e^(pi*i) + 1 = 0

We were twitting today and someone asked about favorite equations :)

OK, my favorite equation is e^(pi*i) + 1 = 0, as Feynman said "the most remarkable formula", as it links the most important mathematical constants (0, 1, i, PI, and e).

Very intriguing in fact because of the identity in the Euler's equation once you set the pi in it!

CES 2011 Simple Summary (7 Feb 2011/Mon)

CES 2011 was definitely interesting. I prepared a simple presentation for my local flash user group.

OK, here is the presentation.

CES 2011 Week

The international Consumer Electronics Show will be starting at Las Vegas this week. As you know, it is one of the biggest technology-related trade show, and hosts many previews of the new and up-coming products.

I believe we will see many innovative devices including small hand-held systems and specifically tablets. I bet it will be very promising show for the Android fans out there! This year is definitely an exciting year for the tablets. Of course, the idea of the tablet is noting new at all, but elusive tablet becoming more main stream, much more responsive and beautiful every year! In the past, the old idea had its failures but with the support of enabling technologies, advancements, new innovations and the big wave of the Android OS changed all those in the recent years. I am looking forward to see the great touch devices, whether it's resistive or capacitive, and strongly believe they will reshape the daily computing in our world very soon!

Who knows, Microsoft may come up with some surprises of their own! We may even see Windows 8 for the first time as well. Probably it will be touch enabled and hopefully much more smoother for the unstoppable tablet devices which may come from different vendors.

What will Intel show this time? Last year I enjoyed seeing the Infospace, which run on the Intel Core i7 processor! It was an interesting system with 576 cubes hooked up to 20000 information resources, including 20 live video feeds. One were able to touch to the cubes and you could see the content coming forward to show the information that it was related to. It was quite responsive and I enjoyed it!

Anything more exciting this year? We surely see in a few days :)

Got my Nexus S

Just couple days ago (17 Dec 2010/Fri), I got my Nexus S with Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) and yes it is amazing! Every month or so a new Android device comes along and becomes or claims to be the best device ever! I have seen quite a few, and I own some, I believe at this point it is the best one in the market as of this week! Of course, the race goes on, and probably we will see much more capable devices, probably with dual cores in the very near future.

I will be in the CES 2011 show next month, I bet many tablet devices will continue to surface in the show. Speaking of the tablets, Galaxy S is awesome, on the other side B&N's Nook Color has become very capable and getting ready for the Android 2.2 (Froyo) update in January 2011. It is priced very competitively at $249. It has 24-bit color, 600x1024 display, definitely it is very good device at this price point! I don't have it, but in the B&N bookstore I have played with it, browsed the internet, it was much better than I thought. Hackers already rooted it and how-to tutorials can be found everywhere in the Internet as usual :)

Big Buzz About Nexus S

A new Android phone coming soon from Google, and surely Google marketing is trying to make a big deal out of it as much as possible :)

Fun part, they are presenting some puzzles for twitter peeps to solve (follow @googlenexus)

Here is the second puzzle:
Puzzle Challenge #2: There is more than meets the eye at http://goo.gl/MKoc8. You'll find the answer in a tweet.

What's the clue? "There is more than meets the eye ..."! In the web page (surprisingly super polished web page, very nicely designed, unlike any other Google web site :)) all you see is the intro to their new phone!
However, if you take a look at the page code, you will see the following ascii-art!

                      I                I                      
                       I      ++      I                       
                        IIIIIIIIIIIIII                        
                      IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII                      
                    IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII                    
                   IIII   IIIIIIIIII  IIIII                   
                  IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII                  
                 IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII                  
                 IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII                 
                 IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII                 
           IIII  IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII  IIII           
          IIIIII IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII IIIIII          
          IIIIII IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII IIIIII          
          IIIIII 0110100001110100011101000111 IIIIII          
          IIIIII 0000001110100010111100101111 IIIIII          
          IIIIII 0110011101101111011011110010 IIIIII          
          IIIIII 1110011001110110110000101111 IIIIII          
          IIIIII 0110101001010000010011110100 IIIIII          
          IIIIII 100101101100IIIIIIIIIIIIIIII IIIIII          
          IIIIII IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII IIIIII          
          IIIIII IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII IIIIII          
          +IIII  IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII  IIII:          
                 IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII                 
                 IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII                 
                  IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII                  
                       IIIIII    IIIIII                       
                       IIIIII    IIIIII                       
                       IIIIII    IIIIII                       
                       IIIIII    IIIIII                       
                       IIIIII    IIIIII                       
                       IIIII,    IIIIII                       
                         I:        ~I

Take a look at the 1s and 0s in the middle of the Android! Go ahead and decipher it, that gives you http://goo.gl/jPOIl. In the web site you will find a puzzle and you are supposed to be solving it in 45 seconds!

Solution? It changes every time you try to solve it, in my 2nd time solution it is ESISNXU Go ahead and try...



That was clever :)

As a side note, we may see an improved UI in the Google sites! Now it's time, don't you think?

WP7 from Microsoft

Windows Phone 7 is here in US (released on 8 Nov 2010/Mon, almost a week now!) I've seen a few models from different service providers, and they all look nice and sleek.

My favorites are:
* Dell Venue Pro (4.1 inch) with vertical slider, surprisingly very nice phone from Dell! Love the AMOLED (Active Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diode) screen. Good size and feels right at hand.
* HTC HD7 (4.3 inch), cool, I like the kickstand, so you can watch movies hand free.
* Samsung Focus with AMOLED, very lightweight
* HTC Surround

All phones have the $199 price tag, not bad with 2 year contract which is pretty much the standard in recent years as you know.

All has mandatory requirements from Microsoft, like 1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, 5 MPixel camera, and 480x800 screen resolution. These enforced standards make it easy for developers to develop applications for the mobile devices.

Last but not least, I got an LG phone as a developer from Microsoft last month (13 October 2010). It is a nice phone too, although screen size is small compared to Dell's, HTC's, and Samsung's phones! All phones feel like performing very smoothly. So far, I've developed 3 apps, you can find them here: http://bit.ly/wp7-20101114 So, tell me what you think! Almost all my apps dedicated to my son :) Most are simple, but in the near future more interesting and challenging apps will show up in the app stores!

Good start for the first week, and the very first version of the OS. I bet it will be much more improving with the following updates from MS.

Sparrow Framework for iOS

Yesterday I stumbled upon a very promising framework for iOS devices (iPhone|iPod Touch|iPad).
Very elegantly designed, if you know Flash, Java, and/or C# you may feel very comfortable with it. Of course, one still needs to understand the Objective-C no matter what!

I like it a lot, I will play with it more and give updates accordingly!

Here is the ULR: http://www.sparrow-framework.org/

iPad

OK, got my iPad almost a month ago (29 July 2010/Thr), looks really nice and I like it a lot :) Time to think about the apps that can be developed and deployed on it.

Of Flowcharts and Social Networks!

Hmm, sounds about right :)


Source: Wired Magazine. http://www.wired.com/magazine/wp-content/images/18-05/st_askflowchart_f.jpg

BCSD6: San Diego Barcamp (6th)

Barcamps are great, don't miss out! So mark your calendars everyone...

SD Barcamp Info (from barcampsd.org): Barcamp has grown – again. This coming barcamp will be SD 6, which means we’re on our THIRD year of barcamp. Technically, since we had to push BCSD6 to January, we’ll be beginning our FOURTH year.

Here’s the current lowdown:

• January 16th and 17th
• Intuit, Santa Fe Campus in Carmel Valley

CES 2010

Consumer Electronics Show is approaching quickly. It will start on 7 Jan 2010 @ LV. We may see plethora of new mobile devices from many vendors in the show. Of course, I am quite interested with Palm's WebOS as a developer. I think they have a great product in their hands!

I bet many small form factor devices such as new wave of PDAs, smartphones, tablets, e-readers and other exciting gadgets will show up in the show! Recently, I saw Mag+, a new concept on the future of digital magazines. It was quite amazing. Check it out. They might be in there as well...

Microsoft and Apple are also working on their secret tablet devices! According to Gizmodo, MS's new tablet called Courier will show it's face next year. Late prototype has beautiful 7-inch dual screens. Probably they will not call it a tablet pc, most likely it will be called a booklet.

Palm's WebOS SDK (Mojo)

Finally, I got the email to download the SDK this evening at 11:19 pm! I will give it a try soon...

CodeCamp @ UCSD (27-28 June 2009)

We had a very good CodeCamp @ UCSD. I talked about Software Design Patterns and Objective-C for iPhone development in two consecutive sessions. Attendance was pretty good, I will post my presentations here soon...

SD BarCamp (30-31 May 2009)

SD Barcamp 5 started @ Intuit today. Very cool sessions :)

SoCal Code Camp Announced

I got an email from my friend Woody Pewitt from Microsoft today. Yes, it is that time again :) We will have our next code camp at UCSD (27 and 28 June 2009).

Come and join us. It is fun, very informative and extremely useful for all of us...

Here is the link: http://www.socalcodecamp.com

Sun's Future (21 April 2009/Tue)

OK, Sun & IBM deal didn't go through, as we all know. Now this week, we have a new offer for Sun, this time from Oracle! Many expressed their concerns about the future of the Sun's technologies. What will happen to Java? How about MySQL? Same questions apply to the others as well, such as Netbeans, OpenOffice, Virtual Box?

Personally, I would like to see Sun standing still on its own feet and continue its wonderful contributions to the technology world. However, company's financial trouble is suggesting the otherwise. We will see what would happen to this deal in a few short days. Is it going to go through or will it fall off like the IBM deal? Again, another interesting development in the tech arena to observe...

I was also thinking today, what if IBM increases its bid for Sun? Think about the other extereme case: Wouldn't it be also funny to see Microsoft jumping in and offering yet another bid for our beloved Sun :)

Well, today is our San Diego Java User Group meeting at Sun, and I bet many of us will be talking about these issues at the meeting all evening long :)

Cloud Computing

In the near future, our data and programs will be floating somewhere in the connected servers known as the Cloud. All of the computation will be done within there, and the processed results will be stored in there as well. The main idea is to incorporate software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS) and infrastructure as a service (IaaS). This is the big promise of the so-called "Cloud Computing". As a matter of fact the concept is a reality today in the form of proprietary implementations, thanks to the pioneers in this field. The concept has been considered as the first major IT market disruption that has taken place since the open software movement.

There are quite a few big players out there: Amazon, Google, Sun, IBM, and Microsoft. New players are joining to the game day by day. Now there is even a manifesto (Open Cloud Manifesto) circulating around the techno corners: Promoting openness! Isn't it too early for a manifesto in this area? I don't know. Manifesto, standards, many companies who are willing to jump on the bandwagon, these are all good, however it may hinder the innovation in this early stage! Maybe for this type of reasons and also to protect their initial investments, some of the big companies like Amazon, Google and Microsoft didn't say yes to the open cloud yet! On the other side, the impressive list of supporters (such as IBM, Aptana, SAP, EMC, VMWare, GoGrid, Red Hat, Novell, OMG etc.) of the movement is groving fast.

Is the cloud computing a big hype as some will argue, or a revolutionary new computing platform for all of us? We will see the results soon :)

Windows 7 == Vista 2.0 ?

I just downloaded the Windows 7 test version (build 7000) today and quicly set up a virtual machine using VMware Fusion for it. Installation went smoothly (business edition installed). Once I installed the VMware tools, I was ready to go and give it a try. I am using my MacBook (w/4GB RAM) and I allocated 1GB RAM for Win7. Later I shutdown the system and restarted again just to see how long it would take to reboot, it took 50 seconds to restart, little better than Vista VM.

On the surface, it looks almost like Vista! Minor differences on the taskbar, but start button and panel are exactly the same. Documents, Pictures, Music, Computer, Control Panel, etc all have the same icons like Vista. In the start panel I noticed Snipping Tool for capturing the screen image. I also did take a look at the Math Intput Panel (under Tablet PC) and Windows PowerShell.

By default, .NET installed of course (that's good). No flash or Java there, one needs to install them seperately. Flash installation was a breeze, I didn't install any JRE yet. I will check the security enhancements soon.

Task manager: Memory section now shows total, cached, available and free memory in the system. This is a good change since in Vista we could only see total, cached and free memory! That gives the wrong impression because Vista tries to cache as many system resources as possible, and one can see that there is no free memory left! This is a misnomer, in fact, Vista will release the memory and replace it with new content as needed.

Still, there is no built-in virtual desktop support (although many applications available freely)! I was hoping for a cool looking virtual desktop app from MS in this release!

OK, here is the screenshot of the desktop:

CES Starting

World's largest consumer technology trade show "International Consumer Electronics Show" is starting this week in Las Vegas (8-11 January 2009). Even in recession times that we go through right now, the show would be very interesting to see. Probably, a lot of start-ups will show their innovative technologies in the event. I am eager to see which products, tools, would be the big winners this year...

San Diego BarCamp (15-16 November 2008)

San Diego BarCamp will be at Intuit's campus this time. A lot of cool sessions! Just be there if you can:) The event is free however you need to register.

http://www.barcampsd.org

Address:
7545 Torrey Santa Fe Rd
San Diego, CA 92129

Map: Intuit's Campus