Before it started

Prager welcoming everyone

Start the show!

Diggnation!

Cuil is a new search engine that went live today. Its goal is to provide more search results with greater accuracy than existing search engines such as Google. Currently it indexes over 120 billion web pages, which is substantially lower than Google’s claim of 1 Trillion unique web pages. Cuil was founded by former Google employees Anna Patterson, Russel Power, Louis Monier, and former IBM employee Tom Costello.

Cuil has some positive qualities, but currently it is not polished enough to replace my preferred search engine, Google.

Pros

• UI: I tend to like darker screen user interfaces than most people, so I especially liked the contrasting black, dark, blue, and white elements. Actually, it fits nicely with the theme of my blog. Overall, the look and feel seems uncluttered, which is largely due to the multi-column view search results. This seems to prevents excessive scrolling when browsing the results.
• Search Categories: When searching for “Seattle”, it divided the search into suggestions that were common for this search. Results included “Seattle Culture”, “Landmarks in Seattle”, etc. Below each category were listed search terms that fit into these categories.

Cons

• Search Results: Several searches that I often do, returned results that were not useful to me. Typing in my own name, “Erik Turnquist”, did not return my website, nor ericturnquist.com which always occurs when searching google. When searching for “Soccer wiki”, “Digg wiki”, “California wiki”, or even “California wikipedia”, did not return a single search result that had Wikipedia. This is highly personal, but searches I do often proved to return useless results. 
• Load Times: Page load times were far too long. Using Webkit r35417, searching for “Apple” took 8.20 seconds, compared to Google’s 355 milliseconds.

Although Cuil is currently having scaling and relevancy issues, I assume that many of those problems will be worked out over time. Conclusion: stick with Google.

The last thing you expect while crossing the street.

1. Download and install the iPhone Configuration Utility
2. Plug your iPhone into your computer.
3. Launch the iPhone Configuration Utility located under /Applications/Utilities/iPhone Configuration Utility
4. Click on the name of your iPhone under “Connected Devices”
5. Open the “Console” tab
6. Debug away!

I finally did it. I got an iPhone. I have been interested in purchasing one for some time, but still had about a year left in my T-Mobile contract. Using the advice from Consumerist, I was able to cancel my contract early because they were going to raise text messaging rates.

It took me two days to actually get the phone. Actually, it’s a funny story.

Day One

On Monday, I went to the Valley Fair Apple Store. When I arrived at 7:31pm I was told that the line had been capped and they would not be able to let me stand in line. I told them that I had taken the bus there, could not get off of work any earlier, and I was wearing an Apple t-shirt (thankfully). After some convincing, I was finally let into the line.

Then, my three hour wait began. At around 10:30pm, a group of six people and I were let into the Apple Store. At 10:35pm I was told, “Sorry, the AT&T servers have just shut down.” My response, “WHAT!?” Apparently, all of AT&T’s activation servers were unresponsive nationwide. Awesome. Thankfully, I was given a card that stated I had 24 hours to claim my iPhone with the guarantee that I would not have to stand in line again.

Day Two

I arrived at the Apple Store at about 9:10pm waited about 10 minutes for someone to actually be available to help me (the employees looked really drained by this point). Finally, I was handed by 8GB black iPhone and within 10 minutes my activation was complete.

As far as I could see.

We have all heard of web streaming music services such as last.fm and Pandora, but I recently had the opportunity to use a desktop streaming music software called Spotify and was amazed.

Spotify, the company, was founded by entrepreneurs Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon and has its headquarters in Luxembourg. Spotify, the software, has been in beta for a little over a year, and gone through a number of revisions in the process. Currently, it offers an iTunes like interface for both playing music and searching through their extensive collection of songs. Songs are organized into playlists simply by dragging them from the Spotify music library. Playing a song is as simple as double clicking on it. Finding a song involves typing the title, artist, etc. into the search bar and then browsing through the search results.

Several areas of the product I especially enjoyed were:

Buffer Time

While using Spotify there was none. None while playing songs that had been streamed previously. None while playing obscure Seattle bands. It was incredible. Even my local music library takes longer to start playing songs when the hard drive has to spin up. I continued to test this with as many songs as I could and was not able to make it pause before a song started playing.

Overall Speed

Spotify offers clients for Windows and Mac OS X (could not find information about Linux). Everything in the interface was responsive. Search results were returned incredibly fast. Spotify felt solid and lightweight while being feature rich.

Library Size

The Spotify library had all of the popular music that I expected it to have, but it also included artists which many main stream stores have difficulty supplying content from.

Although I had the experience of playing with the Spotify beta, there were no ads in the version I was using. In the future, and for the final release ads will be added to the product, but they will be done in a non-instrusive manner outline here.

Although I am not a part of the beta, I was able to get a glimpse at software that I believe could change the streaming music market and possibly change the way I listen to music. While online, being able to play any song you want to, anytime, at no cost is extremely hard to resist.

Special thanks to Erik Hammar for showing me this software.

So, I realized I never officially announced this, but this summer I am working at Apple as an intern in the Development Technologies group. Specifically, I will be working on Core Data with a small team of engineers.

Core Data allows Cocoa developers to create sophisticated data models which are automatically stored in XML, Binary, SQLite, or their own database formats. Through the use of Xcode’s Data Model Design tool developers can graphically specify entities, their attributes as well as their relationships to other entities. During runtime these objects are represented through NSManagedObjectModel objects. Data is saved, loaded, and fetched through the NSManagedObjectContext object, which serves as the front end controller for the database. Data can be distributed across multiple database and multiple NSMangedObjectContext objects can interact with a single database.

For useful tutorials on CoreData, take a look at:

• Core Data Class Overview
• Tutorial:Build a Core Data App
• More advanced:Low-Level Core Data Tutorial
• For developing your own atomic store:Atomic Store Programming

Go to maps.google.com and click on the “Get Directions” link. In my I want to go from the Paul G. Allen Center to Pike Place Market. After I click the “Get Directions” button it shows me how to drive from my starting point to my destination. However you can click “Public Transit” directly below “Search Results” to be shown which bus routes allow you to get to your destination. Below is a photo showing my search results.

It tells me that I can take the 68 to the 73. Cool! Also listed are alternate departure times and buses that I could take to get to my destination. Under “Options” I can also specify my Depart Time or Arrival Time.

What I especially enjoy about this is being able to see exactly where the bus route will take me, as well as where I need to catch the bus and where it drops me off. A significant improvement over Trip Planner if you ask me.

For a list of all cities supported, go to Google Transit.

Go and download the future of internet browsing here.

Recently announced, the Open Computer and OpenPro Computer by PsyStar comes with Apple’s Leopard pre-installed. What is amazing is that they offer this functionality for as low as $400.

This is accomplished by using the same x86 architecture that the majority of computers run on today, but faking the EFI firmware so that Leopard thinks that it is running on genuine Apple hardware. Interesting. Basically this group as achieved what the hackers at OSx86 have been trying to do all along.

The base model, the Open Computer has a 2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo E4500 Processor, 2GB of DDR2 667 memory, Integrated Intel GMA 950 Graphics, 20x DVD+/-R SATA drive that is Lightscribe-capable, 4 rear USB Ports and comes in white or black.

Furthermore, a former Apple patent lawyer thinks Apple may not be able to do anything about it (Wired).

“Basically, when people go to a store or download software, they have a license with Apple to use this patented software on their computer. But breach of contract is one of the weakest forms of legal disputes” - Raj Abhyanker (Wired)

It will be interesting to see how this all plays out; whether the reliability and robustness of Apple’s Mac line can compete against inexpensive third-party options.

My current plan is to post more often, but have less detail in each post. This will hopefully keep things from becoming stagnant as the have been, and allow me to post at least once per day.

Wow. The Mac Pro legacy continues. At the default configuration, which starts at $2,799 it includes the following:

• Two 2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon (8-core)
• 2GB (2 x 1GB) of RAM
• 320GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s
• ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT 256MB (Two dual-link DVI)
• One 16x SuperDrive
• Two independent 10/100/1000BASE-T Ethernet (RJ-45) interfaces
• Bluetooth 2.0 + Enhanced Data Rate (EDR) up to 3Mb/s
• One PCI Express 2.0 x16 slot
• Two PCI Express x4 slots
• Two FireWire 800 ports, two FireWire 400 ports, five USB 2.0 ports

The Mac Pro includes Intel’s newest Penryn 45nm Quad-Core Xeon processors, which can be upgraded to 3.2 GHz. Main memory can be expanded to 32 GB (which I believe did not change from the last model) and it supports and internal hard drive expansion of up to 4 TB. Apple claims that this is the “fastest Mac ever” and that it delivers “up to twice the performance of its predecessor”. Also more good news, it is available today!

Personally, I am excited about the raw power that this machine has, from the graphics it includes to the new Intel chipset, it is amazing what is packed in the new Mac Pro. Other highlights include the shear expandability, and five USB ports (I have run out on my laptop), and excellent design of the machine. I would have liked to see integrated Blue-Ray or HD-DVD (even though this is not likely) support. There were several rumors that this might occur and I really thought that the next upgrade would include this.

This is a view of Red Square at the University of Washington. I hope everyone had a great winter break!

I admit that I got this story from TUAW, but it definitely needs repeating. Everyone’s favorite open-source audio editor is currently lacking mac devs. Here is the story, straight from the source:

“1.3.4 for OS X will appear when someone volunteers to compile it and sort the remaining bugs out. There is currently no-one with a Mac actively contributing to the development of audacity, hence at the moment no Mac releases.” – richardash1981

The only major requirement for doing this is installing wxWidgets, which put simply is a cross-platform GUI library. You also may want to take a look at the Audacity Team Guide for developing on a Mac. If anyone can help this would be greatly appreciated. We can’t lose the best open-source audio software for the mac!

• Lost Season 4
• Macworld ‘08
• Cloverfield
• e-IMCI Research
• Firefox 3
• Cozi
• Summer Olympics
• United States Presidential Election
• Completion of the Burj Dubai

Well, it’s working now, and you might ask what sort of hackery I conceived late last night? None in fact. I woke up, and it worked. Interesting…

Well my wireless was working, that is until I installed this update. My installation of Leopard had been running perfectly smoothly despite others having some problems with the initial release. I have consulted Google and nothing has come up with regards to this update. Will post again once more information has become available.

Where do I even start here? Do the Losties actually get rescued? Who rescues them? I thought about the last question for some time and kept on watching the trailer. This is when I noticed something odd. I used the handy app iSquint to convert the .flv file into a format where I could watch the movie frame by frame. After the text “FREBRUARY 2008 RESCUE ARRIVES”, three frames particularly stood out to me. You can see that there seems to be someone walking with a metallic looking object on their head. What is even stranger is that on the last frame that the figure can still be seen, a red light appears from its neck.

Could these be the “rescuers” that arrive at the island? Then there is the second trailer for Season 4, which only brings up more questions:

I can only guess as to what will happen during the next season. In the meantime check out Lostpedia and stay tuned to hear more updates every Thursday after each show airs.

“Rescuing your people, can’t really say its our primary objective…”

I teamed up with Clint Tseng and Sunil Garg, both talented software developers, to create our first Facebook App.

My College Apps

This was my first Cocoa project using Objective-C that I began freshman year of college. It allows you to input numbers in a 9×9 Sudoku grid. Once a puzzle has been entered, pressing “Solve!” will show one possible solution to the puzzle.

Sudoku Solver App and Source Code