A few days ago I started reading this blog. And it was exactly what I was looking for at this time of my life, with the interests that I have now, and things that I'm planning to do from now on. The blogger looks like Ashok Ferry of building businesses. If you've read Ashok Ferry, you know what I mean. Anyway, I read a lot of his writing for the past few days and there are many things that I've learned from them. As an example, "sell your first business". Oh, that's what I'm planning to do.

In Sri Lanka, we have a great void when it comes entrepreneurs; not every type of entrepreneurs, but tech entrepreneurs. Is selling used computers a tech entrepreneurship? I don't know. However, our interpretation of tech entrepreneurship is some what raw at the moment. It is either selling DVD with some mobile phones aside or outsourcing. In other words, its selling commodities or providing services. I think most of us think that we are (let's say South-Asians) quite successful in services businesses. And I guess its true to some point. But what has won the world? Services or products? Products right? The pink iPod shuffle that you have in your ear is a product.

If you have a look at the current markets (any type of market), you will see that people like buying products more than buying a service. Products represent luxury and services represent necessity. That's the difference. You buy an iPhone because you love it. You buy the mobile connectivity for that, because you need it. So, the product wins!

In Sri Lanka, I have not met a tech entrepreneur. Not personally. There has been one that I know of, but he has already sold his business and now enjoy other things of his life. But again, it was a services company. Not a product company. One of my friend's husband started one in Navam Mawatha, but carries on with a great challenges. Why don't we see tech entrepreneurs in here? If you go to Bengaluru (aka Bangalore) you can buy them by weight. What is missing here? Or what is present here that discourages the tech entrepreneurship? The motivation is clearly missing. The motivation to pack services into products is missing.

As a nation, we can usually come up with good ideas. We value of our ability to come up with ideas. That's our problem. Ideas do not make money; execution does. Sometime ago, we were creating the now Facebook in a tiny apartment at Liberty Plaza. Our then CEO wanted to divert the business focus, creating a loose competitor to LinkedIn. So at the end, now Facebook was never flourished and LinkedIn never noticed the new competitor. Anyway, it is just a side story for our tech entrepreneurship.

What we basically lack is a forum for young entrepreneurs to share their ideas and opinions. We need to learn that competition is healthy and ideas can't build the next big business. Unless we learn this, we will no be able to harness the entrepreneurship in us. Look at the Bay area (Silicon Valley). Its filled with startups. There are VCs eyeing on these new entities and they have a system to nurturer these youngsters running small businesses. If you have an idea with a working plan, you get your money to start.

In Sri Lanka, we need an entity to sponsor the young entrepreneurs. The entity should be a VC with a lot of advises to the entrepreneurs. Of course we have veterans in entrepreneurship in Sri Lanka, but rarely a young entrepreneurs go to these cocktail parties at boutique hotels and get advice. Don't know who's fault. Until we find our angel investors, let's start small. And most importantly, let's share our passion for building tech businesses; talk about it and execute.

Once one of my then CEOs called one of Sri Lanka's leading software companies a "body-shop". I was furious. Now I agree. That's maturity.

Its been a long time!

It has been a long time since I posted my last post. Maybe I didn't have anything to say as I never touched a Linux server since last March. Now I'm back to Vanilla Kernel and browse using Google Chrome.

Trust me guys... Google Chrome rocks! Its light weight, fast, simple, compatible, reliable and many more. I waited last night refreshing Google blog and downloaded Chrome as soon as it came out... within first 10 minutes I guess.

Each tab is a different process... what else should I say?

Anyways will try to update this time to time with what I feel like saying.... its 12.16 at night and I'm after playing some badminton.. so see you'll soon.

OS X Leopard... Finally!

Changed to OS X Leopard... here is my current desktop....

My current desktop!

gOS is there!

Today, while browsing, I saw a nice looking new OS called gOS which is based on Ubuntu and Enlightenment. The OS looks promising and it's simple and polish design looks attractive.

Anyways I'm going to give a try with the Live CD and if I find it cool, will use it and see... anyways this is supposed to be more focused on Google applications (as the name suggests ;)) and you need to have internet access to make a full use of it.

If you would like to try, here it goes.... http://www.thinkgos.com.

Life is a chaos !!!

Isn't it? Are you so worried about it? Your room... your cupboard... your desktop... you name it!

Anyways just an idea for the people who want to get rid of day-to-day chaos...

Chaotic behavior has been observed in the laboratory in a variety of systems including electrical circuits, lasers, oscillating chemical reactions, fluid dynamics, and mechanical and magneto-mechanical devices. Observations of chaotic behaviour in nature include the dynamics of satellites in the solar system, the time evolution of the magnetic field of celestial bodies, population growth in ecology, the dynamics of the action potentials in neurons, and molecular vibrations. Everyday examples of chaotic systems include weather and climate. There is some controversy over the existence of chaotic dynamics in the plate tectonics and in economics.

Anyways... this cannot be understood... So, here are some easy stuff...

The Mathematics of Love !

How about love? We try to understand love in various ways... the list it too big to mention here. What about a mathematical model for that? Will that help you to have a perfect family marriage life? If you want to have a "perfect" marriage life, please refer to the previous post :)

Now, how can mathematics help us understanding the truth about marriage? Thats interesting don't you think? Hell, I do think ! But there is this fundamental issue. For you to understand the model and get the benefit, first you'll have to do a PhD in Differential Equations. So, we'll let these experts to understand it and then explain it in plain English.

"We were able to derive a set of nonlinear difference equations for marital interaction as well as physiology and perception. These equations provided parameters, that allowed us to predict, with over 90 percent accuracy, what was going to happen to a relationship over a three-year period. The main advantage of the math modeling was that using these parameters, we are not only be able to predict, but now understand what people are doing when they affected one another. And through the equations we were now really able to build theory. That theory allows us to understand how to intervene and how to change things. And how to know what it is we're affecting, and why the interventions are effective. This is the mathematics of love. -THE MATHEMATICS OF LOVE [4.14.04]

Interesting?

Gödel's first incompleteness theorem

As humans, we all are incomplete. What ever we do, they all are incomplete. What ever we think, they all are incomplete. So, lets understand this and try to live the life in full before we die.

Do not wait for perfection... Do not wait for the perfect time... Do not wait for the perfect partner... simply because they all are incomplete... imperfect...

Lets accept this and move forward... Now is the best time for every thing.... We love to live in the past and dream about future... But why cant humans live in the present?

Just to give you an idea about this incompleteness, I'm quoting a theorem:

"For any consistent formal, computably enumerable theory that proves basic arithmetical truths, an arithmetical statement that is true, but not provable in the theory, can be constructed. That is, any effectively generated theory capable of expressing elementary arithmetic cannot be both consistent and complete." - Kurt Gödel

Ok. Let me quote the explanation for this (Wikipedia):

"Here, "theory" refers to an infinite set of statements, some of which are taken as true without proof (these are called axioms), and others (the theorems) that are taken as true because they are implied by the axioms. "Provable in the theory" means "derivable from the axioms and primitive notions of the theory, using standard first-order logic". A theory is "consistent" if it never proves a contradiction. "Can be constructed" means that some mechanical procedure exists which can construct the statement, given the axioms, primitives, and first order logic. "Elementary arithmetic" consists merely of addition and multiplication over the natural numbers. The resulting true but unprovable statement
is often referred to as "the Gödel sentence" for the theory, although there are infinitely many other statements in the theory that share with the Gödel sentence the property of being true but not provable from the theory."