Increase your productivity with iPhone apps
My first PDA was PalmPilot Professional (photo to right) produced by U.S. Robotics (later as Palm, Inc.). I bought it in 1998 but I did not use it often due to limited apps. My use was restricted to Calendar, Address and Todo. It was a huge hassle to purchase apps for PalmPilot because there was no single app store like Apple’s App Store. Commercial apps for Palm Pilot at that time were hard to come by. The device went dead during a flight from KLIA to Taipei transit via Singapore on September 11, 2001. I guess it was fried by ESD (electrostatic discharge) while I walked on the carpeted corridor in Changi airport terminal.
Two years later, I bought a Sharp Zaurus SL-5500. It ran Zaurus and OPIE GUI environment. The Zaurus SL-5500 was Sharp’s first PDA to run Linux. Linux was the main reason I chose Zaurus. It was fast and colorful (at that time). It came with a couple of useful apps and desktop sync software. Syncing to a desktop running on Linux was good. After using it for a few months, some commercial apps which I bought, began to crash more often after I updated the operating system. I gave it up after a few attempts to restore the original operating system. Here is the photo of Zaurus (I managed to find its charger) with iPhone lying beside it. Well look at its size! The iPhone 3GS is half the thickness of Zaurus.
The other drawback of the Zaurus is its retractable physical keyboard. The keys are too small for my fingers and typing is real pain. So, BlackBerry with physical keyboard is totally out of the game. Here is the picture of Zaurus with its keyboard and iPhone with the virtual-touch keyboard for comparison:
I was tempted by HP and Toshiba but, hey, they ran on Windows. No way! In early 2008. I purchased a 2nd generation, 32GB iPod Touch. I was immediately captured by its charms. In December 2009, I got a 32GB iPhone 3GS. My response was: “Damn! I should have gotten it earlier.”
Both PalmPilot and Zaurus need stylus to tap on their screens. If you lose your stylus, you need to buy a new one. iPhone is more convenient because everything is manipulated with your fingers. Apple’s innovative multi-touch screen gives more user experience and more operability to the device.
All I can say, I have never used other PDAs like I use my iPhone. I mostly use my iPhone in my work (especially) and for fun during leisure (social networking, music, games and etc.) Here are some apps I use to boost my productivity while I am on the move and even at my desk.
Paymo is a free online time tracking and billing service. With a small fee, user can upgrade the service for unlimited users and invoices. I use Paymo to track my time spent on various projects and business/work related activities. The Paymo free iPhone app works in both online and offline mode. When I am out to support my clients, and/or having business or technical meeting and discussion, I can easily track my time with this tiny useful app.
With design based on the concepts and techniques described in David Allen’s book, “Getting Things Done”, OmniFocus for iPhone is a powerful to-do app that let you stay focused in whatever you are doing or trying to complete. The app is priced at $19.99 which is a little bit on the high side. I was hesitating for a while because of the price. After using it, I will say, “Save your money for OmniFocus and forget about other to-do apps.” Before this, I was using Things and I am still using it. The only reason I want to keep Things is that it allows assigning teammates to your tasks. OmniFocus is more comprehensive than Things and it let you stay focused in getting your jobs done, which is most important. Besides, you can sync your data via MobileMe, Bonjour, WebDAV server or locally mounted disk on your Mac. Personally, I think it is worth the investment.
Things is an easy-to-use to-do app priced at $9.99. It’s a good alternative to OmniFocus if you are on a tight budget. The price tag of $9.99 is considered quite high especially there are some free to-do apps, but to do a good job, Things will be above average. Unlike OmniFocus, syncing can only be done with a WiFi at your local area network where your Mac is running the desktop version of Things. One feature which I don’t like is its ability to assign more than one tag to your tasks. Too many tags confuse me.
Evernote is a free online service which let you save your ideas in the form of texts, voice memos or photos. You can save a web clip or PDF. Syncing between multiple devices and Macs over the Internet is a breeze. I use it while I am writing computer codes to note down what I have done and new ideas that come along. You can tag your documents for easy retrieval later. If you would like to enjoy a larger storage and monthly usage bandwidth, you can upgrade the service to Evernote Premium for $5 a month or $45 a year. Evernote is a good companion for notetaking while you are working, engaged in meetings and discussion and even at leisure.
Invoice2Go allows me to issue invoices on the go without a notebook or desktop computer. With it, I no longer need to go back to office to issue invoices. It saves me a lot of time from traveling back and forth between office and clients. Just email the invoices to your clients and you can make the delivery right away. For only $9.99, it saves you time and gasoline.
Dropbox is a free online storage service. You can take any file with you on your iPhone to meetings. Your co-workers or clients can drop files to your Dropbox and you can pick them up anytime, anywhere on your iDevice or Mac, provided they are connected to the Internet. It also allows you to share your files on Facebook or Twitter via link. By getting your friend to sign up you can earn 250MB of extra free disk space (up to 8GB) for every new account created. Click here to sign up.
Flash of the titans
Apple’s decision for not to implement Adobe’s Flash into iPhone OS has turned Adobe-Apple relationship sour. In an open letter from Steve Job, he has written clearly about Flash’s weaknesses and a firm stance against Adobe’s Flash. I absolutely agree with Steve based on my experience with Flash. I would say: “Flash is nice to look at, but is a nightmare to have it!”
A week or two before Apple published Job’s open letter, I learned about an open source Flash project called Gnash from Twit. You can listen to the podcast here.
I really don’t believe in develop-once-deploy-everywhere development concept. I am more a native application guy because I only believe in native performance without relying on third party software components to run the applications. My experience with Tweedeck served as a wonderful example.
Tweetdeck was developed using Adobe’s AIR and Flash technology and is a develop-once-deploy-everywhere kind of application. Its user interface on the Mac really sucks. It looks more like a Windows application rather than Mac’s native Cocoa application. One thing annoyed me was that I had to upgrade Adobe’s AIR whenever it became available. I feel happier for not running Tweetdeck now.
A Java application has its downsides as well. It too depends on Sun’s JVM (Java Virtual Machine). Java has never become an implementation language in my software development career. Only recently when I began to involve in web application development, I have to work with JavaScript. The experience is awful, in my experience.
It is understood why Adobe is so furious about Apple’s decision not to allow Flash on its mobile platform. The reason is obvious: Adobe loses its grip on Apple’s mobile devices and has been discounted in Apple’s mobile computing gameplay. But Apple is not an easy-to-squeeze apple, it is huge and capable.
Apple has been working on an open web standard HTML5 and Apple’s own version of Flash, Gianduia. With HTML5, Apple’s computing platform becomes even more open, unlike otherwise as Adobe claimed. Both are exciting new technologies which I would like to implement to the web application I am developing.
I will write more about HTML5 and Gianduia when I have found time to research more about these two.
Nuclear power plant for Malaysia?
Two days ago, the Malaysian government announced that the country is considering to have nuclear power plant by 2021. This was certainly a good news, but after a while of mind mingling, I think the implementation could be a disaster!
The nuclear energy is the greenest energy currently available on Earth. James Lovelock, a scientist, environmentalist, futurologist and the father of Gaia Hypothesis wrote in his book: “The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning”, that the nuclear energy is indeed greener than any other form of power generating plants including solar voltaic and wind energy farm. A 1GW wind farm requires 2 millions tons of concrete, enough to build 30,000 homes for 100,000 people. That quantity of concrete would release 1 million tons of carbon dioxide into the air.
The under-construction Bakun Dam, located in Sarawak on the Balui River, will be the tallest concrete-faced rockfill dam in the world and the largest dam in Asia outside of China. Its powerhouse with 8 penstocks to powertrains comprising 8 vertical shaft Francis turbines of 300MW each, 8 air-cooled generators of 360MVA each and 8 oil-immersed transformers (360MVA each) will generate about 2.4GW of electricity. The dam has 16.71 million cubic meters of filled volume. With catchment area of 14,750 km square, its gross storage capacity is 43,800 million cubic meters. How much concrete is required to build this dam? How much carbon dioxide will be released by the concrete? How much biodiversity would have perished under catchment area that large?
I read from various sources about people’s objections (including politicians’) of this nuclear energy project. This should not be a political issue and never be one. This should be an environmental, safety and social-economic issues at top.
TNB, the sole electricity distributor/supplier in Malaysia is not the sole energy producer. TNB buys, under contract, energy from many other producers. Unfair advantages, unscrupulous practice and increasing fuel cost in the produce-supply chain have contributed to rising energy cost, leading Malaysians to cry foul. The substandard service provided by TNB worsens the situation. As a corporation with revenue of MYR25.75 billion and net income of MYR2.6 billion as of fiscal year 2008, TNB is cutting more corners to reduce its operating costs and to maximize its profit with unhealthy practices, e.g. bi-monthly meter reading practice has stirred uproars in recent week. Being greenest, nuclear energy is more profitable than any other energy production. Could this help to reduce electricity cost for Malaysians considering the unhealthy practices and unfair advantages TNB has in its glossary bag?
I am not going to write more about TNB’s malpractice and sluggish substandard service. Ask any Malaysians, they will be able to tell you stories whole day and night. Instead, I am going to write more about safety.
The next question: Is it really safe to have nuclear power plant in Malaysia? This question does not imply that nuclear power plant is not safe. Rather, the human factors in managing and operating the nuclear power plant.
Alongside the nuclear physics in the power plant is the safety critical computer system, which includes both hardware and software, that is used to control and monitor the nuclear power plant. This safety critical system is the most crucial part and the entire operation of a nuclear power plant heavily relies on it.
Safety critical system is a computer (including software), electronic or electromechanical system whose failure may be a catastrophe, causing injury or death to human beings. This safety critical system comprises high integrity software. The safety critical system, both hardware and software, will likely be integrated and maintained by foreign contractors.
Nuclear power plant software are developed using Ada and/or SPARK programming language. SPARK is a subset of Ada. In the mid 1990s, UTM (University Technology Malaysia) KL campus was teaching Ada in CASE (Center for Advanced Software Engineering). At that time, CASE was a collaboration between UTM and Thomson CSF under special arrangement between the government of France and Malaysia. The Ada course was not long lived. Two years later, it was replaced by Java due to ignorance and market driven trends. Java is not a suitable candidate for high integrity, safety critical, real-time and distributed application development. Today, none of the universities in Malaysia is teaching Ada. According to my hitherto knowledge, apparently none of the Malaysia academies have submitted any high integrity and safety critical system related papers in international conferences and scientific journals.
It does not only require software engineers with Ada or SPARK knowledge. In safety critical software engineering, the individual developers, the entire team and organization are required to go through rigorous software development and safety critical validation processes. It takes years to achieve Carnegie-Mellon’s SEI (Software Engineering Institute) CMM (Capability Maturity Model) Level 5. Safety critical system development requires utterly strong discipline and engineering ethics in every requirement, design, development, testing and maintenance process and every process needs to be validated. Other than software process, there are many other non-software related risk assessments to comply.
Malaysia lacks qualified software engineers of such competency to develop and to maintain high integrity software system. It is costly to maintain such system by contract. The maintenance will increase the cost of energy production and hence will be borne by consumers.
The safety critical system of a nuclear power plant must be thoroughly tested with proven track records. With the loosey-goosey attitude of many Malaysians, will they have capability to manage the system and safety critical issues? Will they be effective to respond to emergencies, for example, system shutdown or nuclear melt down?
The disposal of nuclear waste poses another safety issue. If the engine of a RMAF (Royal Malaysia Air Force) fighter jet could go missing and be exported, can you imagine the potential hazard of missing nuclear waste?
Objection should be rational, not emotional. It is imbecilic to politicize the objection without scrutinizing facts. I, in my book, embrace nuclear energy for it is the greenest energy. On the contrary, I do not have any confidence in the management of safety related issues in Malaysia.
iPhone is good for business
As I promised earlier in an article that I would write about my experience of using the iPhone. Well, here it goes…
Dropbox – The magical USB drive
Dropbox, the magical USB drive, let’s you transfer files among computers without the need of a physical USB drive or DVD or emailing. Dropbox on Mac is the latest and coolest file sharing technology made available today.
I have been using Apple’s iDisk to sync and share files among my computers, iPod Touch (iPhone) and as well as clients and co-workers. Two days ago, I discovered Dropbox and I now find it easier to use than iDisk and it is faster! It is free for a 2GB storage or upgrade with a small monthly fee.
One cool feature of Dropbox is that when someone drops you a file in your folder, Dropbox notifies you using Growl. iDisk lacks this notification feature and usually the file arrives silently unless the sender texts or emails you.
Dropbox can work offline. Dropbox on Mac will sync your files and folders to your local hard disks and allows you to access later even when offline. The sync is done automatically.
I used to copy some files on my USB drive and take them to my clients. Now I no longer need to bring anything. Just use my client’s Internet browser to access my Dropbox and viola! The files will be transfered to my client’s Mac.
Of course, there are many ways to use Dropbox for your productivity. For example, taking your lecture notes to the lecture hall without carrying anything at all, not even USB pen drive. There are some other ways of using Dropbox, read here. But that’s not all. Please tell me if you find any other use of it.
Sign up here for extra 250MB of disk space!
Making my dad proud
Perhaps this is the most difficult post ever for me to write. A mixture of emotion makes it even harder to start and it is impossible to write this post without shedding tears and touching emotion.
iPhone 3.0 Software Update
A couple of weeks ago, the iPhone 3.0 software update was official launched. I connected my iPod Touch to iTunes 8.2 and clicked Update. Unfortunately, iTunes said that the update wasn’t available at iTunes Malaysia store. I wasn’t very happy with the service Apple has provided. The update was supposed to be free but it would cost me US$9.95 to upgrade my iPod Touch to iPhone 3.0.
Here’s the screenshots (click to enlarge): Read more
Miranda
Finally, I have got an idea what name to give to my iPod Touch. It was named “Adrian Hoe’s iPod Touch” to make things simple. The hardest part was to find a name which implies its usefulness.
I have several reasons to buy an iPod Touch but I am not going to talk about them here. One most ostensible use of it is that I am no longer required to lug my MacBook (code-named Uranus) everywhere I go. Since it replaces the function of Uranus when it is not with me, I name my iPod Touch, Miranda, one of the five moons of Uranus. Miranda is the inner most and smallest moon of Uranus and is also referred to Uranus V.
GPS tracking
The GPS (Global Positioning System) can tell your exact location. If you are on the move, it can also indicate your heading and speed. With advanced GPS equipment, you can find your destination when you are lost. It is very useful when you are into unfamiliar territory. Most modern GPS equipment comes with huge memory enables you to log your journey to record and analyze your trip.
With today’s miniaturization technology, a tiny GPS tracking device has opened up new potential. You can now monitor where your kids go after school. At the size of no thicker than a golf ball, these GPS trackers can monitor in real-time, the GPS location and movement of the devices from anywhere in the world using any standard web browser.
But GPS tracking is also a very controversial debate. Although, you are able to know the whereabout of your kids, their privacy has been violated. Nobody likes to be monitored or tracked. While some overly concerned parents are worrying their children’s safety, privacy is still a debatable issue. Parents can inform their children about the GPS tracking devices and the reasons to have one, privacy will still be an issue to older children when they begin to understand their rights about privacy.
Privacy issue is not so much of a concern in commercial sector especially in fleet tracking. Company needs to know the progress of the drivers and the exact location for planning and in case of emergency. Drivers will be informed of the GPS tracking devices and have to accept the terms when accepting the jobs.
Discover your iPod touch
One of my most desired applications on iPod touch is to be able to take PDF and source code anywhere I go for discussion without taking a MacBook with me. The good thing about iPod touch is its ability to sneak into my shirt pocket or in a carrying pouch on my belt. Sometimes taking a MacBook along just for the purpose of viewing a PDF or some source code is deemed to be cumbersome. One obvious problem is that I have to carry my MacBook in the bag anywhere I go, for example, shopping. It is risky to leave the MacBook in the trunk. Many theft cases have been reported.
Discover is the best application that allows me to wirelessly transfer my files to iPod touch and view it. It is free and secured. Unlike other free applications of the same class, Discover is only limited to physical storage available on your iPod touch. It supports many file formats such as PDF, Office document formats (which I don’t use), and Unicode support (C/C++, Objective-C and more). Unfortunately, it does not recognize Ada source files. I hope BBase will support Ada in coming release.
Download Discover from iTunes store and install into iPod touch. Just launch Discover and connect (using any WebDAV enabled browser) to iPod touch with the IP address provided on the iPod screen. You can setup secured access with passwords to protect your iPod touch from unauthorized access.
Snow Leopard
The Snow Leopard (Uncia uncia) sometimes known as ounce is a large cat native to mountain ranges in Central Asia from Afghanistan to Lake Baikal and Eastern Tibet. Snow Leopard normally weights 35kg to 55kg and slightly smaller than Leopard.
Apple’s Mac OS X Snow Leopard is the next version of the world most advanced operating system with a smaller footprint compared to its predecessor, Leopard. Snow Leopard will take full advantage of 64-bit and multi-core technology to the height.
Since Apple introduced Mac OS X in 2001, thousands of new features have been implemented and introduced. In Leopard, the ability to take advantage of multi-core and 64-bit addressing have opened up new dimension in desktop computing. Virtualization becomes possible. New features such as Time Machine automatically backup the Mac hard disk without user knowing.
Snow Leopard, to be released a year from now, is going to be smaller than Leopard but more powerful. Snow Leopard dramatically reduces the foot print on hard disk, using less disk space, freeing them for more music, photos and videos.
Snow Leopard fully makes use of 64-bit addressing to increase the RAM size to the theoretically 16TB, 500 times more than what is possible today. “Grand Central” a new set of technologies built into Snow Leopard brings unrivaled multi-core support and capabilities to Mac OS X. More cores, not faster clock speed, drives performance faster in today’s modern processors. Grand Central takes full advantage by making all of Mac OS X multicore aware and optimizing it for allocating tasks across multiple cores and processors. The result: more powerful applications at faster speed.
Open Source and School Works
The increasing buzz about the omnipotence of Google and Open Source projects has left us wondering, what do students do with their research and course assignments today?
The Internet has become a huge reservoir of knowledge since the past two decades. The use of this knowledge has widen the gap in students thinking about traditional working environment, processes and ethics as well as their awareness of copyright laws and humanistic behavior and obligation. Unfortunately, many youngsters studying in local colleges and universities are not well aware of the pitfalls of using such information and open source projects.
With many years of software development (in both closed- and open- source) and research experience, I am able to quickly identify a genuine work or an adaptation of works from other people. I have seen many copy-and-paste work by students and even received copy-and-paste (exact copy-and-paste and adaptation) works by students applying for internship.
During a FYP judging 3 days ago, I had encountered a project which a student had adapted someone’s work as his own. With two simple questions, I established a firm “confidence” of plagiarism. The abridged story goes:
GPS data uploaded
Finally, I have had the time to upload the GPS data I collected from yesterday’s delivery. The data is now all in the Windows box. It is too late to remove some unwanted data (data from other trips e.g. Zakimi on Okinawa and etc.). So I just make another copy of all the data and probably will edit them during this CNY.
I am kind of thirsty for more GPS data from delivery or trips to alien places. Anymore delivery? It is kinda fun. It is like treasure hunting, or tracking down a location. It is really exciting and fun!
GPS Guided Delivery
Delivery all done! A dozen hampers at 4 locations in Selangor/Kuala Lumpur. 3 out of 4 locations were alien places to me because I had never been there. Drop #1 in Sungai Long, Drop #2 was in Sungai Besi, Drop #3 in PJ and Drop #4 in Selayang. 1, 2 and 4 were places I was not familiar with and had never been there.
I arrived at Kajang toll at 1130 hours and started to use my GPS device to guide me. Found the place easily by following the GPS guidance. It took some times to navigate through some messy traffics and finding the block and the unit. But I managed to drop off and proceed to Drop #2 at 1215 hours.
Drop #2 and #4 needed some communication with the clients as their address were without street name. They used lot number as they were in industrial park. That complicated the process a little. By 1507 hours, all goods delivered.
On the night before, I researched on the GPS map and found Drop #1 and marked it. Easy job. I had to defer Drop #2 and #4 until morning so that I could call up the clients for some direction. I called them this morning and could roughly know the locations and marked them.
What made this mission interesting was an ironic demarcation which a traditional delivery versus technology-assisted delivery. While heading to Sungai Long after exiting Kajang toll, I saw a cab driver with a full load of hampers in his cab. He was on a hamper delivery mission too. The difference was that he was looking at his hand drawn map on the steering wheel. In great contrast, I was guided by GPS.
The mission had helped me to build a Clientele GIS.
Sun announces agreement to acquire MySQL
On January 16, 2008 Sun entered a definitive agreement to acquire MySQL, developer of the world largest Open Source database. The move reaffirms Sun as a leading provider of hardware and software platforms for the web economy.
The news is really exciting and as expected. Sun has been involved in open source development and released great products like Solaris 10, OpenOffice and now MySQL is going to be under Sun’s flagship. With the involvement of Sun in MySQL development and the funding, Sun will be able to leverage MySQL further from its current position.
More exciting news and features from MySQL and Sun will be expected to breakout very soon.
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