Have you ever dream of becoming an entrepreneur? Sure most of us have. I guess we are all thinking about becoming successful entrepreneurs when we think about doing our own start ups. However, while in the excitement of our plans, we are often overly optimistic. The road taken by any true entrepreneur can only be described as “crazy”. My entrepreneur journey started four years ago. My life has been in constant struggle since then with the ups and downs of two start ups.

My first start up company was one based on Linux services. I have strong roots with open source software and development. So when the opportunity came for me to stretch out my entrepreneurial wings, I decided to venture into the arena that I am most familiar with; open source. As it turns out, Singapore was not ready for open source. Majority of all Singaporean companies use Microsoft products. Many choose the risk of using illegal software then try to use something new and legal like open source software. I finally admitted defeat when I was unable to sell any of my services. There is really nothing bad about failures but the need to manage ones own emotion and self image while spiraling into despair is indeed a real challenge. I fell into a deep depression soon after. Perhaps my strategy was wrong or because I was too inexperienced. The bottom line was that I failed!

The year that followed, I swear I will never do a start up again. I got myself a proper job like everyone else. A year later, a good friend of mine suggested that we band together to build a new product named Hiitch. They needed a technical geek to oversee the development and I was the chosen one. This time round I thought perhaps I had a better chance of success because the guys I was working with were very talented in their own fields of work. More importantly, I was well rested from my last defeat both emotionally and financially. This time round, I made sure that I prayed about it and got God on my side first.

We spend a year building the product and along the way, I had some pretty good job offers. But like any other true breed entrepreneur, I rejected them and stay on course. By the way, some people called that being stupid, which I feel is somewhat correct. Anyway, when the product was finally about to be released, we had exhausted our motivation and finance. Hiitch had lots of potential but the risks were high and the pressure is in learning to sell it or the value added services on top of it. We had done some pretty stupid things along the way, like refusing opportunities for funding and instead opt for another more painful strategy. Our current strategy is to self fund ourselves through the slow and painful steps of taking in external development projects. We hope to be financially viable while still staying focused on developing our own products for the technology market. This strategy helps us cover the short term financial needs of cash flow while also ensuring that our company has a long term future through our own products. The cycle for this strategy is probably slower and less spectacular but fits us well for now.

Technically, we are still not out of the woods yet but by God’s grace, we are finally growing financially. If there is anything in this company, it is talent. Talent doesn’t always put bread on the table but it sure helps our customer see our value. A typical work day in the office consist of product brain storming sessions, project developments, financial forecast, planning and projection, loud music, complaining about our poor internet connections, lots of jokes and plenty of meal breaks. It might not seem like it for now but we hope to be a commercial force to be reckon with in the near future. Make sure you watch out for us!

We are looking for 2 J2EE/Java Software Engineer to be station in Taiwan, Taipei for 5 months.

Requirements:

• Must be a fast learner and able to pick up new things quickly
• Have working experience in developing with:
  · J2EE/Java (Tomcat, Eclipse)
  · Database (Oracle and PostgreSQL)
  · Linux/Unix (RHEL)
  · XML (Webservies)
  · Subversion
• Preferrably 2 years or more of software development experience
• Able to adapt to new environments easily
• Must be able to work independently and within a team
• Responsible and dependable
• Have your own laptop
• Basic understanding of developing software for mobile devices is a plus
• Basic knowledge of DRM is a plus

Remuneration:

• Good Salary
• Accommodation and airfare will be provided
• Opportunity to tour Taipei

As the project requires candidate to be station in Taipei, we are looking for someone who is able to converse in Mandarin and English.

If you have 5 or more months to spare and love to work in a different environment, drop us an email with the subject title “Application for the position of J2EE/Java Software Engineer”.

A happy lunar new year to all Chinese celebrating the event. 2008 marks the year of a rat. A rat year is a time of hard work, activity, and renewal bringing opportunity and good prospects.

This year we have been busy developing new features for Hiitch as well as some side projects, so stay tuned to our blog for more updates.

Hiitch allows you to create a support group for your own cause. Invite people to share their knowledge and expertise in a secure
and private environment. Chat in real time with other users or discuss topics that interest you most. You can also blog your own inspirational stories so that other users can learn from your experiences.

Hiitch allows you to set up support groups for Addictions, Alcoholics, Conditions and Diseases, Depression, Disabilities, Divorce
Health, Infertility, Parenting, Quitting Smoking, Self-Help, Women.

Following Google’s effort on open social, they are at it again, this time they are trying to do a similar stunt with mobile platforms. Honestly, as an entrepreneur I am a big fan of Google because of their ability to achieve so much success at such a short period of time. Google’s reputation was what got us interested in their Android platform. After discussing among ourselves, we decided to start exploring the possibility on creating an innovative solution on the Android platform.

The initial process to get the platform and development tools up and running is very simple. It took me merely 15 minutes to install and write my first “Hello World” application. Playing with the Android emulator was both impressive and fun. It has all the charm of the iPhone with the additional capability to allow developers to build real applications on it. As much as I like this new platform, there are down sides. These down sides become more apparent to me as I started reading through their documentation and following their tutorials.

Source Code Portability?

The first issue I discovered was the way Android was designed. Activity, intent, service and content providers was the new way Google wanted developers to think on their platform. But wait, the first warning signs lighted in my mind. That means that the applications I write for Android cannot be reused on another Java enabled phone without making major architectural changes to the source code. Bummer! There goes my source code portability, now I got to write one version for Android and another for other Java enabled phones. The new design concept on the whole is good except that it makes reusable code harder to write because now I got to add more layers of needless abstraction in my code to ensure it can be reused on other mobile phone platforms.

Hidden Complexity?

I might be wrong here but while running through the tutorial I started to get the feeling that Android was designed for and by web developers. The concepts and unnecessary complexity seem to have come from a web development mindset. Instead of thinking the normal Object programming model, Android’s programming model indirectly forces you to think tags for GUI, code for event handling, services for facility or code reuse and content providers for managing data. I understand why the web programming model is designed the way it is because the code is often broken up into server and client side then glued together by requests and passing parameters. But why does the Android’s non-web application development model resembles it so closely? Are they trying to attract web developers onto their mobile platform? I personally felt somewhat handicapped by the development model.

In summary, it will take a while before I get comfortable with this new platform. With the prize money that Google is offering, you can be sure that many others like ourselves will be giving it a go. However, whether this new platform can retain its users and developers is still an open question!