Leave it to the Lex column in the FT to put a fresh spin on everything.

This one popped out at me due to the implications on investments/money:

The notion that government is not really keeping up with the people – just look at occupy wall street and some of the middle east uprisings as a clear sign of that. Throw in more social media, more communication and this trend in my mind can only accelerate. I wonder when China will feel it?

Second one was such a good point in that as big as Apple might be – 95% of the planet has not touched an Apple product. You think the shares are high now?

Being a fan of trying to do biz in emerging markets the third point was telling in that markets are getting bigger, easier to access and the talent pool is growing not shrinking.

The world is changing in a big way.

Sure there is the environment calamities – look at Thailand for a stark example of this but knowing how Thailand is operated I think most of it will be shown to be self inflicted. What I mean by this they mismanaged the damns, paved over all the canals to build malls/apartments and responded slowly to the threat. Water must be managed.

Energy policies need to change but I think some common sense – use more natural gas and the rise of technology will find a way to end the oil mess.

Technology will keep getting more sophisticated but yet more accessible all the time – look at these trends: codify and code academy for examples.

As for the financial mess – not sure I know what to say but clearly we have a problem. The rich are accelerating their wealth at a time when the poor are worse off and the middle class is shrinking. Something is wrong but I don’t know the answer. However something will break.

Good luck to the newest members of planet earth – it’s an interesting era indeed.

I covered some of my activity here.

Hats off to viki for their huge round of funding: http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/20/andreessen-horowitz-bbc-greylock-put-20m-in-international-video-site-viki/

Heard about this site today – looks cool: http://chope.com.sg/

I attended this last night and met some folks from Ubisoft – I didn’t realize they were so big in Singapore.

Did you know that this is engineered in Singapore? Was cool to meet Steve from Chumby last night as well.

All in all – a lot of activity in Singapore but you have to dig past the headlines and the events to find the real doers – the folks building companies, heading up multi-national operations and the other peeps running around to ensure the ecosystem takes off. I have every faith that it will – just a matter of time.

Back to work..

First up was accelerate day at TechVenture2011. I attended the full conference at TV2010 and was even at some of the VIP events but this year I was too late getting back from the states so was only able to make the accelerate part of the event.

The main thrust of accelerate besides the speakers is the pitches from various startups in the region looking for cash.

You can check twitter #techventure and #accel2011 for the stream. Some good info in there…

I can’t say I saw something drop dead cool or must have but there was a number of solid offerings. In general though you can see how Singapore keeps evolving and is becoming quite the hotbed of startup and venture activity for Asia. I still feel that apart from China and India – Singapore and SEA is the other main place in the APAC to get it going  on.

Probably my highlight for the day was getting to hear Tim Draper of dfj.com speak twice. Once during the day at accelerate and once at night during FoundersDrinks. I was very impressed with his down to earth style, his poignant examples of business, and his gracious openness with the crowds. He answered a lot of questions and stuck around to talk to pretty much anyone who wanted to chat with him. It was not what I was expecting and I was pleasantly surprised. He shared a few Steve Jobs stories which was very cool. He made some interesting points about how powerful Steve was about changing the world and how is passing will leave a big hole to be filled within the industry.

I must say I was totally shocked during the evening event when Tim performed a song he had written about the venture industry.

I happened to record it with my iPhone – you can catch it here on Vimeo. I have not seen someone this famous from the tech industry belt out in song like that. Props.

Tim had some great points about how this is the best time ever to get started building something – he adamantly encouraged folks to ignore the downturn, the pessimism and to launch full in into building things and changing the world. It was welcome advice given the state of the world these days.

Thanks Tim for coming to Singapore and imparting your wisdom, positive attitude and your song on us!

Tim shared some book suggestions – one was “the startup game” – I would link to it from amazon but I can’t get logged in.

Tomorrow I hope to check Startup Weekend Singapore and JFDI.

laterz

Download was about 90 mins from Singapore – kind of long. Apple needs to host some bits around here.

Sync. Backup. New OS and then restore. Wait – it says my restore needs a password for the encryption. I never encrypted it. Damn.

Did a freshie – no restore. Pain in the ass but I have had no issues. Just took some time to get everything set up again. Kind of a nice way to start over though.

Love the notifications. So much cleaner and easier to deal with.

iMessage is awesome.

Things feel snappier.

Not sure on iCloud yet. Need more testing.

Love the camera from lock screen access.

Battery life looks good.

Need to play more.

Maybe upgrade the iPad tonight.

Macbook Air upgraded but have yet to play with it.

more soon…

I want an iPhone 4S I think…

I was standing outside of Fry’s in Palo Alto waiting for a co-worker to pick me up when I read the tweet. Steve Jobs had just passed away. We all knew this day would come but none of us were ready for it. I was stunned. Sad. Suddenly lonely.

When my friend picked me up I told him and said let’s go to the Apple Store in Palo Alto. I have been needing a new laptop for personal use and figured what better time to buy. So I grabbed a MacBook Air.

For me I will always remember where I was when I heard about SJ and I will always think about him when I use my Air.

RIP

There are a few crosswalks I have to navigate that don’t have a stop light. Usually no one stops but the few times someone has – they are driving a car from out of State.

Is this new post-terminator California?

Back to NPR…

Sure there were glitches, hiccups and plenty of chaos but that is also the part that makes it all that much better when the end result turns out to be so awesome. I think there were over 600 attendees, 100 plus hacks submitted, 100′s of helpers, mountains of food, open bar, swag and lots of smiles all around.

Some flickr photos…

more on Twitter… in fact the topic trended for a few days. Some will say due to the issues but I think it was due to how busy the place was and all the chatter in and outside of the event.

All I know is I met a lot of good people there and talked to a lot of them who told me many times how much fun they had.

General list of hacks here

Congrats to the winners, some flying to NY, and a huge thanks to all the people who helped at the event.

laterz!