I just posted a quick update on Sponsr.Us on our blog. Feel free to check it out! Basically, we’re progressing well and right now, we’re seeking mentors to volunteer their efforts to help out student initiatives. If you might be interested, send an email to mentors[at]sponsr.us.

Read more here: blog.sponsr.us/2011/09/01/where-are-we/

I recently was fortunate enough to pick up one of the last available HP Touchpads in New York City. Late afternoon, I figured the tablets HP was basically giving away would have been long sold out in the Best Buy on 5^th avenue — but there happened to be a couple left.

After HP announced that it would be discontinuing the Touchpad and dropped the price to $99 and $149 respectively for the 16gb and 32gb versions, people flocked to the HP website to buy one. I’m sure that many like me bought one in hopes of running Android instead of the dying OS in the near future (btw, the folks over at CyanogenMod (which I currently run on my Samsung Galaxy ) are making good headway on that)

But after getting one, there was a bit of tugging at my heart for Palm. After using its long outdated PalmOS for years, they developed WebOS. To be honest, I’ve really developed an appreciation for the platform. Struggling against the massively popular Android and Apple devices, the late-to-the-game player with sub-par devices couldn’t remain standing. I really think that if Palm had made their devices nearly perfect at first, the situation would be starkly different from today. The Pre, although nice, just couldn’t really match the iPhone in build and polish. The same goes for the HP Touchpad. It’s nice, but even as HP found out, the hardware is just too limiting. WebOS runs nearly twice as fast on an iPad 2. HP bought up a fantastic company, but with some execution issues (both Palm’s fault and HP’s) now it’s left with a falling community of users.

WebOS is really nicely suited for a tablet interface. I liked it on a smartphone (though laggy at times), but I love it on the large screen of the Touchpad. The multitasking implementation is easy to use and intuitive, but again, the hardware lags behind the software. Boot time is way too long and things just lag all around. It seems just that HP was in a hurry to get the Touchpad onto the market.

Although Microsoft’s Windows Phone was a late player as well, I feel the combination of quality hardware and a larger selection of devices made the difference for the software giant. WP7 is sure to be a huge player in the mobile market and with the introduction of Windows 8, we’re sure to see some shiny tablets running ARM-based Windows soon too.

Although HP is going to license out WebOS for third party hardware developers, it’s probably too late for any major companies to pick up the OS given the strong alternatives available now.

At the same time, Blackberry is riding on a shaky bridge as well. The Playbook is pretty bad in my opinion, designed as a “complement” to a Blackberry smartphone. Although not terrible, I feel the Blackberry new touch-based OS is too deeply rooted in the older Blackberry OS and as a result, feels clunky.

In some ways, I feel HP might have pulled the plug a bit early on the TouchPad. Better hardware and a clear advertising campaign could have turned it around. But then again, focusing on core business instead has its merits as well.

As many wait for Honeycomb on the TouchPad, I think a lot of people will come to realize the potential WebOS had to shake up the mobile computing market. Maybe HP’s hope is that some major software developers will recognize and bring more quality apps to WebOS. But to these people, first building better Android apps is probably much higher on their to-do list.

Palm, rest well, you’ll be remembered in many people’s hearts. The contributions you’ve made to mobile computing are extraordinary.

Overall, I’m really glad I got a TouchPad. There are a couple really nice apps (WordPress for Touchpad!) and hey you never know, maybe WebOS will make a come back…. throwing so many devices into consumer hands has to have some effect.

UPDATE: Thought I’d mention some cool pluses. You get 50GB of free cloud storage through Box.net — for life. The other thing is that messing with the Touchpad is ridiculously easy: you enable Developer Mode (though a code that you type into the search box) and install Preware (basically Cydia for WebOS). I have to say that I’ve significantly reduced lagging with some patches and installing an overclocked kernel.

Back in the spring, I came up with this idea for a community news source for my high school. Combining news feeds from Twitter and a user-generated stream of bite size content, this “Pulse” intends to be a gateway for campus news.

I got a chance last week to start coding up the platform and I’m basically done implementing the basics. In a nutshell, it aggregates (using SimplePie) RSS feeds into a single stream of news and then displays it. I’m using Tumblr as the provider of the user submitted content since it 1)allows for anyone to contribute out of the box and 2)has that focus on “bite sized content”, which can be short posts or photos or even videos.

I could have just kept it straightforward and just a single page, but from there, I figured I would take it a step further and integrate in some javascript. Now, the PHP-based platform is complete with jQuery effects and AJAX loading.

I’ve open sourced the code for anyone to use. I really think this kind of community news source would be great within a lot of high school and college communities, but we’ll see how it goes at my school.

Check out Andover Pulse at pulse.phillipian.net/ and the code is available on GitHub at https://github.com/ericouyang/pulse.

Let’s start a change in how news is made and discovered on campuses! Interested in starting a Pulse at your school? Contact me!

I’ve recently been working hard at a new project. It’s called “Sponsr.Us“. The basic premise comes from a program offered at my school called “Abbot Grants” — this program allow student projects to receiving funding from the school to make them a reality. Students use the money to purchase items for clubs, bring in guest speakers, etc. But beyond the boundaries of Phillips Academy, students may find it difficult to raise funds necessary for projects.

Here’s where Sponsr.Us comes in. It’s a two part website: part social fundraising (a la Facebook Causes, Kickstarter, StayClassy, etc.), part a fund provider for students. I’m hoping to apply for Sponsr.Us to be a non-profit organization and to work with local business and individuals to raise funds.

What distinguishes Sponsr.Us is a couple of things:

• Fundraising is for something specific: rather than raising funds for “cancer research”, “science education”, and so on. It’s focused towards something specific like purchasing a video camera for a school film-making club or purchasing new lab equipment to start a higher level chemistry class or provide transportation costs for a competition.
• Sponsr.Us is geared towards students, mainly high school and college students
• Our organization provides funding for student projects: groups will apply for the funding (6 or 12 month cycles)
• We’re non-profit: donations can be tax-deductable

I’ve already registered the domain and started development using a Python web framework called Django (somewhat similar to Ruby-on-Rails)

Interested in joining in? Send me an message! We’re looking for motivated students to be a part of the team.

The year’s wrapping up… and it’s really been quite a year. From a summer in China, to finishing my first year at Andover (and starting my second), to designing websites (including redesigning this blog and EricOuyang.Com), to really getting into photography, 2010 has been a memorable year.

I really need to post more often on this blog, so I’ve decided to do more microblogging (something like this post rather than a longer one). In the future, I’ll post links to sites, photos I’ve taken, and other tidbits on ReflectionUpon more often than a long article.

Random photo I thought I’d share: (By the way, I got a Flickr Pro account— so you’ll be seeing many more photos on my Photostream (and in original resolution too ))

A Stark Tree

I’m planning on getting a new lens and a Canon Speedlite, so look for photos in my photostream using those in the upcoming months!

2011 — here we come!

China (according to 2010 estimates) has over 1.3 billion people. That’s a lot of people at just under 20% of the world’s population and it’s a good thing that not all of them own a car (or two or three, like it is in the United States). Plus, best of all, there is a well established infrastructure of public transportation.

Shanghai Metro Line 2

As you know from my last post (here), I was in China this past summer and I visited the world’s most populous city (by city proper), Shanghai (though that’s disputable). Inside Shanghai’s city proper, there is a population of 13.8 million people in a space of a little under 2,000 square km, so it’s very crowded (and now even more so with the world Expo there). In each square km, there is over 7000 people. How are these people getting to work each day and around the city? It would be a nightmare if they drove to work. Shanghai, with the world’s longest network of metro rail, has very good public transportation. It is one of the world’s fastest growing subway networks with 12 lines right now (minus the Maglev) and 22 planned to be completed by 2020. And— it only started operating in 1995, 15 years ago.

Although many of the locations surrounding the planned stations (and even some of the outer city ones now) aren’t exactly populated yet, Shanghai is planning for the future. Even with the one child policy, China’s population is still growing extremely quickly and it’s better to be prepared.

When I was in China, subway was definitely the preferred way of transportation. Shanghai has clean, fast trains (manufactured by various companies including Alstom, Bombardier, and Siemens) that avoid the nasty traffic above ground and get me to basically anywhere I need to go. With a daily ridership of 4.78 million, it’s well used. Very rarely would I want to ride on a taxi (unless it’s late at night) since the subway would bring me there much more quickly, especially during rush hour (which is quite scary to be honest both above and below ground)

China has caught on with the idea of building subways in it’s urban centers, currently planning or constructing several subway systems across the country  to provide the transportation people need to get around more efficiently than above ground buses, taxis, and cars. Last year, there were at least 15 cities with subway systems under construction and 12 with subways in planning. With billions of dollars poured down the throat of metros, China is trying to avoid even more traffic congestion. Selling more cars to it’s people than the United States, a lot of cars are put onto the road each year. In other cities where the subway isn’t as developed, it is more convenient having a car, and as more and more people have the money to purchase cars and the prices of cars get lower, more and more people will get cars. And that’s not good considering all the issues of traffic congestion and pollution (which in itself leads to global warming, lung disease, etc.). China realizes this and because of this is willing to send all this money into public transportation.

The high speed train on conventional rail to Hangzhou, China

Public transportation between cities is excellent as well. With upgraded traditional rail, and new elevated tracks running across the country, China has the world’s largest network of high speed rail (with the definition of having trains run at an average speed of 200km/h or higher). Right now, China has about 7000 km of high speed rail. The entire length is planned to reach 13,000km by 2012 and 16,000km in 2020. By contrast, the U.S. only has one high speed rail running from Boston to Washington D.C. and that’s by the Department of Transportation’s definition. This rail only has an average speed of 109km/h, though it reaches 240km/h.

Just like the youth of China’s subway system, this new push towards high speed rail is fairly recent as well. In 1993, the average speed of commercial trains in China was only 48.1 km/h.

Both China’s metro and high speed rail systems are very impressive, particularly looking at where they are headed. Although China’s need for these systems can be easily seen, the U.S. should more heavily consider developing it’s public transportation further. Considering airplane fuel costs and environmental issues as well as population growth, high speed rail and subways should be created and upgraded across the United States. Honestly, the U.S. doesn’t really have the money to do it now, but really Uncle Sam, as soon as you have the money to, consider your options for the future of transportation.

Sources/For more info:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_China

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Metro

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_the_United_States

www.nytimes.com/2009/03/27/business/worldbusiness/27transit.html

Since I haven’t posted on my blog in such a long time, I thought that I might as well reflect on everything that is has been going on.

First off, apparently, the iPad isn’t doing too badly (see my last post: reflectionupon.com/2010/01/27/apple-ipad/). I’ve personally seen quite a few of the gigantic iPod Touches and they seem fine and do what they are supposed to. I’ll say that this is just Apple making a product and people buying it just because it’s Apple, and my opinion still stands that it won’t be the “next big thing”. That’s not to say touch based interfaces aren’t the next generation of user interfaces, but just that the iPad won’t exactly change everything like some people say the iPhone did.

Talking about iPhones, I recently got the Samsung Captivate (Galaxy S) and I love it! I won’t ramble about how great it is, but trust me, it’s amazing

This summer, I spent nearly two months in my mother country, China. One of the biggest complaints that people hear me say is how awful the pollution is. There was a period of around three to four days when in Shanghai, there was just plainly stunning skies with white puffy clouds gliding across the bright blue background. But generally, the visibility is so bad, even looking across the HuangPu, the Oriental Pearl is fuzzy and the sky is just gray with a tint of yellow in it. To be sure, China is moving towards being more green, especially with hydroelectric (Three Gorges Dam) power, but there are just so many coal fired plants and factories in China.

Tourism Commercialization

ShaoLin Monk Performance

My other big observation (though it is also a bit of a complaint) is that many of the places we visited weren’t really that authentic and were definitely way too geared towards tourists. We went to the ShaoLin Temple in DengFeng, Henan and I just felt the place was so commercialized with all the new buildings and their performance. Granted, it was destroyed fairly recently (less than 100 years ago) and had to be rebuilt, but the current temple just doesn’t have that true historical feel to it. According to XinHuaWang, they have two luxury bathrooms that costed 3 million yuan. Yes, they should have nice clean bathrooms, but 3 million yuan spent on bathrooms for use by both tourists and the monks is just ridiculous. It just goes to show how the historical place which is famous for both its ShaoLin martial arts and its Buddhist monastery has  just become a tourist area. We went there and got to see their performance of the Shaolin martial arts and clearly the thing was entirely geared to please the audience. And there was plenty of the typical touristy “take your photos with the monks” and “get your DVD of the ShaoLin monks”.  And what’s more, the tourism group that runs the place along with the city of Deng Feng is going to be listed as a stock in Hong Kong or Shanghai in 2011. Yes, soon you’ll be able to invest in the Shaolin Temple. Now just stop and think about that: an ancient Chinese/Buddhist temple preparing an IPO with its 150 million yuan/year ticket revenues. Oh, and the monks have toured internationally including New York and London. Yes, it’s a business opportunity, and I’m not expecting the monks to live a life that doesn’t fit the 21st century with flushing toilets, cellphones, and computers, but it just strikes me how commercialized the Shaolin Temple has become. Fortunately, the historical and culture aspects of the temple aren’t going to be a part of the venture.

Tourism Buses at the Terracotta Warriors

And in various other places in China, you have a similar story of turning everything into a tourism site. At the Terracotta Warriors in Xi’an, you literally had to walk a good 15 minutes from the gigantic parking lot filled with tourism buses through a street lined with shops selling various items before reaching the actual historical figures. They even had a little electric shuttle (that you had to pay for, of course) to bring you directly to the site if you didn’t want to walk.

Also, temples are sprouting up everywhere, which isn’t in itself a bad thing, but these are tourist temples. I visited a temple under construction near Shanghai in a satellite city called AnTing (which by the way, is an automobile center in China), and everything about it was brand new. The temple itself wasn’t really made with traditional Chinese interlocking wood, but with nice modern cement. Everything about it was just recently made, the Buddha inside was just recently carved. The only part of it that was “historical” was that it was where a temple used to be.

Everywhere you go in China, you’ll run into this rapid over development of tourism. I’m fine with the places catering towards visitors, but not to the degree where you are building luxury bathrooms in a temple where in the surrounding countryside, there are hardly any decent bathrooms for the residents.

In my next post, I’ll talk about a very great part of Chinese cities: public transportation.

Sources:

news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-04/08/content_7940163.htm

www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/china-business/6831187/Shaolin-Temples-kung-fu-monks-prepare-IPO.html

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