Inconsistency

Not that I am a die-hard supporter of Obama or anything but I agree with him on this one (Free Internet for Everyone):

Obama Promises Massive Works Project, Including 100% Broadband Availability (Video available)

Coincidentally I was thinking about the exact same thing.  I recently moved to a new apartment and with Time Warner being an ass, I wasn’t able to establish a connection and get cable TV right away.  However, just plugging in the box will get me free basic cable.  With Internet becoming more and more of a necessity now, it is probably time to advance the entire nation and provide some basic form of Internet.  Don’t you think?

I really enjoyed Malcolm Gladwell’s popular book the Tipping Point and was anxiously waiting for his new book “Outliers” to come out.  It finally did, but with a harsh review from the New York Times.

“Malcolm Gladwell’s two humongous best sellers, “The Tipping Point” and “Blink,” share a shake-and-bake recipe that helps explain their popularity. Both popularize scientific, sociological and psychological theories in a fashion that makes for lively water-cooler chatter about Big Intriguing Concepts: “The Tipping Point” promotes the notion that ideas and fads spread in much the same way as infectious diseases do, while “Blink” theorizes that gut instincts and snap judgments can be every bit as good as decisions made more methodically. Both books are filled with colorful anecdotes and case studies that read like entertaining little stories. Both use PowerPoint-type catchphrases (like the “stickiness factor” and “the Rule of 150”) to plant concepts in the reader’s mind. And both project a sort of self-help chirpiness, which implies that they are giving the reader useful new insights into the workings of everyday life.

“Outliers,” Mr. Gladwell’s latest book, employs this same recipe, but does so in such a clumsy manner that it italicizes the weaknesses of his methodology. The book, which purports to explain the real reason some people — like Bill Gates and the Beatles — are successful, is peppy, brightly written and provocative in a buzzy sort of way. It is also glib, poorly reasoned and thoroughly unconvincing.”

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The accuracy is a hit and miss.  The app is quite good in recognizing words with distinctive sounds.  I said “IKEA brooklyn”,”The Chocolate Room Brooklyn” and “The Spotted Pig New York” and it returned the right results.  It didn’t understand my name (of course, who knows Hui is not pronounced wii?) or “Ugg Soho”.

However, the times when it gets it right, it is insanely convenient.  I only tried it for looking up directions, because I have long dreamt of voice search on the GMap iPhone app.  This is a great way to combat the difficulty in typing on the iPhone.

The design is extremely elegant and user friendly as always.  See for yourself:

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There is this pair of shoes I really want to return to Zappos. I keep on delaying on the return because the box is huge and is hard to bring it into the office. There is no rush thanks to the 365 days return policy.

On Friday night we happened to have rented a Zipcar and the post office is on our way. I decided it will be the perfect opportunity to drop off the shoes. I went on Zappos and try to log on but couldn’t. My browser usually have my username and password cookied and it was weird when the password didn’t auto-fill after I entered my email. I keep getting the same error message that the user id and password combination does not exist or something like that. I must have tried a thousand combinations and none worked. I tried retrieving it from the lost password twice but it didn’t send me anything.

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According to the website, Protonotes are

“notes that you add to your prototype that allow project team members to discuss system functionality, design, and requirements directly on the prototype. You can think of it like a discussion board/wiki in direct context of your prototype.“

It is an extremely useful tool to have if you ever do HTML prototyping.  Having did that for a project and went to presentations of others who have, it seems that although everyone has a different method of annotating, it is still one of the most complicated part of the process.  I know someone here at Razorfish embedded it in their code with the help of a PLD.  My old project uses the combination of code and Wiki, which I think is more robust.

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WallSwaps have a pretty cool interface.  Just hold the ctrl key and move the mouse and the screen will follow wherever your mouse pointer goes.

I know this post is a bit late seeing that the panel was last week but I just got around to watching it.  The conference in question is the Web 2.0 Summit in SF.  The panel is the infamous Jerry Yang’s interview.  There are a lot of reviews online on his performance and definitely some bad ones.  I think it is worth a watch, considering the buzz it has been generating around the blogosphere on what he said about the Microsoft deal.

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I previously blogged about my happy purchase of the IPEVO Skype phone.  It won an industrial design award and seemed to have solved the problem of echo during a call.  However, after about three months of usage, it completely died.

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Strangely, after I hit Submit Error Report, all the tabs stayed and including the iLike tab.

Anyway, I really like the user experience of the browser.  On the other hand, it lags ALL the time on my machine which is really annoying.

Technorati Tags: google, chrome, browser, crashed, crash

Check out their website.  I don’t know if I should be laughing at how geeky this is, or their tagline: “Your kids will love ‘em!”

Sure this will come into handy when I brainwash my kid someday to become an ID.