China in the Age of the Internet talk

Today, there is a talk in the Munk Centre at U of T called China in the Age of the Internet being presented by Guo Liang from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The use of Internet in China is huge now, with companies like Google and Yahoo setting up shop there. The largest search company so far in China before Google is Sina.com. Most Chinese researchers don't use qualitative or quantitative methods, but now the younger generation is using them. In fact, lots of people use the Internet for means of communication and getting information, which would otherwise be censored outside the Internet. The use of Internet is growing fast in China, right now there are 130 million users in China (however it is difficult to measure because people use Internet cafes). People can get access to the Internet using Internet cafes, which is about 3 RMB/hour in large cities and 1 RMB/hour in small towns which translates to about $1 CDN for 3 hours.

His methodology is based on the World Internet Project and China Internet Project. The China Internet Project is based on a door-to-door household based interview. His conceptual model looks into media use and how it influences internet use and internet access.

In the history of the Internet use in China in 2000, the early adopters were young, male, well educated, and well paid. E-mail was not heavily used, and 41.6% did not use search engines, the Internet was primarily used for games. It's interesting that 76% of Chinese users did not make purchases online. It seems that Internet is more of an entertainment highway as opposed to an information highway in the Western world. According to 2005 survey, Guo says that the #1 online activity is reading news, whereas in the UK it is reading e-mail.

So why it is that online purchasing is not so popular? Because credit cards are not prevalent in China and there isn't much content, and also lack of trust. Not many people use search engines in China.

From the 2005 survey that Guo did, he found that pornography, violence and junk messages should be controlled. One would expect that Internet control in China is political, when in fact it is social control. Another interesting thing is Internet search in China. Google started an office in China about 2 years ago in 2005 but still it is not as good or is used that much compared to Baidu. In fact, none of the US internet companies have been successful in China (Yahoo, Google, eBay, Amazon).

So why is Baidu better than Google? Because Baidu knows Chinese content and Google has not done good marketing in China. Google doesn't understand the Chinese market. Baidu apparently is a good portal and service to search for MP3s. The Chinese internet users also seem to communicate online with their friends and colleagues than face-to-face or physically with family by traditional means. As a result, it seems that building an online community would be more viable and easier than here in Western culture like the US and Canada. Chinese users also are favored to use online comments on news where people can leave comments on news articles and spur discussion. In fact, the top 2 country leaders and the Chinese president learned about SARS from the Internet. Internet can affect public opinion which can then change current regulations to become law.

Lots of people also talk about Internet censorship in China, like how some certain sites are blocked because of the type of content or the keywords used. In China, people have to register their personal ID to the police for the internet (but not all do). You can get a pre-paid Internet card to use the Internet. Even blocked sites can be accessed through proxy servers.

More information on Guo's papers and research can be found from China Internet Project.

On Technorati: China, China internet

Toronto has largest Facebook network

Here's an interesting stat, from this blog entry
(http://ryanfeeley.com/2007/04/21/torontonians-surpass-12-million-mark-on-facebook/),
Toronto has the largest Facebook network, surpassing New York and
London, UK. I would have thought that San Francisco or San Jose (some
place in Silicon Valley) would surely beat us, since they're strongly
into online social networking and Web 2.0, but apparently we're
beating them in Facebook.

So, what does this mean for Toronto, does this mean that we're leading
the pack in social networking technologies and online social
networking? Does this mean, that Toronto lacks face-to-face and
social contact compared to other cities? Or, does this mean that
Toronto forms a more cohesive and larger social network and virtual
community than others because due its multiculturalism. What are some
factors that make this Facebook statistic?

It would be interesting to conduct a study analyzing Facebook in
Toronto and compare that with physical community in Toronto, and see
if due to the social fabric in Toronto, this is how the Facebook
network comes to be.

Alvin

Jaiku vs. Twitter

VS.


Well, it wasn't long that there was going to be another alternative to Twitter. That's what happens when something new comes along, there's going to be a rival to the first thing.

This new alternative is called Jaiku, and according to 606 Tech, this seems to be a force to be reckoned with. Apparently, I just found out that Leo Laporte has switched from Twitter to Jaiku. If you don't know Leo Laporte, he's the tech guy on Call for Help and also This Week In Tech (or otherwise known as TWiT), which I listen to his podcasts on my iPod.

So what's the difference between Jaiku and Twitter? Well according to the 606 Tech article, it is "the ease with which any feed can be added to your account, for your own purposes as well as your friends". This is part of the trend of online social behaviour. Think of Jaiku and Twitter as a blending between instant messaging and blogging. In a way, it's like a mini-blog because there are status updates in chronological order like a blog. In another way, it's like instant messaging because you can post messages to other friends and they can reply back. With Jaiku, you can read and post from your phone.

I haven't played around with Twitter or Jaiku, just for the fact that I too might be addicted!

On Technorati: Jaiku, Twitter

Presenting and volunteering at Pervasive 2007

I will be at the Pervasive 2007 conference which is in Toronto this year. Finally, I've always wanted to go to Pervasive but never had the chance to go to because it was too far away and too expensive. I will be presenting my doctoral research as part of the Doctoral Colloquium which is "The Search for Sense of Virtual Community in Social Hypertext". As well, I will also be a student volunteer at Pervasive, so if you're at Pervasive, you might see me running around the conference, or helping out at different sessions, or even socializing. Pervasive starts May 13 and runs to May 16. I'm really eager to help out and to be at this conference.

The keynote speaker is Adam Greenfield, who is the author of the Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing book. Adam will be talking about "Everyware: Some Social and Ethical Implications of Ubiquitous Computing". That's great, because I met Adam when he gave a talk in San Francisco last summer when I was working at PARC, you can see my blog post about him here.

Pervasive should be a great conference, and I'm looking forward to it!

On Technorati: Pervasive2007, Toronto, Ubiquitous Computing, pervasive computing, doctoral colloquium

Escalating from small screens to large screens: Patrick Baudisch talk

Today is the talk in DCS from Patrick Baudisch from Microsoft Research. His talk is about escalating from small screens to large screens. The abstract of his talk is here.

Abstract

The range of available range of computing devices continues to grow.
One way of classifying these devices is by their display size,
ranging from smart personal objects, such as phones and watches to
wall-size displays. The new devices have the potential to radically
reshape the way we think and work. At this point, however, it is
still an open question how these devices will come together to create
that ubiquitous infrastructure.

In my vision, devices of different screen sizes will be joined into a
single "escalation" hierarchy: Whenever possible, users will use the
most available, least encumbering device. Only when the most
available device fails will users escalate to the next larger and
more powerful device. I envision a future in which many users will
conduct the vast majority of their information access on a device the
size of a mobile phone. On the other hand, users will escalate to
very large and powerful devices, such as multi-display systems or
wall displays, if complex sensemaking activities require them to.

In this talk, I present a framework of visualization and interaction
techniques that combines devices into a single integrated device
hierarchy. Its ultimate goal is to enable users to begin a thought
process on one device and to continue it on another one using a
single unified type of interaction.

Here are my notes that I made from the talk:

He is mentioning how the number of cell phones sold is more than the number of PCs. The mantra is to use the most available device, which is what ubiquitous computing is all about. However, the challenge is porting from a small screen to a large screen. Sometimes you want to see information displayed on a wall display instead on a tiny screen of a cell phone. In fact, many people like software developers have more than one monitor, and there was an article showing the performance benefits of having a larger screen. You want to have a consistent experience moving from a small screen to a large screen.

This type of research in my opinion is called ambient computing. According to Patrick, what we want is to have high focus in the core and low resolution in the periphery vision. Only content physically close to the user can be perceived in full vision, therefore the human is the limiting factor. Patrick showed a demo called drag and pop, which allows users to drag files to folders on the desktop but it will highlight those possible folders, without having the user to physically use the mouse to drag to the actual folder. Therefore, this concept is using focus + context interaction which is to bring the content to the user, let the user interact with it, and send the content back. This especially applies to large displays, because you don't want to have users to be fatigued with their body parts like moving their arms or walking across the display.

This then begs the question, is this going to make users more lazy? Witness the success of the Nintendo Wii because it allows users to move and do some exercise interacting with the games. For small displays, we also want focus + context, but the context is imaginary. For example, he showed a demo of a mapping application on a Compaq iPaq handheld, where arcs are used (called halo rings) to indicate that there are locations of interest for the user.

In summary, human factors cause large screens to fall apart into focus and context, and interaction. By the way, Patrick's talk in PPT form is right here.

On Technorati: Patrick Baudisch, small screens, large screens

The computer version of the Lord's Prayer

If you're Christian, you know about and recite the Lord's Prayer. Well, here is a version of that prayer translated into computer terminology. It's quite hilarious and comes from John Barry in 1993. It goes like this:
(funny that it comes from the ACM Review web site!)

The Computer Person’s Prayer

Our program, who art in Memory,
Hello be thy name.
Thy Operating System come,
thy commands be done,
at the Printer as they are on the Screen.
Give us this day our daily data,
and forgive us our I/O Errors as we forgive those whose Logic Circuits are faulty.
Lead us not into Frustration,
and deliver us from Power Surges.
For thine is the Algorithm,
The Application,
and the Solution,
looping forever and ever.
Return.

On Technorati: computer, Christianity

What's so great about Twitter, maybe this video might be the answer

There is a video by Evan Williams of Twitter, explaining about Twitter, that might explain what is so great about Twitter from the ICWSM 2007 (International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media) conference this year.



According to Evan, Twitter is about a sense of connection and is in a way a kind of blogging tool. Kind of like a mini-blog since each Twitter post is up to 140 characters, like SMS.

On Technorati: Twitter

Zude: Swiss army knife of the social web?

I found this really interesting video about Zude, a web site that reminds me of a mashup. This came from CNET after I watched the video about Stanford displaying some new technology from Stanford University's annual Cool Products Expo, me being the gadget man as I am. Zude is a product that comes from Fifth Generation Systems. It's not out yet, it comes out May 1 of this year. It touts itself as "easiest and most powerful way to express yourself on the web. It is both an enhancement to the myspace's of the world as well as the next generation and ultimate evolution of web interaction -- and so much more", according to their web site.

That's a really tall order, in my opinion. This really just sounds like a mashup, which really is nothing new. I think what they're trying to say is that it is kind of a mashup, but for the end user, they don't have to write any code, whereas right now, you need to know the API of the other system that you want to add to your mashup. I've just registered, so I'll see exactly how this works and if it's something that maybe I can use. Oh and by the way, Zude kinda sounds very close to Zune, Microsoft's MP3 iTunes wannabe player, just thought I wanted to say that.

On Technorati: Zude

DCS talk: Adrien Treuille from U of Washington

Today there is a talk from Adriene Treuille from University of Washington called "New approaches to modeling and control of complex dynamics". Abstract of his talk is below.

Complex phenomena such as animal morphology, human motion, and large
fluid systems challenge even our most sophisticated simulation and
control techniques. My overarching research goal has been to develop
fundamentally new methods to approach such high-dimensional and
nonlinear problems. This talk presents my work solving these problems
across a wide range of phenomena, including a new model-reduction
approach to fluids that is orders-of-magnitude faster than standard
simulation methods and enables interactive high-resolution fluid
simulation for the first time. Another example is a continuum
approach to crowd dynamics which efficiently reproduces empirical
aspects of large crowd behavior that would be difficult or impossible
to achieve with traditional agent models. The talk will also cover
work on several other phenomena including human animation, animal
morphology, and protein folding. Such new algorithmic approaches
advance not only our ability to simulate and control complex systems
but also our understanding of the systems themselves.

Bio: Adrien Treuille is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of
Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington. He
received a M.S. degree in Computer Science from the University of
Washington, and a B.S. degree in Computer Science from Georgetown
University. Adrien's research interests include computer graphics,
optimization, model reduction, control, biomechanics, and recently,
biochemistry.

What seems fascinating about his talk is the modeling of crowds like for example how crowds form in metropolitan cities, and how this can be mathematically simulated which closely resembles what naturally happens. Also, what was really cool was how he modelled and showed a simulation of human motion. Even though graphics is not really my research area, it's just neat to see how graphics works.

My blog gets redirected to Blogarithm broken domain

Yesterday, I wanted to write a post about how for some particular reason, if you were to go to my blog, it would automatically get redirected to Blogarithm.com. But when you go to Blogarithm.com, it would come up with the following error message saying that the Blogarithm domain expired:



At first, I thought it had to do with the post I wrote about Blogarithm, and so the Blogarithm web site got redirected because I might have clicked on the link. Then, I thought maybe I had some spyware on my computer. I tried closing Firefox and opening it, but it still redirected to the Blogarithm error page. Then, I tried using Internet Explorer, and I still got redirected. Failing that, I decided to try going to my blog from my desktop computer and still got redirected. I didn't quite understand last night why I got redirected. Then, I went to my blog today and it was fine. Then I realized that I got redirected because on the sidebar in my blog, I have a embedded script that connects to Blogarithm.com which tells what other blogs that the blog readers have also read.

Anyways, the Blogarithm problem appears to have been fixed now. For a moment, I thought that the entire Blogarithm service was out of service for good! Phew, that was a little scare, but it's ok now.

On Technorati: Blogarithm

CODE: Building the new AGORA - Social formations in the age of NextWeb

Today is a panel discussion about the social formations in the age of NextWeb, which is the second part of the CODE: Building the new Agora event. Last night was Wendy Chun's lecture on Open-imagined networks which I blogged about yesterday. It's nice to see a lot of people at this event to discuss about Web 2.0 and social computing. One of the panels is a group from BarCamp Toronto. Some of the representatives from TorCamp here today are Mark Kuznicki and David Crowe. It's a tight night group here, where everybody is sitting in a circle. Right now, everybody is giving a blurb about themselves.

Now, David Crowe is talking about what BarCamp is about, BarCamp is about the connections between people, it is called an "unconference" where there is no set schedule. It's about making connections in a shared environment. You can't build community, community just forms around shared ideas, around connections and events. It's about how to provide tools and systems to people. So the question is about whether community is an organization. The community is built from the bottom and up and is run by individuals not a group of people, so any individual can step up to the plate and contribute to the community. The tools are making the implicit networks become explicit. The community is open, meaning anyone can enter. BarCamp was a reaction to invite-only conferences. One of the things that I brought about is how BarCamp is now applying their expertise in technology to solve society's problems. TransitCamp was created in Toronto by BarCamp in reaction to tackling the TTC's problems in Toronto. What we have in Toronto is closed technologists, who don't really communicate with each other and share, like in Silicon Valley, therefore this is what BarCamp arose from to enable more collaboration and openness. BarCamp can be thought of as a disruptive way of conferences, similar to disruptive technologies (like peer-to-peer) compared to mainstream technologies (like client/server).

The second group is Upgrade which is a group of people that deal with network media and artists and present the work of media artists. There are now 26 nodes of Upgrade worldwide. I've never heard of Upgrade before until today. There really is no structure behind Upgrade, it is broad fusing between technology and the arts like electronic music, arts made with computers. Each particular node is local, but are global.

One of the panel speakers is talking about the Mozilla community and he is a college professor teaching open-source software. And how he is mentoring students as to which people to talk to for writing code, so writing software is about fostering relationships, it's all about social networks. Most software developers meet on IRC where they can talk and listen, but the problem with IRC is that you can't really listen.

The second panel discussion is on Clearing, which is in reaction to a recognition of scarcity of time, a desire to grow and manage identity, and build community. The goals of Clearing are similar to BarCamp, but is like a village. It is being moderated by Jesse Hirsch of Open Flows. The group is organized and communicates through a wiki. There are no lurkers in this group to help facilitate contribution from among everyone in the group. The group arose in response to dissatisfaction with conversations around Web 2.0. There is this group called Juice (I think that's how it is spelled) which was designed to gather a diverse group of people that would never get together, and try to form some interest. There is an intentionality of bringing the periphery to the center, as opposed to starting from a group of people in the center (the A-list) and have other people connect from the center. So, this is kind of like a bottom-up approach. This is quite interesting because when in my research, I was trying to build community around the independent music blog, it was quite difficult, because there was that pressure to provide compelling content and something to say, that would make people go to the blog and start commenting and create conversations as a result of it.

Anyways, very interesting stuff. I wonder if there will be a blog or some kind of communication channel to continue what was discussed today?

On Technorati: CODE-Agora

CODE lecture: Wendy Chun on Open Source Imagined Networks

Tonight, there is a lecture part of CODE which is a follow-up to NextWeb, which I attended about Web 2.0 technologies. What is CODE? This comes from the Project Open Source|Open Access initiative at KMDI.

CODE: Project Open Source|Open Access at the Knowledge Media Design Institute brings you Building the New Agora, an exploration of current perspectives on the contemporary perception of hardware/software and investigates how open source/open access alters our approaches to professional and social networks. Less than five years ago the cultural theorist Lev Manovich claimed that while the 1990s were all about the virtual, the next decade might be about physical space and interactions, albeit augmented by electronic information.

Tonight's lecture is by Wendy Chun of Brown University. This is the abstract of her talk.

The motivation behind the open source software movement has often been discussed in terms of a "gift economy" or pleasure ("just for the fun of it"). Drawing from Benedict Anderson's analysis of the nation as an "imagined community," Chun will argue for the open source movement and other glocal phenomena as "imagined networks." In doing so, she does not argue for the distributed network as the model for our social interactions, bureaucratic organizations, or even our technologies, but rather asks: what needs to be in place for us to understand ourselves and our technologies as networked? How do social and technological abstractions coincide, diverge and inform each other? and how are these abstractions experienced, sensed, felt?

Wendy is looking at the social phenomenon of the open source movement. She is working on this initiative called "open source imagined networks" and code building the new agora. So, I've never really heard of code being called "building a new agora". According to Wendy, it's about involving users and machines in constant and insecure interchanges. Open and public is not synonymous. Building the new agora also raises other questions, agora is not just a public space or marketplace, it is an assembly, this reminds me of the bazaar and cathedral analogy that Richard Stallman talks about when discussing open source software.

Software is a form of enlightenment, the base layer or logic of new media. According to Lev Manovich, new media needs to look to computer science to characterize media that become programmable. Yeah, this shows that computer science permeates society! The essence of software is now becoming philosophical and psychological. What does software do? OED defines software as the programs and procedures required to enable a computer to perform a specific task, as opposed to the physical components of the system. Software blurs the difference, taking the process in time into process in space, turning words into action.

She is now talking about how goto statements complicates the process into command, gotos make it difficult to make the source program to act as a legible source. Gotos also make for "spaghetti code" which every programmer learns when first coding (at least if you're using a programming language that uses gotos like BASIC). So what is code? Code is the first language that actually does what it says - it is a machine for converting meaning into action. Code is the only language that is executable. Source code only becomes source after the fact, so really source is "re-source". According to Wendy, hardware does not require software, for example we can implement conditional branching using gates.

To know the code, is to know that the inside is connected to the outside. This is the first time I've heard the philosophical nature of software, the lecture sounds like one of those philosophy lectures. She is now talking about social interactions with networks. Facebook is social networking software, part of Web 2.0. According to her, Web 2.0 is an imagined network. Facebook provides the interactions for students online. With social network software, we are trying to create cognitive maps.

The top 5 most wanted gadgets

Being GadgetMan, I'm always looking at and reading about the latest gadgets. At CNET, they've released the top 5 most wanted gadgets in their CNET video. What are they? You'll have to watch to find out.

On Technorati: gadgets

Big laptop at Union Station

Yesterday morning, I saw a huge laptop powered with the Intel Core Duo processor as advertisement in the center of Union Station on my way to school. So, naturally, I took a picture on my camera cell phone



I went near the laptop and touched it, but the keys were not real, it was just flat.
This morning, the laptop wasn't there anymore.

On Technorati: intel, Union Station, GO train, laptop

OK, what is so great about Twitter?

I've heard about this new thing called Twitter which allows you to write short posts of what you're doing so that others who subscribe to you, can message you back, and you can show the things you are doing publicly. Kind of like what Facebook does when you login, you can see the status of people and what they are doing.

It seems that everyone is Twittering, Leo Laporte, who is the host of This Week in Tech, which I listen to the podcasts, Father Roderick from the Daily Breakfast, AccordionGuy (Joey DeVilla), it seems everyone is getting into Twitter. But what is so good about Twitter? I just see as a simple chat/blog, it's nothing really new, and just see it as another distraction. What's the value of using Twitter? I suppose if I want to let people know what I am doing or what I did, instead of writing it on a blog where everyone would read it, I can only have a network of my friends see it, rather than messaging, where I have to have everyone connect to MSN.

Can someone explain to me what exactly is Twitter and how it differs than other technologies that we have? What's the value with Twitter?

On Technorati: Twitter

Passed the PhD research proposal!

I just completed my PhD research proposal meeting today and passed. Next step is the thesis proposal which will be in September!

Google TiSP

Google just announced a new product on April 1, 2007 called the Google TiSP. It's a new in-home wireless broadband service.

What will Google think of next?

On Technorati: Google TiSP

Why you shouldn't totally trust Google Maps for trips

Let's say you want to go on a trip from Toronto to London, UK (not London, Ontario), and you type this in Google Maps. The result will seem surprising.



Click the map above to see what Google Maps gives you as the directions. Pay attention to step #26.

Thanks to TorCamp for providing this information. At first, I thought it was an April Fools Day joke, but apparently it's legit.

On Technorati: Google Maps, Toronto to London, TorCamp