I’ve been reading a lot of business and entrepreneurship books lately. I’m especially interested in ones that deal with internet companies. One book that has been sitting in my queue for a while is this one called: “The Dream: How I Learned the Risks and Rewards of Entrepreneurship and Made Millions”. I saw that it was cheaper than the usual 9.99 on the Kindle and immediately bought it. It’s a fairly small book but I literally read it in 3 sittings. i can’t say that with many books.

The book is the story of how Gurbaksh Chahal, who dropped out of school at the age of 16 and at the age of 18 sold his first internet company ClickAgents, an ad network, to ValueClick for $22 million in stock and then at the age of 25 sold his second internet company BlueLithium, another ad network, to Yahoo for $300 in cash.

Gurbaksh, a Sikh Indian who’s family emigrated to the US when he was 4, was amazed at the opportunities of the Internet from a very young age. His family struggled to provide for him and his 3 other siblings. Both his parents worked double shifts. His story is an inspiring true story of rags to riches.

What is amazing is that while many of the internet companies during the dot com bubble didn’t even have business models, this 16 year old’s company was keeping it real and posting profits. He had over $100,000 in his bank account when he decided to go to his father to ask his permission to drop out of school. If you aren’t from an Asian family, it is probably impossible to understand how hard that must have been and how disappointed his parents must have felt.

His book has a good mix of life story and business wisdom. You’ll also learn a lot about south Asian tradition, especially Sikh. I’ve read many business books a most are pretty dry. This one was a great read and I honestly wish it hadn’t ended so soon. I give it 5 stars.

Back on the topic of innovation. I’ve been thinking about it a lot these days. We can’t talk about innovation for 5 minutes before someone invariably mentions Apple and how innovative they are. Well, I thought I’d take some people on a bit of a visual history tour so people can see where Apple gets their innovative ideas.

An old Gizmodo article shows the similarity between the iPhone calculator app and the Braun ET44 calculator.

Another article I found on Metro Hippie shows even more similarities between Braun products and Apple products.

I’m not trying to hate on Apple if that’s what you fanboys are thinking. The point is that Apple liberally “borrows” ideas from others that they see work well. The point is that Apple’s “concepts” are seen as innovations, but clearly, these designs were not dreamed up in the Apple ivory tower. More often than not, innovation comes from without. People get tunnel vision on what they are working on or they are too close to the problem that they can’t see how things could possibly work better. Sometimes what is needed is inspiration from a fresh perspective from those who look at the world from a different point of view.

Which brings me to one of the most famous quotes of all time:

Good artists copy, great artists steal. – Pablo Picasso

With all the buzz going on with the release of Apple’s new iPad – a multitouch tablet computer, my friend Scott Robbin came up with a keyboard concept that he believes is an improvement from what Apple is offering. I thought it was a great idea because made the tablet work like a blackberry almost. You used your thumbs to enter the key strokes as opposed to hunting and pecking with one hand while holding the iPad with the other. It also had the advantage of not obstructing the center with your hands or the keyboard.

However I thought that Scott’s concept, as well as the original iPad soft keyboard have limitations of their own, namely that both require you to use both hands. Scott’s post sparked my own idea of a soft keyboard that would require only one hand to operate.

You’ll have to forgive the actual design, but I whipped it together in a few minutes using the Shear filter in Photoshop. The point is that the curved keypad allows you to use your thumb to type while holding the iPad with the same hand. This way, you use the iPad on the train or bus if you had to hold onto the railing. Naturally if you were left handed, you could flip the keyboard to the other side.

About two months ago I was contacted by Jasmine Grimm, Editor-in-Chief of Connections magazine. She wanted to do a story on me because I’m a weird guy with an interesting story. She found me on Twitter and did some research on me before contacting me. We did a phone interview which she used for her story. Here’s the article

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For people who are interested in the classes that I take, here’s a peak at Extreme Kung Fu. At any martial arts class, I usually try to get there early – usually to stretch, warm up, and to do some calisthenics or conditioning exercises.

At Extreme, warm up is part of the class. This part usually knocks the wind out of me since I’m so out of shape now. Next is the stretch kicks – these are basic kicks that we try to do every class because you can’t have good wushu without good basics. Then it’s on to jump kicks. We either end class or start the next class with individual forms or routines. We each take turns to perform sections of our routine. This part is where you step up your A game since you are the center of attention when you are on.

If you have any questions regarding class, feel free to ask me or contact Extreme at http://www.extremekungfu.com/