I have received Motorola Droid phone as a free gift courtesy from Google. My first question, do I really want an Android phone? I'm an iPhone user of 1.5 year. My service contract has not even ended. But since it is free I'll just give it a try. This is a report of my impression after using it for a few weeks.

The first thing that delights me is Droid has a physical keyboard! The onscreen keyboard is one of my biggest issue with iPhone. Despite iPhone fans' claim, the inaccuracy of onscreen keyboard bothers me. Unfortunately, Droid's keyboard quickly disappoints. The keys are flat. Its tactile feeling is so so. The keys are arranged as a rectangular grid rather than staggered. As much as I dislike onscreen keyboards, I can enter keys with a light touch. With this keyboard I have to push hard each time. My thumbs get sore quickly.

There are more serious problems though. I want to kill the designer who line the number keys on the top row. It is a real pain to type any long number like a phone number. Holding down the ALT key with the left thumb and reaching for the number key with the right thumb while trying to hold the handset steady is such a struggle. Yet this can be fixed simply by having a different layout. Arrange the keys in a numeric keypad pattern as in the diagram will do. You can easily use the left thumb to hold down the ALT key and type any numbers with the right thumb all sitting close together.

Another problem is the alignment of the keyboard. Due to used space on the right, the Droid keyboard is significantly off centered toward the left. On a normal keyboard, the G and H keys are at about the center. On Droid, because the H key is so far to the left, it makes it much harder to reach it using the right thumb. As such Droid has a QWERTY keyboard that does not really feel like a QWERTY keyboard. What a shame! To this day my most favorite phone keyboard is still the first generation Sidekick. The large and well positioned keyboard makes it a real note taking machine!

If the keyboard does not work as well as it should, the direction pad is still great. For navigation, the direction pad delivers much better precision compares to touch screen. I like to scroll using it rather than the imprecise, trial and error flicking gesture. Even better is its preciseness for moving the cursor inside a text for editing. With iPhone, it is super frustrating to try to position the cursor in any different location. So much that I simply give up correcting typing error or do much editing. With Droid I am writing this entire post using the phone, editing out every single error as I see it. Still there is a problem with Droid's direction pad. The key is hidden under the screen, making it unavailable when the lid is closed.

The 5MP camera is a big improvement over my iPhone's. The quality is approaching a basic digital camera. But most importantly, it has a macro lens that's pretty good at close up. This allows me to do what I like to do for a long time, to draw sketches on paper or whiteboard, then pull out a camera, take a picture and send it to my computer to be incorporated into a document or email. The keyboard sketches that I used in this post is the way I like to do. The important point here is not to produce the best quality illustration, which takes time and resources. It is that the process should be easy and casual. Just like drawing with pencil and paper. Droid is the first tool that make this feasible.

One of the key component that makes it possible is Gmail. This is how I transfer the pictures from the phone to my computer. Much to Google's credit, integration with Gmail is super smooth. The first time you setup the phone, it ask for your Google account information. Assuming you have a Google account, your are done. Gmail works right away! Google calendar also works! And you don't need to do any manual tethered syncing using iTunes!

Finally I want to comment on Android's UI Aesthetic. After using iPhone for a while, I find Android rather verbose. On iPhone the home screen is populated with big application icons. I can find application by picking from the pictures. With Android it is difficult to identify the application from their icons. They are about 30% smaller and their design seems not very distinguishable. Instead I have to pick the application by reading the text under it. Secondly iPhone UI relies more on icon and direct manipulation. It keeps the use of text to a minimal. On Android I often see long phrases, or even a complete sentences, for describing the action. Contrast their setup screen for the difference in style.

I suspect my son won't like my Android phone as much as the iPhone. Well he is only 4. So why does it matters? The things is he start to play with my iPhone before he turns 3, and has become quite good in applications like the camera or the photo gallery. All these he mostly learn on his own with few instruction from me (indeed I actively discourage him from messing with my phone.) I think this is a testimony that the iPhone UI is a really phenomenal success. It sets a high bar for others to beat.

2010.05.19 [tech, phone] - comments (0)

Yesterday the U.S. stock market experienced a sudden and volatile fluctuation. Dow Jones index has briefly dropped by 10% during intraday trading. The main culprit seems not to be economic issue but suspect to be a glitch in trading. Apparently one trader has entered an exceptionally large trade by mistake, which set off all the automatic trading program to sell-off. There goes the market value.

Watching this episode I see a picture emerging. This is the day when machines begin to rule the world. For all the vigilance put in place after the computer induced 1987 market crash, we are still, or perhaps even more vulnerable due to more reliance on computers.

The conflict of man against machine seems like a sci-fi plot. But I think it is more realistic than most people think. The problem is we are looking for an anthropomorphous entity like HAL, an supercomputer that knows it all, have immense analytic power, and the most frightening part, it has a mind of its own. As far as I know I don't see anything like this on the horizon.

Instead there are countless software agents roaming the net, collecting information, building database, distributing information and in some case taking active roles like trading stock. This global computer network has developed immensely in the past 2 decades, impacting every aspect of our society. Mostly it makes our economy more efficient and keeping us better informed. But does the system also enslave us in some way? Are human truly in control of our destiny. Or are we at the mercy of the system?

I am imagining how the next computer glitch would look like. Think Google Calendar. One day it may suddenly 'recommend' a political rally event to all users, those logic that even its creator cannot explain. And our history may have changed as a result.

2010.05.07 [philosophy, tech] - comments (0)

Last month the IT world is jolted by the news of a security breach of Google's system by Chinese hackers and the subsequence response by Google threatening to pull out their China operation altogether. Many in the west see this as a courageous resistance to China's Internet censorship and a righteous response to the assault on some human right activists. Other observers noted that Google's market share in China is trailing far behind the local competitor, that they may using this incident to give themselves a graceful excuse to exit.

All of them could have learned something from anthropologist Tricia Wang's insightful observation of Google's uses or non-use in China. Tricia is a research scholar working in China to study how youths and migrants are using ICT to manage their inter-personal communication networks. She come up with her observation from the angle of grassroot youngsters.

Among her observations are

• Google is mostly irrelevant to Chinese users. While elite, educated Chinese depend on Google as much as others do, young people has a very different usage pattern. They mostly use Internet with IM or mobile devices to connect to their friends. They have never found Google to be useful.
• Google has a huge branding issue in China. Most Chinese cannot spell the word 'Google'! I was amused to find that Google is known by its colloquial name GouGou (狗狗doggy) more than its official name Gu-Ge (谷歌). Here in the west, especially within the IT industry, Google's brand name stands for leadership in innovation and intelligent services. There in the back street of China, Google's name is associated with the lowly doggy. What a satire!

Tricia has an excellent piece of analysis that should be on most reader's radar screen.

2010.02.11 [tech] - comments (0)

Last month I've upgraded my first generation Mac Mini to Intel Core Duo. I have been bother by its wireless network issues ever since. It is a late 2009 model with Snow Leopard. It is connected to a Linksys WRT110 router. The problem is its poor reliability. Packets are dropped frequently. Sometimes it disconnects from the access point altogether. This means a very frustrating experience for some applications. VNC session are dropped frequently to the point it is unusable. Directory browsing and file transfer with Samba is a hit or miss. It unreliable and often incurs lengthy delay.

It seems mine is not an isolated problem. Wireless issue is a frequent topic on Apple support forum. I find many message like this one:

Topic : New Mac Mini Wireless Internet - Slow, Disconnects frequently

I use ping to test its connectivity. Pinging the gateway from the Mac gets result like below. There are plenty of missing packets.

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=7 ttl=64 time=1.219 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=8 ttl=64 time=3.698 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=9 ttl=64 time=3.862 ms
Request timeout for icmp_seq 10
Request timeout for icmp_seq 11
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=12 ttl=64 time=3.671 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=13 ttl=64 time=3.766 ms
Request timeout for icmp_seq 14
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=15 ttl=64 time=3.997 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=16 ttl=64 time=5.394 ms

Pinging the Mac from a PC, both are connected wirelessly, is even worst. Besides loss packets, the response time is pathetic. Sometimes it takes hundreds of millisecond.

Reply from 192.168.1.120: bytes=32 time=609ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.120: bytes=32 time=632ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.120: bytes=32 time=655ms TTL=64
Request timed out.
Reply from 192.168.1.120: bytes=32 time=97ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.120: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.120: bytes=32 time=93ms TTL=64
Request timed out.
Reply from 192.168.1.120: bytes=32 time=640ms TTL=64
Request timed out.

Note that this is not a wireless signal problem. I have moved the access point to only 15 feet away from the Mac with a direct line of sight. The test does marginally better at best. Besides, none of other wireless devices on the network have any connectivity problem.

After several false start using different suggestions from the Internet, I have found a config that dramatically improve the Mac's connectivity. I set the router to use Wireless-G only. The default of Linksys WRT110 is in "Mixed" mode. It includes some proprietary Linksys enhancement that none of my device can take advantage anyway. And it is not even Wireless-N. Setting it to Wireless-G only improve the Mac's connectivity with no loss of performance for other devices.

2010.01.26 [tech] - comments (0)

The title of this precentation Data and Capital Markets in Money:Tech 2008 is not very obvious. It is actually an excellent presentation on the state-of-art of database design. Dr. Michael Stonebraker is behind a series of database innovation for several decades from INGRES and Postgres up to his current work on StreamBase Systems. In this talk he has criticized the traditional RDBMS as something woefully outdated. He has presented several new directions in database design that he think will soon upstage the current generation of RDBMS systems.

2009.09.28 [tech] - comments (0)

When I first started blogging, I have a lot of geeky posting about software development. The idea of blogging is to write on short subjects frequently. It is different from writing a long article, which is so burdensome many people end up not doing it at all. But in practice, I have not lived up to expectation of a prolific blogger. Sometimes the gap between postings can be a few months.

Anyway this is the quick posting on geeky subject that I think I should do more. Recently I am working on high performance computing and number crunching task. I have dipped into writing C extension for Python for performance. I got spectacular result from the exercise. It is the best of both world. Programming in Python supplement by C is still very agile and iterative. On the other hand C is giving the performance unachievable with pure Python.

I am started to look into the multiprocessing module introduced in Python 2.6. It is a library to run multiple python processes. With an interface similar to the threading module, it is positioning itself as an alternative approach to threading to circumvent the limitation of Python's GIL. I haven't give much thought to it initially. But looking closer, I find it is really more than just an alternative to threading. It is really a parallel programming framework. For example, the method Pool.map() is really a prototype of a mapreduce framework. I am quite excited to explore this module in the coming days.

Another module I am looking at is the ctypes module. It allows Python code to call C functions directly. Again I haven't thought much about it when it was introduced in Python 2.5. That's because I haven't have a use case of it. Now that I am writing C module, I begin to realize how revolutionary it is. C module delivery great performance. But writing one is a pain. Just the need to keep track of reference count may double the number of lines of your code. For me I am not building a reusable module for other people. It is one off function for me to do number crunching. Using ctypes may allow me easier access to C without the burden of actually writing a Python module.

2009.07.12 [python, tech] - comments (0)

One day my wife’s laptop won’t boot up all of a sudden. I rolled up my sleeves trying to fix it. This is a Dell Inspiron 710m with Windows XP. It turned out to be one of the toughest PC problems I have encountered in years. I have spent many hours using many different ways to repair it. I am still not sure what broke it in the first place. But the virus checker is my prime suspect. Did it kill my computer?

The first problem is Windows XP boots up to a blue screen saying “This application has failed to start because USER32.dll was not found”. First of all I used the BIOS diagnostic program to quickly check that the system do not have hardware problem. Then I found an Internet posting suggesting the virus checker may have make a huge mistake to consider the system file user32.dll as virus infected and has removed it, causing the system to become unusable.

This looks like a good lead. Sure enough I found user32.dll is missing from the \Windows\system32 directory. First of all I used an Ubuntu 8.1 CD to boot up the system. Then I mount the Windows NTFS with a command like:

  sudo mount -t ntfs-3g -o nls=utf8,umask=000 /dev/sda2 /media/c

This posting shows more information about mounting a Windows drive on Linux. Then I just found the backup copy of user32.dll from the dllcache and copied it to \Windows\system32. This simple step solved the problem. My system was able to boot up.

Nevertheless this is only the start. The laptop wireless was off after reboot. Its LED indicator was off all the time. I tried various ways to turn it on without success. Then I come across a useful support page from Dell about How To Restore or Reinstall Microsoft® Windows® on a Dell™ Computer. It provides instruction to three different ways to restore the computer. The simplest way is to use the System Restore function provided by Windows itself. The system automatically backup its configuration regularly. I pick up a configuration saved before this instance happens and restored it. Bingo, the wireless LED light just comes back after reboot!

Unfortunately, the network was still not usable. In fact, even if I plugged in a network cable, it still cannot ping any external hostname. Furthermore I cannot ping this laptop's IP address from another computer. The only sign of life was the laptop can ping an external host if I give it the IP address. I make sure the Windows firewall if turned off. This still did not help. Then I found out the virus checker program also have a firewall function itself. I shut it down also. Bingo, then the network works! It sounds like the firewall was 100% effective in protecting the computer simply by disconnecting it from the outside world entirely.

At this point, the laptop is basically functional. But I still see some programs fail with a message saying that it maybe infected by virus. I think it is necessary to take a more drastic step. I used the second method in the Dell support page, the PC Restore function. It re-images the hard disk to restore the factory image. This necessitates backing all the data files because they will be wiped out in the process. But at least it can start from a clean slate without any residue problem.

So I have re-imaged the hard disk and restore the data files. Then I have to uninstall tons of useless programs the come pre-installed on a Dell PC. I also make sure I have uninstalled the hopelessly outdated virus checker Trend Micro ("PC-cillin"), which I suspect has caused me several days of misery.

2009.04.17 [tech] - comments (0)

When I first started creating this website and my blog, I wrote most of the software on top of Apache myself. I want this to be a learning experience as a webmaster. A very good learning experience it is, I did not have to put in too much time as the software is rather simple. But overtime, things need touch up here and there. Some reorganization is needed to make it friendly to search engine. The layout and presentation also need some fine-tuning. The trouble of building my own website is these maintenance task tend to be deferred and piled up.

Finally I have taken some time to build an index for my past articles. I have also adopted some microformat to help the search engine to find my articles. I feel good after completed long neglected work today.

2007.09.06 [tech] - comments (0)

Web discussion forums is often a place to find useful information. Search engine make this valuable archives only one query away from us. However, I am surprised at how many forum software still present their information badly. For example, I found this from some slashdot derived forum: [more...]

2006.11.25 [tech] - comments (0)

• Mike Arrington of TechCrunch started the second day by giving his take on startup winners and losers. He defines winners as who accomplished a liquidation event like IPO or acquisition. But look carefully at his list, which includes companies like myspace and skype, all of them got acquired. There was no IPO!

  Further he think this list is hot for new startups: [more...]

  2006.09.15 [tech, futurewebapps-sf06] - comments (0)

I was excited to be at this year's the Future of Web Apps summit. This two days conference has gathered many great speakers to look at some of the web's most successful sites and applications and practical advices on creating your own web app.

Here are some highlights from the first day.

• Dick Hardt from Sxip take about identity 2.0. He's points about identity is based on past history, which in turn predict future behavior is well taken. He later demonstrated logging on to websites using different protocol such as OpenID, i-names and Infocard. Since all discussions remained at high level, it is not obvious to the uninitiated to understand what is the magic behind these new technology. [more...]

  2006.09.13 [tech, futurewebapps-sf06] - comments (0)

Coming from a culture where we associate news with accidents, violent crimes and disasters, I have came out and start to question our perverse obsession on negative news. Not all news agencies are created equal though. The Christian Science Monitor, for example, put a lot of focuses on education. Here is one good piece of story about an experiment in India where they put free computer stand in slums and found kids made good use of them. Surprising they found that with no supervision or instruction

the children "download and play audio and video, send and receive e-mail, chat, and so on," he says. They quickly move on to learn some English from English-language websites, read Indian newspapers, and even "look for jobs for their fathers,"

And it does not end there.

Many have changed their goals from say, rickshaw driver to engineer, and most now want to go to college.

Seeing this kind of heart warming notes really light up my day.

Thinking more about this, it is not all that surprising that kids can teach themselves about computer without any instructions. Afterall I learned much about computer and programming by myself before even set foot in the college, and all these without really spending much in gadgetry.

2006.06.01 [education, tech] - comments (0)

I am a little behind in blogging. Last week I have went a few separate but all very interesting events. Last Friday was the Long Now Foundation's seminar The Long Time Tail by Chris Anderson with Will Hearst. Chris has introduced an influential concept of long tail. This time he has extended the concept in the time dimension. The sales of an item would decline over time. Traditionally an item would become unavailable or go out of print because it becomes uneconomical to continues to sell it. But in the world of unlimited virtual inventory with a searchable, discoverable front end, Chris discovered that the demand, though diminished, would extend well into the future. This is the same as the original long tail framework. And it applies very well to the time dimension.

The business implication? A content archive has great and untapped economic value. The implication to the consumers? We will enjoy a much wider selection of quality works. And we will be less subject to marketing hype that tries to push hits to make money in a flash of time.

Chris' presentation was full of studies of different markets. One study of Netflix users says the customers are a lot more satisfy with old movies than new movies. There is a logical explanation for this. Good movies stand the test of time. I for one are very glad to find the old collections available on the market again. For some time old Hong Kong movies have been release in VCD format, a lower quality, lower cost predecessor to DVD. Despite the lack of a searchable online front end and generally available only in a uncategorized, flea market like retail outlets, I still manage to amass a good collection great movies over time. I have fond memory of many old movies I have seen one or two times when they were released years ago. It is great to be able to enjoy them again many years later. The old releases also reportedly turning a good profit. Yet another confirmation that there is a demand of the long tail.

2006.05.19 [tech, economics] - comments (0)

Tim O'Reilly posted some analysis and visualizations of book sales data on his website. It analyzed book sales trend in several dimensions. Java is shown on a steady downward trend. On the other hand C# is clearly gaining share. The idea is the state of book market would be a technology trend indicator. Of course this is more likely to be a trailing indicator. Idea has to be mature enough before it can turned into a book. And it would takes months for it to be published and adopted in the mass market. Nevertheless it gives a good picture what people are really buying into.

2006.04.20 [tech] - comments (0)

Ray Ozzie made an extraordinary demo of Live Clipboard in ETech. He illustrated a very simple concept to enable users to pass data between web applications and the PC, by using the clipboard! All this involves only defining the live clipboard data format and simple enhancement to the applications.

He reminded us the clipboard was a great GUI innovation that allows transfer of data between multiple applications. This is also a glimpse of the power of the semantic web.

2006.03.09 [tech] - comments (0)

Practical Internet Groupware
by Jon Udell

In his book "Practical Internet Groupware", former BYTE magazine editor Jon Udell layout an architecture that links human minds into collaborative relationships. Base on his actual experience in building BYTE's intranet as well as the magazine's public online services, he gave his insight on the powerful use of Internet.

Among the many IT books I have read, this book stand out as sublime, even avant-garde. Got a question? Search the Internet, send a follow up email to folks you have never met. That's something many of us have probably done without much thinking. Yet Jon would step back and reflect on the dynamic that had happened. An ad-hoc workgroup was formed between him and several person on one particular task. The collaboration was unbounded by time, geography or corporate affiliation. He strived to grasp the subtle interactions and to facilitate this flow of information on the Internet.

People are lazy and do not like to learn or adapt to complex rules impose by computer systems. On the other hand simple rules and clever UI tweak can often make interactions spontaneous and effective. Use an appropriate subject for a message is one good example. The author discussed one of the oldest groupware on the Internet, the Usenet newsgroups. He termed it conferencing and explained why it is a better channel for some kind of interactions compare to email. Many of us who get caught in lengthy email debate would be delighted to know there are more effective way to conduct this kind of discussion. Indeed a seamless integration of web, email, newsgroup and a searchable document database are the components that make a formidable groupware application.

Unlike most IT books, he did not focus on any single platform, computer language or a technology. Whether it is a tool from Microsoft or its competitors, a freeware or a commercial product, he would use it if he see fits. Throughout the book are short, unglamorous, but nevertheless working code samples. Given I read this 6 years after its 1999 publishing date, many of the code or specific technologies are already considered obsoleted. Yet the insight that stem from these early system are just as relevant today. Think just what is the core component of web 2.0 technology? User participation!

Perhaps nothing reveal more about this book than its front cover. The 'practical' in the 'Practical Internet Groupware' means everything is derived from actual experience and real code rather than a theoretical discussion. Yet it is in small print while the 'Internet Groupware' is emphasize in the banner. That's because the code and the actual systems are just starting points that spawn the exploration of threads that link people into collaborative relationship. This is an immensely powerful Internet application we have yet to master.

2006.02.26 [book, tech] - comments (0)

I hit upon an entry of my family name Tung 董 in Wikipedia yesterday. What I saw doesn't delight me. It looks like a mischievous teenage has put his twisted bio into the entry. I went in to clean it out and added Tung Chee Hwa as the sole representative of the Tung clan for now. Although it has only 3 lines, this is my first original content contributed to Wikipedia. And a little something I have done for my family name. Furthermore I am delight to find the prankish entry has only been up for 10 days before I shot it down.

Wikipedia is frequently looked as a rival to traditional institutions like Britannica. People like to pick out bad entries from Wikipedia and complain how professionalism is being overran by amateurishness. I of course have many counter arguments. But today I have realized something more. If encyclopedia is to be a most comprehensive reference of knowledge of all kind, then it is a long tail business! I don't expect anyone would care enough to put an entry of my family name into an encyclopedia (I have been generous to call Tung "a common Chinese family name"). There is going to be many many knowledge important only to a small group of people and few others. In the age of information explosion Britannica would have a hard time to hire enough experts to write about each and everything important and remain economically viable. Just 4 years since inception Wikipedia already claim more articles than Britannica. It is really no accident.

2005.11.11 [tech] - comments (0)

As a software developer I am a strong advocate of open source software. They are used extensively both at my work and for my private projects. In retrospect, open source platform, often referred to as LAMP, has long past the stage being just an useful extension to proprietary software. It has become my dominant development platform. If I were to build a server application today, it would make very little sense for me to consider Microsoft servers. Why choose a framework that leave you with a single tools vendor. LAMP has proven to be technical viable, cost nothing to experiment and distribute, and more importantly I trust them because of its openness. Nowadays I need little justification to pick LAMP over Microsoft.

What a big leap from just a few years ago when it looks like Microsoft is going to take over the world.

2005.11.01 [software, tech] - comments (0)

Reuters reports low-cost computers and open source software making it cost less to invest in a startup. I always think open source is an under appreciated revolution. Not only is it redefining laws of economics and inspires people to collaborate, now it also form the basis of a low-cost computing platform and sprawl a new wave of innovations.

2005.04.03 [tech, business] - comments (0)

I got to try out the newly released Yahoo API. Yahoo's move to open up its services to developers is a good news. But specifically I want to applaud them for designing a very developer friendly interface. Registering an application ID a breeze (and it doesn't seems to be mandatory for a quick experiment). They have the sensibility to use REST services over SOAP. It takes me 2 minutes using the web browser and text editor to experiment with their services and come out with a good understanding of what it can do. All these can be done without specialized tools required by SOAP. Google should have go this way in the first place.

2005.03.02 [tech] - comments (0)