DanglingEye

There’s a tiny chance you may have noticed that the latest posts on my photoblog included EXIF data indicating the use of a Nikon D70 digital SLR. I don’t own this camera, it actually belongs to my cousin. Her dad, a.k.a. my uncle, whose house I crashed during my wonderful two week trip to Washington D.C. is a professional photographer, so there was a lot of nice gear for me to play with during my stay. In particular, I developed a special relationship with the lovely 50mm f/1.4 prime.

After experiencing a DSLR, I knew I couldn’t go back to using my current toys: Canon Powershots S2 IS and SD770 IS. I started my obssesive online research process, and after a while I had my choice narrowed down to the Canon 40D and the Nikon D90. The two are comparable in terms of price and features, and both are great cameras, and anyone who claims one is better overall than the other is simply an illogical fanboy (imho.) Choosing between the two was just a matter of personal preference, so I headed to the nearest camera store to get some hands on time with both. That’s how, as of Monday, May 11 2009, I became a happy (albeit poor) owner of a Nikon D90 DSLR. :D

No photo this week because my computer is messed up, even after a format and clean OS installation. I’ll have big news next week though, stay tuned.

I don’t know which is more sad: my google analytics site usage report, or the fact that I actually set up google analytics for my site

By now you must have realized that I’m a big fan of Android development. You may have been wondering though, what exactly am I developing? Well, today is the day you find out! But first I have to tell you about quub…

quub is a service that helps you tell others where you are, what you’re doing and how (or if) you’d like to be contacted. It does this by using sensor data and machine learning techniques to learn your status setting practices and provide helpful suggestions to make it easier to maintain accurate status throughout the day.

What I personally hope to get out of using quub is better interruption management and group awareness. When I first subscribed to a data plan for my phone, I tried staying continuously logged in to my google talk account. That turned out not to be a good idea. Friends and family and coworkers would assume that since I’m online, I’m open to receiving IMs from all of them all the time. I even received one in the middle of the night while I was asleep, asking me why I was up at that hour! (I don’t turn off my phone at night.)

quub also lets you publish status updates to groups of contacts, and learns the style you use for each group. That means it helps you tell your friends and family that you are “at work,” while telling your colleagues that you are “in the budget meeting.” This sort of control over status excites me, but also presents a big challenge for the user experience. It’s tricky to design a clear and easy to use interface that gives users quick access to so many options, especially on a mobile device.

Speaking of mobile devices: quub has native applications for iPhone, BlackBerry, and Android devices (Windows Mobile, Symbian, and webOS will follow suit.) And that’s where I come into play! I’ve been developing the Android client! Now you know!

The first version of the quub app was published in the Android Market yesterday. It’s very much a first version and still has a long way to go before it supports all of quub’s features. Even so, I’m quite happy with the work I’ve done, and look forward to moving the project forward. Thanks to the awesome API, the Android version of quub can become far more sophisticated than anything on other platforms, and I plan to take full advantage of that!

Here are some screenshots of the app:

Here are some of the things I will be working on for future releases:

• Redesigned update status screen: The current one is kinda ugly. It also stops making sense when you consider the on-screen keyboard in Cupcake.
• Advanced quub features: The app currently doesn’t support groups and many other features found in the quub web app. It will soon!
• quub widget: Remember how I was stoked about widgets in Android? Updating status will soon be just a matter of a few swipes ands taps!
• Notifications: quub can get to know you so well that it can remind you to update status whenever you forget to.

Another cool (for me!) thing I’d like to mention is that quub is based on Nomatic*IM, a research project from the Informatics department at UCI (that’s where I study.) The coolest part is that my Master’s thesis is part of this research, so maybe one day my work will help make quub even better!

quub’s launch has been covered by a bunch of high-profile tech blogs, and was even mentioned in the Washington Post! Here are some links in case you’re interested:

Quub: A Micromessaging Service That Asks “What Are You Doing?” And Means It @ techcrunch.com

Quub: The Status Update Reinvented @ mashable.com

How Microsoft (And Others) Are Trying To Make Money From Status Updates @ washingtonpost.com

Me: “I’m going to write an OnKeyPress handler for the TextEdit that checks for alpha-numeric key presses to see if the user has started typing.”

Don: “Can’t you just check the length of the TextEdit text?”

Me: “…yeaahhh I guesssss, wow I suck”

And that, my friends, is why I need to bring an end to my 24+ hour coding marathons.