Blog

Spring Cleaning of Paprika Lab’s Website

May 4th, 2009

We finally got the chance to redo our company website. This time, we wanted to employ a feeling of fresh, green, and eco-friendliness to it. The main page shows some recent highlights in our product line-up as well as few excerpts from this blog. Wooden texture gives a slight dimension to the appearance.

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About page contains a general introduction to Paprika Lab and our 4 values that we believe in and base our decisions on. Few pictures on the right shows a glimpse of what it’s like at Paprika Lab.

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Our products page shows the list of products that we’ve launched so far and a web link or a download link in case of an app.

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Contact page contains the necessary email addresses for communicating with us. On the right sidebar are some images from Google Earth pinpointing our geographical location (not linked on purpose).

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Well, we hope you like our new spring looks. :) Cheers!

Guy Kawasaki’s Spamurai - The Art of Marketing on Twitter

April 5th, 2009

Pretty entertaining and informative on how to use twitter for marketing (and spamming) purposes. As long as it’s targeted and annoyance-free, it’s good marketing.

Quote: Things rarely happen that weren’t thought about.

March 27th, 2009

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“Things don’t always go according to one’s thoughts, but things rarely happen that weren’t thought about.”

Stressing the importance of goals and purpose has become a cliche, but still holds true. We tend to hope for pleasant surprises, but they rarely occur when you didn’t prepare for it to happen. Focus on the outcome and think through of what might lead to the goal, and with some luck, it will become a reality.

* Image courtesy of veruška

Essence of Online Shopping and Commerce

March 16th, 2009

Jeff Bezos recently said in Charlie Rose, what people want in online shopping are basically three things:

  1. Low Prices
  2. Vast selection
  3. Accurate, Fast, Convenient Delivery

It’s a great insight, since business entities tend to focus on the differences between the markets, but there are fundamental needs of human being which can be similar across the world. What I do find true, however is there are some factors not included above are also critical and general across multiple markets.

1. Trust

People won’t buy products or from places they don’t trust. It’s a matter of security as well as reliability. Because they are payinig for something, because they are giving their commitment, they must be able to trust the seller, the product, the shipping & handling companies.

It’s interesting to note that how much we underestimate trust in online shopping, and it’s precisely because it comes before everything else. No matter how cheap the product is, how vast the selection is, or how “perceivably” convenient the delivery is, people won’t buy things from places that they cannot trust.

Fortunately, Amazon.com has a great brand reputation that people do trust, so even if the sellers providing the items to Amazon have not earned such trust yet, they can benefit from supplying their products through Amazon.

2. Relevancy

This may seem to dissent from “vast selection,” but ultimately, it’s not. What it means is, people don’t want to buy 100 different cars or 100 different mp3 players. They want the one that’s right for them, but because we don’t have the necessary technology or service adequate enough to address this problem, we offer them bunch of things to choose from instead.

It’s meaningful to remember that since customers don’t necessarily benefit from vast selection, and that it also hurts the sales for the sellers, one of the most important problem for commerce sites to solve is relevancy. Jason’s recent post on the problem of having to choose from too many “similar looking” printers shows this point.

Since roughly 30% of the sales at Amazon comes from recommendation services, this is a good place to start.

3. Good After Service and Refundability

After service is like a safety net. This may not seem like a big issue (it is for people who had much hassle in their previous shopping experiences), providing good A/S or at least notifying the customers of such will help sales and loyalty. As a matter of fact, Samsung is well known for it’s great A/S (at least in Korea). Whenever you buy a monitor, whatever the problem it may have, they will come to your house, pick up the product, get it fixed or replaced, and re-delivered to you all within just few days.

If you are committing yourself to purchasing something and you know the seller will be there when you have problems, and you know that they will have their money ready when you don’t want to keep the product, you are much more likely to purchase the product without much second thought.

This also helps the sellers because (unless they have a crappy product), customers usually stick to their choices, and if their experiences match up their expectations, they build loyalty toward your products and brands.

4. Ease of Payment

Too many countries in this world still lack much e-commerce, because of this problem. It’s still too darn hard to pay for something that you want. Mobile payment is an easy way to pay for small things on the go and it is quite common in some parts of Asia, but it’s still very hard to find in some of the western countries.

Sellers must provide the shoppers with as many payment options as possible (with simple interface of course) and as securely and reliably as possible.

When I was working at NCsoft, I looked through the way people pay for online games, it was clear that the more payment options you give to the customers, two things will happen:

  1. Customers will pick an easier way to pay for services and life-time value increases (for example, if someone was paying via money-transfer manually every month, they are more likely to stay as a customer when they find out that they can pay by credit-card automatically, obviously).
  2. New customers appear. Some customers in the “grey area” are triggered by this new found easeness and they will begin to spill over to the side of paying customers.

Online shopping and commerce in general has one of the longest history in the areas of the internet, but there are still many problems to be solved and many values to be served.

Ubiquitous City Case: Seoul, South Korea

March 9th, 2009

There seems to be an interesting project going on in city of Seoul, South Korea. Ubiquituous seems to be a buzzword these days, but at least one of them is taking it seriously and doing something compelling with it.

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Along the streets of Gangnam, one of the most populated areas in Seoul, is now decorated with somewhat monolith-like pillars which have numerous features:

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These pillars functions not only as street lights, they supply wireless internet to everyone one in the area as well.

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They also have touch-screen enabled computers embedded that shows traffic and local informations like near by restaurants and cafes. People can upload their own user generated contents to these polls. (I don’t know whether or how they censor/manage the uploaded contents)

This really is an interesting way to bring ubiquity to internet access and touch-screen technology.

QUOTE: Until one is committed, there is hesistancy…

March 3rd, 2009

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, the providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets: “Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!”

W. H. Murray

[via Signal vs Noise]

Reactive Planning Model vs Natural Planning Model

March 2nd, 2009

The Reactive Planning Model described in David Allen’s Getting Things Done is right on point.

But what happens if you don’t plan ahead of time? In many cases, crisis! (”Didn’t you get the tickets? I thought you were going to do that?!”) Then, when the urgency of the last minute is upon you, the reactive planning model ensues.

What’s the first level of focus when the stuff hits the fan? Action! Work harder! Overtime! More people! Get busier! And a lot of stressed-out people are thrown at the situation.

Then, when having a lot of busy people baning into each other doesn’t resolve the situation, someone gets more sophisticated and says. “We need to get organized!” (Catching on now?) Then people draw boxes around the problem and label them. Or redraw the boxes and relabel them.

At some point they realize that just redrawing boxes isn’t really doing much to solve the problem. Now someone (much more sophisticated) suggests that more creativity is needed. “Let’s brainstorm!” With everyone in the room, the boss asks, “So, who’s got a good idea here?” (Thank you, Mrs. Williams.)

When nothing much happens, the boss may surmise that his staff has used up most of its internal creativity. Time to hire a consultant! Of course, if the consultant is worth his salt, at some point he is probably going to ask the big question: “So, what are you really trying to do here, anyway?” (vision, purpose).

Instead, David suggests the natural planning model:

  1. Defining purpose and principles.
  2. Outcome visioning
  3. Brainstorming
  4. Organizing
  5. Identifying next actions

What I find true about this model is the importance of clear purpose and outcome. Whenver I am involved in a project, the clearer the outcome and its purpose is, the more members are motivated, and productivity flows like a stream of water running down hills.

Whenever the purpose or outcome is somewhat vague or not agreed upon, as time goes by, people tend to drift away in their own imaginations or lose their momentum.

So, keep your goals and purposes clear and make sure everyone in your team knows where the goal is.

iPhone Game - HenHouse : Count Attack Released!

February 15th, 2009

After numerous less than one-year of development, we are proud to announce that our massively-singleplayer offline roleless game, HenHouse : Count Attack has gone gold on AppStore.

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This super addictive, mind-bogging, brain-training game features really cute chicks squicking out of their eggs when pressed on. After playing this game for a while, your brain will spew out alpha waves and puts you in a relaxing state.

playing

The basic goal of this game is to press the egg-shaped buttons in numerical order from 1 to 100 as fast as you can. You will be ranked based on your speed (time-elapsed) and your max-combos.

This game can be really fun when you compete against your friends and colleagues. See who can score the quickest time. First time playing men usually scores around 90 ~ 100 seconds, whereas women scores around 100 ~ 120 seconds. (This is probably due to men being more exposed to games in their lives) When you train yourself and your brain, your score will get quicker, maybe 60 seconds, or even up to 40 seconds!

Right now, the fastest player in the world scores around late 30s.

Here’s the video of game play:

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When you pause the game, you will be awarded(?) with some witty proverbs so that you can take your mind off of things.

So go ahead and grab a copy here.

We’ve placed our support page on Facebook Products page.

Weirdest Hello Kitty Video

February 11th, 2009

I’ve always thought of Hello Kitty as a white and pink, cute stuff intended for kindergartners and elementary school kids.

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(familiar?)

Following is a promotional video of MAC (the cosmetics) featuring black, weird Hello Kitty. It totally broke my conventional thinking of brand extension.

(Youtube video)

[via ShoppingBlog & ShinyGloss]

Obama’s Agenda on Technology

February 3rd, 2009

Recently renewed Whitehouse.gov’s section on technology agenda provides some useful insight to which area Obama administration is looking into.

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Here’s the run of high level agenda:

  • Ensure the Full and Free Exchange of Ideas through an Open Internet and Diverse Media Outlets
  • Create a Transparent and Connected Democracy
  • Deploy a Modern Communications Infrastructure
  • Improve America’s Competitiveness
  • Prepare All our Children for the 21st Century Economy
  • Prepare Adults for a Changing Economy
  • Employ Science, Technology and Innovation to Solve Our Nation’s Most Pressing Problems

It’s quite interesting to see that a government is out there supporting openness of the internet and protection of privacy. America’s lack of decent broadband might get better in the next years to come. Focus on math & science education and bio-research including stem cell is also explicitly described in the agenda.

It is motivating to see that the administration’s detailed goals on the various areas of the nation is well-informed. Most of the goals are still highly idealistic, but hopefully they have some reasonable and realistic steps to reaching these goals.