Mapdoo Blog - Bringing You To Places

New Feature - Local Search Enhancement

2009-10-29T16:36:00.005+08:00

We're delighted to have implemented a new feature which will surely enhance your local search experience with Mapdoo. On top of Mapdoo's huge local database, we've integrated the Google local search capability onto the map (located at the bottom left corner of the map). The combination of these databases greatly enhance the chances to return anything you are searching for.

For example, you could search the places as usual through the Mapdoo search box on top of the page; once it brings you to the location you could search the businesses ie. "restaurant" through the Google local search box at the bottom. It should returns you with the restaurants near the vicinity.

We hope you enjoy using the new feature!

-The Mapdoo Team

Selamat Hari Raya!

2009-09-18T14:23:00.003+08:00

We would like to wish you Selamat Hari Raya & Maaf Zahir Batin!

-The Mapdoo Team

Get Directions Feature

2009-06-03T11:08:00.006+08:00

The "basic" feature of direction guidance is now available at Mapdoo. Meanwhile the feature is pretty much self-explainable so please check it out soon. Well the tech team is certainly not stopping here as we're now tweaking the codes to enhance the get directions function. Please stay tuned.

-Mapdoo Tech team

LatLog Info For GPS Navigator Fanatics

2009-05-22T12:55:00.006+08:00

A quick update about the little feature that must be useful for the GPS navigator faithfuls. To answer a great number of requests from Mapdoo users; LatLog info is now shown at the top left corner of the info window for each placemark in Mapdoo. We hope you enjoy LatLog-ing and exploring Malaysia maps and local listings with ease while using other devices too!

-Mapdoo Tech Team

Collaboration Announcement - Angel Wong Chui Ling "EatEatEat" with Mapdoo

2009-04-20T12:50:00.004+08:00

Today, I'm absolutely delighted to announce the soft-launch of yet another collaboration portal between Mapdoo and Angel Wong Chui Ling named "EatEatEat".

Angel, or better known as Chui Ling to her many fans is a Hong Kong-born Malaysia-based TV and radio personality, host and columnist. Her eating TV show, One Day Five Meals (facebook page here) has been a huge hit among the Malaysian fans and is entering into its 3rd season screening on Astro projected to be in June 2009.

"EatEatEat" not only showcases the places that Chui Ling likes to eat. It also allows Chui Ling's fans to recommend good or bad places to eat with the easy to use Mapdoo local search engine. It is indeed a Web2.0 platform that needs your participations and interactions with Chui Ling to make it a truly useful food portal.

I want to to thank both Chui Ling and Joanne Ng (Aluva Media), and the entire team at Mapdoo for the quick execution of this collaboration . You could start to explore "EatEatEat" today and I'm off now to suggest my favorite chicken rice place for Chui Ling :)

I hope you enjoy using "EatEatEat" and enjoy eating!

-say

Happy 2nd Birthday & Happy April Fool's Day

2009-04-01T17:45:00.005+08:00

Time flies and today marks the 2nd anniversary of Mapdoo. We want to take this opportunity to thank all of you who have made this anniversary possible. Your great support has enabled us to work tirelessly with the aim of bringing you to places... with ease!

On April 01, 2007, Mapdoo emerged and it emerged as the very first local company that provides local search for Malaysia. It did not come about because there was a great financial opportunity; it did not come about because there was a chance to gain great popularity and honor, but it did come about because there was a commitment to make local search lively available to everyone for free and searching for places shouldn’t be a miserable experience in Malaysia (& APAC region)

We knew from the very beginning it would be a sacrificial effort. Yet our commitment to provide this was unshakable. Many people predicted it was a mission impossible, and others predicted the website would fold in less than six months. Yet from day one, there was a vision, excitement, and incredible dedication on the part of our staff. We did indeed upset the doomsday predictions. Today, 2 years later, no one denies that Mapdoo has emerged as the primary local search platform in Malaysia.

Today, as we celebrate our 2nd anniversary, Mapdoo is stronger and more battle ready, but not yet the best we can and will be. We can assure you, with your support, Mapdoo is going to bring you much more than what you are seeing now. Once again, thank you very much!

Mapdoo Taking Off the "BETA" Label!

2009-02-26T13:31:00.009+08:00

The Mapdoo tech development team has been hard at work improving the stability and overall performance of the site since we first released Mapdoo (beta) in April 2008. After more than 10 months, we have reached a great number of active users around the world. We're excited to announce that we've taken off the "beta" label last week on the 18/02/2009 and officially named as "Mapdoo Local".

Thanks to the many users who sent their feedback helping us rapidly diagnose and fix issues to make Mapdoo a better local search utility today. We have removed the beta label as our goals for stability and performance have been met but our work is far from done. We are working to add some useful/interesting features in the near future. We've also started to deliver geo-contextually targeted display ads called "Mapdoo LocalAd". Mapdoo is convinced that success depends on providing ads that actually improve the user experience, while at the same time allowing businesses to reach their target audience. We shall elaborate more about the "LocalAd" in the next posts.

If you are already using Mapdoo, thanks a lot and if you think it is useful please tell your friends about us and join Mapdoo on facebook too. Well if you haven't used Mapdoo for a while, now might be a good time to give it another spin.

Mapdoo+Malaysiakini = 1Map (Collaboration Announcement)

2009-01-14T14:35:00.003+08:00

Today, I'm absolutely delighted to announce a collaboration that has been done between Malaysiakini and Mapdoo. The collaboration project named 1Map (1map.malaysiakini.com) will deliver to users Mapdoo's highly localised and geo-based contents with the combination of an intuitive platform and powerful search functions of "on-map" classifieds.

1Map has been officially launched on 5th Jan 2009 and opened for users to list classified ads on-map for free. The collaboration demonstrates Mapdoo's aggressive efforts to create and gather local content and businesses for new distribution platforms and Malaysiakini's drive to leverage its leading edge as the top local online media in Malaysia to provide consumers with excellent user experiences.

Cooperating with Malaysiakini, which is widely recognized as one of the most influencial online companies in the region, allows Mapdoo to show the world the very best of what both companies have to offer - engaging news and location-based information on sophisticated and innovative platforms.

I do want to make sure to thank both Premesh Chandran (CEO, Malaysiakini), and Siva Chandran (Marketing Director, Malaysiakini), and the entire team at Malaysiakini. There's been a lot of hard work and good faith brought to this process over now about a 6-month period of time that we've been working on some very complicated issues that needed significant innovation on both the business and IP front, as well as the technology front.

Thanks to Daryl (COO, Mapdoo) & Rico (CTO, Mapdoo) and the entire Mapdoo team. Everybody worked their socks off to bring this collaboration to bear.

Finally, I hope you enjoy using 1Map.

-say

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Happy New Year & 2009 Predictions

2008-12-31T14:37:00.005+08:00

I've read a handful of 2009 predictions lately and thought this analysis done by the Kelsey Group to be pretty interesting.

“The complexities facing the local advertising industry as a result of the challenging global economic situation are likely to accelerate the transition of some local advertising dollars to the Internet, while at the same time making the role of the local media sales representative more important than ever." said Neal Polachek, chief executive officer, The Kelsey Group.

You could read the full article here.

Meanwhile my personal prediction for APAC region in 2009? Guess what.. I'm convinced that we'll see the majority of things happened in 2008 for the local media and commerce industry in US/Europe sweeping across the APAC region in 2009.

small business front, search will become more widely accepted in key local segments
percentage of SMBs with websites or personal profile pages will be creeping up
traditional media will be going through a storm
declining circulation hit the newspapers hard
with the emergence of new, highly targeted ad products, we could see advertisers spending much more on marketing than in the past.
traditional classifieds will be taken a huge hit
geo targeting will become so widespread
Greater onlne ad adoption by regional advertisers such as supermarkets, banks, furniture store chains and restaurants

Happy new year to all of our friends, and thanks for your support to Mapdoo. See you in 2009.

Podcast - Interview of Mapdoo CEO, Say Chan on BFM89.9

2008-12-10T18:21:00.009+08:00

Hosted by Patrick Michael, the interview on BFM89.9 the business station, was done on 19th Nov 2008. Say Chan basically talked about the overview of Mapdoo, the inspiration of the start-up, the funding, the staffs, the local broadband penetration, the online AdEx, the future plans and the challenges etc.

You can listen to the podcast of the complete interview of Say on BFM here: http://www.bfm.my/Mapdoo-Online-Mapping-Location-Malaysia.html

-mapdoo tech team

Live Interview on BFM 89.9 - 10am Wed, 19/11

2008-11-18T12:04:00.004+08:00

Thanks for the invitation from BFM 89.9 and its founder Mr Malek Ali, I'll be having a live interview with the business station on Wed 10am, 19/11 .

You could follow the BFM live feed here: http://www.bfm.my/assets/media/bfmfeed.html

Meanwhile there will be some major announcements in the coming weeks as Mapdoo sets to partner with a leading online media to provide yet another useful online utility for users. Please stay tuned.

Mapdoo Featured on Google Maps Mania Blog... Again!

2008-09-16T16:06:00.003+08:00

Thanks a lot to Keir Clarke and Mapdoo once again featured on the Google Maps Mania blog. GMM first mentioned Mapdoo back in May 2008 with a very brief intro. This time around in Sept 2008, Keir obviously has better grasp of what Mapdoo possesses as he spotted our own Malaysia geocoder and numerous Malaysia businesses listed on the map. Many thanks to our users too that contributed thousands of both commercial and leisure listings.

You could read the full article here...

Explore Malaysia 3D Earth with Mapdoo!

2008-08-05T14:41:00.018+08:00

Good news.. we could now announce the latest feature we've developed after the major server upgrading works were carried out last week. You could now explore Malaysia with the exciting 3D earth experience on Mapdoo. The combination of the Mapdoo local search and the flying experience with 3D earth without leaving your browser is truly awesome. In short, now you have the option to display the information in 3D, Map, Satellite & Hybrid.

All you need is to download and run the google earth plug-in installer to start flying. However please note the plug-in is only meant for Windows and doesn't support Mac & Linux currently.

The whole process is pretty straight forward as illustrated below:

1. Logon to Mapdoo; click the "Earth" button located on the top-right corner of the map window:

2. You'll be prompted to get the google earth plug-in now; click the blue button and move on:

3. Save the google earth plug-in installer into your disk:

4. Run the installer and it should take several minutes:

5. Restart the browser; logon to Mapdoo and click the earth button. The globe could be seen now:

6. You can now start to search around and enjoy the 3D earth on Mapdoo!

Meanwhile we are working on some noticeable bugs albeit they are minor ones that you should be able to find out once you have tried this feature. We hope you enjoy this!

-mapdoo tech team

Sorry Desmond.. No Breakfast on 29/7 & 30/7

2008-08-01T12:32:00.001+08:00

First of all, I would like to apology for the Mapdoo outage between 29/07 & 30/07 as we've carried out some major upgrade works during the said period. I hope the improvement especially the faster loading speed of pages are noticeable by now. The objectives are plain simple as we strive each day to enhance your local search & mapping experience with Mapdoo.

While we were offline, i managed to read a few emails from the users concerning about the outage and this message from a user named Desmond certainly stood out! It reads as below:

***

"i was disappointed when i logged in to mapdoo today, and to my dismay find the site is under maintenance......its like i missed my morning breakfast....hope you get back on track soon, mapdoo....WE NEED YOU !!!!! -Desmond"

***

Sorry to have made you starving Desmond... Haha! I'll be glad to buy you 2 breakfasts to thank you for your support!

cheers..

Thank you... David!

2008-07-29T12:48:00.000+08:00

It is not uncommon that we usually received lots of emails about technical issues. However we've got something different few days back from a user named David. It was certainly a timely boast to spur us on and we certainly appreciate the encouraging words written by David as below:

***

"I just found out that you guys are malaysian. Great work. I've been using mapdoo for more than a year and only realized your HQ is just down the street in where I work (puchong). Well done and keep it up. "

***

By the way, Mapdoo beta has just been released for 3 months... but David has been using it for more than a year... interesting :) Perhaps it is a hint from David that we should upgrade Mapdoo server asap. No matter what, with the rapidly increasing users each day, upgrading plans are in place to ensure/enhance the browsing/mapping experience for all users.

Thank you David!

Drag & Zooo~oom

2008-07-24T12:15:00.009+08:00

Hi Folks...

Just a little heads up about a tiny but useful feature that has been integrated recently: The little square button sitting nicely on top left corner on the map could be used to drag and zoom, giving you quicker control of the zoom level at the area you desired. Here is the step-by-step guide (well.. there are only 2 steps needed though)...

Firstly, click on the yellow square button on the top left map corner and then drag a rectangle on the area you wanted to zoom in:

Secondly, you will be brought to where you wanted to be... done:

Other than that, Mapdoo tech team strives each day developing features to help users mapping with fun. There are some features that we believe you might have noticed hence we are saving spaces on the blog. Again, we always welcome any feedback from the users hence please leave us your comments or write to us at info[at]mapdoo.com if you have any idea.

-Mapdoo tech team

More features update - MapdooID, URL & Category Panel

2008-05-15T12:27:00.008+08:00

Here are some quick updates on the latest stuffs that the Mapdoo tech team had integrated into the system.

MapdooID is the term to be used effective from now on due to some complex issues arose with the deployment of the term MapID previously used by Mapdoo. Thanks a lot to some of you and especially Raja. Thomas, Angel and Dennis for your kind suggestions in this matter.

MapdooID is linkable now! As you might have noticed inside the info window once you've created the placemark of your location; there is a URL link shown below the MapdooID that you could copy and send it over to friends through emails, blogs, forums or IM easily. That will direct them directly to the placemark you've just created or any placemark that you wanted to refer to them easily. In fact the MapdooID URL is standardised into the form of http://mapdoo.com/?id=xxxxxxxxx hence you can refer the places easily into the URL format or you can shout around about your places and let your friends do the rest to key in the MapdooID into the search box.

Category Panel has added extra categories for your selection! Majority of the categories or types of your placemark you entered to create the placemark will be shown on the map when users select the desired types to be viewed on the map.

Rest assured that we'll do our best to make the Mapdoo interface as easy and as intuitive as it could be. Meanwhile thanks a lot for visiting Mapdoo and please help to spread the words about us. Mapdoo is a community website hence please help our tools and services improve with more users participation.

Again we would like to listen to comments hence you are always welcome to leave your feedback.

-Mapdoo Tech Team

Mapdoo featured on GMM blog!

2008-05-15T10:48:00.004+08:00

Google Maps Mania blog has mentioned about Mapdoo last week!

We're proud to tell you that we are the first in Malaysia to be featured at the Google Maps Mania blog's entry. It is a very respectable blog that meant to be the "press release" for all the interesting Google maps mashup around the globe. Well.. that only featured a single line of "Malaysia - Mapdoo lets you create your own maps"... it meant a lot to us and spurs us on for more great things to come. Thanks again for your support!!

You can read the full article here.

Feature Upgrade - Info Window Editor

2008-04-24T16:59:00.007+08:00

I'll make a quick update on behalf of Rico regarding some feature upgrades. You might have already seen this if you have logged onto Mapdoo and created the MapIDs for the past few days.

You should notice we've plugged in a text editor and you can now make use of the editor:

1. To make hyperlink to your website/blog/forum etc.
2. To put on the photos with hyperlink.
3. To arrange or edit the font.

You could also see we've added a few columns for extra info on "address", "country" & more importantly "type". These info are optional for you to fill-in but i urge you to do so as it will definitely enable Mapdoo to further fine-tuning the search engine and enhance the searching experience for the users.

Nonetheless the upgrades have been plotted with the objective of achieving "more info without sacrifice the easiness" in creating the MapID. I hope this upgrade is particularly useful for the business professionals to better arrange the corporate info within the info window. Meanwhile the users with leisure usage could somehow utilise this to link to blogs or photos.

By the way... please do NOT visit the "Famous Mapdoo Curry House" as the screen cropped picture suggested... I bet you knew it is non-existence :)

Little green* leaflet

2008-04-24T10:33:00.007+08:00

Some of you might have got it from the pc fair... and some of you might have refused to take it even seeing our ladies tried their best with the ~~sexiest~~ ~~cutest~~ sweetest smile... :)

PC Fair - Thank You People!!

2008-04-16T13:32:00.011+08:00

The crowd i've seen during the pc fair was HUGE.. the long hours of leaflets distribution, explanations and showcasing have taken it's toll on the team. Nonetheless everyone in the team has been feeling so excited to have met so many of you and particularly thrilled to have received numerous encouraging comments. So people... thanks a lot to have visited Mapdoo and please help to spread the words about Mapdoo in your website, blog or forum. Meanwhile please continue to visit Mapdoo and feedback. I could assure you there are many more exciting features to be improved/introduced gradually. Stay tuned...

I thought i should post a few nice photos taken during the pc fair since i suddenly (or i knew it long ago) found that the Mapdoo blog is a bit dull.. :) Finally, a big thank you to our lovely ladies Cammy, Khow Yee, Audrey and Andrea that worked "tirelessly" (wait... but they told me they're like having a broken leg... :)

I hope you enjoy the Mapdoo beta!

Or... you could find more photos here at Mapdoo's page @ facebook

Mapdoo Beta Release - We're Live!

2008-04-11T00:48:00.006+08:00

Today is certainly a big day for Mapdoo. I am absolutely delighted and proud to announce the beta release of Mapdoo. I couldn’t be more thankful to our engineers and the management team that have worked day and night for almost 1 year now. It has been an absolutely great journey so far and getting to this point has been a huge effort.

With this release, we're at a point where we believe we have a great platform that we'll continue to build and enhance with the continued support of our beta testers and users feedback. We appreciate all comments and would love to hear what you think of this beta release. If you encounter any issues or any ideas with this release, please join us in the discussion at Mapdoo's page at facebook here.

Meanwhile we will be participate in the upcoming PIKOM PC Fair from 11.04 – 13.04 at Hall 3 (Booth 307). I would love to meet you and listen to your feedback.

I hope you enjoy the Mapdoo Beta!

Mapdoo beta will be unveiled on 11.04.2008

2008-04-09T21:47:00.005+08:00

I could confirm that Mapdoo beta will be unveiled on 11.04.2008 in conjunction with our participation in the upcoming PIKOM PC Fair at KLCC.

Make no mistake, there would not be any kind of grand ceremony or fancily decorated spacious booth... all we have got is a tiny booth with a few desktops/laptops sitting nicely at a corner in Hall 3 (booth 307) for you to be among the first to have hands on experience with Mapdoo beta and feedback.

See you then :)

Happy April Fool... 1st Anniversary!!

2008-04-01T22:56:00.002+08:00

Time flies... and today is Mapdoo's 1st anniversary. No fancy celebrations, no party arranged... everyone at Mapdoo is just so focus gearing up for the release of the beta soon. I'll certainly make an announcement on the release date soon.

Till then... Happy April Fool :)

Mapping Marketshare: Maps Up, Mapquest Down & Yahoo Local is UP!

2008-03-26T13:30:00.003+08:00

Again, I have stopped writing for a while... first of all thanks to those that left encouraging comments earlier and sorry for unable to reply personally. i'll surely rectify these short comings and make sure we have proper channels to communicate better in the future.

Meanwhile i'll be making several *important announcements* within these 2 weeks. Please stay tuned...

Anyway i would like to share an excellent analysis on the current mapping market share battle between Google Maps, Mapquest and Yahoo Maps. The summary of the analysis is Mapquest down, Google up, Yahoo up... My bet is on Google to catch up the lost ground sooner rather than later... read more here

Mobile Local Search: A Perfect Storm

2008-02-04T11:54:00.000+08:00

Hello people... it is February now and it is just amazing that i'm writing my first post for the year of 2008. The things ongoing at the back stage are unbelievable. All I can reveal now is the Mapdoo beta will be released soon... more likely within days instead of weeks now.

Alright, it seems that the verdict is: "The next 36 months will be mobile local search's turn to shine."... I certainly casted my vote of confidence on that.

Click here to read the original article.

2008 web Predictions... from Read Write Web

2007-12-28T15:27:00.000+08:00

I know it might sound a bit boring to read yet another *predictions... but hey... i love it and can't read enough of those.

Click here to read the predictions made by the guys from Read Write Web. Enjoy!!

36 Startup Tips: From Software Engineering to PR and More!

2007-12-28T15:17:00.000+08:00

This is a collection of startup tips covering software engineering, infrastructure, PR, conferences, legal and finance. They describe best practices for an early-stage startup. We hope that you will find these tips useful, but also please remember that they are based on subjective experiences and not all of them will be applicable to your company.

Click here to read on...

2008 technology prediction from "Latest Geek Stuff"

2007-12-28T12:44:00.000+08:00

Click here to read another 2008 tech prediction... "location based services" seems to be on the very top of the list.

Mashable’s 2008 Predictions

2007-12-26T14:08:00.000+08:00

Click here to read the 2008 predictions done by Adam from Mashable.

Atheros Buys Some Global Positioning

2007-12-18T14:17:00.000+08:00

Location Based Services (LBS) are going to be a big next year - you can tell that from the M&A frenzy (25 deals so far in 2007)....

click here to read on.

Mobile Killer app is finally here: Part 1 & Part 2

2007-12-13T14:58:00.000+08:00

Mobile based map applications and location based services are the most favored apps on mobile phones.

Click here to read Part 1...
Click here to read Part 2...

Microsoft Acquires One of Europe’s Top Online Map Services

2007-12-13T13:20:00.000+08:00

Microsoft Corp. has acquired Multimap, one of the United Kingdom’s top 100 technology companies and one of the leading online mapping services in the world.

click here to read on...

PM: Look at R&D, move up value chain

2007-12-12T13:23:00.000+08:00

PM said adapting currently available technology and localising them to suit specific community needs, is a good starting point. He said Malaysia recognised the significant role that knowledge, technology and innovation could play to create wealth and spur economic growth. He also said at the opening of the 3rd Global Knowledge Conference, the lack of local content for developing countries is one of the key factors leading to the widening of the global digital divide.

Mapdoo has always been focused on organizing Malaysia's information to provide a platform of rich localised contents and making it universally accessible and useful through the maps. Hopefully we could contribute a little on this front...

Click here to read the original article.

Twitter + Where I’ve Been = WhereAboutz

2007-12-10T13:45:00.000+08:00

Twitter's updating mentality applying it to a mapping feature, wrapped up in a Facebook application = WhereAboutz... cleck here to read on.

Google Improves AdWords Location Targeting

2007-12-10T13:36:00.000+08:00

Google AdWords advertisers now have new options for geo-targeting feature... read here

Google and TomTom Sharing Data

2007-12-06T12:57:00.000+08:00

Live business data and points of interest from the Google business listings as well as certain crowd-sourced Google Maps data for points of interest will be available via Internet capable TomTom devices. Click here to read on...

Loic Le Meur’s Ten Rules For Startup Success

2007-12-06T12:02:00.000+08:00

I thought this is worth listening to...

read on here

Google Launches Local PlusBox

2007-12-05T13:07:00.000+08:00

Google has begun using its new PlusBox feature in local search results. Click here to read the original post.

Google LatLong: Google presents the Elections 2008 gadget

2007-12-05T12:33:00.000+08:00

Google LatLong: Google presents the Elections 2008 gadget: "Google presents the Elections 2008 gadget"

Live Search Maps Getting Better At Giving Directions

2007-10-30T13:03:00.000+08:00

Ok as sweet as it sounds in the title.... majority of the Asian countries including M'sia surely are unable to enjoy the upgraded services... This is what Mapdoo has always been concerned and focus to find the ways improving what online mapping services that are out of our reach now.

By the way I love all the competition going on in online mapping between Google, Microsoft, Yahoo too.
click here to read on...

Maps + News = YourStreet

2007-10-30T12:41:00.000+08:00

I haven't been posted for a while but i can assure you there are lots of exciting stuffs and activities happened in the background. It has been a crazy couple of past few weeks as everyone in Mapdoo has worked till the socks off. I have got numerous calls from friends and acquaintances asking about the Mapdoo launch date... All i can reveal here is: Pls Stay Tuned... It will be coming real soon!!

Meanwhile i'll try to share some interesting mapping news here. Start with this one about YourStreet.com

What do you get when you combine Google Maps with hyper-local news and comments? You get a map-based news site called YourStreet, which officially launches tomorrow (although the site is already up). The site detects where you are located and serves up news stories about events that recently occurred in your city or neighborhood, as well comments from YourStreet members who live nearby.
click here to read on....

What's BYTP ?

2007-10-17T13:37:00.000+08:00

When we started to have concrete ideas and inspirations to start-up Mapdoo, we have always wanted to shape up Mapdoo's culture in our own way. We have been always asking ourselves how we could make our team of employees feel unique, inspired, and the most, feel at home. We also wanted to create a comfortable environment and the kind of working culture that we will be strived for. There came the ideas of having some specific quotes since i'm really a fanatic quotes lover :) Hence we decided to use the initial alphabets of Mapdoo tag line "Bringing You To Places" - rendering some inspiration quotes and shaping our culture based on BYTP.

So what's BYTP then? here you go :)

********************************

Best idea wins. Everyone in the company is encouraged to contribute ideas and the best idea wins. “The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas” – Linus Pauling

Young mindset company, creating vibrant atmosphere in the work place and sharing successes together. “It is better to be young in your failures than old in your successes” - Flannery O'Connor

Team work does not guaranteed success but without it failures could surely be imminent. "If I could solve all the problems myself, I would." -Thomas Edison replied when asked why he had a team of 21 assistants.

Play, we don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing. We want everyone in Mapdoo to enjoy their works and responsibilities. “Work and play are words used here to describe the same thing under differing conditions” -Mark Twain

*******************************

We'll be reviewing BYTP from time to time and see how we all cope with that. Hopefully all our future employees who are going to join us will see the difference in the Mapdoo culture and enjoy!!

Sergey Brin and Larry Page: Inside the Google machine

2007-10-09T11:20:00.001+08:00

This is an interesting video clip; a presentation by the Google founders LP & SB. The glowing globe is certainly very interesting to watch. At least i have got a clue that the glowing light beams are more pleasing than the traditional bar charts.

Hedonist and the Rat-Racer

2007-09-27T11:53:00.000+08:00

I am a great believer in "learning through reading" in consistent basis. Occasionally, I hope to share with you some of the interesting articles that i bumped into. Well, the story starts with this:

Dr Ben-Shahar, a former Israeli squash champion, is a lecturer at Harvard University's most popular course: Positive Psychology. I'm sure what he teaches must apply in some way to entrepreneurship.

He talks about two extremely opposite personality types who cannot find happiness: what he calls the Hedonist and the Rat-Racer.

The Hedonist lives only for the moment –– for instant gratification –– but ultimately finds it an empty existence, from never building towards anything concrete. The Rat-Racer delays gratification, working hard for the future and making many sacrifices that cause unhappiness, believing that happiness and fulfilment will arrive once he or she finishes university, or gets a promotion to a better position, or earns so much money that life becomes more fun. (Ben-Shahar also talks about the Nihilist: someone who's given up on finding happiness in both the present and the future. We all know some of those.)

Ben-Shahar says we should seek the middle ground between the Hedonist and the Rat-Racer: to live in, and enjoy, the present moment, while working towards sustainable future happiness. Easier said than done, perhaps.

Ok. it seems pretty obvious that the "middle ground" between Hedonist and the Rat-Racer is the perfect category that we should strive for; my question is: what shall we name the "middle ground"? I haven't got a clue yet. Let me know if you have an idea.

Welcome to Mapdooblog!

2007-09-25T16:26:00.001+08:00

Mapdoo is a few days short of half a year old since its official inception and today is definitely a special day as I’m really excited and honored to write our first blog post. At Mapdoo, our objective is to build the leading location search engine and we strived to "bringing you to places". We are focused on organizing Malaysia's information and making it universally accessible and useful through the maps, and the Mapdoo Maps Beta service is a giant step forward in helping users to find the local information they need. We are convinced that searching for places shouldn’t be a miserable experience. Mapping system and information about places should be made lively available to everyone for free. Through this blog, we want to share with you some interesting perspectives from inside and outside of Mapdoo and to ask for your feedback to help us achieve this goal.

We’ve been planning on having a blog for some time, but unfortunately we have not had enough resources and team in place to do it effectively. Also the major part of the reasons we were not able to launch a blog sooner was mostly due to the focus of everyone in Mapdoo is pushing tirelessly for the introduction of Mapdoo Maps Beta soon (yes... soft-launching real soon!). However due to the limited resources i'm afraid we couldn’t devote the time to blogging regularly. Anyway I see the need to start off conversations through the blog between Mapdoo employees, our future users and the mapping industry to share our thoughts on the world of location search engine, and to give our readers some inside perspectives on Mapdoo.

We look forward to you joining us on what is going to be a fascinating journey.