Dinner photos from Singapore buffet dinner @ Sunbelt

I went to a Singapore buffet dinner at the Pan Pacific hotel overlooking the sea in Vancouver. The view was so great and so was the food, as you can see from the pictures below.

Pan Pacific hotel for the Singapore buffet dinner


Inside the Singapore Buffet restaurant


Outside the Singapore Buffet restaurant


Singapore buffet


Singapore buffet


Singapore buffet, look at the Chinese lanterns


Dessert, orange and lychee sherbert ice cream, sago coconut soup and fruit salad


Main course


Salad, chicken wings, egg rolls, appetizers


Music and entertainment


These are just some of the photos, for more, visit my Flickr photos.

Technorati tags: sunbelt06

Podcasts for Day 1 wrap up and my talk at Sunbelt

I made a podcast for the Day 1 wrap up at Sunbelt, Day 1 morning, and a podcast for my talk at Sunbelt, so for those who couldn't make my talk, you can listen it here. Interesting thing and it seems to be with technology, I recorded it with my iPod however, it didn't seem to record my talk at all, the connector to the iPod seemed to be loose without me knowing it. Fortunately, I recorded my talk before hand, so that is what you will hear.

I also have my slides from my talk on "Investigating Evolution of Community in Blogs" available as well.

Technorati tags: sunbelt06

Day 2 wrapup of Sunbelt conference

It was a great and long day at Sunbelt today on Day 2 (it sounds like I'm talking about the Olympics!). Anyways, it first started in the morning with sessions. I blogged about the talks that I was in from the IML research blog. Then, there was lunch and me and a couple of people that I met at the conference (one from Yahoo Research) went to an all you can eat lunch at a Japanese restaurant. Photos from lunch are shown below:






In the afternoon, there were sessions. Here's what I wrote from them. I presented my talk at 3:20 pm as part of the Online Communities A session. My talk went pretty good, I gave out my paper (about 70 copies) and I had lots of discussion afterwards. However, I found out that my podcast of the talk didn't record, the iTalk wasn't on (that sucks, sometimes the iTalk will do that). But, no worries, because I practiced my talk twice last night and so I will upload one of those talks, which is pretty much the same.

Edward Laumann then gave the keynote address, I didn't really listen much because it didn't seem that interesting.




Then, the most interesting part of the day, the conference dinner! It was a great dinner, I have photos to prove it!

Before dinner


Dinner





Dessert



Then, there was a funny guy who was invited by Bill Richards (organizer of the conference) to speak.



After that, there was after dinner entertainment with some East coast music


All in all, it was a great day, I dramatically increased my social network from my talk and I grabbed lots of business cards. Lots of people were interested in my work, I met a guy from Microsoft Research, Yahoo Research, and IBM Research. Some people expressed interest to keep in contact with me for my research, one offered to provide me data for the blogs that he has.

Technorati tags: sunbelt06

Day 2 of Sunbelt

It's 8:20 am in Vancouver and today is Day 2 of the Sunbelt conference. There seems to be interesting talks today which I will blog from them. My talk is at 3:40 pm on "Investigating Evolution of Community in Blogs". I've just created a podcast of Day 1 which I will upload tonight if I have the time after the banquet.

Technorati tags: sunbelt06

Day 1 of Sunbelt

Day 1 has ended at Sunbelt. There was no breakfast provided in the morning so I skipped breakfast and uploaded the photos and podcasts from yesterday. The conference started at 1:40 pm, so I grabbed lunch at a restaurant called FatBurger. It was a little pricey but the burger was really good, much better than McDonald's, they cook it for you when you order it and take their time to make it good. There weren't too many papers that seemed interesting but I did mention to blog in real time some of the papers which you can read here. Here's a couple of pictures that I took:

There was Wi-Fi in the conference.


Inside one of the conference meeting rooms.


Here's the outside of the conference meeting rooms, there were a total of 5 meeting rooms and I jumped from paper to paper to different rooms, and got out of rooms if I felt the paper was boring or not what I was interested in.


I met a couple of people and talked about what research they were doing and what I was doing, and I plugged about my talk tomorrow at 3:40 pm (which I will podcast). I was looking for some of the people related to my research, but I couldn't find them, hopefully I will talk to them tomorrow.

For dinner, I went out to a Chinese restaurant (to compare the food with Toronto Chinese style). It was pretty good, I got chicken Cantonese chow mein combo which included won ton soup for about $6.95. Even cheaper than lunch (which was $8.85 by the way)!

I practiced my presentation tonight twice so I think I'm ready to go. There was an open bar again tonight and I talked with several people but I did not drink any alcohol cause I want to be sober for my talk. Last night, I had a Labatt blue and I felt my head was a little lightheaded and I had a little bit of a headache.

sunbelt06

Podcasts from before Sunbelt conference online

The podcasts that I made are now available!

Before the Sunbelt conference at the hotel

Stanley Park

Enjoy!

Technorati tags: sunbelt06

Before the Sunbelt conference

I took some pictures yesterday before the conference. After I checked into the room, I decided to go for a walk in Stanley Park. It was so beautiful yesterday, the sun was shining and it was almost 20 degrees. People were all out, elderly, teenagers, adults, couples, family, all enjoying the sun. Some were biking, roller blading and most were walking. The beaches were packed with people getting a sun tan, reading, or doing some work. I walked about 2 hours in Stanley Park, I wanted to walk the entire way, but when I walked along the seawall promenade, there was a sign that said that it was closed beyond a certain point. I still kept walking, enjoying the great scenery, the breeze, and the people all enjoying themselves. I took lots of pictures which you can see. Here are some of the pictures for preview:







I also brought my iPod along with iTalk to do a podcast as I was walking and also taking photos.

At night, there was a hospitality suite, and there was an open bar and they're having that every night of this week. Nice! Here's a picture I took from the open bar:



I've never gone to a conference where they had an open bar for more than 1 night, usually they'll have one on the 1st day or 2nd day of the conference and then there will be a banquet for dinner (usually included in the conference fee). For this conference, the banquet dinner is extra. But this is where you get to talk, eat and socialize with other people related in your research area, and network, so it's important I think to go to these type of events.

Also, I feel that the hotel room is not as good as I thought, especially for $165 a night! I think even Days Inn is better and it's less than $100! I'm glad that I'm sharing a double room with another conference attendee.

sunbelt06

Flickr uploading of photos

How come when I use the Flickr uploading software, when I select all the photos I want to add, I only see a subset of all the photos. I just did this right now, and only 5 of the photos showed up. I don't understand what's happening, do I have to upload a little at a time?

Arrived in Vancouver for Sunbelt!

I just arrived in Vancouver at the Coast Plaza hotel for the Sunbelt conference. The conference starts tomorrow and today and yesterday are workshops but you have to pay for these workshops so I decided not to go. It's great weather in Vancouver, sunny and about 16 degrees. And there's Wi-Fi in the hotel room! Yay!

I did quite a bit of stuff while on the plane to Vancouver. I reviewed my presentation slides, I watched the Chronicles of Narnia (which by the way was a great movie and I can definitely see the Christian resemblance with the lion, the witch and Peter and which I finally wanted to see), I looked at the Sunbelt schedule of talks that I want to go to, and I read a chapter from the Naked Conversations book.

Some interesting presentations that I will go to. The ones I am interested in are the following:

Wednesday:
Deconstructing the tie: behavioural and self-report measures of relationships
A Database Perspective of Social Network Analysis Data processing interest in social networks is becoming pervasive and data volumes increase
Creating dynamic social network models from sensor data
Internet usage and social network characteristics in contemporary Hugarian society: A logitudinal analysis
How to Build useful neighborhood information systems
Using social network analysis to explore and predict performance in public-private partnerships
The development of personal friendship networks

I'll post Thursday and Friday's schedule later.

The conference starts tomorrow, I'm planning to go out after finished blogging and enjoy the nice weather in Vancouver. It's 16 degrees and sunny! I'll upload the podcast that I just did coming to Vancouver a little later. It's time to enjoy the nice weather outside!

I will practice my presentation tonight.

Technorati tags: sunbelt06

Leaving for Sunbelt tomorrow!

I'm leaving for Vancouver for the Sunbelt conference tomorrow. I finished the paper which I will distribute to interested people at my session, and finished the slides. I still haven't really practiced yet but since I'm presenting on Thursday, I will have time to work on the slides and practice tomorrow and Wednesday. I can't wait for the banquet and the Italian Opera buffet! Yes, I love going to conferences not just for presenting, but for the food, the sightseeing and meeting other researchers and spreading my research. I hope to be blogging every day at the conference, let's hope there is Wi-Fi at the conference and also in my hotel room!

Finishing up slides and paper for Sunbelt!

I'm still finishing up my slides and paper that I will present at Sunbelt on Thursday. I will leave for Vancouver on Tuesday. Funny, I've been to Vancouver many many times on stopovers from Toronto to Hong Kong, but I've never gotten out of the Vancouver airport!

I'm looking forward to going and meeting with social networking experts that can help me with my research and provide some insight and advice in my PhD. Too bad I can't go to CHI though which is in Montreal! A lot of my classmates from the Interactive Media Lab are going, but unfortunately CHI overlaps with Sunbelt this week. Oh well, I'm going to rely on the proceedings and Sacha is going to blog from CHI, so I'll get to see what my classmates will be actually doing at CHI! So, it will be as if I was at CHI, a virtual CHI for me! Hopefully, I can go to CHI next year and get a paper there!

Testing Sympatico broadband wireless

I just got the Sympatico broadband wireless modem to test today. It's pretty easy, you just plug in the power adapter to a power outlet and connect that to the modem, then you plug the ethernet cable from the modem to the computer. And voila, you are connected. You have to make sure that the modem gets a signal from the cellular network, there is a bunch of lights that track for a signal and then connect, just like with a regular high speed modem. I got 10 Mbps connection which Windows detected (although I highly doubt that I got near 10 Mbps, I didnt actually check the actual speed I was connecting at). I first blogged about this service back here. It's quite an interesting idea, have a broadband wireless access point using a cellular connection since cellular is more ubiquitous than Wi-Fi. In fact, why not include both a cellular broadband and Wi-Fi broadband connection in the modem (or Wi-Max)? Then, which ever network you are near to, you use that broadband signal. Ubiquitous wireless access, that's what we need.

Journal paper submitted, now Sunbelt!

I just submitted my journal paper, now I'm preparing for Sunbelt which is next week. The final program is here. I'm in Session 39a on Thursday the 27th, paper #27 called "Investigating Evolution of Community in Blogs".

Google Calendar

Google has just released a beta of their web-based calendaring application called Google Calendar. It's gotten some good reviews from CNet.
I'm trying it right now, it has the same interface like Gmail and other Google apps, very clean and fast interface using AJAX. Google is really beginning to turn into a Google office, and I can see why Microsoft should be getting pretty worried.

I'm trying to import my calendar entries from Palm Desktop, and I exported to a vCal file, but it only exported one entry as opposed to all entries. If I export all entries, it saves it as a DBA (DateBook archive) file, but it won't import into Google Calendar. So does anyone know how I can do this? Apparently, I'm not the only one. I know I could sync my Palm to Outlook and then take Outlook and import it into Google Calendar. But I don't want to have to use Outlook if I don't have to.

Nice Korean music and TV series

Going to PARC for the summer

No, not the park, but PARC, Palo Alto Research Center! I'll be doing my summer internship at PARC in beautiful Palo Alto (which I've never been before). Should be exciting, I can't wait! I'll be working on task management interfaces with the PARC group, which is different than the blog research I'm doing now. But I'm looking forward to a new opportunity and change in environment from my regular school lab environment, and there'll be lots of things to do in Palo Alto or San Francisco and possibly going to Los Angeles for a trip. Now, I'm looking for a 1 bedroom apartment in Palo Alto, thank goodness for craigslist!

Gadgets and washing the car

As you all know, I love my gadgets, hence people call me the GadgetMan. This was my nickname when I worked at a company and I was responsible for all the PDAs, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, cell phones and other equipment. And I love technology and gadgets, so therefore I'm called GadgetMan. Anyways, besides that point, it was a nice day today, so I decided to wash the car. And everytime I wash the car, I usually use my laptop and use an X10 remote control to change the songs on my MP3 player.

However, since I've gotten a new laptop, I don't want to make my laptop dirty or have any scratches, and I have to install the X10 software on my laptop which I didn't do. So, I used my songs on my Apple iPod mini and connected to the speakers, and played music while I washed the car. It was great! Mind you, I had to go to the iPod and change the songs directly, since I didn't have a control. I suppose I could get a Bluetooth accessory (I've seen one) or RF accessory that can make the iPod wireless and use a remote control. But as I'm a PhD grad student, I don't have too much money as opposed to the days I was working full time during the dot com boom. Ah, I miss those days where I could buy new gadgets to accessorize the technology in my life!

Acura RDX is here!

Well, the Acura RDX has gone from concept to reality. The 2007 Acura RDX is here!



It looks very similar to the Toyota Matrix, from a post that I wrote about the Acura RDX Concept prototype. Will this be the next car to replace my Matrix? The Matrix started it all with this design.

Journal paper

I just got an e-mail that said my journal paper was not accepted. Oh well, I will submit to another place. I have another journal paper that I'm submitting for this week. And then there's the paper that I'm presenting at the Sunbelt conference, check out my blog entry from the research group blog for details.

Busy, busy, busy! I guess that's good, as it keeps me extremely focussed and I can use those papers to hopefully form the PhD depth oral and PhD thesis.

BlogBurst

I just read in the Metro newspaper today about a new blog syndication service called BlogBurst. According to BlogBurst, "BlogBurst is a syndication service that places your blog on top-tier online destinations. You get visibility, audience reach and traffic, while publishers weave the rich and diverse fabric of the blogosphere into their sites."

You submit your blog URL and BlogBurst will have a look at your blog to see if it is relevant and will send an invitation to include your blog in the BlogBurst network. I wonder if anyone has already done this? It sounds like this is an advertising service, and they have signed up publishers that will place your blog feed on their online site. To see how the service works, BlogBurst describes it here.

High speed internet over wireless broadband

Bell is offering wireless broadband high speed internet with its Sympatico High Speed Unplugged service. This allows you to access the internet anywhere by plugging in the modem to a power outlet and that's it! The broadband incoming to the modem is from the cellular towers, and Bell claims the speed is around 3 Mbps which allows you to use multimedia. Bell's offering is part of the Inukshuk Inc. venture with Rogers to allow wireless broadband access to all of Canada within 3 years. Bell and Rogers will have their own competing service and each own 50% of the venture. More details and news about the venture can be found here.

My take is that this is good in that you can pack the modem and then connect if you're within coverage area and you don't have to worry about providers because if you're in a different coverage area (Wi-Fi hotspot), you have to use that hotspot provider. The bad part is that, you have to carry the modem with you and find a power outlet. If you have Wi-Fi hotspots, you don't have this issue with carrying the equipment, in fact if you have Wi-Fi everywhere like what Toronto Hydro plans to do in downtown Toronto (see my post on this).

What we need to have is multiple internet entry points. That is, if your mobile device or laptop is close to whatever internet connection like cellular 3G, or Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, then connect over that. Or, if someone shares their internet connection, then you can connect to that device. In fact, why not have a peer to peer internet connection, in that you connect to the nearest neighbour who connects to another until it hits one of the neighbours that has a broadband internet connection. Then you don't have to worry about connecting directly to a central internet access point. This is kind of similar to what they have at MIT, where they have antennas on the rooftops of residences and in a peer to peer fashion, they connect to the main internet access tower at the MIT building.

Mesh Conference (aka Web 2.0) in Toronto!

There's a Web 2.0 conference in Toronto called Mesh Conference.



There seems to be a high powered line up of people at the event. It costs $350 for the conference. The schedule is here. It seems pretty expensive, hey I'm a student. The student tickets costs $25 but they're all sold out!

Gadgets galore at CTIA Wireless 2006

The annual wireless and mobile gadgets are happening from April 5 to 7 in Las Vegas. It's the CTIA Wireless 2006 technology conference and show. CNET has full coverage of this event.

Noteworthy product announcements that I've read so far. Remember the Sony Ericsson P900 smartphone? It's now upgraded to the P990 which will include Wi-Fi, a 2 megapixel camera, Symbian 9.1 OS. The keyboard is now integrated into the phone instead of on the flip cover.

NextWeb: Web 2.0 seminar and discussion

There was a Web 2.0 seminar and discussion yesterday sponsored by KMDI and Habitat. More information from the publicity of the event here. I blogged about this directly from the seminar at my research group's blog.

It was interesting, very interactive. One of the things when I talked with one of the panelists afterwards, was that how the Internet and the Web is chaotic and a free for all. What may be required is an Internet or Web messiah or Christ-like figure that unites and advocates something like the Ten Commandments for the Internet. That really got me thinking, because if you think about it, the Internet and Web is experimental and we're making mistakes, we are in a state of Internet sin, if we make the analogy to the Bible. We need a resurrection, a hope, we are lost in the Web, we need a sense of direction and purpose. That works very much with my Catholic Christian faith, and the more I think about it, I very much agree with this.

What do others think? Do we need an Internet and Web Christ-like figure?