Apple iScream

"iScream, you scream, we all had free ice cream"

Look who I was behind in line for iscream at work today :)

Not kidding you! It was CEO Jobs using his iPhone and getting some ice cream.

p.s. thx Sumit for the pics!

Google Maps new drag-drop direction

"We're being interrupt from non-stop iPhone coverage for a new feature from Google..."

Google Maps came out with a new feature that allows you to drag and drop driving directions. Finally!

I'm sure this has happened to all of us before. You get driving direction with Google Map, Yahoo Map or the whatyamacallit one? (oh.. Mapquest) You look at the direction and think to yourself...

"I can't drive freeway!"

"I don't want to go thru that neighborhood..."

"I *NEED* to swing by Fry's, which is over here by Lawrence Expressway..."

Now you can change direction on the fly, nice Google! Watch their 2 min tutorial video below.

wife knows me too well (albeit after a few tries)

Conversation we had as I suggested an idea.

"wow, that's a great idea!" Jean said
"no, what do you say?" I replied

"thanks, that's a good idea?"
"no..."

"it's a great idea?"
"no..."

"it's a smart idea?"
"no..."

"Brilliant!"

ding ding ding! Bingo!

iPhone can cook and clean for you

Since the official reviews came out 24 hours ago, I can barely keep up with my feeds as they've been inundated with all kinds of iPhone related news, stories and cripes.

Wow, people expect a lot from this little gadget, huh? But then again, these people *are* dishing $600 (or as some sites have calculated it, it comes out to a few grands with the phone plan). Here are a few I can remember from reading all the blog.

• "Can we have USB port connector so pictures can be printed from it?"
  
  
• "Camera doesn't zoom?"
  
  
• "Only SMS (text), cannot do multimedia messaging service (MMS)" translation: can't send pictures that you take with the camera to an email
  
  
• "No build in GPS" translation: iPhone doesn't know where you are. Bu not to worry, with an iPhone in your hand, anyone would give you direction.
  
  
• "Can't pick a song to use as my ringtone?"
  Dood! as if most ringtones are annoy enough... except for mine, hee hee.
  
  
• "Can't replace the battery"
  You can't do that on the iPod either and it sold like hot cakes and still do.
  
  
• "AT&T EDGE network is too slow"
  OK, this one I kinda agree, but most of us are somewhere around wi-fi anyway.
  
  
• "Two years commitment?"
  Don't we all have to anyway today?
  
  
• "No Java & Flash support?" translation: can't watch many videos (besides YouTube) or play majority games on the web
  OK, another one I kinda agree.
  
  
• "No real SDK?" translation: mmm.... nah, I'm not even gonna try, if you don't know this TLA, it probably won't affect you anyway.
  Yeah, agree again.
  

I think there are probably 100 more things Apple could've put into the iPhone, but then again, simplicity sometime trumps features.

As Henry Ford famously said... "If I'd listened to customers, I'd have given them a faster horse."

First official iPhone reviews

Three days til Friday and the first official reports are out!

You can read NYT's Pogue's review or watch it below here (love David's witty production style, it's too bad that his "It's All Geek To Me" show is not as well made and got canceled by Discovery HD last month)
And if that's not enough, you can also watch Mossberg of WSJ below

Plaxo 3.0 review

Here's a quick review of my experience with the latest Plaxo 3.0 released on Monday.

I've was introduced spamed by numerous Outlook invitations to Plaxo many years ago and thus created a profile. I was never hooked on it and continued to use Yahoo addressbook while secretly waiting to see if Google will come out with a better "contacts" solution in the Gmail. Now that I'm on a Mac, I've started using the AddressBook.app. So now I got my contacts spread out in various places: Yahoo, Gmail, AddressBook.app, PINE (yes, I still use that) and of course home frig (we'll have to deal with that one later...)

So I'm a perfect candidate for Plaxo 3.0. I jumped on it immediately yesterday and decided to give it a try. Twenty minutes into it, all kinds of issues came out, I didn't have the time to debug into the problem (I shouldn't have to as a regular consumer, right?). Here's a list of problems I ran into

• I downloaded the OSX plugin that allows Plaxo to sync my AddressBook.app and add a button to my Mail.app (while Jason waited). The first few sync worked fine, but then I got myself very familiar with the shape and shade of the spinning beach ball. The Plaxo plugin froze my system and forced me to hard-reboot 3 times! I have since uninstalled it and all is fine again (w/o Plaxo).
• The site was slooooow....
• I love AJAX and all, but when a site has "feature" that requires double-click (need to double click on Contact on the left pane to have it open detail on the right), it irks me. It's very counter-intuitive to have to double-click on a web page, unless I'm playing a flash game or something.

I do understand they're still in beta and after all it is free, so I won't complain too much more. Let me know if you tried Plaxo and what's your experience?

BBQ

We seem to BBQ a lot.

Last month, Jerry and Lily were in town with their first kid, so the 4 high school buddies with all of our perspective others gathered for BBQ.

This past weekend, we had another big BBQ with a hodge podge of friends. We haven't ran out of chairs around the big table in a long time. It's always fun to meet new friends.

Update:
Shiu: thx for more pics!

Apple releases 20 min iPhone guide

Before you proceed. If you really are sick of it and want to hear no more of iPhone, you better follow this 7 step program, otherwise, continue on...

Apple just release TV ad #5 this morning showcasing YouTube (with the cool doggie on skate!)

If watching all 5 ads on Apple site still didn't quench your thirst for iPhone, you can watch this unofficial "iPhone New York" video created by some firm.

If that still didn't do it and you got 20 minutes to spare, watch this detailed how-to guide showcasing all features of iPhone.

Get ready... another week to go. Remember, Friday June 29th 6PM local time!

comprendo?

Conversation we had over Friday night dinner...

"So you still don't use Google Reader, right?"
"No, I just go to your blog manually"
"But you do understand the concept of Google Reader, yeah?"
"Of course I do!"
"OK, just checking, b/c someone-we-know still don't quite get it"
"Yeah, but I live with you!"

Hmm... Should I take that as a compliment?

can't find your keys?

Ever loose a key or your wallet? Don't feel so bad... Chile (yeah, the country) lost a freakin lake!

egg explosion!

This has gotta be the wish-we-had-a-camera-rolling so we could post it on YouTube moment.

It is common knowledge that when you microwave a hardboiled egg, they could potentially explode in the microwave and make a mess. But I bet you did not know that if they did not explode while in the microwave, they would explode long afterwards and make a mess outside!

You see, we microwaved 2 hardboiled eggs for dinner earlier this week along with some chicken. About 5 minutes after we took the bowl out, I reached for the egg with my spoon, as I poked into it. "BOOM!!!" Talk about in-your-face!

Jean could not stop laughing for about 30 seconds as she looked at me (face and shirt splattered with yellow yolk). Charlie, on the other hand, was happily licking all the goodies off the floor unaware that his back is also splattered with yellow spots. Both Charlie and I had to be herded carefully into the backyard and clean up before we were allowed back in the house.

Man, only if we had a camera rolling...

So-cal version of the "Hi I'm a Mac" ad

Hilarious! That's all I'm gonna say. Saw this on Amber Mac's blog

Love an old beat-up house

Recently we upgraded to Dish's HD DVR (again, since we tried it once already 2 years ago). We were told that the DVR needs to be connected to the phone line at all times. Now, this would not be a problem in most modern homes. You find a jack in the same room, get a phone line, hook it up and you are done.

But since we live in a 50+ year old house, the simple task of hooking up to a phone jack almost turned into a mini project. First we tried with a $50 wireless-phone- jack from Target, something like this. But that didn't work, thank goodness for Target's awesome return policy. We then tried to just run a wire straight through the house (yeah, ghetto style!) but Charlie protested and didn't like that very much.

Since I'm not much of a handyman, we called SBC and a few handymen off craigslist.com Most of them told us that they would have to run it through the house or outside under the eve anyway, b/c our semi-Eichler house does not have crawl space or attic. And it would cost us $130!!!

We rolled up our sleeves and did our own "wiring" through the house. Love how its an old house and we can just drill holes and put tacks all over and don't have to worry about it... hee hee

Like our craftmanship?

amazing birth of manta ray

Saw on Eric Cheng's blog which links to Tony Wu's blog of a Japanese video of the world's first birth of a manta. I like Eric's description of it.

It’s like she produces a huge turd while swimming, except that the turd then wakes up and swims away.

It is truly amazing to see the blurry "blob" come to life. Cool, huh?

DARPA Urban Challenge 2007 (Stanford's Junior!)

I've been following the DARPA challenge since its inception. It is essentially a challenge offered by the U.S. gov't to come up with a driver-less vehicle. Knight-rider in reality.

It was called "Grand Challenge" (desert course), but the $2M was dished out in 2005, the next phase is called "Urban Challenge" (street course).

In 2004, no team finished the desert course. In 2005, five teams did, Stanford finishing at 1st. Yesterday, DARPA paid a visit to Stanford and "Junior" did very well. There's a video on SJ Mercury here.

The government will continue in coming months to visit all 53 teams and pick about 20 for the race in November 2007! Can't wait...

iPhone June 29 Friday 6PM

So it is official and *all* over the blogsphere now. You can spend that $499 you've been saving since January on June 29 Friday at 6PM!

Is it worth it? According to Josh, it'll be a major disaster (oh wait, wait, not just major... it'll be of "epic proportion!"). The latest bomb news dropped by Jobs on Monday's WWDC Keynote didn't really help either. Safari as a mobile SDK? This is just not going to cut it!

But let's say you overlook all that (which I probably will too), got the extra dough to spend (which I don't), where you gonna go camp out? If you are in the south Bay, maybe you can join Adam somewhere in Valley Fair =)

Sorry, I gotta run now to the bank and fill out that loan for second mortgage so I can afford the phone... ciao.

Lucky to live in the Bay Area

The famous French blogger and entrepreneur, Loïc Le Meur, is moving to the Bay Area (specifically in SF). He answered all the questions he's been getting from everyone on Facebook (including myself).

I've always considered myself lucky to live in the Bay Area (both w.r.t. weather and the fact I work in technology). Reading his post regarding the difficulty decision to uproot his family form France across the pond to the US only reinforces the realization that I should not take this privilege lightly.

Kepler hiring again

Looks like NASA Kepler mission I worked on briefly in Mountain View Ames is hiring again.

Power of Twitter!

I just witnessed Twitter in a powerful way this afternoon. Here is the sequence of events

• Josh reported via Twitter that he is seeing "lost feeds" on Google Reader (GR)
• Minutes later Chris W. of GR team twittered and informed everyone that the GR team is working on it and referenced all of us to Google Group
• About 45 minutes later... GR team worked hard and fixed it!
• Ever since, I've read dozens of blogs reporting the incident. Everyone from Scoble, to Louis Gray, to Google officially apologizing about it, etc.
  

The fire ignited and spread like wild (via Twitter) then the fire fighting team (GR team in this case) put it out before it made to to the 6 O'Clock news =)

Awesome!

Apple WWDC 2007

One hour to go!!! Everyone's blogging about Apple's WWDC 2007, I might as well.

But since there is so much out there already, why not just link you to all of them =)

• Wired live coverage
• Engadget live coverage
• MacRumors live coverage (I like their clean auto-refresh format)
• Gizmodo live coverage
  
• MacNN live coverage
  
• And finally... Mahalo's list of relevant links collected by the army of 'intelligent' people in Jason' pool house.

Or you can watch it on my own version of live coverage using twitter =)

FSJ revealed!

Just kidding! But got your attention, huh?

Fake Steve Jobs has been gaining so much popularity (ok, just among us geeks...) that he (or she) made it up to top of the Business 2.0 listing of "Who matters now"

Wanted!
Do you recognize the cap?
the black laptop?
the fingers?
anything?

I just saw an iPhone in person!

We just saw someone (probably one of these ppl) at Cupertino Chili's who took out his iPhone and showed another older gentleman, looks like his dad, for about 2 minutes!

Woah woah woah!

Update: On the 2nd to last day of WWDC, someone put this up on Flickr, is he an Apple employee? Is that a real iPhone? is it just another 2 weeks before June 29th?

Unity in VMware Fusion for Mac OS X

Pretty nifty video highlighting the new VMware Unity. If anything, just watch it for the music.

Jobs' car?

Last week, I blogged about Google Maps' latest Street View. Since then, tons of sites have popped up showing some funny, some privacy-creeping-scary shots.

The latest is the one on Fake Steve's blog, titled "I love Google Street View". The link on the 1st comment shows what the poster alleges as Steve's house and his car.

According to these sites I've read in the last few years, it might just be his silver Mercedes

• Steve Job's car :)
• Valleywag's Steve on 101
• amg.jpg
• driving home
  

Dang, good thing I'm not famous...

"That's What She Said"

Ever since Purdue days, I've picked up the phrase "That's What She Said". I first heard it from Travis, my weird next door neighbor at Cary Quad who I worked out with sometimes 3 times a day and who runs in -20 degrees until his eyelids are frozen wide open.

Since then, it has been passed onto most of my close friends, it is prospering in the midwest (thanks to my old roommates Brian and JP) and thriving here in the Bay Area as well =)

It got so popular, we (dang, I mean my wife again) saw it on Gilmore Girls last season. Lorelai and Sookie were looking at a house...

Lorelai: Whoa!
Sookie: What?
Lorelai: Is it me, or -
Sookie: Nope. I think it just got bigger.
Lorelai: That's what she said.
Sookie: Good one.

Last weekend, I could not believe what I randomly surfed on!

Good thing we're not at NASA anymore

One of the questions we get asked the most by friend & family while working at NASA Ames was "So you had to get security clearance?"

When working for the federal government, you quickly learn the difference between "civil servant" (similar to an employee of a corporation) and contractor.

Three years after 911 (not the Porsche car), Bush signed an executive order for tighter security and made this 30 year NASA veteran @ JPL very concerned. From the article:

"... are asked to disclose financial records, list foreign trips and give the government permission to view their medical history. In both cases, workers must sign a waiver giving investigators access to virtually all personal information. Once the forms are processed, they submit their fingerprints to the FBI."

By "financial records", they mean tax returns, bank statements, and everything related to $$$. And by "virtually all personal information", they mean your dog's name, your favorite color, high school mascot, street you lived on, your favorite food, blah blah blah.

I could understand this requirement for civil servants, but for contractors as well? Eespecially when majority of the contractors don't handle sensitive information (like the article said)

If I were still employed at NASA, I would thank you for continuing to pay your taxes so we'll have enough budget for Kepler Mission =) Which BTW, showed up on digg few days ago again. Check out this cool drawing from the Popular Mechanics magazine

New iPhone ads (June 29th!)

In case you have not watched TV or surfed the Internet in the last 48 hours (hmm.. then I wonder how you are reading this...), here are the latest 3 iPhone TV ads from Apple.

If you only have time to watch 1 out of the 3, check out ad #3 titled "Calamari", that's my favorite. Apparently it's been YouTubed already.Anyone know the name of the song of that background music? I want to buy it...

Update:
Fourth ad is out too, see all ads here.

Can I see your ID please?

Most people (especially females) would love to be asked the above question when purchasing liquor, clubbing or visiting casinos. But buying a lotto?!?!

Yup! In the last 5 years, I've been asked exactly that in 7 separate incidents at 4 different gas stations. "Cynthia" at the gas station by our house finally recognized me and stopped asking me for my ID =)

The first time was back in 2003.

"Can I have one Super Lotto, quick pick, cash. Please" As I hand him a $1 bill.

"Can I see your ID please?"

"ID? Oh no, I'm just buying a lotto" Thinking to myself: "did he hear me wrong? I'm not buying alcohol or something that requires me to be 21, weird?"

"I know, but you have to be 18..."

Still in state of amusement, I went back to the car to get my wallet, as Jean looked at me even more confused, as to why I needed my wallet to buy a lotto. Ever since, She is always prepared to hand me my wallet whenever I walk back to the car empty handed with the it-happened-again look on my face.

This week, while attending a talk by "Former Apple Industrial Designers Robert Brunner and Jerry Manock, with moderator Bill Moggridge" @ the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, it happened again!

The front desk asked if I wanted to purchase a "student membership." I guess that's not as bad since a "student" can be of a wider age range.

Who knows how many more years this will go on...

My sister's Twitter

at work...

at work..

at work...

still at work...

at work..

going back to work...

still at work..

sick of work...

So Jean asks me, why does Chris even bother to Twitter given that we know where she is ALL the time =)

"So what the heck is Twitter and that blue thingy you have on the right side of your blog" you ask?

Here's my explanation of it to my non-techie friends. It's kinda like a mini-blog + IM status. Sign up and twitter away with me.