If you suddenly found that the media keys on the Mac keyboard no longer works with iTunes, chances are Google Chrome has took over the media keys and made them only available for it, especially if you have installed Google Play Music. It’s pretty easy to fix but to be honest, it’s not easy to figure it out by one since there is no any warning about this change.

Solution

1. In Chrome, go to Extensions
2. At the bottom of the page, click Keyboard shortcuts
3. Under Google Play Music (or any app that is using the media key), change the key setting from Global to In Chrome

Voila!

Recently got myself a new PC with this beast and at random times, I noticed that the screen would flicker/jump a little bit when browsing or doing work on Photoshop. Never thought that it would be the graphic card BIOS bug until I searched around internet and found that there are many (really many!) people that owned this card were having the same issue.

It appears to be some bug in the vBIOS and likely related to the clock speed of 2D engine. Some of the manufacturers like MSI and Sapphire has released their newly updated BIOS for consumer to solve this issue. Luckily I have the Sapphire R9 270X OC D5 2GB Dual-X, so I just grab the new BIOS from here (at second tab – 바이오스), extract the files, and run the batch file (BIOSUP.BAT). The BIOS will be automatically flashed, and prompt you to restart. Now you should have the latest BIOS 015.041.000.000.000000. (Previously I had 015.0.39 version). With the latest BIOS, things seems to be fixed.

If you have the Sapphire R9 270X OC D5 2GB Vapor-X, the new BIOS is also available.

Good luck!

Source: AnandTech Forum

If you own a Surface RT and you are a tech geek, most likely you got it installed with the latest Windows RT 8.1 Preview. While it’s fun to play with all the latest features, there is a pretty annoying issue with this preview on the Surface RT, particularly on the battery life. With the Windows RT 8.1 Preview, the battery drain extremely fast even though it is kept in Sleep Mode, and I have tried different ways trying to stop the draining (turning off Bluetooth, Uninstall apps etc.), it doesn’t seems to work at all.

Luckily, there is a weird workaround to stop this battery drain issue – turn on the Bluetooth, rather than turn it off. Sure, it sounds really strange, but apparently it’s a bug in Windows RT 8.1 Preview and below is quoted from someone worked in Microsoft:

Powercfg /sleepstudy reports any issues that are preventing the CPU from entering its lowest power state during Connected Standy (e.g. screen is off).  In this case, the state of the specific UART controller is preventing the CPU entering its lowest power state.  This UART happens to be connected to the Bluetooth radio on Surface. Unfortunately, the bug that causes this bad state occurs exactly when the Bluetooth radio is turned off in PC Settings.

It is reasonable to want to turn off the Bluetooth radio to conserve even more power, but be aware that the major contributor to drain on battery is overall system power use, not just an individual radio.

Microsoft teams are aware of this issue in the preview build of Windows 8.1.

It works for me pretty well since I turn on the Bluetooth radio, so if you have a similar issue, give it a try and let me know if it works for you.

Touch-free interaction is emerging 

That’s the first one. Second thing from Apple, which started to push (indirectly) for touch-free interaction, the almighty voice assistant in the iPhone 4S – Siri. With Siri, you can talk to the device, asking for assistance in scheduling, setting alarm etc. with natural language, though it obviously cannot fully replace the existing touch interface due to the limitation in terms of functionality and practicality, but it’s well on track for initiating the next thing in Human-Computer Interaction – a Touch-free Interaction.

Of course, in the game console world, there are already a few commercialized devices (such as Microsoft Kinect, PlayStation Eye) that promoting touch-free interaction – gesture-based interaction and/or facial recognition – they works well in living room distance, however, they might be not ideal for shorter range, for example in front of your PC or mobile devices (though the recent new SDK of Microsoft Kinect that includes Near Mode can open up new possibilities).

Touch-free interactive products are growing in numbers

Samsung Smart TVs

Recently there are already quite a number of products that starting to build this next future. Take a look on Samsung Smart TVs, which includes a touch-free interaction feature (Gesture control and Voice Control) for the user to interact with the TV set.

The Leap

Here’s another very interesting product (with a very impressive size and scalability) – The Leap, claimed that the future is on your hand, and indeed, they have the right to say so. This device has a by impressive tracking functionality (that can track even a tip of the pencil) and awesome precision. I am totally blown away when it is used to play a FPS game with hands.

S-Voice

S-Voice, a slightly less-impressive but still able to get the basic job done, released by Samsung exclusively on the Samsung Galaxy S3, is a sign that touch-free interaction is the upcoming trend. Heavily inspired by Siri, the user of S-Voice can ask to do certain tasks that can be accomplished using the fingers. Demo at 2:30 in the video below.

Virtual Presenter/Assistant

While this technology most probably doesn’t fit in the category of touch-free interaction, but I believe soon enough this virtual manikin made using 3M Vikuiti Rear Projection Film that has been pretty widespread now in some airports around the world will have their interaction part very soon (voice recognition like Siri, for example).

What’s next?

With tons of rumors going around (for example the new Apple TV with Siri functionality), it’s definitely not crazy to think that in the upcoming future, more things around us that requires physical interaction will be slowly replaced with touch-free interaction, though I believe definitely not in the very near future. It is also natural that the next generation of AI will definitely getting their emotional parts, as well as understanding more things that a human exhibits – gestures, facial emotion, voice etc., and respond accordingly (Sounds a bit scary no?).

Are we getting lazy? Yes, but human are always lazy. We keep on innovating to create things that help us accomplish tasks in a better, faster, efficient way, and that’s the reason technology is important. Of course, user experience is still the number one thing in touch-free interaction – human will be the one that interact with computers nevertheless, and things changed when the technology is shifting from touch experience to touch-free experience, but it will be an awesome experience. So, welcome to the future!

While it seems to be a pretty simple question, but if you are using Adobe Reader AND you are filling a fillable PDF form (with the above warning), most probably that you are scratching your head and ask yourself ‘How do I save this darn thing?‘. Of course, if the fillable PDF is created in an appropriate way, Adobe Reader user will be able to save a copy of the filled form.

What if that is not the case? You have the option to go back to the author and ask for a proper version, but sometimes it just doesn’t work that way. Solution? You will still be able to save the form, only in other PDF readers. Here’s some PDF reader alternatives that can be used to save any fillable form:

• Nitro Reader – A pretty new PDF reader and it is impressive since first release. You can save fillable form as normal form or flattened version.
• PDF-XChange Viewer – A long time third party PDF reader with a lot of features – saving a fillable form is one of them.

What are the alternative if a new PDF reader is not a preferred solution? You can try any PDF printer. Fill the form, print the form using PDF printer, and you will have a PDF filled with your information. My recommendation for PDF printers:

• PrimoPDF – Highly recommended. Easy to install and easy to use.
• CutePDF – Simple and easy application.

So that’s it! Happy form filling!

Image source

It’s been a wonderful day that Microsoft decided to release the Windows 8 Consumer Preview Build to the public to taste the new features.

I install it on top of my Windows 7 and everything went so well until I restarted my PC – I can’t login to my Windows 8 and I confirmed that I have my login details right. So what’s the problem here?

16-Character Only Password Bug

The problem is – a bug that I wouldn’t expect from a Microsoft product – the password bug in the entire system. For some reason, it seems to have a 16-character limitation to the password for Windows Live ID, so if you have a password that contains more than 16 characters, you won’t be able to login to your Windows 8 Consumer Preview, and all other services offered that use your Windows Live ID. For me, I not really sure why this is implemented in the first place.

But this isn’t the worse. The worse is that you will still able to login – by using the first 16 characters of your Windows Live ID password. So for example, if you have a password of abcdefghijk1234567890, enter only abcdefghijk12345 (16-character) and you will be able to login. This applies to the Windows login, and all other services like Messenger, Marketplace etc.

I hope this can help for some people as it seems to be a really strange (and careless) bug for me. Indeed, you can argue that it just a Consumer Preview Build and it can contains bugs, but for me, this is a very unusual bug that I have ever encountered.

Do you have an Apple iPhone? If you do, allow me to ask another question: Do you know there is a feature called ‘Shake to Undo’ on the iPhone which allows you to undo/redo your last actions during typing?

If you are aware of this feature, do you still recall how do you know about it? If you doesn’t know about it, you are not alone, and it’s not your fault.

I owned an Apple iPad for more than a year before I got myself an iPhone 4S, therefore I am aware that there is an undo/redo feature for typing in iOS. When I got my iPhone, I am pretty excited and start taking notes using Pages while reading Donald Norman’s The Design of Everyday Things, and I started looking for a clue to undo my wrong Paste action. As you would expect, I failed to find any single clue until I searched on the internet for the activation method.

So, what’s the problem here? It’s a cool feature, right? Allow me to quote a few sentences from Donald Norman’s The Design of Everyday Things:

The user needs help. Just the right things have to be visible: to indicate what parts operate and how, to indicate how the user is to interact with the device. Visibility indicates the mapping between actions and actual operations. 

Whenever the number of possible actions exceeds the number of controls, there is apt to be difficulty.

Shake the device to activate the Undo/Redo feature sounds really cool (and lesser button on the virtual keyboard?), but is it a good design? In my opinion, it is a bad design. Unlike Android where you might have the menu button (which is actually gave up by Android Team) to house the Undo/Redo feature, there is only one hardware button on the iPhone, and it is so natural that people will start looking into the possibility of undo/redo by searching through the keyboard layout. Below screenshot shows the iPhone virtual keyboard (at Advanced Symbols layout) which I really expect the Undo/Redo button should be placed:

So my suggestion to this design issue? Make it visible! Just one Undo button at the Advanced Symbols layout will really helps a lot. Long press it to access the Redo option (if applicable).

Why this solution can be a much better option compared to the ‘Shake to Undo’ feature? It’s because even though now I already know shaking the device can activate this Undo/Redo feature, but I just doesn’t want to do it in public and look stupid.

What do you think?

Click the image above for full-size view.

I loved the Holo theme in Ice Cream Sandwich. That’s the reason I made the Android ICS GUI Design Kit in PSD for Android Designer to design high quality app with stock UI elements in mind. But I am also curious how well can the UI elements in Holo theme for ICS can be applied to the currently available apps, so I decided to start with the official Twitter Android app, which is an easy one I think.

I have tried to apply stock UI elements as many as possible to show that they can be used to design high quality app and preserve the user experience (UX) that is consistent and predictable with the stock ICS. During the design, I also try to improve the UX of the app for better usability.

• Stacked Tabs – For the main tabs, I have decided to use Stacked Tabs instead of Scrollable Tabs. Scrollable Tabs can work well in this case, however, for 4 tabs, Stacked Tabs is suitable. This will allow the user to tap on the wanted tab, and also allow the user to scroll through the tabs using horizontal gesture. You will notice that the selected tab will have a highlighted effect at the bottom of that tab (which is a stock tab behavior). For the unselected tabs, the grey indicates that it is not selected and there is no update for that tab. The blue highlight for unselected tabs indicates that there is some unchecked updates.

• Refresh button – To be honest, I am not a fan of ‘Pull down to refresh…’ feature in the Twitter app. Call me old school, but I still prefer a Refresh button on the Action Bar.

• Search button – I have also added a Search button on the Action Bar. In the official Twitter app, a Search button (but looks like a text field) is placed on top of the content (both in Connect and Discover tab), so if you scrolled down to the very bottom of the page, you will have to scroll all the way back to the top to access it. I am aware that we have a hardware Search button, but I think it will still be easier if the user can initiate the search within the app.

• Grid Lists – The Discover tab is a good example to show how the Grid Lists can be used in the app, other than the stock Gallery app.

• Mentions Only switch at Connect tab – In the official Twitter app, the bottom bar consists of two tabs, Interaction and Mentions, which in my opinion, is redundant and confusing. So instead I have made it a switch to turn on/off Mentions Only mode for the Connect tab.

It is really interesting to see how well an app can be enhanced only with the stock UI elements in ICS and of course, well in-line with the Android Design Guideline. Let’s hope with the released Android Design guideline meant for ICS, there will be more good quality app in the Android Market.

Don’t hesitate to comment/criticize my UI concept, this is where we can learn our mistake and do better for the next one.

Details

Update 30-06-2012: Version 2.0 includes the new Nexus 7 in Portrait and Landscape!

Besides the Android ICS GUI Design Kit that can be used in Adobe Photoshop, I also think (and love!) that sketching is a big part of UI/UX designing, while it can be messy, but it definitely help in quick idea visualization and aid in brainstorming.

So here I come up with two sketch templates for Android App, using the Samsung Nexus S and Samsung Galaxy Nexus as the sample devices, and put them on an A4-sized PDF with almost real-life size so designers can sketch the app with the size as close as the real device (don’t blame me if there is one or two pixels off! /jk/).

Android app designer, go create some awesome apps with the GUI Design Kit and GUI Sketching Kit!

Download

Android GUI Sketching Kit – Nexus S

Android GUI Sketching Kit – Galaxy Nexus

Android GUI Sketching Kit – Nexus 7 Tablet – Portrait

Android GUI Sketching Kit – Nexus 7 Tablet – Landscape

Android GUI Sketching Kit – Galaxy Nexus and Nexus 7 Tablet