Traveling Tech Guy Blog

De-Pressy

2014-07-02T10:10:00.000-07:00

In my CES post, I told you about how excited I was to meet the Pressy guys, a Kickstarter project I backed. Well, 6 months have passed, and my Pressy finally arrived - way behind schedule. And as it turns out, way over the price of its competitors. To the right is the 'Klick', one of Pressy's cmpetitors, sold for quarter of the price, arrives in a nicer box, and available 2 months before Pressy was released.

To read my full review and impressions of the Pressy, the Klick, the Kickstarter project and more, please jump to my Medium article.

Explanation:
I'm currently trying a new micro-blogging platform called Medium. It allows fast posting of short stories, including simple, frictionless, online editing. Since this is my main blog, I'll include a reference to any Medium story I post, and you can always see all my stories at my Medium profile page.

Hanukah in Munich

2014-04-29T10:33:00.000-07:00

The moment you realize it’s impossible to forget childhood memories — a story for Holocaust Remembrance Day 2014

Gate of Dachau, after the American army liberated it (http://www.archives.gov/)

Holocaust Remembrance Day is observed as Israel’s day of commemoration for the approximately six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust as a result of the actions carried out by Nazi Germany and its accessories, and for the Jewish resistance in that period. This year it was observed on April 28th, and commemorated 70 years since the annihilation of Hungarian Jewery.

Memories

As a child, growing up in Israel in the ‘70s, I was very fortunate to have all four of my grandparents alive. Almost everyone I knew had lost a grandparent, uncle, relative in the holocaust. All four of my grandparents lost their entire families; and all had a blue number tattooed on their arms, to forever remind them of their loss.

My parents kept mentioning how lucky I should feel, as they never met their grandparents. I heard many stories as a kid — and not just from relatives. There were still many people alive who had personally survived the horrors in Europe. They saw it as their moral obligation to pass their stories on, lest anyone forget.

Speaking of Germany or Germans at home was usually accompanied by a swear word, or simulated spitting. I remember watching football (“soccer” in Americanese) world cups, and rooting for whoever Germany was playing against. This was not strictly an Israeli behavior: in Montreal, where my cousin and his family live, no Jew dares buying a BMW, Audi or Mercedes — even if they could afford it.

Flash forward to 2004. At that point in history, the attitude toward Germany has changed amongst the younger Israeli generation. People had German customers, and even friends. Some Israelis even migrated to Berlin, seeking education and job opportunities. I myself worked with some German colleagues, and found them to be nice, professional, and even possessing sense of humor (which they were rumored to lack). General hatred toward Germany was considered an older-generation affliction.

Of my four grandparents, only my dad’s mom is still with us. (In fact we celebrated her 92nd birthday this past March — may she live to be a 120.) My grandma was livid when she heard my parents and I went to visit Hungary. Her hatred of Germans is only surpassed by her hatred towards Hungarians, whom she considered worse than the Nazis. My visit to Budapest confirmed some of her opinions: to kiss up to the Nazis, the Hungarians voluntarily annihilated their Jewish population in less than a year — starting in 1944, when the war was nearly over.

I had been working as a professional services consultant at a small startup, in charge of European accounts. My week usually started at Ben Gurion airport on Sunday afternoon and ended there on Friday night, or Saturday morning, after a full week on site.

In December of that year, I was assigned a lucrative account: a major German company, based in Munich. I got in touch with our sales guys in Munich over phone and email. We agreed that the training I was supposed to deliver in English, would instead be delivered by one of them in German — to make it easy on the students. I would shadow the class, and assist with questions and exercises.

I told my dad where I was headed the next week. He was not thrilled, to say the least. He asked me to not tell grandma where I was going. He also reminded me that the next week was Hanukah — the Jewish holiday celebrated by lighting a menorah every evening. Sadly, I had forgotten his second point.

Munich

Leaving Israel’s always-summer weather, I landed in frozen Munich, just in time for Christmas season. Every place had Christmas trees and decorations; Christmas stores were everywhere. I met my colleague for breakfast and we took his car, a finely-tuned BMW, to the customer’s site. I was introduced to 8 developers and their manager, all of whom were extremely nice and welcoming. They were relieved to hear that they wouldn’t have to strain their English skills to become fully trained. I spent that day sitting at the back of the class, listening to my colleague deliver our slides in German. All conversation was in German. Whenever I jumped in, the pace of the class slowed, to allow for back-and-forth translations. It was a jarring experience.

The next day, I was supposed to get to the customer site on my own. “No problem,” said my colleague, “Munich has one of the best underground networks in the world, and our client has a stop right next to the office.” That evening at my hotel, I downloaded a map and started to plan my commute:

Munich underground map

Scanning the list of train stops, my eyes were attracted like a magnet to a name I recognized immediately: Dachau. You couldn’t have grown up in ‘70s Israel and not have heard about Dachau, the first concentration camp. I never knew it was in Munich itself. I located the line I needed to take, and looked for the last stop, to know which direction I need. My eyes landed on the second Munich landmark I recognized: the Olympic Stadium. A place where 11 Israeli athletes were murdered in 1972. My destination was located between 2 places where Jews were killed for being Jews.

A terrorist at the 1972 Olympic Massacre

Memories started flooding in. I left the room and wandered the streets. My dad called: did I remember to light the Hanukah candles? I was ashamed I had forgotten. I started going from store to store, looking for candles. The only ones I could find were small, red, heart-shaped Christmas candles. I bought 5 (it was the 4th night, so 5 candles were needed), rushed back to my hotel room, and lit them on the windowsill. I remember hoping people on the street would look up, see the candles, and know that 60 years later, a grandson of holocaust survivors is back in their city, lighting Hanukah candles.

I Quit

Despite everyone around me being extremely nice and welcoming, the next day was torture. I cringed every time I heard German spoken; I eyed people on the subway suspiciously; I started feeling physically unwell. After work, I rushed back to my hotel room and called my boss. I told him in a few quick sentences how I felt, and told him I wasn’t sure I could continue doing this. I even offered to quit, if required.

I had one of the best bosses one could have (sadly, hindsight is 20-20 ☺). He had plenty of experience working in Germany, and he even speaks German. He calmed me down, explained it’s a common issue with first time visits to Germany by Israelis, and rejected my resignation. He said it’d get better. And he was right — it did.

Since that first time, I’ve visited Germany several more times. I met some very lovely people (and some that were not — but then, you have those everywhere). I helped close my biggest deal ever with a large German corporation. I worked long hours with German engineers. I heard plenty of German spoken next to me, and have not gone into culture shock again.

But I still never told my grandma where I went.

CES Days 2-4 - Drones, Wearables, and 3D Printing

2014-01-13T10:12:00.000-08:00

`Wearables` is still not a word in the Oxford dictionary (and consequentially, marked with a red dotted line every time I type it somewhere), but it would probably be added soon. The idea of equipping humans with sensors is age-old: remember the $6M Dollar man? With miniaturization, advances in technology, and price drops, I'm guessing Steve Austin would probably retail for $199 + tax if he were made today.

Tinke Blood Sensor for iPhone

People and machines generate huge amounts of data, even when at rest. One of the figures I heard this week is 15GB of data per hour generated by a modern car. For humans, many things can be measured: pulse, blood pressure, sweat, salinity, speed, location, altitude, steps - the list goes on and on, with new measurable data added every year. We are finally at a point where, on the one hand, sensors are cheap, and on the other, data analysis methodologies have advanced enough to find useful patterns in huge amounts of data (aka 'Big Data'). These are the main reasons why we're seeing a boom of sensors integrated into watches, wrist-bands, necklaces and clothes.

Smart watch

I don't know the percentage of booths that promoted wearables at CES this year, but it seemed like
there were a good number of them. I've had enough of smart watches on the first day: they all looked bulky, and none looked like it can be worn comfortably on a daily basis, or be worn by a woman.

I did like seeing sensors integrated into shirts, allowing you to improve your athletic regimen on one end of the spectrum, and predict an impending stroke or heart attack on the other. Imagine a day in the (not too distant) future, when your shirt will signal you to take a drink of water, or call a doctor immediately.

Printed chip

Just like last year, 3D printing had a big footprint at the show. It was less interesting to see the printers in action again (I've seen them all last year). But the rapid commoditization of the printers is really exciting: the sizes are coming down, prices are dropping and the resin spools are coming down to manageable prices. Being the non-artistic person that I am, I probably won't be able to design anything to print, even if I own a printer. But the good news is that this opens new markets, where you'd be able to purchase new designs online, to print at home. Or maybe purchase a design, and have a the company print out the result and send it to you - I can already see a potential Amazon 3D Prime offering in the future (you heard it here first).

CES Day 1 - A Future With More Pixels

2014-01-10T16:59:00.000-08:00

Day one of CES 2014 behind us. For Suz and I, CES actually started yesterday at 3am. We flew out of Oakland at the @ss-crack of dawn to attend the AT&T Developer Summit. After voting for the hackathon winners (great competition, but my by-far favorite, Simon Signs – an app that translates sign language to English – did not win), we attended some sessions to hear about the new AT&T services, APIs and future directions. I learned a lot, and am especially looking forward to trying M2X – their new platform for connected devices (aka “internet of things”).
We followed the sessions with some clubbing and a Macklenmore concert. We finally got to our hotel at midnight.

Today, we made our way down to Las Vegas Convention Center to see CES itself. We started by visiting with Robert Scoble. I asked him about his latest “Google Glass is Doomed!” post. His take is that pretty soon, Glass would be more acceptable and accepted. Once price drops (his sweet spot price is $399 btw), and more people own it, it and its users will be treated with more respect (right now, people refer to Glass users as “Glassholes” – at least in the bay area). The future, according to Scoble, is that by 2020, you’d be able to ask Glass to get you a car to go to your hotel. Glass will give you directions to a self driving car, and charge you $15 for the ride. He’s aware of current limitations (some intended, and some mistakenly added to the product), but ultimately, we’re going towards a “Glassy” future. I bought a copy of his book “Age of Context” and got his autograph.

The rest of CES suggests that the future is going to have w-a-y more pixels in it. We spent the rest of the day visiting the large companies’ booths: Pioneer, Panasonic, LG, Samsung, Sony – all are featuring 4K displays, curved displays and other UHD monitors and solutions.

I’m convinced my next TV will have a 4K display, and probably so will my next computer monitor. By far my favorite was a 4K 27” Samsung monitor, that allows you to choose whether to connect to one device at 4K, or 4 separate inputs and view them all at the same time at HD resolution each. The monitor also supports axis rotation, and different color compositions. Definitely geared towards professionals.

In the phone front, LG grabbed my interest with the G2, Nexus 5, and the curved Flex. Both G2 and the Flex have their main button on the back. To compensate, the phone can be turned on and off by double-tapping the screen (a feature LG calls “Knock”).
The current trend with cell phones seems to be ever growing screen size – completely the opposite of a few years ago, when everyone was trying to shrink technology. The Flex looks amazing, and its self-healing plastic back (you should watch a demo) blew my mind, but it’s just too damn big.

As if to prove the point, the Alcatel Hero is well aware of its size. Not only does it come with a special cover that uses LED for notifications, but it actually has a small accessory called “Sidekick” – that looks like a phone from 10 years ago – that connects to the Hero over Bluetooth, and allows you to make calls and send texts without pulling the big device out of your bag. BTW, Alcatel reps asked people to not take pictures of the Hero. I guess they completely forgot they were at a show. Next time, if you want to keep a secret – stay at home. So here are some photos of the Hero, and its Sidekick (pay attention to the white LED on the cover):

After walking the halls for hours, seeing screen after screen after screen, and hundreds types of cameras, the funniest thing I heard all day came from a guy at a line to see ShutterBall – a selfie button (it's a button that connects to your phone using Bluetooth, allowing you to appear in your own photos): Where do you put all the selfies? On the shelfie

Looking forward to seeing more tech tomorrow. We have 22,000,000 square feet to cover…

Shrtr

2013-12-21T15:29:00.000-08:00

Note: to read the full technical breakdown on developing Shrtr for Windows Phone, see my code blog post.

I made several forays in the past into Windows Phone development. I actually like the platform, and the development tools. Having experienced iOS (XCode) and Android (Eclipse) development environments, Visual Studio looks like it's in a completely different league. I think Microsoft made some major marketing mistakes promoting the platform, but they're getting better, with a lot of community outreach, developers' resources, and hackathons.

Last year I got myself a Nokia Lumia 710, and started hacking in WP7. 5 minutes later, Microsoft announced WP8, along with the enraging tidbit that my brand new phone will not be supported (why? they claim hardware compatibility, I claim greed). I was pissed off, so off to eBay it went, and off to Android development I went.

A year later, I just had to try again, so I got the very well reviewed Lumia 620 (in blue), and looked for an incentive to develop anything. It came in the shape of an invite to a DVLUP hack day at Nokia HQ in Sunnyvale. I became aware of DVLUP, the Nokia developers community, at the AT&T summit I attended last year. This year, they promised a new Nokia 620 (yay! another one), to any developer who builds a WP app, and publishes it to the Windows Phone store within 2 weeks. The challenge was on!

I've already been toying with an app that uses URL shortening services, to allow you posting/sending/sharing manageable URLs (rather than the jumble of random characters URLs have become lately). Since my girlfriend is doing a lot of URL sharing as part of her marketing job, I validated the need, and set to work.

You can find all the nitty-gritty technical details, and dev challenges, in my code blog post, but suffice it to say, I had the app ready within a week. I had to wait another week, or so, for Microsoft to approve the app for the store. In the meantime, I got the domain www.Shrtr.us, and deployed the server side of the app. After successfully publishing the app, I had to wait for 2 more days for the DVLUP site to recognize the app, and attribute it to me. With the help of Paras from Nokia, I managed to accomplish the task in time, and the new Lumia is on its way to me!

I actually think I'll gift a 620 to my mom. She's been begging for a "smart phone" for a while. I believe Windows Phone is the best starter mobile OS - the UI can be turned to Hebrew (or any other language) completely, it has a very simple navigation paradigm - the tiles are big, readable, and self explanatory. And frankly, you can't "break" anything in it. I'll try it, and report back on my mom's experiences.

Finally, due to the design decisions I took while developing the app, I ended up with the app logic on the server side, allowing me to develop an Android app (to be released later) and a Chrome extension, both using the same URL shortening services. You can download the WP app and the Chrome extension at www.Shrtr.us. Leave me some feedback and comments. Feel free to ask for your favorite shortening service, or feature. I can't promise I'll get all of them, but I'll try.

Final note: as can be plainly witnessed from bot the extension and the app's UI, I lack in the graphical design department. If anyone out there feels they can elevate the state of my UI (in either HTML/CSS or XAML), please let me know.

Download links

Prepping for CES 2014

2013-12-16T12:30:00.002-08:00

It's been nearly a long year since I posted to this blog. A year full of great personal and professional events: my girlfriend and I moved in together; I took control of my startup; Several conventions and hackathons occurred; Plenty of new gadgets acquired, and a new laptop arriving soon...

For the third year in a row, I plan to visit the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas on January. This time, I'll be joined by my girlfriend (aren't I lucky she likes gadgets :)), and a new ultrabook that I intend to use to post from the show floor.

Last year, the big stars of the show were 3D printers and robots - and I expect more of the same this year. But I really think wearables will take a more central place, with almost every company releasing a "smart" watch, a band, a shoe - whatever they can to collect more info on your movements.

I do not foresee any big changes in the phone or tablet market - just more of the same Android black squares, with better cameras. Same for TVs, with probably more 4K offerings (although 4K content is still far in the future). In the laptops arena, last year introduced the Asus Taichi as the design coup of the show, and I'm hoping to see something similar this year, but will hold my expectations in check.

Personally, I'm looking forward to meeting the funny people from Pressy - a project I supported on Kickstarter - and looking forward to actually hold in my hand.

I was hoping that the guys from Agent smart watch (another supported KS project) will make it, but they are struggling with release deadlines apparently, and I'd rather have the watch in my hands sooner :). I'm especially excited about the SDK, and pondering developing some watch apps, when it's out.

Another event I'm looking forward to, is the AT&T Developers Summit. This year I'm skipping the hackathon (I already published my first WP8 app last week - I'll post about that experience in my code blog at a later date), but will enjoy the professional sessions, and the party and concert.

Visit CES 2014 virtually

This year I'd like to offer my readers a free service: if you are not capable of visiting CES yourself, I can visit it for you virtually. If you are interested in a particular company, product, trend, release date, etc. - let me know. I'll attempt to visit the booths of the companies you mention, ask the questions you want, and take (blurry, phone-quality) pictures of the gadgets you like.

To have me virtually visit a company/product for you, follow these easy steps:

Locate the company's booth in the list of CES 2014 presenters - I'd need the hall and booth number, to better plan my path
Submit this online form with the company name, product, and location - you can fill it as many times as you like. Alternatively, post a comment with the info (although, for planning purposes, the form will work better for me)
I'll chart a path including (hopefully) all the requested booths, ask all the questions, and post the results to the blog. If you provide an email, I'll personally notify you of a post containing the answers to your questions

And that's it - your chance to virtually visit CES 2014. And now I'm off to plan my Christmas trip to Salt Lake City - more on that next time.

CES 2013 - The Future in Our Lifetime

2013-01-12T14:25:00.000-08:00

I'm just back from a week in Vegas, where I attended the Consumer Electronics Show, for the second year in a row.

AT&T Developer Conference

On Monday, I attended the AT&T Developer Conference. Some of the tracks were very interesting, including AT&T announcing support for WebRTC - an HTML5 standard that allows screen sharing and video conferencing from within your browser (currently supported in Chrome 23 and FF 18 - IE and Safari are still no-shows); or the extended support for NFC and security; or the announcement of a free developer tool called ARO (Application Resource Optimizer) that scans mobile app's code, and recommends optimized use of network, space and other resources.
But I really liked the hackathon winner: Ruggero from Italy developed, in 24 hours, a headband that "reads your mind" and if it feels you're otherwise engaged (i.e. talking, or stressed) it redirects all incoming calls directly to voicemail. He said he'd be working on the other side of it - not letting you call certain people (your boss, your wife) if it feels you're in an agitated mood. He appeared in stage with a single cat ear on his headband :). Here's his pitch:

The event was finished with several club party, and a killer The Killers concert.

Here are some of the pictures I took during the conference:

And then, it was time for the real CES...

3D Printing hitting the big time

I saw 3D printers last year at CES, but this year they were everywhere, they were printing tons of intricate products, and they were more affordable (relatively speaking).

This innovation, more than anything else I saw, gives me a hope for seeing the future, as predicted by Star Trek's replicator, in my life time: A future in which we could all just print what we need at home (from screws, to electronics, to cloths, and maybe - one day - food). We'll just be paying for the materials (whether it's resin or proteins) and the designs. Some companies already put in place a service model, allowing you to send them your design, and they ship you the final product. One of them was Sculpteo which won a 2013 Innovation Award for their iPad app that allows you to design items like an iPhone case - from your tablet.

Everything's Connected

Another trend that developed over the year is to connect everything to the web. Samsung announced the Galaxy camera: a 21x zoom digital camera, running Android 4.1 (including all apps), connected over 3G/WiFi - a reversal of a typical Android phone with camera. Others showed watches, pedometers and speakers that were connected. I liked Monster's approach to making Bluetooth pairing simpler. We all had those awkward pairing experiences. With the Monster Beats speakers you use your phone's NFC to tap the speaker - and you're done. iPhone users need not apply (at least until the idiots in Cupertino decide that NFC is "magical, wonderful and amazing").

Robots

Robots were everywhere in the show, whether dancing like Michael Jackson, sweeping the floor (a-la Roomba) or giving you a back rub.

For $299, you could buy robots similar to ones used by the police and the army. Put a tablet/phone on them, and you can control the robot from another tablet/phone, see other rooms, and communicate with people remotely. Some models can even climb stairs, and some can take AK47 rounds and continue to function:

Another type of robot I got to see up close was the smart flying AR drone. I first saw them in this TED lecture video a year ago (a must watch). Now I actually got to see them in action. They can fly in intricate formations, flip in mid air, carry out exact tasks, and map indoor locations.

But to my eyes, it was easy to imagine how easy it'd be to replace the camera with a gun.
Bringing to mind this TED lecture about the ethics of using robots in battle.

My "best in show"

What struck me was how about 80% of this year's CES was exactly the same as last year's. The same cables/boxes/speakers/headphones/phone cases/etc. manufacturers were there - with the same stuff they showed last year, and the year before.
TVs were bigger and sharper. 3D was 3d-ier. Tablets and phones were slightly faster. Laptops were thinner. But mostly, it was boring to stroll through more of the same.

Still, here are my favorites of this year's CES, other than the aforementioned 3D printers:

ASUS Taichi - a dual 1080p monitor ultrabook. Close the laptop lid, and you get a tablet. And 2 people can use it at the same time! Problems I foresee: battery life with 2 monitors, the external monitor getting scratched, and the price point (rumored to be $1600 for the 13")
AfterShokz - open ear headphones, using bone conduction technology to get the sound directly into your head. They're safer (your ears remain free), the sound is clearer, and they do not harm your hearing. There were several companies showing this technology, but these cost just $69 on Amazon (or $99 for the Bluetooth model)
Liquipel - one of the many water repelling technologies I saw demonstrated. Coat anything with this stuff, even a tissue paper, and water won't be able to touch it. Allows immersing your phone/device in water for up to 30 minutes.
SafePlug - a power socket that does not allow electricity through, unless the plug inserted has a a specific RFID tag. Think of a baby pushing a fork into this socket...and nothing happens. As a side effect, all such sockets in the house can be remotely controlled from an iPad app. I'm hoping they'll call me when they decide to build the Android app :)
Basis - a watch that includes a pedometer and a heart and sweat sensors. Along with a cool-looking app, it'll monitor your health, exercise goals and sleep behavior. It costs $200 and looks a bit thick for my taste - but I'm sure next year's model will be thinner :)
Panasonic 20" 4k tablet - to call this monstrosity a tablet is to call a MAC truck a compact.
At 20", running Windows 8 for 2 hours of battery life at 4k resolution, this would probably be used by designers, architects and showroom personnel

Here are some of the photos I took over the week (pardon the quality, they were snapped mostly on my phone, as I got tired of carrying my camera):

And that's it for CES 2013. Already registered for next year's. See you in Vegas, 1/7-10/2014!

Scotland

2012-08-11T18:46:00.001-07:00

I just returned from a week-long tour of Scotland, and boy, I wish I could have made it longer. It's one of the best and easiest countries to visit, in my opinion; full of amazing things to do and see, as well as some of the nicest people I ever met.

It all started when I ended up with a canceled plane ticket that I had to use within a year. But since it was a very busy year (a new startup - check out ExPOS, if you haven't already), I left the decision to literally the last month. By then, most of the destinations I wanted were over the ticket's limit. Iwanted to visit Scotland for the last 7 years. I've been all over the UK, Ireland and N. Ireland, literally on the border with Scotland, but never got to visit it. Now I had my chance.

I convinced my pilot friend Ohad to join me on this trip. Due to the short schedule, we haven't done all our homework. We did book hotels as anchor points, but decided to improvise some of the trip's contents. And I don't regret the results: I got to see most of what I planned to, leaving ample reason to return again in the future. Here's a short list of what we did, along with some pictures and recommendations:

Day 1

After landing at Glasgow airport and picking up the only automatic car Hertz had (I can drive shift, but shifting with my left hand is another issue all together), we headed for the city of Stirling. Full of history, with a nice town center, we had lunch and proceeded to Stirling castle.

Stirling castle

The place is full of history and interesting things to see and do. It also hosts some museums covering history, archaeology and military. The vistas from the castle walls is amazing, showing Stirling, the fields, the river and the William Wallace monument. This is where, with a little planning, we could have saved some money. Apparently you can buy a ticket that covers entry to all the castles we later visited saving us not only money, but time standing in line. I highly recommend pre-purchasing such a ticket online prior to your visit, if you plan on visiting castles in Scotland.

A short car ride brings you to the William Wallace monument. You can't miss it - it's a tall tower on a high hill.

William Wallace monument

We opted to walk up the hill to the tower (you can take a van) and started climbing the narrow, circular stairs. Every landing has a small museum with more information about William Wallace, his achievements and his death, including a chilling multimedia presentation of his trial. William Wallace was immortalized in Mel Gibson's movie "Braveheart", which doesn't sit well with the Scottish. You see, "Braveheart" was actually the nickname of the king Robert the Bruce, not of Wallace's himself. And the movie is full of other mistakes, as every Scottish tour guide would be glad to specify. However you stand on the matter, it was an interesting visit.

We haven't calculated the distance we had to climb well, and with every landing, we were sure we reached the top. 246 stairs later, we have, and it was well worth it! The top of the tower is open and affords 360 degree views of the area.

From there, we continued up north to the Highlands and Cairngorm park. We booked a hotel at the center of the park, near a little town called Aviemore.

Photos from day 1 - Stirling

Day 2

We took the funicular up to Cairngorm mountain - the 6th tallest in the UK - to look at the whole park. You can also walk up, if you so choose. We saw lochs and glens all around us, and decided to visit a couple.

Cairngorm park and the Higlands from the top of Cairngorm mountain

We started with the largest, Loch Morlich. You can sail across, rent a boat or canoe, or just swim. We decided to walk around it. While the trail sometimes leaves the shore of the lake, it's easy to find again by just looking towards the water. It affords great views of the lake, flora and fauna. We've seen hikers, joggers, and cyclists on the trail. But mostly, we've seen vista like this:

Loch Morlich

It took 2.5 hours to circle the lake - about 5.5KM, if memory serves.

From there we continued to the town of Aviemore for a spot of lunch. From there we continued to a smaller loch called Loch an Eilein - the lake of the island. In the middle of the lake, on an island, stand the ruins of a small castle with some interesting history.

Loch an Eilein's island

We also got to see some Highland cows, which sadly did not wait around to be photographed. These are big furry animals, fed on grain left from whiskey distillation process - making them the happiest cattle on Earth, I guess.

Highland cow (taken from Google Images)

Photos from day 2 - Cairngorm park

Day 3

We decided to attend some Highland games and found that Clan McPhereson held their annual gathering at the town of Newtonmore, just beyond the park's border. It was a glorious sunny day and the games turned into a great happening, with clan members arriving from all corners of the Earth. It gives them a chance to meet and wear their traditional kilts and suits. And of course, compete.

Kayleigh competition

Some of the games are traditional athletics, such as running, jumping etc. But some are unique to the Highlands: bagpiping, Kayliegh dancing, Caber toss, and the Scottish hammer. We got good seats and pretty soon found someone to cheer for.

Caber toss

After sampling some of the local whiskeys, we headed to the closest distillery, the Dalwhinnie. After learning about the distillation process and sampling some more of the fine fire-water, I was disappointed to find out that one large company now owns most distilleries in Scotland and that the distillery's store now sells single malts from all of them - putting aside years of rivalries and claims for excellence. From what I've learned, all single malts are made from the same 3 ingredients (barley, water and yeast) and the only differences between them are the water quality and the length of the process.

W continued down the winding road to Loch Laggan, but the nagging rain ruled out a walk.

By the way, if you don't like rain - stay away from Scotland. It rains all year long (even if the temperature remains warm). As I was told by at least 3 different people (which makes it an official Scottish joke, I guess): "Summer? oh yeah, that was last week. We called it Wednesday".
The second famous Scottish saying is: "it's not rain, it's liquid sunshine" :)

Photos from day 3 - Highland games

Day 4

Today we headed up to Inverness, the Ness river and Loch Ness. There's a highly recommended museum at the village of Drumnadrochit, explaining the history of the loch and the "monster" sightings. It explains how even you can mistake something on the loch for a monster's neck - a point that was driven home when I later took this picture of a duck on the lake:

The Loch Ness (duck) monster rears its head

We took a cruise of the lake. It is quite deep and gets very deep very close to shore. The loch looks very mysterious, with mist coming down from the hills, and Urquhart castle overlooking it.

Mist on Loch Ness

You can feel the history and the weirdness of the locale, driving people to believe in the loch's supernatural qualities, as far back as the 6th century.

Urquhart castle overlooking Loch Ness

We proceeded to visit Urquhart castle itself - well worth the visit, as you learn about life at the castle and the several battle held and lost there.

We then proceeded to drive down to Edinburgh - Scotland's capital - through a torrential rain.

Photos from day 4 - Loch Ness and Urquhart castle

Day 5

We reached Edinburgh in time for the Fringe festival: the streets were choke full of street performers and people giving out leaflets for their shows. Here's one, where a husband and wife, tied to a post, try to convince the audience to take their side in an argument:

Who's right? Husband, or wife? Edinburgh Fringe Festival

We took a walking tour of the city, and saw many of the interesting spots in old town. We then proceeded to the National museum and learned a bit more about Scotland's history and contributions to the world, including a nice communications exhibition, Dolly the cloned sheep and some old vehicles. The roof of the museum provides great vistas of Edinburgh and the castle.

Dolly the sheep at the National Museum, Edinburgh

We previously purchased tickets to the Military Tattoo - the world's most famous military parade, held at Edinburgh castle annually. I recommend buying those online well in advance as good seats run out fast. Although by the time of the show it rained cats and dogs, we enjoyed a great show. Here's a video of the Swiss drum corpse, called "Top Secret" performing one of the best parts of the show:

Photos from day 5 - Edinburgh and Military Tattoo

Day 6

Today we took the time to tour Edinburgh castle in full - a 3-4 hours trip. Prepare for a 45 minutes wait for the ticket line (again, order tickets on the internet to avoid). Another great castle, with tons of history and things to see and do.

Edinburgh Castle

There are actors re-enacting some of the castle's famous inhabitants, such as a very funny audience we had with "Queen Mary" and her castelan at the castle's great hall.

An audience with "Queen Mary" is granted

And with that, we headed west to Glasgow, to prepare for our separate trips back home the following morning.

Photos from day 6 - Edinburgh castle

Map

View Scotland Trip in a larger map

The tech corner

But this post can't be complete without adding some tech to the travel. A week prior to my trip, I bought a Google Galaxy Nexus phone. At the time of the writing, it's the first and only phone to support penta-band GSM radio, and Jelly Bean (Android 4.1). It cost $350 and comes unlocked, with the promise it would work everywhere on Earth. And it delivered big time.

At Stirling I bought a local SIM card for a provider called '3' for 15 pounds ($22). I got a month of unlimited 3G data and 300 minutes of talk. This allowed me to use the phone as a GPS everywhere, use it's tethering capabilities to get internet service for my iPad, and use Skype to call peoples' phone in the US and Israel. All in all, much better than what other cell providers here call "roaming" (and I call extortion).

Another great feature of the phone is panoramic shooting. If you look at the albums mentioned above, you can see some images like this:

Panoramic view of Edinburgh

Do yourself a favor: get an unlocked phone, get a pre-paid, no-subscription program with data (this phone, for example, works with AT&T and T-Mobile in the US, and any other network on Earth) and use a local SIM card wherever you travel. Much cheaper than the alternative, and you are not bound to greedy, outdated corporations.

The State of the Nook

2011-07-20T13:53:00.000-07:00

I've already mentioned how I think the B&N Nook Color is the best, most cost efficient tablet out there right now. At under $200 (if you get a brand new one on eBay, or even a factory refurbished one), you get a device that can run Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) remarkably well, and even a hacked version of Honeycomb.

What I want to describe in this post is the further steps you can take to get more out of your Nook.

Step 1: get a better ROM
Whatever phone or tablet you get, you can safely assume the OS installation (commonly known as ROM) you got with it contains some stuff that you could do without. Whether it's stock applications that your mobile provider tries to push on you, or some OS features that they locked out "for your own good".

For Android, there's no better alternative ROM then CyanogenMod. Not only does it free your Android, it also add extra features like themes, CPU overclocking and various widgets. It's supported on almost 30 devices (find out if yours is on the list) and installed with the aid of a micro SD card, that all devices support. It does requires some expertise to install, but the site contains step-by-step guides.

I came across Maurice Mongeon's blog, dedicated to improving your Nook. This particular post discusses how to deploy a CM nightly build and he has several other helpful ones, including instructions on how to restore your Nook to its original state (nice if you intend to return or resell it). Not only is the blog helpful, but Maurice helped me to fix some issues and even recommended some great apps to get more out of the Nook. Thanks Maurice!

Step 2: get some apps
Here's a list of apps I currently have on my Nook, all of which you can get from the Android Market (with the exception of Netflix, see note below).
1. Utilities
    1. ES File Explorer - best file manager
    2. Gemini app - task manager
    3. Gemini Task killer widget - cleans memory with 1 click
    4. Dropbox
    5. PocketCloud - VNC client
    6. Terminal Emulator - terminal into Android
    7. ConnectBot - SSH client
    8. Titanium Backup - backup all your apps and settings
    9. Wifi Analyzer - find the strongest signal
    10. Speed Test - test Wifi connection speed
    11. Shark - network sniffer
    12. Keepass Android - password vault
    13. Hacker Keyboard - full keyboard, with all special keys and TAB
    14. Battery widget - see battery % on main screen
2. Hacks
    1. ROM Manager - install new ROMs
    2. Battery Caliberation - calibrate battery after ROM installation
    3. Nook Screen Recalibrate - after every ROM installation
    4. Nook tweaks - speed, audio and USB host
    5. ClockSync - atomic clock synch for WiFi
3. Media
    1. CNN
    2. Aldico - multiple format book reader
    3. ACV - best comic book reader out there
    4. Nook - well, you did buy a Nook :)
    5. Kindle - Amazon's book app
    6. Evernote - share notes across devices
    7. MoboPlayer - media player
    8. Pandora - music service
    9. Tunein radio - bettr than an FM receiver
    10. HD wallpaper - get a new one every day
    11. Netflix - stream movies from Netflix
    12. IMDB
    13. Youtube
    14. Amazon MP3
4. Social and shopping
    1. LinkedIn
    2. Gh4a
    3. Google+
    4. Twitter
    5. Meetup
    6. WootWatch
    7. Amazon
    8. eBay
    9. NewEgg
    10. Wiki Encycloopedia

To use Netflix on your Nook, follow these easy steps:

Download the app "Nook Color Odds and Ends"
Select EMMC>fix netflix and reboot the device.
This basically will change the device name in you Nook's props file to a device Netflix supports
Download the Netflix apk (currently 1.2.2 - search for newer ones)
Run it and log in
If you like doing things manually, or understand how things work, read this article.

Step 3: get some hardware
Like all other tablets, the Nook is great for consuming media, less so for producing media. Well, not anymore.

App #4 on the "Hacking" apps list allows you to turn on "USB Host" mode. What it means is that with the help of a simple USB plug (less than $3 on Amazon), you can connect any USB device (keyboards, mice, cameras) to your Nook.

I already had an HP wireless media keyboard (got it for less than $20 3 months ago). It has a built in mouse, a tiny USB connector and several multimedia shortcut keys.

Finally I got a tablet stand to prop up my Nook - and Tada! Instant mini laptop.
The Android OS supports keyboards and mice easily, and even some of the multimedia keys (volume, start/stop) work in some of the apps.
This album contains photos of all pieces of hardware mentioned.

I actually managed to write this post in the Android Blogger app on the Nook, and upload photos from my phone. My favorite use for the Nook right now is taking notes at meetups and classes directly into Evernote. I can always access and edit them later on my laptop.

East Coast Android

2011-07-07T13:41:00.000-07:00

The last 3 weeks I went back on the road for some family visits. I did manage to squeeze some tech in the form of my “new” Android phone.
[in this post, clicking a photo will take you to the full album]

I started by flying out to Montreal. I lucked out and got there while they were having one of those perfect summer weeks. I had an amazing day at the farmers market, and the park, watching a group of Brazilian drummers and an encounter with a raccoon who just didn’t take no for an answer.

From there, we drove down to NY, spent the night and continued to Stamford, CT for a big family gathering. I saw some relatives from all over the US I haven’t seen in years. Fun was had by all.

At that point in time I bought an Android phone on eBay. My small Comet was running through its battery to fast and it’s screen was a bit too small to get the full Android experience. I also became a bit disenfranchised with the virtual keyboard (even when it uses Swype – which is a step in the right direction) and started yearning for my Blackberry real keyboard days.

I therefore opted for the T-Mobile G2 (also known as the HTC Desire), that has both virtual and physical keyboards. It also supports the T-Mobile 4G network, that worked great for me throughout the trip. I got it for $220 and T-Mobile immediately unlocked it for me, so it can be used worldwide.

I actually left AT&T after being with them since 2004 because they wouldn’t unlock an Android phone and actually had some of the stock Android options (like applications source – needed for private and Amazon apps, and tethering) locked out in their ROM. I mean, if I buy a phone, I get to decide what it can or can’t do, not a network. So goodbye AT&T – call me back when you’ve bought a clue.

I’m glad to report the transfer was quick and painless – I got to keep my number, my Google Voice was oblivious to the change, and I even got a refund from AT&T – they sent me a check for $1.83 .

So when I hit those hotels along the way with a verrrry slow internet connection (I’m talking to you, Hilton hotels – all of you in the US. The ones in London have such high speed, I’d like to live in them permanently), I pulled out my G2 and used it as a wireless hotspot (make sure you sign for the “unlimited” package first). Speed was 3-5Gbit, and I managed to watch Netflix files on the device as well.

The battery runs out fast when streaming and the solution I found was to spend $11 on a 3500mAh battery at DealExtreme (free shipping). Yes, it makes the phone more cumbersome, but at more than 2.5 times the original battery, you can do more and recharge your phone once every 3 days.

One pet peeve I have with Android’s way of treating batteries (other than the way it drains them quickly with all those needless services running in the background), is the power alerts. Android issues an alert at 20%, 10%, 15% and 5% of power, finally starting a shutdown at around 3%. The problem is: it does it by percentages, not actual left power. Case in point: with the original 1300 mAh battery, a 10% alert means you have less than 130 mAh left. But with the 3500 mAh one, you still have 350 mAh left, which is almost 30% of the original. And 3% of 3500 should still be enough for several more hours. Just one more way statistics are lying to us.

From Stamford we continued to a weekend in Boston. Sadly, we got rained in for most of it, but we did get to tour the Boston Commons and the downtown area. Since it was the day before the final Stanley Cup game between Boston and Vancouver, all the statues were dressed with Bruins jerseys.I wonder what would George Washington say about this

From there we continued to Cambridge and got a tour of Harvard from an old friend who studies there. There’s a tradition kept by tourists, that if you touch the left shoe of John Harvard’s statue, you get accepted to Harvard.

This tradition, according to my host, has 3 main flows:

John Harvard was not the founder of Harvard’s university – it existed several years before he arrived
This statue is not of John Harvard – no one know what he looks like so the artists just improvised
The fraternity kids tend to tank up on beer, piss on the left shoe of the statue and stand in the windows laughing their asses off as tourists touch the shoe

So all in all, another tourist trap – literally .

From Boston, we continued back south to NY, with one night stop at Hartford (another slow networked Hilton – for shame). After a brief visit with my sister, I flew back to SFO, utilizing some of my Continental points to boot myself to first class on a United flight. This was one of those 3-class flights, so 1st just made me want to stay on the plane and continue to Australia.

And to end this post on a celebratory note, I attended the 4th of July concert at Shoreline Amphitheater for the 3rd year in a row. It was nice as always, this being the 100th year of the SF Symphony, who performed well. I took some shots of the fireworks and 2 videos, one of Jon Miller, the SF Giants anchor, performing the poem “Casey at the bat” and the other of the E.T. theme by John Williams. Several hours later I got an email from youtube notifying me I may be violating copyrights. So, hopefully the videos are still there.

36 Hours at the Hackathon

2011-06-28T12:22:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I took part in the Muther of all Hackathons at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. The goal was to come up with a new mobile app within 24 hours. The apps are then judged in several categories and awarded prizes by the sponsors. They apps can be useful, novel, look nice, or just promote a certain sponsor’s pet technology, to win.

I got to CHM at 8:30am Friday morning with no idea what I'll be doing next. I sat through several sessions on the state of the mobile industry, the various mobile platforms and their disparity and various predictions that Android and Windows Phone 7 will drink Apple’s iOS milkshake by 2015.

But the real fun started after lunch: people divided into 2 groups: people with app ideas looking for developers for their team, and developers looking for a team to join. Every team could consist of no more than 4 people, serving as developers, designers, or product managers – often all at the same time.
I had several app ideas, but decided to shelve them and added my name to the 2nd list. That’s how I found Mark. Mark is a volunteer firefighting pilot and he had an idea for an app that will warn people of their proximity to wildfires, and allow them to communicate with each other and with first responders. The app was pitched as a not-for-profit app, with the sole purpose of saving lives. I was sold immediately.

I met Le, who already helped Mark win an earlier Android competition. We went over the available app categories and decided to develop a cross-platform mobile app and enter in as many we could. This entire hackathon was promoting mobile web development, as a mean to bridge the platform disparity gap. We decided to use PhoneGap as our main library, with jQuery and jQuery Mobile as the UI layer.

We found a corner, opened our laptops and started writing code.
We still needed a UI/UX designer. Those were snatched up fast all around us, but we were lucky and managed to get Marco on our team. He immediately set to work building a UI that will be clear, simple, work on all platforms, but most importantly, be useable to a person who sees fire approaching him. Team DisasterRadio was complete.

From right: Mark, Marco, Le and me at the CHM Hall of Fellows

We ran into multiple issues and problems throughout the night: this web solution is still young, and most libraries we used were in either alpha or beta stages. Internet forums are full of bug reports similar to the ones we encountered. But we had a race against the clock, so we cut corners.

Some of our issues were not technological: since our app shows data from a real time feed of fire reports, we had to make sure we can show a real live fire. Since fire conditions changed every several hours, we “froze” a fire into our demo. We took one of the real fires that raged in Arizona, dubbed “Wallow Fire” and saved its data to our server. And while our application uses geo-location to locate the user and fires around him, there were no fire around Mountain View, so we set our demo user in the town of Springerville, AZ – several miles north of the Wallow fire.

Our app allows the user to communicate with people around him through twitter, by using the fire’s name as a hash tag. We assumed that the first person to twit about the fire would create that hash tag and we played with it a bit. But we soon realized fires already have names and tags assigned to them by the fire department, so all the test twits using hash tag #wallowfire went into the real feed of actual people and firefighters around the fire. We stopped that immediately and faked our twits on top of the live twit feed in the app.

We worked all night, stopping once in a while to push coffee and Red Bull into our systems. The only thing I deeply regretted was not bringing a long-sleeved shirt – it got so cold later. The great hall was peppered with small air mattresses, and some people took turns at grabbing a few hours of sleep. But I reasoned that if I take 3-4 hours of sleep, I’ll be even more tired when I get up, so I decided to power through. And I wasn’t alone. The team worked hard all night and when dawn rose, we had a working prototype, with a final design.

We spent the rest of the morning making sure that the app worked well on an iPhone, an iPod an Android phone and finally, on an HP WebOS TouchPad, that the HP team was kind enough to loan us. We also compiled our app to work with appMobi – a cloud solution for cross-platform mobile development. At this point, we started faltering a bit. Due to tiredness, pressure and inherent issues in the technologies, we ran into issues, regressions and at one time, I merged a file wrong and went back a version. But we kept our eye on the prize (and the other on the clock) and at noon o Saturday, we nearly achieved our goal.

Our last snag, occurring few minutes before noon (the official deadline), was that the TouchPad stopped showing the map. I rushed to the HP expert table and the very helpful dude confirmed they have had problems displaying Google maps and suggested some solutions. We had no time to implement those, so we just took a screenshot of our map and pasted it in WebOS .
There were a couple of presentations after lunch, but frankly, no one was listening. People who had been hacking through the night struggled to stay awake and practiced their presentations. The random order put us 2nd in line to demo. There were supposed to be 45 demoed apps.

Our demo went without a hitch. We had 2 minutes to pitch and we used them fully. We demoed Wildfire on 5 devices at the same time: iPhone, Android, iPod, TouchPad and as a web site on my Mac. All in all, being a recent arrival to the mobile app development arena, I couldn’t believe we accomplished all of this in 24 hours.

Demoing the app

We sat through the rest of the demos. Some people decided to present more than one app, and we got 60 demos instead of the 45 scheduled. The judges became lax with the rules: some people took muuuch longer than the allotted 2 minutes per pitch. Some didn’t have their app ready and just used PowerPoint slides – a big no-no. Some just came from home with a readymade app (a pair of developers that demoed an app – I shall not name it here) actually demoed the same app 2 weeks before at an Android app meetup. Basically, at that point I could have whipped out armodello and demoed it, competing for an augmented reality prize, if I wanted.

Waiting for the judges' decision

At around 5pm, after 33 sleepless hours, the demos ended and the judges took some time to render their decisions. We all sat together, waiting for each judge to pick his best 3 candidates.
We won 2nd place from HP (we each got a new Veer 4G phone and a Dr. Dre Beats Studio headphones) and a 2nd place from appMobi ($250 for the team). Joe from appMobi actually whipped out a wad of bills and paid everyone on the spot.

Winning appMobi prize. Joe from appMobi holding cash

The grand winner was Air Guitar Move – an app that uses a unique piece of hardware, shaped like a guitar pick, to turn your iPhone into an air guitar. I have to admit, it is a very cool app and I enjoyed playing with it during one of the breaks. And it certainly was the most exciting one shown, but (you knew there was a but coming), it was definitely not built during the night or on premises.

Winners of Muther - group shot

I finally left at around 6:30pm and managed the drive home on sheer adrenaline. I hit my bed like a sack of potatoes at 8pm on Saturday – 36 hours after the weekend started. Haven’t done that for a while. Still, it was a great fun. I was taken back to my university days of finishing a project the night before it was due, and my army days, when we hacked at night and fixed really big problems, consuming coffee and stale cookies to stay awake (my record then was 48 hours straight).

And I learned that even though I progressed to “management”, I still “had it” – I can sit down in front of a blank screen, with a ticking clock, and deliver a working solution. And even though I’ve been working on my own for several years now, I still enjoyed working with a team, especially one so talented.

I would like to thank Mark, Le and Marco for turning this weekend into a great experience and I’d very much love to build a for-profit app with you all - any time.
Also, thanks to Tony from appMobi for jumping in at the last minute to assist with some issues we’ve encountered. And thanks to Caroline and Carlo from WIP for putting this even together. Caroline said the next such event will take place in Brazil. Hmm, haven’t been there yet…

For more shots from Muther, go to my album, or fitml’s flickr.
Also, here’s a review of the entire event on WAPReview.

All Over the Place

2011-05-27T19:21:00.000-07:00

It has been more tech than travel over the last couple of weeks. The only 2 (paying) projects I’ve been working on were research related (i.e., can be completed from home). That left me plenty of time to learn new technologies, play with new toys and go to several meetups to keep current with latest trends.
A technology consultant is like a shark – he can’t stop swimming, lest he drowns. In my case, it means constant learning. I’ve long been of the opinion that you cannot know “enough”. The more you learn, the more times you can answer “yes” to the question “have you heard/used technology X?”. Over the last 2 years, I found myself replying with either an outright “yes” or with “no, but give me a day and ask again”.
With that in mind, and in no particular order, the last few weeks have been spent learning:

Node.js – a new JavaScript server side technology
Netduino + electronics (see my Code Blog for some samples)
New version of armodello – coming soon!
Pachube – I have a feed that shows the light conditions and temperature in my kitchen in real time. More on this (including code) soon
Android development
iPhone development
Developing for the MS Kinect
Test-driven development – learn how to write tests for your code, before writing your code
A new version of Ubuntu – install and play
PhoneGap – a cross device HTML5 development environment
Bringing together 5, 6 and 10 to develop an app that runs on both Android and iPhone, showing your geo-location info, based on your external IP
Android rooting/customizing – if you own ANY Android device, pay a visit to CyanogenMod to see whether a ROM exists for it

The nice side of doing so many things at once: you never get bored. If you’ve been staring at that Objective-C file for an hour, just jump to that JS file, or connect another resistor to your Netduino’s light sensor. The bad part is loss of focus: I have 3-4 projects I work on at once, and they’re all creeping foreword at about the same pace.
And then there are the toys: Other than my shining Netduino Plus board, and tons of electronic components needed to complete projects (and a solder, and some tools, and a box and…), I also got what I think is one of the best tablets you’ve never heard of: the Nook Color.
The Nook Color was introduced by Barnes & Noble to compete with Amazon’s Kindle. However, somewhere along the way someone gave it specs that rival current generation Android phones: 800Mhz CPU, nice GPU, 8GB onboard memory, 7” IPS screen (that is not as reflective as my new mirror aka iPad), bootable micro SD card slot and finally, Android 2.2 (Froyo). BN sells it for $249+tax, but you can easily get a new one for ~$200 off eBay, or a used one for $180.
The problem is: having been designed to be just a book reader, the Nook is locked into this nice, dumbed down interface that allows you to read books from BN, read PDFs, and buy the 8 apps BN allows in its “store”. Which is great for people who just want to read books, but is boring for people like me.
What the bootable SD card slot allows you to do is boot the device into an alternate OS. For example, Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) or even the newest version 3.0 (Honeycomb). And you can choose whether to keep your device’s ROM (skin) intact, or deploy a new ROM on top of it. You can find clear step-by-step instructions on this great blog.
I played with the dual boot Honeycomb option for a while, and then after backing up the original ROM, I deployed a Gingerbread ROM. Basically, I can now install any Android application I want: games (Angry Birds anyone?), browsers (FF5 beta is my current favorite), multimedia apps and book readers. I use 4 readers:

nook – the BN nook for Android gives you (almost) the same experience as the one in the original ROM. Only now it’s an app – not the whole device
Kindle – read your favorite free and paid Kindle books – on the nook!
I bet the following screenshot gets people from both Amazon and BN totally mad: the 2 reading apps, side by side on one device
ACV – a comics book viewer
Aldiko – allows you to read everything else: ePub, PDF, mobi – you name it, you can read it

I also have Google books installed, but I never bought, nor will I buy a book from them.
My current favorite multimedia apps are Amazon MP3 – allowing you to stream your music from your Amazon CloudDrive and buy music on the spot, and TuneIn Radio, which allows you to listen to radio stations from around the world. Oh, and if I haven’t mentioned already, the Nook can play almost all video formats, and it’s screen, while a bit smallish, is great on airplanes.
Here are some more screenshots from my Gingerbread NookColor.
In short, what I learned over the last couple of weeks is that off-the-shelf products are a good starting point: you can root your Android, jailbreak your iPhone, reverse engineer your electronics and skip a web server deployment for a Node.js.
But most importantly, you should keep on reading, trying and testing everything that comes your way. What you’ll learn along the way is how to learn – and that is a lesson worth your time and efforts.

Announcement: New Code Blog

2011-05-02T00:53:00.000-07:00

I'm glad to announce a new blog: Traveling Tech Guy Code blog.

In this blog I'll describe my new projects, the new technologies and paradigms I'm testing, and post samples, videos and code of my current and past projects.

The 2 main reasons for moving that information to a new blog are:

Some of the info is way too technical for my blog. I really want to go deep into code, and this blog is still more about experiences and opinions
I've gotten to a point where I'm doing way too much at the same time; right now I'm knee deep into v2 of armodello, learning Android development, working on a Netduino project and on a brand new stealth idea I'm hoping to turn into a startup (know a good Biz. Dev./Product Manager? I suck at the business side of things). This blog would allow me to document my projects, keep my key code snippets in one place, and maybe serve as a sort of a portfolio for future jobs.

So, if you're interested in software development, if code and technologies don't scare you, or if you just want to see what am I up to lately, head over to my new blog. Comments appreciated.

The New Evil Empires

2011-04-24T15:39:00.000-07:00

I've been an Apple technology fan for most of my adult life. My first computer was an Apple, I once took a summer job just because the office had a Mac in it, and I managed my university's multimedia lab, just so I can get the latest and greatest models and toys (oooh, a CD reader! Shiny!). The distinction is, I always liked the technology - not the company.

For a company that was started by 2 hackers in a garage, Apple did its best to distance itself from its origins. Everything is closed: their OS is not licensed, their devices can only be used in certain ways (the only reason I can't buy my parents an iPod is because I'll spend a lifetime to explain iTunes to them. Better to give them an off-the-shelf drag-music-into-it MP3 player), their SDKs carry an agreement license that requires an army of lawyers to decipher. Until this very day I hope I haven't signed away my first born to Steve Jobs when I joined the Apple Developers program. As for the real quality of their hardware - this deserves a separate post.

In short, Apple became Microsoft (or what Microsoft used to be). And last week, when the facts came out that Apple is collecting location data on everyone who uses an iDevice, Apple just became as evil as Google (remember the wifi tap fiasco?). I know, some people think this is not a big deal. Those people haven't yet used the free application that accesses that log file and draws all points on a map.

I was shocked to see every single place I visited and every trip I took mapped down with dates (can I at least use this for my expense reports in lieu of collecting a mountain of receipts?). I have nothing to hide, but still, why would anyone want to collect this data on me?

As in the Google case, Apple claimed it's a bug: they were supposed to keep just the last location (why?), and their algorithm just "forgot" to clean the history. And as in the Google case, I think the company means that the bug is the exposure and bad publicity they are receiving.

It has since came out that Google is also collecting location data on Android phones - and even transmits it back to HQ several times an hour. I wonder if there's a place for a class action, suing them for using my bandwidth without my permission. But this is just further proof that the equation Apple == Google holds.

At the time of this posting, there's still no way to stop the location tracking on either iDevice or Android phones. I assume it would come out with the next OS update (and let me hazard a guess: it will be buried deep in the settings screens, with the default turned to "on").

But Apple and Google are not alone. Even new start-ups play at being evil. Take for example one of my favorite products: Dropbox. I love this product and use it on a daily basis. One of the assurances they made, to entice people to trust them with their most secure data, was that the files are doubly encrypted: even Dropbox's developers cannot access their contents. Last week it came out that is not really the case. Not only are the files accessible, but have been shared with law enforcement agencies in the past. This means Dropbox's employees can access them - they are just told not to.

It is a known fact that a security chain is only as strong as it weakest link. If your company/bank/financial institute is maintaining unencrypted secure or personal data, all it takes for it to be abused is one disgruntled or underpaid employee. That's why we need double-blind encryption algorithms, access mechanisms and audit systems in place, and that's why banks vet their employees. With the new wave of start ups offering to maintain you most personal data, maybe we should demand encryption and employee vetting?

And finally, the last straw in this privacy and security infringement month: the Epsilon hack. It turns out many companies that I trust with my email (I'm talking to you Hilton and Best Buy) actually give it away to 3rd party companies to manage their marketing campaigns. And at the beginning of the month, that company was hacked big time (take a look at the list of companies affected). This prompted a torrent of emails from these companies warning their users not to trust any further emails from these companies, because they might be phishing scams (the irony is not lost).

The bottom line of this post is not "Trust no one" - that way leads to paranoia (although every fact I've seen so far suggests a bit of paranoia is justified when it comes to companies). No, I think what we should take away from all those stories is this:

comfort x security = k

In other words, to get more comfort (free services, immediate access) we have to give away some of our security and vice versa.

This still doesn't justify spying on your clients - that is pure evil.

Update 4/29/11:
A few days ago, people started talking about an outage on Sony's PlayStation Network. Sony at first claimed it was technical difficulties. As days passed, they were forced to admit their network was hacked. As I'm writing this update, the first credit card numbers of PSN users are being sold on hacker sites. Way to go with maintaining your network and encrypting your data, Sony. I sincerely hope some IT managers are performing Harikiri as I write this. Jerks.

armodello - Design Your Home, Without Leaving It

2011-02-06T15:39:00.000-08:00

Over the last 6 months, my partner Eitan and I have been hard at work trying to find an answer to a simple question: how do you furnish your house, without
spending countless of hours going through showrooms, browsing through online catalogs, and making educated (more or less) guesses about how that sofa would look in your living room, next to your curtains and carpet.

Eitan and I have been working together for the last 6 years. Coming from a software development background, we were sure we could find a software solution to this real world problem.

Along the way we have learned a lot: how to outsource well, how to utilize online assistance and assets, how to work together across multiple time zones and what's involved in developing a mobile app. The experience I gained is worth several dedicated posts. And it has all been worth it:

I'm proud to announce armodello - an iPhone app that brings the showroom to your fingertips.

armodello allows you to select furniture and other home design items from leading designer catalogs, and place them on a photo of your room (taken by your iPhone's camera, or from your iPod's/iPad's album). You can then use simple tools to rotate and resize the item.

After adding several items to your room, save the room design and share it over Facebook, Twitter or email with family, friends or people whose design advice you appreciate. Once your heart is set on a design, use the link provided with the item to purchase it online. It's that simple.

We're proud to have our first 5 partners featured in the app already, including a graduates catalog from Pratt academy, with many more to come (expect a large online retail site soon – too early to disclose).

armodello is available in Apple's iTunes app store for free. Give it a try, and leave us a rating and a comment. Check this space and our dedicated blog often, for more catalogs and more exciting features coming out in the next version!

PS: what's in a name
The name 'armodello' comes from ar = augmented reality + modello = design in Italian. Once we decided on a name, it was obvious we need an armadillo for our logo. We had several designs drawn up, and finally decided on the final critter you see above, courtesy of a talented Irish designer.

Traveling Tech Guy, LLC

2011-01-17T22:21:00.000-08:00

New year, new resolutions, new company.

I'm proud to announce my company is now incorporated. Traveling Tech Guy, LLC is a consulting company, focusing on delivering management, research and development services to technology-focused companies and teams. I started small in 2009, but things finally took off in 2010, making incorporation the only logical step.

This year I undertook several training projects, some unexpected backend development, some research projects and an exciting Cloud PHP development for an exciting new startup.

Right now, I'm hard at work managing 2 development teams, delivering an iPad and an MS Surface applications to an exciting new company.
This project is my dream job: cutting edge technologies, bright developers, travel and a customer who totally "gets it".

All this, while working on my own personal major project - more on that later.

As I have several more projects lined up, I may actually be hiring some help soon - too much for just one person to handle. The person I'm looking for is a bright young person, who'll answer the question "Have you heard of technology X?" by either "Yes, and I have an amazing open-source project to show you", or "No, but give me 10 minutes and I'll be an X-expert". If you know someone like that, drop me a note.

More exciting news coming soon.

To 3D or Not To 3D

2010-12-12T11:42:00.001-08:00

Truth to tell, I don’t like the whole “new” 3D trend (not really new, they tried pushing it before in the ‘80s, ‘90s and even in the ‘50s). In movies, games, TVs and cameras – 3D is the new “HD”.

When I was a kid, an aunt from Canada sent us a Viewmaster with several reels. Most reels contained scenes and buildings from Ottawa and Toronto (which later in life I was delighted to see in person, but one was of wild life. I used to have nightmares caused by the over-realistic shark swimming at you, mouth agape.

Today, I don’t really appreciate the fact that every 3rd rate movie offers a 3D version – as if sitting for 3 hours with plastic goggles on top of my glasses would cover the gaping holes in the script. I still remember the headache I got watching the 3D version of Avatar (though I‘m still debating whether it was caused by the technology or the annoying, bottom-rate script).

The last wave of 3D TVs got me wondering whether we’re all doomed to wear weird glasses in our living room, and what’s the right number of pairs of glasses you need to buy, so that none of your guest feels left out.

But to some people, 3D photography is a passion and a hobby. Take my friend Gil in Virginia, for example. His dad came up with a way to use 2 cheap point-and-click cameras to build a DIY 3D rig (get full instructions and samples on his site).

While visiting Gil last October, he took several 3D photos (go get your blue-green glasses to enjoy these):

You can find some more samples in Gil’s Gallery.

So clearly not everyone is as unenthusiastic as me about the concept. I still hope the interest in this gimmick and the “me too!” attitude would die down, as it did before. Call me old fashioned, but in my humble opinion, If you want to experience something “just like it looks in real life” – open your door and step out.

Halloween in NY and American Express Sucks

2010-12-05T14:17:00.000-08:00

I just landed a big customer in Virginia, leading to some trips to the East Coast and Canada. I did a full circle, flying into NY, driving to VA, flying out to Montreal and returning to NY to meet family and friends. I managed to attend the Halloween parade in NY city (side note: brrrrrr. Standing on 7th avenue on a cold October night can turn you into a block of ice in seconds). Here are some pictures, and there's even a video:

2010-10-31 Halloween Parade in NY

One theme was recurring throughout my trip: "Sorry sir, we do not accept American Express", followed by a mumbled explanation about how Amex charges the vendor up to twice the commission MasterCard does. I found myself reaching for my dusty backup card more than once, or ~shudder~ - even resorting to cash.

Now, I've witnessed this phenomenon occurring more often even here in California (and I won't even count Canada and Europe - where the card is treated as a useless piece of plastic), but this time it reached annoying proportions, when even large, respected restaurants refused to accept the card. I called the customer relationships department to ask them what they're doing about this, and the answer was "nothing". They just suggested I try to shop at vendors who do accept Amex. Basically getting me to do their dirty work for them, and punish vendors who can't pay their exorbitant commission.

Don't get me wrong: I like the perks that come with my card, and I've used the points I acquired several times before. But if I have to hold several cards and go into the hassle of maintaining several accounts, just because Amex feels it can fleece simple vendors, I guess I'll have to find other perk-offering cards elsewhere.

On another interesting note regarding Amex, I've been running into a bug on their web site for over a year now. When you log into their bonus rewards site (requires logging into an account), and search for "Amazon" in the list of merchants, you get a huge Java error message [geek alert: attached is the full stack dump for my Java-savvy readers to solve - doesn't take too much].

This type of alert exposes the inner workings of the Amex web stack, not to mention the fact that this type of message should never find its way to the end customer, but I'd expect someone to notice and fix it.

I took the time to document the error, attached a screenshot of the dump and sent to their support team. The reply I got was:

I'm sorry for the inconvenience this has caused you. I do understand your inconvenience and have forwarded this problem to our technical team.

They are diligently working to correct it.

Please be advised that it is sometimes challenging to diagnose online access problems through e-mail, because there are so many factors that can affect any given situation.

Attempting to solve your problem through e-mail could be both time consuming and frustrating for you...

Well, if describing the step that gets you the error and seeing the message itself is not enough to allow them to diagnose the problem, may I offer the service of the Traveling Tech Guy consulting agency. Free of charge for Amex. Just make it so I could use my card in more places on my next trip please.

Mini for Sale

2010-11-07T17:15:00.000-08:00

I just got a nice new netbook – the Lenovo IdeaPad S10-3t. I got it mostly for its touch screen – it can switch to tablet mode, allowing for swift web browsing and, with Amazon Kindle installed, provides a great book reading experience. And the Atom 470 makes it swifter than the usual netbooks.

As a result, I’m selling my Dell Mini 9 (read my initial review). It includes:

2GB or RAM
Wireless N card – Intel 4965AGN (the original wireless G card included as well)
32GB SSD (supports SDHC cards, so you can add 32GB more)
Bluetooth dongle (works great with a GPS module I got on eBay)
A 9” sleeve

It runs Windows 7 quite well (including Netflix movies). Some images:

I’ll also throw in a 120HD in a USB enclosure. My asking price for the whole package is $250. Let me know if you, or anyone you know is interested.

Locate a Stolen Laptop

2010-10-16T14:40:00.001-07:00

The statistics for stolen and lost laptops in the US alone are staggering. As a traveling tech guy, I’m at constant risk of accidentally leaving my laptop at a TSA checkpoint, or having it taken off a Starbucks table when I get up to get a napkin.

Stop for a second and think what you have on your laptop? Will access to your email reveal some finance information? Is your client list in the open? Is your credit card mentioned in any document? Social security number in the latest DMV email? The loss of data, risks to privacy and damage to ongoing business is quite frightening.

Preventing physical theft

While every laptop today has a Kensington security slot as a standard, all it does is deter your casual opportunity thief. Someone with 5 more minutes can easily saw through it, or break the plastic bit.

Locating a stolen laptop
Services like Lojack will allow you to locate a stolen laptop (much in the way they locate stolen cars), for a fee. Some laptops even have such a service enabled in the hardware (Lenovo offers it for free for the first year, if I’m not mistaken).

I recently came upon an online service called Prey that will protect up to 3 laptops for free. To test it, I installed it on my main laptop, took my tablet to a nearby café, logged into the site, and marked my laptop as “stolen”.

Within 10 minutes I got a report that included a screenshot displayed on the laptop, the name of the logged in user, the list of open applications, and the laptop’s location, based on its IP. I would have pasted the report in, but the map is so accurate it actually showed my apartment (!). You can also annoy the hell out of the thief, displaying messages, logging onto the machine etc. Mind you, if your thief decides to format the hard disk, this entire scheme goes out the window. But for immediate response, I installed this on all my computers.

Which brings me to the next discussion point: should you confront someone who stole your laptop? This might be quite dangerous in certain areas. I recommend alerting the police once you ascertain the culprit’s definite location, or taking with you a friend who moonlights as a ninja.

Protect against data theft
Even if your laptop does get stolen, beyond the hardware costs, there are several ways to combat data theft.

Always use a password protected user. Make sure you log off (Windows-L in Windows) before getting up from your computer.
Use a BIOS password. This will add 2 more seconds to your boot time, but will mean it’ll be harder to get at your hard drive.
Encrypt your data: either use the Windows built-in BitLocker mechanism (Vista and 7), or a free application like TrueCrypt to encrypt a file, folder, a whole partition or even a full disk.
This is the ultimate data-theft deterrent. A thief will have to format your HD to be able to use the computer.
Backup – make sure you have your sensitive information backed up. At home use a large hard disk and/or a NAS, and start using online services like Mozy, or Dropbox

All said, if you travel a lot, there are good chances you and your beloved laptop may part ways on a less than happy circumstances. Never let a laptop theft create more damage than beyond the theft itself. Protect, prevent and backup.

Fuel Trick

2010-08-22T19:25:00.001-07:00

I took this photo of a fuel pump at a gas station near my home. See if you can tell what’s wrong with the picture:

In case you missed it: in most gas stations in the US, 3 fuel grades are offered: 87 (“regular”), 89 (“extra”), and 91 (“premium”). Buttons will appear on the pump in either ascending, or descending order.

This guy rearranged the buttons on the pump (and I say “this guy” because I haven’t seen this anywhere else before, or since) so that the “premium” button is in the middle. A customer used to fueling “extra” (and hence, always hits the middle button) would just select a higher grade by mistake, providing the owner with 20-30 cents/gallon more.

This is what’s known in Hebrew as “kosher, but stinking” – it’s not illegal, but not the most ethical thing to do. So the tag “scam” may be out of place, but the closest I have for this.

And yes, I fell for this trick. Once.

Northern Exposure

2010-07-18T20:25:00.001-07:00

When a customer canceled a week engagement, I decided to take a trip that would be the furthest I could get from home, while still staying in the US. Surprisingly enough, I didn’t end up in Hawaii, but in Alaska.

Getting there was not easy – with a layover in Phoenix, I still got there at 1am local time. Luckily, the sun was still out. A rather strange flight where you get to see the sun set and rise (sorta) within the span of 5 hours.

I stayed at the Anchorage Hilton and spent one day touring Anchorage itself. It’s quite small and walk-able. And restaurants are still full at midnight (again, due to the long light hours, people tend to compensate themselves for the long, dark winters, by staying out late).

Click here to see some pictures of Anchorage

On the second day I took a Glacier Cruise. 26 Glaciers cruise takes you by bus from Anchorage to Whittier – a town so remote and desolate people used to wear t-shirts saying POW (Prisoner of Whittier), and is only accessible by a train tunnel and by sea. Along the way, the courteous driver stops at interesting vista points, explains about the view and the state and even offers to take your picture. At Whittier you board a catamaran and sail Prince Edward Sound to see… well, 26 glaciers.

Click here to see more pictures from the tour

It was a fun experience. We saw otters, ice, seals, ice, glaciers, glaciers, ice… you get the picture. The food served on board was great, and they even gave us binoculars. The crew fishes some ice blocks that you can use in a drink, if you want to sample a pure 100 year old ice. And the vie is breathtaking. All in all, a great value for a $170, even though it gets a bit old after the 10th glacier. Take into account that with the round trip to Whittier, this is a full day trip. Oh, and dress warm!

The next day I took the Alaska Railroad to Seward. This is a special train, with limited trips. It goes through some of the nature reserves, so you get to see more than you see from the road. I saw some moose, though no bears. And many waterfalls and icebergs (again). The train has a car with a transparent roof for the whole 360^o experience. The trip takes 4 hours each way, so plan accordingly if you intend to return on the same day.

Click here for more pictures from Seward, the cruise and the train

At Seward, I took a cruise of Resurrection Bay. Less ice, but much more wildlife. I saw plenty of bald eagles, porpoises, seals, otters, puffins and 2 Humpback whales that just swam at us, and below the ship. We ate a great lunch on Fox island and took the long way back to Seward. From there, another long train ride brings you back to Anchorage. And even though it’s past 10pm, it was still bright and all the shops and restaurants open.

My flight back left at 1:40am – the latest (earliest?) flight I ever took in the US.

Alaska was a refreshing surprise. I was taken by the beauty, nature, and wide, open spaces. And it allowed me to clear my head and prepare for the rest of June, which turned out to be quite busy.
I highly recommend this trip. Next time I hope to visit Denali National Park and Mount McKinley.

PS: I was testing my new Nokia X6 GPS+camera on this trip. Here are some more geo-encoded images from the trip:

Fail

2010-07-17T20:50:00.000-07:00

It seems like everyone is doing a “Fail” post or column (heck, there’s a full blog dedicated to fails – warning: some is NSFW!). A “fail” is a picture containing a contradiction, or a stupidity that is clearly evident and could have been avoided if people had more between their ears

Here are some samples I collected over the last few months while traveling around the US:

1. Where can I find the diet foods? Why, on aisle 9, near the candy, snacks and chips of course (taken at a supermarket at Cupertino – really expected more from these people ):

2. New Israeli kosher dish: Couscous with Shrimp. Next week: Indian beef (pardon the quality, tried snapping quickly with my phone without offending anyone):

3. Ever wondered what’s the result of the equation you call “phone number”? Wonder no further. Apparently, if you type a phone number into Bing, it treats it as a calculation (found when I was looking for one of my old articles about 1-800 scams:
4. Question: if you have 100 channels, how long will it take you to flip through them on this TV? (Hampton Inn, Jacksonville, FL):
5. This bottle has a smaller cap so we can save plastic and save the Earth, so we killed a tree to print this label and explain our smaller cap (Zephyrhills water bottle, made of 100% plastic and one dead tree):

6. The makers of this gate have written instruction of what to shout out in case this gate accidently closes on your car:

Let’s zoom in:
7. Finally, an old-y but good-y fail I got from an Israeli news site.
This is a photo of a “Photografy Forbiden” (sic) sign contains so many fails. Wonder who was stupid enough to take it, and next to a cop, no less.

Secure Google Search

2010-05-28T20:01:00.000-07:00

After many years, Google finally announced a secure safe search site: https://www.google.com (emphasis on the 's' after 'http' - meaning the site uses SSL encryption). Like any other Google product, it carries a little "beta", and probably will continue to for several years (hey - it beats employing QA people ).

Now, you might ask "why do I need this level of security?" In case you, like me, use your default browser's search box, chances are you search with Google regularly. And there are some people who wander around collecting network traffic for nefarious purposes. While your personal wi-fi router might be secured (and if not, read this article - ironically pointed to by Google's blog), you may spend time on the road or on open networks - and then, your search strings (along with any other non-encrypted data) is fair game.

And now, you can change your browser's default search behavior.

Firefox: download the Secure Google Search Engine addon, and make it your default search.
Chrome: Go to the wrench menu, select "Options" and click the "Manage" button next to "Default Search". Google does not let you edit its provider, so add a new one and type the following:
Click "Ok", select your provider and click "Make Default".
Opera: click the small drop down arroww next to the magnifying glass in the search box. Select "Manage Search Engines...", select the Google provider, click "Edit" and add the 's' after 'http':
Internet Explorer 8: I could not find a way to either add a secure provider, or edit the existing one. Then again, I'm sure none of you use it anymore .

Update 5/30/2010: after posting a question on SuperUser, I got a link to this site, explaining how to create your own search provider in IE8. Follow the steps and create one pointing to https://www.google.com.

And remember: Big Brother is out there watching you. And he's even issuing stocks...

Google Stockholders Meeting

2010-05-13T17:32:00.001-07:00

Just back from Google's annual stockholders meeting. It was a fun experience. A sunny Mountain View day meant we could eat the great lunch they served outside. Eric Schmidt's speech was informative and entertaining, and Larry Page joined the crowd unannounced.

Like every year, 3 proposal having to do with Google dealing with issues like transparency, privacy and and human rights were brought up - and voted down (see my post from 2 years ago). The part that pissed me off the most was when Kent Walker, Google's general council, announced the vote on the proposal, noting that they already know the answers since the majority of stocks have been voted by proxy. That means no matter what I voted for (and I of course voted "for" on all 3 proposals) - I already lost. Oh well, guess i need 20 million shares, rather than 20 to make a difference.

While I'm not allowed to comment on the financial aspects of the meeting, until the report is made public, I can tell you about a couple of the questions. An elderly woman complained that she did not get the proper invite to the meeting in time. She tried the web site, emailing and even calling Google - but got no proper answer. That caused her to arrive late to the meeting and miss lunch. Dr. Schmidt appologized and invited her to lunch next year. When another person complained about the same, he became more serious and asked his staff to check the site.

Another woman asked whether Google has decided already on the US city they are going to provide with gigabit networking. When she was told that the decision has not been made yet, she revealed she was here on behalf of the town of Frederick, MD. She bought an old Jeep, colored it blue, added Google logos, changed the license number to "Feeling Lucky" and drove 3150 miles to the meeting to try to convince Google to pick her town as the recipient. Everyone clapped and Larry and Eric found that extremely funny.

Finally, Eric recommended that everyone switch to Chrome and showed the Chrome "speed tests" video:

It was a fun afternoon. As a consumer, I don't really like the privacy decisions taken by Google. But as a stockholder, I wish them all the best