10 years in internet is a very very long time. Paypal has come a long way - setup 10 years ago as a personal finance beaming tool, now has become a world giant in online payment processing.
Don’t miss this interesting report on Internet Attitude, it might give you a glimpse on where the next huge growth engine lies (where else? internet of coz)
As promised, another new e-commerce store template !
This time the cameras are used as dummy stocks, check out how it looks below. If you are selling digital cameras and accessories, just imagine how nice and easy to start out your online store by utilizing the existing templates.
All the supplied e-commerce templates that comes with webShaper e-commerce are designed for easy navigation and fully optimized for speedy loading. Did i tell you that by utilizing our webShaper CSS Template System, we actually cut down the time needed for template integration with the ecommerce system significantly? (From one week to one working day, and we don’t mess with programming code!).
If you are a web designer, do check out how our CSS template system benefits you by helping you to save time and take charge of your e-commerce design.
Till then, stay tuned. We have more e-commerce templates in the pipeline.
Master Template- The Look & Feel, the Layout and the Colors
Category Display - How products in each category are being displayed
Notice the name card i’m holding, it got super huge fonts that you can see from 2 miles away.
Guy kawasaki (famous apple evangelist and silicon valley VC) and also Vinton Cerf (father of TCP-IP) were here - Thanks to Malaysia for being the host of WCIT 2008, we have a chance to meet some of the very top brass of Silicon Valley.
Off topic:- If you wondered where i got the CNET t-shirt, i enrolled in Cnet Malaysia back in 2002 as an intern before it was dissolved - i swear the closure got nothing to do with me. Now CNET is happily acquired by CBS for a whopping USD 1.8 Billion and damn! i don’t get a single cents out of it!
So i’m not going to delve in details here. I will just touch on some of the highlights that manage to leave an impact (very likely less than 72 hours) to my tiny little brain.
First on Guy Kawasaki.
One most inspiring thing mentioned is D.I.C.E.E. - the way of creating a truly world class products that sells like nobody business (think ipod & iphone), else risk being listed here. Btw,
If you miss the event, you can still grab some of the crucial point of the presentation by Guy here at:
Vinton Cerf gave another inspiring speech in a special appearance arranged by MDEC 2 days after guy kawasaki. He touches on the very future of the Internet, IPV6, Silicon Valley Wannabe, Mobility etc.
One interesting he brought up is how many “silicon wannabe” that fails. reasons is you cannot just simply copy silicon valley without realizing the substances that make it successful. He describe Silicon Valley as an “fine-tuned turbo engine” where all the components fits into each other perfectly to keep pumping out great and optimum horse power.
So What does it take to be Silicon Valley?
Venture Capitalist (VC)
Unlike the traditional banks, VC dare to risk in new venture without holding on any collateral, it’s like they are banking on the idea, the business model and the team behind it. Out of every 10 investments, VC expects 6 to fail, 3 to do so-so and 1 hitting the jackpot.
Don’t shoot capitalism, embrace them.
Matured Capital Market
US got Nasdaq. Singapore got Sesdaq and we follow with Mesdaq. IPO is an important route for high growth technology company to gather capital and expand their business, it’s also the most crucial channel for VC to cash out on their startup investment (apart from being bought out by the industry stalwarts).
NASDAQ - Where you find Micro$oft, Intuit, Intel, Cisco and lot more!
Supply of Trained Employees In technology business, it’s all about the People. Silicon Valley doesn’t accidentally “grow” around top university like Stanford. It’s the continuous brain capital supplied by the Top Universities around the area that made Silicon Valley. Likewise, we have our Multimedia University (MMU) too, the only different i can see is that MMU is planted there as part of the MSC Grand Plan. Isn’t it ironic this ERP company claiming they will lose half their staff strength moving to MSC Cyberjaya?
Do we have enough supply of geeks?
Steve, where are you?
Access to Experienced Manager
Very simple fact, young and bright engineers starting up companies need experienced leaders that can guide them and lead the company forward. Just like why Sergey Brin and Larry Page hired Eric Schmidt and even made him a billionaire.
3 makes a company
Tolerate Failure
Vinton mentioned Steve Jobs highlight this point to ex-UK prime minister, Tony Blair when he asked the Top CEOs of Silicon Valley on what makes Silicon Valley a success. Steve Job said:”I dunno what makes us successful, but i think every CEOs here in the room have fail at least once before.” Seems like in Silicon Valley, Failure is the rule rather than the exception, remember, what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger. See how apple co-founder steve wozniak learned from failure.
This is very interesting, who would have thought this is one of the “substance” of success? And can failure be bought with $? (even if you can, nobody sane would buy failure) If not, how do you replicate it?
I would say it’s part of the cultural trait that’s hard to mimic. In US generally, failing is not seen as a bad mark of incompetency, people are willing to give you the 2nd chance (or more). In Malaysia and many parts of the world, Failure is being seen as a bad mark of incompetence. If you fail once, not just VC will ditch you, probably your girlfriend will dump you and you stand a risk of your parents disowning you too.
Market Size
Is the domestic market big enough? If not, then think Global, how an you reach and serve the market outside of the country? You gonna THINK BIG! ACT Locally by moving forward one step at a time.
Notice one point missing ? Yes, he did not mention anything about HARDWARE aka building or so called “infrastructure”. Silicon Valley is what it is today all because of the “software”, it has got little to do with hardware.
The blind spot in our MSC Grand Plan (and alot other silicon valley wannabe) has been the sole focus on hardware instead of software. Why? it’s because you can buy your way through hardware and you get instant gratification! Hooray! As long as you got the cold hard cash, hey, u can even hire alien to build highest building in the world to fill your ego. Make no mistake that there’s no shortcut for software (ppl development), it takes a long long time to develop people and talent. Money just cannot buy you this shortcut no matter how deep your pocket is.
As an entrepreneur myself, can you tell me why Malaysia need Yet another MSC Cyber city? In what way does it really benefit the technopreneur? Does a nice office transform a mediocre programmer into a super hacker that can cramp up codes like nobody business? Does paying higher rent psf that enrich the property owner instead of yourself make your product more likely to succeed in the market? It just doesn’t make sense to me. All i see is that it only benefits the contractors.
Instead, why don’t the government just focusing on bringing up the level of the skilled knowledge workers and give the country a cheap, reliable and abundant broadband and let the entrepreneurs take care of themselves.?
Last but not least, Vincent also highlight that FDI (Foreignt Direct Investment) will create jobs, but not creating wealth. To create wealth, you need to own the company. So if you are reading this, why wait? start your own company today and if you are thinking of e-commerce, Don’t forget to drop us an email to find out how we can help you on that. Nite.
Congratulation to Ethan Chong, our very main guy driving the Internet marketing efforts. He got himself a Google Qualified Advertising Professional, adding another credential under his belt.
As you know Google is an amazing database of intention - as people search, it’s an indication that you are researching for the subject or keywords and this is why Google can sell you ads alongside their organic search results.
Google Adwords is such a huge success that it contribute more than 80% of Google revenues alone. (This is why you are getting so much free services like Google App & Google Analytics from Google since the golden goose can easily finance all these “free” services).
Check out the presentation by Ethan, titled “Top 5 mistakes Most People made in Running Google Adwords Campaign”, Have fun!
This is part of short media interview conducted for the MIRC E-SME Week we are taking part as the speakers. We will speak on topics like “Driving Traffic to Your Online Stores”, “Top 5 Mistakes for Google Adwords” and “All you need to know about Online Payment Gateways (M’sia Merchants)”.
Do come join us if you would like to know more about the topics. It’s free admission as this is regular community events held by MIRC to boost up SME competitiveness.
If you are curious, the nice toys picture we actually “borrowed” from one of our client - www.mylofttoys.com - check out their nice store done by one of our web design partner optima solution, they rocks!
We realize how important template selection is to clients, More new & nicely design templates to come together with webShaper e-commerce soon, stay tuned!
PS: In case you did not realize, there are already 6 ready templates comes together with webSHaper e-commerce. to access it, just go to webShaper > Design > Manage Design > Select New.
Master Template - The look & Feel, the layout and the colors
Category Display - How products in each category are being displayed
Microsoft needs this video to “pyscho” their sales that Windows Vista rocks? and steve ballmer said we don’t want Windows XP ?
We just bought a new dell laptop recently, we make a request for Windows XP PRO installation and Dell insider sales rep told us the machine “must ship” with windows vista (W T F ? hello, are you listening to the customers? ). If we want Windows XP bundled, the only choice is Dell Latitude Machines, hell… i might as well get an IBM X-61 then.
None of my friends (to be fair, mostly techies) has good things to say about Vista, coz it a hog on machine resources, it’s slow… very slow… i know they have nice interface, but again, aero interface is useless if it gets in the way of completing the tasks faster. My sister got a dell desktop at home and i’m suffering big time using vista (even with 2GB of ram) until i completely turn off they eye goodies then the thing starting to get “usable” again.
Heck, we are going to install ubuntu if necessary.
oh ya btw, if your co-worker is slacking, you can use effective “threat” below to keep things moving.
These 2 guys, Mark Chang from Jobstreet.com (on the left) and Tony Fernandes from AirAsia.com, which needs no further introduction. They are among the most successful of new breed of Internet Savvy, Young and Aggressive entrepreneurs in Malaysia.
One of them is the founder of Jobstreet.com - the most successful Internet Company (actually they are no longer “just an internet company”, they are a full swing service oriented company that use the Internet Extensively to compete in the “people industry” ) in Malaysia. We know that they have done something terribly right when we also become their customer. There’s tons of jobstreet-wannabe but none of them come close.
Another is the maverick which had made it possible for most Malaysian to fly, fly often, and now even can fly to Australia for just RM9.95 only. Thanks to him, even small company like us can now thinking of having our company trip at Gold Coast too.
Recently they are touted as one of the most Innovative firm by FastCompany, alongside with well-known Giant like GE. It’s really quite an achievement.
And interestingly, it seems like these 2 companies have a knack for fast cars (think speed, think high risk aka high return), Jobstreet is sponsoring the Malaysia A1 team while AirAsia is sponsoring the William F1 Team - so they do share something in common ya..
And of course, both webShaper e-commerce & webShaper e-catalog are 100% compatible with Exabytes Ebiz Windows Hosting. Just buy and we will provide you the installation for free!
Happy selling online!
