Beta Tester Wanted for Android Travel App (Home-based Job)

We are looking for beta testers for a Travelopy Android app which focus on discover places and capture moments (like a simple journal).

1. You must have access to an Android (version 4.0.3 and above) phone.
2. Use the app to discover nearby places.
3. Use the app to capture at least 3 moments (a moment is a like a Facebook post about your eating and outing trip) with description, photos and places identified.
4. Sign Up as a user (Google account required)
5. Complete an online survey after the completion of the above task.
6. You are allowed to take up to 14 days to complete the tasks (the actual tasks take less than 20 minutes, but discovery of places and capturing of moments depends on location and opportunity).
7. You will be paid RM 20 upon completion of all the above tasks (must have a valid Malaysia Bank account as money will be GIROed).
8. Interested candidate do email to desmond.lua[at]travelopy.com (replace [at] with @). 

Beta Users Wanted for Travel Website (Home-based Job)

We are looking for a beta users for a travel website (Travelopy) who fulfilled the following criteria:

1. You must own 3 digital photo albums (each album for different places with minimum of 50 photos each) of personal travel experience in the past 3 years.
2. All photos must be of reasonable quality (no “shaking”, no red eye, no bad lighting) with reasonable amount (30%) of photos is the actual place (without people in it, bystanders are acceptable).
3. You shall upload the photo to the website and it will be available for public viewing (you should filter out all photos you deemed too personal for public viewing).
4. Each album should have a title, a short description (minimum 50 words) and tagged with a location.
5. You shall write a short feedback of your experience of using the website and report any errors encountered.
6. This exercise could be done at the comfort of your home and shall take between 1-2 hours. We pay:
   • RM 60 for this exercise.
   • Extra RM 2 for each accurate tagging of unique location per photo (assuming you visited multiple places per album).
   • Extra RM 5 if accurate error is reported.
7. This position is open for users with valid Malaysian bank account only (payment shall be GIROed). This is a limited BETA so we can only take in a small amount of users.
8. Interested candidate do email to desmond.lua[at]travelopy.com (replace [at] with @). Prior approval is required before this offer is considered valid.

My affair with Travel

As a kid, travelling is very exciting as I get to go to places outside the boundary of home and school: seeing the big city, order pizza for the first time, stop by a small town for a special meal recommended by dad, or picnic and swimming at the beach. It is all fun and adventurous, with no worry.

In my early twenties came the tour group concept, which bring me to many uninteresting places in a day, and won’t allow me to stay longer at places which I love. It is tiring, unsatisfying, and not exactly cheap.

I guess the tour group experience kill my enthusiasm for travel, and my logical mind believe there is nothing to be gained from travelling. I just spend money and getting nothing in return. If I spend money buying a computer, I get a computer; my money got burned in travelling, offering neither material or happiness in return.

I started joining some some friends for some self-organised trip: firstly to the national park, then to climb mountain Kota Kinabalu. I realise it could be affordable, fun, and there are interesting places to visit outside of city and monuments. I found something which would change part of my life.

I met some hiking friends and we started hiking and camping around Malaysia, an experience which no tour group could offer. We walk for 5-8 hours into the mountain, swim in the cool river stream, set up our camp at the perfect spot and a capable cook will prepare a delicious dinner. The friendship and the experience is priceless, and I owe them a lot for showing me what travelling (or hiking)  is all about. Sometimes we travel oversea in extremely big group (20-30+) and still manage to go through it without too much unhappy incident, simply amazing!

I started travelling more often with Mei Ru (my girlfriend cum wife). Oversea travel planning is more time consuming as we need to figure the transport, accommodation, places to visit, route, prices, booking, etc. At first we hire a small travel agency for our Nepal trip, then we rely on Rough Guide for our India trip, then planning got more time consuming and complex for our China, Europe, Vietnam and Japan trip. I always want to build a website to simplify travel planning, allowing less painful planning and more happy travelling. In the meanwhile, I would need to suffer the planning part until I succeed.

I was thrilled to see the snow mountain in Nepal, the big castle and desert in Rajasthan, the nice and beautiful Japan and the grassland of XinJiang. Travelling could be very tiring if we have to move from one place to another every other day, so I have to learn to travel at a slower pace. Travelling have many uncertainty so I have to learn emotionally handle surprises.

I think I got a bit tired of travelling. The big mountains no longer amazed me like the first time, and I never quite like the cities. No matter how beautiful the scenery is, my heart is not a peace; it feels like emotionally or spiritually I didn't blend in with nature, where I feel like watching the beautiful mountain behind a glass. I no longer yearn to be a traveller which move across places at a fast pace, I want to find a little heaven which I could blend in and stay a little longer.

Now, I feel like I am travelling to find the little heaven which could made me stay behind. I imagine a wooden house with a green grassland in front, where the river is not far away and the mountain is my everyday view, and the weather is just nice all year long. I would do my work (with Internet access) in the morning, where I would hike into the nearby hills for a picnic and afternoon nap.This would be my new dream home for a week, a month, a year or for a lifetime.

Now I travel to look for my little heaven. Perhaps it’s in Chiang Mai, perhaps it’s in Japan, perhaps I have yet to travel near it yet, perhaps it’s very near.

Lessons I learned from playing Dota 2

Failure is necessary and painful

Everyone would like to be the undefeatable champion, and champion are not born but trained. Can I be a champion without losing or dying (in the game)? Nope. You could fast forward your newbie period by reading guides, but learning is accelerated through the adrenaline of PVP which end in frustrated death.

The more you fail the more you should rethink

Failure is the mother of success. Does that mean the more I lose/die the better I will become? Yes, only if you give thoughts to why you lose/die, and thinks of ways how to be better. If you just blindly keep dying and playing without refinement, you are just being insane: repeating the same thing and expecting different results.

You don’t learn much if you win occasionally

Sometimes you got lucky (killed a noob a few times), and sometimes your team mate is a champion; you won and found the game to be too easy, and then you lose the next game and start to wonder why. Loosing make you thinks for new strategy, and winning based on luck only helps your ego, and winning constantly validate your strategy.

Keep calm and take over the world

Keep clam, don’t just rush into battle even though you are a tank. Know your position (Attacker or Support), and wait for your comrades. If you are alone, wait or retreat. Not dying is as good as a kill.

It’s a Team Game

“I am damn good, but my comrades suck”. Dota 2 is a team game, and it does not guarantee victory even though you are a champion hero (though it increases the odds). Coordinate attack with your comrades (doesn't mean you can shout and boss people around by massive clicking, and be angry when people ignore you).

You can blame your comrades, but it doesn't help you win.You can choose to party with a champion player, but make sure you learn something from it.

Choose your hero based on your style/character.

Choose your hero wisely based on your playing style or character. If you are aggressive, chose an attacker and melee hero. If sneaky is your nature, choose an invisible assassin. If you like support from a safe distance, choose a ranged hero. There is not best hero, only hero who suits you; you might start with a popular hero, and it takes times to find your real hero.

Leadership is not bossing

Some people expect others MUST follow their orders else these bosses will click their minions to death followed by deteriorating comments. Understand than each player play differently based on their style, hero and skill; respect them and you shall be respected, help them and you shall be helped. Leadership is not demanded, it is earned.

Blaming others only make it worse

If you die, it’s mostly your fault. Even if someone make a mistake (like trapped you to be killed), blaming them doesn't improve teamwork or the odds of winning, just move on and look forward to the next battle. If they can, they will avenge you; if they can’t, they have their reasons and limitations; if they run away, it’s because they know they are going to die (besides, one less death on friendly side contribute to the odds of winning). Angry people have natural tendency to blame others, learn to refrain it.

Be a real Champion Leader

A champion win even though the odds are against him, with noob or disconnected players in the team, when the team is losing yet be able to turn the tide around. A champion does not play the blame game, doesn't boss people, but help and lead others to victory.

I must not Quit

Repeat the above before every game. If you are a real champion, you don’t quit because there are a few noobs in your team, you don’t quit because your team is losing, you don’t quit because you are constantly being killed, you don’t quit because your team mates doesn't listen to you, and you don’t quit because someone says you sucks. You play the game until the end: you die with honour defending your team mates, and you don’t abandon them.

Ignore the Assholes

They are bad people in the real world, and sadly they exist in the game as well. With an asshole in your team, the best you can do is not to let his remark and clicking affect you. You know what your are doing, and you know your capabilities and limits, and you play the game as best as you can.

Let the metrics be your mirror of reality

If you lose more than 75% of the time, you are either a noob or you sucks, admit it (your death is not due to others incompetency, admit it). Rethink your strategy or playing style, and try again. If you win 50% of the time, you are average and doing fine. When you are a real champion, you will know it.

It's not fair

Some people are more talented than others. Is this the right game for you?

It is competitive; it's a game

You could take it seriously, but don't forget to explore, have fun and make friends.

What did I learn from 1 week of Dogecoin mining

I am a late “adopter” of cryptocurrency. I heard of Bitcoin many years ago, but couldn’t truly understand it or take serious in it. When too many cryptocurrency news keep popping up, perhaps it’s time to get my hands on some coins.

How to get my hands on some coins? Mining of course, unless I sell something which accepts cryptocurrency as payment. I come across 3 cryptocurrency: Bitcoin (2009), Litecoin (2011) and Dogecoin (2013). Based on my understanding, mining get exponentially more difficult as times go (depending on how much had been mined). So it would be extremely difficult to mine Bitcoin, and Dogecoin is fairly new with light humour in it, so Dogecoin it is.

Below are a few of my observation as a Dogecoin miner for a week.

The Wallet

Firstly, I need a Dogecoin wallet, which is a piece of software which can store Dogecoin in a file. After the wallet is installed, it needs to download the blockchain, which is supposed to be ALL the Dogecoin transaction data as of today, which takes about 8 hours to download before I could start using the wallet. When someone else use Dogecoin to send to receive (a transaction), it will add to the blockchain, which will get bigger and bigger overtime.

There is no username for your wallet, so there is some basic anonymity. You could password protect your wallet (like a password protected zip file), just in case someone get their hands on your wallet. I think you can keep multiple copy of your wallet on multiple machines (I might be wrong).

How does people send money to you? You can generate an address (a string of characters), and ask them to send money to this address using their wallet software. You can generate multiple addresses to identify what money come from whom.

The Mining

There are CPU-based and GPU-based (using NVIDIA or AMD graphic cards) mining. Somehow GPU-based mining perform much better.

Somehow pool-mining perform better than solo mining, so join a pool.

Mining on my 2013-end Notebook (Gen4  i7-4500U @ 1.8Ghz, Nvidia Gefore 740M)

Mining speed in measured in khash/s, where each machine (or worker) should at least produce 10 khash/s in order to make mining minimally worthwhile at the current state.

The i7-4500U can run 4 threads, where each thread yields 10 khash/s, so my notebook is capable of 40 khash/s. I found that I can run on 3 threads in the background and my OS and virtualbox still run normally without much slowdown while I do web development in Python. The heat is slightly hot, and it isn’t noisy.
The Nvidia Gefore 740M only have 1 core and is capable of 40 khash/s. The heat is quite hot, and I am afraid it might damage the notebook if running for a long time.

So my notebook is capable of 80 khash/s, but I only run CPU-based mining on 3 threads (30 khash/s) for 12 hours per day.

Using a Dogecoin calculator, at 30 khash/s  (current difficulty=1771, assuming block reward=500000), I could mine 7 Dogecoin per hour, 170 Dogecoin per Day. At the current exchange rate (BTC per DOGE) of 0.00000212, the daily income is USD 0.35 (about 500 Doge to 1 USD). Since I am only running 12 hours a day, so I only get half of it.

Mining difficulty goes up fairly fast (it was 385 on 1st Jan 2014). Current Block Reward is 0 to 1,000,000 DOGE (500,000 is used as Average), but it is estimated to drop to half in 18 days.

Mining on my 2010 Notebook (Gen1 i5 M460 @ 2.5Ghz)

The i5 M460 could run on 4 threads, where each thread yields 3 khash/s, so my notebook is capable of 12 khash/s (it means my 2013 Notebook’s CPU is 3.33 times more powerful). The AMD Radeon performance is too pathetic, clocking only 3 khash/s.

Given the cost of power consumption and all that, I am afraid mining isn’t marginally worthwhile on this machine.

Mining on Digital Ocean (2 CPU, USD 20/month)

The DO server with 2 CPU could run on 2 threads, where each threads yields 6 khash/s, and the instance is capable of 12 khash/s (it means 2 CPU on DO is equivalent to the processing power of Gen1 i5 M460 @ 2.5Ghz).

At 12 khash/s, it could generate 67.5 Dogecoin per day (difficulty=1771, block reward=500000) and about USD 0.13 per day. The cost of server is USD 0.66 per day. So this is definitely not profitable at the current state.

Mining on AWS Spot Instance (c3.2xlarge, 8 CPU, USD 0.112/hour)

c3.2xlarge on-demand instance cost USD 0.60/hour, so the spot instance provide about 80% discount.

The AWS server with 8 CPU could run on 8 threads, where each threads yields 4 khash/s (DO CPU performs 50% better), and the instance is capable of 32 khash/s (it means 8 CPU on AWS is equivelant to 80% of processing power of Gen4  i7-4500U @ 1.8Ghz).

At 32 khash/s, it could generate 7 Dogecoint per hour (difficulty=1771, block reward=500000) and about USD 0.02 per hour. The cost of server is USD 0.112 per hour. So this is definitely not profitable at the current state.

Conclusion

Dogecoin mining is hardly profitable at the current state of 25 Jan 2014.

If you have a new and powerful CPU, you could mine in the background and hopeful of getting 500 Doge (about 1 USD) within a week. If you have desktop with powerful GPU, you might do better. But the future isn’t getting brighter for Dogecoin mining, just mine for fun.

I didn’t try to build a GPU-based miner or try GPU rig or AWS GPU-based instance as I believe I am too late into the game. Those with earlier experience mining Bitcoin or Litecoin would have a better advantage.

If somehow you get your hands on some free idle server or nvidia super computer, it could still be fun.

A CPU on DO yield 6 khash/s while AWS yield 4 khash/s. A Gen1 i5 M460 @ 2.5Ghz could yield 12 khash/s. A Gen4  i7-4500U @ 1.8Ghz yield 40 khash/s. I overestimated the CPU capability on AWS and DO. 10 CPU on AWS or 6.66 CPU on DO is equivalent to the processing power of Gen4 i7-4500U on a 2013-end notebook.

The Forbidden Path

It’s not actually forbidden, just that no one encourage you go there, your seniors and peers don’t go there, you heard of someone gone there and struck gold, and you are drawn there by mysterious forces.

I am not the type who would take the forbidden path. I study and work hard, fairly obedient and follow instructions pretty well, and would probably live a normal life with a normal career. I think the only things which tick me off is that Bill Gates the Techie could be a billionaire, and my brother saying there is no future in employment.

After 7 years of employment in two companies, my normal career kind of ended. I had been freelancing while working and I freelance full-time when I quit my job while I try to develop some product. Some people don't know where to get customers for freelancing projects, and I guess when you are doing it for a while, word will spread with referrals, and you will get repetitive business. I think things are better nowadays with Elance and oDesk, plus various online community and offline meetup; plenty of jobs, it’s a matter if you are interested or not. Though freelancing is pretty common, but I don’t have a friend who is actually a freelancer as well, until much later. I would assume less than 5% of people in IT embark on freelancing? So this path is still less than normal.

I thought I could build a product and sell it for money, but I don’t have the sales and marketing skill, and I didn’t meet someone who could help me. Then I just follow my passion and build something which I found useful, without much market study or business model. I developed a website to list new property launches, and another one to list restaurant reviews. It took about 3 years to generate USD 100 per month (luckily I live in Malaysia), and without knowing or planning for it, I have the most bizarre form of income: Adsense money. I have the hard time explaining how I manage to make money without selling anything or soliciting advertiser myself. Then I realize it’s like those free newspaper, give it for free to increase readership and get money from the advertiser, except I have an advertisement broker which is Google (less money, but no sales and marketing cost). How many of my friends actually make money from online advertisement (including bloggers)? None, except the new found bloggers which I came to know after running the food review site.

I guess there are many forbidden paths where we heard of, and people around us doesn’t seems to do it: freelancer (programmer, designer, photographer, etc.), blogger, people who sell things online, renting out room with airbnb, people who do a start-up, or people who start a conventional business. Sometimes you get people who work from home and people who don’t sell anything, or professional gamer (make a living by playing computer games).

If you kind of doing a startup (or just making a product), there is the thing with funding, market study, business model, validating your idea with customers, etc. What if you are a person who builds a product but you do none of the above? Does that make you a planned failure or irrational optimist? There is a Chinese saying 性格决定命运 (your character decide on your fate), so I am guessing its happening to me. I am not motivated with the business and customer stuff, and I am delusionally building a product which interest me, and hoping others would like it as well. I am pretty sure I am not an entrepreneur, probably just someone having fun building stuff. I accepted the fact I probably wouldn’t become filthy rich, but I shall become someone happy building things which I like. It might be difficult to make tons of money, but it shouldn’t be that hard to make a decent living while doing what we love, in a way which makes us happy most of the time.

Life is of many choices: I can choose to live the life I desire or give in to society norm; I can try to enhance the sales and business skill which doesn’t interest me, or I could seek an alternative model like Google Adsense; I could insist on making lots of money, or live a more meaningful life with less money; even though I am not a successful entrepreneur, there are still options besides employment. There is the normal path, less than normal path or the forbidden path that almost no one could guide or encourage you.

Some say normal equal mediocre. I think normal or mediocre is alright if this is the path you have truly chosen for yourself. I always assumed people have the naturally tendency to make more money, then I realise this is not true. Most people might choose the path with the least hardship and uncertainty, and some indeed feels more money isn’t really more attractive.

The forbidden path is mysterious, but not everyone wanted an adventure, as it’s filled with great uncertainty, with the promise of great reward or nothing at all, depending on how you look at it.

Every time when you want to claim that you have no time or no choice or no money, pause for a moment and think again, think about alternative choices.

If the logical mind doesn’t favour the forbidden path, where does the logical mind leads to?

Have a look at some of my projects: Malaysia Most Wanted, hackerio (new) and travelopy (work in progress).

2014: a Brave new year

It’s time to bravely set some new and old adventures for 2014, after saying goodbye to 2013.

Build Travelopy to ease my travel planning by helping me with where to go, when to go, how to go, what to do, what to eat, etc. (Booking.com handles where to stay pretty well most of the time). Create a beautiful album/journal of my travel experience. It shall be a place where traveller came together and share things in a meaningful and fun way. This shall be the 8th year since I hatched the idea, and this shall be the year to deliver it.

Make hackerio a useful resource page: Wikipedia + Delicious for Hacker. It shall be a playground for hackers.

Make Malaysia Most Wanted a playground for foodie.

Use Travelopy to plan for my travel in 2014. 2 months of holiday + 10 months of work seems reasonable. Taiwan? Xinjiang? New Zealand?

Build a few more "stupid idea" apps. A database of fictional character? An app to help disposal of useful junk like freecycle? Build a game.

Have a kid, if God permits.

Finally became a millionaire, as usual.

In 2014, remember what I am doing through Sprint + Kanban + Pomodoro.

May I find peace and meaning in life.

PS: In 2014, I shall go into coding spree to build plenty of stuffs.

Goodbye 2013.

It’s the time of the year, where I can hardly recall what I had done for the past year, and bravely set up to do magnificent things in the coming year. First, let's recall back what I set out to do in 2013 ...

In 2013 I wish to build a version of Food and Travel web app which I am really proud of, but sadly little progress is made. The only consolation is I did launch a very basic of Travelopy (learn about Python and Google App Engine in the process), and Malaysia Most Wanted’s Python Migration is 50% completed. It sadden me that I set out to build Travelopy 7.5 years ago, yet it's no launched yet.

In 2013 I manage to attend an Arduino hacking session at Google DevFest, then I realise I really doesn't have the leisure time to pick up this new hobby.

In 2013 I did manage to work on a “Stupid Idea”: hackerio help hackers to discover and organize online resources, which involve tagging of web links, bookmarking, collaborative list of things, startup database, etc. Why I manage to deliver? Thanks to Google Cloud Developer Challenge 2013, and at least I won a consolation prize of Nexus 7 for about 20 days of work.

In 2013, I didn’t manage to make a game.

In 2013, I travel to Europe and Japan for almost 2 months, which is great. Only through traveling I can break away from the anxiety of life, replaced by the stress and enjoyment of travelling.

In 2013, I pick up the responsibility to be on the committee of my apartment (reluctant "hero" scenario). It’s pretty stressful and unrewarding, which tormented my quiet life, yet it still feels like the right thing to do. It made me understands in order for the apartment to function and make the residents happy, someone needs to sacrifice; in order to build a better country, someone need to sacrifice as well, though some people are more suitable for the job.

In 2013, it had been 8 years since I quit my job and work from home. Malaysia Most Wanted is probably 7.5 years old, and I am happy it’s still relevant today, and I am sadden I didn’t do more for it. I am happy that I manage to adapt to working from home, and even happier that I “retire” from freelancing, and very happy to spend time on projects which interest me. I guess I am having my unicorn job. Now, only if I manage to make a game, complete Travelopy, make Malaysia Most Wanted fun to use (besides useful), travelling as a lifestyle …

In 2013, I came to accept the idea of having children of my own. My logical mind always wonder why create more "problems" to oneself, I still can't figure it out, but it feels like the right time and right thing to do.

In 2013, I bought "hackerio", replacing optimus.

hackerio

In 2013, I wanted a “True Life”, yet the image of a “True Life” is very vivid in my mind, then I saw message I left for 2013: May everyone find peace and meaning in their life. I am still feeling very restless now, so many things I wanted to do, with so many distractions and so many things not done. I need to find peace within my heart: it is a journey which I don't have the map.

Goodbye 2013.

Project Planning: Sprint + Kanban + Pomodoro

One thing I like about travel is that it disrupts routine and makes me rethink about life after I get home. One thing which bothers me every year is that I seem to be busy working on various things, but I can’t seems to make sense of what I had done (or achieved). One thing I love about blog is that my thoughts (more specifically my New Year resolution) are recorded and I always look back to see if I have done what I set out to do.

I have 5 things listed for my 2013 New Year resolution: I completed one (travel), will complete another by next week (try hardware hacking), another one is work in progress (travel web app), another one wishful to be completed (stupid idea) and last one is hopeless (make a game).

Kanban + Pomodoro is pretty good in helping me to keep track of productivity and small tasks, but I lose sight of the bigger pictures of things I had done and should be doing next. My wife’s company recently adopted the SCRUM software development framework, and I like the idea of sprint, let see if I can mesh the methodology together.

What do I want to do (or achieve)? I want to work on a stupid idea every quarter of the year, while spending time to maintain and work on Travelopy and Food web app.

I shall split 1 year into 4 quarters, where each quarter has 3 months, and each month will have 2 sprints (2 weeks each). In each month, one sprint shall be used to develop stupid idea, while the other is to develop the core products. By the end of the 4th quarter, I should have 4 stupid ideas in beta release, while the core products should be completed and running as production. Each sprint MUST end with a release (something working in production mode). I will use Kanban + Pomodoro to keep track of the actual tasks and hours spend.

				Expected	Actual
Q1	M1	S1	Stupid Idea 1
		S2	Core Product
	M2	S1	Stupid Idea 1
		S2	Core Product
	M3	S1	Stupid Idea 1
		S2	Core Product
Q2	M1	S1	Stupid Idea 2
		S2	Core Product
	M2	S1	Stupid Idea 2
		S2	Core Product
	M3	S1	Stupid Idea 2
		S2	Core Product

1 week sprint is too short, and I usually take 1 week to hammer out the code, and another week to polish it for proper release. Why spent 50% of the time on stupid idea and lose focus on core products? I found that if I work on the same project for too long, the enthusiasm and productivity goes down. As much as I like to work 7 days a week, but my mind and body just wouldn’t allow it. Thus I feel a good mix of leisure and work, stupid idea and serious work is important. If I don’t give enough time to stupid idea, nothing will be released thus I won’t feel the accomplishment. I am not sure whether this will work out or not, so let’s try it out.

With this new chart (Project Sprint Chart), I should have a clear view of what am I working on, promising better planning and time management.

More than a Bookmarking App

I always wanted a better bookmarking app, a better version of Delicious, and I wonder what could it be.

Bookmarking

Old Delicious

The first bookmark app that got me excited is Delicious, where I could see how many people bookmarked the same link as I am. At the time I was using it, Delicious doesn’t even have a browser plugin to easily bookmark a page, where I have to visit Delicious page to add a link (much like HN), but it’s already wildly popular. Delicious has a few goodies:

• Store bookmark on Internet (before the age of Cloud and Syncing), so we wouldn’t lost all the precious links when the computer fail.
• Number of people who bookmarked the same link is a vote which signal the “authority or importance” of the link (much like submission and up-voting by HN or Digg)
• The tagging might be chaotic, but it does allow browsing for import links for a specific category.
• The front page shows hot links, which is good for reading and browsing (much like HN)

New Declicious

The new Delicious didn’t show hot links unless I signup. They didn’t show the number of people who bookmarked the link in the listing, unless I link on the link for detail.

The hot tags are Egypt, breakingbad, redskins, Olympics, recipes, which didn’t interest me. I realize the early communities of Delicious are techies, thus I found the links relevant. Now Delicious is like Reddit (cover everything from gossips to politics), where I wish it was like HN.

The bookmarking features work quite flawlessly, yet I am still not happy (perhaps I am looking for more than just a bookmarking app). I can follow people and find out what link they bookmarked.

Somehow the new Delicious just didn’t feel the same anymore; perhaps the expectations had changed since I last used it 10 years ago, perhaps the community behind it isn’t the same anymore.

Kippt

Kippt used to be simple bookmarking tool, until they decided to pivot into something called “make your information workflow and archiving effortless.” which I didn’t get it. It annoys me once in a while by prompting their “social” following feature. I don’t object to the feature, but I don’t link to be interrupted by opening the kippt page when I try to bookmark a page.

Chrome Bookmark

Isn’t chrome bookmark good enough? It is fast and simple, and sync seamlessly with mobile devices. Somehow I never quite used it, unless on mobile devices, because it require much more effort to bookmark on mobile browsers using third party tools.

Perhaps it lacks a webpage I could browse my links (Google Bookmark doesn’t seems to integrate with Chrome Bookmark), or perhaps I miss the social and hot links discovery part of Delicious.

Discovery

An important aspect of the Old Delicious is the “social” side, or more precisely the discovery of hot links which interest me, which I would end up bookmarking it.

Digg

In a certain sense, Digg as a news aggregator site have the discovery side of bookmarking app like Delicious, where we could see hot and trending links on the FrontPage. Why I didn’t use Digg anymore? The techies had left, and the gossips and entertainment had taken over.

Reddit

I never joined Reddit because the hot links on the front page didn’t interest me. I read somewhere the essence of Reddit nowadays is in the subreddit (focus topics) due to its grown size. I just added the subreddit into my feed reader.

Hacker News

I use Hacker News actively, because it has quality links thanks to the techie community (felt a bit like the Old Delicious, without the fancy features of tagging and bookmarking).

Lesson Learned: In order to discover the things you like, you need to attract the right crowd.


PS: as much as I like Hacker News, it's still very much a niche as compared to Reddit

Feed Reader

I like Google Feed Reader, where it had the social aspect of following my favorite blogs, and I get to discover good reads from time to time. Nowadays I used Feedly, it works well.

Not Just Bookmarking anymore

I thought I wanted a simple bookmarking tool, but it isn’t that simple anymore. I wanted a tool which keeps my favorite links and help me discover new favorite links (and find useful resource page).

• A simple tool for quick bookmarking, accessible from anywhere.
• Discovery of hot links like Old Delicious, Hacker News (need to attract the right community)
• Follow my favorite blogs, writer, and topics like a feed reader.
• Group similar links together to provide useful information for a specific topic. E.g. tagging, subreddit, Wikipedia page, etc. In a certain sense is like people keep a page to list relevant resources, e.g. Resources for Android Development, Best IDE for Python, etc.

I always thought of building a “better” bookmarking app, and now I realize I actually wanted a Delicious + Hacker News + Google Reader + Wikipedia.

PS: a quick google on "Bookmarking Tool" yield little meaningful results, perhaps it's not something people care about these days.

Why the Government doesn't listen to me?

Plenty of times Government did do some funny things

• Spying on the entire nation in the name of national security, irregardless how vulnerable the citizens feel about it
• Treat people like terrorist suspect with no dignity when going on board a plain
• When someone reveals dirty secrets about the government, that person is deemed to commit treason against the country (or the government?)
• Censor the Internet and limit freedom of speech, where you are not allowed to talk bad the government
• When the people try to voice up, the government threatens to put these people in jail through charges like disrupting the peace, treason, racial sensitivity, etc.
• When the people try to question the government, the government put up reasons like “this could not be questioned”.

It seems to me that the Government feels insecure, thus act defensive when feels threaten by the people, they very people they are entrusted to protect and take care of. Perhaps I am naïve and didn’t understand the concept of the Government. I thought the Government is a custodian to represent the people, and to act in the best interest of the people. Somehow I felt most government’s priority is to stay in power. What is possibly going wrong here?

Maybe Thomas Jefferson and I are wrong

“The purpose of government is to enable the people of a nation to live in safety and happiness. Government exists for the interests of the governed, not for the governors.” ― Thomas Jefferson

“When government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny." ― Thomas Jefferson

Perhaps Thomas Jefferson and I are wrong about the purpose of the government, or maybe Tyranny is still a form of government though not favored by the people. I am not sure what kind of vow the elected representative of the country takes when they take the office, but I sure hope someone has the power to make them accountable.

Why I feel the government is not doing very well "to enable the people of a nation to live in safety and happiness"? Is this the primary objective?

Maybe I am not “the People”

Maybe I am not the intended People of the country, supposing I am the minority and everyone else thinks that the government is doing a great job. Many people could voice their discontent on the Internet, but many more didn't voice up, and even more didn't use the Internet.

When the Government proposed a law which I think is stupid or dangerous or both, how could I as the people stop it? We could do a petition or protest, but we could hardly gather the active support of 5% of the population; the government could claim that they have consulted all stakeholders and the majority support it. In fact, it was our elected representatives who pass the law. The government didn't see any unhappy people, did you?

It’s very hard to prove the Voice of the People, where it’s only actively polled once every 3-5 years during the election. Usually the ruling party shall be the upper hand in government election (access to media and resources, using government machinery for party, last minute favorable policy for the people, electoral divisions, etc.), where the results could easily skewed 10-20%. In another words, it would take 60-70% of favorable votes for the opposition to win.

Do we have a mechanism to effectively reflect the voice of the people for each intervals and events? How do we prove a policy or law is indeed stupid and dangerous in the eye of the people?

Maybe the people are too stupid?

Some people believe that people are too stupid to take care of themselves, what’s more about knowing what’s good for the country. If the people don’t know, who knows better?

Would you agree if the government give you free money even though it would bankrupt the government in the long run?

I have poor financial management skill, thus I hire a financial manager. One day the financial manager I hire thinks that I am too stupid and decided to steal my money. The people don’t know how to run a country, so we elect a government.

If the people could be stupid, the government could be a cunning smart ass, and I am betting the latter is more dangerous.

Why someone want to be the Top Public Servant?

I am in the committee as caretaker of my apartment building, where I don’t get paid, facing complaints, and with plenty of work to do. Why did I take up the role? Because the apartment operation and finance is on the verge of collapsing and there is no one else to pick up the shit. I always wonder what’s the reason other people are taking this role?

Why would you want to take up the top post of the Public Servant, where you have to serve millions of people who are literally your boss, and didn't get paid quite well given your responsibility? Why you didn't become the CEO of corporations where there are thousands of minions under you, and it’s not uncommon to be paid millions of dollars in remuneration?

People say you could get power and money by being the top public servant …

Why teacher get paid so little when they about responsible of educating our future leaders? Why our top public servants get paid lesser than CEOs while being entrusted with more power and money?

Why not we make it a policy that top public servants are paid as well as the CEOs (at least a few million per years, depending on the country’s performance), but are not allowed to be super rich (somehow manage to amass 10 extra million per  year from “business” during the tenure). If your business is prospering rapidly, I am sure you don’t have the time to run the country. If you immediate family fortune grows exponentially during your tenure, I am sure you would like to retire and spend the money with your family.

Do you know the fortune of the top public servants? Is it reasonable given their salary?

Public Servant should be paid well given their responsibility, but it’s unreasonable for them to get mad rich due to their position.

The People always complaint

A Korean friends told me the people always complaint about their government (including Korea), and the Singaporean taxi drivers complaint about their government as well.

Perhaps it's human nature to never be satisfied. Nevertheless, there is still so much room for improvement to build a better country, and I am afraid some of the current trend and policy is leading to a downhill path.

Please enable the people of a nation to live in safety and happiness.

I won't and can't secure funding, for now

I was guilty of taking a few shots at the "free money" provided by Government Fund, but I never seek VC money before. Though I was disappointed with the outcome, but I am glad I didn't get funded as I would probably end up like Adam. After many years, I come to understand accept I probably didn't deserved to be invested in (though it didn't means the other applicants are more deserving).

I don't need the money

I have some ideas, and I was tempted by the idea of "free money", so why not spend some time to take a shot at it. In the beginning while I was still under employment, the fund would act as a nice cushion of allowances while I work on the project. When I was freelancing, the fund seems like a good extra income. Today, the "free money" is not worth the paperwork and bureaucracy I have to endured.

I didn't truly need a lot of money to kickstart most of my idea (Internet and Software related). I just need to summon some courage to spend at least 3-6 months working on an idea (leap of faith), perseverance in coding without supervision and good at SEO (now known as Growth Hacking).Besides, I "wired" my mind to not work on any ideas which required tons of money in order to succeed (e.g. e-Commerce).

My intention to apply for the fund is not truly genuine. I just wanted some freebies, a safety net. I didn't need the money to kickstart, and there is no growth to fuel. Servers are cheap nowadays, and I can code. There is nothing to stop me except myself.

I can't Pitch

The ability to start a successful business and the ability to secure money from investors are two very different skill sets. Some people have common idea and unproven execution capability, but they could win pitching contest easily as if they are professional "pictcher". I probably have some common idea as well with some coding capability, but I definitely can't pitch or sell. I could explain ideas and benefits, but I don't have the killer instincts to close the deal. I didn't dive into the mindset of investors and understanding their needs. I share my ideas and plans from the perspective of a coder and a consumer.

To succeed in pitching to investors is like going through examination. You don't have how are you going to apply your knowledge in life, you just need to know how the examiner is going to score the answers.

At a later stage I came to witness the importance of networking with the investors. Stupid coder like me thought that we could barge in into the room full of investors we didn't know, show a slide deck and talk for 10 minutes and walk away with the money. Too young too naive, haha. The smarter way would be find some ways to talk to potential investors before hand, understand what they are looking for, what they think of your idea, how you could improve on the idea and let them know you personally. Else the minutes you finish your presentations, they will bombard you with a high dosage of skepticism, doubts, misunderstanding and distrusts.

My naive idea of pitching is just to share what I love doing, and hopefully you might like it as well and put some money into it. I don't like to hard sell, or pretend to be someone I am not just to please you. Sadly the VC world don't work this way, these people invest to make profit, not a hobby or investing into ideals.

I don't have a Business Model

When people ask what do I do? I told them I am a programmer who build website, and they probably think I am a freelancer who build websites for business. I don't consider myself a true entreprenuer, as I care more about product and users than how to make money. I just want to build a great product and have plenty of happy user who find my product useful and use it frequently. I like how Google, Twitter and Facebook got started: build something useful.

During my pitch, I did come up with some ways to monetize my products and projects profit from few hundred thousands to a few million per year. I probably did it to satisfied the pitching requirement, where the monetization methods are reasonable, but I was never truly interested in them. Most of the time I failed miserably at this part. Most investors probably would not invest in Google or Facebook, so it doesn't helps if I try to act like them. Anything with a few million ringgits of profit per year might be good for a lifestyle business, but it's not a business worth investing in for most investors. I was just being too naive.

Nothing to Show

I guessed there are certain things investors are looking for, either they are conventional wisdom or what the startup world is preaching nowdays:

• Idea: Restaurant review like Yelp? Never heard of it. Travel Review like TripAdvisor? They are some damn good and there is nothing you can do to beat them. What makes you think they won't do the features you are proposing?
• Profit: Since I don't have a real business model, and pathetic income from Google Adsense probably made them despised my capability to make money.
• Team: I'm a solo founder, nothing more to say.
• Traction: I have nothing more than an idea at my first few attempts at the Government Grant, but my last attempt does have 300K monthly visitors with 50% yearly growth (not spectacular, but something to show). Sadly investors from this part of the world probably like paying users better.
• Market: Malaysia? Too small. Restaurant Review? Nobody makes big money in it. Why don't you do food delivery like foodpanda, or e-Commerce?
• Passion: Passion is not something we can put in a slide deck and talk it out; and personally, nobody care about your passion besides yourself.
• Connection: I am a coder who doesn't have any influential friends.
• Social: I don't know you, never heard of you, and you will end up as the 101th small potato I rejected this year, muahahaha.

Poor evaluation based on Profit

Most investors in this part of the world would evaluate a startup based on current profit fast forwarded 5 years in to future with a certain growth rate. Let say my startup makes RM 50K per year with 30% growth annually for the next 5 years (50 + 65 + 85 + 110 + 143 = RM 453), my startup's evaluation would be around half a million ringgit. Is there evaluation tempting? RM 500K is nothing much nowadays (can't buy a decent house), and I probably spent almost equivalent of time worth in it, and the same amount of money couldn't not build another equivalent startup. Since I suck at squeezing profit out of the business, the evaluation seems unfair to me.

Anyway, how does Instagram reach $1B evaluaton without making a dime?

Loss of Autonomy

Once I taken in partners or money, the entity is not fully mine anymore. I can't do as I wish, where I have take into account the opinions of others and probably focus on profitable activities. I can't work on an idea just because it would be fun or cool or "because it feels right" anymore; I probably need to spend a lot of time convincing others that these ideas are worth pursuing, and they would probably ask me to create a project plan, market survery, feasibility study, etc.

I never really like the Business Modal Canvas, and Steve Blank would probably roll his eyes with the way I work. I don't really care about market size (at long as I'm not the only intended user), I naively believe I am the model user of the product and it should be fun to develop to keep me going. It shouldn't take too long to launch the first version (less than 3 months, 1 month would be better), and it shouldn't require skill I don't have or money I'm not willing to spend. I must be confident of making moderate success through SEO or some other common Growth Hacking technique and doesn't require to spend a fortune on marketing.

I'm pretty sure many people aren't comfortable with the way I work, thus I require absolute autonomy. I hate the feeling of not able to work on something I truly believe in, unless you could dissuade me.

I might be happy running a lifestyle business

I thought I am a Startup Guy (I like Google), but I am probably running a lifestyle business. My website doesn't have high growth with no massive users or big fat cheque after running for 7 years. When you take money from investors their business model becomes yours.

I might have a very peculiar attitudes towards running my business which might make most VCs roll their eye or vomit blood. I am mostly driven by passion and didn't take making huge profit seriously, but survivability and sustainability is important. I like to work on idea where I am the intended users, so I don't have to go around asking people what they want. My only measurement of success is traction, the number of happy users using my product to solve their problem. I don't like weekly meeting to talk about numbers, but how to make the product and user experience better. I believe in growth hacking, and it's about the only non-coding thing I like in running a business. I try to avoid direct sales and in person marketing. I will end up procrastinating too much if I work on things which I dislike. I don't buy the idea that there is a need to work more than 8 hours per day, 7 days a week (I will burn out within days).

Perhaps I had become too rigid, and probably a bad team player, but I believe I am in my "optimized" form for productivity, probably suits me in the current state and stage. I realize I might have problem growing a team as I am too used to being a lone ranger. Basically, I want people to leave me alone and let me do what I like, and I am too lazy to convince others.

I thought that I need to secure funding from VC to be successful (reading too much TechCrunch). I also understand an invested business with VC support does have higher chances of million dollar exit, as proven by a friend's business lately. Somehow I am not ready to play the VC game, and I probably sucked at it. One day an angel investor offered me a small investment, then I realized something: I don't know how to use the money, and I always believe my business is undervalued.

Do I really need VC money? There is no growth to fuel yet, and I yet to have the confident to repay.


 

Review: PG's How to Convince Investors

• Investors are interested in you if you seem like you have a chance, however small, of being one of the big successes (the conventional wisdom is 15) each year.
• How do you seem like you'll be one of the big successes? You need three things: formidable founders, a promising market, and (usually) some evidence of success so far.
• Most investors decide in the first few minutes whether you seem like a winner or a loser, and once their opinion is set it's hard to change.
• Truly evaluate whether your startup is worth investing in. If it isn't, don't try to raise money.
• Founders think of startups as ideas, but investors think of them as markets.
• A lot of VCs would have rejected Microsoft and Google.
• The people who are really good at acting formidable often solve "who else is investing?" problem by giving investors the impression that while no investors have committed yet, several are about to.
• The best solution is to tackle the problem head-on, and to explain why investors have turned you down and why they're mistaken. Experienced investors are well aware that the best ideas are also the scariest. They all know about the VCs who rejected Google.
• i) Make something worth investing in. ii) Understand why it's worth investing in. iii) Explain that clearly to investors.

Review: Do Things That Don’t Scale

Do Things that Don’t Scale by PG is one of the more insightful article I had read in recent times, and it’s pretty long (having a hard time taking notes).

Notes

1. The most common unscalable thing founders have to do at the start is to recruit users manually.
2. There are two reasons founders resist going out and recruiting users individually. One is a combination of shyness and laziness. They'd rather sit at home writing code than go out and talk to a bunch of strangers and probably be rejected by most of them. The other reason founders ignore this path is that the absolute numbers seem so small at first.
3. If you have 100 users, you need to get 10 more next week to grow 10% a week. And while 110 may not seem much better than 100, if you keep growing at 10% a week you'll be surprised how big the numbers get. After a year you'll have 14,000 users, and after 2 years you'll have 2 million.
4. Marketplaces are so hard to get rolling that you should expect to take heroic measures at first. In Airbnb's case, these consisted of going door to door in New York, recruiting new users and helping existing ones improve their listings.
5. It's harmless if reporters and know-it-alls dismiss your startup. They always get things wrong. It's even ok if investors dismiss your startup; they'll change their minds when they see growth. The big danger is that you'll dismiss your startup yourself.
6. Microsoft can't have seemed very impressive when it was just a couple guys in Albuquerque writing Basic interpreters for a market of a few thousand hobbyists (as they were then called), but in retrospect that was the optimal path to dominating microcomputer software.
7. How do you find users to recruit manually? If you build something to solve your own problems, then you only have to find your peers, which is usually straightforward. 
8. Otherwise you'll have to make a more deliberate effort to locate the most promising vein of users. For example, Ben Silbermann noticed that a lot of the earliest Pinterest users were interested in design, so he went to a conference of design bloggers to recruit users, and that worked well.
9. You should take extraordinary measures not just to acquire users, but also to make them happy. For as long as they could (which turned out to be surprisingly long), Wufoo sent each new user a hand-written thank you note.
10. A lot of of startup founders are trained as engineers, and customer service is not part of the training of engineers. You're supposed to build things that are robust and elegant, not be slavishly attentive to individual users like some kind of salesperson.
11. I have never once seen a startup lured down a blind alley by trying too hard to make their initial users happy.
12. But perhaps the biggest thing preventing founders from realizing how attentive they could be to their users is that they've never experienced such attention themselves. Their standards for customer service have been set by the companies they've been customers of, which are mostly big ones.
13. Steve Jobs wasn't just using "insanely" as a synonym for "very." He meant it more literally—that one should focus on quality of execution to a degree that in everyday life would be considered pathological.
14. It's not the product that should be insanely great, but the experience of being your user. But you can and should give users an insanely great experience with an early, incomplete, buggy product, if you make up the difference with attentiveness.
15. In software, especially, it usually works best to get something in front of users as soon as it has a quantum of utility, and then see what they do with it. Perfectionism is often an excuse for procrastination, and in any case your initial model of users is always inaccurate, even if you're one of them.
16. Sometimes the right unscalable trick is to focus on a deliberately narrow market. That's what Facebook did for Harvard students.
17. Any startup that could be described as a marketplace usually has to start in a subset of the market. It's always worth asking if there's a subset of the market in which you can get a critical mass of users quickly.
18. Most startups that use the contained fire strategy do it unconsciously. They build something for themselves and their friends, who happen to be the early adopters, and only realize later that they could offer it to a broader market. The strategy works just as well if you do it unconsciously.
19. Among companies, the best early adopters are usually other startups. They're more open to new things both by nature and because, having just been started, they haven't made all their choices yet. Plus when they succeed they grow fast, and you with them.
20. Pick a single user and act as if they were consultants building something just for that one user. The initial user serves as the form for your mold; keep tweaking till you fit their needs perfectly, and you'll usually find you've made something other users want too. Even if there aren't many of them, there are probably adjacent territories that have more.
21. Use your software yourselves on customers’ behalf. Viaweb: Some merchants don’t want to make an online store with our software, but they'd let us make one for them. It taught us how it would feel to merchants to use our software. Sometimes the feedback loop was near instantaneous.
22. When you only have a small number of users, you can sometimes get away with doing by hand things that you plan to automate later. This lets you launch faster, and when you do finally automate yourself out of the loop, you'll know exactly what to build because you'll have muscle memory from doing it yourself.
23. If you can find someone with a problem that needs solving and you can solve it manually, go ahead and do that for as long as you can, and then gradually automate the bottlenecks. It would be a little frightening to be solving users' problems in a way that wasn't yet automatic, but less frightening than the far more common case of having something automatic that doesn't yet solve anyone's problems.
24. The Big Launch don’ usually work. All you need from a launch is some initial core of users. How well you're doing a few months later will depend more on how happy you made those users than how many there were of them.
25. So why do founders think launches matter? A combination of solipsism and laziness. They think what they're building is so great that everyone who hears about it will immediately sign up. Plus it would be so much less work if you could get users merely by broadcasting your existence, rather than recruiting them one at a time. But even if what you're building really is great, getting users will be always be a gradual process—partly because great things are usually also novel, but mainly because users have other things to think about.
26. Partnerships too usually don't work. They don't work for startups in general, but they especially don't work as a way to get growth started.
27. The need to do something unscalably laborious to get started is so nearly universal that it might be a good idea to stop thinking of startup ideas as scalars. Instead we should try thinking of them as pairs of what you're going to build, plus the unscalable thing(s) you're going to do initially to get the company going.

A Shorter Summary

Sometimes conventional wisdom (even in the startup world) could be wrong, or wrongly interpreted and practiced. When we are small and have no users, there is a lot of non-scalable manual work need to be done to attract users, keep them happy until we reach a tipping point. The side effects is that we could learn a lot while doing the manual work, better understand the user's need, and how to optimize the process better. After that, perhaps we could scale, or not. No everyone needs to scale like Google.

A local angel investor reminded me that sometimes it’s good to go local and do something which don’t scale, as it makes it harder for the “scaling” foreign player to enter the market. It’s more work with more “hardware” problems, but it’s also more defensible. Market too small? The VC might not be interested with 10 million dollar market, but I am.

Perhaps it’s not a matter of scaling or not, but doing whatever is required.

Invited: D`MUG’s Magic Mug

When I caught wind of a friend venturing into the ceramic mug business, I was curious and wondering what is special about mugs. Then I was told it is a “magic” mug.

It’s magic in the sense the mug is temperature-sensitive (react to heat or cold), where the image on the exterior of the mug will change color when the mug is being exposed to heat or cold (heat-sensitive based product is more common). The “magic” nature of the mug makes the mug much more interesting, where you could put hidden message or motive where it will only be exposed when in contact with heat, which makes a great gift candidate.

 

I would assume the most important aspect of magic mug is the design of the exterior image, where is not only have to be beautiful and unique, but the contrast between the normal image (room temperature image) and hidden image (appear upon heated) must be captivating and bring out “surprise”, the same expectation we have with magic.

I ask Dexter, the co- founder of Dexsim (the company behind d’MUG), about who their target customers are. He said the magic mugs are popular as corporate gifts, and they are targeting end users as well. From their design I would say it’s a “safe” design, meaning it probably more suited towards corporate with similar “look & feel” to those of souvenir gifts.

Before

After

I was given 3 design as samples: The TV (a black screen brighten up and showing the word “ON”), The Tiger (Stripes turn into a tiger) and The Words (Black words turned into colourful words). I am very satisfied with the quality of the mug (solid build, vibrant color), and the design is okay, but I feel there is much more room for improvement. The TV has lots of potential, as the black screen could be turn on into anything, but why just show the word “ON” (which is not very meaningful), why not a more meaningful hidden message, a funny character or “You Are Being Watched” or “I'll Always Watch Over You”, then switch the corresponding white background with similar mood theme. As for The Words, rather than showing a bunch of meaningless words, why not put a hidden message in it and color up the hidden message, such as “Marry Me”, will this be a potential best seller? The Tiger is quite alright, but I like The Zebra better.

To target the individuals, especially the younger crowd, the mug’s design should incorporate humor or cuteness (for the much younger crowd) or some special characters or styles (gothic, girlish romance, etc.). Since it is expected to be bought as a gift, it should have more meaning (especially hidden meaning) for occasions such as birthday, father and mother’s day, valentine, etc. There should be a message of love, message of praise, message which makes people laugh, and help people to convey a message. When I say message I don’t mean just text, as message could be translated in other visual form. We have enough of “safe” design flooding the market; I believe we are desperately looking for something special, unique and unconventional. The nature of the magic mug is very special, and it should be complemented with a special design.

The magic mug still makes a very good gift with a surprise element, and I have high hopes for d’MUG’s next releases. The mug is sold for RM 22 per piece on d’MUG’s online store (original price is RM 26) excluding delivery (For West Malaysia is RM6 for Normal registered pos & RM8 for Poslaju. For East Malaysia will be RM12  for Poslaju only). If you would like to save on the delivery fee, you could try to contact them (enquiry@dexsim.com) to arrange for pickup (probably near Subang Empire area). There should be discount for bulk purchase (at least 50 units).

If you are interested in custom design, they accept a minimum order quantity of 50, and you can even print some customized message at the bottom of the mug. What if you only want 1 or 2 unit? Probably still could be done, but the price shall be higher, do contact Dexsim regarding your request.

The mug is made of High Grade Ceramic Compound, which feels pretty sturdy. The Ink and the Mug is food safe, certified to be compliance with "Directive 84/500/EEC – approximating EU countries' laws on ceramic articles intended to come into contact with foods”

I believe d’MUG should be a popular corporate gift, magically presenting each company;s identity and “secret message”, and it comes with a solid blue color premium box, which protect the mug well and portray a premium image. Do email enquiry@dexsim.com for bulk discount and custom design.

Dexsim (M) Sdn Bhd
B-06-29, Empire SOHO, Empire Subang,
Jalan SS16/1,
47500 Subang Jaya,
Selangor, Malaysia.
Tel: +6017 888 4678
Email: enquiry@dexsim.com
Web: http://dexsim.com
Online Store: http://www.d-mug.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DexsimSdnBhd