Marvin Lee Dot Net

So I made a visit to Google’s office in Atlanta on 27th April 2010.

It was GTUG Atlanta’s second meetup, hosted by Chris Ramsdale.

This time around I brought a friend, actually it’s a colleague who tagged along and it was his first time attending a GTUG meetup.
Nice to meet GTUG ATL!

Google Atlanta is located on the 6th floor at 10, 10th Street Midtown.

Are you feeling lucky?

Visitors would need to sign up and print a sticker badge prior to attending events in the office.

This is Charlie Colin, the founder of GTUG Atlanta.
Beer and pizzas are served in the meetup.

Rick Thomas spoke about Google Wave and introduced briefly about it.
When he found out that most attending have been using Wave and some developing with it, he shared about how the inner messages are sent between servers (especially for multi party updating the same document). Very informative!

Rick also talked about some of the new features from Robots API v2 which was released a month ago especially about the Active API where robots can now run actions without having to wait for users interaction.

David Chandler who blogs at http://turbomanage.wordpress.com/ demonstrated his GWT project, RememberOneAnother and spoke about The 90-Day Startup with Google AppEngine: A Case Study (with GWT). David is really a fan of GWT and AppEngine, talking about the concept and advantages of GWT, admiring the AppEngine administrative console :),and promoting GWT over creating your own site and writing your own javascript.
If you are not using GWT, you will get very excited with GWT hearing about it from David.

Given the limited time allocated, Robert Cooper gave a short lightning talk about his personal project on developing his crossword puzzle Android app, Shortyz. I downloaded there and then and found that it has over 5k downloads already.
This is a great crossword puzzle app, as it can downloads puzzles automatically from a list of sites and even save it.
What you don’t see from his site is “Cooper” has made a Wave version for Shortyz using the same code! With minimal changes and customization on the presentation layer, he ported it over to Google Wave as a gadget (supports multiplayer, how cool is that?)

Their presentations are uber cool, I hope I can have a copy of their presentation slides. 😛

Oh by the way, there seems to be a few asking if I’m working for Google.
The answer is here in this photo:

If I am one, you won’t see that I need a Google Visitor badge.
GTUG is something that is run by individuals who are using Google Technologies, just like Charlie who founded GTUG Atlanta and Nazrul of GTUG KL.
If you’re interested, just find a GTUG community within your locality and join their meetups.
Usually fun for developers or geeks. 🙂

Events, Google Atlanta, Google, GTUG, GTUG Atlanta

Wow! Yahoo! Fu-yoh! What else now?

WHOA! that is.

TM’s iTalk prepaid card is nothing new, in fact is has been around for a very long time. Probably that’s why it has been lacking some WHOA! in it?

And so I found out that TM is coming out with an innovation for its iTalk product, and it’s named iTalk WHOA!

What is iTalk Whoa?
iTalk Whoa is a portal that lets you stay connected to your friends without the hassles of logging in to several websites. Users can simply send an email, check a friend’s status update, chatting, send sms or even make a long distance call at the same portal by using iTalk Whoa.

In short, it is an extension to the iTalk prepaid card, and to attract internet users to purchase and use iTalk cards, online, with the browser. 🙂

I have just registered myself and used it for a very very short while.

I found the dashboard, which is actually a webpage, very similar to the web client of Microsoft Outlook, thus things are quite familiar if you have used the web Outlook before.

This post is meant to be a short intro, so in short, some of the main features of this iTalk WHOA! are:
– Email Integration
You can add multiple email accounts to the dashboard so that all emails go into this WHOA! portal
– Contacts
Phone contacts can be sync IF only your phone have the sync ability
– Calendar
Can create calendar items
– Twitter
Integrate with your twitter, unfortunately not using OAuth
– SMS
Send SMS with your iTalk credit
– RSS
Add RSS feeds to your dashboard
– VOIP call
Make VOIP call with your iTalk credit using your computer, with microphone and speaker

So guess what’s the first thing I tried on?

Of course the VOIP call, the main attraction for me from iTalk WHOA! is the VOIP call. Using prepaid credit, without having a phone, to call any number in the world, no matter it being a landline or a mobile phone.

It’s actually like Skype, but this time around it’s from Malaysia and all you need to do is to purchase the iTalk credit in Ringgit and not USD.

Notice that the caller number is +60388700411.

Stay tune for some extra details on my review as I intend to have a few days of trial before another posts of the features.
If you’re impatient already, try it out yourself at http://www.italkwhoa.com/

Oh ya, you’d need to use IE though, Firefox and others doesn’t work. Need Flash Player too. WHOA! Haha..

Internet, Internet Marketing, Malaysia, Review, Software #italkwhoa!, iTalk, iTalk WHOA!, MSW SkyJump, TM

You might have been through the cooler days and more hotter days now.
You might have been asked to use less plastic bags or probably even been denied one while shopping for groceries.
Earth Hour had gone global although the real effect on climate change could be doubted.

Is Climate Change a trick or truth?

There’s no question that it is warmer now and evidence shown that there are so many different changes to our planet that shows we have to do something.

The earth has warmed, on average, by about 0.7 °C since 1910 with nine of the ten warmest years on record occurring in the past decade. There has been an increase in heatwaves, fewer frosts, and a warming of the lower atmosphere and upper ocean.

Sea ice is melting, glaciers are retreating and sea level is rising. Greenhouse gases contributed to the rising heat human and animals are feeling.

Sudden environmental changes are also taking part frequently. I’m not a scientist but I believe the earthquakes, hailstorms, etc are not something that happens as random as getting a lottery jackpot.

Human population is growing fast and so is the usage of the planet’s resources. However, from the rate this is going, I don’t think the growth of resources will be able to fulfill the requirement of all humans soon.
We will not be able to sustain ourselves.
If one person needs a liter of water a day, how many is needed for a billion person?
Our world population currently stands at 6.8 billion, and in 1800 it was only one billion.

The UN estimates that it could be 14 billion in 2100 (highest estimation) or less than 6 billion (lowest estimate).
I am slightly alarmed by this. Will the world fight for food and resources that lead to the decline of world population or is the climate change resulting in lower population?

This April 22th, is Earth Day 2010, check out what’s happening near you from http://www.earthday.net/earthday2010 or http://www.earthday.org/earthday2010.

Environment, Events Earth Day, Earth Hour