Posts Tagged ‘video’

Video: Interview with some of the folk behind my.barackobama.com

I had the pleasure of having a quick video interview with Chuck Hagenbuch and Leigh Heyman, both from Blue State Digital, and people that helped run the my.barackobama.com campaign. They’re giving the closing keynote at the MySQL Conference & Expo 2009 alongside three engineers from Google, and its going to be great.



If you missed the embed, here’s the video. Don’t forget to see them, at their closing keynote titled Database We Can Believe In: Stories from the Front Lines (and Server Rooms) of Barack Obama’s Online Presidential Campaign.

Frank Mashraqi on Hadoop, memcached, and why the MySQL Conference is cool

Today I spoke with Farhan “Frank” Mashraqi, former Fotolog DBA, now working at a startup, NetEdge, working on social analytics. He’s talking about the two sessions he’s giving next week at the MySQL Conference & Expo 2009, as well as the benefits of being at the MySQL Conference & Expo.



He’s giving two talks:

  1. Hadoop and MySQL: Friends with Benefits in where he will tell you about how you can combine data sets and queries, some of which run on Hadoop, and others which run on MySQL, but eventually probably end up in MySQL (he works on this cool stuff at NetEdge, the startup he’s currently attached to).
  2. Advanced memcached use cases in where you get best practice information on leveraging memcache, a software package that all the big boys use.

Frank also says, “If you’re not coming to the MySQL Conference, you’re losing out”. He’s right. You should be there. Look at all the amazing sessions, all the amazing networking opportunities, and more? He clearly specifies that the tutorial selection this year is pretty incredible, so make sure you’re signed up for Monday! Plan your sessions ahead, otherwise you might miss out some of the important things.

The MySQL Conference & Expo 2009 runs from April 20-23, 2009, at the Santa Clara Convention Centre. Don’t hesitate to register as there are plenty of interesting sessions there, next week.

What leads people to success?

This is one of the better three and a half minute videos out there (like a lightning talk), by Richard St. John, at TED, titled The Secrets of success in 8 words, 3 minutes. Watch it. Its summed up as:

  1. passion: do it for love not for money
  2. work: its all hard work. nothing comes easily, but you have fun nonetheless
  3. good: practice, practice, practice, and be damn good at it
  4. focus: focus yourself on one thing
  5. push: push yourself. physically, mentally, just push through shyness and self-doubt
  6. serve: serve others something of value
  7. ideas: listen, observe, be curious, ask questions, problem solve, make connections
  8. persist: persistence is the number one reason for success

Thanks to @blogjunkie for pointing this out.

Gen Kanai from Mozilla speaks about localisation in Firefox and more

At BarCampKL, I conducted a quick interview with Gen Kanai, the Director of Business Development, at Mozilla in Asia. He has vast experience, that ranges from starting the Japan office, to marketing, to helping open the Beijing office, and this year, its all about South East Asia.



Mozilla wants to know if there is a need for Firefox in Bahasa Malaysia? I asked Gen how hard it was to translate Firefox – there are over 60 localisations, and unofficially, there are over 100.

Bahasa Malaysia is about 40% complete, and the website needs localisation as well. While the system itself is not as simple as Ubuntu’s translation system, you don’t need to be a programmer, just know how to use source code management tools. You can use a simple text editor like Notepad, and move all the way to using Pootle.

Do you want Firefox and other Mozilla tools translated into Bahasa Malaysia? How will it help you (or someone else)?

Getting VLC to display full screen video on the secondary/external monitor

Today, I acquired a Dell S2409W 24″ full HD LCD monitor. Its been a while since I’ve connected external displays to my laptop (on Linux, they are fun to work with), so today, I thought as one of the tests, I should see how VLC performed, on the 24″ monitor.


VLC dual screens
Video -> Video Device

But then, how does one get VLC to display on the secondary monitor at full screen? My repeated attempts were getting me to only see it on my main 13″ display. A little prodding brought me to the Video -> Video Device menu option. There, you can choose either Screen 1 (your LCD panel on the laptop) or Screen 2 (the external monitor). Immediate win!

Just wish this was automatic (ala, the Mac way), or a little more obvious.

On why the iPhone isn’t ready for the Malaysian market

I have lamented before, that Apple should sell the device, in more markets, especially here in Malaysia. I experimented with grabbing one here, and it turned out to be a pleasant experience. I can only sing praises for iWorld’s customer service, and quick delivery, and more.

But I think I’ve come to a realisation as to why the iPhone 3G is not ready for the Malaysian market yet, despite it being a groundbreaking device. So assuming you’re pining for one, you might want to think again, and settle for what is available in the market currently.

  1. The camera is nothing to shout about – who cares for a 2MP camera, with no flash, no video recording by default. The quality is passable, but no different from my old Nokia E61i. I’d have expected a lot more from Apple, clearly.
  2. No Multimedia Messaging (MMS) – don’t you think this is short-sighted? You’ve snapped a nice photo, and now you want to share it, and your only method to do it, is via email? Especially when the cost of MMS is a lot less than the cost of sending one email – unless you have an unlimited data plan, and that comes at around RM99/month via Maxis.
  3. No video calling – the whole idea of a 3G network, is that you have a lot more bandwidth to use, and you would make video calls. In fact, Maxis doesn’t charge you any more to make a video call, than they charge you to make a voice call. Is this forward thinking? I believe so. But with the iPhone 3G, you cannot make a video call, which seems kind of daft. Its useful, when you’re out shopping, or just wanting to see what the other person looks like…

So, unless you’ve got an unlimited data plan (they don’t come cheaply), you’ll find the iPhone 3G lacking. In fact, even with an unlimited data plan, its kind of lacking, in comparison to what you can get from Nokia and other providers. Apparently, not only I think the iPhone 3G is semi-daft – APC magazine came out with ten reasons too (though to be fair, cut&paste works now, I believe).

And until the iTunes Music Store becomes available, I don’t see it being too useful. In fact, I see a lot of iPhone’s being used these days, but I can assure you the use of the AppStore is limited – so, even if I were planning to develop applications for the local market, I would think again.

On local developers
I would however like to highlight that there are local iPhone/iPod Touch application developers. Take a look a ApptivityLab with their mistletoe application, as well as the wabbit studio’s shizi app, that is a Chinese & Hong Kong units translator.

I always remember writing units translators when I first learn a new language. Its one of those exercises that you do, similar to Hello World.

At some stage, it would be great if there were local applications, that provided more integration with the A-GPS, and more. I have plenty of ideas, but its a chicken and egg situation – I’ll have to wait for Apple to bring the device here. But Apple won’t – because the device is lacking. So maybe, we’ll see something new at WWDC 2009? I doubt it, but I have hope. Why? Because Apple designs for the American market largely, and the American cell networks, are just not nearly as advanced as those, outside America.

As an aside… I’m surprised it was ready for the Singaporean market. I’d have assumed that MMS, a phone that records video, video calls, and more, would be required.


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