Hung Truong: The Blog!

The Fantastic Plastic Machine – The Guy

While I was waiting for the plane to board in the Oakland airport a few days ago, I was messing around with my Macbook. I tried getting an internet connection, but the stupid airport (the actual airport I was in, not the wireless card on my Macbook) wanted me to pay for it. Oh, they let me check out the Oakland Airport website, though. But that’s not interesting.

Anyway, I opened iTunes and started listening to a podcast I had saved. Some business podcast that had a guy talking about Google. He was supposed to have an insider’s scoop, but what he gave was a super high-level description of things that I already pretty much understood before.

Then I noticed that there was something in the “shared music” section. I guess the airport still allowed me to get on some kind of local area network. So I was listening to this dude’s shared music (something like, Hernando Fernandez or something, I forgot his name). A lot of it was R&B or random electronica. One of the artists that caught my ear was named The Fantastic Plastic Machine.

I listened to a few songs before I had to start boarding. I wrote down the name of the artist for future reference though. Funny: apparently FPM is a Japanese j-pop-ish artist. So when I listen to music blindly, I choose J-Pop. It’s a bit different, though.

Some now defunct company published some FPM stuff a while back. I wonder if it’d be legit to download some of the music? Otherwise I’d have to buy some out of print CDs or import… Anyway, I thought it was pretty neat to be able to discover a new artist through the kindness of a random Oakland Airport guy. Thanks!

Mahalo: Worst Idea Ever (This Month)

What’s with all these stupid startups that have been coming out recently? First Truemors, and now Mahalo!

Mahalo is a “human powered” search engine. Apparently humans can do a better job of giving search results than an algorithm can. The idea is that Mahalo pays grunts to make a personalized page for a common search term, like “iPhone.”

But let’s look at the results page for iPhone in both Google and Mahalo… First result is Apple’s iPhone page. On both Google and Mahalo. Second is… Engadget. For both. Third in Google is a link to Google News, which is probably more relevant than Mahalo’s third, which is Wikipedia. But Wikipedia is Google’s #4.

So thanks, Mahalo. You’ve done a pretty good job of giving me GOOGLE’S SEARCH RESULTS PAGE! Oh, and if the search term you’re looking for doesn’t exist on Mahalo yet, you get Google’s search results…

It’s probably just naive to think that humans can do a better job of giving relevant (up to date) search results by hand. It has to be stupidity to think that this can scale. There’s a reason that algorithms are invented. Perhaps Mahalo isn’t trying to compete with Google. But then, what is it trying to do?

Also, I liked this idea better in 1996 when it was called about.com.

Google Street View Easter Egg!

Google just released a new feature in Google Maps that lets you see a 3d view of streets in a few select locations. One of these locations is in Silicon Valley, so I figured I’d check out Google Headquarters (it’s a lot easier than stalking them in person). I remembered from my visit that the Googleplex was on Ampitheatre Parkway, so I just went there and looked at the street view.

While circling the Googleplex (in a non-threatening manner), I found an easter egg! There’s a bunch of googlers in green shirts, with one riding a motorcycle! Neat! I’m guessing they were on the team that did the mapping or had something to do with the street level feature.

By the way, the street level views are freaking sweet!!! There’s incredible detail (you can zoom in) and every few feet there’s a 3d panorama to view. Incredible. If they could get this for every city, I really think sightseeing in person would become obsolete.

PS, I still want to work at Google very, very badly.

WSJ Article About Social Computing + Me!

A few weeks ago, a guy by the name of Andrew LaVallee from the WSJ emailed me to see if I could answer some questions about social computing. I guess he found my blog, either my personal one or the grad school one, and noticed that I was going to be in the University of Michigan SI program.

I answered his questions, and tried to do so without sounding uninformed. I was seriously worried that I’d betray my intelligence and say something stupid, which would be republished and used against me for the rest of my life. Today, the article was published, and luckily, I don’t really sound like a moron, per se.

I figured he might mention my name and quote me or something, but he actually gave my background and stuff too! Pretty neat! Maybe I qualify as being famous now? Anyway, the article isn’t only about me (duh). It describes the increase the interest levels that schools are having in social computing programs. I was actually thinking of applying to RIT, one of the schools mentioned in the article.

I was quoted as saying that social computing was more into real life applications with computer science being more ambiguous. I just checked, and indeed, I did write that! But I later elaborated, saying that the SI was more of a depth program while CS is very breadth oriented, at least at the undergrad level. I think that better captures my feelings on the differences of the programs.

Computer science is a really great subject to get a foundation in working with computers: programming and algorithms. Once I got that degree, I felt like I wanted to do something more specific and less abstract. Now that I think of it, I really meant “abstract” when I wrote “ambiguous.” Oops!

Either way, I think the article is way cool, so be sure to check it out!

Back From Michigan Trip!

I just got back from the trip to Michigan. I fit quite a lot into the trip, visiting a lot of landmarks and whatnot.

My sister’s friend Juli was nice enough to pick me up from the airport and show me around the town the first day I was there. After that, I met up with Adam, another SI grad student who I met at visiting days. So me, Adam, and Adam’s wife sorta just wandered around for a few days.

Let’s see… I went to Pinball Pete’s and played some kind of light gun game in Japanese starring a bunch of cats shooting at ghosts… or something like that. It was really easy, which means it’s probably a kid’s game. I beat all of the levels and then it gave me a game over thing.

I walked around campus a lot. Saw stuff like the fish bowl and the cube, and other random stuff I didn’t see during visiting days. I also got my MCard, which is just the university student id card. I wore my red Google shirt, then realized I wore Ohio State colors!!! NOOOO! I might need to get them to replace it with me wearing a yellow shirt or something.

I went to the Hatcher Graduate Library to finish up all of the paperwork for my job with the university. Glad that’s over with. I had to sign something and get it “notorized.” Luckily, one of the people in the administrative offices is a notary public, so I just had her “witness” me sign the paper.

Of course, I also went to look at apartments. There were some pretty crappy ones and some nice ones. There was one that was super nice in the middle of Kerrytown right above a Smoothie King! But there wasn’t any parking nearby. I’m pretty sure that I’ll be going with the Nob Hill apartments, since they seem decent and they’re only about a mile away from campus. So they’re sort of a good compromise between price, distance, and quality.

One of the realty companies I went to look at apartments with, Varsity Management, seemed kind of creepy. Like we just went to apartments that still had people living in them, then we knocked on the door to see if they were home. And they weren’t so we just went in. I felt like I was in some kind of cop show or something. Like I was scared there’d be bodies or dead hookers, etc. Apparently it’s part of the lease agreement, but that seems like a pretty crappy lease agreement.

There’s an Ikea in Canton, which is like 20 minutes or so from Ann Arbor. We went twice. That’s how much I like Ikea. The second time we went, I even bought a few random office organization thingys. I’m probably going to Ikea again next week when I go visit my brother in California… and buy more random stuff.

We also hit some pretty cool restaurants. Like umm… well, the only one I can remember is Champion House, where they do that Japanese cooking thing in front of you. It was pretty neat. Way expensive, though. But tasty. I suspect that our cook was Chinese, though, and not Japanese. Which is cool either way.

And I guess that’s it. Overall, it was a pretty fun trip, though somewhat stressful due to the quality (or lack thereof) of apartments. I guess I should’ve prepared for crapiness, but still, seeing it in person is quite harsh.