::A Geek in Korea::

Scrabble on the go is a pretty intriguing concept. There are iPhone applications that do this, but finding the equivalent Android application wasn’t something I was looking for until I stumbled upon a thread of players raving about WordFeud. I signed up in the thread (Username: Torgodevil ) and waited for someone to challenge me to a game. I eventually just started a new game with a random challenger. I now have four games going on simultaneously with people from all around the world that I drop letters into at any particular time. It takes a few minutes a day to keep up with, so anyone can find time to play.

Whenever it is your turn, you get a notification. That is, as long as you turn on that feature. Otherwise it is up to you to log in from time to time to check to see if it is your turn.  Then you simply use the letter tiles at the bottom of the screen and place them on the board. There is no “challenge” feature, or the ability to bluff words that aren’t in a dictionary, which is for the best. I’m not a Word Freak. There is no penalty for spamming words that might not be legal either, so you can simply place tiles in the highest scoring position and hope for the best.

This game is good, simple, well executed, and fun.

Now if Scrabble with people over the Internet isn’t your thing, but you still like word puzzles, check out Shortyz. This application was one of the first things I installed on my phone, but months ago it had a terrible, unusable interface. Now all the navigation and word entering is done on the device as you look at the puzzle. It has a greatly improved user interface, and made the crossword experience much more pleasant. You can have it alert you to errors, reveal spaces by letter or by word, it keeps track of your time, and collects dozens of crosswords from multiple sources. Trying to go back to doing a pen and paper crossword feels limiting because there is no way to check for errors or get feedback about your responses that might cause you to stop the puzzle in frustration. This application went from something I installed and tried to use that I took off my phone in disgust, to one of the best wastes of time on my phone. I love it.

Does anyone else know any good word puzzle games for the Android platform?

One thing that Android has is tight integration with services using Google accounts. You can see your mail, and you can manage your to do lists from the phone, or the web. However, the Google Market doesn’t work on the PC like it does on the phone. You still need to navigate the clunky, cluttered, and limited Android Marketplace to find applications. Well, you did, but AppBrain singlehandedly improved on the Google App Market and then took it to the next level of awesome.

When you install AppBrain, you can see a list of all the applications you have install. You can sync your phone with the website, and it will then use the applications you have installed to recommend new applications you might like. That is an improvement, because the popular applications in the phone version of the market aren’t recommended by any sorting metric other than popularity.

With AppBrain, you can also set which applications you can install. You sync with the phone, and the AppBrain application on the phone will instantly take you to the install page of the Marketplace so you don’t have to search for each application individually. Excellent time saving feature.

The thing that takes AppBrain from useful to absolutely essential in the South Korean market is that it can get around regional application install limitations. South Korea has a law stating that all games sold online must first be put up for review for a Korean rating based on content. Rather than submit all the games in the Marketplace for this ridiculous law, Google simply removed the game section of the Market. It is empty. There are no games available for Korean Android users…unless you use AppBrain.

To get around this limitation, do the following:

Install AppBrain and log in.

Sync your account.

Install “Fast Web Installer” in the Google Market.

Enable Fast Web Installer, and allow it to install programs on your phone.

When you find a game you would like to play on AppBrain, click “Install”.

It will instantly start to download on your phone.

Enjoy your games.

It is embarrassing that the AppBrain team has improved on the market experience so much more than the default service, but it is also awesome that Android freely allows for users to make such solutions without shutting them down. That’s why a more open approach to development ultimately improves on service for everyone.

Access to WiFi is going to get easier to find in Korea. Seeing as I am now officially addicted to playing around with my phone at all hours of the day like any other Korea resident, the light blue arcs signifying “Open WiFi Zone” are a welcome sight to me. My University has pervasive, free WiFi in the buildings where I teach, and I didn’t notice how much I used it until I upgraded my phone OS and had my MAC address change. Suddenly I was off the network and needed to pay for my 3G access instead of being able to access the Internet at WiFi speeds for free. I’ve never run over my limit of 3G service because I could download podcasts or access whatever I needed for free at either my house, or at work with WiFi.

I had to catch the tech support guy in his office today because he is also in charge of keeping track of all the paper boxes for copy machines for the offices. While I had him helping me with taking the paper up to the office so I could finish off some copies, I told him my phone wasn’t working. He helped me set it back up using my campus information so I could access the entire web for free while at work. Now I can go back to lazily searching things on my phone, playing around with apps, and not getting any work done when I should be. Yay?

There has been a second carrier added to the school for people with iPhones (KT), perhaps this increase capacity will help out everyone on the other network as well. The telecommunication companies are so competitive here it is ridiculous. While the speeds now are acceptable, once the gaggle of students with various smart phones return to campus, the speed will slow back down to a crawl. I’d love to be able to do everything in class wirelessly and paperlessly, but right now the capacity of the current school wouldn’t make that pleasant. I’ll have to wait a year or two before I go tablet teaching crazy.

Cardiotrainer

In the past few days, the Android Market has opened up their paid application section in South Korea. This is handled through Google Checkout, which processes a credit card transaction through the market and delivers an email after the download finishes. While there are tons of free applications on the Android Market, some of the applications I use have premium features that I wanted to upgrade that required access to the paid marketplace. The “Shareware” or “Try before you buy” model where you find the application you like using, grow dependent on it, then upgrade it worked for me. I’m hesitant to buy new applications, because review shows sometimes don’t value the same features.

Cardiotrainer is an application I’ve used before. I had an older version that I used for a few weeks to help me track my exercise habits. I kept up with exercising and tracking my progress, both for speed and distance by using it. I also could track calories burned while I exercised, but was interested in both the “Race” and “Weight Loss” features present in the full version of the application. I decided that since I’ve been trying to lose weight for a few months without much success, I should look into any application that kept me interested in walking for a longer period of time. I bought both the race module, as well as the weight loss module.

The weight loss module asks for a weight, then asks you to set a workout schedule. Then, you have to set your goals. There is a scale to measure moderate verses ambitious weight loss goals. I sided on the cautious and optimistic goal of a few kilograms in a few months. My weight has been slowly ballooning these past few months because of stress related overeating and snacking. If I can start tracking my exercise habits, and get reminded of my caloric intake, perhaps I’ll be able to reverse that trend.

I think that being reminded of my goal over time will help me stick to it longer. I would hate to get into a situation where  I start falling behind and can’t meet a modest goal. When my camp schedule starts in the middle of summer I’ll have to shift my exercise time to later in the evening. If I don’t have a digital deadline looming over me, I likely won’t go out after I finish my blog to burn a few more calories. Every little bit helps, so I also purchased the racing module to keep myself interested while I walk the same paths throughout the summer. I am setting a few tracks that I can easily repeat while I walk my dog, or alone.

That way I can see if my pace falls behind, or if I am resting at the same spots at the same frequency. I noticed that my pace slowed down considerably because of a foot bridge where I had to help Yoshi across the steps. Next time, instead of stopping and waiting for my dog, I can pick him up and get across without slowing down as much. Without the tracker, I wouldn’t have known to make such a change.

Do I really think I’ll lose much weight because of a cool application on my phone? No. Perhaps it might help a little. I was also interested in going through the checkout process, which was completely painless and very easy. I am more likely to buy other applications with a price tag attached to them because I’ve had a positive experience. I know of other applications I use on a regular basis that have other features integrated into them that require access to paid applications. I’ll likely be spending more money on phone applications this year than I will on my gaming budget, and there are still no games available in the Korean Android marketplace because of Korean laws requiring Korean ratings reviews of all applications before they can be posted. Sorry Korean game developers, no applications are up for sale, so no cash for you either. Oops.

Anyway, if I buy any more awesome applications, I’ll be sure to share my opinions of them on the blog.

Way, way back in the days of high school yore, I used to go to University classes and study primitive programing languages like “Visual Basic”. There were books, and examples, and lots of confusing things to do to make such a simple visual language to work. You had to tie events to objects on the screen, and when you clicked on things it would make things “work”. It was confusing, and I didn’t enjoy it, so I decided I’d never pursue a career in programming. Twenty odd years later, I’m glad I took that course and hated it, because I would never have passed any of the programming classes my friends took in college. I discovered that I didn’t grasp of math to a sufficient level to allow me to use it for profit purposes.

Now, all these years later, with the invention of Android App Inventor, I can have a second try at visually creating applications. The language itself reminds me of “Scratch“, a language developed for children to learn programming skills at MIT. Yes, that seems like a suitable level of difficulty for me to use it. Having done no programming since rudimentary stuff in college, I don’t think anything require lots of code would work for me anyway.

What I like about the concept of the Android App Inventor is that anyone at all can use it once it is released into the wild. ANYONE can write an app for their phone. You can make something that changes how you interact with your own device. You “own” it in a different way than most other devices. I already use my phone as much as I use my computer, but if I was able to come up with some creative application to solve a problem I don’t even have yet, I’d be ecstatic.

My brother in law has updated my phone for me. I was running a version of Android that came out right before a major new version was released. For whatever reason, my phone was unable to update itself, and needed to be manually updated from a website that did not run on the computers I had access to. It required a combination of Active X + Windows XP, which is a recipe for sadness anywhere else in the world, but standard operating procedure for Korean firms. My brother in law navigated and successfully updated the phone so that I can have access to future updates without the process of needed a Windows XP computer, and also cleared out all the extraneous applications that had been sitting unused on my phone.

Now I have lots more space to try out new Android applications. The first one I’ve started putting to heavy use is “Google Search by Voice”. It’s amazing, and every time I use it I feel like I am living in a science fiction movie. All you need to do is to push a button, speak into the microphone on screen, and the phone will analyse your voice and search for what you said. You can also use other applications to copy whatever you said for use in other ways. No more tedious “typing” whatever you need. If you have superior pronunciation, you can simply speak and the phone will know what you were saying. It’s like addressing the “Computer” from Star Trek: The Next Generation.

For example, today I was in the store, and I saw a brand of coffee I didn’t recognize. I simply said the name “Georgia Max Coffee Wiki” and the phone took me the search results, which were exactly what I was looking for to find out about this particular brand. I wouldn’t have opened up the search bar, then typed in that long string of words, then waited for the browser. I don’t type fast enough for that casual query, and it wasn’t that important to take a minute to search. Voice commands on the phone are so much faster and fun! I was looking for an excuse to use it, and I succeeded.

Of course, this feature doesn’t work with Korean searches yet…or at least it doesn’t work reliably on my phone with the Korean version of the plugin I found. I can’t wait to download and use all the apps I used to need to pick and choose to use due to size concerns. I have lots more space for finding useful applications now. Plus, Froyo 2.2 will make my phone even faster when it is released. It’s a good time to be an Android User.

Fascinating.

I hate shopping for cameras. It’s the only tech item I never enjoy looking at, because the terminology and vocabulary never overlaps with my interests, so I have no idea what any of it means. I hate being an uninformed consumer, but even after checking out reviews from rival brands, the best opinion I can muster is, “I guess it is good?” Getting a new camera is a perfect excuse to go for a walk around town.

We ended up buying a new point and shoot camera for the family.  I’m planning on sticking to “auto mode” until I have a better chance to check out the features.  Having spent a lot of money on our choice when it arrived this week, I wanted to get some experience using it before we went on vacation. I don’t mess around with settings and features of digital cameras. The Canon IXUS 200 IS, which I thought would be simple to use, actually comes with a 170+ page manual. I want something I can use to take the best picture possible with no tapping on little menus or tinkering with settings I can never tell do anything.

I have basic photo needs, but this was the only nice point and shoot camera on the market in our price range that could also do HD video recording. We looked for the camera with the best “auto” features, and I thought we had done enough research to end up with something powerful but simple. Taking a walk today, I found I could snap pictures, they were in focus, they seemed to look fine, and they were high quality. While I couldn’t upload them instantly over the air like I can with my phone,  it was easier than using my phone because the Motoroi’s camera buttons are fickle little things that do not work well. Also, the Android phone app needs a lot of improvement. If I ever see the new release of Android on my phone (PLEASE GIVE ME FROYO), I’ll update you if the situation changes. Otherwise, I’ll leave it at that and say I really did need a new camera.

As long as there were no obvious problems with the camera after my walk, I would be happy with the purchase.  This was the trial run.

The one feature I failed to research before buying the camera was if I could charge the battery with it inside the camera. My last few cameras have had that feature, and I never would have believed a camera sold in 2010 would require an EXTERNAL FUCKING CHARGER for batteries. The battery lasts for 200 shots, but you’ve got to haul around both a charger, adapter, and the cord to have a functional camera for vacation. This is not what I consider “travel friendly design”. Removing the battery, charging, then replacing the battery means I’ll be much more likely to lose it, damage it, or need to buy a second battery. Having external chargers is one of my biggest pet peeves about electronics. Ugh

Two articles, I ironically found on the Internet, basically explain how I’ve been feeling recently about the Internet in general. I can probably blame my “always on, always available, always checking” needs on dopamine levels in my brain. Close to a year ago I listened to a Radiolab podcast about how trying to make sense of random systems can lead to a rewiring of the predictive nature of the brain. The delayed response of dopamine, and a general rewiring of the brain. It was fascinating to think that the expectation of reward was that powerful. I don’t have any gambling urges, and I dislike games of chance with money stakes, but the reward systems in the brain are powerful things.

For example, I’ve been known to haunt reddit these days. While it might be a internet hose running at high pressure, blasting news in your face, it’s also got a reward system in place to keep you hooked on the site. There is a Karma counter for submitting helpful information or good links. You can earn achievements for accomplishing certain feats that enrich the site. When you have a reply to your message, you get special mail. It’s designed to create a longing to contribute and build, to share and receive rewards. It also moves fast. From day to day there might be a few dozen interesting articles, or new things to learn, funny pictures, programs, lesson ideas, or things to check out. The content is “self-selecting” to a degree. If you check the things with the best scores, you’ll likely find the most interesting things. If you have more time, you can even spot trending articles that will start to rise in popularity in the future.

It’s weird to describe the feeling of being the first to know stuff constantly. The desire to be “in the know” is a powerful urge in me. I think it stems from being an outsider in school. Since I lived far in the countryside, I was always the last to find out about trending topics, and the last to be able to get in on a fad. While that fickle stuff in school was probably best left forgotten, it did give me a push to always try to discover things before other people. I’m not talking about the possessive, hipster, “I liked that before you, so I am better than you” sort of bullshit. I’m talking about being able to form a coherent opinion about something and be able to speak about it when asked. Websites that reward and are built around that behavior are powerful to me.

Reddit has become such a brain suck that the other person in the office that is addicted to the site and I share an extreme shorthand lingo now. “Did you see…yah. What’d you think about the…oh, yeah, saw that already.” No one else in the office will have any idea what is going on as we chat through some of the topics we read earlier. In a few days when the information goes mainstream, we’ve already seen, discussed, and moved on from it.

I’ve also read about how the Internet literally rewires your brain. You take in new, novel, easy to understand information, but little of it goes into your long term memory. You also move on from things more quickly. The Internet destroys long term attention spans, and pushes your brain to deal with information overload. I know I’ve been feeling that for a while now. Twitter, Reddit, and the short bursts of communication I have are all destroying my attention span. If I leave a Twitter client open, I’ll just get bothered by the constant chatter as people tweet about their day or something clever. I’ve broken down my news feeds into short lists of twenty to thirty people. I check to see what they are up to once a day. Before I did that, Twitter was insane.

If nothing is interesting on Twitter, I’ll hit up reddit in the morning. If reddit isn’t moving fast enough to keep me busy before class, I’ll check a forum. If there isn’t anything going on in my D&D game, I might listen to a podcast. If I’ve burned through all my podcasts, I’ll listen to some comedy. If I go home, I’ll be updating my site, checking my rss news feeds, spend some time watching something interesting, then go to bed. I make conversation, and I don’t multi-task when I talk to people, but that’s just because I know how annoying it is when people do that to me. If we have a family function, or something I need to engage in, I will withdraw from the Internet and participate. Of course, it’s still always accessible in my pocket. I’d rather be talking to people that are in the same physical room, if they have something worth talking about, but depending on my schedule and my workload I might be in the office a few hours with different people. Not everyone is in the office to chat. If people need to get work done, I’ll just chill out and see what’s new.

I can still read books and watch long television shows without distraction because there are no ads during the shows I watch here. I haven’t been able to find the time to read a dead tree novel in quite some time. I still can’t watch MTV like rapid fire editing without being distracted, but recently I feel like my attention to intricate rules and fine planning have been suffering. If I don’t block out time to minimize distractions, I can’t get anything done. I’ve recently started to notice this about myself, and instead of doubling down, I’ll just walk away.

When I reach the point of Internet burnout, I’ve been trying to break the cycle of endlessly checking for new updates. Sometimes you just “finish” the Internet for the day. No more dopamine spikes. No more information is going to be processed. Since it’s been nice outside, I’ve started taking walks around campus. When I am at home, I walk the dog or do the dishes, even if I don’t need to right away. Anything that gets me away from the constant casino gambling of the “upvote” and the “karma point”.

If I didn’t have the practice of long form writing (relatively speaking) on my website, I’d probably be a dribbling idiot with an even lower, more atrophied vocabulary than now. The Internet rewards, the Internet takes away. Having the Internet accessible anywhere, anytime has a profound affect on you. When I first read Snow Crash (and it did change my life, I freaking LOVE that book), I thought the concept of a gargoyle was awesome. The closer I get to being able to access everything anywhere, the more doubts I start to have about how the rest of society will be able to deal with this trend. I’ve got reddit in my pocket, tweets on my phone, and podcasts in my ears. Short of eating and breathing the Internet, I’m about as wired as I need to be. One of the reasons I love Korea is the super fast access to the Internet. Getting online anywhere else simply doesn’t provide the same “fix” fast enough.

If I can recognize the change this always-on access has on my brain, what will my daughter’s world of “always-on has always been” be like? My wife is not nearly as connected as I am. I hope that trend continues. Perhaps Glow can learn to moderate herself better than I have in the past year.

Scan to download Aldiko from the market

Amazon is releasing the Kindle software onto the Android platform so that people will start using their phones as ebook readers. Yay…I mean, wait. I already do that.

What? There is already a very nice ebook reader on the Android playform. Aldiko has been working really well for me the past few weeks. It’s got a lot of things right. You can download free books over the air, and they work directly on the device without any DRM or anything locking you into a proprietary device. You can set up how you want your screen to appear when reading, including touch controls for the back lighting, different fonts, or colors. There are “day” and “night” modes for easing eye strain. You can lock the screen orientation, and indicate how you want to change pages, either with hardware buttons or a gesture. It supports .epub  format dowloaded books and custom book repositories. Some authors even release their books in the right format. You might not be able to find everything you can on a Kindle, but depending on your tastes you might be able to find something. If not, you can always make your own .epub format files to read.

Having finished a book on the device, it’s something I plan on using for a while. I thought that eye strain might be an issue, and while I’d certainly love a slightly larger device for this purpose, Aldiko’s font  customization and “night and day” modes made it more than just tolerable. I wouldn’t buy a Nook, Kindle, or Ipad for dedicated reading, because it’s just not that practical for me unless I could more entirely paperless. If my classroom material was available in a digital format with character recognition, then…maybe.

While more choices for applications that can work on the Android platform is nice, the only advantage the Kindle software offers is a greater selection of recently released books. There are already a lot of books in my library now, and I only use it a few times a day when I am bored and don’t feel like burning through my 3G connection. I might not read an entire book in one sitting on my phone, but it more than fits the bill for an hour at a time. It’ll take months to get through what is already on my device, and I stumble upon new things to read far faster than I can read them. It’s going to make a long trip more bearable too.

I found reading ebooks a lot better than trying to read comics on my phone. It might be because I haven’t found a comic that I wanted to read in a long time. That, and I can always be listening to Audiobooks on my device. I spend so much time with my phone it is a little bit strange to imagine not having all these features a few months ago available all the time. My phone really has reorganized my life.