Thoughts by Sze Wong » Just Thoughts

The new economy – part 1

Sze Wong — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 17:18:38 +0000

Yesterday I read an article from Mark Mills on Forbes about the new Economy, and this morning another article on TechRepublic saying now it’s a great time to be a developer. I agree with both, and as usual, I want to put my own spin to it.

There are 2 key words appear in both articles: Cloud, and Mobile.

The cloud has, and will continue to, fundamentally change everything we do. The term Cloud is a catchy term. What it really means is the as-a-service (AAS) model. (Software-as-a-service, platform-as-a- service, infrastructure-as-a-service, etc.) When an industry moves into a AAS model, it signifies maturity, and the IT industry is finally maturing. Just in the last few months, I bumped into two separate companies who said, “For the last 10 years, we were actually an IT company also doing X.”, and X is their actual business. One of them is the world’s largest hotel chain, and the other is a local public school system. Both of them said they spend so much energy into IT that basically turned them into IT companies over time. Look at any big companies around you, do they have a big IT department? Their own data center? Are you part of that big IT department?

As the IT industry matures, we realize we are wasting resources by having duplicated IT departments in each company doing pretty much the same thing. When I was in Fannie Mae, I keep pushing to have Sun MicroSystems run our data center instead of running our own. My argument was, “Why do you think we, a financial company, will do a better job of running servers than those who’s lives are to run servers.” “Well, security, data behind fire walls, etc., etc.”, my manager said. As the cloud gets better, more companies are realizing giving IT to those who does IT well is a far better and cost effective solution. After all, you would not have a plumbing crew on staff just to have a water cooler in the office, right?

A wrote a blog 3 years ago predicting 80% of IT goes to the cloud. I think have a big chance of being right!

Now, think about what that means. There is currently probably billions worth of IT that sits in different companies in the world. What this trend will mean is that all of those will slowly move to the cloud. This is a fundamental change. When a change this big is happening, there will be lots and lots of opportunities.

I will write about Mobile in another post.

How Steve Jobs changed my life

Sze Wong — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 03:41:14 +0000

When I was 11 years old, my mom used her entire monthly salary and brought me an Apple IIe. It was a Taiwanese clone and cost about US$350.00. It may be a clone, but it’s an Apple IIe. That summer I learned Basic and felt in love with software. Since then I became the “computer boy” at school and eventually came to the US for college and majored in computer science.

In summer of 2008, I was working on a project in Fannie Mae building accounting systems. My friend Mike Sanford took me to lunch and said, “Sze, you got to do this. This is the 80′s all over again. I am quitting my job this afternoon.” Mike was referring to the launch of the App Store and the opportunity that came along. I brought my first MacBook that weekend and start developing for the iPhone.

Today, iFormBuilder helps people replaces clipboards and go paperless with iPhones and iPads. It is deployed in over 80 counties and in many different industries.

Had is not been for Steve, my life would probably be very different.

I will continue to work hard and like Steve said, “Never settle, follow your heart.”

NPR’s Report on Patent Issues in the US

admin — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 14:39:00 +0000

Listening to this makes me want to cry:

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/play_full.php?play=441&podcast=1

Growing up

Sze Wong — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 15:15:36 +0000

When my grandma passed away, I was very sad. We were closed and losing her was painful to me. I was just out of college and i asked, “how come nobody ask me how I feel?” That was almost 15 years ago. As God slowly takes people around me away, I finally started to understand what God is doing. God doesn’t want me to be sad. Its not about me, its about people around me. God is giving me another chance to love people around me more, while i still can. God wanted me to make people around me less sad. God want me to be there for them and say “its ok”. Life is always busy and things are always inconvenient. While I still can, I will be there. I am here.

My First Garage Band recording

Sze Wong — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 17:53:57 +0000

This is just the intro to the song I’m trying to learn, but the process is cool so I’m writing it down.

I play the song from my iPhone, and try to play it on the piano.

Once I got the notes correct, I hook up my Mac book to the piano.

As I start playing, notes starts to show up in Garage band:

It records in MIDI with paddle timing and even how hard I hit the keys (emotion). The following is being play back from GarageBand, but it’s almost like me playing. Very cool.

song1

WordPress Expert!

Sze Wong — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 18:44:50 +0000

Yesterday, my co-worker called and said where can he find a wordpress expert and said someone should be able to get it done in an hour. So, I asked, what do you need?

I have 3 themes that I like, I want to mix them up.
I want to do wrapper pages just like I could in Joomla.
and…

Wo, wo, I said, even if someone is very good with WordPress they can’t get that done in an hour. So, Sze being Sze, said, “I will look into it.”

By 3 pm, I finished:

- Mixing the overeasy theme with videographer theme so some posts uses videographer’s templates.
- Created custom sidebar for different pages
- Created a new wrapper template for wrapper external pages.

Am I a wordpress expert? No. I am just a friend.

Virginia Vote Report

Sze Wong — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 04:13:23 +0000

Twitter Vote Report Video

Sze Wong — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 19:01:22 +0000

Twitter Vote Report

Everbody should Vote and everbody should Report!

Sze Wong — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 01:26:33 +0000

On November 4th 2008, millions of Americans will go to over 200,000 distinct voting locations and using different systems and machinery to vote. Some voters will have a terrific experiences, and others will experience the same problems we have been hearing about for years – long lines, broken machines, inaccurate voting rolls, and others will experience problems that we haven’t heard about before. That’s why a new citizen-driven election monitoring system called Twitter Vote Report (www.twittervotereport.com) was just launched. Using either Twitter.com, iPhone, direct SMS, or our telephone hotlines, voters will have a new way to share their experiences with one another and ensure that the media and watchdog groups are aware of any problems.

And YOU can help! Be a citizen journalist! Submit a report about conditions at your polling place.

Four ways to submit reports to Vote Report:

Twitter: include #votereport and other tags to describe the scene on the ground
SMS: Send text messages to 66937 (MOZES) starting with the keyword #votereport plus other hash tags
iPhone: We have a Twitter Vote Report iPhone app in the App store!
Phone: Call our automated system at 567-258-VOTE (8683) to report about conditions, using any touch-tone phone

And if you would like to talk to a human to report bad conditions you’ve observed, please call our partner 1-866-OUR-VOTE.

As news outlets and blogs will report on Election Day stories, www.twittervotereport.com is an invaluable resource for thousands of voters to get immediate help. From questions like “where do I vote” or “how do I make sure that my rights are being upheld,” Twitter Voter Report augments these efforts by providing a new way for voters to send text messages (aka tweets) via cellphones or computers which will be aggregated and mapped so that everyone can see the Nation’s voting problems in real-time.

Imagine a nationwide web map with pins identifying every zip code where Americans are waiting over 30 minutes to vote or indicating those election districts where the voting machines are not working. Collectively we will inform each other when the lines are too long and ensure that media and watchdog groups know where problems exist.

For more information, go to www.twittervotereport.com. The complete list of tags or keywords that you can include in your reports is listed there. And please help to spread the word — send this to everyone you know!