Hello all readers, sorry for the absence of posts lately. As high school students we are still terribly busy with AP exams and other studies but we have a whole chock full of things to get to as soon as tests are over including a fresh site redesign, a new blog, and a couple of other ideas that I have been keeping in mind.

One of the latest ideas that has gone pretty well was this Facebook group to get the whole country to write “THIS IS SPARTA” on AP and other essays and then cross it out with a single line.

Credit goes to my friend Jake Bryant for coming up with this idea 4 months ago for our English midterm. It went pretty well then so I made a note of it to recreate this idea for Facebook and make it go viral.

In just a week, this group has grown to over 4,000 members! Sure this is really nothing compared to the infamous 1,000,000 Strong for Colbert group but I’ve been lucky to get even 100 members in any group I made so this is huge.

Plus it’s a good thing. The letters AP (Advanced Placement) strike fear into the hearts of many high school students but this really alleviates the stress to borderline mock the test.

That and I really wanna see a teacher’s face when they see that thousands of students all wrote “THIS IS SPARTA” on their AP exams. Can you say WTF?

UPDATE: Group now has over 8000 members! It literally doubled in one day and shows no sign of stopping

UPDATE: SPARTANS ARE AT 20,000 MEMBERS!!!

~Kevin Xu

If you’ve dabbled into anything web 2.0, you know a major plus for aggregating all your social and informational needs is through RSS feeds. We have one too, right here. So how many are you subscribed to, 10? 50? 100? 1000? I actually know some people that have thousands and they just sit there reading them for countless hours like I just did. Don’t.

Many people get the feeling that they “have to read everything or else miss out on something” or there are others who don’t read them for a long time and go on binges of a million posts at a time. Both ways are wrong and waste valuable time.

The idea for RSS feeds was for updates to come to you rather than you refresh at a page for updates. It became a huge convenience for people that track lots of websites but with more information, we feel more compelled to digest all that information. Once again, don’t.

Most if not all RSS readers have this magic little button called “Mark all as read”. If you are the awkward type that have never clicked on this before, what it does is magically clears all your RSS feeds to “read”. Go on, try it now, I promise it’s painless.

When I was away last week I had over 1500 updates stockpiled up and was afraid to let it all go. I thought “oh no, all that valuable information will be lost, all those tips, videos, photos, interesting tidbits… well my life will go on” and magically my RSS reader was clean.

If you still feel uncomfortable getting rid of all your unread feeds, then try a folder management system. Seen in the picture above, I categorize with:

• Daily Read
• Random Updates
• Skim
• Unimportant

~Kevin Xu

I have been at the State Leadership Conference for FBLA these last three days and one of my major “things to do” was campaigning for District Vice President! I was successful albeit I was the only one running but I learned many things that I thought I’d share.

1. Don’t waste your time- This is a major one because at a 3-day event, time is of the essence. After I set up my booth at the campaigning room, I would stand by it when no one else was around. I thought this was the thing we were “supposed” to be doing or maybe someone in charge would come around and wonder where I was but both were wrong. I wasted time trying to do the right thing when I could have competed in more events and network with more people and then come to my booth during busy hours. Instead time passed under my boredom.
2. Act fast, Act first- Whether it’s when you’re campaigning, talking to someone, or eyeing that cute girl you want to dance with across the room, you got to act fast and act first. There is no right time for anything but there are wrong times and that’s when you are too late. Either the opportunity will be gone or taken away and you will never know what could have came out of it if you had just toughened up to go and do it. In most cases just think about it this way, you’re going to be doing it anyways so might as well do it early and get it over with.
3. Find minions- In other words, delegate your tasks. Every great boss knows this and does this well. Every unsuccessful boss has this mentality that “nobody else can do things as well as I” which leads to overworking and bombing. Learn to rely on your friends to do things when you can’t or to make your work faster. I had many friends represent me at my booth while I did other tasks which helped a lot. 
4. Network, network, network- You have probably heard this at every other blog you’ve read but it is still true. You meet amazing people at events or conferences and some of those people can come in very handy or lifelong friends. More connections open yourself to more opportunities so definitely take the initiative and talk to people. I’ve realized that people really don’t mind because they are looking forward to meeting new people too so taking the initiative only makes things quicker.
5. Learn names- You get an awesome sense of a personal bond when you actually greet someone with their name. You come to learn someone’s name when they see it or from a peek at their nametag but learn to immediately memorize it if you feel this is a friend you will come back to. As Vice President, names are a must for me especially of board of trustee members and other important adults.

In today’s growing “social” world where websites like Facebook, Flickr, Last.fm, Twitter, Wikipedia, and now Friendfeed all encourage this thing called “sharing”, should we be more focused on keeping things private or encourage sharing and the collaboration of minds?

One could argue that for startups, there is the need for privacy and to not let their “sacred ideas” get out before they get a chance to make something of it. So-called as going into stealth mode, founders try to keep as much as possible on the downlow until launch and boom from there. But this would also mean not getting other people’s view on things and being very selfish over things.

Recently I took my SAT and did pretty well (2330) so came the onslaught of “Ooh whatdya get’s?” from my friends. But no matter what I got I would have told them without embarrassment. Some of my friends on the other hand, refuse to reveal their elusive score in fear of criticism or who knows what. If they did bad, I would understand not telling the score and I instantly know it from the expression on their face so its ok.

But some cases, geniuses usually, choose not to say anything after “Ooh whatdya get?” probably in fear of competition. I know how their mind works, if they reveal what they got then I would know and if its better then I would take the test again and try to do better. Or if its worse then I can wallow inside on the sense that I did better. Or maybe they just don’t want to reveal how smart they are even though everyone probably knows they got a perfect score. Wrong, wrong and wrong, keeping it to themselves is just being selfish and conceited cause they don’t want others to do better themselves. In my case, I would never express any of the aforementioned reactions cause I honestly do want all my friends to do better and go to great colleges with me.

So I say embrace the idea of sharing and collaborating, the web sure has. Using tools like wiki’s makes things easier than ever. Of course you won’t want to reveal that super master plan for success to others but the basic ideas and concept should be out on the open market. A great example is Jessica Mah using a wiki last week to collaborate ideas for a speech she was presenting. She got the opinions of many others that crafted an even better speech.

I’m willing to bet the future will hold a lot more of this idea of sharing.

~Kevin Xu

Photo courtesy of photoai

Not sure if any readers have noticed but the title of our blog is a slight flaw as it implies only one mastermind behind this idea and this dream. Although I am the primary writer, I want to make sure everyone knows that Josh is also intricate to the blog’s process with the backend work and constant discussions to further ideas and the future startup.

But beyond the naming problem, I realize this could lead to problems in the future over say copyright or ownership of this blog. As we go separate ways (I hope not), two roads diverge in a yellow wood, and we may never know where we may end up.

I hope when that time does come, this blog still stays alive and our memories and experience really advance us in wherever we are.  I know thatsounds corny but the inevitable does happen so although the title says “Can The World Hear Me” I really want it to be “Can The World Hear Us” as I believe there are more people than just Josh and me that share this dream.

On forth!

~Kevin Xu

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

Remember the traditional board game you used to play with your friends on bored weekends? Well a couple of guys from Yale and a guy from Columbia want to bring that same intense territory-conquering battle to the web, to your campus, dorm vs dorm. Meet GoCrossCampus (GXC).

This has created a huge stir across campuses as dorms get to make secret alliances and betrayals to battle for supremacy! All in the sake for bragging rights, exactly what college students love.

The game has recently hit the NYT and Techcrunch providing substantial coverage for an otherwise unheard of game beyond the college campus. They hope to expand their user base to even more universities and even large corporations for office vs office type battles. According to the NYT, it seems that Google has taken quite an interest. I hope they find their way to my high school next!

In my opinion, they have done all the right steps so far growing what was an idea into a full-fledged startup. Not many ideas have become more than an idea in a college dorm room (not everyone can be a Facebook) but GXC shows a lot of promise.

The one thing I always wished to see more of with Web 2.0 was integration with the real world. I always viewed the internet as the next “New World”, kinda how America used to be viewed with limitless possibilities, but we still need direct interaction in our current world. GXC involves optional planned meetups to elect commanders and spies for even more fun which is exactly what I wanted to happen. I bet this can be expanded for even greater depth!

GXC even emailed me and we chatted about ideas and such. Who knows, this might possibly turn into something. I’ll keep you guys updated.

So everyone go sign up! You don’t have to be affiliated with any colleges to play some games like the GoCrossPoliticalBash. Go Colbert! =D

~Kevin Xu

Uncomplicated, straightforward, austere, smooth, easy, simple.

Everyone likes it when things are simple.  From web design to project assignments to blog posts. Simplicity has that rare beauty to delight the eyes and at the same time convey info.

Sadly the world is not always simple and but it is up to web designers to at least make the virtual world simpler. A favorite example of mine is Google, I mean have you seen their homepage? You go to Google to search and it lets you make a search without distraction. Easy, straight-to-the-point, simple.

Recently I received a certificate from Google for participating in the GHOP contest I mentioned earlier and I love it’s design.

Clean and simple, done

There’s absolutely no need for colorful backgrounds or random images to make it look “pretty”. It’s a certificate with my name, the contest, and a signature and I’m happy with it.

So with that in mind, we want to make “Can The World Hear Me” as simple as possible. Wordpress is the master at aggregating and automating many parts of the blog but sometimes it gets cluttered. Fortunately everything is customizable.  Uncluttering the website and making the content stand out is our current goal.

And to our new readers and old readers― we have revised the point of this blog to its simplest form:

 A chronicle of two boys’ journey to leave their mark on the world

~Kevin Xu

P.S. If anyone wants a really simple blog, Tumblr is the way to go. Simple design and simple posts give a whole feeling of calmness. I’m even considering creating a personal blog using Tumblr ;D

Hi, my name is Kevin Xu, and I am solipsistic.

Solipsism is apparently the philosophical idea that “My mind is the only thing that I know exists.” When you think about it, it’s true. Only I know what I feel when I touch something. Only I know what I think and everyone else’s thoughts are synthetic. I don’t know if anyone even exists when I’m not with them. Maybe all life was just created to further my life? Yes I’m saying that none of you are real and are only here to entertain me.

Of course, all of the above is sarcastic. But solipsism can be a major ego-booster if you’re ever feeling down, try it out.

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I failed to get into the SSBB tourney… (stupid line)

I failed to meet Aaron Stanton… (or any other tech dude)

I failed to go to meetups or conventions… (GDC costed $$$)

I failed to make any progress startup-worthy… But hey I got to visit San Francisco!!!

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