Twitter Gateway

As far as I remembered, when twitter first came to the scene, one of the main attraction to this micro-blogging or the one-liner blogging site, was the ability to blog (or tweet) from your mobile phone via SMS.  It was initially envisaged as an SMS based social networking tool.

Picture taken from wikipedia.org.

These days, most people use either the web based interface or some other tools that integrate with twitter via the twitter API.  SMSing to twitter is costly and hence there are less people using it.  However, it is also because the lack of gateways that are available.  From personal premium SMS experience, it is possible to provide such a service and potentially profit from it.

In Malaysia/Singapore, you will need to work with the Telco companies to get a short-code for the premium SMS.  You probably need to negotiate hard to get it at the right price as in this region, the Telcos take a large percentage unlike in Korea and other regions.  All you need then is simple web services programming that can accept web services calls from the Telco’s SMS gateway and then you need to be able to integrate to the user’s twitter.  Of course, for easy registration and usage, you can provide a sleek webpage for the users.

Why it may work?  If the charges are low enough, a few tweets a day would only cost the user maybe SGD1 or RM1 per day.  That isn’t really much compared to the total phone bills.  It provides the users with a simple way to tweet.

The main drawback is receiving tweets, you probably need to provide filters for the users at the webpage to filter their followers’ tweets.  They may only be interested in actively following a few or none at all.  All SMS’ to the users can also be charged, possibly less than for them to tweet.

Over to you to explore … but meanwhile, I find this page quite funny.

Online site for professionally bound reports

There seem to be a sudden increase in online photobook printing for the many new found photography hobbyist.  Prices ranges depending on the quality of the print, from very affordable (and crappy quality) to very professionally done albums.  This convenience have attracted many people to use these services (including yours truly) as they are convenient and different.  I have even ordered a calendar of the kids portraits as gifts for family members.

Some examples of these sites are canonfoto, photobook and pixart.

Why only limit market (and limit) this service for photos?  Although we are in the so called “paperless” era, there seem to be an increase in printing on paper.  This is evident in that the increase in the number of laser printers (and inkjet printers) being sold for households and businesses.  Furthermore, just walk into any hypermarkets and witness the number of printing paper being stacked up for sale!  So, why not provide this service for the masses?  Target market would be;

Businesses:  Many businesses participate in tenders and these usually require large printed documents that have to be submitted.  Businesses tend to get a comb binder themselves and submit their tenders in that format.  Wouldn’t they want to differentiate themselves from others with better binding and better quality printing?

Funding Applications:  Very much similar to the one above, but these are normally submitted to various parties for review.  If these are professionally bound, it would probably increase the chances for success.  However, it can be in-directly marketed via the funding agencies (as a requirement).

Academic Reports:  Assuming that there are probably some bright students reading this and are probably thinking of being an entreprenuer, just think about how shabby most student reports are.  Whether for assignments or for their thesis.  We don’t need to spend a tremendous amount of money for binding them, but maybe something cheaper but still looks professional.

You can actually buy printers that does these saddle stitch for you.  Would be a service that you can provide using the photobook models (where you provide templates) and with the convenience of doing it online.  Good luck!

Advertisements on T-Shirt and Memorabilia

In the online world where the expectations of free products and/or services are common, most business models are centered around advertisement.  Google’s main revenue comes from advertisement and there are many other online advertisement companies around.  The FREE world is here and probably here to stay for sometime, even with all the naysayers that this is not a long term solution.

We have the “free” OS in Linux, the “free” greeting cards by Hallmarks, the “free” Office Productivity in OpenOffice.org, the “free” this and that.  Seldom do we see “free” physical products but that seems to be sprouting up occasionally.

In Japan, they have free photocopying services where they will sponsor the paper and the copying.  The catch is that the opposite side of the paper will be full of advertisements, much like the advertisements on the back of your supermarket receipts.

Currently, we will encounter pirated merchandises such as T-Shirts or even Hard Rock Cafe badges from various parts of the world.  These seems to be very popular among tourist.

The business idea is simple.  Why not start an advertisement business that prints the advertisement onto items such as T-Shirts.  This can be setup quite cheaply initially to gauge the market acceptance and also to minimize investment initially.  All you need is an online presence where they can submit their logo and requirement.  You can then start by printing them on those iron-on labels for T-Shirts and start producing them.

The issue here is that they probably won’t see the marketing returns by sponsoring the whole T-Shirt, but you just need to gauge fees that you can charge, don’t worry about the margins.  After that, work with the T-Shirt retailers and sell them at cost.  Your profit will be from the advertisers and not from the T-Shirt customers, who will basically just cover your T-Shirt cost.

In short, instead of selling pirated T-Shirts, these T-Shirt retailers can sell genuine product without paying royalties whilst the brands can advertise cheaply.  Of course, the known brands would be particular with the type of materials and would probably look at their merchandise as a revenue channel.  However, for others, it maybe a good brand visibility channel, think of consumer brands like Persil.

3rd Party DSLR Products

Lately, I have been spending sometime with my Sony Alpha 200 Digital SLR (DLSR) camera.  This is my first DSLR and hence the minimal investment into something that I am unsure. I have also been spending time looking for 3rd party accessories, such as filters and flash.  The main purpose is to learn about the different types of techniques that can be done with a DSLR (see my other blog at http://www.iantan.net/) without incurring too much damage to my pocket.

I have bought stuff online and with further exploration, I think there is a business that one can do part-time.  The thought is as such, from my observation, most Malaysians would prefer to transact COD or through a face to face meetup, quite evident from lowyat.net (LYN) trades.  As such, many would shy away from purchasing from places such as alibaba.com and ebay.com.  This maybe because some of them do not have credit cards or a paypal.

So here a simple and old idea.  Buy from ebay for yourself, go to Teh Tarik sessions and show what it can do, then return to the forum and advertise.  For each product, you may be able to turn over a 20% margin.

Stores such as sainidigital do provide reasonably priced items and shipping and I am sure with small volume (3-10 qty) you can firstly save on shipping and secondly maybe negotiate the price.

I may try this for side pocket money too …

Business Model from the Dot Com World

Lessons Learnt from the Dot Com Era for Real Physical Business

This entry is inspired by enterprising MMU students (or rather graduated students) and I feel strongly that I should at least give them a mention wherever I can to "advertise" their business.

One of the most successful dot com business model is online advertising where companies such as Yahoo!, Google and a magnitude of others actually manage to create a successful web business. The brick and mortar business can also learn from this business model. In Japan, entrepreneurs are providing free photocopying where they generate revenue from selling advertising space on one side of the paper whilst photocopying on the other.

Locally, in Malaysia, keep a look out for Enveluv.Com. Their domain should give you a clue and they should be ready for business in the next few months. I for one wish them success and believe strongly in their business model.

Web 2.0

Web 2.0 in a Vertical Market

This has been at the back of my mind for sometime but I haven't found the time to write it down. There are lots of talk about Web 2.0 and surprisingly not many know what it is. Ok, I don't really either but from what I gather, it has to do with the web is now no longer a one-way traffic for information flow and in it's new re-incarnation, it is now a community based publishing or simply put (in my view), the content involves more than just one party. Examples of these are YouTube, Wikipedia, and MySpace (although I have no idea what is MySpace!).

Now, it makes me wonder. So far, the success are all 'horizontal' in nature. What about a community based information publishing in a much narrower vertical market space? One can argue that it is already part of an existing or new Web 2.0 site. However, information overload is an issue and with this in mind, I believe there will be a lot more Web 2.0 sites that are more specific in nature. It would be a smaller audience but a more targetted one, hence if the revenue model is based on advertisement, the charges can be higher due to targetted audience.

PS3 Supercomputer Project?

PS3 Cluster

Well, with it's 1 PPE and 8 SPE (that's 1 main processing core with 8 pipelines vector co-core processors), it has a theoretical performance of more than hundred GFLOPS (that's billions of floating point operations per second to the slightly technical minded people). The Top500 fastest computers starts with a few TFLOPS, so clustering a few of these low cost mini monsters should theoretically be able get yourself list on the list, albeit temporarily. I am sure there are people in the scientific community running FORTRAN or C code, using simulation such as Monte Carlo, would be interested in a low cost alternative. The PS3 comes with many networking ports, so that's a good start for clustering, it can run Fedora Core 5 on it (check out the IBM website on this) which means that there should not be a problem with programming.

Anyone out there who wants to jointly develop this, being a poor academician, I can't even afford a PS3, so you guessed it. Have ideas, no money ... sigh ...

PS3 for classrooms

In a multimedia classroom, the use of PS3 to interact with the instructor through the build-in Wi-Fi

In the classrooms of the future, the use of multimedia equipment for teaching will be the norm. Currently, the state of the art classrooms equip the students with a proprietary device that can interact with questions and exercises posted through the projector by the instructor. The classrooms are equipped with Wi-Fi access where the students have a unique identifier and can answer questions online. In addition, the marks can be tallied in real-time.

The idea is to develop a similar software that runs on the Sony PS3 or any gaming or personal digital assistant that will also one day be as common as us wearing our shoes

Transportation Management

An anti-fuel hike system

This has been well researched and also there are several solutions out there. However, most are targetted at large distribution organizations. Small and medium enterprises on the other hand are left out. The system can be a simple one as the number of transports will be small and area of coverage will usually also be small. However, it would be bebeficial as the fuel/transportation cost has a major effect on the cost of goods.

Hosted TiVO Service

Legal or Pirated VCD/DVD?

This is a gray area in terms of legality. Generally, it is assumed that there are pirated copies of VCD/DVDs for shows that are shown on free-to-air television. However, it is also "legal" for us to record these shows for our own consumption. If there is a service to assist us in recording shows, format and package them, for our own consumption, then it would not be illegal (or would it?). This can easily be an online service.

A user logs on to the online service store, states that he/she would like to record the next season of "Winter Sonata" which will be aired on "free-to-air" television as he/she is not able to make it back in time from work. The user pays for the service online. The store will then record, put the episodes in series, package it into a VCD/DVD and send it out only when the last ordered episode is shown. The store will charge for the service, the media and the delivery. Of course, the pruchaser can also request for past series that he/she has missed ... and that normally encompasses everything other than the latest movies.

Baby Monitor

A battery powered room audio monitor

One of the problems with commonly available baby monitors is that the transmitter end of the baby monitor system is usually either battery powered or uses the mains. As most parents would know, it is sometimes difficult to ensure that the battery is in good condition and also if it uses the mains, then there would be a need for a power point. Having minimal electrical equipment in a baby's room is recommended. The idea is basically to redevelop a battery powered baby monitor (or room audio monitor) that can last for years whilst being able to operate wirelessly. Using the ZigBee (802.15.4) low powered short range wireless capability, this may be a good option.

What is a baby monitor?

IEEE 802.15.4

3G Killer App?

HTTP in phone speak?

One of the hindrance to the adoption of 3G (or even 3.5G) mobile phones and devices is that the device form factor is generally too small for users to benefit from it's high-speed data transmission capabilities. The screen form factor has reached a reasonable size but the hassle of keying in the URL is a major drawback. With phones now being more powerful than PCs of around 5 years old AND equipped with high resolution cameras, we should be able to develop an intelligent OCR software that utilizes the camera and will be able to surf a website simply taking a snapshot of a word, e.g. "ibm", and it would be intelligent enough to point you to www.ibm.com or www.ibm.com.my or similarly. Users can also provide a hand written URL for the phone/device to know where to surf to.