and.... check out my new site.

I found this blog deserted after quite a few years.  The new place is now at https://heta.link

Cheers!

2 years

2 years is a long time.  Especially talking about this day and age of information explosion.

Looking at my last post I am pretty amaze how much and sometimes how little things has changed in technology world.  For one, Android software has grown very much in all aspects, but yet, it seems we are still stuck on the very same concepts of things: about having a tablet, keeping it charged, pulling it out and find information or entertainment on it.  The internals and UI may be drastically improved, but the paradigm remains.

But we are seeing the next wave of disruption.  Wearable technologies such as smart watches, smart glass(es) (e.g. Google Glass), and bendable mobile display.  These are getting more solid by days to pave the way of the next technology evolution.   I look forward to it.  Very much.

For now, I am pretty happy with playing games on a Nexus 7, reading on a Kindle, and using my phone while cursing its battery life (I am still rocking a Galaxy Nexus... I know...) and I am writing this blog on a Lenovo X1 Carbon (love it!).  I envision a year or two later, I would only have a smart watch with built-in cellular functions, and perhaps a Glass, and yet, I would still have a e-ink Kindle (it's pretty hard to take me away from e-ink now) and a laptop (a Chromebook perhaps?)

2 years is a long time.  I am still quite lost and in denial in social networking, but I am glad to say that my little one has grown quite a lot these 2 years.  So now I get to spend more time with him, instead of worrying about what to do with all the social networks ;)

Kindle Fire thoughts and EEE Transformer review

I have been using my EEE Transformer tablet for a few months now and here are my observation:

• Pros:

1. Good internals: credit goes to nVidia's Tegra2 processor. It really make apps and games looks sooo much better and play smoother.
2. tons of storage: I got the 16GB version and was able to put my whole apps, books, music collection and some movies on there, but the cool thing is it comes with Micro SD card slot so I can get more space if I want to. But I haven't reach the need at all.
3. Andriod apps: though Android apps ecosystem is still catching up with Apple's, there are some really good games around for the Honeycomb tablets already... Here are some of the one I really enjoy: Muffin Knight, Dungeon Defender, Robotek HD, Destroy Gunners, Backbreaker THD, Pinball HD , Zenonia series, Inotia3, Reckless Getaway, Samurai II: Vengeance, Cordy, Roboto, Diversion, Galaxy on Fire 2 THD, The Mystery of Crystal Portal. And I've actually found myself playing game more on the tablet than my PS3 or PC nowadays. Other non-games apps I also want to mentioned that are outstanding: Jota Text Editor, Sketch Book Express, News Republic, and APPY Geek, USA Today, Netflix, oh, Dolphin For Pad browser, some of the children's story book apps are really nice too: The Candy Factory, The boy who Cries Wolf...
4. build: Asus did a great job designing the lines and building this product. It feels solid and look smooth. I haven't been using the hardware keyboard too much, but I know Asus has consistently been improving the firmware and the UI, as I have seen the Chinese input system been improved with better associate phrase prediction and the UI flow now.
5. customization: dock with full size USB adapters and full size SD card reader, on-tablet mini HDMI port... unbeatable.

• Cons:

1. Honeycomb: soft keyboard, and the input area a lot of time does not get focus properly. You open a web page, see a text field and tap on it to enter some stuff, I would say a good 3 out of 5 times it will fail and the text field will be covered by the soft keyboard or something else. It really pisses me off.
2. Microphone issue: I haven't really spent enough time to figure this out... so perhaps it's my fault. But I've tried to use the built-in microphone, the headphone comes with Nexus S (both headphone and mic share the same 3.5mm adapter), and a bluetooth adapter that works fine with my Nexus S. And no matter what I do, the other side of my Google talk Video chat can barely hear me. As a result, I have not been using my tablet as much as I wanted to for Video/voice chatting.
3. Live Wallpapers: I've tried a lot of Live Wallpapers on this puppy and 4 out of 5 of the Live wallpapers I've tried render the front end (Launcher) sooo sluggish that it's unbearable. While this is not a major factor, it just took the point off in the comparison.
4. Hardware: I run pass a co-worker with a Motorola Xoom tablet the other day and realized that, even though being lighter than Xoom, EEE Transformer does feels heavier, and bigger. Reason? I blame the overall diagonal ratio and the margins around the actual display. EEE transformer's overall body seems longer, and the margins are pretty big. If the margin can be cut down to half in Y-axis and to 1/3 in X-axis, then I think it will help the weight distribution and the look.

Seeing the latest Kindle Fire videos/photos reminded me to post this, since it seems like Amazon is on the right track to make a desirable tablet. 10.1 inch display is feeling a bit oversize for me and it's contributing the feeling of its being overweight too. I think 7 inch is probably a more suitable size for tablet, as I really, _really_, love my 6" kindle, I love its weight, portability, durability, and battery life.

So Amazon, I wish you luck to get this right. Please, please make sure the UI is smooth, keyboard is great, battery life is good, and weight great on the hand. (It seems like they are claiming all these so far, so I hope they can cash that check)... If all these are down, I am sure to be in the line of the pre-order list :)

Social Networking and My poor blog

So I finally realized both Facebook and Twitter has this thing called 'list' which I've never understand it other than it being a 'label'. My retarded soul just realized that it can be used the same way as a news aggregation, in a social way.

So I can add my 'real' friends to 'RealFriend' list and have a 'celeb' list following all the celebrities, and a 'professional' list for ppl I know from work...etc. Now, when I check the 'updates/news' I can just check the list to look at news at specific lists first... this way it's less noisy than the way I have been doing... basically having no list at all...

I know, I am about a year behind in social network, and this babystep is sooo big for me.

But, is it really worth it to make all these efforts to think of a 'list' to put the people in? I still find it too troublesome. Speaking for my anti-social nature.

Social Networking is booming, people express themselves on it, post local observation on it, deals, posessions, preferences, even their research notes/blogs... and those information are becoming very private, if works as designed.

Is it really helping human being to improve the way we communicate with each other and speed up the information flow? Or is it going to just become bunch of little social circles (looking from the total human scale) where certain information only flows within that circle and may eventually get lost when the 'list' is unlisted?

In the 1990's we go to library, clip down newspapers, categorize our notes and clips...

In the 2000's we start to use Search engines like Altavista/yahoo/Google/wikipedia to search for things people document online

In the 2010's we are moving into social networking, looking for trendy news, tribal knowledge fom socially connected sources... If the sources allows us to see the results.

It seems the control of the knowledge source is getting more and more distributed?

Regardless, I guess as a human, or a social being, I better catch up and start to organize my lists... :D

About the Big Pebbles in your Life

http://justinlim.wordpress.com/2006/11/28/of-rocks-pebbles-and-sand-who-are-the-rocks-
in-your-life/

Really nice story... get you thinking...

the sliding power switch of my kindle broke after only 2 days. called their support and a replacement is now on the way. (:-/

my kindle arriving today... oh did I say that my kindle arriving today? #excited #kindle