…Silicon Valley right in our backyard?
There might be a recruitment drive you;ve heard about that is making its rounds. In fact, maybe Ive already heard it before but pushed it into a cobwebby corner. (I have too many ideas that sometimes I have no choice but to tune OUT or blow UP. Now, this is one more thought I can put into my mindmap software!)
BlinkList was one of z reasons my brother came up to me this morning totally psyched.
“Mindvalley?” I blinked. Sorry tot it was MidValley at first… but yea…this start up has KL as one of its hubs with offices at KL Sentral.
Why are you even considering a start up? I ask.
Cos, right now i have no life, he admits.
Wrong answer dude. After you join startups… your existence goes down the drain. You’ve been in the tech industry for this long… dont you have an idea??
I feel sorry for my bro sometimes… its been his lifelong dream to develop games, yet he is doing the one thing in the world that is quite the exact opposite.
And he seemed really keen with this, and honestly… of course i want him to pursue the thing which he truly has 100-percent heart and passion for. If there’s a chance he could fulfil at least part of his geeky dream, what right do I have to discourage him?
Of course, the label Silicon Valley and former e-Bayer might have blinded him, so I took a stroll through the website.
ummmmmHMMMMM. Yep. Yep.. yep.
Promise of a Google-esque work environment, Google-type benefits, Google-like fame… only difference is, its all set against the background of a tropical paradise which is Asia.
But I know which of the benefits it was that really gripped my brother - the weekly one-on-one 30 min mentoring sessions with Michael Reining.
So, i told mybro… If all hes there for is show and you cant learn anything useful from him… DONT DO IT!!!
All Reining’s brilliance at eBay may just dim in a sunshiny environment like Asia. We just arent the same market.
But, of coz, I couldnt resist a test drive so off i sauntered to www.blinklist.com
umhmmm…. Impressive use of AJAX. Fast, clean, responsive, intuitive. Niiiiiiiiiiiiiiice….. Reminded me of Mugshot which has better and more convenient usability via widgets-like apps.
But MindValley does have an avenue for open information sharing and also support…though its just a matter of time before I can see how fast it is.
But I think i will stick to PersonalBrain thanks (www.thebrain.com). Just downloaded it last friday and here’s an idea of how it works (excerpted from AWSJ):
It’s a defiantly different kind of thought-mapping program called PersonalBrain, and a new version (including versions for Mac and Linux users) will be launched next month by U.S.-based TheBrain Technologies LP at www.thebrain.com. Users include scientists, soldiers, inventors and others who have used it to marshal their collections of thoughts, projects and even databases on criminal syndicates. I find it so useful and absorbing, there’s nothing — be it a Web site link, a random idea, a contact, a document, a scrap of information — that I don’t add to its spider-web-like screen, knowing it will throw up links my brain had never considered or had failed to remember.
(this the part I like muchos!!!)
Now there’s nothing particularly magical in this. It’s not as if PersonalBrain is doing the linking for you. You have to build the links yourself. But remembering all the connections is something else. That’s where PersonalBrain comes in. Bali-based Mr. Capodieci, for example, adds a few basic terms (what the software calls thoughts) as categories — suspects, locations, criminal activities, phone records, etc. For each suspect, he adds a thought. Under locations, he adds places he is surveying — bars, restaurants, clubs — and then under criminal activities adds prostitution, drug dealing, robberies, etc. The next step is to start linking the suspects to the locations and to the activities. Pretty soon it is clear that two suspects in the same bar engaged in the same kind of activity are likely to know each other. Those frequenting more than one bar might be the links between two groups of suspects. Then he adds the suspects’ phone-call records, further linking them together and building a picture of the gangs he is dealing with.
So, in theory once I get the hang of using PersonalBrain, in abt 3 months I will have about 4000 thoughts floating around in my personal software…enough for more than a few major KICK ASS projects.
I cant wait!!!
