kwc blog

Natural Language

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 07:12:56 -0800

NOTE: the voice recognition was correct in these examples, kudos to Nuance

After all the hyperbole on the latest natural language app to be released to the iPhone, I gave it a quick test. As my quick test above seems to confirm, it's doing exactly what I thought it would. It's just looking for nouns (places, things) it understands and mapping them appropriately. If it doesn't recognize the noun, it assumes that it's a restaurant or a hotel. It pretty much throws everything else away.

I'm pretty adamant against "natural language" apps, mainly because once people understand the "magic", they realize that they were wasting their breath.

Firefox Minefield

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 22:17:24 -0800

I did a user test with Firefox Minefield while I was out getting my daily coffee (it helps living in Mountain View, home of Mozilla). The user test was trying out a new streamlined/combined location and search bar for Firefox. Before I get into that, I want to mention that I was impressed by the discussions I had with the people running the study.

One of the employees made the point that Mozilla isn't about making Firefox "win". It was pushing the Web towards standards, in other words, it's about not letting IE win. From their perspective, Chrome and Safari are fantastic -- as long as there's someone out there with 30% of the market share, we will not return to the days of "This site is built for Internet Explorer". It reminds me of John Nack's recent post, Adobe isn't in the Flash business. Actions are more important that mission statements, but it's a good start.

I also mentioned that I was excited by all the developer-focused technologies appearing in Chrome, only to have pointed out to me that technologies like WebGL were actually invented by Mozilla; they're just doing a bad job at promoting/pushing these technologies.

As for the user test, there was a little search engine selector in the bar you could click on to select different search engines on the fly (e.g. Google/Bing/Wikipedia/eBay). What was different was that this would appear when it detected you were doing a search task (e.g. visiting Google.com), but otherwise not be visible. The coolest addition was a little preview window that opened below the location bar, i.e. where you normally might see autocomplete suggestions. For example, if you were doing a Google Image search, it would show you images immediately below the location bar, instead of having to wait until you loaded the actual Web page. If you were doing a Wikipedia search, it would list the matching articles. It reminds me a bit of Yahoo's cool Instant Search, which Yahoo! has of course killed.

There were some rough edges as it is a prototype, but what I thought was novel was you could "detach" this little preview into its own window. You could then click on each search result and see it appear in the main window. What's often annoying is you do your search, then you go back and forth between the results page and each search result to find what you're looking for. Or you ctrl-click the results into a bunch of tabs and create a bunch of litter. This was a new tool for temporarily "saving" the search result and maintaining context.

In our post-user-test interview, I mentioned how I had switched to Chrome, partly because I prefer it's location bar, and even more specifically, how it integrates with my keyword bookmarks. If I type "goto ", the location bar immediately inserts a box that says "Search I'm Feeling Lucky..." to the left, which gives me confidence that I'm using my keyword. The little widget I was testing today is activated in the same manner, i.e. typing "g " activates the Google icon.

And yes, I downloaded Firefox 3.6 today (I've been using Chrome the past 2 months). They convinced me that they've started focusing on some of their performance issues (threading issues in the location bar, performance testing the top 100 plugins, changing the plugin API to get rid of common performance hits). It starts faster, we'll see if it can win me back.

Links for 2010-02-01 [del.icio.us]

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 00:00:00 PST

Exploring Tokyo Through Its Ramen Shops - NYTimes.com

Today's iPad announcement spurred my switch to a Google Nexus One phone

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 20:39:26 -0800

To be fair, I've been planning on switching to Android since Android 2.0 came out -- first it was going to be the Droid, but seeing the issues with the camera on that, plus the subsequent announcement of the Nexus One, gave pause to that earlier switch.

So what did today's iPad announcement have to do with it?

I was mainly waiting to see if:

The iPad was a device I was interested in
If it was, did the 3G options with it impact my decision to switch to Nexus One? e.g. should I wait until Nexus One is on Verizon?

I was expecting #1 to be true, especially given how poorly Apple managed the secrecy around this one. I was surprised to find myself completely disappointed.

I want my phone to be more like a computer, not my computer to be more like my phone. I'm switching to the Nexus One because it is a better computer than the iPhone. The iPad takes everything cool about a computer -- general-purpose freedom, multitasking -- and replaces it with a bill from the iTunes store. I love some of the new UI flair and experience of the iPad, but not at that cost.

Psychologically I could convince myself that this was okay on the iPhone. When it first came out, there really was no possibility of freedom on that platform, and Apple really did change that landscape. Their motivation, however, was just to supplant the cellphone company as mediator and tollbooth. It was really Android that really set things free. Unfortunately, the first release of Android was an inferior product, and I couldn't bring myself to switch. Android 2.0 is worth switching to, so at last I can say goodbye to my first-generation iPhone.

Who knows. The iPod was initially booed, but it eventually succeeded. I didn't buy one until the third generation, and I'd say it wasn't until the fourth that they really had a great product. I'm sure Apple will improve on this initial iPad offering and make it more compelling. What I don't see happening is Apple reversing their trend towards increasingly closed systems that make them tons of money. There are many wonderful ideas that you can bring from the iPhone experience to the computer, but forcing me to buy all my media and applications through Apple is not one of them.

ROS 1.0!

Sun, 24 Jan 2010 15:29:59 -0800

I've been working on ROS for two years and change now. I don't think that we thought back then, when it was just three of us, that we would be where we are today -- the community is awesome. So, thank you.

Robots!

Sat, 16 Jan 2010 11:59:20 -0800

We unveiled our robot last night, which we will be sending to ~10 research institutions around the world at no cost. It cleaned up pretty nicely.

Happy Twenty Ten

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 11:41:29 -0800

Life's been keeping me too busy to write regularly here (I've been busy keep this site up-to-date, among other things). Above is a month-old video of my trip to the IREX robot exposition in Japan.

Happy 2010!

Links for 2009-12-01 [del.icio.us]

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 00:00:00 PST

gource - Project Hosting on Google Code

Fixing a Macbook Pro Keyboard after an (eggnog) spill

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 12:32:38 -0800

My dog Ninja knocked over a full glass of eggnog onto my unibody Macbook Pro. The eggnog turned to glue overnight, so while the electronics survived intact (the backlight was the one fatality), the keyboard was basically useless.

My first thought was to get a new keyboard, but my trips to the Apple Genius Bar were discouraging. Apple wanted five days and $300+ to fix it. It also came with a threat -- if they found anything else wrong, they would "depot it" and charge me $1200. AllMac was much better -- they said they could fix it in a day, but I would have to come back during a weekday. They even offered a cheaper cleaning option instead of full keyboard replacement.

Now that it was clear that I couldn't throw money at the problem and make it go away quickly, I decided to clean it myself. I was able to get the responsiveness back by prying off the individual keys, soaking them in water, scraping out the gunk underneath, and reattaching. You can tell from this entry that my keyboard is mostly working: it went through some weird states where the 4 key stopped working and certain key combos wouldn't work, but these got better the more keys I cleaned.

Before embarking on this, I did some Google searches and eventually found this video, which was the most useful for learning how to remove keys from the Macbook Pro keyboard. Some notes on what you see:

as you lift up the edge of the key, you have to push a little white tab in to release the key. If you watch the video carefully, you'll see this, but it's not obvious.
be very careful not to damage the silicon membrane beneath the key as you jab stuff underneath the key. I found this out the hard way

Also, for the stuff not described:

You need to pull the white scissor clip out from the key before reattaching. It's easiest to detach the big end first. I just ran a small screwdriver beneath the clip and it immediately popped out. The small end is trickier and more fragile. You'll want to rotate it out 90 degrees first. then pull straight out. It's not the end of the world if you break one -- you can order more online.
the option key is rotated 90 degrees clockwise, so you have to push in the tab on the top right or top left instead.
the command key is much beefier -- you also have to push in at the top, but it requires much more force
the white scissor clips can come unhinged from one another. The clips for the letter keys are easy to slide back together, but the Command and Spacebar clips are a pain. I inserted one pin in and then used my screwdriver to create the necessary space to insert the other by lifting the the hole over the other pin.
the spacebar is a pain and I haven't figured the proper way to get it off, though I did successfully remove it. There are metal bars on the top and bottom edge that you have to work free. Then there are two of the white plastic scissor clips to release. When you put the spacebar back on, there are a lot of things that need to snap together. It may seem like you have it back on, but you really need to press down hard on every part of the bar to make sure.

Advice to starting photographers

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 21:25:40 -0800

Shoot lots. Like, really, really lots.

Find something you care about and take hundreds of thousands of photos. Don't worry if they're good, because everyone starts out bad. Find something (or things) that you care so much about about after you've taken 100,000 shots, you're eager to take 100,000 more. Fill up the memory card every time you go out and shoot. Find other photographers who care about the same thing and study what they do.

According to Malcolm Gladwell, it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at something. I don't take Gladwell as gospel, but at least in my case it's true. It also means that I'm not an expert yet.

I'm better than I was when I started, but there was no magical rule that made me become a better photographer faster. I've just taken a lot of bad shots. I've taken so many bad shots that, when I go to take more shots, I can remember those bad shots and try new ones. Sometimes I even try to take bad shots -- there's always chance to be happily wrong.

There's other advice I could give, like learn to use a flash, learn what every button on your camera does, get high, get low, so on and so forth. But, really, that's what the 100,000 shots are for.

Links for 2009-11-07 [del.icio.us]

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:00 PST

Abandoned Places In The World

Bridge School 2009

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 22:45:38 -0800

The post comes a bit late, but d got me tickets to this year's Bridge School. This year was lacking the headline acts that normally accompany the event, but there was the bright spot, as always. In this case I was surprised that it was Chris Martin of Coldplay. I like Coldplay's Parachutes, but latter albums went towards "wall of ambient noise" and other overdone production. As a complete counter to that, Martin came on stage with nothing more than piano and occasional violin accompaniment, playing through several hits and a Back-to-the-Future-inspired "Earth Angel" cover. He flubbed here and there, but it was like watching him teach you how he came to write these songs, where their heart was, and even mixing in some ragtime to deconstruct them.

No Doubt was the "big act" of the night -- though Neil Young still closed. Watching them on stage made me realize that it's been 17 or so years since I last saw them on stage. Although they gave good performances of those nearly two-decade-old songs, it was exactly like watching them 17 years ago and I was a bit sad to realize that the songs nor the performance felt relevant anymore.

As for the rest of the acts: Sheryl Crow and Jimmy Buffet were entertaining, Monsters of Folk felt like a bunch of incomplete songs, and Neil Young delivered one of the better sets I've heard from him in the several years I've gone.

Death to TiVo

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 22:25:56 -0800

The Netflix disc for my Playstation 3 arrived this week, so, for the first time in over eight years, my TiVo has gone silent. When I got the Apple TV, it was clear that my love for the TiVo was waning. Almost a decade ago the TiVo was a symbol of all that was good with consumer design in products. I even went to a talk by their UE director to try and soak up all the wisdom that went into the product.

Fast forward to the present, and the TiVo Series 3 doesn't seem that much better than the Series 1 I first used. Sure, I was excited when the Series 3 arrived, but it really was about HD and nothing more. Anything else they added to the TiVo was done half-assed, like the Amazon and Netflix video on demand, as well as TiVoToGo.

Although the Apple TV has a laughably bad remote that requires an iPhone app to rectify it, I at least enjoy using it, whereas the Amazon store on TiVo filled me with rage, so much so that I had trouble spending $10 free credit on it. Similarly, TiVoToGo was such a chore that I gave up on ever watching my TV shows on my iPhone. The Netflix integration with TiVo seemed passable until I used the Netflix disc on the PS3 -- sure it sucks to have to stick a Blu-ray disc into the PS3 to use it, but at least I feel like I'm using a modern system. Add in Hulu, and we've got plenty of TV to keep us busy M-F.

No one has solved live sports, yet, and for that I'll be sad. Cycling is moving more and more online and I hope to see the day in which all sports are streamed and can easily be viewed on a TV -- that will be worth the next upgrade.

RIP, Geocities

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 10:43:44 -0800

Geocities is shutting down today. Nowadays it's a bit of a joke and the XKCD homage is well-earned. When I was in high school, though, you couldn't just run a server off your home DSL line. Logging onto the Internet meant modems and AOL and hacking your winsock. All terrible things, including "logging onto the Internet."

Geocities offered more permanence to the Internet -- one of the first things I used it for was to convert my friend Kenji's zine to a Web site. My graphical design left much to be desired, but I learned a lot and Geocities made it possible. There's even a "Web ring" on the page, that delightfully, now ancient, form of online social networking. So, farewell Geocities, sorry that Yahoo made you suck.

Links for 2009-10-22 [del.icio.us]

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:00:00 PDT

redis - Project Hosting on Google Code

Links for 2009-10-14 [del.icio.us]

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 00:00:00 PDT

.screenrc / Ubuntu Tutorials : Dapper – Hardy – Intrepid – Jaunty

Links for 2009-09-29 [del.icio.us]

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 00:00:00 PDT

seagull bags - custom handmade messenger bags and courier packs - columbus, ohio

Life is weird

Sat, 15 Aug 2009 21:16:27 -0800

There's a time I would have loved to see my work on Slashdot. Now, in a period of two weeks, the previous project I worked on gets on /. -- I have nothing to do with Siri:

Slashdot: DARPA Builds Smarter Version of Microsofts Clippy

As well as the stuff I'm currently working on:

Slashdot: A Standardized OS For Robots

And, in the weirdest twist, the same article that's referenced also gets posted to BoingBoing:

Boing Boing: Common operating system for robots

Really, we're on BoingBoing? That's still cool, right?

Links for 2009-08-01 [del.icio.us]

Sun, 02 Aug 2009 00:00:00 PDT

Amazing Light Paintings | Abduzeedo | Graphic Design Inspiration and Photoshop Tutorials

Front Page

Sun, 26 Jul 2009 07:48:42 -0800

Ok, now my mom can be proud -- NYT front page photo credit (below the fold). Article

Comic-Con: Saturday

Sat, 25 Jul 2009 21:44:37 -0800

First goal of the day was to try and get into the Chuck panel and it was also my first failure: not only was the panel full, but the line to get into Ballroom 20 was closed (I've never, ever, seen that occur before).

The nice thing about missing Chuck was that there was plenty of time to settle in for Quick Draw. Peter David was impressive with guessing the secret words: the initial list was, "There is no list, just draw random stuff." He got it correct. They then proceeded to put up three real words, which he similarly dispatched with ease.

I sat through half of the Comics Syndication panel, which was interesting, even if I don't draw comics nor seek to syndicate them. It sounds like it's an easier and more difficult time to be syndicated: if you are syndicated, it's much easier to deliver your product, and it's easier to "prove" yourself by building an Internet audience first. However, it's more difficult in that newspapers are declining and there are 4000 people applying for about 2 new spots a year.

After the syndication panel was the Spotlight on James Jean. He put together a pretty good presentation of 100+ slides that took us from his childhood photos, through art school, his influences, his technique, his Fables and commercial work, his personal/artistic work, and forward. I was tempted to buy the final drawing to accompany the New York Times sketch I bought from him a couple of years ago, but my wallet has already felt enough damage from this year's Con.

I finished the day at the convention center in the Fringe panel (1+ hour of waiting in line, still missed first 15 minutes). The cast had a lot of fun with the audience, asking us trivia questions in exchange for shirts. They seemed genuinely surprised that even their toughest questions were no challenge to a room of over a thousand fans. There was no preview of what is to come. I was disappointed at the time, but more appreciative for the lack of spoilers now.

After I left the Convention Center I joined up with the rest of Team Uni at the Alice in Wonderland exhibit that's showing in a separate building on Seventh street, between J&K. It's a really well done exhibit with most of the main props from the upcoming movie on display. You start off walking through the door into the rabbit hole, "landing" in the same room as Alice, where they her dress, the keys, the potion bottles, and a miniature model of the room are on display. You head through the next set of doors and find the Tweedledum and Tweedledee tea setting, along with the Mad Hatter's hat, clothes, and wig. In the final room is the throne of the Queen of Hearts and her costume, as well as the White Queen's and the Vorpal Sword.

It's hard to explain as just a list of items. They really recreated four different sets there that are richly decorated with actual items from the movie. You get a rusted key as a keepsake. They send you through in small groups with a personal tour guide, so it is quite intimate. My wild-ass-guess is that it is costing them $50 per person to conduct that Tour and apparently it's going to 11 more cities, though no more US.

Here are m's photos from the Alice in Wonderland Exhibit

First New York Times Photo

Sat, 25 Jul 2009 20:51:18 -0800

I'm happy to finally get a photo into the New York Times, though this is a cheating case -- when the company you work for is one of the focuses of the article, and you're the person at the company who takes all the photos, you tend to get the photo credit. I have no clue as to why my name appears at the end of the article, all by itself, not linked to anything in particular. Perhaps it's so the future will have a name to blame when robots outsmart man, though I will say now that any such blame will be entirely misplaced.

I am tired of discussions on the future of robots immediately digressing into Hollywood-inspired visions of the robot uprising. My dog is smarter and more capable than any robot than I've ever seen, and we don't discuss the dog uprising. Or maybe we do, and I just missed that panel at Comic-Con.

New York Times: Scientists Worry Machines May Outsmart Man