Kilimanjaro.

Kilimanjaro: To The Roof Of Africa

On the other hand, in retrospect, this DVD doesn't quite convey the full spectrum of the actual climbing experience. The following is another great video - shot years ago by members of the same expedition group, International Mountain Guides, that my son and I had joined, taking exactly the same route as we did. In this much less polished amateur video, you get to experience the physical exhaustion, constant heavy breathing and the occasional cussing.

Kilimanjaro Climb - Full Machame Route

We climbed using the so-called Machame Route which takes six nights and seven days, transversing a total walking distance of 40 miles and a vertical elevation gain of 13,438 ft (2.6 miles). Now, to put things in perspective, for those of us who live in or are at least familiar with the Bay Area, this is exactly the same lateral distance if you were to walk from the Oakland Airport to the San Jose Airport. Also, the total elevation is similar to six times the height of Mount Hamilton (tallest mountain overlooking the Silicon Valley).

So in some way climbing Kilimanjaro is very similar to an extended hiking trip, just more demanding, if you discount the extreme cold and near absence of oxygen during summit and lack of toilet facilities and showers throughout the trip.

http://7summits.com/kilimanjaro/pix/machamemap.gif

DAY 1 - We left our hotel in the morning and were driven to the Machame Gate by noon which has an elevation of 5,900 ft or 1,800 m (bottom left corner of the above map). This was our last contact with civilization. The mountain is actually a well guarded national park. No one gets in and out without government permission. And the park authority enforces a "leave no trace" policy which basically means that we bring everything we need into the park and we must bring everything back out when we leave, leaving nothing behind. This turns out to be an important part of the overall challenge.

There were fifteen of us in the group, all from the States, including our lead guide, Andy Politz, who had previously climbed Mount Everest seven times. Andy was travelling with his teenage son and his best friend, both had lots of climbing experience. In addition, we had four local guides who each had climbed Kilimanjaro more than 150 times (they said they had stopped counting after the 100th).

Then there were forty-nine porters of different skills - three were cooks, four were stewards (serving us hot meals and taking care of our personal needs) and six more had enough experience that they also acted as rescuers. The rest were to carry provisions and to set up and tear down our tents when we travelled from camp to camp.

For this trip, we each had two duffle bags, one we left behind in the hotel and one was carried by the porters who also needed to carry their own equipment plus everything we need for the next seven days (food, water, fuel, tents, lawn chairs, etc.). We each carried our personalized necessities (camera, energy bars, toilet paper, Purell, additional jackets, etc.) plus adequate water (2 liters) for the day.

On our first day we climbed straight up for more than five hours for a total distance of six miles. We gained about 3,900 ft, going through essentially an extensive rain forest. The trail was muddy and slippery allowing us to fully appreciate the functionalities of the various pieces of recommended climbing gears including gaiters and trekking poles.

Our camp is the Machame Hut which sits at the edge of the rain forest and the beginning of the next climate zone (there are a total of four zones before we reach the summit). Upon arriving the camp site, we also witnessed our primitive toilet arrangement which was basically a hole in the ground used every day by the incoming groups, until someone decided to dig a new one. Coming from a third world country, knowing how to squat was the one survival skill that I had that other team members did not.

DAY 2 - Today is similar to Day 1, trekking more than six hours for a total distance of five miles and gaining another 2,400 ft. When we entered our second camp which is called the Shira Hut (upper left corner of the above map), we were at an elevation of 12,000 ft (3,720 m). The terrain was very different from Day 1. Instead of rain forest, we were now in the so called Heath zone.

All through the day we enjoyed great scenery, seeing all kinds of unusual plants and vegetations. We crossed a small valley walking along a steep rocky ridge which was covered with heather. When the ridge ended, the route turned into a river gorge which we had to cross. Then we had to climb another hour to reach camp which was on top of the gorge. On the way up, we saw porters rushing down with large water bottles. They were busy preparing our dinner (keep in mind that we left the last camp before they did).

DAY 3 - Today we had the first taste of the challenges ahead. We learned first hand the concept of "scrambling" which was slightly less demanding than hardcore rock climbing and required no safety harness. We also had to climb down which turned out to be much more difficult than climbing up (more exhausting and more dangerous). At above 12,000 ft, breathing was becoming a challenge and simple chores such as climbing up a vantage point to take better pictures required noticeable effort. Fortunately none of us experienced headache which would have been the onset of altitude sickness.

We were on the trail for eight hours walking only a short but difficult three miles (including a break for hot lunch brought to us by our ever endearing porters). We climbed 2,500 ft up but 2,000 ft down, reaching our third camp, the Barranco Hut (middle of the above map), which had an elevation of 12,800 ft (3,900 m). Along the way, we passed the Shira Plateau and the Lava Tower (at 14,950 ft). We went through two climate zones, starting with the Moorland and ending with the Alpine Desert. It was a good day for group pictures.

By the way, in the past, from Lava Tower, the most demanding route to summit Kilimanjaro was to climb straight up from the west side of the mountain (called the Western Breach). However, in 2006, there was a rock slide accident causing death of three tourists and serious injury to numberous local guides and porters. As a result, this route was closed (a minor fact that I did not disclose to my wife until we returned).

In any case, today was the day that I finally realized how physically unprepared I was for this trip (even though I had been training nominally for six months). I had given up on keeping with the rest of the team and simply walked on my own pace, accompanied only by the trailing guide. Enthusiasm had gradually morphed into apprehension.

DAY 4 - Today was more of the same but several times more difficult, climbing between huge rocks that were almost vertical. It was a six hour day for another three miles. Interestedly we gained no elevation at all today, having to climb 985 ft up and 985 ft down, reaching Karanga Valley which was our fourth camp (bottom right of the above map). By mid-day, it was obvious that I was having a hard time keeping up. Our lead guide was concerned enough that he fell back and became my personal trainer.

I was told that the most important challenge for high-altitude climbing was breathing. By the time we reached summit, the available oxygen would only be about 50% of where we started. So basically breathing meant more than just real-time oxygen consumption but also taking reserve for the future.

Andy taught me about "pressure breathing" which breath by pursing the lips and blowing out forcefully one or more times. By emptying the lungs, the idea was that fresh oxygen would rush in making the process more effective and efficient.

In addition to breathing, there were also essential techniques such as balancing of the poles and locking one knee after another so the weight of the body is rested properly ("rest stepping"). Also, one must learn to "trust his boots" so you can balance properly on loose rocks and "think ahead" such that your unlocked leg could reach for the next strategic spot. Finally, the key is to slow down the pace but keep a consistent pace (taking very small steps but similar size of steps each time).

In other words, there were six and seven things that I must learn to do if I were to survive the rest of the trip. By the end of the day, I knew what the steps were. I just didn't know how to do them all at the same time.

Day 5 - Today was the day before summit and we had to reach high camp which was Barufu Hut located at 15,090 ft or 4,600 m (center right of the above map). We were told that it would be an easier trek (at least compared to the last two days). We just need to climb 2,295 ft, for a total distance of three miles which would take about three hours.

When we reached high camp, we would not sleep overnight (which was dangerous at high altitude, we were told). Instead, we would rest, eat, hydrate and get ready to summit at midnight. I was determined to make the best use of today; it was my last chance.

So after breakfast, instead of falling behind the rest of the team as I had done in previous days, I decided to give myself a headstart. It turned out that Andy had the same idea and had already asked one of the local guides to walk with me. As we left the camp at Karanga Valley, it is clear that this would be another tough day. The only good news was that we only had to go one direction which was up.

As I walked behind the guide, I started to practice my rhythm ... left foot down, stop, breath out once, lock my knee, breath out twice, lift right foot, take a small step, find a rock, land, rotate my hip, lock my knee, etc. I also walked very close to my guide, using his back to block my view so I didn't have to search for the top (which was very far and devastatingly discouraging).

Also, I discovered a trick which was to look up just enough so that I could identify a rock about five paces in front of us, look down again to concentrate on my breathing and when I finally saw the same rock under my foot, I would look up again to find the next rock.

So on and on I go and I was making progress. At first, the guide was looking back constantly to be sure that I was following him. Then after awhile, he just kept moving since he could hear from my breathing that I was behind. Then all the sudden I realized that I wasn't thinking anymore, I was in fact doing all the right steps in the right order and I wasn't struggling any more. I was just climbing, one foot at a time.

I was so incredibly happy that I started crying, so much so that my Maui Jim sunglasses was fogging up. The guide also noticed something strange. He turned around and saw that I was sobbing and I was trying desperately to wipe off my tears (at 12,000+ ft, the sun was very strong and I couldn't just take off my sunglasses). He was sure that I had gone mad.

He immediately dropped his backpack, took out his portable blood oxygen meter and put it around my index finger. Then he took it off, wipe my finger clean and try it again. He still had the same look on his face and he started to walk behind me. He flagged down the next incoming group, spoke to another local guide in Swahili and came back with a different meter. Then he did the same test again. Afterwards we looked at each other and I said, "What?" He said, "You are perfect! Your blood oxygen is fine."

We were both so happy that we hugged each other and started dancing. At 13,000 ft, that had to be quite a sight.

After a brief rest, we continued. By now, I was more confident and I proceeded to climb all the way to camp without stopping. We were there more than 30 minutes before any one else. When the rest of the team finally showed up (including my son), they were quite impressed. By now I was reasonably assure that I could make it to the top, all i had to do was to start early and finish late.

Unfortunately my euphoria didn't last. While having lunch at Barufu Hut, I learned that when we reached summit the next morning, we would only stay there for no more than 10 minutes. In other words, the plan was to leave at midnight, climb to the rim of the volcano in time for sun rise, rest a little, continue to climb to the summit, take a few pictures and get off the mountain as quickly as we could. And we had to get off the mountain together, otherwise they would have to divide up the guides, the rescue porters and the medical equipment which was not something that they liked to do.

So I had to come up with a different plan. But there were no other plan. Either I climbed to the top or not. I could do it. I knew that. I just couldn't keep up.

The engineer inside my head told me that if I couldn't change my objective, I would have to loosen up the constraint. So I went to Andy and said, "I want to start at 10:00 pm."

Andy said OK.

So at 9:30 pm, my guide came woke me up at the tent and took me to the mess tent. There they had hot coco and biscuits which they asked me to eat. Then the guide took out his backpack which was empty except for a portable oxygen tank. He took my backpack and put it inside his, which contained my water supply, my camera, toilet paper and my enormous goose down parka (which we were told not to wear until the coldest part of the climb, i.e., right before the sun came out).

At 10:00 pm, we left camp and as I passed my tent, I leaned over to where my son was sleeping and whispered, "I love you ... see you at the top."

DAY 6 - The first two hours of the summit climb was uneventful. It was obvious that this was going to be a very tough day, probably tougher than all the previously days combined. Basically we had to climb 4,000 ft for about 3 miles to reach the rim (twice the height at twice the inclination as the day before).

After reaching the rim which would take six to seven hours, we would climb another hour to hour-and-a-half to reach the summit (which was only 450 ft higher than the rim but another mile-and-a-half more climbing in extremely high altitude). So up until midnight I was doing pretty good. I was putting everything I had learned in practice, taking small steps and breathing properly.

The scenery was magically. Whenever I looked up, There were stars everywhere. I could see the lone mountain with its snow cap reflecting off the full moon. At first, I didn't even have to turn on my head lamp. The moon light was more than enough to guide me.

It was cold, however. It was already freezing when we left camp and the temperature continued to drop as we climbed. But I had two pairs of wool long johns, two summit-series fleece jackets (with wind-proof zippers) and a Goretex wind-breaker with hood. I also had fleece pant as the liner, water-proof padded ski pant on the outside, two pairs of wool socks, gloves and leather mittens, a scarf, ear muffs, face mask and ski cap. I was warm enough. And I still had my parka in my backpack.

Then my back started to hurt, just the muscle in between my shoulder blades. Carrying my own water had been tough on my back. In the last few days, the first thing I did when I arrived camp was to go inside the tent, take couple of Ibuprofen and lied flat on my back. But leaving at 10:00 pm meant that I never had a chance to relax my back. And now I was paying the price. I also forgot to bring my pain medicine.

The pain had gotten so bad that I could not walk anymore. So I sat down on a rock hoping that the rest of the team would catch up. I figured someone would have the medicine that I needed. As I sat I started to hallucinate and I started to feel really cold. So I knew I had to continue to climb in pain to generate body heat or I would die. I had no choice but to catch up with the team further up.

So I continued to climb and later on, seeing a row of head lamps, I could start to see them slowly coming up the hill. But I couldn't stop to wait and I needed to continue to climb. It took another three hours before we finally met up and it was the longest three hours of my life.

When we met we happened to meet at the mid-point (about 17,000 ft). Sure enough, someone had the medicine that I needed. I took them quickly and sat on a rock as the rest of the team passed me by. I was completely exhausted. I saw my son at the end of the line. He was determined to get to the top.

After the team left, I lost all will to continue. I figured I had achieved what I had come here to achieve. Helping my teenage son get this far and knowing that he had an opportunity to go further on his own was enough. I didn't need to climb to the top. So I turned around and told my guide that I was ready to get down. He was visibly happy, in fact, a little too happy.

In the last few days, I had learned more about our porters and our guides. Almost all of them are from the local Chagga tribe. They are proud people with a strong work ethnic. Not needing to climb to the top actually does not give them much pleasure. They are warriors and they would rather help their clients achieve their goal. So there had to be something else.

Being an inquisitive mind (even at high altitude), I had to probe. So we started talking and quickly I was told that there was actually a bet among the guides that I wasn't going to make it to the top! So it wasn't a big surprise that I asked to return.

I thought about it and I said to myself that it would be silly for me to do something to spite others. I clearly was not all that sure myself that I could make it to the top. However, now that we were at the halfway point, perhaps I could continue and turn this into a geometrical exercise.

So I said to my guide, "I don't want to get down yet. But I am not sure I could go all the way up. We still have time and I can still climb some more. So why don't we cut it in half. I will continue but you let me know when we get to the three-quarter point. Then I will make another decision and we could either come down from there or cut the remaining distance in half once again."

So off we go and now the temperature really started to drop. I took out my parka to keep my body warm but after a while, my fingers and my toes started to feel like they were frozen since they were the most exposed. Behind my face mask, I could see tiny icicles forming around my nostrils. In fact, when I took out my water bottle I was drinking ice slushes, which was kept inside a thermal sleeve, wrapped around by a pair of spare wool socks and inside two backpacks. My son later told me that his multifunction wristwatch had recorded a minimum temperature of -20F or -29C! That's cold. My freezer at home is only set at -8F!

Besides the cold, each step was getting harder and harder. I felt like there were no oxygen in the air. At one point, I had to breath out five times after each step to get enough oxygen into my lungs and after every five steps, I had to stop and breath out ten to fifteen times before I had enough strength to continue.

Then around 5:30 am, the sun came out and we reached the three-quarter point. It was beautiful. We were on the east facing slope above the cloud and the only visible features were the bright sun and Mount Meru in the distance. The cloud was so thick and so steady that I felt like I could just walk between the two glacier peaks.

With the sun coming out, the temperature started to rise. I also noticed for the first time that my guide had very little clothing. So I took off my parka and gave it to him as a gift (which costed more than a month of his salary). Instead of carrying my jacket on his backpack, he now carried it on his back. Everyone was happy.

After some rest, I decided to continue. But we were still pretty far from the top. Another three hours went by and I could finally see the rim. Now after every step, I had to rest so I was fighting for my life one step at a time. But I could see people standing on top including a few from our group. I even thought they were waving at me.

The last 100 ft was just brutal. I was no longer climbing rocks but on lava sands. I would take a forward step and would fall back two steps. My guide measured my oxygen level and he was worry. I was not oxygenating.

He finally said we didn't need to get to the summit which was called Uhuru Peak. If I could get to the rim I would have reached Stella Point and I would still receive my Tanzania government issued official certificate. So he suggested that I took some oxygen and just climbed to the rim. He said only one out of two people ever made it this far. I don't need to stay there very long. Just long enough to take some pictures to prove that I was among the 50% of tourists who successfully climbed to the top of Kilimanjaro.

But I said I wanted to do this on my own. If I had wanted oxygen, I would have done it long ago. But after trying another ten minutes, I still wasn't making progress so I said "screw it" and asked him to hook me up for oxygen. Then I figured since I was now on artificial life support, why not get some more artificial help. I was proud but I was also practical. So I asked my guide to call down some of his friends.

I finally reached the top with three guides, two holding my arms, one on each side and one holding the oxygen tank.

It was not what I originally had in mind. But I reached the roof of Africa. It took me eleven and a half hours, but I made it.

By the time I caught up with my breath, I realized that everyone in my group made it to Stella Point but only nine out of the fifteen made it to the Uhuru Peak. My son was among the nine and he was the only one with no prior climbing experience. Everyone was proud of him, especially me. We waited for everyone to come down, took some pictures together and we went down the mountain in a hurry.

Getting down Mount Doom was even scarier than coming up and I had to have lots of help from the rescue porters (for the first 2,000 ft, they lifted me by my arms and practically carried me down but that's another story). By the time we reached our next camp which was Mweka Camp, we had descended 8,340 ft. It was 8:00 pm when I walked into camp, two hours later than everyone else. I had been on my feet for twenty two hours climbing one kind of rocks or another.

DAY 7 - The next day after breakfast, we hiked for another three hours, through the rain forest once again, for another four miles and down another 5,100 ft to the Mweka Gate, our exit from the Kilimanjaro national park.

By now I was a veteran climber. My blood was over-saturated with oxygen so at least for one day, my 53 year old body was keeping up with my 35 year old mind.

--
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Buzz by Denny K Miu from Buzz

2010-06-10T18:47:33.000Z

**What You Don't Do Matters**

With the announcement of the iPhone 4, I was once again glued to the web and found myself watching Steve Jobs' staged performance at WWDC as well as his earlier interview at D8 (which was a lot more entertaining and insightful).

Having been an Apple "fanboy" for longer time than I care to remember, I was still impressed by two things.

One was how amazing Steve Jobs is as a "startup" CEO and two is how consistent Apple has been in executing their product strategy.

--

I have spend over fifteen years as a startup CEO, with more documented failures than successes. And I have learned a few things.

Entrepreneurship is all about survival. We survive by not dying.

In other words, our DNA dictates that we don't go away by ourselves. If someone thinks we would or we could, then they have surely misunderestimated us.

And if in fact an entrepreneur were to go away, just because enough people have told them that they don't matter, then they ain't no entrepreneur.

--

Steve is obviously such a person.

He didn't go away when even his own partners (Woz and another co-founder of Apple) didn't believe personal computing was a viable business.

He didn't go away when his own company (Apple's Board and his hand-picked CEO) fired him.

He didn't go away when Apple needed him once again while everyone else had written them off (including CEO's from Dell and Adobe which Steve obviously has not forgetten).

He didn't go away when he stumbled upon an opportunity to reinvent the entire music industry with the iPod.

He didn't go away when the rest of world so mis-executed that he was in the right place at the right time to re-imagine the smart phone business with the iPhone.

He didn't go away when death knocked on his door and spitted on him.

He didn't go away when he was able to mobilize a constellation of technology chess pieces to re-revolutionize the PC business with the iPad.

And I suspect he won't go away when the rest of the World (including Google) wake up one day and realize that the existing search based ad model is no longer relevant with the emerging touch-interface computing paradigm because we are able to pinch, expand and zero-in on contents without seeing any ads.

--

But it is important to understand that Steve Jobs is no Bill Gates.

Unlike Microsoft, Apple did not execute on any of these products by "just" leveraging on their largeness and monopoly (market share, distribution channels, cash reserve, head count, etc.).

Instead, in each and every turn, Steve basically planted a pirate flag and mobilized a small commando team within the company.

They identified a product concept that would be "insanely great" but yet executed in such a way that only a minimal subset of viable features was introduced that would ensure the fascination of a loyal population of early adopters who would turn around and become their champions.

This two-step process (a small step characteristic of a startup followed by a large step characteristic of a large company) gave them the clarity, the agility and the breathing room that they needed to constantly keep them miles ahead of the competitors.

In other words, Steve Jobs was successful (over and over again) because he is a renegade (even in his own company), because he knows how to pick battles that he can win and because he has the iron will to ignore the distant thunders in order not to take their collective eyes off the ball.

This is ironic given that Apple is actually a bigger company (in market cap) than Microsoft.

--

So to understand Steve Jobs (and Apple's) success, it helps to examine it from the perspective of a startup.

The success of a startup is defined by what it does, but the survival of a startup is defined by what it doesn't.

--

It is too easy and too convenient for the geeks and the pundits to criticize Apple for the features that it lacks (Flash, physical keyboards, multitasking, removable batteries, etc.).

But none of that matters to the majority of consumers who are buying Apple products.

And Steve and Apple are brilliant in their execution because they have the discipline to be able to say NO to the shiny objects (in order to survive) and focus on what really matter (in order to succeed).

--

It turns out being able to say NO is important for our personal life as well.

--

I sold my share of my last startup business three years ago to my former partners right before the economic downturn in order to enjoy my "first" early retirement.

To keep myself intellectually occupied, I write part-time for a website with a bunch of friends. It is a modest but a profitable business.

Recently my partner and fellow editor got into a pissing contest with my former company. They basically stole my friend's articles (from our site) and use them as their marketing collaterals.

There is no doubt that my friend has been wronged here because this is the web after all and all the evidence are there for everyone to see.

What adds insult to injury is that my former company accused my friend that he had improperly misappropriated their company property because they argued that the articles in question were written while he was employed as a consultant, which was wrong and I happen to know because I was the CEO at the time.

--

So my friend has a few choices and he asks me for advice.

One is to ignore the whole thing which is tough for him to do (as a man of principle).

Two is to pay money to a lawyer to issue a cease-and-disease letter and if necessary, follow up with a law suit.

Three is to spill ink on our website (which has the pleasant byproduct of creating tons of pageviews).

And finally there is the possibility of making use of my friend's extensive roledex to let the industry know what is being done (and potentially hurting my former company where it really hurts).

--

My advise to my friend is that "what you do matters but what you don't do matters even more."

It takes a lot of energy to be negative.

Sometimes it is best to to move on.

As a startup entrepreneur, I prefer to concentrate my energy on being positive and being constructive.

Also, as a son, as a husband and as a father, I have learned that very often "what I don't do" matters a great deal to those whom I love.

--

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Buzz by Denny K Miu from Buzz

2010-06-03T03:55:43.000Z

**I want my gPad**

Today is an important day, two months after I initially received my iPad and one week before Steve announces the new iPhone (and the next release of iPad OS).

And today I finally give up. I had thought that one of the ideal use case for my iPad would be to write my Buzz posts. But it turns out to be impossible without buying an app. It turns out that Google docs doesn't work well on the iPad in the sense you cannot edit Google documents (which is how I normally draft my typically long Buzz posts).

--

Now, I don't want anyone to think that I am writing a negative review on the iPad. So I am going to start with the positives.

The iPad is the perfect device for someone like my wife who only needs to check emails, glance news articles and search for phonebook information (office hours of our family doctor, nearest Goodwill dropoff points, etc.).

The iPad is also the perfect device for me while I am enjoying my morning coffee at Starbucks or waiting at the car repair shop. It is perfect when I am just consuming and leaning back (exactly as shown in iPad ads).

--

The iPad is less than ideal when I need to visit essential websites that are full of Flash (restaurants, car manufacturers, e.g.).

The iPad is less than ideal when I have to edit my Google documents (I already said that).

It is also useless when I want to carry reference information during my upcoming European travel (PDF's or JPEG's of hotel reservations, driving instructions, etc.).

I also cannot use it to watch movies stored on my file server (i.e., no Boxee on iPad).

--

I still love my iPad and I am sure that with the next software upgrade, I will love it even more.

But ironically I am convinced that the only way that the iPad would become my perfect tool is with competition coming from the release of the Google tablet (gPad).

--

I believe Apple has introduced two important and revolutionary features with the iPad, Touch and the form factor, both of which Google will copy.

But Google is smart enough that they will not copy Apple's business model.

Instead Google's gPad will be totally open which will be both a feature and a bug.

--

None of what I said above is new and earth shattering. Google will compete with Apple and Apple will fight back with everything they got. That's a given.

On the other hand, the iPad was designed as a big iPod Touch which is an inherent limitation.

The remaining unknown is whether Google will following Apple and simply design the gPad as a big Android phone, or they would think different and design the gPad as a Chrome OS netbook with touch capability.

If the gPad is just a big Android phone, our future is much less interesting because a race is just a race. It is a piece-wise predictable event.

But if the gPad is a touch-enable netbook running Chrome OS, then our future would be much more uncertain and much more exciting. It would be akin to Google bringing hockey sticks to Apple's synchronized swim.

One way or the other, we will know by X'mas.

--

As they say in America (and never in China, as far as I know), "May we live in interesting times."

--
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Buzz by Denny K Miu from Buzz

2010-04-20T22:17:34.000Z

**Integrity Is What We Do (When No One Is Watching)**

I started my first company in 1995, after spending nine years at UCLA as an untenured Assistant Professor. I struggled until the telecom bubble was in full bloom in 1999.

It is said that in a tornado, even turkey can fly and I was no exception. By 2000, I was able to attract $65 million worth of venture investment to grow my company.

Unfortunately, along with many struggling entrepreneurs, I didn't survive the bubble and had to leave my company in disgrace in 2002. But I learned a great deal including how to grow a company from eight employees to close to two hundreds in less than twelve months.

Recently I heard an interview with Tony Hsieh, the Founder and CEO of Zappos, where he talked about growing a sustainable business and building company culture.

Tony made a distinction between motivation and inspiration and I couldn't agree more. Specifically he told the story of the three bricklayers, one was miserable, one was indifferent and one was ecstatic, all doing exactly the same task.

It turned out that the first bricklayer was just laying bricks, the second knew that they were building a wall but the third understood that they were building a cathedral.

Tony's simple message is that company culture has to be built from bottom up and it's the CEO's job to empower his/her employees such that they believe in a larger purpose.

By the time I had sufficient VC money, my mission was to build a telecom-grade company and my challenge was to do so with no telecom engineers.

In 2000, it was impossible to hire anyone with telecom experience. Any telecom engineer would already be working for a telecom company and would be golden-handcuffed with ever more valuable stock options. So we had to hire engineers with solid technical backgrounds and relevant skills and then turned them into telecom engineers.

The most important attribute of a telecom company is quality and reliability. The reasoning was that in mission-critical networks, every second of downtime was equivalent to hundreds of thousands of dollars of revenue loss (not to mention brand value). So I had to not only motivate but inspire my team such that they believed that they could build reliable and quality products as well as anyone else even if they had never done so in the past.

In the large cubicle area where we housed all the engineers, I painted on the wall, "Quality is what we do when no one is watching."

This was a simple message that everyone in my company could understand because in my own office, I painted, "Integrity is what I do when no one is watching."

So it was a commitment from the CEO in exchange for commitment from everyone else.

--

Like many aspiring entrepreneurs, I read lots of books before starting my own company, especially biographies of successful entrepreneurs.

The one that made the most impression on me was the one by Thomas Watson, Jr., the CEO of IBM for twenty years and the son of Thomas Watson, Sr. who was the father of the modern day IBM. Watson Sr. was one of the richest men of his time and was called the world's greatest salesman when he died in 1956.

In his book, Watson talked about how when he was young, his father would take him along on sales trips and would always tell him how he had to thoroughly clean the bathrooms on the train after he used them because he could never predict who would use the facility next. In other words, it was not what he did that mattered in business, it was what other people thought he did that mattered.

And I remember similar stories in my own upbringing. I remember when we first came to America, my dad and I drove to the local gas station and after paying, I had a smile on me and my dad asked me why. I said they overpaid me one dollar.

My dad was so upset and he made me turn around and return the extra dollar to the cashier. He said he didn't bring me to the United States so I could be brought up wrong. I argued with him that it didn't matter because no one knew and Chevron was a big company. He said it mattered to him. It mattered to him that we tried to do the right thing even if no one was watching.

And that is the case with integrity.

The more educated we are, the more we know how to do the right thing because we understand people are watching.

But people are constantly watching. And they watch for small things as much as they watch for big things.

And our hard-earned reputation can be easily destroyed by small and seemingly inconsequential things, things that we never thought people would ever watch.

So be careful with your actions, even if no one is watching.

Be careful with your actions, especially when no one is watching because it is not what you did, it is what people think you did that matters.

--

Many of you know of Leo Laporte. Some of you might even know Jason Calacanis. And no doubt a few of you have heard of the nuclear fallout between them this weekend.

I am not here to protect Leo. And I am not here to support Jason. They are big boys and the dispute between them is really just tempest in a teapot.

But I believe this is a teachable moment, especially about integrity.

If you are interested, the following would help you draw your own conclusion.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONSDGdnb9Yk
http://getthenext.com/archives/512
http://newsblaze.com/story/20100418171221tm75.nb/topstory.html
http://calacanis.com/2010/04/20/background-on-the-this-week-in-controversy/
http://calacanis.com/2010/04/18/my-official-statement-on-the-leolaporte-thisweekin-com-controversy-twit-twist-twi/

--

But let me also tell you what I know and what I think, as a listener and a fellow entrepreneur.

Leo Laporte is the owner of the TWIT network (This Week in Tech) and has a growing number of popular podcasts all about information technology.

By all measures, Leo is successful. His business is profitable and it is growing steadily and organically. I listen to four to six of his shows every week. I like Leo and admire him. Like me, Leo is a baby boomer.

On the other hand, Jason is a successful entrepreneur. He is at the top of his game.

Jason sold his first company in 2001 and sold his second company, Weblog Inc., to AOL in 2005 for $30 million. In 2007, Jason started Mahalo with substantial VC money and he is personally an active angel investor.

Jason is 40 years old and is a member of so-called Gen-X generation. He is also a controversial figure (having had run-in in the past with Digg, allegedly stealing their key contributors, all of which one can google).

I first heard of Jason when he came onto the TWIT show as Leo's guest, mainly to plug Mahalo. I don't dislike Jason but I was impressed by his passion.

Then in 2009, Jason started a podcast called This Week in Startups (TWIST).

And I remember Leo was very supportive both emotionally and technically (helping Jason with audio setups and video tricaster, etc.). In my opinion, Leo did what was expected of a friend.

I also thought that it was a brilliant move on Jason's part because it would help him differentiate himself as an angel investor. On the other hand, I understand why Leo would be supportive because entrepreneurship is clearly outside the focus of his TWIT network.

Even though Leo never said it, I am sure in his mind, he is thinking of my favorite line in Godfather, "I want to congratulate you on your new business and I'm sure you'll do very well and good luck to you. Especially since your interests don't conflict with mine."

One reason that I am intrigued with Leo and TWIT is not just that he has a bunch of podcasts but in the last two years, he has done something phenomenal which is to build a 24/7 CNN-like video network using off-the-shelf technology.

This is big. This is Desktop Broadcasting, bigger than Desktop Publishing, and it will change the World.

But Leo, even with all his guests, is essentially a one-man show.

To go from big to huge, he needs scale. In other words, Leo can't just build a business, he has to build a franchise. He can't just have a bunch of cannon balls, he got to have firework.

Then on March 1, in episode 237 of TWIT, where Jason was a guest and which he referenced in his rebuttal, Jason said something that just knocked me off my chair.

He talked about expanding and doing couple more TWI shows, including This Week in Cloud Computing and This Week in Android, and said, "What’s happening is it’s very much like Weblogs, Inc. ... it’s going to be an exit for everybody because somebody will come and say hey let’s put five of these things together and get scale. You have five things making a million or two million dollars each. Put them together, all of a sudden you’ve got scale."

I said to myself, "OMG, the man got vision. He figured it out."

Unbeknown to Leo and all of us listeners, Jason has been executing a roll-up strategy from day one.

As a listener and a fellow entrepreneur, my observation is that Jason knows that Leo is sitting on a pile of gold and he is going to invite himself to the table to be Leo's equal partner, to provide the firework for Leo's cannon balls, and to hijack this TWI baby all the way to the bank, whether Leo is ready is not.

Keep in mind that I have not accused Jason of any wrongdoings, especially not for a shrewd businessman that he is. I would have done the same thing if I were asked to provide a meaningful financial exit for Leo. But I would never claim to be Leo's friend.

--

No one really knows what is inside other people's head and why they do what they do. And at the end of the day, it is not important.

We draw our own conclusion on people based on what they did and what we think they did.

I predict Leo's brand will not suffer but I predict Jason's brand will suffer greatly.

Because unlike Leo the baby boomer, Jason the Gen-X has yet to understand the difference between persona and reputation.

What you write on your blog, your facebook and your tweets is your persona. What people think of you behind your back when you thought they were not watching is your reputation.

It takes a lifetime to build a reputation. It only takes one tiny miscalculation to throw it all away.

Good luck, Jason.

--
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Buzz by Denny K Miu from Buzz

2010-04-17T21:23:11.000Z

**Silence Is Not An Option**

I grew up in Macau, a former Portuguese colony in South China. I was 10 years old when the Cultural Revolution broke out in the mainland, which in retrospect was basically a para-militarized power grab by Mao Zedong who had fallen out of power after his disastrous Great Leap Forward.

Cultural Revolution was Mao's way of doubling down, over-compensating his previous failed experiment in collective farming and mass mobilization which had caused tens of millions of death.

Mao was a revolutionary and a tyrant.

--

The elementary school that I attended in Macau was run by a pro-communist workers' union so we were swept up by the political fever as well. I remembered one day as I walked into school I noticed all the pictures of the various party leaders had been taken down except for Mao's and our regular text books were replaced by a little red booklet containing a collection of quotations excerpted from Mao's speeches and publications.

Our favorite passage was "Revolution is Righteous (革命無罪) ... Rebellion is Justified (造反有理)" which empowered and emboldened my fellow students and became the basis for all our actions. We were told that it was our solemn duty to conduct class struggle (whatever that might mean) and if we saw any injustice done by anyone, it was our responsibility to speak up and to act, even if we were only a bunch of 10-year olds.

In other words, "Silence Is Not An Option."

So we started to mimic what was being done by the little Red Guards in the mainland and we started to post "big-character posters (大字報)" which were basically blog postings except that they were done with paper and ink brushes. And we started to compete with each other day-after-day by being ever more vocal and ever more confrontational. It was just a game and it was great fun.

One morning I posted an open letter criticizing my least favored teacher, one Mr. Wong, who was not really a teacher but a disciplinarian. Whenever kids misbehaved, they would be send to Mr. Wong for corporal punishment. So we all feared Mr. Wong who was the policeman, the jailer, the judge, the jury and the executioner all wrapped into one.

I actually was a relatively well behaved kid so I didn't have much direct contact with Mr. Wong but I despised him just the same. I wrote about his abuse of power, his arbitrariness and his unfair way of favoring one kid over another, particularly girls over boys.

Learning from Mao's writings, I labeled Mr. Wong a counter-revolutionary. I was too young to really understand the consequence of writing such a post but I was totally committed to the notion that silence was not an option. In my mind, Mr. Wong was a tyrant and had to be taken down.

Little did I know that the next morning, five other students had placed similar posts next to mine and within a week, it was the talk of the school.

Apparently many kids and even a few teachers felt the same way about Mr. Wong. Some of the subsequent criticisms were substantive and some were mundane (like Mr. Wong had bad breath). It was obvious that I had ignited a revolution and by choosing action over silence, I had provided a platform for the oppressed to speak out about injustice.

Then one day as we went to school anxiously waiting to see what else was posted about Mr. Wong, to our surprise, we found that all posters had been taken down.

No one knew what was going on except that there were police everywhere asking everyone questions. Eventually our parents were called in and there was a big meeting among the adults. It turned out that two older girls had come out and accused Mr. Wong of sexually molesting them.

Wow!!!

Like Mao said, "Single Spark Can Start a Prairie Fire."

For a ten-year old wannabe revolutionary, this was a life-changing experience and from that day on, silence had forever stopped being an option.

--

But silence is an option.

After immigrating to the United States and after getting my Ph.D., I got my first job working as a research scientist for Kodak and after two years, I became an Assistant Professor at UCLA.

And the one thing that never ceases to amaze me is that people in the US, despite all our freedom, actually doesn't speak out as much. People seem to always prefer to conveniently look the other way whenever there is injustice. It is as if we pay enough tax already, therefore it ought to be someone else's problem.

Silence is everywhere but it is worse with more educated people. My experience is that there were more silence and more tolerance for injustice and prejudges at the faculty club at UCLA than there were at my neighborhood Chinese laundry where I used to worked during high school.

It appears that the higher we climb, the more we have to lose and the more we are afraid of losing.

But over the years I have started to understand and I have learned not to judge so quickly.

I remember in my first summer job, I sat next to an engineer who talked shit all the time but whenever we were in a meeting where he could actually speak out and made a difference, he clamped up. After the meeting, he would talk shit again.

Then I realized that he had a lot of expensive toys. He had a fancy car, a motorcycle, a speedboat, a big house and a trophy wife. But everything he owned including the wedding ring for his bride were bought with money that he didn't have. In other words, he not only mortgaged his house, he mortgaged his freedom. He dared not lose his job or he couldn't keep up with his monthly payment and to feed his material life. For him, silence was just a consumer choice.

Similarly I remember at Kodak, there was another engineer in our group who was really smart and capable. I truly respected him. But he was always quiet and he never questioned anything. He just did his job.

Then I noticed in the corner of his desk he had a small picture of his family, his wife and his two children. His smaller child was obviously suffering from Down Syndrome. It was not that he didn't want to speak. It was his fate. For my friend, silence was his best option because he had bigger responsibility.

--

In a few months, both of my kids would be in college. They will start to live their own lives. In the past, when they were younger, whenever opportunity presented itself, I would tell them these stories, to remind them that in our family, silence is not an option.

In fact, short of life's bad fate, the only way that silence would become their only option is if they inadvertently over-materialize their life such that they couldn't afford to speak out.

I explained to them that I would consider it sad and a great irony if I could afford to speak out while living under near-communist rule and yet they couldn't while living in a democracy.

This is why I was so proud of my kids recently. I was proud of my son who got into big trouble in school when he started a Facebook fans page criticizing a non-performing teacher and I was proud of my daughter who wrote an editorial for her school paper boycotting a soon-to-be-released movie that she considered racist.

http://www.thecampanil.com/2010/04/08/blog-boycott-avatar-the-last-airbender/

Silence is not an option for me and I am grateful that silence does not appear to an option for my kids.

--
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Buzz by Denny K Miu from Buzz

2010-04-08T04:35:31.000Z

**iPad is the Prequel**

I did what I was told.

I pre-ordered my iPad three weeks ago sight-unseen and I obediently awaited for its arrival on April 3rd.

Unfortunately I had to be out-of-town so I missed the scheduled shippment. Then I missed it again on Monday. Finally on Tuesday evening, after waiting by the window all day long, the UPS truck eventually showed up and I was able to join half-a-million fellow worshippers who are now endowed with a 9.7-inch iPad.

The only redeemable feature of getting my iPad later than everyone else is that by the time I was able to "Slide to Unlock", I had already read every single review from every possible perspective.

What I find interesting is that while everyone seem to finally agree that the iPad is just a large iPod Touch, they disagree on whether or not the larger format iPad has any unique and sustainable values, especially to those who already own a MacBook and an iPhone.

My own take is that it is not possible to properly evaluate the iPad by thinking of it as a sequel to the iPhone. Instead you need to think of the iPad as the prequel.

In other words, you need to time-travel and assume that the iPhone (or iPod Touch) doesn't exist at all and iPad is in reality the first mobile device from Apple with a touch interface. And the "One More Thing" that Steve promised is that the upcoming IPad Nano (aka iPhone) would be a small form factor iPad but with a built-in GSM phone and a bonus camera.

Then your perspective would be completely different.

The iPad can now be viewed as a revolutionary product, changing the industry in a substantive and permanent manner, and bringing about a whole new expandable platform of mobile, always-connected personal devices for a whole new family of rapidly growing under-served casual users.

For someone like me who have lived in the Silicon Valley in the last forty years and was already old enough to drink when the Apple II first became available in 1977, I really appreciate the iPad's (potential) impact. This is particularly true if one puts the iPad in the historical context of the previous two information technology revolutions (both of which originated in the Silicon Valley).

The first revolution was the invention of Personal Computers and the second was the invention of Internet ... please allow me to elaborate.

- Invention of Personal Computers (invention of BIOS)

Contrary to popular believe, Apple did not invent the personal computer industry. When the Apple II was first introduced, the most popular accessory was a Z80-based expansion card such that the underpowered 6502-based Apple II could boot up on the CP/M operating system and run WordStar, dBase II, and other popular business-oriented CP/M software.

The first personal computer was actually the MITS Altair 8800 in 1975 and its inventor was Ed Roberts who recently passed away. The only programming language available was Microsoft Basic which you had to load with paper tape. Other than that, you would have to program the Altair with toggle switches to manually input hexadecimal machine codes (which I did many times).

The Altair was really just a hobby and it took another company, IMSAI, to build a more commercially viable alternative. The IMSAI engineers basically made an Altair clone using the same processor (8080) and same bus structure (S-100) but with a 8-inch floppy drive. And they recruited an independent and brilliant software engineer by the name of Gary Kildall to write an operating system called CP/M (which had a command instruction set similar to the DEC RT-11, the most popular OS outside of the IBM universe).

At the same time, there were many similar computer startup companies all wanting to jump on the bandwagon and build better and faster S-100 compatible products, including NorthStar (using a Z-80 and dynamic RAM) and Cromemco (adding color graphics).

Northstar was a company located in Berkeley, Calfiornia and its founders were scientists from the University of California. Their original name was Kentucky Fried Computers and their slogan was "A Computer in Every Pot." For two years, I put myself through college by working there part-time as customer support.

Cromemco, on the other hand, was a cross-town rival and located in Mountain View. It was started by two Stanford Ph.D. students who named their company after Crothers Memorial Hall, the dormitory where they met.

Kildall was a genius and he didn't want to be captive to any particular hardware manufacturer. So he wrote CP/M in such a way that there were two interoperating parts, a hardware specific part called BIOS (Basic Input Output Systems) and a logical part called BDOS (Basic Disk Operating Systems).

This separation between the physical and the logical layer allowed software manufacturers including Microsoft, Wordstar, Peachtree, etc. to interact only with BDOS such that they could sell softwares independent of hardware as long as they run CP/M, greatly expanding their potential market.

Similarly, the hardware manufacturers were able to concentrate on their own innovation, constantly upgrading CPU, memory and IO as well as improving pricing and support. All they needed to do in each iteration was to update the BIOS firmware with the confidence that all existing third-party software would continue to work.

The PC industry expanded and evolved in the late 70's but really started to take off in early 1980 with Osborne Computers which had two innovations, the first integrated (portable) PC and the first to come with bundled software so that it was a business solution right out of the box.

At the same time, Intel introduced their 16-bit processor, the 8086, to replace the 8-bit 8080 (and to stop further encroachment by the 8-bit Z80 made by Zilog). But it was not a commercial success until they downgraded to 8088 which had a 16-bit internal core but an 8-bit external bus. This allowed manufacturers to substantially lower total system cost by making use of existing and cheaper peripheral chips (which ironically were often made by Zilog, Intel's arch rival).

One of the first companies to adopt the 8088 was IBM and they needed an operating system. So they contacted Kildall to write a 16-bit version of CP/M.

There were a lot of stories about what really happened but basically IBM decided not to do business with Kildall and contacted Microsoft instead which was still a small company known mainly for their Basic interpreter.

Bill Gates (or William Henry Gates the Third as was known at the time) convinced IBM that he had a 16-bit CP/M compatible operating system ready-to-go and all he had to do was to rewrite the BIOS.

In reality, once he signed the contract, Gates turned around and outsourced the phantom product (MSDOS) to a small outfit named Seattle Computer Products without disclosing the real customer and later paid the owner $75,000 for the exclusive rights (two months before the IBM PC was released to the World).

My point is that there were many contributors to the PC revolution. Apple was an important part but they were not the dominate part.

Apple was the existence proof for the rest of the industry.

Apple was the first to commercialize bit-mapped graphics, soft-sectoring floppy drives, SCSI and eventually mouse and graphic user interface. But Apple was a one-stop shop and was compatible only with itself.

The rest of the world was different and they were successful by copying Apple's features but not its business model. They were compatible with each other and they were united because they had no other alternative.

Most early companies did not survive. In my opinion, Compaq was the last innovative hardware manufacturer and everyone else (HP, Dell, Gateway, etc.) remained viable by being essentially channel distributors for Intel/Microsoft products. In other words, they gave up on individual innovations because economy-of-scale was not in their favor.

This anything-but-Apple eco-system eventually dominated the marketplace and garnered over 95% of the market share. But it would not have been possible without Kildall's original invention of the BIOS, the unsung hero providing the glue and the interface between Intel's hardware and Microsoft's software.

So this was the first revolution.

- Invention of Internet (Commercialization of ARPAnet)

Believe it or not, Al Gore really did invent the Internet.

The hardware backbone of Internet is Ethernet which is a packet-switching technology allowing computers to communicate with each other through a single conduit. The original development work was done by scientists at UCLA (where I was once an Assistant Professor).

Since the work was sponsored by the Advanced Research Projects Agency, it was called ARPAnet. It was meant to be the “Intergalactic Computer Network” allowing all ARPA-sponsored researchers at various corporate and academic laboratories to communicate with one another.

Eventually the requirement was relaxed so that basically anyone working in academia was able to have an email address allowing them to text-message each other domestically as well as internationally.

Then in 1991, as a US senator, Al Gore wrote the legislation that released ARPAnet into the commercial world, and renamed it Internet. Overnight all my friends in the commercial world had the same toys as I did.

By August 1995, Netscape (originally known as Mosaic Communications) went IPO with the most important Internet product of its time and we never look back.

But the second revolution is not about Internet technology per se but the fact that in the last twenty years, always-on Internet connection has gradually become a requirement and not just a feature.

Nowadays it is inconceivable and impractical to have a computer not connected to the Internet.

I can't even write an article anymore without being online. My brain just doesn't work that way anymore. My knowledge is greatly limited unless I also have unrestricted information.

Like the umbilical cord that provides the unborn with fresh blood and necessary nutrients, all computers must now be tethered (wired or wireless) to be useful.

- Invention of Touch (Vernacularization of Computing)

School children in the West study Latin not for communication but for its historical value.

Similarly, when I was a little kid growing up in Macau, we had to study Classical Chinese (文言文) which was derived from the language used in the Middle Kingdom between the Zhou and the Han dynasty (200 AD).

Classical Chinese was completely distinct from the spoken language in that it was extremely concise and compact. An essay written in Classical Chinese, for example, would use half as many characters as its spoken counterpart, even though the meaning remains the same. Classical Chinese was considered elegant.

Classical Chinese was a language used and understood only by the educated, and more importantly by the imperial rulers. So in a way Classical Chinese was a top-down self-imposed barrier-to-entry to prevent upward mobility by the masses. In short, Classical Chinese was unnatural and it was oppressive.

After the May Fourth Movement, the first student uprise in Beijing on May 4, 1919 (and many more to come), Classical Chinese was replaced by Vernacular Chinese (白話), a style of writing that is similar to modern spoken Mandarin Chinese.

The students were protesting unfair treatment by the foreign powers. After Germany was defeated in World War I, its colony in Shandong peninsula was ceded to Japan rather than returning sovereign authority to China, despite massive protests.

It seemed obvious to the enlightened that breaking down the artificial cultural barrier between different forms of expression (writing and speaking) and simplifying communication between different economic classes was an important and necessary first step towards liberating a people from tyranny.

In other words, true revolution could not have come from the elites, it had to come from the masses.

And so it is with computing. Until iPad comes along, only few people can use computers. The digital divide is in fact an economic divide, separating the elites from the masses. You have to be trained and you have to have special skills to use computers. Mouse was a great improvement but it is still unnatural for a large majority of the uninitiated. To many, the mouse is a shackle.

Among the many product reviews, the best was the one with a two year old having a first encounter with an iPad (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pT4EbM7dCMs). For her, the iPad was a natural, as natural as month tongue, and using it requires no additional skill than what is needed to manipulate objects in her physical environment.

So the iPad has started a third, but yet-unnamed, revolution ... bringing vernacular (mother tongue) computing to the uninitiated and underserved.

I suspect things will change very quickly in the next eighteen months with lots of companies jumping into the game.

And once again, Apple will be the existence proof for the rest of the industry.

History will repeat itself, but with Google playing the role of Microsoft, attacking the mobile touch computing market with their Android operating system, which similar to CP/M is architected with a hardware specific top-layer allowing every other hardware manufacturer to offer their own customization but still benefit from a collective economy-of-scale.

And in the end, my guess is that this anything-but-apple eco-system will thrive and dominate, borrowing heavily from Apple's innovative features but not its self-limiting business model. These companies would be compatible with each other and once again, they would be united because they have no other alternative.

How lucky we are that we get to experience yet another technology-revolution-of-a-lifetime ... for the third time.

--
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Buzz by Denny K Miu from Buzz

2010-04-01T03:21:30.000Z

**Google is a Hypocrite**

Like many families living in southern China in the late-50's, mine was splited between China, Hong Hong and Macau. When the communist took over China in 1949, people fled. They did so for economic reason or they did so for political reason. It didn't matter. One day the border was closed and you were where you were.

It is as if San Francisco were forced to split into two. If you happen to be north of Golden Gate Park at 5 o'clock, you are now a citizen of the People's Republic of Richmond District or if you are south, you are a citizen of the United States of Sunset District. With your family members scattered at different place when the border is closed, you will never see them again. And each of you would live an entirely different life for no logical reason whatsoever.

So it was in China on October 1, 1949. Much of my family was in Macau, a Portuguese colony south of the Pearl River delta, much was in Hong Kong, a British colony north, and the rest in communist-controlled China.

--

Recently, many of our fellow Americans use the phrase socialism (or even communism or fascism) to describe the health care reform. They have the right to say what they want to say but I don't believe they have the personal experience to know what they are talking about.

I know socialism. I know communism. And I know fascism. As a small child, I used to visit my grandparents and my family all the time, on the other side of the Chinese border.

In fact, surprising to even my parents, I remember my first visit which was when I was less than two years old. This was 1958 and due to mismanagement of the so-called "Great Leap Forward", an experiment in collective farming, China was experiencing a three-year famine which even according to government statistics, 15 million Chinese had died (unofficial number was more like 40 million).

My family was dying on the other side and those of us who lived outside the bamboo curtain were scrambling to bring food and any life necessities into China in any way we could.

I remember my parents were carrying everything on their back to walk that 10-miles trek from Macau into China. They had cooking oil, rice and old clothings (new clothings were forbidden) and they had specially sewed duffle bags made of used cloths which they could then turn into fresh fabric once they crossed the border. And they brought cooked meals that they could claim to be their own lunch.

I was too young to be of any use to them but I remembered having flint (for cigarette lighter) hidden in my front pocket which I gave to my grand-father so he could bride the party members for more rice rations. He was so proud of me and I remember him patting my head while sitting on his laps. Decades later when my grand-father visited me in America, we still talked about that.

One more thing that I remember is how my family was growing yam in a private plot in the hills which was basically our family grave. I remembered walking up the yellow mud with my teenage uncles and aunts and digging yam with our hands in the rain.

--

My point is that it is tough to live under communist rule. Obviously things have improved significantly in the last four decades and many of my family are now living a much better life, even in China. But I did do my part to improve their life and I firmly believe that the only way to improve lives under communist rule is to engage and improvise, and not take a politically correct position to isolate and patronize.

Life is obviously not as free in China as it is in America. In the mass media, we talked a great deal about censorship, about Tiananmen Square, about Tibet and about Falun Gong and how despicable it is that the Chinese government would block such contents on the web.

I understand the agrument and I understand that it is a prerogative of Mr. Sergey Brin, the Co-Founder of Google, a Soviet-born American and a multi-billionaire, to take personal offense and to lead corporate action to leave China.

I don't have any problem with his decision and his company's decision. I just think that they are hypocritical.

First of all, I think it is a distraction from the real issue which is that Gmail accounts have been compromised and that their Achilles' heel for security in cloud computing is now fully exposed.

But if I take their words in face value which is that they are doing this for their own conscience, that they wouldn't have done any different if this were South Africa and not China, and this were apartheid and not communism, I still think that it is the wrong tactic.

Instead of Google pulling out of China and taking away the only open search tool left for the Chinese people, what if Twitter decided to pull out from Iran? What would have happened to their burgeoning revolution then?

Like it or not, information is the new weapon. I rather give the Chinese people half of an imperfect weapon and be on their side of the future, then to take a high moral ground and be on the wrong side of history.

Don't get me wrong, I am not a Google-hater. I use their products almost exclusively because I respect and I trust their "Do No Evil" philosophy.

But if Google really believe in half of their own press release, then they should not only pull out from China, they should stop selling their Nexus One, an iPhone competitor that is manufactured by HTC, a Taiwan-based company with factories in China. And they should convince their Android phone partners (Samsung, Motorola, Sony, etc.), all of which manufacture their hardware in China, to do the same.

Doing any less would end up hurting the Chinese people much more than the China government.

--
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Buzz by Denny K Miu from Buzz

2010-03-28T20:53:56.000Z

**Why Tax Corporations**

Both of my kids are now old enough to vote.

Unlike them, I was not born in this country. I came to the United States as an immigrant almost forty years ago. From the day that I was old enough to vote, I have experienced eight presidential elections.

My first election was in 1976, a time when our country was desperate to move beyond Watergate. We were looking for "change" and we were looking for an outsider who was more like us. We found Jimmy Carter who not only represented change but generational change.

Although Carter was not a baby boomer, many who supported him were. Like me, the baby boomers were old enough to vote and yet young enough to be inspired.

Four years later, the country had lost not only confidence in our institutions but also confidence in ourselves. We were looking for change once again but it was a different kind of change. We became nostalgic and we rediscovered Ronald Reagan.

I personally believe that Reagan was a great President because by the time he finished his second term, we were once again a great nation (at least we felt that way).

2008 was my eighth election. Our country was ready for another generational change. We were in desperate need to move beyond 9/11, to move beyond Iraq and Katrina, and to move beyond divisive partisan politics.

We found Barack Obama who was barely old enough to qualify as a baby boomer but on the other hand, he was one endeared by my kids' generation, who were now old enough to vote and young enough to be inspired.

But Obama is not Carter, Obama is Reagan, not in similar philosophy or belief, not in their shared gift as the great communicator, but in how they both have managed to change the tone, the narrative and the trajectory of a great nation.

--

One week after health care reform has become law, we are still arguing. It is clear that the rhetoric and the rancor have not subsided and might never will.

I can only imagine how mind boggling this must be for my kids and their friends, who have great difficulties seeing anything wrong with extending coverage until they finish graduate school or providing coverage to infants because being born prematurely is no longer a pre-existing condition.

To help them understand, I think it is important to frame the ongoing discussion as a histrionic death duel between "Reaganomics" and "Obamacare".

The objective of Reaganomics is to reduce government spending, to cut income and capital gains tax, to stifle government regulation and to greatly expand money supply. President Reagan said it best, "Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem."

This simple philosophy resonated with the country. We all believed that if we could just get the government off our back and let free-market capitalism do its magic, we could all live the American dream. As summarized by Deng Xiaoping, "To get rich is glorious."

Obamacare is different. By care, I don't necessarily mean health care, but "care" as in the role that government should play in our life.

In a little known speech given long before Obama was a presidential candidate, he said, "If the people cannot trust their government to do the job for which it exists - to protect them and to promote their common welfare - all else is lost."

In order words, Obama believes that government's job is to provide security: security for the sea lanes, security for the borders, security for the poor, security for the unemployed, security for the old, and now security for the sick.

And when that objective is consistent with Reagonomics, Obama is a capitalist. When it is not, he is whatever you wish to label him. Again as Deng Xiaoping said, "Doesn't matter if it is white or black, if it catches mice, it is a good cat."

--

I think it is beyond anyone's ability to persuade the ongoing argument about health care one way or another. If it could be done, it would have been done already. After forty years, we are still arguing Social Security and Medicare.

But what I would like to do to provide some crispness by quoting George Will who likes to remind us that, "Corporations don't pay tax, they collect tax."

The idea is that Corporations don’t pay taxes - people do. Corporations are legal entities which collect taxes on behalf of real live human beings. In George's mind, the human beings are the shareholders of the corporations.

In other words, by shifting the tax burden to high income individuals and corporations in order to pay for yet another entitlement program (i.e., health care), we are basically taxing the American people, namely the shareholders. It is not trickle-down, it is boomerang. And it is a fool's errand.

Is this true? I have been a CEO for many years and as a CEO, my fiduciary duty is to the shareholders. However, shareholders do not create wealth.

The wealth of a corporation actually comes from its customers and its workers. Wealth creation of a corporate is calculated based on what its customers are willing to pay and what it costs to produce the goods and services. So as a CEO, I could maximize my company's wealth by charging more (to the consumers) or paying less (to the workers).

So that's really the great debate going forward. Rather than arguing the role of the government, we should argue the role of the corporations (and by extension, high-income individuals).

Do corporations really pay tax? Or do they just collect tax?

If we believe as I do that, as consumers and as workers, the American people are the ones contributing to their wealth, then corporations are in fact collecting tax on our behalf and we should not have to apologize on how we wish to distribute that collective wealth to the American people to provide collective security: national security, homeland security, social security and now health care security.

I am not a communist. I am not suggesting that we redistribute wealth indiscriminately. I am merely making the observation that corporations are legal entitles that have collected wealth, but not just for their shareholders.

On the other hand, if we do believe that corporations are collecting wealth only for their shareholders, then we should do away with double-taxation and not tax corporations at all.

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2010-03-26T17:17:15.000Z

**Is Immigration a Right?**

People say that as you get older, you have better long-term memory than you do short-term. I am pretty sure this is true.

Although I am still more than a decade from being able to collect social security, I am only a few years from being able to enjoy senior discount at Denny's. Needless to say, I have noticed that I am starting to lose some ability for short-term memory which by definition, I suppose, means that my long-term memory is better.

For example, my family immigrated to the United States almost forty years ago and I still remember the early days as if it was yesterday.

--

Due to some minor issue, I had to fly to San Francisco on my own, a month behind my parents and my brothers. I remember that day well, June 16th, 1971. I stepped off a brand new 747 and I remember feeling very proud. The stewardess presented me with two choices, and I said "Coca Cola". That was the entirety of my very first conversation in English and it was all good.

I was then ushered into a big lobby with lots of people in uniforms and I handed over a large bag full of papers that my dad had said that I needed to guard with my life. After they searched my luggage they pointed me to an exit. Outside the sliding doors, I saw my parents, and my uncle and aunt for the first time.

Then we got into a huge station wagon with wooden side panels that was bigger than most sampans in Macau. We drove to San Francisco and I saw Golden Gate Park for the first time. It was an incredible experience, as if I was being driven through Champs-Élysées in a bullet-proof limousine.

Then within a week, my aunt received a large envelop from INS (Immigration and Naturalization Services). It was to be the only three-letter government agency that I knew and feared for a long time (long before IRS).

In the envelop, there was a bunch of greenish plastic cards, one with my name (only my Chinese name, not Denny) and my picture. I saw it for ten seconds and it said Alien Registration Card. My aunt took it away from me to keep in a safe and said that only adults needed to carry it at all time.

So that was my first question. What is an alien?

Well, five years later, I was eligible to become a citizen and I was already in college. Richard Nixon had resigned and Gerald Ford was now the President. Watergate was the best civic lesson that any teenager could have. I passed the examine easily and they took away my green card.

I studied many many important issues including who would get the secret code if the President, Vice President and Alexander Haig all die in a plane crash.

I was sworn in as a naturalized citizen and recited the Oath of Allegiance. I remembered thinking how strange it was that I had to explicitely pledge my allegiance to the constitution and promise to serve in the military and to perform civilian duites of national importance. Doesn't everybody do that?

Then I realized that not everybody does that. If you were born in the United States (like my kids), you would be a citizen by default and you have all the rights that come with being a citizen but you never actually have to agree to the obligations.

So that was another question. What are my rights and what are my obligations?

Immigration is a right. It is a right of any citizen to be united with their family. My uncle was a World War II veteran and he was granted citizenship when he was discharged. He went back to China to marry my aunt. As a citizen, he had the right to be united with his family which was why my aunt was able to come to United States.

But for five years she was a resident alien which meant that she was legally permitted to remain in this country which was foreign to her but she was not a citizen. Besides permanent residents, you could be a legal alien if you were a tourist, a guest worker, or a student.

Then after five years, she was eligible to become a citizen (provided that she did not commit a felony) and then she would also be granted the right to be reunited with her family including her brother, my dad.

My dad submitted his immigration application after my aunt became a citizen and we waited. We were fortunate that his application got approved before I became an adult. Otherwise I wouldn't be able to come as part of the family and I would have to wait until my father became a citizen before he had the right to be reunited with the rest of his family.

My point is that immigration is a right. But it is not a right for the immigrant. No one has any inherent right to immigrate to the United States. It is only a right given to a United States citizen provided they fulfill their obligation (as my uncle did).

There is no such thing as illegal immigrants. You have to be legal to be called an immigrant. If you are in this country illegally, you would be an illegal alien. Being illegal meant that you have broken the law.

--

Now that health care reform is done, everyone is jockeying for the next big ticket item: banking reform, climate control, immigration reform, etc.

But we do not have an immigration problem. We have tens (if not hundreds) of millions of families waiting to be reunited with our citizens. This is a long waiting list. Sometimes it takes decades to be approved but everyone is following the law. When it is their turn, they will be given the permission to immigrate. But by definition, they would be legal immigrants.

On the other hand, I believe we have a humanitarian problem. We have lots of people living in the United States illegally including children. I would be the first to support an argument that we need to provide relief in a humane way. But being illegal means that they have broken the law and it is inconceivable to me (a legal immigrant) that they would be rewarded with "a path to citizenship."

This is really an issue of fairness. It would have been less unfair if everyone who has been waiting patiently in line were told that they didn't have to wait in line anymore because being an illegal alien was in fact a fast track to becoming a legal immigrant.

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2010-03-20T20:13:44.000Z

**Health Care for Mommies**

This morning I had an opportunity to explain the state of the proposed health care reform to my wife and it went like this.

I reminded my wife that she has another twenty years before she is eligible to retire. When she retires her problem would be solved, not because of the social security benefits that she will receive which is almost inconsequential; the monthly stipend that she would receive from the government after decades of paying taxes would be barely enough for her to pay utilities and property tax.

What is important is that she will be eligible for Medicare. She would still have to buy supplemental insurance in order to be able to choose her own doctors but basically her future is secured. She will be living off of our savings but she doesn't have to worry about going bankrupt if she gets sick. That doesn't mean that she can let up on her diet and exercise. But she would be able to control what she can control and have something to fall back on when she can't.

On the other hand, until she retires, as long as my wife continues to work for the company that she is working now, she also has nothing to worry about because her company's health insurance will also take care of her (and me) whenever we get sick.

Her share of the insurance premium will continue to go up and she probably won't get a meaningful merit increase in her salary for sometimes because basically her employer has been paying her more already year after year in the way of higher premium (I know this because for years I was a small business owner having to deal with ever increasing health care cost on the other side).

The problem comes when she gets laid-off (which she did a few years back). Then if we are still married and if I am still alive, I would have to give up my dream of being an entrepreneur. I would have to find a full-time job instead of staying self-employed.

The issue is not with money. Like many, she can afford to pay the high premium that comes with buying individual insurance on her own. The problem is that even if she could get insurance, the insurance company will not cover any pre-existing conditions (I remind her that at our age, it is going to be tough to find something that doesn't pre-exist already). Also, they could drop her anytime, they could raise her premium anytime and they could even impose a lifetime cap retroactively anytime.

In other words, it is going to be miserable for her until she retires and every day she would run the risk of losing her hard-earned savings (not only on herself and also in taking care of her two college age kids in case they get sick).

So in summary, if she is retired or if she has a full-time job working for big companies, she would have no need to pay attention to the ongoing discussions on health care reform. She already has the best health care that money can buy and anything else is just a distraction.

But if she thinks that there is a chance that she might be laid-off again or for whatever reason she can't work full-time anymore (e.g., to take care of her aging parents), then she needs to start paying attention.

So I told her that what's being discussed and potentially being voted on this Sunday is that all insurance companies will be forbidden to exclude pre-existing conditions, to drop coverage, to raise premium beyond reason and to impose cap. And also our kids will be able to get coverage from us until they finish graduate schools. So she said that sounds great and why don't we do that already.

I said the problem is that if we do this, then no one would have any incentive to buy insurance including us because we can always get insurance when we get sick but not before. So the only way to reform health insurance is to change the law such that everyone is required to buy insurance.

So she said, "like what we do now with auto insurance." I said yes. Then she asked what if she is not retired, she is not fully employed and she can't afford to buy insurance. So I said that's why the plan is more complicated.

I said right now the compromise is that half of the cost of subsidizing the uninsured "working poor" would be from cutting Medicare and half from raising taxes. She said that's not so good.

I said, well, it is not too bad. Because we are not really cutting Medicare, just a privatized small segment of the Medicare program that was essentially a give-away to the insurance companies. So we are in fact cutting "waste" in Medicare without cutting "care" so no one is really affected including her parents. Then she said how about the tax increase part.

I said remember when I used to run my own company, my cost per employee was part salary and part benefits. The salary is obviously taxable but the health benefits are not. So basically what they are proposing is that we will set a threshold on the benefits, above which it will be taxed as income. But the threshold is set so high that anyone who makes less than $200K a year will not be affected.

At this point, my wife said this sounds very reasonable and straightforward, how come no one ever explains it like this to her. I said that's because I am not a journalist.

If I were a journalist, I would have to be "balance" and report the issues in such a way that I give equal time to both sides of an argument, even if the other side is represented by someone who is nothing but a lying sack of shit.

At that point, she walked out of the room.

--
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2010-03-18T22:28:53.000Z

**Negotiating from Strength**

Like many of us, I am a political junkie. Every four years, I would be obsessed with the primaries and the general election, the candidates and the punditry, the main stream media as well as the narrowcast blogs. And most of all, I would be totally obsessed with learning how technologies have evolved and been adopted year over year.

One of the TV news shows that had become my favorite was This Week with George Stephanopoulos which started in 2002 (even though the show itself was started in 1981 but with different hosts). From the show, I also have come to know George Will, Sam Donaldson, Cokie Roberts, Donna Brazile, Paul Krugman, David Brooks, etc., who are very reliable sources for their views if not often for their facts.

So with the recent musical chairs at ABC, with George promoting out to a weekday morning show, I have been keeping a curious eye on the potential replacement. And for weeks, while the show was hosted by an ever changing cast, the rumor was that the new host would be an outsider. And finally today it is official.

I could never remember her name but I can recognize her from a mile away because of her distinct look and distinct accent. For those of us too young to remember, Christiane Amanpour first came to fame during the first Gulf War, as the war correspondent for CNN. I like her a lot and I congratulate her. I will definitely continue to watch the show.

But what I find most intriguing is how the recruiting process unfolds itself. It is evident that Christiane was their number one choice and she was approached almost from the beginning. But a deal had to be negotiated and she was definitely doing so from a position of strength. I am sure eventually she got everything she wanted, a change of venue, a nice sign-on bonus, editorial control, a big budget and potential severance.

--

In my own career, I have had one (or at most two) such opportunity, where I also happened to be in the right place at the right time and I was able to negotiate most of what I wanted before signing up for a new assignment. But for the most part, in the last thirty-five years, unfortunately, I had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. And I had to work much much harder to even get a firm grip in order to soften an otherwise harsh landing.

Many of my close friends have lost their job recently and all of them are trying desperately to find a new one. I suspect none of them are in a position of strength to negotiate. My most sincere advice for them is to take one small step at a time. Don't try to recover everything you lost in one big swoop or wait indefinitely for the perfect opportunity to come along. The competition for jobs is just too severe right now.

If you are currently unemployed (as I did more than once), then try to focus on getting a part-time job (e.g., as a contractor working on a project-by-project basis). Once you are successful in levitating yourself from unemployed to underemployed, from uninsured to marginally insured, you are in a much better position to take the next small step. If you then successfully transition from part-time to full-time employment, from temporary to permanent, you will still be greatly under-paid but at least you are now employed.

The only way to get a better job is if you already have a job.

Just take it one step at a time. Don't try to negotiate from strength, but try to "navigate" from a position of "incremental" strength.

I have been through this dark tunnel a few times in the past. If you keep digging you will eventually break through to the other side. Then may be the next time, you will be in a similarly strong position as the incoming host of This Week, having all the cards to negotiate while others are clamoring to keep your seat warm until you arrive.

Success is the best revenge, my friend. Keep up the spirit and good luck everyone.

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2010-03-12T20:44:56.000Z

**Security for Some**

When my kids were young, I had a conversation with them about racism. And I asked them a question, if someone says to you that they don't like you because of your heritage, that you are the descendant of an Asian-American, would that be considered racism? And they quickly said yes. Then I asked, what if that same person says to you that they really like you because you are an Asian-American. They didn't answer. I said that's racism as well.

The point is that if racism is when someone discriminates against you because of your race then it is also racism when someone goes out of their way to favor you because of your race. You can't just have it one way and not the other. In other words, equality for some is inequality for few; inequality for few is inequality for all.

President Obama said recently that everything that needs to said about health care reform has been said and anyone who has anything to say about health care reform has said it already. I beg to differ.

I think the one thing that hasn't been said enough about (potential) health care reform is that the issue is really about security.

Fundamentally I believe the government's job is to provide security. I am happy to pay 15.3% self-employment tax, 9.3% California State tax, 35% Federal tax, 9.5% sales tax to the City of San Francisco, and 1.163% property tax to the County of San Francisco, all in exchange for security.

I sleep well every night thinking that if my house were to catch on fire, the firemen would come. If I were robbed when leaving my house, the policemen would come. If terrorists were to bomb my street, the FBI and the CIA would be there to prevent it and to catch whoever responsible. In other words, I don't have any problem paying dearly to a collective body in exchange for collective security, security for myself, my family and my neighbors. It's part of the overhead.

On the other hand, I would have problem if security is provided for just some of us. Put it in another way, I would have problem if the police decides not to come to the needs of my neighbor if they happen to be Hispanic. Similarly, I would have a problem if they come to my needs because I am not. Security for some is insecurity for few; insecurity for few is insecurity for all.

And that in a nutshell is the problem with the existing health care system.

Everyone says that we have the best health care system of the World. No, we have the same best health care system as they do in China. In China, you get the best health care if you have cash. In the States, you have the best health care if you have insurance.

If you have reached your retirement age (like my parents), you have the best health care. You might complain about the quality of care. You might complain about the so-called "donut hole" in your prescription drug coverage. But no one who has reached retirement age in the United States would go broke because of their illness. You still have to die. No one can prevent death. But you won't die from a curable disease. Aging is not a disease, it is a pre-existing condition.

On the other hand, if you are not retired but you are employed, you will have group insurance and you will also have the best health care.

Together, the retired and the employed constitute about 90% of the population. So what's problem? 90% of the population has security (health security) and that should be enough, right?

Is it enough that 90% of the population has racial equality? Let me take it even further. What if we decide that every racial groups in America deserve the same rights except for the Native Americans. There are only about 5 million Americans who are descendants of American Indians and Alaska natives, which is much less than 1.5% of the total population. So who cares? What if we treat everyone equal but treat them like crap, would that be acceptable? No, inequality for few is inequality for all.

What if we give everyone health insurance but not the Indian Americans, would that be acceptable? No, insecurity for few is insecurity for all.

And that in a nutshell is why the existing health care system is fundamentally unfair.

For those of us who have not reached retirement age and who are not employed by large companies, in other words, for those of us who are self-employed, un-employed and under-employed, we must buy insurance on our own.

And for that small segment of the population, in case you hadn’t noticed, it is a complete disaster. If you have to buy insurance outside of our employment-based system (as I did in the past and you might in the future), there wouldn't be any coverage for pre-existing medical conditions. If you have enough resources to pay for coverage it will be dropped whenever you get sick, and your huge premium would increase even more whenever there is an economic crisis. It’s this sector, plus the plight of Americans with no insurance at all, that are in desperate need of help.

One might say, that's a small population, right? Why should we care?

I care.

Insecurity for few is inequality for all.

--
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2010-03-07T19:44:38.000Z

**Natural Calamity Unnatural Disaster**

Summer is coming. Summer is a fun time for me. Every summer I get to travel with my family. In the last few years, my kids and I have travelled to Asia, Europe and Africa.

In 2008, my son and I travelled to Yunnan Province which was the closest that we could get to Tibet at the time (which was completely closed to foreign tourists due to the uprise and subsequent crackdown in March).

We were able to go as far as Zhongdian (otherwise known as Shangri-La, the official name since 2001) which was a predominately Tibetan city, less than 100 miles from the Tibet border and has the biggest Tibetan monastery outside of Tibet. In fact, before the communist invasion in 1949, Zhongdian and the neighboring area was part of the semi-independent Tibetan nation.

Keep in mind that China was rocked by the 8.0 Sichuan earthquake in May while the rest of the country was mobilized to prepare for Bejing Olympics to be held in August (a coming out party for communist China), so being in China in June, in the middle of all these historical events, was interesting to say the least.

Because I wanted to travel freely, I had arranged with a private travel agency such that we had our own English speaking private guides (mainly for my son who doesn't speak the language) and private chauffeurs in every cities that we visited. I speak and read Chinese fluently (although my pronunciation of Mandarin is atrocious) so I was able to switch between the two languages depending on whom I wanted to speak with and the level of interaction that I wished to engage.

One of the things that was intriguing to me was that every Chinese person I spoke to, independent of education and profession, would always ask me, "why are the Americans so critical of China?" I really didn't know how to answer that except after a while, I finally decided to say, "it is because Chinese are not critical of themselves".

It was not a bad answer, it was an American answer and it certainly had led to more discussions.

It wasn't until we were back in the States that I started to remember my friend Zvi who was also an Assistant Professor at UCLA when I was there. Neither Zvi and I got tenure at UCLA and our fields are almost identical. We even lived in the same faculty housing when we first started and moved to the same suburb once we settled.

Zvi and I were very close but we were also very different. Zvi was smart and hardworking but he didn't understand politics so he got into a lot of unnecessary troubles in the department. So we would argue all the time. Finally one day we blew up and I said, "It was just a criticism," and he said, "it would have been if I could improve but since I can't and you know I can't, you are just trying to beat me up."

That was the most insightful thing that Zvi ever said to me.

The Chinese don't understand that the Americans are criticizing them, they think that we are beating them up because they fundamentally don't see a way of improving. It is sad but it is true.

Tonight is Oscar night. One of the intriguing entries is "China's Unnatural Disaster: Tears of Sichuan", an HBO documentary special on the Sichuan earthquake which was completely banned in China. The story is simple. Over 5,000 children died unnecessarily because their schools were not built properly. The country was corrupt and people's welfare, especially the poor, was not protected by the local officials.

On top of that, the parents of these children were the first generation of Chinese grew up under the communist rule and obeyed their draconian one-child rule. So not only had they lost their only child, the entire clan lost their future. And of course, their plead for justice or even medical help to reverse birth control procedures had been completely suppressed.

That's a not a new story. For Chinese-Americans such as myself, we know the story. But it is new to most Americans. And if they win the Oscar tonight which I suspect they might, it will restart a firestorm of criticisms from the West. So let's think this through.

I am a hyphenated American which means that I have a 200% identity. I am 100% this and I am 100% that.

For my American friends, China is not a nation but a nation of people. Like Americans, almost all Chinese are apolitical. The communist regime is relatively young (slightly over 60 years old) while the Chinese culture is 100 times longer than that. Like Americans, Chinese people are interested in improving their lives and the lives of the children and they really just want to get their government off their backs (sounds familiar?).

For my Chinese friends, America is not a nation but a nation of people. We are very critical, but that's only because we are very critical of ourselves. Fortunately we have the luxury of being critical because we believe that we can control our own destiny. We believe in representative democracy. We understand that there are lots of special interest groups that often successfully hijack our national agenda. But in the end, we can throw the bums out and we have.

So perhaps when Americans are critical of the Chinese (or at least perceived that way), we are actually showing our deep desire and our confidence that one day, our Chinese friends would in fact be able to control their own destiny (as I wished for my friend, Zvi).

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2010-03-05T23:21:28.000Z

**Real Man Needs Pain**

"Damn it, Bones, you're a doctor. You know that pain and guilt can't be taken away with a wave of a magic wand. They're the things we carry with us, the things that make us who we are. If we lose them, we lose ourselves. I don't want my pain taken away! I need my pain!"

If you are like me, born in the 50's and grew up in the 70's, you would recognize these words. If you don't, these are important words uttered by our collective hero, Captain James T. Kirk, and in my mind, have come to symbolize a much simpler time. Pain, guilt and anger, they are the three headed monster that men in my generation, and in particular, Asian men in my generation, had been taught to accept, internalize, endure, harness and dare not to discuss in any forum. These are the things that make us who we are (so I thought).

I heard this morning that the consensus among economists now is that our unemployment rate will hover around 10% for months to come. And that not only will we be experiencing a jobless recovery, the nation might actually be transitioning into a jobless economy. As of today, on average, across the United States, for every job opening there are at least six people actively looking for work. So clearly there wouldn't be a V-shape recovery. There wouldn't be a U-shape recovery. There wouldn't even be a W-shape recovery. It might turn out we are having a L-shape recovery. In other words, it is a real possibility that we might experience a Lost Decade as did the Japanese twenty years ago.

The study also shows that the current downturn affects working males more than females. Since 2008, men have lost about 6 of the 8 million jobs that have disappeared. I suppose that's because many more men than women work in fields that have suffered the most, namely manufacturing, construction and finance, etc. Women, on the other hand, are more likely to work in schools and hospitals, which so far have fared much better. The startling statistic is that nearly 20 percent of men between the ages of 25 and 55 are currently unemployed.

Having been unemployed multiple times in the last twenty-five years, I can tell you with authority that it sucks. Lost of income is one thing, but lost of prestige and authority at home and among family is the worst. In fact, one economist even compares the effects of prolonged unemployment (over six months) to the death of a spouse. I wouldn't know about that since fortunately I haven't had to experience the trauma of losing a love one. But I know what pain is. Not having a job is like walking around with a bowling ball permanently welded to your neck. And it is not very nice.

If you are unemployed, you are no doubt in a world of pain. I am not writing today to talk about how to make pain magically disappear. I don't know how to dissolve pain. I was never taught. In my experience, the only tools I had to deal with pain was to distract myself from pain, to endure pain until there is nothing but pain, to harness pain until pain goes away, and finally to celebrate pain as if pain is what makes me.

When I sold my last business I decided to write up my experience in building startups and one of the chapters has to do with recovery from setback (http://bit.ly/6Gq4en). Not everything I wrote is relevant to losing a job, but a few points do. I sincerely hope my experience would help you.

But before you do anything, the first thing you have to recognize is that this is not about you. This is not personal. You are not alone and you didn't do anything wrong. Free market capitalism is brutal and we are just tiny teeth in a big zipper that needs to be unzipped every once a while. And this time it looks like it will take longer to untangle.

The point is that losing your job is a major setback but there are plenty of setbacks in life. It happens, and happens all the time. It is not how you fall. Nobody cares. It is how you recover.

We have an old saying in China, "When the horse is dead, you start walking".

You don't have a choice. After you lose your job, you probably want to take a break. You have severance and you have unemployment benefits. You even have some savings. Your wife might even work. And by the way, chances are that the economy will recover quickly and if your previous employer doesn't call you back, surely one of the competitors will. They would be stupid not to take advantage of your experience and secret sauce, right? Wrong. Your horse is dead. There are no more horses. You have to start walking. And you have to start walking fast and you have to keep walking. Only momentum could overcome inertia.

This is the most painful journey you ever have to endure. But there is no way around the pain. Because as Captain Kirk said, there is no magic wand. Good luck, everyone.

--
http://dennykmiu.com
http://buzz.dennykmiu.com/rss
http://buzz.dennykmiu.com/real-man-needs-pain

Buzz by Denny K Miu from Buzz

2010-03-03T22:28:23.000Z

**Be a Magnet, Be Leo**

I have had three jobs in the last twenty-five years and had been fired from all of them. I was fired by UCLA when I couldn't get tenure after having been there for nine years as an Assistant Professor. I was fired indirectly by the Board of Director of my first startup which I found, after struggling another nine years and wasting millions. I was not actually fired from my second startup but I was bought out by the remaining owners, which in retrospect turned out to be a very good thing since I got all my money in cash right before the downturn.

So I am not a stranger to unemployment and I have had plenty of opportunities where I had to re-invent myself to survive.

I have been writing about Buzz (ironically using Buzz) and the positive effects that Buzz could have on retail marketing and personal branding. Actually what I also had in mind was my friends who had to do BOTH at the same time, which is to market themselves as potential employees (i.e., looking for a job).

It is tough out there. Anyone who lives in the Bay Area knows that the real unemployment rate (including under-employment) is more like 20%. In other words, if you have a large family and if you are not unemployed yourself, then at least one or two of your (and your spouse's) siblings would be. And if you live in a cul-de-sac and you are not unemployed yourself, then at least two or three of your neighbors would be. And it is tough to find a job.

Basically besides a few big names, Google, Microsoft, etc, the only industries that are expanding are healthcare, biotech and solar. But it is tough to transition into these relatively small industries if you are not in them already since everyone else are trying to do the same.

Startups are not hiring neither. To get a job at a startup, you basically have to be a co-Founder.

Even for highly skilled technical people with leadership experience, they are forced to change industry in order to find new opportunity. To get an interview, you have to have a good network and an inside champion. But there are easily 40 qualified applicants to every opening and you have to endure multiple interviews. It is basically a beauty contest whereby anyone could have a veto vote (including your future subordinates who much prefer that you don't get the job). Even in the best case scenario, finding a job could take as much as 14 months if you haven't given up already.

In my case, I gave up every time. I end up having to start my own company every time. People always talk about how small businesses are the ones that create the most jobs. I say, yeah, small business owners are motivated because we have to survive and we have to create at least one job (for ourselves).

For those of you struggling out there, I say this: keep up the spirit, keep pushing and let the pieces fall.

You can control many but you can't control all. If you have a supportive family and good health, then at least you have two out of three which ain't bad. Now you just need to work on the third which is to restart your career. Whenever you get a rejection, just fall back on the comfort of the remaining two legs of your three-legged stool. If you haven't quit, you haven't fail. But if you lose your family or your health, you are screwed.

In my multiple experiences in struggling with unemployment, I have found that keeping a positive attitude is the most important, both for your own survival and for improving your prospect of getting a job. In a buyer market such as what we have now, your technical skill and your resume are no longer your differentiating feature. Showing that you have a unique ability to communicate and the necessary DNA to break through barriers is much more important in rising above the heap.

We used to call someone a "people" person when that person doesn't have any other skill. In the old days, calling someone a people person was not meant to be a compliment. But a people person is what we need to be now if we want to maximize our chance of finding our next firm footing. Actually we need to be more than a people person, we need to show that we are a people "magnet".

I suspect most of you are familiar with Leo Laporte and might even subscribe to his podcasts. I know this is the case since I started out following you by clicking on Leo's follower list. Leo has been around for a long time. I used to read his books (and those of John C. Dvorak) long before I watch and listen to their TV and radio shows. I am a great admirer of Leo Laporte, not just for what he has been able to accomplish as a successful entrepreneur, but for his style and him as a model human being.

In my mind, Leo is the perfect People Magnet.

So as you struggle and as you try your best to survive the devastating head blows of never-ending rejections, I want you to think about Leo, learn from him and be inspired by him.

The following is what I think about whenever I listen to his shows (my weekly favorites are TWIT, TWIG, Macweek Weekly, The Tech Guy and Net@Night) ...

- Always be Positive

If you are not familiar with Leo's career, just read his wiki page. Leo has done a lot of things in his life and a lot of things have been done to him. But you would never know that from listening to his shows. The man has no bad bones in his body. I am sure he gets up every morning thinking only about all the good things that he can do. And that positive attitude and energy is very contagious as you can tell from listening to his shows. So before you go into an interview and even before you submit that resume, think positive. Don't think about (and never talk about) the wrongs that have been done to you. No body cares. Just think positive.

- Always be Prepared

Leo is often wrong in the technical details. But anyone who listens to his show has to be amazed at the amount of readings that he must have done before the show. The man knows his craft and he is constantly honing it. So you must constantly preparing yourself by reading about the industry, the company, the division, the management and the team. Also, keep up with the news and the World around you. And practice. Pretend that you are having conversations when you are alone. There is just no excuse for being lazy.

- Avoid being the smartest guy in the room

Another thing that you would notice about Leo is that he never tries to be the smartest guy in the room. He knows what he knows but he always give other people a chance to speak and be the expert. Sometimes the guest has so much rope and ends up hanging themselves, but that's not Leo's problem. The man is not only confident, he seems very comfortable with his own skin. Often during an interview, we would try to impress and we could even be over-prepared. The reality is that people don't expect you to be the expert. Chances are that you are not even from their industry. And chances are that the person who is interviewing you is in fact the expert. So don't over-compensate.

- Be a Kid

Leo likes toys. He wouldn't do what he does day-in-and-day-out if he didn't enjoy them. Every day is X'mas for Leo. Throughout our career, we have been taught to be rational and deliberative. But none of us would have gotten into technology if it didn't excite us. But perhaps we have forgotten that we were once kids before. Obviously when you are out of work and the future of your family rests on your shoulder, you have even less desire to be a kid. But ironically when you are interviewing and when you are trying to break into a new field, curiosity is necessary. Your technical skills and your management experience are important, but why would anyone give you a chance to re-invent yourself if you weren't at least a bit excited about exploring the unknowns (as Leo does at every show and with every guest).

- Know your audience

Leo is at his element when he does his radio show (The Tech Guy). He is good in all of the shows but he is best when he is the only person in front of the mic. During the radio show, it is all about his audience and you can learn a great deal by listening to how he interacts with the caller, to figure out who that person is and their reason for calling. It is counter-intuitive but a job interview is less about you talking and more about you listening. Try to figure out who you are talking to and where they fit within the organization. It is rare to see Leo goes off on a tangent. Half of the time he figures out what the problem is and offers his best answer. Half of the time he just say he doesn't know or he couldn't help because he doesn't have enough information given the constraints that he has. So by the time you finish the interview session, you should know as much about him or her as they know you. If you don't know much about them, then they probably don't know much about you neither.

- Make fun of yourself but not others

Humor works and having a sense of humor is important. But you need to know the line and you should not cross the line. Obviously you don't try to tell jokes during an interview but you shouldn't take yourself too seriously neither. In Leo's case, he never passes an opportunity to make fun of himself, especially when he is already being made fun of. But he never piles on when others become the targets. People don't remember what you said, just the way you said it.

- Be faithful even if you are not monogamous

One of the other things that impresses me about Leo is that when he is at one show, it is all about that one show. And when he is with one guest or one co-host, that's all that is important to him. Many of us listen to multiple shows and even when we listen to him talking about the same subject the second or the third time, it is as if he has never done it before. I think it is the dedication and the complete focus. He is where he is at any given moment in time. It is just magical. So when you are in an interview, it is obvious that you have been on the road for sometimes. You are tired, physically and emotionally, and you are gasping for air. Everyone knows. But if it shows then it is bad. So go to every interview as if this is the first one and the only one you ever been to. Go find that energy or don't go.

- Always be the last voice

Being the main host, it is obvious that Leo would be the last voice. He would thank the guests, thank the sponsors, thank the chat room and thank the listeners. He would invite everyone back in the following week and bid farewell. Do the same. Thank the interviewer, thank the HR person, thank the receptionist, thank everyone. And follow up with emails and if they reply, thank again. And if they just say OK, email back a smiling face.

Just keep going and keep pushing. This is the toughest journey you would ever have to endure. But if you don't give up then at some point, as Uncle Leo likes to say, you would be able to "put it in the can". Good luck everyone.

--
http://dennykmiu.com
http://buzz.dennykmiu.com/rss
http://buzz.dennykmiu.com/be-a-magnet-be-leo

Buzz by Denny K Miu from Buzz

2010-02-26T06:08:45.000Z

**Google Got us by the Profile**

I have a very good friend, Paul, whom I admire tremendously. Paul gave me my first engineering job while I was still in college. He had retired for many years and was recently ordained as the deacon of his church. Paul and his wife now live in New Mexico and together have eight children, all married, and nearly twenty grand kids.

Paul is a man of absolute integrity, always doing the right thing. He didn't just try to do the right thing. He always did the right thing ... no matter the price. Many years ago, I asked Paul how he keeps that up and he said, "I worry about what they say on my tombstone".

Those simple words have been my guiding light. I live every day as if it were my last worrying about what would be said on my tombstone. In other words, like Paul, I work hard to build and maintain the integrity of my personal brand.

--

A few years ago I had lunch with one of my business partners and his nephew who was in town for a job interview with Google. This was right after Google finished their IPO and they were in a hiring spree for top-notch smart engineers. During lunch, I learned about Google's strident hiring practice and the high standard that they have set throughout the company. Since then I have been watching Google carefully, always from the perspective of what they are thinking and what they might do next now that they have accumulated such an incredible brain trust.

People have described Google as an asylum run by the lunatics. And they don't always mean it as a compliment. But unlike other asylums, in this one, the lunatics actually think that they have an algorithm. If the World doesn't fit their algorithm, these guys are crazy enough to believe that they can change the World so that it does fit.

As a result, whenever Google introduces a new feature or a new product, I would always be an early adopter, trying to figure out how Google could improve my life and how I could make money off of their free products. This was true with Gmail (replacing Yahoo Mail), Picasa (replacing Flickr), Google Docs (replacing Microsoft Office), Google Reader (replacing Newsgator), Chrome (replacing Safari), Google Talk (replacing AIM) and Google Voice (replacing SMS and Skpye), etc. To me they were not religious decisions, I just felt that it was important for me to be part of Google's algorithm because the World would surely be changed accordingly.

So when Google Profile was introduced a few months ago, I quickly signed up and filled in the contents. It was not obvious what benefits Google Profile could provide and it seemed that after the initial flurry, it sort of became dormant anyway, which is often the case with many Google products. In fact, Google Profile sort of adds to the confusion and the chorus of criticisms that Google really doesn't have a clue. The common wisdom is that Google makes their money on search and everything else is just a hobby (after all, they are run by a bunch of lunatics).

One of the most impressive aspect of Google Buzz is how it ties together many of the existing or recently announced, seemingly disparate pieces of the Google puzzle. Much have been written already about how buzz is integrated with Gmail and Google Map. To me, the most intriguing feature of Buzz is how it was designed to be the engine powering Google Profile.

I believe it was on the second day after playing with Buzz that it hits me like a brick, that Google Profile was in fact designed to be our tombstone. Everything that we wish to be written on our tombstone will now be etched in Profile. In fact, I could even imagine when we die, instead of written words, there will be a solar-powered flat panel display embedded in our tombstone that is linked to our Google Profile webpage. Every word that has been written about us and every word that we have written about ourselves and about what we think of others will be in our Profile pages.

--

On the other hand, I believe Google provided us with a tremendous opportunity.

Goggle Profile and Google Buzz are powerful tools for us to build our personal brands.

Anyone who is self-employed, unemployed or under-employed should start now and experiment with Google Buzz to build contents for your Google Profile. It is possible that you will still need a webpage for your business (or potential business) but brand building is about engagement. And there is no better place to engage than in Buzz.

Engagement is not the same as sales. For the most part, engagement is education. You can't convince someone to buy your products or your services unless they are convinced that they have a need. Once they identify their need, then they would be receptive to a solution. Unfortunately unless they are knowledgable, they cannot differentiate your solution from others who compete with you. By educating your customers proactively, you are essentially inoculating yourself from having to compete purely on price, or worse, competing with free.

As an individual, there is no better place to engage and to educate than your Google Profile page and with Buzz. The following is what I have learned in the last two weeks.

1) Set up your profile page with your real name and make sure you choose a custom profile URL using your Gmail user name (and not random numbers).

2) Use a real picture of yourself, not a kid picture, not a cartoon, not a pet, nothing cute.

3) Make sure your list of followers and followees are hidden from public view.

4) Do not import any external contents (no Twitter, no Friendfeeds, no Flickr, no Yelp, no nothing. If you want noise, go back to Facebook).

5) Start creating original contents and make sure they are informative and educational.

6) Try to maintain a theme but avoid being repetitive or monotonous.

7) Be personal and try to share personal experience. But whatever you do, don't rant. In other words, don't be negative. There is enough of that already.

8) Keep in mind that the first few words of your post will become part of the URL, so pick them carefully.

9) Go to someone like Robert Scoble and Leo Laporte who have tens of thousands of followers and start following. After a day or so, they will start to follow you.

10) If anyone "Likes" your posts or comments on your posts, be sure to thank them and comment on their posts as well.

11) Be generous and be courteous. Always keep in mind that every word recorded in your Profile page will be on your "tombstone".

12) When you get to the point where you think you have enough followers (or followers start to appear on their own), start un-following those who are creating just noise.

13) Start incorporating your Profile page into your email (as a signature) and your business website (using a widget from buzzcounter.net).

Buzz is so new, no one really knows where this is going. But I suspect that all Profile pages will be ranked highly by Google, especially those that are most "liked" and most commented. In other words, the point of the exercise is not to find customers among your Buzz followers but to have them provide the dry powder for your Google firework.

Of course the entire exercise assumes that being in tuned with the Google algorithm will put you in a happier and more financially rewarding final (or semi-final) resting place. I am betting that it would.

Good luck and happy buzz'ing.

--
http://dennykmiu.com
http://buzz.dennykmiu.com/rss
http://buzz.dennykmiu.com/google-got-us-by-the-profile

Buzz by Denny K Miu from Buzz

2010-02-24T07:15:28.000Z

**iPad: It is All About Pain**

Rumor has it that Apple will start to take pre-order for iPad tomorrow. I hope so. I am determined to get up early in case I can be one of the first to place an order.

I don't want an iPad. I need an iPad.

I don't want just another computing device. I have plenty, starting with my iPhone which also serves as my flashlight when I go to bed, my alarm clock to wake me up, and my mobile Internet device to check email, news, bank balances, stock market and the weather ... all that before I even get out of bed.

After breakfast, my iPhone becomes my Internet radio while I drive my wife to work, listening to my favorite podcasts. After gym, I would go to Starbucks for coffee and use my 10-inch netbook (running Jolicloud) to catch up on emails and respond to comments on my blog (or other people's blogs). Then when I return home for lunch, I would watch news and TV shows that I have downloaded on my Apple TV (running Boxee).

And when I am finally motivated enough to do some serious work, I would sit down on my desk and use my two-year old 15-inch Macbook Pro (as a portable desktop machine). There is even a Mac Mini permanently sitting under my desk that performs as my file server as well as running a RSS-driven bit torrent client (I have a DVR for recording cable programs but I prefer downloads because I can watch the shows anywhere).

As I said, I don't want nor need another device. I have plenty. But what I don't have is a device that does not cause me pain.

I am talking about joint pain, specifically joint pain in the right arm, from the fingers to the shoulder.

I consider myself a member of the 50-50 generation, born in the 50's and are now in their 50's. We are also the generation that are sandwiched between our aging parents and our growing kids, pulling us 50-50 in separate directions (the good news is that our parents are living longer but the bad news is that our kids never seem to want to leave their comfort nest).

There are lots of demands (both financial and emotional) but there are lots of rewards. None of these are new and can easily be learned and managed. Some could even be taught (by our parents and by our kids). But the one thing that we have to do on our own is to manage our health. Aside from exercise and proper diet, increasingly we have to learn to deal with pain: joint pain.

There are simple ones, like pain in the fingers. They are caused by inflammation of the knuckles which are essentially onset of arthritis, an experience shared by our parents.

Then there are more subtle ones, like pain at the wrist, the forearm and the elbow. They are more like pain in the tendons as opposed to joints. They are the usual suspect, i.e., carpal tunnels syndrome resulting from years of using keyboard and mouse, an experience not normally shared by our parents.

Finally, there is less known pain in the shoulder (often called frozen shoulder syndrome, or in China, the 50's shoulder). The pain occurs most commonly to those who have just turned 50 and more commonly in women. Not understanding the real root cause doesn't make them any less painful.

Unfortunately, for the 50-50 generation, we suffer joint pain every day and every time we use a computing device, with the level of pain varying between different postures: sitting upright, walking/driving, or leaning back.

When we sit upright in front of the desk, we can manage our joint pain the easiest by using an ergonomic keyboard, a non-Apple mouse and a nice chair. They help a lot but they don't make the pain go away.

When we are walking or driving, we have our iPhone. My iPhone is actually the least painful device for me since I usually avoid typing on the touch keypad except in emergency. But the screen is too small making it really a device-of-last-resort.

When I am leaning back (in a coffee shop or on my sofa), I would use my notebook since my Macbook Pro is just too much to carry. My netbook is actually the worst device for my joint pain since the keyboard is very small such that my fingers are bent and my shoulders are pushed together. The screen is also too small forcing my head to lean forward putting additional stress on my back and my eyes.

The only reason that I am talking about this is that this is serious business and I am not unique. I am a baby boomer and since I was born in the mid-50's, I am in fact both the center and the mean of our generation.

For those of us suffering from minor to major joint pain, the iPad would be our ideal device. The screen is big enough and the fonts can be easily enlarged using finger gestures such that we can hold it at the right distance, keeping our head and our back relaxed, while scrolling and flipping pages with just our thumbs and index fingers.

The iPad would be such a relief. I can't wait.

By the way, Steve Jobs and I are practically the same age so I have to believe that he must be suffering from joint pain as well. In fact, if the rumor is true that Steve is suffering hormone imbalance, then he is in fact suffering more than his fair share of joint pain.

What if Steve actually designed the iPad for himself and for us fellow half-centenarians. May be finally, the iPad can be "The Computer for the Rest of Us." No wonder Steve hated netbooks so much and said that "This will be the most important thing I've ever done”. It better be because no one else would do it for him.

And "one more thing", many of us 50-50 generation now have a face that is perfect for audio. We don't like video conferencing and we don't need no front facing camera. Or did Steve already know that?

--
http://dennykmiu.com
http://buzz.dennykmiu.com/rss
http://buzz.dennykmiu.com/ipad-it-is-all-about-pain

Buzz by Denny K Miu from Buzz

2010-02-22T18:50:11.000Z

**FAX, URL, Yelp and now Buzz**

Until last week, the buzz around the Internet was all about Twitter and FaceBook. In the last news cycle, Twitter was particularly enticing to the popular media because of the celebrities and also because of the uprising in Iran. That technology could have a profound effect on burgeoning democracy seemed surprising to those who prefer to report on infidelity by sport stars and politicians (who cheat not only on their wives but also on their mistresses).

Many of us know about the man stopping the tanks at Tiananmen Square and the subsequent massacre.

What most of us don't know is the enabling effect that technology had on such a historical event. Obviously we didn't have Internet yet in 1989, let alone Twitter. But it was the time when FAX machines had just became popular, even in China.

Also, while the event occurred in June, in May Mikhail Gorbachev had visited China (the first Soviet leader who had ever done so since the two countries broke off relationship in the 60's). So there were a lot of satellite uplink equipment already put in place in Beijing by the Western press, allowing us to witness for the first time the people's struggle unfolding live in front of our eyes (what lucky timing). But the Chinese weren't able to see the same heroic and horrific images because television was controlled by the State.

But what they did have was FAX machines (not in homes, but in Universities). And they were able to communicate with similar groups in different Chinese cities and with their supporters in Hong Kong and Taiwan by FAX. Even with such simple and in retrospect, primitive, technology they were able to let "A Single Spark LIght a Prairie Fire."

Similarly, technology has had profound effect on business as well, especially retail business.

I remember back in the 70's when I first came to United States, all restaurants in San Francisco would advertise their phone numbers on their awnings. But they only needed to print the last five digits because there were relatively few telephones and everyone shared not only their area code but their prefix. That changed quickly as more people started to demand a second line for FAX machines. FAX was truly enabling and had greatly enhanced communication and commerce. For mom-and-pop shops, especially restaurants, FAX eventually became indispensable.

Then in more recent memory, having your own websites became indispensable as well. People don't call. People don't FAX. But they do need to visit your website before they would visit your business.

And in the last two years or so, having a website is not enough anymore. The only thing that is even more important to the survival and success of a neighborhood restaurant is their Yelp profile.

I have come to believe that Buzz would become an important enabling technology as well and in time, would become indispensable to any mom-and-pop retail business. But unlike Yelp, the shop owners can be proactive with Buzz and unlike a website, it will cost almost nothing and require little technical knowledge to engage.

Over the weekend, as I was waiting in the parking lot for my wife to finish shopping and for me to catch up on podcasts, I log into Buzz with my iPhone just to see if there were any interesting comments around where I sat. And to my surprise, I saw one from a real estate agent who was having an open house for an apartment. And she was Buzz'ing about the property and asked if there was anyone nearby who might want to take a look. To show support, I buzz'ed her back and became her follower.

So Buzz Local (not Buzz Gmail) would be like flashing neon signs except you don't need a line of sight. I also believe that this could be a tremendous business opportunities for us geeks. Trust me, there is no better way to make money than to bring revenue-generating technology to non-technical business people.

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is the king.

--
http://dennykmiu.com
http://buzz.dennykmiu.com/rss
http://buzz.dennykmiu.com/fax-url-yelp-and-now-buzz

Buzz by Denny K Miu from Buzz

2010-02-18T22:06:38.000Z

**What if my Avatar were Diabetic**

Growing up in Southern China, I had very little memory of death. Many of my older relatives had died during World War II, either during the Japanese invasion or the subsequent civil war between the Communists and the Nationalists. Those who survived would die young from unavoidable deseases, long before I was old enough to remember. During my childhood, people in their 40's were considered middle age, people in the 50's were considered old, and few lived past their 60's.

Recently as a country we talked much about health care, the rising cost and the inequality (between those with jobs and those without, and between those who are retired and those who are not). What we don't talk about enough is that in this country we still have the best health care system in the World (at least for those who have coverage).

Also, what we don't talk about at all is that what we really have is not health care, but sickness care. In the old country, the two were the same. In other words, if you became sick, you died. And if you wanted to stay healthy, then you would do whatever it would take to avoid getting sick. In this country, with the great advances in modern medicines, i.e., drugs and surgery, we could cure any disease (or almost any). As a result, we think the two are the same but they are not.

I am 53 years old and with some luck, I suspect I could potentially live to the 90's. I am also convinced that as a country, we will continue to have the best health (sickness) care of the World. We will have to fix many fundamental problems (insurance reform, universal coverage, cost overrun, etc.). Much of that is beyond my control but I have enough faith in our democracy that eventually we will get it done right.

As an individual what I could do is to control my own lifestyle so that I could minimize any need to depend on the World's best sickness (health) care system to live a normal and productive live. I want to stay healthy by avoid getting sick in the first place. In other words, I want to be my own health care provider while letting my doctor be my sickness care provider.

As it turns out, I have a family history of diabetes. My father is diabetic and almost all my uncles and aunts are also diabetic. So it was important for me to learn about the disease and its prevention. In this journey, I inadvertently discovered that the key to a healthy life is to pretend that you are diabetic even if you are not.

Let me explain.

1) If you are diabetic, the first thing that your doctor would recommend is to have regular exercise. It helps your blood circulation and it helps to reduce your weight. I now swim twice to three times a week. When weather permits, my wife and I would hike for about two hours once a week. If I am diabetic, this would help. If I am not, this would also help.

2) If you are diabetic, your doctor would also recommend that you cut down on carbohydrates and processed sugar. That means no white rice, no white bread, no pasta and no potatoes. As a result, I have adjusted to eating brown rice and whole grain bread. I also started to prepare oatmeal reinforced with bran and flax for breakfast. Obviously I greatly cut back on sugary desserts (substitute with fresh fruit whenever I can). In other words, I am on a high-fiber low-sugar diet. These are good practices whether or not you are diabetic.

3) Finally, if you are diabetic, your doctor would recommend that you cut back on animal fat because they tend to reduce your body's ability to process glucose. Obviously cutting back on fat also helps in reducing the risk for heart disease and lowering cholesterol. Basically my wife and I cook our own food which are mainly plant based, supplement with small amount of lean meat for animal protein. And once a week I would indulge on sushi. So it is all good.

None of these are new. They are obvious and have been written about extensively in the press. So the battle is really one of the mind. It is a mental exercise that requires strong will and discipline.

In my case, I needed some help so I have to invent a trick. I learn to imagine that I have an avatar who is 10 feet tall, has strong body, good heart and high integrity. All the things that I want to achieve in life so my avatar is my friend and my protector. But unfortunately, my avatar is also diabetic. So to help him to help me, I have to protect him and take care of his diet and I must encourage him to exercise. It is what he would do if it was the other way around.

This little silly mind trick has worked for me and I hope it helps my readers as well. Because if any of you are also a baby boomer like me and you think you can live to the 90's, then you have almost forty years to go. Forty years ago I was just a kid (only thirteen) and I have lived a happy, healthy and productive life. I intend to live a happy, healthy and productive life going forward, hopefully without adding any more stress to an already stressed, although still the best sickness care system of the World.

In summary, live the life of a diabetic and life will take care of you. It is not too late to start.

--
http://dennykmiu.com
http://buzz.dennykmiu.com/rss
http://buzz.dennykmiu.com/what-if-my-avatar-were-diabetic

Buzz by Denny K Miu from Buzz

2010-02-17T23:04:40.000Z

**Touch is the New Mouse**

I remember back in college (in the late 70's) I was one of the first kids in my neighborhood to have a PC. My very first computer was a North Star Horizon which had a 4 MegaHertz 8-bit Zilog Z80 processor (compatible with 8080) and 16 Kilobyte of RAM. It had a single "double-density" 5-1/4 floppy drive that could store a total of 360 Kilobytes. The computer was connected to a Soroc CRT which was built by couple of guys who wished to name their company Coors but spelled backward (more or less) and had a logo shaped after the top of a beer can. The naming was not too strange if you considered North Star was started by a bunch of former hippies in Berkeley and was originally called "Kentucky Fried Computers".

Eventually the whole PC business went from a hobby (an extension of CB radios) to a business and two of the most popular business software packages were Wordstar (word processing) and PeachTree (for accounting). The original Apple Computer (as a company) existed already but they were kind of in a separate Universe (distinguishing themselves with color graphics but really different from the rest of us because they were using 6502 processors, had a 64 character wide screen and used a non-standard soft sectoring floppy drive).

So in 1984 when Apple introduced the Macintosh with a single floppy (by then most of us had already migrated to 5 MegaByte 5-1/4 Winchester hard drives as the main storage) and a tiny monochrome screen, it was understandable that they were the source of much ridicule. But I was curious. I read about the work that was done at Zerox PARC and how Steve Jobs had visited them (and stoled their work, as some would argue). And I thought this could be the future.

On the other hand, I do remember how the Wordstar CEO came out and said, "mouse is great, especially for people with three hands." Because before mouse, we moved around the screen with cursor keys and those of us who knew the tricks knew how to move up with Control-E and save a file with Control-K-S. So who would ever need a mouse unless you had an extra hand.

I saw it differently. The first time I laid my hands on a MAC, I knew my life had changed forever. The mouse was a pointing technology. But it was really a liberating technology. I eventually wrote my doctoral thesis on a MAC. Not having to memorize any key-strokes allowed me to completely focus on content creation and not the mechanism of creation. And as a community, we never looked back. But more importantly, in addition to liberating the existing computer users, mouse liberated the market. Mouse greatly lowered the threshold of learning and allowed many many more non-geeks to use personal computers.

In the last month. many people ridiculed the iPad as just a gigantic iPhone Touch. I believe it is. And for the existing computer users (which are a great number although by no mean the majority of our population), it would provide some nice-to-have functionalities.

But I believe touch as an input technology would present itself as another liberating technology, same as the mouse. Whereas on an iPhone, touch was the technology-of-last-resort because of limited real estate. On a larger format device, touch will become the technology-of-choice. Touch will liberate the existing user but similarly, it will further liberate the market, allowing another wave of non computer users to enter our Universe.

I am already imagining what my parents would do with an iPad ... flipping through newspapers and magazines written in their native language, browsing the latest picture uploads of their grand kids, navigating their plasma TV and cable box which are impossible to use ... all that with the tip of their arthritic fingers.

By X'mas 2010, it would be hard to imagine another PC or PC-like device without some kind of touch interface. We will never look back.

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Buzz by Denny K Miu from Buzz

2010-02-16T19:36:44.000Z

**Google the Evil Genius**

Like other animals, humans started out as hunters and gatherers. For over two million years, we acquired our food and coverings from either hunting down or scavenging animals (large and small) and we supplemented our diets by gathering nuts, berries and eggs in the forest.

Research showed that this was a highly unpredictable and inefficient way of life. It has been said that it took more than a square mile of natural resources to properly feed two people. Since physical strength was key to survival, it also created tremendous inequality between individuals and between sexes (even though as much as 80% of the food was obtained by gathering which was done mainly by women).

Then for the last ten thousand years or so, humans became farmers, growing plants and raising animals. This was obviously a great improvement and came as a result of population growth and also inventions of tools (including fire). Agriculture also brought us much needed stability and predictability (against nature and against adversaries). It even brought us societal harmony (although we had to endure thousands of years of feudalism before the invention of electoral democracy).

And so it is with data.

With Google releasing Buzz, we are now starting to see a glimpse of their grand vision, which is to migrate from the original business model (hunting and gathering data in the wild) to a new, more stable, more predicable, and more scalable business model (farming and cultivating data in a sheltered environment).

Data is not money but the access and the ability to interpret data can result in money. What Google has showed us is that they can afford to give us everything for free (search, mail, doc, etc.) as long as we give them access to our data such that they can predict our intention and be proactive in providing us with more data (i.e., ads).

These guys are geniuses. They understand that we are no dummies. For us to give them free access, we need more than free. We need to be confident that they will not use our data to hurt us. Hence, do no evil.

They also understand that they need to break down all existing and future barriers. Because as a hunter/gatherer, they have to able to find data wherever they exist. So they go beyond "do no evil" and become our champion, fighting the good fight to make sure that every software is open-sourced, every standard is non-proprietary and every network is neutral.

But they also know that they can't just be hunting and gathering forever. It is unpredictable and it is inefficient.

So now they are growing our data. They have given us Gmail and now they are giving us Buzz.

These guys are geniuses, evil or not, we will know within our lifetime.

I happen to believe all geniuses would eventually become evil.

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Buzz by Denny K Miu from Buzz

2010-02-15T19:58:32.000Z

**Buzz'nation, Buzz'nation, Buzz'nation**

Growing up in Macau, a small town across the Pearl River delta from Hong Kong, I remembered very little about advertisement. We had no TV so it was just radio and newspapers. Advertisements were limited to American cigarettes and propagandas from either the pro-communist or pro-nationalist communities.

Marketing was mainly word-of-mouth. People knew where to shop and where to go because they knew. If a new place opened, you could tell if it was any good just by the line of people outside or lack of. So it was in fact "location, location, location". If you opened a noodle shop in the middle of town and people started to line up, other people would see it and a legend would be born. If you opened anywhere else, no one would show and no one would ever will.

Retails have not changed that much neither in the Western World except for the dominance of franchise. People have no problem finding Starbucks and 7-Eleven but any mom-and-pop shops would live and die by locations. You can make up for a sub-optimal location by being proactive, leaving leaflets at the doors or on the windshields, standing in front of your shops to drag people in, or even advertising at local TV/radio stations.

Then came Yelp and the World starts to change. Ask anyone who runs a restaurant and they will tell you how many stars they have on Yelp. The owner of my favorite sushi restaurant even greets me by my first name because she recognized me from Yelp. But retail business owners are still on the receiving ends, they can't really control Yelp other than to encourage their customers to write for them or to make sure every customer is happy just in case they happen to know about Yelp. It works but it is not efficient. It is clearly not proactive.

Much has been written about Google Buzz and much complains have been launched because of the intended or unintended exposure of Gmail contacts. But little has been written about Buzz Mobile. Google actually released two related but distinct products last week, Buzz Gmail and Buzz Mobile.

In the mobile version, it is basically twitter with a GPS except it is tied to Google Map and Google reviews. I have been experimenting with Buzz Mobile in the last few days and this tool is phenomenal for retail owners. Imagine you run an auto shop in an alley two blocks away from Starbucks. No one walks by your shop but you know they are in the neighborhood. In the past, you can pass out discount coupons but you will definitely get the stink eyes.

But now imagine Buzz'ing from your smartphones while sitting at the cashier waiting for revenues. You can build a nation of potential customers just by being smart with Buzz Mobile.

This is clearly game changing and whoever figure it out first would clear a path for the customers to find your doorstep.

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Buzz by Denny K Miu from Buzz

2010-02-15T17:11:46.000Z

**Jolly in the Cloud**

My experience with Jolicloud started about eighteen months ago. I had purchased an Asus EEE PC to get ready for our trip to Africa. I figured it was the thinnest computing device that I could carry up Kilimanjaro. I decided to buy the version that comes with only flash memory which had the added feature that I would be running Linux. The system came complete with Firefox and Skype which were all I needed.

Then after about two weeks, I noticed that the OS was having a hard time connecting to WiFi, typically taking more than a few minutes to connect and at times even require a reboot. I searched the web and clearly this was a known problem. What was even more clear was that Asus was not a software company and they had never released any upgrades and bug fixes.

Around the same time, Windows 7 was available as a free download and I figured out how to bit-torrent a copy and prepare an USB bootable drive. It was an adventure worthy of my effort and I was clearly the first geek in my zip code to be running 7 on a netbook. But as anyone would expect, running Microsoft on Flash was not going to be a pleasant experience. I keep trying different ways to optimize. Surprisingly, the fastest browser turns out to be Safari (faster than Firefox, faster than Opera and way faster than IE).

Then I read about Jolicloud which was basically Linux with a better front end and an active company and a vast community behind it to provide support. But I had to wait for my invite code. And I end up climbing Kilimanjaro without a netbook (which was just as well).

My experience with installing Windows 7 prepared me well with Jolicloud. When my invite code finally came, it took me less than an hour to install and I was impressed with the performance and features (even for an alpha version). And I have been a Jolicloud enthusiast even since, constantly getting the lastest version of Chrome and Skype as my tools of choice.

If you are using a netbook, there is no better choice than Jolicloud.

On the other hand, the problem with the EEE PC is that the screen is not very good (it is small and not very bright). Also, the touchpad keys were really hard to use making my problem with carpal tunnel much worse. And when you're 53 years old, you have to be careful with your toys.

A week ago I decided to upgrade to a new netbook which had Windows 7 pre-installed. I didn't think about installing Jolicloud since 7 was working pretty well and I thought may be I could even install iTunes in case I need to download some podcasts while on the move.

Then I discovered Microsoft has turned off the networking capability on the "Starter" version shipped with the netbook. Now I am on a rampage.

I went back to the Jolicloud webpage and to my pleasant surprise, they now have a "Express" install option which does not require making a USB drive. Instead it is a simple download while running Windows and allows co-existence of the two operating systems.

It is nice to be back. I highly recommend Jolicloud. It is rare to get to do something that is both right (best operating system ever for a netbook) and good (sticking it to Microsoft which they deserve).

Jolly computing, everyone. You don't have to but you NEED to try Jolicloud.

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Buzz by Denny K Miu from Buzz

2010-02-14T23:10:07.000Z

**Why 2010 is like 1984**

There were three events in my life when I was completely glued to the tube, the man stopping the tank in 1989, the unveiling of the Macintosh ad at Super Bowl 1984, and the landing of the first space shuttle in 1981.

The commander of Columbia's first voyage was John Young, an experienced astronaut who had walked on the Moon. I remembered when Young landed, the only thing he wanted to talk about was how much fuel there was left in the tank.

I believe there is a deep desire among humans to always want to do the most with the least and among the professionals, efficiency is in fact the only meaningful measure for accomplishment.

So in that spirit, I do not believe the recent popularity of netbooks is only about cost. Of course, it is true that the recent economic downturn has inevitably forced most of us to watch every penny. Besides cost, I actually believe netbooks satisfy a much deeper human desire which is to do the most with the least.

Netbook is all about cloud computing but cloud computing is not new. For those of us who have plenty of white hairs or no hair, we used to call this time-share computing. In other words, we are accustomed to performing computing using a "thin" terminal and have all the important data resided in the "cloud".

I believe what brought us full circle is mobility. The more mobile we are as a data consumer, the more important it is that our data stays permanent and centralized. So netbook is not a new wave but the result of a collision between multitudes of existing waves. The most important of such synergistic waves is Google growing beyond stationary search.

When Google became a public company, I noticed that they didn't use their cash to immediately build revenues. Instead they recruit a brain trust of smart engineers. I was not smart enough to understand what they had in mind with so much raw talents. Now I know. It is all about breaking down barriers and centralizing data so they can continue to monetize.

"Do no evil but centralize data in the cloud".

And they would not stop until they tear the World inside out with their Android, Chrome, Buzz and Chrome OS. Looking back to 1984, instead of Apple declaring war on Microsoft, this time it is Google declaring war on Apple.

My eyes are glued to the tube once again and this time I want to be both a spectator and a participant. I am determined to figure out how I can help others monetize now that we can do so much with so little.

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Buzz by Denny K Miu from Buzz

2010-02-13T22:40:23.000Z

**Why is Microsoft fucking with me?**

When it was available as a free download, I had installed Windows 7 on my Macbook (using a trial version of Parallels). I was quite impressed. It was clean and it was fast. Microsoft had obviously borrowed enough from Apple that I was convinced that this would be a viable competitor. I was also happy for all my Windows friends that they might finally have something decent since life is just too damn short to be stuck with a sucky OS.

The netbook that I recently bought/rented from Costco had Windows 7 installed so I was at least happy. Then I noticed that it was a "Starter" version. I had no idea what that means but for the first two days it didn't seem to matter. Then I was finally ready to install Boxee so I could watch some video podcasts I normally subscribed. But I couldn't get Boxee to work because I couldn't see my servers on my network. Another two days go by and I gave up. Then I read that "Starter" meant that Microsoft has turned off networking capability.

WTF!?!

This is just crazy. So Microsoft purposely crippled their own product thinking that they could easily extort another $100 from me because I am stupid.

Well, I am not stupid. And I have alternative. Think Jolicloud.

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Buzz by Denny K Miu from Buzz

2010-02-13T21:57:25.000Z

**Rent a PC**

Years ago, a good German friend of mine told me (as we were walking to the men's room), "you never buy beer, you just rent them." And that's how I feel about buying computers these days. The technology is changing too fast and the non-recoverable total-cost-of-ownership is too high (initial investment plus repair/extra-warranty cost). So it is unrealistic to think that a computer purchase is a worthwhile capital investment that would have redeemable values after more than a few months (especially commodity PC's).

A few days ago I bought a $350 netbook from Costco with the intention that I will return it immediately after I get my iPad. I knew it was wrong but I figure I have purchased enough stuff from Costco in the past that I am only a small step on the wrong side of the moral hazard.

Then I decided that I should just make this a policy since Costco "guarantee my satisfaction on every product they sell with a full refund". And no one can be satisfied with a three-month old netbook. Therefore I should just return it every 90 days and buy a better one.

Is this illegal? No.

Is this immoral? No.

Is this unethical? May be.

But who am I hurting?

I am not hurting Costco or fellow Costco shoppers since Costco is just a distributor and they get full reimbursement from the manufacturers in exchange for volume.

I am not hurting HP/Dell/Asus etc. since they are also distributors for Microsoft and Intel and they actually make a business decision to include their products in the netbooks even though they have better alternatives because they don't want to lose out on the kickbacks.

So I am basically hurting Microsoft and Intel but at least they have my money upfront.

On the other hand, by having the latest netbook at all time, I am in fact helping the struggling software developers (Jolicloud, Boxee, etc.) by giving them valuable feedbacks as their loyal alpha/beta user.

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Buzz by Denny K Miu from Buzz

2010-02-13T16:22:53.000Z

**The Third Place**

Most people who complains about Apple's iPad don't understand the concept of "The Third Place". I remember decades ago when Starbucks first became popular, people didn't understand neither why they would need another place to hang out when they already have a home and a work place. In other words, Starbucks was successful because they uncovered an untapped and enormous market to satisfy people's desire to hang out with total strangers. It's that simple.

The iPad is not a computer and is not a phone. The distinction is in postures. If you sit up right, you need a computer. If you are driving or walking, you need a phone. If you are leaning back on a sofa, on your bed, in a plane, on a train or inside a Starbucks, you need an iPad. It is just that simple.

And Steve Jobs knew that (which explains why he was launching the iPad, not standing, not walking, but leaning back on an unannounced iPad accessory).

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