Thoughts on Textbooks on iBooks

Published on January 22, 2012 in Nerd and School. 0 Comments Tags: , .

I was thinking about the latest news from Apple, that they were partnering with textbook publishers to bring cheaper textbooks directly to the iPad while at the same time releasing an application for anyone to publish iBooks for the Apple Bookstore.

Perhaps I am being cynical, but it’s always appeared to me that the main business model of a textbook publisher is to slightly tweak versions of a textbook, altering page numbers and quiz questions in order to force students to buy newer editions instead of used ones. Perhaps the industry is thinking that iBooks will eliminate the used book market, and they’re probably right. But this could also have some negative (for publishers) side effects as well.

Apple is lowering the distribution costs of textbooks dramatically. Assuming that schools actually pay for a set of iPads for each student, it becomes trivially easy (with the iBook publishing software) to create free textbooks for schools. Who would want to give textbooks away for free? Teachers. There are cases of teachers self-publishing for their own schools, but for this idea to really work, I think teachers would need to collaboratively create a textbook that meets either regional or national standards and release it for free on iBooks. If you don’t believe this will happen, take a look at Khan Academy.

Previous attempts to create free textbooks have been hit or miss. I am not quite sure how popular Wikibooks are in the classroom. The problem is probably that of traction and scale. Previously, no one has created a standard for e-textbook distribution. Apple is doing that with iBooks. The beautiful part is that they’re bootstrapping it with traditional publishers who are probably digging their own grave.

Of course, this could play out in a number of ways. Maybe iBooks will prove to be too costly for most public schools to adopt (I’m guessing this is very likely). If only private schools or schools with a lot of funding can support them, it may not become worthwhile to create free textbooks for all.

What I’d hope to see is a slow adoption of iPads in the classroom using iBooks as textbooks. Once a critical mass of schools is using iBooks, free textbooks will be developed and adopted by certain school districts and spread to others.

I’m glad to see that Apple is trying to “disrupt” (I lose some points here by using a word I hate) the textbook industry, and it’s awesome that they’re partnering with that industry to do it. I’m really looking forward to seeing how this plays out, hopefully for the benefit of our education system.

2011: A Hung Truong Year In Review

Published on January 3, 2012 in Life and Meta. 6 Comments

Last year I wrote a review of the stuff I had accomplished in 2010. It was useful for me to look back and realize that even though I felt I hadn’t accomplished much, I really had. I figure I should do the same this year, so here’s what I did in 2011.

January was a pretty big month for me. I had entered my apps into a University of Michigan contest and Checkmate ended up winning 3rd place. I also “released” Instascriber, which got picked up on a couple of tech news sites, including LifeHacker. At the end of January, I socially engineered a Facebook poll to virally get around 60,000 responses before Facebook shut it down. That was pretty fun.

February was a bit slower. I think I mostly ported Mapskrieg to App Engine (though I since reverted it back to the PHP version since App Engine raised their prices like crazy). I think I also interviewed at a couple of places for jobs, but didn’t have any sustained interest from anyone (or with anyone, really).

I must have spent most of March doing iOS programming, because the only blog posts I have are the one about UISplitViewController and the release of <3 Threadless for iPad. The iPad app release was pretty big for me since I had not previously released an iPad app that was much more than a simple scrollview with a main view attached.

In April, I released another iPad app, Mapskrieg. This was a really good way for me to get better with iOS development and to write my own API to use in the app. I believe April is also when I started interviewing for other jobs, including one at Bebarang. I also started working on a freelance app for the University’s Enriching Scholarship event. I guess I never announced it on my blog previously, but here’s the app I worked on.

In May, I started working with Allen Kim on Bebarang, the Netflix for baby clothes. I moved to New York in June, and stayed there to work on the startup for July and August as well. My summer experience deserves a blog post of its own, which I started writing and sorta forgot about. It was really awesome getting mentorship on the ins and outs of starting a business. I got to meet lots of incredible people and learned a ton. I also got to eat some really good food and experience New York. I am super grateful for the opportunity to work with NYC Seedstart and Bebarang. Unfortunately, things just didn’t work out, and I left the company at the end of August.

In September, I noticed a job posting at Threadless, and contacted my pal Chris about it. I attended the Threadless Family Reunion and got a job offer that I couldn’t refuse! I moved to Chicago (actually a suburb of it, Oak Park) in October and I am currently working on cool things at Threadless, including an awesome looking redesign of the site. So far I have learned a ton about actual software engineering (as opposed to the cowboy coding that I’m accustomed to). It is majorly sweet that I’m getting paid to get better at Django and Python (oh, and contribute to the code base, of course). I really couldn’t ask for a better turn of events than to work at a company I’ve long admired (and bought from).

In December, I took a trip to California to hang out with my family (much of whom also traveled to California to hang out). I went to the Santa Cruz Mystery Spot but forgot my fucking bumpersticker!!!! I am really pissed about that. I discovered that my niece and nephew really like Minecraft, and I think I will write a separate blog post about that.

Looking back, I feel I got a lot accomplished in 2011. I think I finally found a good balance between doing whatever the heck I want (and getting paid little) and being a complete corporate slave (and getting paid slightly better). I learned that maybe being a startup founder is not for me (at least in this stage of my life). I want to make an impact in whichever field I work in. I’m still figuring out how to maximize that (while still enjoying life and hanging out with other people, like my girlfriend). I feel like I am finally at the point where my hard work and accumulation of experience have paid their dividends, and it is now up to me to continue working hard and improving every day.

I think my greatest concern for 2012 is that I won’t accomplish as much as I have in previous years. Working a full time job can be hard on side projects, so I’ll try to put in a good effort on keeping those and my hobbies alive. I also want to work on my health, as living in New York and eating all of its food has added a few pounds. I started playing DDR again. It’s fun.

I have a few ideas for side projects that I’d like to work on. One is an open source ifttt clone that anyone can install (on their own server) and write modules for. Another is a redesign of Anime Nano (and maybe a rewrite in Django). I also want to get an aluminum base plate and photopolymer plates made for my letterpress. Finally, I would like to blog more often; shorter blogs, longer blogs, blogs about wacky stuff that I experience.

I want to look back to this blog post in a year, and hopefully I’ll have accomplished many or all of my “resolutions” by then.

Lucid Dreaming: Inception Style

Published on December 1, 2011 in Dream. 0 Comments Tags: .

I often have the problem that the moment I realize I’m dreaming, I wake up. I never get a chance to do the cool stuff you’re supposed to do in a dream when you know what’s going on (like fly and whatnot). Last night, I did end up having a lucid dream of sorts.

I was walking around a house when I realized I was dreaming. I read somewhere that you can spin around really fast, and apparently that helps you stay in the dream and not wake up when you realize you’re dreaming. I did this and was able to stay in the dream. After that, I walked through the house some more and looked at the furnishings, thinking that I have a pretty cool brain for being able to invent that stuff on the fly. Like, “wow, my mind just made up that sofa arrangement.”

At this point, I decided to do something more fun. I tried moving parts of the house around with my mind, and see if I could demolish it. It didn’t work. Once I wasn’t able to control the dream, I woke up. After I woke up, I decided I would try to go back to sleep and dream the same dream. I wasn’t quite able to do this, though, because I was still dreaming! What I thought was a lucid dream was really me dreaming that I was lucid dreaming. I think this is the first case I can remember of having a dream inside of a dream. I’m pretty sure I was dreaming that I woke up, because I can recall actually waking up and it being quite different from my dream waking up.

I think it’s kind of interesting that I was able to keep dreaming even though I realized I was in a dream partially due to the fact that I was dreaming of dreaming. The complexity of dreams continues to surprise and confuse me. Hopefully I am writing this blog post in a non-dream, because I’d really like to have a record of this dream in a dream.

Dropbox Referrals with Google Adwords

Published on November 2, 2011 in Web. 2 Comments Tags: , , , .

I read a tweet from someone a while back about how they used Google Adwords to max out their Dropbox referral disk space. I thought this was a clever hack and decided to try it for myself. I made a new Adwords account and entered a coupon code from Dreamhost for $75 in free Adwords money.

I ran into a few issues with my first ads. They were running okay in the beginning, but were getting shot down in the review process for trademark issues. I couldn’t figure out why this was the case, since I had seen multiple blog posts describing how to set up the ads with no mention of trademark issues. I tried a few tweaks, and removed “Mac” from the copy of my ads, thinking that the word might have triggered the trademark issue.

The first set of ads without “Mac” in them ended up getting approved, and I was on the fast track to Dropbox space gluttony. Here’s a screenshot of what my campaign looked like (until I stopped it because I maxed out on referrals):

Things looked like smooth sailing and I think I only used something like $20 worth of credit (though I could’ve easily optimized for spend, I kinda wanted to finish more quickly, so I set my cpcs aggressively). I was gonna change the ads and open it up for friends to get referral space, too.

Then yesterday, with no warning, I got an email that my account had been suspended. There wasn’t really any good explanation for this. When I look at my account, it says:

Your Google AdWords account has been permanently suspended for repeated violation of AdWords or Landing Page and Site policies in this or a related account.

and

Your Google AdWords account has been permanently suspended because your billing information in this or a related account could not be verified.

I’m not sure I could come up with a more vague message. So far, Google Adwords email support has been of no use at all. I first got an email saying they were “escalating” the matter, which probably just means they didn’t get around to it within 24 hours so they had to send something, then I got a generic form email saying that:

After reviewing your account, it has come to our attention that your Google AdWords accounts do not comply with our Terms and Conditions. As a result, your account, and any related accounts you may have created, have been suspended, and your ads will no longer run on Google.

Well no shit, that really doesn’t tell me anything new! The best tidbit of the email was that:

- For privacy reasons, AdWords Support is unable to provide any additional information regarding this account.

You know, in case I find something out about myself that I didn’t know… It’s my account!

If I did something wrong to get banned, I sure would like to know why. Since I don’t, I feel like I’m in the customer support limbo that is synonymous with “Google Support” which is already an oxymoron of sorts.

Anyway, TL;DR I used Adwords to max out my Dropbox referrals like many have before, got the banhammer from Google and now their customer support is atrocious (as expected).

Facebook Trolling: Ticker Edition

Published on September 23, 2011 in Facebook and Music. 0 Comments Tags: .

I sort of have a tradition when it comes to Facebook updates. When Facebook introduced polls, I took advantage of the viral sharing properties to expand my poll to more than my close circle of friends. The Facebook ticker feature just rolled out this week, and yesterday Spotify integrated with Facebook’s new graph api.

I’ve noticed a whole lot of ticker updates since then from my friends’ playlists. I decided I would have some fun with the Ticker feature, so I went on Spotify and made a playlist of just “Never Gonna Give You Up.” At first I thought it had not worked, but it looks like my friends are now all aware of my favorite song in the world.

I mostly mess with Facebook to point out unintended consequences of their design decisions. In this case, something passive like listening to music overpowers stuff that might actually be interesting, like a comment or a post. I wonder if Facebook will change their ticker behavior, or continue to allow it to be used for a “firehose” of info while the news feed will be used for more interesting/important stuff.

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