In which I tell you about solving problems with at least 2 different approaches. And the squeeze theorem.

I attended some talks at Barcamp Singapore 8 held at Tembusu College. I also gave a talk on “Vlogging on YouTube”, which had less-than-enthusiastic reviews.

Generally speaking, “losing weight” is a bad thing in Asian cultures, because it means you don’t have enough food to eat.

If you have a steady paycheck, the company paying you your salary is not going to ask for your salary back, right?

But if you have your own business, and if your customers ask for a refund? Then you’d have rendered a service or provided a product, but you don’t get paid.

If that’s the case, why are there so many food stalls here in Singapore? Singaporeans are notoriously picky eaters. It can’t be that every single food stall sells delicious food, right?

What are you truly scared of?

Out of all the products in the bundle, I’m interested in the “How To Make iPhone Apps With No Programming Experience” ebook, the small business infrastructure ebook, and guide to publishing ebook.

You want to start a business? This’ll get you started. Hurry, it’s only on sale for 72 hours (hence the name).

Can’t wait to read Chris’s new book. Have I mentioned that’s a hardcover that will be shipped anywhere you live if you buy the bundle now?

You learn the basics of counting numbers in Chinese. Also, there was a lot of wind. And my camera battery threatened to die on me, hence the hurried nature. I also counted from 1 to 10 in Cantonese, Hokkien and Japanese.

To those participating in VEDA, you made it! VEDA stands for “Vlog Every Day (in) April”. It appears to be a thing that happens on YouTube. There’s also VlogMAFIA, which stands for “Vlogs May Appear Frequently In April”. YouTube people are fun…

So I use an FTP client. I didn’t search very hard, and found something that works well for me. It’s SmartFTP and you can check it out.

But I’m a Windows user. What if you’re a Mac user? (I understand a certain percentage of people read my blog on Mac machines. Ok, I’m basing it on users on Safari and iPad/iPhone, but still, it’s a relatively good assumption…).

So here are 5 Mac FTP clients. Disclaimer: this is an article from Rackspace. I’m not paid.

FTP For Free: Top 5 Mac FTP Clients You Won’t Pay For

Every organization seems to have its head in the cloud. The off-site, third-party solution for hosting, sharing files and archiving data is fast becoming the de facto tool method for individuals and organizations seeking to collaborate and share files.

But the truth is “the cloud” is simply a newer, more sophisticated version of a seasoned technology that’s been in place for years. Individuals and organizations have been using off-site and third-party resources and technology like File Transfer Protocol (FTP) servers and clients to store and share data for decades. The Cloud and cloud storage continue to make headlines, but FTP is still widely used behind the scenes as an easy way to transfer, share and synchronize large files.

One of the reasons FTP use has declined is its inherent lack of security. According to technology blogger Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, United Kingdom, FTP is an anachronistic protocol and should be abandoned in favor of more secure technologies.

But for quickly and easily transferring large files like data sets and high-resolution photos and video, FTP can’t be beat. Additionally, many FTP solutions are available for free; here are five of our favorite FTP clients for Mac.

FileZilla

By far the most popular free FTP client, and not just for Mac users. FileZilla is an open-source FTP client that supports Mac, Microsoft Windows and GNU/Linux, according to the FileZilla Project. One drawback: while the FileZilla client is platform-independent, the FTP Server is Microsoft Windows-specific.

Ed: I’m a .NET programmer. This isn’t that bad a drawback… But I’m not a Microsoft fan either. Be fanatic about what you can do with the platform, not the platform itself.

Support is plentiful for FileZilla, and available through the FileZilla website as well as an associated wiki, user and developer forums, bug fix requests and tracker reports.

Fetch Softworks

This is the original FTP client for the Mac, dating back to 1989. Fetch supports both FTP and SFTP, as well as FTP with TLS/SSL (FTPS), according to the Fetch website. One of Fetch’s greatest strengths is its ease of use; as with most things Macintosh, synchronizing and transferring files is as easy as drag-and-drop, and Fetch includes intuitive features like automatically resuming downloads of stalled or failed transfers. Fetch is compatible with nearly all FTP servers.

The Fetch website includes links to support resources, user forums, FAQs and message boards for users. The catch? Fetch is only free for a fifteen-day trial period, after which you must purchase the software.

Ed: I kinda like this one. What’s my reason? There’s a dog. Ok fine, the software looks competent. Most (if not all) purchases are based on emotions. On first impressions, I feel Fetch is better than the other 4 simply because I can imagine feeling comfortable using it. Understand that “free” is also a price. (I have nothing against free open-source projects)

Cyberduck

CNET.com editors call Cyberduck a “lean, mean, file managing machine,” and with good reason. The free, open-source software can interface with standard FTP servers as well as cloud-based solutions like Google Docs and Rackspace Cloud Files. Cyberduck, while an entry level (read: easy-to-use with limited functionality) client, nonetheless handles basic transfers, synchronization and interoperability quickly and easily.

If you’re looking for an agnostic, simple FTP client without a lot of unnecessary bells and whistles, give Cyberduck a try.

RBrowser

RBrowser is a UNIX-based, free, full-featured FTP and SFTP client designed with a simple graphic interface. RBrowser is more advanced than other SFTP clients; it combines all the secure tools available on both users’ local and remote systems, as well as maintaining a continuous secure connection to create links, according to the RBrowser website. With RBrowser, users are empowered to move and edit files quickly, and can make changes to files using direct remote-to-remote operations.

For more skilled users and UNIX-savvy administrators, RBrowser is the way to go.

Built-in Mac OS X FTP

While it’s not as full-featured as stand-alone FTP clients, Apple’s built-in FTP client works great if you’re looking for a simple way to transfer files quickly. It can be accessed directly from your Mac OS X desktop. The OS X Daily website offers step-by-step instructions with detailed screenshots. Once connected, you can browse files as though you’re looking at any local folder on your desktop, and transferring files is drag-and-drop.

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Kakbank was founded by Peter Kelly. It’s meant as a fun way to have a gathering and also do some good. The idea is to eat cookies and cakes while deciding who to help with the group’s pool of donations.

For my group, one of the criteria is that the loans should be made out to people running businesses. We also assess the viability (as much as we can anyway) to determine if the business has a high chance of being sustainable. You could say we’re like VCs, but without all the stock options and exit strategies and board meetings and… ok, maybe we’re not like VCs…

Links

• Kakbank
• Karin Jonson’s TEDx talk on Kakbank
• Kiva
• Ridzuan Ashim
• Preetam Rai
• Chinmay Pendharkar
• Hackerspace Singapore

Teachers using the iPads as teaching aids want to move around the classroom. With the iPad, the teacher can project information on her iPad to the screen. But the moving around was a problem, because the iPad needed some connecting wire thingy to the projector.

Well you might say that Apple should have considered making wireless projection of the iPad screen seemless.

But I want you to consider this. If tablets weren’t available, and thus teachers could carry tablets around, would the problem of using the tablet to project information wirelessly even exist?

In the pre-Industrial age, practically everyone was working on the land. If you don’t grow food, you don’t get to eat.

The thing about working on farms is that there’s always something to do. (Just ask any Farmville player…) There are cows to be milked, chickens to feed, eggs to collect, grains to harvest.

In the Industrial age, factories made everything systematic and efficient, and our lives became better. You need to be at the factory at this time. You will go for your lunch break at this time. And most important for our discussion here, you can go home at this time.

This created a problem humans never faced before. Suddenly, we had free time.

What are we going to do with it?

And steep tuition is continuing to climb further while salaries stay stagnant.

That applies even if it’s just a normal degree.

Less people are hiring MBAs

Really? It might have something to do with being overqualified.

Of all US Presidents, only 1 has an MBA: George W. Bush

That’s interesting. Maybe a political career takes too much out of a candidate for him/her to take up studies.

What’s an MBA?

MBA stands for Master of Business Administration. I don’t have one, so I’m going to make a general assumption. You study how to administer a business, right? Accounting, finance and whatnot.

I don’t know the actual course curriculum. Does it focus mostly on administering a medium to large sized company? Does that appeal to you? Will what you learn benefit you as a startup founder?

I would even go so far as to say you’d be learning to administer other people’s money. You’d have bar charts and pie charts and business matrices to support your argument to your superiors that they should go about their business this way, or handle their finances that way, or streamline their product lines in such-and-such way.

But it’s not your money. It’s not your money on the line. You’re not worried. If your proposition fails? The worst that can happen is you get a pay cut. Possibly even get fired.

I’m all for getting a degree (but start a business on the side too). But an MBA seems like an overkill.

After over 2 years of running my own business, I’d say nothing gets you up to speed on how to administer your finances than having your own money on the line. And it cost me less than my degree, let alone an MBA.

Get an MBA if you feel it’s worth your time and money. Just don’t get one because everyone’s getting one (or telling you to get one). Make your own decisions.

Thanks to Tony Shin for telling me about this.