Posts from the 'personal whatever' Category

Hong Kong Electronics Fair – tech insights for 2014

Being in the mobile software business in US or Europe, you might think that visiting an all-electronics fair in China is simply irrelevant. But it’s not.

This is a sneak peek into your future

Hong Kong Electronics Fair: tech insights for 2014 by Richard Dancsi
View of the Hong Kong Expo building from the Kowloon pier.

Not exactly the future of high-end technology though. At least the products showcased on the Hong Kong Electronics Fair would definitely not receive a standing ovation on an Apple keynote.

Most of the products and services here are of a significantly lower quality than what you see on the upper shelves in those electronics supermarkets in the US or Europe. Apart from the really big brands, the few exceptions won’t be amazing either – more like, well, decent.

I still think this is a great opportunity to look into the future:

  • The Asian region already accounts for 45% of all internet users globally. The next boom is coming soon as the penetration rate slowly reaches the US levels.

    These people tend to use low-end smartphones to access the internet, and the devices on the fair will meet a need on – among others – the humongous Indian or Russian market.

    Still think it’s irrelevant? It isn’t: it’s a safe bet that Google went back to support 512MB devices with Android KitKat just to fulfil the need of these markets.

  • Asian companies are not only manufacturers anymore, but also creative drivers with a huge market. As more and more products emerge, they will have an ever bigger impact on what services and devices we’ll see in the next years.

Insights from the fair for 2014

To start with the easy-to-guess ones, it’s no wonder that compact cameras and camcorders are nowhere to be found: most of these functionalities are already replaced by the features of the smartphones. Action cameras are still fine, but dedicated GPS and personal navigation tools are also gone.

Phones and tablets are blooming. I did hold five perfect iPad mini replicas in my hand, and tried dozens of other phones and tablets. Android seems to run on almost everything, even on portable wifi routers or mini USB computers.

The wearable accessories wave shows no signs of calming either. There are smart watches, fitness bands and some sort of smart glass-looking things. This still feels being an early stage here, with most of the showcased products lacking a strong use case just yet.

Smart homes, offices and class rooms are hip. Home sound systems even more: wireless speakers and headphones are everywhere – some with Bluetooth, some with AirPlay and some also with added NFC support. There seems to be a hipster-driven turntable comeback as well. (Hell yeah!)

My favourite tool, a 2-in-1 shower radio with built-in torch, shows that Asian inventors are unstoppable.

Hong Kong Electronics Fair: tech insights for 2014 by Richard Dancsi
Radio and flaslight. (Photo from Shenzhen XinHuaMei Electronics Ltd).

Can I get in? Can I get in for free?

Yes. Most probably, yes.

I was lucky enough to be invited by one of my clients, but everyone with a trading company can simply register online. As far as I know, if you do it quite in advance you can get tickets for free. The standard price is not high either though: 100 HDK – about £9 – will buy you access for the two visitor’s days.

Scams & pitfalls in China and lessons from Apple’s supply chain

For those of us who are unexperienced with the Chinese market just yet, the free seminars are an excellent opportunity to catch up. On these one hour long lessons you can learn quite a lot, from avoiding scams to negotiation techniques with Chinese partners.

Choosing the right supplier can make or break your business. It’s well known that Apple has over 150 suppliers – the biggest being Foxconn, employing over 250,000 in China alone and running the operations like clockwork. Foxconn then also has about 500 suppliers on behalf of Apple. Imagine the negotiation and management power they need to run a manufacturing monster this size. So these talks are indeed pretty useful.

Are you a government? Copy this event!

The Hong Kong Electronics Fair is the world’s biggest expo of the kind. It’s also something more: a 5-story example of how governments can support local businesses.

The event is organised by the Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC), the international marketing arm for Hong Kong-based traders, manufacturers and service providers. The fact that they have 40 offices operating worldwide shows that they are serious about their mission, to create opportunities for the region’s small and medium-sized enterprises.

With the fair, electronics manufacturers and their distributors have a controlled and comfortable environment to find each other. More than 4,000 exhibitors from 30 countries are showcasing their wares, and have the opportunity to close the sale right on the spot.

How awesome would it be to have something similar for your business, right?

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Bintan, Indonesia: free wallpaper downloads

On my latest trip in Asia I had the time to meet up with friends and go for a weekend getaway to Bintan, Indonesia. This is a truly beautiful island with gorgeous blue skies and a turquoise sea, so it’s no wonder that we took some pictures before jumping in the water.

Bintan, Indonesia - free wallpaper from Wimagguc

These photos then ended up being my wallpaper, bringing the summer to the cold Northern Europe. Please find the screens available for download below:

Bintan, Indonesia - free wallpaper from Wimagguc

Bintan, Indonesia - free wallpaper from Wimagguc

To take the photos I was using my good old Nexus 4’s sub-awesome camera, hence the huge amount of noise. I tried to remove that with some lightweight Photoshop editing, and then doctored a somewhat more natural, diapositive-like colour too. I’m quite happy with the Cereal Magazine style, but feel free to argue on Twitter.

The wallpapers are free for personal use. (Please contact me if you want to use them elsewhere.)

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Indie webcomics to follow

A well written joke or a sharp illustration can make my day. I love Dilbert and other popular comics, but there are some more out there who very well deserve the spotlight.
(Furthermore, if you are an aspiring cartoonist pop star like myself, following these guys can be great to learn new tricks and techniques.)

Please welcome some of my favourite webcomics.

The best indie webcomics
Poorly Drawn Lines by Reza Farazmand

The best indie webcomics
Invisible Bread by Justin Boyd

The best indie webcomics
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal by Zach Weiner

The best indie webcomics
Little Gamers by Christian Fundin & Pontus Madsen

The best indie webcomics
Noise to Signal by Rob Cottingham

For this list, I considered indie everyone who looks indie. It’s not a real measurement I know – but if I made a mistake, it’s alright. The point here is to find awesome webcomic authors.

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To play Ingress, go to Berlin

I’m sure that playing Ingress is great fun everywhere, and also, this whole topic is very subjective – but I’m certain that this place adds a lot to the experience. I have at least three reasons why.

1. Awesome scenery

The ugliness of Berlin is a significant plus to the game experience: every building here looks like a scene from your favourite first person shooter. And now that I pay more attention to statues, I know that most of them are pretty weird too.

playing Ingress in Berlin - from Wimagguc, a geek blog

2. Perfect language

Everything sounds more serious in German. My communication field is full of texts like ‘Der grosse Stern – Gefangen I’m netz der Schlumpfe‘. I don’t even know what that means, but it does look scary.

3. You are not weird

The whole place is full of geeks and other weirdos, so no one gives you the look when you are running back and forth between portals. (Not unless you are holding your phone out to watch those commands about establishing control fields and destroying links – in the circle of an elementary school group. Yeah, maybe try to avoid that.)

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Reducing the meat problem

Living healthy starts with eating right. Unfortunately if you are not a fitness-, cooking- or calories nerd, it’s not easy to decide what to put on the table every day. As for me, most of the time I end up buying some meat, roasting it and, serving with bread, call it a dish. Now this came to an end.

I would not want to go cold turkey (ha!) and become vegan, especially for all the excellent salamis and great wild meat out there. The only thing I want to stop is the mindless defaults: why would anyone eat chicken wraps and Frankfurters anyway? 

Somewhere I’ve read that an average grown up person in Europe would eat something like 50 kilograms of meat a year – my consumption seems to be fairly close to this, although I’m trying to be on the healthy end.

Ready-made products and those with unidentifiable origin seem to be easy to avoid, but then again: the recent horse scandal shows that even if the label looks very accurate, it’s rarely the case. Döner kebab is not something you would have high expectations about, but even Nestle and other, seemingly reliable companies sold horse meat as beef products.

Not that I’m picky with animals, I would eat whatever – my biggest complain here is that if we don’t even know the type of the animal, how would we know such very important facts like whether the unlucky pig was raised in a cage with hundreds of others, or: if it has ever seen the sun.

There I can get very picky actually. How much more awesome is to know that the animal I eat was in good health, free of weird antibiotics and full of energy! (Before it got slaughtered.)

If you just search for some minutes, you will see that some chickens are living a total of 32 days before you find them as ‘chicken wings’ in McDonalds. I can’t see how this is not bad for the public health and the environment – in the race for low-price meat, the food industry is leaving us with antibiotic resistant germs. (And even worse: food snobs, who only eat stuff coming from Bio Company shops.)

So here is my plan: I quit being a part of the problem and will reduce my food consumption to a more eco-friendly level, with the following:

  • Emerge new defaults: breakfast with cereals, choosing hummus and falafel when eating out (kill all the chickpeas!)
  • When buying non-vegan products, going for organic: looking for meat directly from farmers
  • Not buying minced meat or similar all-in kind of products
  • Keeping track of my food: keeping meat products below 500g a week

Please be aware of the fact that I’m in no way more clever than you with this. I’m not a doctor, have no idea of biology, fitness, health – so you better don’t follow anything you read here.
This post might be a good food for thought though. And please, feel free to send me further readings, hummus recipes, or just get in touch and encourage me / tell me I’m a fool on Twitter.

I might return to this topic later, if anything significant happens – although, I would be surpised if that was quite soon.

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What I’ve learned from a Facebook marketing campaign

To get more attention and hopefully, eventually more likes for Frederique’s Facebook page, I’m running a small marketing campaign in the last two weeks of the year. Here are some of my findings, a little after halfway through.

(Preface: the campaign is for winning free posters. For that, one only needs to share anything from the Facebook wall or like the giveaway’s post. More info about the campaign here.)

First, the campaign is set to run in the last 18 days of the year, within the most noise around – when everyone is already immune to ads. This was clearly not great timing, and I will avoid this in the future whenever possible. 

Second, I scheduled the post to go online on a Thursday, when I saw most of my peers active on Facebook. Also, I’ve let some close friends know about the post immediately and asked them to like or share it to gain more visibility. This worked well: some people liked the post a day later as well, showing that it was among the important ones (sharing it as an image probably added some extra points to its rank).

Third, my optimistic webcomic has a very special audience: almost every person is a potential follower, and therefore it was almost impossible to foresee the new followers. (This also means that I will have next to no chance narrowing down the audience for a future ad campaign based only on gender, age or similar values).

Fourth, the helpfulness of my friends is fantastic: their shares, likes and comments helped to show Frederique to hundreds of people in a week and meet the very modest goal of reaching the magic number – 50 followers of my Facebook page.

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Sickness resolutions

I’m sick for quite a few days now, which means spending most of my time in bed and skipping all the fun. This is a no-go, especially on possibly the last warm days of the year here in Berlin.

The worst part of the whole thing is the mood. Not being able to do anything that’s not a must. This is to get over with first: it’s not enough that I haven’t written in weeks, but reading the starred articles in Google Reader should be the bare minimum. (Now I’m finally doing these both. How proud.)

Being nailed to bed didn’t come as a surprise: I had quite enough signs and there were a few things I shouldn’t have done. First, a week with fifteen meetings and four parties in three countries. Eating out in cafes ways to often. Not taking the weather seriously enough: after the first time having 15 degrees in the room I should have switched on the heating.

So now, as soon as I got better and be able to do sports again, there is going to be a new deal.

1. Vitamins. I raised my Vitamin C intake to 2g a day (plus shitloads of oranges and paprika).

2. Sports. Running four times a week, short daily yoga sessions.

3. Being prepared for sub-optimal weather situations. Always having a scarf and another layer in my bag. Switch on the heating as soon as it’s needed.

To be organized is the new deal.

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Goodbye Nike+, welcome miCoach

As you may remember, I started to track my runs with Nike+ just about two months ago. Since then we shared a few moments (ten sessions and 50 kilometers) – quite enough time to know: I need something else.

Adidas miCoach - about Android, web, tech from Richard Dancsi
miCoach – slightly less style

The main reason for the break-up was something that’s not the really Nike’s fault: their app is only for running. Because I like to track my cycling routes as well, I had to have a separate app for almost the exact same thing: see some speed and location data on a map.

And since miCoach from Adidas (the Android version) was already there, I couldn’t help to see the advantages of it:

1. Better statistics: shows my actual speed in time (not only green/yellow/red colors), average by kilometers, fastest km, elevation data etc. Just perfect.

2. Works without registration. (Now, I registered anyway so that I can see my data online, but I really like the fact that I didn’t have to for using the app.)

3. Feels more accurate. Sometimes Nike+ showed 100m as the distance so far, right at my 600m turn (I used to run on the same route a lot.)

Some drawbacks:

1. Slightly worse UI. Not bad, not ugly, but well… Nike+ really was top notch on that.

2. miCoach asks for a code every time I start it. (Why? Anyone who gains access to my phone, could check my emails, Twitter, even payment data – but not how far I ran? It really doesn’t make sense.)

3. I have no idea, how the achievements work.

Well, let’s see how long this relationship lasts.

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Why does Android look dodgy?

As much Android deserves the love for the great freedom it gives to its users (try to install a file manager to your stock iPhone or copy music to a friend’s computer), the user interface is just not there. They surely have put a lot of effort into Jelly Beans, but the devil is in the details. Look at these widgets, for example.

Android widgets: power control, music and weather
different colors, sizes, outer glow – on stock elements

In every operating system, at least the stock widgets should look alike – but, to mention just a few flaws, the three main widgets (power control, music and weather add-ons) are different in size, colors and they use different spacers between the buttons. The widgets coming from 3rd party developers in Google Play are not much help either: even the ones that claim support for the stock Ice Cream Sandwich are missing the guidelines with a mile or two.

Maybe Google’s development teams don’t work together very well. Maybe the UI teams’ quality assurance is missing. Maybe they just don’t care, because manufacturers like Samsung, Motorola and HTC have their own design tweaks anyway.

Either way, in 2012, the pixel-perfect paradise is not here yet.

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