I have a friend doing long term AI research in the HK area and he talks it up so positively that I have considered going there for 4 or 5 months to live and work on my own projects. Does the Cyberport rent inexpensive shared office space suitable for one person to have a nice work environment? I work out of a home office in Arizona, and have a great working environment but living for 4 or 5 months in a foreign country probably means a small apartment so I don't think that I would want to work at "home."
BTW, my wife really likes Hong Kong (we were there 15 months ago) so this would be an easy sell for me to talk her into it.
We have a few cowork options, and expect some more spaces to open within the next 6 months.
BootHK (http://boot.hk) is my space I opened and is mostly hotdesk space for early startups.
HK Commons is a little more for established companies that are still 2-4 people and growing.
There are also more traditional serviced office type offerings, but that isn't quite as interactive with the general community.
Beside Cyberport there is also a place called Science Park which also provide cheap places for start-up.
From my second hand information the rent for a 1,000 sq. ft. office is about $1,100 US dollar (electricity inclusive)
I am from HK and if you want to know more about HK you can contact me.
I built a magento ecommerce site about 1 year ago. Here's a quick summary of my experience:
Pros
- Beautiful themes out of the box
- Easy to setup initially (i.e. payment plug-ins,etc)
Cons
- Extremely slow on a shared host (i.e. netfirms)
- If your host is slow, using the admin panel to manage the content is painful
The performance issue killed it for me. Unless you can spend some more money on a good hosting service, I'd stay away from it. Otherwise, it's pretty awesome out of the box.
I've been thinking about this too. I feel awesome that Amazon reached out to me but does that mean it's better than Droid/Berry/Nokia? If I agree to any new opportunity, what if it's the next Microsoft KIN/ZUNE (I doubt it)? Even if Amazon sells a million kindles a month (12 million a year), it would take them a few years to catch up to droid/berry/nokia? It seems like a high risk/high reward situation when I don't even know if the Kindle app store will work out at all. Whereas, the other markets are proven. I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm just talking about a different angle of approach.
OTOH, wouldn't you be more discoverable in a sparsely-populated Kindle App Store than a Droid or Berry Store filled with competition? I've got to stop replying to this. It makes me seem like I'm pimping Amazon. I feel unclean.
Thanks for the encouragement. I actually tried to ask them for a discount on a kindle but was rejected. As for being their go-to guy, I'm not sure what I can gain down the road. Maybe another beta license for the "KindlePad"?
"Email them back and tell them to send you a kindle when they get serious."
Agreed ... at least with the point that they aren't very serious about their offer to you, which puts into question some of the benefits that are being posited. They're proposing a wild jump into the dark and expecting you to shoulder all the costs, opportunity and out of pocket (not even a discount???). The idea that you'll be "their goto-guy" looks unlikely; perhaps check out the developer agreement to see if you can even talk about what you learn to others, if you're the sort of person who can turn that into an advantage (assuming the platform takes off in this way).
So I'd say it comes down to how much of a gambler you are (compare Digital Research and Microsoft when IBM came calling for an x86 OS, although note that Bill Gates was very well connected through his parents) and what your current non-Kindle prospects are. Can you turn your current iOS position into something greater? Does an Android or whatever port have a serious chance at getting traction? Right now you have no idea whatsoever if a Kindle app will or even can gain traction; Amazon's success at selling books is as you note elsewhere no indication of their likely success with apps.
Another way of looking at this is that few are likely to buy a monochrome Kindle to run apps on. Many customers have a Kindle for it's fantastic convenience (the ability to read any of a large selection of books while running the kids around town, on a vacation, etc.) and a Kindle app market is a de novo marketing and sales proposition, although Amazon at least has a rather captive audience for the marketing (I'd pay real money to Amazon to have a switch for their site so that I'd never ever see anything about the Kindle outside of reviews). But that doesn't mean they'll ever make any (serious) app sales, beware of the Chinaman Sales Fallacy (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1223405).
Thanks for the information. The sales figure is impressive but it's for a book. I'd expect app sales to be less than a book publisher's because users bought the kindle mainly for the ability to consume content, not apps.
OTOH, people are bound to have their Kindles with them all the time, because they're lighter and less expensive than an iPad, say. And there are times when people just want to kill time, not concentrate on reading. So, if it's a game you have, you might want to consider that. Plus, the rumored KindlePad, which will do more than just read books (I know bringing this up seems to contradict my first point, but still. People have their libraries in K format, so they'd be more likely to also buy that Pad.)
