Technology

Help! Technology Stole My Childhood

April 21, 2009

Whether it’s texting a friend or downloading the newest song off iTunes, being a kid has changed drastically. Gone are the days of waking up for Saturday morning cartoons and in are chatrooms and spending hours watching YouTube. It can be argued that technology has made our lives easier and enables us to accomplish more, but to say that technology has improved life all around is far fetched.

Do you remember when you would wake up Saturday mornings and watch The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or go over to your friends house for a sleep over and get excited when you could stay up past your bedtime? You may not remember all the details, but you do remember how much fun it was to be a kid. As a kid you worried about when you would lose your next tooth and whether you would get the ‘nice’ teacher at school. Nowadays, kids have different priorities and different agendas.

To give you an idea of what kids know and do now, I asked some 11 year olds the other day if they knew what “Monopoly” and “Jenga” was to which they responded no. When asked if he knew who Britney Spears and 50 Cent were, they knew immediately. 11 year olds don’t know popular board games, but do know pop sex idol, Britney Spears, and rapper 50 Cent. Do you see something wrong here? Kids are growing up too fast and technology has a huge part in this.
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Lifestyle

Don’t Move Out of Los Angeles & Expect To Come Back

April 17, 2009

Whether you’re into sun tanning at the beach or into shopping on Rodeo Drive, you can do just about anything in Los Angeles. With so many great options, outsiders may wonder why people even think of leaving Los Angeles.

When I graduated college, a few of my friends mentioned to me that after college they wanted to get out of Los Angeles. While I respected their choices, being an LA native my whole life I had to question their reasoning. Perhaps it is just my biased opinion, but LA is unique compared to other cities. No where in the United States can you find a city as large and as diverse. Yes, you can make the argument that other cities are just as diverse, but not only is LA diverse ethnically, but it is diverse in its personality. LA is known for having the ‘glitz’ and ‘glamour’ but it is more than that. Living here my whole life I realized when I visited other large cities that LA has a personality unlike any other. LA has a sort of swagger to it. Perhaps it is the laid back nature of its citizens on the weekends and the intense workaholics on the weekday’s that give LA such a unique balance of work and play.

So what makes people leave?

While it may not be the million dollar question, it is a question that has many possible answers.
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Lifestyle

You Are A Superhero

April 14, 2009

Do you work 9-5, have a family to take care of at home and feel like the world is on your shoulders? If so you might be a superhero. Don’t believe me? Well I don’t know if I would either. As a child I learned from watching Saturday morning cartoons and reading comic books that superhero’s were these ‘god-like’ characters that would save the girl and defeat the bad guy. They didn’t have families, they didn’t have jobs, they were just superheroes.

In the 2004 Disney blockbuster hit, The Incredibles, we are introduced to the Parr Family. The Parr’s are a reflection of the average American family in that they face many of the same issues that family’s face. From the struggle to spend quality time with family to money issues, The Parr’s resemble a ‘real-life’ family that most people can relate too. As we all know though, Disney puts a twist to it all. The Parr’s are actually superheroes trying to fit into society. The movie may seem like another made for kids movie, but it has a deeper meaning to it. While its messages may not be as obvious as such movies such as Crash, it is able to connect with society based on its stereotypes and social messages.
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Entrepreneur

The Global Startup

April 11, 2009

One of the hardest things you can attempt to do is to turn a startup into a successful company. While I wouldn’t go so far as to say the startup I am part of is a success, we have made significant strides toward it. I have heard that startup companies fail for many reasons. From poor leadership to lack of funding, the odds are against you, but that is how we like it.

Aside from the common obstacles that most startups face, we at Future Delivery have a unique obstacle that most other startups don’t encounter. While I wouldn’t call our obstacle a problem, I would say that it poses a wild-card element to the startup life. Over last 2 years our company has gone through many changes. The biggest of which is the relocation of our CEO and the addition of new members to our team from different parts of the map. With 2 core team members in Los Angeles and 2 in Silicon Valley and several others in different parts ranging from Texas to Turkey, we are not just a startup, but a global startup.

Our CEO, Yu-Kai Chou moved to Silicon Valley in a move that he felt would make the company stronger in terms of being able to network with tech savvy individuals in that area as well as meet investors for our company. Currently, Jun Loayza and myself are here in the Los Angeles area working primarily on marketing. With such a great distance between us, the question is how does this affect us? Now it would be a lie if I said that everything is fine, but in all honesty we would love it if we could all be in the same area working together. This past week I was able to meet up with Yu-Kai and spend some time working along side him as well as getting to know him better.

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