Giving a research seminar at work today, and my wife is pregnant!

Just received notification that my poster got accepted into Hypertext conference http://www.ht2009.org! Going to Italy in end of June!

another chilly morning in Beijing, when will it be warm again?

heading into work on a chilly monday morning in Beijing, Chinese lesson today

Reading the first reading at xuanwumen catholic church

At the cctv tower observatory

Right now pedaling a boat on the lake at yuyuantan garden park

At yuyuantan park for the cherry blossom festival

Just saw beijing's version of toronto's cn tower!

Switch off your lights for one hour today at 8:30 pm for Earth Hour (http://ping.fm/BAd2k) to conserve power and save our Earth

leaving to take the bus to go home from the workshop, met new friends

Finishing up the 2nd day of the university collaboration workshop, great discussions and brainstorming

University collaboration Workshop is almost over for day 1, good brainstorming

Bright early morning, heading to a 2 day workshop off site, chilly morning but at least no snow!

Great day, was a sponsor for a friend of a friend who is becoming Catholic, then went to Beijing Zoo, and Sarah Brightman concert!

sarah brightman concert is finished, now heading home!

sarah brightman concert is finished, now heading home!

Sarah brightman concert starting!

At the sarah brightman concert sitting down at our seats

Finished church, tonight going to sarah brightman concert

Hypertext 2009 demos/posters for inclusion in proceedings is due in 2 days, March 23! http://ping.fm/tMIRn

Finishing up writing a paper for a poster

Finally at the gym one month later! Better late than never!

One year since my father passed away

I can't believe it but it has been exactly one year since my father passed away. It was just so sudden and surreal, that my family was at his bedside in the hospital one year ago. As I think about the year since he passed away, I know my father would be proud of me that I finished my PhD and found a great job at Nokia Research Center in Beijing, and that I'm learning Mandarin.

So even though life moves on, I will always remember my dad. Remember all those time we shared when I was a child, when we would play catch with the baseball, going out to dinner, asking him help on Chemistry homework in high school, and helping me with my Grade 7 and 8 science fair project.

My father is in a better place without any suffering any more and is with God. So even though I miss him, I can feel at peace that he is with God and is watching over me, saying "I'm proud of what you have done son". You never know what life throws at you, but whatever it is, I have my faith in God. It also makes you realize you need to treasure every moment with your loved ones.

It's been a long long day today, meetings and then NRC Day! Another busy day tomorrow!

Traffic bad so taking subway and then short taxi ride to a client meeting

Nokia N97 gets thumbs up: http://ping.fm/OMqYl I'm looking forward to seeing the actual device later this year!

It's St. patrick's Day today, are you wearing green? Well actually I'm not. Have a great day, it's going to hit 24 degrees in Beijing!

Looks like a great line of speakers and panel discussions for Mesh 09 in Toronto in April, too bad I won't be able to be there: http://ping.fm/aH0Nj

Check out this cool demo from TED that merges the virtual with the physical world: http://ping.fm/AKfsJ

Palm Pre: Is Palm back from the dead?

Everyone has heard about the Palm Pre and how it wowed everyone out there at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) including tech geek blogger Robert Scoble. Scoble says how Palm did what Nokia, RIM and Microsoft couldn't do, and that is build a user experience better than Apple. Palm overhauled their previous UI and interface and developed WebOS, it's web-based operating system, where everything is web-based.

The Palm Pre was shown by Engadget's Joshua Topolski on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon:



But don't count Apple out, apparently Apple's iPhone 3.0 software is supposed to be due out for preview on March 17th (tomorrow, St. Patrick's Day) and is going to have a lot of Palm's webOS features. The race is heating up with iPhone 3.0, Palm Pre and webOS, Google Android, and Nokia Symbian. But I'm still looking forward to the Nokia N97.

On Technorati: Palm Pre

Augmenting the real world with annotated virtual and internet data in real time, Pattie Maes and her team at MIT demonstrate their system at TED for creating a sixth sense: http://ping.fm/AKfsJ This is cool, I wish I could have a wearable system like that wherever I go to get any type of information given to me when I see a real object.

at xuanwumen catholic church for third sunday of lent

watching kmdi university of toronto lecture on the xpressmusic 5800, looks nice!

Meetings went well, looking towards a relaxing and fun weekend! Have a great weekend every one!

Just finished my Chinese class today, had a great meeting with my team, so research is going well!

nice sunny day in Beijing, heading into work. Watched Alias season 1 episode 4 last night

playing i mean testing with the expressmusic 5800

Ugh! Gmail has multi-attachments feature but after upgrading to latest Adobe Flash player, in Firefox I can't add attachments anymore! Why?

Beautiful sunny warm day in Beijing, heading to church now on the second sunday of Lent

My PhD thesis is now in the ACM SIGWEB theses repository: http://ping.fm/qtcAP

Skittles' web page is Twitterfied and includes Facebook, YouTube and Flickr feeds, it's a pure social media site: http://www.skittles.com

Nokia Research Center and Corporate Research

There are many research centers that are part of corporate companies. For example, HP Labs is part of Hewlett Packard, IBM Research is part of IBM, Microsoft Research is part of Microsoft, NEC Labs is part of NEC, and Nokia Research Center is part of Nokia. Research is at the pinnacle of a company's innovation and drive to succeed and differentiate from its competitors. Corporate research also allows researchers to get to see the deployment and use of their research in everyday lives, which is usually very difficult to do in an academic environment such as a university.

One thing that I love about corporate research is how it blends both academia and industry, you kind of get the best of both worlds, in my opinion. However with the economy and downsizing of companies, how does corporate research continue to thrive and transform itself into a driving force for a company? Enter Nokia Research Center, where I'm a Member of Research Staff there (if you do not know by now) at the Beijing lab in China. In the video below by Henri Tirri by Nokia Conversations, head of Nokia Research Center, he explains about how Nokia Research Center is different than the other corporate research labs and how the future of Nokia depends on NRC.

I agree with Henri's views on research, and I'm glad to be working at Nokia Research Center to help bring research into reality and on Nokia mobile phones. The full interview with Henri is here from Nokia Conversations.

On Technorati: Nokia Research Center