Thursday, August 17, 2006

Web 2.x and Beyond - Multiple languages design

I should not say multiple languages design, multiple languages feature is more appropriate.

The World Wide Web is not for english only anymore. More people who speak other than English has access to the Internet the same way other people access to the Internet. So why not build a website that support more than one languages?

The previous approach of the multiple language was to develop a site with one language. When it is finished, copy the entire content and put it under another folder best fit with the language itself and then translate the content word by word to the targeted language.

One problem quickly surface: The pain of update.

While we have more powerful computers and database driven website, to implement multiple languages website become much easier.

How much more visitors will there be when a website can serve more than one languages? It surely will be more.

Thursday, August 10, 2006

Web 2.x and Beyond - Community oriented.

How do you feel when you have a million of people around the world working as a group working together to make the site information accurate and up to date?

It is what drives site lik <a href="http://www.wikipedia.org/">Wikipedia</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/">YouTube</a> so successful. The content was checked frequently in Wikipedia by many to make sure each entry is truthful and unbias. YouTube was able to protect itself away from offensive material by users themselves to make sure the video were not offensive. The information were so much that it is hard to keep track of by just a few people, or even a hundred of them. It is better to maintain by the people who view or create the material. Similiar to open source software, the more eyeballs on the source code, the easier to point out security risk.

Of course, it comes a cost.

Wikipedia has recently suffer from inaccurate reports. Changes in those report were made so frequent that Wikipedia has to limit who can change the content.

YouTube has million of copyrighted material like TV shows hosted on the site. When the users _think_ it is OK to share those video, then it is up to the copyright agency to control it. Again, the copyright agency has just so many employee to control what material should available on YouTube.

After all, why does this community oriented site become a trend? I personally think that was related to more people receive education. Back then, only a priviledge fews receive education. There are only a small group of people in their little circle exchanging information or able to teach. Corrupted few would even prevent teaching others in order to keep their "superior status". However, as education become more accessible to more people, many learn that sharing information was the key to improve themselves and the society. Internet becomes a tunnel to access to obtain or provide infomation as a website becomes a marketplace to anyone who wants to know about anything.

It is a win-win situation when information are available to view by many and update by many.

Wednesday, August 09, 2006

Web 2.x and Beyond

When building a website nowaday, there are certain things in my mind that I thought it has to be a must-have. Other than those W3C standard and database driven standard things, I came across a list of things that _I_ thought was important.

1. Community oriented.
2. Multiple languages design.
3. RSS feed included.
4. API access.
5. Instant response. (XMLHttp).

Monday, July 31, 2006

Rethinking About the Web Management

Recently, I had a brief conversation with my co-developer of my fellowship's website.

Yes, we are re-developing it, but this time around, we will take a different approach.

We started off with a 5 people committe on managing and designing the web site. We did not have much to develop on, but collabroating to update material is time consuming.

So we decided to change the way it works to Web 2.0 style. Instead of just a few of us responsible to the materials of the website, we let the fellowship member to decide what should be there.

It will be a bit change, but now the responsibility of the content material will not fall solely on a few people, rather, it will fall onto those who want to make the fellowship site better.

10 Degree Change

Yesterday, I visited the <a href="http://saddleback.org/">Saddleback church</a>. I was very impressed with the church. It is not the usual church building that I have thought, instead, there were few office building like buildings, tents, and a convention center like meeting place.

The convention center like meeting place is the santuary where people worship and speaker gave message. I enjoy the message and I thought it was a good reminder.

The speaker said he did not expect a 180 degree change instantly, instead, we should try to change at least for 10 degree. It was true that it was hard for a person to change 180 degree in a short amount of time, but the 10 degree change will be very different over time when comparing to the original way of doing things.

I was glad to be there to hear about it.

Monday, July 03, 2006

Fu Jian, China

After spending several days here in San Ming, I am more impressive about the city.

It is a developing city. Dusts are flying everywhere because there are so many developments going on. There are a lot of people and a lot of cars passing through the street interchangingly.

I have a really good time with the friends and children that I am visiting. The children are very friendly and I am very impressive on how well they behave and how much they welcome us.

I am very blessed to be here.

Wednesday, June 21, 2006

2006 NBA Champion Miami Heats

Congratulation to Miami Heats to their first NBA championship.

The most talk about topic about the finals was referee.

Many felt that the referee did not do a good job. Sure, they missed some calls and made some mistake, but they had been professional. They did not back down even though there were so much pressure on them and they were able to keep the game under control.

We might able to see the replay on TV to check if there is a foul or not, but the referees cannot stop the game and watch the replay. Their decision had to be made within a blink of the eyes. NBA players move so fast that it is hard to make every call correct even though you are a professional referee. So, hat off for the referees.

Congratulation to Olonzon Mourning, he deserves to win a championship trophy and a ring.

Monday, June 19, 2006

Be known and allowed to be known.

When I feel others do not know about me, I have to think about if I have allowed others to know about me.

Monday, June 12, 2006

RSI (Repetitive Strain Injury)

As we use computer more frequently than exercise these days, we need to know more about RSI.

Sometimes I have the syptom of RSI causing not only from computer use, but also from play sports.

I have been aware the problem and also correct them. Following is a list of what I experienced:
1. My knee lost power suddenly when walking.
2. My right index finger tingle.
3. My back hurts.
4. My shoulders tighten up during sleep or after waking up.
5. My right elbows causes pain.

Again, I did not know about RSI before, but I was lucky that I was able to correct them before it becomes severe. See a doctor if you experience such problems. You may also read something about it here: http://www.rsi.deas.harvard.edu/

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

The Other Way to Search

Snap.com was officially launched yesterday.

Their advertise slogan is "The other way to search". They focus more on visual search result instead of just text.

They have a business model of pay-per-action. When a user click on the link and if the user purchase something, the cost will be paid or charged.

I think that Snap gave the Internet user another way to look at the search result. It is great to see a fresh idea presented out to the pulic.

Tuesday, May 02, 2006

Google Santa Monica Open House

I have an opportunity to visit Google's new office in Santa Monica today.

It was a very fun experience. I was able to talk to the people who work at Google. They were very friendly and have a really good conversation with them.

I was glad that I was able to meet with the Picasa team. It was because I like the program a lot and I use it for my photo collection.

I was also glad to meet with some recruiters there. They encouraged those who apply not to be intimidated about the interviews.

The office enviroment was easily to be fallen in love with. It was not because of the free soda or Pac Man machine, but the learning culture and the idea gathering culture of it. Surely, Google employee can talk to each other from IRC or messenger while they are working on their dual 21-inches screen plus a laptop, but having a pool table or having a game of table tennis together will give them a chance to talk to each other about what they are working on and exchange ideas. It is probably how ideas are formed.

Anyway, Google is probably a place for those who can express their idea and understand each other.

These employees are so good at communication that I can actually remember all their faces. No wonder why Google attracts so many good engineers.

Saturday, April 22, 2006

NBA Playoffs 2006 Day One

King James explained why he is the One.
Spurs slaughtered the Kings.
Baby Bulls showed that they are the rising team.
Clippers won their first playoff game out of the late game scare.

Overall, it was a very exciting game 1s from 8 teams.

I have not watched all the game yet, but from what I watched, Bulls vs Heats and Nuggets vs Clippers, I am very satisified with the intensity from teams and the executions.

Besides the Spurs and the Piston, the ticket to play against this two teams is up for grab.

Thursday, April 20, 2006

NBA Playoffs 2006

NBA Playoff will start this Saturday.

16 teams will try to get this year's NBA championship trophy. It is highly likely that Piston and Spurs will be meeting each other to fight for this trophy.

Besides Spurs and Piston, other teams who are hopeful to get this trophy is worth of mentioning about their name.

Suns: Despite of losing their best interior player, Stoudemire, they were able to shoot down other teams by their sizzling 3-pointers.

Bulls: Late season run made them to become a playoff team. Kirk Hinrich will become one of the famous point guards in the NBA history.

Wizard: A team packed with athletic players. Jamison and Butler are nice teammate to be with for Areana.

Clippers: A truely amazing season for them. Cassell is credited to turn the losing culture in the Clippers to a playoff contender.

Mavs: A team full of unorthdox players. A center who shoots 3 pointers, undrafted forwards, and an unheard of point guard buzz around the league.

Kings: The changed of team philosophy in the mid season made them better. A dangerous team in the eighth spot.

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

A new feature added

I always thought a subject in email and a title in blog entry is useless.

I was wrong.

It is actually very important. A nice brief information about what the email is about or what the entry is about helps the reader a lot.

After struggling for a while, I have decided to put in the title for the blog entry. It will surely help the readers and the editor, me, a lot.

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

Fedora Foundation might depart with Fedora project. Redhat will soon stop the Fedora foundation.

Here is the announcement made from the mailing list.

Fedora Announcement

As a long time Redhat user from version 8 to Fedora 3 currently (Fedora 5 just came out), I think Fedora has moved too fast. However, the issue is not here, it sits on the problem of legal matters.

At first I was impressed by Redhat to take partnership with Fedora project after they discontinued Redhat 9. I like the idea of keeping the Redhat product tradition of putting everything together and ship it to desktop user. It eases a lot of installation issue.

I like Fedora, I hope without Fedora foundation, Fedora project will continue to grow to help the Linux desktop community.

Thursday, April 06, 2006

Apple posted a program call "<a href="http://www.apple.com/macosx/bootcamp/">Boot Camp</a>".

It is a software that helps user to use both OS X and Windows on the new Intel base machine.

Before the machine boots up and if the Option key is pressed, the selection between which OS to boot will show on the screen.

It definitely will affect the decision when a consumer think of getting a new computer. I wonder if boot camp will support when two hard disks are installed on the Mac Intel.

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

Source control management system.

The major brands are CVS and Subversion (SVN). I started off with CVS to manage my source code and lately, I have been using SVN more and more.

SVN claims to be a improvement for CVS. It has a slightly different method to track the source code.

For more information, you can visit their respective web site for more detail.

<a href="http://subversion.tigris.org/">Subversion</a>

<a href="http://www.nongnu.org/cvs/">CVS</a>

My personal option:
I like CVS more because I felt that it made more sense to me when having version for each file. SVN uses revision of the project instead of the file individually.

Example:
In CVS, I will say:
Version 1.1 of foo.c om project p.
In SVN, I will say:
The foo.c in revision 5 of project p.

The argument could be similiar to either VI or EMACS is better (VI), but it's personal preference and I think as a programmer, I should be flexible to either.

Monday, April 03, 2006

I have just added a new function for the website. This function will synchronize my blog entry to another public bloggin server.