2010-04-20
Moving to Blogger
Hi long time no post,
I just moved my blog from hatena to Blogger as it seems more flexible with Twitter Widget and etc.
E Square http://toyo213.blogspot.com/
2010-02-17
Trip in last 2month and interesting new venture
I have been to Thailand, China(Shanghai, Beijing), Norway, Finland, France, Switzerland and Hokkaido in last 2 month.
it was not consecutive but separate individual trip in such short time.Yes it was tough, lots to see and definitely super-fun trip.
Especially in Finland my first time to experience "never see sunshine all day long" due to its high latitude after entering Arctic Circle, could not get to see sunshine even at 1PM. Yes it was around -30C which is almost -22Fahrenheit, your finger start getting frost bite in 5 min without glove.
now back in Yokohama and found interesting Robot venture "Cyber Step" at Yokohama Tech Show.
It can be controlled by Flash app(FMS as a middleware for streaming) and got camera mounted on its top so that user can see where it is going.
It is not getting to the point of real use case nor mass production yet.
However, I got the feeling that once motherboard for those robot become available, it can be built up like self-made PC and customized for various purpose in a way fabless companies do with Flat TV.
Tomorrow morning Japan time, there will be snowboard HalfPipe Final and Kazuhiro Kokubo (sponsored by Burton) , expected as silver medal by local paper, will show up. I ended up missing this once in a 4 year event for business trip to Kansai... Well hope he best Shaun White and be on the center of podium!!!
2009-11-12
Why so many surf app?
Until I started surfing in Japan, did not realize why so many wave information web sites are available.
Now I got to know reasons why many surfers are willing to pay $3- 6/month for that information.
Yes it is a niche business but I guess that is stable and lucrative once you become a top site in this field.
The main reason for this is simply surfers needs accurate wave information deadly to make their day.
Therefore wave information site got much more drive to make users to pay for its information such as wave size, shape, wind and etc than SNS and other website does as to its contents. The bottom line is Surfers can NOT surf without good wave ,and they need most recent information NOT one 10 hours ago.
I think that the same goes for the monetization of bloomberg. Prop Traders needs updated information deadly to catch a wave of the market too.
It has been a while since people started paying for internet contents(e.g. last.fm) but not many of them are successful yet.
when it comes to monetization of internet contents, given that the success of this niche business, to strike a balance between how sexy your information can be and how many of those attracted to its contents may be a KFS.
By the way, Namidensetsu (Surf Legend) is a very first Japanese entertainment mobile app and No.1 japanese wave information site.
it also got very intuitive GUI so is its iphone app.
it is said in Japan, there are 150,000 registered(paying) customers for wave information site and if it set its ARPU(Average Revenue Per User) is 400 yen(US4$), 60,000,000yen/month, US$7.2 million/annual revenue.
Given that sending that simple html(100kb or less/page) to mobile besides live camera streaming(64kbps or so), Data transfer should NOT be too much. Nor is infrastructure investment with Amazon EC2. Actually they dispatch staffs to each surf points and check waves onsite so it is more accurate as compared to website whose report is based on only data analysis. (No.1 US wave information site surfline.com is only report by data analysis I think)
but even after subtracting staff fees, this niche business can be high operating profit with stable # of Unique Users I guess.
By the way, here is a traffic info of surline.com from alexa.com. surprised to see only wave information can be this giant and it got online ads revenue in addition to its contents fee by taking advantage of its traffic.
Again let me pick up this song!
JAY Z feat Alicia Key Empire State of Mind Video is finally OUT!!!
Disclaimer:the information about paying customers and # of surfers from unknown site, it may be off or way off :P
2009-10-22
Innovation in hardcore computer service
surprised to hear this news that IBM mainframe still account for 10% of whole server market share which is 53 billion US $ in the world and now a target of antitrust in US.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/08/technology/companies/08antitrust.html
I do not know IBM mainframe well, so I could be a little off.
so please provide me info/reason that large computer always has to be IBM mainframe.
This news gave me an idea of in those inefficient software/hardware markets have huge potential to grow because it is just left behind in this cloud computing era and still got big margin to improve its productivity as compared to other web/mobile service market.
When it comes down to sending info by text, twitter is fast enough as a framework to spread the word in a blink of an eye to the other end of the world.
just thought too many engineers trying to create services to increase productivities in the area that there is not so much margin left.
I believe that Good Data can be a good model of storming into lucrative blue ocean market.
Lets see how far this cloud computing movement can go.
Todays pick up JAY-Z and Alicia Key "Empire state of mind"
Always have a special place in my heart for NYC. this song kind of remind me of my days in NYC and make me sing "New York!!"♪
2009-09-16
Flippr and California trip
These days things slow down with flippr due to the lack of my full commitment that is vital for start-ups without saying....
We already completed first prototype and service concept.. I started pitching my ideas to my friends and potential investors.
The impression I got as to investors is "create movement and get the # of users for future revenue first, them come back to us", kind of chicken or the eggs situation.
After creating prototype, to boost up # of users and expand,evolve the service, more dedication and commitment will be needed...(may be money too)
That is something you can NOT handle single-handedly and require your team full-time commitment.
So the question is whether I am ready to jump off to the deep end.......
I will be in LA and possibly in Silicon Valley from 18th - 22nd September and am supposed to meet with some entrepreneurs as well.
Well, hopefully it helps my soul searching and better my idea.
Flippr Service site
- How to use Flippr
please add "http://flippr.in/" to the top of URL as followings
When clicking "Flippr.in" logo, it scrolls down and shows you tube videos and tweet list.
also Chat window will show up in the right bottom and you can share comments on website.
Disclaimer:Chat feature does not work with Windows + IE at this moment :p
Toyo