Archive for October, 2009

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Kayaking in Langkawi!

Saturday, October 31st, 2009

I’ve been quite busy this past week catching up and I’ve exhausted my buffer posts. Suffice to say I don’t like keeping a lot of buffer posts. Anyways, early Monday morning I’ll be hopping on a flight to Langkawi (a charming little island off Malaysia) to do a week-long kayaking expedition to complete my Gold International Award (the expedition part of it, anyway). All of our previous expeditions were jungle treks and it’s (touch wood) time for change.

That means no blog posts for next week, and WIPUP development would be delayed yet again (though I did get a couple of commits last week to present a rather broken implementation of the project timeline carousel – a very exciting feature). I’ve also been doing some research into online backup solutions and am pending an rsync.net account for my files as well as to begin a repository for ThoughtScore. Yes, that’s right – ThoughtScore isn’t dead. It’s just in hibernation.

Well, until next week, then!

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Google Wave Review

Monday, October 26th, 2009

I have a Google Wave account. I’ve had it for a couple weeks now and have had time to familiarise myself with it enough to write a review.

In a nutshell, Google Wave is a pimped combination of email, instant messaging, and live document collaboration. It tries to combine these three functions into an interface that is easily accessible on the web. I think it’s best to split my review into these respective parts.

First I will talk about its function as email. If there’s something I’m really against, it’s unnecessary function duplication. I would like to stress my use of the word “unnecessary” here, because function duplication as an innovation strategy is actually incredibly good. Google wave is the perfect example of “unnecessary” function duplication for its use as email. It provides no extra benefit at the moment. It is simply what GMail is except inside a smaller window and formatted like a chatlog. But is it so bad? Now there are still a very limited number of bots you can use (small extensions that allow you to insert interactive “widgets” or manipulate the conversation in some way) but as time passes, I predict the number of bots will increase, and thus really make Google Wave’s use in email very, very different. One example is the “yes, no” widget, which allows anybody in the conversation to place themselves in the “yes”, “no” or “maybe” category – useful when organising an event.

Am I willing as a customer to give up my email for Wave? No. In the future? Maybe.

Instant messaging – it’s absolutely terrible. I’ve seen the Windows Live Messenger program do better. Inconvenient, clunky, extremely distracting (real time typing!), and gets confusing real fast. With shortcuts it’s barely manageable, but without, it’s a lost cause. Once you get more than 10 people in a single conversation (even with 5 people it’s absolutely terrible) you’d wish IRC were more mainstream.

Live document collaboration – admittedly I haven’t tested this as extensively as the previous ones but personally I wouldn’t go near Wave’s “live collaboration” with a 10 foot pole. Allow me to use an analogy here – let’s say you were a designer. A digital graphics designer. I can guarantee you that anybody doing this as a profession will not touch the computer unless they have a superbly clear idea of what they want in their head. Even if this were the case, I can again guarantee that discussions with other designers about their ideas in any collaborative environment or even with themselves would be done with their hands, a writing utensil and something to make marks on. Like “paper and pencil”, you know? It’s this process that Google is trying to digitize. Admittedly sometimes technology helps – but for things like these nothing beats face to face, or at least a good conversation over the phone.

Ok – but what about the application itself? It’s quite stable on my Firefox 3.5.something on Gentoo amd64. QtWebkit doesn’t display it properly (KHTML? Not a chance). It’s speedy up until I try to use the playback feature on a conversation, and I’ve been in a Wave with over 100 people with … well, yes, a lot of lag, but it displays and still can be used if you’re a very patient person. Google Wave seems to be crossing the uncanny valley in a way I haven’t seen before – there is a form of “window management”, including docking, minimising, maximising and restoring. There are very many desktop-like effects, such as their interesting implementation of a scrollbar (think touchscreen device) – and many toolbars littered here and there, but overall it puts me off more than attracts.

However an important point to notice is that Google Wave is still not much more than a poorly implemented clone of what the desktop world has refined over the years. The web was designed as a standardised freeform canvas to present information, which is why websites are not desktop applications and desktop applications are websites. Scrollbars? Drag and drop? Right click? I’m sorry – when was the last time you used a proper application? Admittedly Google Wave is composed of three main areas as introduced through their loooooong video – one of them is to do with an API. This obviously means that there’s nothing preventing a future implementation of a Wave Client, but until then, Google Wave shall continue to receive my polite disgust.

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Is there such thing as a good monopoly?

Saturday, October 24th, 2009

The technology world is no doubt aware of Google’s seemingly unstoppable leap into existing markets. On my previous Google rants to beware of Google and their evil, and perhaps their latest and greatest (is it?) innovation Google Wave, I have kept my polite contempt at their progress unconcealed. Today before I release my upcoming post on a review of Google Wave I want to question if there is such a thing as a good monopoly?

Google isn’t seen as a bad company. Its motto is “don’t be evil” and their offices seem to be the envy of the labour market. They seem to have a fun approach to developing and see themselves as engineers with an itch to scratch. A recent slashdot article suggested that Google was attempting to take on iTunes with an upcoming “Google Audio” product – and that made me think whether or not what they’re doing would be seen in a good or bad light.

The perfectly “economically” rational consumer will simply pick the one with better value for money given their income and financial priorities. However assuming the extreme that every single market in the world had the same single company as its monopoly – how would you as a consumer react?

It’s quite interesting as Google is in the technology industry right now – the resources used here are quite mobile between markets and there’s plenty of expertise to be shared. Google as a monopoly could offer us much in terms of economies of scale. Given their well ingrained corporate culture the internal diseconomies of scale would be kept to a minimum and services still be a personable as ever. There is nothing stopping them from branching out in the market with these good qualities and will (this is all assumption) be able to provide appropriate services for all kinds of needs, save for the most extreme of niche markets. So given all this, if everything about their service is great, just that they have huge power over every market (assuming they use that influence responsibly and ethically) – what will consumers do?

If I happened to belong in one of those extreme niche markets, I’d continue using my own service providers without a care in the world. If I did however conflict with a service that Google provided, would I purposely roll my own solution despite the higher complexity and cost or would I go with the crowd? If the service depended on integrating with others, assuming that Google didn’t abuse their monopolist position there should be no problem – so you can safely disregard integration as a barrier. I personally would go roll my own solution.

But we aren’t simple minded people who are content with just what we need – no, the question I’m really asking is whether or not this’ll spark a consumer rebellion?

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Making the most out of the Windows Mobile Experience

Thursday, October 22nd, 2009

If you so happen to own a Windows Mobile phone or played with one before, there are likely to be many things that you find rather terrible about it. What with the iPhone, Android and Palm, it’s no surprise that Windows Mobile deserves to be shunned to a shameful corner in the market. However what most people don’t know is that the Windows Mobile team seems to be getting their gear together and is doing some major upgrades for the next iteration of their platform – Windows Mobile 7. Though it still lacks in many ways, it’s definitely a move forward.

Many people on the Windows Mobile platform are not making the most of it – they aren’t using a smartphone as a smartphone. Through this article I hope to touch up on some of the ways your phone could be used.

Improve the overall experience

Before you start trying to use your phone for tasks, you might want to make your phone more usable first. Windows Mobile was designed for a stylus and envisioned as a minature desktop – something that really makes it a terrible OS to use. Windows seems to have made touch-friendliness its main target for improvement and these upgrades are available for all users, without having to buy a whole new phone. However you’d have to search quite a bit, (I recommend the XDA community) to find something that really clicks – meanwhile this introductory article should help.

Flash a newer ROM

This is the equivalent of upgrading your operating system. I wrote a review of it here but development has already progressed much further than those screenshots display. Windows Mobile seems to aim to challenge the likes of the iPhone with its WM7 version coming apparently in Q4 of 2010. With this aim and the rapid ongoing development it’s hard not to expect greater things in the future. Even though it’s not out yet learning how to flash a ROM will grant you access to the ongoing development – and of course making your experience a lot, lot better. I would go so far to say that even 6.5 on my aging Dopod’s hardware (popular name HTC Hermes) is fast, and really makes the device a joy to use (yes, quite shockingly the newer ones are less resource hungry!).

Get started and learn about flashing ROMs in the XDA-Forums. Highly recommended.

Theme it properly

Whether you have flashed a recent ROM or preferred to keep your old one (I recommend flashing), a theme will do wonders. There are already themes for WM6.5 and can really sharpen up the phone in no time. A good wallpaper, colourscheme and not to forget icons too can spice things up. If you are using shells or widgets then finding matching skins for those will help give your system an integrated feel.

Themes can be found on the XDA-Forums as linked above, as well as on FreewarePocketPC.

Use a Shell/Widget/Plugin for the Today screen

For those already with WM6.5, it comes with Titanium and that is a huge improvement from the today screen, giving you quick access to pretty much all of the phones functions outside individual applications right on the front screen. However many other interfaces are available (most are crap) and some are really quite something, such as SPB Mobile Shell (pictured), TouchFlo/Manilla (2D or 3D), Home2, and various today plugins (available on FreewarePocketPC).

Ensure the basics exist

Make sure that you’ve got the basic set of applications – Windows (Live) Messenger, Windows Media Player, Office Mobile (including OneNote?), and … wait for it … Windows Marketplace and Microsoft MyPhone. This basic set of application should come with every phone and if you didn’t get it, you should hunt it down. Windows Marketplace is Microsoft’s attempt at the iPhone’s App store and Google’s Android Market. It was quite recently released (and even more recently cracked and available for free on XDA) and though I’ve only seen very few applications available on it (and even fewer free ones) it’s been a joy to browse and no doubt has a lot of potential once more developers add their stuff. Microsoft MyPhone is a new service to bridge mobile and web synchronisation. It’s quite nifty allowing two-way synchronising for SMSes, contacts, calendars and todos – all accessible through a web interface. It also allows synchronisation with social networks (though Microsoft’s Facebook application is very good) as well as synchronisation between several devices. Some of it’s “pro account” features involve phone tracking and remote phone lockdowns,

In my next post on this topic I will start going through specific uses and my recommended applications for that use. But taking those first easy steps can really make a difference.

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Just flashed Windows Mobile build 23053 – it’s miles better than 6.5.

Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

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Any (e)book recommendations?

Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

Dear lazyweb,

Lately I’ve taken to reading ebooks on my phone and I’m running out of good material. I’m not picky with any book genres and couldn’t care less if I was recommended a book about gardening as long as it’s a good read. Here I am asking for any good (e)books, classic or hidden-in-a-dusty-corner-of-the-internet, I don’t mind. If you can provide a download link too (preferrably free and in plaintext format, but I don’t mind PDF/doc/odt) that would really be awesome, but otherwise book titles are also appreciated.

If you know any good ebook resources where I can easily get free ebooks in sane formats (see above), or even a trusted and cheap paid site, I’d also be happy to know of these.

… or you could just ignore me.

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Experimenting with some pop-under/interpage ads with the BMR – I should be shot.

Sunday, October 18th, 2009

http://e2-productions.com/repository/

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Back from Australia

Sunday, October 18th, 2009

I’m back from my trip to Australia and greeted with the Deepavali holiday. It was a great trip – visiting Sydney and Melbourne, my cousin’s wedding and checking out 6 universities. I met a lot of relatives I didn’t know before, didn’t know when I met them, still don’t know, and don’t plan to know. I close to perfected my mobile experience when limited to my phone and my cousin’s wifi, I learned what you could only learn about universities if you visit them, and of course the wedding dinner was (really) delicious.

I also got a Google Wave account to play with (from Marvin, whose shared interests are in the downfall of TMNet, our ISP – or an optimistic person would say the upgrading of TMNet), and will update you on my impressions later (no, I don’t have the send-invite ability yet, see the explanation, but if you do send me a kind request when I do I’ll send you an invite).

This is somewhat of a filler post as I’m quite tired and also have a lot of catching-up work to do. thinkMoult posts will resume its usual 2-day schedule. Of course WIPUP will continue development once I’ve catched up a sufficient amount. But to keep this post friendly here’s a paranoramic shot I shotted with my phone camera (hence the tiny size).

If you look closely you can spot Sydney Opera House.

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Back in Malaysia, happy Deepavali everybody!

Saturday, October 17th, 2009

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aaaand I’ve got myself a Google Wave account!

Monday, October 12th, 2009

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The problem with Gentoo

Saturday, October 10th, 2009

Gentoo is a relatively technical Linux distribution. It was also the first distro (though I did play with PuppyLinux before) that I used. Compared to most geeks I am rather illiterate. My technical background lies in the internet and as a result I treat the desktop world much like an average joe.

Before we all assume that therefore I’m not the target market, I’d like to say that I see Gentoo as a distribution that should allow me to easily use my computer whilst keeping configuration as flexible as possible. Of course with customisation we often get a tradeoff in usability, but nevertheless there are a couple areas where this tradeoff shouldn’t occur:

1) Hardware

Things like sound, internet, webcam, wireless, and suspend/hibernate should work out of the box. Tweak it later if you want, but it should work first. Please don’t just say it’s the kernel developers problem.

2) Updated documentation

Gentoo being a rolling release I find that howtos and online content get out of date, fast. Third party writers should have responsibility over their own work, but most importantly a centralised resource must be created. I propose that a quality team be notified automatically at regular intervals for each page to check that the data is still valid.

3) better communication between developers and users.

By this I am suggesting that at regular intervals an average-joe understandable summary be written about what has progressed. Lists of new ebuilds and eliminated bugs are good, but we need more qualitative than quantitative information. This not only helps joe keep up to date, but helps foster the Gentoo community.

I hope I put my points forward as constructively as possible. If it turns out that I’m actually completely ignorant of an existing solution, perhaps we should ask ourselves “why is he ignorant?”

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In Sydney and enjoying myself – going to Melbourne later.

Friday, October 9th, 2009

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Screenshot October 09

Monday, October 5th, 2009

I update my system on a two-weekly basis. Apparently the last update I did something stupid like unmerging qt-*, which left me without a working KDE desktop for a good while (also killed most of the apps I use). Fluxbox is the WM I fall back to at this point, and so I was back letting it rip on mainly console apps. It so happens that it was Gentoo’s 10th Birthday too, and the lovely wallpaper that it comes with motivated me to redecorate my Fluxbox. Of course when I say “redecorate” I mean edit the theme a little and change the wallpaper. Anyway, here’s my little beauty (click for full res, of course):

2009-10-05-184023_1280x800_scrot

Happy (belated) birthday, Gentoo!

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GIMP development has some really impressive new stuff, including a single window mode!

Sunday, October 4th, 2009

http://www.mmiworks.net/eng/publications/2009/09/gimp-single-mode.html

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AdBard actually emailed me to tell me they changed their ToS to allow other ad networks. Wonderful – both for the change and the email!

Saturday, October 3rd, 2009

http://adbard.net

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