the blog
I thought of a software that I loved very much last decade. It was designed for Windows 95. Yes, Windows 95, the classic and obsolete Windows OS. I finally figured out its name, Icon Corral.
I googled it. To my surprise, I found it! Here is the link.
It is used to put any window title on taskbar to the system tray when it is minized. Pretty simple. Such feature will be soon be included by the upgrade of OS, just like thousands of other features.
I know what Netflex is, but not Hulu. But I can guess it’s another online video service, and also US-only. When I was asked by my friend how Netflix is going to make profit on such low monthly fee, which is $7.99, I don’t know. It must have something to do with the user volume.
I used to install Netflix on my iPad. But it had no much usage, since I’m located in China. If there is such service in China, will I pay for it? Not likely.
Firstly, pirate version is still very easy to access through emule. Though legal copies are more and more affordable, but without a certain inconvenience to get pirate ones, we still won’t choose them.
Secondly, there are no good shows worth our monthly fee. We watch American sitcoms most of the time. And they are not supposed to appear on Chinese market. Due to regulation and censorship reasons, they are not legal in the first place.
And for me, I simply don’t have an acceptable broadband Internet connection. VOD is as far as buying another apartment, which simply will not happen.
Both of them are luxuries to me. I’ve heard of them hundreds of times, from Leo’s talk show as well as many tweets. But they are still far away from my laptop screen.
I did try to enable the Google Instant Search. I used a proxy, located in Las Vegas, changed my locale settting to en_US, and changed all those setting trying to tell Google I was in America. But the google was very smart, the regional setting awlays bounced back when I did some more clicks. The worse part was, the Instant Search will be disabled automatically when it detects my connection speed is too slow. Well, it can’t be fast when I’m using a cheap proxy.
The new twitter.com UI simply doesn’t show up yet. One of my colleagues got it today. How unfair it is! He is an inactive user, with only less than 10 followers, And his tweets are all private!
When the Chinese government blocked foursquare.com, I downloaded a tiny zip file, in which there were only a handful of php and apache config files. It made my 4sq app on android cellphone work again. I skimmed through the source code. It’s pretty simple, just a comple lines to implement the request redirect function.
I found my Twip proxy for Twitter didn’t work anymore. It’s already the latest version. I looked like there was little I could do. And suddennly the 4sq proxy came to my mind. Hey, maybe I could modify it and use it for twitter.
And it did work. All I needed to do is just change the value of the api url to twitter’s url, and config a subdomain for it. It worked breezily!
Here is the source code of the two main important files:
1. .htaccess (the apache config file which lets 4sq.php process all the request):
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . 4sq.php [E=HTTP_AUTHORIZATION:%{HTTP:Authorization},L]
</IfModule>
2. 4sq.php (grabs the request, and redirects them to the real receiver):
<?php
$file_name = ’4sq.php’;
$api_root = ‘http://api.twitter.com/’;
$request_uri = $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'];
$pos = strpos($_SERVER['SCRIPT_NAME'], $file_name);
$path_component = substr($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], $pos);
$curl = curl_init();
$headers[] = ‘Connection: Keep-Alive’;
$headers[] = ‘User-Agent: FxxkGFW’;
$username = $_SERVER['PHP_AUTH_USER'];
$password = $_SERVER['PHP_AUTH_PW'];
curl_setopt_array($curl, array(
CURLOPT_URL => $api_root . $path_component,
CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER => $headers,
CURLOPT_USERPWD => “$username:$password”)
);
if ($_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD'] == ‘POST’) {
curl_setopt_array($curl, array(
CURLOPT_POST => 1,
CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS => @file_get_contents(‘php://input’)
));
}
$result = curl_exec($curl);
curl_close($curl);
?>
My routine data backup happens every 3-6 months. I zipped the “My Documents” folder and put it on the hard disk of my home desktop. That was what I did before.
I replaced my desktop with a Sony notebook last year. I didn’t bring the notebook out of my home. So it worked just like a desktop, until lately I started to use it as my working notebook and installed a Debian on my old office desktop.
What about my data backup? I put them on a portable hard disk. The problem is: the portable hard disk is carried with my notebook in the same backpack everyday. So, I put all my eggs in one basket.
I found out this fact this morning. The first response is taking out the portable disk and leaving it at home.
Backing up data is boring, though important. I heard the prodoct Carbonite many times in Twig show. It’s an automatic online backup product. It sounds good. The only problem is its price, which is a little bit high.
Gonna try it and compare it with Dropbox.
“Buy once, read everywhere”, I love this statement of Amazon Kindle.
I’ve used Sony Reader for a year. I chose it over Kindle because of its touch screen. Double-tap to look up words is a good feature.
Then I saw Kindler for PC, Kindle for MAC. I didn’t get Amazon’s idea until I installed Kindle for Android lately. Yes, that’s “buy once, read everywhere”. The most annoying thing of DRM is the binding to device. Digital is supposed to be read on multiple devices. What’s the point of binding to one?
Amazon knew this. It sees itself a platform, rather than a reader manufacturer. Sony is still a manufacturer. If it wants to get its slice in the ebook market share, do something. Ditch the stupid DRM.
Do I need an iPad? That depends what I use it for.
I’ve played with my colleague’s iPad for a while. The screen size is good, not too heavy to carry. Reading PDF with a screen as large as this is much enjoyable expereience than on cellphone. The only problem is: how often will I use it to read books?
I bought a Sony Reader a year ago.
It’s a b/w device. Reading experience is not bad, especially in the sun. I later discovered this feature is not that cool. How many times do I need to read in the sun? That must be on the beach. I wish I could be there as much as possible. Without color screen, reading magazine like Time and Newsweek makes me feel something is missing. Reading novel is good, especially when I need to look up a word I don’t know, I could just double tap on it. The battery life can last for two weeks. It sounds good, but if its charger is not super huge and the charging time doesn’t take too long, 10 hour continuous working time is good enough. That’ s ipad’s battery life time.
What’s really annoying me in digital reading is not the device, it’s the DRM. The ebook must be bound to one device(or two, if including the PC I used to download). There is no easy way to read a copyright protected ebook on multiple hand-held devices. OK, it’s not Sony Reader’s problem.
Since I replaced my Nokia N81 with a Nexus One last month. My cellphone reading experience has improved drastically. Clearing unread Google Reader items becomes entertainment now. Cellphone screen as big as this is good for reading fragmented information like web pages and news feeds. But for novel reading, the screen will make us turning pages all the time. I need a larger screen to solve this problem. Maybe it’s not a problem for younger generations: they are supposed to turn page so frequently.
I’ve installed FBReader for Android lately. It’s a really cool reader software. I guess I’ll try some reading with it first, see if I could get used to the small screen, in comparison to my Sony Reader. And I’m also waiting for a droidpad to emerge in the market. Competition is always good.
BTW, the Nexus One really caused some change of my reading habit. I read RSS more and spend less time on deep reading now. I need a good balance between them.
