After having soft launched Persumi in 2023, I quickly found myself wanting to explore better ways to promote the product. Unfortunately, most of digital marketing products are focused on three main areas: 1. Keyword bidding, e.g. Google Ads or Facebook Ads 2. Cold outreach, e.g. Apollo 3. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) They each has its own pros and cons. As an indie developer without a huge budget, none of these tools work effectively. The Challenges Keyword bidding and targeted ads are...

The article compares six AI OCR tools: AWS Textract, Microsoft Azure Document Intelligence, Google Cloud Document AI, Rossum.ai, Super.ai and Eden.ai. It then does a deep comparison between Azure and Google, the two leading choices, in several aspects: initial setup, auto labelling data, text detection and recognition, custom labelling, auto-label accuracy, auto-label result verification, data training speed, data regions and compliance. The article concludes that Azure is the better choice.

A few weeks ago I soft launched an MVP - you are looking at it right now. In this post I'll talk about the features, the tech stack and the globally distributed infrastructure behind building this MVP, and of course, with a sprinkle of learnings too. The "MVP" Deciding what makes up an "MVP" is always interesting - I've heard some saying if the product isn't embarrassing you're releasing it too late, and also if the product is embarrassing, you're not gonna make it. For me, I've always had th...

Like many software engineers and indie hackers, I dream of and experiment with different product ideas every now and then. Five years ago, in 2018, I toyed with an idea where personas and expressions are the enablers for showcasing people's talents and interests. I called it, Persumi. The Origin The original idea was to break the pattern of modern day social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, where every person is hidden behind a two-dimensional facade. Words and photos are...

As coding bootcamps such as Coder Academy and General Assembly churn out more and more software developers, and as more and more people start to realise the importance of software, companies these days are facing an increased amount of candidates applying for junior dev roles. Recently we had to take down our job ad for a junior full stack React and Elixir role only a few days after posting it due to having received about 300 applications. Suffice to say, the competition is fierce at the entry-l...

Due to COVID-19, not many companies are hiring at the moment. The company I work for therefore is in a very fortunate position to still be thinking about growth and hiring. As a hiring manager for almost a decade now, I've personally reviewed thousands of job applications and CVs, and many hiring managers would probably agree, the vast majority of CVs are terrible. Let's change that! During COVID-19 where more and more people are either losing jobs or having their work hours cut, we are experie...

Over the past decade or two, both as a software developer and as a manager I have accumulated a few tips for becoming a better software developer. For context, I've been working as a software developer for more than a decade, mostly in small product-based companies; over the last decade or so I've worked as a team lead or manager in various capacities; and I've moonlighted as a consultant, freelancer and open source contributor in-between. Check out my LinkedIn profile and Github profile if you ...

Over the past few years as I gain more and more experience in not only building software and products but also in leading teams and projects, I realised that my desire of wanting an agile tool that's super simple to use yet super flexible to adapt to different needs has grown stronger and stronger. Given the COVID-19 situation that's going on at the moment, I've finally decided to spend a few nights working on a pitch deck for myself to validate the value proposition, and some high level wirefra...

Seven years ago in 2012 I spoke at RubyConf China 2012. It was a technical talk on how to become a better developer, if you're interested you can check out the video recording. Seven years later in August 2019, I headed back to Shanghai again to speak at this year's RubyConf China. And this time around, it was a non-technical talk on how to develop one's career. Check out the video recording below: video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBczdO7RgNo And, here are some photos of yours truly. :) ...

In 2010 I set up this blog on Tumblr mostly due to the ease of publishing and not having to worry about the hosting. I also went through two design iterations done in Photoshop: [] You can probably tell that these designs were done before the flat and minimalist design trend we are seeing in recent years. As I decided to revamp my blog once again, I thought I'd use Sketch this time around and aim for a simpler, cleaner and more mature design approach that's quicker to design and to build. And ...