Last week I was reading some Amazon.com reviews of Malcolm Gladwell’s new book Outliers, both the positive (the majority) and the negative ones (about 30% gave 3 stars or less). I like a bit of controversy, so started off with the negative ones. If they can convince me I often do not buy the book. Gladwell is known for writing entertainment covered with a scientific sauce, as you probably know if you read his two bestsellers Blink and The Tipping Point. If I would buy Outliers I would not expect a dry scientific book that weighs all the pros and cons from the available literature to come to a conclusion, but apparently that is what some reviewers were expecting.

Especially the top negative (1 star) review was interesting: this review focuses on the the superficial treatment of the term outlier without a historical background, a dubious citation list with lots of URL’s instead of real books, and on the fact that other books address similar issues in a much better way. Not very convincing to me, because these are arguments that might be important for a scientific work, but not necessarily for a popular semi-scientific entertainment book. However, 80% of the readers who rated this review found it helpful. I wonder if they ever read another book of Gladwell before, because they all seem to have their expectations wrong.

Anyway, because I like Gladwell’s writing style I decided to buy the book and went off to the Chaterhouse bookstore in Times Square during lunch the next day. But as happens more often at this mediocre book store (but still the best English language store in Shanghai), they did not carry the book. Ordering it through Amazon did not make sense, because that takes at least 2-3 weeks and I did not want to wait that long. So I decided to download the audio book instead. That was a good decision, but after listening to about 1 hour of the total of 7 hours I decided that reading the book is much better than listening to it on an iPod. Then I got the brain wave to buy the e-book for my iLiad reader, something I should have thought of a lot earlier already of course. So yesterday I downloaded the book and I finished it in one day.

After downloading the book I immediately received a Twitter message from someone saying that the book was not worth the time, but after finishing the book within one day I totally disagree. It’s a fun read and I really enjoyed the couple of hours that it took me to read. Outliers explains why successful people became successful and it show that it is not just talent or hard work. Of course that’s a major part of it, without a lot of talent and putting in a lot of effort you cannot become an outlier (an extremely successful person such as Bill Gates). But it is not sufficient, you need more.

This books shows what some of the things are that may make a major difference, for example the month in which you are born determines if you can become a successful hockey player in Canada (read the book for the explanation). Also your year of birth is important, it is not by coincidence that Steve Jobs (Apple), Bill Gates (Microsoft) and Eric Schmidt (Sun, Novell, Google) were all born in 1955. No worries, this is not related to astrology.

But also the culture you were raised in is an important determinant, and explains why so many Air Korea planes used to crash (and in case you read this while on a Korean plane, it also explains why this is not the case anymore). Your family, its values and your parents jobs all play a big role as well (I will keep this in mind while raising Scott). And of course pure luck, being at the right place at the right time several times in a row. The main conclusion is that you cannot copy other peoples behavior to become an outlier as well, it’s a lot more than being smart and working hard.

Very entertaining with lots of interesting trivia that can be useful in party conversations. Sure, not a major scientific work but fun to read anyway. The right book for a lazy weekend or a relaxed day a the pool.

One of the things that has amazed me over the past 12 months is how quickly a helpless little baby changes into a toddler with his own personality. If I compare pictures of Scott from just a year ago with how he looks now I sometimes wonder how he could change so quickly.

For that reason we put together a picture frame with one picture of Scott per month. Now suddenly the transformation of baby to toddler becomes more clear. In some months he hardly changed, but in others he is suddenly a lot more ‘mature’ (click on the picture to see a bigger version). We will keep on taking monthly pictures (well, actually almost daily), so in the end we have a nice series to see his development over the years.

Yesterday China finally issued its 3G licenses, not only for its home-grown TD-SCDMA network, but also for the European W-CDMA and for the US/Japanese/Korean CDMA2000 standard. China Mobile got the first one, China Unicom received the W-CDMA and China Telecom was awarded the CDMA2000 license.

China Mobile, China’s biggest mobile phone provider with over 400 million users, already set up its network a couple of months ago, but the performance was quite bad. They gave away lots of TD-SCDMA phones for free but most people were still unhappy with the service. If I remember correctly 80-90% of all users were dissatisfied! I hope for them that they will get their act together, because they will face some competition soon. The CDMA2000 network will start in the next 4-6 months in Beijing and Shanghai, to be followed by WCDMA.

So far you had to buy a new phone and get a new number to start using TD-SCDMA, but that is not the case anymore. You just need to buy an official 3G TD-SCDMA phone (so far only crappy models are available, but Nokia and Samsung are developing new phones) and plug in your China Mobile SIM card. If you’re currently not a China Mobile user you have bad luck and you will need to apply for a new number. If you are a China Telecom or Unicom user you can use that number for 3G services once their network will be rolled out.

The 3G speed was announced to be up to 14.4 megabit/second, but of course that’s a theoretical speed. Costs are the same as for GPRS. There will not be an unlimited data plan yet, but starting prices are reasonable at RMB 20 (EUR 2.20) for 150 MB.

An online survey by Sina.com showed that 65% of the 130,000 respondents said that they would switch to 3G. If the adoption rate will indeed be so high mobile internet in China will take off very soon, and it will change the Internet landscape considerably. I look forward to all the business opportunities that this will provide.

Although I am normally an early adopter, I will probably wait until decent phones come out before I make the switch to TD-SCDMA. My iPhone won’t work anyway on the China Mobile 3G network, and I do not want to change my number. I am anyway planning to eventually get rid of my iPhone, because it still does not support FlashLite (in my opinion a big mistake by Apple). Hopefully Nokia will roll out its N97 with the Chinese 3G standard, in that case I will switch right away.

I just started reading “400 million customers” by Carl Crow, a book that was originally published in 1937 but that has now been reprinted by Earnshaw Books. The most striking thing about the book is that so many things have not really changed over the past 70 years and that especially foreign business men keep on making the same mistakes in China.

I like to read books about China’s history, especially about the past 100 years or so, but I like film footage even more. So I was quite happy to find a link to a film about Shanghai in 1947 on Danwei today. It’s a still movie, but in between the scenes it gives some comments about what you see in the film.

Also here I notice a lot of similarities between Shanghai 60 years ago and now. Traffic is just as chaotic as it is now, and not only on the streets but also on the water. Go with the flow was also then the best way to get to your destination without getting into accidents. Fake products are not new to China, Carl Crow describes that both Chinese and Japanese factories immediately copy new products. And this can be seen as well in the film, where there is footage of a ‘black market’. The only difference is that fake markets are now mainly frequented by foreign tourists.

Another thing that struck me is that China did not seem to have high value money bills, just like now. In the film someone is selling (or pawning) gold and gets a large stack of money in return. Nowadays China’s largest bill is just RMB 100 (about EUR 11), and because a lot of transactions are still cash-based you can see people leaving or arriving at banks with bags full of money

Human power is still used to transport products from one part of the city to the other. At least once a week I see migrant workers using ropes to pull carts with wooden poles over the steep bridge close to Tudou. Exactly the same as what you see in the film. One thing I noticed is that there were no horses in Shanghai in 1947, I only see boats, cars and bicycles. Were they not allowed in the city?

If you enjoy this kind of films, then also check out this one about Hong Kong in 1938 (h/t Thomas Crampton). Both films are part of The Travel Film Archive on YouTube that has a lot more historical travel footage from all over the world.

A few weeks ago I got my hands on a pre-galley copy of Jeff Jarvis upcoming book What Would Google Do? Judging from the title you might think this is just another book about Google, but it isn’t. It’s a book about seeing the world as Google sees it. What Jarvis did is translating Google’s way of doing business into a set of rules to live and do business by.

I loved the book, not only because it’s a highly entertaining read filled with real life examples, but especially because I think it will open the eyes of many people about how the world has changed because of the Internet, and what they should do to stay ahead or at least keep up. Many of the Google Rules that Jarvis defines are very recognizable to me and several have helped me to grow my businesses over the past years. But others I did not really think through yet, so they were quite thought provoking while reading the book.

The first part of the book is about the Google Rules, the way Google does its business, about 30 in total. Some of the most important include:

– Jeff Jarvis First Law: Give the people trust and we will use it. Don’t and you will lose it. The powerful (companies, institutions and governments) used to be in charge because of the control they had, but the world has changed. They can only win it back by being more transparent and listen to their customers

– Your customer is your advertising agency: Google spends next to nothing in advertising, people spread the word for them. Let your customers do that for you. Good news for Internet Word of Mouth companies like Sam Flemming‘s CIC (in which I am an investor).

– Join the Open Source, Gift Economy: Your customers will help you if you ask them, people like to be generous (look at Wikipedia for example)

– The masses are dead, long live the niches: Aggregation of the long tail replaces the mass. Not one online video will have the ratings of the Superbowl, but together they capture a huge audience

– Free is a business model: Google will find ways to make money by offering services for free. Charging money costs money

– Make mistakes well: It can be a good thing to make mistakes, but it depends on how you handle them. Corrections enhance credibility. You don’t need to launch the perfect product, your customers can (and will) help you to improve it

– Beware of the cash cow in the coal mine: Cash flow can blind you to the strategic necessity of change, tough decisions and innovations

These rules will change the way you will do business. And not just for obvious industries like the Internet or traditional media. In the second part of the book, If Google Ruled The World, Jarvis describes the impact on (or better: opportunities for) many different industries. From media to advertising, from retail to manufacturing, and from the service industry to banking and VC’s. He describes how these industries will be forced to change and how you can become a winner by changing faster than your competition – or lose everything if you believe that your current business model will survive. A thought provoking and very inspiring part of his book. If you’re in one of the industries mentioned above it is a must to read his analysis. Even if you are not convinced by Jarvis analysis, it should make you think about the opportunities and threats the future holds for you.

The final part of the book, Generation G, is more about the impact of Google on personal life. Google will keep people connected: young people will stay linked, likely for the rest of their lives. This improves the nature of friendships and how you treat each other. Past mistakes will be visible forever, but if you made mistakes it not a big issue, because everybody did. An age of transparency must be an age of forgiveness, in Googlespeak: Life is a beta. Privacy is not the issue, but control over your private information is.

A lot of people my age (I’m 36 years old) ask me why I put my whole life online, they do not understand this. This book may help them to understand. And it’s not just me doing this of course, it’s the whole younger generation doing this. Sharing of information is a social act, it is the basis of connections. Sharing brings social benefits that outweigh risks. Withholding information from the collective knowledge may even be considered anti-social. If I look at Twitter and read what other people are for example eating for breakfast, some people may laugh and say it is nonsense to put that online. But Jeff Jarvis calls it ‘ambient intimacy’ and explains that it is good for friendships.

It does not happen often that I read a book that I fully agree with, but this is one of them. Mr. Jarvis puts on paper how I see the world changing around us and how I see people getting left behind because they fail to see it. But he also explains what they can do to keep up or stay ahead of the rest. For people living and working on the Internet like me, a lot of things may not be new, but reading Mr. Jarvis analysis is still very worthwhile. If you do not know all ins and outs of the Internet, this book is a must-read. If there is one non-fiction book you plan to read this year, this should be the one.

What Would Google Do? will be published on January 27, 2009. You can pre-order it here.

What’s the best way to avoid the consequences of a possible recession? Keep on innovating your products and improving your services. So that’s what we have been doing at Spil Games Asia over the past months. One result of this was launched this week: our Chinese web game channel at ol.game.com.cn

Webgames are massive multiplayer online games that you do not need to download, but that you can play directly in a web browser. That means that you can immediately start playing the game on every computer with an internet connection. No download and installation needed!

Our web game channel launches with one game, ???? (Wang Ye San Guo), a cute-looking Three Kingdoms game. The game is free-to-play, with a business model based on virtual items. We have two more games lined up that will launch shortly, and a couple more will follow later this year.

If you have followed me on Twitter you’ll have noticed that I already had a couple of excellent lunches and dinners at M1NT Shanghai over the past weeks. The club’s restaurant is located on the penthouse floor of the Cross Tower, giving diners a spectacular view the city and the Pudong skyline.

What many people may not know is that the restaurant is also open to non-members, so if you are looking for a special place for lunch or dinner keep this place in mind. M1NT now also has a special tasting menu for RMB 388 per person, including a glass of champagne and club access afterward. Recommended!

Bookings: bookings@m1nt.com.cn or call +86 21 6391 2811
24/F, 318 Fuzhou Road, Shanghai (corner of Shandong Road)