Coming from a technical background in software engineering,  I worked as a programmer and software developer, later started my own business.  But the problem is, there is a whole lot of difference between a business run by a technician, and a business run by a business person.

In trying to cross over from a technical person to a business person, there are many skills and expertise I need to develop, including problem-solving, presentation, public speaking and networking, among others.

Certainly no MBA will be the magic bullet to provide everything I need to learn in business.  But it will give me a good foundation in both knowledge and business skills, knowledge being the know how in different functional aspects of business and business as a whole, which I never learned in a class.

But most importantly, it’s the business skills that I’m looking for.  I would not have gone for any academic course in business, if not for its student-centered learning, problem-based learning and self-directed learning approaches by GSM.  Their unique positioning in how they impart knowledge and skills to the students attracted me, apart from being one of the top business schools in Malaysia and Asia.

I’m taking only two subjects per trimester (school term or semester as they call it, as there are three semesters in a year), which is the least number of subjects possible, in order to spread the whole course over 2 years. My subjects this trimester are Organizational Behaviour and Accounting For Decision Making if you are interested to know.

I don’t want to rush as I still have a business to take care. I also think it’s the learning and development process that counts, not just the end result.  Moreover, I don’t need to finish the course quickly in order to get to the job market fast. I’m not interested in job anyway

So I’m glad to be an MBA student now.  It will be an important part of my learning and development plan in realizing my dream in business. I’m going to learn, develop, network and enjoy in the whole process!

Much thanks to my long time customer Ms Alison and business partner Tim for being kind and supportive referees to recommend me for the course.

If you are a current MBA student in GSM, I want to know you! Please add me as your friend on my Facebook page! (Please do introduce yourself when adding)

What do you think of MBA? Feel free to share

However, this web design company insisted the customer use their web hosting service.  Web hosting was part of their web development package for the customer.  Not being a technical person and not having been briefed clearly, the customer unknowingly agreed to the deal.

Later the web design company called me up to get my “cooperation” to transfer hosting to their server.  I sought clarification from customer but he said he never wanted to switch hosting provider.  He still wanted to host with me.

But the web design company was very adamant that the customer must host with them.  They claimed that they had set up everything about customer’s web site and database on their own in-house server, and so it was very troublesome to move their work to my server.  They said it was “easier” for them to develop the web site by hosting on their server.

Luck was on my side, though.  Customer insisted to host with me and gave them official notification to the web design company to host their works on my server.  Long story cut short, the customer is still happily hosting with me until now.

By some discovery later on, I found out that the web design company was actually using hosting from third-party hosting provider.  So they had not been very honest by saying the customer must host on their own “in-house server”.

From my experience, it is generally not true that you must host your web site with your web design company.  No matter where you host, as long as they get hold of the details on how to log on to the server, they can do their work.

It is also generally not true that it’s “easier” for them to develop your web site on their server.  No matter where you host, they work on your web site using pretty much the same ways - uploading and downloading by FTP, web-based administration using cPanel and PhpMyAdmin, and so on.

But I know of some cases where a customer’s web site makes use of special features available only on the web designer’s server.  Then in such cases, you have no choice but host with them.  But these cases are rare.

Web design and web hosting are two different services.  These two services can be separated and provided by different providers. But a web design company often bundle web hosting in their service, and this is perfectly good strategy.  But it is not good when they are not being honest and transparent with you.

He has been using File Transfer Protocol (FTP) software for this purpose.  He created a specific directory on his web server, uploads the files into that directory, and asks clients to download from that directory.

While this has been working for his purpose so far, it is not a very good way for file sharing.  For one, non-technical users may not know how to download files using FTP.  Either they need to know what to type on the address bar in Windows Explorer (such as ftp://user@ftp.domain.com), or they need to install and use some FTP software to download the files.  Worse, some companies do not allow employees to install new program without proper authorization.

Also, if the files are to be shared among more than one client, a client who can access the directory can often see the files shared to other clients.  Of course, my customer can create different directories for different clients.  But it’s simply more work.

Also, his clients just want to look at the photos.  By using FTP, they need to first download the files in order to view the photos.  But download wastes time, especially for large files.

FTP as its name suggests, is used for “file transfer”, that is to upload and download files from and to a server.  It is not really meant for “file sharing”, which is to share files between and among more than one user.

Since my customer needs to share photos, instead of using the more technical FTP, why not use Flickr instead?  Just upload the photos to Flickr, decide who can view the photos, and share the web address which contains the photos to the clients.  The clients will be able to view the photos without needing to download.

The customer saw web design as a lowly job.  It seems they considered a web designer nothing more than someone who get paid to simply put up their company photos online and finish her job.

They insisted a whole Flash-only web site to be done up for less than RM1,000.  But I think the market rate is at least RM5,000 if not more!

But what surprised me most was that, the pitiful freelance part-time web designer, though obviously being looked down on, accepted the job at such dirt-cheap rate!  I don’t know what quality of work she is going to deliver.

Are the web designers out there doing work just to “cari makan” (earn a little money here and there to feed stomach)?  Good and passionate web designers like Danny Foo will be the first to disagree.  Nowadays web designers are not just designers.  They are artists, engineers, strategists, marketeers and business consultants!  The good designers are in for long-term business.

Unfortunately how the market perceive web designers may not be so noble.  This maybe something for web designers to ponder on.  Why such a bad reputation?

For me I don’t see web design as a lowly job.  I know web design in general, though it’s not my choice for business.  I know the time and effort a dedicated web designer put in to show up a quality work, though not well recognized and appreciated by others.

Anyway, sometimes my hosting customers too can encounter problems in their Internet connection to our server.  I normally ask them to check their connection to server and send me report generated by a software called PingPlotter.  Customer support by phone and email is a full-time job.  So I might as well post here and refer them to this article.

So are you reading this because you can’t connect to our server, or any web site?  Download PingPlotter (free version) at http://www.pingplotter.com to find out what’s wrong. Install and run the program as usual.

As you can see above, there is a little text box at the top left.  Just type your server address there and hit Enter.  The server address depends on what you want to check.  It could be mail.yourdomain.com or pop.yourdomain.com for mail server, webmail.yourdomain.com for webmail, www.yourdomain.com or simply yourdomain.com for your web site.

A little graph will be generated on the right hand side every few seconds.  It shows what happened along the way from your PC to our server.  If the graph is mostly in green, you are having good connection.  If there is some yellow or red color, there might be some bottleneck or network problem somewhere halfway.

To churn out the report, click Edit menu, then Copy As Image.  You can then start and paste the copied image into your graphic software, such as Paint.  Then save the image and send to me at ricky [at] rickysoo.com.

Any question or comments? Welcome to comment below.

• You do not know why you are blogging.
• You do not know what to blog about.
• You do not know who your target readers are.
• You do not know what you can offer to readers.
• You do not feel happy and at peace blogging
• You blog because others do, or others asked you to.
• Your blog is just a copycat of another more established blog.
• Your blog is not serving what you intend to achieve.
• Your blog conversion rate is too low.
• Very few people read or subscribe to your blog.
• You find blogging eat up too much of your time and energy.
• You find blogging become more important than other things in life such as your job and relationships.
• You find blogging working against your life objectives!
• Do you have anything else to add?  Please feel free.

Actually this is a checklist for myself.  I started blogging since years ago on Google’s Blogspot.  Since then, I have stopped and restarted a few blogs.

During my previous blogs, I could easily answer yes to many items in above checklist.  When one blog was not working, it’s time to take a hard look!

At last, I settled down with this blog since April 2008 and it’s been one year plus now.  Hopefully it will stay long this time

I was initially skeptical of the business model.  The idea seems old and uninteresting.  But after getting to know that the startup was to be backed by one of the most visited web site in Malaysia, my perception changed.  Its very high traffic is going to spill over to the new portal and bring advertising dollars to the new business.

In fact, though the idea is not new, I think the startup is going to work.  Those who joined the group are going to earn, not only financially, but in reputation and authority as well.

But unfortunately, I am unable to fulfill their requirements.  Each blogger is to blog at least one post per day.  So it’s 7 blog posts per week, 30 blog posts per month, at least.

Not that they emphasize quantity over quality.  But the founder said most successful blogs have something new everyday to become successful, though it may not be long essay everyday.

I can’t join because I can’t commit myself to blog everyday.  Currently I’m blogging only once or twice per week.  I’m not a full-time blogger or problogger, but rather an occasional one.  I even consider myself still quite a newbie in blogging.

Furthermore, it’s going to be like a full-time job to blog everyday.  It’s not only the time spent to write, but it’s the time spent to read up, research, think and organize my thoughts that is going to consume most of my waking hours, every single day!

So it’s going to be a job for me to work in rather than a business, and it’s a pretty hectic job.  My personal mission is not to create a job for myself.  My mission is to create a business.  Otherwise, I might as well work for others.

When an opportunity knocks, no matter how great it is, one may still need to think whether it is in line with one’s life mission or not.  In this case, the blogging job is really not for me.

It’s a pity for me not being able to join this startup.  But it’s OK.  Opportunities abound on the Internet.  Our job is just to be ready when they come

Yes, the Internet is getting more and more “social”, with real people using the Internet to interact and influence one another.  Much thanks to the advent of blogs, and social media sites like Facebook and Twitter (strictly speaking, blogs are not social media).  Even the older generation have jumped on the bandwagon and claimed an account on Facebook.  In fact, if you are not “in” social media nowadays, you are “out”!

Therefore, the social media now presents a natural channel for marketing your products and services on such increasingly social online networks.  After all, many people have always been looking for others’ opinions when deciding to buy (or not buy) something, used to be offline, but now online also.

In the local hosting industry, it seems hosting providers are picking up on marketing through social media.  I know one company has set up their profile on various social media such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and Plurk!

This company is capitalizing well on social media.  They offer money for bloggers who write about them.  They give out prizes for lucky draw winners who follow them on Twitter, tweet about them, and ask others to retweet about them.  They also own a company page on Facebook and promise to offer discounts for domain names based on the number of Facebook members who become their fans.  Yeah, many social media jargons here, I know

I also had set up a Facebook group and a Twitter account for BizPartner, and tried to create some buzz in social media.  I have yet to achieve what I want, but I’m trying, and learning.

And we can expect that more and more hosting providers will soon start to use social media for innovative marketing, branding and customer relationship building.

While I’m facing the same problems competing in such fragmented hosting industry, these are a few pointers we managed to come up with.

Firstly, don’t try to fight them with even larger space at even lower price.  How about going to the other extreme, by selling small but enough hosting space at half or quarter of their prices?  For example, selling only 100MB at just RM80?  But the customers need to be educated that they actually won’t make use of so much space.

Secondly, expose the tricks (even deception) used by hosting providers.  Nowadays anyone can sell any large amount of hosting space at cheap rates using the “overselling” kind of business model.  This works because statistically an average customer will not use even 10% of the space promised to them.  Some customers are “space-greedy”.  They need to know the inconvenient truth in the hosting industry.

Thirdly, bundle hosting service with other services with prices you have more control on, such as web design.  This way, customers may not know even if you charge them double the hosting prices.

Fourthly, but a very bad strategy - fight the competitors with even larger space at cheaper price!  We know some customers will be lured into this but actually never use so much space anyway.  Nevertheless, I’m against this as it is over-promising.

Last but not least, seek out blue ocean strategies that you no longer need to compete with other hosting providers in such a red ocean.  But seek out new markets and sell to them some services which include hosting service.

Just as an example, how about an online service for couples getting married?  Many couples get married every week.  More and more couples start to want a wedding web site to commemorate such big event!  In providing such service, you no longer compete with other hosting providers but customers will have unknowingly bought your hosting service anway.

I suddenly came up with this weird thought.  Why not reverse the charges?  Charge RM1 for parking under 2 hours, but give it free for over 2 hours?

The purpose is to get people stay longer in the mall, and hopefully spend more as a result?  Yes, there will be those who lepak (wander around) without spending a single cent.  But in overall, more crowd means more business.

Do you think this idea works?

If interested, please email me at ricky [at] rickysoo.com with your contact details.  My job is simply to forward your emails to the customer.  Please don’t ask me anything about the project as I don’t have the details.

By the way, I find software developers from India very agressive in promoting themselves via email and even phone calls.  Don’t you think so?

Trying to keep to my principle not to do what others were already doing, I proposed a new strategy to the owner.  However, I didn’t proceed in the venture as we couldn’t agree on the right business model.  At the end of discussion, the owner still preferred a business model 90% identical with the existing one!

Nowadays, many youngsters look for friendship and relationship on social network web sites, But besides casual relationships, there are others who look for serious life partner.  So there are many offline dating and matching services around.  Naturally, some of them get online and here come these online dating and matching web sites.

The problem is that, do people trust the Internet to look for their future husband or wife?  Most do not.  They don’t think Internet as a safe place.  Instead, they consider it full of cheaters.  The trust for the channel is just not there.  We may disagree, but this is the market perception, at least for my (older) generation.

Internet presence might work for an offline matching service using the Internet to promote their service, automate some business processes and value-add to their offline offerings.  But how about a purely online matching service?  Will it work?

If you were to operate such an online matching service, how do you make it big on the Internet?  Difficult, if not impossible.  This calls even more badly for a blue ocean strategy.  Let’s not be so bounded and bondaged by the same old thought just as other competitors in the industry.

I was helping to blog regularly for the event.  As you know, whatever we blog now comes up at the top.  I remember being told not to blog any more for time being, because the last blog post was so important that it had to stay at the top of the home page.  In another case, the committee chairman told me a post had disappeared!  It had “dropped off” the home page after a few newer posts were put up!

With the advent of World Wide Web, we became so used to the way how a web site organized itself, that is, hierarchically with menus and sections.  But blogs changed the way how a web site works.

On blogs, the latest piece of information comes at the top. Then as we put up more posts, the previous post will “drop” down in the home page slowly to the bottom, until “disappearing” into oblivion (actually hidden from the home page).

Frankly, when I first started to read blogs and publish a blog, I was not so used to how it worked too.  I thought it was not “user-friendly”.  But as time went by, I started to see the logic and got familiar with blogs now.

Instead of an almost dead hierarchical web site, a blog site is just like a live person who changes from time to time.  Rather than just looking at the same old and cold content, a blog gives a more personal touch, a plus point for businesses.  It encourages more interaction with the users, through links, search box, comments, widgets and others.

But there are still many who think blogs are not the best way to organize information.  As “the customers are the kings”, we must not be so proud to assume that blog is the best architecture for a web site.  But just like other technologies, I believe blogs will evolve to be even better and more useful.

• To maintain an existing match-making web site
• To develop an online job portal
• To develop a business networking web site
• To develop an online charity web site
• To develop a web site plus web application for a non-profit nationwide sports event - This is a volunteer and non-paying job. But I guess the web programmer will be given due recognition and a plus point in his or her portfolio.

As for me, I’m not a web designer and not in web development business. I developed and still maintain my own sites (yeah, I know I should not do it myself). I was a programmer and I still can program well in PHP (and that’s the only programming language I still know now!)

It’s good to have a gift in web development and programming. But it’s one thing to be a “technician” doing programming, it’s another thing to be an “entrepreneur” in business world. To turn from owning a job to a business, and from working in a business to working on a business, I just have to come out of my comfort zone called programming.

Sometimes I’m asked to develop web sites, from both commercial and not-for-profit sources. But my time commitment does not allow me to take in any of these jobs. Sacrificing precious hours for these web projects means I have to sacrifice time for other more important life goals, though sometimes these projects are good and worthy ones. In other words, doing web development projects simply drags my feet from achieving what I want!

Anti-SPAM Policy Disclaimer:
Mail cannot be considered spam as long as we include contact information and a remove link for removal from this mailing list. If this e-mail is unsolicited, please accept our apologies. Further transmissions to you by the sender may be stopped at NO COST to you.

This spammer has a serious misunderstanding of what a spam is.  Any unsolicited commercial bulk email is spam.  But the spammer tries to justify his action by deceiving people the real meaning of spam.  Or maybe he tries to avert his own guilt by talking himself into believing this is not a spam!

Further transmissions to you maybe stopped at NO COST to you?  If you ever reply or click on the unsubscribe link hoping never to hear from the spammer again, sorry but you are wrong.  By receiving your request to unsubscribe, a spammer can verify that your email address is active and so, worth spamming to!  He may not spam to you again himself, but your email address can be used by other spammers to send you even more garbage!

It is good for businesses to use email marketing to promote products and services.  But not in this way.  Spamming is very ineffective yet it brings many negative consequences to our business.  Some of us just have to mature up and know what works and what does not.

Would you like to indicate your location or department in your email address?  You can use subdomain in your email address such as sales@malaysia.mycompany.com or ricky@hr.mycompanycom!

What is a subdomain anyway?  It is anything that goes before your domain name.  For example, in “singapore.mycompany.com”, “mycompany.com” is the domain name” and “singapore” is the subdomain.

It’s easy to create email address with your chosen subdomain.  Let’s create an email address called ricky@malaysia.mycompany.com.

1. Log into your web-based control panel cPanel.
2. In cPanel, go to the Domains section and click Subdomains.
3. Enter “malaysia” as subdomain, specify the location of the subdomain (such as /public_html/malaysia), and click Create button.
4. In cPanel, go to the Mails section and click Email Accounts.
5. Enter “ricky” as the email username, select “malaysia.mycompany.com” from the domain list, enter other details such as password, and click Create button.
6. Now set up your email software such as Outlook to start using your email account. Done!

By the way, if you have created a subdomain as above, you can also use it to have a different web site for your branch in Malaysia under your domain name with the address http://malaysia.mycompany.com!

I don’t like hackers’ act of hacking web sites. They are only creating nuisance for people and economic waste for the soceity, yet gaining nothing for themselves. Yes they may feel an empty sense of achievement, but it’s vanity, just like going after the wind. Even if they are paid for the job, deep down in their heart they know they are breaking the law and doing something wrong that they will not like to tell their children.

Anyway, like it or not, hacking is already being used as a tool to advance one’s propaganda, to bring down one’s business rivals, or even enemies in war. I have customers who asked how to hack their competitors, for business or even political purpose.

Perhaps in future wars, where cyberwar is a main feature, hackers will be the ones very instrumental. I’m not justifying for hackers. But my point is that hacking is here to stay.

But in a broader sense, “hacking” also means playing around with technologies, possibly to improve them. There are many scientists and inventors we acclaim who were actually “hackers” (not computer hackers) at their times to “hack around” to see what works better. Without their “hacking” skills, we would not be enjoying the standard of life we have now.

We don’t need the computer hackers. But they are not going away and we have to accept the fact. But we need the “hacking” culture, without which our society will not advance.

We can be obedient to the customers and obey whatever they ask us to do.  Tell me what you want and I’ll do it for you.  If you don’t tell me anything then I will not do anything for you.

We can also be of service to the customers and serve them in their needs and wants.  Is there anything I can help you?  I have become more proactive in serving you.

We can also be “loving” to the customers by giving them our “love”, not only our service.  We are here to bless you and make your life better.  We will serve you even if you are not (yet) our customer.

Well, it’s not possible to “delete” those pages from Google (unless you get a court injunction ordering Google to do so). But he can add in more positive content about the person, and try to boost these web pages up the ranking using search engine optimization (SEO) techniques.

But if an individual, a business or an organization’s reputation is already bad due to their behavior, no matter how much positive content is generated, even more negative content can still get its way into the search pages. This is especially so when everyone can publish nowadays on the Internet by means of blogging.

With the advent of Internet, and social media more recently, reputation management has become very important for individuals, businesses and organizations in their branding, marketing and PR efforts.

Perhaps the best policy is do like what Google says, “Don’t be evil”. Be good and people will talk about us well on the Internet.

But in case there is any negative content, one can contact the web site owner, or participate in its forum or blog, and try to set things right, perhaps by posting feedback or comments on the web sites. Be professional and don’t hide behind anonymous email address which I believe some commentators did on this blog when I talked about them. Be respectful. Don’t point fingers and don’t lose temper.

Today we no longer can ignore what people say about us on the Internet. The long term solution is to be good and not evil. As for my customer, all the best to him for what he intends to do.

He asked me to introduce web developers for him.  Besides suggesting my partner web designers for any web development job as I normally do, I also suggested him do it himself, especially if it is such a simple web site.

Customer can consider using any free content management system (CMS) out there, such as Drupal and Joomla.  A good CMS enables you to develop a complete web site with little or no technical knowledge.

But CMS to some customers is still quite technical.  Why not use a blogging system like WordPress instead?  You can create static pages using WordPress, and announce latest news and promotion from time to time by means of blogging.  This RickySoo.com web site is created using WordPress.

In fact, for businesses who want to build a web site, I would suggest make it a blog, especially if the web site is not too complicated.  Businesses should use blog not because it’s the “in” thing to do now, but it could be the most cost-effective way as well.

Learning WordPress is easier than learning a typical content management system.  You just need to download WordPress, install on your web site, set up everything, put in the content, and maintain it along the way.  Find out more on how to set up a blog here.

At the beginning there will be some learning curve.  But soon my customer will become a pro in WordPress, and he will love it.  The good thing is that, he can apply the WordPress skills to replicate other web sites as he wishes.

Do it yourself!

The articles are compiled by Rodney Toh and Benson Wong, who also write many chapters in it. What is so special about this book is that it is like a “devotional” book on MBA. That means it contains short articles that you can read up quickly anytime you are free, perhaps after waking up in the morning, or before you sleep at night.

What is so advantageous about having an MBA in the marketplace? The subtitle gives you an overview - “How an MBA experience enhances managerial skills, knowledge, networking and professional value in today’s competitive world”.

There are people who criticize having an MBA as useless as it is an academic qualification. I have some customers who share this view, especially those who came out from school early and built their businesses from scratch. They would rather hire MBAs to work for them, instead of going for MBA themselves.

But the second chapter “Building Competitive Advantage Through MBAs” by Rodney gives me some answers. While there are some truths behind the criticisms, and while there are poorly run MBA courses around, a good MBA is not just about studying and going to exam.

A good MBA trains our minds to see things differently (rather than always through our lens of experience) and so solve business problems creatively. It is is much more than a course. It is also a self-development training, an eye-opening experience, a life journey, a networking opportunity, and more.

The book is one of its kind in the market. There is no other book on MBA like this (not the kind like the dry “The Ten Day MBA”). The book is a blue ocean product for the authors. I envy the authors must have earned a lot

Besides being a great promotion tool for MBA, the book is also like a dream book for would-be MBA students to “preview” their MBA dream before pursuing it. Am I interested to take up MBA? Of course, otherwise I would not have bought the book!

Too much to share here. Better go buy and read the book yourself!

But according to my friend, the real feng shui masters in Malaysia are few and far between.  Yes, we have heard of some big names who tout their expertise in feng shui.  But although their marketing is excellent, some of them may not be real experts in feng shui and may not have respect among feng shui masters.

On the other hand, there are those who are real masters but are not good in marketing themselves.  But after all, why need to market so much?  Their daily schedule is already packed up and they are already earning good money.

I myself don’t believe and don’t practise feng shui.  But here I’m writing from a business perspective only and nothing else.  I asked my friend who is computer-savvy why he doesn’t use the Internet and even blogging to promote his business.  Perhaps the web site will not generate many leads.  But he can use it to build his reputation.

But he said those who promote on the Internet expose themselves for challenges from the real masters in feng shui.  If one is not yet ready, better not have a web site, much less a blog.  Ok, sounds reasonable to me.

There are web developers and Internet marketers who think that EVERY business should go online.  But I think there are businesses which should not have an Internet presence, perhaps because the Internet does not fit into their business model, or they are not yet ready for Internet presence.

So perhaps a feng shui business is one such example?

Is there is a seed of evil in us? Is it why we need laws, rules and ethics to “regulate” us so that we don’t do evil? Otherwise we can just go amok and the world becomes upside down as everyone is free to do anything that satisfies his or her own selfish desires.

There are businesses who “do evil” by shortchanging customers and employ unethical means to compete in the market. There are business people who think “touching on the borderline of the law” is perfectly OK. After all, we are all in business. You want to be nice to everyone? Don’t be in business!

What some may not realize is that businesses who don’t believe in having good ethics may not be a sustainable business in long run. They may win something today but their evil conduct can hit them back later, perhaps even hit them so hard that it costs their very existence.

There are proper ways to compete and win over customers in the market. Those who have good corporate ethics like Google are well respected. Not like those who act evil today and think they can repair their image tomorrow.

This does not apply to businesses only, but also to individuals, non-profit organizations, government agencies and yes, even political parties. What’s good in it to win a battle now only to lose a war later? And in politics, what’s good to win a state now only to lose the entire nation later?

So businesses, don’t be short-sighted. Justice will prevail. The customers will decide…

• We were individually created for a purpose on earth.  There is a reason why we exist.
• We have been equipped with the necessary potential to fulfill our purpose in life.
• Our job is to draw our potential out, not to underestimate our self.
• We must not let criticisms from others to undermine our own potential.
• We must not let rejections in life to undermine our own potential.
• We have yet to reach our full potential.  We can always do better in life.
• We can always reach out to bless more people in life.
• We can always enlarge our territory (sphere of influence) in life.

Press on towards our goal!

I heard some say that market share, or “mind share”, is first and foremost important.  When many people have got to know a dotcom brand, they will visit the web site,  the “eyeballs” will be so increased, the “critical mass” will be so achieved, the “branding” will be so built up, and naturally the profit will come.

On the other hand, others think that profit should be the first to focus on, not market share.  A business can grow its market share so much that it is still not profitable.  It can command a large market share yet sacrifice the profits that could have been earned during the growth.

One typical example is a membership business online.  Shall we first focus on market share by giving out free member accounts in order to first attract the mass, and then try to sell some premium services later to them?  Or shall we start with a chargeable membership so that we can starting earning right from the first day?

Perhaps profit should be our first objective.  And as we do things the right way towards the objective, market share is a natural result.  What do you think?

The problem is, we just can’t ignore competing in the red ocean, whether now or in future.  Perhaps our industry is still red.  Perhaps a blue ocean will also turn red after some time.  Competitive strategies still have an important place in business and marketing.

I heard that a telecommunication company in Malaysia has two teams of people planning their business strategy, one called “Compete Today”, another called “Compete Tomorrow”.

As the names suggest, the “Compete Today” team plan strategies to outsmart their competitors in today’s market.  Whereas the “Compete Tomorrow” team brainstorm and explore new markets and plan strategies for the future.

So I’m learning not to just look up to anything “blue ocean” as good and look down on anything “red ocean” as bad.  A more holistic perspective is required.

Looking at the development of Internet in the past one and half decade, we can see the role of Internet users changing, from mere consumers of information in the 90’s, to producers and publishers of information on the Internet nowadays!

Just think about it.  In the good old days, we surfed the World Wide Web to read up what the site owner wrote. Then with the development of web authoring tools, the more technical people among us learned to design and publish web pages on the Internet.  Around the turn of the millennium, any IT student (including me) could do up a web page!

With the flourishing of social networking web sites in past few years, even non-technical people got to express themselves on the Internet.  Nowadays, more than 9 out of 10 college students own a piece of virtual property on Facebook or Friendster!

When blogs were popularized in more recent years, we change from owning a member page on Friendster to owning a blog!  Now virtually any Internet user can express themselves and shout on the Internet by blogging.  Even those who used to consider Internet as a scary place started to speak up!  Think about it.  It’s easier to learn WordPress than Microsoft Word!

So the Internet population has been transformed from content consumers to content “prosumers” (producer-consumer).  The technologies have turned non-users of the Internet to voice our thoughts, to using the Internet to rave about anything!

But many people in this country are still not using the Internet yet.  But watch and see.  When mobile Internet becomes so pervasive in our mobile phones, there will be more people surfing the Internet on mobile than through PC.

If most mobile users know how to send an SMS message now, they will know how to “micro-blog” in the future.  Microblogging tools such as Twitter may not be so popular and useful now.  But it will be in the future as more non-Internet users become Internet users via mobile phones.  At that time, even more people will publish content on the cyberspace!

We have been communicating with others by email everyday for many years. It is such an indispensable tool that it is now part of our lifestyle. But have you taken it for granted? Do you know that the emails you send and receive can be intercepted and read by third party?

When you send an email out, your email content travels from your computer to the Internet in clear text format. That is, what you write can be read plainly if it is intercepted by someone or some machine while it travels to the destination. If you send password, it can be retrieved and your online security will be compromised. The same risk applies to incoming emails.

But worry no more. You can “encrypt” your emails before sending out, or get incoming emails “encrypted” before receiving them. When your emails are “encrypted”, it means that the email content is turned into garbage text before traveling on the Internet. When the emails reach the destination, they are “decrypted”, being turned back to normal text for your reading.

This is done by using a technology called SSL (Secure Socket Layers). By using a connection secured by SSL, your computer cooperates with your incoming or outgoing mail server to encrypt and decrypt your email message accordingly. This way, your email content becomes unreadable even if it is intercepted while traveling on the Internet.

If you are currently connecting to your mail server without SSL, it’s time to consider adopting such security measure now. Please change your email settings as below now to enable SSL on your end!

Outgoing mail (SMTP) port number: 465
Incoming mail (POP) port number: 995

Please turn on SSL for both outgoing and incoming mail servers. In Outlook Express, this is in the “Advanced” tab, the same place where you change the port numbers above.

For customers hosting on the new cPanel-based Linux server, SSL works immediately upon changing your settings as above. For customers hosting on the old server (non-cPanel based), please inform us at info [at] bizpartner.com.my that you wish to activate SSL email service.

Click here for some basic instruction to set up your Outlook Exress for SSL

A Chinese female tutor is preferred.  Click here for more information on the tuition job. If interested, please contact info [at] nextlevel.com.my.

If you operate a tuition agency or a tuition web site, you are welcome to contact me if you have any tutor under your belt who can take the student.  We can work out some deal for this job, or even for future jobs in the long-term.

I have many partner tuition agencies in Singapore, but almost not a single reliable one in Malaysia.  Why?  Perhaps tuition agencies in Malaysia think NextLevel is their competitor.  But this is a misnomer.  Actually NextLevel is a platform not only for tutors, parents and students.  It is also for tuition businesses to promote their tuition service online.

For example, after I met the entrepreneur behind one local tuition web site, I offered him to take over all tutiion jobs on NextLevel Malaysia site that are not taken by our tutors.  But apparently, somehow he was not interested.

By the way, what do you think of the current debate whether to continue teaching maths and science in Malaysian schools in English?  No offense to anyone, but I think it should continue for now.  Once launched, it takes years to gauge the results for an initiative.

By the way, learning something in English does not necessarily mean a threat to any other language.  Let’s not have such “red ocean” kind of mentality.

I don’t know why they have such a mission. Perhaps they aspire not to hurt others, but to bring goodness to the world through its existence. Unlike some other newspapers who are used to criticize and hurt others, this is indeed a noble mission for such a media company.

How about a blog? Blogs are transforming from being “alternative media” to being a “main media” on the Internet. Should we not aspire to bring some goodness to people also through the existence of our blogs?

We can see some blogs being used to criticize and hurt others. Some point fingers, complain and even swear against company, service provider, government, college and even lecturers. Of course there is freedom of speech. But do we really need to do so?

I understand that everything is permissible under the sun. We can do anything we like. But not everything is beneficial. We will need to be prepared for the consequences of our words and actions.

The mission “to injure no man, but to bless all mankind” sounds attractive to me. I might have to reflect and even repent on how I wrote against some people in the past, though I kept to my policy never to mention names.