Random photo taken in Sai Kung last weekend

Unfortunately, nothing much to talk about since my return from Toronto/NYC. It was nice seeing most of m friends again (I was only able to make it to Toronto for 3 weekdays, so unfortunately, I didn’t get to see many people, especially those that live a good 4+ hours drive from Toronto (yes, I know Google maps says 2.5 hours, but unless road conditions improved drastically from 4 years ago, that is a complete LIE). Since I’ll be taking DP this fall, I’ll practice by writing my blog post in point form (because apparently that’s what I’m supposed to do on my exam… ).

• My good friend Benny moved to Seoul for work so that kinda sucks. At least I’ll have more incentive to go skiing in Korea. He left behind alot of booze.
• Heading off to Japan Mid-September for a very short vacation (aka. Get away from Hong Kong for a weekend so I can study). I haven’t been back since I climbed Mt.Fuji in 2006, so this should be fun. I’ll be heading to a small town “City” called Saku in Nagano Perfecture. Aside from Mt. Fuji, I’ve never really spent any time outside big cities in Japan, so this should definitely be interesting (and if it turn out to be boring, I can always study… right!?).
• I’ve had my Samsung Galaxy SII for about 6 weeks now. So far so good. I’m an app whore, so as much as I love HTC (it’s the only manufacturer that I have actually purchased 2 phones from!) they just don’t want to put more memory on their phones!! So, yes, I’ve gone with Samsung instead and I’m loving the huge Super AMOLED Plus screen, all the extra storage, and especially how unimaginably light and thin the whole phone is. Battery life went from “absolute crap” to “manageable” after I rooted it (I’m currently on Villain Rom)
• Google+ … uhh I don’t know, my stream is so flooded that I’m having trouble keeping up with posts. I need to sort things out better. I love the concept though and I do have a similar set-up on facebook using lists to keep separate groups of people from seeing certain things, but its much easier/lower maintenance on G+. For now, anything “public” is usually posted on Facebook/Twitter (or this blog!) and things that are more.. private… I’ll post to specific circles on G+. That’s a fairly good compromise for now.
• Sometimes I feel like my blog posts don’t contribute to the world. But that’s ok, because there are people like Zach Weinersmith who is currently summarizing Calculus: Early Transcendentals . Sad to say, I actually liked this textbook so much that I still have it.
• Going to watch Captain America’s Hong Kong premier tomorrow. Still haven’t watched the last Harry Potter yet. I’ll do that soon.

[22:44] Domomo: http://mail.google.com/mail/help/motion.html
[22:44] Domomo: This is hilarious
[22:47] Ema Shingai: weird
[22:47] Ema Shingai: that defeats the purpose of email
[22:47] Ema Shingai: i cannot do htat in the office
[22:47] Ema Shingai: dude
[22:47] Ema Shingai: i just downloaded the stupid guide by accident
[22:47] Ema Shingai: haha
[22:47] Ema Shingai: funny
[22:48] Ema Shingai: “Star Message”
[22:48] Ema Shingai: HAHAHA
[22:48] Ema Shingai: “A baby girl?” <– wtf?
[22:49] Ema Shingai: how is that a common phrase hahaha
[22:49] Ema Shingai: they should just do this motion thing with ur mouth instead of whole body…
[22:50] Ema Shingai: PRANK
[22:50] Ema Shingai: PRANK DAMNIT
[22:50] Ema Shingai: U
[22:50] Ema Shingai: U FOOLED ME
[22:50] Domomo: ……………….

I actually wasnt trying to fool her, I just wanted her to watch it… and I stepped away from the computer for 6 minutes and I came back, and she had clicked on “Try Gmail Motion”. orz (Apparently she read the whole guide below as well…)

Happy April fools.

1. Sign in to Google Webmaster Tools
2. Add your site and complete the verification process
3. In  Google Buzz, your site should now appear in the “connected sites”, share it and you are done!

apparently it’s only for google.ca as far as I can tell

click to enlarge

The first thing I noticed was how not intuitive the this was. Maybe there’s a bigger leraning curve than I expected (honestly I was expectiong a flat learning curve here), but things were difficult to find and confusing. Then again maybe reading some tutorials would help (but that’s not my thing).

Something else I noticed (all too quickly), was how sluggish it was in FireFox. Switching to Chome was a major improvement, but I’d really wish they wouldn’t force people to jump to Chrome. Aside from being slower in FireFox, some of the larger, media intense waves crashed my FireFox (like that “tell a story using pictures” waves that have 100+ blips on it. Its slow even in Chrome, and unstable at best in FireFox).

Editing other people’s blips is sloppy and confusing. On the top of the blip it will show each “contributor” but won’t really show who contributed what. So I have a few blips with 5-6 different people editing and I can’t tell who’s editing what (note the “playback” feature DOES show who edits what, but I honestly dont feel like wasting 10 minutes trying ot figure out who edited what).

Don’t get me wrong, Google Wave is still fun to use, but there’s alot of room for improvement. Oh I’m looking forward to better Twitter integration like they showed at the demo…. can’t wait to see what Google will do with this.

by the way feel free to add me at : dywong[at]googlewave[dot]com

Someone sent me this link, where Christopher describes how Google Latitude gets your location (when not using GPS). Generally speaking, there  are two methods to updating your location:
1) GPS
2) Cell-id Loactaion

GPS (from what I’ve read) the more accurate of the two. Of course, it also drains more battery which is why Google disables GPS updating if you leave latitude running in the background (ie if you close latitude on your phone and select “continue updating my location after exit” or something). If you are using the background updater you will, by defualt be using the Cell-id Locaiton.

The Cell-id Location automatically detects your location using Google’s cell tower database and the accuracy can be as good as a few hundred meters but as poor as 32 km (mostly in suburban areas and rural zones). The known range of the particular network base station is usually what affects the accuracy. WHen running in background mode, it seems like it only updates every 20-30 minutes (I havent tested this). While Latitude is running in the foreground, it seems to like to update itself every minute or so.

I currently don’t have GPS enabled on my Touch Pro since I installed a custom rom. I’ll probably re-install and test it out this weekend to see if I get better results with Latitude. I’m pretty sure the huge skyscrapers and pollution here in Hong Kong isn’t helping in getting a more accurate location using the Cell-id method when I’m in the city.

To add me on latitude, you can use dywong [at] gmail <dot> com on your mobile phone or via iGoogle (on your computer).

additional reading

Aside from OS, Google has their hand in anything and everything. My top three favourites are GMail (how many years has it been in beta?), iGoogle and Google Reader. Recently, I discovered Google Latitude, which broadcasts you and your friends’ location in realtime, allowing you to see where your coworkers, friends and family are (assuming you have added them and they accepted your invitation). Great for stalking  people. I’m not joking.

Google Latitude on my HTC Touch Pro.
Compatible with most devices running Google Android, BlackBerry OS, Windows Mobile, or Symbian s60. Compatibility with iPhone, and iPod Touch devices is also planned

My only gripe with Latitude is:
1) On mobile phones, its not accurate enough to act as a GPS system. I went around Hong Kong on the weekend with Google Latitude running on my cellphone, and noticed most of the time  was at least 1 city block off from where it said I was. Of course to be safe, they use this giant “you are within 1km of this location” circle. They don’t try to push it as a replacement for the GPS, but we all know they are all thinking it.

2) Google latitude is accurate on an internet connection, however, on a computer, you need to use iGoogle for latitude to work. I don’t really ahve a problem with that since I always have my iGoogle open. However, alot of people won’t bite on the iGoogle which means they aren’t really on google latitude when they are home. Not really a huge deal I guess.

So I guess for now, we are safe from event like this: