The Global Venture

In the last 2 weeks I have had the chance of meeting 3 very senior people (CEO or staff like that) here in Hong Kong.

• I would just like to make 3 comments about the impressions I had:

1) They were all so terribly modest about their achievements.

2) They really talked to me in a very easy-going way: Hi you, seat here with us! What do you do in life? Why did you come to Hong Kong.

3) They usually prefer not to talk about themselves but make questions about their interlocutor and discuss about those topics suggested by their interlocutor

To sum up, CEOs are just the contrary than middle management bosses

The other day I discovered a new use (at least for me) of YouTube: Music player while working.

I usually listen to my last.fm widget on my facebook page. But I have to say that there is not a lot of music by Luciano Pavarotti (1935-2007). 

So I really needed to find out a solution!

Finally I found that there are so many performances of Pavarotti on Youtube. After further examination, I discovered I could use the "Playlist" function to play one video after another automatically. This way, Youtube can be converted in a CD player to listen while working! I may be stupid but for me it was a discovery.

The same can be done with DailyMotion and probably many more.

In fact greatest inventions are just finding a new use of something. Aren't they?

Here you one of these playlists about Pavarotti.

Luciano Pavarotti, who died two weeks ago, was the best tenor ever. I have to say that I don't buy a lot of music but the first CD I have ever bought was the concert given by the Three Tenors (Carreras, Domingo and Pavarotti) in 1994 for the Football World Cup Final.

As Woody Allen said, when I listen to Pavarotti I feel like invading Poland creating a successful startup! (Well, Woody Allen was talking about Wagner and somebody with moustache who invaded Poland in 1939)

Nobody has ever sung "Nessun Dorma" (Nobody should sleep") like him. RIP

Today I read an excellent article on ReadWriteWeb called "10 Future Web Trends". According to this excellent article, which I recommend you to read, the 10 trends for the next 10 years will be:

1) Semantic Web: As Alex Iskold wrote in The Road to the Semantic Web, the core idea of the Semantic Web is to create the meta data describing data, which will enable computers to process the meaning of things. Once computers are equipped with semantics, they will be capable of solving complex semantic optimization problems.

2) Artificial Intelligence (AI):  In the context of the Web, AI means making intelligent machines. In that sense, it has some things in common with the Semantic Web vision.

3) Virtual Worlds: like Second Life, Chinese second-life clone Hipihi and a very large family of applications

4) Mobile Internet Access: Mobile Web is another Next Big Thing on slow boil. It's already big in parts of Asia and Europe, and it received a kick in the US market this year with the release of Apple's iPhone.

5) Attention Economy:  The Attention Economy is a marketplace where consumers agree to receive services in exchange for their attention. Examples include personalized news, personalized search, alerts and recommendations to buy. The Attention Economy is about the consumer having choice - they get to choose where their attention is 'spent'. Another key ingredient in the attention game is relevancy. As long as the consumer sees relevant content, he/she is going to stick around - and that creates more opportunities to sell.

6) Web Sites as Web Services: More and more of the Web is becoming remixable, the entire system is turning into both a platform and the database. Major web sites are going to be transformed into web services - and will effectively expose their information to the world

7)  Online Video / Internet TV: Not only online video sharing like YouTube and company but also Internet TV like Joost, Babelgum, Zattoo.

8) Rich Internet Applications:  (According to Wikipedia) Rich Internet applications (RIA) are Web applications that have the features and functionality of traditional desktop applications. RIAs typically transfer the processing necessary for the user interface to the Web client but keep the bulk of the data (i.e., maintaining the state of the program, the data etc) back on the application server. RIAs typically 1) run in a Web browser, or do not require software installation  2) run locally in a secure environment called a sandbox

9) International Web: Of course not only US anymore. Not only Europe or China but also India and African countries

10) personalization: Not only netvibes but also any other application like last.fm and many more.

I am in Beijing for three weeks improving my Chinese. I have very limited access to the internet so I cannot post as usually as before. Nevertheless when I am back home in HK, I will continue disccusing web 2.0 ideas with you.

There is a whole chapater about Charities 2.0 that I want to discuss with you very soon. See you soon