Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve heard of google. Since it has come around, I’ve been able to find almost anything that I was looking for unless it was really obscure.
I can not say the same for a lot of people I know. I often get asked “Hey Alex, can you help me find … “. It’s not that I mind helping people out, but I feel it’s often better to teach people to help themselves. So I’m going to give a brief guide:
- quotes - If you want to search for a phrase, just put quotes around it, eg. “Live long and prosper”. This will only give you results in which the words in quotes are next to each other in that order.
- site: - Search only one domain with the site: keyword. eg. john draper site:wikipedia.org will only give you results on wikipedia.
- - operator - Putting a minus sign in front of a word will give you results without that word, eg. chili peppers -red -hot will give you all sites with “chili” and “peppers”, but not “red” or “hot”. This is great for phrases that have multiple meanings.
Those are the three that I find most useful, however if you want to learn more here’s a good resource: GoogleGuide via Link
August 28th, 2007
Alright I’m sure you’ve read the rumors on various sites (Gizmodo, GigaOm, MacNN). But here’s a wrap up of the rumors I’ve read.
- Sept release outside of USA
- Q1 2008 release in USA
- HTC is the hardware partner
- runs linux
- software written by Android (bought by Google in 2005, and Andy Rubin founded Danger, maker of the T Mobile Sidekick)
- GPS
I’ll try not to post too many gadget related articles, however, I’m in such dire need of a better phone I’ve been watching this space intently. Yes, the iPhone is there, but competition is always a good thing.
How likely is this? I’m not so sure there’s going to be a piece of hardware that says “gPhone” on it. However, my guess is there’s going to be something like Google Pack with a customized linux distro that will run on HTC hardware.
August 28th, 2007
I had purchased a Wii a while ago and I have to say it’s an awesome console. Like many others have said before, it’s loads of fun and appealing even to non - gamers. It is far from the perfect system though. Where are the first party titles? Where are the good 3rd party titles? Yeah there are a few here and there … but I’m a bit disappointed.
However, the one problem that I think they can fix is that of the Wii-mote.
There are lots of complaints about the wii - mote not being responsive or accurate enough. I really felt this problem when I started playing “Warioware Smooth Moves“. There were so many instances where I thought I was aiming at the damn screen but the tennis racket or pen just stood there flashing. Check it out in the video:
here You can see that the little lady there loses a ton of the mini games because she’s not even lined up with the damn screen. (You can tell because the item she’s controlling is flashing indicating she’s not pointing at the tv).This all changed for me when I started playing Wii Play. The game gives you a lot more visual feedback telling you where exactly you are pointing, and at what angle, etc. I almost never go off the screen because I know exactly where I’m pointed at all times. If they provided more visual feedback letting users know that status of the wii mote (how far you’re tilting, where you’re pointing etc.), people would have an easier time handling it.
here
July 11th, 2007
Yes, it’s true.
MWF around 9:30pm
http://justin.tv/techtalk
where Nick Gonzalez (of TechCrunch) and I talk about the latest tech stories that we fancy. Sound like Diggnation? Yeah pretty much, however, we do interact with the chatroom people. So watch, chat with us, and have a fun time.
Tags: justin.tv, alexchoi, rtfmplease, techtalk
July 11th, 2007
For a long time I’ve been known as “the sidekick guy”. I was known for constantly typing on the little keyboard and doing the little “flip” to access whatever IM / data that came to me from Danger’s little device. However, that era is over.
I did like the Sidekick 2, I did like Danger. It had a great UI, a very usable keyboard … and was a pretty stable little machine. However, the SK3 was a huge disappointment. It was still huge, and the big clincher … still a walled garden. That for me was a big killer … I wanted a platform where there were people working on apps for the device … officially as opposed to this USB / developer key / NO GUARANTEE OF ANYTHING situation.
So yes, I’m now a crackberry head. I got the Blackberry Pearl. I now have accesss to google maps, gmail, and google talk. The AIM client definitely blows … but who uses AIM anymore? Yes, the keyboard is pretty freaking awful, but I’m more interested in getting data and short messages as opposed to full fledged conversations.
Google maps alone has saved me on several occasion when lost on the peninsula.
Some other notes
- the camera on the pearl is much better
- “dead zone” recovery is much better. When I come out of a parking garage the pearl is able to make calls instantly. The SK3 had this ridiculous wait time to reestablish it’s EDGE connection
- predictive text is pretty crappy on the pearl, but at least it’s there
technorati tags:sk3, sidekick, danger, blackberry, pearl, blackberry pearl, gtalk, google talk, google maps
April 18th, 2007
I dearly try my best not to come off as mean or such when trying to help people out, but sometimes people misinterpret or make the task of helping harder by doing a couple things
- Not giving out all the information
- Making no effort to find out the information on their own
- Getting mad at the person they are asking help from
Here’s an example of a conversation I had:
Jessica
5:52
hey what’s happens when you buy a flickr pro account
and it expires
do they delete your photos
Alex C
5:55
no
Jessica
5:55
what happens?
Alex C
5:55
read the flickr faq
it should be there
Jessica
5:56
i don’t understand it
Alex C
5:56
did you read it?
Jessica
5:57
my friend did
she wants to know
Alex C
5:57
well she didn’t read it
it says right there
I just checked
Jessica
5:58
fine n/m
geez
Alex C
5:58
look
http://www.flickr.com/help/limits/#73
it’s right there
does that make sense?
Jessica
6:01
yes
I’ll admit it … sometimes I come off as an a**hole when trying to help out, but it’s difficult when those asking questions make little or no effort.
Here were some of the things that could have been done to make things easier:
- She could have told me she was asking for a friend. That would have changed the questions I asked
- She could have googled “flickr pro expires” Link
- I could have not accused people of lying
In retrospect, this post is kind of petty. I don’t mind helping people, but I’d rather help people on issues that are not easily solvable by a simple google search.
technorati tags:google, rtfm, rtfg, flickr
March 13th, 2007
So Yahoo! recently set up a portal page for the wii. It looks like some kind of community site for Wii users (there’s a message board, articles, and general information). However, they also decided to have a flickr widget which displays all the photos with the “wii” tag. Yup … me and my friends are there. (picture from Ellectic)
Link to site: http://wii.yahoo.com
Link to Wired article: here
This begs the question … is this fair? Is this allowed? Recently Flickr has been angering some people through various means. To some people, this was an unfair use of their pictures that they didn’t think should have occurred.
Some say that Yahoo shouldn’t have done this. It was never disclosed this would happen, their content is being used for a promotional site. Flickr even has Creative Commons tagging so they could have used that to filter out pictures people didn’t want used without certain restrictions.
The other side of the coin is that … all of these flickr pictures are public anyways. In addition, they are only using the thumbnails (which is still under debate see Google Vs Perfect 10)
I’m not really too bothered by it, but I think that maybe Yahoo should have possibly used the CC Licenses to filter out certain photos and add attributions where necessary.
Yeah, I haven’t posted in a while … blame the wii … and Guitar Hero … and Gears of War … and HBO
technorati tags:wii, flickr, yahoo, fairuse, thumbnails, wii.yahoo.com, creativecommons
Blogged with Flock
February 2nd, 2007
I’ll be off to the east coast this weekend to speak to a man named Paul Graham
technorati tags:programming, ycombinator, web2.0, web20
Blogged with Flock
November 1st, 2006
So the lovely MJ asked me to perform at Lap Pop! 2.0 over 6 months ago. To say i was excited is an understatement. However, due to my lack of preparation … I’d have to say my performance was pretty abysmal.
I apologize to those who had to endure my bizzare stories … I’ll be sure to be more prepared next time I do a solo performance.
October 24th, 2006
If you’ve ever downloaded a software package from apache.org you maybe have noticed that some of the packages are mirrored at http://mirrors.playboy.com . Apparently according to this post they are big proponents of open source software. There is also a lot of discussion on whether or not this is a “good idea”.
Some of the arguments are that a lot of workplaces would ban any traffic going to the playboy domain. Another being that if a logo / icon was used to represent the mirror some people may have moral objections.
Checking once again, apparently playboy is no longer a mirror.
Also reported A LONG TIME AGO on:
digg
newsforge
Apache Board of Directors Meeting Agenda
technorati tags:opensource, apache
October 18th, 2006
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