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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Tomorrow I’m flying to California for a week-long super vacation extravaganza!

Basically I want to check out the startup culture and visit some colleges. I view San Francisco as a city full of wonderful opportunities for a young lad like me. Just by meeting the right people and making the right connections can get me really far in my dream.

First up I’ll be in Los Angeles from the 16th to the 18th. There will be a Super Smash Brothers Brawl tourney that I hope to get in. Only first 256 people though, let’s see how clever I am.

Then I hit the road and off to San Francisco from the 19th through the 22nd. I will be visiting Stanford on the 21st but other than that I will just be around the area just basking in the culture. I don’t think any big companies like Google or Apple will just let me talk to someone if I go into HQ. But I sure will try to take lots of pictures in front of those company logos!

I’ll also be sure to blog anything worth mentioning here. California has great wi-fi spots =D

So if anyone is in those areas, I will be more than happy to meet up with anyone! Just send an email or leave a comment. Aaron Stanton from CanGoogleHearMe actually offered to have lunch with me after reading my last post. He hasn’t replied back to my email but here’s me hoping for the best.

~Kevin Xu

Seems like Google wants to tap into the precious minds of pre-college kids once again― more specifically my age group.

Doodle 4 Google is Google’s newest project allowing kids in grades K-12 to draw a new Google logo and win prizes. It will be centered around the theme “What If…?” which leaves it open to an infinite amount of innovation. Grand prize includes a $10,000 college scholarship, a technology grant for your school, a trip to the Googleplex, and of course your logo on the Google homepage for a whole day.

Pretty genius idea if you ask me. The Google logo has become almost a cultural icon and if you are an artist this is an awesome opportunity to show off your ability. My bet is that Google is going to value the creativity of the logo way higher than the actual artistic prowess of it.

But I find it funny how GHOP just ended with the winners announced and now Doodle 4 Google starts. Google has done a fine job of micro-managing by splitting the company into different departments (Open Source, AdSense, Gmail, etc.) but it’s interesting how they all come together targeting 18 year olds and younger to join them as a part of these contests. It’s a great opportunity and also great prizes await. But it’s all just very interesting…

It’s not like Google is trying to brainwash kids at younger ages to hail them as Godly or something. The least we want is a new generation of fanboys/fangirls (being politically correct here). Or maybe they are just prepping kids to love them so they don’t have to pay them so much?

But I do admit that I love their logos:

~Kevin Xu

His quest started with a simple question: How do you get a big company like Google to really listen to a good idea? Now Aaron Stanton is on his way back to Google HQ to turn that idea into a reality.

I blogged about him when the blog started, but it’s almost surreal to watch his progress from idea to execution. Stanton blogged frequently about his first adventure to Google HQ mainly because it was the crux of the site but then the posts started dwindling. But I knew that he and his team were hard at work programming the Novel Project into something that he could be proud of.

It is now more than a year since he started and he has almost gone full circle. He got the idea, the motivation, the publicity, the partners, the time, the money, and even the office space (his living room).

We chose the name Can The World Hear Me not because we weren’t original but because we applaud what Stanton has done so far and what he will do. Seeing his success drives us to go forward with our plans because in reality (just like in fairytales) anything can really happen.

Funny thing is, he still hasn’t told us what his idea is! I’ll be in the San Francisco area next week as well so maybe I might bump into him on the streets? You never know…

~Kevin Xu

Can The World Hear Me was meant to be a starting point for us to create something notable enough for the world to know our names. And it is still that.

Besides the daily occurrences of schoolwork and social life, there is so much more to be done in one’s lifetime. We’re glad we didn’t realize that too late in our lives. If we just kept going with the status quo the whole time, we would just be another head in the crowd.

So this blog will chronicle major points in our journey to do just that. It has served well as a place to talk out our ideas and it will continue to do that. We want to extend its use to become an online portfolio as well as a planning area. We also got Moleskine notebooks for private ideas and planning.

Currently this is the laid out plan:

• Full redesign of the blog― Expected date: March 25
• Launch Birthday Blog Idea― Expected date: End of Spring
• Establish first Startup― Expected date: End of Summer
• *Meanwhile gain experience and startup know-how

There may be a slow down in the number of posts per week but that is only because we want to emphasize major updates in our journey. It may seem like we have been re-iterating our same goals but that is because of our constant posting. We’ll try to fit in a post a week to keep everything updated and that also serves as a due date to make sure we do something interesting every week.

We are also very interested to hear from our readers. Either drop us a comment or email us, we’re interested in the general reaction.

~Kevin Xu and Josh Belanich

You know, I’m really getting the hang of making these ‘overused web 2.0-ish-y’ logos. Yeah they are really common-place and probably getting on some people’s nerves but there’s no denying that it is here to stay.

Sorry for the lack of posting again but we are re going on a hiatus for Midterm week and the SATs. Yeah, the trials and tribulations of being a student… *sigh*

In other news, has anyone figured out what our possible idea was?

~Kevin X

Sorry for the lack of updates recently, since the new year started school has taken full swing on our minds and sapped our ability to write a decent blog post (Ok that was a lame excuse but just go with it). But we have been working very hard toward our long-term goals! Don’t believe us? Here’s a quick run-through:

• Kevin has been pro-actively studying like a madman for the SATs on January 26 thus the lack of posts as the main author. This is one of the final obstacles in the way of his dream college and he is planning to go all out on this one and do his best so he will not have to worry about it ever again. He has forcefully reduced himself down to the “good asian student” and postponed all other aspects of “fun life” until after January 26.
• Kevin has also created a website for ThinkQuest about Dunbar’s Number. This was done in an extreme example of an all-nighter but on the plus side it looks awesome and he played with more code than was possible in a small amount of time. He hopes to get it uploaded online soon so our readers can see it, critique it, and become educated as well.

• Josh has run through several drafts and templates for a new design for the website. Below is his current draft and any suggestions, advice, critiques are HIGHLY appreciated: (click for larger view)
• Josh has also been thinking about a new section for all our various ideas and projects. One of the main things that we lack is credibility and even though we are slowly building it up, we want a place on our blog to store all that stuff too. Kind of like an informal online portfolio so people know that we are serious and not just kids playing around. This will take some tweaking of the Wordpress code but if anyone knows an easier way to do this then please leave a comment!

That would be considered hard work right? Well we hope it all pays off in the long run. The fun thing about having a blog and dreaming of a startup is that you really don’t know where you are going to end up. Enjoy the ride as they say.

To conclude, we also have an idea! It’s not a super-big idea like Facebook but it is an idea and we might go for it. One thing we do know is that it hasn’t been taken in any which way or form so thats really good. It might lead to something and it isn’t that hard to create either (we think…).

We feel like being a tease so let’s say that it is a rare topic mentioned on blogs but everyone has one and it starts with the letter “B”. To make it more exciting, we are also going to give the first person that guesses it right Zen Habit’s E-Book Zen To Done by Leo Babauta for free! We are allowed to do this now since he released his copyright and we hope that someone can benefit from Leo’s guide for a simpler life!

~Can The World Hear Me

Today we are presenting our very first guest post! The author is a fellow lad from Great Britain who instantly fell in love with our blog, our dream and our question, Can The World Hear Me? Part of our goal is also for the the world to hear other people too that have a strong message but don’t have a blog yet or currently no strong means to reach out to the 6 billion people out there. By having a contact in Britain, that means we are also going international

Now without further ado, presenting “Seb Huckle, RaveJelly (Coming soon…)”

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I have been known to be a “futurist” and by that I mean half my mind is always in the future. I’m usually thinking of things that will happen in the near future and how I can prepare for it and also the far future and what I can expect. And lately I’ve been noticing that my venture into startups might be very bad timing.

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Here’s to 2008, a whole new year with many opportunities and high hopes from two young teens.

To be quite honest, we are amazed that we even made it through the year. We started out all the way back in September and went through a redesign and got out own domain name! Since the move (Nov. 2) until now 2857 visits with 4746 pageviews and 2,324 unique visitors! We hope many of our readers stick with us through our adventure and a great way to do so is to subscribe to our RSS feed!

So what have we been up to lately? Kevin has created a logo!

“This was more of a personal project than anything else. It’s just a way for me to mark my stuff with my emblem and have it all symbolic-y. I also got to play with web 2.0 stuff and GIMP. Hopefully one day it will be a wide-known symbol logo.”

“It’s just a new creation with my initials, K.X. and through a little research, the arrow is supposed to represent power… success… and apparently luck in battle as well.”

Hope you guys like it. If you got any comments or suggestions then please tell us in the comments!

~Can The World Hear Me