So I will post about being green! Kinda.

About a year and a half ago, my sister and I walked into Watsons because she wanted some lip gloss crap while we were in Taiwan. After she paid, the cashier left the lip gloss on the counter. My sister stood there, a bit confused and stared at the cashier. Likewise, the cashier did the same. For what felt like way too long, the cashier realized that were standing there because we were waiting until she put the lip gloss in a plastic bag.

“We don’t offer plastic bags for free anymore. They now cost [25 cents USD] if you want a bag,” said the cashier.

This was the same throughout much of Taiwan, and I imagine many other places around the world. And I wonder why it isn’t more common. It seems like a perfect solution to be “greener”.

Simply:

• It is better for the consumer, store, environment, THE WORLD because we would all be using fewer bags, fewer plastic. SUPER GREAT FOR THE PLANET
• Better for the store because there’s no need to spend money on buying these plastic bags. I imagine large chains could save millions a year just by doing this.
• Paying for plastic bags I think is enough to make people bring their own bags when grocery shopping. And if priced right, if you just stop into a supermarket and need a plastic bag, it’s not the end of the world

I don’t really see any reason not to start charging for plastic bags. Well, maybe I do. It’d be supremely inconvenient for consumers, but for places like super markets where your purpose of going is to buy groceries, it won’t be hard to bring a couple of canvas bags with you.

A follow up to In the Future, We Will Be iPhones

I’ve had a few discussions with a couple of friends about the my post and the iPhone in general. More often than not, the reaction towards the iPhone is negative:

Give people the choice. Never think that a closed platform is an advantage. (via ericgar)

I still maintain that having a closed platform initially is good. I really feel that the mobile platform has taken far too long to take off. It really is a very powerful platform that will definitely change the way we work.

But I truly believe that if they had an open SDK, there’s a big risk of it stalling the mobile platform even more. Hear me out The number of applications initially will be relatively small, just because it’s a young device/SDK. Because of this, the impression that these first few apps make really do matter. Applications like Loopt I think will really wow people, and I think he caliber of the first batch of apps should have this effect to jolt the software industry to think harder about mobile devices.

In one of the stackoverflow podcasts I listened to today (don’t laugh), Joel Spolsky shares my sentiment. He describes the difficulty of programming for devices that may or may not have touch styluses, that may or may not have GPS, that may have a wide screen or a slim screen. That affects the overall quality and leanness of the application.

He goes on further to say that Google Android might fail because it is open. He speculates that a lot of people who are excited about Android are not the general population, but sup3r 1337 h4×0rz who will be more interested in porting rxvt over to Android than they are creating solid, useful applications. I tend to agree. I’m not saying there won’t be amazing apps for Android, but the fact that only good application developers that are developing software for consumersare allowed to release software in the AppStore make it the rule, not the exception.

There are some others saying that Apple could have done a lot more with the iPhone. They could have included more apps by default, they could’ve included video conferencing, they’ve could’ve done a lot. That’s absolutely true. I thought it would’ve been really awesome if they included video conferencing. But I’m not sore about that. Why? If you look at the smart phone market right now, what’s there that is as exciting? Windows Mobile hasn’t done anything exciting in how many years?¹ Palm software is butt ugly. Blackberry software, industrious and boooring.

So people can complain all they want about the iPhone software/firmware, but it’s the only one that has stepped up and created more than a slight buzz amongst the general public. They can say they’re not treating users right, but don’t the users of Blackberry/Palm/Wndows Mobile deserve a little care from their software developers? They aren’t treating their customers right if they leave their software stagnant and un-user friendly. Windows Mobile is on their 6th version, and its nowhere even close to where the iPhone is with its second version.²

All that said, I hope that the iPhone SDK will not remain closed. To grow, to progress, Apple will have no choice BUT to open the SDK up. Being closed off will hurt them like it has before. I think Apple is doing the right thing for now, in this situation. But once they’ve made their point, they have to adjust.

Shabadoowop³

1. Thanks Kunal [↩]
2. Ok, yes, that’s not entirely fair; Windows Mobile has been out much longer, but it still stands [↩]
3. @ericgar That’s how genius’ sign their posts [↩]

I couldn’t think of a better title. Or maybe it should’ve been…

Why I Think the iPhone is Important

But hey, it's my blog. I do what I want.

Nonsense aside, I truly believe that the iPhone is making great strides in the mobile space. For one, I feel like it is the first smartphone that makes people want to buy one. Have you ever been that excited about a new Palm smartphone (maybe except the Centro, which came out after the iPhone)? There have been some pretty cool phones, especially HTC ones, but the exposure of those are limited to gadget freaks. As the iPhone gains popularity, the mobile platform will be more widespread and available than ever.

In addition, I feel that it is improving the state of mobile platforms not only through sheer proliferation, but also giving people a great platform to develop on.

“The big advantage Apple has with the iPhone is that they control the entire product, top to bottom. The case, the chipsets, the OS, the user interface.”…. “Google’s dependence on hardware and carrier partners puts the final product out of their control — and into the control of companies whose histories have shown them to be incompetent at design and hostile to users.”

Now, I’ve heard many people whine that this is disadvantageous to the user. Yes, you’re at the mercy of Apple. Yes, it’s a closed SDK. But the major advantage of this is that because the specs are exactly the same across all iPhones, superior applications can be made for them.

I was really excited about Android was announced. It was a great idea. It has become apparent, though, that this model is flawed. Why?

Developers working on android apps are put in a position where they need to guess and program for different physical UI scenarios (none of which actually exist in the wild, yet):

Does the target phone have physical buttons?
What is the button configuration?
Does it have a touch screen?
What about different resolutions?
What sensors do you code for? camera? accelerometer? proximity? touchpad?

[via]

As an Android developer, I feel like you have to take into account of these factors. You need to degrade gracefully, have switches for a bunch of features depending on hardware. I feel like you can make a leaner, more powerful, robust application when you know what you’re working with.

Combining a visually superior UI and a consistent development platform, iPhone and iPhone apps will become wildly popular and push the mobile environment to the next level.

Shabowza.

1. You don’t crash (yet). Thank you. That makes me happy.
2. When I move you onto my second, smaller screen, you know this. You readjust, and I appreciate that.
3. You finally understand me. When I zoom, the pictures should zoom too, not just the text. You really know my soul .

PS: Laura, this does not change the way I feel about you.

Being a click-highlight guy, I was very intrigued when I read about Awesome Highlighter.

Awesome Highlighter is a company that provides a tool that enables you to go to a website and highlight information to save for later or share with your friends.

Here’s what TechCrunch had to say about the site:

Awesome Highlighter have focused on a simple task, and executed on it very well. Some of their competitors have overly complex processes that require a lot more user involvement than a simple and familiar highlighting and note making procedure.

I feel like that statement can be applied to any most genre of websites, and can explain why the successful ones succeed, the other ones go the way of the deadpool. I’ve commented on the success of Muxtape compared to other “mixtape” sites here.

Less is … less (that doesn’t mean bad!)

Creating a simple solution to a problem generally means having less of a feature set than other websites. And contrary to conventional thought, thats a good thing. I feel this is because people like to do what they want to do with the least possible resistance. One example of this happened a couple years ago at Columbia:

CU Community vs. Facebook

A few years ago, there was a website for the Columbia community aptly named CU Community (link to founders site). CU Community was a website that aimed offer a journal feature for blogging, submit news, and allow students to showcase their artwork. You could also request people to be friends to be a part of your network.

Although the CU Community and Facebook weren’t exactly the same type of website (CU Community was more of a mini-Deviant Art for students), I feel like in many of the students eyes, they were in direct competition. It was a way to connect friends on campus.

At the time, Facebook was in its original form; a simple website where you could be connected with friends. Back then, I don’t even think they had the “Wall” application yet.

For a while, the two sites were gaining popularity on campus, but eventually Facebook won out. There are many reasons for this, but one major reason is that Facebook had a clear message of “we are a social network.” Conversely, CU Community was a place where you could upload artwork, you could blog, you could create a social network with friends, but there was no real focus. There were just too many features on the website to focus on just one.

Reading

This idea of doing one thing and doing it well has been around for a long time. The Unix community has long held that ideal. From The Art of Unix Programming:

Make each program do one thing well. To do a new job, build afresh rather than complicate old programs by adding new features.

And more recently, 37signals wrote in their Getting Real book:

The answer is less. Do less than your competitors to beat them. Solve the simple problems…

This isn’t to say that adding features is bad. Of course not. But don’t add features if it doesn’t help solve the problem.

So I was reading this article the other day

But maybe people simply like what they do and aren’t, as some management would have you believe, asking for too much — just the elimination of a small but disproportionately powerful amount of office inanity.

That doesn’t sound quite right to me.

The article has the same tone and message throughout. Maybe it’s me, but I feel like I demand a lot from my job. While I think you don’t necessarily need a job that you would marry given the chance, but I feel like elimination of “office inanity” isn’t enough?

I’d to hear your thoughts on this. Maybe the author is right, but from my own experience and the people around me, the message of the article just doesn’t quite fit?

So how do you like your job and what would make it the “perfect job”?

My buddy Jon has been prisoner to iMovie since we got back a week+ ago and has made two video, one from our trip to Taiwan and one from our stint in Hong Kong.

Trip to Taiwan: Healing Island

Trip to Taiwan from Jonathan W on Vimeo.

Hong Kong: Homage to Benny

24 Hours in Hong Kong from Jonathan W on Vimeo.

“… now wiggle with it.”

I’m not entirely sure why, but I’ve recently been hit with a fear of loss of data. This should have hit me earlier as I’ve lost three hard drives in the past two or so years. And I know it’ll happen again. Mostly it was because I was a college student and anything but ‘free’ was too expensive.

And it’ll, more likely than not, happen to you to. Of course, hard drives have gotten better through the years, but the failure might not be hardware related. Other things could happen: fire, theft, dog ate my hard drive, leprechauns, etc.

So because of my fear of leprechauns stealing my hard drive, I decided to look into the alternatives (read: read a lot of blogs) and found Amazon S3. It’s not free, but now that I’m making money, I figure it’s ok to spend a couple bucks to save my important data (pictures!). It’s basically Amazon offering their own storage space to us common folk. I looked at a few other options, such as Mozy, that looked very similar to Amazon’s service. Ultimately, I figured that Amazon has created and maintained many, many Data centers throughout the years, so your data is probably safe with them.

The service itself doesn’t provide an easy way to drag and drop your data, but there’s a piece of software called JungleDisk that makes your Amazon storage space look like another drive so that you can drag and drop! It works on Windows, Mac and Linux.

Now how much does it cost? No, it’s not free, but it’s pretty affordable. Most of the charges come from how much data is sitting on their servers, as well as how much traffic goes to and from their servers (uploading/downloading). Here’s a breakdown of my costs so far:

• Initial Cost: Amazon: $0, JungleDisk: $20
• Initial Upload: Amazon: $12
• Storage Cost: Amazon: $6 (40gb of photos)

So far, it’s cost me $38. So not “cheap” per se. But that’s only the initial startup cost. It now costs me around ~$6 a month to maintain what I have now, and I imagine it’ll only go up by a couple of bucks every half year or so.

I won’t go into the details, but eventually it’ll be cheaper to have an extra external hard drive (and even a RAID system, you still won’t have the reliability and replication that you’ll have with Amazon. And those leprechauns, don’t forget the leprechauns.

ACCA Ad Campaign

Seen in the Hong Kong Airport.

I just got into Taipei last night (late!). I’m here on vacation with two friends (one of whom speaks no chinese!) until the 31st. The trip should prove to be … interesting I have a lot to blog about, but as you can see, none of them have made it on here yet. I’ll probably have a lot of downtime traveling around the island so maybe I can sneak a few posts here and there and post them when I’m back online.