Hello World on Android

Well, from tiny acorns mighty oaks do grow… I really should be asleep, but here’s a screenshot of my new Android tablet (an EKEN M-001) running my first Android application.

I will leave any comments on the development SDK till later. Generally seems quite painless to write small applications, complying with Android standard app architecture and following an appropriate UI style might take a bit more getting used to.

To begin with you might think that the fact that your online presence is likely to outlive you is a somewhat comforting one – after all most people would like to think they would leave behind some form of legacy when they die. And of course people can pay their respects by emailing relatives from anywhere in the world, creating tribute web pages and leaving facebook messages etc. However it is worth considering that for some people an enduring reminder of a loved one’s death may not in fact be very comforting, particularly if they died in tragic circumstances. I recently read an article about two obviously very bright but also terribly troubled researchers in the field of Artificial Intelligence. Both sadly commited suicide around a similar time a few years ago, although neither of the events were linked or seemingly related. Both these bright young people most likely believed strongly in the great ability of the internet to allow ones achievements to live on. But you have to wonder whether, for the families and friends that were affected, certain reminders of such tragic events are quite painful to have to deal with.

Not only can other people leave both positive and negative comments about a person online, social networking sites like facebook that are not under the full control of the family or friends present issues like dealing with the removal of personal information, and stopping unsensitive things happening such as ’suggestion’ type services which ask one to interact in some way with a person who is no longer alive.

As life with a heavy online presence becomes increasingly normalised, the superficial advantages on the surface give way to expose some much more serious issues which we deal with on a fairly regular basis in real life but which are uncharted territory on the internet.

This all links in with the privacy debate surrounding the internet as a whole which I feel is set to become one of the huge legal and political issues relating to the computing and technology industry, and I can only hope that such issues are not ignored by software giants, policy makers and politicians and the public at large in favour of the reward offered by advancing the online world.

Any work can be potentially mentally taxing, but software development can be a particularly cerebral activity requiring a lot of concentration. Every programmer will know how difficult it is sometimes to juggle system architectures, models and concepts as well as more specific programming language related constructs and syntax. The complexity of these tasks can be comparable to solving mathematics problems and manipulating scientific theorems. Any intense thought processes take their toll on your energy and occupy your mind, and the more they do so the more difficult solving problems can become. When you add into the equation any work or home related stress and project deadlines that may crop up,  this can become all a bit much and even affect your wellbeing. Here are some tips for keeping your head fresh at work that hopefully may prove useful:

• Take regular breaks – this is probably the single most important piece of advice to follow to increase productivity and your wellbeing too. It can be difficult to adhere to this particularly when a problem presents itself, however this is exactly the sort of situation where a break is most beneficial. If you can arrange to have a short break every hour or two, it will help to alleviate fatigue and can give you a fresh look at your work. Sometimes seeing a problem from a new perspective is exactly what you need to advance with your work.
• Make notes – no matter how intelligent you are there is a limit to the amount of information you can keep in your head at any one time. The chances are that the more you try to remember, the more things you will as a consequence forget. It’s much better to make a few notes either electronically or physically to remind you of things you need to do or be mindful of in relation to your work. Sketching diagrams and scribbling down your ideas can also help where design is required or you are having trouble understanding something in particular.
• Communicate – this is both important to do in order to share ideas and obtain assistance from others, but also simply to keep socially active and avoid feeling isolated from your colleagues. Software development can often be a somewhat solitary activity where words are rarely spoken amongst people. However for most people, the less you interact with your work peers the less pleasant your work environment may seem to be. The odd conversation can help to lighten the mood and boost your confidence in the work you are doing.
• Pay attention to your working environment – this one is carefully worded because there are several potential issues here. Firstly, the physical surroundings in which you work can have a big impact on how you get on at work and your feelings about your job as a whole. An ideal environment for many developers would probably resemble their own desks in their own rooms at their own homes. Really what I’m saying is that its a matter of personal preference and so any opportunity to improve your surroundings to your liking should probably be taken. If you feel comfortable and relaxed you’re probably going to work better as a result. Also though, there are aspects of your work environment beyond your control and so it is worth being aware of how you feel about these aspects. These external environmental factors can be poignant enough to make you feel very negative about things. If this is, or has become, the case then you really need to monitor the situation and consider your options to improve the situation or remove yourself from it entirely. Remember that work is not a selfless act, you do it in expectation of something in return, and if it is not providing for you what you need in any particular aspect it is time to consider moving on.
• Monitor your physical and mental wellbeing – these things are affected by so many factors I could not possibly list all the things to watch out for. But be aware that everything from your working hours to your diet and leisure/hobby activities can affect your physical and your mental health. It is easy when you’re working hard to ignore how you are feeling personally and your health in general. However one of the most important things in your life is your health so you need to avoid causing yourself any harm and take any problems you may be experiencing seriously and talk to a doctor about them.

At times you may have to actually force yourself to be mindful of these things, it is easy to forget or ignore them – we all do it! However it is worth it in the long run to be happy when you’re not at work and at the very least content as often as possible when you’re at work. And the more this is the case, the more productive you’re likely to be.

Now I’m not suggesting for one second that someone cause malicious damage this way (hacking in my dictionary defines a very wide set of computing practices, not necessarily with bad intentions). However there are interesting possibilities with this kind of reverse hacking, including spam prevention, SEO manipulation, and identification of bots and their method of operation.

Personally I don’t have the time or need at the moment to investigate these possibilities, but I thought I’d provide some food for thought – nuisance bots could actually be a useful resource.

It seems the EU are interested in introducing legislation to make big tech companies open up their technologies by using standard formats and interoperable interfaces. On one hand this vision of the future seems like a bright one, but on the other there is a big question as to whether it is really realistic to do this and how on earth the rules relating to this interoperability would be possible to define.

Trying to legislate on technology related issues is an extremely difficult thing, largely because only a very small minority of people will fully understand both the technology involved and the legal consuquence of imposing such legislation. This is why law suits involving technology companies are so horrendously expensive. There is also the issue that technology has been a world-wide market for some time now and it is impossible for the EU to introduce laws that affect distrubuted systems which operate outside of Europe.

One slashdot contributor summed up my feelings on the subject with the following comment:

What? (Score:5, Insightful)

by jim_v2000 (818799) writes: on Thursday July 01, @12:59PM (#32759272)

“Any kind of IT product should be able to communicate with any type of service in the future.” [EU]

What does that even mean?

Indeed defining what any statement so sweeping as that above really means is impossible and the statement reflects a chasm between recognising the intention for good in this proposal and understanding the reality of what it actually entails.

What VirtualBox enables you to do is host any number of VMs which can be launched on your desktop as required. For those that are uninitiated VMs are very clever software virtualisations of physical machines

. They have applications ranging from a home user trying out a new OS such as a linux distribution, to software developers using them for testing and simulation of distributed software.

The system compares well and has many similar features as the most popular VM products from VMware. As far as any detailed analysis goes, as yet I can’t really offer an opinion, I’ve not enough knowledge of other VM products and haven’t used VirtualBox enough to really say anything much. From initial impressions it seems to compete well. Here you see a screenshot of VirtualBox running a Damn Small Linux image.

What is somewhat frustrating though is that because mobile devices reach such a wide audience, they often fail to accommodate for a particular section of society. Most mobiles are marketed at the broadest range of individuals as possible, and as such attempt to do everything they possibly can as well as possible, prioritising only the features that appeal to the majority of the market. This leaves people with an amount of choice that is paradoxically both incredibly broad but also guilty of not catering enough for specific niches. Why do we need a netbook that touts potential for ‘multimedia’ usage as well as internet usage? Some folks might be quite content surfing the web and reading plain old text without watching videos as well! And the two are a very different purpose: compare e-readers with iphones (and ipads) – the design is deliberately different. So why are there hardly any web-readers? At best one can find a handful of  good quality ‘Mobile Internet Devices’ which aren’t phones and don’t focus on multimedia delivery.

I’m not against mobiles that can do everything, but sometimes I might want to buy a product for a more specific purpose – because a phone just can’t do everything as well as a product designed for a specific purpose.

On the software side, I agree that people want choice more than anything. But the problem is real choice isn’t a lock-in operating system or an App Store which is designed to turn the people who made the hardware a tidy profit. I’m happy to pay for software but I want to feel I’ve chosen the software, not that someone’s chosen it for me. And I want to at least have the option to tweak under the hood, and again if necessary I’d pay a small premium for an optional OS that offered such flexibility.

Its a shame that because the success of different types of mobile devices is driven by the mass target market, new innovation tends to emerge rarely. When it does happen it often becomes quickly absorbed into the ever-growing list of features that any new mobile device seems to have to implement in some way. Using this mobile features ‘checklist’ to develop new products gets in the way of any really creative developments which come from trying to solve a more specific problem on its own, or implement something in a better way by focusing entirely on it. I can only hope that more specific mobile devices will co-exist and thrive alongside their more all-encompassing cousins.

I’ve found people can be surprisingly approachable about discussing things you may wish to achieve as long as you have enough material to talk about and believe in what you’re trying to do.

I think communication is a trick some people do miss which causes problems long term in business and in one’s personal life. Even if you’re not the most confident of individuals, discussing something on the internet can be a useful tool. Sometimes you can reach the exact types of people you’re looking for to discuss something on the internet, although of course the opposite is also the case (but even this might help you to decide that perhaps your target audience differs to the audience you originally envisaged).

So there’s a bit of food for thought for anyone thinking of developing their ideas into something productive; its worth approaching and discussing them with the relevant people, after all you’ve nothing to lose.

Exams are nearly over, which is a great relief and the sun is shining here in Norwich. Things can indeed only get better as in a weeks time I will be making my way to France for a holiday with my lovely girlfriend and my housemates who will all be graduating this year. Bon voyage!

Unfortunately for me this means some of my web-sites don’t seem to get listed as highly as they used to and my inevitable bias is telling me that this change is bad!

In fact, I can’t help but point out a few criticisms:

1. Aesthetically everything seems to be aligned to the left hand side and leaves a massive gap on the right – why not fill the space instead of giving me ‘blah blah blah…’
2. The screen doesn’t resize, its fixed to your screen size so if you make the window smaller it doesn’t wrap the text.
3. More importantly searches seem to be ordered differently, something I wouldn’t mind too much (as I’m sure its a very difficult job to please everyone with the search ordering), however the options on the side menu allow you to search for everything apart from just plain old web sites. Perhaps they just aren’t web 3.0 enough to be considered important these days?
4. Why have we got two menus which seem to do the same thing now – one up top as has always been, and one new side menu which only seems to be different because it has a pretty icon beside it?

The more I think about it the more I’m starting to consider alternatives, and that says a lot: The fact that I’m prepared to waltz over to bing or altavista is quite a paradigm shift, especially as I generally use Chrome as my browser of choice and generally largely support Google’s end-user services.

I am confident if I have a little to say on the issue plenty of people are completely up in arms about it and this will not be an issue that will easily disappear.

Personally I just want Google’s search engine to be what it has always stood for – a simple way to find web sites. I don’t really care about customizing the look, and its much higher on my priority list to find the most relevant web site I’m looking for, not the page or specific content such as images, blog posts and most certainly not updates/tweets. And before anyone would suggest otherwise – I am a young person and I’m sure I can speak for plenty of us when I say I’m really not interested in gimmicks like twitter.