Zero Degree, No MBA, no PhD, Got JOB

On a trip with some colleagues from Kuala Terengganu to KL, I was asked, "Why are you not one of those living in posh Damansara Heights?". Here's why.

This 17 yr old, Ashley Qualls, is the CEO of whateverlife.com, a website she started when she was just 14 — with USD8 borrowed from her mother. Now, just three years later, the website grosses more than $1 million a year.

Her savvy cultivation of her peer group as a target market, Whateverlife began pulling in more teenage girls than a Justin Timberlake concert - about a million a day. With a big audience, the site attracted advertisers.

It all started just as the online social networking craze began. When she saw her friends personalizing their MySpace pages, she began creating and giving away MySpace background designs through Whateverlife. The designs are cheery, colorful and whimsical, with lots of hearts, her favorites.

No degrees, no MBAs, no PhDs required to make it this good. The guys living in posh Damansara Heights have college degrees? The ones I know, they don't even have secondary education or they were Grade C students.

Grade A students will always end up working for Grade C students. That's my convenient answer, but not as convenient as "Itu takdir".

See 2007 Best Shots

http://minhaselecao.blogspot.com/2008/02/best-press-photos-from-2007-95-photos.html

Gee!???

If it does exist, what's the explanation for the result of the studies that say 70% of women do not orgasm during sexual intercourse? Does this also imply that 70% of men get fooled? In the movie, When Harry Met Sally, you'd understand how so easy it is for men to get fooled. If based on Durex's annual study of men's sexuality, Malaysian men deserve to be fooled. Durex says they are selfish lovers.


Harry Burns: Had my dream again where I'm making love, and the Olympic judges are watching. I'd nailed the compulsories, so this is it, the finals. I got a 9.8 from the Canadians, a perfect 10 from the Americans, and my mother, disguised as an East German judge, gave me a 5.6. Must have been the dismount.

Believables

My legendary daughter, http://nicki-ez.livejournal.com/, presented me an iPod upon her return from Japan. The iPod has an urban legend attached to it. As we know, the best urban legends are dramatic, unbelievable and told with such frequency that recipients assume they have to be true. There are the historic "URGENT AND CONFIDENTIAL" lucrative business proposals from deposed Nigerian leaders,the envied Khairy Jamaluddin, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khairy_Jamaluddin , said to amass RM62 billion worth of government projects, the existence of Big Foot in the jungles of Johore that even attracted foreign scientists, even the myriad of tea brands all claiming to boost the male power and the all convincing existence of G-spot that bring hope to unfulfilled women.

I'm yet to believe claims that mobile phones emit some form of harmful radiation. But here's one that I believed: Last year I received an RSS feed titled, "iPods Attract Lightning", describing cases of men wearing iPods being struck by lightning. Their injuries - ruptured eardrums, hearing loss and burns - matched the pathway of the headphone cord. The news was carried by many online media. Much later, read that the doctors did not say that the iPod acted as a lightning rod, though. But as we know it, eardrum perforation is the norm in lightning-related injury, and I believe is not a sign of any special effect due to an iPod.

Now, that mother-of-all urban legends of the century: The Y2K Bug Will Destroy Life As We Know It. The media frenzy leading up to 12:01 a.m. on Jan. 1, 2000, was more intense than the public interest in a combined Paris Hilton DWI, Britney Spears meltdown and all the news stunts. What was supposed to have been the end of the computer-networked civilization (which would surely have led to an all-out assault on IT departments everywhere - "Why, oh why couldn't you just have used FOUR digits in the year field?!") turned into one of the biggest non-events in history. Did we really buy into all of that hype? Yup, and I did.

Lately, a close friend told me of rumours circulating about me - that I'm separated and my family is broken. Amazing how urban legends are built up. And how much truths, half-truths and outright untruths get published in print media. You think only facts get published in print media? How about the horoscopes? With the current Opposition bashing frenzy by the media leading up to the next General Election, everything is only just believable.

Wearing XP Still Orgasmic

This year of the Rat, the only reason I would upgrade to Windows Vista is because my new PC would be pre-install with the pig. While Vista has cool looks, it does not have the substance and essence of Megan (pic). With virtualization, I can choose to run virtual instances of XP well past the "official" XP availability date. I'll strip off Vista, install a hypervisor, drop an XP instance on top, and go on my merry way. Anything on my lap top would be a Megan or something even more desirable. Why would any one log in and out to anything of less orgasmic nature?

This is the reason, I believe, that Microsoft's head of Windows marketing, Michael Sievert, has "left the company," corporate-speak for "been dumped." At least they didn't add the killer clause, "to pursue other interests," which is corporate-speak for "dumped with enthusiasm." Without rehashing the myriad criticisms of Vista, Microsoft's main problem is that there is a perfectly acceptable alternative already in use with most potential customers: XP. And Vista does not provide sufficient improvement to justify the license cost and work required to migrate. Michael Sievert didn't shout loud enough to get people to buy Vista?

Pretty good lessons here to learn about product decision and marketing. Does marketing need to tweak the message or shout louder? Or is it a case of, "It's The Product, Stupid!".

Don't Change the Conversation

Here's something cool to talk about - How so easy it is to make a difference.

Yes, as easy as sending an instant message. Every time you start a conversation using i’m, a portion of advertising revenue is shared with some of the world's most effective social cause organizations. Each of the partners will get a minimum of $100,000. As for the maximum? The sky's the limit. Go to http://im.live.com/Messenger/IM/Home/.