Jul 14 2008
Software piracy has been a problem from the earliest days of Microsoft. When they developed Altair BASIC, only about 10% of its users bought the software. The rest pirated it.
Bill Gates wrote a letter to the Altair community on February 3, 1976, explaining the need for buying software instead of just copying it. His arguments are very good and still apply to today’s software industry.
Jun 27 2008
Google has a search tool that can be accessed through your phone. Dialing 1-800-GOOG-411 (or 1-800-466-4411) will allow to give verbal commands for items that you want to search for. If you want to find a pizza restaurant in Vancouver, you tell this to GOOG and it will give you a list of restaurants in that city.
The search works surprisingly well. Its not as fast to use as searching on a computer, but it is a good alternative when you don’t have a computer nearby for searching.
Jun 22 2008
We’ve all heard the same advice from our parents and teachers when we were children: work hard in school, get good grades so we can go to university and get a degree. Then we can get a high paying job with good benefits, and we’re set for life. Sounds like great advice, but unfortunately its not something which leads to riches. It’s this kind of thinking that will keep you poor throughout your entire life.
Robert Shemin, in his book, “How come THAT idiot’s rich and I’m Not?”, explains why most people are not rich. We all know people who should by the world’s standards not be rich or successful. We wonder why those intellectually inferior, lazy, and unorganized people are enjoying greater success than we are. Shemin’s book shows why we’re poor and why they are rich, or to use the word he uses for them, rich idiots.
He uses the term RUB to describe poor people: Right side Up and Broke. What this means is that following all the rules and conforming to society’s standards will keep you perpetually poor. The rich are rich because they think different. This sounds like the old Mac advertising slogan, but in this case its the ability to take control and responsibility for your life. We’re rewarded from an early age for being obedient and we’re told that we’re smart if learn all the rules and everything else that we’re taught. Those who don’t conform are punished and forced back into line, and labeled as idiots if they continue resisting.
You won’t learn rich idiot skills in the public school system. Few people realize that the modern school system is a Prussian invention dating back to the 19th Century. Schools were designed to produce obedient employees and soldiers. They do so with great success. There are better systems out there, such as Montessori Method. The founders of Google are one of the many success stories that came out of this innovative learning process.
Shemin gives a short test to determine if your a rich idiot or a RUB:
I took this test and found out I was a RUB. Shemin expects that if your reading his book, you must be a RUB so you don’t have to feel bad. He will help change your thinking for your path towards becoming a rich idiot.
After showing you what a RUB and rich idiot are, Shemin goes on to explain how to change your thinking and what you need to do become rich. His book gives specific examples in many areas to help you build wealth, such as the three assets that you need to own in order to become wealthy.
“How come THAT idiot’s rich and I’m Not?” can be summarized in two points:
We all get ideas on how to make money, but most do not act on them. Later, they complain when someone else uses their idea to get rich. The road to riches is one where people take action to move along it. Put action behind your ideas and join the rich idiot club.
Jun 14 2008
When looking for a job, its a good idea to know how much money to ask for in the position you are applying for. In many instances, the job ad states that your salary will be according to your experience. Searching for the average pay for a profession on Google can be difficult and time consuming to get real numbers. Most of them are not posted online.
You can check how much a job should be paying with itWorldCanada.com’s Salary 2008 Calculator. The site claims the information is current and it will display your regional income against the national average.
There are three categories to choose from: IT Executive and Senior Management, IT Management, and Staff/Technical Positions. You would then select the job title, size of the company, the industry, and the province of employment. I selected Software Engineer in a company of less than 100 employees, the industry was Computer/Technology, and the region was British Columbia. The base salary for B.C. is $68,500 and the national average is $76,605 (the total cash compensation would bring that to $85,735). I’m not sure how accurate those numbers are, but they seem about right.
While the salary calculator was designed with Canadian provinces in mind, it can be used by Americans since our dollar is almost equal in value, and salaries in both countries are also similar.
Jun 13 2008
Apple’s iPhone is a very well marketed technology device. Its touch screen revolutionized the cell phone’s user interface. I’ve been told that there is a great deal of money to be made in creating iPhone applications, but I have to wonder if that’s true.
There are currently 3.3 billion active cell phones in the world. Luxembourg has 158 cell phones for every 100 people. Apparently, many people there must have multiple mobile phones. A market of 3.3 billion customers seems like a good one to make money with. If you get a 1% market share selling a $20 USD application, you would make $660 million.
Can You Make Money?
The problem is that most cell phone owners aren’t aware that they can install applications on their phones. Cell phones can run either Java or .NET applications, or in the case of the iPhone, a mobile version of OS X. Most cell phone users are only interested in buying clever sounding ring tones and a few of the more savvy ones will buy games.
As far as I can tell, no company has made significant profits with cell phone applications. In spite of the tremendous market size, the average cell phone user doesn’t spend time online looking for applications to buy for their phone. A better market to write software for are the 650 million Windows users who do actively look for software to buy. Your $20 application sold to 1% of them would generate $130 million in revenue.
Cell phone manufacturers and the phone companies who sell them need to better educate their customers in what their phones are capable of. There is a very good potential to make money there if people only knew that they could extend the functionality of their phones with useful applications.
Cell Phone Development Tools
I need to do more research to see if building iPhone applications are worth while, or even building mobile Java or .NET software. With .NET, Visual Studio 2005 / 2008 has development tools and various emulators to test the software. If you want to write mobile Java, you’ll need to learn how to build applications using environments like Nokia’s J2ME tools. For the iPhone, Apple has the iPhone Developer Program. It requires a Mac to write iPhone apps, but you can also develop them on Windows using the iPhone Binary Toolchain Installer for Windows.
You can download free cell phone applications at GetJar.
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