Tim Wang's eLearning Blog

Today at 4:00 PM EST, over 60 avatars gathered on the Sun's island in Secondlife, cuing up to get a "ticket" for the first experimentation of the Wonderland Project by Sun's Microsystems. The event was organized by the MediaGrid which is a computational grid platform that promotes 3D virtual learning environment. The event had a slow start, mainly due to the registration process. However, many of the crowds managed to download the newest edition of Wonderland and got onto the platform. The system seems to be stable and here are some screen shots from the event:

Everyone cued up in Second Life, getting ready for Wonderland...

Picture taken from The Princess of Yaximixche's Blog...

One of the highlights at this year's NMC summer conference is seeing how the consortium is moving towards the open source immersive 3D platform created by Suns Microsystems - Project Wonderland.

On June 12th, Kevin Roebuck and Jordan Slott showed a slick demo of the yet to come Wonderland version 1.0 at the 2008 NMC summer conference. The platform seemed to be very stable and efficient. Jordan also showed us a cool 2D tool which would make the 3D world build relatively easy. Since the entire project is done in java, tools can be "easily" embedded in web pages to provide precise control of the 3D world. Another word, a true bridge between the 2D web interface and 3D metaverse can be established. It seems there has been some serious re-development of the platform we were looking at. Jmonkey engine has been introduced in the newer version of project.

On June 13th, Larry Johnson and kevin Roebuck further explained the NMC Open Virtual World project. The 2 main reasons behind the open source initiative are exactly aligned with the Arts Metaverse project here at UBC:

1) Intelectual Property ownership need to be more flexible and better facilitated;
2) Complex 3D models and precise digital reconstructions bring the true meaning of 3D metaverse in the high education communities.

These two reasons drove us to drop Second Life and stared using Open Croquet for the Arts Metaverse project. I am happy to see NMC is moving forward with this initiative. According to Larry, we should see some serious collaboration between the Wonderland development team at Suns Microsystems and NMC members in the next six months.

This is another back-dated blog post, due to attending NMC 2008 conference at Princeton.

Flying to Princeton for this year's NMC summer conference with my colleagues from UBC: Cyprien Lomas, Joel Chauvin, Natasha Boskic and Negin Mirriahi. Diana Oblinger, President of Educause opened this conference with a powerful speech on her visions of e-Learning 3.0. All of the key note speaks can be found here. Stay tuned for further updates...

This is a back-dated blog post, due to attending NMC 2008 conference at Princeton.

Learned from Julian's blog, the June update of Cobalt is now available. Kudos to the developers lead by John Dougan and Mark McCahill.

cobalt-base-current-build-20080608.zip

According to Julian, the following features are applied to this update:

- Cobalt can now punch through the NAT firewalls.

- Cobalt now has an OpenAL null device class that will be used if the OpenAL libraries are not installed or if they have a startup problem (special thanks to Mike Klein for this code).

- Hitting the Esc key while the mouse is over the menubar no longer causes the menubar to disappear.

- A patch to make embedded applications work is now integrated into Cobalt.

- "Message not understood" no longer thrown when closing the 3D Painter tool in Cobalt.

- Cobalt's harness classes and their support are partially refactored.

- A race on quitting was removed by carefully timing the Tweak shutdown relative to the morph delete.

- Various packaging clean-ups were done.

- Minor fixes to the ASE import around some of the texture name handling code and more logging to aid in future fixes.

- New code to import a new mesh collection for the avatar (switch avatar functionality) has been updated to handle ASEs as well as the obsolete MDL format.

I accidentally stumble upon (was looking for information on the actual Temple of the Sun) this old style game an hour ago - Temple of the Sun. Believe or not, I actually spent 20 minutes playing this "boring" educational/promotional game made by Suns Micro-systems. It is really an old school game - a 2 dimensional, dodge and left to right game. What caught my attention were those cheesy programming questions embedded in the game. I actually wanted to refresh some of my fading C++ programming knowledge. Here are some screen shots. What's amazing is the top scores underneath, don't know how did they get 7 figures! LOL...

A few hours ago, some one left a comment on my blog, that's how I first found out about the earthquake. Here's the original post:
"At that time, i was sleeping in my bedroom.My school were in Chongqing. At first, i thought i were having a dream ,but after a short time, i realized it was an earthquake. It was much noise outside.All the people flooded from the building. I just took a trousers with bare foot and jump out of my bed. Everyone was nervous and anxiety. It looks like the end day of the world. After a few minutes, people remembered calling the friends or families how they were. But they found the cell phone cannt be used. After a long time, may be half an hour, the communication was recovered. You can see nearly every one were calling. Some were afraid, the other were exciting for it was his first time:(. An hour later, people came down, but a few stay outside still. How terrible the noon is!" - 05/12/08 @ 02:44 (Vancouver Time)

This is a rather power earthquake with a magnitude of 7.9! Equivalent to 250+ Nuclear Bombs... The death so far has been over 8,600.

Watched this clip today on Youtube, kinda funny. Warning: the content is extremely anti-social, Viewer discretion is advised...

The top 20 anticipated games in 2008 nominated by WorthPlaying are:

#. Game Name, Style, Launching Date, Platform

1. Fallout 3, RPG, 4th Quarter, PC/PS3/X360
2. Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, Action, 2nd Quarter, PS3
3. Super Smash Bros. Brawl, 3D Combat, March 9th, Wii
4. Grand Theft Auto 4, Action, Second Quarter, PS3/X360
5. Spore, Simulation, Second Quarter, PC/Wii/DS/Mac
6. StarCraft 2, Real-time Strategy, launch time not determined, PC
7. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, Action, Second Quarter, PS3/X360/PS2/Wii/PSP/DS
8. Fable 2, RPG, launch time not determined, X360
9. Street Fighter 4, 3D Combat, launch time not determined, platform not determined
10. Mario Kart Wii, Car Racing, First Quarter, Wii
11. Ninja Gaiden II, Action, launch time not determined, X360
12. LittleBigPlanet, Puzzle, Third Quarter, PS3
13. Soul Calibur 4, 3D Combat, Second Quarter, PS3/X360
14. Left 4 Dead, FPS, Fourth Quarter, PC/X360
15. Brutal Legend, Action, launch time not determined, PS3/X360
16. Alan Wake, Action, PC/X360
17. Devil May Cry 4, Action, February 5th, PC/PS3/X360
18. Ghostbusters: The Video game, Action, Fourth Quarter, PC/PS3/X360/PS2/Wii/DS
19. Lego Batman, Action, Action, PC/PS3/X360/PS2/Wii
20. Mercenaries 2: World in Flames, Action, PC/PS3/X360/PS2

I have highlighted my favorite ones.

Dr. Cohodas sent me this link today, it shows how people can benefit from today's virtual reality equipment and technologies. I am wondering what would be most efficient way to connect a virtual world constructed in Croquet or Secondlife with a VR gargle and motion sesored navigation system...

One of the most "exciting" conference took place in town last week - The CanSecWest conference 2008 (the world's most advanced conference focusing on applied digital security) was held in Vancouver, B.C. Canada. And of course, the most exciting event in the conference would be the "PWN2OWN 2008" contest, where three laptop computers each equipped with Mac OSX 10.5.2, MS. Windows Vista Ultimate SP1, and Ubuntu 7.10 (linux) are put to the stand to some brilliant "hackers" to break. The first person succeed take the laptop he/she breaks plus a cash prize. Specific rules applies to each day of the contest, regulations will be gradually relaxed over time, but the cash prize is also shrinking while the clock is ticking...

The first day, under the strict condition that only the default OS could be targeted, no security breach reported among all three machines. The second day (Thursday, Mar 27th, 2008), stand applications like email clients, browsers were allowed to be targeted and guess who was the first to go? The brand new MacBook Air with OSX 10.5.2 went down due to an undisclosed Safari (the default web browser for Mac) flaw. The Windows Vista held one more day and went down on the third day (Friday, Mar 28th, 2008). On that day, the contest rule was even more relaxed where more "popular applications" can be installed on the laptops. Thanks to an previously unknown flaw in Adobe's Flash software, thus the Windows Vista fell...

The Sony Vaio laptop running Ubuntu remained "un-compromised" at the end of the conference. The MacBook Air winners collected $10,000 and the Vista breakers collected $5,000. What a nerve wracking event!

Talking about all the weird weathers around the world, Vancouver is getting a heavy snow (well, on UBC campus at the least) after the Easter holidays. I sincerely hope this has nothing to do with the global warming phenomena...



Too bad we don't have any Cherry Blossoms (Sakura)around Buchanan.

My colleague John Bratlien recently wrote a summary on wiki comparisons. With his permission, I am posting the comparison result here and hoping it will help those of you who have demands to deploy your own wiki servers. Our IT infrastructure (mainly PHP/MYSQL applications) limits the pool of candidates selected for the comparison:

Overview and Objective:
Arts ISIT requires a fully featured and user friendly wiki solution to support our faculty in their teaching. The wiki interface should be intuitive so that a lay person can use it without more than just a basic introduction. In addition, we want a wiki solution that is low maintenance (easy to install, configure, support and upgrade).

Comparison:
The following matrix is a comparison of some key features offered by well documented, widely deployed, leading open source wikis. The focus is on PHP based wikis with the exception MoinMoin.

Notes:
* via plugin
** some of these wikis have experimental and beta versions of WYSIWYG editors, not production ready

Summary:
Ideally our requirements, WYSIWYG editor, easy inclusion of multimedia and intuitive management of content and users, are supported out of the box. Features that are part of the core are more likely to be robust than features added through plugins, as well plugins require additional work for separate installation and configuration. Of these wikis,
MoinMoin comes closest to meeting our usability requirements and does so primarily using core functionality. The PHP based wikis do not offer a workable WYSIWYG editor, however, of the bunch, TikiWiki offers the best pseudo WYSIWYG editor.
Regardless, lack of a WYSIWYG editor continues to scare off most users and therefore wikis lacking one should be eliminated from contention.

With regard to support and documentation, all of these wikis are adequate as all have highly active user communities and are well supported (as open source projects go).

Other Systems to consider:
There are PHP based wikis with fully featured WYSIWYG editors such as telepark.wiki and Triki-Wiki. However, telepark.wiki is not free; it costs 149 Euros to purchase. Triki-Wiki, on the other hand, is free and looks very promising but it is developed and maintained by only one individual, not a community. In addition, it is not widely adopted which makes it a riskier option as it lacks the support and documentation of a widely adopted wiki.

I haven't had much time to post lately due to projects are piling up at work. One of them is a cross-institutional online course between UBC and University of Melbourne. The course provides students the opportunity for comparative inquiry of Indigenous experiences of colonization and the manifestations of that experience in the contemporary socio-cultural environment. Through the use of digital interactive technologies like Flash and Immersive 3D platforms, students will have the opportunity to engage in authentic learning. Compare to the past mixed-mode courses, this one is more challenging due to the aspect that many of the subject matter experts are in the remote places. We must rely on video conferencing and project management tools to pull things together. So far, the team members are pretty happy with Skype and Basecamp. There are many exciting modules in this course are under-development: Flash based games, 3D re-construction of residential school, collections of multimedia elements and much more. So, stay tuned...

Julian Lombardi showed us the first application build of Open Croquet - Cobalt on the first day of the "Harnessing Virtual Worlds for Arts and Humanities Scholarship Summit" at Menlo Park, CA. This is a really exciting milestone for the Croquet consortium in the sense that developers across the globe can now systematically build out virtual worlds using given Croquet functions. I will not spoil the launch of the application and leave the excitement till next week. Get ready to download it at opencroquet.org

*update* The sound recording of the session is here. It's in mp3 format.

It's happening right now... Join us at Sun Microsystems in Second Life: 123.23.63

This meeting is a follow-up to the Education Grid discussion that started at the Boston Summit a couple of weeks ago. Three platforms will be discussed: Second Life, Croquet and Wonderland. Discussion Guideline include:

1.0 PLATFORM ECOSYSTEM + EDUCATION GRID OVERVIEW
1.1 EDUCATION GRID KEY FEATURES AND CAPABILITIES
1.2 FIGURE: PLATFORM ECOSYSTEM + EDUCATION GRID
2.0 EDUCATION GRID BASELINE REQUIREMENTS UNDER CONSIDERATION
3.0 EDUCATION GRID TIMELINES
4.0 COMMUNICATION AND DEVELOPMENT PROCESSES

The full discussion outline is posted here.

First of all, the title cheated, it's a server, but designed in a desktop layout. Our IT department recently received a new desktop server-Dell Poweredge 2900, for a department in the faculty. Since it is "the most expensive" desktop computer (It cost over $10K) I have encountered so far, therefore I better take a few pictures. I am so far quite impressed by Dell's Laptop quality but never knew they can build a high quality server box with such an efficient design. The Power Edge 2900 is one of the newest and most powerful desktop servers in the market today. A lockable panel in the front prevents access to the hard drives and a small on-box LCD panel with color variations provide quick summary of the server status. The Dell Poweredge 2900 has a similar height as a normal desktop and 1/3 longer than a regular desktop.

The desktop server provide amazingly flexible storage options: you can plug in up to 8 SAS or SATA hard drives in hot-swap carriers. An optional flex-bay can be inserted in the lower of the two spare 5.25in bays above, with its own backplane and interface.

There are six easily removable fans providing a good access of air through the interior front to back, for the purpose of cooling the monster down: 5050 Xeon processor mounted on it, both sockets have dedicated fans and the (max. up to 48GB) memory slots also have dedicated fans.

It’s got a dual 93w hot-swap power supplies in case of one breaks down.

Unfortunately, it is "too noisy" for anyone to hide it under the desk. Therefore, it still needs to go into a server room. But it certainly got the "Ferrari" look.

Crysis vs. Unreal Tournament 3 (UT3), there are many discussions on this topic; I have no means to pretend to be the “game expert” here. Since I am a First Person Shooting (FPS) game fan, I intend to share my opinions via this blog. I find many debates over this issue started on the wrong foot because this is really a personal preference. Therefore, I’d like to lay down my FPS gaming experience first so you know where I am coming from:

My first FPS game was the good old legendary Wolfenstein 3D, then I picked up Doom, then the Quake Series. During Quake II, I stopped playing the story line based FPS and moved on to multi-player FPS games. Quake II Mod-Rocket Arena (RA) was a solid starting point. I got really “sucked in” by the Quake III Arena Mod - Rocket Arena III – practicing rocket jumps and rail gun shots on Friday nights. After my RA clan dissolved, I started playing Counter Strike and Days of Defeat which are the MODs of Half Life. Then of course, that got migrated to CS Source and DOD Source (both are based on the Half Life 2 game engine). In between Quake III and CS, I also tried the Unreal Series: Unreal Tournament 2, UT 2004, and then UT 2005. I have also played Far Cry and F.E.A.R. My most recent attempt in FPS is Crysis and UT3. Yeah, in the meanwhile, I did graduate from high school and got into university and later on got a job.

Alright, now you know what I have played, here’s my opinion on these two games: I think Crysis is the winner simply because the game has changed the FPS dynamics not simply from the graphic and sound aspects as all the other games do (UT3 included). It has changed the gaming experiences by introducing new elements into the combat. Started from In UT 2004 and Battlefield 2, players can drive vehicles or airplanes; but starting in Crysis, players can modify the avatar’s speed, armor and visibility in the middle of a shoot off, which makes the game much more complex and fun. Although the whole “wheel menu” UI and "suit mode" remind me of the console games. On the other hand, I felt that Unreal Tournament 3 is just another UT game, the same old gameplay, nothing new really.

When it comes to FPS games, you can't ignore the graphic comparison, although I say it really depends on the hardware and other elements, but here are some side-by-side comparisons:

Cleary Crysis win this one, well, if you are only looking at "human" skin textures that is... There are lots of detail in the people and very dynamic facial expressions "grabbing the neck faces"...


The physics between the two games are quite different since Crysis is aiming more at the real world battle simulations and Unreal Tournament 3 is aiming at the Sci-Fi “hover boards” style physics. Both are doing it well I think. But I still appreciate more on the running and gunning
effects in Crysis, with some nice blur effect.

Weapons and Firing, since UT3 weapons are more built for science fiction, the fire effects are fancier than Crysis. E.g. Using the “Shock Gun” to shoot the light balls out and then use the beam to nail them for a wider range explosions, you can almost feel the air vibrates around you when you do that, really cool!

Plants comparison, well, not much need to say here, Crysis is a clear winner. Where the palm trees are so pretty you hesitate when you shoot in the woods because your bullets will break them apart...

Avatar comaprison, both are well done, but I think the "power suit" in Crysis is the best looking amour ever.

Lighting comparison, The Cry Engine is simply built for out-door natural light settings. It has the best lighting effects among all the FPS games I have played so far...

Both games have improved their graphics incredibly but I am still impressed more by the Cryengine 2 renderings. I found that some texture rendering in Crysis are purposely blurred to add effects and decrease processor demand. This is really neat when you have lower end machines. When I lowered the graphic settings down on both games, I experience that Crysis is a bit more playable than UT, but of course this really depends on the hardware settings. (FYI, I am using a Dell XPS laptop with the Geforce Go 7950 GTX graphic card)

In comparison to CS Source (Half Life 2), the game settings in Crysis are much more complex, maybe even a little unnecessary according to some players. Many FPS fans may complain that the fancy objects in Crysis (trees, burning cans, and metal fences) are overkill in a game, well, true, but I think this make the game more realistic?

I also find the shadowing effects are not as sharp as in Crysis, say in the “Under City” level. Anyway, in conclusion, I value the gameplay in Crysis a lot. The “add-on” effects to the avatar by the “maximum strength” of the suit are just revolutionary. UT3 is a wonderful game too but it’s nothing like Crysis. HOWEVER, I believe UT3 will have a slightly bigger players community because there are way more documentations and video tutorials out there for the game modifiers than Crysis.

Ironically, neither of the two games are sold well in the past couple of months, they are both losers in comparison to Team Fortress 2 based on the box offices. Reasons? Same as I stated in the beginning, TF2 focus even more on game tactics and character buildings. Darn, looks like I am going back to the Source-based games...

PS-I am also a Real Time Strategy (RTS) game fan, well more like the "Blizzard" fan: Diablo II, Warcraft II, Starcraft, Warcraft III, Startcraft II(coming...). Well, there ought to be another confession I suppose...

PS2-Oh, yeah, my Massively Multi-player Online (MMO) game friends somehow read my blog and complained the still-not-completed-confession: Chuanqi (Legend, one of the earliest Chinese MMO game), WOW and EVE... If I ever get to them...

One of my co-worker is looking for a “small and thin” laptop and I think her search is over. Apple MacBook Air was announced at Mac World this week. Check out the dimensions first: 12.8" wide, 8.94" deep, and 0.16" to 0.76" thin and weight: 3.0 lbs (1.36 kg).

The entire laptop is only 0.76” thick! That is the base + lcd for less than 2 centimeters! This makes this laptop to be the thinnest laptop in the world today. But the immediate trade off is that there is no CD/DVD drive attached and only one USB port. However, the MacBook Air seems to have a new generation of wireless solutions: 802.11n2 and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR wireless technologies. Remote Disc option allows you to easily access other Mac computers’ DVD drive.

To me, the real eye catching component is the multi-touch trackpad, yeah, just like the iPhones…

Another thing worth to mention about the “thinnest laptop” is the 13.3”” widescreen LED supports resolutions up to 1280 x 800. This means you gonna get crystal clear images and good coloring from it.

What’s need to be noticed is the CPU power is not so great considering you can only upgrade it from 1.6GHz to 1.8GHz, and the price nearly doubled (originally at $1799, now $3,098). But you also get an extra of 2GB RAM memory though.

Here are the full specs of the default model: $1799
13.3" Widescreen LED Backlit (1280 x 800)
Intel Core 2 Duo 1.6GHz and 1.5GHz (4MB L2 cache, 800MHz frontside bus)
1.8" 80GB HD (same type in iPod) or 64GB SSD option
Multi-touch trackpad
2GB RAM (667MHz DDR2 SDRAM)
Intel X3100 graphics
Magnetic latch
1 USB 2.0 port, Micro-DVI, Audio out (analog)
802.11n wireless
Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
iSight camera built-in
37 watt-hour lithium-polymer battery
No optical drive built-in, but SuperDrive accessory available for $99

In case you haven't watched this, a short clip put together for Bill Gates, to illustrate his last day at Microsoft, with a nerdy humor. Quite brilliant as matter of fact. The cast is incredible: Matthew McConaughey, Brian Williams, Steve Palmer (well, that's a given), Jay-Z, Bono (from U2), Steven Spielberg, George Clooney, Jon Stewart, Hilary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Al Gore. Here's the video:

This video was screened during Gates' farewell speech at CES 2007. A crucial part of the talk:

Gates outlined three major themes for the second digital decade-high definition displays with 3D experiences and high quality video and audio, connected services and the power of natural interfaces. Gates had a vision early of those themes, but his quest to make the Tablet PC, Media Center PCs and natural interfaces, such as speech and touch, more mainstream has not been realized.

There is a really exciting event coming up this weekend: Boston Digital Media Summit. Check out the program schedule. There are quite a few interesting sessions that I would love to follow up with: Larry Johnson (CEO of the New Media Consortium) on Game-changing Immersive Educaiton Paradigms. Julian Lombardi (Chairman of the Board of Directors, Croquet Consortium) on The Croquet Immersive Education Platform. The summit focuses on how can games and 3D simulations facilitate learning. This would be a wonderful opportunity to realize (or debate on) the true values of the technologies like Second Life and Croquet in education. Unfortunately, there are other commitment so I will miss this event. But I will share the web cast on this blog if there is any.

While many western people are wondering, "what's the big deal of Olympic?", there are 1.2+ billion people (1/6 of the entire world population) busy preparing for the event without any doubt and hesitation in their mind that this is THE most important event of the year - Beijing 2008 Olympic. There were over 30 major cities celebrated 2008 New Year's Eve with great wishes to the coming Olympics. Here are some photos from "the bell" at the:

My director, Dr. Ulrich Rauch was invited for one of the 2007 Educause Podcasting sessions where he talked about the Ancient Spaces project, Arts Metaverse project, Croquet, immersive 3D platforms and social networks.

He starts from how the Ancient Spaces project was initiated by the students and then being supported by the academics. He also explains how Croquet is perfectly connecting the projects. The podcast covers much of what we have learned from the Ancient Spaces project and what we are aiming for in the Arts Metaverse project. Sharing experiences of how to facilitate creativity and explaining the "object oriented" knowledge distributions with the "ARTS" point of view. It ends with a little insight of UBC's IT infrastructure - the "decentralized collaborations".

Listen to the podcast here. or download the mp3 file here.

Kudos to Julian Lombardi and Mark P. McCahill and the rest of the team at Duke university. They just received the 2007 MATC (Mellon Awards for Technology Collaboration) for leadership and development work on the OpenCroquet project. Julian and Mark were both among the original architects behind Open Croquet and they are currently dedicated to push the Croquet platform further into the open source community. Congratulations!

You get Edusim, a powerful way to engage students by bringing a 3D virtual environment to their finger tips (literally). Edusim has successfully created a classroom tool to engage the young learners by combining Open Croquet and a very compact eBeam input device. The following video shows you the wonderful result.

More videos on Edusim3d's web site.

Our new learning center is exploring for a multi-media display + smart board system. The high-end smart board / screen overlay can cost as much as the LCD or data projector itself (up to $2000-$3000 easily). Then a much cheaper and yet more powerful solution came across (thanks to Ulrich Rauch), it seems one can convert a Wii remote into a multi-point infrared reader, with a few infrared sensors, you can turn any flat surface (Plasma TV, LCD, Projector Screens and even a coffee table) into a smart board! Too good to be true eh? Yeah, that's what I thought too, until I watched this video:

The guy who invented the "Wiimote interactive white board" is Johnny Lee, the software he mentioned in the video can be found here. Not yet impressed? Well, take a look at the next video where Johnny takes this Wii Remote hack up a notch - Minority Report technology in real life for less than $100!

I just can't miss the opportunity to share this amazing lecture with you. It's the last lecture given by Dr. Randy Pausch from Carnegie Mellon whom expects to die from cancer in a couple of weeks. he delivers this powerful 1 hr lecture to share his life journey, with a dark humor. Some may already watched it, but if you haven't, watch the following preview and decide for yourself if you want to watch the entire lecture on Google Video.

Click here to watch the entire lecture recording. [1hr25min]

Randy Pausch is the Director of Carnegie Mellon's Stage 3 research group, where he oversees the development of the open source 3D programming environment - Alice.

Some of my favorite quotes from Dr. Pausch:

Is that when you see yourself doing something badly and nobody’s bothering to tell you anymore, that’s a very bad place to be. Your critics are your ones telling you they still love you and care.

But remember, the brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough.

So. How do you get people to help you? You can’t get there alone. People have to help you and I do believe in karma. I believe in paybacks. You get people to help you by telling the truth. Being earnest. I’ll take an earnest person over a hip person every day, because hip is short term. Earnest is long term.

Show gratitude. When I got tenure I took all of my research team down to Disneyworld for a week. And one of the other professors at Virginia said, how can you do that? I said these people just busted their ass and got me the best job in the world for life. How could I not do that?

Don’t complain. Just work harder.

Be good at something, it makes you valuable.

Find the best in everybody. One of the things that Jon Snoddy as I said told me, is that you might have to wait a long time, sometimes years, but people will show you their good side. Just keep waiting no matter how long it takes. No one is all evil. Everybody has a good side, just keep waiting, it will come out.

And be prepared. Luck is truly where preparation meets opportunity.

A couple of weeks ago, a colleague of mine at UBC and I successfully finished a grant application using Google Doc. It was my first time using a collaborative word processor and the experience was great. We finished the 6 pages proposal within a few days while each of us were in different locations, the only communication needed was a few phone calls. This really got me interested in the collaborative desktop publishing environments. I then did some digging and surprisingly found out there are quite a few products out there (or coming on the horizon) to accommodate the collaborative desktop publishing needs. Google Doc is obviously the first tool in the genre. Microsoft has been chasing the “Microsoft Office Live” idea since 2005, and the beta was launched just two weeks ago.

There seems to be some critical issues with the current collaborative desktop publishing tools:
- Sharing the existing documents directly from the hard drives. How can we securely share the hundreds and thousands documents from the past without uploading, converting and grant permissions?
- Offline publishing. Although internet connections are becoming more standard in our modern life styles, but there are still a huge crowd enjoys writing offline. How would the collaborative desktop publishing tool accommodate that?
- Synchronizing changes by different authors when simultaneous editing occurs is still a little flicky to me. There were several times when I see the message of my colleague is editing the document, I was reluctant to make changes at the same time. This is mainly due to I don’t see the changes he is making at the time. I would be nice to be able to see which section of the documents he is working on in real time.

Recently hyped up in the media, a new desktop publishing tool is in the launching phase. It’s called “Live Documents”, created by Sabeer Bhatia whom sold Hotmail to Microsoft back in 1997. In order to receive a beta testing account of Live Documents, you need to give them your email address and hope to “get invited”, similar to the GMail launching process. There are two reasons that I am looking into this platform:
- It is done using Flash and Flex which means the UI should be well designed and word processing transactions should be seamless.
- It offers solutions to the 3 issues listed above.
- It offers real time communication tools like chat while publishing.

Beside Live Documents, there are a few other collaborative desktop publishing platforms out there:

Zoho, an application based on the Google Gears open source platform, has been launched earlier this year. It offers offline editing. There is rumors that Yahoo is looking at Zoho and possibly looking for opportunities to acquiring this Silicon Valley and India based company.

Another one is Buzzword which is being backed up by Adobe at the moment. It was created by the Boston-based company called Virtual Ubiquity. It is currently in open beta.

There are also few other web based word processors that have the potential to compete in the "web-top applications" race: Glide Write, ajaxWrite and ThinkFree. As stated in the title, the collaborative desktop publishing era is already here, it’s time to find your right tool and give it a try.

Learned this from Julian's blog, "Squeak by Example" is a good book for people who want to learn the open source development environment Squeak. The book is intended for both students and developers. The great part about the book is that it's under the Creative Commons Attribution -ShareAlike 3.0 license, which means you can download the PDF version for free. To show your support, buy the printed version at lulu.com.