Feet On The Ground, Head In The Cloud

My home PC went on strike the other night, where the blue WordPerfect 5.1 screen of death got me down and missing DLL files made me frown.

I did the requisite rain dance but things were still wonky.  Panic attack led me to believe it was time for some extreme action - either reboot and reinstall Windows or...perhaps look into switching OS. 

I also took the opportunity to tap into what the world is buzzing about - cloud computing. 

I think so far, the best part of cloud computing has been that wonderful use of the word "cloud". 

Telling users their data is in the cloud is like telling a kid his dog has gone to -  doggie heaven. You and I know there is no doggie heaven as such and likewise, your data isn't floating in a cloud so to speak.  It is in fact, residing in a datacentre somewhere in a rural part of the world.
 

Honestly, none of that cloudy concept is new.  Think Hotmail, your Blog, your Facebook.  All of them aren't stored in your local hard drive, but are accessed by an umbilical cord linked to the internet.  How new is that?  But somehow it became ever so cool when Apple does it with the introduction of iCloud.

With iCloud, I can keep all devices on the same page with all my stuff. Take a photo on my iPhone and the photo got shot up to doggie heaven cloud and then rain falls back down into my iPad and whatever else I have as long as it's - made by Apple.

The trend is basically saying, as more and more of our data evaporates off our hard drive and ascend into doggie heaven, Steve Jobs up there will get more control over us.

I suppose a lot us will like to have it both ways i.e. feet on the ground, head in the cloud.  Down the line though, we may be forced to decide: If I can totally trust doggie heaven / Steve Jobs in heaven, does it mean I can demote my home PC entirely?

Google Plus Or Really...A Minus?

I recalled its Twitter-like Buzz didn’t get much positive buzz and its Wave service waved goodbye before it was even officially launched! 

Been wanting to fiddle with Google+, Google's latest social networking service, only to be told that it is “still ironing out a few kinks in Google+”.


So it’s not ready for everyone yet.  

Good Old Backing Data Up

How do you backup your music, photos and data files by and large?   Remember when ZIP drives came out?  100MB of cheap, portable storage, and they were such a saint over floppy?  Well oh well, if mine still operates fine, I can probably stick in 20 photos in there, no problem.  But that's all. 

If anything happens to my hard disk right now as I type (touch wood), there goes my 10 years worth of digitally-taken photos plus a music library that will play nonstop for 60 hours without repeating!  Can't afford to lose any of the 120GB of data for sure.  I currently resort to the tedious exercise of regularly copying all my files in my home computer to an USB External HDD and I have been wondering if there are more ingenious ways of doing that.  


I can probably set up automated backups with external drives, but then either I have to remember to plug in the drive at the right time (so much for unattended backups), or keep the drive plugged in at all times, which means my backup isn't physically separated from my computer - losing the whole point of disaster recovery!

I tried exploring the options of automated online backups - a physical separation between my hard drives. The problem: horribly, horribly slow.  Gave up on that and back to my good old 2.5" Hitachi HDD.



Then in the last year or so, Dropbox appears as a rather popular "in the cloud" tool for backing up files.  One can go for just the free service offering limited storage or sign up for a plan and store all our data in the secure cloud and be able to access it anywhere, any time on any devices.  Making the big assumption of course, that we have internet access always!   

We have certainly come a long way from days of a floppy disk, yet backing up what we need to back up is fundamentally the same. The storing, transferring and sharing of 2GB only with Dropbox  - so far so good, particularly impressed with the ability to drag files into my iPhone as I want them!   


I however, can't wait to see how Apple's iCloud will beat Dropbox.  Apple may be late to cloud computing, but what's that saying about better late than never?  Late has worked for Apple before, and I expect it to do so again. 

Enough said, it's time to backup those precious files of ours.  

Won't Be Long Till We Have Superman's Vision

I come to appreciate the human eye as a perceptual powerhouse only when I started using the most advanced DSLR Cameras and realise how pathetically tardy the shutter speed can be.  

I am perfectly glad with our human naked eyes and I am thinking it will be at least another hundreds of years before technology can quite catch up with us human in that front.   

The scientists aren't dumb you know.  They know technology will never make it there so they bet on something else - Bionic eyes for example - as seen in the Terminator or the Iron Man, where they can zoom in on far-off scenes, and be equipped with useful facts that pop into their field of view.

Pretty cool that was.  

Scientists are now saying it is not limiting to Sci-Fi only and super-heroes and that we too, are soon going to have a way to surf the Web on the go wearing contact lenses!  Read it here.

You've heard it right.  In the immediate future, we might be able to browse our favourite websites, watch movies and seriously augment your vision via a miniature LCD display that will sit on our eyes.

Yup.  I suppose you can look into the eyes of your boss and tell him/her you aren't watching a movie and you could be surfing the web at the same time, trying to find the funniest joke to distract him/her.  Yes.  It is possible!


Wild enough concept, or can this really be an augmented reality?   

 

The Danger of Free

Everyone loves to get stuff for free is it not?  We line up to get a free drink, even though we all know and understand that free is an illusion.  After that free drink, we pay for the next three.

Most online consumer services I subscribed are free, including Gmail, Blogger, Facebook, Amazon, eBay and Taobao just to name a few.  The logic is that the more people who use these services, the more page views they generate and the more ads they are shown – so the happier the advertisers.   And you'd learn to ignore ads on your screen as part of the deal, you just so naturally don't expect to have to pay for these services in return.  

On the surface this makes perfect sense.  Until this very day, when I had problem signing in my Google account in the morning, got refrained access to Blogger in the afternoon, these two alarming incidents made me realise the danger of using these services for free. 


Free is starting to make me nervous.  I am easily being exposed to losing nearly 6 years worth of emails, over 1000 blog posts in the span of just over 4 years and not to mention the various online documents currently being stored in Google Office.  

I have to keep reminding myself that nothing has changed.   


There's no free lunch.

I Can Turn My Blog Into A Book?!

Can I really?  
Just when I was suffering hugely with a writer's block and currently in deficit of topics to blog about, my readers are supplying me with tonnes of brilliant ideas.  I can't be more appreciative for that. 

Out of all, I came across Blog2Print.  

They are basically saying any blogger like me can pick a cover, add an optional dedication, give it a little preview and have a book published - just like that.  


alampy's space can be turned instantly into a professionally made soft cover or a hard cover book with a few clicks.  That sounds exciting to me definitely.

What's more, I can also use the Blog2Print widget to enable sales of my blog as a book, sold directly from my website.  

Is that all it takes?  Write, post, and earn money!  A bit hard to comprehend but it surely is a way to convey us that the possibilities out there are simply - endless.  

Tried Chrome Yet?

Google has just announced five new and exciting ways to view my blog content in Blogger, which takes advantage of the latest web technologies such as AJAX in providing my readers with a richer experience. 

All you need to do is install Chrome browser if you haven't already, then install this Chrome extension and it will add an orange Blogger icon in your address bar when you are visiting a Blogger blog such as alampy's space. 

If you click on the orange icon, you'll get a list of five dynamic views to choose from.  Try picking one of those and it will totally render the layout of my blog, giving you a fresh new perspective.  

It’s THAT simple and it's darn exhilarating.  


Please try and tell me what you think of it.
  

@Mentions in Facebook

Previously, Facebook users could only use @ Mentions on contents they created from scratch, such as on wall posts and status updates.  That invention was useful, we liked it and obviously they have heard.

From now on, users can type the @ symbol when writing a comment to get the drop-down menu for @ Mentions.  Naturally, when a user is tagged, they receive a notification stating that a friend “mentioned you in a comment". 

They sure know how to lure visits and engagements on their website, but I am shocked it took Facebook this long to figure this one out.

Facebook Places Landed in Hong Kong Finally

After a significant delay, Facebook's location-based service "Places" is finally available in Hong Kong, allowing users in the terrirory to check-in to locations, an added dimension to connect with friends.

Many are still skeptical about the whole thing but when the momentum starts building up and when businesses start to offer deals via some location-based marketing, I think this will make more sense for people to check-in a bit more willingly. 

Say when someone checked-in and claimed an offer, their status update will look something like this on their Facebook:

Picture how businesses can lure more customers with their advertising campaigns, then users get more benefits on the go and ultimately, Facebook more interactivity.

Facebook Places - combining virtual world with reality...What a wonderful world!

Missing Someone In Your News Feed?

I have heard a few friends complain about how their friends' activities never seem to appear in their News Feeds in Facebook.  One even moaned about not seeing her wife's activities! That's not a good sign. 

While you knew what News Feed is all about, you might not aware that Facebook's News Feed took the liberty to pick stories that they think you'll enjoy based on a variety of factors including how many friends have liked and commented on it and how likely you are to interact with that story.

If you want to be cleverer, you can scroll down to the end of your News Feed page by pressing the "End" button on your keyboard, until you see "Edit Options".

From there, you can pick and choose who you wish to see in your News Feed page - including your wifey!

Start Getting Used To Location Service Before It Gets To You

Google has launched Google Latitude this week which is essentially the extention of Mobile Google Maps to provide real time location information for friends that you have chosen to follow and in turn, have allowed you to follow them.

Images of friends you are tracking will appear on the Google map so you can see their where-about at any given moment in time. You can also instantly choose to interact with them through GTalk, SMS or Gmail.

That may be a little stalker'ish and a bit too creepy for some, but since it is 100% opt-in (which means the really paranoid can't quite get you if you don't let them), it isn't at all bad.  


On the other hand, you can also manually select the location you are at instead of having it shown automatically - a great option for those weary ones, who somehow need to appear to be somewhere else.


Take a moment and consider just what a company with the reach of Google could do with the data it is collecting right now as we speak. 

Think about all that travel habits that can be revealed by Google Latitude users - it is going to create a huge marketing potential isn't it?




Rather than fight it, I am choosing to be excited about the ground breaking functionality of location services and got the app downloaded straight away.  Simply because - we can't quite get away from it any longer.  I really think it's time we get used to this paradigm and start embracing it wholeheartedly.   





 

Welcome To The Information Age

As part of my job, it is vitally important that I keep up to date with relevant information as and when it happens. This can be a craze as the amount of information out there is huge and growing, while the channels through which they are delivered are proliferating just as much.

Since getting my iPhone 4, I have noticed that I am using this device to access information at least as much, if not more, than I use my PC at home.  I keep a folder in my bookmarks toolbar on Firefox and over coffee first thing in the morning, I use the ‘Open All in Tabs’ command at the bottom of the folder, I then check out each tab to give me a snapshot of what is going on.

I rely heavily on RSS feeds and personally consider this my best source of information, as I have the habit of categorizing my feeds and I highly recommend Google Reader.  When I find a post that is too long to read right away, or that I want to refer back to in the short term future, I can save it easily read it later.

This is basically how I breathe through the tsunami of information that confronts us in this information age on a daily basis.  And I am finding it is not quite enough. 

What about you?  Do you have tips on how you are coping with the firehose of data that is coming your way?

From A Slang To Becoming A Verb

"Let me GOOGLE it."

"You should TWEET that."

"Do you want to SKYPE now?"

"I went and YOUTUBE some old MTVs."

"That has obviously been PHOTOSHOPPED."

"Let me BING you now."

You could have said one or even all of the above today and some of these have gotten the official stamp of approval to enter the English-language dictionaries. 

That also means, one day, down the road, we could end up Googling something on Bing or photoshop something in Paint!


Think about it for a second, when it comes to branding, may be this is when becoming a verb isn't such a good idea afterall.

Social Network

Have you ever noticed that not every one of your friends appears regularly in your facebook's Newsfeed?

Have you ever connected with friends who, for whatever reason, never seem to appear at all and yet, if you visit their personal Facebook wall, you noticed that they have in fact, been participating all along.  If they haven't already de-friended you, what happened there?

The truth is, Facebook does not provide you with a true reflection of the online interactions of ALL of your friends at any given moment in time.  Instead, they provide you with the content that they believe is likely to be most engaging.

It makes sense, because should they stuff you with a chain of uninteresting newsfeeds, it will just going to bore you away and you might stop visiting all together - definitely the last thing they want in their revenue generating model.

So, this leads to your next obvious question:  what does Facebook deem interesting and engaging enough content to appear in our newsfeeds then?

From my observation as a user, they place heavy emphasis on photos and on content that receives ‘likes’ and comments.

If you have recently considered viewing any of the Facebook’s “Photo Memories” where random pictures are posted on the top right hand corner of your photos page, the chances are, their freaky database behind their engine has got you - they have successfully dished out things that are of interest to you based on your usage.

They are no charity organisation my friend, they are a billion dollar company who have thousands of mouths to feed and...hopefully in the process, knows what they are doing too.  

A Critique On My Own Blog

After all the effort of writing daily, I thought it would make sense to perform some kind of analytics to my own blog to get to know a bit more about my readers.

I started collecting data 3 months ago today to arrive with this overview below.

• Hong Kong is naturally where I would expect to see most of my pageviews come from, so that's a no brainer.
• My readers are sprawled in 10 different countries (I am quite sure there's a 11th: Blogger is banned in mainland China unfortunately).
• An average of 33.3 page views per day (not enough to attract Google adsense but more than I imagined).
• Interesting to see Firefox (45%) has overtaken Internet Explorer (28%) in becoming the most popular browser based on the statistics.
• 16% of my readers uses Apple's products, but not all of them uses Safari when browsing (only contributing 9% in total).   
• Surprised not to see any Android users captured here as according to Gartner's research, Android is now the second most popular smartphone OS.

In theory, if done properly, the analytics should help me buy the right keywords, target the best markets, engage with my readers more and hopefully convert some ad dollars to my pocket.

Well, that could be my next project to work on in the not too distant future.  For now, let's say we review the same set of data in the next quarter - just for fun.  

 

Google - The Hungry Beast?

Though you may have been "googling" things for years, the word you were using was technically a slang, until it officially became an English noun (and a verb) found in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). 

But why would you need your OED when Google can tell me I have spelt the word "psychaitrist" wrongly and the search will also land me with a list of the nearest psychiatrists in my locality within 0.17 seconds. 

I mean, let's face it, you are admitting things to your computer that you wouldn't otherwise admit to your doctor or your loved ones.

Should we be scared of the hungry beast?

Stop Hiding, I Can See You!

I am sure you have friends in Facebook who notoriously tag you in every one of their photos.  I am perfectly fine with that so don't you worry if you have done it, because I know I can easily choose to untag any of those embarrassingly terrible moments that you guys find so terribly amusing!


Very soon, with Facebook Places, you will be able to do much more than tag and be tagged.  This service, is already pre-installed in my iPhone 4 and has been rolled out last week in U.S., allows users to see where their friends are and share their location with the world.  

Basically that translates to the fact that you will be able to see if any of your friends are currently checked in nearby and hence choose to connect with them, or I supposed, run away, should you find your so-called Facebook Friends whom you don't want to see, are nearby!

Like most privacy settings in Facebook, you do have control of what you share and the people you share it with. So when you choose to check in a place, you can tag friends who you are with but only if their settings allow it.  And when you are being tagged, it will appear in your friends' news feeds and you will be notified immediately too.

Pointless, creepy or genius? You decide.

Time Capsule

Every Mac user I talked to today, knew about the Time Capsule, either because they are already using it or they have heard nothing but positive comments from other Mac users.  

To have been kept a fair distance from this network storage device (already its 4th generation since 2008), I must have been living in a time capsule myself.  

Where have I been?

I say, it is probably time to reclaim and open up my senses, wake up to a new day dropping that perversely adherence to an opinion.

The first and foremost task now though, is to back up my blog, in the good old conventional way.  

Go...make an effort.  

I got it.  You pay a notch more with the Time Capsule Solution and it becomes automatic, it's effortless. 

Apple does have an edge when it comes to life's little treasures (in a chic digital way). 

A Password Driven Life

I think my life these days has become largely dependent on passwords, whether I am checking emails, transferring funds or shopping online.

I'd say a password-driven life for me is pretty accurate, as oppose to Rick Warren's best-seller "The Purpose-Driven Life"!

Today at work, I was being reminded once again of these tips for setting strong passwords for my single-sign-on. 

   1. Password should have at least 8 characters
   2. Password should contain mixed case letters
   3. Password should contain at least one special character or at least one numeric character
   4. Is not the same as user ID or any part of it
   5. Is not a word in any dictionary
   6. Is not commonly used combinations such as guest3, welcome1, password5, oracle, oracle1
   7. Is not the user's birthday, or a related person's name or other personal facts

Man...I am basically running out of juice whenever it comes to a password renewal!

If you haven't come across, below is the top 10 most commonly used passwords online. 

1. password
2. 123456
3. qwerty
4. abc123
5. letmein
6. monkey
7. myspace1
8. password1
9. link182
10. (your first name)

If everyone is avoiding the top 10, I reckon I should just pick one from the above list.  Sorted!

May Be A Rehab?

There are 10 other things I could be doing on my vacation and yet, I chose to go online! 

I woke up this morning and thought, what have I got to lose if I go cold turkey on my facebook account?

May be a bit too radical a decision to be made the first thing in the morning.

However, I have just decided my laptop is not following me in the next few days.