Happy Canada Day and Happy Independence Day

To all my Canadian friends and anyone in Canada, have a Happy Canada Day tomorrow! I'll be going on a long weekend to Los Angeles with a couple of interns, and hopefully I'll be able to blog and post photos and even make a podcast of the event.

Have a safe journey whereever you are during the Canada Day or Independence Day long weekend.

Jonathan Grudin video talk

Emerging Technologies and Knowledge Management
Microsoft Research

- we need to pay attention to the environmental change
- seeing more data doesn't help
- even when aware of non-linear growth (exponential growth), we reason poorly about it
- a great deal of change is right in front of you, the tail is getting longer (from 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50 years of Moore's Law)
- people haven't changed but technology has changed
- he produced code that was compact but difficult to understand and maintain, whole nature of software engineering has changed based on memory advances
- more memory, don't need to create compact code
- he's talking about inertia about these changes
- another thing that has changed is new technologies (IM and text messaging, tagging, blogs), new behaviours (multi-tasking, multimedia authoring, search and browse)
- this parallels the generation that brought email and word processing into organizations
- people are forming social identity from these technologies - this is what Jonathan is now focussing on
- there is a strong parallel between how e-mail was used in 1984 and how IM was used in 2004

- beware the hype cycle (Gartner)
- RSS, blogs, tagging, wikis are already past the peak of inflated expectations from the Gartner hype cycle

Enterprise Knowledge Management
- there are promising emerging technologies: unstructured tagging, weblogs, lightweight enterprise search
- this is what Lilia Efimova is doing in her PhD research

Jonathan Grudin's research
- he's mentioning about Lilia Efimova who was an intern at MSR last summer doing a qualitative study of blogs at Microsoft (meetings, documents, DLs, blogs, 39 interviews of bloggers, infrastructure support, senior legal and PR, VPs, Sharepoint and MSN planners)
- surveying MS attitudes, behaviours (with Gina Venolia)
- analysis of KM and emerging technologies

Employee Blogs at Microsoft
- with Lilia Efimova
- very dynamic area

Managing Knowledge: Challenges and Potential Solutions
- digital documents are difficult to find (adding metadata is work)
- tagging is a lightweight, visible, bottom-up (flickr, delicious) and simple, is ontology overrated?
- documents are difficult to assess (blogs can accommodate this)
- unstructured tagging (flat structure, no hiearchy, so don't need to worry about ontology)
- quesiton: how far can bottom-up approach go?
- problem is that you get so many tags out there, that are not in levels, how are you going to find what you're looking for
- addressing limitations of organization of tags: get most recent photos
- there are lots of personal benefits to tagging
- so people bypass the system
- expertise locator software hasn't succeeded

Further reading: Clay Shirky, "ontology is overrated", Cory Doctorow "Metacrap", David Hawking "Does Topic Metadata Help with Web Search?"

Blogs and the Workplace
- this is related to my PhD research on finding community in blogs
- blogs currently are public personal interactive diaries
- have "A list" bloggers on politics, technology, events, cool stuff
- corporations are beginning to use this
- Jonathan is talking about how blogs differ from e-mail, how provide conversation
- wikis are good for collaboration, for version history

Conclusions
- social technologies are emerging rapidly, will flourish as students enter the workforce
- there are however social practices and technology that remain to be worked out
- unresolved questions, such as limits to bottom-up and collaborative organization

research.frogbusters.com/~jgrudin

Questions
- how extensive are blogs in corporations?
- don't know, Microsoft found lots of people using blogs

Xerox and Palm settle lawsuit

Just heard today that Xerox has settled its patent lawsuit against Palm Inc. According to Xerox, this was a patent referring to Palm's Graffiti software that infringed on a patent at PARC for the Unistrokes application. The patent was filed in 1997. Palm will pay Xerox to settle the patent.

Social networking, the buzz everywhere

You know that social networking becomes mainstream when PC Magazine starts writing a full length article about it. Social networking is where it's at, and we all can relate to that, because it's our human nature. Combining that with the web and mobile devices, and you have what I feel is truly ubiquitous or pervasive computing, what Adam Greenfield calls everyware, or what MIT Technology Review writer Wade Roush calls "continuous computing". The computer becomes a truly ubiquitous and immersive device in our lives, when it gets integrated with our social lives and helps facilitate our social mobility and how we do things. And social networking sites are one step in that direction (they haven't quite gotten us to truly ubiquitous computing yet), but I think that they are leading us towards there. We just need to have context awareness built into mobile devices that we have or sensors in the environment.

Happy Birthday to Toronto's CN Tower!

Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday CN Tower, happy birthday to you! It was June 26, 30 years ago, that the CN Tower was finally built. Today marks the 30th birthday of the CN Tower, which is still the tallest free standing structure in the world. I've been to the CN Tower several times, last time being 2003. It's quite amazing how it can withstand winds and an earthquake of magnitude 8.5. It also boasts the best radio and telecommunications signal in the world, which was one of the reasons for building the CN Tower.

Of course, the CN Tower is not going to be the tallest free standing structure in the world for long anymore. Apparently, the tower being built in Dubai will be much taller, about 700 metres (CN Tower is 553 metres). Still, it is the CN Tower that marks the landmark of Toronto, and that will never change.

Here's a video clip of the celebration broadcasted from CTV news.

San Francisco trip today

Finally, I went on the cable car in San Francisco today! Did you know that the cable car runs without any fuel, it's electromechanical. There is a cable underneath the pavement which is constantly moving and the movement comes from the sheaves in the cable center plant which look like large turbines that move the cable.



Apparently, San Francisco is like one of the only cities in the world that has the transit system using cable cars, every other city uses streetcars and buses and other transit. Me and a couple of PARC interns went to downtown San Francisco where we went to the cable car museum and experienced a windy road, and went on the cable car. Pictures (more to come) are on Flickr, and were taken with a Palm Zire 71 camera and a Motorola RAZR v3 (sorry if they look blurry!)

Napa Valley trip today!

Today, me and a couple of PARC interns went to Napa Valley, wine country which is famous for its wines where some of the wineries have won many awards. It was a great trip, we had to go through San Francisco to pick up an intern and on the way there, we stopped by Pier 39 to see if we could get any tickets for the Alcatraz tour (home of the famous federal prison before being declared a national park and place) tomorrow afternoon. But unfortunately, they were all sold out! We tried to book online yesterday but for some reason we couldn't, there were technical difficulties with the web site. We then went across the Bay Bridge to Hwy 80 East. We drove on the car pool lane (the left most lane) which allows for 3 or more persons in the car. In Toronto, Hwy 403 now has a designated car pool lane, where before none of the highways had a carpool lane. We crossed the Carquiuez Bridge, which is a toll bridge, and then we were supposed to turn at the Marine World Parkway exit. However, we missed it and so we had to go all the way back, but on the way back, there wasn't any Marine World Parkway exit. We had to go across the Carquiuez Bridge again and then pay a $3.00 toll again. We finally made it onto the Marine World Parkway, Napa exit and then turned right onto Highway 29 (also called Sonoma Blvd). It was quite a ways, probably about almost close to an hour before we were in St. Helena.

On the way to St. Helena, we passed by a town and it was called Oakville, my home town in Canada! I wanted to take a picture but I didn't. Anyways, we finally arrived at the V. Sattui winery where we went to visit, eat lunch, and taste some wines. For lunch, there was a BBQ so I had BBQ ribs and macaroni salad as you can see below.



Here are some photos I took inside V. Sattui.













The wine that I really loved the most was Mustkat, it had a nice fruity taste to it.
After tasting the wine, we decided to go to another winery called Sterling Vineyards. However, when we arrived there, they just closed, they close at 4:30 pm and we arrived 4:35 pm. Doh! So, even though we couldn't go in, I just took some pictures outside of the winery as you see below.





At Sterling, there was a cable car that goes up a mountain (probably maybe where the vinery is), but we couldn't go because we just arrived after closing time. After, we drove back to San Francisco and passed by through the country side, where we were in awe with the scenery of the vineyards, mountains and fields, it was so beautiful! Also, we passed by a race car grounds, which reminded me of the movie Cars which I saw last night. We wanted to go see the bay across from the Vista Point at the Golden Gate Bridge, but it was so foggy that we couldn't see anything! So, we just crossed the Golden Gate Bridge into downtown San Francisco. We wanted to find Tangerine Orange on Castro Street, but there was so much traffic of cars (due to the parade in San Francisco today), that it was very difficult to also find a parking spot. Everything we thought we saw a parking spot, we couldn't park because it was in front of a driveway entrance or fire hydrant, and it's against the law to park there. We finally found a parking lot, and then decided to eat at a sushi restaurant.

It was a very fun and tiring day today!

Cars

I went to see the movie Cars tonight with a couple of PARC interns. What a great entertaining movie, I really enjoyed it, much better than the Da Vinci Code. The animation was done nicely, and there was a good plot line to the movie. Pixar has done it again in the successes of Toy Story, A Bug's Life, Monsters Inc, The Incredibles and Finding Nemo.

If you haven't gone and seen this movie, I recommend it, it's worth watching!

Being a researcher

Did I tell you how much I'm loving my work at PARC? It's great to have research talks, forums, brainstorming sessions, and of course free food! And I feel in awe surrounded by such intelligent people and the aura of Mark Weiser who used to work at PARC. Also, I love having conversations with fellow PARC researchers, sometimes about work, and others about non-work stuff. It helps me get myself emersed with the PARC culture and try to blend in with the PARC research environment. I'm also getting a lot of exercise now, since I take my bike to work (after going on the bus), I play tennis twice a week, and I go swimming once a week. So I'm exercising my brain and my body!

Adam Greenfield talk on Everyware Computing

Tonight, I'm in San Francisco attending the talk by Adam Greenfield who is the author of the book Everyware, having to do with ubiquitous computing. Mark Weiser coined the term ubiquitous computing. Since Weiser, other terms have come into play, like pervasive computing. But Adam provides another term which perhaps is easier to understand and that technology agnostic individuals can understand. That is the term Everyware, where computing is everywhere. It's not a technical term per se, but it does convey the message I think. There's lots of people in the audience. The book is not entirely detailed, but provides a high level overview of ubiquitous computing.

Adam has these 5 principles of ubiquitous systems design.

Principle 1: Ubiquitous systems should have a default mode to protect safety

Principle 2: Ubiquitous systems should be self-disclosing. There is a role for developer, user experience consultant, graphic designers. Ubiquitous systems must contain provisions for immediate and transparent querying of their ownership, use, capabilities, etc.

Principle 3: Be conservative of face. Ubiquitous systems must not unnecessarily embarrass, humiliate or shame their users. Our current technical systems expose us to shame and embarrass us.

Principle 4: Ubiquitous systems should be conservative of time. They should not have to do unnecessarily make it more difficult to use.

Principle 5: Ubiquitous systems must be deniable. Users should have the right to opt out, simply say no to the system. There are some moments in our lives where things are ok, and that information processing should not disturb when things are going ok. There will be an enormous amount of good in ubiquitous systems.

One of the questions from the audience had to do with that users should own their data and Adam agreed with that. China, Japan and Asia may have more ubiquitous cultures than other countries. The whole underlying theme is that users need to be in control of their environments and opt out of the technology if they choose to do so. Culture plays a big role in the adoption of ubiquitous computing technology.

I met with Adam afterwards where I asked him several questions about ubiquitous computing. I recorded his answers in this podcast. Here's also a podcast about me and 2 other interns who drove to San Francisco for the Adam Greenfield talk.

And here is a picture of me with Adam Greenfield.

PARC research with Fujitsu

I didn't know that PARC was doing joint research with Fujitsu in ubiquitous computing, from this press release in 2004. Specifically, the joint research with PARC involves the following (from the press release):

Fujitsu and PARC plan to focus on the following research areas, with product results appearing as early as 2006. These topics reflect the partners' shared vision and are expected to expand.

* Simpler and more secure wireless networking
* Obje™ software architecture for interoperability
* Ad-hoc sensor network technology
* Technologies to protect privacy and simplify security
* Advanced information visualization technologies

This is great to hear and shows the value that PARC can provide to the greater community, which heeds back to the roots of PARC in the early days. Fujitsu also has collaboration with Xerox with FXPAL, which apparently is down the street from PARC and I'll have a chance to visit during the intern social events. More details about the PARC-Fujitsu collaboration in ubicomp is in this journal article.

Gadgets for today

This is what I have in my car:



No, seriously, I don't have THAT many gadgets in the car as this guy, although I used to have a Co-Pilot cell phone holster that connected to the radio in my car.

Some neat gadgets I saw today during my daily reading on the Net. There's a vending machine that dispenses Sony accessories, they have a couple in the US.



And there's a vending machine that dispenses iPods in Japan and they have one in the US.



There's also a Wi-Fi Skype phone where you can call using Skype without a PC. Now, this is ubiquitous computing, not tied to a PC. You can also have a Wi-Fi Skype phone on a Pocket PC. Just download Skype on the Pocket PC or smart phone with Wi-Fi and you have a Wi-Fi Skype phone. Of course, not everyone has a Pocket PC, so having a special device that just does Skype is cool, and will cater to those that don't want the instability of Windows Pocket PC and want a dedicated device that just does calling but for cheap. It will be available June 30.

My web site updated

I've finally found the time last night after much delay to update my web site with what I'm doing for the summer term. Haven't had the time to update the list of latest gadgets though, I guess that will have to be another time.

I think I've figured out the transit system

I think I now understand how to work with the transit system here in Menlo Park, Palo Alto and Mountain View. Because the buses don't run that frequently on weeknights especially the bus that takes me home from PARC (the Dumbarton Express), I really can't do much in the city at night. However, I've begun to play tennis at night and sometimes I may want to go out like watch a movie and hang out with my friends from PARC. So, I've found out that I can use my bike (well actually I'm borrowing it from the roommate who I've taken his room until he comes back). They allow bikes on the bus (actually, there's a rack in the front of the bus, and you put your bike there). It took me a while to figure out how that worked, but now I know. So, I can take the bus if I need to, and if there isn't a bus, or I can ride my bike. Having the bike is so convenient I've found out in here!

For example, yesterday, I took my bike on the bus to go to Mountain View to get my social security number (so I can work in the US). There was a bus that goes near to where I work at PARC, but that bus didn't arrive until an hour later. However, there was a local bus that runs every 15 minutes or so, so I took that one, got off a stop and then rode my bike to PARC. And today, I went to Mountain View again and I rode my bike to Stanford Shopping Center, boarded the bus to Mountain View, took my bike off, and then rode along Castro to get my hair cut, and then took the bike back to the bus stop, rode the bus to Menlo Park Caltrain Station, got off and rode my bike back home.

This way, I get my exercise from biking which I haven't done in like 5 years, but then I can make use of my monthly VTA bus pass as well. If the bus doesn't come or the bus stop is far away, I have my bike. It all works out.

PARC intern video

Today, I was interviewed for the PARC intern video at work. It felt really cool and nice sitting on the couch, talking about my research and what I'm doing at PARC, my feelings about PARC, my advice to other interns. Kind of felt like Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer when they were interviewed for Channel 9. The intern videos will be shown to PARC to show them what we interns are doing. I think that's great and I'm glad and willing to do any thing that I can to make this summer internship the best ever!

Mayor of Toronto is on MySpace!

This is really cool when you hear that the mayor of your city is on the social networking web site MySpace. David Miller, the mayor of Toronto has a MySpace! Is he totally hip or what? He's doing this because he's trying to get reelected for Mayor of Toronto for a second term. So, I guess it's part of PR and he's making himself known in the social web space and appealing to the young people out there that are on MySpace and other social networking sites like that.

Bill Gates to step down and Robert Scoble leaves Microsoft

What a double dose of Microsoft news today! I read from a contact of mine on MSN Messenger that Bill Gates was to step down from Microsoft. Naturally, I was like huh? Really, can this be? So, I went to do a search on Gates step down Microsoft in Google and lone and behold it was true. But Bill is not stepping down now, he's going to reverse his full-time role at Microsoft to part time and make working with his charity foundation become his full-time business in July 2008. Ray Ozzie will become the chief software architect to take over from Bill. There's a video that shows Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates talking about this transition in a very intimate one on one setting that was shot in Microsoft on Channel 9. It's not very often that you see two big executives talking in this kind of intimate setting, no fancy elaborate lighting or studio, just sitting on a couch, especially with Microsoft. Usually Bill is talking on a podium. It's refreshing to hear the both of them talk about the changes at Microsoft. Bill doesn't seem to be looking at the camera, he seems to be shying away and doesn't seem to exert much energy like he kind of does when he gives speeches. Many people have commented to say that it's good that Bill is using his wealth to devote full time to his charity foundation and it is good for humanity. Other people say that Microsoft will not be the same with Gates and that this shows that Microsoft is really in trouble and not invincible as everyone seems they are. Robert Scoble writes about Gates leaving on his blog.

I just found out apparently Jeff Sandquist who is Robert Scoble's boss did the video of Ballmer and Gates. There's also a webcast of the press release but I can't see the video. Maybe there are too many hits to the site. Update: I am now listening and viewing the press release video.

And speaking of Robert Scoble, in a double whammy, Scoble is leaving Microsoft to become vice-president at a startup Silicon Valley firm called PodTech. It actually started the past weekend where Scoble did mention that he was leaving Microsoft to join PodTech. People in the blogosphere are wondering why Scoble would be leaving a great company to another company. Is there something inside Microsoft that would cause Scoble to leave? Scoble created the Channel 9 web site and the human voice of Microsoft. Lots of people are wondering maybe Scoble got too critical of Microsoft so Microsoft sacked him. However, from Scoble himself, he's said that he had all the freedom to meet with Microsoft competitors and to do things that companies would probably not let him do. I just found out that there was may have been some hints that Scoble was going to leave Microsoft, as I've read from the Naked Conversations blog. If it wasn't for Robert Scoble, Microsoft probably wouldn't embrace blogging. In fact, Gates has noted that after Scoble leaves, there are no plans to shut down blogging at Microsoft but to increase use of blogging.

So, it seems that Microsoft is evolving. People may think that Microsoft is going down because of these announcements. In my view, it seems disappointing that Scoble is leaving and that Gates is stepping down after July 2008, but the company needs to evolve. In fact, perhaps Microsoft may become better because then the public may change and not view Microsoft as such an evil company and empire. I think that this has started to change from blogging. Microsoft is a dynamic company and a very bright company. And the Microsoft employees you speak with are just like you and me, like I witnessed at the BayCHI dinner where I met 2 Microsoft Hotmail employees.

This is one of my longer blog posts, but today is a very important event in Microsoft's history that will probably be written down in the books. After hearing the press release video, Microsoft iterated that nothing is going to change, just only a shift in the leadership, but the innovation will remain there, the high energy and productivity won't change. Is this true? What do people think?

PARC public forum: Exploring Genomic Medicine Using Integrative Biology

I'm right now in the talk called Exploring Genomic Medicine Using Integrative Biology.

Atul Butte, Stanford University School of Medicine

The past 10 years have led to a variety of measurements tools in molecular biology that are nearly-comprehensive in nature. For example, microarrays are just one of at least 30 large-scale measurement or experimental modalities available to investigators in molecular biology. Instead of focusing on the cell, or the genotype, or on any single measurement modality, using integrative biology allows us to think holistically and horizontally. A disease like diabetes can lead to myocardial infarction, nephropathy, and neuropathy; to study diabetes in genomic medicine would require reasoning from a disease to all its various complications to the genome and back. To enable such research, we have been studying the process of intersecting genome-scale data sets in molecular biology, such as those from genetics, genomics, knockout experiments, and many others. I will show how we have built computational tools that reason over these types of data to help enable discoveries in genomic medicine, with specific applications for obesity and diabetes mellitus. Though standards are increasingly being required and used for genome-scale data, representing the experimental context using a structured vocabulary has not yet happened, yet is a crucial step towards automated integrative biology. I will show how the largest unified biomedical vocabulary can now be used to represent microarray sample annotations and show examples of visualization, searching, and analysis using this coding that could not have been done before. I will end with a consideration of ways we can use genome-scale data to provide new ways to classify disease, and show how this broad recasting of disease nosology allows identification of new therapeutic opportunities, and of the specificity, or lack thereof, of disease biomarkers.

Atul is talking about how we can use wafers instead of microarrays to hold millions of probes but each scan takes around 10 terabytes per GIF image. Your entire genome will fit on a CDROM. Genomics can be used for diagnosis of disease. Algorithms are needed to integrate genomes and phenomes. Johannsen's equation in 1908 is phenotype = genes + environment. Instead of doing this one of a time, relate all genes to all aspects of the environment to all phenotypes, and use text mining. Data is already stored in a system called Unified Medical Language System, it already has gene ontology and other biomedical vocabularies, and this semantic network is all free to download for research. You can then extract genes and concepts from the genome-phenome network of nodes and links (like a social network). We can then create a table of human disease genomics collection using hierarchical colection. The same gene can be used to determine whether to use a particular drug or not and what type of disease. We don't have an ontology to store the genomic test results from one hospital or another. Many physicians do not know how to use the genome. Genome-wide measurements are here, managing this data and relating it to medicine is a challenge. Bioinformatics can help in this regard.

This talk reminds me how bioinformatics is a hot area especially in Computer Science of which University of Toronto's Computer Science department is also being involved in this area.

Web 2.0 Framework video

Check out this Microshaft Web 2.0 framework video! It's funny! It's amazing what people will do to broadcast themselves on YouTube!

Biked to PARC and back home today

For the first time, I made the unthinkable, I actually biked from my place in Menlo Park to PARC in Palo Alto. I was debating whether to take the Dumbarton Express with my bike, but it was so long that it didn't come, I thought hmm, I've never tried biking to work before, let me give it a try. What an experience! I decided to make a short cut through Stanford, when actually it was longer! When I hit Foothill Expressway, there were lots of going up and down hill and I felt so tired from peddling (note, I've never done this intense biking ever I think!) When I finally reached at PARC (an hour later), I was literally out of breath and I couldn't even move my legs.

Anyways, I also rode my bike back home but took the streets instead. Thanks God that I arrived home safe. I certainly have got my exercise for this week. Swimming on Sunday, work out yesterday, biking today, biking tomorrow because I'm playing tennis, I'm going to be fit in no time!

Bay CHI meeting

I just finished the Bay CHI dinner tonight at Compadres. It was pretty good, I met several people who are interested in my research and met with 2 Microsoft people who are working on Windows Live Hotmail. Now, in the PARC auditorium waiting for the meeting to start. There lots of people here tonight in the auditorium, it's almost filled to capacity. There is also a podcast of the BayCHI meeting as well. There are 3 people presenting.

The first is Simeon J. Yates who is the director of the Cultural, Communication and Computing Research Institute in the Sheffield Hallam University, UK (s.yates AT shu.ac.uk) who is going to talk about A Device for Doing "Culture": Gender, Design and Use of the Mobile Phone.

Simeon J. Yates
A Device for Doing "Culture": Gender, Design and Use of the Mobile Phone
Starting Questions:
- why does academic social and cultural research have so limited an impact on the design and implementation of novel technologies and devices?
- why do academic social science and cultural studies colleagues still think novel technologies and devices are not of relevance to our subject?
- how do we explain gender differences in communication technology use?

Starting answers:
- need to focus on a clear and present cultural variable (such as gender)
- start with the mobile phone

Case with the mobile phone:
- mobile phone has a type form that resist from being changed
- huge cultural difference between how women and men talk
- gender as "performed" through "social practices" (Butler)
- we do gender when there is local context
- take culture into account by reading the history of its design and use
- culture gets lost to the technology
- did survey of young adults using SMS
- he showed the graph of average text message length, the largest is from woman to woman and the smallest is from man to man (dramatic drop, audience laughs)
- the text messages from man to man, are short, and abbreviated with a certain language
- emotional support most common in messages from women to women messages
- sarcasm most common in messages from men to women

Doing culture with the mobile
- there are certain rules and norms when to text or not during certain social situations, this generates mobile phone behaviour
- women and men engage in face work via the affordances of the phone
- women and men can articulate complex uses of the mobile phone in face and interaction management
- people use the mobile phone for face management and interaction management
- the device itself is gendered (different colours of the mobile phones, clamshell vs. not clamshell)
- how do you redesign a device for a social context when the device changes the nature of the context and culture it is used in?
- in Britain, people do a lot of texting because it is cheaper to text than voice

The conversation mechanism is dependent on the type of device.

Scott Jenson
PDAs Are Not Equal to Phones
Google
- we have had disasters of trying to take the web and technology and bring them to cell phones
- we need to be more reflective of what has failed
- phones are hot, web is hot, so phones + web must be even hotter (audience laughs)
- he is giving a real life example of finding a movie from the WAP browser on the mobile phone, but so difficult to make it work
- you are stuck in this UI loop because can't find what you are looking for
- it took him 21 screens and 12 minutes and 15 seconds to find the movie and when it's playing
- execution and vision are very far apart
- it seems so obvious for the design, but it doesn't show up in the design process
- it is very painful to develop and show design on the mobile phone
- he's presenting his slides on the mobile phone!
- it's hard to reinvent the wheel each time, we've tried to put a lot of desktop metaphor thinking into designing the UI of the mobile phone
- interaction on the phone is completely different, not just that the screen is smaller

Study of Nokia phones
- button count (not including the keypad) went down from 10 to 8, 6, and then 4
- then around 1998, the button count increased due to data and the web because trying to make desktop work on the mobile phone
- phone UI has more menus than the application!

- game designers get the UI metaphor
- 1 button games are coming
- game designers are embracing the limitations of the phone

MMS trouble
- SMS was fairly clean
- MMS is not even close to the cleanness of SMS
- for MMS, it is so easy to fall into the trap of unfeatures in adding one thing, this creates a domino effect and can get into a loop in which the next step can't be completed without finishing the previous step (eg. can't send until you have the recipient before, the send is greyed out)

Mobile banking
- it was considered the mobile "killer app"
- just because it is possible, it does not mean that people want it

Concrete examples
- Google Maps on the phone, it was a straight port from Google Maps on the desktop to the phone
- the behaviours change on the phone because have to scroll and then zoom in
- huge debate between ease of learning and ease of use, because have to change the learning behaviour
- but after learn the behaviour, then can become easy to use

Zooming web pages is a difficult more complicated case.

Browsing a web on a phone
- it has to be specific phone information
- what about transcoding of content to be dependent on the type of the device and the network? I wanted to ask that question but there was no time.

ZoneTag: Putting Your Photos in Context
Mor Naaman
Yahoo! Research Berkeley
- how would we create/store, find, share, discover the photos?
- ZoneTag research web site
- use cameraphones because they are programmable, context-aware and network-connected
-current mobile experience: it is difficult to share and find
- tag/categorize/annotate your photos from your phone, gives tag suggestions
- use location to infer context and tags
- tags come from you, your contacts, various datasets, customized streams
- if you want to participate in the ZoneTag research and upload your photo with the cell ID and share with others, you can register
- ZoneTag can also take annotations from RSS feeds and links
- ah, so this is what Yahoo is doing and how they are incorporating Flickr and del.icio.us
- tagging is the means, not the goal
- Mor talked about how he took photos from the Where2.0 conference (related to Web2.0 metaphor) in San Jose that talked about mapping and local search
- mor AT yahoo-inc DOT com
- this tagging of photos seems very similar to a mobile photo tagging application from Mobisys 2004 called Metadata Creation System for Mobile Images

It was certainly a great meeting, out of all the meetings that I've gone to like Canada PUG, this was the most well attended, with very interesting questions that were asked from the audience. There will be a podcast of this meeting afterwards. Kudos to the people that organized this meeting, it was great and very professional and fun! I will certainly make BayCHI a monthly event while I'm here at PARC for the summer. Plus, at the dinner, I made lots of new friends and explained about my PhD research and what I'm doing at PARC, and had very interesting conversations.

BayCHI meeting tonight!

The BayCHI meeting is tonight and it will be held at PARC's auditorium. See more info from here.

Went biking in Palo Alto today!

It's been almost more than 5 years since I last rode a bike, because well I have a car back home so there's really no point in having a bike, when I can go from point A to point B. But in Palo Alto, it's a different story. I don't have a car, and from my experience, the bus is ok during the weekdays, but come the weekend, the buses are infrequent. So, I decided today to ride my bike and I biked to Stanford. Along the way, I took some photos. Biking is actually really nice, you can go wherever you want to go, and it's nice for exercise as well. I really enjoyed biking today. Before I went to Stanford, there was a flea market at Palo Alto high school where I bought a pair of rollerblades for $10!

Photos from the Stanford campus:























After finishing up at Stanford, I went to the Menlo Park nativity carnival which is an annual tradition in Menlo Park. The carnival reminded me a little like a small Canada's Wonderland or CNE. Here are some pictures that I took.









They even had a ferris wheel!



Entertainment:



Mmm, funnel cake!



I made a podcast at the Menlo Park nativity carnival, you can listen to it here.

Now, I realize that having a bike really helps to go from point A or point B. Plus, it's nice weather as well!

Bluetooth wrist watch is finally here!

After hearing about the Bluetooth wrist watch as part of the research in the Wearable Computing group at IBM Research that runs Linux, and how Seiko mentioned that it was going to manufacture them, now Citizen has announced they will market and sell the Bluetooth wrist watch. This Bluetooth watch apparently will notify you if you've misplaced your cell phone. Incoming phone calls on your mobile phone are displayed on the watch. Apparently, it will only be available in Japan (typical, isn't it, Japan always gets the coolest and latest gadgets).

BayCHI meeting this Tuesday the 13th

There is a Bay area CHI meeting this Tuesday and it's being held at the PARC auditorium where I am working at PARC for the summer. It's from 7:30 pm to 9:30 pm so I'm planning to go. Just need to figure out how to get back home after since the Dumbarton Express doesn't run after 8 pm. You can see the program for that night here. It's going to be about mobile phones, and me being GadgetMan, that excites me! And Google and Yahoo will give talks!

There's a one page flyer here about the event. Should be interesting, I'm looking forward to the meeting and schmoozing and building and expanding my social network!

Internet 'It Boy'

Just came across reading my daily dose of technology news from CNN when I saw this article. It's about the Evolution of Dance video posted by Judson Laipply which is the most watched video on YouTube.com. For those who don't know, YouTube is a web site where you can post your videos for other people to watch. Apparently, people find his dancing hilarious. They say that it's the funniest 6 minutes you'll ever see. Well, I'd dispute that, I laughed a little but I didn't think it was the funniest 6 minutes though. You can watch the video and see for yourself.

Learning C# and the world is such a small place

I'm learning C# at PARC now, specifically parsing XML using C#. Now, I see why people say C# is similar to Java. It is. It uses the same concepts just different syntax. Instead of the java "import" for importing packages, C# uses "using". Exception handling is also very similar to Java as well. The Visual Studio environment is actually quite nice (it's been a while since I worked in Visual Studio), when you write code, it provides a list of variables and methods to choose from, and dynamically tells you what parameters to enter. So, you don't have to search online or through Help while coding.

And the world is indeed such a small place. Just today before going to work, I met this guy who recognized I went to Waterloo because I wore a Waterloo summer jacket. Yes, if you want to get noticed, wear your alma mater's clothing! Anyways, he talked to me and I found out he is also a summer intern but in undergrad and he goes to Waterloo! It's nice to know, that I'm not the only Canadian intern and specifically the only Southern Ontario intern in the Palo Alto area.

Google Maps mania

Everybody is now mashing up their web sites and using Google Maps. Google Maps is amazing, you can map whatever you want on Google Maps, but too bad that Google Maps can only do Canada and US. Apparently, now Google Maps API will allow to do other countries, as this Google Maps Mania blog says. This blog mentions all the cool web sites that are mashing up with Google Maps.

Check it out!

Sunday, a time for rest, cooking and French Open!

Today, I watched a little bit of the French Open tennis, where I saw Gael Monfils beat American James Blake. That was a long match, it lasted 5 sets and almost like 3 hours! On the women's side, I saw part of the match between Dinara Safina and Maria Sharapova where Dinara Safina beat Maria Sharapova. Oh my, two upsets, I would have thought Maria Sharapova would have beaten Dinara Safina (who is the sister of mens' tennis player Marat Safin). It was a slugfest between the two, with loud grunts by the two women. Sharapova was leading and had like 4 set points in the first set, but lost the first set 7-5. She easily won the second set 6-2, and was leading 5-1 in the third and could have closed it out. But apparently, she didn't, and that allowed Safina to come back and win. I want to play tennis but I can't seem to find anyone there to play with. If you're a tennis player and reading my blog, and you are in Palo Alto or Menlo Park, contact me cause I'm looking for someone to play with. I found out that tennis keys for the Menlo Park tennis courts are $30 for the year for Menlo Park residents. That's not too bad, so I think I'm going to get it. Besides watching the French Open, I bought a bike helmet for $20 from Performance Bike as I'm borrowing a roommate's bike.

And to close out the day, I made steak at night. I think it was ok, although it was a little dry.

Thank you 511.org!

I'm so confused in terms of taking bus transit in Palo Alto and Menlo Park. The bus schedules that I got only show the intermediate points so it's difficult for me to figure out when the bus is actually going to come to a particular bus stop. Also, the buses don't seem to run that frequently on weekends. I was in Menlo Park today at the Menlo Park Caltrain station where I had lunch at Cafe Borrone's. Man, it took so long before the lunch came, I was getting impatient and hungry! Anyways, I decided to walk along El Camino Real after going into Kepler's bookstore (which was huge, considering it's not like a Borders or other big name bookstores). When I decided to walk back, I saw a bus stop and I waited for a bus. Two buses came, but they didn't stop (I guess that wasn't the stop that the buses were supposed to stop). But I didn't know that, I find the bus transit confusing and frustrating. I sometimes have to think to myself, should I wait for the bus, or just walk. Sometimes, it's even faster to walk than to take the bus. Now, I know why my friends told me that having a car in Silicon Valley is convenient!

Now, someone told me that there is a web site called 511.org which can help you plan your trip. Certainly, this is what I've been looking for! Before, I had to find out my source and destination using Google or Yahoo maps, and then try to map that to the nearest bus stop on the bus schedule. No more! 511.org will tell you which bus line to take and which station (for both source and destination). It will also tell you the bus schedules for the route. This is a life saver, thank you 511.org! They have a version for the PDA, but it's under construction. I would certainly love that feature! I suppose I could create an AvantGo channel and then sync the web page with AvantGo and sync it with my Palm.

But still, I find the transit perplexing, and difficult to understand. Maybe someone can explain to me how to make my life easier in using transit. I have been considering maybe getting a bike and giving myself exercise, you can also put your bike on the front of the bus (they have special bike racks to accommodate up to 2 bikes).

In Plutos right now

I'm in Plutos restaurant right now. I had dinner for only $12! I took pictures which I will post later tonight. I'm here with 2 other interns who celebrated my birthday tonight. And what was really cool, we exchanged each other's contacts through Bluetooth on our cell phones!

Here are the photos I took with my Palm!

Circuit boards are printed on this egg in downtown on University Ave. (yes, only a geek like me would take a photo of this!)






Steak side salad


Grilled chicken sandwich

Paper submitted and it's my birthday!

I submitted the paper last night at 2:30 am in the morning! So tired, and today is my birthday! This afternoon, there was an interns orientation of the library and the PARC facilities. There was cake and strawberries, mmm! And today, I wrote some code using XML and C#, I've never used C# before and now that I look at it, it's very similar to Java. So, I don't think the learning curve will be too great.

My plan is to go out with a couple of interns tonight to celebrate my birthday! I've always had my birthday in Toronto, so this will be the first time in I don't know how long, that I'm celebrating my birthday outside of Toronto! It should be fun, as you can see from my blog, I'm enjoying myself here in Palo Alto. I found a tennis court that is right near where I live in Menlo Park and the price isn't too bad to get the tennis keys, so I think I'm going to do that. Looking forward also to watch French Open tennis this weekend!

Forgot pass, phishing, and never take the DB1 bus!

Today was my 4th day at PARC and I think I'm getting up to speed with the research project that I'm working on which has to do with task management in e-mail. However, I forgot my PARC pass at home! So, I had to get a temporary one. I usually don't forget things, but I was in a rush, so I forgot it. I still have my tuna casserole that I made last night, and I had that for lunch and also for dinner! I still have one more to finish up for tomorrow lunch.

During the afternoon, I attended a talk on phishing and I learned about the fundamental problem of e-mail and how it's difficult to detect phishing e-mails now these days and the ways that we can try to combat phishing. The real problem with e-mail is that there is no authentication of e-mail content, you can authenticate the sender e-mail but not the content itself, so anyone could write anything in the e-mail message content. So what are the ways around this? We can do sender authentication, however this won't work with forwarding. Another thing is to use SPF (sender policy framework) and add SPF records to DNS that indicate what servers are allowed to send mail for your domain. The receiving mail server looks up the SPF record of the mail’s From domain to match. Apparently, SPF is relatively widely deployed and is great for catching phishers. But the problem is that SPF records need to be added to the DNS and the mail servers need to implement that. Not all mail servers (especially forwarding mail servers) do that. So, the question is where do you catch the spam? You can do it at the mail server or at the client (with filtering techniques which many people use and so do web-based e-mail). I think we need both.

Coming home tonight, I took the DB1 bus instead of the DB bus, and I remember several people telling me not to take the DB1 bus because it is express and doesn't stop at the places I need to get off at. But I took it anyway, and because of that, I had to retrace and take the DB bus one hour and half later. So, instead of coming home at 7 pm, I came home at around 8:30 pm.

I need to continue to finish up writing a paper tonight, it's due this Friday, which happens to also be my birthday!