All Posts by ‘George Chen

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Write Chinese on the iPhone – with your finger.

Due to some SEO weirdness, a lot of people come to my site (via Google search) that look for iPhone or iPod Touch Chinese input method.

Of course, the best way to input Chinese on a computer is via tablet since Chinese is such a visual language. Now you can write/input Chinese directly on your (jailbroke) iPhone 1.1.4. With Installer add the source: iphonecake.com/src/all. Refresh, then look for HWPen. Current beta version supports both simplified and traditional Chinese. It works pretty well for me.

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TAD gear

I love design, but I am not big on de$igner fashion. When the cool kids on the street are rocking Bathing Ape, Ice Cream, and Lucky Brand (Jeans), I rather go with something a bit more affordable / functional like Levis or North Face – that is until I discovered TAD Gear.

TAD Gear, technically is not a “fashion brand”, but the design and the quality of their urban and outdoor gears are so above and beyond that one should consider it as a designer brand. Did I mention the price tags are “designer pricey” too? Anyway, TAD Gear is definitely a “designer brand” in the tactical arena….

Wait. You said tactical as in SWAT, Special Force, PMC? Yes, but you are not going to look like John Rambo with TAD Gear’s Stealth Jacket. Their design is more in line with The North Face, Patagonia, Arc’Teryx type outdoor clothing but with serious military / tactical spin.

The attention to details and general high quality of their products has caused a lot of people in the “macho business” (Private Military Contractors, Law Enforcement, and the Military) to take note and start buying. In fact, if you go to their Web site, the first thing you see on the site are customers’ pictures wearing TAD gears that are usually heavily armed. 🙂

Their current Web site is pretty Web 1.0, but I think eventually they will get it right. If you are in the Bay Area, you should check out their retail store too. To me, the place is like a designer boutique with amazing jackets, backpacks, pouches, and all the stuff you want to look tactical and macho – everyday.

Now I finally understand why women love their Gucci, and Louis Vuitton….

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Your brand in other’s mind.

From Seth Godin’s blog: “Brand Tag is a simple game where you pick one-word associations to go with major brands. The result pages are actually pretty inane, but the magical way each and every one of these brands compels you to think is fascinating”. (Note: the typographic tag cloud layout is interesting too)

Check it out.

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Mobile Geeks Must Read

Two interesting article you should check out if you are interested in the mobile world. One business centric, and one tech centric.

Venture Beat’s crash course 101 on Mobile Social Network. The usual suspects Mocospace, Pep, BluePulse, Mig, Zannel, etc are all mentioned. Surprisingly, the term “Mobile Ecosystem” was not used in the article. 😉

Ajaxian: Location APIs: The Discussions – location awareness is coming to the mobile browsers after all. Soon anyway.

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Bad (mobile) UI

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HTC just announced their new phone Diamond using the new Touch3D UI. The UI is actually pretty nice as a skin on top of Windows Mobile 6.0. There’s one big problem though.

Their email preview is at an angle for stylistic reason which makes it pretty hard to read the preview of the message.

Do not recommend.

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More on Twinkle – and why it’s a big deal

I think I’ve figure out an interesting use case for Twinkle (Twitter + location based meta tag). See my post on Nokia Point and Find and similar prototype. Twinkle, in a way, can be used in a very similar fashion – bridging the Real World with information from the cloud.

This example will illustrate the concept:

Last night, I was driving through downtown San Francisco. I created a simple Twinkle powered Tweet ( I said “I am here between Kearney and Broadway.”). No big deal right?

This morning, I drove through the nearby neighborhood, and looked up all the “Near Me” Twinkle Tweets. That Tweet I posted the night before (from a few blocks away) showed up.

The current Twinkle “Near Me” has a minimum radius of 1 mile, but in the future when you are able to drill down, say, 50 ft then you can start leaving very explicit tweets on a landmarks, stores, or restaurants.

There are many obvious features needed before this became truly powerful (i.e. filter by rating, messages’ “rate-of-decay”, or even private location based tweets that act like “invisible graffiti” that only your circle of friends can “see”). Things are getting very interesting indeed…