Disclaimer

The content of this blog is my personal opinion only. Although I am an employee - currently of Nvidia, in the past of other companies such as Iagination Technologies, MIPS, Intellectual Ventures, Intel, AMD, Motorola, and Gould - I reveal this only so that the reader may account for any possible bias I may have towards my employer's products. The statements I make here in no way represent my employer's position, nor am I authorized to speak on behalf of my employer. In fact, this posting may not even represent my personal opinion, since occasionally I play devil's advocate.

See http://docs.google.com/View?id=dcxddbtr_23cg5thdfj for photo credits.

Monday, September 29, 2008

Motorola Ming Hacking

Apparently I show my age when I say "hacking" - apparently the modern term is "modding". Ah, well.

Useful link:

http://www.modmymoto.com/forums/showthread.php?t=61759

It's probably dangeous to post my firmware version. ah, well, I probably did not copy it well enough - I probably should photograph it.

R532_G_11.00.53P
BP: R532_G_11.00.5
3PBPFLEX
GSZHNANT675
VA013DSP: 631F1FOOTechnology: Quad-Band GSM


How to install .PKG files (applications) to phone:

http://www.modmymoto.com/forums/showthread.php?t=39950

Sunday, September 28, 2008

Ming Phone

I'm trying out a Motorola "Ming" phone.

Apparently it is a Linux based phone, running Java applications, that Motorola sels in Hong Kong. The phone I am trying has "China Mobile" stuff installed on it.


The web page linked to above says 'The new Motorola "MING" PDA Smart Phone is a fully integrated gadget that serves as a mobile phone, a PDA, a music player, a camera, a video recorder, a name card reader and a data storage device(up to 1GB). From now, you need nothing but Motorola "MING" PDA Smart Phone.'.

I quite like the phone - physically, it has a nice form factor. I like the stylus. But there are a few issues, mainly with the software. I will record my impressions here.

---+ User Interface

My biggest complaint is that the user interface feels a bit clunky and pasted together.

It feels a bit like an Open Source UI like KDE or Gnome on Linux, as opposed to something like Microsoft Windows: possibly more powerful, but things just don't "flow" smoothly.

For example, I keep wanting to hit the red physical button (the Power/End key) on the face to stop a call - but instead I have to hit the "End" button on the touchscreen. The red physical button seems to be reserved for power down - which means it is a waste of a button most of the time.

Ooops, I lied - you can hit the red physical button to stop a call. It just doesn't always seem to work.

Pressing the green physical button on the face (the Send key) takes you to the calls record application, where you can see the Recent Call screen with calls you have received, missed, dialed, etc. This is a reasonable choice - although it might be nice to suggest a good number to dial, like the last call received or dialed, to reduce keypresses. But, annoyingly, once you select past Dialed Calls, and scroll, you cannot hit the green physical Send key to dial it - you have to use the center push of the 5 way switch, and THEN hit call.

So, the fastest way I have found to redial a number is

0) from the home screen

1) hit the green physical Send key to get to the Recent Call window.

2) 5 way switch up to scroll around to Dialed Calls"

3) 5 way switch center to get to the Dialed Calls screen

4) assuming the call you want to redial is topmost, select it via a center push

5) and now, to this very cluttered call screen, hit the green physical Send key and/or the Call button onscreen.

Five button clicks, of 4 different buttons, to redial! My manual dexterity is challenged.

OK, I just found a shorter way:

0) from the home screen

1) hit an icon in the upper right corner of the Global Navigation bar of the touchscreen to get to the Call dialing keypad screen

2) hit the Redial button at the bottom of the touchscreen

3) now hit the Call button at the bottom of the touchscreen, and/or the green physical Send key.

This is fewer buttons, but they are further apart, and quite a challenge to enter one handed.

Moral: I want the most frequent phone operations (dialing one of my usual numbers, redialing, etc.) to be only a few keypresses away, ideally one handed.

I think what is mainly bothering me is that I have not figured out if there is a pattern to what function is on what key in what screen. Lacking such consistency in the UI, I have to study each screen quite closely - and, in fact, I was not able to figure some things out untilo I had read the manual.

RTFM?: this is one of the first phones in years that I have had to read the manual for. That is not a good thing - it means that its UI is surprising.

In fact, I was inspired to write these notes as I learned that I had to use the manual.

---+ Camera / Business Card Reader

I think they mean what American's call a "business card reader" when they say "name card reader". The camera has a switch that allows it to focus in on something like a business card.

TBD: test it out.

I would really like to be able to use it to scan receipts into an accounting program. Apparently that is not standard, and it is unclear if a Java application can be installed to use it.

---+ Petty Annoyances

Home Screen Setup won't let me get rid of the China Mobile applications.

That's typical, but annoying. I think that I have dialed China twice already by mistake.

---+ Handwriting

One of the things that I most like about this phobe is that it has a pen-like stylus, and a graffiti style handwriting recognizer. I *love* being able to write notes onto my phone, rather than text using a painful keyboard.

However, the graffiti style recognizer is very slow - even when set to fast (Applications/Setup/Input Setup/Writing Speed/Fast).

It took me 52 seconds to enter in the entire alphabet via the recognizer.

Compared to, it took me 18 seconds on the touchscreen keyboard.

And 25 seconds on my old Kyocera Smartphone, with the original Palm graffiti. Not to mention that the graffiti was more accurate.

I can't report a real measure here, but I definitely have the feeling that the Ming is slower in recognizing letters than my now-defunct AT&T Tilt / HTC 8925, a Microsoft Windows Mobile based Smartphone, which has several forms of handwriting recognition.

The Ming handwriting recognition - letter box - is far too slow for real use.
This is sad, since my Kyocera is much older, with a much slower processor - and it was quite useful.

Apparently the only way to enter symbols and special characters such as $ { } ( ) is to use a dedicated virtual keyboard. It is annoying to have to switch from handwriting, slow as it is, to keyboard.




---+ TimeZone

My phone is displaying time for a different timezone. (Not China, interestingly; actually US Central.)

Unfortunately, after clicking around for more than an hour, I still haven't found how to change the time/timezone.


... ahhh, finally I found how to change the time and timezone - using the World Time application. Obvious and appropriate, but nevertheless well hidden. Plus, of course, the usual problem: it won't allow me to specify my preferred locations as Portland OR, or Haifa, Israel - but instead insists on using neighbouring cities such as Seattle or Jerusalem. But it does support Bangalore.

---+ Color Schemes

Color schemes available are red, icy white/blue, and grey.

I understand that red is popular in China.

I'm going with white for now, although I would prefer options such as pastel green, etc. I.e. any color scheme option based on studies of what are least stressful to the eye.


---+ Accidental Keypresses

>unlock phone keys

>When the flip is closed, your phone
>automatically locks the side phone keys after
>a period of inactivity, to prevent accidental
>keypresses (for example, when carrying the
>phone is a purse or pocket). To unlock the
>phone keys, press a key two times in a row
>within four seconds.

Like that won't happen in real life, with my keys jostling against it.

Sunday, September 07, 2008

Want a GUI for linking pages, e.g. in PowerPoint

I twittered: Hyperlinking pages within a PowerPoint presentation: wanted: a graphical link editor, so I can draw arrows...

It's rather hard to express this in twitter's length limit, so let me elaborate:

I'm creating a PowerPoint document, where every slide has a link to a corresponding slide somewhere else in the document. Basically, parallel structure, with crosslinks.

It is a real pain to use PowerPoint's hyperlink feature: "all you have to do is ... drag the shape that the link will live in, write the text, mouse to Insert / Hyperlink, scroll the dialog to the slide you want to link to, fill in the text, and fill in the flyover..." Worse, I was making bidirectional links, so I had to do this twice for evety pair of corresponding slides.

I mean, this is one of the reason's people like WikiWord with CamelCase or [[links]] - wiki makes it easy to create links, even if the formatting is not so great.

But, although this could become a paean to Wiki, it will not: I'd like to make it even easier.

E.g. I would like to be able to draw arrows between slides in something like PowerPoints's Slide Sorter view.

Now, it is easy to see how drawing such arrows would establish the link, but how would you want the link displayed? I suspect that I might like to have a default object, e.g. something like a box labelled "To Corresponding", where the arrow starts; for that matter, a similar box labelled "From Corresponding" where the arrow ends. You would probably have to figure out some placement, either explicit, or added to a stcak of such links in a footer area.

This is not a paean to wiki: indeed, I would like a similar link editring tool for wiki pages.

Wiki links are nice in that they flow natirally with the text.

The links established by such a GUI would probably not be "in text flow" links; they would probably be special buttons at head or foot of page.

Extension to multinode relations are easy to imagine.

Monday, September 01, 2008

Arrow of Time

I've been thinking about the arrow of time, and thermodynamics.

I continue to be uncomfortable with logical positivism, the Copenhagen Doctrine, etc. I still believe that there is a physical reality, even absent the observer.

What if we were actually perceiving multiple universes, multiple histories? As in the many-worlds hypothesis, where reality is constantly forking at every decision point.

"Forking" tends to imply a direction, the arrow of time, and exponential growth.

But what if universes converge as well as diverge? Or, rather, sans the arrow of time, there are multiple states that can be reached by a small change from any given state. If certain of states are considered to be earlier in time, they may be said to converge; if certain are considered to be later in time, they diverge.

What if consciousness, the observer of reality, is actually perceiving many such neighbouring states, averaging them, if you will. Then this averaginging would reflect the most probable neighbouring states. Which is essentially a thermodynamic statement of the arrow of time.

I.e. an observer may be considered to be at a point in this non-arrow-of-time dimensional space. From this point, the observer looks around, and perceives a neighbourhood. of neighbouring states. But normally the observer averages the neighbourhood - and this averaging sucks the observer and observations along in a valley finding, seek the highest probability, manner.

Meta-multi-poster

I really want a meta application, that can accept a "blurb" of text, and post it to multiple places;

* one or more blogs, including this

* twitter

* one or more wiki sites

* email

* newsgroup

twitterings

AndyGlew I can imagine IT saying that the only reasonable way to comply with SOX or legal holds would be to have a keyboard and mouse logger. 25 minutes ago from web

AndyGlew Plus, I may be legally required to record all of my "postings" - including twitterings. 26 minutes ago from web

AndyGlew Twitter: yet another "medium": a single message may need to be posted to one or more twitter, IM, text, email, wikis, etc. 26 minutes ago from web

AndyGlew Why I need a PDA: password archive. (Just forgot my newly created twitter password.) 35 minutes ago from web

AndyGlew @jeriellsworth computer controlled cars will help conserve energy, reduce carbon footprint: you'd driver slower on autopilot, increasing MPG 39 minutes ago from web in reply to jeriellsworth

AndyGlew Shopping for PDA *separate* from cell phone. Back to the future. Few phones are good pen based PDAS. Gave up on AT&T Tilt in disgust. 42 minutes ago from web

twitterings

AndyGlew I can imagine IT saying that the only reasonable way to comply with SOX or legal holds would be to have a keyboard and mouse logger. 25 minutes ago from web

AndyGlew Plus, I may be legally required to record all of my "postings" - including twitterings. 26 minutes ago from web

AndyGlew Twitter: yet another "medium": a single message may need to be posted to one or more twitter, IM, text, email, wikis, etc. 26 minutes ago from web

AndyGlew Why I need a PDA: password archive. (Just forgot my newly created twitter password.) 35 minutes ago from web

AndyGlew @jeriellsworth computer controlled cars will help conserve energy, reduce carbon footprint: you'd driver slower on autopilot, increasing MPG 39 minutes ago from web in reply to jeriellsworth

AndyGlew Shopping for PDA *separate* from cell phone. Back to the future. Few phones are good pen based PDAS. Gave up on AT&T Tilt in disgust. 42 minutes ago from web

Back to the Future

What does it say that I, a committed handheld gadget early adopter, now have only a cheap cell phone? And that I am considering adding a separate, cheap, Palm PDA?

I.e. what does it say about the market for handhelds, PDAs, SmartPhones, etc., that I am considering - heck, actually have - and going back to my cell/PDA configuration of more than a decade ago.

My current cell phone is a Motorola V197. Essentially the cheapest cell phone that i could get, unlocked. It has minimal address book functionality, and that's about it.

I don't currently have a PDA, apart from the limited functionality of my cell phone. I was shopping today, and am probably homing in on the Palm Z22 (99$, "technophobe") or TX (270$, WiFi).

I am, or at least was, an early adopter. I got a cell phone before they were popular or digital - as a modicum of safety for climbing. I purchased the first Palm PDA.

My wife and I agree that our best cellphone ever was our Kyocera SmartPhone. A good enough phone, and a good enough pen-based PDA. I negotiated two job changes using text messaging and the pen on that phone.

But I have been disappointed since then. My most recent disappointment was my AT&T Tilt (HTC 8925). Now, the device formfactor itself was not a disappointment - but its lack of durability was. A minor fall to a carpetted floor broke the screen. Googling reveals that such problems are common, and that the warranty seldom covers such damage. I am reluctant to replace this rather expensive but apparently unreliable device. Moreover, in at leas one way oit is overkill: I never used the slide out keyboard, at least not after the first day. Pens rule!

Which is probaby the problem: I love the pen interface. I hate the mini-keyboards; and I especially hate the pseudo-keyboards of numeric pad phones. But there are almost no cellphones, bar the HTC family, that have a decent pen interface. An always out keyboard wastes precious screen space.

The iPhone is cool, but Steve Jobs apparently has a thing against pens, since his erstwhile rival promoted the Newton.

I naturally gravitate towards Linux devices such as Nokia's web tablets, but, again, they have no pen interface. Nor do any of the numerous Linux ports to PDAs and SmartPhones appear to support pens.

So, this leaves me with non-phone PDAs, mainly PalmOS and Windows Mobile 5 and 6.

Hence my reversion "back to the future": back to carrying a separate phone and PDA. The only saving grace is that this time around, the PDA may have WiFi or GPS. It's a pity that the PDA won;t be able to dial the phone via bluetooth.