Happy New Year to all my friends and family in Canada, it's already 2009 here in Beijing and in the East!

Reflections on 2008 and Happy New Year!

It's that time of the year. Time to reflect on the year that's about to be passed and look towards the new year. This is what I said for New Year's last year. So what were the most memorable moments in 2008? Personally for me, this year really was a year of ups and downs, but I'm glad to say the year is going to end up on a high note. First of all, the new year started for me and wife by spending the New Year in Hong Kong with my cousins at Time's Square in Causeway Bay. Then afterwards we had our wedding banquet for my wife's family and friends in Guangzhou. It has been a while since I spent my new year's away from home in Toronto.

Then, it was job search time so I was very busy in January throughout April with job interviews for faculty and industry research positions. In January, Bill Gates gave his last keynote speech at CES, so this was memorable for the tech industry. On January 17, Apple released the world's thinnest laptop, the MacBook Air. My father was admitted to a senior nursing home towards the end of December last year, so it was a tough time for me and my family to see my father deteriorate in his health (he had Alzheimers disease, Parkinson's disease and diabetes). Then on March 19, the inevitable happened which shocked our entire family, my father passed away. This was just so sudden that it was surreal, I couldn't believe he was gone. And I had to go to a job interview right after, which made it really difficult. However, I felt my father's spirit in me and with God, family and friends, they all helped me guide through that difficult time.

On the upside, I passed my PhD departmental exam on April 24 which was a significant milestone for me on road to completion of my PhD. In May, there was the Mesh conference in Toronto on social media and Web 2.0 which was really great and met lots of cool people in the industry and learned about what new technologies are out there. Towards the end of May, DGP turned 40 years old, the lab at U of T that started making an impact in graphics and video in the industry and academia.

Then Apple splashed up again with their new iPhone 3G in June which was probably the tech highlight of the year, and also the last time that Steve Jobs will give a keynote. Bill Gates had his last day at Microsoft on June 27 which was a momentous event in the computer industry. My conference trip report from Hypertext 2007 conference was published in the ACM SIGWEB newsletter in July.

The next great moment of this year for me was my acceptance of my full time research job at Nokia Research Center in Beijing. My wife and I moved on July 26 and this was a big change for me but the next chapter in my life. I had the wonderful opportunity to attend several events at the Beijing 2008 Olympics of which the most memorable was getting to be at the Bird's Nest and Water Cube. I even got the chance to watch the Olympic torch relay for the first time in my life under scorching heat (sure I got a headache but it was worth it!)

In September, Google announced their new browser to add to the browser wars, Google Chrome. Another great joyous moment in 2008 was on September 29 when my wife and I celebrated our one year wedding anniversary which was so special to us. Then another great moment happened at my work at Nokia Research Center, I was accepted to give a talk in Helsinki, Finland about my research at Nokia Research Center Beijing in Mobile Web 2.0. It was my first time to Finland and I had a great time meeting Nokia people! My paper in the New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia journal was also published in October, which was a great achievement for me and my PhD research.

Then the ultimate event on November 3, which was 5 years in the making, I became a doctor! I passed my PhD defense! A very momentous and joyous event in my PhD and life for sure. Another exciting tech event was at Nokia World when Nokia announced their new mobile phone which competes with iPhone and ups the bar for mobile social networking, the N97. On December 8, the computer industry celebrated the 40th anniversary of the invention of the mouse publicly shown by Doug Englebart. Also in December, Nokia Research Center Beijing turned 10 years and I was glad to be a part of the celebration.

And so now it is December 31, 2008. As you can see a lot of things have happened this year, which I'm so glad I made a record on my blog. I've certainly been blessed by God for this year and I look forward to the new year 2009. As this year comes to a close, I wish everyone a Happy New Year and may 2009 give you peace, happiness, blessings, and success! Like the video says, Happy New Year!


Happy New Year 2009

It's New Year's Eve here in Beijing, and it will be 2009 very soon. Wish everyone a happy new year, stay safe and sober!

Sixth day of Christmas, only 2 more days till the New Year! How are you celebrating New Year's Eve?

Lost my Wii tennis pro status tonight but quickly gained it back!

fifth day of Christmas, back to work, only 3 more days until the new year!

fourth day of Christmas, celebration of the Holy Family

finished singing christmas songs for the choir, now listening to other performances

waiting for our turn to sing Christmas carols at xuanwumen nan tang catholic church

On the 3rd day of Christmas my true love sent to me, three french hens, two turtle doves, and a partridge in a pear tree

Friend View and my phone - so happy together

First of all, I hope you all had a great Christmas with family. I know I certainly did with my wife in our first Christmas here in Beijing since our move from Toronto.

I tried to upload version 0.830 of Nokia Friend View on my phone a couple of days ago, but for some strange reason, I kept getting "Certificate error, please contact the vendor". As cryptic as that error message sounds, I checked my certificates that Friend View would use and using my engineering background, tried to reverse engineer from which certificate was causing the problem. After deciding not tinkering with removing the certificates with the risk of making other software on my phone unusable (as is like with Windows machines), I decided to remove Friend View and revert back to the one that did work which was version 0.823. But, alas, I got the same error and couldn't install. Same for Nokia Image Exchange.

All I wanted for Christmas was having my Friend View back, because I couldn't FV on my phone and had to use the web. But seriously, it was probably good to have that break since I'm beginning to be addicted to FV on the phone.

Well, I'm glad to say that my phone and I are back to normal with FV reinstalled after I decided to reinstall my phone by flashing it. Thank you Nokia PC Suite for backing up all my data, all I had to do was restore after installing Friend View and Image Exchange, and it didn't take that long (maybe 10 minutes) to do the restore and I had all my applications and data back to normal. Boy, I wish it was that easy with reinstalling Windows on my PC.

So all is well in Friend View land for me and me and my phone are now happy. Onto enjoying the rest of the Christmas holidays, and hope you are also having a great Christmas holidays too!

Great Christmas Day yesterday in Beijing and Christmas Day mass

Merry Christmas! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Jesus Christ is born today! A son is born to save the world!

Merry Christmas everyone! Joyeux Noel! Felix Navidad! Sheng Dan Kuai Le! 圣 诞快乐!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone

I'd just like to wish everyone and readers to my blog a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! May the new year bring us joy, more open standards and integration with social media and social networks, new gadgets (like the Nokia N97), new technologies, peace, safety, and security around the world.



Even though we all love our tech gadgets and love to blog, FriendFeed, Twitter, Facebook, Jaiku, Flickr, etc., we all need to remember what is most important in life. And that is God, our family and loved ones. So, spend time with them, tell them how much you love them and enjoy the holidays. Let's remember the true meaning of Christmas, if you haven't read the book The Purpose of Christmas by Rick Warren (author of The Purpose-Driven Life), I'd strongly recommend you to read it.



For some Christmas humour, check out this song and video.



God bless everyone for a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

圣诞快乐！

Joyeux Noel!

Felix Navidad!

Listening to Christmas music on Last.fm using "Christmas" as the tag

Christmas eve in Beijing, wish everyone a blessed and merry Christmas! God bless the world!

Finishing up final touches to the PhD thesis before giving to my PhD supervisory changes committee

2 more days before Christmas, Merry Christmas everyone!

Winter Solstice, 3 more days until Christmas!

Just finished watching Randy Pausch's The Last Lecture online at http://ping.fm/EKRqi

Just finished decorating the Christmas tree with my wife and spraying snow for the decorations on the window!

Christmas tree just arrived, time to decorate the tree tonight

great workout now back to work

One week left until Christmas!

Just finished Chinese homework and studying for tomorrow's Chinese lesson! Wo ming tian xue zhongwen

Back at work after a great weekend going out for Christmas shopping in Beijing with my wife

at xidan joy city shopping mall after great christmas lunch with church friends

at xuanwumen nan tang catholic church for third week of advent

Fourth Sunday of Advent, Christmas lunch today! Christmas is almost here!

In the office, need to finish up work before the weekend. Another week is almost done?

can't believe it is almost end of Thursday already, it seems like Friday today for some reason

40th anniversary of computer mouse and hypertext

I've just heard that this day in 1968 was the first public debut of the computer mouse, hypertext, object addressing, dynamic file linking, and shared collaboration technologies by Douglas Engelbart from his famous SRI demo (otherwise known as "Mother of all Demos"). These technologies have changed the world forever and started the computer industry and computer research today as we know it. Thank you Doug and you can see the original demo post and videos here.

On Technorati: mouse, Mother of All Demos, hypertext, SRI, DougEngelbart

at xuanwumen catholic church for second sunday of advent mass

Plan for the weekend, finish up all the changes in the thesis, every single one!

Cold cold morning at work in Beijing, -9 degrees Celsius. Just like in Toronto except probably not this cold right now.

I just installed Google Friend Connect on my blog so come start connecting to me! http://ping.fm/rfgON

At work now, in a research proposal meeting

Nokia completes its acquisition of Symbian: http://ping.fm/ZleVl

Working on finishing up changes to PhD thesis

The genie is outside of the bottle: Nokia N97

So everybody already knows by now that the new stunning, QWERTY keyboard, touch screen, iPhone competitor is out from Nokia at Nokia World. It is the N97 and it looks really nice. Wow it has 32 GB of onboard memory! My, that's like a server on a phone! It expands till 48 GB if you add a microSD card, just simply amazing! This phone was definitely made for video. It does 16 X 9 resolution. Promo video of the N97 phone is shown below.










Here's a demonstration of one of the videos of the N97 in action at the NYC flagship store:







Robert Scoble (from FastCompany) has a blog post about the N97 compared to the iPhone and his viewpoints which he says has many features better than the iPhone, especially video.




Ah, ooh, and there is mention of doing Facebook on the phone as well. So, how will the N97 fare with consumers compared to iPhone, well only time will tell.



Many people are saying how they want to retire their N95 or other phones to get the N97. Seeing that the price is around $600 US starting, it's certainly expensive for the average consumer but I can see where business people would want to get it.



Just imagine the possibilities you could use this phone for Mobile Web 2.0 and mobile social networking!

On Technorati: Nokia N97, Nokia World 2008

The new Nokia N97 phone, the ultimate phone? New Nokia N97 phone is here:
http://ping.fm/7BWF3

At work now, it's going to be a busy December! Only 4 more weeks until Christmas!

Just finished reading The Last Lecture book, it was really good, I enjoyed reading it. Lots of life lessons to learn from Randy Pausch

At work, TGIF, happy Thanksgiving to the American people!

great day of doing of research now need to finish changes to thesis

happy birthday to my sister!

Making changes to the PhD thesis tonight, almost finished point 6 out of 12 points to address.

Reading The Last Lecture by Prof. Randy Pausch who died this past July, a great book about life in general

Mobile Mondays Beijing event

Right now I'm in the meeting at Mobile Mondays Beijing. This event was started by Benjamin Joffe of PlusStar. The meeting tonight is about foreign firms in China. The speakers for this meeting are Lin Song from Opera China, David Sullivan from Alliance Development Group, Karl J. Weaver from Gemalto China, Dan Wong from Nokia China and Allen Yang from LemonQuest China. There is such a great turnout here at the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business, around at least 100 people! The speakers are now talking about why they entered into the Chinese market.

Lin Song is talking how Opera started as a narrow facility and then how it expanded in the mobile browser market. Allen Wong says their main reason to come to China was to bring research and development together, produce in China, and then market abroad. LemonQuest does development of mobile games. Karl J. Weaver is now saying why Gemalto came to China because it makes sense to come to the largest market in the world. In fact, I did not know that Gemalto was the original developer of the SIM card that is used in GSM mobile phones. It makes sense to go to China to go to the largest subscriber base. David Sullivan is now explaining that it is important to choose your partners, working with Huawei and ZTE, it's having your engineers work with others. He says that you become "customers of your partners". You must maintain speed and the technology roadmap, you need to have offense to protect your defense, in football speak.

Benjamin is now talking to Dan Wong, VP of Software and Services of Nokia China about how Nokia is getting into the services area. IPR for services and software is more complex, one of the important things is how to protect IPR for your business, one way to do this is to look at China. In China, it is easy to copy products, as people are familiar with. China created free software but charge for time to connect with the server, that is the business model that works, according to Dan. The deeper question is can you develop a business model that is IPR proof, it is broader challenge for developing services globally. Nokia's vision is that OVI provides a very differentiated experiences via just the hardware. According to Karl Weaver, you cannot stop IP, you cannot stop the flow of technology, there are strategies that you can compete. According to David Sullivan, a lot of foreign companies use the same model to start up shop in China, but it doesn't work. Services are becoming very important and critical in China, if you get the service model right then you can protect yourself. You need to keep staying ahead.

How do the foreign companies keep staying ahead, is the next question addressed by Benjamin. According to David Sullivan, it is important to identify the ecosystem and then identify the suppliers, there is a need to be much more creative. From Lin Song of Opera, you need to have a great product and get constant feedback from users.

Third question: What kind of difficulties have you found in growing the business in China?

Karl J. Weaver: Chinese companies treat information as secret, which is frustrating in trying to grow the business in China.

Allen Yang: Foreign companies can never act local when they are global, they say act global stay local.

David Sullivan: A lot of companies go into China and see the level of investment needed, and decide not to come. The challenge is localization, you need to find the Chinese partners and the language. The challenge is also talking with headquarters.

Dan Wong: The biggest challenge is market challenge, the biggest market in the world. In China, there are 2000 models, the level of competition is at an entire new level from the regulatory environment, the unique standards, and the market structure. The biggest challenge is the combination of all those things.

According to David Sullivan, there are companies that are starting to develop with the China market first and then bring it globally, that have 95% of the development work in China. From a consumer demand, Nokia's Dan Wong says want to compete in the services arena in a different way, it is not to replicate this. For mobile music, people in China will pay for downloading music, Dan says we are seeing pockets of opportunity.

Question: What are some failures and success stories with your companies?

Lin Song: There is an importance of finding the right people, it is not that they are not competent, it is the element of trust.

David Sullivan: A lot of companies project their experiences but have no idea what is going on, which results in failure. when companies find the right technology fit and right partner, and commit to that localization, then there is a lot of opportunity for success.

In the end, a great talk and discussion, I've never been to an event where there was so many people listening to the speakers, and there is internet access, and power where my seat is! Now, it's time to network and eat a light buffet!

i'm at mobile mondays beijing here, lots of people!

heading to mobile mondays beijing meeting now

heading into work, excited for going to my first mobile monday beijing meeting tonight!

i've never thought i had to enter my pin # almost 100 times at the bank!

University of Toronto CS department featured in ByteClub

The University of Toronto Computer Science department of which where my PhD comes from, is featured in this video from Byte Club which is a Toronto-based web show featuring technology companies and their culture:



It's a great show, showing the cool things in Computer Science happening in University of Toronto and what the students are doing. Who said Computer Science was just for geeks?

On Technorati: UniversityOfToronto, ComputerScience, ByteClub

back at work after 2 days at home with stomach flu

heading into work on a chilly morning in beijing

I'm trying out GLUE, a Firefox plugin to link your social networks with what you browse on the web (http://ping.fm/j8njC)

back in beijing from tianjin

at a tianjin old city shopping place

back at the hotel for the night

taking a taxi around tianjin

visiting china house in tianjin

arrived in tianjin

sitting on the train now to go to tianjin, its a fast train to get there in 30 min

heading to tianjin

heading to tianjin

I'm giving a talk still now

Updating my status using ping.fm

I'm trying out this new service called Ping.fm for posting to multiple social networks like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and FriendFeed. This allows you to avoid having to go to the individual social networking site in order to write your message. It's quite nice, and they also have a feature to post to Blogger which I'm doing right now.

Great day of brainstorming and discussions at the lab retreat, it's great to do research!

It's now Dr. GadgetMan

Yes, that's right, you heard me. I successfully defended my PhD today with just minor changes. Finally, after 5 long, hard, blood and sweat years, I've been able to arrive at this milestone in my life. Thanks to everyone my family and my committee for being there and supporting me. And especially thanks God for providing me the strength to do the PhD, God is so awesome. Also, my wife who has always supported me in everything I do, thanks honey!

Finishing the final preparations for my PhD defense

I'm right now finishing up my preparations and rehearsal of my talk for my PhD defense tomorrow at 10 am. I hope everything goes well. Please pray for me in your prayers tonight and tomorrow, and once I know the result of my defense I will let you all know on this blog, Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, Plaxo, MSN, Google Talk and all my other social networks.

Heading back to Toronto today

Yes, that's right. I'm just doing the last stuff for packing back to Toronto and then preparing for my PhD defense on Monday! I'm so ecstatic, so please pray for me to have a safe trip back to Toronto, and a successful defense for Monday!

PhD defense in 1 week!

It's 1 week left and counting until I go back to Toronto to do my PhD defense! Boy does time fly fast. I'm busy now doing the preparation for my defense. I've been waiting for this moment for 5 years and finally I'm at the final stage. Please pray for me that it will be a successful defense, I've gone through a lot the past 5 years (you can probably read from my blog). Thanks to my loving parents for supporting me in this journey and also my especially loving wife who has supported me in my PhD ever since we first met when I started my PhD, and continues to support me in our move to Beijing and my work at Nokia Research Center. She has been the rock upon which I have been able to lay upon through all the challenges and tribulations.

Even though my dad is not here with me (as he passed away in March), I know that he is proud of me as I'm following in his footsteps of getting a PhD. Dad, watch over me and provide me the strength in my defense.

I'll let you know the outcome of my PhD defense on November 3.

Survey of how scientists use computers

I'm forwarding this on behalf of a professor at the University of Toronto (Prof. Greg Wilson) who is doing research on how scientists use computers through a survey. See below and participate!

Computers are as important to modern scientists as test tubes,
but we know surprisingly little about how scientists develop
and use software in their research. To find out, the University
of Toronto, Simula Research Laboratory, and the National Research
Council of Canada have launched an online survey in conjunction
with "American Scientist" magazine. If you have 20 minutes to take
part, please go to:

http://softwareresearch.ca/seg/SCS/scientific-computing-survey.html

Thanks in advance for your help!

Jo Hannay (Simula Research Laboratory)
Hans Petter Langtangen (Simula Research Laboratory)
Dietmar Pfahl (Simula Research Laboratory)
Janice Singer (National Research Council of Canada)
Greg Wilson (University of Toronto)

My paper published in New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia and preparing for PhD defense

First of all, apologies for not writing to my blog for a while, I've been extremely busy finishing off the thesis, doing work for Nokia Research Center Beijing, and travelling. I just came back from a business trip last week to Helsinki, Finland talking about my research for Nokia about Web 2.0 and social networks.

Anyways, I have great news to say that my paper on Automatic detection of cohesive subgroups within social hypertext: A heuristic approach has been published in the New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia, a top-tiered journal for hypertext. I'm so ecstatic!

I'm currently busy now preparing for my PhD defense which happens in about 2 weeks. I can't believe that I'm almost towards the end of the PhD after about 5 roller-coaster years. It is just a great feeling to know that all these 5 years were all worth it, for my career. Then, everyone of you call me Dr. GadgetMan!

PhD thesis has been sent!

My PhD thesis has finally been done and sent,whew! All those late nights for the past couple of weeks. Now, I just have to prepare for my defense which is on November 3. Meanwhile, it's Chinese national holiday for this week so I've been postponing this and my wife and I's one year wedding anniversary until I finished sending the thesis. I can now take a break and relax for the rest of this week!

To all those in China, have a happy, safe, and relaxing holidays! Guo xing jie kuai le (yes, I'm practicing my Mandarin, it's been actually much better since 2 months ago!)

One year wedding anniversary

Today is our one year wedding anniversary for my wife and I. Can't believe that it's been one year already. But it's been a great year, and I continue to be so blessed with her. She is so supportive of me in my move to Beijing to start my job here at Nokia Research Center. I'm in the midst of finishing sending my PhD thesis to my committee members (really busy now) but it will be sent soon. Then I can relax and we can celebrate our one year wedding anniversary.

I can still remember our wedding last year, getting up, going to pick her up at the hotel, giving tea to my parents and family, going to the church, walking down the aisle and seeing her in that beautiful wedding dress. Then saying "I do", going to the park, and then the reception. If I had to do it all again, I would and I would not change a thing.

All I can say is thanks God for everything that we have, and continue to bless our marriage.

Social networking researcher danah boyd joining Microsoft Research

Just read this from the SOCNET mailing list which was sent by Barry Wellman. danah boyd (yes the lower case spelling is intentional), who is known for studies on Friendster and MySpace, and studying the youth in using these social networking services and acting as advisor to many companies and in politics, is going to join Microsoft Research in Boston in January 2009. danah wrote up about this on her own blog, Zephoria.

I think this is great for her and for Microsoft. She mentions how she will be directing her own research and how MSR is a great fit for her after she met with the MSR folks. Congratulations danah and keep us posted with your research.

And yes, I understand about the dissertation because I'm also in the same boat with finishing up the changes so I'll be ready for the defense.

OneWebDay

Did you know that September 22 is OneWebDay, I didn't know until I read the Nokia Conversations post (thanks Charlie from Nokia Conversations for this post). It's a day to promote one web, one world, one dream. Sounds similar to what the WWW 2008 conference's motto was from Beijing. I think that's great, we use the web on a daily basis, and we should promote a vision to have one Web with unifying goals. What will this web look like? Let's help to drive this vision!

Anyways, promote OneWebDay by joining the Facebook group!

Web 2.0 Expo NY presentations and videos

Even though I did not attend Web 2.0 Expo in NY, but my work colleague did, it's nice that there are videos and presentations already on the Net on this. There are videos from Blip.TV and presentation slides from O'Reilly (which sponsored and hosted the Web 2.0 Expo conference).

The most notable keynote I watched was that from Tim O'Reilly, the founder of O'Reilly Media and the person who coined Web 2.0, on Enterprise Radar. Tim was talking about how the Web meets the World, in that the valuable contributions and impact on Web 2.0 is not creating a gaming application for Facebook but using Web 2.0 technologies to help the world like for example in global warming, for helping detect weather storms and informing people, etc. Tim gave a challenge to users out there to make something that is useful for the world that is life changing. I think that is good advice.



Another video I saw was of Jay Adelson from Digg talking about the growth of collaborative filters. There wasn't really anything new here I found.



On Technorati: Web2.0ExpoNY

Web 2.0 Expo comes to New York

The Web 2.0 Expo, which is the Web 2.0 conference for industry, just started in New York yesterday and is being held September 16 to 19. A colleague from my research group at Nokia Research in Beijing is there right now providing us with updates from the conference. I'd be interested to hear from the attendees how they feel about the conference and the relevant keynotes, presentations and tutorials about how Web 2.0 is being used in the enterprise and how developers are creating Web 2.0 applications for mobile devices.

I've attended a Web 2.0 conference before in Toronto called Mesh, just before I moved to Beijing. I blogged about Mesh on my personal blog, as well as Twittered and Facebooked my updates. Apparently, Ignite NYC was happening before Web 2.0 Expo. For those who don't know Ignite, Ignite is an event where people are given just 5 minutes to talk about their product or idea and pitch it to the audience. It seems that there was a cupcake contest in which there were buttons on the iPhone in the form of cupcakes, see below.

There appears to be lots of energy online about the Web 2.0 Expo in NY as can be seen from joining the Twitter feed, the blog, as well as the photos.

If you're interested in Web 2.0 or are working in Web 2.0, keep track of this conference. It looks like the first day just finished the workshops and tomorrow starts the keynotes, sessions and exhibition hall. In relation to Nokia, it seems like S60 is a sponsor of this event so it will be interesting to see the mobile development for Web 2.0 on S60 devices.

Looking forward to hearing about the keynotes and the other sessions and demos in the following days.

On Technorati: Web20ExpoNY, Web 2.0

Google Chrome

I'm trying out the new Google Chrome browser that Google has created. You may ask yourself why do we need another browser? Google created this video just to answer that question.



According to this video, Google has redesigned the browser to take advantage of the media, the richness and the speed that users require for accessing the internet, as well as security and personalization. Do we need another browser? Well, before we used to have Netscape and Microsoft Internet Explorer. We now have Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, Apple's Safari, and now Google Chrome. It always doesn't hurt to have more competitors, it can only help consumers. And it seems that Google Chrome is much faster in loading pages than the other browsers I've been using.

Google Chrome is open source and can be downloaded here. There's also an interesting comic book about Google Chrome as well. As with all new software, Google Chrome has not escaped bugs, there are some early security vulnerabilities as indicated in PC World magazine.

In my opinion, what will make Google Chrome a success is its openness to developers wanting to write plugins for this browser. I see many developers and techies flaunting to try new things, but what about the average joe user? They are already happy and know how to use Mozilla Firefox or Internet Explorer, what will be the compelling reason for them to change? And I don't know if Google Chrome will support ActiveX because many web sites use ActiveX plugins like Microsoft's download sites and Windows Update. The only time I use Internet Explorer is to have to use Windows Update to check my computer for the latest updates since it won't work with Firefox.

What do people think? Are people using the Google Chrome browser, what are your experiences with it? Is it good that Google is creating another browser, are they dominating the web with their presence, is this part of the Google empire?

On Technorati: Google Chrome

Added FriendFeed to my growing list of social network tools

I'm looking at FriendFeed and it seems great where it aggregates all my social network information and Mobile Web 2.0 services into one feed (like Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, StumbleUpon, delicious, etc.). I've just added the FriendFeed widget to my blog so check it out! I hate having to go to all the different social networking and Mobile Web 2.0 sites to add updates to my blog, this just aggregates it in one place. You can subscribe to my FriendFeed here.

On Technorati: FriendFeed, social networking, Web 2.0

Technology summary for August 28, 2008

Today, I'm going to start a new thing, writing a technology summary of the news that I have read for that day and writing my own comments. Hopefully, it will be easier to read than having to post so many posts a day and inundating people reading my blog.

The first news to share is that of Palm. People know that I have a Palm Zire 71 and I haven't upgraded it. It's actually not in use right now since I have found out that the Nokia N82 is serving my needs quite well for now. It seems that Palm is coming out with the Palm Treo Pro, and by the looks of it, it's getting some good reviews and looks really sleek.



It's been a while since Palm came out with a good device, Palm has lost its PDA and smartphone marketshare to Apple's iPhone, RIM and Windows Mobile. This shows that Palm is still not dead yet. In fact, in this article, Palm has a plan to come back into the game. They just hired Jon Rubinstein to help them out with their design and save Palm. Jon Rubinstein apparently is noted in the industry, he helped Apple get back on its feet with the hit iMac and iPod designs. In fact, Jon has hired a bunch of other employees previously working at Apple, to reign the ships at Palm. I think this is really good news for Palm. And Palm is working on their next generation OS, Palm OS 2.0 which features stuff from BeOS that Palm bought a couple of years ago. Let's see how this goes, having many competitors boosts great value for customers.



The second news is that an Android phone maybe coming to market this year. Android is the software from Google for creating a mobile phone OS that is open source. There has been talk about Android for a while now, but no actual phones that are powered by Android. There are rumours that T-Mobile in the US is going to come out with an Android phone called the HTC Dream later this year. More details can be found here. Latest news that I've found is that the date for launch of the HTC Dream is October 13. I think this will spur great innovation and customer choice in making the phone become more open source and allowing developers to develop easily for phones as they can now for PCs. I can see great momentum and excitement in the mobile arena. Can't wait to see how the Android phone will look like. I wonder how many will buy the Android phone and how the numbers will compare to Apple's first launch of the iPhone.



Third bit of news is that Japan is planning to open up their technology for wallet phones that uses a computer chip called FeliCa for allowing you to pay for goods using a reader installed at cash terminals. I think it uses NFC communications. I've been waiting for a eWallet like this, I carry so many cards (as I'm sure many of you do as well) it would be nice to loosen my pants (not physically of course!). And how many times you can't find the right credit card or loyalty card because you left it at home!

Anyways, this sounds something similar to RF tags like Esso's SpeedPass or the Dexit tag which I've tried back in Canada. I would love this on my phone. Of course, one thing to make note of is that if I were to lose my phone, there needs to be an option where others wouldn't be able to access my credentials. Maybe something where the phone automatically erases all the information when an attacker tries to get in or the phone explodes. Kind of like a sci-fi scene.

Went to Bird's Nest and Water Cube!

I had the wonderful privilege last week to go watch the Olympic athletics events at the National Olympic Stadium aka Bird's Nest. I also was able to see the Water Cube from outside (didn't get tickets for inside). The views of both are breathtaking. You can see the photos here on Ovi:



Beijing has really put on a spectacular show for the Olympics to the world and it is going to be difficult for London in 2012 to top this off.

Also, I've updated photos from the Beijing Food channel and Around Beijing channel where I went to see the Temple of Heaven and Wangfujing.

Around Beijing:



Beijing Food:



Enjoy!

On Technorati: Beijing Olympics

Toronto TTC may finally be with the rest of the world

I just read this post from BlogTO today about how the Toronto Transit Commission will be ordering new TTC subways and transforming their stations with a system that actually lights up and announces the current station and next station is in the subway cars. Some photos of this here courtesy of BlogTO:

LED lights in the subway car of the route you are taking:



Outside of the subway car:



Inside the new subway car:



Finally, the TTC is getting along with the times. After riding subways in Beijing, Hong Kong, and Guangzhou, I'm so fascinated at the efficiency and promptness of these subway systems and wonder why Toronto can't do the same. A transit system is behind the life of a city, it is what makes the city thrive. As I am in Beijing now, I am impressed at how Beijing was able to get so many new subway lines installed and operating this year for the Olympics. The subway system in Beijing here is just great, it runs smoothly and it is a pleasure to use. When I always come back to Toronto, I really envy the subway system abroad and wish Toronto would have a system like that. Well, it looks like Toronto may finally have, and about time too!

On Technorati: Toronto Transit System

2008 Computer History Museum Fellow Awards

Three people have been inducted as Fellow Awards at the Computer History Museum. They are Jean Bartik, Robert Metcalfe and Linus Torvalds. I'm sure most of you know Robert Metcalfe as the one who invented ethernet and is now a VC and Linus Torvalds, the inventor of Linux. But I never heard of Jean Bartik, which apparently according to the Computer History Museum Fellow Awards web site is one of the first programmers of the groundbreaking ENIAC computing system in 1945.

Congratulations to Jean, Robert and Linus! I had the wonderful opportunity to visit the Computer History Museum and post photos of my trip there.

On Technorati: Computer History Museum, Linus Torvalds, Bob Metcalfe

new Beijing photo channels on Ovi

I've organized my photos into several channels for easy access in Ovi. They are the following:

1. Beijing Olympics channel



2. Around Beijing channel



3. Beijing food channel



Enjoy and post comments if you have any.

Nokia SportsTracker Beta

One of the cool things with the Nokia N82 cell phone is that you can download an application called Nokia SportsTracker Beta which allows you to record your workouts like jogging or walking using GPS and accelerometer to track your speed, altitude and location on a map. I tried out this feature and just uploaded my walk from the bus stop that I got off to Oakwood residence . You can see the results of this walk here.

Let me know what you think by putting comments on this blog or on my SportsTracker Beta
web page!

Final torch relay in Beijing before opening ceremonies tonight

Today, I had the wonderful privilege on behalf of Nokia to witness and see the torch relay in our area (Beijing Economic Technological and Development Area). Today is the final leg of the torch relay before it enters the National Olympic Stadium for tonight's opening Olympic ceremonies. It seems so surreal that I'm actually here in Beijing and witnessing this live.

I managed to take some pictures which I've uploaded to Nokia's Ovi service using my Nokia N82 cell phone. Unfortunately, the most important event when the torch flame was exchanged between the torch bearer and the other one here at leg 114 (seen
below), I wasn't able to capture because my cell phone ran out of battery!



Here is a picture of me below.



By the way, you can view more pics from this momentous event from Ovi here. And if you want to try out Ovi (instructions here), it's quite nice, it seems to work pretty well and you can download the Ovi client on your Nseries phone to view pictures and your friends' pictures.

Testing out Nokia Ovi

Nokia has a software service called Ovi that allows for easy management and uploading of media from an Nseries Nokia phone to the web. We all have many photos and videos that we like to share with people. It's very easy to download these media to your computer, however it is very time consuming to share it with others. You need to find the media once it is downloaded to the computer, then select a web site that can upload those photos or download some software to allow you to upload to that web site. In my case, I use Flickr Uploadr or Shutterfly Studio which allows me to drag and drop which photos I want and I configure the web service with my account information and the name of the online album that I want to create. However, once that is done, then I have to go to the online album that I have created and then select all the recipients that I want to share with. With Shutterfly, it's really strange, you have to either share the album which is a cryptic link within an e-mail or you can make a special URL to a collection. But within that e-mail that is sent from Shutterfly, I can't change the title and message of the e-mail!

If I want to embed the photos to my blog then I can either link the entire album online or have to choose each photo separately with the embedded link. In Flickr, the link is cryptic and long so it becomes very time consuming. Sometimes, it takes so long that I don't even do it. How to make this process of uploading and sharing photos from your device much easier? Nokia aims to do this with Ovi.

You can subscribe to the Ovi service by making an account and then downloading the Ovi Suite program. This creates programs to synchronize your calendar and contacts with the Nokia Nseries phone (in my case the N82), and to synchronize photos and videos from the phone to a designated folder on the computer automatically. It also includes a Nokia Application installer to install apps on the phone, a program to view contents on the phone via a phone browser, a gallery to view the photos and videos, a 3D gallery that shows your photos in space by time. It also includes a Music Manager to help manage your music from your computer to the phone (like Apple's iTunes). To upload and share the photos and videos with your friends, you use Ovi's share service.

I then followed the instructions to upload the files using Firefox, which allows you to use the Web Publishing Wizard in Windows Explorer to publish to a web place which is Ovi. It's pretty easy to set up and use. In less than 10 minutes I was able to make a share on the web of my pictures that were downloaded from my Nokia N82 mobile phone. These are my photos of my tour around the city of Beijing.

Mobile phone barcode

I've got a mobile phone barcode for my contact info which I've created at Nokia so if you have a mobile phone with a barcode reader like N93,N93i,N95, E90 then you can scan and save it as my contact on your phone. You'll see it at the sidebar below my Blogger profile.

Going around Beijing

While I'm not at Nokia Research, I'm going around Beijing along with my wife. This past weekend we were looking at apartments to rent. Here are some pictures around Beijing.

Enjoy! It's really hot in Beijing now and everyone is gearing up for the Olympics. There are so many people wearing Beijing Olympics T-shirts with a red-band on their hand, these people are Olympic volunteers who will direct people to the Olympic venues. Apparently, those volunteers get to ride free on the Beijing subway!

Great Web 2.0 video

For those that need to explain what Web 2.0 is to those not technical, this video is a great way to show what Web 2.0 is all about.



This is exactly what Web 2.0 is all about and why everybody needs to get on the bandwagon of Web 2.0, it isn't hype any more, it's real.

On Technorati: Web 2.0

Social networking comes to Microsoft Excel

Marc Smith's Community Technologies research group at Microsoft Research has just released .NetMap which is a plug-in to do social network analysis in Microsoft Excel. This was presented at the Microsoft Faculty summit this week. Just import your data into Excel and let .NetMap visualize the social network, calculate centrality, and do all the other stuff that UCINET, Pajek and NetDraw do. Gone are the gzillion steps that you have to do in order to get the visualization of the social network (in my PhD thesis, this involved MySQL to get the actual data in a table format, creating a DL file to import into UCINET, then taking the file and converting it into Pajek to use Pajek features, or visualizing it in NetDraw).

More details of .NetMap are below:

New tools from Microsoft Research make performing many basic network
manipulations and visualization tasks as simple as using Excel. The (Excel)
.NetMap add-in provides directed graph charting features within Excel,
allowing users to create node-link diagrams with control over each node and
edge color, size, transparency and shape. Since .NetMap builds within Excel,
all of the controls and programmatic features of Office are available.
Additional features of (Excel) .NetMap generate social networks from data
sources like personal e-mail (drawing data from the Windows Desktop Search
engine). Arbitrary edge lists (anything that can be pasted into Excel) can
be visualized and analyzed in .NetMap. To download the Excel .NetMap Add-in
and slides, go to the following Web site in CodePlex (Microsoft's version of SourceForge).

I'm going to try it out and see how it works. Of course this could have saved me time in my PhD research analysis!

On Technorati: .NetMap, Microsoft Research, Excel

Arrived in Beijing

I've just arrived with my wife in Beijing and staying at a temporary apartment until we find a permanent housing to live. Can't believe that it's finally here, that I'm in Beijing and living and working here. Going to start my first day of work at Nokia Research tomorrow, looking forward to it!

Off to Beijing

I'm at the airport now with my wife and we're waiting for the flight to Beijing. This move is really exciting as I've been in Canada (specifically Toronto) throughout my entire life. I can't wait to start my new job at Nokia Research and I'm looking forward to this new journey in my life.

Please pray for us for a safe flight and a new and blessed beginning in Beijing. Maybe we'll get a chance to see the Olympics while we're there!

Keep reading my blog and keep in touch via e-mail. This is not good bye but a new beginning since so many things have happened in my life this year. And I'm grateful for God for everything in my life, my family, my amazing blessed wife, my exciting new job, and finally nearing towards the end of my PhD (my defense is in November).

God always has a plan for all of us.

Preparing my move to Beijing

Today, the moving company came to move the items that my wife and I are packing to Beijing. They were pretty fast, done within 2 hours, but they had 3 people to help to pack in boxes. Now, it's packing stuff in suitcases and then physically flying to Beijing.

I'm so excited to start a new job in Beijing and with Nokia Research and it will be a great opportunity to start a new life with my wife. I'm beginning to learn how to balance work and family life and having an amazing wife that supports me, I feel I'm the most blessed man and husband in the world.

PhD final defense scheduled!

Finally, the PhD is near its end after 5 years. I just scheduled my PhD final defense for November 3. It feels great that I'm going to graduate soon and start a full time job. I have accepted a full time job in Nokia Research in Beijing, China which should be exciting and challenging. I'll be moving with my wife to Beijing. Maybe I'll be able to see the Olympics while I'm there.

Just need to finish minor changes and flow in the dissertation.

As I reminisce on my PhD years, what I've learned is that a PhD prepares you for life, it's not about the degree, it's about the experience and skillset that you gain. You go to conferences, you practice your talks, you meet other people, you socialize with other researchers, you work on interesting projects, you improve your writing skills by writing papers, and you cooperate with other students and faculty. It is such an enriching experience. It isn't without its ups and downs, but its the ups and downs that make it all worthwhile.

TV houses using social media for research

TV companies like ABC and NBC are always looking for ways to improve viewer ratings, viewers themselves to watch TV, and to create enhanced services based around TV shows. We've already seen this with Facebook applications like Addicted to Lost around the ABC's hit TV show Lost and Warner Brothers' move using Facebook on their TheWB.com network. Now, NBC is using the Beijing Olympics as a testbed for research into social media to determine which sports viewers like to watch and to provide a "comprehensive picture of how people are supplementing TV viewership with tools such as video streaming, video on demand and mobile phones" (Alan Wurtzel, NBC's research chief). They are also giving online surveys to viewers to guage their feedback and even giving special programmed cell phones to look at viewer behaviour when away from the TV watching the Olympics.

I think it's about time that TV began to use social media and integrate it with their own TV offerings. There needs to be more value add in TV, it needs to be a more social experience. This reminds me of a research project from PARC called SocialTV. You can also read a previous blog post I wrote about this.

On Technorati: Olympics2008, social media, TV

Hypertext 2007 trip report published in ACM SIGWEB newsletter

If you're an ACM SIGWEB member, then the latest SIGWEB newsletter is out. In there you'll find an article co-authored by me and James Goulding about the Hypertext 2007 conference trip report.

Have a read and let me know what you think!

On Technorati: SIGWEB, HT07

Bye bye Bill Gates

As everybody probably has known, Bill Gates' last full day at Microsoft was yesterday and there's been so much video, audio, posts, you name it, about Billy G leaving. Some of the CEOs and visionaries from other companies have made comments about Bill, his competitors and fiercest enemies. Gates gave his final speech to Microsoft employees.

Love him or late him, you must admire his drive, his passion, his motivation in forming Microsoft as the underdog and how he has been able to fight so many challenges by many companies like Netscape, WordPerfect, Lotus, IBM, Apple, Borland, Palm, Sun Microsystems, and Yahoo just to name a few. Translating this same drive over to the Gates foundation will certainly make him probably one of the greatest philanthropic leaders of all time. It's good to see that he will be using his wealth and money for finding cures for diseases and for making the world a better place.

I've never met Bill Gates in person but I have heard his keynotes before at computer conferences (specifically Comdex in Toronto). I've read his books like Business@The Speed of Thought and many other books about Microsoft like Hard Drive, All I Really Need to Learn in Business I Learned at Microsoft, and The Microsoft Way.

Bill is an inspiring individual, he was definitely one of my role models and made me first get into the computer industry. Gates is now wanting to spend more time with his 3 daughters.

Best wishes for you Bill and for the Gates foundation.

On Technorati: Microsoft, Bill Gates

Plazes social networking service bought by Nokia

In an interesting move, Nokia has bought out Plazes, the social networking site for allowing users to mark places that they have been for others to look at. This creates location-based services and avoids the need to have GPS which provides absolute location. Plazes creates semantic location. As long as you have some kind of internet connection like Wi-Fi you can track where you are and write comments, put photos or mark what the location is. I've tried the service and I really liked how it worked, although I haven't been using it for a month. It is kind of like Intel's PlaceLab where location can be annotated and hotspots found contributed by people rather than having to provide GPS or radio-type location technologies (like triangulation).

This is a good acquisition for Nokia because Nokia does not seem to be very much in the social networking arena and the next step is social networking on mobile phones. Integrating Plazes with the Nokia phones would provide the next logical step to providing ubiquitous location-based services, and will be part of Nokia's vision of "Connecting people".

On Technorati: Plazes, Nokia

Journal paper submitted and Hypertext 2008

I finally submitted a journal paper today based on the latest results from my PhD thesis. Hypertext 2008 is on Friday of this week (June 20) and goes unto Saturday June 21 in Pittsburgh. I would love to be there but circumstances prevent me from doing so. Either way, I will track what's going on through Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and the blog. You can network virtually with Hypertext 2008 attendees. For those who are going, have a great time there and link with others!

On Technorati: hypertext08", ht08

iPhone 3G

It's finally here, which everyone has heard about, the iPhone 3G which was announced by Steve Jobs at his keynote at the Apple Worldwide Developer's Conference. It will be rolled out in 22 countries on July 11 and finally, Canada will get one on the Rogers network. It has 3G, GPS, version 2.0 software with iPhone APIs for location-based services and for third party developer support, the apps will be downloadable over the air on App Store, and the really surprising part, the 8GB version is going for only $199! You can check out specifically the iPhone part of the keynote here:



If you see the keynote, the apps that some of the third party companies that demonstrated are just amazing. There are lots of games that make full use of the touch screen and the gyroscopes of the iPhone. This brings a new generation into mobile gaming and a new experience, just like the Nintendo Wii has done for console gaming.

Will I get an iPhone? Well, if it's only $199 I think I just might to finally replace my Palm Zire 71 that I've had for so long. I've also wanted GPS as well so I can find where I'm going. But wait there's also RIM's Blackberry Thunder which is also touch screen and is going to compete with the iPhone:



What about Nokia, the #1 cell phone vendor in the world? Well, don't count Nokia's socks off, they do have a touch screen concept phone called the Achieve:



Somehow, I don't like the Nokia Achieve, it seems really ugly compared to the beauty of the iPhone. So, hmm, which one to get? Well, in this tech world, you're never satisfied with what you get, since another one will come out the next second.

On Technorati: iPhone 3G, WWDC08

Goosh: A Unix-type interface to Google

Well someone either is a hard-core computer science person, has too much time on their hands, is doing this for a project, or all the above. This person has created a Unix-type interface command shell to Google called Goosh (Google shell named appropriately). It has all the same commands that you would issue to Google in a web browser or using the Google search API. This would make a good Computer Science web programming project, as all I can see is that this is just an interface that makes calls to the Google Search API and presents the results in a command-type interface.

On Technorati: Goosh,Google shell

DGPis40 Abigail Sellen talk

This is the second talk that I attended at the DGPis40 reunion conference which was by Abigail Sellen, Senior Researcher and Microsoft Research Cambridge.

Abigail talked about her stints at DGP as a post-doc where in the early '80s and '90s, she worked on Bill Buxton's Ontario Telepresence project. She is now at Microsoft Research Cambridge in the UK working on socio-digital systems and her talk is "Being Human in the Digital Age". Her research deals with how to bring humans into the loop of computer technologies and assist the human, a human-centered approach to computing which I think is much needed in our industry. She has 23 patents and she says that we have to think and change our methodologies towards HCI. We need to put a humanistic agenda in research.

In the past, the origins of HCI was about thinking the brain as an information processing system and using cognitive psychology (in the '70s and '80s) and human factors engineering. Then in the early '80s, Don Norman talked about HCI and Card, Moran and Newell (1984) wrote a book called the Psychology of HCI. The idea here was to use cognitive psychological models to improve the use of computers. These led to the following contributions to HCI: User-centered design, user-testing and modelling.

Now, we are in the age of ubiquitous computing as visioned by the late Mark Weiser from PARC. An example of this is the Augmented Reality kitchen from the MIT Media Lab. The problem with HCI is that we need a view of the user and understand users as cognitive machines, therefore we need to have multi-disciplinary terms and design goals for rich evolving ecosystems and practices. As a result of this, Abigail and her colleagues created a Whereabouts clock which allows each member of the family to see where others are (either work, school, or out) based on their location. They conducted a user study that showed that family members got reassurance of where everyone was.



In their research, they have opened up the view of the user and thought of new information appliances that they would have not thought before if there was not any user testing. Opening up to the user can lead to invention. Another example that they created is the digital postcard where people can send SMS of pictures and text and it will show on the postcard.



Another example is the kitchen postcard which they created which becomes an ambient display and blog space. Think of it like a digital version of putting stuff on the fridge.



They also created a visual answering machine called Bubbleboard where the size of the bubbles indicates the length of the message.



According to Abigail, long term studies in real homes can give new insight into value of technologies for people. Abigail says that we need to redefine the H,C and I in HCI. Can technologies help us to switch off, forget, be isolated, be engaged (the opposite of what technologies do for us but thinking about what it means to be human). We are so increasingly connected, but sometimes we just need to unwind and not be connected, we need a break. So this raises new questions for research and development. Therefore, we need an HCI based on human values.

Abigail and a bunch of other researchers explore this reincarnation of HCI (in my opinion) with their published document from their workshop called Being Human:Human Computer Interaction in the Year 2020 which can be downloaded. I'll for sure be reading this because my research is very much into this area with social networks and how we can bring social networks to mobile and ubiquitous computing.

DGPis40 Bill Buxton talk

Here is a talk that I attended from the DGPis40 reunion conference for U of T's Dynamic Graphics Project, which turns 40 years old!

40 Years: Almost Enough Time to Make a Difference
Bill Buxton
Microsoft Research
www.billbuxton.com

Bill started his stints at DGP as a student but he was not a Computer Science student but a musician. Today, he probably would not be admitted as a Computer Science student. His talk today is based on whether Could DGP Happen Today? He is reviewing 40 years of DGP. A lot of the technologies of icons, Palm’s Graffiti, teletype, all came from beginnings of DGP. Also, Bill is mentioning that another icon is the Academy Award, which DGP has probably amassed more based on its alumni and the lab compared to other schools, which is strange he says because since DGP is in the Computer Science department.

What is the real accomplishment of the past 40 years? Bill worked on a computer that is now in the National Research Council (NRC) archives. NRC made a mouse in 1968, probably the second mouse based exactly from Doug Englebart who invented the mouse before PARC came up with the mouse in the 1970s. Bill worked as a musician and an artist, and started contacting Leslie Mezei at U of T (who is the founder of DGP). While working at DGP, he felt worthy of respect and became colleagues with others. If you wanted to do something, you could make it happen. Compared to other environments, you are dirt and you have to show respect to others until you have paid your dues. At DGP, people are challenged and are questioned and are proven to be wrong, because this means you will have learned something. DGP has published many papers at SIGCHI and SIGGRAPH more than any other academic and research lab during the first 20 years of its incarnation.

DGP was a self-organizing group because it was based on communal responsibility, he gives the analogy of filling concrete. Once students graduated, others came to fill the hole, so there was some kind of social contract. There are three generations of people in the CHI Academy, the only university to do so (Bill Buxton, Brad Myers, and Ron Baecker considered the grandfather in this lab). Bill is talking about The Long Tail a book by Chris Anderson, in the old economy you only had the beginning or head of the tail, whereas now in technology the most interesting opportunities happen in the long tail. A lot of work is done in the beginning of the tail in innovation and doing research. It takes 20 years from innovation to commercialization which is the exact number of years before a patent gets expired.

According to Bill, as academics, we are on a slippery slope and the slope is tilting. According to the New York Times in December 2007, corporate research labs are going away. There were few PhD students working in industry research than in 1980. There is no and will not be a Silicon Valley in Toronto or Canada. According to Bill, the DGP lab is absurd compared to other academic and corporate research labs. DGP represents integrity and values, productivity and influence around the world. Computers and technologies need to have as much engagement and review and criticism similarly to art and literary review. We need to think about culture and society within technology.

One question that was asked is how to bring the culture of DGP to corporate research labs like Microsoft Research that focuses on patents before publications. Bill answered that 80% of the work is on cultural change, the other 20% is the actual work. In his opinion, Microsoft Research has more academic freedom than any other university, which was an interesting comment in my opinion seeing that you would think Microsoft would absolutely tie all research back towards Microsoft products. Which is not to say that Microsoft doesn't do that of course, Microsoft Live Labs is exactly doing that, being a industrial lab to foster innovation within its MS products. What I got out of the talk is that there needs to be open Research, research with a capital R, not just some wishy washy research that is just for the benefit of the company and not the rest of the world. That is how you make a difference.

Photos from Mesh08 conference up

I've put my photos from Mesh08 up on Flickr. Check them out! Thanks to the organizers for a great Mesh conference. You guys did an amazing job.

Mesh08 - Day 2 - Second installment of 15 minutes of fame

Now is the second installment of 15 minutes of fame.



The first presenter is Ali Asaria of Well.ca which is an online drug and pharmacy store. Ali is saying that the key to their success is not the technology, but everything is focussed on the customer. Why are people buying online? People are saving time and it is the convenience of buying products.



The second presenter is Enomaly by Reuven Cohen which deal with enterprise cloud computing and scalable infrastructure. They are building scalable open source systems for companies. Mark Evans is asking Reuven where is cloud computing going? Reuven says that cloud computing is the next evolution of software. He is envisioning cloud computing as the base platform for building the next Google or like the Apache of cloud computing.



The last presenter is OverlayTV by Robert Lane. The business was focussed around user generated content. There are not a lot of tools for the average amateur user. Users can create overlays on video and post to Facebook, blog and any other social networking site. This is what video is heading towards, to annotate and to overlay on the video. The vision is to give 3 minutes to users to overlay on a video. Mark Evans is asking what is going to make Overlay.tv the YouTube of video. Robert is mentioning that there are 3 components, relevance, control (the users should be in control in creating the overlay).

On Technorati: Mesh08, Mesh 2008

Mesh08 - Day 1 - Private vs. Public

I'm now in the last session of the first day of Mesh08 which is on Private vs. Public. There is the question of regulation in a public space. There is an issue now where people who are not who they are, post fake pages, there was this case with a Toronto local councillor who was bad mouthing others, according to Ken Anderson, assistant privacy commissioner for Ontario. You have to understand the ramifications of posting content online, according to philosophy professor and author Mark Kingwell. Rachel Sklar, the moderator, is addressing about how people use handles to be anonymous and not reveal their identity. An audience members is addressing how whether we can use a Creative Commons notion for acknowledging privacy and asking if it would be viable, because it is the case now that we have to be aware of what is being said in surroundings and how content about yourself can easily be posted online. Ken addressed how surveillance is something you can't control and he is talking about sousveillance where people monitor their surroundings like Professor Steven Mann's work on wearable computers.

Another question being addressed by an audience participant is how to guarantee that the information being captured using cameras is used for just for the purposes intended for, but what guarantees that it is not being used elsewhere. Another question is that whether we should get rid of privacy because everything is being made public and it is difficult to regulate and control privacy. According to Ken Anderson, not all websites are the same.

On Technorati: Mesh08, Mesh 2008

Mesh08 - Day 1 - Panel: The New Front Page

I left the online video workshop to come to the panel on the new front page. Daniel Burka from Digg and Pownce is talking about how the web is not replacing traditional media, and how traditional media like CNN is not linking or using Web 2.0 tools like Digg. I'm beginning to see how CTV and CBC.ca is now using Facebook and other social media technologies and bookmarking services for sharing content with others. Daniel is mentioning that Digg is having some content partnerships with media companies.

On Technorati: Mesh08, Mesh 2008

Mesh08 - Day 1 - Online video workshop

I've finally decided to go to the online video workshop. The workshop is talking about the creation of content, the presentation of content and monetization. The video content needs to be viewer centric and tailored to your audience. You also need to engage your audience with blog comments, etc. You need to distribute your video on a regular, predictable schedule and decide your distribution (iTunes, YouTube, blip.tv, Vimeo, Ustream.tv). For networking, you need to be part of the community through face-to-face meetups as well as social networking like MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and other online tools. As a matter of fact, I'm getting more people following me on Twitter from the mesh conference than ever before!

On Technorati: Mesh08, Mesh 2008, online video, Amber MacArthur

Mesh08 - Day 1 - 15 minutes of fame

Right now is the 15 minutes of Fame where start up companies talk about their product in 15 minutes. Today, there are three companies which is being moderated by Mark Evans.



The first company is aideRSS which is a service which provides an extra metalayer to target to users to read what matters to them, since there is a pool of information that is hard to digest. The web is now an RSS pool. This seems very relevant in Web 2.0, so I may check this out.

The second company is GigPark by Noah Godfrey and Pema Hegan, which is using friends to make recommendations to others for services. I'm a member of GigPark and seems really cool, something simple, but useful.



The third company is carbonetworks by Daniel Crawford. They create a software platform for helping companies create carbon emissions strategy.

On Technorati: Mesh08, Mesh 2008

Mesh 08 - Day 1 - Michael Geist keynote

I'm right now in the keynote with Michael Geist who is University of Ottawa law professor. He is talking about technology law and copyright with digital media. There is lots of mashups of video that take different streams and making their own video. We talk about Facebook advocacy, YouTube advocacy, and Google advocacy (example using Ushahidi.com which uses Google Maps and identify places where violence has occurred).

There are examples where people have used Twitter where protesters in Germany updated other protesters, Facebook was used to bring to attention an issue by the public from which a law was made in the Senate in Canada. Offline protests have been organized from Facebook meetings. There is also a protest about net neutrality which has been publicized on a website online where people are gathering on Parliament Hill in Ottawa and Canada to not regulate the internet. According to Michael, there are people from the blogging community that are speaking against (cyberdissidents) issues and are jailed, and they use mainstream media to bring to the attention of those people that are jailed (like Reporters Without Borders). Michael gave an example of a video mashup which uses short clips from Disney movies to illustrate copyright law.



Michael has also launched a site called iOptOut to exempt yourself from a do-not-call registry. There is now the instance of Government 2.0. For example, in Britain, people can upload videos of what to ask the prime minister and invite the public into a kind of virtual townhall meeting.

On Technorati: Mesh08, Mesh 2008, digital advocacy

Photos for MeshU on Flickr

Here is my photostream for all photos that I took today at MeshU on Flickr. I can't wait for tomorrow's Mesh conference for two inspiring days that only cost me $30 because I'm a student! Ah, the joys of being a student, but soon to be no more after I graduate!

On Technorati: MeshU08, MeshU 2008

MeshU tomorrow!

I can't wait for MeshU which happens tomorrow, it's a one day workshop on technical stuff for Web 2.0. I'm trying to recover back and get back into work mode after the Victoria Day long weekend here in Canada. Then the Mesh conference happens on Wednesday and Thursday. This should be great, there are lots of great talks and speakers, and I got both tickets for $30 each as a student!

On Technorati: MeshU08,Mesh Conference 08

Video Gaming Research Symposium at U of T

Today is the Video Gaming Research Symposium at the University of Toronto that deals with video gaming research and issues dealing with distributed systems support, middleware, HCI and animation, artificial intelligence, video gaming design and course education, social research, psychology and spatial cognition, cognitive gaming research, individual and group behaviour, and legal ramifications. Attendees from academia and industry came together to discuss and listen to leading video gaming research.

Some interesting research talks that struck me were the following. The first talk was on character motion content models for motion editing and interactive visualization, by Patrick Coleman. In video game design, character animation is being done to mimic human movements to make it more realistic. In this talk, the purpose was to use content to solve video gaming problems which involves using poses for motion editing. This led right into creating models for learning motions in order to generate new motions based on training data called Data-driven character animation, presented by Professor Aaron Hertzmann of DGP. The idea is to "learn" from movement of pose models and how specifying certain points on poses allows for more natural movement rather than having to specify all points on the body to move. Another aspect is non-photorealistic animation which involves whether we can make games with visual styles of traditional artistic media.

Another talk dealt with AI research application to video games. One talk was on Practical AI modules for development of non-player characters in video games by Stavros Vassos. Current video game developers create their own "thinking" function for what a non-player character should do which is generally a finite state automaton (FSA) and is generally coded in C++. The "thinking" function can also be implemented as an AI agent which abstracts this using cognitive robotics. In this way, the AI agent is plugged into the video gaming engine. There is few AI research that is being used in video games.

What does it take to design a video game and how can video game companies hire the best students? This is where Steve Engels talked about designing a video gaming course at the undergrad level and how to address the drop in enrollment of CS students as well as few females in CS. Video gaming may be one example that can entice students to consider CS as a discipline to study and build a CS career. The challenge is that video game design is a collaborative discipline that deal with many CS and non-CS fields: AI, graphics, systems, psychology, sociology, and HCI. According to Steve: "video game design is the lure, but breeding CS is the goal".

Another aspect of video games is its social impact. Tracy Kennedy, PhD candidate, Department of Sociology from U of T talked about "What can social research tell us about the non-traditional gamer". In here, she discussed about her cultural studeis of virtual worlds. She has many virtual avatars in virtual worlds and she is studying role playing in massively multiplayer online games using ethnographic research, content analysis, surveys, interviews and network analysis. One of the things is that gaming helps to have the family spend time with each other, and there are moms who are active gamers. She studied women gamers in the XBox Live forum called GamerChiX and using content and network analysis, she discovered that there was a lot of activity and support, and there was one instance where one post received many comments. It was evident that community was important to female gamers. Another thing that I suggested as a question to her was looking into social interactions through chat logs in online games such as the work done by Nic Ducheneaut from PARC.

Ian Spence from the Department of Psychology provided the next talk on spatial cognition and video games. His lab did an experiment with non-gamers and gamers where they were given cognitive tasks to see if gamers perform better at spatial cognition than non-gamers. The non-gamers were given video game training and then they did a user field of view experiment and mental rotation test. They found that non-gamers did in fact improve their user field of view and mental rotation after playing video games, which would sound intuitive. They are also looking into measuring electrical activity in the brain in response to video games and looking at how seniors could improve their user field of view by playing video games in order for them to reduce accidents. As well, they have also begun work to designing mobile phone games using first person shooter.

Following along this cognitive research path, Kevin Tonon and Ron Baecker from KMDI at the University of Toronto talked about Internet-based cognitive enrichment communities for research on mental aging interventions. Ron talked about how we could slow down cognitive decline using video games in order to improve mental fitness (like Scrabulous which a lot of people play, myself included on Facebook) and find interventions to make cognitive fitness become more fun and enjoyable. They are building a web site to support cognitive and social stimulation games online to allow for research randomization and data collection. Kevin then talked about the technical details for creating this web site and hosted games involving game authoring where anyone can design or author a game using a hybrid approach of domain specific language and GUI. He gave an example of designing a chess board application.

Jonathan Freedman then looked at the obvious question do violent video games cause aggression and violent crime. There is a study from Anderson and Dill that is cited the most in the literature, but has no convincing evidence that violent video games do cause aggression. For most video gamers, they know that what they are doing is not real. However, for those that have psychological, family or social problems, then this is where violent video games may have an effect.

The final presentation dealt with virtual property and real law by Susan Abramovitch. With virtual worlds like Second Life, people are creating and collecting virtual property and creating a virtual market for the consumption, production and exchange of virtual goods just like in the real physical economic market. Virtual property is similar to physical property. Virtual currency in fact can be exchanged for physical currency. For example, Linden dollars which is the virtual currency in Second Life, can be exchanged for US dollars. There have been cases where real world laws were applicable to virtual intellectual property. For example, a company was able to sue a Second Life user for selling their virtual property that was not theirs, and vice versa, where a user successfully sued a company for not protecting his virtual rights when his virtual property was stolen by another user. She concluded that legal aspects of commerce in virtual property will become more important if it has not already.

All in all, it was a good showing of different aspects of video gaming research from various disciplines, and made me open up my eyes to other areas of research in video games. I am not an avid video gamer, but I know I am getting really addicted to the Nintendo Wii because I love the engagement of your body into the games, rather than just sitting at your computer and playing. That is why I am more into the Wii than any other gaming console.

On Technorati: video gaming research, UofT