Horse catching some air
It must stink in there so the horse decided to catch some air. The car towing the horse was driving around 60 mph when I captured this pic.
Mobile Blogging while waiting in the car
Posted by eric in Miscellaneous on July 23rd, 2008
Just sitting here in the car so thought I would try out mobile Wordpress for the iPhone.
Here’s the view from my location:
iPhone 3G Impressions
So I went out and got the new iPhone 3G on Saturday 7/12. The second day’s seemingly short line only took me 4.5 hours at the Apple store to get one, but I did finally get one! For those thinking of getting one, don’t even consider going to the AT&T store. Apple ships them with very limited quantities (~40 total for all 3 varieties) so you won’t get one that you want unless you’re the first 10 in line! If you’re going to the Apple store, make sure to check your local store’s availability.
My last phone is the Nokia N95 so most of my impressions will be to comparing the iPhone to the N95. I seriously thought the N95 would last me for many years. Guess I got suckered into the Apple hype. 
So with that, here’s some of my initial impressions in no particular order:
Buying Experience
I didn’t buy the first iPhone, but I heard people just went in, bought the phone, and left: simple, quick transaction. The difficult part of buying the 1st iPhone was finding a store that still had the phone in stock. I purchased my N95 from a web retailer, so was just a buy, ship deal. For the iPhone 3G, Apple really screwed up the buying experience. This is just another example of where money/profit/margin takes priority over customer satisfaction. Forcing everyone to activate in-store is what led to 4.5 hours of my life gone. Since the Apple store can’t handle all the activation cases, I noticed most people buying at the Apple store having to call up their provider because of problems. One family held up an Apple employee and all of us in line for 45 minutes trying to get their account figured out. Eventually, the family didn’t even buy an iPhone, wasting everyone’s time. My activation took only 10 minutes since I was a simple new AT&T customer. I figure most people on average took 20-30 minutes.
Web Browsing
Much nicer on the iPhone. The larger screen and navigating pages through the touch screen is a lot simpler and more efficient than on the Nokia. Pages just load much faster (unless you’re multitasking, see that section) on the iPhone than the Nokia.
On a note of web browsing, this is also my first time with mobile internet. One word: awesome! I have no idea how I lived all these years without mobile internet! Even though it’s awesome, I am paying 2-3 times more for this iPhone AT&T plan than my original plan though. Ouch.
Call Audio Quality
The iPhone is really good. People have said I come in crystal clear. The earpiece on the phone is a lot clearer than my N95. The microphone is really sensitive, picking up the slightest noise. The included iPod headphones double as a hands-free headset with a small speaker on the right headphone. If you put on both headsets, you can actually hear your caller in stereo!
The speaker phone is OK. You won’t be able to hear your caller in a noisy environment (ie. out in the streets), but a quiet room will work just fine.
User Experience
iPhone wins in this category. The previous winner was Nokia, but iPhone sure makes the UX really nice with really good graphics, metaphors, and transitions. The large screen and high resolution icons make the Home screen a pleasure to the eye.
Another elegance of the iPhone compared to the N95 is the transitions. If you’re listening to music and a call comes in, the music fades out and the ringtone comes in. On the N95, when a phone call comes in, the music stops abruptly and the ringtone rings. A small thing, but nevertheless shows Apple’s elegance in offering the best user experience for the user.
On that note, the touch screen on the iPhone can be a hit or miss. Because it’s a touch screen with no tactile response, I always end up looking at the screen. There’s no way you can “feel” your way around the controls like you can do with gadgets with physical buttons. The iPhone has to be one of the worst phones to use in the car. With my N95, I can keep my eyes on the road while I change the volume, change songs, and play/pause.
Listening to Music
Hands down, the audio quality on the iPhone is far superior to the N95. Unlike the N95, there’s no annoying hissing noise on the iPhone. The iPod UI on the iPhone is much improved over the old iPod UI on my 4G iPod. Finally I can repeat/shuffle without having to navigate 5 levels of menus. For ease of use and great user experience, the iPhone has the better music player compared to the N95’s music player. For functionality, the N95 music player is better than the iPhone.
Playing music over the speaker phone is decent. Similar to talking on the phone, it’s hard to hear in a noisy environment. Otherwise, perfectly audible in a quiet room.
One favorite, unexpected feature is being able to view lyrics of a song while it’s playing. If you have lyrics embedded in the ID3 tag of the music file, tapping the album art while a song is paying will display the song progress and overlay the lyrics.
Watching Videos
Watching videos on the iPhone is far superior to the N95. The huge 3.5 inch screen is much more enjoyable than the 2.6 inch N95-1 screen. The resolution is also much larger (480×320 vs. 320×240). These 2 factors alone make watching videos on the iPhone so much better.
Unfortunately, typical of Apple, there’s just some missing features that make the whole feature feel incomplete. First, why can’t we watch videos in portrait mode? A video podcast can be viewed in both portrait and landscape, why can’t movies? Second, why can’t we have a video playlist? Once again, video podcasts can be added into playlists, why not movies?
Build Quality
The iPhone feels much more solid than the N95 (version 1). The N95 has locations where it can flex and the innards are exposed. On the other hand, the iPhone is completely solid. One thing I know for sure though is that the N95 can take a beating. I haven’t tested yet whether the iPhone can take a beating yet without completely shattering. I know many people where this would be an important “feature” to have.
Spec-wise, the iPhone is heavier than the N95 (138g vs. 120g). Holding both phones evenly in hand, they feel about the same. If the iPhone is off center, then it feels heaving in my hand. In my pocket, the weight difference is unnoticeable. The thinness of the iPhone is definitely noticeable compared to the N95. Size-wise, the N95 is sure “fat”.
The most annoying thing of the iPhone build is the finger prints left all over. It just picks up finger prints way too easily! For neat freaks like myself, the finger prints all over the phone is just too hard to ignore. I bought an Invisible shield to wrap the phone in so that fixes the fingerprint problem.
Keyboard
The keyboard is easy to get used to and works surprisingly well. It took me just a couple of minutes before I started typing really quick. A full keyboard is just so much easier than typing with a number pad and T9. Just like the original iPhone, the keyboard is a touch screen keyboard, with the button you’re pressing magnified. When you type out a full word but mistyped a few letters, the iPhone is smart enough to recognize what you’re trying to type. 95% of the time it is correct.
The auto-correct feature also doubles as a auto-complete feature. Sometime auto-correct would recognize the word I’m tying before I’m complete. If that happens, I can just hit Space and complete the word without typing the rest of the word. Unfortunately since I always end up staring at the keyboard most of the time, I usually see the auto-correct word by the time I’ve completed the word, so no help there.
The on-screen keyboard and the auto-correct feature reveals a disadvantage with virtual keyboards: they use the processor. Once you multitask enough on the iPhone, even the keyboard lags significantly. At onetime, it would take me 2-3 seconds after typing a letter for the letter to show up! See the Multitasking section later.
Chinese Support
And of course one of the new features with the iPhone 3G and iPhone v2.0 update is the international language support. Since traveling to Taiwan last year, I’ve found being able to input Chinese on my phone indispensable. My European N95 at first didn’t support Chinese input. However since failing and having it fixed when I was in Taiwan, Nokia Taiwan actually installed the Chinese firmware on my phone. Because of that, now I have asian font support as well as Chinese input with zhuyin and pinyin.
The iPhone always had (so I’ve read) asian language support pre-2.0 you could read asian fonts. However Chinese input is something new with 2.0. Playing around with it, I have to say it is awesome being able to write your word in. If you prefer pinyin, support for that is also there, but unfortunately there’s no zhuyin. Actually writing the word out as an input method also has a side benefit of forcing me to learn how to write a word if I forgot it!
Multitasking
The iPhone really sucks in the multitasking category. This was a shocking revelation the first time I realized this problem. I multitask on my Nokia all the time:
- Listening to music while browsing net
- Listening to music while using GPS
- Listening to music while taking a picture
- Taking a picture while using GPS
- Listening to music, using GPS, taking a picture (this one is a stretch, but most times it works)
The iPhone can barely handle any of these tasks without having an application crash or the music stutter. Talk about a sore disappointment: the power of OS X in your hand, yet it can’t even handle 2 processes. True the N95 sucked at multitasking when it was initially launched due to limited RAM and bad memory code, but it was significantly improved with the latest update by adding memory paging support. I hope the iPhone’s multitasking problem isn’t due to hardware and that Apple will be making a similar update to smooth the multitasking experience in the near future.
GPS
The GPS on the iPhone is not true GPS. It is assisted-GPS. A-GPS uses cell phone towers to triangulate your location instead of using GPS satellites. While A-GPS has it’s advantages, it also has the disadvantage of not working when you don’t have a cell phone signal. Having GPS was one of the main functionality holding me back from the original iPhone (since I had GPS on the N95). Now holding the iPhone 3G in my hand after hearing about GPS support, I am so disappointed to learn that it is only A-GPS and not true GPS. The iPhone also does not support Bluetooth GPS connections. If you’re not going to give us true GPS, the least you can do is allow us to use an external GPS device! Very disappointing indeed.
The N95 has built in support for both A-GPS and has a GPS chip built in for true satellite GPS. Clearly the N95 in this.
Missing Features
And of course there’s lots of other missing features of the iPhone that the N95 has:
- Video Recording: um, which modern phone today doesn’t have this?
- Bluetooth A2DP: I don’t have any such headsets, but c’mon… all advance smartphones nowadays have this!
- Wireless sync: My N95 can automatically sync with my computer once I come close enough through bluetooth. The iPhone has no way to automatically/wirelessly sync with your computer. So now I have to always bring a cable around wherever I go?
- Call Log with details: um… every phone in the world has some kind of detailed call timer, details. Why doesn’t the iPhone have one? I’m guessing once again it has something to do with profits.
So which is better? Both devices have their pros and cons. When you buy an iPhone, you’re buying one for the experience, not the features. If you look at the features of the iPhone, you will be very disappointed. For a 2008 phone, it has the features of a 2003 phone. However if you look at the phone through the user experience perspective, it is clearly a 2010 phone. No current phone comes even close to how slick the UI is on the iPhone.
That said, the iPhone really needs to catch up on the features as well and fix some of their existing features. First they need to support multitasking better: add more memory, add a faster CPU. Second they need to fix some of their basic features. Third, add features that every phone in the world currently has. The saving grace for the iPhone is the 3rd party support. Finally Apple allows us to create our own applications to fill in the holes of the iPhone native software. I am not impressed with the applications currently on the App Store, but hopefully that is just because it’s new. Hopefully, with time, applications will mature and become more usable.
Using MSN for Adium Offline
If all your MSN friends keep telling you that you appear offline even though Adium shows you online, it might be because your MSN account is by default logging in “Appear Offline”.
I encountered this problem and no matter what I tried my friends still said I appeared offline.
To fix this problem, find a Windows machine and change how you login to be “Online”. Now when you log into Adium, you won’t login offline anymore.
Learning on the web
Posted by eric in Commentary, Software on June 26th, 2008
Being an on-off amateur photographer, one of the first things I installed on my MacBook Pro was Aperture. Since I’m new to Aperture, I decided to check out the tutorials link.
Clicking the link opened up my browser and navigated me to the Aperture Tutorial website with numerous videos about 1 to 3 minutes long. After watching a couple of videos, I realized how easy it is to learn from this website.
Now I’ve seen many webcast/video tutorials before, especially Microsoft ones. What makes the Apple one different, and better than the Microsoft ones?
The tutorial website is really well designed. True to Apple’s design, there is no clutter on the website and it is clear where you go and how to select videos to watch. Compare this with Microsoft’s Office website:
Seriously, how long will it take you to find the tutorials link on that page? There’s even advertisements on the Office homepage!
Another important factor to easy web learning is short and to the point videos. There is no marketing fluff in Apple’s tutorial videos. When you click on a video, you know exactly what you are watching. Each video shows you what the feature is and how to perform it and quickly ends.
Once again, let’s compare to Microsoft’s Office website. After 20-30 seconds of hunting, I finally find the Training link. From there I click on the “Popular” link showing a video on “SharePoint document libraries”. Now being on a Mac, I don’t have Windows Media Player to play the video, but just looking at that page with the “20-30 minutes” timer makes me want to close the browser. This is actually pretty good for a Microsoft video as normally Microsoft videos that I’ve watched in the past are over an hour long minimum!
Why are long videos useless? First of all, everyone is busy so no one has the time nor the patience to sit through an hour-long lecture. Second, long videos are long typically because it’s jam packed with lots of information. Thus it’s really easy to get overwhelmed and forget most of what was discussed in the video.
Another nice feature of Apple’s tutorial website is this:
Since there are numerous videos, Apple’s website helps you keep track of videos you have seen, have not seen. Wow, nice touch! These check marks even persist after you close the browser (through cookie’s I’m assuming). Come back to the website a few days later and you’ll see your check marks still there! Good luck trying to remember which videos you’ve seen/not seen on Microsoft’s website.
I used to dread watching video tutorials based on bad past experiences. Apple’s Aperture tutorial website has completely changed my perception. Now, I rather enjoy watching Apple’s video clip tutorials: I don’t have to waste time finding the videos and I get to control how much time I want to spend. And if i decide to take a break and come back the next day, I won’t have to waste time watching the same videos because I forgot I had already watched them!
How to setup up an IT infrastructure from scratch
Working at a startup, you literally start with nothing. NOTHING! The full effect of “nothing-ness” doesn’t hit you until you sit down and start to plan out what you’ll need. Since I’m the tech guy, this post will focus on the technical side of starting up a company. If you’re here looking for information on operations, well… better find another blog. 
Once you realize you have nothing, that’s when when you realize how much work the IT department of a company does to setup an IT infrastructure. Luckily if this is something you’re interested in, as I am, then it’s also quite fun to pick and choose your new toys.
So what kind of IT resources does a start up need? Let’s see…
- Web Server
- Email Server
- File Server
- Backup Resources
- Test Servers
- Production Servers
- Network Services
- Hosting Services
- Networking Equipment.
- Source Control System
- Issue Tracking System
- Workstations
- Laptops
- Wireless Communication
Of course whether you need all these resources depends on your company. For my start up, we definitely needed all of these. Technology is so essential in any modern-day business, you’ll most likely need at least one or two of these items no matter what kind of company you’re starting.
Now that you have a list of technologies you’ll need, it’s time to take the next step: cut as much as you can! Yep, you read that right. Since a start up starts with very limited funds, you’ll need to do your best to save on everything. Thus it’s crucial that you save, scrimp, clip, do whatever it takes to get by with the bare minimum, even with technology. Ideally, you want to save as much as you can now, while also picking the right technology that will allow you to easily scale down the road. Stay tuned as that will be the topic of the next post. 
LINQ to SQL in SQL Server
Posted by eric in Programming on June 20th, 2008
I’m writing some code that will be in a .NET 3.5 assembly running in SQL Server 2005. Since I’ll need to retrieve data from the database, I figured I might as well try out LINQ to SQL running inside SQL Server while I’m at it. The good news is that it will work, however you will have to add a couple more assemblies into SQL Server than just your assembly.
This post won’t go through the basics of SQLCLR integration. You can read about SQLCLR in this super long MSDN article or these 2 short and succinct articles instead (TIP: take the 2 short articles :P).
So to get LINQ to SQL working inside SQL Server 2005, you’ll need to add the following assemblies first (shown in hierarchical dependence order):
- System.Core
- System.Data.Linq
-
- System.Runtime.Serialization
-
- SMDiagnostics
Run the following script to register these assemblies (assuming default installation locations):
CREATE ASSEMBLY [SMDiagnostics]
AUTHORIZATION dbo
FROM 'C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v3.0\Windows Communication Foundation\SMDiagnostics.dll'
WITH permission_set = unsafe
CREATE ASSEMBLY [System.Runtime.Serialization]
AUTHORIZATION dbo
FROM 'C:\Program Files\Reference Assemblies\Microsoft\Framework\v3.0\System.Runtime.Serialization.dll'
WITH permission_set = unsafe
CREATE ASSEMBLY [System.Data.Linq]
AUTHORIZATION dbo
FROM 'C:\Program Files\Reference Assemblies\Microsoft\Framework\v3.5\System.Data.Linq.dll'
WITH permission_set = unsafe
CREATE ASSEMBLY [System.Core]
AUTHORIZATION dbo
FROM 'C:\Program Files\Reference Assemblies\Microsoft\Framework\v3.5\system.core.dll'
WITH permission_set = unsafe
Once these assemblies are in SQL Server, you’ll be able to add your LINQ-ified assembly into SQL Server.
With all those assembly registrations, is it worth it? I don’t think so. After I tested it out, I got rid of all those assemblies and replaced my LINQ code with a few simple calls to SqlCommand to get my small piece of data. This just goes to show you: the newest technology is not necessarily the best technology. Don’t just blindly follow whatever is the latest that Microsoft pitches to you!
Firefox 3
Just installed Firefox 3 and so far I’m impressed. I opened up a bunch of tabs (28 to be exact) right away just to test out the speed and memory usage. I’m glad to say all the tabs loaded really quick and used about ~100mb of RAM. Not too shabby!
Only one addon that I regularly use didn’t make it past the upgrade: CTC. That’s not too bad and hopefully an update will be on the way.
One thing I noticed with FF3 for Windows is that it will hijack your default browser. Um.. where’s my dialog box that disables this? I thought we were over this browser-war-hijack-default-browser-stuff? FF3 for Mac doesn’t have this problem. Whoever created the Windows installer needs to be fired (that is if he’s being paid)!
All in all, my first impression of FF3 is that it’s a great upgrade for everyone who uses Firefox. Too bad the Windows version is marred by the setup faux pas. Remember to download your copy today to help Mozilla’s attempt at the world record!
EDIT: Just downloaded FF3 again and noticed a default checkbox that would let me disable default functionality. Much better!
Homecoming
Posted by eric in Miscellaneous on June 14th, 2008
See what life changing emails do to you? After hitting the pause button on my blog for the last few months, I’ve decided it’s time to hit play again.
So what’s new? Here’s some of the things that I’ve been working on these past few months which I’ll be posting about:
- Moving from California to Taiwan to Utah.
- Setting up an IT infrastructure from scratch.
- Setting up an IT infrastructure on the cheap (being a start up after all…).
- Life in a start up.
And of course, I’m typing this post on a brand new computer.
More to come!
[Image from graphicstyles.org]
The Fees of a Global Economy
Posted by eric in Commentary on July 30th, 2008
I’m all for a global economy. I enjoy seeing stores up online that are based around the world since they usually sell items that can’t be found locally. This just goes to show how our planet is becoming one world instead of a planet with different countries.
However, if you’re going to be selling stuff online to different countries, please make sure your customer’s know where you’re based. That way we won’t be surprised when there’s a foreign transaction fee when we purchase goods from you.
Skype is a company that was purchased by eBay. eBay is an U.S. company. Boy was I surprised when I found this fee in my bank statement.
Skype is a great service and I’m willing to pay the extra fee. But the least you (I’m pointing at you Skype!) can do is let me know you’ll be processing my transaction in a foreign country causing me to incur a fee. And I mean something that is clearly stated, not some -5 font embedded footnote text! It’s just common courtesy!
I’ve seen this fee a couple of times already this year from purchasing goods online. Sure there’s no official internet tax, but this is slowly becoming one!
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