Sing while you poop

Ah yes, only this could come out from Japan. It's the toilet MP3 from Toto. You can listen to MP3 music while you go to the john. The MP3 is not integrated in the toilet but is mounted on the wall. It features an SD slot. A video shows how the toilet works (in Japanese).

There was a story a while ago about Microsoft in the UK making an iLoo, which was an Internet-enabled toilet with wireless keyboard. What's the next high tech gadget out there?

Is the Apple iPod video worth it?

I must admit the Apple iPod video player looks really nice, and it's much thinner than the regular iPod. CNet video shows this player and it almost has the form factor of the iPod nano. So what's next for the next generation iPod? And with so many different accessories that you can now add to the iPod, it's really spawned the iPod generation X. Can the iPod get any better? Would it be worth to put in Bluetooth or 802.11? Motorola has tried to blend iPod and a cell phone with the Rokr but it really hasn't done too well.

Will the iPod become a PDA, a reincarnated Newton? Remember, the Apple Newton, the first PDA before Palm came out. The iPod has some bit of PDA functionality, so it could become a PDA. But to stick with Apple's design and philosophy, it should be simple and should be designed well for one particular purpose. And for the iPod that is music or in the new iPod video. Once, you try to cater to other functionality, you will lose something. You can't have a all-in-one swiss army knife of gadgets.

Updated podcasts from CASCON

I've just updated the podcasts from CASCON for Tuesday and Wednesday. Come and listen to them. You can subscribe as a podcast.

Technorati tags: cascon

New gadget and it's free!

Yes, there's a new gadget out there and it's free! You don't have to buy a PDA or expensive organizer, you just have to get the PocketMod. It's a disposable paper-based personal organizer. The premise is that it's easier to carry a folded piece of paper and less cumbersome than carrying a PDA. You have to get used to the user interface on a PDA, but with paper, you just write. And how many of you HAVE NOT had crashes on your PDA where you wrote something and then you lost it for some reason?

Has anybody tried this? I am trying to get rid of paper as much as possible, but in some cases I still like paper, for example, for reading conference papers, it's still better than reading PDF on the computer.

I love Feedreader!

I never used Feedreader before for reading RSS and Atom feeds until when I had to give my talk on feedreading and RSS at the CASCON Hands-on Workshop on the Latest Technologies. I used to always use the feed reader from My Yahoo because I always use My Yahoo to read news. But the problem with web-based feed readers, even though they're ubiquitous in that I can get from any browser, is that when I click on the feed entry then I go to that on the web site. If I want to read another feed entry, I have to go back in the browser window to my list of feeds on My Yahoo. That kind of causes a bit of a nuisance.

However with Feedreader, even though I have to import my feeds, if I have lots of feeds, I just import the OPML file that I export from Bloglines. If you haven't used Bloglines, use it. It's great in that you can categorize and add all your feeds which I did with my Bloglines. Then all you have to do to use any feedreader is to import that OPML file to any feedreader. So, I did that with Feedreader on my laptop and on my computer at school. And with Feedreader, I see the posts just like e-mail messages, and I can scroll down the posts and the feeds. But here's the nice thing about Feedreader, it's an HTML-based reader so when I click on the post, it will load the actual HTML link in Feedreader on the bottom pane of the window. Sweet! And if I want to make a comment or post, I can do so right within Feedreader. So, this means I don't have to go to a web browser to make a post or comment. I can do everything within Feedreader. I really love that!

Just to let you know that Feedreader works only on Windows. But there are lots of feedreaders for other OSes. You can also use Sage as a feedreader for Firefox, although it doesn't show up as nice as Feedreader.

Post-CASCON

So the CASCON conference is over, and it was quite a week. I am so tired, I woke up quarter to 6 in the morning every day from Monday to Wednesday of last week just to get to the hotel at around 8 am. But it was great, I spoke about feedreading, RSS and podcasting on Monday and Tuesday at the Hands-on Workshop on the Latest Technologies, and I chaired the Business of Blogging workshop and spoke about my research at that workshop as well. I also had a poster in the Technology Showcase at CASCON. Oh yeah, and also I helped out with doing podcasts of the keynotes and workshops, as well as created a CASCON blog. So, basically, I went CASCON crazy and hopefully made my mark this year. The only thing I don't have to my credit is a CASCON paper, so that's what I will have to work on for next year!

I am now processing the audio that I recorded from the keynotes and workshops from last week which I recorded on the Apple iPod with iTalk. However, I just found out some of the recordings didn't seem to work well. The problem is that the iTalk wasn't plugged in properly into the top of the iPod and so without me knowing about it, the talks never got recorded. However, the best recording was on Wednesday at the Business of Blogging workshop where I was able to record the talks plus the discussion. This weekend I made the edits to the audio, there were some that I had to delete some stuff and amplify, because it was too soft to hear. Editing audio is time consuming. I now need to make an RSS feed of this, and then it will be posted on the CASCON blog.

The next step will be to analyze the data gathered from CASCON, the questionnaires and surveys, as part of my research data.

Oh yes, and by the way, I've finally decided to make a cosmetic change to my blog. The orange colour was getting to me, and it was looking very bad, so I decided to change templates. Hopefully, the presentation style is better now and more people will come read and post comments to my blog!

Technorati tags: cascon

CASCON Business of Blogging workshop was a success!

The Business of Blogging workshop is over! It went great, much better than I expected. Thanks to all who came and participated in the discussions, it was great. Now that CASCON is over, I have to now process and edit all the audio that I recorded on the iPod and make a podcast.

Day 3 of CASCON conference

Sorry I haven't been blogging lately, I've been so busy since Monday of this week at the CASCON conference and maintaining the CASCON blog. I presented at the hands-on workshop on latest technologies on Monday and Tuesday where I talked about RSS feeds and podcasting. Today just finished listening to a keynote from Rob Sutor of IBM on standards and open source and a panel discussion from the 4 Pioneers of Computing in Canada. I have a poster in CASCON and today I will be chairing and presenting at the Business of Blogging workshop where I will be talking about blogs and communities.

So very busy this week and also very tired. I hope my talk goes well today, yesterday's talk went so-so, the blog site choked a little bit so I had to think of things on the fly.

It's nice to have wireless internet access in the hotel! True pervasive and social computing yeah baby yeah!

I am at CASCON conference right now

Wireless internet is great. I am at CASCON right now, listening to the keynote from Rob Clyde from Symantec Corp. The introduction right now just talked about the Hands-on Workshop on Latest Technologies, which is where I am speaking at about feeds, RSS and podcasting.

I am also podcasting the keynote right now, hope it works!

CASCON 2005 conference

The Interactive Media Lab will be in full force at the CASCON 2005 conference this year. Sacha Chua and Alvin Chin will be speaking at the hands-on workshop on Monday and Tuesday. The Interactive Media Lab group will have a poster at CASCON in the Technology showcase on Tuesday and Wednesday from 11:45 am to 5:00 pm. More details below:

Poster at Technology Showcase:
Blogs and Communities - Using Blogs to Build Communities
The exhibit is about how one can build communities using blogs. Blogs are popular on the web, so the CASCON audience will be interested to know how blogging can be used to improve collaboration.

Please visit the CASCON blog for more information and to join in the blogging discussions at CASCON, even if you can't make it to the conference!

When Windows crashes in public

I was waiting at Union Station tonight for the GO Train to take me back home like I always do every night after I finish school. I was checking to see what track number the train was at, when I saw the digital screen show a black screen with the Windows recovery screen (you know Last Known Configuration menu, the screen you get if Windows can't boot up properly). I thought that was hilarious, so I took a picture of it with my Motorola Razr V3 cell phone (which by the way I love and which I've uploaded that picture to my computer using Bluetooth!) . Then, the screen would show the HP logo and I thought oh it's just rebooting and will return back to the schedule. Nope, it was cycling through the black recovery screen and the HP logo.

I've seen Windows crashes before, I saw one at one of the airplane check-in counters in Terminal 3 at Toronto Pearson airport where it showed General Protection Fault. But come on, these are public places, and it makes you wonder as to the security, reliability and stability of the computer systems that run these places.

Should public places be running Windows and if so, what measures are in place to make sure their systems are secure, reliable and stable, and most importantly dependable? Have any of you seen something like this happen in public places?

Here are the pictures:
Windows crash
HP logo on screen

Technorati tags: windows crash, union station, toronto

Yahoo introduces tools for podcasts

Yahoo is now getting into podcasting, that is, just searching, organizing and rating for now not creating. Yahoo is betting that users that are not familiar with podcasts (which still are not known to many web users) will become familiar through them, since many people use Yahoo. So far, finding podcasts is still not that really easy, unless you know of a podcast site or go to for example iTunes. By using a heavyweight search engine provider, then podcasts can be searched for much easier is what Yahoo is trying to do. I know personally when I started searching for podcasts, I did a google search for podcasts, but still it was difficult to find what I was kind of looking for. iTunes helped somewhat because it grouped into categories, and I knew if I wanted to look for Catholic podcasts, or technology podcasts, or Palm podcasts. But I still didn't find it that easy to do, it took some time, probably spent me about an hour trying to find podcasts to load up to my iPod mini.

You can see now that the major search companies are now branching off to various different aspects of search, since text-based search is pretty much covered. Google is into searching of blogs and video, and searching of mail in GMail. It won't be long till Google will be doing search of podcasts that's for sure, they probably have it in their Google Labs.

In fact, Google just recently released their Google Reader for reading feeds. So far, it looks pretty simple. What's neat about it, is that you can preview the paragraph of the blog entry, which in My Yahoo you can't really do and have to go to the blog entry on the web page itself.

Web 2.0 has arrived

Everybody's been hearing about Web 2.0, and how it will change the Internet. The next generation of the web involving a more social atmosphere to the web. This article from Technology Review talks about Web 2.0, and how some people feel that it has already arrived.

What is Web 2.0? According to the article, "Web 2.0 stands for the idea that the Internet is evolving from a collection of static pages into a vehicle for software services, especially those that foster self-publishing, participation, and collaboration". The technologies for Web 2.0 involve community photo sharing (like Flickr), tags, blogs, collective editing (like Wikipedia) and social bookmarking like del.icio.us.

In fact, you see many companies embracing Web 2.0 technologies. Witness Yahoo which bought Flickr and launched Yahoo 360 for blogs and community and Yahoo My Web 2.0. So what do you think, is Web 2.0 a social phenomenon for the web? Can semantic web play a role in this web transformation and bring a collaborative and humanistic touch to the web?

AOL acquires Weblogs Inc.

AOL agreed to buy Weblogs Inc., a provider of premium content blogs where Weblogs pay bloggers to write content. I read about Weblogs Inc. and their model of business for blogs from this Technology Review article.

Very interesting read on Weblogs Inc. from Technology Review, and is much related to my workshop on the Business of Blogging which is on Wed. Oct. 19 at the CASCON conference in Toronto. Visit the CASCON blog for more details!

IML research group blog up now

The IML research group blog is up and running now. It was down last week due to technical difficulties at Modblog. I don't understand how a website can be down for an entire 1 week. Modblog said they were doing their best to get back up and running, they had some hardware issues. Still, I think one week is quite a long time to get back up and running.

Apparently, not all the functionality is there, I want to backup the blog entries but I can't. They haven't enabled that feature.

Didn't know there's another CASCON 2005

Google points out that there exists another CASCON 2005 which is here. I did not know that! But that CASCON you have to pay $695 and have to go to Loew's Miami Beach, but the CASCON in Toronto is free. Though, mind you the weather in Florida is probably better than it is in Toronto as it's getting cooler now in Toronto. And it's also on the beach!

Anyways, if you haven't already, visit and blog on the CASCON 2005 blog!

IML Research Group Blog down

As you may have noticed, our research group blog is down for a week now since our blog is hosted on Modblog. I can't believe that it's taken this long to fix their problem. Well, I know I am going to move our research group blog to a different blogging provider once Modblog is up. Modblog sucks, who has their web host down for a week?

Podcasting on the train

I decided to test out the iPod and iTalk for podcasting on the train, so here's what I recorded. It's not too bad, I can see where I could use this to record my research thoughts or record any talks, lectures, meetings.

My first podcast

I just recorded my first podcast today, using the iPod and Griffin iTalk which is a voice recorder that sits on top of the iPod. I have a picture below. It's pretty simple to use and neat!

Here's the iPod and the iTalk together:


Here's the iTalk by itself:

Google tech talk tonight!

Google came tonight at U of T for a tech talk. The room was totally packed, Google had free long-sleeved T-shirts to giveaway. Unfortunately, they ran out, but I did get one. It's a white T-shirt with the Google logo, which I've shown as a picture below. But they ran out of men's XL size, so I had to get a woman's XL size. It doesn't seem to be as nice compared to the black Google shirt which I wore today (also shown below). I got the black T-shirt last year when Google was on campus. I think the black T-shirt is much better, don't you think?

Anyways, Google talked about the problems that they are solving with search and queries, their infrastructure, the positions that are open (mainly full-time and summer internships), the Google culture (do you know they have free gourmet food like breakfast, lunch, and dinner, doesn't this sound like the grad life, except you're being paid as a salary to do something!), and the technical details of how they made their Google applications like Google Maps for example.

Google had a prize draw at the end where they gave away a Google lava lamp (those are popular at Google), and 2 sets of really nice speakers. I submitted my CV as I am looking for a summer research internship for next year.

I wanted to do some work and surf the Internet while I was listening to the talk, but I couldn't detect any wireless in the room! But I guess that's good, because otherwise I would be distracted to doing something else. And I am good for doing that, especially multitasking.

It's funny, when I came into the room, a lot of people thought I worked for Google, hehe.

Here's the black Google T-shirt that I wore:


Here's the white Google T-shirt that I got:


Here's the beginning of the talk:


And here's the giveaway of prizes (it's a little blurry, since I used my Motorola Razr V3 cell phone which by the way is awesome, especially with the transfer of photos over Bluetooth!):

Ning - social software from Marc Andreesen

Marc Andreesen, the creator of Netscape, is at it again. He just created another company called Ning that creates social software to make it easier to access social sites like Flickr and thefacebook. You can see the article about Ning from SiliconBeat.

Interesting to see how this is going to play out, and how communities can be formed. Social software is getting really hot now, witness My Web 2.0 from Yahoo, LinkedIn and others.

Autodesk to acquire Toronto-based Alias

I can't believe this. Alias, headquartered in Toronto, and started by professors at University of Toronto, is being acquired by Autodesk that makes CAD software. Alias is well known for their work on character animation and special effects and have won Academy awards for special effects for movies such as Lord of the Rings.

What does this mean for Alias? Will the culture change now that it is being owned by Autodesk? Will this in any way affect the future of Alias?

A video iPod?

According to Reuters, there's been speculation that a video iPod may be released at an event mailed via e-mail by Apple to reporters. I was thinking that Apple wouldn't release a video iPod until next year, because they've already released the iPod Nano last month which should cause brisk sales at Christmas as the ultimate, must have, cool MP3 player. To me, it would make sense that Apple wait till when till the market dies down, then blow the competition away with the video iPod and put it back on top again.

Otherwise, what's next after the video iPod? Apple has to constantly innovate if it wants to be the leader, and there's lots of competitors that are nipping at its heels for a piece of the digital MP3 player market.

Hmm, what about an iPod that is a photo player, video player, MP3 player, cell phone, and can play digital TV?

CASCON 2005 blog up and running!

Live from the IBM CASCON conference, it's the CASCON blog, up, alive and ready to blog!

Come and get it by registering for your free blog account, after registering for the conference. You only need to register if you wish to make blog posts. If you just want to read, go to the CASCON 2005 blog.

Happy blogging!

Alvin