Archive

Archive for September, 2010

Facebook in Cinemas as The Social Network

September 28th, 2010

Facebook has conquered the world and is so great that somebody decided to make it into a blockbuster movie.

The movie’s name is ‘The Social Network’. Friendster and the rest must be banging their heads not having to hold the special identification of ‘The Social Network’. 🙂

Anyway, the movie is based on Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, an adaptation from Ben Mezrich’s 2009 book The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook: A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal.

I sure hope it’ll live up to the expectation, just like the real Facebook.

Check out the official trailer below from Sony Pictures.

Official website : http://www.thesocialnetwork-movie.com

The Social Network movie is set to be released worldwide from Oct 1 2010.

I wonder why there isn’t anyone making movies about Google or Bill Gates in the first place?

Internet, Movies , ,

Free Tickets to Tech Insights 2010

September 22nd, 2010

This is for you if you’re Microsoft’s league of developers and based in Penang.

I received an email from my friend Peky and I’m sharing it over here.
The enclosed email below is from someone in Celcom’s Developer Program and by referring two person to join Celcom’s League of Extraordinary Developer Challenge/LEDC (are long names more glamorous?), you get a free ticket worth RM 80 to the Tech Insights Penang 2010 three day conference.

LEDC (my department) is Celcom’s developer program (like Apple Apps store, we have our own developer program). We organizes mobile applications training, as well as encourages entrepreneurs to develop mobile applications through our program, and subsequently market it with Celcom (is CSR program from Celcom, hence the giving back to society).

Our developer based for the moment is mainly in Kuala Lumpur. We are out-reaching to developers in Penang, and our first initiative this year is through an independent technical conference organizer – Tech Insight. Tech Insight details can be found through: http://www.techinsights.my/

Tech Insight is holding a technical conference as per below details:

Date : 22nd to 24th September 2010 (LEDC’s slot is on 23 of September 1-1.30pm)

Venue: Eureka Building, USM.

Cost: Tickets are available for sale for RM80 per person.

LEDC is offering free tickets to the event as part of our out-reach program. All one has to do is :

1. Register through our website to join the LEDC’s Developer Program. Website: http://www.celcom.com.my/developerleague/be_our_developer.php

2. Get 2 person to recommend him/her while registering for the LEDC’s program

3. Email us with the 2 person who recommended them: developerleague@celcom.com.my

Can you guys help help forward to anyone who might be interested? Or anyone who is free (not need to be developer also can, but has interests to hear what we have to share). We’re on 23rd @1-1.30pm. So, Come come come (but register to get the free tics)!!!! The more the merrier..

Events, Technology , , , ,

McDonald’s ain’t great, Ray Kroc is – Grinding It Out

September 14th, 2010

McDonald’s is like a synonym to fastfood like Coke is to softdrinks.
(And they can always come up with the most attractive menu to make you obese, aka FAT).

Human from the youngest of age til the oldest would no doubt recognize the Golden Arches logo and the world’s most famous brand of fastfood.

However, the same cannot be said of Ray Kroc.

Ray Kroc is actually the one person who made McDonald’s as popular as it is.

Yes, it wasn’t McDonald’s or the owner of McDonald’s first restaurant, it was Ray Kroc!

He was born in 1902 in Chicago but only in 1954, at the age of 52 that he discovered the first McDonald’s restaurant.

Grinding It Out is the book about the Making of McDonald’s by Ray Kroc himself.

He started the book about his growing up and his earlier job as a paper cup salesman.

Ray has also been through the period of World Wars and also was friend with Walt Disney.

Some other interesting facts also can be found in the book, such as he had moonlighted as pianists in a bordello (brothel) and even taken up jobs such as Red Cross ambulance driver and radio jockey.

Eventually, he became a multi-mixer milkshake machine salesman, and that was when he met with the McDonald’s.

The first McDonald’s began in 1940, with a restaurant opened by brothers Richard and Maurice McDonald in San Bernardino, California.
Business was brisk that they used eight multi-mixer machines at one time (each one can make 5 cups of milkshakes at the same time), so Ray Kroc was amazed by it and went to observe how the business was run.

The two McDonald brothers were kind to tell Ray how their business run and Ray suggested to them that they franchised it.

However, the McDonald brothers wasn’t interested to run a larger business than what they already had, so Ray Kroc had an agreement with the brothers so he could create more McDonald’s restaurants in America and have a percentage of revenue paid to them in return for their advice.

Ray had much problems setting up the restaurants in various location prior to making a system that works for all. Even the fries and choice of potato and how it was prepared were all tried and tested.
During that period of starting up the business, Ray was one person who was very concerned about the details of everything.

But perfection is very difficult to achieve, and perfection is what I wanted in McDonald’s. Everything else was secondary for me.

People have marveled at the fact that I didn’t start McDonald’s until I was fifty-two years old, and then I became a success overnight. But I was just like a lot of show business personalities who work away quietly at their craft for years, and then, suddenly, they get the right break and make it big. I was an overnight success all right, but thirty years is a long, long night.

The book shares about Ray’s trials and tribulations in getting the franchise system going, growing it, getting the right people and setting up the correct menu.

Eventually, due to the McDonald brothers refusal to alter their original agreement for Ray to continue develop the chain, Ray bought over the company from the brothers in 1961.

Grinding It Out is a good read as it is written not through a third party perspective, but by the man who made McDonald’s a global brand.

Although the making of McDonald’s is what is most interesting, the personal life of Ray Kroc including his love life and relationships are revealed in the book as well.

For less than $8, this is one of the best deal of a book I had, getting to know the interesting history of McDonald’s that I never knew.

Although Ray Kroc died of heart failure in 1984 at the age of 81, McDonald’s is surely one enormous legacy that changed the world.

The only thing that I missed from the menu of McDonald’s is the Grilled Chicken Foldover, one that is not common in all restaurants and not in Malaysia’s McDonald’s anymore.

I wonder why? It is one that is tasty and could have been the least contributing factor in obesity.

Or making people obese IS the intention? 🙂

Books, Review , , , , , ,