Version Control

A long long times ago, Application UI design is still in chaos and not united by MS Windows yet. There was good variety of UI design existed. Some are really unique but lost in history. Photo is a screen of 3D studio 4 that is the ancestor of 3D Max and has been most popular 3D authoring tool. When 3DS was introduced back in 1991, I was fascinated with its elegant UI design and advanced features. One of my favorite is "+" button on saving screen. It is simple idea to add version number when you save your project file to disc. For example, while you work on "ABCD0001", you can save it as "ABCD0002" by just pressing "+" button.

It was simple but still keeps me out of trouble because I manage my working files in that way. Whenever I can give an advice to new young computer user, I often say "Save whenever you stop your mouse!” If you lost your file some guy kicked out the power plug, all responsibilities is yours because you doesn't save your file. Frankly I still don't believe any hard disk, CD or memory card. Neither auto-saving. It can be lost forever at anytime. Credibility of a SW has been not improved since Windows 3.1 introduced.

To talk about naming a file more, I think most stupid file name that I ever saw is "resume.doc". Probably hiring manager may receive tons of resume. You can improve your chance by giving more identification on it. Add your name or Job title like this "UIdesign_Resume_Alfbae2006june01.doc" = Document title + Document purpose +creator name+date+version.

SO WHAT?
As I said I can't believe any local save for 100%. I want to have a backup on Internet storage that is operated by a reliable server can last long for 100 years. Why don't we make a doomsday vault at Greenland to save all humankind knowledge back up copy? We could retrieve Sumerian language that was written in 4600 years a go because they carved on stone located in desert.

Reference
Brewster Kahle's modest mission: News.com

Make it meaningful

Nameless thing is meaningless. Every body can create content but all content can't survive without name. It will perish in backup disc sooner or later. Nowadays name is given by user as 'Tag' for digital content. Tag is one of basic concept for future Internet. But problem is laziness that may be biggest threat for all mankind. I'm not an exception. I'll never give proper file name for all images from my digital camera. It is really annoying. Yes, if it is annoying to do, it can be a seed of invention.

RIYA.com is not perfect for that yet but it shows quite interesting level of tagging technology. When photos are uploaded, faces of respective photos are analyzed and user can start to give a detail for it. By given data, it can try to identify rest of faces automatically. Side or rotated angle can't be identified.

What is for? For example, you may browse photo by tagged name. Select a person and get all photos that the person appears in.

Ok, it is still far from voice computer installed in USS Enterprise yet. But it is still good start.

By the way, I expect a digital camera which can identify faces. It may create a photo with proper names, location, direction and time/date. If it can be integrated with mobile, it can find electronic address of people in photo and send photos to them.

Otherwise, please try to memo on back or give a proper file name. Never use "Photo001.jpg".

One more, what is good tag? I think it should be able to explain context behind the appearance of a content and should connect other related content as a story.

Reference
http://www.riya.com/

Star Rating

On my iTunes, there are 2 songs which have five stars. Absolutely It is best song for my life. How about you? It seems you can see 5, 10 or whatever rating system on hotels, music and movie etc. It is clear about top rating but others seem too often ambiguous for me.

Some people think 3 is mid point but others regard 2 as acceptable. If you love to watch Leonard Martin's movie critic, movie with 1 or 2 stars means it is rubbish or only few may love it.

Back to my iTune, some time I found really funny song in my collection. For example, I bought a Korean idol star's album. I loved their new song "Road" but first intro track was sound of fan's yelling and cheering noise in concert. I really hate that so I decide to give CD to my young colleague. But again I found some annoying sound in my iPod. My iPod has that intro noise sound and I can't delete it. As you know, you can't delete a song in iPod (Typical PC minded users some time want it). So I have to remember which song should be kicked out of my iPod.

Here is one tip for you. Please mark that song with one star. Later you can easily find out which song should be purged. Because I'm a generous man, I usually give 3~5 stars to a song. Actually only 36 songs are rated by myself from 1400 songs in my iPod. Even if it has two stars, it is very good. But a song with one star that's a bad.

Following is my star rating system. 6 grades (Don' forget to count Zero)
* * * * * : Great songs. I use it as a Redbull for my soul.
* * * * : Good songs. Yes, I think you might love it too.
* * * & * * ; I can't tell you what is difference between these 3 & 2 stars. But I'm sure it is noteworthy.
*: A hate mark. I'll purge it when I have time with iTune.
Not Rated: I might give some stars in future.

Why don't we have a minus star? A skull icon may be used for it.

By the way, I found more interesting about iTunes"Play Count". It is only counted when a song plays and finished. It is accumulated value as user listen to. As you might guess, it is similar with my star rated list.

What if I can trust some one who might share my interest and can recommend a good new or undiscovered song for me? Can I use my star rating system to find a mate who can share same musical interest from Internet?

Otherwise more collaborative rating system as a Mashup can happen? If you are lonely traveler in strange city, ZAGAT's trusted ratings and review may help you to find a good meal. It is sophisticated 30 point scale on food, decoration, service and cost. Of course it is not perfect but it is commonsense level of wisdom for you. One more tip, if you don't have Zagat guide, just try to find a crowded restaurant.

SOWHAT?
1. We need to think about negative rating.
2. Matchmaking system based on comparing iTune playlist. It may help you to find a soul mate.
3. How can a rating system be a reliable and helpful? Too often it may be spoiled with advertising promotion.


Reference
DJUNA's movie critics
Wikipedia "Rating"

Future of Spreadsheet

Google Spreadsheet is just another rubbish web application only limited works can be done comparing with rich client applications in perspective of Microsoft (Zdnet podcast interview with MS's LeBond). But it reminds me of an old revolution of VisiCalc . Picture above still shows how VisiCalc's original design of spreadsheet is still neat and elegant for today(1981 IBM PC edition). It was really easy. Without it, you need to learn Fortran or Basic to do some calculation. Any ordinary business man can use it right away after 30 minute introduction.

MS Excel is just a rubbish copy product for doing every thing. In 1985 first Excel was released for Mac and Windows version win the battle with Lotus 1-2-3 finally. But it is error prone. Hard to keep track of change and follow streaming of in & out. Even it is not friendly with other MS applications such as Word and Outlook.Pasted or exported chart is often uncontrollable and ugly.

Interestingly, MS Excel is a popular office documenting tool rather than a calculator nowadays. Especially my HR and finance team guys use Excel for every thing. For example, when I request new PC lease, I need to download a XLS format and keep my personal information on it. Print out & sign on it and send it to mailbox. Actually it doesn't do any calculation. It is one of big reason why business people love Excel. Most business people don't have training any programming languate such as C/JAVA or HTML. They learn Excel. In case of Word and Outlook, you don't need special training for this. After training course or self training, every man can create smart document which can automate and normalize input. Output is ugly but enough for office.(Sorry, Jensen but you need to focus on output rather than the Ribbon.)

Can Google spreadsheet be a new hope? It is promising for sharing chart with others. And it's FREE!! but it is just a rubbish test service yet. (Please see introduction by ZDnet)

SO WHAT?
Actually, I'll love if future of spreadsheet can do following things.
For Google or any other guys want to invade in MS office empire, I believe it is very vulnerable point.

1. Copy a value from an internet site and paste on sheet and it will be updated lively/manually. Imagine a stock price widget is living in a cell.
2. Aggregate data from a variety of other sheet and internet document which are reported from your team member. It will be updated by member's publishing.
3. Keep history of changing. Like a Wiki, you can go back to whenever and can create historical comparison chart.
4. Simulate by test input. Like a Blog, draft saving is allowed. It will be separated until publishing.
5. Visual spreadsheet. It has been researched based on visual programming tool such as Prograph. But it is almost forgotten technology now. You can build financial model and understand formula more easily. Because Spreadsheet is easy but error prone. It will be useful to save your chart from audit. Please click for more
6. Visual layout. Like a MS Access. Report designer may help people to control the document output. Of course it should support XML output as well.
7. Export to Blog. HTML table is sucks. I need to paste a part of spreadsheet on my Blog. And it should be alive with controls.

And one small thing...

8. Sort by color. I love to use background/font color of cell to identify rows usually. I'll really appreciate if spreadsheet can see color as attribute.

World Idol Contest

Youtube is really hottest internet video sharing site globally.

If you are not familiar with Youtube, please visit www.youtube.com at your spare time. Because it is based on interesting Flash player technology for streaming & playing video, it play well without any warning or password windows through your company firewall.

Most of contents are uploaded by users.(That's Mashup! That's UCC:User Created Content) You can find many popular video clips without appropriate copyright and size limit but there are many unique and interesting amateur films. Most interesting phenomena about Youtube is that it is beloved by many young as well. It is popular among people who lives out side of US. In Japan, over 2 million Japanese internet users visited there at March 2006. It is 5.2% market penetration.(US is 5.4%). Even though there is no regional service yet, it attracts more and more people globally.

Some says it is good model to explain "Long tail". It may be not big major block buster at all, enough mass to be noticed. It might not be able to kill TV but share some yummy portion of pie along with DVB-/H,DMB or IPTV. It is also attractive for Bloggers. You can easily link video to your blog by copy&paste HTML code generated from Youtube.

Sustainable & profitable business model is still unclear question in there business plan. But thanks to VC like Sequoia Capital who recently invest on Youtube, we may enjoy it free for a while. Youtube might find a heaven in advertisement as Google did. If they decide to insert a preroll or banner in video clip, it is hard to avoid. Report from Online Publishers Association said "Video Ads: The Shorter The Better, But Many Viewers Accept Long Ads". Around 39% answered 30 sec or more longer Ads is acceptable.

Otherwise, thanks to Youtube boom, many talented amateur comedian in the world , documentary film artist and digital camera/camcorder owners who want share their baby first walking with grandparents can have big benefit and find an useful way of promoting talent and sharing media. Nowadays sharing some images is not a big deal so you don't need help from FLICKR always but sharing a minute of video is totally different level of problem in term of bandwidth.

SO WHAT?
Many interesting youtube clips are made by PC camera cost less than $30 not by $1500 Sony camcorders. But I believe mobile phone can be a best tool for it. Problem is how an user can upload a video to video distribution channel such as Youtube without hassle. Mobile carrier may provide an incentive or discounted packet cost for uploader and share profit from downloaders. On opposite side, latest mobile phone is actually good video player already but you need to be a millionaire to enjoy video downloading freely from your network. Synching with PC is still and only reasonable way. Last mile between mobile phone and internet seems still bigger than in PC space.

Anyway, I think it could be good candidate for 3G killer apps instead of face to face video conference call. Why don't we have some hope.

Here is some funny clips I found from Youtube.All clips are really silly and amateur but it is good to see happy people for me without understanding their language at all.

LINKS

Philippines Lip Sync Guys
14 years old Asian boy living in US
Two Korean Girls in Karaoke Booth
24years old drunken Jabarca
Dr.Reck in Japan
A guy with sunglass
A gangster wannabe German boy

Visualize Product Life Cycle

Ok, It looks not that charming but really impressive for me.
PLC : Product Life Cycle is one of 101 class item and most useful economic theory in marketing for me. I think I can understand by a new method by Google's new LAB project "Google Trend".
Google Trends analyzes a portion of Google web searches to compute how many searches have been done for the terms users enter relative to the total number of searches done on Google over time. The graph is matched with major news issues. You can sort it by cities/regions and languages as well.

For example, if you input "RAZR", you may see the rumor about RAZR was appearing at Q4 of 2004. And then you can see hot buzz when it is finally introduced at market. Around 2005 christmas season, the graph reached at peak point. I think it is interesting the graph has still good strength. I assume it might thanks to RAZR limited edition and other variable versions such as Gold Dolce & Gabana. Now it seems RAZR will be next Startac which has been produced for exceptionally long time. By June 2006, 50 million units of RAZR were sold globally.

SO WHAT?
Google trend will be loved by all marketers and researchers. If this volume shows fame of a keyword, we may regard it as social/cultural interest value by end users. By matching news and event schedule, we may understand how those event affect it. In future, some smart marketers may learn how to keep people's searching keyword for extending product life.

LINKS
Keep eyes on "RAZR" through Google Trends
Learn more about PLC: Product Life Cycle

Only Kid Can Hear

I hate to say but we are growing older. As we grow older, physical ability such as eyesight is getting worse. Hearing ability is so as well. Human's audible spectrum is known as 20hz~20Khz but actually old person can't hear high frequency sound such as 17KHZ.

A British inventor, 39 years old Mr. Howard Stapleton invented "Kid Repellent" called Mosquito which generates high pitch tone to repell yound mischievous kid from a retail shop. It is just like a sound of Mosquito or "Headache sound". He said "It's very difficult to shoplift, when you have your fingers in your ears." It seems he share a same viewpoint of education with a Victorian man.

But another brilliant people utilize it and makes a mobile phone ringtone for kid. In class, student use it without teacher's attention.

SOWHAT?
Test it by yourself. Most of over 30ies couldn't hear 17Khz tone including myself. It may be not great for normal ringtone but may be useful for receiving message alert or morning call alarm which can wake your lazy son up in the morning.
This is an interesting story about a technology can be used for an experience and the oppisite way around at same time. Being good or evil is depending on creator's mind.


Try it by yourself and compare with older or younger friends. At 17Khz, some 27years old my colleague can hear the buzz but most of over 30 years old people in my office couldn't hear that. Please don't try this in public space. You should prepare a headset. You don't need to worry about that much. Even you can't hear that it doesn't mean you are missing a tune of music at all.

1. Clip of 12 KHZ tone
2. Clip of 13 KHZ tone
3. Clip of 14 KHZ tone
4. Clip of 15 KHZ tone
5. Clip of 16 KHZ tone
6. Clip of 17 KHZ tone
7. Clip of 18 KHZ tone
   
   

LINKS
Article about the kid repellent
International Herald Tribune Article
Metro's article about kid ringtone