Colin Charles Agenda

I saw the Nokia N9 sometime in June 2011, when it was launched not by Stephen Elop but by Nokia SVP of Design, Marco Ahtisaari. I loved it — good build quality, great design, good interface, superb camera, finally usable browser. All the makings of a winning product, no?

Sometime later that week, Mr. Elop decided to say that they will ship a Windows Phone this year. It became clearer that the N9 would be sold in some markets, while the new-fangled Windows phone will be sold in certain markets. There would be no intersect.

Nokia Malaysia invited a bunch of folk to launch the Nokia N9 in Malaysia yesterday (13/09). Folk were treated to a ninja parkour at the launch, and the theme clearly is “perfect fluidity”. The key takeaways from the event:

• It didn’t go for sale immediately at launch. It is expected to do so sometime early October 2011. This is too late.
• 16GB model costs RM1,799. 64GB model costs RM2,088.
• Asked whether there will be more MeeGo devices the answers were very shift. Simply the innovation from the device will live on. They are experimenting with the consumer experience and looking for feedback. They are focusing on the apps people actually use — i.e. quality over quantity. No one wants to speculate if there will be another MeeGo device or not. To me, that translates to no more MeeGo devices. But the amazing things like NFC pairing with headsets (over Bluetooth), fluid swipes from edge-to-edge, these are things we may see in the next Windows phones.

There were not enough devices for all to play with. I’ve been told that the Nokia N9 will cost 599 and 699 euros respectively for 16gb and 64gb models. Some regions aren’t even getting the phone. So Malaysians can start a little eBay business and start exporting phones :)

Malaysians tend to change phones every 12-18 months on average (at least in the city, from what I can see). Will this device be a hit? Who knows. I don’t know how much more goodwill Nokia can get. The price points are a bit costly, but well below the iPhone (starts at RM2,190).

Looking for a device for the next 12 months, you’ll probably have all the apps you need –  it after all runs all Qt native apps.

However if you’re starting to sync with the cloud, and use web-based apps (say Dropbox, TripIt, 1Password, etc.) you may be better off with an iOS or Android powered device. WhatsApp will work, for example, but the challenge is for Nokia to ensure that what people use regularly will be on the phones. Web apps are becoming very important, and I applaud the FT for giving up the whole AppStore idea to focus on a HTML5 app. That in itself will be N9-ready.

Am I going to buy it? I’m having mixed-feelings at the moment. I’ll wait till the launch to actually decide.

I tweeted yesterday: Why are prepaid users any different from postpaid users when it comes to GST? Demographics.

People are up in arms, and the youth division of the incumbent and opposition political parties seem to think this is bad. Postpaid users have been paying the 6% tax since 2011, thanks to Budget 2011 from the Najib government.

According to Bernama, telcos have been absorbing the tax for prepaid users since 1998. As all these telcos are public listed, why are the shareholders suffering? Keep in mind that several telcos are giving away 50-80% of profits in dividends for stockholders.

I figured it must be something to do with demographics. The latest study by SKMM is dated from 2005. Its a most interesting read. I’m willing to believe these stats don’t vary much in 2011…

• Malays have 53.9% share of handphone users, followed by the Chinese at 32.4%, the Bumiputra (Sabah & Sarawak) at 6.5% and the Indians at 6.3%.
• Prepaid subscribers are 80.4% of the demographics, with 19.6% being postpaid.
• In 2005, ages 15-19: 11.5%, 20-24: 20.9%, 25-29: 16.2%.

Guess who’s voting in the next election? Guess who’s having the loudest voice? I see this as akin to having a tax for motor vehicles on the road, but not having one for the basic motorcycles.

Najib (“So I hope it can be reviewed to reduce the burden of the rakyat who are now facing hikes in food prices” via Malaysiakini)and Khairy suddenly cares for the rakyat. They want a complete GST implementation (to ensure that it “broadens the government’s revenue base”) but for your non-essential mobile phone, they want it to be GST-free? Tsk tsk.

Quick Update: DiGi’s annual report 2010 states that 7.3 million subscribers are prepaid users, with only 1.4 million postpaid users. Maxis annual report 2010 states that there are 10.69 million prepaid users versus 2.67 million postpaid users. Interesting ratios, but since they’re not the government, they don’t give you racial demographics :-)

It seemed like only a year ago, I upgraded my laptop to run Snow Leopard. And now I’ve gone on to getting Lion (didn’t take almost a year to upgrade — good sign?).

I’ve found some issues (and I’ve only used it for less than a day), and here are a few notes:

• First time I’m installing an OS in OS X via the Mac AppStore. It feels very much like doing an “apt-get dist-upgrade”. All 3.5GB of it.
• Immediately running Software Update will lead you to an error. It seems that just waiting it out (maybe after Spotlight finishes?) is the solution because this is an error I cannot repeat any longer. As always there are updates awaiting.
• I’m a big fan of Spaces. In Lion, they’ve created something called Mission Control. It takes a little bit of getting used to, but you can create spaces, as well as assign apps to spaces. Spaces (workspaces) are key to how I work — I’ve been doing them on all my Linux desktop, so its crucial it works. The best article for you to acclimatize yourself is Using Spaces on OSX Lion by Matt Legend Gemmell.
• System Preferences -> Trackpad -> Scroll & Zoom. Untick “Scroll direction: natural”. I don’t see how this was a smart default because it’s not natural in any way, shape or form.
• I was typing in OmniOutliner and I realized that OSX was trying to correct my spelling. It reminded me too much of using a mobile phone because it wasn’t my spelling that was off — it was picking on names. Best way is to turn off auto correct for spelling.
• XCode goes away. You have to get it for free via the Mac AppStore (over 3GB download). And when you download tools from the AppStore you still have to manually install it from the /Applications folder. This is where Linux/BSD package management gets it done right.
• Homebrew just continued to work out of the box after XCode/GCC/etc. came back.
• MsgFiler now only works if you grab it via the Mac AppStore. Crucial for filing messages and archiving if you use Apple Mail.
• Apple Mail took ages to convert my database. The new look is definitely not something I am accustomed to, but they allow a Classic View (Mail -> Preferences -> Viewing – Use classic layout). I hope this option never goes away.
• The ability to bounce a message has disappeared. There is a guide on how to bring bounce back, using Automator and AppleScript. I think I’ve got to edit that script to ensure that after a bounce it also moves the message to the trash.
• I like the status updates I get from Terminal (like when it’s running big operations, waiting to connect to the server via SSH, etc.)
• Things generally seem snappy. Waking up from sleep seems better. All this using spinning disk on the MBP (though I do have 8GB of RAM).
• Scroll bars have disappeared until you actually scroll. I wonder if this is a good UI change. Or are people naturally expected to just scroll? I can see this impacting web design more, in future…

Annoyances I haven’t fixed yet?

Some have said this is a Time Machine problem and it will go away after Time Machine runs. It seems to go away when Time Machine is running but when I disconnect the external disk, it comes back intermittently. Some claim its an AirDrop issue. Some claim its due to the fact that Time Machine does snapshots via something called Mobile Time Machine. I can assure you unmounting /Volume/MobileBackups does not fix the issue (I know, I did).

Exciting news – MariaDB gets its first book!

Many years ago I read Ben Forta’s MySQL Crash Course . It is a book targeted at beginners of MySQL. Ben has now written another book, titled: MariaDB Crash Course.

Its still targeted at beginners, and covers many of the new features that are available in MariaDB up to version 5.2. I had the pleasure of pre-reading it, and did send in lots of comments to Ben, and if implemented we’ll see some stuff in there that is current even for MariaDB 5.3, like dynamic columns and more.

You can pre-order the MariaDB Crash Course which goes on sale September 23 2011 for USD$29.99 (Amazon lets you save, its $19.59 now). I’m not sure if we’ll see a Kindle version or not.

I’ve been carrying an iPad since the second day it got released in the United States… That makes me somewhat of an early adopter. I’ve been reading e-books on the iPad using iBooks (via O’Reilly’s Safari) and also via GoodReader when people release them as PDFs. I never did purchase an iBook or Kindle book until recently.

Last week, right before a long flight back from San Francisco to Kuala Lumpur, I decided to purchase: The Upgrade: A Cautionary Tale of a Life Without Reservations by Paul Carr. I had enjoyed reading his previous book, Bringing Nothing To The Party: True Confessions Of A New Media Whore, which he at one stage even released as a free PDF.

GoodReader has been my most popular application on the iPad. And I do a lot of reading using Instapaper. But for books? I bought an iBook using my US-based iTunes account, and I read the entire tome from Carr on the flight back. I was hooked.

This weekend, while sitting down in a hotel in Seoul, I decided to try my luck with the Kindle. Lo and behold, I can do one-click purchasing using my Malaysian-issued credit card. Now you’ve got me hooked! First I used the Mac application — figuring out though I would not be reading too much on the Mac (I really only read technical books on my laptop, and that is served very nicely from the Safari bookshelf).

Next I proceeded to download the iPad/iPhone application (they’ve made it universal). Enter my username and password, and I’m off to reading straight on my iPad. I paid for three books last night and have already made some headway in reading one.

I can highlight bits of writing, which is a lot better than me dog-earing books and sometimes forgetting to come back to snippets. Now with Kindle? I have a webpage, in where I can see what I’ve highlighted, write notes, see my own highlights, see other people’s public notes, and lots more. I forsee that right after I’m done reading, I can just save my highlights in Evernote, and I’ll have a digitally searchable copy of everything.

This changes the way I read. This changes the way I buy books (currently I bulk purchase them every couple of months, since I visit the United States pretty often). This also probably means I’ll have a lot less to carry in my travels.

The Kindle experience so far beats the iBooks experience for me. Of course, to buy a book, I’ve got to do it via a web browser and not in-app (thanks Apple for making life a little more difficult for me). Makes me wonder how much longer my Audible subscription will stay alive…

All that said, the iPad has become a whole lot more useful for me. And an iPad upgrade for myself to the iPad 2 has become a whole lot more appealing as well…

This is probably stating the obvious, but make sure your plugins in WordPress are up-to-date. You keep up with the latest WordPress releases (and you should — there are lots of security fixes within releases), but you also have to make sure that the plugins are updated.

I deploy some systems using SVN, and on some sites, make use of the Disqus plugin for commenting. The plugin itself, as of writing, has only been tested against WordPress 3.1.4. Today, you have WordPress 3.2.1. Don’t fret though — Version 2.66 works just fine.

Why do I preach about updating stuff? My recent update had broken a production site… not the site itself, but the authors could not upload any media. The uploader (JavaScript) wouldn’t work. Chrome has the JavaScript Console available which showed me exactly what was going wrong, and that’s how I debugged the offending plugin.

Upon a little search later for wordpress 3.2.1 upload image, I see a bunch of people asking questions. The standard answer is to disable plugins to see if things work. In this case, updating solved the problem.