Write it down, read it out

NBA2K12

2011-08-04T02:54:00.000+08:00

Even though the NBA games are not attractive nowadays (except that Dallas won the Champion by teamwork), the 2K Sports NBA2K series has drawn my attention since NBA2K11 with the theme of Michael Jordan.

They have just announced the cover of the latest version - NBA2K12 - with some amazing artwork...

Hold on, why Jordan's leg pad (sports brace) is on the right leg? Shouldn't it on the left leg?

Charles

Google+

2011-07-07T09:44:00.001+08:00

We all know that it's big, so we'd like to be part of it and try it out.

Sadly, they were not accepting new registration due to capacity in trial period. But now, they opened the registration channel again for those who received invitation previously, so catch the time and be part of it!

http://www.google.com/+

I've just in :)

Charles

Update: Google has just brought the "Invite" button back! You can now invite as many people as possible!

Angry Birds Chrome Edition... hack?

2011-05-20T00:04:00.001+08:00

Have you tried the chrome edition of Angry Birds yet?

Getting tired of completing all levels to get into the new chrome levels? Since it's using HTML5, it's possible to update the data using script and here's the lazy approach by hacking the game locally.

In Angry Birds chrome, copy and paste the following script into the address bar and press enter:

javascript:var i=0; while (i<=69) { localStorage.setItem('level_star_'+i,'3'); i++; } window.location.reload();

All levels are having "3 stars", including the new levels (i.e. it's unlocked!) As you can see, it's using a while-loop to set all levels to have "3 stars" locally. In the same way, you can set all items to different levels by changing the parameter '3', or you can write your own scripts as well.

Anyway, I encourage you to enjoy the game by beating every levels :)

Google Body Browser

2010-12-18T02:42:00.000+08:00

The latest lab invented by Google - Body Browser.

It provides a detailed 3D model of a human body, which uses WebGL to display. There are several options to navigate and browse through your body, to name some:

Skin (outlook)
Bone
Muscle
Organ
etc...

Or you can search by typing keywords.

A YouTube video showing the Body Browser:

So now you can be more familiar with your body, but you need to have a latest new of Google Chrome 9 beta/dev/canary, or Firefox 4 beta.

Source:

http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2010/12/google-body-browser.html

Charles

Visualizing Friendships - Facebook Worldmap

2010-12-15T11:58:00.000+08:00

This is a very beautiful image created - base on the friendships among all Facebook users.

Paul Bulter, an intern working in Facebook, has used the data of 500 million people regarding their social relationship to construct an image of the world.

The image of Facebook Worldmap is generated using the R Project for statistical computing, he inputted all the coordinate of the cities and generate base on the data in the repository. The image is also visualizing the user base of Facebook in the world.

A pretty good looking image that you can know the majority of Facebook users located...

The original thread by the author:
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=469716398919.ksh/sg

Charles

Chrome OS test pilot programme

2010-12-08T23:49:00.000+08:00

Are you living in the US?

Good for you! You have a chance to register and try out the latest developing Chrome operating system. For those IT enthusiastic person living in the States, you may register the Chrome OS pilot program on or before 21 December 2010, Google will choose the right users to try it out. For those who've been selected in the programme, they will receive a Cr-48 Chrome notebook and test it out. They are asked to send feedback to Google regularly as well.

I wouldn't mind - or should I say I love to do so, just like help the research of Google Voice in Cantonese before - to send regular feedback and would like to be one of the tester, sadly it's not available in Hong Kong.

Charles

Google Nexus S

2010-12-07T00:15:00.002+08:00

Google Nexus S is finally there!

Official video

Behind the scenes: Party

Official Website:
http://www.google.com/nexus

Official Google Blog:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/introducing-nexus-s-with-gingerbread.html

CityU-CS Robocode Contest 2010

2010-11-24T00:19:00.001+08:00

The first ever CityU-CS Robocode Contest 2010 has come to an end on 20 November 2010, congratulations to all winners. I think it's now appropriate to recap my experience as a designer and helper in the Contest.

I have been asked to be the designer and coder of the website, then an additional request of preparing the poster, then the banner, and lastly being a voluntary helper.

Design

It was the original and the only request for the contest, and it's the area that I'm most familiar with. First, in early March 2010, I've come up an early design using blue-white theme for the whole website in order to match the colour of Department of Computer Science, as well as the default tank colour in Robocode. The design is a little bit fail-safe approach, which would be easily accepted by most people. While getting the designed approved, I have implemented the same design into the poster, which have been prepared in A3 size.

Right in a few days before sending the poster for printing, a latest comment from senior suggested that we shall go further to the design with more attractive design. This is the same experience as in business world, a sudden change of plan or new comment, a total start from stretch again. Wouldn't it be great to have such instruction earlier? Go further for more attractive design, just aligned to my principle, perhaps I should have thought that seniors here could accept more crazy idea. In early April 2010, I have spent another day to design the website and the poster together, and come up the latest design finally - the current website and the final poster. The design is simply a big symbol of "a tank plus a computer equals to Robocode Contest 2010", easy to read and digest.

Poster

This time, the poster has to be scalable - A4, A3 and A2 - with the same design and the poster design needs to cater both English and Chinese. The poster was designed using Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop.

Designer Charles Cheng

Website

The website was designed using XHTML, CSS, JQuery, etc. I was deciding both XHTML and HTML5 in March when implementing the code. Even though I like HTML5 so much, I understand that as of today, most of the secondary schools in Hong Kong are still the majority user of Internet Explorer 6/7/8, XHTML would be a safer approach in view of the coming 2 or 3 years. So that the website can be further extended without big changes in the coming years.

Designer Charles Cheng

Banner

In October 2010, it's time to design and implement the theme into a banner. It's a one-time work and the design has been approved by directly, which proceed to printing within a week. The banner is designed using Adobe Illustrator.

Designer Charles Cheng

I have been involved in several design works and web development for different parties in the previous years, this is the first time I have jotted down my experience. Love to see your comment :)

Official website: http://robocode.cs.cityu.edu.hk/

This blog post: http://goo.gl/DVe7d

Imagine - John Lennon

2010-10-09T11:36:00.001+08:00

You know I like the music of John Lennon and the Beatles, let's celebrate the 70th birthday of John.

Yoko Ono Lennon is going to relight the Imagine Peace Tower celebrating his birthday, check out the official website. Also check out the official YouTube channel for John Lennon.

Related: Yoko Ono and EMI Music Partner with Youtube to Honour John with Worldwide 70th Birthday Tributes

Imagine with peace across the universe.

Charles

John Lennon 70th Birthday doodle

2010-10-08T16:15:00.002+08:00

Google has prepared another great doodle to late John Lennon, celebrating his 70th birthday - 9 October 2010.

Click on the doodle on the Google homepage will play a YouTube video dedicated to John Lennon, enjoy!

Charles

InstaLoad™ Battery by Microsoft

2010-07-02T14:18:00.002+08:00

Nice, nice, nice, it's fun to see this appear in the 21st century...

InstaLoad™ technology enable users to insert batteries into a device in either + or - direction and the device simply works.

Why shouldn't this appeare a few decades before?

Charles

Google China stops redirection to Google Hong Kong (Part 2)

2010-07-01T13:35:00.000+08:00

Two days since the announcement of stop redirection, Google China has changed their search engine landing page to a static page - clicking any part of the main body would then be redirected to Google Hong Kong.

It writes a message in Simplified Chinese: "我们已移至google.com.hk - 请收藏我们的新网址". Let me do a little bit translation: "We have moved to google.com.hk - Please bookmark our new URL." In this case, they don't have to add a filter in every searching while asking people to intentionally go to google.com.hk.

They published a Mainland China service availability report in google.com, they reported that the service of web search and mobile channel were sometimes interrupted on 30 June 2010, but when I checked the same report again on 1 July 2010, it's back to normal:

Referring to a local online news channel in Hong Kong, they reported that Google China agreed to follow all the local laws in PRC, including filtering (Traditional Chinese). While another news reported that Google Maps weren't approved in the renewal process (Traditional Chinese). Seems like still a long story to go.

Charles

Google China stops redirection to Google Hong Kong

2010-06-29T19:55:00.000+08:00

Recalling your memory of the story in March 2010 - Google.cn redirects traffic to Google Hong Kong - it ends up that it doesn't make a huge impact to my friends in/from China, 'cos they always visit google.com instead of google.cn.

Now, as Google China needs to submit the ICP license renewal application, they announced a stop in URL redirection from Google China to Google Hong Kong. Otherwise, they application won't be approved. That means, people going to google.cn will no longer be redirected to Google Hong Kong.

For details, please read their official update in the Google Blog - Official Google Blog: An update on China.

Business decision? political decision? Whatever your views on it.

Charles

Google Android device: Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 and XPERIA X10 mini

2010-06-25T11:56:00.000+08:00

I played around with both XPERIA X10 and XPERIA X10 mini in Sony Ericsson showroom. Both are great just to the fact that:

XPERIA X10 mini beats the 4" XPERIA X10 in terms of usability by introducing the One Hand Touch operation. It's extremely easy to use with just one hand. This is non-sense for XPERIA X10 not to include this feature in the coming firmware upgrade.
I don't know why, the XPERIA X10 mini is faster than XPERIA X10. I have no experience of lagging in the operation of mini, unfortunately, quite frequent in XPERIA X10 especially switching between applications and photograph mode.

Finally, my friend bought XPERIA X10 mini and I tried it for another day. If Sony Ericsson managed to integrate the speed and the good usability experience from XPERIA X10 mini into the bigger XPERIA X10, the XPERIA X10 is a must choice.

(Of course, with the arrival of Android 2.1/2.2 as well, probably with a bit smaller size - 3.2" to 4")

Seems like an Android phone is definitely my next target replacing my aging frequent break down Nokia N82. Developing Android application is fun too, will talk about this later.

Charles

Google Presentation at CityU Hong Kong

2010-04-21T14:39:00.002+08:00

Yesterday, I attended a great presentation conducted by Bill Luan, Technical Program Manager & China Country Lead, Developer Relations of Google. It's located in the City University of Hong Kong.

It's the only session held in Hong Kong as of today of such kind (not counting the Android session in early March), he's believing that more Google sessions would be held in Hong Kong through HK GTUGs (Google Technology User Groups) from now on. Since I'm not able to share his slides here, just few key items to mention below:

Session 1: HTML5 and Web apps

- HTML5 Examples shared (Supported by Chrome 4+, Firefox 3.5+, Safari 4+, Opera, IE with Chrome Frame)

Convas - pixel level drawing and rendering in 2D graphics

Geolocation - simply what it means, your Geographical location tracked using the IP/Wifi network

Google Maps

App cache & Database - a build in database concept in the browser's cache, using SQL to operate

Workers - you can imagine it's about multi-threading for web application

Demo

Session 2: Google Maps API

- He demonstrated how to setup a Google Maps using the API, and the tricks behind, as well as some business cases of real life website/web applications mash up with Google Maps using API.

Between the two sessions, I participated in the speech recognition research project for their Android device, using my voice to speak 500 commonly searched items in Cantonese. Each of the participant would be given a complimentary Google T-Shirt when finished.

Upload one or two photos later.

Charles

Google LatLong: Imagery for Qinghai, China earthquake

2010-04-20T16:27:00.000+08:00

Read it, you have no reason not to help the victims there and make donation.

Google LatLong: Imagery for Qinghai, China earthquake

The following content is posted in Google blog:

To see more of this imagery, you can download the KML here and open it in Google Earth.

Crisis Response page for the earthquake with several additional resources

Charles

Google April Fool's Day Jokes - Gmail

2010-04-01T21:36:00.001+08:00

I'm not very sure if it is the Google April Fool's Day Jokes in Gmail, ~~nothing from Google yet~~ (Update on 2 April at 01:48am) but the Gmail blog has a post regarding this - all the vowels are missing issue. Whenever you visit Gmail in English version today (1 April 2010) before login, you can see the screen below:

>> Update on 2 April at 01:48am: Gmail has posted official post in their blog regarding this - "vowel outage" :)

Enjoy!

Charles

Finally, welcome to Hong Kong: Google China is redirecting its traffic to Google Hong Kong

2010-03-23T15:53:00.003+08:00

Finally, it's happening. Welcome to Hong Kong.

Google has redirected its www.google.cn to the new Simplified Chinese section of Google Hong Kong, with the message "欢迎您来到谷歌搜索在中国的新家" - "Welcome to the new search home of Google China".

"新家" in Chinese means "a new home", it sometimes refers to a new station, a new base, a new homepage, etc (as a general Chinese writing style). However, in this case, I guess they really want to emphasize the meaning of this phrase, a real "new home".

Let's share your thoughts.

Charles

Google Maps Street View in Hong Kong

2010-03-11T17:56:00.000+08:00

Google Maps Street View in Hong Kong rolls out today, and I can see rains in some of the street view:

It's very nice, try it out!

Charles

Support Disaster Relief in Chile

2010-03-02T04:00:00.000+08:00

It's sad to write another post regarding the disaster, this time is for the disaster relief in the recent 8.8 magnitude earthquake in Chile. Anyway, another side of the post is, spread out the information and react fast in order to support to recovering as soon as possible. This would be the most achievable goal after the disaster happened.

Google crisis response page dedicated to Chile earthquake
http://www.google.com/relief/chileearthquake/
Resource updates: Google News | YouTube | Real Time updates on Google Search

Help whatever you can.

Twitter & Google Buzz

2010-02-21T00:24:00.000+08:00

Do you use Twitter, guess most of you do so. What about Google Buzz?

I really want to know if any of you are using both Twitter and Google Buzz currently, and I started a buzz and a tweet using a tag #ITweetNBuzz, see how many of users are following. Let me search Google a few days later, probably no one :P

Charles Cheng

Nokia Ovi Maps 3.01 - Keep you walking

2010-02-01T22:53:00.000+08:00

I'm a Nokia N82 user, for one and a half year already.

On 21 January 2010, when I heard that I can have a FREE navigation in ALL Nokia Smartphone with GPS enabled, I was extremely excited! However, later on, I was having the same frustration as other typical Nokia phone existing users, I was not eligible to use the free navigation as I was not one of the latest smartphone to install the latest Nokia Ovi Maps 3.03. No timeline for releasing to my model.

Okay, I had hard-reseted my phone in order to upgrade to version 3, but it's only version 3.01 unfortunately. The good thing - walking navigation is free - made me at least have one new feature to try.

I walked from the University to the destination which I've tried before took me an hour to complete - by following nothing, a complete free walking. Here's the stats of today's walk:

Distance: 3.7 km
Time: 47 minutes 34 seconds
Average speed: 5 km/h

A bit faster, it taught me a new road to the destination which was a bit shorter. However, it led me to a wrong way - it asked me to go across a football ground, but it's bounded and not accessible, I have to figure out another pathway to walk through. On the whole, the navigation was nice except that my position is not accurate, sometimes, due to the crowded buildings in Hong Kong city (please don't ask me to use A-GPS as I don't have a data plan). It's a great experience to try the free navigation for walking if you have a smartphone, and, most importantly, if you are eager to walk.

What about your map navigation, Nokia/Google/MapKing? How's it working? Do let me know.

Charles

Helping the victims, support disaster relief in Haiti

2010-01-15T12:26:00.000+08:00

It is unfortunate to write something related to disaster again, but then the first thing to do is support their relief effort in Haiti, suffered from a 7.0 magnitude earthquake on 12 January 2010. The easiest and one of the quickest way to help: donate to the charity organization.

Haiti Situation Tracking Form (Provided by Google, for those needed)

Charles

Official Google Blog: The meaning of open

2009-12-23T15:42:00.000+08:00

Worth reading, a blog post below by Google.

Official Google Blog: The meaning of open

- The rationale behind them working on open-source

Of course, check out the latest status of the coming Google Phone "Nexus One", which has been talking over the Internet in the past few weeks.

http://phandroid.com/2009/12/22/new-nexus-one-shots-plus-a-giveaway/

Google Wave: getting started...

2009-12-09T21:32:00.003+08:00

After trying Google Wave for a few weeks, I have come up with a little comments:

it's easy to use, as long as you have a reliable connection and a fast processing computer

I tried it in a public computer when I was in trip (Celeron notebook), it takes several minutes to load and process every instruction

robots are nice

did a bit Google searching, found some robots (i.e. Tweety, Bloggy, etc..), including the Rosy (The real-time translation tool)

still at preview stage, bugs behind

it's getting problem when using Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Korean, and Japanese in Google Chrome dev 4, keeping repeating the characters in the wave
Having problem when using Rosy to translate the 4 languages mentioned, keep repeating the wavesssssss....
sometimes having problem synchronize the waves between different users (characters were deleted in user A but not user B), but not very often

On the whole, it's a very nicely done platform and concept, look forward to its official launch to the market :)

YouTube Video:

Charles