I need to dissect it more but some good points in here
http://jayvee.co/2014/08/21/why-singapores-becoming-the-delaware-of-southeast-asia/
Month: September 2014
iPhone 6
Had it since Friday. Initial thoughts.
– I can’t go back to a 5. Just too small now.
– 6 feels perfect to me but you have to get used to it. One handed use is fine.
– It is slippery – already dropped once. One the plane but hit the rug. Need a case I think.
– Battery life is better than my 5 but no amazing jump. I think battery is where a big improvement is needed.
– Screen is amazing. I think the combo of iOS 8 and the screen for reading and videos is stunning. The screen even feels closer to the display than ever before. I love the practically no edge thing on the sides.
– Finger print sensor is working great for me but I never had a 5s
– Extensions are cool but not really using many yet but the promise of it all is nice.
– I am playing with the keyboards but not sure I want to get hooked on them. I am undecided. Swype and Flesky are my current picks.
– It is much thinner and it just looks so slick compared to a 5 but maybe I just like this form factor more.
– Camera is better. Faster start. Pics look much better in general but I have not done a lot of photos yet.
– I think 6+ is cool but as an everyday phone I think too big and heavy for one handed stuff. But would have to play with it more.
Now I think 6 is amazing but need a big iPad and a smaller retina laptop. Hard to say.
Glad I am still holding Apple stock.
Back in the US of A
In LA for a few days. Hanging in the hotel cafe having a coffee and trying to stay awake. Of course every freaking TV has the piece of shit NFL on which is loud and annoying enough to probably help keep me awake.
I always find it comical to land and deal with immigration. Was surprised to see the computer kiosks for residents in place but what is comical is it just seems to add and extra step versus cutting down on time or process. First the kiosk but of course it seems you still fill out the dumb form on the plane. Why have both? Then the kiosk prints something and you wait to see an officer. He takes the paper from the plane and gives you back the receipt from the kiosk. Then go grab your bag. Talk to another officer to get out of that room. Then another line with another officer checking to see if they need to scan your shit. Seems I was not flagged for secondary this trip and sailed through but still comical there are so many checkpoints and that the computer part of it doesn’t seem to actually speed anything up.
Well the sun is shining, I have email to do, BigAssMeeting prep and some dinner to hunt down.
Happy Sunday!
On big phones
I need a new phone but I don’t know if it will be a 6 or 6 plus yet. I need to feel it and play with it.
On just returning back from Thailand you notice phablets everywhere. To me it’s a simple reason why – I think for a lot of these people this is there only device and the bigger the better. Within reason of course but it has a bigger battery, bigger screen and they don’t care what they look like talking on it, watching videos on it or taking pictures with it.
It’s their computer and happens to fit in their hand.
For me it’s just that simple.
My Apple Recap
I usually write for myself and in the process some others actually read my stuff. This post fits that mantra – after watching the keynote and digesting some other accounts of it I have some opinions of it all. Take it or leave it.
The live stream sucked ass in a big way. It is just embarrassing that a company of Apple’s size with all the money in the world cannot get this right. Hell – pay for two separate infrastructures and just switch over when one doesn’t work right. The whole thing felt like amateur hour and Apple is not a bunch of amateurs. There is really no excuse for not being able to pull of an event of this scale unless the numbers were just too big but I think this was more a case of errors than too many viewers.
First there was this takedown of it :: http://blog.streamingmedia.com/2014/09/why-apples-livestream-failed.html
Some folks are saying this is not an accurate analysis but I think there are some valid points in it. If they did use S3 and Akamai together – that was a huge mistake. It just doesn’t work well together. Akamai is maybe the king of CDN’s but it is the old school internet and is funky to work with.
Other folks are pointing to this article which is good and I even left a comment there but I don’t think it gets to the bottom of what happened. Apple is the inventor of HLS – they should have it nailed by now. Someone just majorly fucked up is my take on it. We may never know.
Either way it ruined being able to watch it in unison with others and as live as possible. Someday I may be able to make it to a real event but for now I am stuck with the live stream. Apple could do a better job of it for all of us staying up late wanting to watch it.
The phones. Nothing dramatic really but we have come to expect it now. I am on the fence as to which phone to get. Sometimes I want the big one but then I think it might be too big to carry around. I do a lot with my phone and with the big one I envision only needing a phone and a laptop and won’t use an iPad anymore. Then again I think I want the smaller one and a new iPad Air. Thus using laptop less. I don’t know yet. I honestly think I want to play with them both but at the same time I am curious about new laptops. I know I need more than one device but now I use three. So the idea for me is I want to get to 2 devices and I don’t know which two yet. I may have to wait for laptops and iPads to hit first.
I think iOS 8 is huge but we shall see when it hits and when the new dev stuff kicks into gear.
Before I get to the watch I just want to say the whole U2 thing was dumb. It came of as cheesy, it didn’t pack the punch Apple expected and I think they should be pushing Beats – not shitty iTunes. Anyway. Who cares but it ruined the close of the event for me.
The watch. I am in no hurry to get one but if it can track my biking and walking well, plus manage notifications easily and look cool – for me it replaces any sort of need for a fitness band. I am still confused what it does when not tethered to a phone since for example – I don’t want to carry my phone when I go running just to track fitness. I had a nike fuelband and digged it but was not married to it. I still don’t feel like I need one but this might be just the right combo. However if I am charging it every night, like the Pebble, I am not in a rush for it.
That being said – to me this is all about wearable computing. We all know it will happen in some form or another. Apple thinks it might be the watch. I tend to agree but is it this version of it? Come on. It’s a 1.0. I didn’t use an iPhone until number 4. I know this has a ways to go but wearable computing is inevitable. This is just their vision of it. It looks pretty amazing but like the new phones – I want to play with one first.
This is what sucks about Singapore for me – where is a real Apple store. Tired of this retailer shit.
okay. back to real work.
No point in writing today.
Thoughts on SEA ecosystem and location
Lots of twitter activity over the this post :: http://www.nokpis.com/2014/08/28/hong-kong-versus-singapore/
As mentioned I wanted to follow it up with some thoughts on this post :: http://thenextweb.com/asia/2014/08/23/time-founders-southeast-asia-accepted-location-used-advantage/
Let me preface I did not attend GOAB nd I don’t know Mona. I used to follow her on twitter but she broke my follow rule of never replying to my replies. One of my twitter rules is if I reply a few times to folks – famous or not and they don’t ever reply back then I figure there is no point in following. The point of twitter is reasonable discourse – at least for me anyway.
Mona nails well the recent rise of the SEA ecosystem and how one can most likely build a startup anywhere. Totally agree! However I think there are still some issues.
I will add that this is a tough soapbox to get on for me these days cause I will admit I am NOT in the scene as much as I used to be but this is also one of my weird opinions on the local scene. People talking about the scene and eventing tend to get more attention than those just heads down actually building a startup. Maybe that is just my personal feeling but the local media tends to focus on funding, rumors and covering events talking about the scene more than going deep on what is getting built, by who and the obvious failures that can happen. If I had more time I would do a few things – start a podcast talking to folks building things about how they got here and why they are building what they are building. I would start a review service going deep on all the consumer facing products that are coming at us everyday – some good and of course some bad. An investigative service trying to uncover why local startups fail so we can all learn from it. Alas – I don’t have the time. I am too busy with Spuul and my family to take on any more tasks. I will keep up my mentoring and writing as I see fit. The podcast idea is still brewing cause I miss TWIA and figure there is still some local demand for a good audio feed.
That being said, unlike my time at Yahoo, I am not running around at events or attending many startup focused conferences. Which leads me to another need in the local ecosystem, there are not many events or communities to lean on for those in the local startup land that are a few years in and maturing. This will hopefully improve over time.
Back to some of my thoughts on the article…
– I think seed funding is getting pretty easy to get. However it might all depends on your definition of it. Let’s say less than 150k USD for starters as a rough estimate. I think anyone with some connections, a good idea and some perseverance can land some money in this range. But anything past this I think is hard – there are some trends that buck this. Do something in ecommerce or transportation and for some reason the money is just flowing. Try to do anything with a large risk portfolio, hardware or enterprise and I think the money is much harder to find. Jump in the 150k to 1 million range and unless you have rockstar metrics, a super connected angel or crazy PR – it gets quite hard to find. This is from my personal experience and what I hear from companies I either mentor or talk to a fair amount.
– Location is still tricky. We at Spuul experience this some. The local press tends to pass us up cause they don’t see us in Singapore much. The Indian press always wonders why we are not in India and the USA press tends to overlook global plays from Singapore in general. I think the funding conversations take a similar tact at times. I think for location to work well for you it might make sense to be sure that you can dominate in the market where you have your HQ. Then figure out your regional play and maybe the globe later. Saying you are here and working on the globe might not work for those that like a tangible way to grok things. Of course you may have built something killer or viral that just works for everyone. I am speaking in terms of products as well – not the notion of outsourcing or being a vendor.
– The silicon valley stigma. I look at this one from a different angle than others. I base this on doing some focus groups with yahoo and talking with anthropologists who also study tech. If you get in a room in let’s say in Indonesia. You have a set of normal people who use tech and the internet. You present them with a novel product idea, some screens and user stories. You ask some of these people would they use this if it it came from Indonesia. Or Singapore. Then ask some of them would they use it if it came from Silicon Valley. What happens is they almost always get more excited about the product from the valley. Always. I don’t think this will change anytime soon. It is no different than people loving a Hollywood movie. It is not about what is better but just the cultural aspects that appeal to folks. I think startups in the region have to contend with people on a very local level to win or doing something very unique. If you build something similar to something else that comes from the the valley I think it won’t be successful. Granted this does not pertain to closed or unfair markets like China or say Vietnam who don’t allow truly level playing fields.
The local scene is exploding – just figure out where to make your mark.
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