Harry Chen Thinks Aloud

One of the most rewarding experience that a young person can have is being an entrepreneur. A special report from the BusinessWeek online surveys the Best Entrepreneurs Under 25.

It seems that the success stories of Goolge, YouTube, Flickr, MySpace and Facebook have encourage many young people to become entrepreneurs.

In a 2006 poll of 1,474 middle and high school students, youth entrepreneurship organization Junior Achievement found that 70.9% would like to be self-employed at some point in their lives. That’s up from 68.6% in 2005 and 64% in 2004. The National Association for the Self-Employed projects its ranks will increase to about 250,000 members by the end of 2006, up from 100,000 in 1988. While the number of members under 25 has only grown from 0.2% in 2000 to 1.6% in 2004, membership of 25- to 34-year-olds jumped from 3.6% to 12.3% in the same span.

Source: Young, Fearless, and Smarts

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Few weeks before the launching of its game console Wii, Nintendo is executing some marketing strategy that is quite unusual for a video game company. The New York Times reports that the company has taken Wii to Life@50+, an annual event sponsored by AARP.

Two points that Nintendo tries to sell: (1) If you know how to make card games, you can play Wii. Its game control is more natural than which of its competitors. (2) Nintendo games such as Brain Age are not only fun to play, but also they can exercise your mind and help to improve brain functioning.

+1 point for the Nintendo’s marketing team.

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Many things in life we don’t have full control over. This includes starting your own business and accepting a new job. While we can try to do everything right, but sometimes failures are inevitable. If success is the best case scenario, then failure is the worst case scenario.

Professor Cornwell writes the importance and the necessity for entrepreneurs to consider worse case scenarios in their business plans. There are two problems that entrepreneurs often don’t aware. First, mistaken the meaning of a worst case scenario, and falsely believe that which is equivalent to a less optimistic variation of what the entrepreneur think will actually happen. Second, some others go to the extreme, and consider declaring bankruptcy as the ultimate worst case scenario. See the post for a detail explanation of these two points.

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As we enter a new era of information technology, politicians have learned to exploit search engines to better their political campaigns. According to the New York Times,

Fifty or so other Republican candidates have also been made targets in a sophisticated “Google bombing” campaign intended to game the search engine’s ranking algorithms. By flooding the Web with references to the candidates and repeatedly cross-linking to specific articles and sites on the Web, it is possible to take advantage of Google’s formula and force those articles to the top of the list of search results.

Put aside the real political value of those candidates. I’m impressed with their ability to exploit cutting-edge technology. However, I think those smart ideas probably came from their respective marketing and campaign organizations. Nevertheless, I think the world is changed forever because the Internet and its tight integration with our everyday life.

In the future as a new generation of politicians come into power, and they also happen to be the ones who live and breath with MySpace and YouTube, they will bring political warfares into a whole new next level. I wonder if we will soon see SMS spams, splogs (spam blogs), or YouTube videos for political campaigns?

After seeing shares of Google stock price hitting all time high, a friend asked me if I own shares of GOOG. I reply “yes. And do you?” “No, unfortunately. I own shares of some index fund,” he said. “So you probably own GOOG”, I laughed.

Like my friend, I don’t directly own share of GOOG in my investment portfolio. I own shares of an S&P 500 index fund and which makes certain amount of investment in GOOG. I’m happy when GOOG share price goes up, and I’m not too upset when it drops hard. This is why I think investing in index funds makes sense for most people.

Also, I think many mutual fund owners don’t aware how their mutual fund works. This can be dangerous because they may end up overweighting shares of certain high-profile stocks like GOOG.

It’s hard to convinced people to be eco-friendly if there is no financial incentive. Here are few tips from Alice Quillet on how you can cut monthly bills and save the planet at the same time:

• Seal windows and doors will save your energy bills.
• Make good use of curtains natural lights will keep homes warm in the winter and cool in summer.
• Use energy-efficient compact fluorescent light bulbs. Not only those light bulbs will use approximately 70 percent less energy, but also put out less heat and last about 10 years longer than standard incandescent light bulbs.
• Unplug unused chargers and electronic devices. A VCR consumes 90 percent of its overall annual electricity when on standby or not in use. Watch out for your unused cellphone, PDA and MP3 players chargers that are plugged into the walls.

Source: Help the planet and cut bills with a few steps at home

Image Metrics is a technology company that is specialized in mapping human actors’ performance onto any character — virtual or human, living or dead. The creators of the Image Metrics’s software say that their technology goes way beyond standard hand-drawn computer graphics, which is used in Tom Hanks’s 2004 film “The Polar Express”.

A key differentiator of their software is the ability to capture all the movements of the face, including the movements of the eyes. “You can’t put markers on eyes, and you can’t replicate the human eye accurately through hand-drawn animation,” says Andy Wood, the chairman of Image Metrics.

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On Oct. 9th, 2006, North Korea went with its first-ever nuclear test. North Korea hoped to use this test to threaten the US and other countries that want tougher foreign policies against the North Korea government. Given the current situation, I think North Korea has miscalculated the response from the global community.

• Rather than increasing North Korea’s advantage, its test may united opposition. China and South Korea who were somewhat less aggressive than the Western countries are now very angry at North Korea’s nuclear test.
• Countries (e.g., Australia) that previously didn’t voice strong opinions about North Korea now advocate tougher UN sanctions.
• If no countries want to play soft with North Korea this time — less international aids and tougher UN sanctions, who suffer the most is the poor North Korean people. This may eventually lead to instability within the country.

Source: North Korea blasts away hopes of engagement, Economist.com