Random Musings | aka.spvn

Thoughts on the iPad 3

07-03-2012

So in roughly 12 hours Apple is set to announce the next iPad. Seeing as how I haven’t blogged in almost a month, it’s high time I wrote about something.

First and foremost, please Apple, please somehow incorporate a stylus for the iPad 3. Apple recently started its forray into the distribution of textbooks via the iBookstore, as well as encouraging the use of iPads in schools. Now I know they introduced a lot of useful features like notes and highlighting to iBooks, and I know the touchscreen is great and all, but when you’re a student nothing beats scribbling stuff on the white margins of your textbook. And taking notes with a pen and paper still feels way more natural than typing (even on a physical keyboard).

Back in secondary school, I loved taking notes on my tablet computer in Windows Journal. It felt really natural, and I didn’t need to worry about wasting paper and any mistakes I made while writing could be easily rectified. However tablets from 6-7 years ago are vastly different from the “tablets” we know of today. Back then there was no such thing as touchscreens. Tablets were basically a laptop with a screen that could be swivelled around and laid over the keyboard. Also, the displays were only able to receive input from the special stylus that came with the tablet. This was pretty great because it meant that you could rest your palm on the screen while writing without worrying at all.

Plenty of 3rd parties have introduced styli for the iPad, but the problem is that the iPad itself isn’t designed to receive inputs from a stylus. This is a really big problem because while writing, you can’t rest your palm or wrist on the screen while writing as the iPad would take that as input as well, thus interrupting your writing. Some apps have tried to mitigate this problem by introducing features that detect your palm and try to ignore that input, but it’s far from perfect. You still can’t comfortably rest your hand on the screen while writing, making it nigh impossible to easily take notes on your iPad without causing strain and aches to your wrist.

I’d be so damn happy if Apple somehow works some kind of magic and has some special stylus and some special app that allows the user to easily write on a capacitive touchscreen. The iPad 3 would become the only thing I carry all over campus in the future if that were the case.

Other than that though, I don’t really have any other wishes for the new iPad. People have been clamouring for a retina display on the iPad. While that would definitely be a nice addition, I have to wonder what kind of a nightmare it would be for developers to double the resolution of all their graphics. Furthermore, if powering this screen would require more juice which would cause a decrease in battery life, I would much rather live without a sharper screen thank you very much. The insanely awesome battery life of the iPad 2 I’m currently typing on is one of the biggest reasons why I love this device so much. Unlike my stupid iPhone 4S, this thing can last for days and days without having to get plugged in.

I’m sure Apple will try to make it thinner once again, but I don’t really think that’s necessary. What would be nice though is to make this thing lighter. Sure, in comparison to a laptop this thing is really light, but it’s still not light enough to the point where I can just bring it out with me whenever I want to.

So listen up Apple, writing and weight. Just handle those 2 things and along with many other students out there, I’ll be over the moon.

The power of social media

By: spvn

14-02-2012

Random Musings

This whole social media phenomenon has really only caught on in the last few years. While social networking sites definitely did exist before (such as Myspace and Friendster), none of them had the monopoly that sites like Facebook and Twitter have nowadays. In the past, social networking sites were mainly targeted towards and suitable for youths. However, now people of all age groups have joined in, making social networking a much bigger entity than it has ever been.

With people now permanently connected with one another via such social networking sites, word of mouth marketing has never been more important and effective. One person’s endorsement of a product or brand on Facebook will immediately let his dozens and dozens of friends know about an awesome new product. A single celebrity with hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter could instantly make or break a product with his or her opinions on it. Thus, it’s no wonder that companies are increasingly engaging in social media monitoring, where they try to keep up with the buzz around their product. However, with billions of Facebook and Twitter posts to sift through, it can be quite a daunting task to find out what people are saying about your product.

Thus, services have popped up that assist companies and individuals in keeping track of what people are saying about their brand on social media sites. Sites such as sproutsocial do the dirty work of sifting through social networking sites and breaking it down into numbers and graphs, allowing users to instantly notice any trends at a glance. While many of such services can be a hit-or-miss, this sproutsocial review certainly has pretty good things to say about that particular service.

Social networking certainly is one of the many ways that technology is forcing companies to change the way they do business. It’ll be interesting to see how else companies will make use of this large network of people to market their products.

Growing money

By: spvn

09-02-2012

Random Musings

It’s that time in my life where “earning money” is actually starting to become and issue. I guess I’m lucky enough that that time has come relatively late in my life compared to some others. It’s pretty damn hard to find people who are willing to hire me though. Even though I know I have some skills that are of value, it’s hard to convince others that I’m worth their time and money. It’s time like these when I really envy those who can earn money just by investing it properly, i.e. growing their money.

It’s kind of insane to think that there are people out there who can earn loads of money simply by being smart about what they invest their money in. Of course, there’s a ton of risk involved. The moment you make a bad decision, a ton of money is suddenly gone. It’s no wonder there are tons and tons of books and articles out there dedicated to teaching people how to invest appropriately to ensure they don’t end up losing all their money. For example Timothy Sykes news is one such individual who turned about $12,000 into $2 million over a decade. He’s continuing to earn money now by opening “classes” to teach people how to invest like he did.

Maybe I’ll dabble in stuff like that one day. For now, I need to find work.

iTunes’ Genius doesn’t get enough love

By: spvn

05-02-2012

My 2 cents worth, Random Musings

There’ve always been “music discovery services” floating around the Internet for years now. In all honesty, I haven’t found a single one of them that can accurately provide me with songs that I enjoy. Most of them usually ask you to name one or a couple of songs that you already like, then they’ll suggest other “similar” songs. From there, you have to manually tell the service whether you like or hate each and every song they throw at you to give them a better idea of what kinds of music to filter and present to you. What a hassle to begin with.

But it doesn’t work like that

The problem with this approach is that they’re taking a very scientific approach to music discovery. Oh, you like an R&B song? Well let’s play more R&B for you. The problem is that music doesn’t work like that. Just because you liked a particular R&B song doesn’t mean you’ll like all other R&B songs. You might have liked that first song because you liked the unique beat it had, or the unique vocals of that particular song. The fact that it was an R&B song was just a coincidence. But these “music discovery services” don’t know that. To the algorithm, both songs are tagged as R&B, so you should like both songs, right?

Of course, I’m over simplifying here. I’m sure there are many other algorithms that go into determining whether a particular song would be to your liking. But the fact remains that discovering music isn’t a scientific endeavour, but rather an intuitive one. That’s what’s so brilliant about Apple’s Genius feature. It relies on the intuition of other humans to decide what songs to suggest to you.

A little history…

For those who don’t know, Genius is a feature Apple introduced into iTunes all the way back in 2008. It’s s system that suggests songs to you based on what you already have in your library. Plenty of people saw this and immediately dismissed Genius as another way for Apple to sell you more songs from their iTunes Store. However, it goes way further than that. Genius also allows you to create playlists from your library based of off any one particular song. The genius (pun intended) of this feature and the factor that sets it apart from most other music discovery services is that instead of basing the suggestions off of the song’s descriptors, it bases it off of who else listens to that song as well, and what other songs they have in their library that you have as well. Once they find these common denominators, it’ll put it together into a playlist. The basic idea is:

Oh, both you and these 100 other users here listen to this particular song. And you have these 24 other songs that can also be found in the library of these 100 other users. I’ll put them all together into a 25 song playlist for you!

Of course once again I’m over simplifying and there are other algorithms at play here (e.g. For starters the 24 other songs they put in will most likely be the 24 most common songs among these 100 users, and they probably won’t suggest Heavy Metal songs when you chose a Pop song), but that’s the gist of how Genius works, and more importantly why it works so much better than other music discovery services.

“It just works!”

Genius is one of those Apple products that follows their mantra of “it just works”. Whenever I generate a Genius playlist, the other songs included in the playlist are oftentimes from vastly different artists, and even slightly different genres. However, for some strange reason, when I’m in the mood for that particular song I chose to build my playlist around, I will also be in the mood to listen to the other 24 songs that Genius chose for me. It works so well for me that I’ve more or less abandoned manually creating playlists because I completely rely on Genius to put playlists together for me.

Y U NO USE THIS FEATURE

And yet, despite being such a useful (and free) feature that’s included with iTunes, a surprising number of people actually don’t even know about it or use it at all. To be honest Apple didn’t even really advertise Genius much. They seemed to have made an even greater effort when it came to Ping, their attempt at a social network based around music. That turned out to be a huge flop, and rightfully so. Apple didn’t seem to realise that the last thing people wanted was another social network profile to maintain. Not to mention it hardly did anything out of the ordinary to justify their users spending time on it.

In comparison, Genius is a feature that actually works and is actually useful. Unfortunately the only problem is that few people outside of those who know the ins and outs of iTunes+iPod actually know of it at all. A problem that really needs to be rectified.

Ringtone Maker

By: spvn

01-02-2012

Random Musings

Ringtones sure have come a long way. I still remember the days of monophonic ringtones back when Nokia still ruled the roost. Then when polyphonic ringtones came along they seemed like the coolest thing ever. Nowadays though, with every decent mobile phone able to play MP3 files, truetone ringtones have become the norm. However, it’s quite annoying to have your ringtone start from the beginning of a song, most people would much rather have their ringtone be the chorus of their favourite song. And that’s where ringtone makers come in.

Mobile 17 is one such site that assists users in creating their own custom ringtone. One simply has to upload a music file (in any of the common formats), and then use the website’s ringtone maker to set the time within the song that you want your ringtone to start from, and the desired ringtone will be created. Obviously, the most common use of this would be to cut out the chorus of famous pop songs, such as creating a Moves Like Jagger ringtone.

I’ll probably look into creating a ringtone for my phone sooner or later. I’ve always wanted to, but such tools weren’t really available a few years ago. With such tools to help facilitate the creation of ringtones, there’s little reason for me not to get my own one soon.

Well that didn’t go so well…

By: spvn

09-12-2011

Random Musings

With reference to my previous post, I’ve realised that there aren’t that many good tutorials online about WordPress theme development for someone with some programming background but almost no web development background. Terms and concepts are thrown around as if I knew everything to begin with, which is frankly annoying.

Thus, I’m kind of back to searching for a theme for my blog again. I keep coming across themes with these great slideshows at the top and wish I could use them. Alas, they don’t quite fit the needs of a personal blog. There is even a jquery slideshow plugin for self-hosted WordPress blogs that looks awesome. While slidedeck has a pro version that costs at least $99, they offer a free, lite version as well that’s a simple WordPress plugin. It’s pretty damn cool, not only does your mouse’s scroll wheel interact with the slideshow (which is a great improvement over having to click the left or right side to change panes), but it even allows for vertical sections within each pane. Awesome.

If I were operating a magazine-style blog, I’d get this in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, I like my personal blog to be as minimalistic as possible…

That does it…

By: spvn

04-12-2011

Daily Life Stuff, Random Musings

Over the past year or so, I’ve been searching for a theme that I’d be satisfied with for this blog. None have fit that criteria. WordPress is a very complicated and robust system, thus almost all the good looking themes I’ve found are catered towards stuff like businesses or portfolio. All I want is a simple theme for a personal blog. Yet, most of these themes I’ve found are either too flashy, too complicated, or just don’t look very good.

So I’m gonna try and create my own theme from scratch.

I dabbled in HTML and Javascript literally almost 10 years ago and have never done web development in my life. But seeing as how I have quite a lot of time during this period of my life, I might as well give it a go. I’m not an artistic or creative person, neither do I have good design sense. I’m not even completely sure what kind of theme I have in mind.

Guess I’ll just start and see where it goes from there!

So… a funny thing just happened

By: spvn

30-06-2011

Daily Life Stuff, Random Musings

Was just watching the latest episode of Diggnation, and the first story they were talking about was the unveiling of Oink, the brand new app from Kevin Rose’s (the founder of Digg) new start-up, Milk. The idea behind this new mobile app is that let’s say you visit a restaurant, and you really like the Fish and Chips there. You’ll then log on to Oink and sort of “vote” or “thumbs up” it (ala Digging). From then on, other friends (it’s integrated with Twitter/Facebook so I’m guessing Oink’s “friends” will just be your followers/FB friends) who log on to Oink will see that you’ve given the Fish and Chips a thumbs up, so if the dish gets voted for by plenty of their friends, they’ll know it’s a great dish.

So instead of simply “checking in” to an area like you’d do with Foursquare or Facebook’s Places, you’re voting for the items that are specific to that area.

And this isn’t limited to food I’d guess. For example what rides are worth queuing for at a theme park? Or maybe what attractions are worth checking out if you’re on holiday or something? Obviously this mobile app is a really great, easy and simple way to quickly figure out what’s worth your time whenever you visit a new place. Instead of having to hunt down reviews beforehand, you’ll be able to tell what’s great at a glance.

Yet, the whole time Kevin was explaining the idea on the show, I had this nagging feeling at the back of my head of: why is this concept so damn familiar? Is it already out there?

Then I realised that I had had this exact idea for a mobile app just last week. One of those ideas I tend to park at the back of my head as potentially profitable ideas. And now this idea’s just completely worthless.

I was quite annoyed by this news, because this means I can’t build this by myself in the future. This had happened to me before last year or so, when I was actually conceptualising how Jarvis (you know, that digital butler that Iron Man has in his house that responds to his every command) could actually be built in the real world. Then I find out some guy was already doing that. His version is in its early stages and he built it for personal use, but he got a $100,000 grant to build it into a full product. But like a year later and still absolutely no news.

But this whole voting-for-cool-stuff-in-an-area was actually a much more feasible idea, something that could be built right now. But once again I’ve been thwarted.

After some consideration however, I don’t know if I should be flattered. I mean little ol’ me thought of an idea that Kevin Rose himself came up with and felt was worthy enough to build into a full product. I mean this is the guy who co-founded and built Digg from the ground up. That site now has 8.5 million unique visits every month from the USA alone and at one point was worth US$200 million.

The greatest ideas are usually those that seem to be the most obvious, which was exactly what Digg was when it first started up in 2004. I always felt that I’d never come up with something as creative as the likes of Kevin Rose can come up with.

I might have just been proven wrong

Apple’s marketing is insanely good

By: spvn

27-03-2011

Random Musings

Their latest series of “If you don’t have an iPhone” ads are seriously insanely good. Apple just released the latest entry into this series of ads, and in my opinion is the weakest of the lot because the entire ad revolves around JUST the iPhone 4′s retina display. Yet, somehow, they manage to make the retina display seem like an absolute must-have. It’s amazing what this ad company can do, creating an whole 30 second ad about the display on a mobile phone.

“Yep… if you don’t have an iPhone, well… you don’t have an iPhone”.

Amazing marketing.

I love Dragon Age 2

By: spvn

22-03-2011

Daily Life Stuff, Random Musings

I’ve always hated RPGs. I mean HATED them. I love Pokemon, but I can’t stand playing the games on the Gameboy/DS. Theyyyyyy areeeeeee justtttttt sooooooooo slowwwwwwwwwww. Walk here walk there fight battles walk back PokeCenter walk out again walk some more walk walk back PokeMart walk out again walk walk walk. You get my point. Which is why I refuse to play Pokemon on anything but an emulator on the PC, where I can speed up the stupid animations by like ten times.

I’m just not an RPG person. I’ve read and re-read the entire Final Fantasy 8 guidebook a ton of times, because the guide itself is just so darn interesting. I’ve *started* the game itself about 5 times now, and I have never completed it. Simply cannot bring myself to complete an RPG. I feel invested in the story and all the characters and whatnot, but I just can’t stand the game long enough to finish it.

Then now there’s Dragon Age 2.

When the first DA game out, I never bothered with it, thinking it was just another RPG that most people would love and I would hate. But when the sequel came out, I just decided to dive into the game to check it out.

Now I’m hooked.

It’s 10.30pm now. I’ve been playin the game non-stop since 8. I’ve never found an RPG that could hold my attention this long. The last game that glued me to my screen for hours at a time was probably Civilisation V. But that game was designed to be a time-suck in the first place so it doesn’t really count I guess. Anyway, I’m 12 hours into Dragon Age 2 and I think I’ve barely scratched the surface. I just keep running all over the place doing all the little side-quests even though they don’t advance the story at all because they’re just jolly fun. Every quest is a mini-adventure of its own. You’re given a very specific goal to fulfill and a location to go to, but other than that you have absolutely no idea what lies between you and your goal. The constant tension and excitement ensure that I enjoy myself every step of the way.

Oh and of course it helps that I don’t have to spend 90% of my time in-game walking around from place to place thanks to the way the locations are designed.

I don’t know why DA2 just works for me. I’ve tried another one of Bioware’s creations, Mass Effect, and as per most RPGs I couldn’t bring myself to finish it. Of course, the gameplay mechanics in that game were much more clunky and less satisfying than the combat in DA2, but Mass Effect is a wondefully well written sci-fi story. I’d take a sci-fi novel over a fantasy one any day of the week, which would mean I should enjoy Mass Effect way more than the fantastical DA2, but it just ain’t so for some reason or another.

When I first started ME, I thought it was going to be one of my favourite games of all time. The world was so well thought out, so beautifully crafted and, as it should be in a sci-fi universe, just so cool. Gadgets and gizmos intricately modeled, multiple alien races populating the cities, putting a spaceship under the command of the player. Everything felt so exciting. But then everything went downhill for me when they decided that the best story they could tell with this wonderful setting was to just muddle everything in politics. Our world’s political situation was just extrapolated so that countries became planets and galaxies, while our different races became… well… alien races and the various religions became… alien religions. Why in the world would you create such a wonderful and exciting world, only to tell such a thoroughly uninteresting story?!

Anyway, long story short, I love Dragon Age 2. Hope this becomes the first RPG I ever complete. I forsee spending about 50-70 hours on this game.

And wow this post sure has been long and rambling and probably completely nonsensical to people who don’t play games.

— aka.spvn

Thoughts on the iPad 3

The power of social media

Growing money

iTunes’ Genius doesn’t get enough love

Ringtone Maker

Well that didn’t go so well…

That does it…

So… a funny thing just happened

Apple’s marketing is insanely good

I love Dragon Age 2

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