WE, FYP, Startup and Halo :D

Alright! After one month+ of not writing, I’m sure I need to give you guys an explanation for my disappearance on what I’ve been up to. To avoid this article becoming length and boring, I’ll do very very quick point forms.

1) Internship at Waggener Edstrom ends

I spent my term break interning at Waggener Edstrom’s Studio D where I was doing mostly Social Media Marketing and Digital PR. For those of you who are unfamiliar with buzz words, it is planning and conceptualizing digital campaigns for clients to tell the right stories and experiences to the customers. In more simple terms, I have a license to Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Twitter all day long 😀

It was a very interesting experience for me because my life activities have been turned over. What do I mean by turned over?

In the past:
During work: Code and develop stuff
After work: Read up on marketing strategies, plan campaigns and brainstorm creative ideas for own projects

At WE:
During work: Read up on marketing strategies, plan campaigns and brainstorm of creative ideas for clients
After work: Code and build my own fun stuff 😀

…and I have to admit I really like the switch in environment. A great company that knows how to recognize and value great talents 🙂

Would really like to thank Melvin for pulling me into the company and exposing me to the PR industry.

The Studio D team and Jen Houston during her visit to WE Singapore
For more personal pictures with the team, check my Facebook ^_~

 

2) Final Year Project and Startup
It is official now! After a few weeks of indecisiveness and running through various phases of paperwork, I will be working on my own proposed Final Year Project at NUS. I know it is quite a huge risk to take but I believe it is worth a try.

Although the focus still needs refinement, it’ll be about measuring the diffusion of “Word of Mouth” marketing both quantitative and qualitatively on Social Networks. My team and I will be building a youth retail site with an environment that would trigger “Word of Mouth” marketing (hopefully). We will then measure the flow of information about products/brands from one user to another and how recipients act on this information. The platforms we plan to integrate with the site are Facebook and Twitter. This retail site will also be the startup I’m currently working on.

Will update as more things are finalized ^_~.
 

3) Halo Session with HP’s CTO – Phil McKinney
This Friday I’ll be waking up in the wee hours of the morning (okay its not that bad! just really early for a morning person like me) to attend a video conference at HP’s office with HP’s CTO, Phil McKinney. It will be a roundtable discussion using HP’s Halo technology .

I’m really excited about this event as the topic we will be discussing is Natural User Interfaces! What is Natural User Interfaces (NUI)? In short, it is interfaces that are easy to learn through experience. To put it simply, they are interfaces designed so well that you don’t have to read the manual to learn how to use the device. Unfortunately the only experience I have with NUI is my little, amateur-ish, out of the garage interactive kitchen table. Would be really interesting to hear how the pros go about the innovation process. 😀

Alright that’s about it! Feel free to e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, drop comment if there are any questions you would like me to ask during the discussion with Phil. I know some of you are real experts in this area judging from the e-mails I got on the touch table in the past.

Have a good half week! ^_~

Ready for work in 5 mins!

This came in my mail early this morning. Cheered up my morning for work!

Get up, change clothes, eat breakfast and be ready for work in 5 minutes 😀 Perfect solution for sleepyheadzz!!

Great cinematography: The Cougar Scene

Came across this superb video of nature taking its course today. The cinematography was so good half the time I was questioning whether I was watching a movie or a documentary.. really kudos to L’ours, the guys who created this back in 1988! Be prepared to be nerve-wrecked!

Open Idea: Walking cane with embedded phone

Hey guys! Recently for one of my modules I was asked to come up with a product design that would improve a home activity for a target group. As it was just an idea brainstorming session, I thought I should share an idea I had here which I think would be useful for many old people around the world with walking difficulties.

Some of you might be asking: Why are you doing this? The reason is simple. My grandfather is very frustrated with this problem and I want to help him resolve it but unfortunately I do not have the technical capabilities to do so. I am throwing this idea out in the open so that anyone who knows about such a technology or will be building it, can inform me so that I can get one for him to make his life easier.

Quick Brief
My grandfather is 80 years old and he is unable to walk without a cane. His walking pace is very slow and often, when the phone rings, he is unable to reach the phone in time to pick it up. He ends up missing the call making it very frustrating for him. I believe this is a dilemma often faced by many elderly people around the world. A simple solution that can be done is to add a cordless phone-like device into the cane. As the cane is always with the elderly person, it will make things much more convenient for him. This modification is a simple addition of a button and an embedded speaker phone. When the phone rings, the cane will emit a ringing sound. The elderly person can press a button on the cane to pick up the call and hear what is being said from the cane, right from wherever he is in the house.

Note that he does not need to bend down and put his ear to the cane as it is using speaker phone technology.
Also note that this is not a handphone but a phone that syncs with the house phone.

I threw in a very rough illustration too to help you guys understand the idea better.

And feel free to drop any comments for discussion! It can be about what you think of the idea, its usability, how it can be more useful, etc. 🙂

Break until 2nd December

Hey guys,
I’ll not be writing anything here until after the 2nd of December. This is because exams are around the corner and I have a lot of things to settle before I leave for my 2nd home! Promise that I’ll put up lots of cool stuff once I get everything done. Been meeting a few interesting people lately whom I’d love to tell you about but no time to “key” it down properly in words. Hence, until 2nd December, later! ^_~

Su Yuen

Beyonce on SNL, Justin in Leotard!!

I know this is unrelated to this blog but I JUST HAD TO POST THIS UP!! This video is just SO HOT! 😀

Hahahahaha Justin!!!

Slime mind-controls ant

This is one of the most bizzarre facts I’ve ever come across. Those innocent, harmless looking slime creatures are actually more powerful than lions.

Now I wonder whether the same would happen for humans who “accidentaly” consume the slime. 😐

Resources you might want to check out:
National Geographic on YouTube <– LOTS of cool stuff.

Wildlife.. interesting behaviour

Everytime I watch lions attack a deer on TV, I get super angry because first of all the deer wasn’t alone.. it was with a group of other deers and when one of them is attacked by the lion, the other deers run away. After they have ran a distance and the baby deer is in the lion’s grasp, they just STARE and WATCH instead of helping. One lion and a group of deers? Come on! It is not impossible for them to save their comrade. They can’t be that selfish right?

And then came this infamous video on YouTube!

According to the voices in the video, this is the first time the buffaloes are pulling together to fight against the lions in the park. Maybe, like humans, one buffalo thought about things more than the rest leading to their new found collective behaviour. The next curiosity I had following from this is now that it is harder to eat buffaloes in the park, will the lions adopt a different attack strategy? It’d be interesting if the few lions manage to come up with a strategy that can beat the huge group of buffalos. Coz then we would have the Sun Tzu of the wild!

Bitbot Happy Bits Week 3

Ever wanted to make quirky and squeaky voices similar to cartoon characters like Donald Duck? The guys at Mythbusters have shown how it is possible to easily alter your voice without much effort by inhaling some proportion of different types of gases. 😀

Special thanks to Alvin for highlighting this

Bitbot Happy Bits Week 2

Hey guys! It is Wednesday again and as promised, here’s a video to brighten up your week. Thanks to Peter Kim for highlighting this video to me. After you watch the video, you will start to see Pachelbel’s “Canon in D” differently. 😀

On a more serious note, I spotted this crazy video with 45 million HITS! I’m pretty sure most of you have already seen this but in case you haven’t, I present to you the “Canon Rock!” by JerryC and FunTwo. Really fantastic arrangement 😀