Archive for June, 2007
Saturday, June 16th, 2007
The following is a quick introduction to Primezero Chinese Tools.
The purpose of creating Primezero Chinese Tools is to provide a one-stop start page for learners of the Chinese language like me. 
I am a long way from accomplishing this goal.
The new layout is designed to be simple, clean and cross-browser-friendly. I am looking at Safari, Firefox, Opera, and that other one (that is basically NCSA Mosaic with added spiffy security holes).
Additionally, users of the older Chinese Dictionary Project pages will notice that Preferences are now available for the first time.
This allows you to customize the search results to fit you best!
For example, if you prefer tone numbers and easy-readable Large Chinese Characters but DO NOT WANT the clutter of pictures and videos (actually, thumbnails from Flickr and YouTube), you can set those options for your browser.
Your results may look like this:
Please note that you can also quickly jump over to a Chinese Web Search without even knowing how to speak Chinese. This is useful for computer users without the ability to install and/or use a Chinese Input Method Editor (IME) on their PC.
Now, let’s say you want to include some visual context in your web search. You can set the Display option to do so and you may get something like this in your search results:
Hope you find this useful.
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Friday, June 15th, 2007
Visit Youtube Remixer page…
On your mark… get set ….
MIX!! ~
加油! 加油! 加油! ….
Posted in from dual | No Comments »
Wednesday, June 13th, 2007
All right.
Last year, Google dabbled into newspaper advertising. Then they stopped. Then they started again. Are they testing the water at different times of the year to know the tempereature? Who knows. What I do know that Google in print publishing is a good idea.
Think about it: Google should just go ahead and explore providing FREE newspapers. Ya, that’s right: newspapers for free as has been the new trend in Europe. Google already makes money on pay-per-click. They could make money on the referral barcodes on the coupons in the newspaper!
This provides a way for them to track conversions, allowing them to fine-tune the content of the newspaper. Eventually the newspaper for a particular part of town will be “optimized”, where all the news stories and business advertising campaigns are relevant to the people nearby.
Money better spent.
Google already knows about what you are looking when searching online, so imagine getting your morning paper with EVERY story relevant to what you want to know that morning. Ooohh.. big brothery, but convenient. Well, the credit card companies already know everything you do with your cards.
Best of all, your paper would be good for the environment. It would use just the right amount of paper. On one side of the paper, you will have the articles and the other side could have coupons (preferably preforated edges for easy removal, thank you very much) .
hope that sorta made sense…
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Sunday, June 10th, 2007
Over several years, I have written many programs in several languages.
Maybe because I am maturing as a writer of software, the task of writing is not about jumping on emacs or vi and punching out code immediately. Right now, in contrast, writing software only takes about 40% of my time now.
Most of the time is spent gather customer requirements in a notebook and even encourage the customer to draw sketches for me. This what i might start calling my “jai yen yen” coding style, where I am just letting the design process unfold through descriptions of shapes and sounds, applied to paper. Um, .. hmm.
Jai Yen Yen is a thai idiom meaning “be relaxed, be cool, take it easy， or slow down.” This is why I love this style. It allows me to sit back and look at the process. This does not mean I drag my feet through a project. No, that is never good. It means I look at the whole process of what the customer wants. The delivery of the product is just as important as anticipating the customer need (known and unforseen).
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Wednesday, June 6th, 2007
All right. Some updates. The goal of this update is to basically allow you to search Chinese characters on Chinese search engines without even knowing any Chinese
- Each Chinese character is clickable (as done before)
- You can now search characters on the Chinese search engines
- Flickr images and Youtube Thumbnails clickable
Playing a little bit with borders, CSS boundaries. Interface is already feeling a little heavy, but that’s OK, because I can compress the UI and save whitespace in future updates.
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Tuesday, June 5th, 2007
Ok, so I’ve been sorta busy for the past few months. Took it and passed in April! Whoohoo!
I haven’t had a chance to let it sink in that I am a Zend Certified Engineer, among other certifications, but I’ll get to those later.
I know I know. Big deal. What’s the point, Eric?
Well, to me it means that I took the time to prepare for professional certification, spent the time to understand the PHP language (although I have been using it for 7 years), and now as I grow as a professional, I read technical information from a totally different perspective:
- Read to get the gist.
- Read to get a fundamental understanding.
- Read later after some coding sessions to really digest the design intent.
Seriously. Furthermore, the PHP5 exam was comprehensive and requires understand of various aspects including Web Services. It is nice to take an exam that really tests understanding rather than how many questions you can memorize. I highly recommend taking the exam!
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Sunday, June 3rd, 2007
All right. The Chinese characters are now clickable. Also, Flickr photos accompany some entries. There are also some video thumbnails at Youtube. No big deal. Easy to pull in the data using Filckr API and Youtube API. The idea is to try to provide context for entries using visual learning modes. Next, I probably need to find a way to work sound into this.
Last year, I started a project called the Pinyin Inventory Project, where users provide the Hanyu Pinyin tones on a recording to be played back to help learners with Chinese pronunciation. In fact, the Chinese flashcards developed earlier provided users a chance to drill while using the pinyin sound files. Huh? Ok…
去年, 我開始了拼音系統計劃, 用戶可利用系統上提供漢語拼音錄音訓練中文讀音。
中文拼音卡的發明, 為用戶提供一個演練機會,同時使用拼音的聲音檔案 .
Now is the premise clear? The deployment of the sound was meant to be seamless experience. In previous versions of Internet Explorer and Firefox, the amount of memory for loading the sounds was just too excessive. The hope in playing with the Quicktime and interacting with JavaScript was quite appealing, since the work could be completed for cross-platform deployment. Many things were learned during the Chinese Flashcards demonstration development:
- Safari and Firefox for Mac OS are very strict about parameter usage/limits.
- Quicktime is a smart deployment path because several users have iTunes+Quicktime installed, which removes that barrier of “Here, download this.”
(Digression: Those who developed text-to-speech or any unified messaging solution during the tech boom of the late 90’s knows exactly what I’m talking about. Pretty much every site you visited with something cool basically had the following user experience: “oh, cool. want to play this? download this. wait. wait. wait. reboot. now view. 20 seconds and its down”. End Digression)
- You can build JavaScript sound into a page without tremendous fanfare
So, let’s see if I can take what I learned from that project and add sounds for pronunciation without anyone noticing.
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Sunday, June 3rd, 2007
Okay, so … today I made a few updates. I updated the Preferences page after some testing. The way this page handles cookie functionality is more predictable across all browsers.
Also added a function that makes every word clickable in the dictionary (sometimes works out well, some times doesn’t) … I will probably make all the Chinese characters clickable in the next update. Let’s see if that works well enough.
Many of the features you have already seen in the Corgilabs Chinese Dictionary. In fact, as I review customer feedback and trouble tickets, I will post older versions of applied concepts online for nostalgia. well, it also helps me gather my thoughts.
The hope is to not only make this dictionary search tool interactive but also INTER-RE-ACTIVE. Trying to make it follow some of the rules information architecture that show collective awareness of individual applications.
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Friday, June 1st, 2007
Ok.. Primezero Chinese Tools is now available with basic search functions. This Chinese English Pinyin lookup dictionary tool only uses CEDICT for now. I want to test and see how strong I can search for finite set of data before allowing user submissions and other features. I also want to take some ideas from my sketch notebook and try them out online.
You can also add the Google Toolbar Button if you want.
I know, I know, “this search algorithm is not as robust as Soleri, Venturi or Aulenti” (which, for those of you in the audience who have joined us mid-program, are all previous versions of the Primezero Dictionary tool)
… Yes, you are correct, but this is a different direction.. still thinking about a name for this release.
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