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by: Bernard Teo

Joy of Tech ... from Geek Culture

Wed 23 Jun 2010

Liya for iPhone does Multi-Tasking

Category : Technology

I've been reading the iOS 4 programming documentation most of the day - only to find that it takes just one line of code to implement multi-tasking.

It's amazing. And I think it helps improve the app's usefulness, too, to be able to, e.g. read a message, look up a database, copy and paste data from the database to the email message, and when you get back to the database to make another search, start off where you left off, rather than have to login to the database all over again.

So, Liya for iPhone now does multi-tasking. I'm now figuring out where the best places are to insert iAd banners into the app. When that's done, I'll submit this version, 1.0.2, to the App Store.

Hai Hwee is almost done with a basic version of Luca for iPhone. You'll be able to monitor the Trial Balance, Balance Sheet and Profit & Loss data, if you're using MySQL or PostgreSQL as the Luca database. No data entry yet. That will come next. But it'll be a free download.

Posted at 11:22PM SGT | permalink

Liya for iPhone 1.0.1

Category : Technology

Liya for iPhone 1.0.1 with multi-lingual text entry and search support is now available for free download at the App Store.

I'm now working on adding support for multi-tasking on iPhone's iOS 4. Plus, I've already got iADs working (less than 30 minutes of work).

Hai Hwee should be ready with a Luca for iPhone by the end of the week.

Posted at 11:26AM SGT | permalink

Thu 17 Jun 2010

Liya's Multi-Lingual Support

Category : Technology

I remembered, a couple of days ago, that a design objective for the database frameworks we've been building has been to support data entry and search in any language - Chinese, Japanese, Thai, whatever, so that, e.g., for the case of an insurance system used in Thailand, motor policies can be recorded with their underwriting terms written in Thai, and the system will all just work.

But I realised that I hadn't tested this notion in quite a while. So we put Liya to the test and found that it already supported input in multiple languages for PostgreSQL, but not for MySQL. Debugging this, we found that we only had to fix a couple of lines of code, and Liya (connected to MySQL) can do entry and searches in Chinese, say, as shown below :

And, since these fixes were at the database frameworks level, Maven automatically gets multi-lingual support, and Luca too.

Shows the importance of good design. Instead of adjusting two lines of code to get something so enormously useful, we would have had to comb through any number of programs, at any number of levels, simply for a lack of foresight and discipline in coding.

So, Liya 1.0.1 with multi-lingual support has been submitted to the App Store. It'll probably be available for download in a week (well, I just submit it & forget it, the App Store way).

And there'll be new versions out soon for Luca and Maven for Snow Leopard.

I'm going to rename Maven to Liya for Snow Leopard. So, we have the odd couple - Luca and his girlfriend Liya. I seem to have two completely different group of users - Luca and Liya users on one side, and users of the Enablers on the other. And they don't usually cross over. I find that interesting. Had expected different.

Posted at 5:24PM SGT | permalink

Mac OS X 10.6.4 Snow Leopard Software Update

Category : Technology

I've updated my live server to 10.6.4 and all the services (mail, web server, DNS server, ftp, ssh, fetchmail, SSL, WebDAV, etc...) continue to work.

So I think it's safe to upgrade, in case you've come on over here to find out.

P.S.: It's not always like this. Sometimes things break, and they break horribly, and we've got to scramble to fix things in Apple's wake. So I'm never complacent about OS X Software Updates. All's well, for now, until the next time it breaks. In the mean time, we get some peace to work on some new stuff.

Posted at 4:27PM SGT | permalink

Wed 16 Jun 2010

MySQL & PostgreSQL Installers

Category : Technology

So, I managed to bug Hai Hwee into doing a MySQL installer to add to the one she did for PostgreSQL. And she's just updated both to their latest (generally available) versions.

Once installed, new versions of these installers will upgrade the previous version automatically, including bringing over existing data.

They'll also install Preference Panes that'll work reliably. They're 32/64 bit Intel fat binaries, Snow Leopard only.

The MySQL installer installs version 5.1.47 of MySQL, whereas it is version 8.4.4 for the PostgreSQL installer.

Posted at 4:51PM SGT | permalink

Liya on the App Store

Category : Technology

Liya for the iPhone is now available on the App Store, exactly within 7 days of app submission.

[As Steve Jobs said on D8, 95% of the apps are approved within 7 days].

It's a free download.

Now that I know that the system works, I'm going to submit an update that'll make Liya work with data in any language (Chinese, Japanese, etc).

This is all so fun. Now watch out for Luca on the iPhone. Coming soon.

Posted at 4:35PM SGT | permalink

Tue 15 Jun 2010

Berlin Wall Comes to Bedok Reservoir

Category : Commentary

Fragments of the Berlin Wall at Bedok Reservoir, depicting two kings, one bright and joyful, the other blind to the wishes of his people :

It made me think of the book about North Korea that I've just finished reading - "Jia by Hyejin Kim". That was harrowing, like living inside a Hieronymous Bosch painting. I finished it with a sense of gratitude that the author did not turn the screws on our emotions but kept her touch light. But still, your heart will go out to the North Koreans.

Now, if you switch media for the moment and compare that with this viral YouTube video of a South Korean applegirl002 making music with four (count 'em) iPhones. She looks so bright and happy, it doesn't leave much doubt that South Korea has the better political/economic climate, does it? The "Dear Leader" up north is the King on the right, "oblivious to the wishes of his people".

Posted at 11:02PM SGT | permalink

Goodbye, Twitter

Category : Commentary

I'm game to try anything once but I really don't understand Twitter and can't quite figure out what it is that it does that isn't already covered by the other stuff, like Facebook and the blog.

So, goodbye Twitter and all that.

Posted at 10:39AM SGT | permalink

Mon 14 Jun 2010

Where did the Time Go?

Category : Commentary

The tour guide on the Great Ocean Road was a seventies' music kind of guy, so wafting in with the wind and the waves, back from the nether regions of my consciousness, were melodies I hadn't heard in years.

And the names associated with those melodies - Chris Rea, Adrian Gurvitz, Marc Bolan and T Rex, Christopher Cross.

The best that you can do is to fall in love.

Sweet pain. I, too, was young once.

Posted at 7:27PM SGT | permalink

Twiddling Away

Category : Technology

As of now, Liya for the iPhone is still "Waiting for Review". I'd just wanted to feel how easy or difficult this App Store-submission process is before we commit to doing a few other Luca-related iPhone stuff we had planned, e.g., allowing invoices to be entered into Luca via the iPhone, which will open up a lot of other potentialities, like time-billing or making possible other revenue-collection or cost-control activities.

Having the ability to update a database remotely via the iPhone or iPad is the key enabler for a business - or any business. The database represents the state of the business. Every piece of data collected updates this picture. Yet the more layers you have between the data collection point and the database, the more your cost of doing business. Opportunities exist to cut away at these layers whenever technology changes, because that will always make some forms of work obsolete.

As sure as the sun rises tomorrow, the cost of doing business is going to rise - inexorably. Yet it's not quite so sure we can raise prices just as fast - probably not. So we've got to figure out which parts of every business process we can cut, to do more with less of the ever-expensive resources.

And I hope I'm not talking like any sleep-walking IT/business analyst. I mean, that's the way we need to train our minds to think. Like in Melbourne, it costs about $12 in Singapore Dollars to eat at a food court. Singapore is about two-thirds that at an equivalent food court. So you can see, the prices have room to head up. Whether the quality and the consumer's experience go up with it is another matter - the problem is in the aspiration. But systems and processes don't have aspirations, so there'll be resource substitution by the smarter businesses. The dumber businesses, which could include government-linked ones, plus the people with the aspirations - these are the ones who'll get hurt, bad.

So, one step at a time. I need to get Liya out there on the App Store first.

In the mean time, I'm adding a feature to set up database users and groups and their access rights in Maven, which I'll probably rename Liya for Snow Leopard when I'm done. That'll plug one remaining gap and give us a true "end-to-end" database capability - from creating and designing the database, to collecting data and serving information from any end-point, anywhere in the world.

Posted at 11:27AM SGT | permalink

Sat 12 Jun 2010

Melbourne

Category : Travel

Now that Liya the iPhone app had been submitted, and I'm twiddling my thumbs, here are some pictures from our trip to Melbourne last week.

Hai Hwee came along, so we had no one back home to tend to the server, if it went down. Fortunately it never did. But Hai Hwee did manage to set up a back-up server at her own home that duplicated everything the live server did, including getting synchronised updates from the live database - and she did all these in just a few minutes, a few days before we left. This would have allowed us to switch to the back-up quickly, if the main server went down. Just goes to prove you can actually do all these enterpricey things in a quietly efficient way without all these IT Department-like Sturm und Drang.

Posted at 7:27PM SGT | permalink

Liya For iPhone

Category : Technology

I've submitted this app to the App Store - it's Liya for the iPhone.

Liya connects to MySQL and PostgreSQL databases, and allows iPhone users to access and edit the database contents. It'll be a free download.

I'll have more to say, if and when it gets approved.

P.S.: Liya is a reduced version of Maven for the iPhone. It doesn't allow the user to edit or create the table structure for the database - it'll only allow edits to the contents, plus there is a search function for textual data. But that was useful enough when I was on holiday in Melbourne last week (e.g., to search through my database when I got email from people who'd lost their serial numbers) that I hadn't needed to use my MacBook Pro at all during the trip, what with the 3G Bridge Data Roam feature working so well.

Posted at 4:06PM SGT | permalink