Hung Truong: The Blog!

Made It To Seattle!

You may have noticed that this blog has been pretty quiet for the past few weeks. Okay, you probably haven’t.

It’s because I traveled from Ann Arbor, MI to Seattle, Wa. All by myself! My car actually helped a lot, too.

I haven’t written much, yet I have much to write about. You might see a post here soon. Besides this post, telling you that I’ll be posting again soon…

Here, enjoy a picture of a Salmon mosaic art thing I took at the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks:

Craigslist: Addiction!

I have had some experience with craigslist before, but never selling stuff. I just looked at some apartments. But since I’m moving and I need to get rid of stuff, I listed a few things on craigslist to sell.

One girl contacted me about my coffee table almost immediately after I listed it. Her roommate picked it up and he told me she’s kind of a hawk on craigslist. Many people contacted me about stuff and never replied after I replied to them. Some people just didn’t show up. Lots of people are bad about calling before showing up. Actually, no one so far has called before showing up. This is bad, because what if the thing already sold?

The most interesting thing about craigslist interactions is that they consist of two parties who don’t really trust each other, except that they recognize they’re both just normal humans who are probably okay. There’s a lot of implicit trust set in.

Like, for example, the dude who picked up my table left his wallet in my apartment for some reason. Maybe that’s like a form of escrow. Then he paid me after the entire table was ready to be driven away. The person who took my couch paid me upfront, before I helped her husband move the couch into their truck. Either way is fine, I guess, if you believe that people are inherently trustworthy. Or at least trustworthy enough to not drive away with your table if you go back into your apartment to get him some tape to hold down the drawers. Also, it would be much easier to just steal from people than set up an elaborate craigslist scam.

I wonder if anyone has done research on the psychology of craigslist. There’s certainly a lot of risk/reward built into the system, along with not knowing people, whether they’re trustworthy, etc. There’s also just a mad adrenaline rush when you get a wad of money and someone takes your couch for you! I have a few more things to get rid of, so hopefully the rest of my transactions go as well as my previous ones!

SXSW 2010 Panel Proposal: Student Startups! Entrepreneurship in the University

I have once again proposed a panel for SXSW 2010. Last year’s didn’t get picked, but I have a good feeling about this one. I don’t see any other panel ideas that are too similar to it and I think it’s a neat idea. Basically I’ll get a bunch of student entrepreneurs and have them talk about the challenges and opportunities of doing startups while still in school. I know a few other entrepreneurs and I’m trying to enlist the help of others. Here’s the proposal:

Description:
While student startups are not a new phenomenon, universities and venture capitalists are beginning to see the advantages in supporting them. Join a panel of student entrepreneurs in a discussion on finding funding, incorporating a company and balancing homework, work and life, all while attending school full-time.

Questions answered during the panel:

1. How are universities starting to support student entreprenurship?
2. What are the legal implications of using university resources for personal business? (copyright)
3. How can I “double-dip” schoolwork and startup work into the same project?
4. What kinds of venture capital support are available specifically for student startup businesses?
5. Into which type of corporate structure should a student startup incorporate?
6. How much money do I need to get started as a student entreprenur?
7. How can I get my classmates to provide free labor?
8. What should I look out for when accepting work from non-company students? (ownership rights)
9. How does one achieve a healthy work/homework/life balance as a student entrepreneur?
10. What happens when I (and my partners) graduate?

So far, my pal Ben Congleton has said he’ll be on the panel. Now to find a bunch of other panelists! You can also help by voting for my panel (I should have mentioned this first) here!

Open vs. Proprietary Platforms

There’s been a lot of talk lately about proprietary platforms. Apple has been rejecting apps left and right due to various reasons. For example, they rejected the Google Voice app using their generic “duplicates iPhone features” reasoning. Isn’t that kind of reasoning grounds for an antitrust case? They also rejected a dictionary app for potentially bad words! Someone think of the children!

While I think Apple deserves some credit for popularizing the whole app store notion, they also kind of suck for holding such an iron grip on it. It’s nice to find apps in the store without having a third party directory or searching for apps all over the mobile web. But it sucks when honest developers get screwed because of totalitarian control.

I wonder if there can’t be a nice, happy medium. Maybe an app store combined with a way to legally (without jailbreaking) install apps via a third party. For now, the iPhone’s App Store is great for customers, but I have a feeling that abused developers will eventually learn their lesson and go elsewhere.

Windows 7 RC Impressions (on a PC!)

I made the switch from PC to Mac a pretty long time ago. It’s been about two years since I started using my first Macbook and a few months since I went exclusively to using OS X (when my PC crapped out). I recently got bored and decided to fix up my PC and put Win 7 RC on it (I think the thing flipped out when I got a new hard drive and it somehow got two Win XPs into the boot registry thing).

I already tried installing Win 7 Beta on my Macbook Pro a few times via Boot Camp and VMWare Fusion. They were both pretty bad solutions. It’s just too much to try and virtualize a modern operating system, and the Boot Camp drivers are just kinda crappy. My main thing was that Win 7 kept crashing in Boot Camp, losing wireless connections and having a really laggy touchpad interface.

You may recall that my opinions of Vista were not the most positive. About a year and a half (and an operating system) later, I think the thing is finally pretty good.

The user experience is nice. I like the fact that I can hit the window key, then type whatever I want and get a list of programs, etc. It’s really useful because the control panel is so insanely organized that it’s impossible to find anything in a hierarchical manner. I guess that’s a mixed complement/critique. I like the desktop backgrounds, and all the apps I’ve installed so far work pretty well. I didn’t have to scavenge for a single driver, which was really nice. When I managed to buy Windows 7 UK and installed it on my mom’s laptop, however, it was quite a task getting the video card to work (it was an old Dell 300m).

The only real complaint I have is that file sharing is still really confusing. I found out how to access my shared folders from OS X, but I haven’t figured out how to access my Mac from Win 7. Overall, though, Win 7 is actually looking pretty good. If I actually had a need for this desktop, I might actually use it more often (besides for playing games). For now I’ll stick with my trusty Macbook Pro. I’m thinking the upcoming Snow Leopard upgrade will keep OS X interesting.