Digital Living

I Evol Uoy -- Do You Know What This Means??

A friend of a friend-of-mine create this fascinating tool that can "translate" words, so that things and thoughts that we type suddenly sounds more "interesting" and fascinating" than if it is written (or spoken) in "normal" everyday language.

For example, if we say: "Happy Birthday", it becomes: "Yppah Yadhtrib". It sounds more "unique" and "sophisticated" isn't it? :-) Someday people might think this is "French". *hahaha*

Try again:

• If we say: "How are you", it becomes: "Woh era uoy".
• If we say: "You are beautiful", it becomes: "Uoy era lufituaeb".
• If we say: "This is a garbage can", it becomes: "Siht si a egabrag nac".

Whoa!

Do give it a try. It's quite fun! :-)

But please don't say this to people:

"I ekaw pu Yadnom gninrom a tib etal, dna I nevah't hsurb ym hteet!"

Hearing that, they'll probably get pretty excited, ... yet become extremely "very sad" when they know what it really means :-) :-) :-)

Kudos to Maseko for creating and sharing this "esrever drow" tool. It's quite fun. And to Andika for exposing Maseko site to me.

Enjoy your week-end!

Microsoft Brand Is In Sharp Decline!

It was published today in Yahoo News that Microsoft Brand is in sharp decline. It was told that according to  a recent study by market research firm CoreBrand, Microsoft's brand power has been in sharp decline over the past four years, an indication the company is losing credibility and mindshare with U.S. business users.

But the biggest story here is not about the Microsoft's brand sharp decline itself, but it's about the fact that such information is being published in YAHOO news site -- business unit of YAHOO Inc, the exact same YAHOO company that Microsoft eagerly wants to buy!

One sided love is never easy. :-)

Click on the above screenshot image to enlarge. Click here if you would like to read the full article.

This Is How We'll Manage & Share (Digital) Photo In The Future

Do you still remember the "long ritual process" that we have to do to store, secure and manage our photo collection today? If you are like me, probably this is the "basic sequence" you do: 1. Use camera to take photo, 2. Plug the camera to the computer, 3. Sync/Upload the photo to computer (or transfer it to Flickr), then 4. View and enjoy the photos everyday.

It is a long tedious process by modern standard. Even worse, next time we have another photo, we have to repeat the whole "sequence" again!

Kodak Quick Touch (see above picture) might give us a glimps of what the future of "managing photo" will look like.

With this new approach, we just: 1. Snap in our photo into the photo album, and 2. Have it on display. We no longer need to sync to the computer (anyway our computer harddisk is -- very often -- almost full also). It's a new, seamless, simpler, easier way to get this thing done.

Once we are done with that, we can browse the photo through the touch interface. Simpler, easier, faster.

And even better:

• I imagine -- in the future we might even have the ability to easily using the digital album interface to sync our photo up to our flickr .. and -- through RSS subscription facility -- have it appear in our Mom's, brother and sister's photo album too automatically and immediately ... so everybody always "uptodate" of what's going on and happening in our lives.

• Imagine also if we can write our "personal greetings" and "notes" on top of those photo! ... because the photo album -- in the future -- would have a "pen" that will enable us to write our notes "on top" of it too!

Truly awesome!

BlackBerry's Upcoming New Phone Looks Great!!

Aesthetically Blackberry Curves was such an awesome beauty. The hardware looks pretty, although -- typical to many hardware company -- the software is a bit so-so.

But -- many people said -- the new Blackberry (the BlackBerry 8xxxx?) physically would look even prettier and nicer. This is how many people "predict" it will look like:

We hope the software would look great, very simple and easy to use too! Just the way palm software used to be. Here's a peek:

Compared to super smoothness of the iPhone UI, seems many major improvements still need to be made.

OpenOffice.org Site Has A New Look!

As of yesterday, the openoffice.org site has a new look. Although not awesomely perfect, the "new look" looks better now compared to how it was before. Great software deserve great website so people get excited to visit the site, and then can understand what the product is all about.

There's nothing "web 2.0" yet about the site. Nevertheless is a great progress towards the future.

Notice the MySQL/Sun logo at the bottom of the page. This shall be excitingly recorded in history. OpenOffice.org site never had this before :-)

Linux Live CD: Best Way To Avoid Catching Virus From "Dirty" Windows Computer

Have you ever felt scared each time you use public computer to do your business activity?

Have you ever thought: "What if this computer contain alot of virus?" How do you know that if your USB drive connect to this dirty Windows computer, the Windows virus will not 'eat' or 'destroy' your data?"

Linux Live CD may be could be a good solution to that. By booting through this Live CD, we can create a  totally new "computer" environment that we can trust. Based on that we can do our business activity safely.

Linux live CD can be created in a lot of ways. This article explain the process in great detail. Do take a look there if you are interested to know more.

Happy "live-CD"-ing! Now every public computer can be instantly turned to become "your trustable computer", where you can do your work and computing/communication activity safely, securely ... and peacefully.

Office-Processing Moves To The Web

In today's era when office processing can move to the web, and when desktop-based "office stuff" (wordprocessor,  spreadsheet program, and many other) can be "purchased" in the market for free or for a "small fee", would it still make sense to buy an "offline" desktop system at a price of $300 per person?

• On the desktop, OpenOffice.org tools is now available for people and public for free. It resemble 99+% of Microsoft most important functionality; it even adopted the open document format as a standard -- which is a much better "future ready" document format rather than the proprietary Microsoft standard.

• On the web, Zoho and Google Docs provide alternatives of how office-document-processing can be done on the web. It also offers a more attractive subscription model -- compared to Microsoft's older "$300+ per person" scheme.

If these are the key realities; as popularity of these "web-tool" (and public awareness of such tool's availability) continuously increase every year, how would Microsoft respond to that? Would it transform and reestablish itself on the web, or on the desktop, or integrate both together?

And what would the product/service pricing scheme that Microsoft would apply? Would it lower its dinosauric pricing scheme? Or would it shift to subscription based model?

This is something important that we need to continue watch and carefully review.

March 26 - "Document Freedom Day" -- Why It's Important??

March 26, 2008 marks the birth of the first document freedom day initiatives around the world. Many people may not have heard about document freedom day before, and ask probably "What is the significance of this for me and how it impact my daily activity?".

Here are example of some important facts that perhaps would help us getting aware and understand how "document freedom" initiative is an important concept for our future and how how it is actually one of the most important major issue facing our modern digital living society today.

• Still remember the problem when we can not read nor access important document that we create sometime in the past, because the application program that we used to create that document (in the past) is no longer available? What we can do about it? nothing!

• Still remember how bad it was when -- after trying so hard to find the old program, the document still can not be read because the operatingsystem no longer support that program?

• Still remember how bad it was when -- after trying so hard to find the latest version of that program -- the document seem can not be read because the latest program does not support the old document format anymore, because this document format is already "too old"?
  

These are examples of context of problem that the world society face today, which never get solved accordingly, which the document freedom day initiative try to resolve and address due to its significant importance for world society as a whole.

In essence, the core basic idea of document freedom day initiative is to raise awareness of people, public, business, organization and society as a whole about the importance of carefully (and smartly) considering the document format that we use to store our digital document, so we can avoid MAJOR problem  of  "critical document inaccessibility" (such as the one we described in above example) from happening anymore.

To "free our document" from such terrible-destiny on a world-scale basis, the core idea of the initiative is this:

• Document format shall be open, and equally accessible to everybody, instead of being locked to one vendor or proprietary format provider.
  
  • The core problem with "document format" is that many of document format that we use today is too tightly integrated with the application program that creates it.
• This means, for example: if we use format X, we need application X to edit, read and modify it, if we use format Y, we need application Y to edit, read and modify it.
• Under such monolitic, "proprietary" structure, the content and document format belongs to the application, instead of belong the public and society that suppose to own it.
• The consequences of this:
  • When the application no longer available, the document suddenly also "vanish" without reason.
  • When the application is available, but not accessible from where the owner of the document would like to read, edit, modify or access the document, then for that particular moment, the document become "locked"  and "temporarily" not accessible from its owner.
• Document format shall be freed from the tool nor application that we use to create it in the first place.
  • This means we can create the document using application X, but later on we can always access it, or edit it further using application Y, or Z, because all equally recognize and understand the open document format standard.
  • This concept is not much different from internet content and browser we use today. For any information on the internet, we can use any browser to read it, despite the application or program that was being used to create the website itself.
  • Even, if no program is available at our disposal, we shall be able to use our basic browser to access and read the document!

If we can do above vision, then the whole world knowledge and information can be stored in a secure, safe format, because through that format everybody can now create document with whatever tool and technology that available to them at particular time, and sometime later in the future, the same document can be edited, read and accessed again from a totally different tool that is available at that particular time in the future.

This is the ideal situation that is aimed to be happening, which will "free" the document from its proprietary boundary that annoyingly exist as of today.

• If eventually we -- and world society -- eventually can understand the concept, and start smartly  (and carefully) choose the document format that we use to store our digital document and information, then we -- the world society -- would have access to the powerful power and flexibility that open document format can provide.

• Yet at the same time, if we don't do anything to change our current condition, many of our world knowledge and information will be "lost" simply because we can not access, read nor edit it anymore.

With that perspective, supporting the noble idea behind document freedom day initiative, by adopting, spreading the importance of embracing the world's open document format (ODF) and standard becomes important.

By doing so,the world document and information is now has a chance to be freed from any proprietary format nor unnecessary boundary that surrounds it today.

Further information about the vision and "extended future capability" that open document format might be able to provide is as follow:

• Document Can Be Read, Edit And Accessed "Forever" Form Any Tool And Device That We Had, Because From Day 1 The Format Has Been Designed To Be Future Ready.

• No longer document format tightly dependent on any proprietary program that creates it.
• Now we can compose document with any tool we like, and we can use different program to read it, or even to edit it further.

• Document Can Easily (And Friendly-ly) Be Made Exportable To Any Other Popular/Important Format, As We Wish It To be.

• Translation to Microsoft Office (.doc, .xls) or adobe (pdf) or other popular format that we need is no problem.
• Yet at the same time the original document itself still can be edited and read using any tool that we like (or have accessible to us at particular time), at anytime.

• Our Document Can Be Easily Made Accessible & Transportable Everywhere (Soon/Sometime In The Future).

• Transporting documents to any kind of devices, whether it is a Mac or a PC, a computer or a PDA, shall be easy.
• We can use different application and program to edit, access and modify our document.
• Even if we don't have the program that we need, we can use our browser to read the document.

• We No Longer Need To Pirate Legal Software, Because The Open Document Application And Program Is Free.

• Document can be created with high quality -- yet using free wordprocessing or spreadsheet tool, or office program of our choice.
• This way we don't have to pirate office software anymore.

In summary:

• Document freedom initiatives brings the power and control of our document back to the consumer, who is actually content creator and owner of the document who should have the full right to have access to the future of the document lifecycle.
• With Open Document Format, it is now us -- the content owner and content creator -- that can decide what tool we would like to use to create, read and access our documents, rather than a few vendor that dictate what tool we can use, and we can do (and can not do) with our own digital document that we create today, in the past, and in the future.

• Through document freedom initiatives, now we as consumer have our freedom back to freely choose any tool, program to create our document.
• We also now have have our freedom back to access and read our document without being trapped nor limited by any proprietary application tool, application format or standard.

• Document freedom initiatives makes the world one step better because the container for our information now no longer limited by document-format barriers nor application-tool boundary that makes the document so difficult to be exchanged from one person to another, and from one device to another.

• Document freedom initiatives brings back open-democratic mechanism that  enables world innovation and world creativity to flourish once more, because the mechanism of storing, editing, viewing and processing documents now again back become fully accessible to everybody and the most creative and dedicated individual for that matter. 

Through document freedom initiatives, everybody can now help and contribute various thinking, idea and continuous innovation to world's most open document format. The human digital container for knowledge, work activity and work result become continuously better as the result.

It is because of that idea, great perspective and honorable spirit that no matter what, for the good of information access and information control of greater world society today and the future, supporting open document format (ODF) and various associated initiatives that relates with it (OpenOffice.org, Document Freedom Day, etc) is a "must".

Happy ODF-ing! Happy "Document Freedom Day" too!

My Favorite Branding & Marketing Subject

How is branding and marketing differ in today's digital new age, compared to few years back?

What works, what doesn't work, how to differentiate the "fad approach" from the "workable ones"?

How do you measure success, and return on brand-investment?

Here are some of my favorite slides regarding the subject:

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Microsoft Wants To Buy Yahoo: Final Defense To The "Old Kingdom"??

I think I got the idea why Microsoft wants to buy Yahoo -- no matter what Yahoo asking price is.

Despite the "basic business rumors" that they would like to do this because Microsoft+Yahoo combined equals the largest traffic on the net, or other "possibilities" that we have discussed a few week back, the heart of Microsoft most important reason to do it is probably is this:

Microsoft needs Yahoo to be the "open", "social", "mass internet" interface to its older, boring, no-longer-cool proprietary platform!

Take a look at many of Microsoft recent initiatives. Under the slogan "Microsoft is now more open", they are now embracing opencomputing proactively. Integrate with many open-companies, Microsoft try to wrap "free" or "open computing cool-ware" front-end selections around Microsoft's dinosauric "software".

The Microsoft core strategic idea may be:

Free, cool, open technology at the front, but "old" dinosauric stuff at the back.

Very Ballmerian-style by any sense.

Microsoft seems to understand now that the computing era has changed. The computing world that makes the "zing", "cool" and "hip" innovation everyday has transformed from the old monolitic -- one size fits all -- model of the old computing era, to "something" consist of loose confederation of many small "new republic" -- all poised by the idea of "freedom" and "democracy", all poised by the concept (and power) of collaboration and openness in innovation,  all joined together in a great, massive world-scale attempt to build one "integrated open computing platform" of the internet. All these are happening in ways that Microsoft never understood nor experienced before. It's a totally different democratic world, where king no longer rules, and the concept of "one kingdom" no longer applies.

To this perspective, Microsoft first attempt was to "pooh" "pooh" the idea of these tiny confederation of "gags". But as the combined power of these "tiny mutan" seem to show traction in the Microsoft established market and domination itself, Microsoft seem try to pose a different gesture:

They act as if they support the idea of "the republic" -- while at the central, they still to defend the core idea that the same king and kingdom still rules!

What a "joke", "poke" idea to be! Something of a "very Ballmerian nature" that one day probably will be remembered in the history of computing as the most "dangerous" idea ever invented!

Oh, Microsoft!!! Still the old king that is nostalgic about your old kingdom are you?

I am still nostalgic of the days in the 80s-90s when Microsoft was so great, because it focuses on inventing technologies, SDK, APIs and ideas that resonate with the need of the market and gained the full hearted support of the smartest world developers at large, because of their great mission and heart; rather than the today's Ballmerian Microsoft that put poked face here and there in search of a "new identity" and "clothes".

ps: Do take a look on how Microsoft and Yahoo chosen future path seem increasingly made different everyday. When Microsoft take this path, Yahoo choose another. Would a "forced marriage" between the two companies made these different perspectives complementary? -- like the powerful "Yin" and "Yang" combined -- or would this be a source of "hell" for both companies and to the rest of the industry?