Following is a screenshot of my laptop at home (no kidding !!) and as you can see, there are only 5 icons in the Windows 7 desktop. How neat … In fact, my computer at work has the same desktop view.

This post is about how I organize my files to declutter the desktop, but more importantly, how to make it work around the Dropbox service (and any other cloud storage services or your private Internet accessible NAS). That basically makes all your important files accessible from Internet, whenever you want, and whereever you are.

Before we start the work, you need to answer yourself one question, that is “how many ways you want to access your files ?”. In my case, I have computers at work, at home and of course mobile devices like smartphone and tablet. Therefore, I can classify all the files I ever created into the following categories, in terms of access methods:

1. I want to access files created from my home computer;
2. I want to access files created from my office computer;
3. I want to access files created from my mobile devices

If I further elaborate those access methods, I have a combination of:

A) Files and folders created by home computer,

i) access from home computer only;

ii) access from any computers;

B) Files and folders created by office computer,

i) access from office computer only;

ii) access from any computers;

C) Files and folders created by any computer,

i) access only from locally;

ii) access from any computer;

As you can see A (i), B(i) essentially are the same as C(i) in the cases of home and office computer, so in principle the access method of files and folders are:

1. Files created by any computer but access only locally; (i.e. the computer that created the files)
2. Files created by home computer and accessible by other computers;
3. Files created by office computer and accessible by other computers, and;
4. Files created anywhere, but accessible by other computers.

To make the above works, all I need is to create 4 folders, of which 3 of them are created in Dropbox. And they are:

1. A folder names – “Desktop – Local“, this is a folder in each computer and stores the local created files / folders and will not share to any other computer and the Dropbox;
2. A shortcut to a folder names – “Desktop – Home“. The folder is created in Dropbox. Files / folders that created by home computer but like to share with other computer shall store here;
3. A shortcut to a folder names – “Desktop – Office“. The folder is created in Dropbox. Files / folders that created by office computer but like to share with other computer shall store here;
4. A shortcut to a folder names – “Desktop – Virtual“. The folder is created in Dropbox. Files / folders that created by any computer but like to share with other computer shall store here.

Lastly, don’t forget to install the Dropbox software to your computer to synchronize all these folders. In summary, with this approach, I minimize all sorts of files and folders in all my computers. In addition, any files and folders that need to be shared are nicely organized and stored in the Cloud storage Dropbox.com and I can easily distinguish where the files are created (home computer or work computer – for personal or work files).

Hope you will find it useful !!

Happy Chinese New Year !!

Guess all of you know that in Chinese Astrology 2012 is the Year of the Dragon. The Dragon is a creature of myth and legend; in fact, it is the only animal of the Chinese zodiac year that is not real. A symbol of good fortune and sign of intense power, the Oriental Dragon is regarded as a divine beast – the reverse of the malicious monster that Westerners felt necessary to find and slay.

Anyway, many of you must be eager to know if you will have better luck in the coming year than previous years. Let me tell you one thing – to get lucky, all you need to do is be a happy person and stay happy.

Following is a photo of the Chinese word “Happiness”.

I started the annual reporting of this tiny blog since 2009, and I found it is a very good way to tell how the blog compare to previous year. The first thing I found is I blogged a lot less in year 2011, in fact I posted only half as many posts as in year 2010. And therefore, the blog also sold only 76 various models of Kindles (33% less compare to previous year).

As usual, people bought many other stuff from Amazon thru the site, for examples:

• Running shoe
• Camcorder
• Zoom lens
• Laptops from Dell and Acer

However, the most funny products sold in the last 12 months, definitely belonged to that pair of Freudian slipper and naked coconut water …

Same time next year, another annual report is waiting for you.

I like black and white pictures. A lot.

But I am not exactly know why, may be it’s like what the famous writer Stefan Kanfer writes – “There’s something strange and powerful about black-and-white imagery.“. Or may be just because I am now old enough, and the world is no longer colorful.

“Shades of grey wherever I go
The more I find out the less that I know
Black and white is how it should be
But shades of grey are the colors I see.”

Billy Joel

Unlike others, I don’t take photos in color mode and then process those to black & white with retouching software. (Yes, I switched to digital photography for quite some years) Instead, I toggle on the black & white mode with my camera (e.g. Olympus E-5, E-P3), and just take the photo as is. Many times, I used the “grainy” mode to add some textures to the photo as well.

So, what’s your story of taking black and white photos ?

How many apps you have downloaded to your iOS devices ? And is it easy to find them from within the devices – then run your favorite game or utility apps, move them or delete them ? Yes I know many of you have your favorite apps in the home screen and you can organize the apps into folders as well … but more questions pop up – how to name the folders ? How to arrange the folders ? And is it easy to find the folders you created last week or month in your iPhone / iPad ?

iPhone and iPad are smart devices but you need to be very smart as well one way or the other, to make that device works for you. Other than downloading good apps, I firmly believe you also need a smart(er) way to organize your apps and folders – and in turn, better user experience.

And here are 8 tips and tricks on that:

1. First, only download the apps your need. A simple but important trick, for example, if you don’t play games at all then why download the Angry Birds ?
2. Second, organize all standard Apple apps (Clock, Calendar, Contact, Map etc.) in the home screen of the device. With this approach, when you know you need to run those standard Apple apps, just go to the home screen to find it. Free up your mind, you don’t need to memorize where are those apps – like, where is the Map apps ? However, if there are really some Apple standard apps you don’t need in the home screen – save those into a separate folder, say “Apple apps”.
3. Always leave a row in the home screen for your apps and folders though, in other words, only keep at most 12 standard Apple apps in the home screen (in the case of iPhone). That will leave you 4 ”slots” to place your own apps or folders. For iPad, keep 15 standard Apple apps in the home screen and leave 5 “slots” for the apps folders.
4. In the case of iPad, you can also move one of your favorite apps to the apps docking bar in the bottom of the screen. In my case, I added Zite to it.
5. In the home screen, keep the most used apps on the left most column (if you are a right-handed person), or the right most column. That will help you to access your favorite apps with only one hand and your thumb.
6. Probably the most important tips – sort your folders position by their names. For example, place the folder sequence like “Finance”, then “Games”, then “Health” etc. That will help you easy to find one folder just by a glance to the screen. In other words, if you want to find the folder ”Health”, the first glance of the screen you found “Finance” and you will certainly know the ”Health” folder is somewhere on the right or below the folder “Finance”. No more folder hunting.
7. Keep the folders names the same between iPhone and iPad. So you can easily find the same apps in the same folder.
8. Lastly, review the apps and folders once every few months – remove the apps that no longer needed; rename the folders or create new ones if new needs arose; reorganize the folder position again.

I hope all these tips and tricks make sense to you, following you can find few screen shots of my iPhone and iPad set up.

Once in a while I have nothing to blog.

No more Kindle posts, no more photographs or camera gears, no more gadgets and of course, no more cloud computing stuff (guys and gals, we are tired of keep talking about cloud computing, by someone who have not implemented any cloud computing platform before).

I suppose I can also write something about SoMoLo (or SoLoMo … whatever you like it) apps, something about Liquid Newsroom Project, something about the latest Open Mobile Summit in San Francisco, or even why my iPhone 4 battery runs out faster with iOS 5.0.1; still, my mind is blank.

Then I finally find out the reason this morning … if something is really important to blog, I will tweet it, Facebook it, Google+ it … but if something is not that really important to blog, I will just leave it aside – till one day, I forget all about it.

Technology and mobility do not make us more productive, it just make our life run faster – without any goal.

“Life in the fast lane, surely make you lose your mind.” – Eagles

No, Apple II was not my first personal computer, it was the Commodore 64.

No, iPod was not my first portable music player, it was a Aiwa portable tape player.

No, Macbook Pro was not my first laptop computer, it was a Toshiba Portégé.

No, iPhone was not my first smartphone, it was Dopod C730.

No, iPad was not my first tablet, it was Amazon Kindle.

And no, Steve Jobs was not my first idol, my dad is.

But just imagine the modern days without Jobs, Apple II, iPod, MacBook, iPhone and iPad. And imagine the days without mouse, GUI, touch screen gesture …

Remembering the man who behind all these, and who made “IT” stands for “Innovation, Transformation”.

“Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me … Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful… that’s what matters to me.” – Steve Jobs

Guess you know all about the new Kindles from the search engines, technical blogs etc. But what you probably don’t know are the impacts to you – if you’re a Kindle 2 / 3 owners, iPad owners or not living in USA. OK, here you go:

Your Kindle 3 is now named Kindle Keyboard or Kindle Keyboard 3G. The new prices are US$ 99 and US$ 139 (with sponsored screensavers) … but they are still selling at US$ 139, and US$ 189 for non-USA customers.

The Kindle 4 is now just called Kindle. This is a basically keyboard-less Kindle 3 but with only 2G of RAM (Kindle Keyboard has 4G RAM). It costs only US$ 79, but US$ 109 for non-USA customers. It’s also 30% lighter, 18% smaller and supports WiFi only. It supports six languages now – English (US and UK), German, French, Spanish, Italian, or Brazilian Portuguese. Since the Kindle now doesn’t have a physical keyboard (and the next / previous page buttons are very “low profile”), but at the same time it is not a device with touch screen – you need to use the non-QWERTY virtual keyboard and use direction keys to “type”.

And what about the new Kindle Touch ? 

The Kindle Touch is 8% lighter, 11% smaller than Kindle 3 and of course with a 6″ touch screen to turn pages (it’s called “EasyReach”). There are also one new feature – X-Ray. According to Amazon, this feature “Explores the bones of a book. With a single tap, see all the passages across a book that mention ideas, fictional characters, historical figures, places or topics of interest, as well as more detailed descriptions from Wikipedia and Shelfari.” Yes, don’t really know what it is … I think we have to see it to believe it.

Another significant feature is the new Kindle Touch now support the display of non-Latin characters, including Cyrillic (such as Russian), Japanese, Chinese (Traditional and Simplified), and Korean characters, in addition to Latin and Greek scripts.

The Touch has a Wi-Fi version (US$ 99 with special offers) and a Wi-Fi / 3G version (US$149 with special offers). But guess what ? It is available for U.S. only. Looks like I need to use the tricky method to get it.

Kindle Fire

Lastly, the really cool Andriod-based, colorful, dual-core processor Kindle Fire. Cost only US$ 199 and (also) available in U.S. only, it is really the cloud-enabled device. It includes a cloud-accelerated browser – Amazon Silk, free cloud storage, streaming of songs and videos. In addition, similar to Amazon’s Whispersync technology to automatically sync your library, last page read, bookmarks, notes, and highlights across your devices. On Kindle Fire, Whispersync extends to video. Start streaming a movie on Kindle Fire, then pick up right where you left off on your TV - avoid the frustration of having to find your spot. Not a new technology but it sounds like really easy and as smooth as silk.

iPad-like screen, 100,000 movies and TV titles, runs Android apps, free cloud services, 17 million songs … hey, it is really as good as iPad and a great tablet.

So which one will you get ? I will probably go for Kindle Fire.

(Check out other Kindle related posts for evaluations, tips and tricks)

Before I shamelessly promote myself as a big fan of Kindle Apps, I better tell you that I am also a big fan of Kindle eBook reader. I really love the Kindle Apps as it works very well in tablets like iPad (I think people just use the term “iPad” instead of tablet anyway). Therefore when I know Amazon released the Kindle Cloud Reader, I have to review it …I set up the Cloud Reader without any problem, but it’s not that intuitive to set up your library for offline reading … anyway, here is the full details (with photos by the end of that blog post) of that new offering from Amazon.

1. First of all, go to the homepage of Kindle Cloud Reader. Click the “Sign in to get started”, then sign in with your Amazon account credential in the next screen. That step will then kick start the Kindle Cloud Reader web application, and show you all the eBooks you have purchased for your Kindle.
2. Next step is to increase the local database storage size (up to 50 MBytes) so that the application can save your books to your iPad (or other devices) for offline reading. And here is the tricky part, the application will also try to save the apps for offline use, and you will see that message “Saving app for offline use” in the bottom of the screen.
3. In many cases, that step will return an error message stating “Error saving app. Tap here to try again“. If you encounter this, go to your iPad setting page and clear the cache of Safari and repeat the steps above again. The saving shall then be successful.
4. Then add the apps to home screen. Change name to whatever you like and add to home screen
5. Other than the Book grid view, you can also see the Book list view. You can toggle the views from the lower right corner selection buttons.
6. Same as the Kindle for iPad apps, you can change the settings like font size, color mode.
7. Click any book and you can start reading, and it works pretty much like Kindle for iPads.
8. Now, try exit the apps and start the cloud reader again.
9. If you have not saved the app for offline use successfully (see step 2 and 3 above), you will be greeted with that error message “Cloud Reader could not be opened because it is not connected to the internet“.
10. To really read the books offline, you need to press and hold any book cover in your library, then select “Download & Pin Book.”
11. After the download, you will see the books are “Pinned” with a green color pin icon underneath the downloaded book and ready for offline reading !!
12. And lastly, there is the Kindle shop such that you can buy books directly within the web apps (if you’re online).

After all these set up, you can read the book as any Kindle apps … with three exceptions:

• You cannot currently create new notes and highlights using Kindle Cloud Reader – but notes and highlights you create while reading the book on your Kindle or another Kindle app will be displayed.
• There is no built-in dictionary (I missed it a lot !!).
• It still feels a bit slower than Kindle reader and Kindle apps.

Hope you find this review useful !!

First of all, a disclaimer, I am not a big fan of Google … even though I am / was an user of their Gmail, Search Engine, AdSense, Google+, Maps, Earth, Picasa, Wave, Buzz, Lively, Analytics, Webmasters, Docs, Apps etc. etc. I am just a big fan of innovative products, and Google is one (a big one though) of many companies that developed many innovative solutions. For example, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, and even Microsoft, just to name a few.

The recent launch of Google+ from Google however make me think twice about what I can do with it. Is it a “social network” to post my opinions, share my photos, chat with friends ? Or is it a copycat of Facebook or Twitter ? Or is it a whole new Internet communication platform ?

It’s too early to answer these questions of course, but just from the way it “Share what’s new” to the way to show the various “Streams” I think it is a new communication platform. Let’s have a look:

One Google+ user, Mike Elgan, posted the following the other day:

Instead of saying, “I’m going to write a blog post now,” or “I’m going to send an e-mail” or “I think I’ll tweet something” you simply say what you have to say, then decide who you’re going to say it to.

• If you address it to “Public” it’s a blog post.
• If you address it to “Your Circles” it’s a tweet.
• If you address it to your “My Customers” Circle it’s a business newsletter.
• If you address it to a single person, it can be a letter to your mother.

I can further add / fine-tune the followings:

• If you address it to your “Company” Circle it’s a company newsletter.
• If you address it to “Public” and limited it to 140 characters, then it’s a tweet.
• If you address it to “Your Circles” it’s like a Facebook status update.

Other than sending, the different ways you show the “streams” also means different approaches of modern days’ communication. For example,

• show the streams from “Friends” circle is like the wall posts in your Facebook, and
• show the streams from “Following” circle is like viewing an expanded version of all the tweets from Twitter.

And of course, I can do Hangout to have video chats with many friends at the same time, and I can have group messaging with Huddle with mobile apps. Lastly, with the Chrome browser extensions (e.g. G+ Count in Title, G+me and Start G+), the features of Google+ is keep expanding, fine-tuning and advancing.

Let me know how you use your Google+, and here is my Google+ account.