Since google changed their service agreement on google apps. I noticed the mobile exchange sync on my iPhone is no longer working. At first, i thought the google mail service is down, and it wasn’t fixed for few hours. Therefore, I tried to see if the service agreement change affected the setting.
Bingo, google reset the mobile sync option to inactivate. All you need to do it’s go to google apps administration page(you can manage the domain if you are the admin for the google apps) and choose Setting => Mobile => Check “Enable Google sync” (as the image below)
Wait for 10 – 30 minutes, disconnect from internet (by switch “airport mode” on and off or reboot your iPhone). You will get ur push mail back. Time to send the emails you wasn’t able to send!
iPod have a lot of limitations when you want to covert your videos into iPhones or iPods. iPad doesn’t.
Thanks to the A4 Chipset. iPad can decode more complicated videos.
THE MOST IMPORTANT THING: Change the dimensions to 1280 x720 HD (that’s 720P) when you encode it in H.264 .
The format iPad accepts
H.264 video up to 720p, 30 frames per second, Main Profile level 3.1 with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats;
MPEG-4 video, up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats;
Motion JPEG (M-JPEG) up to 35 Mbps, 1280 by 720 pixels, 30 frames per second, audio in ulaw, PCM stereo audio in .avi file format
Basically if you are using QuickTime 7 ( with / without x264 encoder),
File=> Export
When you see the window below => Options
in Video section => Size
Here is the most important part, Change the dimensions to 1280 x720 HD (which is 720P that iPad support)
As you can see, Frame reordering is supported on iPad.
Yes, You might say, “ya ya ya… another apple fan boy is talking licking Apple’s ass”. Maybe? Maybe not? I have to admit. At first, I dont think i will get an iPad. I was thinking. No webcam? 3G/wifi model is $130 more than the wifi version? I am not getting it.
As time goes by, I realized i was missing the point. The reason i need an iPad it’s not b/c it can go on web, check email, use apps. I can do all of the above on my laptop or iPhone.
The reasons i think it’s revolution is because I can read books on it, with COLOR.
I was amazed when i saw the Amazon kindle before. It’s slim and light, and the e-ink looks nice and comfortable for the eyes, but i never bought it. Why? It’s because, first, it’s not in color. I am a designer, and I love reading book with a lot of nice illustration or photos. Most of the design/technology book are full of photos, charts. Amazon and SONY sticks with e-ink and they only get some grey-scale images which is not really ideal for design and technology books (or even any normal non-fiction book we are reading today.)
User interface is another problem for kindle and SONY reader. Don’t get me wrong. The next and pervious buttons are looking useful on kindle, but other than that, the user interface is just what we expected in DOS era. (If you used computer long enough, you will know what i meant). It might not be bad for fiction books, but it’s really bad for reference books. We want to quick search and find the page we are looking for, access the content quickly.
Not only the color screen, the ability of handling 3D objects and smooth graphic/video playback are the essential points to make iPad stands out in digital reading. Oh, did i mention now you can finally carry all the books with you when you are in the move?
We have problem to carry the design/technology books with us because they are usually big and heavy. Carrying one is heavy enough, and i am not gonna even mentioned about the advantage wen you move to another place. Last time I moved from upstate New York to New york city. Half of the boxes i mailed were books. They are heavy and taking a lot of space. They are not good for moving or storage in a small room in NYC.
iPad provides a new platform for us to re-think and re-define “a book”. What’s a book? What kind of content can be put on a book? How are we going to carry a book? How is the experience we have with a book. How can i keep my book looks clean and nice? What if i lost my book? The answer you have now might not be the same after we are using iPad.
Therefore, I think today is a big day in history. Human has been reading for centuries. A new era for reading is coming. I wish this is a good start. No matter iPad will be the most successful reading device or not. I think it changes the way we read, and the we as human are moving forward.
After figured out the worst part of my thesis, the programming, I began to work on overall branding and user interaction design. Since i will have a series of tutorial/promotional videos. I spent almost 16 workings hours on this branding video. It can be used on all beginning of every video.
This video sums up the concept of my thesis project. SiftU aggregates all the status, photo, video you uploaded to private online services into one personal database. You can search and look back your life, and learn more about yourself. Beta coming soon. Stay tune.
Background music // Lions, “The search is over.” Hand Drawing Handy Icons // Webdesigner Depot
Since my professor is gonna kill me if i don’t have my exhibition plan submitted to the symposium community. I designed the exhibition space as follow. I am not sure how realistic can be since it require a lot of $$ and equipment.
The panel on the left will be playing promotional/tutorial video to explain the project. The mini + LCD on the right is the demo machine, so people can really plan with the platform.
In order to have this plan working, I will need 1 x 40″+ LCD screen, 1 x 24″ LCD screen, 2 mac mini, and keyboard+mouse.
A 10 feet wide x 6 feet tall place will be needed for the installation.
I always like to make something beautiful and useful, and I believe it’s my pleasure to make this world a better place (to live or to enjoy). Since I was in Parsons, I have been brewing some ideas with this goal without realized it. In the first semester, I designed a talent database called “Genius Finder”. It’s a human resource database for local/non-profit/educational organization. The goal is to help them utilize the talents within the community (usually they don’t have a good amount of money to spend), so they can have the things done with better result.
Second semester in Parsons, I was building a Flash application that provides a dynamic multi-lingual support touch panel system for hotel guest services, named “ServeSmart”. It is intended to help international travelers overcome language barriers and enrich their hotel experience.
In summer 2009, before the beginning of the semester, while I was jogging, an idea came to my head. Online content sharing that we do everyday might actually helps long distance relationship. The most important thing in romantic relationship is sharing, sharing the time together and sharing the life experience together. If people are in long distance relationship, the first thing they got hit might be lack of “sharing”. Since they r not physically together, it will be hard to know what the other is doing and what kind of environment/situation he is dealing with. The only way s/he gets a sense of what the other doing is by writing or talking to each other. The code for this project is “Stringed”.
Project “String” is a platform that two people must sign up an account together. The joint account will provide a space for them to combine all the content they share online. (Status, photo, video, even restaurant review). They can see all the information in a timeline base page. There is something interesting that brought up by my thesis studio professor David Carroll. He mentioned the thing he will be interested to see in this platform is the crossed points of two people’s life. Couples share their time together to have some life experience together.
I began researching and making rapid prototype to ensure I am technically capable to execute this project, e.g., Facebook connect, twitter API implantation, flickr API implantation. While I was doing research on how to improve long distance relationship with the platform I am thinking to build, some reactions from my friends actually make me doubt about the project. They were talking about maybe I should just make a online sex simulated platform with physical computing knowledge built in. That will significantly improve the long distance relationship.
Although they were joking about it, I began to doubt if this is what people really need for their relationship? Exposing information about themselves to their love one is “sharing”, but in another way, that’s what we call “Spy”. I began to question myself if i will be willing to share all the “private content I share/upload to online services to the person i like.
Am i really interested to improve people’s romantic relationship? Am I trying to do the job that cupid or God suppose to do? Do I even believe in long distance relationship? I cleared my head and suddenly, I realized what I really interesting here is building a database which contains all the information that I share online. This is the turning point of my thesis, from improving romantic relationship to improve the understanding myself through the achievement of online sharing content. Therefore another code was born which is “IN” (Intersections).
In early stage of “IN” is marketed and positioned as an online diary platform which not only replaces the existing old traditional hand-written, paper bounded diary. It also tries to use the advantage of technology, so people can sort and search the information in their online diary. Some Design prototypes were made.
The platform was designed browsed with latest update and searched by keyword, geo-location and time. The bonus feature here is to compare the timeline with your friend. Matching by the approx. geo-location and time from the content, the platform will calculate all the crossed point from those two people. It’s more like shared memory in a glance. This feature was adapted from the pervious project “Stringed”.
The reason “IN” is marketed and positioned as an online diary platform in early stage was because the feedback from the thesis studio. People in the class think it’s an online diary. At the same time, I questioned myself if this is really an online diary, and am I trying to make an online diary for myself? After I have thought about this question carefully, I know what I am not making a online diary platform since I don’t even write diary. My goal here is to archive the information/status I share online in daily life. I can use this archived information to know myself better.
The reason “IN” is marketed and positioned as an online diary platform in early stage was because the feedback from the thesis studio. People in the class think it’s a online diary. At the same time, i questioned myself if this is really a online diary, and am i trying to make a online diary for myself? After i have thought about this question carefully, I know what i am not making a online diary platform since i dont even write diary. My goal here is to archive the information/status I share online in daily life. I can use these archived information to know myself better.
IIn the past, we all have control of the content we share or keep in our life. You diary will not disappear or destroyed unless your house is on fire or you chose to do it. When micro-blogging and status update slowly replace our habit from document daily life in a diary. We have lost the right to control the content we shared.
Facebook owns you status update on Facebook. They have rights to delete it anytime and there is nothing you can do. Is it true? Sadly, it’s a “yes”. I have been using Facebook since it was born in 2007, and last entry I can get back from the server using Facebook API is August 2008. Where are the statuses before August 2008? All the memory and status i shared was gone. It’s very depressed to me, a person who deeply believes digital media can helps us to archive the memory that won’t fade out like traditional media.
Now, you might ask, you never thought of this problem might accrue, and you might not even notice it. That’s because there is no way you can search your status archived on Facebook. There is no way you can search the status you shared on twitter. They are good at providing your recent status to the world or your friend, but there is no ways you can look back at your life and see what you have shared. All you can do is hitting that “More” button that if you clicks 200 times you might see the status you shared 3 months ago.
Private companies controlled our data. They use the content we share to know about us. When they know about us than us. Is there nothing we can do with it?
Of course, there is always something we can do about it. It will be solved by my thesis project. The code for this project is “IN”(in my life) at this point. As I finally positioned the direction of the thesis, I am also researching the possible way to visualize the information on this platform. I was inspired by the diagonal prospective to show the content. It gives the depth of the time when we display items in order on a diagonal timeline. First I was inspired by the Time Machine commercial & Timeline 3D software.
I dont like people smoking since i was young, and i know it kills and smells bad. Therefore, i chose this topic and hope it might help people to realize what smoking has done to them and quit smoking to “die another day”. I remix the background music. It’s sung by Madonna.
I was designing my landing page for SiftU. Since the website is not working yet, i would like people to get the first hand message about the website, so i can get enough beta tester when the site is launched.
Traditionally, website will ask the visitors to leave their email address here. It will involve with tons of annoying PHP email list and mess email admin pages. Thanks for the modern technology and Twitter. We can simply put on a follow me on twitter icon. People can click and follow us easily. It reduced the chance to become junk emails and make the sign up process easier.
Twiiter logo is tricky. They didn’t came out a good design following me on twiiter icon officially. They didn’t even provide media kit for branding. I googled the twitter logos, and didn’t find something I like. They are 3D, and i dont think they match the style of the website. Therefore, I did extended research on the icons.
Luckily, I found these nice designed icons. You can download directly from HERE or visited Mark Thoburn’s blog. It’s free and awesome. (even with Original PSD).
Lots of Designers use Mac as their work machine, and lots of designers are a bit clean freak like me. Therefore, it’s really hard to swallow when Microsoft try to put an useless “Microsoft User Data” Folder in Documents Folder.(Usually it’s where we put our projects in).
Therefore, today I decided to research for the solution on this. (to fix this annoying problem since years ago)
This is the window you usually see when you have Microsoft 2008 or 2004 installed. The “Microsoft User Data” Folder will always be there no matter how many times you have removed it. It will be automatically recreated every time you open an Microsoft product on your mac. It’s VERY VERY annoying.
Thankfully, this is the solution. Simply move “Microsoft User Data” folder from “Documents” to Users/ (YOUR USER NAME)/Library/Preferences/
DONE!! You will never see that annoying folder again in your Documents Folder. Thank god. :p
I was amazed when i saw the Amazon kindle before. It’s slim and light, and the e-ink looks nice and comfortable for the eyes, but i never bought it. Why? It’s because, first, it’s not in color. I am a designer, and I love reading book with a lot of nice illustration or photos. Most of the design/technology book are full of photos, charts. Amazon and SONY sticks with e-ink and they only get some grey-scale images which is not really ideal for design and technology books (or even any normal non-fiction book we are reading today.)
We have problem to carry the design/technology books with us because they are usually big and heavy. Carrying one is heavy enough, and i am not gonna even mentioned about the advantage wen you move to another place. Last time I moved from upstate New York to New york city. Half of the boxes i mailed were books. They are heavy and taking a lot of space. They are not good for moving or storage in a small room in NYC.
I began researching and making rapid prototype to ensure I am technically capable to execute this project, e.g., Facebook connect, twitter API implantation, flickr API implantation. While I was doing research on how to improve long distance relationship with the platform I am thinking to build, some reactions from my friends actually make me doubt about the project. They were talking about maybe I should just make a online sex simulated platform with physical computing knowledge built in. That will significantly improve the long distance relationship.
In early stage of “IN” is marketed and positioned as an online diary platform which not only replaces the existing old traditional hand-written, paper bounded diary. It also tries to use the advantage of technology, so people can sort and search the information in their online diary. Some Design prototypes were made.
