1. Netflix
   Watching movies or TV series on the small screen is good boredom killer.  It’s a well made app too: Very simple user interface with a effective functions like resuming last movie played, and instant queue management.  The quality of streaming video is awesome too!
2. Facebook
   I admit I’m addicted to Facebook. I guess I’m the curious type. Just want to know what my friends are upto – in real time.  No matter where I am, it gives me the warm fuzzies I can still keep in touch.
3. Bejeweled Blitz
   Ever since I discovered this game in Facebook, I couldn’t stop playing it.  Even better now that it’s an iPhone App!  I have somewhat given up in trying to get a high score, since my friends have already scored close to 1,000,000 points!  But it’s still a good brain exerciser.
4. iPod
   Apple flagship product – for a good reason.  Everything I need in an MP3 player is all here: Shuffle Play and Audio Output control.  Apple really did their research in terms of usability here!  The only drawback is the use of iTunes to transfer files.  I don’t blame Apple for that though.  I blame the music industry for being overly paranoid on copyright.
5. Seesmic
   With my social media “addiction”, I wanted to post the same status updates to all of my favorite social sites.  Previously, I used the ping.fm website.  Since Seesmic bought ping.fm, they’ve integrated it into the app. Nice bonus.
6. Foursquare
   Geolocation Social Media is a new thing for me.  I’m always curious to know where everyone is and discover new places to visit, such as restaurants or sight seeing places.  People used to make their status updates to announce their location.  Now they have an official app to use to organize the activity.
7. Yelp
   Speaking of restaurants, Yelp is the ultimate place to find good ones. So far, I’ve got pretty accurate reviews. It’s a handy guide for the adventurous traveler.
8. IMDB
   Nothing beats reviews than IMDB movie reviews.  Since I watch a lot of movies (and TV shows), having information on my finger tips is nice.
9. Google Mobile
   This search app makes Googling is more fun using my voice.  It saves time typing.  I’m still not that proficient with touch-screen keyboard, unlike some people.  The voice recognition is not perfect, but it’s an excellent start.  Oh, don’t confuse this with the recently released Google Voice App, which I  haven’t found particularly useful yet since it has no push notification.
10. Skype
    When I didn’t have a phone service with my iPhone 3G, I relied on Skype (on Wifi) to make phone calls.  I used it for conference calls, and cheap calls to Canada.
11. Camera – now with HDR!
    Someone said, “The best camera is the camera that I’m currently carrying.” I always believe carrying one device for everything, and a camera is no exception.  The 5MP iPhone 4 camera is nice in the first place, and with the addition of HDR on iOS 4.1, taking decent photos is so convenient.  However, I’ve also discovered not all photos turn out well in HDR mode.  For example, when the subject is moving, HDR photo make more blurred images.  Good thing is, as a feature in the iPhone 4, I can save both HDR and non-HDR, so I can choose which one is better.
12. Notes
    Just like on Windows, I always use Notepad for a quick cut/paste text from web, terminal, etc.  I am trying out EverNote and Remember The Milk for a more elaborate note-taking, but it’s hard to beat this simple built-in app.
13. Runkeeper
    I try to keep fit by going cycling and walking.  It’s more fun to be able to keep track my travels, determine my pace, and amount of calories burned.  I can share my activities on Facebook or Twitter, but I won’t do that – just yet.
14. Amazon Kindle
    I don’t do much reading, but using the iPhone Kindle makes it more fun for me.  It’s also multi-device – not confined to just one.  Plus, it syncs via the Internet, so no reliance on a PC.
15. iBooks
    It supports PDF files.  That makes it very useful for reading comics and magazines.  But I think iBooks is much better on a bigger screen, like the iPad.  Oh well, I just have to make do on the iPhone4′s 3.5″ screen.
16. Angry Birds
    It’s the #1 game on the iPhone, and it will soon be released for Android and WebOS devices. I discovered this game late, but man is it addicting! Cute game to boot, too.
17. Fruit Ninja
    Nothing beats sliding my fingers back and forth quickly on the screen, especially in “Zen” mode.
18. StumbleUpon
    Another relatively new app for an old habit¹.  Discovering new websites is so much fun this way.
19. Pandora
    Internet Radio – who knew it’s possible?  Even though they can only play old albums and play the same song every 3 hours, it’s still useful to discover music that I don’t usually listen to.  The iPhone actually put the company Pandora Inc. on the map and make more money.

There are many reasons the native apps are being made – two of the biggest are bandwidth saving and performance.  There’s even a report that native apps also account for half of the mobile internet traffic.  It also doesn’t hurt to make money along the way.

No doubt I’ll find more fun and interesting apps, so my list will be expanded, soon.  If anyone has a recommendation, let me know below in the comments!

This article was posted on Rudy Amid's Blog:

My Top iPhone Apps

1. It’s also a good way to drive traffic into my website!

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Google Usefulness

• Life Magazine photo archives on Google image search.  Searching through classic photographs within a speedy search engine is just awesome.
• Street View on Google Maps.  Imagine virtual tourism, without ever leaving my home or office.  Much cheaper too.  The exception: I can’t use it in some parts of Germany and Switzerland.  Scheissen¹ !
• Google RSS Reader.  I use this practically every day.   Fast and robust, as expected from a Google app.
• Gmail.   I was impressed with Google Mail since it first went beta.  I particularly love the spam filter – worked sensationally!  I even advertised my Google mail address in plain sight by posting regularly to Usenet.  It caught virtually all of the spam emails!  Now they’ve added Google Video Chat embedded in Google Mail, which I haven’t used yet.
• Google Cloud Computing.  The way Businessweek described it, made it impressive:
  

  The only search company built from the ground up around hardware.  Investing more than $2 billion a year in data centers.  Far and away the leader in cloud computing.

• Google Docs.  I love the idea of not having to rely on OpenOffice or Microsoft Office to do a quick document.  I love the idea of being able to share those documents online.
• Google Insights.  With virtually everyone using Google search engine, data mining trends using Google Insight can reveal some interesting results.   Vladimir Prelovac has some fun and insightful examples.
• Google Android.  It’s an exciting alternative to the Apple iPhone and the monolithic Nokia Symbian.  It’s even a contender to RIM Blackberry.  The list of applications is growing steadily.  Not bad for a new phone OS just released a month ago.
• Google Chrome.  Another alternative to the big three web browsers, except Google’s promises it will be faster and more robust.  It did find it perform much better on Ajax scripts, than Firefox and IE.  After the third beta release, it’s slowly getting there.
• Google Picasa.  Improving on every release, this is my best photo fixer and organizer.
• Google News Aggregator.  This is the ultimate tool for news junkie.  I don’t read/watch mainstream news regularly, so this site gives me a quick glance on what’s currently making headlines.

Google Uselessness

• Google Mail Themes.  Come on – plain white and blue background is just as good as brown and sunset.  The background is dynamic, yes,  that’s nifty.  But still useless.  I’ve seen this before with iGoogle anyway.
• Gmail as a cloud storage.  Due to network bandwidth limitations, this is not an ideal solution for storage.  It’s not a solution for Enterprise users either for privacy concerns.
• Google Docs.  I know, I did say I love it, but the privacy concern just makes it slightly useless.
• Google Android G1 on T-Mobile.  They made a poor choice with the network carrier for the introduction of the G1 phone.  T-Mobile’s service and coverage are terrible for my area.  Ever more bad news, my reliable cell phone carrier, Verizon Wireless, is reportedly going with Microsoft.   It’s too bad.  No Android in my future, yet.
• Google Talk.   It’s under utilized and under featured.  Yahoo Messenger has a big lead on instant messaging.  In my case, it’s only as useful as how many of my friends and family use it.  So far, they’re all using Yahoo IM.

This article was posted on Rudy Amid's Blog:

Ga-Ga over Google!

1. Pardon my German

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Also in the past 3 weeks, I was struggling at work to figure out a problem with a Java application. The application sits on an Open Source Java container with a proxy web server connected to it. Drawing parallels to the show, the system exhibited a chronic heart attack that I couldn’t cure. The system would freeze up when we load tested it with 100 concurrent users. The developers didn’t see it was a code issue and suspected Oracle’s JDBC driver. It couldn’t be the driver because direct connection to the container was successful, all the time. All the symptoms seemed to indicate there may be a problem with the proxy web server. The system would only hang when it was connected via AJP protocol. I tried to keep the heart beat going by putting in timeout values, keep-alives, and header/thread size tweaks. I even tried changing the module, without any luck. I was stumped.  Searched Google for clues and they didn’t help.  I was running out of ideas. I basically said the disease was “lupus” because it looked bad on the outside – the client facing layer. I was ready to abandon this web server proxy altogether and do a skin transplant using a Cisco hardware load balancer.  Everyone in the team thought about doing major surgery: replacing the Java container! We were ready to make hard decisions to keep the project alive. I could use a vicodin at this point.

However, earlier this week, I decided to download the enterprise (commercial) version of the Java container and combed through the documentation. I saw something that was a revelation. My eyes lighted up, jaw opened, and stared at the page:

In the production/run.conf file, the -Xmx and -Xms parameters specify the maximum and minimum heap sizes respectively. It is recommended that you set the -Xmx and -Xms to the same value to avoid dynamic re-sizing of the heap, which is a source of instability in many JVMs.

So, it was NOT LUPUS!

The min/max settings in the open source version of the Java container were set with different values. As recommended, I changed them to be the same and ran the load tests again. Sure enough, the system stabilized!  This patient no longer have a chronic heart attack and can now go about doing its business.  We were excited, glad and relieved.  I picked up my cane, waddled over to my next project, and moved on to cure the next patient.

As for the show, recently I just watched the first two episodes of Season 4. I have 12 more episodes to watch in my DVR. I’m looking forward to more House antics and crazy diagnosis. Solving a problem is fun, especially when the patient is still alive!

This article was posted on Rudy Amid's Blog:

It’s Not Lupus!

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1. Twhirl
   Hands down, one of the best user interface client for Twitter. It gives me the ability to see my public timeline, send direct or @reply messages easily. It doesn’t have the ability to view all of archives since there’s a bandwidth limitation with the back-end Twitter API. It’s based on Adobe AIR engine, complete with transparent window. Both client and engine are updated regularly.
2. Jott
   Jott is a neat and unique way to post my tweets. I use it with my cell phone and dictate the words I want to post. I tried doing some tweets when I was in Disney World, and it worked pretty well. Accuracy is only as good as the clarity of my voice over the phone. It can also go to multiple destinations like to my tumblr site, or email.
3. Twitter Feed
   As a way to promote my blog, I use Twitter Feed to automatically announce new blog posts on Twitter. The site uses my RSS feed to figure out what’s new, and it’s configurable how many blog posts to tweet and how often it should scan per day. Some people are against seeing automatic blog announcements, but in my opinion, if it’s done sparingly, it’s OK to do it. Actually, if my headline is catchy enough, people will click on the announced link. I’ve seen it happen. I’ve clicked on a few of my follower’s Twitter Feed’s announcements.
4. Twitter Verse
   This is just a useful site to see what the Twitter “universe” has said recently. It’s sort of a trend discovery tool. Some of the words are NSFW, so be warned. The tweets are searchable all the way back to April 2007.
5. Friend Feed
   FriendFeed is probably the most important discovery I’ve ever made. It’s not built specifically for Twitter, but it enables me to keep track of specific Twitter folks more closely like Robert Scoble and Darren Rowse. It also aggregates recent news from the social media sites that they use, such as StumbleUpon, Digg, or Del.i.cio.us. It’s a great way to discover new sites. The key is to follow the right people in Friend Feed, otherwise it’s just another information overload.
6. Mosio
   I was looking for a way to data-mine Twitter and came across a site that promised to give me answers. Mosio is a cell phone messenger service, sending my text messages to their network, and also Twitter. When I tried it, most of the answers came from their network. It may not be that useful for the Twitter experience, but at least the interface is there, so I’m giving it an honorable mention.
7. Twitter Fox
   @Epiblogger recommended this to me. I like that it doesn’t take too much real estate on my desktop – only on bottom right corner of the Firefox browser. It’s also discreet by popping up new tweets. However, I’ve grown accustomed to Twhirl UI so much, it’s difficult to adapt to Twitter Fox’s UI. It is a lightweight app, so I may just it on my additional laptops in the house.
8. Tweet Scan
   It’s a search engine for Twitter. Very simple interface and quite fast.
9. Tweet Clouds
   Another fun site to find out what my favorite Twitter folks are saying. Check out my Tweet Cloud – it shows who I’ve been @replying to, and the most frequently words that I used.
10. Twubble
    This is a great app made by @crazybob, a Google engineer. It’s a nice way to find new people to follow, based on the existing people I’ve been following. Definitely a unique way to search. Catchy name too. Too bad Bob’s too late to register the domain name for it.
11. TwitterMail
    I use it to post on Twitter via email. The interface will also work with cell phone text messages by sending to a random email address supplied by the site. The @reply functionality is kind of quirky, but I can turn this off via the preference page.
12. Twitter Local
    @Jfhscribbles introduced this to me via his tumblr page. It’s a great way to find local Twitters by using my city or zip code. I found a few that I’ve followed in the Los Angeles/OC area.
13. Twist
    It’s another trend discovery site, but it’s limited to the last few days, so it’s for current topics . Type in a word or two, it will show the line chart of how many tweets use the word(s). It’s useful to determine if the topic I want to discuss is in Twitter recently.

Which one do you use?

Photo Credit: seydoggy

This article was posted on Rudy Amid's Blog:

Twitter: The Productivity Tools

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• Adjust MySQL’s system variables.
• Use tuning-primer.sh script.

The most active application of this blog requires the use a database system to store data such as this content, comments, tags, or links. The database of choice here is MySQL. By default, it comes with a default set of system variables, designed for common and light-weight use. However, tuning can be performed to make it even more compact and efficient.

Below are the settings in my.cnf file for this low traffic and light weight site:

• sort_buffer_size = 64K
  Default is 2M, reduced to 64K because I’ll hardly do big complex sorting.
• read_buffer_size = 256K
  Default is 128K. WordPress does a lot of sequential scans, and giving it more space is helpful.
• net_buffer_length = 2K
  Default is 16K. Apache/PHP client does a lot of quick lookups. The expectation is the client will not need that much socket buffer to begin with. The buffer will dynamically enlarge, as needed, to 1M (default for max_allowed_packet).
• thread_stack = 64K
  Default is 192K. Connection from this site may only be 1 or 2 clients. Other external clients are not allowed. A large value, such as the default, is not necessary. The only sure way to know the limit is to run MySQL benchmark suite.

There is a MySQL Performance Tuning Primer script that can be used to provide more tweaking recommendations. The database must be active for more than 48 hours before using this script. The following changes are based on the script’s recommendations:

• long_query_time = 5
  Default is 10 seconds. When SQL queries usually go fast, it’s advisable to reduce the threshold. This is used in conjunction with –log-slow-queries option to figure out any queries that is out of the ordinary.
• max_connections = 10
  Default is 100. When there’s no external clients and the database only have a handful of local connections from the Apache/PHP, reducing this to a more reasonable number will conserve file descriptors and possibly memory usage.
• key_buffer_size = 128K
  Default is 128K. As an experiment, set at 16K, the key cache miss ratio was 1:8 and key buffer was at 50% fill ratio. Getting the right number will help reduce SQL command execution time. Setting it to default produces miss rate of 1:212 and 100% fill ratio. That seems like the correct setting for this site. There is a post on InformIT that mentions how to determine the proper key_buffer_size setting.
• query_cache_type = 1
  query_cache_limit = 256K
  query_cache_size = 3M
  Defaults are 1, 1M, and 0, respectively. With frequent querying, it will help to ensure most common queries are cached and ready to run. The number to watch is the Fragmentation size. The more fragmentation, the database will have worse performance. With this setting, fragmentation is currently at 4%. There is a more in-depth review of MySQL’s Query Cache (old but still relevant).
• max_heap_table_size = 96M
  tmp_table_size = 192M
  Defaults are 16M and 32M. This is for the efficiency of doing table lookups in memory. When there is not enough space allocated in memory, the temp tables will be created on disk. Lookups on disk is slow. If there is enough RAM on the server, it is better to move those temp tables to memory. The tuning-primer will show how many temp tables being used and a percentage of what’s on disk. If the machine is a dedicated server, increase until all of temp tables are not created on disk. Using this setting, this site has 68% temp tables created on disk. It is possible to allocate more memory but this machine is not a dedicated database server. Some memory is needed for other applications.

Database tuning is a tricky job. Professional Database Administrators spend a lot of time tweaking and tuning the settings to get their databases perform optimally. Since there are so many variables, it is almost an educated guess and plenty of experimentation to get it right. With the proper tools, one must not be afraid to take a risk and try out all of the combination.

Further readings: MySQL tips and tricks list, InnoDB Performance Tuning Tip, and Getting Maximum Performance from MySQL.

This article was posted on Rudy Amid's Blog:

Web Site Tuning – The Database

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It was also no coincidence Oracle announced to acquire BEA on the same day Sun made their announcement. The battle for middleware supremacy is on, and I’m betting on Sun to pull this off quite nicely.

Thanks to Reodica for the lead to the Sun/MySQL press release.

This article was posted on Rudy Amid's Blog:

The Sun is Rising Again

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First problem: I haven’t sprung additional cash for a static IP address so I’m still going ghetto with dynamic IP. Problem with dynamic IP is an ISP can arbitrarily reset it at any time. In my experience, with a decent ISP, such as Road Runner by Time Warner Cable, this happens maybe once or twice a year. For some reason, with AT&T DSL, it happens almost every week! I’m not sure if it’s just an unstable DSL modem connection, or they’re doing this on purpose to frustrate me. I’m thinking the latter. This morning around 10:30am Pacific, the dynamic IP lease expired and my DSL was assigned a new IP address. I got paged that my site was inaccessible, so now I had to find out what my new IP was and tried to enter it into my DNS server.

Now for the second problem. My DNS is hosted by Network Solutions. They have a nice warm & fuzzy GUI that I can use to modify my DNS info at any time, anywhere. Sounds cool. It worked great in the past. But for some reason this morning the site was dog slow! It would take me 5 minutes to load each page. As a customer, I was able to call their tech support and attempted to find out what went wrong. After a few minutes on hold, a friendly (American) voice answered and informed me that they were performing, and I quote, “maintenance on the site to improve the customer experience.” I got an estimate of 30 minutes for the down time. They weren’t improving my customer experience, especially in light of Network Solutions domain name phishing and hijacking incidents.

I did manage to input the new IP address afterwards. My site was inaccessible for an hour. Maybe more because DNS changes may take upto 24 hours to propagate everywhere in the world. This is what I have deal with when trying self-host a WordPress install with a crappy ISP and DNS providers. Too many moving parts that can go wrong, and they often go wrong at the same time. I’m still crossing my fingers!

On a side note, in relation to the Hal 9000 image above, enjoy this LOLcats image related to 2001: Space Odyssey. It brightens my otherwise frustrating day.

This article was posted on Rudy Amid's Blog:

I’m Sorry Dave, I’m Afraid I Can’t Do That

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Stay tuned…

This article was posted on Rudy Amid's Blog:

A Better App

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