Growing pains – comical excuse for the truth

~ michael_msft ~ 1 Comment

Just saw this today :: http://www.mumbrella.asia/2016/11/hooq/

Senior staff churn at Hooq put down to startup growing pains as OTT firm parts ways with CSO

What does parts ways mean anyway? I won’t get into that line but man the spin machines are running on high speed today.

Startup spends lots of money recruiting good talent.

CMO from Flipkart

CTO from Spuul (okay not a big name)

CSO from NatureBox and Netflix.

CFO from Electronic Arts.

CTO gone. CFO gone. CSO gone.

See a pattern here?

Lots of middle management and worker bees gone as well. Lots. 

I myself have never seen churn like this and it is not about being a startup.

Sad. It could have been much more.

Tools

~ michael_msft ~ Leave a comment

Will leave this right here:

I posted this page yesterday which I will keep updating as I go. Nothing groundbreaking but figured this was easier than banging out an email each time someone asked about Singapore. 

http://www.nokpis.com/singapore-101/

Carrying on. 

What a glorious time to be in the tech biz when it comes to all the tools being made for tech. I will leave on the table for a future post another subject to cover which is all the tools made for non tech and the investment opportunities that will provide.

I tend to break things down into speciality tools (like sketch for example), white collar tools (slack, office) and blue collar tools (stacck).

The white collar tool space is on fire and it is amazing to see old stalwarts like Microsoft make a comeback. Personally have always loved office and the iOS office stack is pretty killer. Makes Google docs look like toys for the most part. One of the crummy aspects of going iPad Pro only as been how lame Google docs is on iOS. Now with Microsoft shipping teams, I am curious to play with it and see how it goes.

Link on FB about all the troubles people are having trying to used teams :: https://www.facebook.com/dsobeski/posts/10157747558430008

As to Slack. I am a fan and have been using it for the past three companies, but honestly it is feeling stale since not much has changed with it over the last year or so. I think they should have moved faster to deal with docs better since no matter how deep I am into slack I still have to find another tool for documents. And for me that default is office. I think Microsoft knows the score here. Slack should have used their cash to buy their way out of this problem. Or innovated. Now I am tempted to check out teams since I already use office.

Google. Well. Not a fan anyway but docs works and is great for collaboration but again it is so stale. Not much innovation and the mobile side of it generally sucks. I would dump it in a heartbeat.

There are other tools I have tried but I just don’t stick with them. Asana is one of those. I give it a whirl each time but it’s just overkill and I usually drop it.

Trello seems to be a winner and I should probably get better at using it. 

Facebook for work I have not tried and I probably won’t. I get it and I can see they have put some work into it but Facebook doesn’t care about the enterprise. Which means this is not a focus for them and I doubt it ever will be.

Personally I have used for a long time and will keep using Evernote but I don’t do the group stuff with it. It’s just my personal brain and I like it that way.

I am sure I have missed some other stuff. However I generally find that email is still a killer app and under utilitized. I think AI is going to make email even more powerful and people will realize that everything as chat is not the answer.

Use the comments to obviously prove me wrong. 😉

Interesting times.

~ michael_msft ~ 1 Comment

Alibaba buys Lazada.

Amazon supposedly tried to buy Redmart. For the record – I would have took that deal.

Now Lazada buys Redmart. I don’t know the deal specifics but clearly this was not a sale from a position of strength. Redmart needed cash and I think this was the best option – versus going out of business.

Now Amazon announces they are coming to Singapore. Personally I am stoked. It is hard to not want some sort of Prime Singapore situation. I buy stuff from Lazada from time to time but it is kind of a crappy experience. It works but it is not amazing. Give me fresh, books, video and Alexa all working locally and I think it will be awesome.

Globally no one is equipped to rival that. No one. Sure Alibaba has some of the pieces and they may weave together something similar from the remnants of Lazada, Redmart and all the other products/properties they own but I doubt it can rival Amazon. I also doubt I will have any interest in it.

Some may see this a harbinger of things to come – the global guys coming in but for me I see this as something deeper and far more exciting. SEA is now on the map big time. It’s an ecosystem big enough to care about and if you happen to be here, building for this scene. Cry tears of joy.

Carry on.

Still on the fence…

~ michael_msft ~ 2 Comments

Another :: http://www.asymco.com/2016/11/02/wherefore-art-thou-macintosh/

More :: http://daringfireball.net/linked/2016/11/01/bjarnason-macbook-pros 

Have to admit – this is a good read :: https://chuqui.com/2016/10/how-apple-could-have-avoided-much-of-the-controversy/

Day to day I use an iPad Pro with the apple keyboard. When I was in the market for a new machine about 6 months ago, I figured the best hardware out there was the iPad Pro. I love the battery life, the true tone display and the always on Internet. Notice I picked the best hardware since I feel that is what you buy – the latest hardware. I figured I could get by with iOS for most of my day to day work.

There are times when this is painful. Crappy websites that don’t handle mobile browsers well, some aspects of file management and Google docs. Google docs tends to just suck on iOS apps and I bounce between iOS and the web version from time to time to accomplish certain tasks. 

However I generally like the ease of carrying around something so small that is always connected. I use it for note taking, reading and just getting shit done. It could be better but I get by.

I was assuming that as soon as apple announced their latest macbook that I would grab it. Now I am not so sure, but there in lies the issue. Apple is introducing doubt among their most ardent fans. I am waiting for the real life reviews to come and to go play with one before I decide. I would like to have a machine at work with a monitor and keyboard and the macbook pro will probably be great for that. 

I would have loved for apple to delighted me so much that I was ready to buy the moment I could. That didn’t happen and apple should see this as a canary in the coal mine.

I also may look for a killer chromebook and force myself to try that world as well since I think it is a glimpse into what the future may look like. For sure I won’t entertain anything from Microsoft cause honestly I think windows still sucks. I spent about an hour the other day making a printer work on windows that just magically works on iOS and MacOS. Microsoft is making some killer hardware and they are getting better at their craft but let’s face it, Windows still sucks hard. No thanks.

I think this post captures my feelings pretty well :: http://mjtsai.com/blog/2016/10/27/new-macbook-pros-and-the-state-of-the-mac/

Adding this link for another opinion on the matter :: http://macdaddy.io/apples-new-macbook-pros/