A Thought on Google Drive

What, you guys are expecting the third part of the post-mortem?
Sorry, you gotta wait a bit more, but I do have something for you later.

Meanwhile, there’s something else I want to talk about, and it’s…

Google Drive
A few days ago the world was abuzz with the launch of Google Drive, Google’s attempt at cloud storage service. Google Drive acts just like what you would expect from a cloud storage service such as Dropbox, Box.Net, or SugarSync, it lets you automatically sync stuff across your devices. And since it replaces Google Docs, it also lets you have your Google Docs file right on your file system (which is a sorta anti-cloud behavior if you think about it). Currently it’s available on Windows, Mac, and Android devices, but expect it to hit iOS soon as well. And probably many more.

Google Drive indeed made a lot of headlines, but it also sparked up a lot of discussions regarding cloud storage services, mainly Dropbox. There is a lot of arguments about it, several argue that Google Drive aggressive pricing will drive users from Dropbox, while another argue that Dropbox has more features than Google Drive. Some argue that Google’s ubiquity will win in the end while others argue that Dropbox has the advantage of being the smaller company. With the launch of Google Drive, a lot of people is trying to predict the life and death of Dropbox.

However, the way I see it, Google Drive actually competes more directly with iCloud, Apple cloud-syncing service, instead of Dropbox. Why would I say so? Simply because Google Drive launches with not just an SDK, but also several apps already using that SDK. While DropBox have an API as well, Dropbox is more of a product for syncing files then a service running across various apps. Whereas Google Drive and iCloud is a service that could easily be used to sync various apps across multiple devices.

Right now Google Drive SDK only works on web application (which I suppose would be a nice addition to internet-based operating system like, oh I don’t know, Chrome OS?), but it doesn’t take a genius to see that an SDK for Android app would quickly follow. I’ve been longing for Android apps to sync between devices (so I don’t have to play Angry Birds from the very beginning for each new device I got), and I guess Google Drive is the answer. So, expect more Google Drive integration on the next generations of Android phones.

And I don’t think it will stop at that, lately Google has been pretty adamant in unifying their services, and Google Drive would fit very nicely in their unification strategy. With Google Drive you could have a single place to store your files on Google server, much like how Google+ is the only place for everything social on Google. Right now it’s only docs, but it could easily expand to pictures (Picasa? Google+ Instant Upload?), music (Google Music?), apps (Google Play?), and even codes (Google Code?). Integrated over various Google services, Google Drive could enhance the experience.

So, should Dropbox be worried?
I believe they’ve been worried about this since their inception, so I’m sure they already have some ideas on how to counter Google Drive. Not just that, I feel that Dropbox has a way, way better user experience than Google Drive, it has shell integration, file status indicators, and a lot of other important little things that made them a winner over Google Drive for most people.

Another thing Dropbox has over Google Drive is user traction, these days I see more and more people use Dropbox, even non-techies. Sure, Google is able to promote Google Drive all over their service to try getting people to use it, but look at Google+, they’ve been promoting it like hell yet that doesn’t really help the situation.

Anyway, I could be totally wrong here, a lot of people predicted that Google Drive won’t be just another Dropbox clone and their predictions turned out to be wrong after all. But hey, it is never wrong to image a fun future =D

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And whoa, I haven’t blogged for a while, but I manage to type this whole thing on my laptop in a hotel room simply because I’m bored but feeling productive. Oh, and the fact that the internet connection is pretty crappy probably helps too XD

Love

It’s Valentine day!
Let’s talk about love, shall we?

And no, I’m not talking about love between couples or any kind of relationship, I’m talking about a different kind of love. One that gets less talked about, even though it’s as powerful as the kind of love that occurs between two individuals. I’m talking about the love for creations.

Love for creations is the love you have for the creative works of another person. It’s the love you have for your favorite TV series, your favorite novel, your favorite comic book, or any other kind of creative works. It’s the love for stuff that’s shared by everyone, so the love for your shoes or your gadget doesn’t count, since what happens to your belongings happens to you alone.

(for example, when Darth Vader reveals himself to be Luke’s father, millions other viewers would also feel your astonishment, however, when your favorite shirt gets torn, only you would feel the sadness).

So, what prompts me to talk about this? Well, earlier this week, Mangastream announced that they will no longer scanlate Shonen Jump series due to a complaint from VIZ Media. Then, this morning, Red Hawk Scans also announced that they will stop scanlating Shonen Jump series because of the same complaint. This is very troublesome for me since both of them scanlate some series I really care about such as One Piece, Hunter X Hunter, Beelzebub, or Bakuman.

Just get it from the official channel, you said? First, tankobons are like 2 months late compared to the chapters on Weekly Shonen Jump magazine, so I would be at least eight chapters late, it’s just not acceptable. And that’s for japanese tankoubon, it would take more times until the english one is released since they have to translate it first.

Well, they actually have this new thing called Shonen Jump Alpha, which is an application that will receive new manga chapter weekly, just like a manga magazine in Japan, only in digital form. This leads to the second problem though, it’s only available for US and Canada! The library is pretty limited as well, there are only 6 series that readers can subscribe. Oh, not to mention that it will still be three chapters late =/

The third and last problem, is the translation. I definitely am not fluent in Japanese, but I can tell that the translation from scanlation group is way better than the official translation. It’s completely unbelievable that some professional, paid translators would get beaten by some guys who translate for free and doing it in their spare time. Beaten by some guys who do it purely out of their love.

And now we’re getting back to the love part. The power of love is pretty scary isn’t it? These guys, the scanlator, the translator, spent their precious time for free just so the rest of world can enjoy something they love. Well, I have been a scanlator once, both forming my own group as well as working for Mangastream, so I know first-hand that scanlators do what they do just because they love the series they are working on.

Kickstarter: Harnessing the power of love...

It’s very interesting to see how far people would go for something they love. Kickstarter is one of those who has managed to harness this power of love really, really well. One example is Order of the Stick. It’s an epic webcomic based on Dungeon and Dragons (seriously, check it out, it’s amazing) which recently used Kickstarter to get funding for printing the comics into book form. Guess what? It blew past its target and now has been 1000% funded, all thanks to love (from its fans).

It’s also very interesting to see how some people never seem to understand love. VIZ Media seems to be one of those people. Did they really think people don’t buy manga because there’s a FREE alternative? Hell no, it’s because there’s a BETTER alternative. And true fans usually go to the one that provides better quality. Not to mention that these true fans are the ones who would spent their money on what they love.

All in all, internet has enabled us to easily share things, it has enabled us to find other persons with the same love. And thanks to that, the power of love has been amplified on the internet. It is interesting to see if anyone could make use of such power, so far only open source community has benefited from it.

As for the manga series? Well, I believe in the power of the Internet and its users.
You can’t stop love.

The Magic of Bathroom

Let’s rename bathroom to idearoom.

Seriously.

You see, my latest two ideas came when I’m in the bathroom. The first one came to me when I’m not sure if I should enter a certain competition or not, since I don’t really have any idea of what should I make.Several hours before the registration deadline, I randomly decided to take a pee, and that’s when an idea hit me: controlling a kite using touch interface! So I decided to use it as my entry for the competition.

To be honest though, that idea still needs a lot of tweak, even now I’m not sure the gameplay is really fun XD

The second idea came to me just this morning. For a long time I haven’t got the slightest idea about how to adapt one of my games (Komodo Park) to touch interface, but just in a couple of minutes under the shower, I got an idea for a suitable gameplay. But seriously, it’s so random! I didn’t think about anything related to games before I took the shower, yet I suddenly stumbled into that idea.

So if bathroom is so effective in drawing out good ideas, should we start doing brainstorming in the bathroom? No, I don’t think so. Once we start having brainstorming sessions in the bathroom, it would become just like any other meeting rooms. I think it’s more about the activity rather than the purpose of the room. So thinking while taking a bath in the bathroom or in the meeting room have no difference whatsoever.

So, why? Why does the bathroom let us have good ideas? The first thing that I can think of is the state of our mind inside the bathroom. We’re relaxed when we go into the bathroom (so a public, crowded toilet won’t do). We all know that being relaxed helps up think clearly, that’s why it’s easier to have ideas under that condition.

The other thing would be freshness. Usually going into the bathroom lets us take a break and stop thinking about our current predicament. It’s like most of our problems are being stored outside and our minds are getting reset. With our mind reset, it’s easier to look at problems from different perspectives, resulting in brand new way of thinking that leads to a new solution.

One last factor that comes to my mind is that we don’t truly think inside the bathroom. It may sounds contradictory to my original argument, but it is true. We don’t really think when we’re in the bathroom, rather, we just let our minds wander off on their own. And much like the freshness point I mentioned before, letting our minds wander also means letting them tackle problems from different directions, leading to some new ideas that we never think of before.

I think its easy for our minds to wander off in the bathroom because most of the stuff we do there is already automated, leaving our minds idle. The privacy of bathrooms also helps, since now we don’t have anything to pay attention to.

So it all came down to being relaxed, being fresh, and having nothing immediate to think about. Could we recreate them outside the bathroom? It’s hard, but I think walking around with no destination is a close one, though it’s kinda dangerous if you don’t pay attention to your surrounding when you’re walking.

Ironically, most meeting rooms don’t encourage those three components XD

CES 2012: Day 2, 3, and a Wrap-up

I know, I know, it’s been days since the second and third day of CES 2012. But hey, it’s not totally my fault, most of the good products have been announced, so the rest of CES 2012 felt kinda dull. Fortunately, there are some cool gadgets I haven’t covered before, and I also got some thought over this year CES.

ASUS MeMO ME370T
If Acer Iconia Tab A700 is all about Quad-core, ICS, and 1080p, then this ASUS MeMO is all about quad-core, ICS, and $249. Yes, freaking $249! It’s totally unbelievable, with only $50 difference to Kindle Fire, you can get a tablet with ICS and the full Google ecosystem. A friend of mine is currently looking for tablets for a better reading experience, and if he’s willing to wait several month, I would definitely recommend this tablet.

Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga
Joanna Stern from The Verge totally nailed it, this is definitely one ”Crazy, flipping, Yoga laptop”. Flipping? Indeed, flipping is mainly how this laptop differentiate itself from the rest of Windows 8 laptops/tablets. Basically, this is your regular Windows 8 laptop, however, you can flip the screen to the back, effectively hiding the keyboard and transforming the laptop to a tablet. Unfortunately, Windows 8 is an essential element to the usability of the tablet, so this laptop here won’t come out until Windows 8 is released later this year.

I can’t wait to see various new form factors for Windows 8 devices =D

Ultrabooks
Intel has been pushing Ultrabooks really hard these days, another batch of them are introduced here at CES 2012. But, well, I’m just not really interested in them, even though I must admit that it’s really pleasing to see all those super thin laptops. The truth is, I’m really, really disappointed that none of those Ultrabooks have a decent GPU =/ You may say that you don’t need GPU for working, but according to my experience, that’s just wrong.

You see, my laptop is pretty much capable for working, since I can compile and test stuff quite quickly on it. Unfortunately, due to the lack of dedicated GPU, it isn’t capable of rotating canvas on Photoshop, something very very essential when drawing using a Wacom Bamboo. From then on, I decided that dedicated graphic card is a crucial element on laptops.

And one last thing, I barely used my laptop anymore =/ I’ve been really spoiled by my dual-monitor setup, so now working on a small, single monitor laptop really feels like it’s hampering my productivity. Nowadays, I only did some light works like checking and replying e-mails when I’m not on my desktop. However, to do those stuff, I don’t need a laptop since my tablet works just fine.

So here’s an idea to all those vendors out there, how about a tablet that can be used as a second monitor for your laptop? So all you need is a HDMI cable to connect both laptop and tablet, then voila, you get a dual-monitor laptop =D I sure am interested in that kind of devices.

Ice Cream Sandwich
This is totally against my prediction, but there are no Android phones with Ice Cream Sandwich announced on this year CES!

I really was expecting a flood of ICS-based smartphones, especially after those glowing reviews of Galaxy Nexus, but there are none of them here. We do get a lot of 720p phones like LG Spectrum, Sony Xperia S, and even Lenovo K800 which comes with Intel chipset, but they are all using Gingerbread apparently (even though most of them said that ICS is going to come via updates).

My theory behind this lack of ICS phones is because currently vendors are still developing their skinned version of ICS, which I suppose will take a lot of time since ICS is a really big departure from Android 2.x, so they’re not ready for any announcement yet.

So yeah, I suppose this means no vanilla ICS for your phones (honestly, if I was one of those vendors, I would just release one high-end phone with plain ICS while building another batch of skinned ICS phones =/). The swarm of ICS tablet supports my theory, since vendors barely customize the look of Honeycomb, they can release those ICS tablets much quicker.

Wrap-up
CES has always been special to me, it’s one year ago during CES 2011 where I started to get obsessed over consumer gadgets and technologies. I remember getting totally excited over the first dual-core smartphone, the Motorola Atrix. And even though the actual device turned out to be disappointing, the excitement of having a dual-core phone on the horizon made me really happy, it’s like being a kid in a toy store.

Well, CES did it again this year, it made me got really excited over 1080p tablets and NVidia Tegra 3 SoC. I’ve learned my lesson though, the first generation products will not be good, but the next iteration will be so awesome, just take a look at our current batch of dual-core phones, Samsung Galaxy SII, HTC Rezound, Droid RAZR, and compare it against the Atrix.

Now let’s look forward to what the Mobile World Congress on February will bring to us.
(I think there will be a Samsung Galaxy S3 announcement =D)

CES 2012: Day 1

The first day of CES 2012 is done! Well, even though it’s the first day, a lot of announcements have been made, since day 0 is really full with press conferences. So, what’s my opinion on various stuff in this year CES? Please bear in mind that I’m not really interested in things like camera or TV (been some times since I actually watched TV), so mostly it would be about gadgets.

Acer Iconia Tab A700
Three words: 1080p, quad-core, and ICS. Shit just got real.To be honest though, I’m sold at the word “1080p” already. But of course, spec isn’t everything. My friend has an Iconia Tab A500, so I’ve got the luxury to try out an Acer tablet, and well, despite having the same spec as my Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, the experience is completely different, A500 felt pretty clunky and plastic-y compared to my Galaxy Tab. Still, we don’t have the actual device on our hands right now, so we can just keep drooling over the potential awesomeness and hope it would provides an experience that matches the spec =D

Nokia Lumia 900
So, why would a Nokia device interests me? Because it’s their high-end phone, it’s their big return to the US, so I was expecting something mind-blowing. Instead, all they got is N9 / Lumia 800 design on a 4.3-inches phone with extra LTE, seriously? Oh, and don’t forget, it’s still the same old Windows Phone, no extra feature, no killer application, no customization. Do they forget that Nokia barely got any marketshare in the US? How do they hope to compete with other vendors when there’s nothing really different between a Windows Phone from HTC and a Windows Phone from Nokia?

Nokia Lumia 900

While we’re on it, let’s discuss differentiation. You might call Android fragmented, but I still believe that it’s actually freedom. Samsung and Sony are examples of OEM that managed to take advantage of this, they have made a lineup of devices (Galaxy and Xperia) that covers from low-end to high-end and could fit all kind of people. Other OEMs have failed on this aspect, let’s see HTC line ups: HTC Desire, HTC Wildfire, HTC Sensation, etc, etc. Seriously, those phones aren’t so different from one another, even their prices are similar, how would consumer know which phone is better? Anyway, back to Nokia, I really, really want them to starts differentiating themselves from other vendors, take advantage of their deal with Microsoft, and stop reusing the same design over and over again.

Asus Transformer Prime TF700T
It’s our second 1080p tablet! \o/ Asus has been delivering amazing products lately, both Asus Transformer and Asus Transformer Prime seems quite well received both by critics and by publics. Not to mention that Transformer Prime have started to receive the ICS upgrade. I definitely recommend this one if you’re looking for a 1080p tablet, though if you can wait, you should wait until iPad 3 announcement and Samsung’s counter to it =p

HTC Titan II
Another Windows Phone… phone(?) on the list. Not really interested in the device itself, but I’m more intrigued with the camera on this one, it’s a freaking 16-Mega-Pixel-Camera! But again, we all knew that mega pixel counts barely means anything these days, but I think it definitely is a good news if vendors have managed to manufacture a 16 MP camera for a smarphone.

Lenovo K800
We’ve got a newcomer to the the smartphone industry, Intel! Intel has been pretty late to the smartphone game, but with Medfield chipset now ready, they’re going to use their massive capability to spread their chipset all over the world (hell, ultrabook spread is all thanks to Intel). More competition is always good, with most tablets now using NVidia Tegra, we’ll see how Intel could change the balance. So, Lenovo K800 is the first device to run on Medfield, and bundled with ICS and 720p display, it would definitely be a great first step for Intel’s venture in the mobile market. And Intel also made a partnership with Motorola to make various devices using Intel processor, since Motorola is now owned by Google, would we see an Intel Nexus next time?

Razer Fiona
Razer has been experimenting a lot it seems, on last year CES they introduced Razer Switchblade (which later on morphed into Razer Blade) which is pretty revolutionary in my opinion. This year they introduced Razer Fiona, which shows another possibility for portable gaming, a tablet for PC gaming with integrated dual controller. Not really original you might say, since XPeria Play has the very same concept, but this is Razer we’re talking about, they made some ridiculously bad-ass-yet-comfortable design for their devices. Hell, I never know how much difference a good mouse could make until I tried Razer Orochi (and later on, Razer Imperator). Anyway, I’d really like to see they implement both Android and Windows on it, playing both Assassin’s Creed 3 and ShadowGun would be so awesome on Razer Fiona.

Razer Fiona: A PC gaming tablet?

Special mention would go to LG OLED TV
It’s ridiculously awesome, never know a screen could be so good.

There are still several interesting stuff I haven’t covered, let’s hope I can cover it on Day 2 =D