Archive for the ‘Three I's’ Category
A whole new twist to your FriendFeed
While reading around my rss feeds, a lot of the top blogs have been mentioning a new little toy called FriendFeed. Apparently it aggregates all the top social networking sites together into the monolith of social networking all in a nice web 2.0 fashion.
I have never been the one to always follow the crowd so I had not joined yet until I read that Nate Weiner over at the Idea Shower decided to join so I knew something had to be up. I finally decided to give it a shot and I must say I am impressed.
The UI is nice and clean, the networking is strong, and overall it’s actually quite useful. It also brought to light just how many sites I signed up with which appears to be a lot. I don’t have too many friends right now but I hope to change that and this actually got me interested in twittering again.
If you add me as a friend, I’ll add you back, and let the networking begin!
FriendFeed - http://friendfeed.com/kevinx
~Kevin Xu
What are the Solutions to these Problems? (Part 4)
A good startup will provide a simple solution to an aggravating problem. In our last post we mentioned some of the problems in today’s world. In this post I will outline some ways we can implement the three I’s to come up with a useful solution to these problems.
Sleep/Stress/Organization- As I thought more and more about this, these three problems all go under the subject of ‘time management’ and that really is an issue for many people. The whole “I got a lot of work/homework but I want freetime” thing is quite cumbersome because it takes a lot of personal initiative. The main solution would just be to have a set time to do work and then a set time to play around so there is no procrastination. It actually takes some getting used to because some people just go on long work marathons or play marathons and that gets nothing done. Doing work in sections is also a helpful tip but Lifehack does its job for giving tips on productivity. The only thing that someone hasn’t done is find a way to get work done by itself. But we all know that is impossible =(
Tech-savvyness- How do we engage people into the internet through the internet? Well besides guides and tips, it will really take the initiative to get a lot of the older generation to learn new techniques to make life faster and easier. The ability to change homepages and keyboard shortcuts is still new to a lot of people. I saw on tv some program this guy is selling that promises to teach you how to use the computer and thought “wow, another way to corrupt people”. In order to gain ‘tech-savvyness’ it once again takes personal initiative but what about providing a service for other websites to make them more user-friendly?
Boredom- I took this idea from an old favorite www.i-am-bored.com. It was really popular around 2004 but then just kinda stayed there. Looking back, it hasn’t evolved much since then either and could use a facelift or a whole new rampup. Innovating the same idea and making it web 2.0 or a combo with digg is an interesting idea. Maybe that might work…
Money- We can provide financial tips and portfolio management but that is already done by many top-execs. To innovate this we can make it free but the work isn’t enough for the reward. Other than that we don’t want to make any of those ‘get rich quick’ schemes so web 2.0 can help facilitate money by ads but Google was wise to make AdSense. Maybe a service where easily persuaded teens are exchanging items with commission fees?
So this is basically my mindmapping as you can see the sentences are all like I am talking to myself. Yeah I can just do this in real life too but I decided to blog this stuff so it stays written somewhere. I also like to mention this great website called IdeaShower I encountered the other day. The owner, Nate, just keeps a record of all his ideas and numbers them and I hope many of his succeed. His current two, Charade Ideas and the Firefox Add-on Read It Later, have been a hit so far. Check it out!
Stay tuned for part 5- Where are the profits?
Previously:
Why form a startup? (Part 1)
Why use web 2.0? (Part 2)
What problems can we solve? (Part 3)
~Kevin X
The forever-changing dream
My dream has changed form a lot in the past few years. I remember thinking of what my dream in life was two years ago and it happened to be “do good in high school, go to good college, get a good job, and have a good family”. It was just too average joe.
I like the dreams I always see in movies. “I must destroy the evil monster”, “I must marry the princess”, “I must avenge my father’s death”, “I must save the world”. I wish I could have these kind of dreams but alas this is the real world. I wanted to be unique thus I thought of having the world know my name and leaving my mark on history. Then I realized I was one kid out of 6 billion people. But that didn’t stop me but rather motivated me. If I could stand out out of 6 billion people, my life would be complete.
So one day I decided to turn this dream into an actual tangible goal. I wanted my name ‘googleable’ so that people can search my name and actually find me for something significant I did. I wanted my high school friends in the future to google my name and see that I actually made something of my life. Then I realized I could easily just create a webpage and upload it to Google right now but that’s the easy and shameful way. I wanted to deserve getting my name on Google.
Then I found the amazing world of startup companies and how even a 17-year old can be a successful entrepreneur. This inspired me to take my goals further and develop some company that would leave a lasting impact onto this world. I started this blog and coined the three I’s for success. My new tangible goal was to be in Time Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People of the World”. This really clearly explains what I want from life and how I want to leave my mark on the world. To be in the top 100 people in the world that had a powerful impact on it doing whatever they do best. But is getting my name on this magazine really all that my life would be about? (Continued in next post)
~Kevin X
I am easily inspired…
So CanTheWorldHearMe just got a comment today from another blog called Ethically Green and her comment made me feel very special. This just meant that another person has acknowledged our existence and appreciates our dream of getting the world to hear us. Getting people to read our blog is one thing but getting people to read our blog and appreciate what we are all about and then willing to post a comment is what I would consider a RAoK.
I recommend all of our readers to also read her blog as well and learn from her example. Now most of you might thinking that I’m just recommending her blog because I feel like I am obliged to or it is just good blogging courtesy. That’s not it at all, I actually admire what she is trying to do on her blog. She is also another teenager out to make a positive impact onto the world. I especially like her question “What can one do to make a difference?” because the truth is not that much. Just by doing the little things is enough to help our world. As humans, we need to understand to respect the planet that we actually live on. Sure my dreams of business and technology are important but Ethically Green reminded me of my duty as a human. Maybe I’m just easily inspired but it doesn’t hurt to go over for a good read. Remember, nature is too beautiful to waste.
~Kevin X
The Last I- Innovation
Looking over the past couple of posts since we have started, I noticed that we have been talking about two I’s: Influence and Inspiration. Now I present to you the last I: Innovation.
Innovation is how I refer to humankind genius. The ability to look beyond the obvious and outside of the box to come up with a brand new idea. Since innovation is always new, it is usually looked upon with skepticism from people who are too stuck in ‘the norm’. But the innovations that do become successful create huge changes in the economy and culture. Here I’m talking about Apple’s infamous iPod and Nintendo’s shiny new Wii (which I finally got recently ^.^). I don’t know if it was Steve Jobs’ plan all along to make a cultural icon and revolutionize the music industry forever but that was exactly what happened. Heck, the i in iPod might as well stand for innovation. And then there’s Nintendo’s Wii.. with two i’s! Innovating video games with something like motion sensing brings about a whole new way of playing games.
So the three I’s will now be our tactic to get the world to hear us. We want to influence the world, inspire others, and create an innovation for the world to see. That might sound ambitious but this is what CanTheWorldHearMe is all about. Expect some more posts based on this but I don’t actually know if the three I’s have been coined anywhere else. A quick Google search doesn’t bring up anything significant. So with the completion of this sentence, I now coin the three I’s: Influence, Inspiration, and Innovation. Hopefully one day it will join the ranks of the 3 R’s and the 5 W’s.
~Kevin X