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LG wants you to drink more with their new LP4100 phone, with a built-in breathalyzer. For evidence, check out the happy Koreans above.

Yes, apparently, this phone is the Holy Grail for clubbers, drinkers and all who party. As ABC News put it so well, it “not only promotes sobriety, but chastity — and probably your dignity, as well.”

Here’s how it works, you breathe into a small hole which masks an internal breathalyzer and if you exceed the alcohol limit, a snazzy video shows up on those pimped up Korean phones of a car zig-zagging and hitting over traffic cones. Sounds like a simple message to drunk folks to understand. That is, if their heads ain’t already spinning and mistaking that zigzagging for normal driving.

BUT HERE’S THE KILLER APPLICATION.

This phone has an auto call-blocking feature that is activated once your phone determines u r drunk. It will prevent you from calling sensitive pple in your life such as your ex-bf or gf, your domineering and insecure boss, ur neurotic co-workers, ur mom, blah blah…

So far, 200,000 crazy drunks have bought it in Korea. Its gonna launch in US soon, no date set yet but i dun think promoting sobriety and chastity as their marketing message is gonna fly in the US, but …

buying it just to keep my stupidity under check when drunk?

As Mastercard says, priceless.

I am headed to Mumbai, India next Thursday for a Harvard student conference. Its gonna be rocking in the land of Bollywood, lassis and desis… And maybe to Goa I head (after Mumbai), the Ibiza of Asia!

Welcome to India where the cows eat hay,
and we drive auto-rickshaws everyday,
Goat meats, yummy sweets, wild monkeys roaming,
The roosters don’t crow till five in the morning! (2x)

To the tune of Welcome to Atlanta by Ludacris, check out Welcome to India, a hilarious and new parody starring DJ Vikram and Luda Krishna found off this Carnegie Mellon site..

To all you out there who have friends in Mumbai, drop me a mail or comment as I would love to catch up with them. This Mumbai trip is gonna be a great complement to my China trip in May. I can now proudly say I have been to the hinterlands of the twin economic behemoths of Asia for the 21st century. =)

You know that feeling. It feels like a Monday but isn’t. You feel lazy but its not even Friday. Your body is 2 seconds slower than your brain and coffee gets spilled, your mind wanders and you miss something important your boss said 2 seconds ago. You think every meeting with >5 pple is a waste of time.

Well, at least thats how I feel on a working Thursday, sometimes. Some of you lot reading this might disagree, good for ya, hope you ain’t reading this in the office then. =)

But I found some good reads today and thought I might as well share it.

1. DO YOU KNOW what are the Top-$ careers outside of finance, law and medicine?

Restaurant managers, truck drivers, coaches, tech writers, truck drivers.. All these jobs can make you > US$100,000 a year, more details here. Yes, and I like to highlight COACHES, cos these ain’t the sports coaches most are familiar with, but the business and life coaches that act as “cheerleaders” of sorts that provide confidence lifts to struggling entrepreneurs, aspiring novelists or even confused corporate executives.

Think for 5 seconds how many times you went out with friends and they complain about work over beer? So here’s an evil thought, why can’t we swap those “late-night beer outings-cum-life-ranting” sessions for a real job and provide it as a professional service to your friends and more at decent rates? That could be a win-win formula to making those beer sessions happier occasions for yourself and your “friend-client”. For proof, see below.

“Coaching is exploding,” says Dan Janel, president of Great Teleseminar, a business that caters to tech-savvy coaches by handling the production work needed to perform remote seminars via the TV screen. Janel said his business was earning six figures itself within 13 months, thanks to the plethora of coaches popping up.

Another business spawned by coaching, naturally, is coaching the coaches. Christian Mickelson, who started as a small business coach in San Diego seven years ago, now helps wannabe coaches get their businesses started through his Web site, CoachingBusinessRocketLauncher. He says the key to six-figure success in coaching is finding a specialty and sticking with it.

2. Question: Why Corporations should Embrace Oddballs and beware of Kingdom-builders

look for the occasional rebellious person who argues or is not afraid of the boss. It’s important to have a few around, although those are the ones who are usually sacked. Look for the oddball person with a different point of view.

The second thing that I recommend is to be aware of kingdom-builders. They start out helping the organization to function, but in the end, they end up hurting it by creating too many rules and regulations.

Answer: Keep the entrepreneurial spirit (of innovation and risk-taking) alive in a huge corporation

If this article inspired you to be a professional coach or an oddball in your company, drop me a line. If you are a kingdom-builder and hate me for what i wrote, go take a holiday and just chill.

South Park - inspired pics from JoshuaInk. Thanks!

In less than 30 hours, Singapore celebrates our 41st birthday and the whole nation expects a rolling good party! There’s something for everyone, be it the multi-million dollar fireworks, the parades by the armed forces and social organizations, the aero-batics by the elite troops, aircraft fly-bys, the breathtaking performances put together by students, youths and with both amateurs and professionals co-operating together in what has always been the nation’s biggest social equalizing event of our diverse races and social classes.

This year, nostalgia will meet the usually unbridled joy of the attendees and participants as the National Stadium @ Kallang will host its last ever National Day since 1966 before its torn down for a new sports hub. And the organizers have really leveraged on this memorable moment and created the most awesome multimedia experience for web-savvy Singaporeans.

As you saw above, the website this year has truly been worthy of the occasion with brilliant colors that exude the brilliance of color and celebration while not being overly cluttered and messy. Best of all, it loads fine on the Firefox browser. In addition, there are:

The obvious Web 1.0 package of:

Even though Web 1.0-ish, the wallpapers are a nice touch, finally some decent and actually a few impressive shots of our city-scape that makes me use one as my wallpaper for today.

But whats new, souped up and exciting is the new digital media package reflective of the more recent digital revolution on the internet and mobile phone platforms:

1. near-comprehensive collection of free MP3s since the 1988 National Day,
2. free video clips of event highlights during the celebration since 1997, even overseas celebrations such as the air force base in Arizona, USA,
3. free polyphonic ringtones to the tune of popular National Day songs and easy-to-follow downloading instructions by Iguana Mobile
4. and mobile messaging (SMS/MMS) greeting portals by Singtel

So what’s Bjorn gushing about, you might think? The organizers have not really done anything new this year or truly revolutionary.

Well, I do and here’s why:

• Youth Appeal. I really think the new media material of ringtones, videos, MP3 songs will stick due to the high adoption rates of cell phones and immense amount of time kids spend to personalize their phones. Not even mentioning the amount of time young people spend just surfing the web. The Singapore National Day event has always focused on involvement of schoolchildren from 8 to the college students of 20+ in all the rehearsals and actual event. Last week, I was on the MRT and noticed primary school kids fooling around with National Day music on their phones. The inclusion of such content have definitely given more relevant choice to the youths of Singapore who now have more local media alternatives to the Youtube videos and foreign-made MP3 songs. But i will suggest uploading some of these to Youtube too so as to improve the chances of Singaporeans watching it or even adding sections for bloggers to paste code of the videos, or email the links to their friends through MSN IM easily. Making the videos compatible with multiple formats for mobile phones, iPods will be awesome too. And maye consider a NDP blog in future? Complete with RSS feeds for those who like the updates? These little features will help in spreading this content virally.
• Focus on User Experience of Website. I never felt inclined to visit the National Day website in past years, always stalling at the homepage, which is god-awfully ugly all the time, slow to load and loaded with text no one wants to read. THis year, the website is fun, easily navigable, colorful (yet not gawdily so) and cleanly designed at the same time. Perhaps the Web 2.0 inspired round boxes framing the main categories of sub-events and content helped. =) And maybe thats why I clicked to more pages and discovered all this media that might have been there in earlier years. Finally, somebody understands that the homepage is the digital equivalent of the shopfront and that web surfers have the same behavioral patterns of window-shoppers.
• Tearing down the Walled Garden of past and present National Day media content. Opening up the historical digital archive of National Day songs and videos. Finally again, such media is no longer confined to the ownership of schools or governemtn agencies and are now uploaded for access by any web user. When I was in California last year, I always wonder where and when I will be able to listen to these tunes and let my foreign friends hear them since these songs are not even downloadable on Bittortent, Limewire etc… I am glad the organizers did not think of selling them and this enlightened approach towards releasing free MP3 versions might really help in allowing Singaporeans or even foreigners to listen to the catchy though propaganda-esque tunes many Singaporeans grew up with. Its an integral part of our local culture and by democratizing the songs, Singapore is really placing the tools of nation-building in the hands of the citizens or well-wishers. Quite a liberal approach for our government.

Having a strong web presence for National Day is definitely useful for the legions of overseas Singaporeans who hunger desperately for local cuisine. I have seen some of these people and even was one of them last year. Without the physical proximity of soaking in the atmosphere and mood of National Day, the next closest thing will be a rich media experience over the Web. And I think 2006 is a watershed as we are finally in the right direction, digitally.

I couldn’t focus on my real work, which is researching for my thesis. So i decided to do the next best thing: helping you find good reads.

Noah Kagan, owner of Okdork.com and founder of Entrepreneur 27, has tons of gems and precious posts of wisdom and creativity in his blog. He’s one of the reasons why many of us don’t have to read so much anymore but just rely on him to read all the crap and sieve out the good stuff for us.
I randomly picked out some I enjoyed.

1. How to Get People’s Attention (and then keep it)
2. How an American taught leadership to Korean schoolkids creatively (and what we can learn in crossing cultural barriers)
3. 17 Great Insights for Startups
4. The People Experience Series (about interactions with products and services) @ The Bank, Apple, Coffee
5. The Evil but Brilliant Cigarette Marketing Campaign of Philip Morris

Ok, confession here. Noah actually has this new “Road to 1000″ competition he thought up to drum up traffic for his blog to 1000 unique visitors. Some of you might think this is traffic-whoring, I respect your decision but I believe good stuff should be shared and circulated widely on the web. Hence, I am putting up a badge on my sidebar till September 30th to direct any interested readers to Noah’s “Sexy Business Blog”.

So if any of u like his blog, go to Noah’s blog, look for my name “Bjorn Lee” on the right sidebar and vote for it. Actually, you can click on anybody’s name anyway cos I won’t win even if I send all my traffic to him (hence i have no selfish motive) =) Think of your vote as a reward to Noah for the good articles he writes and hence motivate him to write more.

Think about it, MP3 players have been the best thing to have happened to music since hmm… we discovered tunes? I shudder to imagine the relative inferiority of Walkmans and Discmans  we used to endure with. With MP3, you can carry hundreds or thousands of songs in digital formats without lugging huge CD albums ever again. Mp3 players are symbols of freedom, convenience and even icons of fashion (if you have iPod) and the digital age.

But they also polarize our society, here’s why:

1. Have you seen middle-aged folks using MP3 players?
2. Why are they not using MP3 players?

I think I have the answers. Computer illiteracy and legal restrictions.

Illiteracy Perpetuates Inconvenience and Impracticality

To even begin using MP3 players, you need MP3 tracks. Thats tough for older folks who have most of their music collections in CDs or audio cassettes. lack of computer skills will restrict them from converting these formats. But this is easily solved through the many computer courses available today as our society modernizes with the digital era. Of course, older folks can always buy MP3 tracks. But try telling your dad to buy that Frank Sinatra or Beatles album for $0.99 per song (and cheaper for an entire album) when he already has it all on CD. There’s no motivation for him to use MP3 players at all due to his inconvenience of format conversion and impracticality of making duplicate purchases.

The inconvenience issue can be solved. But not the impracticality issue. Here’s why. RIAA, the Recording Industry Association of America, that represents the US recording industry, and also the most influential in the music world, strongly forbids it.

An Unfair Piece of Law
As of February 2006, RIAA has decreed that CD ripping of music is illegal too, see here and here. They have decided, in collaboration with the legal courts who rubber-stamped their proposals, that when you buy a CD, your rights only extend to the music tracks in that plastic CD format, not any other formats. Especially not MP3 or any digital file because that doesn’t constitute fair use for them, the record companies.

What a load of BS. I own the Cds by paying cold hard cash for them, i should jolly well do what I can with them right? The music labels never mentioned this to me when I bought it, otherwise I wouldn;t have paid for those CDs, would they? Its perfectly commen sense to be able to do whatever you can with music in your CDs, no?

Flip-flopping of the RIAA

Apparently, RIAA used to think so too:

For those who may not remember, here’s what Don Verrilli said to the Supreme Court last year: “The record companies, my clients, have said, for some time now, and it’s been on their website for some time now, that it’s perfectly lawful to take a CD that you’ve purchased, upload it onto your computer, put it onto your iPod.”

Well, they changed their mind later, in order to ensure customers MUST continue listening to music in CD format, else become criminals. At the same time, they, at first, resisted selling music as digital files on the Internet but finally gave in reluctantly after iTunes came along but not without many complaints about how long the prices were on iTunes and how they were still not making money. In other words, they want to make money both ways and force those who already have CDs to buy those tracks again on digital formats. Simply bloodsuckers. This is no way to treat your customers.

So do you blame middle aged folks from not owning MP3 players in droves? Or blame young people for turning to illegal P2P networks for illegal Mp3 tracks? I am not justifying the 2nd group’s actions. But when push comes to shove, nobody’s an idiot to pay through the nose for songs they already have and own. People get smart, and learn to get around unfair policies, and in this case, stupid laws. They will either rip or download illegally. Its a free world. THe music labels can’t control what people do in their private homes especially when they are not using brains to understand the fallacies of their own strategy to selling music. Those lawsuits against individuals might win them battles but the war has already been lost. Now, a landmark case on August 3 2006 where RIAA lost against a woman, might turn the tide further against RIAA.

The Digital Divide

Hence, since it is totally illegal to rip music from your Cds, impractical to buy MP3 files for songs you already have, and impractical for some to learn how to buy Mp3 songs they don’t own, a significant proportion of our society today are prevented by legal and social barriers to own MP3 players without being legally exposed. Ask yourself where many of your friends got their MP3 files in the first place. Steve Jobs would own the entire Earth and all our asses if we had bought from his iTunes.

This is the Digital Divide, also a social boundary and tyranny of RIAA that separates the old from the young from what should otherwise be an equal access opportunity to music enjoyment.

Hail! All hail the “Queen of MySpace”, newly crowned by Vanity Fair in their March 2006 issue. The Queen herself has almost a million Myspace “friends” and counting (982229 at time of posting), including real celebrities such as the band Nine Inch Nails.

Christine Dolce, who also goes by her Myspace alias Forbidden, used to be a cosmetics salesgirl at some mall before her inspired take towards her MySpace profile shot her into stratospheric fame. Reading her blog is like a “Celebrities for Dummies” tutorial.

Whats her formula? Pics always tell the truth, not words (unless you are JK Rowling)

The last pic above is from Stuff Magazine, one of many “lad mags” you will find her on. But the first two photos are symbolic of her style that got her fame.

A buxomic figure + Edgy/ Punk Rock style + Good photography + provocative poses = glamorous shots, which are damn viral on social networks and ensure high attention and profile views from all the men. The professional and methodical approach to marketing herself and even branding herself as “Forbidden” is simply alluring and differentiates herself from so much of the MySpace sluts. Not to mention throwing in dozens of photos, blogging frequently about her road to glamor and glitz, “mentoring” wannabes, being nice and welcoming to all friend requests on MySpace. Christine kept her story real, keeping to her amateurish roots on Myspace, told the story faithfully through personal media such as blogs and balanced it well with her increasingly professional studio shots.

She has rode on her initial fame to also launch her own clothing line(Destroyed Denim jeans) like many other self-respecting celebrity would too, think JLo, Britney. And similarly, she also has multiple product endorsements on her profile of her photographer, media firms, all neatly tied in with her own personal brand which shines ever so brightly on MySpace. It was her latest conquest of Unilever that caught my attention as she’s hired to market the consumer giant’s line of Axe deodorant products.

Everyone loves a rags to riches story, particularly one that is gathering in steam like Christine’s. Its way cooler to be part of the making of a celebrity on a social network than just witnessing the finished product which skips the social participation stage like so many other offline manufactured celebrities.

>And if you think softcore porn photographs are not enough for her to hit the mainstream, you will be surprised to hear of her mentions on established mainstream media such as the Economist, Wall Street Journal, Business 2.0 who have lauded her as the icon of the New Media wave that Rupert Murdoch is betting his fame on to ride it successfully. Business 2.0 went as far to laud her as one of the hits in their “Hits and Misses” feature, alongside Valley luminaries such as Steve Jobs, the godfather of PC Bill Gates, and the Google rock stars of Sergey and Larry.

Christine Dolce’s meteoric rise through the Internet is set to go even further when she appears on Playboy in October 2006.

While her achievements are certainly noteworthy by themselves, her role in our cultural world today has a deeper significance. A new message to all aspiring fame-seekers:

Celebrity status is no longer a monopoly of media giants but a democracy for web-savvy amateurs.

Christine’s a web-born celebrity, one of a few that have escaped the monitor screens to really hit paydirt and gain fame in the offline world. The empowering influence of the internet used to centre around existing offline celebrities such as Britney Spears, Baywatch babes, Beyonce who occupy top spots on search engine traffic but the Youtube phenom has spawned multiple amateurs who have relied on sheer ingenuity and raw talent or looks to rub it with the multi-million dollar image makeovers by professional firms.

Christine certainly won’t be the last web celebrity we see to have been pushed to the top of her career by a mass of gawky internet users on a social network.The Internet has given birth to the voices of millions who clamor for celebrities or cutural icons that are truer reflections of ourselves rather than the manufactured superstars of yesteryear. That fuzzy, warm feeling, of knowing someone who was equally an unknown as you were years ago to have made it and become a celebrity through a social network alone, is truly inspirational.

Related Articles:

Is MySpace the Future of Web Marketing?

Teen Spirit worth a $60 billion bet?

More here…

In my very first virgin blog post last year, I sought to make this blog as a repository of my thoughts, an online investment of my time to accumulate knowledge I might find useful in future. I thought of it as an expanded version of del.icio.us but one which allows me to capture the context of my interaction with material or experiences I had come across in my life.

Looking back, I have surprised myself by blogging thus far. I never thought I would be blogging this consistently after I got back to Singapore. I was never one to write diaries nor do I love to write. I never set out to write to get traffic or readers too or get famous. But what blogging has really helped me is in the articulation and expression of my thoughts.

Have you ever read a newspaper or magazine article and just felt the compelling need to share your thoughts with someone, anyone? Read the rest of this entry »

Look right of this window and you will see a Meebo chat window that allows the blog author to connect directly with its readers on s/he own blog. I just spent some time playing with this new toy today. Its called Meebo Me.

1. Sleek design is always a plus. There are already blog-hosted chat applications available but those are really ugly versions that remind me of the IRC days.
2. Viral App. Meebo has definitely etched themselves in the minds and hearts of bloggers around the world. THis is definitely aimed right at people like me to hopefully blog about the application and either hug or slam its usefulness to our readers, hence making this whole application a viral marketing campaign for its main service.
3. Crawling with bugs. I must say Meebo Me started off not too well while I was installing it onto my Wordpress platform. I had to keep renaming my widgets everytime I had an unsuccessful attempt in installing the code into the WP widget. After installing, I couldn;t chat with visitors on my blog unless I am logged in as a Meebo user on their Meebo main site. Frustrating indeed. Can’t the Meebo Me app detect that its blog author is logged in as long as I am logged in with my blog host? This really defeated the purpose of Meebo me as a tool in connecting the author and its readers. If you need the author to always log into Meebo from Meebo main site, then you are forcing people to use your main service. I am happy with my MSN IM currently and dun foresee me using the web-hosted version from Meebo. Is this their way of forcing all IM users to convert to Meebo as their IM browser?

Having said that, I am still satisfied generally with Meebo Me and its vision of integrating IM within the blogging experience, both for the readers and authors. More importantly, its early days for Meebo Me and I shall be virtuously patient.
Do drop me a line if you are visiting.  =)

I re-read books. I re-watch shows and movies. Because you always have a different perspective everytime you read or watch the same thing again. Same applies to entrepreneurship. Same idea, different timings, can often be the crucial factor between success and failure. Same goes for relationships and what have you not.

But I am digressing. I re-read Steve Jobs’ Stanford Commencement Speech again today. Steve Jobs is one of my top role models. He’s articulate, he’s a perfectionist and the brilliance in his life is so bright it just awes and inspires you.

SO today, I am inspired again, despite having heard his speech in Stanford, and then reading his speech 2 times after. somehow, reading about Steve’s life always gives you new insights into your own life.

I extracted several good parts that really reasonated with me today.

Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

I am going to write an article on this and connect this dot with the E27 dot (Read Steve’s analogy on connecting dots). Because I think our pragmatic nation of Singapore is intolerant of dreamers (aka hungry people) and fools. All this translates to an intolerance of failures. Because the above 2 groups of people have high propensities to be failures. Coincidentally, they are two character traits of entrepreneurs too. Chandra was right. Steve Jobs wouldn’t be what he is if he was in Singapore.