Phil McKinney and Anne in the Halo Room

2 weeks ago I was invited to participate in a discussion with HP’s CTO, Phil McKinney, about Natural User Interfaces(NUI). As Phil is a very busy person, the discussion was held via HP’s cutting-edge video conference technology, Halo. Why cutting edge? It is because I felt as though Phil was sitting on the same meeting table as me in real-time. I could even see what Phil was sketching on a paper clearly.
 

Richness vs Reach/Mobility

Above, we see a sketch that Phil drew to start off his discussion. This is a graph showing the state of technology right now in the balance between Richness (user experience, high definition, sound quality, etc) and Reach/Mobility (reaching out and making technology available to more markets). For example, devices like televisions are high in Richness but low in Reach/Mobility.

The line slanting downwards shows the state of technology for the various products at the moment. Unfortunately, there is a void in the middle of products that are high in mobility with average richness. Not many products are able to balance this well while maintaining usability. There is also the “Laws of Physics” that is preventing technologies like a 75″ TV fitting into your pocket.

The challenge faced by most technology players right now is:
1) Filling the void
2) Getting off and above the line

HP’s strategy for achieving (2) is by exploiting Touch technology to increase the Reach of PCs to untapped markets. Currently, 80% of the market has never owned a PC due to literacy barriers. Another reason for this is the intimidation with using a keyboard and mouse. Some of us might find it difficult to understand why using a mouse/keyboard may be intimidating but if you look at it, there are people around us even in developed nations (e.g: the elder generation) who are afraid of performing mouse clicks in fear of what unintended actions may be triggered on the PC.
 

Why Touch?
Apart from there being non-gimmicky uses for Touch technology, it is a form of interaction which we have been using in our everyday lives – for example, the ATM machine. The learning curve for Touch technology is also less steep as users has one lesser step of learning how to use a new device.
 

Challenges faced with Touch
HP’s motivation for using Touch is to drive the ease of use of new technologies by designing devices that adopt to users. The very first question that popped into my head was:

“There are so many different type of uses around the world with different levels of literacy. Wouldn’t HP have to design many different devices for different communities?”
 

Sharings from the lab
Phil shared some research findings in HP’s labs. They tested touch with 2700 users in homes of mixed literacy and discovered that people touch devices differently based on where they grew up.

Here are some of the examples Phil mentioned:
- Some used a whole hand, their thumb or items like an eraser and pencil
- Pulling both sides of an image to enlarge an image
- Grabbing one corner to enlarge the image
- When grabbing one corner and realizing the image follows the hand, the user shakes his hand rigorously as though he was trying to shake it off

From all this research they were able to map out which set of gestures were natural for the different types of users. Based on the first few gestures used by the user, the computer will be able to tell which set of gestures to load for the rest of the user’s interactions. A similar analogy would be how users would select a language on the computer before your mobile phone loads up in the appropriate language.

Do note that this is just for research and not all gesture sets will be going into the final product.
 

Moving into emerging markets
Lastly, I was wondering how HP plans to break into emerging markets where there are a large number of non-PC owners. Due to cost and infrastructure issues, current PCs are too expensive for people to own in these countries. E.g: In Africa, the cost of one month of broadband is equal to 14 months of their salary).

Instead of focusing on bringing existing PCs into emerging markets, HP is focusing on building basic PCs with the right technologies to meet their needs. They are currently experimenting with concept PCs in some of these markets.
 

For a later post..
Phil did send me quite a bit of information on their work on emerging markets and also segments of the community with special needs. However, as this post is getting lengthy, I will keep it for another day.
 

Concluding words
From the session, I could tell that most of the players in the PC market are jumping into the bandwagon of natural user interfaces. There are lots of other cool technologies HP is experimenting with out there like gaze, motion and tactile feedback. However, most of these are still just “gimmick”s and not at a stage where it can be integrated into HP’s products. HP went with Touch as it is found to be the most practical and usable of them all.

Personally, I can’t wait to see what technologies will come into our computers 5 years down the road! (Maybe some cool holography/Augmented Reality stuff). On the other hand, I’m glad that we are not flooded with useless tech filled with only “gimmicks” for novelty.

P.S: Oh yes! Before I forget, many thanks to the Amelia and Calvin from Waggener Edstrom for giving me this opportunity to be in a discussion with Phil.

Alright! After one month+ of not writing, I’m sure I need to give you guys an explanation for my disappearance on what I’ve been up to. To avoid this article becoming length and boring, I’ll do very very quick point forms.

1) Internship at Waggener Edstrom ends

I spent my term break interning at Waggener Edstrom’s Studio D where I was doing mostly Social Media Marketing and Digital PR. For those of you who are unfamiliar with buzz words, it is planning and conceptualizing digital campaigns for clients to tell the right stories and experiences to the customers. In more simple terms, I have a license to Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Twitter all day long

It was a very interesting experience for me because my life activities have been turned over. What do I mean by turned over?

In the past:
During work: Code and develop stuff
After work: Read up on marketing strategies, plan campaigns and brainstorm creative ideas for own projects

At WE:
During work: Read up on marketing strategies, plan campaigns and brainstorm of creative ideas for clients
After work: Code and build my own fun stuff

…and I have to admit I really like the switch in environment. A great company that knows how to recognize and value great talents

Would really like to thank Melvin for pulling me into the company and exposing me to the PR industry.

The Studio D team and Jen Houston during her visit to WE Singapore
For more personal pictures with the team, check my Facebook ^_~

2) Final Year Project and Startup
It is official now! After a few weeks of indecisiveness and running through various phases of paperwork, I will be working on my own proposed Final Year Project at NUS. I know it is quite a huge risk to take but I believe it is worth a try.

Although the focus still needs refinement, it’ll be about measuring the diffusion of “Word of Mouth” marketing both quantitative and qualitatively on Social Networks. My team and I will be building a youth retail site with an environment that would trigger “Word of Mouth” marketing (hopefully). We will then measure the flow of information about products/brands from one user to another and how recipients act on this information. The platforms we plan to integrate with the site are Facebook and Twitter. This retail site will also be the startup I’m currently working on.

Will update as more things are finalized ^_~.
 

3) Halo Session with HP’s CTO – Phil McKinney
This Friday I’ll be waking up in the wee hours of the morning (okay its not that bad! just really early for a morning person like me) to attend a video conference at HP’s office with HP’s CTO, Phil McKinney. It will be a roundtable discussion using HP’s Halo technology .

I’m really excited about this event as the topic we will be discussing is Natural User Interfaces! What is Natural User Interfaces (NUI)? In short, it is interfaces that are easy to learn through experience. To put it simply, they are interfaces designed so well that you don’t have to read the manual to learn how to use the device. Unfortunately the only experience I have with NUI is my little, amateur-ish, out of the garage interactive kitchen table. Would be really interesting to hear how the pros go about the innovation process.

Alright that’s about it! Feel free to e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, drop comment if there are any questions you would like me to ask during the discussion with Phil. I know some of you are real experts in this area judging from the e-mails I got on the touch table in the past.

Have a good half week! ^_~

The huge Samsung Unpacked Billboard on Orchard Road

This week I was invited to the regional launch of the latest addition to the Samsung family – the Samsung Jet! It was a very classy (and purple) event that was sleek and funky at the same time. The decorations, venue, execution and FOOD was utterly superb! I believe Samsung spent a HUGE fortune on this event especially with it being held concurrently in Dubai and London.

My only picture of the interior (sorry was too obsessed with phone) – Media Registration Counter

The event was held at the Changi Exhibition Centre which as DK says, is out in the middle of nowhere. Thankfully they provided us with a shuttle service from City Hall to the venue, else I’d have given up trying to get my forgetful self there.

The presentation was truly a class of its own having the presenter interact with the projected animations rather than pressing clicks / mouse buttons to go through traditional presentation slides. I’m not sure what technology was used for the presentation but it really came across as holographic. The presenter looked like he was interacting with a semi-holographic projection making the whole event look very 3D and interactive.

My only decent presentation shot. As flash was not allowed, I couldn’t get any clear shots of the projected holographics

Ok enough with the boring stuff.. lets get to the phone. The phone has a LOT of cool nifty features but these are the ones that caught my attention (and which I would probably use the most).

The Samsung Jet

#1 The Technology – Speed
Samsung calls the Jet a phone that is smarter than a smartphone. The phone is designed to solve all the problems we hate about using smartphones, namely the SPEED. It comes with a 800Mhz processor which is actually a LOT for a tiny device, making it possible to multi-task numerous programs and watch high quality DVD videos without any lag.

One of their Korean executives gave me a demo of the phone loading 4 web pages in the background, running a game and then watching a movie. All ran concurrently without ANY lag. The response is extremely fast too, no more frustration from waiting 3 seconds before the phone responds to a press. Don’t believe me? Watch a video Claudia took of the video playing in action on the phone here… now only if the screen was bigger.
 

#2 The Dolfin Browser

The Dolfin Browser is one of the reasons why the Jet runs so smoothly when browsing the Internet. It is created by Samsung specially for their phones, making it possible to view 5 websites and switch between them without any lag. When I was trying it out, I could load multiple web pages including Facebook and flip among them without any problem. Not too sure whether JavaScript is a problem but DK said it has some bugs with Flash.

One last note on the browser: According to the website it is able to handle multiple downloads smoothly but I wasn’t able to test it due to Starhub’s slow 3G..
 

#3 One Finger Zoom

One Finger Zoom

Samsung went one step further and created a new convention for zooming photos and web pages by using only one finger. This way you can zoom in and out of photos and web pages using just one finger, maintaining your hand stance like how you would while SMSing. To get into and out of the zoom mode, you just have to hold your thumb on the screen for a little while, the zoom meter appears and you slide your finger up or down to zoom in and out. Took me just about 4 seconds to get used to it. I have to admit it is much more convenient than the 2 finger zooming convention which all smart phones are happily replicating today.
 

#4 The User Interface!

Dynamic User Interface

For starters, I’m VERY glad they created an interface of their own.. Windows Mobile is getting a little weak for smartphones in terms of performance. The image above shows the core interface with a little “tool box” on the left with links to applications, and a set of core functions in the bottom menu. What I really like is that you can hide the tool box at anytime to increase the amount of space to play with in the main area. Also, as this is a dynamic interface, you can drag and drop widgets from the toolbox onto the main area like a computer desktop. You can add new widgets as well when you download more applications.

The interface with the tool box hidden, BlueTooth and music player widgets

Before I end off, there is ONE FINAL feature which I totally love, lacking from all other smartphones I’ve experienced. It is the TASK manager. You know how sometimes you may have multiple apps running in the background, thought you closed them but they’re STILL RUNNING, wasting your precious battery power? Samsung added a cool nifty feature where you can easily access the task manager and close running applications. All you have to do is hold the cube button down and the task manager will show up in a very easy to use interface.

The super easy to use Task Manager

#5 Keyboard
Sorry there is ONE MORE feature I MUST highlight which is the keyboard. As usual, they are using a Qwerty keyboard that has keys smaller than your fingers. I hate the iPhone for not having a keypad interface as a keyboard. The Samsung Jet has both but when I tried their Qwerty keyboard, I was in total amazement. I could type VERY fast without much care and I had very little spelling errors. What’s happening here? Instead of detecting one key at a time, the keyboard detects a few (2-3 I believe) based on the area of your finger. Based on the combination of keys you typed in and the central area your finger touches the keyboard, it intelligently guesses the word you are trying to type and inputs it. Typing on it was so convenient I found myself typing web addresses more with the Qwerty than the Keypad. I have no idea why this is not highlighted on their website even though it is a big plus point.
 

Conclusion
On the overall, I really like the phone as it fixes almost everything I hate about smartphones – speed, small keyboard keys, invisible running applications, etc. It is definitely a smartphone, that is smarter than a smartphone. My only qualms with it is the User Interface.. it is very well designed… you can see that a lot of thought has been put into it especially in fixing major user interaction issues that are common in smartphones. However, I feel that there are some minor adjustments that could be done to make the phone even more thumb-friendly. And no, I’m not saying the iPhone’s interface is better.. the Jet beats the iPhone in terms of both technology and UI design. It is just that in a general sense, the UI design is not perfect yet.

And before I forget, app junkies will suffer from deprivation as there will probably not be less apps available for the Samsung Jet
 

Other random pictures from the event

Lucky draw machine.. I didn’t win! DK and Preetam did though

One of the many never-ending reception snacks

My dinner menu

The Starter – Poached Boston Lobster, Cauliflower and Truffle Puree, White Asparagus and Shellfish Sauce

Main Course – Pan Seared Sea Bass, Steamed Wa Wa Cabbage, Buttered Fondant Potato, Ginger Sauce

Dessert – Tahitian Vanilla and Manjari Chocolate Mousse, Crunchy Praline and Passion Fruit Ice Cream
 

Resources you might want to check out:
Official Samsung Unpacked webpage
Official Samsung Jet webpage (lots of useful information on the phone)
Unboxing the Samsung Jet

This came in my mail early this morning. Cheered up my morning for work!

Get up, change clothes, eat breakfast and be ready for work in 5 minutes Perfect solution for sleepyheadzz!!

When was the last time I watched cable TV?
Many many years ago… when I flipped my cable TV on recently out of EXTREME boredom, I didn’t realize which channels were which anymore. The station had revised the channel numbers TWICE and I missed both iterations!

How do I use my TV now?
Hook up my laptop to my HD TV using a HDMI cable, stream/play video on my laptop, watch away on the nice, big clear screen.

Will I get Cable TV when I have my own home? Will my friends get Cable TV?
MOST PROBABLY NOT.

But why??!!
Isn’t it obvious?! We’re arrogant. We don’t arrange our schedules around television programs anymore.. waaay too troublesome. We’ve tried that in the past and have always ended up going “When did this guy die?? o_O??”.

A couple of weeks back my colleague Calvin and I were talking about how long it has been since we last watched TV.. I realized that all I remembered was that it was EONS ago… leaving my Cable TV to collect dust (and continue feeding the TV station subscription fees). The interesting thing is, we know it is happening to majority of youths now, we’re sure the TV stations know it too but we still see the usual “$XYZ per month for 100+ channels” packages being promoted all over. However, instead of laughing at the death of these stations, we embarked instead on a discussion of how TV stations would change their models in the near future.
 

Model 1: Pay Per Channel Collection model

Saying Pay Per Channel may be very misleading as there are Cable TV stations that allow you to pay according to the number of channels you subscribe to. Instead of saying channel to avoid confusion, I’m going to say Collection. Every TV Station now have their own line of series like AXN with CSI and House, Star World with American Idol, MTV with Punk’d, Sweet Sixteen and the list goes on. I love watching all these programs and I’m subscribed to all these channels! but I watch them online now.. all because they do not fit into my schedule.

Instead of making viewers pay for PROGRAMMED Television, why not give them UNPROGRAMMED Television? How it works is simple. I subscribe to the channel and I instantly get on-demand access to any show shown on that channel, whenever I want. The next question that came was, whether there should be ads for these shows.. Currently, we are paying for channels and am kind enough to tolerate the ads shown on them. This is a convention that has been in place for years and people have gotten used to it.. When it comes to paying for on-demand access however, we have gotten used to a no ad policy and will probably be really unhappy if we saw ads popping up here and there. It doesn’t help either that a large portion of a station’s revenue comes from ads, hence a subscription-based on-demand model might not work.
 

Model 2: iTunes, meet TV

How about we apply the iTunes system to TV programs instead? Pay per episode of a series you want to watch. I admit that I am unsure of how much cost actually goes into the creation of each series but my guess is each episode would not exceed $1 million? So assuming that the cost of producing an episode of a TV series like Prison Break is $1 million and we charge users, say, $3 per episode taking into consideration users are already willing to pay $1 for a 4-minute song, $3 for a 1-hour video should be well-received. Multiply $3 with the average number of viewers during its worst season, we have:

$3 x 5.3 million viewers = $15.9 million

This is a profit of $14.9 million per episode not taking in the in-movie advertising and endorsements by companies. Even if the cost of the episode was $10 million the profit would be $4.9 million for each episode..

Prison Break was a huge success, so lets take a lesser known TV series instead. Lets try Harpers Island. Their latest episode only managed to garner 3.62 million viewers. Assuming that as this is not a popular series, we have only 20% of these 3.62 million viewers willing to pay for the episode.

20% x 3.62 million viewers = 724,000 viewers
$3 x 724,000 viewers = $2.1 mil

This still covers the cost of $1 mil per episode.
 

Consequences of model
The model actually feeds into a trait of consumers becoming more and more selective. If we feed into that trait, that would mean we are giving consumers a free hand to pick whatever they wanna see.. which also equates to lesser known TV series and movies dying. Is this a bad thing? No because even today, bad TV series are being pulled out by stations very quickly except that with this model, it may be pulled out faster as there are no ads to reduce losses. The result will be an ever more competitive market leading to an increase in the quality of media produced.

But what about series which are actually good but fail to succeed due to bad marketing? What if consumers only stick to the few series they are only aware of and never give the other series a chance? To tell you the truth, I, as a consumer actually do pay attention to the little icons and animations that pop up at the corner of the screen every now and then advertising an upcoming new series. I look forward to those as they give me a guide of what to check out in the gazillion series to choose from out there. In other words, I don’t mind paying for episodes that have some little animations and bars appearing to promote an upcoming series that is currently being practiced by TV stations. I believe most consumers wouldn’t mind those unobtrusive elements either.
 

Conclusion
If TV stations want to continue operating, they have to move towards new models that feed into the traits of UNPROGRAMMED, on-demand televising. If they don’t change their models soon, they will start to see their finances dwindle until it is too late and we will all be left with nothing but old video archives on the internet to watch. Coming up with a “Support TV stations! Don’t let them die” campaign won’t work because the benefits of on-demand streaming online is just too good. Better change before it is too late for all of us! (and we’ll just stick with computer games and box office movies).
 

Note: This post was written from a consumer’s point of view. I am unfamiliar with the inner workings of the TV industry and as I couldn’t find much information of what elements of costing goes into the production of a TV series, my values were made based on estimations from costs of blockbuster movies

During a recent conversation my friend told me he had set up a Facebook page for his company’s new initiative. The first thought that went into my mind was “Not again..” but before jumping to any conclusion, I replied “Oh hey, that’s interesting. What are you doing on the page?”. To my disappointment, I got the answer I expected. “Engaging users, posting videos, links, news and inviting people”.

Many companies nowadays are setting up Facebook pages for their products and initiatives to “engage users” but most of these end up being a gathering of inactive users who either joined the page out of interest for the company/product, or out of goodwill for an invite from a friend. There are definitely several companies who have done well by doing what my friend did like Coke, Intel and Seventeen Magazine but the rest, especially by lesser known brands are quite dead.

What is the formula then for creating a successful Facebook Page? This is the question I was wondering before I decided to find common traits between 2 successful campaigns which I believe might work for other companies as well. The keyword that popped into my head was:

Lobbying…

Note here what I mean by lobbying is not lobbying done by the company but rather by users and fans of the company. Also note that this probably applies more to specific events / campaigns rather than general company pages. Let me illustrate by drawing on 2 examples:
 

1) Victoria’s Secret PINK Campaign (Over 1 million fans)

This was a hugely successful campaign not because it gathered lots of fans, but because its fans were voluntarily creating groups, activities and content around the campaign. What Victoria Secret did was create a PINK collegiate collection where users could nominate and register their school to be part of the collection. Victoria Secret would manufacture a PINK collection branded with the school’s logo and mascot. This created a lot of excitement and gave their users (aka college girls) enough reason for them to lobby their friends into it, garnering more than 1 million fans.
 

2) Target Bullseye Campaign (Over 75,000 fans in 4 days)

Image from Inside Facebook

Target wanted to donate US$3 million to charity this year but didn’t want to do it in the traditional way where charities receive the money and a picture of them holding a gigantic mock cheque appears in the papers. They wanted something that would capture the attention of youths on Facebook as well, and hence created a Facebook application on their page. In the application, fans could vote for their favorite charities and at the end of the 2 week campaign, the US$3 million will be split amongst the 10 charities based on the percentage of votes they received. Almost immediately, this campaign has given the charities MORE than enough reason for them to lobby all their supporters to get onto the Target page and vote for them. The campaign is now over but according to Inside Facebook, the campaign garnered 75,000 fans after just 4 days.
 

Reason for lobbying??
The next question is how do you go about creating these incentives for people to lobby their friends. I’m no expert at this either as I’ve not created any successful Facebook pages/groups before but these are my observations based on what gets me to lobby my friends:
 

1) Something I want or strongly believe in…
If a campaign would give me something I want should I get my friends in, then I’d lobby for it. One example would be to look at the immensely popular and addictive Facebook game PackRat (sorry for picking a game, but I think they have great incentive systems). PackRat is a game where you go around collecting sets of collectible cards and stash them in a vault by stealing from your friends. They give 2 very strong reasons to lobby your friends:
i) You’d have more friends to steal cards from and grow your collection
ii) Inviting a certain number of friends gets you a limited edition card

Note here that there is a clear guarantee of reward if you achieve certain milestones which I believe beats crappy “invite 3 friends and increase your chances” incentives.

For an example closer to home? Take the latest GI Joy SoyJoy campaign which got bloggers like Nadnut to rally all her friends, blog readers and companies she knows to vote for her and participate. The prize for her? A trip to Japan (and all the buzz that comes with it).
 

2) Something I can own…
This may come a little hard as if you’re a company on a low budget / just starting out, you wouldn’t want to spend money on physical products as rewards that people can own. The alternative is a digital solution which a lot of people have come to dislike.. my friends still prefer handwritten letters and physical greeting cards to electronic ones anytime. However, if you give them something they can own and show off to their friends, chances are they will participate more. This reminds me of the super old and probably forgotten Vampire & Werewolves game on Facebook where everyone was literally inviting everyone else to get the side they were on (Vampire or Werewolf) to get bigger than the other for “world domination”. The items they are owning here are was something very simple. A small tiny square badge on their profile with a vampire/wolf picture that would evolve with their rank and 2 lines of statistics.
 

3) The Cold Start problem
Like many new brands / products, there is the cold start problem. Not every company has a huge database of customers whom they can already mass mail to start getting them lobbying for them. The key here is to reach out to key people in your target audience who will be inspired to do the lobbying for you. This brings me back to the NEXUS ‘07 by TDM which attracted over 800 registrations within 2 weeks (and we had to turn some away). The publicity was done purely through only social media and none of the traditional press methods. I’m not trying to promote NEXUS or anything here but I thought this was a good example of a cold start problem to highlight. Back then I was very skeptical about the power of social media and had a very traditional mindset of how events should be publicized but Ming Yeow, the founder, was trying extremely convert me. This started with us looking for key experts to work with us on the conference programme. Believe it or not, the very first person we contacted was Kevin Lim. We met up with Kevin, told him what NEXUS’07’s inspiration was and from his immense knowledge of Second Life, we invited him to run the Virtual Worlds track of the event. What I didn’t expect after that was that the plug on his blog would lead to many other blogs plugging us as well and a sudden surge in website hits. o_O
 

4) Eat your own dog food
Okay.. this is starting to sound like a start-up lessons thingy but seriously, this point is very relevant here as well since you are creating something to market your initiative. Nothing much to elaborate here except the simple point: Will you be excited enough to get your friends involved? Or will you only be excited to submit an entry and not be motivated to tell your friends about it? The first question should be the one you’re answer “YES!!!” and the second question is where you say “NOPE!”. If it is the other way around, then the chances of visitors to your campaign lobbying their friends for it will be low.
 

Concluding Words
I know coming up with a good reason for getting people to lobby their friends and organization members for your initiative may be hard as you don’t want it to sound too gimmicky either (and potentially end up ruining your company’s reputation) but if you get it right, you should have a pretty good chance of generating a lot of buzz around your Facebook page. And trust me, this is much easier than creating a successful Facebook application. If I’m not wrong, the only somewhat successful Facebook app by a company to date is Whopper Sacrifice by Burger King? That is like a once in a blue moon thing.
 
 

Other formulas for a successful Facebook page:
Successful Facebook Fan page article by Mashable
How to develop a Facebook Page that attracts millions of fans by All Facebook

Looking sleek, thin and sexy!

Last week I was invited to the Acer Aspire Timeline bloggers event by Daphne Chui and Brian Koh from Ogilvy . It was held about 3 days before the official launch in Singapore at the usual geek hangout (Geek Terminal).
 

Good Point #1: Long battery life
When I arrived at the event, the presentation was already half-way through and my face was staring at this slide:

This slide really delighted me. See the loooong red bar on the 6-hour battery life category? That is what Acer’s product development team identified as the most important concern of consumers, and built a notebook focused heavily on that. The question then is whether they delivered.

I started playing with the laptops at around 8pm+ and was told the battery had been perpetually on Wifi since 6pm+. Check out the battery reading:

3 hours and 35 minutes remaining on dim brightness. This is really a power conserving laptop!
 

Good Point #2: Light Weight and Ultra Thin

Comparison of laptop thinness with my Dopod 818 Pro

Comparison between the 14″ and 13.3″ models of the laptop. Note that their weights are 1.9kg and 1.6kg respectively with the batteries attached.

Personally, I prefer the 13.3″ model as it is much thinner, lighter and sleeker than the 14″ with an equally long battery life. Somehow 1.9kg feels like a bit of a
 

Good Point #3: Super Cooling

The Acer Aspire Timeline uses the latest, cutting-edge Intel cooling technology which keeps the laptop super cool all the time. When I was there, the laptops had been on for quite a while and if you touch the bottom of the base, it is only slightly warm. They are going with the idea of users using their laptops on their lap without getting affected by the heat generated. I believe it is called the “Lap technology”?
 

Good Point #4: Saves the environment your electricity

According to the Acer employees, the Acer laptop is engineered to automatically stop charging when the battery has been fully charged. This saves up to 66% of power consumption which is quite a huge energy saver. Oh and the 8 hour+ battery life you see in the image above applies when you are not on full brightness and wifi.
 

Good Point #5: Convenient mouse gestures

The various mouse gestures supported

The engineers have thought about how the touchpad can become more convenient for users and came up with 3 basic gestures:

- Zoom in/out by sliding fingers in a curve left and right
- Alternate between a group of photos by sliding fingers left and right (usual iPhone stuff)
- Scrolling up and down a document by traversing through a spiral path (shown above). This is the most confusing gesture but they have an alternative gesture where you can slide your fingers up and down the right side of the touchpad.
 

Bad Point #1: Confusing Spec Sheets
They gave us some really confusing spec sheets which the tech guru Lester can’t understand either. He has done us the favor of scanning it in and uploading it here.

If I’m understanding the specs correctly, this laptop seems quite underpowered when compared to other current mainstream laptops. This may be a pay off for the longer battery life.
 

Bad Point #2: YouTube videos jerky??
I tried watching some videos from YouTube on both the 14″ and 13.3″ models and guess what? They were all jerky and laggy. I am not sure whether it was because the laptops were in power saving mode or the processor was just too weak to handle videos, but this is a HUGE negative point. Why would I want a laptop which I can’t watch videos on?!
 

Bad Point #3: Dolby Surround Sound

Dolby has become such a well-recognized industry standard for high quality sound to such an extent that I don’t know whether it would have been better for Acer if they did not highlight this in their specs. I played some songs on the laptop and yes, there was surround sound but the quality was not there. Although the bass support was good (most laptops in the market today don’t have bass support), the music came out muffled and unclear giving me a HUGE disappointment. As a result, listening to music on it was worse than on a laptop without Dolby Surround Sound. Maybe the sound would have been better on connected speakers and headphones?
 

Verdict
As you can see above, there are quite a number of pros and cons which may be beneficial/disadvantageous based on your usage and needs. If you’re looking for a laptop that is high on mobility, doesn’t have teenie weenie keyboards you can’t type on and don’t really care about the quality of entertainment you are getting, then the Acer Aspire Timeline is PERFECT for you. However, if you’re the entertainment and design/coder junkie like me, then you’d prefer to go for the average laptop that would give you more processing power.

Resources you might want to check out:
Review by Nicole
DK’s take on the notebook
Tech guru Lester’s thoughts

Other random photos while we were fooling around with the product:

Came across this superb video of nature taking its course today. The cinematography was so good half the time I was questioning whether I was watching a movie or a documentary.. really kudos to L’ours, the guys who created this back in 1988! Be prepared to be nerve-wrecked!

As promised, here is the article on how my team and I built our interactive kitchen table step by step with all the details from hardware to software. Note that this is just ONE of a few methods to build a touch table in your garage and other methods may be more suited for the purpose of your touch table. To learn more about the various different methods, I highly recommend joining the NUIGroup community who is always there to contribute to discussions and help you with any questions you have

Alright, lets begin!

Methodology used: Diffused Illumination

Hardware Setup
Materials required:
1) Piece of glass / acrylic
- this is the surface you’d like to project your screen onto. My team chose to use glass instead of acrylic as acrylic is a bit soft and bendable, hence not very stable for a kitchen counter top where you’ll be messing around with your ingredients.

2) Stand to place your piece of glass/acrylic
- can be wooden, metal, self-made, as long as you have enough height to project your screen onto the surface from below.

3) Projector
4) Web camera
5) Piece of Mirror

Once you have the hardware needed, set it up such that the arrangement is similar to the image below. (Please excuse the illustration.. drew it in a hurry with no thought for the colours chosen haha!)

Adjust the mirror angle and projector settings until you get the size you want of the projected screen on the surface. Once you get the alignment right, position your web camera such that you are able to see the whole projected surface area. Note that you need not position the web camera where I placed it.

Alright that’s it for the hardware! Simple huh? Now lets move on to the software needed.
 

Software setup

1) TBeta by NUIGroup

This is the software needed to track shadows detected by the web cam and send the data retrieved from it to another channel or software. I highly recommend that you read the tutorial on how to adjust the different settings (e.g: Threshold, contrast, callibration, dynamic subtraction, etc). For our table, we took a while to get the settings right so that it will detect only shadows that were pressed on the surface.

2) FLOSC
What FLOSC does is that it takes values sent to it by Tbeta and sends it over to your interface application. For ours, we used it to send positional coordinate values to our application written in Flash.

3) TUIO
TUIO will contain the code which you will need to add to your Flash ActionScript file so that your Flash application listens to data from the same port that FLOSC is sending data to. In other words, if FLOSC is sending data to port 3333, you set your Flash to listen to data from port 3333 using TUIO. You can then use TUIO to extract the necessary data for your application like the X and Y position of the shadows detected on the interface. Note that the TUIO API also has code which you can add to your Flash application to detect TouchEvents (e.g: TouchEvent.CLICK).

4) Adobe Flash
Thanks to the TUIO API, all you have to do is code your whole Flash application as per normal, add the necessary 2 or 3 lines of code to read the TUIO API and replace all your MouseEvents with TouchEvents ! It is really that simple. The way I coded the interface was to do it fully using MouseEvents in Flash and then later changing it to TouchEvent when I wanted to test it out on the touch table.
 

Limitations of not having InfraRed Lasers
The limitations of our setup is that we didn’t have any InfraRed Lasers / Camera to detect the touch. We were using shadows and sometimes when the shadows can’t be seen clearly especially in areas where the background colour is not dark enough, it is not detected as a touch. Hence, I designed the interface such that all the buttons that will be pressed have dark-coloured backgrounds. If you used InfraRed lasers on the other hand, it would be very sensitive and accurate leading to a much more responsive table. The reason why we didn’t include the InfraRed gadgets was because we couldn’t find them here in Singapore and didn’t want to spend a bomb ordering them from overseas. If you do get the opportunity however, I highly recommend using InfraRed lasers.

Alright! So there you have it, my quick guide to building a touch table. If you find any parts of this tutorial unclear or have further questions, feel free to e-mail me or drop a comment here! Will reply and update this post accordingly as soon as I can

And thanks for the very encouraging comments on the project guys! Really appreciate it! Enjoy hacking in your backyard! ^_~

Additional resources you might want to check out:
Discussions about building a touch table on NUIGroup
Build your own InfraRed Camera (thanks James!)
Quick tutorial on building a touch table using Total Frustrated Internal Reflection
Reactivision for tracking fiducial markers

Hey guys! Know I’ve not been blogging for a looong time… mainly because I’ve been busy working on projects at school and exams are around the corner. However, thought I should just put up a quick post about one of my projects, Recipease, a project I worked on as part of the CS3248: Design of Interactive Media module. What we did was create a multi-touch table that is supposed to show a concept of how major problems faced by people during the food preparation process can be reduced.

Before I say more, here is a video demonstration of our table.

Yup so that’s about it in short! Promise to update this post with more information later. In the meantime, if you have any questions about the project / engineering behind it, etc etc do feel free to either e-mail me or leave comments here. I promise to follow-up on it as soon as my exams are over!

And oh yea, do let me know what you think of it as well in terms of concept, interface and interaction design, functions, or even the actor! Thanks for watching! ^__^

Update:
Thanks for all the encouraging and positive comments guys! Really appreciate them. As promised, here is the follow-up with more information about the project.

Our assignment requirement is to take any existing electronic appliance or propose a new one that would solve a problem or make a house chore easier. The problem we set out to solve was that faced by users in the kitchen.

Before we built this, we performed some surveys and interviews to identify the common problems that caused people anxiety during both food preparation and cooking. Our user group consisted both of young adults and housewives, including both novice and expert cooks. Based on the list of problems gathered, we came up with 3 primary functions:

Use Case: Our primary use case is where a person, has some ingredients in his fridge but do not want to crack his head thinking what he can cook with them. He wants a system that can tell him what he can cook based on what he has or feels like eating (sometimes you may have fish and chicken but only feel like eating chicken).

1) Ingredient Recognition
Problem it solves:
- trouble of not recognizing what user has especially with ingredients user hardly purchase
- unsure of what user can cook with what he/she has

2) Recipe Recommendation
Problem it solves:
- saves trouble of thinking about what he can cook
- widens choice of recipes user can cook. Not limited to only what the user knows
- informs users of which ingredients are missing
- if user is cooking more than one dish, system notifies of whether there is enough for both dishes combined

3) Recipe Scaling
Problem it solves:
- most recipes available are based on the assumption that users are cooking for one diner. However, sometimes users throw parties/gatherings that require preparing a dish for more people.
- able to tell user whether he has enough for a gathering and if not, how much of which ingredient is missing

Our user testing of the table after it was built showed that this concept does help in reducing the anxieties users felt during food preparation and pre-cooking. Glad that those of you who have seen the video felt the same as well.

About the module
Got a couple of e-mails asking whether this module teaches students how to build a touch table. The answer is no, but in fact the professor (Prof Zhao ShengDong) made it better than that. What he did was he made the assignment very open-ended, with the only requirement being to come up with a concept that will make a house chore easier for a user. This can be a new electronic appliance or an improvement of an existing invention. It is totally up to students how they want to implement/show their idea. Hence you have students building touch tables, interactive screens that utilize the Wii mote and even remote controls for house appliances using the cell phone. In other words, this module does not teach or spoon feed you on how to do things but rather create an environment that encourages students to experiment. How much you learn depends on how much time and energy you invest into your idea. Having said that, Prof Zhao will be constantly keeping track of the progress of projects and is a great resource of how to go about your project and who to approach for further advice.

The Team!

This is my crazy team who just can’t stop making me laugh while working throughout the project. Somehow we never fail to do something really silly which we’ll be stuck at for hours before suddenly encountering an “Eureka!” moment. Lots of silly things happened during video filming as well, like someone’s handphone ringing and ingredients rolling off the table.

Back row (from left) : Teong Leong, Joel a.k.a Kar Meng, Jeremy Wong
Front row (from left) : Me! , Yiyang

Concluding words
This was a really fun project which made me realize how fun research can potentially be. I used to shun away from it thinking it was for n3rds but came to realize it can turn out to be pretty cool especially if you’re working on a fun project within your scope of interest. Would really love to thank my Prof Zhao for making CS3248 a really fun module and encouraging us to go on with our ideas!

How to build a touch table?
Got a lot of questions about how my team built the touch table and all the various programs we used. I’m currently in the process of writing a step by step tutorial on it and will upload it within the next 2-3 days! In the meantime, look out for it! ^_~

Update: The tutorial is done. Check it out here