Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
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
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
Monday, December 29, 2008
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Friday, December 26, 2008
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!
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!
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
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!
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!
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Monday, December 22, 2008
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Monday, December 15, 2008
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Monday, December 08, 2008
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
On Technorati: mouse, Mother of All Demos, hypertext, SRI, DougEngelbart
Saturday, December 06, 2008
Friday, December 05, 2008
Thursday, December 04, 2008
Wednesday, December 03, 2008
Tuesday, December 02, 2008
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
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
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