Hey readers (as if I have one :-)! My last blog post is more than two years ago. I really have forgotten about this blog already until Blogger emailed to remind me about it.
So, what's new?
I've been busy with work as usual and day to day "extracurricular" activities. There's so much had happened: my knowledge and career experience enhanced (but my other skills deteriorated as a trade-off). And the most recent significant happening is that I have a new employer. I just started to work for a particular IT company which I will not name here. My job is slightly different from what I am used to either as a consultant or a freelance contractor, because now, I'm hired to maintain an in-house product. Gone are my consultant days when I had to deal with different and unrelated projects.
Starting today, I'll be posting new stuffs in this blog but keep in mind that any statement posted in here is solely of my own and does not represent or resemble the views of my company. I'm not going to be serious and academic here. I'll try to be as casual and as "me" as possible.
I feel like blogging again even if nobody reads my post other than myself. I think Twitter has failed to kill blogging contrary to what other analysts predict; just 4 years ago, they thought blogging was going the way of MySpace--down to recycle bin. Yes, Twitter is something, but, blogging is another thing; microblogging can't just bury down blogging for the same reason as index cards and sticky notes have failed to replace bond papers.
One other conflicting ideas among analysts and forecasters today is whether or not social networking sites like Facebook can generate revenue from user information. Unlike Facebook, Google has steady stream of revenue from its search and advertising business out of publicly available information that the Web can offer. But can a social networking site sustain its hotness like Google does? Can Facebook sell information that its users mark as private? No. Facebook can analyze a user's private information and exclusively sell him analytics and convenience, but it can't sell or disclose his private data to others. And what if users finally become tired of worrying about their privacy and resort to the next cool past time? So, can Facebook eclipse the information giant that is Google? No. Even Microsoft armed with Bing! has tried hard and failed and still trying hard and still failing. Facebook, in order to keep investor optimistic of its stock value, should think of an effective business plan on how to monetize our statuses and pics.
And speaking of Facebook, I have one: https://www.facebook.com/ryandavs
and Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/ryandavs
Around the year 2006, I was designing and planning a social networking site geared towards scientists, technologists, mathematicians, and other professions that are naturally devoid of social life (just kidding). I'm not talking about a social networking site to share pics, corny sayings and jokes, or even to shout out their misery. What I mean is a networking site that's collaborative in nature where they can share and review each others inventions, discuss about discoveries, review each others works, and to feed their ego and bragging instincts. The target audience are people in academics, senior professionals who want to hone junior minds, investors, various potential stake holders (e.g, environmentalists, anti-HIV/AIDS-related champions, etc.). This is not a site for you to just pick up other's ideas and inventions and hope to be rich out of it. Its principal purpose is to mimic the early community of open source/free software movements and to promote the culture of openness. Even before the Internet became a rock-star popular among consumers nowadays, those bearded bright folks had already enjoyed the liberty and benefits of collaboration that resulted to great operating systems, languages and utility programs that the software industry now freely enjoys.
By the way, I loathe patents on software and mathematical algorithms and formula. I'm relieved that the Philippines does not allow patents on software and I hope that it stays like this (I heard from the FOSS-folks that lobbying in the congress has already started to legalize software patents).
OK, going back to the social networking site that I wanted to create for the eccentric and virgin-at-their-30s geeks, there are reasons I did not pursue this. Having no funding is number one and the lack of solid business and marketing plan is the 2nd. But the other reason I didn't pursue it was because I had another software idea in mind.
Back in year 2007, I envisioned a software product that will revolutionize software development process. It will try to solve the software development troubles that have been bugging the industry since the 70s that even Atlassian and IBM failed to realize. I wanted to end the now became the norm which is the wasting of millions of dollars on failed software projects. Well, enough talking boastful bull-shit. The reality is that I'm just a loser, a failure, and just somebody who happened to grab a Scrum and Agile books and started dreaming nonsense. But this product that I've been longing to create is more marketable than that social site for the nerds. But without the eager will and the right money from investors, this idea is destined for the garbage bag (it's not even recyclable and even the rats and cockroaches can't benefit from it). Well, it's OK because I still had another idea.
A magnificent e-book reading software product that until now is still at the top of my list. Even before Amazon invented Kindle, and even before Apple invented its own ebook reader, I already had the still unchallenged idea of an ebook reader. So many ebook readers that are just sprouting today like mushrooms can't even deliver the 10% of the salable feature set that I imagined for my ebook reader. My ebook reader was born to create millions (millions of dollars, not millions of irked users). It was designed to create a market of its own. But where is it now? Well, to tell you the truth, until now, it just remains to be a prisoner of my thoughts and never will materialize. I'm still an ordinary employee who depends on the mercy of my boss. My dream of becoming a CEO by 27 and a millionaire by 30, has been realized in the person of a Steve-Jobs-wannabe, Mark Zuberckerg. I'm not bitter. I'm just jealous.
I'm so dying of frustrations. How will you feel if you had an idea, like that Siri on your iPhone, and you knew that it is feasible and you knew it would click like any touched-by-Oprah products. Yes, way back in 2004, I knew that it was possible to give the world a digital personal assistance, with personality, that can tell jokes to cheer you up and empathize with you when you're getting a divorce. But unlike Siri, my thought on this virtual assistant (or if you prefer, virtual girls) is to put it in the cars. So you have a virtual someone ready to talk to you and to entertain you while you're driving, and answer your questions, or give you advice, or just inform you whether it's not safe to go over 100km/h in traveling speed. People will pay for this software, and will pay again for the AI, and will pay again for upgrades, and will pay again for the personality (i.e., a voice of a girl in puberty will surely attract pedophiles). But who cares now? People will think now that's it's just a copy-cat of Siri, which by the way is downright inferior in my opinion).
Frustrations don't end there for I still have another product idea that will put Apple and Samsung to their knees. I won't mention it here, of course. It's not in the market yet, meaning, no one else has thought about this yet.... so far.
Now, I'm sleepy. I don't know what I'm writing here and why. Maybe I just miss writing. But to sum it up, the bottom line is what? That blogging is fun? Or that boasting and talking shits doesn't lead to wealth? It's up to you to draw conclusion.
(This is how I usually post. Random thoughts from a discomposed mind.)
