Technology

Thank God for the Internet

Today I had one of those “Thank God for the Internet!” moments. Maxim, while going through his pile of toys, found my old Casio watch.

Surprisingly, the battery was still running, the time was accurate, and even the display light was working. He played with the watch for a few minutes, clicking all buttons, checking the light in the dark, and doing all sorts of things kids do to old watches.

Nobody knows how, but he managed to setup an hourly time signal. It’s that annoying little beep that sounds every hour on the hour. Needless to say, the user interface is far from perfect and it is practically impossible to figure it out without a manual. So here comes my “Thank God for the Internet!” moment.

Backside of the watch contained all the information that I needed:

Casio 1572 A168 Stainless Steel Back Water Resistant Made In China

The manuals are online and the instructions to disable Hourly Time Signal are straight forward. I’m posting them here in case my grandkids will find this watch and the battery will still be going.

Group messaging is the next big thing

Download Squad suggests that group messaging is going to be the next big thing in mobile communications:

The next big thing in mobile communications seems to be group messaging, and that’s no real surprise. If we take a look at the currently entrenched communication platforms, not many of them do more than messaging one-to-one or one-to-a-few well. Sure you can have group chats using traditional IM protocols, but they are inherently transitory.

I have to agree with them somewhat. I don’t know if that’s necessarily going to be the next big thing or if it will be big at all, but it is something that is needed. Today. By many people.

Living in Cyprus, a rather small country with not many ties to technology, I am often much behind the needs of my friends from more populated areas. There is usually a three to five year gap between the time when my American and English friends form a new communication need, and the time when I do so. And more often than not, this gap is enough for a good solution to the problem exist before I even have the actual problem.

With group messaging it is different. At least in the last part. I need it now. Yesterday even. And there is nothing uniform, free, and convenient. Email and Skype are the two tools I use for those purposes the most right now. But neither of them, no together, they solve the problem. They are good enough for when I am (as well as other group members) are online and at their computers. But more and more often we really need a solution that bridges mobiles and desktops.

Features that I personally need are:

cross-platform client (Linux/Windows/Apple desktop, Android/iPhone/Blackberry mobiles, and also web)
server-side history with synchronization
offline messages (if the participant is offline, you should still be able to send the message and he should receive it when he comes online)
persistent groups (I don’t want to redefine same groups over and over by adding individual members to chat)
persistent chats (same chat can continue for days or weeks, while there can be more than one chat in progress with the same group, so archiving has to be smart)
UTF-8 and multilingual support
attachments and web friendliness (thumbnails for pictures and videos, highlighted URLs and email addresses, etc)
basic styling (mostly for quotes and code snippets)
ideally, integration with Google/Facebook/Twitter/Oauth or something else that would save me the trouble of yet another registration, pair of credentials, and all the hard work for contact/group building.

Debugging with git bisect

Via Sebastian Bergmann’s blog I’ve learned about git bisect and how it can used for debugging. Sebastian demonstrates the functionality together with PHPUnit. I am a git newbie, so that was quite interesting for me.

git bisect can be used to find the change that introduced a bug. It does so by performing a binary search on the list of commits between a known good and a known bad state of the repository. A tool such as PHPUnit can be invoked at each step of the binary search to check whether or not the current state is broken.

Here is a shortcut on how to actually use it:

$ git bisect start
$ git bisect good someVersion
$ git bisect bad someOtherVersion
$ git bisect run someCommand -with SomeArgument

There are, of course, more resources online covering the feature. I found this section of the Git Community Book helpful. Hopefully, I’ll remember about it when I actually need it.

Discussions in Google Docs

Google introduced discussions in Google Docs. A very useful feature, no doubt.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zmOYziFKZw]

After seeing a social network implemented within Dropbox, I wonder how much time it will take to turn this feature into the next Twitter. Or Facebook.

What your email provider says about you

Hunch Blog runs a rather massive statistical study of users of different email providers – Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, and AOL. I’ll just copy the snapshot of findings here for my own quick references. But you, you should have a look at the original article.

AOL users are most likely to be overweight women ages 35-64 who have a high school diploma and are spiritual, but not religious. They tend to be politically middle of the road, in a relationship of 10+ years, and have children. AOL users live in the suburbs and haven’t traveled outside their own country. Family is their first priority. AOL users mostly read magazines, have a desktop computer, listen to the radio, and watch TV on 1-3 DVRs in their home. At home, they lounge around in sweats. AOL users are optimistic extroverts who prefer sweet snacks and like working on a team.

Gmail users are most likely to be thin young men ages 18-34 who are college-educated and not religious. Like other young Hunch users, they tend to be politically liberal, single (and ready to mingle), and childless. Gmail users live in cities and have traveled to five or more countries. They’re career-focused and plugged in — they mostly read blogs, have an iPhone and laptop, and listen to music via MP3s and computers (but they don’t have a DVR). At home, they lounge around in a t-shirt and jeans. Gmail users prefer salty snacks and are introverted and entrepreneurial. They are optimistic or pessimistic, depending on the situation.

Hotmail users are most likely to be young women of average build ages 18-34 (and younger) who have a high school diploma and are not religious. They tend to be politically middle of the road, single, and childless. Hotmail users live in the suburbs, perhaps still with their parents, and have traveled to up to five countries. They mostly read magazines and contemporary fiction, have a laptop, and listen to music via MP3s and computers (but they don’t have a DVR). At home, Hotmail users lounge around in a t-shirt and jeans. They’re introverts who prefer sweet snacks and like working on a team. They consider themselves more pessimistic, but sometimes it depends on the situation.

Yahoo! users are most likely to be overweight women ages 18-49 who have a high school diploma and are spiritual, but not religious. They tend to be politically middle of the road, in a relationship of 1-5 years, and have children. Yahoo! users live in the suburbs or in rural areas and haven’t traveled outside their own country. Family is their first priority. They mostly read magazines, are almost equally likely to have a laptop or desktop computer, listen to the radio and cds, and watch TV on 1-2 DVRs in their home. At home, Yahoo! users lounge around in pajamas. They’re extroverts who prefer sweet snacks and like working on a team. Yahoo! users are optimistic or pessimistic, depending on the situation.