Softwaremaker

Time to give back to the society

2012-07-26T08:58:57.5060000+08:00

It has been more than 18 months but I have finally received my sales proceeds from my WP7 Apps in the Windows Phone Marketplace: SG-Drive and NaviRoutes. It was really projects that I just wanted to get my hands wet into WP7 and XAML programming. It garnered great interest from the start since there was a glut of a WP7 developers. I suspect buying interest had waned since then because there are now tons of developers and also the proliferation of iOS and Android devices out there.

The sales proceeds I have received from the sale of those applications were only a small token amount. However, as I have said in the T&C in my WP7 applications, sales proceeds of the above will go towards charity. From the very early beginning, I have always given to charities I believe in and, most importantly, often neglected and overlooked. That said, the best mileage is to go for those 1-for-1 charities to get maximum impact per dollar.

I will update this post once I have decided on a charity to donate the sales proceeds of my WP7 applications to.

[UPDATE]: Done. Proceeds donated to Children At Risk Empowerment (CARE) Singapore.

Thanks for all your support.

Surprising interest in the WP7 GeoBlog

2012-03-04T06:25:10.9000000+08:00

I had posted more than 3 months ago about my little port from WM6.0 to WP7 of my GeoBlog application. This successful port was not made available in the Windows Phone Marketplace as I had stated that there was a need for a back-end Server infrastructure of a web server hosting a simple web service to make this app complete. The push-pin points and locations uploaded will be overlaid on a Google Map, using the Google Maps API, specifically the Javascript SDK. I have no idea at this point in time how to package the back-end Server infrastructure so it is not a complete solution for anyone downloading WP7 GeoBlog without that infrastructure.

Little did I know that there was quite a bit of interest from emails to me about this application and how I can potentially move that backend infrastructure to the cloud. I had also thought about that. However, it is more complicated than that. For example, it would be easy for those with Azure subscriptions. For those without, it would be another process that not many moms-n-pops can deal with today.

Anyways, I had no idea this port would have generated that much interest. It seems that while people like the idea of "blogging" their adventure and vacation trails, quite a few of them didnt like the idea of putting it on a public domain due to privacy concerns. My app worked that way because that data collected is private - both on the phone and on the server back-end.

The surprising interest also came from the fact that mobile broadband (3G, 3.5G) penetration is on the rise, much more than I thought. With telcos setting up bridge domains and more alliances with each other over country boundaries, costs would only go down.

I am still thinking on how I could package the whole solution before I make it public to the marketplace. To those who have gotten the app and the scripts from me and successfully set up their hosting infrastructure, whether it is at home or at hoster's, Thank you for your support. I am glad that you have enjoyed and benefitted from the application as much as I have.

Stay tuned for more little enhancements to this WP7 GeoBlog app.

WP7 GeoBlog: Geo-Blogging on the Windows Phone

2011-11-07T20:05:56.9140000+08:00

After so many months of starts, stops and many distractions, I finally took the time over the (long) weekend to port my Windows Mobile 6.0 GeoBlog application over to Windows Phone 7. I had searched and waited so long for a similar application on the Windows Phone Marketplace but none were there that could do what I wanted it to do.

While geo-taggers, geo-markers can be found in the dozens in the Windows Phone Marketplace, most of them doesnt allow you to share with your family and loved ones on the trails you have been to, local or somewhere exotic and far-away. Even the ones piggy-bagging on Google Maps doesnt have certain features like adding comments, taking pictures with each geo-blogging location.

Hence, I decided to port my Windows Mobile application to Windows Phone 7, taking this opportunity to add and further enhance some of the features along the way. I named this application WP7 GeoBlog and I will be taking this along to the Great Ocean Road a few weeks later.

However, I am not publishing on the Windows Phone Marketplace as of yet. Reason is because, it needs a certain back-end Server infrastructure of a web server hosting a simple web service. The push-pin points and locations uploaded will be overlaid on a Google Map, using the Google Maps API, specifically the Javascript SDK. I have no idea at this point in time how to package the back-end Server infrastructure so it is not a complete solution for anyone downloading WP7 GeoBlog without that infrastructure.

If you have a developer-unlocked or jail-broken WP7 and want to try this out, feel free to drop me a note here. For now, I will leave my readers here with an image that my WM 6.0 GeoBlog application generated when I was in Hokkaido, Japan last year.

Audio-Video Signal Processing - A band-aid solution for solving the mismatched time-lag issue

2011-09-24T11:11:27.5468750+08:00

This might be a little bit different from what this blog is themed towards but it still has a slight tinge of software flavour to it.

Those that know me well will know that I have been dabbling in music for the past year or so. The sound engineering aspects of it, besides the musical genre, fascinates me with all regards to acoustic and digital. I recently had a chance to learn about the lip-sync issues that HDMI threw up. The write-up here is very good and explains why HDMI 1.2, 1.3 are are all poor bandaids on a problem that shouldn't have happened in the first place. RTP packets (in internet VOIP and video) have timestamps and packets that link those to a shared timebase so you can synchronize audio and video. It is therefore strange and unimaginable to me, from an engineering perspective, that the first version of HDMI was released without at least considering the possible variable delays on the two chains. OK, I have digressed.

In any case, I had the chance to encounter this problem straight-up recently when I wire-up all the video devices I had with HDMI because of the many HDMI options my new TV offered me. However, the audio capabilities of my AV receiver remained, at best, at an analog level.

In a nutshell, what happened, was that the the audio delivered through my AV receiver->speakers was processed, and therefore heard, lot faster than what the visuals was processed to the TV. In other words, I heard the crash ahead of the specific moment when the drummer actually crashed on the cymbals.

Contrary to popular belief, this is NOT a lip-sync issue that HDMI 1.3 was designed to solve. The usual culprit in audio lag is due to a TV's video processing, which is constantly trying to send a resolution that matches your TV's native resolution. Most of the workaounds today revolve around getting an AV receiver that allow a time-lag adjustment that enables you to set audio delay by source, in effect, allowing you to calibrate, or slow down, your audio processing to match the *slower* video processing. This works, provided you have enough dough to cough out to get a new AV receiver, with matching speakers probably.

I decided to apply some common sense and see if there is a way to *speed-up* my video processing so it can catch up with the audio processing instead. Now, I am aware that this would probably mean that you may not get the best visuals for your TV. However, to be honest, a lot of the infinite details is not visible to the naked eye, not mine anyways, so I am willing to live with that compromise.

If you are still with me at this point, you would understand that most TVs today come with a "Game-mode". It is designed to reduce the amount of processing involved in producing the image on the screen so that high-speed high-intensity graphical images can be served up fast on your TV. By speeding up the served image, it reduces input lag.

I set my TV to "Game-mode" and true enough, the *calibration effect* was applied and now my video processing could now match my audio processing. The graphics are still superb as visible to my naked eye, just less vivid, which is not something you would care about while watching a live concert DVD, etc.

Till I decide to plonk down money to get an AV receiver that allows me to set a time-lag/delay for my audio-processing, this *free* workaround actually works well and will suffice for now.

On the speaking trail again: Generating actionable Insights and increasing efficiency with intuitive business intelligence

2011-08-16T07:53:58.3750000+08:00

Time to do my sporadic updates on this blog again. I have been making quite a few presentations on Business Intelligence recently and my next presentation will be together with Panoroma on the 17th August 2011 in Microsoft Singapore. Title of the presentation will be "Generate Actionable Insights and Increase Efficiency with Intuitive Business Intelligence"

With my usual presentation style of decorating the business of analytics with an interactive storyboard, I will be dotting the presentation with some bits on SQL Server "Denali" as well, highlighting on Project Cresent and PowerPivot v2. It should be a fun event. Come on down if you are around.

Gettiing WP7 Update 7.0.7392.0 into the Samsung Omnia 7

2011-06-25T18:05:17.7343750+08:00

For those old WP7 faithfuls who are trying to get WP7 update 7.0.7392.0 to work on their Omnia7 without any success and thinking you have bricked your phone, I have managed to get mine to work successfully.

It is not an exercise for the faint-hearted and requires good 3-finger coordination. It is somehow still linked to an underlying bootloader issue from Samsung for the Omnia7. Read and download the fixed USB driver for Omnia7 here: http://bit.ly/mN3tzu and http://bit.ly/jUEnBJ. Make sure your Omnia7 bootloader is more than 4.10.1.9. http://bit.ly/jVxK8B. Mine is the 4.11.0.4 and it worked like a charm. This really reminds me of those great CE and WM days :)

Release of NaviRoutes into Windows Phone 7 Marketplace

2011-04-13T20:14:36.1590000+08:00

The better-than-expected response to my SG-Drive in Windows Phone 7 Marketplace has resulted in some user feedback for a leaner version of the application. Feedback collected suggested that there is a need to just have the very-popular Navigation features of SG-Drive alone to cater to the international market who doesn't reside in Singapore. In this sense, the application would have a broader-based international appeal and I am able to price it below the psychological USD1.00 barrier mark.

I am happy to announce the release of NaviRoutes today. NaviRoutes is THE WP7 Navigation Application with Map Visuals and Live-Traffic Conditions on the Map. The trial version has limited functionalities such as incomplete navigation routes and directions, no map visuals, no live-traffic information, etc

In just less than 10 hours, it has racked up 5 downloads. I am also mindful to market NaviRoutes out of the Singapore context since the Navigation features really work everywhere. Well, almost everywhere.

If you are interested, please search for "NaviRoutes" in Windows Phone 7 Marketplace or use any of the Navigation key terms to reach the application. Thank you for your support.

Reduce Iconic Cluster in IE9 Address Bar

2011-04-06T07:44:55.7593750+08:00

One of the hidden is what I thought to be the most useful setting in IE9 - and that is to be able to split the STOP and REFRESH icons and move it before the address bar. This effectively reduce the cluster on the right of the address bar. Because all those icons were bunched up together by default, it was hard to see what you want to do and easy to make the wrong clicks.

Right-Click on the icon cluster on the right of the address bar to make that change.

Streamlining SG-Drive in v.3.12

2011-03-29T00:59:08.4030000+08:00

It has been about 4 months since I released SG-Drive into the Windows Phone Marketplace. v3.0 onwards has been a popular hit, judging by the user requests coming in via email and the good and not-so-good user reviews from all over the world. It seems to me that people living outside of Singapore are buying my WP7 application because of its navigation features since it is not restricted to navigation within Singapore.

I have had many requests from me asking me to port my SG-Drive to the iPhone, iPad as well as the Android. The idea is sure attractive and I had thought about it for some time. However, after some scouting and research, I realized that there are rather similar apps on those various platforms so I am deciding against it since it will not be productive use of my time.

For the record, I chose WP7 first, not because I am a fan-boy, but rather that it was new and it was a green-field for applications without much competition. It is not about the money since it is ONLY USD1.26 and all sales proceeds of SG-Drive will go towards charity. I just wanted to be sure the time invested in creating this application would be put to good use by the consumers out there. I not too sure about the sales of WP7 overall but the velocity of releases has slowed down a fair bit since I have been busy with my work and music. I do tinker with the application to make it better when I have time but users shouldnt expect a new functionality every fortnight.

That said, v3.12 is one release that I actually took a functionality off - and - that is the Estimated Travel Time feature. From what I have asked and checked, that seems to be a feature that most users (whom I know who bought the application) find the the least useful and took a big chunk of real estate of the application screen. There was also a recent outage from the source service provider, the Land Transport Authority (LTA) of Singapore, whom I was told, deliberately took the service offline as they dont want too many "free-loaders" consuming the service. Apparently, this stems from the fact that there are paid-users of this feature of www.onemotoring.com.sg who are complaining.

Much as I disagree with LTA on what I think I should be the role of what a Government Agency and its public civil servants should be to the general public: To freely serve as well as to disseminate public useful information for the greater good of its citizens' consumption without a commercial agenda, removing the Estimated Travel Time feature is a common-sense decision since a much-unused feature is taking up much clutter of the applicaton real estate and generally affecting the user-experience of the application (too much scrolling).

Real-time traffic conditions such as the Estimated Time Travel can still be derived from the Navigation features as well as the Live Traffic Conditions on the map, which provides better contextual information to the user. In the end, users want to know the estimated time to get to their destination, not from Exit A to Exit B on a certain highway.

With this feature removed, there is not much "scrolling" anymore and users can get to the feature they want much quicker now.
Another by-effect is that now SG-Drive loads much faster.
Coupled with the WP7 NoDo update and its enhancements built into SG-Drive, v3.12 will even load faster from cold and the NoDo update will provide the much-awaited copy-n-paste functionality as well.
Visual Maps from the navigation routes and directions also gets a boost with faster rendering time and better delivery mechanisms.
Live Traffic Conditions on the map takes it own spot and it is location-aware now. If GPS is turned-off, the default location will be Singapore.
Interfaces are much stream-lined now and can be accessed directly from the horizontal (and often-missed) ApplicationBar menu items.

Do download it or refresh your older versions. Try it and let me know what you think. I can always un-do my decision if the majority tells me I am wrong.

... AND YES - it will still cost a measly SGD1.99/USD1.29 and the proceeds will still go to charity.

Shame on you, Google

2011-03-16T04:53:58.8550000+08:00

Pretty darn sneaky GOOG. Do you really have to resort to this to hijack someone to Chrome? Accuracy of GOOG search is definitely questioned here and gives rise to how much truth is actually tweaked.