Lightweight Models & Cost-Effective Scalability

As mentioned in the previous post – Leveraging the Long Tail, web-based companies are much cheaper and easier to set up. Again, the benefits are:

-          Reduced time for marketing the services/products

-          More and faster Return on Investment (ROI) as implementation time is shorter and cost is lower

-          Risks of failure is much lower

-          It has great adaptability

How the companies generate revenue? There are a few options available:

-          Allowing other companies to advertise on their websites (which is very common)

-          Charge customers on some functions like newsletter

-          Extracting some commissions from partners when transaction occurs

-          Provide premium services such as unlimited access to data, and much more.

As for companies in the gaming industry, they have another ways to generate revenue besides these! This week, I would like to introduce Garena ^[1], online game software development and online game operation company. Garena’s mission is to transform the internet into a massive virtual cybercafé. And they are working their way towards it.

Garena supports the latest and popular games such as DotA (Defence of the Ancient), L4D (Left 4 Dead 1 & 2), Call of Duty, Counter-Strike and many more.

End of introducing the application. Let’s talk about how Garena earn. There is a universal currency in Garena, named Shells ^[2]. Shells are needed to purchase in-game items. For example, in BlackShot (a First-Person Shooter game which I am currently addicted to) I will need Shells to purchase premium weapons which are more powerful than the regular items.

As shown in the above image, even though the statistics of the Black AWP is only slightly better, but the appearance which is cool black would definitely attract a lot of Snipers (players who loves to use Sniper Rifles) to purchase it.

Currently Garena has more than 25 million of registered users ^[3] from more than 200 countries (Registration is free). Given this amount of users, and if half of them purchased Garena Shells once, which costs SGD15 for 50 Garena Shells, how much would Garena earn?

12.5 million of users * SGD $15 = SGD $187,500,000.

What a huge sum! And there is no way that only 12.5 million of transactions have been made. It’s got to be more than that (my elder brother has contributed many times – how I hope he contributed the sum to me).

From this, we could see that even the amount is very small; it would snowball into a huge sum. Maybe I should start jumping into business!

References:

^[1] – Garena Online. (2010). Company Profile. Retrieved on 2010, May 9, from http://www.en.garena.com/main/about-garena

^[2] – Garena Online. (2010). Shells. Retrieved on 2010, May 9, from http://www.en.garena.com/main/shells

^[3] – Garena Online. (2010). Company Profile. Retrieved on 2010, May 9, from http://www.en.garena.com/main/about-garena#userbase

Leveraging the Long Tail

Let me ask you. If you are given a chance to be your own boss, what will you sell? Things that you know are very popular currently, meaning that what you sell is just for the sake of earning, or you will sell things that are of your interest?

With the help of Internet, we can eliminate some of the worries:

-          Capital needed to renovate the store

-          Capital needed to purchase furniture and decorate your store

-          Space to rent

-          Hiring someone to tend the store for you or;

-          Having to open and close the store everyday

Except for some rare occasions whereby the server is down, else your store will be open 24/7 and even on Public Holidays!

Back to this week’s topic: Leveraging the Long Tail. There is a lot of websites that we can find in the Internet, offering different services and products. Some are common and popular products, whereas most are for hobbies, interests and collections, which cover a wider range in the market. These markets belong to the long tail. These markets’ given term is niche.

Why is this so? It is because every individual has their own personal preferences and interests. But once the products successfully started a trend which will make an impact to everyone, it would be very common and will soon be part of the Fat Head in the Long Tail model.

I would like to introduce Blood Romance ^[1]. Blood Romance is an online store which sells Punk, Lolita, Gothic and Fantasy style of clothes and accessories.

Although I am not a fan of Punk, Lolita, Gothic or Fantasy, but I still find some of the dresses very pretty and creative. It would be cool to have one of the accessories too.

Currently this style of dressing is very popular in Japan (even babies!) but not as popular in other countries. But slowly, more and more people are beginning to accept this style and I believe that one day, this trend will squeeze into one of the markets in the Fat Head of the Long Tail Model.

References:

^[1] – Blood Romance. (n.d). Blood Romance. Retrieved on 2010, April 30 from http://www.bloodromance.com/

Third Door Media, Inc. (2008, October 10). A Practical Guide To Leveraging The Long Tail For SEM. Retrieved on 2010, April 30 from http://searchengineland.com/a-practial-guide-to-leveraging-the-long-tail-for-sem-14998

Wikipedia. (n.d.). The Long Tail. Retrieved on 2010, April 30 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Long_Tail

Perpetual Beta

There are so many Web 2.0 applications currently available on the Internet, even for games. Why would companies launch Beta version of their application instead of launching the finalized version? But first, let me explain what is Beta.

Beta version is the name for second stage of software testing ^[1]. As the name suggests, the first round of testing is named as Alpha. In Alpha phase, software is being tested by software testers that are hired by the company to perform first round of testing. After which Beta version will be released as a trial version for users to try.

Now, let us look at some of the reasons why companies to go for Beta Version:

During this stage, companies will collect comments and feedbacks from the users and enhance on the system. This will:

• Save cost in hiring software testers
• Build a foundation of potential users (Knowing who uses your system)
• Creating bond with users by involving them
• Eliminate the time used on testing the system

Sounds good doesn’t it? Above are all the good sides of releasing your system as Beta version. How about the bad ones? I will provide an example to highlight the bad points.

QuakeLive (Beta) ^[2] is a free web based First-Person Shooter game. It offers 50 different types of arenas and 5 game modes. Players are allowed to choose to play with other players who are at the same skill level. In addition, QuakeLive (Beta) also offers the option for players to choose to play with Artificial Intelligence (AI) offline.

Sounds interesting. Especially to a First-Person Shooter fan like me. But I didn’t get to play it. When the browser loads the game, it actually took up a lot of my CPU resources and lagged my computer. I quickly closed the browser and went to check out the forums ^[3]. There are actually a lot of reports on computers crashed after playing the game for awhile.

Players have been repeatedly reporting bugs such as players not receiving many types of awards when they have accomplished some objectives, graphics issue, in-game chat not working, game not functioning properly and many more. Below is an example of graphical issue:

With all the problems occurring all the time, users bound to get more and more frustrated over time and may even give up on playing the game anymore. This happens to me as I did not even bother to try playing after it lagged my computer.

Please don’t be mistaken, I am not trying to imply that QuakeLive (Beta) is a bad example of a Beta version application. Just that there are some room for improvement. Which is why they released as Beta version isn’t it?

References:

^[1] – Conjecture Corporation. (2010, April 23). What is a Beta Version? Retrieved on April 23, 2010, from http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-beta-version.htm

^[2] – ZeniMax Media. (2010). QUAKE LIVE. Retrieved on April 23, 2010, from http://www.quakelive.com/#home

^[3] – ZeniMax Media. (2010). Bug Report Forum – QUAKE LIVE Forums. Retrieved on April 23, 2010, from http://www.quakelive.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=27

Software above the Level of a Single Device

Since computers were being invented, time flies and everything starts to evolve rapidly. From the very first invention – Z1 Computer (1936) ^[1] till now, that I don’t even remember which is the latest computer invention. See below for more details:

Computer History Year/Enter	Computer History Inventors/Inventions	Description of Event
1936	Konrad Zuse – Z1 Computer	First freely programmable computer.
1942	John Atanasoff & Clifford Berry ABC Computer	Who was first in the computing biz is not always as easy as ABC.
1944	Howard Aiken & Grace Hopper Harvard Mark I Computer	The Harvard Mark 1 computer.
1946	John Presper Eckert & John W. Mauchly ENIAC 1 Computer	20,000 vacuum tubes later…
1948	Frederic Williams & Tom Kilburn Manchester Baby Computer & The Williams Tube	Baby and the Williams Tube turn on the memories.
1947/48	John Bardeen, Walter Brattain & Wiliam Shockley The Transistor	No, a transistor is not a computer, but this invention greatly affected the history of computers.
1951	John Presper Eckert & John W. Mauchly UNIVAC Computer	First commercial computer & able to pick presidential winners.
1953	International Business Machines IBM 701 EDPM Computer	IBM enters into ‘The History of Computers‘.
1954	John Backus & IBM FORTRAN Computer Programming Language	The first successful high level programming language.
1955 (in use 1959)	Stanford Research Institute, Bank of America, and General Electric ERMA and MICR	The first bank industry computer – also MICR (magnetic ink character recognition) for reading checks.
1958	Jack Kilby & Robert Noyce The Integrated Circuit	Otherwise known as ‘The Chip’
1962	Steve Russell & MIT Spacewar Computer Game	The first computer game invented.
1964	Douglas Engelbart Computer Mouse & Windows	Nicknamed the mouse because the tail came out the end.
1969	ARPAnet	The original Internet.
1970	Intel 1103 Computer Memory	The world’s first available dynamic RAM chip.
1971	Faggin, Hoff & Mazor Intel 4004 Computer Microprocessor	The first microprocessor.
1971	Alan Shugart &IBM The “Floppy” Disk	Nicknamed the “Floppy” for its flexibility.
1973	Robert Metcalfe & Xerox The Ethernet Computer Networking	Networking.
1974/75	Scelbi & Mark-8 Altair & IBM 5100 Computers	The first consumer computers.
1976/77	Apple I, II & TRS-80 & Commodore Pet Computers	More first consumer computers.
1978	Dan Bricklin & Bob Frankston VisiCalc Spreadsheet Software	Any product that pays for itself in two weeks is a surefire winner.
1979	Seymour Rubenstein & Rob Barnaby WordStar Software	Word Processors.
1981	IBM The IBM PC – Home Computer	From an “Acorn” grows a personal computer revolution
1981	Microsoft MS-DOS Computer Operating System	From “Quick And Dirty” comes the operating system of the century.
1983	Apple Lisa Computer	The first home computer with a GUI, graphical user interface.
1984	Apple Macintosh Computer	The more affordable home computer with a GUI.
1985	Microsoft Windows	Microsoft begins the friendly war with Apple.

After computers were invented, internet was being introduced in 1969 by ARPA ^[2]. Soon after, games and mobile devices were being invented and everything can be connected to the internet, and not only computers.

Almost everyone should have heard of the game console – Wii. Wii is not only a gaming console and it offers Internet which they (Nintendo) called it “Wii + Internet“. Wii + Internet ^[3] is a place where the Wii users can discover and access to all the exciting contents when users connect their Wii to the internet. Users are able to access the Forecast and News Channels that are pre-installed. Demos and trailers are also available in the Nintendo Channel and lots more of software can be downloaded through Wii Shop Channel.

In additional, there are more than 100 Classic Games such as Mario Brothers, Donkey Kong and so on, are available for download. In order to download, we will need Wii points ^[4].

Wii points can be purchased through Wii Shop Channel using credit cards or Wii Points Card through retail outlets. WiiWare such as SNES, Nintendo 64, NES, NEO GEO and so on is also available.

Also, as long as your Wii is connected to a Wi-Fi network, you are ready to play with all other players around the globe. This enables us to play with friends, near and far!

With all these technologies evolving rapidly, where will the future technologies head? Any ideas?

References:

^[1] – About.com. (2010). The History of Computers. Retrieved on April 13, 2010, from http://inventors.about.com/library/blcoindex.htm

^[2] – Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. (n.d.). History. Retrieved on April 13, 2010, from http://www.darpa.mil/history.html

^[3] – Nintendo. (2010). Wii + Internet. Retrieved on April 13, 2010, from http://www.nintendo.com/wii/internet

^[4] – Wii Nation. (2010). Wii Points: You can’t earn them. Retrieved on April 13, 2010, from http://www.wiination.com/wii-points-you-cant-earn-them/

O’Reilly. T. (2007, November 28) Software Above the Level of a Single Device. Retrieved on April 13, 2010, from http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/11/software-above-the-level-of-a.html

Nintendo. (2010). Wii.com. Retrieved on April 13, 2010, from http://wii.com/

Rich User Experiences

From our experiences in surfing the web, we can notice that the websites nowadays are more fanciful and attractive, such as drop down menus, aligned content, flash and well designed theme. These are part of Web Designing.

In web designing, we should know who our target audience is. For example, kids would be more likely to be attracted to websites designed with cheerful colors and elderly would prefer simple and neat websites ^[1].

In order to achieve the correct “look and feel” for your website, we have to:

-          identify the target audience

-          understand what the “personality” of your website is

-          decide on what color scheme to use

-          and reinforce the style consistently throughout the website

In this link you will be able to see the bad examples of badly done websites, which users will avoid.

Good HTML practices are also crucial to enhance users’ experiences. Below are the 4 Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) principles ^[2] to improve the website’s accessibility:

1. Perceivable
> Choose good color schemes to contrast the contents in the website.

2. Operable
> Assist users to navigate and look for the content such as including a search function if your website is huge

3. Understandable
> Make text readable and understandable

4. Robust
> Maximizing the compatibility with the current and future technologies

One of the good examples is Gamespot.com ^[3]. Gamespot.com is a website specialized on game news, reviews and entertainment. Its target audience, needless to say, are people who are interested in games.

Gamespot uses dark Grey background to contrast white and yellow fonts. This color scheme has a “cool” feeling. Not “kiddy” and not too serious. Throughout the website, the alignments and style were consistent. The only difference is that different header colors represents different menu. For example, Blue represents PC games, and Red for iPhone.

They offer a search engine within their website as they cover a wide range of games. In addition, users will be able to participate in rating, reviewing and commenting the games once registered. Users could also personalize their profile and change their profile pictures after they have gained enough levels by contributing. This encourages users to participate more in the discussions.

Flash were created and put up in the home page to advertise the new games. The game changes after 6 to 10 seconds to allow users to have sufficient time to read.

If you are a gamer like me, click here to go to Gamespot now!

References:

^[1] – Queensland University of Technology. (2009). INB271/INN271 “The Web” – Web Design. Retrieved March 25, 2010

^[2] – W3C. (2008, December). Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). Retrieved March 25, 2010, from http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/wcag.php

^[3] – CBS Interactive Inc. (n.d.). GameSpot is your go-to source for video game news, reviews and entertainment. Retrieved March 25, 2010, from www.gamespot.com.au

O’Reilly Media, Inc. (2005, September 30). What is Web 2.0. Retrieved March 25, 2010, from http://oreilly.com/pub/a/web2/archive/what-is-web-20.html?page=5

Flanders Enterprises. (n.d.). Web Pages That Suck. Retrieved March 25, 2010, from www.webpagesthatsuck.com

Innovation in Assembly

Websites are evolving from static web pages with only words and images, to dynamic web pages with flash, JavaScript and so on, to the web platforms in these days. Since the purpose of most people turning on their computer is just to use the Internet, more and more websites are expanding their functionality by adding web-based developer tools, ranging from creating simple mobile applications ^[1] to Enterprise applications for business ^[2].

One of another example is Iceberg. Iceberg is also a web-based application which focuses on Enterprise applications such as Customer Relation Management (CRM) or Project Management (PM) ^[3] and even Vacation Management ^[2]. Iceberg is easy to learn and simple to use. Users will only need to perform some drag and drop, create the data needed and the key point here is – no codes are needed ^[4]. On top of that, there are also detail documentations and step by step guides available.

Iceberg is working towards their vision for Web 3.0 – everyone is a programmer. Although it may sounds nice but it leads to some concerns. If an application is really that dummy-proof and anyone without any programming knowledge, will there still be enough jobs for the IT professionals? I personally would prefer to leave the jobs to the professionals. More pros and cons of APIs are available here.

But this could be something for us to think about. Please post your comments here!

References:

^[1] – ReadWriteWeb. (2008, July 11). Cascada Mobile: Now Any One Can Build a Mobile App. Retrieved March 17, 2010, from http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/cascada_mobile_now_anyone_can_build_mobile_apps.php

^[2] – Iceberg. (n.d.). Iceberg Video Tutorials. Retrieved March 17, 2010, from http://www.geticeberg.com/movies/

^[3] – ReadWriteWeb. (2008, June 5). Iceberg launches, Now Everyone Can Program. Retrieved March 17, 2010, from http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/with_iceberg_everyone_can_program.php

^[4] – Iceberg. (n.d.). Iceberg Features. Retrieved March 17, 2010, from http://www.geticeberg.com/features/

ReadWriteWeb. (2008, March 3). APIs and Developer Platforms: A Discussion on the Pros and Cons. Retrieved March 17, 2010, from http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/apis_platforms_pros_and_cons.php

O’Reilly Media, Inc. (2005, September 30). What is Web 2.0. Retrieved March 17, 2010, from http://oreilly.com/pub/a/web2/archive/what-is-web-20.html?page=4

Data, is the Next “Intel Inside”

Let’s talk about what people do nowadays in the Internet. Researching, reading news, searching for books or CDs to purchase, looking for updates or just simply surfing the net. According to the statistic report ^[1] for Search Engines, Google ranked the top, followed by Yahoo, Bing.com, and Ask.com.

In order to increase the competitiveness against Google, Microsoft decided to replace its Live Search Products (such as Live Search, Windows Live Search, and MSN Search) with its new search engine, Bing ^[2].

However, Microsoft advertised Bing as a “decision engine”. To meet the customer needs, Bing is being designed to provide better search experiences with new features and enhancements ^[3]. Below are some examples which contrast Bing and Google:

Differences in?	Bing	Google	What do I prefer?
Home Page	Has different beautiful pictures, revealing more information about the picture when mouse over	White background	Bing
Search Results	Able to preview and read more of the search results. Saves time as users are able to know if that is what they are looking for and reducing the number of wasted clicks	Users will have to click on the link to know if that is what they are looking for	Bing
	Able to collect, analyse and present the real-time content from Twitter and Facebook to provide better search results	Currently does not have this function	Bing
	With the new Infinite Scroll feature, there will be no needs for users to wait for the next page of images and videos to load. All will be displayed, with filtering feature.	Limited number of images and videos will be displayed in a page. Users will need to click “Next” in order to look for more data they needed. With filtering feature.	Bing
	30 seconds of video preview when mouse over	Currently does not have this function	Bing

Above are just some of the examples of the differences between Bing and Google. Although I would prefer Bing more than Google because of the new features, but there is currently an issue faced by Bing. It was being reported in CNET news that this new Search Engine makes it a little too easy to allow adult videos to be viewed in just a couple of clicks ^[4].

During the search, a warning “…may return explicit adult content and has been filtered by your Bing SafeSearch settings” was shown and it states “To view those results as well, change your SafeSearch setting (this is a link)”. When the link is clicked (first click), and you changed the settings from “Moderate” to “Off”, all the adult contents will be shown (second click). To read more about this issue, click here.

How will Microsoft handle this issue? All comments are welcome!

References:

1. ^[1] – Hitwise. (2010). Top 20 Sites & Engines. Retrieved March 13, 2010, from http://www.hitwise.com/us/datacenter/main/dashboard-10133.html

2. ^[2] – Josh, B. (n.d). How Microsoft Bing Works. Retrieved March 13, 2010, from http://computer.howstuffworks.com/microsoft-bing.htm/printable

3. ^[3] – Microsoft Corporation. (n.d). Product Guide. Retrieved March 13, 2010, from http://www.discoverbing.com/behindbing/productGuide.aspx

4. ^[4] – Larry, M. (2009, June 2). Parents beware: Bing previews video porn. Retrieved March 13, 2010, from http://news.cnet.com/8301-19518_3-10255043-238.html?tag=mncol;txt

5. O’Reilly Media, Inc. (2005, September 30). What is Web 2.0. Retrieved March 13, 2010, from http://oreilly.com/pub/a/web2/archive/what-is-web-20.html?page=3

Harnessing Collective Intelligence

As the world changes and improves itself, Web 1.0 evolves to Web 2.0. The current mentality of Web 2.0 is about bringing user’s experiences and knowledge into play to develop better systems, technology and software by sharing and contributing. Many companies are applying this approach – harnessing the collective intelligence from users to make their systems better. But what should companies do to attract users to contribute? Ideas were generated and have become one of the best practices since. Below were some of the examples of the best practices:

• Paying people to do it
• Having volunteers to do it
• Reward the user first
• Involving users explicitly and implicitly
• Providing meaningful context for creation
• Trusting their users

One of the popular examples of collective intelligence is the online encyclopaedia – Wikipedia. Wikipedia allows its users to create new entry of documentation if they does not exist, or edit the existing entries. It also proved the power of collective intelligence as it currently has more than 3 million of articles and was edited more than 300 million times. It currently has more than 11 million of registered users.

I have came across another Web 2.0 website which is also another example of collective intelligence – Digg. Digg allows user to share contents such as news, videos and images. Users are also encouraged to vote and comment on the media they liked best and the term for voting in Digg is to “Digg” a media. This creates a folksonomy for the users in Digg. The more a media was being “Digg” by the users , the more likely the media will be appearing on the front page of Digg. Likewise, if users discovers that a particular media is either duplicate or with an off-topic content, they are able to notify the administrators by clicking on “Bury” button.

From the above we could see that Web 2.0 is focusing mostly on user’s participation and interactivity on the websites and collective intelligence would definitely improves the websites and allows them to remain competitive against similar websites.

References:

Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. (05.03.2010). Wikipedia:About. Retrieved March 3, 2010, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:About

Digg^TM. (n.d). What is Digg? | Digg About. Retrieved March 3, 2010, from http://about.digg.com/

Queensland University of Technology. (2010). Pattern One: Harnessing Collective Intelligence. Retrieved March 3, 2010, from http://blackboard.qut.edu.au/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_2_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3Ftype%3DCourse%26id%3D_61779_1%26url%3D

O’Reilly Media, Inc. (2005, September 30). What is Web 2.0. Retrieved March 3, 2010, from http://oreilly.com/pub/a/web2/archive/what-is-web-20.html?page=3

My First Blog

This is my first time creating a blog and writing a blog. It always took me alot of time when starting something from scratch, whether its programming, art and craft, or composing. Even food. Too much variety. People tends to think too much when there is nothing that they can follow as a guide.

Even if there is a title, like IT, its too general. For example, there is so many types of both software and hardware. Which should I choose to start blogging about it?

But lucky me, I have the chance to start a blog with topics ready for me to blog about. This blog will solely cater for Web 2.0 Applications. Looking forward to the topics to be released next week.

That’s all for my first blog! Real blog starts next week!

Cheers!
Joanna Lim