Tien's Home on the Web

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Tiendq — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 18:05:32 +0000

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Chuyện nhỏ trong thế giới lớn

Tiendq — Sun, 21 Nov 2010 05:46:37 +0000

Mới mua quyển này hôm kia vì đọc thấy giới thiệu đâu đó (tìm lại mà không nhớ) khá hay, về đọc thử thấy hay thật. Sách cho trẻ con nhé. Vừa post tí comment lên TL, lười typing lại nên copy tạm qua đây

Tối qua em đọc được 100 trang của Chuyện nhỏ trong thế giới lớn, phải nói là hấp dẫn, với giọng văn kể chuyện của một người lớn cho một em bé nghe, tác giả dẫn người đọc đi suốt chiều dài lịch sử nhân loại, khởi đầu từ thời tiền sử, rồi sự xuất hiện và suy tàn của các nền văn minh Ai Cập, Lưỡng Hà, Ba Tư, Hy Lạp etc. với nhiều chi tiết như chữ viết từ đâu, ngày trong tuần khi nào được nghĩ ra, rồi tiền sử, rồi Công nguyên etc. tất cả đều giải thích đơn giản, dễ hiểu để phù hợp với trẻ con.

Khi nào thì ebook được “mặn mà” ở Việt Nam?

Tiendq — Sat, 20 Nov 2010 05:26:44 +0000

Trả lời câu này khó, chỉ có điều hiện tại thì đúng là chưa được “mặn mà” thật, như bài này trên PC World VN. Tuy nhiên có một số điểm ở đây không chính xác lắm, không hiểu tác giả đã đọc ebook trên những ereaders nào rồi:

1. Chuyện đọc ebook trên ereader hay phổ biến hơn được là mobile phones nói chung bây giờ mà chủ yếu dưới dạng .prc hay .mobi nói chung là rất dễ dàng bao gồm cả nguồn sách (tiếng Việt), và sự support đa dạng trên nhiều thiết bị khác nhau. Chỉ có một số ít người đọc thông thạo kỹ thuật và hay có yêu cầu riêng biệt nào đó thì mới cần đến những tools như calibre, MobiPocket Reader etc. Đa phần còn lại chỉ cần download sách từ một nguồn nào đó và copy vào thiết bị đọc là xong. Chưa bao giờ dễ thế.

2. Giống như thị trường các thiết bị điện tử, máy tính, digital camera, mobile phones, thị trường ereader ở VN cũng sẽ là sân chơi của những tên tuổi lớn. Yếu tố giá cả là quan trọng nhưng chắc chắn là tìm một người sử dụng Kindle ở VN sẽ dễ dàng hơn nhiều lần để tìm ra ai sử dụng những thiết bị có tên lạ hoắc như tác giả nêu trong bài. Không việc gì phải thu hút nhà sản xuất ereader cả, mà họ cũng chẳng thích thú gì với thị trường bé tí và thích xài đồ chùa như VN, cứ có nhiều ebook, giá hợp lý thì người đọc tự tìm cách mua ereader rồi những ai có máu kinh doanh sẽ tự biết cách tìm ereader mang về VN bán .

3. Tại sao muốn phát hành ebook lại phải bắt tay với nhà sản xuất ereader? Thứ nhất đây hoàn toàn không phải là một điều đơn giản và việc tự mình buộc cổ vào một loại ereader sẽ là một rủi ro khi mà chính những ereader hàng đầu như Kindle hầu như không có ràng buộc gì về định dạng và nguồn sách. Mua ở Amazon thì tốt, không mua thì tự copy sách vào vẫn tốt như thế .

Rào cản lớn nhất có lẽ không có gì khác với thị trường sách giấy: giấy phép, quản lý bản quyền. Tuy nhiên có lẽ bán ebook sẽ loại bỏ được những chuyện như giá sách giấy đắt đến vô lý vì chiết khấu cho khâu bán hàng có khi chiếm tới 50% giá bìa như một số bài về thị trường sách mà tôi đã đọc cách đây mấy năm (hình như trên TBKTSG). Nếu quản lý DRM tốt, và giá ebook hợp lý thì có thể bán ebook như thị trường nội dung cho mobile phone đã phát triển rầm rộ từ khoảng 2004 đến nay. Thực ra đằng nào các NXB cũng có sẵn nguồn book dưới dạng document Word, PDF etc. trên máy tính rồi, không đem ra bán thì cũng hơi phí . Một số website ở VN có public free ebook (chắc là phải hợp pháp ) tuy nhiên tiếc rằng chỉ là dạng PDF, nếu họ chịu bỏ thêm ít công sức để chuyển thành định dạng thân thiện hơn với ereaders như .prc thì tốt hơn nhiều.

Why does Amazon sell ebook as same price with paperbook?

Tiendq — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 14:52:55 +0000

You know even in Vietnam, Kindle 3 is now becoming an interesting topic and people have been talking more about it in offices, pubs and of course online communities etc. For example, you can see more than ten people in this topic which I started two months ago who have bought one for themselves or considering to buy one. Right now a colleague of mine is digging Internet to find out what Kindle is all about and he even asked me to use my Kindle in a few hours to get real experience before making his decision – buy or not. But what is the next thing that you will think about after buying yourself a Kindle? Certainly it is about books and in most cases you should buy books directly from Amazon then you go to amazon.com and look for your favorite books but you will soonly think that there must be something wrong here because there is almost no difference in price between Kindle (ebook) and paper edition of the same book. Why?

You’re little confused and you’re not alone, I’ve known many people who have been complained about it because we often expect the ebook edition’s price must be much lower than paper edition because it almost costs nothing to make a new copy. All we already read about this fact in The Long Tail, didn’t we?

Since these edition types are same in some aspects so as a reader you get what you wanted no matter the book type is. They have exactly same content and layout, by buying book you will have same accessibility to additional resources, and needless to say you always don’t have right to distribute its content in any form and by any mean without the authors/publisher’s permission.

Despite these similarities, there are a number of marked differences in the way you use it. But first let me make it clear so you will not be confused with the term “ebook” that I’m talking about here. Ebook edition here means an electronic format of the book that you can read on various ereaders or mobile phones. Specifically Amazon named it Kindle edition in their website because the format is made to read on their well-known Kindle. Definitely it’s not about the PDF document that you often get it freely with a paper book, and most important thing is until now PDF documents are only read well on computer screen but any ereader.

Everyone will agree that reading a paper book is most comfortable, and as Amazon said you really lose yourself in the reading, so great it is. On the other hand, the best quality of paperbook comes with hidden costs. First, you aren’t always eligible for free shipping offering so you must pay for this service. It is a significant amount of money if you are not in the US, thanks to Internet and globalization that make the world more flat than ever so it isn’t only option for us now. Second, you must wait from three days to two weeks to get your book delivered. The less money you pay for shipping service the longer it takes to reach your home. Third, you cannot bring your bookself everywhere. They are just three most significant things that don’t exist with ebook. Enough?

And what’s about ebook? At least now the content is only displayed in B/W screen, you don’t have flexibility of a paperbook such as quickly jump to a page, take a note anywhere and in any form you want it. You can’t or hardly read technical books that contain lots of complex diagrams, figures. And although it isn’t as important as aforementioned things, you should aware that not all books have an ebook edition especially non-English books, just look at your bookself to convince yourself. And ebook definitely is not for kids, or I just personally think so, I believe all kids like, and it is goof for them, colorful and nice layout, and larger font books.

Nevertheless, ebook and ereader must be created to make our life better and it has unbeatable advantages and what we most wanted from it is mobility. Now you can read any book anywhere at anytime in a reasonable screen quality, in fact it is almost like paper now. An ereader like Kindle 3 can contain two thousand books and its battery can last for a month. And don’t forget that ebook doesn’t have any hidden costs. You also save trees, then save our world by reading ebook too, is it more green .

It is clear, therefore, both ebook and paperbook edition have their own advantages, and you should not expect one costs less money than the other. The publishers don’t need any paper and ink to print a new book but you must pay for ebook’s unique benefits. Even you still don’t think ebook price is acceptable and balanced, you will be likely to buy ebook because your Kindle itself was a big investment for your reading .

New release of Castle Windsor

Tiendq — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 02:35:13 +0000

Although I no longer use Castle Windsor in current work, it is still the best component I have ever used. Surely I like it very much, the most recent project which I used it for is in 2009 and when the project was finished some developers liked it too, at least I know one developer even has added it into his experience list in his resume . I was very excited when I knew about Dependency Injection and played with it in the past. Windsor is 2.5.2 now and it just has some new logos, congratulation.

You can find more about Windsor here.

Welcome to Mac World

Tiendq — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 07:29:58 +0000

Since I no longer need to work with a laptop, I finally decided to replace my three months old HP laptop with a new desktop computer – a new Mac Mini (Surely an 27 inches iMac is very attractive but I just simply can’t affort it now, on the other hand I don’t like included wireless keyboard and mouse because they are so small, especially the keyboard isn’t fullsize). I’ve never wanted to work with a laptop, both its screen and keyboard are small and they have sometimes caused me a pain in the neck. Now I’m free of laptop’s issues and very comfortable using a desktop computer with a fullsize keyboard plus a wide 22 inches screen. In case I need a bit of mobility then iPhone and Kindle are enough.

Windows at work and Mac at home. Just want to say hello to my Mac mini .

Go LED. Go Green.

Tiendq — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 05:01:01 +0000

I continue to replace my four years old LG 17″ monitor with a new ViewSonic 22″, although I intended to buy a 24″ model but now 22″ is suitable. I also wanted to buy two monitors and place them side by side since I’ve worked with a laptop and an extra monitor for three years. But now I found that a 22″ wide monitor is really wide for me and I’m not sure if there is any issue with eyes when using two, it will be about 1m2 wide screen in front of me. So I decided just one monitor is enough now. What I mostly like in a wide screen is openning an IDE such as VS2010 in maximized size, with large space for code-in-larger-font and no need to turn on auto-hide for tool windows on the right. I’m a software developer and definitely spending most on my time with an IDE .

Is Windows Phone 7 really a new Windows Mobile?

Tiendq — Sat, 06 Nov 2010 17:24:38 +0000

I don’t know since I’ve never touched any Windows Phone 7 smartphone . By reading various news and blogs daily I’ve seen it is being pushed in every channels for several months and in last month I saw more post about it in here and here. I just also knew from a friend while I was having coffee with him that Microsoft spends 500M for this biggest Windows Mobile marketing campaign, and its marketing vehicle has been started hehehe. I still remember how Windows Mobile 2003 SE is, I’m meaning both its ugly UI and poor performance, it made me remember Windows 3.1. In 2007 I bought a new O2 smartphone again, it was Windows Mobile 6.1 and I was quickly disappointed again, it was still as ugly as Windows 3.1, except a nice home screen and some classy widgets.

I’m a software developer but I’ve never tried to write a simple application for Windows Mobile smartphone, I’ve never thought a .NET application can run well on a such poor performance Windows.

Start to develop an application for Windows Phone 7 is fairly easy to me and definitely not a steep learning curve since I’ve worked with .NET many years and Microsoft is even throwing out a programming book freely . But no, if it is really a new and nice Windows I may start with Windows Phone v-Next . In case it is a totally revolutionized Windows Mobile, there are still more interestings from iPhone or Android although it will cost me much more effort to write even a simple application on those devices because I’ve never written any more C/C++ code since 2002 (I was felt in love with .NET since its first C# whitepaper in 06/2000) .

The keyboard + mouse you can’t deny :D

Tiendq — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 13:41:48 +0000

I just replaced my four year old keyboard – Genius Ergo Media 700 with a new Logitech MK520 combo. First I like its standard design, since I’m a software developer but not a gamer, not a music crazy fan so I just need a comfortable keyboard without non-sense media or “advanced” features. Unfortunately it’s quite difficult to find a good keyboard just as simple as it was today. MK520 has a sleek design, softly rounded keys, quiet and my fingertips immediately love it hehehe . It’s worth your money.

Logitech Wireless Combo MK520

And this is old keyboard, it was also a nice one at the time I bought it about four years ago.

Genius Keyboard Multimedia Ergo Media 700

Utility to convert a long path to its short version

Tiendq — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 10:36:24 +0000

We have worked with a big product and like all other big softwares its code base is huge and there are significant amount of code were written in legacy VB6/C++ languages. Legacy code needs legacy tools and legacy tools know only about legacy 8.3 file/folder naming so getting short paths from long paths by DIR /X commands in Command Prompt window is really tedious.

I just created this small and simple utility to make our developer life a bit easier, it works very well in my Windows 7 box but unfortunately there is still a known issue (it’s Windows’ fault) so it may not return correct short path in your computer. Just try to click on Fix button, asking Google to know more about the issue is better

This utility is built with .NET Framework 2.0. Download it here for free.

Path 8.3 screenshot