MuSMo started nearly a year ago. Not the website, nor the name, but the concept. The dream of making your media come to live wherever you are. For us, we have a clear cut roles to play. My brother, TzeErn, who has the financial mind from his actuary background with the experience in China as the business development manager, he is no doubt the best candidate in the business area. As for me, there’s only one area left, the technical side of things. For a non-developer and non-engineer (not even having education that’s anywhere close to it), I had to spend much time in learning this new field.So where are we now? TzeErn has taken some serious time lately to iron out our business directions. And I have been working on developing the right infrastructure and right application platform for us all. The following questions remained in me as we continue, where do we start? How did we start? Which direction do we take? How do we take it? What do we choose? How do we choose? And the big question of “when”. For a startup business, these are important questions.

For nearly one year now, I’ve taken time out to learn what I need to learn. The overwhelming hype about Linux on server environmnent made me moved from Windows to Debian, to learn what it is all about, what developers use, to learn what is known as “best”, to learn what is the right tool to use and when, and how this can be applied to MuSMo. Debian was quite an easy choice, great package management system, good standing of documents and user-base, and don’t have a steep learning curve as Gentoo. Next was to scout around for available web tools that are essential to the business. Firstly, we took the step to find out which websites are similar to us. Naturally, the next step is to find out what sort of tools they use, what are their pitfalls, possible issues and solutions, and work on from there (see also Blog.WebApplication). In such, I come to list out what there are out there. A range of solutions are before us, we have Java-, Perl-, Ruby-, Python-, Erlang-, and even Flash-based. Where do we start?

This is where discernment is most important. How does one discern which is the right tool to do the job? Scouting around in the forums, mailing lists, and IRC channels are great places to start. Where people talk, people walked. And once you have sufficient knowledge to understand a fair amount, start talking to people in the industry, simple as that. Listen attentively, ask (stupid/irrelevant/smart/boggling) questions, break through the wall of unknown to see what’s beyond. It’s the only way to learn what you need. It is also complementary to read industry blogs and news sites. And equally important, Read The Fabulous Manual! It can be very technical, so what? Just try it out and ask succinctly. With the right amount of knowledge and understanding, it’ll be more comfortable to choose the right tools. It takes lots of time and patience, but it’s worth it.

This is only on the technical side of things. As for business, meh, I wouldn’t know. But I know this, to be in business, you must know your business. For me, I’m coming to the point of knowing which tools will be the right ones to build MuSMo. A project plan to be fulfilled. Hopefully at least.

Update: This was intended to be a series. But due to lack of time, and shift of priorities, I am unable to continue but will try my best to find time to share our knowledge, etc.