paperdrip.net

Came across an annual report about internet development in China today and notice a significant adoption of internet usage in China.

Also, internet access is no longer for people living in big city. The increment in rural area and villages has outgrown those in the bigger city (60.8 vs 35.6%). What’s more, most of them are using broadband for internet access (around 90%), and surfing on the mobile phone has a significant gain as well (133%).

I think the explosion can be seen in two fold, one is the general public adoption while the other is the booming of our own internet application. We are now having all kinds of localized web application, which break down the language barrier for the user adoption.

Talking about web application, it is found that about 24% of the web site hosted in China is using PHP, which is the most popular languages among all.

The report is very informative and I am seeing that the internet user in China is now more comfortable in using this media to do things more than web browsing. The penetration of using the internet to do ecommerce might be coming soon.

I like my iPhone, the apps and games are wonderful. But I can only realize the true power after subscribing to a data plan.

See the above? I can now blog at anywhere, locate myself at any time and what’s more is to get the latest information on the road.

But are we not getting connected enough? Now, other devices, such as the digital camera or portable gaming console, can also gain access to the net.

I wonder when would we feel exhausted in sending update to our friends round the clock.

Before that, I will enjoy the using of my iPhone.

There are several apps which I come back and forth and deciding if it fits into my usage pattern.

ForkLift is one of them.

The first thing to intrigues me in using it is the 2 panel display. I’ve been grown up from the DOS and Norton Commander is my preferred way of file manipulation. There are several offering of apps on the Mac platform that enable this but I like ForkLift in several way.

First, I can create “Groups” on the left panel. For instance, I can crete a new group for work and drag all work folder as a short cut. Then, there’s a built-in app delete tools. I can remove application that I no longer needed easily. Also, the lower panel provides information that I need at times, one of them is the size of the folder. And the integrated “Connect” capability let me transfer file to my remote server in the same application.

Yet, there are some features which I want. I use terminal a lot, and I hope there’s a short cut to let me open a terminal and change location to there. Alternative, it would be nice if they provide a shortcut key to copy the filepath.

I’ve mentioned I like the “Connect” option but I couldn’t find a protocol that I used a lot - SAMBA. When I need to connect to the SAMBA share, I need to do it in Finder and switch it back to ForkLift.

I’ve found it can be bought in a discount from MuPromo. Go check it out.

There are several website that offers daily deals which I will check everyday, Apress is one of them and today, they are offering a one day promotion on the above mentioned book.

You can own the ebook of “Learn Objective-C on the Mac” for US$10 (regular price is US$27.99).

I love MacWorld, definitely because of the keynote by Apple (sad that it’s gonna be the last one this year) for the new product announcement. Apart from that, vendors will usually offer special promotion in this period.

Today, I came across a very nice offer from BeeDocs. They are offering a big discount on their flagship product - Timeline 3D, which usually cost $65, is now offering to user at a special price of US$30.

I tried this once sometimes ago and love it. But I encounter some problem in using it, which Andy reply to me promptly and turns out it is the driver from Logitech that break the software (to be precise, that driver render Growl from working properly).

If you need to draw some timeline, go grab it before it goes away.

BeeDocs

HA, don’t worry, it’s not a SPAM.

What I am talking about is the size of screen estate.

Have a look at these images and you can tell.

I’ve bought my own Dell 2408WFP lately and the increase in screen estate enable me to open both an IDE and a PDF reader at the same time! It’s a joy to work but I am still finding the best way to organize the windows.

Anything tips from your guys?

2008 is definitely the era of netbook - low cost but under power laptop, which is good enough for day to day internet surfing and light enough to bring along.

I keep hearing a voice telling me to get one and finally, I could resist this temptation and place my hand on this.

The price of a netbook varies, some could be as costly as a low end notebook but in general, the specification for most of them is more or less the same. As a secondary machine, I prefer to spend less on it, although there are some drawback (which I will talk about it later).

The brand “Hasee” might be unfamiliar to most of you as it is a manufacturer in mainland China. The specification of the machine as follows - 80G HDD, 1G RAM, 1.6GHz Atom CPU, 10.1″ LCD (LED Backlit), 130 Megapixel webcam and it all costs me US$346.

It comes with no OS and I am having Ubuntu 8.10 running on it just fine (with most of the drivers available except the webcam), the only draw back is the size of the keyboard. It’s small when compared to the others (HP M1000 offers the best keyboard btw) but I couldn’t complain for the $$$ I am paying.

It serves very well as a browsing machine but I found that the resolution (1024 x 600) hinders the using of IDE application since some of the menu items cannot be shown properly in this resolution.

Before MBA comes down in price (or given a refresh in hardware specification), I will settle my desire in having a small notebook with the Hasee.

After upgrading the SSH package due to security issue in Debian, I noticed that I cannot connect back to my machine through NX Client.

The error message is an offending key in the known_hosts. I suspect it is due to a change of the key and thus, when I connect back to it, NX thought the server is compromised.

By deleting the entries in this file resolved the issue.

Over the years of development on my product, I have been working with different batches of tester. And I have noticed some good time, as well as some bad time with some of them. I noticed a “trend” that lead to my different emotions.

I feel fruitful and respected when I work with tester who is knowledgeable. The “knowledge” I am referring to, is the understanding of the domain that the software is dealing with. One analogy I can thought of, is the necessity to recruit driver in testing out a car. You won’t find someone who don’t know how to drive a car for testing.

OK, I hear your voice. You say the test is biased if the user is already “contaminated”.

I would agree if the test is focused on the perception on something intangible. E.g. the color should be used or where the submit button should be placed. But if the test require the knowing of the mechanism, it falls into another dimension.

What’s more, if your test is composed by a league of such user, I could not imagine how diversify the feedback will be. Each of them will likely to represent the personal preference of the user and what matter worst is, these user will likely NOT to be the same group of user who gonna pay and use your product.

Developing software is an art, but spotting the right gang of people to give you feedback is even so. Now I will go back to my cave and meditate on the next features to implement.