Spundot

Announcing Spundot Shirts!

2010-08-10T01:28:00.000-07:00

Drawing from decades of personal experience as both a geek and t-shirt wearer, I'm proud to announce my new online t-shirt store, Spundot Shirts.

What is Spundot Shirts about? It's about taking the inside jokes of Silicon Valley, the blogosphere, Twitterdom, and Facebookistan and wearing them proudly for all the world to see.

Technorati, geeks, nerds, and folks who just don't like the sun, these are the shirts for you. Hipsters, you can buy them too, but only if you wear them extra ironically.

What are you waiting for? Check it out now.

Making the G1 usable

2010-07-20T22:54:00.000-07:00

I'm getting a Droid this week, which means I'll be retiring my T-Mobile G1 (technically an ADP1). I figured it's a good time to chronicle all the hurdles I went through to get the G1 to be mostly usable.

When I started using the G1 at the start of this year, it was painfully slow and could only fit a few apps from the Market before it started nagging me with low space warnings.

Things I did to improve the situation:
- Installed Cyanogen ROM: Faster performance, nicer UI, and updated apps, including Maps with Navigation.
- Installed 10MB hack: Faster, at the cost of 3D performance, which I never missed.
- Bought a microSD card ($13), partitioned, and used for swap and Apps2SD. Improved performance, but at the cost of stability. Occasionally, the device would complain that either the SIM card or the SD card was not inserted. Reinserting and rebooting once or twice usually resolved the issue, but sometimes in the process any Market apps that accessed the internet would stop working and I'd have to reinstall all of them.
- Bought Autostarts ($1) from Android Market and killed unnecessary processes from running at startup: Improved startup time and dramatically improved general responsiveness.
- Bought extended battery ($7) from eBay. I didn't buy the super-huge ones that require a replacement back and look hideous, but it still provided a nice boost in battery life. Went from maybe one day of life to usually a day and a half.
- Bought car USB charger ($2) and HTC audio adapter ($4): GPS sucks the G1 battery at an incredible rate, so USB charging in the car was essential. The HTC adapter let me hook up the charger and an audio out cable at the same time, so I could listen to Slacker or hear GPS directions clearly through my car stereo -- although not at the same time.

Things that never quite worked right:
- Typing with the on-screen keyboard always felt sluggish
- Unlocking the screen via pattern worked one in three times. I think it was too slow to respond to my finger swipe.
- SIM/SD card detection problem and subsequent app reinstall. I did drop the phone in a parking lot once, which could have permanently messed up the card slots.
- Sometimes the phone would lose signal and then be unable to reconnect to the network, requiring a restart.
- Picking a contact to call from the dialer would sometimes dial the last number in my call log instead.

It definitely felt like more of a science fair project than a phone, but hey, it was fun. And I'm excited to be getting what may well be the last hackable Android phone from Motorola.

Removing Blogger bar with the new template designer

2010-07-04T16:53:00.000-07:00

I'm not a fan of the navbar that appears at the top of all Blogger blogs by default.

It's well documented that you can remove it by editing your Blogger template to add the following code right before the "Variable definitions" section:

#navbar-iframe {
   display: none !important;
}

I'm working on a new blog that uses the spiffy new Blogger Template Designer. The above hack still works, but the template I'm using has a bare spot at the top that's usually covered by the bar.

To fix this, find the following section in your template and change the value of margin-top from "30px" to "0px":

.body-fauxcolumns .cap-top {
  margin-top: 30px;
  background: $(body.background.overlay);
  height: $(body.background.overlay.height);
}

Voila, lovely bar-free blogging.

Why negative reviews show up at the top of search results

2009-12-30T13:33:00.000-08:00

From the mailbag:

The medical director at my hospital is relatively high profile and a lot of people write reviews on yelp, yahoo, etc. about our hospital and especially him. He was wondering why it is that when you google his name, the really bad reviews are the ones that come up first.

Google results have a lot to do with a) what content is available online and b) how web pages link to each other. People are much more likely to write a review for a bad experience than a good one (this is true for everything). So, even if most people are very happy with the medical director, they probably won't write a review, whereas a really angry person may post reviews in 5 different places. One factor in ranking web pages is looking at how many other pages link to a particular page (it can indicate authoritativeness and popularity). People tend to link to content that is sensational or generates a lot of interest. Positive reviews probably don't generate much interest, so the negative reviews probably get linked to the most -- just like how bad news generates more interest than good news.

The best way to "outweigh" the bad content to encourage the creation of positive content. For example, asking patients who have had good experiences to post reviews on Yelp, Yahoo, etc. Also, the hospital might consider enhancing its website to put more content online explaining what the hospital does, it's philosophy, experience, etc. And if the medical director has a personal website or webpage, he can develop that content as well. There are also some optimizations you can make to your website to ensure they are being properly indexed and displayed in Google results -- for example, you can customize the description (or "snippet") that is shown in the search result for the hospital website:
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769

I'd also encourage the hospital to set up their directory page on Google Maps and Yahoo Local to ensure that the correct information is presented:
http://www.google.com/local/add/
http://listings.local.yahoo.com/
http://list.infousa.com/dbupdate.htm -- this is used by MapQuest for their business info

Viewing chinese, japanese, and korean web pages in Windows XP

2009-05-05T03:16:00.001-07:00

new handy post on my tokyo blog This Tokyo Life.

no jumper? use a piece of tinfoil

2009-04-18T01:58:00.000-07:00

Recently I needed a jumper to flash the firmware of my OCZ Vertex SSD (which by the way is amazing and I highly recommend).

However, I didn't have one handy and instead used a piece of tinfoil. See the thing about jumpers is that they're just a piece of metal that bridges two pins. Data isn't traveling across the jumper, so it doesn't matter what kind of metal you use as long as it's conductive.

So I ripped a tiny piece of tinfoil, mushed it into a tiny little roll, and then shoved it onto the pins. And it worked! If you try this, make sure the tinfoil isn't touching any other pins or other metal parts of your drive or PC.

Good luck!

Welcome to Japan's mobile universe

2009-04-14T06:21:00.000-07:00

Techy folk often talk about how mobile usage in Japan is so high compared to other countries. They point out the souped-up handsets available only in Japan ("high-spec" in Japanese English) with a TV tuner with DVR capability, non-crappy cameras, and other such niceties. But what they forget is that Japanese people use their phones in a totally different way from other countries.

For many Japanese people, the phone is their Primary Computing Device. Let's digest this for a second: They use their phone (or keitai) for computing more than they use their PC (which has "computer" in it's name). We're not just talking about mail or IM (which by the way, no one uses on their phones). We're talking about web surfing and actually doing work. For example, I've been told that college students will look up information and WRITE PAPERS on their phone using predictive text entry. If you told an American college student to write a paper on their phone, they would laugh and go back to drinking.

And the web they are surfing? It's not the same internet you're surfing right now. It's a complete, self-sufficient universe of Japanese-only mobile sites. There's everything: blogs, social networking, porn, shopping, you name it. It uses it's own variation of XHTML and takes into account factors like screen size, input method, and Japan's affinity for all things cute. Take a gander at some of the sites in this gallery.

To me, it looks like someone shoved Geocities onto a Zune, <blink> tag and all. But to many Japanese people -- particularly young women -- this is The Internet. The internet you're using now? That's the "PC internet" -- a foreign land where you have you use a full keyboard instead of your keypad. So if you want to tell Japan about your cool website/toaster/robot, you can't just promote it on your internet, you need to promote it on Their Internet as well.

(Screenshot from Asiajin)

nLite and why you shouldn't leave Modem Support out of XP

2009-04-12T02:49:00.000-07:00

When I was creating my super l33t XP SP3 slipstream CD with nLite, I didn't include Modem Support. When was the last time you used a modem?

Anyhow, I was trying to get BlueSoleil Bluetooth drivers to work with my aforementioned Zonet dongle (it didn't work), but the installer was failing because it was missing Modem Support.

Turns out not including Modem Support can cause issues if you're trying to install a 3g modem or a bluetooth dongle. And there's no easy way to restore modem support without a fresh XP install (god no).

So, with some intensive Googling, I figured out a solution. I'm not sure exactly which steps are required, but if you do all of them you should be good.

Manual way:
1) Follow the instructions in post #8 in this thread -- you'll need an XP CD or a known good XP install to copy files from. One file that is not listed that should go into system32 is msports.dll.
Important: To extract files from your XP CD, you can't just copy them directly -- they will be garbled. You have to use the command line Expand utility.
2) Expand mdmgen.inf to your PC, right-click it, and click "Install." (tip from here, but I don't recommend downloading inf files from the net, unless they are from me :D )
3) Reregister mdminst.dll.
4) Restart and try your install again.

That was painful, no?

Slightly less painful way:
- Download modemsupport.zip (dear Microsoft, please don't sue me)
- Copy the files in the inf, system32, and system32_drivers (system32\drivers) folders into the corresponding directories in your Windows directory.
- Double-click modem.reg, and confirm.
- Right-click mdmgen.inf and click "Install."
- Start > Run > cmd. Type: regsvr32.exe %SystemRoot%\System32\mdminst.dll (it will give you an error message, but that's fine)
- Restart

Note, I am running XP SP3. Performing these steps on a different OS may cause your PC to melt.

Thanks to all the people on the internet that made this post possible.

Zonet Bluetooth USB dongle drivers

2009-04-12T02:14:00.000-07:00

I purchased a cheap Bluetooth dongle from Newegg a few years back.

Zonet ZUB6201C USB 1.1 Bluetooth V2.0 Adapter, class 1

It still works, but I ditched the driver CD long ago. With some sleuthing based on the FCC ID printed on the back of the device, I realized it's the same exact board on the inside as the MSI StarKey. I was able to install the MSI drivers on XP without a hitch.

Direct download link

Since Taiwanese gadget makers are not known for maintaining the best driver archives, I'm also making the drivers available here.

Speaking of which, anyone know of a Bluetooth headset that doesn't pick up WiFi static? I have a Logitech Mobile Freedom, which works fine as long as you don't step away from the PC.

The difference between American web design and Japanese web design

2009-04-01T03:39:00.000-07:00

Something to make you think a bit before serving the same page to the entire world:

IE8 Download Page (US)

IE8 Download Page (Japan)

IE8 Yahoo Edition download page (US) - must be running IE or use User Agent Switcher to view

IE8 Yahoo Edition download page (Japan)

Skytap: Cloud-based virtual PC lab for testing and development

2009-03-08T11:18:00.001-07:00

SkyTap is an interesting startup providing virtual PC labs for businesses. From CNET: "Skytap is a Seattle-based start-up targeting a "lab in the cloud" concept (my term, not theirs) in which enterprises can acquire resources for on-demand development, test, training, proof-of-concept and demonstration workloads. What differentiates their offering is a sophisticated front end, targeted at what lab managers need to control resource availability and costs, in front of what would normally be thought of as an Infrastructure-as-a-Service offering."

So rather than build up (and ultimately tear down) a lab for a specific project, you can rent a virtual lab on SkyTap. "You can develop and run your applications and virtual machines unchanged in the cloud on the industry leading hypervisors, including VMware and Xen, with planned support for Microsoft Hyper-V. Skytap supports all operating systems that run on these hypervisors, including Microsoft Windows, Solaris and Linux variants." (http://www.skytap.com/solutions/solutions)

While Google internally has a variety of tools for facilitating testing across multiple platforms without having actual machines in front of you, it's great to see this functionality being made available broadly.

Why Twitter is not the next Google (yet)

2009-03-03T10:24:00.000-08:00

My ex-colleague, the wry-humored Elad Gil, has posted an interesting article about how Twitter could play Google to Yahoo's Facebook. It's a thought-provoking theory, but by no means a sure bet.

twitter is a content-generation tool. content-generation tools come in waves.

some other waves you may remember:
- website builders (geocities/tripod/homestead)
- blogging tools (xanga/blogger/livejournal)
- video sharing (youtube et al)

usually, in such waves, the first mover(s) builds an early lead and cashes out, becoming a complementary business to a large company like Google, HP, or Fox. the others fail, find a niche, or linger like lost souls.

who has benefited the most from these waves? search engines. why? because they enable intent-driven discovery of that content, which makes their traffic highly monetizable. by intent-driven, i mean in the sense that search tends to be driven by a specific desire ("where can i get a really good cheeseburger?") compared to say, browsing news headlines or RSS feeds.

Twitter, as the first mover in the microblogging wave, could cash out and be done with it. But to really be the Google to Facebook's Yahoo, they must provide the best tool for searching (and by extension monetizing) microblog content.

Twitter search is that tool today, simply because it's easy: a high percentage of microblogging is done on twitter, thus their comprehensiveness is high. But what if microblogging were to become more fragmented? What if instead of 80% of microblogs being written on Twitter, 40% were, and the rest were split between Facebook and a spate of others? The emergence of FriendFeed and Google's move to open Jaiku seem to point in this direction.

In a fragmented landscape, the qualities of the best microblog search engine are similar to those of the best plain old search engine: comprehensiveness, ranking, speed, and reliability. Twitter has proven well its deficiencies in reliability. Whether they can deliver in comprehensiveness (when a significant amount of content is hosted elsewhere), ranking, and speed has yet to be seen.

I can't take it anymore

2008-08-24T18:24:00.001-07:00

I'll admit it -- I read TechCrunch.

But crap like this and this -- I can't take it anymore. I'll continue to check TC for the latest news, but some of the analysis is laughable. Perhaps Michael Arrington should consider actually reading something written by a would-be contributor before signing them on.

So I'm going to start writing tech analysis on this blog, in the hopes of increasing the signal to noise ratio online by just the tiniest smidge.

Wish me luck!