Thursday, April 30, 2009

Wants vs Needs

You don't need an IPhone. You want one.

It is cool and fun and worth talking about. You can easily start a conversation with someone on one of the IPhone features. It is an idea virus.


My wife is infected with the IPhone ideavirus.

"Honey, look I can fish with my IPhone."
"Honey, look I can change the TV channel from my IPhone. See ..."
"Honey, Can I borrow you VISA to buy this application? I couldn't find a crack for it."

Doesn't matter if people need your product or not. Just make sure your product can easily starts conversations and it will spread. Try to avoid the "So Whats".

If you need to call someone this should be more than enough.

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Press the red button

Do you have something fun and worth talking about?

Just Start. Start now. Fail often. Enjoy the ride.

P.S. Promise to keep your niche less annoying please.

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Write less

Whether you write an article or a computer program. It's the same.

When you write, you feel confident about your work. This confidence is actually bad. It prevents you from reading your work again. Even if you did, you will read it with confidence lens and eventually change nothing.

You should slide down the confidence equalizer while reading your own work and remove those confidence lens. Its healthy.

You will end up peeling a lot of unnecessary words and sentences and paragraphs. Then you will free the simple, beautiful and the core idea of your work dancing through the words. This too will keep your work short and sharp and solid for people to actually read.

That works too for programmers.

Monday, April 27, 2009

The Anti-Virus guru is not born yet

You know that.

Everyone deep inside knows that he's not satisfied with his Anti-Virus. Yes you defend it in front of your friends. But you know that it's not the guru.


Nod32: Consumes too much memory.
Kaspersky: It treats everything as a virus including me.
Norton: Most viruses know how to kill it.
Avast: They want to sell you the professional software by any means.


I will not suggest anything. But I will ask you one question.
Have you seen an Anti-Virus that does only his job?

There is always an "AND". An Anti-Virus AND a SPAM filter AND a Pop-Up Blocker AND a Firewall. Why don't I have an Anti-Virus that detects viruses only?


When that guru is born. Nobody will buy it. Nobody will spend hours on Google trying to crack it.

Because it will be for free. And yes, everybody will talk about it.

At least I know that guru will be a Purple Cow Anti-Virus.

Sunday, April 26, 2009

So What?

People don't talk about a new search engine anymore. We have Google.

People don't talk about a free home delivery restaurant anymore. Most restaurants provides that.

People don't talk about a new sandwich at Hardee's anymore. It's just a sandwich after all.

People don't talk about a new Nokia mobile anymore. Every week they release one. Its becoming a boring routine.


Now lets work on this a bit.


People do talk about a new search engine if it can find your lost car keys.

People do talk about a free home delivery restaurant that gives you the meal for free if they're late by even 1 min.

People do talk about a new sandwich at Hardee's if it weighs 2 KG.

People do talk about a new Nokia mobile if it calls the person you're currently thinking of.



So before doing something. Ask yourself. So What? Alors que? Dakara Nani?

IS IT worth talking about?

Friday, April 24, 2009

Device drivers tragedy

Device drivers are the smallest software that can be wrote. Write a driver for a NASA rocket and it will take about 10 MB.

If you format your laptop, and you lost your CD. You visit the vendor website and get lost.

Why?
Why you have to download a 50 MB Bluetooth utility when you only need a 200 KB driver?
Why you have to download a 200 MB Graphic utility when you only need a 500 KB driver?
Why you have to suffer finding out what version of LAN network you have, so you know what to download exactly?

Vendors write fancy applications with the drivers that few users really care to use. You just want the device to work. OK. Will it hurts them to make their fancy applications optional?


Seriously Why?
Why don't I have all these problems with my Mac?

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Mathematical Induction

Iron is a metal, it enlarges with heat. So does copper, magnesium, sodium ... OK lets just conclude that all metals enlarges with heat.

You form a rule or a formula and prove it with a set of examples. If you didn't find an example that contradicts your rule, you win. That's Mathematical Induction.

We do that in business too. We know deep inside its not 100% correct, but it helps in making decisions.

E.g. We bought 5 HP Laptops for our company. All of them constantly stuck showing the BSOD. It seems they can't handle our Software. That's it no HP Laptops anymore for our business.

Now I'm not saying this induction is correct but we tend to use it all the time. Its kinda related to a post a wrote about inertia.

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Flexibility = Stability + Compromise - Simple

Windows is flexible. The lefties at Microsoft keep things organized in a way to make the user do everything with windows.

Enabling the registry (regedit.exe) is an excellent flexible backdoor. But this just deforms the simplicity and adds more compromise factor to windows.


You may have wondered why we have so
many viruses for windows right?

Don't get me wrong, I love that feature in windows, I can do anything with windows. It works out for lefties I guess.

We could adjust that equalizer to control the level of flexibility vs compromise and simplicity to reach a reasonable accepted system.

You may freely argue with it, that's just what I think.

Sunday, April 19, 2009

Hard, fake and difficult work

Yes there is a difference.

Hard work is what most people do. There is a by-the-book, pre-written, organized rules and they follow those rules precisely. They work very hard to satisfy themselves and the big whales up the hierarchy.

e.g. The
coordinator who spends nights to do the monthly report for the company.

Fake work is the work people mistakenly think its hard.
e.g. The manager who only sends emails at 3 am while he does literally nothing through the day.

Difficult work is the work people should have guts to do.

e.g. The marketing director who halts the entire ads campaigns and spends the budget on the product quality.


EDIT: Smart work is a mixture of fake and difficult work. You do something difficult once and then you rest doing fake work while your difficult work pays off.

What kind of worker are you?

Saturday, April 18, 2009

Sinking in details

In English we say:
Ali is Calling...
Fatema is Calling...

Same syntax for male or female

However in Arabic we say
Ali yatasel...
علي يتصل
Fatema tatasel...
فاطمة تتصل

My mother's Arabic-interfaced phone rang, the screen was showing "Fatema yatasel" فاطمة يتصل. Grammatically that was wrong. As usual I started a discussion in how to solve that.

Hussein: "Okey, we'll check, if the last letter of the contact name ends with this letter or this letter or this letter then its a female. However, some names doesn't go with that rule so we need to keep a track of a centralized database of most common female names and regularly update it via a web service through the phone GPRS."

My wife interrupting me: "Honey, why don't you just let your mother tells the phone Fatema is a female?"
Hussein: "Oh, I didn't thought of that".
So simply let the user specifies the gender while adding a new contact.

I am going to write a book titled: My right brained wife. She saved me from several embarrassments and she is a source of inspiration.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Research: Thermal Sensing Mouse





What if the mouse served as both input and output device.

It reads the x,y coordinates and it outputs, well, heat!

We could utilize this feature to do some cool stuff.

1. Browsers can emit heat to the mouse when the visited website is new or recently updated!
2. Digg can emit heat to the mouse when the current post has rich diggs.
3. Facebook can emit heat to the mouse when the current member has too many friends or wall posts.

You may add to the list.

From a technical point of view, I don't think its difficult, we just need it to be supported in Windows and Mac to catch in fire.


Feel the heat while net surfing.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

The purple cow person

A Purple cow person doesn't have a resume. His remarkable achievements speaks for him. In fact, he doesn't need a resume because people find him easily without one.

A purple cow person is specialized in a sub-sub-sub field and he is really good at it. Not only that, he is remarkable because nobody does it like him. (And certainly am not talking about Chili's)

A purple cow person doesn't aim for everything, he is bad at that. That's the main reason he is good. Once everybody started to do what he does, the purple cow person is finished, he will just be a cow. A boring one.


How to know if you are a purple cow person?

If people are talking about IPhone Games Programming, the first person comes to their head is the purple cow person at IPhone Games Programming.


Monday, April 13, 2009

McDonlands Manama-Bahrain just fixed their door

It was February the 15th 2009 when I wrote this post, McDonalds main door was broken for more than a month at that time.

In 13 April 2009, they fixed it.

That main door set broken there for more than 4 months.

How much McDonalds makes in 4 months?

Do the math.

Saturday, April 11, 2009

I would love to fail

Approaching a problem with this esteem makes you do your best.

When I created the geShout.com website, I didn't think of winning of losing. If it is truly remarkable it spreads. It wins and I'll be happy but not satisfied.

If it fails, well, that's lovely too. Because I would have learned a lot during that journey. I'll carry that experience to my next journey to solve a new problem.

I wrote few ideas in my blogs, and there are other ideas in the wild. So, there are plenty of ideas, why worry?

Shout This

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

An Idea: A NewsPaper with Touch E-Ink








Seth Godin claims that the end of the newspapers is near. So I thought I would propose something to the newspapers firms.

1. E-Ink Technology
My idea is to create an E-Ink paper (Electronic Ink).
This E-Ink paper is much better than the screen because it feels like reading a regular ink, yet it possess the electronic capabilities.
The paper can also be folded.

2. Built-in HSDPA
The paper includes a built-in HSDPA that allows the connection to the internet.3. Touch Sensor
This paper will have a touch sensor (you may call it the touch paper)
4. One Button
The paper will have one button only called update. Using this I can see today's newspaper with this button.

5. Horizontal Slide Flips the page
I can go to the next page with a horizontal slide (just like the IPhone) I can go to the previous page if I slide back.


6. Vertical Sliding Controls the Details
This is interesting, If you however slide vertically you will be able to control the level of details in the news! More details slide up.. less details slide down

7. Filter the News
Now here is the fun part, I can filter the news based on my favorites. Give me economic pages, show me the columns related to this author only etc..


The Technology Behind it
Now this cannot be done with the touchpaper alone. The newspapers must have some standard (e.g. XML). So every column can have a predefined tags like category and an author.

The newspapers company will win because they will save the printing costs and they will also save the editing costs in case of any editing error, in this case they just need to update the XML and that's it! Everybody gets it.

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

ArcGIS Desktop Administrator

ESRI ArcGIS Desktop Administrator is the tool where you manage ArcGIS licenses. It helps you connect to a license server, change the license type (Editor, Viewer, Info), availabity, and check the service packs

When you point the DesktopAdmin to a license server say, MYSERVER1 (or you may use the IP e.g 10.0.0.19) , it will read the licenses from that server.

For some reason, you disconnected MYSERVER1 or changed the IP or changed the name or moved your licenses to another server. Doesn't matter, MYSERVER1 is not available anymore.

So you will let DesktopAdmin point to the new server to get the new licenses right? When you open the DesktopAdmin you will wait for 20 to 30 minutes, because DesktopAdmin is trying to connect to MYSERVER1 and it is out of reach. You can't do anything, you have to wait.

This problem has been there since ArcGIS 9.1 (Didn't work with versions prior that), we are in 9.3, still not yet fixed.

I have developed a tool to change the server name from different places in the registry to fix this problem temporary. Just to let the DesktopAdmin open faster. But that tool isn't efficient you really have to go the clean way after that from tbe DesktopAdmin. The tool helps you just get rid of the waiting.

Is there a simplier way?

Monday, April 6, 2009

Execute Javascript in PHP

Calling a PHP function from javascript is basically another way to say AJAX.
However calling a javascript function from PHP is quite a challenge.

In post-back enviroment this can be achieved easily

just use echo




This will print that tag and while the page is posting back it will get executed.

But that doesn't work in AJAX environment. Because the page is already loaded, script tags will not get executed.

Well I used this method.

When I want to call a javascript method I echo this


.





When I receive the text from AJAX partial post back






if (s.search(EXECUTESCRIPT1) >= 0 )
{
p1 = s.search(EXECUTESCRIPT1);
p2 = s.search(EXECUTESCRIPT2);
jscode = s.substr(p1 + EXECUTESCRIPT1.length, p2 - p1 - EXECUTESCRIPT2.length + 1);
eval(jscode); //execute the javavscript code
//alert("done");
}




The eval will execute the code for me after I parse it.

When I face that problem, I tried to look for something in the net but with no luck. So I thought I would write one so people can get use of it.

Saturday, April 4, 2009

An Idea: Zorro Cure, Internet Justice




You may have suffered from these: Folder Options menu is missing, hidden files are not shown, task manager cannot be opened, etc.. All these are bad traces of potential viruses and worms.
The idea goes like this:
  • Study the viruses and worms behavior for the past 3 years that affect the Windows OS.
  • Collect information about the traces and damages they leave.
  • Use this information to develop a cure that will fix these bad traces.
  • Create a worm that will spread through Windows machines discretely without any trace.
  • Inject the cure into the worm and launch it.

As the worm passes through the windows machines it cures them if needed and then It sends itself to other machines from the current one.

Leave no trace at the destination computer. Nothing, not even a notification that the computer was fixed.

Now this is illegal. But frankly, what are these "legal" anti-viruses doing anyway? They consume huge memory and we pay them a fortune and most of the time they failed to protect our machines.

Now you will gain nothing form this. But lets say this is Internet Justice.
You may laugh, I will be happy if I made your day :)

You are what you read

Or maybe not.

Read, Watch, Listen, Touch
For sure you can't stay isolated and wait to invent something without reading what others are doing. (By read here I mean read, watch, listen, touch .. etc)

You read something. You got inspired. An Idea pops up. You implement it. People tune your idea to create other ideas that spreads.

Jealous People: "So You read Big DEAL!"
There are some isolated mediocre people who watch their friends read and write ideas. They say, "Yeah, they've just been inspired by what they read, not big deal, everybody can do that."

This is just like the kid in the circus pointing at the clown, "I know how he did that trick! MA"

Its not a matter of knowing something, its matter of having the guts to start doing it. Have the guts to fail. Those guys play it safe and stay mediocre.

99% of the posts I wrote been an inspiration of what I read.

Thursday, April 2, 2009

Research: Saving data in Water



I had this idea for a long time. What if I can save data in water?

I would have my hard disc sealed and filled with water. 


Add more water to get more space.

Storage costs will be down the drain.

Imagine the cool thumb drive with water.


How to do it? Well I thought of that.

The Water molecule is H2O, Two hydrogen atoms (two electrons) and 1 Oxygen atom.

If we can (by any means) save one digital bit (0 or 1) in each electron of the Hydrogen atom. In 1 liter of water I would be able to save
7606104190927 Tera Byte (TB), (1 Tera = 1024 GB)


Here is the math:

In 1 liter of water

= 334.52*1023
Water molecules.= 334.52*1023 * 2 = 669.04**1023 Hydrogen electrons = 669.04*1023 Bits (We said we'll save 1 bit in each electron )= 669.04*1023 /8 = 8363000000000000000000000 Bytes

= 8166992187500000000000 KiloByte

= 7975578308105468750 MegaByte

= 7788650691509247 GigaByte

= 7606104190927 TeraByte
= 7606104190 PetaByte= 7606104 ExaByte= 7606 ZettaByte= 7.6 YottaByte


That's in 1 liter of water.

In a water drop (about 1 micro liter) I can save 7 ExaBytes. That is approximately equal to all words ever spoken by the human beings. And I didn't touch the oxygen atom yet.

The limitations are many I guess, but the world after that idea is prosperous isn't it?

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

The official launch of geshout.com

My friends,

In
Saturday, March 7, 2009 I wrote a post about geoShout concept, I promised to start the project and create a prototype,
And here it is ..

Today 1st of April 2009, I launch the official alpha version of the geShout

http://geshout.com

Here is a quick help how to use the site

And remember, I can't spell success without u, I need your valuable comments.


This is a demo youtube video

Enjoy