Web 2.0 Entrepreneur

The reason to focus on simplicity

• Posted by Tengku Zahasman on March 12th, 2008 filed in Ramblings, Web2.0, Strategy


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• (649 Views)

… because the big players did it and it worked better than the other smaller players who built complicated bulky apps …

Thanks to StuffThatHappens for the illustration and to FunkyKaraoke for sharing it!

Malaysian politics and Web 2.0 campaign

• Posted by Tengku Zahasman on March 7th, 2008 filed in Viral Marketing, Web2.0


• 4 Comments »
• (727 Views)

Well, I’m no fan of local politics, but a post in Profy today caught my eye.

Seems like this 89-years-old gradma turned to the Internet to reach voters in her political campaign as a free candidate for the coming election day (oh wait… it’s tommorrow ). Not only does she has her own campaign blog, she also makes use of Youtube channels, Picasa photo album, and even created a Facebook group to reach out for supporters.

Telling by her age (and the way she gives that “blank stare” into the LCD ), I’m sure someone else is maintaining those online campaign stuffs for her. But I don’t care if she’s gonna nail the election or not (considering her age and background, and what was the name of her party again?), she’s definitely one step ahead than most other candidates out there who still relies solely on traditional street-side posters and a few talks to attract voters. This grandma records herself and posts her videos into Youtube. She pose for pictures and uploaded them to Picasa. She fully utilizes Web 2.0 to do her viral marketing campaign.

You rock grandma!

Is Flash still appropriate?

• Posted by Tengku Zahasman on February 15th, 2008 filed in Thoughts, Flash


• 4 Comments »
• (441 Views)

A few years ago when Ajax started to get really famous as an alternative solution for creating Rich Internet Applications (RIA), a lot of people started bashing Flash, saying that Flash is bad considering its implementation - its loading time, its scalability issues, and especially the part when Flash contents can’t be easily indexed by search engines or be bookmarked. As a huge Flash user back then, I get pretty frustrated over this new development. As I remembered correctly, a few years before Ajax, Flash used to be the king of all. People praised it for delivering the only proven cross-platform solution over the net and putting Java Applets to shame. People were magnified by Flash’s ability to create stunningly eye-catching effects and interactivity that no one has ever thought possible to be done inside a web browser before. Websites like 2advanced.com got very well respected within the Web community of that era.

A few years later, things started to change. Topics like SEO and “friendly URLs” get tossed here and there. Online bookmark applications like del.icio.us and BlinkList started to get into the mainstream lane. All these new adoptions has revealed Flash’s weaknesses in Internet’s content indexing.

However, there were a crowd of people who still believed in Flash and injected it into the Web2.0-sphere. Suddenly web apps like Geni, Scribd and SlideShare sprung up into the Web 2.0 scene introducing Flash as their core technology and proving the true power of Flash in interactivity. People started to realize that with the right application, the strength of Flash can actually be put to good use. This is for the people who keeps bashing Flash out there

“A 100% Flash website” may be somewhat impractical at this age, but Flash itself, is not. It is still playing a huge role in the Web 2.0 scene for its flexibility and cross-platform adaptability. Think about it… there wouldn’t be YouTube if not because of Flash.