Cristian Serje's Blog

Nanotechnology, Nokia HumanForm

2012-02-23T04:46:00.000-08:00

Nokia HumanForm was created in a joint effort to translate the most promising new nanotechnologies into meaningful user experience, prototype those for decision making; and transfer and set aspiration for future portfolio. The project is a key to bring significant user experience benefits to the market thereby creating mindshare and value share through nanotechnology enabled experiences.

Nokia HumanForm is a visionary solution for a dynamically flexible device beyond touch screen and voice communication where technology is invisible and intuition takes over.

Natural interactions are enabled with a kinetic user interface. The concept and a follow-up Nokia Kinetic Device prototype were launched in Nokia World 2011.

All this will be possible with the Nano technology, if you want to learn more about it and how will change our future see the next video that Nokia Research shares:

Java Magazine - January/February 2012 is here.

2012-02-23T00:38:00.000-08:00

The January/February 2012 issue of Java Magazine is out and you can read or download a copy here. You have to be a subscriber to see the links.

For Java to remain relevant in the age of cloud computing, the standards need to evolve to meet new deployment and management requirements. This issue takes you inside that process to learn how Java EE 7 will accomplish this goal.

Standford Courses

2011-11-29T09:34:00.000-08:00

Between January and Febrary 2012 The University of Standford will begin a new edition of open free courses for the whole world, There are 13 courses which goes from Computer Science to Entreperneurship, all of the clases are going to be leaded for prestiguious teachers from the university.

Its really good!! do not miss this great chance, not just to learn, but also to be part of one of the biggest e-learning from this times.

Every course has conferences, downloable videos, notes, tasks, exams and more. You can access to the videos everywhere, through Youtube, iTunes and MP4. Once the student gets over succesfully with all the course they will get a "certificate" singed by the professor.

No doubt that Stanford is pointing a new way for the "Open Knowledge" movement.

If you want to be part of it, check the links below, I am already subscribed =D

Computer Science

Software Engineering for Software as a Service . Armando Fox and David Patterson, Febrary 2012.
Computer Science 101 . Nick Parlante , Febrary 2012.
Machine Learning . Andrew Ng, January 2012.
Human-Computer Interaction . Scott Klemmer, January 2012.
Natural Language Processing . Chris Manning and Dan Jurafsky, January 2012.
Game Theory . Matthew Jackson and Yoav Shoham, enero 2012.
Probabilistic Graphical Models . Daphne Koller, January 2012.
Cryptography . Dan Boneh, January 2012.
Design and Analysis of Algorithms I . Tim Roughgarden, January 2012.

Entrepreneurship

The Lean Launchpad . Steve Blank, Febrary 2012.
Technology Entrepreneurship . Chuck Eesley , January 2012.

Civil Engineering

Making Green Buildings . Martin Fischer , January 2012.

Electrical Engineering

Information Theory . Tsachy Weissman , march 2012.

Times change!

2011-11-24T02:29:00.000-08:00

Today i drop this interesting video about this kid, that beside of being considered as the "new steve jobs" I found very interesting his approach to the current focus on technology: with his short age he already has a company which sells two application developed by his self, including the popular one, Bustin Jieber, a parody to the teenager singer, and is planning to later focus and develop hardware.

"Lot of kids are interested in video games, but nowadays they wanna develop them"

For sure we will be hearing about him in couple years

Coderun

2011-09-08T03:25:00.000-07:00

If you were interested in one of my post, about programming online with JSFiddle, this one is in the sameway.

CodeRun Studio is a cross-platform Integrated Development Environment (IDE), desingned for you to develop, debug and deploy your own web applications on the cloud, so you will be able to execute it using your favorite browser.

With CodeRun you will be even able to share with your peers the project and suppously leave aside your current desktop IDE.

I tried it in Chrome and it works really good. Even thought it seems pretty good, I wont rely on the cloud my projects just like that, but i think it is a really good start, and for some small projects it can be complete, you will be able to decide which kind of web application you want to develop, it can be, ASP, Silverlight, Facebook apps, and others.

Just give it a try to see how it is, its really fast, and best of all FREE. If this one didnt conviced you there are some others one out there that maybe will fit better in your projects. Maybe will worth to look at CodeNRun, but you have to sign in to try it! Didn't try this one but it seems a good promise as well.

Magic of truth and lies (and ipods)

2011-09-05T03:03:00.000-07:00

I couldn't miss posting this interesting video, were you can see the ipod video syncs between different devices.
Not just the topic is interesting but the animations and effects are really accurate.
Just check it out..

http://www.ted.com/talks/marco_tempest_the_magic_of_truth_and_lies_on_ipods.html

New Facebook Chat! Good and Bad!

2011-08-02T04:05:00.000-07:00

For those who are hating the new Facebook Chat, like me, i bring you some tips that will make you feel a little bit more comfortable with it, or even tips to return to your lovely old chat box.

Yeah i dont like the chat because like all of you, i can not see everybody in the chatbox, but just the lately persons i chat with. But everything its not that bad, now you are able to chat with more than one person (group chats) without the necessity to create any group for that, but just adding someone to the conversation.

Also something that its really good, but not that good yet (Its beta), its the video calls implementation, like a remarkable response to Google+ which is having a huge growing and a lot of new features.

If you want to activate the video calls service you need to:

Download the plugins here
Then you just have to find the camera icon which is in the top-left corner of your chat window
Enjoy!! wait, wait, not that fast, its required the other person to have also the plugin and the service installed.

If you just want to continue using the old chat, nice and simple you can try this, or this window edited by me.off course you need to log in first!

Now for real, Enjoy! =D

Cocoon: A free VPN Proxy Service

2011-07-26T03:00:00.000-07:00

Long time ago i heard about a Firefox extension it seemed good but i never tried it out, because i had to pay a fee to use the service and i never had the guts to do it, now i decided to try it out, since it is another history it's completely FREE!!

Cocoon its the extension that for me so far and by far it's the best firefox extension of the year, i just tried it and i am really satisfied not just with the product but also with the fast and great support the Cocoon Team provides.

Cocoon its a VPN proxy service that it works as a complement to help us out to increase our security in our internet connection.

With this extension you will be able to surf the net in a anonymous way without worrying about to be contaminated with malwares; you won't leave any footprints in your web visits so you can avoid ad tracking, since you will never provided your current IP or localization. If that it is not enough it also has several tools to control your email accounts (mailslots), cookies, history and more in the cloud, so you can manage it everywhere in any computer.

For those who are wondering:

Yeah, it is really easy to use, once its installed the firefox extesion you just need to regiter your email and that's it. you will be ready to surf in a secure and anonymous way.
Yeap!! you can skip the proxy security at your work, and access to every page you want including Facebook, youtube and those which are usually blocked. (you like that, right?? =D)
And Yeah!! it also work to use services that are not allowed to use outside USA, like Hulu, Pandora or so.
Noup it's not available in Internet Explorer, So far the add on its just available for Firefox, even though the company it is working in a IE version and the say it will be ready "soon".

Microsoft's Tulalip answer to Google+ and Facebook!!

2011-07-18T08:00:00.000-07:00

Just weeks after Google launched their answer in the social networking area with a new website, Google+, Microsoft had decided ~~by mistake~~ to show their intentions in this Social business.

After Microsoft purchased the domain SOCL.com has linked in this one what it seems to been an advertisement to their new social website, like a response to facebook and google.

Now the link is not available anymore prompting that by mistake they leaked this internal project.

Now seriously, The biggest company in the information systems area, will leak an internal project that easy? just by mistake? It's curious it happened just a couple days after Google+ opened their social webpage.
Maybe for the users to wait little longer to see what its Microsoft comming with.

Anyways for the facebook fans, I dont thing this new social project will affect that much to Facebook, since Microsoft owns a part of this company, and they have been working in good terms so far. Also in the screen we can see how this project seems to have compatibility with Facebook and Twitter (Not Google+), which it will give microsoft the advantages of more than 700 millions facebook's active users against Google+.

The name of the project "Tulalip" it is not the final one, maybe its an internal name as usual, We will see!

Microsoft vs Apple History

2011-07-18T06:44:00.000-07:00

As many of you know, the war between this two Gladitors has been rolling already for some decades.
Here some history classes in a "simple" timeline, to help you to understand the movements of this two.

Reference: http://thenextweb.com/shareables/2011/06/27/the-history-of-computing-infographic/

OWASP : Secure Applications

2011-06-21T03:55:00.000-07:00

Today i bring you information about OWASP, the OWASP is a worldwide organization which is looking for improve the secure in software applications.
https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Main_Page

This organization release some frameworks, tools, articles, tutorials which allows you to improve the security in applications, my favorites ones are:

WebGoat - WebApplication in J2EE with different lessons and challenges about how to explore, discover and prevent security leaks, in a good site through different kind of methods (XSS, SQL injection, Weak Session Cookies, etc.) - https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Category:OWASP_WebGoat_Project ;

WebScarab - Java App, works like a middle proxy, which allows you to analyze all the data passing through in your network in any http(s) request https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Category:OWASP_WebScarab_Project ;

It has also a information repository about the threats and weakness in WebApps for several technologies (.NET, PHP, Java);

For sure tools to keep in mind to keep our applications secure.

Microsoft gets more money with Android than with WindowsPhone

2011-06-07T06:02:00.001-07:00

Acording with the last report about Microsoft made it by Walter Prtchard, A citi analist, Microsoft its getting 5 time more with Android than with their own operate system Windows Phone.

In april 2010, Microsoft signed an agreement with HTC Corp since this one was infriging on Microsoft's intellectual property. Under the tems of the Agreement it was decided to HTC to pay US$5 for each Android device sold by the company. Citi said that HTC sold more than 30 millions devices, giving to Microsoft more than 150 million dolars in Royalties.

Meantime, Microsoft sold 2 millions Windows Phone's licenses, getting around US$15 for each sold Windows Phone, giving a total of 30 million dollars in incomes.

And it is not just with HTC that Microsoft its getting money with, but also other companies which Microsoft made the same deal

http://gizmodo.com/5526078/microsoft-licensing-mysterious-patented-tech-to-htcs-android-phones

QR Code! Future of usual Barcodes

2011-06-02T04:13:00.000-07:00

I decided to write about this, because i have seen a lot this kind of code, everywhere, and most of the people have no idea what it is about.
I am talking about the future of Barcode, it is the QR Code, (QR comming from QuickResponse), it is the same as usual barcodes but this one having to dimensions are able to support a lot more of information that normal barcodes.
Even thought it was created in 1994 now its having a huge growth everywhere, mostly because of the smartphones, since the QR Code can be easily scanned throught usual mobile camera.
In many parts of the world the scanning of a QR Code has become the door to the mobile Internet, Because of the portability and the wide kind of data that it can support from URLs, phone numbers, Text or a complete SMS, perfect for advertsiment, to povide further information to the users.

If you wanna try this code you can use free generator in the web such as:
http://qrcode.kaywa.com/

If you wanna read the code it is enough having a smartphone an a QRCode reader application, which you can easily find in your respective market, just type QRCode or BarCode in your Market and for sure you will find a lot of readers.

TRY THIS:

Car for blind drivers!

2011-06-01T04:46:00.000-07:00

I saw this video and i think this technology execersice is great. Creating independence in mobility for people with disabilities is an undeniable goal:

Nevertheless i think there would pass a lot of time until it will be finally operating in open areas and public.
The challenges to these feedback loops from random events in our existing open- system transpo infrastructure/environments could not be anticipated in a robust way. The whole system must be addressed.... which a car for 'blind drivers' only begins to do.
But it is a incredible good beginning.

Apple iPads and iPhones in China are forcing staff to sign pledges not to commit suicide

2011-05-30T09:07:00.000-07:00

Factories making sought-after Apple iPads and iPhones in China are forcing staff to sign pledges not to commit suicide, an investigation has revealed.

Its just too much!!
They are not just exploted with hard work, completly sad work enviroment and low salary, but now they can not even decide what to do with their own life.
If they try to kill their self its 99% the companies fault because of the treatment they give them, the facilities of theses companies "Foxcomm" seems more a jail than a normal company.
One of these days they will even decided how many times, these unhappy employees can breath that polluted air.
The worse thing it is that most of these companies have certificates of social responsability (ISO 26000).
I guess the important thing its to get as much money as they can, nothing else matter.

Further information:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1382396/Workers-Chinese-Apple-factories-forced-sign-pledges-commit-suicide.html#ixzz1Nqu3nA38

A doubt between the heaven and the hell! A Newbie Lesson

2011-05-30T08:01:00.000-07:00

Here, I will bring you good stories and advices about the bussiness and professional area.
A lot of them i learnt listening an expert the business managament, Max Geringher. Everything began in the year of 2007 when i was Working in Brazil, Paraná. Always listening him and his good advices and stories in my way to work, at that point i never thought that after more than 4 years i will still remembering most of his anecdotes.

So today i will bring you the first one, for those who are beginning his proffesional life experince and are hesitating about which work to take.

Once upon a time there was a guy who just finished university, as a every just graduated he was looking for a job, and it was doing interviews everywhere, with all the positive energy on it. One day he had an interview, and he was in such a hurry to get early at the interview that he was running to get there, suddenly he cross the street with no attention and a car bit him and he died!!
After a second he woke up between beatiful clouds and a sunshine area, in front of a big desktop, after 10 minutes came a guy with long beard, he said: "Welcome to the Heaven, we will be pleased to give you the great opportunity to stay here, but at the moment we dont have any vacancies, maybe if you come back in a couple hours we will arrange something for you, meanwhile you can take a look of the services offered down there"

The guy really scared went down to the hell, just to take a look what where they offering. Right away came the receptionist, the most beatiful girl he had ever seen. And she said "We wont make you wait, follow me you will talk with the CEO", and he started to feel specil for that good treatment, The CEO say hi with a fraternal hug and said: "Let me show you, our accomodations", he opened the window and there was a huge pool with a lot of people partying, dancing, drinking and having fun. Surprised the newbie asked: "This is the hell? i thought it would be hard work and agony", while CEO said: "No, this place is everything you are looking there just fun and no problems at all, our bad reputations is just part of the bad advertisement that our oppositors make". With no hesitation and happy the guy signed right away a contract.
He came inside the pool, while the pool began to turn into a huge volcano, everybody he saw before happy actually were working hard, suffering and crying. Desperate between all this agony he asked to a little demon who was walking next to him:
"What happened here?? what did i do wrong?", the little demon said: "You just had the 2 usual mistakes a newbie can have, First: You believed everything the company said, Second: you accept your first offer!".

Eu Apoio o acordo ortografico da lingua Portuguesa!

2011-05-26T07:33:00.000-07:00

I am Agree with the reforms in the Portuguese orthography!
I have decided to post about this topic because there was a big thread in the company where i am working at about it, everybody expressing their unconformity about this reforms in the Portuguese orthography.

I will tell my opinion about this in Portuguese since it is more focus to Portuguese speakers.

Decidi escrever sobre este tema por causa de umas mensagens recebidas no trabalho, mostrando a inconformidade desta adaptação, a polémica foi tanta que decidi dar a minha neutral opinião.

E é que eu por minha parte estou de acordo com um acordo da língua.

Sendo eu de América latina, pelo que conheço posso dizer que não há NENHUMA palavra que no meu país escrevamos de um jeito diferente que nos outros 20 paises que tem o espanhol como língua nativa. Embora de que possam-se encontrar muitos dialectos, sotaques e “slangs” e ainda quando em foros ou chats podemos escrever de um jeito diferente, num documento formal sempre está um espanhol “normalizado”.

Imaginem a volta de 508.426.487 pessoas que falam espanhol escrevendo todas de um jeito diferente, umas palavras com acento outras com uma letra a mais outra sem uma letra, etc.

No caso do espanhol, e tirando a dúvida existe uma instituição(RAE) encarregada da planificação linguística desde 1713, e é a que seguimos desde a escola.

Como é normal ainda dentro do mesmo pais temos diferentes usos de palavras em diferentes regiões mas elas não passam de ser ou sinónimos de outras ou simples coloquialismos que são normais e aceitáveis.

A ideia para mim, não é todos falar igual, mas sim com uma certa normalização, os coloquialismos e sotaques continuaram por sempre como representação de um povo, mas não as sintaxes de uma palavra em comum.

Por exemplo, há alguns professores que ensinam espanhol com enfoque na Espanha outros espanhol com enfoque em Latinoamerica e outros até uma mistura dos dois, vão se aprender diferentes sotaques é fonemas e até diferentes reacções dependendo do pais, mas nunca vão ensinar a escrever , “Ola”em vez de “Hola” ou “Pratica” em vez de “Practica”, etc.

Por um lado concordo com todos os incorfomes ao não querer trocar as palavras que a vida toda já falaram e entendo que achem que está a ser “adulterada” uma língua tão bem tratada por Camões, mas por outro lado pensem no crescimento mesmo da língua que está sempre viva é está em constante mudança.

Não há que esquecer que o Portugues do Brasil vem do Portugues de Portugal pelo que muito provavelmente essas palavras “tão” diferentes eram faladas pelos seus antepassados do mesmo jeito.

O Português não vai passar a ser Brasilhes ou cosa qualquer o Português sempre vai ser de Portugal, e continuará sendo o Português e seu património certeza não vai ser trocado por uma Cê a mais.

Acho que uma normalização só vai aportar ao crescimento desta bela lingua :)

Podem atacar ;)

PhoneGap, The cross-platform framework

2011-05-25T06:55:00.000-07:00

Lately i have been trying different kind of cross-platform frameworks and i am finally pointing to one that throught my point of view, it is one of the most completes out there.
It is a development framework that lets HTML and JavaScript developers build native mobile phone apps that take advantage of native capabilities of the mobile devices. It acts as a bridge to all the rich core features of the mobile platform while preserving the development environment of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code.
This is PhoneGap!

This framework will help you to avoid the pitfalls of writing to different phone platforms. Normally a developer would need to know Java to create an application for the Blackberry, but with PhoneGap the developer could use JavaScript and HTML instead.

I have try it and it was really easy to implement in android, and the learning curve its really low, since the language use it is well known, Nevertheless you will need advance level of knowledge of javascript, if you really want to do powerfull applications. But even if you don't know i think it worth it because Javascript it has a long time to live still.

One of the Cons that i would point about this framework its that the developer has to download the particular devices SDK for each device they want to develop an app for, but its a necessary Con since you can cross the native with the phoneGap framework, given you more control over a particular device.

Facebook deleted Mark Zuckeberg's account?

2011-05-24T08:19:00.000-07:00

Yep!!
Mark Zuckerberg has seen his facebook account deleted from facebook. But no! it is not about the facebook creator and CEO account, but from a lawyer with the same name that has had a lot of problem with his profile. He even had to sent some evidence to the facebook admins to prove that that's actually his real name

If you want even more proves go to his website: http://www.zucklaw.com/ and check it by yourself, anyways I'm sure it works for him since he can take advantage of his name and use some free publicity of it. =D

Imaginary Phone!

2011-05-24T07:31:00.000-07:00

The idea its certanly strange but interesting. three german students at the Hasso-Plattner Institute invented a technology that allows users to use their palm like a touch screen while inputs are transferred to the phone(IPhone) over Wi-Fi.
To make calls it would still needing the device but with the "imaginary" version it would be possible to access to the apps and reject a call.

Amazingly the entire process does not require any visual or physical feedback, only depending on your muscle memory(because you should remember the possition of the buttons) and your personal ability to operate the phone blindly, since it got a ingenious camera tracking technology powered by a wearable depth that they developed.

With this technology they are trying to complete the use of remote controls and telephones, allowing to use them even when you dont know where they are.

WordPress to Blogger

2011-05-24T06:27:00.000-07:00

Yesterday i decided to move my blog from Wordpress to Blogger, since i wanted to add some javascripts functions and implement ads in here, because wordpress.com do not support it.
The problem was that i didnt want to lose my old post in Wordpress. I found an app to solve this problem.

http://wordpress2blogger.appspot.com/

There are the instructions, follow them and get a 100% reliable conversion.

Temporal Email Accounts

2011-05-23T04:43:00.000-07:00

Sometimes we need a temporal email account, for different reasons, we dont want to provide our personal one, avoid spams, protect our privacy, etc.

Thats why i brought you here some tools to create a temporal email adress, you dont need to sign up, no need to set up, and off course FREE.

The only thing i would like to find in this tools would be the possibility to send messages as well, since so far you can just receive. Nevertheless it can be useful in several situations.

10 Minute Mail

Guerrilla Mail

Mailinator

Tempinbox

Dodgit

JSFiddle

2011-05-18T09:38:00.000-07:00

Today I was looking for an online Web Editor to try some Javascript things, after trying a couple not good pages, i finally found out one that satisfy my tests.. JSFiddle.

Now it is in the alpha version but it works pretty good, i was not just able to try entires codes of javascript but also html, CSS3. I could even add frameworks for the final preview.
It has even integration with social networks and user account module.

I will keep trying this development tool in the next days to see if its that good as it seems.

The EU will assist Portugal with 78.000M€

2011-05-17T04:38:00.000-07:00

I have been always in touch with the Portugal/ EU economic situation since is the country/continent where I am living and working at. I have been here already 1.6 years and it has been a great experience for me, professional and personally speaking.
Today a really good Colombian friend told me that yesterday was approved an aid to Portugal from the EU with 78000M€ (110,000 million dollars), it is the third country in the euro zone that has been rescue from an international bailout in a year, after Greece and Ireland.

I thought after heard so many disagreements and complaints against the government around the city that maybe it was a overreaction. Even thought I knew the situation was not good, I didn’t think they would need an extra help that fast.

And the help came with a lot of money on it, 78.000 million euros which are coming from Europeans countries (26.000 M€ available in the comunatary budget and 26.000 available for the member states) and 26.000 M€ coming from the international loan program. The interest they will pay for this loan haven’t been decided yet, but it would be between 4,25% y el 5,25%.

The payment was decided in exchange for concrete steps to cut the deficit from 9.1% Gross Domestic Product(GDP) to 3% in this 3 years that supposedly last the loan program.

Now the Portuguese Government will have to carry out privatization and reform the health system and public administration to reduce its current deficit of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to 3% allowed by Brussels 2013, all this labors will be monitored quarterly by the European Commission.

The overall of this situation in Portugal is good, you can barely feel this economy problems, just with the taxes that lately have been increasing drastically.
Hope this loan will really help the country and the whole EU, For sure if Portugal keep stick to the plan can reach a deficit even below the required.

Chromebook

2011-05-16T08:17:00.000-07:00

Last week Google introduced the new chromebooks, which promised faster and revolutionary web experience, It will be available from June on in some countries.

http://www.google.com/chromebook/

It seems that the war between mobile devices has a new good competitor!

Meanwhile was already hacked the Chrome's Sandbox

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Chrome/thread?tid=36f4ded6f477be8e&hl=en

http://gurubootcamp.net/mobilephone/wp-content/plugins/rssposter_pro/cache/5a14b_google-chrome-book.jpg