Image by Banksy. Behold Apatheism.

On the cab today, my casual remark of the evening traffic was met with a lengthy self confession from the over enthusiastic driver. As if feeling a need to defend himself, he went on for the entirety of the 20 minute ride about how the June 4 Tiannman massacre incident should be regarded, twenty-one years later.

“Leave it to the authorities.” he began.

“To be honest, we all know what that was all about…but these people out there marching on the streets, they don’t have a clue what they’re doing it for.”

The scenery of thickening lunch time crowds hurriedly making their ways flew past outside the speeding car.

“They’re fighting for a lost cause, and are being taken advantage of by low rate, votes-scurrying politicians.” he went on.

“And as a matter of fact, those were troubled times. And under extreme conditions, extreme measures have to be taken. It’s too bad that someone got hurt, but hell, everyone who was involved got hurt one way or the other.” So went his rational analysis on why bloodbaths and human cruelty are tolerable.

I stayed mute.

“If there wasn’t a crackdown, China would become fragmented, just like Russia. People would still be as poor as they have been 20 years ago, so there was no other way. No other way, man.” He said as if reciting the most natural phenomenon of nature…how the hell could this kind of fuzzy logic became regarded as fact? Violent suppression as an effective glue for holding a country together. I started glancing at my watch.

As an effort to answer to his conscience, or for the fear of being pigeonholed as a susceptible backbone-less coward, the cab driver made his verdict:

“When the dust has settled, by which I mean twenty or thirty years later, when the officials related to the event were long dead, there could then be a vindication. Until then, it is impossible for them to step up and admit to their own mistakes…..Hey, can I drop you off round the next corner? It’s a tricky area to stop.”

And within seconds, the vehicle got swallowed in the sea of afternoon traffic. A perfect analogy to the tale of the malleability of human nature and susceptibility to opinions popular to the minute. The most pathetic thing is how human would go to lengths to defend their own apathy and ignorance. The arguments they put up in maintaining that last bit of self-righteousness are often incredibly thin and contradictory in itself. If extreme times called for extreme measures, wouldn’t every involved be victims of the times, and if so, why would there be a need to apologize and vindicate?

“Democracy passes into despotism.” – Plato.

…Democratic self-government does not work, according to Plato, because ordinary people have not learned how to run the ship of state. They are not familiar enough with such things as economics, military strategy, conditions in other countries, or the confusing intricacies of law and ethics. They are also not inclined to acquire such knowledge. The effort and self-discipline required for serious study is not something most people enjoy. In their ignorance they tend to vote for politicians who beguile them with appearances and nebulous talk, and they inevitably find themselves at the mercy of administrations and conditions over which they have no control because they do not understand what is happening around them. They are guided by unreliable emotions more than by careful analysis, and they are lured into adventurous wars and victimized by costly defeats that could have been entirely avoided.

Excerpt from http://faculty.frostburg.edu/phil/forum/PlatoRep.htm

At the end of the day, tyranny, one-party states and dictatorship are not the most evil inventions of human nature. Apathy and Ignorance are. May shameful history whitewashing be condemned.

Google Accessible Search

Paying lip service or fanning out the occasional pity penny is one thing, but going behind the psyche of those in need and offering something solid is another, however trivial it may appear.

Today I got to meet one of the talents behind Google’s Accessible Search, which, to the unknowing eye, is completely identical to its standard counterpart and not worthy of a mention. In fact, that was the initial impression I had. Coming from a world where even visual reality with layers of information thrown on top is not enough, the mantra that “less is more” has long been discarded as a myth and an excuse for laziness. It takes people who have had extraordinary experiences to grasp that simple truth and put it to use when it’s most effective.

Briefly put, the Accessible Search is Google’s search with its rankings tweaked by giving higher relevance to screenreader friendly sites, plus features such as keyboard navigation and ability to strip graphics from search results. And that’s it. No fancy realtime text to braille conversion utilities, no expensive unwieldy equipments. Just a minor algo tweak and some CSS tricks – and the lives of millions made slightly more tolerable by an immense degree. Take a look at Victor Tsaran’s intro to screen readers and you’ll share the pain of what visually impaired users are putting up with when they use the computer.

Undoubtedly, Accessible Search leaves a lot to be desired – like one discussion board user pointed out it didn’t even have the option to invert the contrast, as looking at a black on white screen is akin to staring directly at sunlight. But when I was told that the project was initiated, implemented and deployed entirely out of the compassion a few individuals had towards visual impairment, largely due to their own personal encounters with the matter, all seems forgivable. No, you won’t get much credit for de-styling a search page or making the fonts bigger. And there’re no rewards for the perseverance put into garnering support from countless layers of management for your good cause. At the end of the day, that team of people made their 20% extra time (on top of a 70 hours working week) and did something which made the world a better place, and that’s all that mattered.

Except that was hardly the end. Check out videos of T.V. Raman ( the other core member of the Accessible Search team) and see how he’s bringing about the same changes to the mobile space and more.

Descartes asserted that “we can know our mind more readily than we can know our body”, that “we can use our senses to help us understand the true nature of things, but the senses alone are inadequate to determine truth (since they are often deceived)”. In this case, it is a visually impaired person and a Yahoo exec who urged me to see beyond the screen pixels and into the real needs of those less fortunate.

Extended Reading:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braille
• http://www.w3.org/WAI/
• http://www.wikicfp.com/cfp/servlet/event.showcfp?eventid=9574&copyownerid=2
• http://labs.google.com/accessible/faq.html
• http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/business/04blind.html?_r=1&em=&pagewanted=all
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xS-ju61vOQw&feature=channel

"You're supposed to smile for the camera, dumbass". Image: guardian.co.uk

And if Cameron is indeed fearful that worst times are yet to come, he’s not hiding it. Take a look at the wordings in his first speech – I wonder if it was written with the sole purpose of curbing expectations and evading responsibilities in the first place. For instance:

And I think the service our country needs right now is to face up to our really big challenges, to confront our problems, to take difficult decisions, to lead people through those difficult decisions, so that together we can reach better times ahead.

One of the tasks that we clearly have is to rebuild trust in our political system. Yes that’s about cleaning up expenses, yes that is about reforming parliament, and yes it is about making sure people are in control – and that the politicians are always their servant and never their masters.

But I believe it is also something else. It is about being honest about what government can achieve. Real change is not what government can do on its own – real change is when everyone pulls together, comes together, works together, where we all exercise our responsibilities to ourselves, to our families, to our communities and to others.

If that didn’t sound hope instilling and upbeat, take a count and see how his speech was dominated by words that paint a picture of depression and urgency:

• “difficult” and “difficult decisions” – 4 matches
• “work” – 6 matches
• “challenge”, “hard” – 4 matches
• “problem” – 3 matches
• “rebuild” – 4 matches
• “stable”, “trust”, “strong” – 9 matches

Of course, it’s not Cameron or Clegg’s fault that the country isn’t in more healthy shape. Not that their parties or voters wished to be caught up in the predicament of a coalition government and a pissed poor economy anyways. It’s just that the rate at which events unfolded and the dramatic marriage of opposing forces gave a surreal air to the entire event – or should I say more “real”, because it clearly exposes how easily and quickly what claimed to be core values and fundamental differences can be set aside and forgotten, when it comes to a power struggle that decides who runs the parliament of a country.

Images of 10 Downing Street always remind me of a particular scene and a particular era. An era that in retrospect started off just as horribly but people were buying into a bubble and thus optimistic and cheerful. Now compare this speech excerpt with Cameron’s and try not to come to the conclusion that one of these speakers were under the influence of certain reality bending substances during the delivery:

“It’s been a great year for British music,” said Blair. “A year of creativity, vitality, energy. British bands storming the charts. British music back once again in its right place, at the top of the world. And at least part of the reason for that has been the inspiration that today’s bands can draw from those that have gone before. Bands in my generation like The Beatles and The Stones and The Kinks. Of a later generation: The Clash, The Smiths, The Stone Roses…”

Even though that was a speech made at the 1996 Brit Awards and not upon taking residence at Downing Street, once can’t help but reflect in awe how the circumstances have deteriorated. Compared to then, UK in the 2010 appears more like a torn apart war zone struggling to maintain its identity. And no-one, not even the guys at the NME, can focus on the music alone and not get distracted by the prevailing cries of distress and desperation.

Tony Blair and The Chief in 1997. Image: dailymail.co.uk

image: http://ciberprensa.com/clones-de-twitter/

Not really been a fan of copycat sites like the Sina Microblog, considering how shamelessly ideas and features were lifted without any credit. Hell, even its yet-to-be-made-public API set is a lost syntactic twin brother of Twitter’s.

Given the ubiquity of the service in this part of the world (due to good marketing and ignorance of the masses nonetheless) though, it’s hard to avoid hearing about it every now and then.

To that end, this PHP code snippet (tested to work) might be handy sometime:


$ch = curl_init();
// login

curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, 'https://login.sina.com.cn/sso/login.php');
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, 'username=xxxxxx&password=yyyy&returntype=TEXT');
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
$store = curl_exec ($ch);

// update status

curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, 'http://t.sina.com.cn/mblog/publish.php');
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, 'content=test microblog update!');
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_REFERER,'http://t.sina.com.cn/');
$store = curl_exec ($ch);


On the Narita Express, Tokyo. 1st Oct 2004.

RIP…and I love you. That’s all I can think of saying.

Documentary films have therefore evolved from the hardcore BBC style where authenticity and university professors take center stage to the makeshift blockbuster thrillers they have become. While effective in grabbing headlines and generating controversy, one sometimes can’t help but think whether the tradeoffs are worthwhile. Tension and drama are no doubt effective emotion provoking vehicles, but when the dosage gets too frequent, fatigue and detachment can kick in just as quickly. As easy as that is to grasp, film distributors have never been so keen on pushing the noise stirring documentary race to more ridiculous heights.

The argument is not against producing good quality documentary films that are both thought-provoking and dare I say – entertaining. Few would think that Ric O’Barry’s compassion towards dolphins was an excuse for putting night vision scenes in The Cove. When executed appropriately, the tension helps to put the viewer in the epicenter of the depicted event and make him as involved in the subject matter as the film makers themselves.

However, the abundance of subpar documentary films relegating to shock and gore as cheap marketing tricks have inflicted enough damage on the genre already, making viewers and critics much more skeptical and “rational” than before. On the other hand, right wing critics with a self-proclaimed sense of responsibility to balance the opinions of the world would pour out lengthy counter-arguments with the sole purpose of muddling the original message of the documentary film makers and showcasing their own moral objectivity. Healthy, serious debate is much needed as it teaches us not to accept everything at face value, but most of the ones I came across were merely pseudo arguments with a rational disguise. At the end of the day, this deranged phenomenon causes a set back as confused and less-knowledgeable viewers at large become less sure of what to believe in anymore.

Not all film makers are able to recruit ILM expertise for camera hiding advices and unmanned aircrafts constructions. From The Cove.

So that’s that – documentary film makers should stop adhering to the Moore formula as their impacts are being increasingly watered-down and no meagre budget boosts would help.

Check out this vid to get a taste:

It took only one look from a veteran objective-c developer colleague to diagnose the problem – UINavigationController was waiting for a single thread to finish rendering all 60 images before sliding in the ScrollView. “NSInvocationOperation is your answer“, he said.

And indeed it was, the perceived performance sky rocketed ten folds after the process of initializing UIImages was wrapped in an NSOperation. Here’s the difference:

And the code change was as follows:

Basically, all that was required was to move the necessary rendering logic to a separate method, create instances of NSOperations with selectors set to the method, and add those NSOperations into the NSOperationQueue. The Queue would schedule the firing of these operations and there wouldn’t be any hint of sluggishness at the UI. Thread programming 101. Duh.

Extended Reading:

• http://developer.apple.com/cocoa/managingconcurrency.html

WTEFF?

So I was recently asked of my opinion on EFF’s “All Your Apps Are Belong To Apple” posting which has sparked some discussions for a day or two.

My reactions? Hardly surprised, really. In fact, although the arguments presented appear reasonable, the article has a serious air of deja-vu to it that provokes more doldrum rather than rage upon Apple followers.  Every few months, the old statement of “Apple treating its customers unfairly” would get recycled time and again. A few such litigation came to mind immediately:

• “Apple should open up the iPod for sync-ing with other music formats.”
• “Apple should allow songs purchased from iTunes store to be playable on other mp3 players.”
• “Apple should allow Mac OS X to be installed on regular PCs.”
• “Apple should allow consumers to jailbreak the iPhone because they paid for the device and could do anything to it as they pleased.”
• “Apple should allow people to replace the batteries on their Macbooks/iPhones.”

Funny thing is, these never amount to anything substantial (like a court order for Apple to change its policies). Pundits would complain as much as they could, but every argument raised against the company would almost certainly be silenced by a larger group of supporters in the end. Some dismiss this as mere fanboyism, fused by leagues of blindly loyal geeks prepared to accept any offerings or services that came out of 1st Infinite Loop without ever questioning the fairness and sanity of it all.

When you think about it, this explanation doesn’t really hold. With more than 220 million iPods, 57m iPhones, 12m Macs (2009) sold, the installation base is huge and reaches much further than tech-heads and nerds. Is the majority of people in this large user base simply oblivious to the various restrictions imposed by Cupertino then? Why are people willing to pay a premium in exchange of Apple services or products that are apparently ridded with limitations? Flashy marketing and peer pressure alone doing the magic? Obviously not.

At the end of the day, it’s really down to the outstanding user experience offered by Apple products and services in general. Ever since 1977, when Steve Jobs decided he would hand-polish the plastic cases of Apple ][ machines with sand paper to "make the corners smoother to the touch", the company has been embarking on a never-ending mission of striving to produce "unparalleled user experiences" in everything they do or make. Even when that meant going against the entire computer industry and alienating their loyal user base by imposing strict EULAs or removing features that were popular amongst users.

Cases in point - getting rid of floppy drives in iMacs and 1394 ports on iPods/Macs, killing the iPod mini, purging more than 5000 mild-sex oriented apps from AppStore overnight, suing third-party accessories makers, enforcing non-removable batteries on Macbooks and iPhones, forgoing physical keyboards on iPhones…in other words, imposing a water-tight system and employing draconian measures that fiercely go against anyone or anything daring to stand in its path of evolution.

Openness comes with a price.

Each of these steps created uproars and distress upon introduction, but when the dust has settled, favorable opinions would come sifting through. The controversial change brought about by Apple would become a de-facto standard, and pretty soon, competitors who ridiculed the change initially would begin to jump on the bandwagon and roll out inferior copycat products/services to cash in.

So…back to the point. Does this 30 year old track record render the points EFF highlighted in the iPhone Development Program License Agreement justifiable? That remains to be seen, but knowing that control-freak motif behind the company might make those restrictions more reasonable:

• App Store Only: this is the only way Apple can make sure that apps available for the iPhone are reviewed and up to a certain standard, and could be revoked anytime if need be.
• Ban on Reverse Engineering: duh. This is common sense right? Apple develops and owns the iPhone OS and its core apps, and need to protect its investment one way or another.
• No Tinkering with Any Apple Products: same as the App-Store-only sentiment.
• Kill Your App Any Time: this is the only way to ensure crap apps like I’m Rich and porn/malicious apps can be removed at anytime.

Consumers associate everything they see on the iPhone with the Apple brand, so it is of no surprise that the company does everything to protect its decades-old reputation.

Having said that, there always follow the question of whether Apple Inc is “right”, because many believe that the companies in the industry should play a part in “fostering innovation” by “promoting openness and interoperability”. After all, M$ got her share of negative opinions by being a monopolistic goliath that stifle innovation in return for cash. Shouldn’t Apple Inc be subject to the same level of scrutiny?

No matter how rosy you paint a picture, it's no use if we'll still stuck on the other side of the wall.

In my opinion, that can’t be answered by anyone until the legacy of Apple Inc, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and all other “monopolistic” companies are history and the market has entered a new phase. Consider J2ME (arguably the predecessor of Android) – a standard that was backed by all major software/hardware companies, was totally open but yet was also totally chaotic and totally failed to be grasped by consumers at all. Yes, the openness of J2ME was great for the tech crowd and manufacturers. But the side effect was fragmentation and incoherence. At the end of the day,  openness became the very thing that killed the market it wanted to create in the first place, and when the market is gone, so are your promises for innovation. All efforts became futile.

I think the day we should start worrying is the day when it comes to a point Apple Inc became the only choice available, much like how M$ Office and IE stipulated the markets back then. Until then, as a consumer and developer, I’d still be thrilled by what the iPhone platform has to offer.

p.s. Come to think of it, I should have answered this question simply with “Hey, the success of the AppStore meant that I could now throw Hadokens against Blanka on the bus!” Now that’s an argument.

Extended Reading:

• http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/archives/2008/03/apples_design_p.html – Apple’s design process
• http://www.businessinsider.com/the-case-against-apple-2009-8
• http://techcrunch.com/2009/07/27/apple-yanks-the-cord-on-gv-mobile-is-it-trying-to-kill-google-voice-on-the-iphone/
• http://www.wired.com/gadgets/wireless/magazine/16-02/ff_iphone?currentPage=all – “The Untold Story: How the iPhone Blew Up the Wireless Industry”
• http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/5939600/steve_jobs_the_rolling_stone_interview
• http://thenextweb.com/mobile/2010/03/15/android-market-breaks-250-million-downloads-989-free-apps/

Developing native iPhone apps can be fun, as SDK 3.0 offers tons of APIs and options that makes leveraging of features like location detection, animation and embedded maps in your apps effortless.

Then again, developing native iPhone apps can be a major pain, as the restrictions imposed by the SDK can be so strict that you need to go to lengths to create something simple.

This sharing aims to quickly cover the basics (iphone OS, objective-c, UIKit elements, ViewControllers). You’ll also be able to see what it takes to add features like Animation, Network Connectivity, JSON parsing and iPhone specific features such as Shake/Orientation Change/Gestures Detection to an app.