www.ZhouWenhan.com

Hmm…so how do I improve Hereing.com?

Wenhan — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 04:59:11 +0000

Ok…so I have step on a minefield and it blew off my legs…

I am making sure this does not happen again so I am inviting food bloggers to give me suggestions here just so I know what they are thinking.

There are a few things that I hope I can be more clear about.

1) Do you all really mind the linking of your blog post from other places?

2) How do you view food blog aggregators like foodlah.com and foodbuzz.com

3) What is your primary motivation for writing a food blog

4) Who is your target audience for your blog?

Hereing.com - First Test and Mistake

Wenhan — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 04:09:00 +0000

Hi people,
Firstly, Please take a look at Hereing.com for some background context. It is basically a food/resturant review aggregator. When you click on a resturant, you will be shown the resturant’s rating and all the reviews by bloggers about that resturant.

How the system works is that a user submits a blog review to hereing.com under a resturant that is being reviewed by the blogger. During the submission process, the required fields are source, title, review and rating.

Here is where I made the mistake. Some bloggers will put ratings in their blogs some won’t. But because I coded hereing.com’s rating field to be complusory, I had to put in a rating when I was submitting the review. This wasn’t a problem if the blogger had specific ratings in his own post but when a blogger didn’t put in the rating I had to gauge by reading the blogger’s review and then tried to put in an approximate star rating.

And at this point, the minefield under my feet exploded. You can read it here http://food.recentrunes.com/?p=2237

Long story short: it is misrepresentation to help people rate their review.

Lesson1: dun be lazy I already had misgivings about helping bloggers rate their reviews but because I was lazy to change the code, I just put in approximate ratings. But because of this episode, I had to go back and correct it anyway so that ratings are no longer compulsory. darn…if only I knew…

Lesson 2: Engage your users…early…You never really know what other people are thinking. the only way to find out is to ask them early. I didn’t do that. I just decided to build the system and start submitting reviews. If I did that, the “helping people to rate review is wrong” mine wouldn’t have exploded because I would not have made the rating field complusory.

And then as the list of comments grew longer, I started seeing how varied ways of how people think. For example, there was 1 blogger who didn’t want to be linked. As a blogger, I could never understand that. But she put it clearly that her blog was semi private and she didn’t appreciate the attention. This is still something that i have to get my head around but I guess I need to code a block list so bloggers can submit their own site to be blocked.

My thoughts: I really want to build something that food bloggers will use and readers will find it useful. So my next post will be more proactive and engaging all the bloggers whom I have linked to before in asking them for their opinion.

Lessons from Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to be Persuasive

Wenhan — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 17:17:12 +0000

This is a book about social psychology applied to marketing, sales and general persuasion. It is an interesting read of what is essentially hundred of social studies and test complied into a laymen format with applicable real life examples.

I have complied my summary after reading the book. Do note that this is not in the order for the 50 chapters in the book. I have even grouped them under headings not found in the book for my own use.

How to encourage a response

1)The herding instinct

By saying many people are doing it
By referencing people similar to the target audience
Increasing social approval of an action
Seeing a mirror or a set of eyes encourages self reflection and a stronger sense of sticking with the social norm

2) Reducing the options

When customers are not clear about requirements
People choose the middle product as a compromise
Present at least 2 products
Present the more expensive one first

3) Fear

The more clearly people see behavioral means for ridding themselves of fear, the less they will need to resort to denial

4) Providing a memory aid at the decision making stage which you message is trying to affect

The reciprocity Principle
1) An ounce of personalize extra effort is worth a pound of persuasion
2) Three Major factors make a gift or favor more persuasive and more likely to be reciprocated

Significance
Unexpected
Personalized

3) Initiate the reciprocity without expecting anything back
4) Favors change in value over time

Recipients placed a lower value
Doers place a higher value

How to get commitment
1) Get a small commitment before asking for successively bigger ones
2) Asking “Even a bit will help” increases the possibility of an action
3) People perform to expectations when labeled
4) Asking a simple question of volunteering
5) To increase the possibility of following through - Commitment should be voluntary, active and publicly declared to others
6) Active commitments- Written are more likely to be fulfilled

How to change people’s mind

when presenting ideas that might be inconsistent with previous behavior,
free them of their previous behavior by saying it was the correct decision at that time given the evidence and information
Use the word “Because”
Adding this in your conversation with a good following reasons increases willingness of the other person to help you
Get the other party to say because to you because it reinforces their beliefs about you

How to get a positive perception

asking someone who does not like you for a favor might help change their perception of you for the better
See the virtue of others instead of their flaws
get someone/something to introduce you and blow your trumpet
promoting your weakness puts you in a better position of trust to sell your strength
Promoting a weakness and then a related strength enhances the preference of your product
Taking responsibility for your mistakes shows that you control over future events and the fix ready

Confluence

Bring up similarities between you and the other person to increase the chances of that person agreeing to a request
People like names that are similar sounding to their own
Parroting a person’s word will make them feel more at ease and confident that you have understood them
Names should be pronounceable and easy to remember
Product Slogans that rhyme
Asking for too many reasons of why a product is good might induce a negative perception because of the difficulty of coming up with the number of require reasons

Scarcity principle

The more scarce, the more people are likely to horde it
People – who knows or have it
Things – Limited quantities

Perceptual Contrast

The amount of information that a preceding message has affects the positive influence on the next message. The less information, the more influence the second message is.
People will be more likely to complete task and programs if there is an indication that there is already some progress towards completion instead of no progress.
in a competitive market, a lower starting price is better as it generates more attention and buy in from early bidders

Loss aversion principle

Instead of pointing out what they stand to gain if they do A, point out what they stand to lose if they don’t do A

Names:

Unexpected Descriptive, Ambiguous names create a sense of fascination and attraction with it compared with common and common descriptive names

Interpersonal Dynamics

Team > one person’s thinking. Encourage input but make your own decisions
a true devil advocate will increase confidence in the final position
It is easier to reach an agreement with someone when there is background information on each other

Others

learning from examples of past mistakes is more effective than just learning good practices
Cultural differences affect the strength of messages
Bundling will devalue the bundle product
Instead of using the word free, state the value of the product
“Receive $250 security program at no cost to you”

Physiology

Emotional affect decision making.
Avoid decision making when you are feeling down
Take time out before making a decision
Being distracted or tired makes you more susceptible to untrue persuasion
Caffeine consumptions make you more easily persuaded with good arguments. Bad arguments have no effect.

Why I Started NearDeals?

Wenhan — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 04:33:52 +0000

First off if you are wondering about the name, it is because the site was originally intended to be a great deals/coupons for physical products site. This was what I self Proposed as my Final Year Project.

“Title: NEARDEALS - Local Coupon & Deals Search via Mobile Interface

A location based service for searching coupons and deals nearby to a current or pre-determined location.

Local Coupons provides an easy way to search for coupons and great deals. Coupon inventory and deals are indexed from the internet, socially contributed by users or sponsored by merchants.

Coupons and restaurants can be socially reviewed and rated by users via their phone or web interface.”

After thinking it through, I realise that location is actually not the hard part. The hard part is getting the data. Like a blog, a site without fresh content is next to useless. So I decide to get data the easiest way possible and that is by linking to content instead. Given that I am also interested in Location based Services since my first startup(Tagxe.com, a taxi ridesharing site, which closed because we couldn’t hit critical mass), I decided that I wanted to help surface content that was closer and more relevant to the user.

The immediate problem that I could see was that on a social news voting site, everyone saw the aggregate wisdom of the crowd. This could be good but if you ever tried posting a Singapore-focused article on Digg, it will nvr get to the front page. So neardeals is trying to counter that by providing many views for many people. Right now it is still location based view which means depending on where you are, you see a different set of news stories. In the future, I would expect everyone to see a different set of stories depending on his demographic, interest,location etc.

It is still very early beta for neardeals so i welcome any feedback for the future development of neardeals.com.

Solving ERP problem using Dash.net

Wenhan — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 16:49:28 +0000

I am going to propose a new replacement for ERP(road congestion Control) although I am pretty sure that this will just be a mental exercise.

First, lets explain what Dash.net is:
Dash.net is a car-GPS navigation manufacturer. What differentiates their product is the 2 way connectivity of their GPS set. This means that data(i.e. your current speed) is collected and filed on the server. Other drivers who are planning a trip/on a trip that might be using the route you are on has access to the speed and their GPS set can determine if route A(Your Route) or B(another alternative route) might be faster.

“Flow data vs. Incident data

Freeway breakdowns and auto accidents are nice to know about, but what really matters is the speed of traffic around them. Most GPS devices that show traffic rely primarily on ‘incident data,’ which only tells you where and when an incident happened, not how it’s affecting traffic now. Dash uses traffic flow data to help make Dash arrival times the most accurate on the road.”(translation: your GPS will tell you to take the routes that are the least congested and the fastest)

Secondly lets examine ERP’s aims and its method of reliving road congestion:

“Electronic Road Pricing (ERP) is an electronic system of road pricing based on a pay-as-you-use principle. It is designed to be a fair system as motorists are charged when they use the road during peak hours.

After the review, the ERP rates would then be adjusted where necessary to minimise congestion on the roads. ERP has been effective in maintaining an optimal speed range of 45 to 65 km/h for expressways and 20 to 30 km/h for arterial roads.”

How ERP works is by shifting demand on roads in 2 ways. Time of travel and route of travel.

How Dash.net can also solve
1) Time of travel
This is actually pretty difficult to solve. Most trips do not have flexibility of time. If you have to get to work or meet a client at 10am, the ERP cost isn’t going to deter you from going down.

I chanced upon a blog and the following suggestions would effectively spread road demand over time.

I) Stagger Work hours
II)Work from Home
III) Spread out the CBD to other areas

I am pretty sure that it is unlikely any form of technology can solve the social behavior of having to go to a place at the same time. However the 3 suggestions above can lend a helping hand to spread demand around.

2) Route of travel
By implementing Dash.net into all SG vehicles, we can effectively divert the route of travel to roads with less demand. Drivers do not have to worry about where and how to drive, instead they just have to follow the GPS directions. Plus, there will be less traffic jams, people get home faster which also means less cars on the roads.

How much will this cost???

Well given that ERP has cost the government USD125 Million, this equates to USD255 per car (489,000 cars in 2007). Right now a Dash.net set cost $299 USD on amazon.com. If the SG government was the order in bulk, I am sure we can get the sets for less than $150USD each. This will make it cost comparative to the current ERP System.

Another Conclusion

Perhaps it is too late to change from the ERP system now. However the lesson that we should learn here is that any project with heavy technological components(I.e. the ERP) should not have its cost amortized over a long period of time. In the period of time, it is likely that a cheaper solution will emerge and make you look stupid for adopting the new technology.

10 Types of Leadership Style

Wenhan — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 01:15:51 +0000

The leadership styles we look at here are:

Autocratic leadership.
Bureaucratic leadership.
Charismatic leadership.
Democratic leadership/participative leadership.
Laissez-faire leadership.
People-oriented leadership/relations-oriented leadership.
Servant leadership.
Task-oriented leadership.
Transactional leadership.
Transformational leadership.

Source

The Tagxe has left

Wenhan — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 21:53:31 +0000

Hi Tagxe Users,
Tagxe will be closing its website today. At time of death, we are exactly 1 year old and we have 1,493 registered users and 349 rides created. However on our key benchmark of our success, we have no successful ride that we have matched up so far.

,We envisioned Tagxe to change the world (as all entrepreneurs doJ). But our efforts seemed to have fallen short of the required critical mass for Tagxe to be a self sustaining system. The main reason for stopping Tagxe was that the team has decided to move on with other ventures. (Also our 1 year hosting plan has ceased)

We will be redirecting Tagxe.com to the Tagxe forum. Some users have already started using it to organize rides so I guess this will suffice as an interim solution until a real solution can be created by someone else. One key thing that will be missing is that you will no longer get ride notifications when a ride is created.

We would like to thank all of you for being the early adopters of a vision that tried to make everyone’s lives easier. We would also like to thank TagxeBoy (Andy@photoatwork.com) for being our most enthusiastic user and also for volunteering to be the forum moderator.

Wenhan says: To the Tagxe Team(Yee Han & Patrick): Thanks for helping out in Tagxe. You guys are great housemates and team mates. We are glad that we have tried to make a dent in the universe. I will be moving on to my next venture which will be my final year project that will be my start-up concept (think Digg.com with local and personally relevant stories). For those who want an invite, check here.

Yee Han says: I will be focusing on my studies and continuing my passion for photography. It has been a great time learning and working with Wenhan and Patrick.

Patrick says: I plan to get married in 2 years time.

Leave Comments Here

10 Ways To Get The Best Price For Your Car

Wenhan — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 07:43:05 +0000

I just sold my car, a Mitsubishi Mirage vintage 2000 with 90K miles on it. It was a good deal for me and the buyer. I got it for a good price so I let it off at a good price too. I know my car is reliable but I was thinking of how I could make sure that my car is in peak condition when buyers came to test drive. This is the list I came up that I think might help you get a higher price for your car.

1. Polish, wash and clean your car’s exterior and interior
First impression counts! This is important!

2. Inflate all tires equally
This reduces any chance of alignment issues. Sometimes you feel that your car is drifting. This is usually not an alignment issue but one where tires are either infliated to a different amount. In case you do any an alignment issue, you can try to hotfix the alignment issues by custom inflating your tires to “balance” it all out

If you under inflate your tires by a bit, it also helps for a less bumpy drive. However this comes at a cost of reduced mileage

3. Fill it up with premium gas
Premium gas helps a little bit for smooth acceleration. Use pump this one time!

4. Oil change and clean the engine
Bring it to a mechanic for an oil change. Oil changes will make for smoother transmission changes and acceleration. If it is due soon, bring the car in yourself. Alternatively if you are a scrimper, let the first interested buyer bring the car in for an inspection. Large auto repair chains usually bundle oil changes and 50+ point checks together for a cheap price.

Ask for the mechanic for help in cleaning the engine dirt off. The engine will look well maintained when the hood is opened

5. Change the tyre covers
30$ from Costco. This helps to improve first impression lot if you are like me and scratch the covers on the kerb when doing a parallel park,

6. Warm up the car before the buyer comes
So that the engine has the power for quick acceleration which buyers like to test
7. Get your documentation ready
a. New Smog Check
b. Service records
c. The title
d. Carfax report
e. Vin Number

8. Get a cheap mechanic check from a honest mechanic (I use a highly yelped mechanic)
You can share the cost with the first interested buyer. A recent check report will help push in decisive buyers to real buyers.

Be aware that mechanics usually tell you to change everything. So get the mechanic to highlight only the things that really need to be changed.

9. Take lots of flattering photos of your car(photoshop???)
No need to highlight the flaws. The buyers will see them when they come for the test drive. But the goal of an ad is to get response and not to close the deal. The test drive and you are the deal closer.

10. Test the market valuation
Other than checking KBB and other similar car prices, you can do a market price test.

Post a ad on Craigslist with some information. No pictures or vin number and see how many people email you to setup an appointment. Once you have 3-5 people emailing you in a week, you are probably are at a good spot.

Now post the real ad with photos and bell and whistle. Add a few hundred dollars to the price where you got response. Now people will be contacting you and you know how much your car can fetch

Bonus:Never let bird shit stay on your car for too long. After a while it starts to corrode the paint and past that point, there isn’t much you can do

You might also be interested in:
10 Thoughts about Living in Silicon Valley

10 Fast Track Ways To Becoming An Expert - 10 Point Summary From Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi

FedEx Logo - Can you see it?

Wenhan — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 22:40:42 +0000

No? how about a different colour?

or a 3d one?

Still no? arrow down for the answer

/* www.ZhouWenhan.com

www.ZhouWenhan.com

www.ZhouWenhan.com*/

There!

and a little web 2.0 bonus

Should YOU Mobile? - Opportunities & Challenges in the Mobile Space

Wenhan — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 22:20:13 +0000

Hi,

I just wanted to post this great event that is happening. There will be speakers from Storm Ventures, Intel and Qik.com(of course the event will be qiked live too) and Nokia.

Should YOU Mobile? – Opportunities & Challenges in the Mobile Space

You are cordially invited to attend “RainMakers Live!” Conference brought you by The National University of Singapore Entrepreneurs Association (NUSEA).

Date: Friday, June 27
Time: 5:30 – 9:00 p.m
Venue: Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, 950 Page Mill Rd, Palo Alto.

To pre-register for early bird tickets, please visit http://rainmakers2008.eventbrite.com/ by noon on Friday, June 27.

Only limited seats available!

Conference Theme:
RainMakers Live! Summer 2008 will bring together the leaders in the mobile applications and wireless space to discuss the topic “Should YOU Mobile? – Opportunities & Challenges in the Mobile Space”. It will consist of a keynote speech, a panel discussion and an exhibition of some of the hottest mobile start-up in the Valley.
Speakers:
•    Purnima Kochikar, Director of Strategy and Business Development, Nokia Enterprise Solutions
•    Sriram Viswanathan, VP of Mobility Solutions, Intel
•    Tim Danford, Partner, Storm Ventures
•    Vish Mishra, Venture Director, Clearstone Venture Partners
•    Bhaskar Roy, Co-Founder, Qik.com
•    Lewis Adams, CTO, GainSpan
•    Hank Nothhaft, Chairman and CEO, Danger
•    Tom Kosnik, Fenwick and West Consulting Professor, Stanford University

For more information on “RainMakers Live!” Conference, please visit: http://www.nusea.org/rainmakers2008/

Thank You to Our Sponsors:
We liked to thank our kind sponsors: IDA Singapore, SABA, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, and NUS Enterprise for their generous support to NUSEA “RainMakers Live!” Conference!

I look forward to seeing you at “Rainmakers Live!” 2008,

“Rainmakers Live!” 2008 Committee
NUS Entrepreneurs Association