Vic Peacock's blog

iOS developer... kind of wanna be :-)

2011-11-12T11:41:00.001+01:00

I enrolled the Apple's iOS developer program and getting ready to start development of iPad/iPhone apps. I am really excited because it is something I was not doing (developing software) for a long time. In fact, I was able to teach programming but being a developer is something else.

(Well, I developed software in Prolog, but that's something else...)

I really like XCode IDE and the features of Objective-C. I plan to become proficient as I believe that the future of computing is with mobile devices and the cloud. That's also Apple's vision and I am willing to play a role in it.

More to come... stay tunned!

It is never too late...

2011-09-10T10:45:00.001+02:00

Today I choose to be positive!

Finally they installed power plugs in Swiss trains as you can see in the picture. It's certainly useful but it comes when now laptop batteries have extended time life. It would have been more useful a few years ago when batteries lasted only 1-2 hours.

Next I expect to have Internet connectivity when nearly everybody will have their mobile Internet plan on mobile devices.

One lesson learned is that innovation bust be deployed in a timely fashion otherwise it becomes obsolete or useless.

Providers of public services need to understand that. If users ask for a new service or an improvement, that means that they need it NOW! They must react fast even with a suboptimal solution.

If I am really hungry, every kind of food will do the job.

Apple iOS5 location-based reminders for Just in Time/Place task assignment

2011-06-15T14:21:00.004+02:00

RemindersApple introduced a new feature in the new iOS 5 that could open several opportunities for developers. As described by Apple here:

A better way to do to-dos.

Next time you think to yourself, “Don’t forget to...”, just pull out your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch and jot it down. Reminders lets you organise your life in to-do lists — complete with deadlines and locations. Say you need to remember to pick up milk during your next shopping trip. Since Reminders can be location based, you’ll get an alert as soon as you pull into the supermarket car park. Reminders also works with iCal, Outlook and iCloud, so changes you make update automatically on all your devices and calendars.

I have explored location-based reminders in one of my works on Kinetic User Interafaces. I instantiated this type of reminders to a shopping-list (UbiShop) scenario where a shared shopping-list is used to send reminders to people when they are located in a place where items in the list can be purchased (e.g. near a grocery store).

This not the only application of location-based reminders as it is applicable to several other situations. I called this "just-in-time/just-in-place" task assignment. You can find here a research article on this subject.

If Apple will provide API to manage location-based reminders within the OS for developers, what I have conceived can become a true reality. I am very excited about that and willing to dive into it.

You can watch below a video made by some of my students who implemented a prototype of Just-in-Time/Place reminders for the UbiShop scenario.

Hype

2010-11-28T20:32:00.002+01:00

a real-life exponential growth!

Apple iTunes App Store glitch

2010-11-22T10:18:00.001+01:00

As it is common for many people living in several locations, I have several iTunes accounts. It happened I purchased (well, it was free, but technically it's the same) an App from the Swiss App store which has now been removed. However, the app is available in another country's App store for which I have an account.

Now, when I am connected to this App store my iPod detects an update of the application (from a different country's App store from which it has originally purchased). When I try to update it, it asks me again the original country's App store account password, which I provide. But the result is that it bounces back to the other App store and tells me that the app is no longer available.

Currently, I don't see any workaround for this problem.

Of course, it is in general very annoying having to switch from one account to another for updating the apps (including selecting the different iTunes stores and wait that everything loads).

Google Translate Mistery

2010-11-21T20:20:00.001+01:00

This is funny!

It seems that Google Translate uses prediction as in Google Instant Search but in a strange (and inconsistent) way.

I was looking for the English translation for the Italian "andare d'accordo".

I typed the this: "Andare d'acc" and Google immediately translated into "get along" (see picture below):

Then, once I completed the expression, Google changed its mind and gave a different (wrong) translation:

(Note that "Agree" translates into Italian "essere d'accordo")

I cannot actually explain this strange behavior. Any comment about that is really welcome. :-)

Interview on Digital Natives on RSR

2010-05-11T21:07:00.001+02:00

I have been interviewed during the LIFT 2010 conference by Radio Suisse Romande (RSR) and the interview has been broadcast today as part of the Médialogues program. The episode (and the interview) is now available as a podcast on the RSR site.

Question de génération

Le multimédia à travers les âges. [podfoto / fotolia]

Le multimédia, il y a ceux qui ont vécu avant et ceux qui sont nés avec.

Connexion internet, téléphonie mobile, réseaux sociaux, abondance d'informations, comment vit-on avec suivant son âge?

Quel effet cela produit-il entre les différentes générations? Quelle est la perception de ceux qui ont 20 ans?

Avec Julian Zbar, étudiant à l'université de Lausanne, intervenant à LIFT 2010, Vincenzo Pallotta, chercheur et professeur d'informatique à la Webster University à Genève, Gaetano Stucki, consultant nouveau médias à Cinémas Tous Ecrans et Sacha Brasseur, consultant pour le Festival du rire de Montreux.

écouter

télécharger la chronique

Lift Workshop @ Webster - Lift conference

2010-05-11T14:12:00.001+02:00

Lift Workshop @ Webster - Lift conference (18th June 2010)

Human Language Technology for the Information Society

Natural Language Processing is at the core of information technology, especially now that information is pervasive, distributed and easily accessible.

In this event we will gather researchers and professionals in the field of computational linguistics to discuss around the current challenges and implications of processing natural language for the information society.

The event is made of two parts:
1. In the morning and early afternoon, the scientific workshop DART2010
2. In the late afternoon, a panel of local researchers and professional in the field of Human Language Technology. Each panelist will give a short presentation and afterward the panel will answer question from the audience.

The full event is free of charge and it will be followed by a cocktail offered by the Webstr University Geneva.

Why must I always restart my computer in Windows?

2010-01-16T12:03:00.001+01:00

Look at this alert:

Shame on both Adobe and Microsoft because I don't really see the need of restarting the computer to install UPDATES of an application. This of course never happens in Mac-OSX or Linux.

From the user's perspective this is an ANNOYING service disruption. I agree that my applications should always be up-to-date, but I cannot accept that I have to stop, wait for reboot and resume my work just for updating applications.

This is not something that happens sporadically, it almost always happen and, worse, the user is almost never warned in advance that the system need to be restarted before installing the updates. This is a system design flaw which affects system's usability. Usability is not just fancy, colourful or transparent GUIs as it seems Microsoft is almost exclusively focusing on. I believe that these guys has to think about a more holistic view of usability which of course includes the notion of UNOBTRUSIVENESS. In other words, please help me in doing my work without hassle.

My book published!

2010-01-12T12:46:00.003+01:00

Cognitive Language Engineering

Towards Robust Human Language Technology

Vincenzo Pallotta

Abstract: Human Language Technology is essential in coping with today's information overload. To scale up, it must be robust and capable of making sense of noisy data. This book explores the topic of cognitive language engineering as a key for robustness. It can be used by students and practitioners alike, as a computational linguistics textbook and as a toolbox

for building robust natural language understanding systems.

Keywords: Language, Computing, Linguistics, Information, Understanding, Cognition, Intelligence,
Knowledge, Semantics, Software.

About this book:

"Pallotta's insight and critical discussion of the underlying mental models are core issues of present-day cognitive language engineering" [Prof. Hon. Giovanni Coray, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne, Switzerland].

“From a computational linguistics perspective Pallotta's book provides students and researchers with a powerful toolbox and many examples of real-world applications.” [Prof. Rodolfo Delmonte, University of Venice].

"Pallotta’s work on cognitive language engineering is a stimulating and well written treatise on models for computer applications that can interact using natural language. Practical and robust natural language systems begin to become a reality with this
fascinating work." [Dr. Afzal Ballim, Computational Linguist].

Number of pages: 407

ISBN: 978-3-639-21814-5

Price: 79 Euros

What's wrong wih Google Wave?

2009-10-20T21:26:00.001+02:00

I am among the "fortunate" users (or better testers) of Google Wave preview (thanx Radu!). Nowadays, there must be many Wave users around...

After so much hype, I am feeling skeptical about Google Wave.

First of all, it is not a compelling technology: does not fill any gap. Google made us familiar with products that came at the right moment to solve compelling problems. Google always did it very efficiently. But now it seems quite different. If conversely, Google is trying to create something new, then Wave does not feel as something new or dramatically different. I have the feeling that somebody is telling me: look, watch what we can do with current web technology! Isn't this amazing or miraculous?

Second, it is not "simple" (in the Google's sense): it is not just about features; it is more about usability. The Wave client present itself as a kind of white canvas where you are expected to do something. But you don't know what to do. Well, there are many functions that remind us familiar applications such as e-mail, IM or social networks. But in what Wave is different or similar to them, is hard to tell. Shall I use it as e-mail, as a chat, as a wiki? Any old familiar usage I choose would make Wave overshooting. The feeling is that you end up thinking: "so what now? I could do the same with XYZ".

Third, it is an early beta product. It does not crash, but many menu funcions are grayed. Something appears and something else disappears... I understand that it is a preview, but we are accustomed with the Google's quality of beta products (e.g. GMail). If I look at Google Labs prototypes, the quality is much better. I also noticed a new way of promoting products: Wave has been announced long before its release as a "revolutionary" technology. It should not be Google in saying this. This should emerge from its usage as it has been the case for Google Search. This approach is more similar to European practices in innovation where great headlines appear long before the start of a project and whose results always deceive expectations (e.g. the Quaero search engine).

So, far the above are, I would say, "minor issues". The main problem is to understand what Wave actually is.

I asked myself two questions:

1. Is Google Wave a substitute of asynchronous Internet communication?
2. Is Google a collaborative technology (such as Wikies or Blogs)?

For question 1, of course there is persistence in the (possibly asynchronous) Wave conversation. But also real-time: synchronous conversations. But you are not free to choose! If you write a message in a wave and some participants are online, they will see you typing (or interacting with a widget). Is this something that people really want? When I need to interact synchronously, I use IM or Skype. If I use e-mail or discussion forums it is because I don't want to interact in real-time with the recipients.

For question 2, what kind of collaboration is enabled by Wave? Threaded discussions are nice, but they already exist in various forms in discussion forums (e.g. USENET newsgroups) or in even certain CMSs. The real difference here is that you can "discuss" in real-time and possibly hide some piece of discussion to some participants.

For what I can understand for the first impressions, I think that the Wave client is misleading. The client is hiding the potential of the Wave platform. Wave is a protocol and a client-server technology. When a Wave server is running, any client application can interact with it through APIs. This means that anybody could design a different client for interacting with Waves. If this is true, Wave makes much more sense.

For instance, one can imagine applications that combine not just Wave technology but any other Internet technology such as VoIP or social media. Waves become containers of content that can be exchanged between people both synchronously and asynchronously, in a transparent way. Moreover, Wave robots can participate to the interaction and provide additional services. (By the way, Robots remind me IRC's bots that could read the incoming messages and react accordingly).

What I expect from Google is to provide us with some compelling use cases for Wave. Not just fancy demos of two maps that can be moved at the same time, but real collaboration scenarios.

It's always someone else's fault...

2009-10-12T09:48:00.001+02:00

Dear readers,

I urge to express my opinion on what I think is the most spread attitude in the world. I notice everyday that people (unfortunately including myself) tend to look for external causes of unpleasant events and situations. It is a pervasive phenomenon: in politics, in family, at work, basically everywhere!

That's not the way it should be. We should try to look at ourselves first, and consider our share of responsibility in bad situations. This doesn't mean that we are the sole responsibles: that would be the opposite extreme. But, what if we recognize that we are, to some extent, contributing to what we don't hesitate to blame? Even if we are not directly responsible of some mistakes, we can never be sure that we did not contribute (even minimally) to them.

One common example, which I believe this kind of intolerance spans from, is family. Family is often the sandbox of intolerance where members train themselves to blame each others. The first reaction when something wrong happens is to find the culprit... Why we don't just try first to calm down and find a solution by assuming that we are all equally responsible for what happened. After all, one could say: if you did not cause the problem, at least you did nothing to avoid it!

Do I have a cure for this disease? Yes, I do. Well, it's very simple measure but hard to put in practice. It needs a lot of effort and good will. We must change attitude towards people near us. We need to admit that we are responsible in a way or another and we need to help each other to find a solution. We need to step back and change perspective and attitude: from inquisition to understanding.

Don't get me wrong. This does not mean that we have to forgive who committed wrong actions or crimes. It's just that we should try not jumping at conclusions that have as the only goal to save ourselves. We are all in the same boat!

Finally, I write this because I realize that it is this attitude (a kind of unjustified rage against the others) that is causing most of the problems I had, have (and will have) in my life. We cannot change the world if we don't change ourselves first. The first step is admit and take our responsibilities. The next step... I don't know. Maybe this would be just enough.

Telephone companies: no more voice, please!

2009-08-22T11:23:00.001+02:00

This message is addressed to telephone companies. They struggle in understanding that there is a new world outside: the Internet! Please, let us choose how to communicate. Please, free us from the tyranny of telephone numbers and land-line cables.

At home, ADSL can be replaced by cables or optic fibers to convey more rich media. Telephone numbers can be replace by a wealth of VoIP services (Skype, Google Voice, etc.).

Thes VoIP services can now run on all mobile phone platforms (iPhone, BlackBerry, Symbian, Android, Windows Mobile, etc.). This means that classical voice communication is no longer needed to be offered by the telephone carriers. Only Mobile Internet (UMTS, HDPSA, etc.) at reasonable rate is indeed necessary.

Internet replaces telephone communications for good. They are cheaper, richer and more efficient. But telephone companies seem not understand it. They keep offering rates for both voice and Internet communication, while it would be reasonable to offer them separately.

I hope that somebody else will agree with me and start a movement to fight this tyranny.

I work in one of the "top 10 universities for adults" in the world.

2009-03-13T09:25:00.001+01:00

MSN encarta published an article where it reviews the top 10 universities for adults.

Here is the motivation:

Webster University, St. Louis, Mo.
Webster focuses on practical majors in areas such as procurement and acquisitions management, and human resources development. That's one of the primary reasons 96 percent of Webster grads find jobs or continue their education within six months of turning the tassel.
Course schedules are flexible and students might take advantage of exchange or travel-study options. Dual-degree capability and a strong alumni network can help motivated grads land a job more easily.

I currently work as an adjunct professor at Webster University's Swiss campus and I am very proud to be part of this institution.

Support the economy: spend more and pay less income taxes...

2008-12-20T16:50:00.001+01:00

I wonder if this idea has also been explored and discussed. I don't know how to search for it. So, I simply state it and see if somebody reacts.

Everybody agrees that economy is healthy if people spend money by purchasing produced goods. Everybody knows also that when you buy goods you pay one tax: TVA.

So, the reasoning is simple. One of the reasons why I cannot spend money for purchasing goods is because I owe income taxes to the state, which in turn already takes money from me through TVA.

So I propose that you pay income taxes only on earned money that you don't spend in goods and for which you already have paid TVA. This measure would push people in spending more their earned money because they can deduce this money (not the TVA, but the whole amount) from incomes taxation.

You would pay instead taxes for earnings from financial speculations and interests.

My question is: is it feasible? Are there any problem with this proposal?

I really hope somebody react to this post.

The future of Italy is in its past.

2008-12-10T20:05:00.001+01:00

Where are the economic opportunities for Italy? They are mostly in its past!

Where exactly? In its culture heritage, in its wonderful resorts, in its beautiful lifestyle full of art, music and fine food.

If you were about to choose a place where to install a R&D center for a big company, would you chose a place where living is easy? Yes of course!

But why this does not happened in Italy, which fulfills this requirement? The answer is simple: all the rest is missing!

What is basically missing is infrastructure for business, lightweight bureaucracy, an international environment (Italians who live in Italy barely speak their own language), business and technical skills of local people (here I mean not just managers, but ordinary people), competitive universities and research centers.

So what? Maybe our last chance to survive an economical disaster is to capitalize on our past: history, art, fine food, music, ... Somebody already calls Italy the "World's Disneyland". Why not? Entertainment is big business and we possess the necessary "know-..." What is missing now is the "how"!

Where is Italy?

2008-12-04T15:27:00.001+01:00

EUROPEANA is a new initiative to bring the European's cultural heritage to the Internet.

It is a huge digital library that has been by the European Digital Library Foundation.

Here is the list of participant insitution and as you can see (this is at November 2008), Italy is missing. Yeah, Italy the craddle of "renaissance" culture with Da Vinci, Michelangelo etc. is not part of the effort.

Italy is again missing an opportunity of being part of the cultural discourse that is developing in Europe.

Multi-touch input: when is it really needed?

2008-11-15T11:40:00.001+01:00

Multi-touch input is an emerging input modality where several point of pressure can be detected on a surface.

To a great extent the success of graphical user interface was that it was possible to perform direct manipulation of graphical objects with minimal effort, namely pointing and clicking. The mouse lies on the table and does not need to be continuously held by the user. Then, switching from mouse to keyboard is very easy (even better with touchpads in laptops).

Now with multi-touch screens the user has to make the additional effort of point on the screen with two hands. I see it comfortable only in the situation where the screen is a tablet. But still in this case the multi-touch feature is not really needed because the user hold the tablet with one hand and interact with the other.

If the multi-touch screen is a tabletop as in the case of the Diamond Touch or the Microsoft Surface, then I see a possible comfortable use, especially for multiple users.

Then there is the case of multi-touch input on portable device such as the iPhone. In this case I believe that the multi touch feature is not really necessary. Users of mobile devices use only one hand and one finger.

A strong case for multi-touch input is touch pads in laptops. As in the case of the new Asus EEPC and the new Apple MacBooks, the possibility of making gestures with two touch points is very useful. This is true because when the hands are on the keyboards the two thumbs are naturally located on the touch pad affording for combined movements.

My conclusion is that multi-touch input is not applicable everywhere and one shoud be careful to not force the user in making unnatural physical movements for interactions that can be made effortlessly with simpler input devices.

My political position...

2008-11-11T10:01:00.003+01:00

I participated to a survey on political issue in Switzerland issued by Perspektive Schveiz and I got this nice diagram that shows my political position compared to the views of political parties and average people in Switzerland.

I am very proud of this result because it combines liberality with left-wing views, often considered (mistakenly) as incompatible.

Search insights on jobs

2008-08-20T14:20:00.004+02:00

I tested the newly launched Google service called "Insights for Search" which is an improved version of Google's Trends.

I tested with a few search term and I tried the term "jobs".

Look at the pattern I got from this term:

I made a guess interpreting this graph:

People stop searching for jobs during Christmas holidays (this is easy to catch). Then they feel they need to catchup in january. They don't find any changes from the past year and they wait a little bit. Then they start again in springtime and they reach the top in summer (many might look for a summer job). After the summer the interest in finding jobs decreases again to its minimun again at Christmas.

Please post a comment if you have alternative interpretations of this pattern.

Usability is not just about flashy animations...

2008-07-28T13:46:00.001+02:00

I was browsing the IKEA web site in order to find a suitable carpet for my living room. For this task you need two basic information:

1. the size of the carpet
2. the picture of the carpet's texture

Typically, the previews show the carpet's texture but in the IKEA's web site they do not include the size that it is shown when clicking on the item's preview.

This is a very simple case of usability issue that can be easily solved. It is not about the appearance of the web site but just about what information is relevant and useful for navigating the site.

If the web site is an e-commerce portal, then this issues can result into a loss of revenue due to the increasing customer's abandon rate (i.e. the user visit the site, tries to make a purchase, but the task is boring or too difficult, or just it does not find the necessary information to make the purchase).

If you want to check whether your site have usability problem you can ask help to a usability consulting company such as SimpleUI with which I am currently collaborating.

Romania... still much to do!

2008-07-02T14:43:00.001+02:00

Dear readers,

I am back to Romania for holidays. Last time I was here Romania was not yet member of the European Union. Now, it is almost 2 years of membership.

Many things have changed so far, but unfortunately it is mostly only "surface". Only "visible" things such as make up of few buildings, flags everywhere and prices up to European standards.

But fundamental things still remain to improve. As an example of this, we travelled from Iasi to Nasaud (near Bistrita, the city were we live) with a train that crosses the whole country from east to west up to Timisoara. It is a very important railway line, especially because there are no flight connections between Iasi and the other west-side cities (e.g. Timisoara, Cluj-Napoca, Tirgu-Mures, Oradea and Arad). Travelling by car is almost impossible because of unmaintained mountains roads, always populated by huge trucks.

We travelled in first class on one of these old "blue" trains:

It was a nightmare!! If it is acceptable for adults to travel on these trains it is unacceptable if you are travelling with kids. It is so uncomfortable, dirty and definitively dangerous!

I don't understand why, at least for these important connections the Romanian government did not change the train cars. I am not asking for luxury cars, but for something decent. Yes, of course the train fares are cheap compared to other countries, but everyone here would spend just a little bit more in order to have a decent train journey.

In contrast, much effort has been put on the Romanian railways web site. Of course, no trace of the old trains. Only the new trains that connects Bucharest to few cities such as Iasi are displayed.

Of course, someone else complains (in Romanian)... It seems that people here accept the situation and whenever it is possible find alternatives to cope with this problem: buy a SUV and travel by car, basically!

Second year at the "Forum des 100"

2008-05-22T17:14:00.001+02:00

Great talk of Evelyn Widmer-Schlumpf!

This post comes from my mobile phone.

FaceBook will kick me out...

2008-04-29T18:28:00.002+02:00

Yeah,

it's true... I've been warned to stop "spamming"!

Well I don't consider myself a spammer... I was just exchanging a few messages with a colleague... maybe too fast for the FaceBook standars and that's what poped up on the screen:

I don't know what to think, actually... I will tell you, later! I don't want to spam you too much!

Context-unawareness...

2008-04-10T23:29:00.001+02:00

I uninstalled the Yahoo! toolbar from Firefox. Don't you notice something strange?

Blogged with the Flock Browser