Hung Truong: The Blog!

Yet Another Employment Announcement (And More Moving)

I wrote in my New Year's Retrospective that my greatest fear for 2012 was that I would not get as much done as in previous years due to working a regular job for the first time in years.

That concern turned out to be quite prescient as within a couple of months, things quickly changed. While I enjoyed increasing my proficiency in Django and hanging out with cool co-workers, I found that I couldn't break into areas that I was really interested in, specifically mobile. I decided to look for a new opportunity where I could grow as a mobile developer.

I'm happy to announce that I've accepted a new gig with Canopy (whose name is going to change soon), a spinoff of a company called LanguageMate. Canopy is based in Ann Arbor and specializes in language applications for medical professionals. I'm working on a neat tool that helps nurses and doctors communicate with patients who might not speak the same language. I think it's an interesting space and presents a lot of interesting challenges in interface design, marketing, end user support, and other aspects that revolve around mobile development.

I believe this will be a better fit as I'm now able to work on a startup that is investing heavily in mobile. On top of that, I think it's great that the app actually does something meaningful. Sure, a photo sharing app might sell for a billion dollars, but has it ever saved a person's life?

Right now I'm in the middle of another move. If all goes according to plan, I'll be back in Ann Arbor (for the 4th time) on Friday. I'm looking forward to hanging out there again, spending more time with Emily, and eating at BTB every day.

I am really thankful for all the friends I made at Threadless, and I feel bad leaving them so soon. Having said that, I am really looking forward to making a big impact at a small startup that really needs my skills. Here's to an interesting second half of 2012!

New Tumblr: People Walking Dogs

When Betsy left to work at Razorfish, I decided to commandeer her desk. It's really nice. It has lots of natural sunlight and a good view (minus Atkins' head). One thing I noticed right away is that a lot of people walk their dogs along the street in front of said window. Maybe it's just the unseasonal crazy nice weather. Anyway, I decided to start a Tumblr of pictures of people walking their dogs. Why? Why not?

Mostly this is a way to practice my camera phone slinging skills. I'm not used to swiping up to get to the camera (it's a new iOS 5.1 gesture)! Also, I have a theory that once something becomes sufficiently easy to do, there's really no reason not to do it. So, while it lasts, please enjoy my photos of people walking their dogs outside my office window. Hopefully I will get a book deal soon.

Google Play Vs. iTunes Match

I signed up for the Google Music beta a while ago and promptly forgot about it. I was either too busy to check it out or unimpressed with the feature set. I recently took another look at it after it was renamed to “Google Play.” It's suddenly making a bit more sense now that I'm trying it out again.

Google Play (I'm really just talking about the music part) lets you upload all of your music to Google's servers. This step seems kind of dumb but I guess for legal reasons they can't just recognize your music and use their own copies of songs. I'm sure they've got the technology to do it. Anyway, once your music is uploaded you can play it from “the cloud.” While this seems like something so simple that Dropbox could do it, it's the details that matter. In this case, Google offers a pretty neat interface to listen to your music (and buy more, if desired).

I haven't used iTunes Match personally, but from what I've read, it seems to do something similar. iTunes Match will scan your music library and “match” them up with songs in their database. If a song isn't on your iPhone but is in your library, you can download and listen to it from your device. So far, it doesn't seem like there's a desktop component of iTunes Match besides iTunes (meaning you can't listen from a website). Also, iTunes Match costs money.

What I like about Google Play is that there is a web interface, so I can listen to all of my music at work without having to download iTunes. I complained earlier on Twitter about how there isn't a native app for iOS that lets you listen to your Google Play stuff, but there does happen to be a web based player that seems okay. iTunes integrates more easily with your library (no need to actually upload stuff) but seems more rigid about re-downloading music.

Overall, it seems like Google Play is the better service. If it had a native app for iOS it would be the clear winner. Eventually I would like to lower the amount of space on my phone that I'm using for music, which would allow me to have more apps, photos and videos. Hopefully the two services continue to develop and compete with each other to the point where they're both improving.

Whole Foods Cereal Shill

I was at Whole Foods today getting some groceries when I came across this mini food testing area at the end of an aisle. There were two nice sales people (one lady and one dude) who were hawking cereal. The type of cereal was super organic and it came in a pouch. The lady bragged that all of the ingredients were on the front of the bag in large type. The cereal was available for testing in cereal form, baked into a cookie, and blended into a smoothie (which was apparently made with apple cider and yogurt or something).

Sidenote: While I was deciding what to taste test (I eventually went with the smoothie and it was not bad, and followed up with a chunk of cookie), an old Asian lady walked up to me and started talking in Chinese. I tried to tell her that I don't really speak Chinese, but I forgot how to say “I don't know Chinese” in Chinese. It's kind of absurd, anyway, to say you don't speak a language in that very language you're saying you don't speak. Anyway, she mumbled some more stuff and then said “Chinese.” Like, yeah, lady, we're both Chinese. I guess she walked away after that.

So anyway, here's the real part of the story. I'm tasting the cookie and am about to leave when another woman walks up to the food tasting area. The sales guy asks if she wants to buy some cereal and she's like “oh, I already have some at home! I love it! I'm just going to have some samples.” And they get into this conversation about how great the cereal is. I caught some more of their conversation as I walked away. Only later did I realize that the cereal-praising lady was probably a shill! It was literally the oldest sales trick in the book! I mean, no one gets that excited over cereal, right? She was really into it; a little too much into it to be believable.

Perhaps I am just cynical, but I would love to hang around Whole Foods to see if the same lady came over and did that multiple times. The sad part is that I can see the shill bit working on quite a lot of people. It probably didn't work on the Chinese lady, though. She didn't speak English.

Thoughts on Textbooks on iBooks

I was thinking about the latest news from Apple, that they were partnering with textbook publishers to bring cheaper textbooks directly to the iPad while at the same time releasing an application for anyone to publish iBooks for the Apple Bookstore.

Perhaps I am being cynical, but it's always appeared to me that the main business model of a textbook publisher is to slightly tweak versions of a textbook, altering page numbers and quiz questions in order to force students to buy newer editions instead of used ones. Perhaps the industry is thinking that iBooks will eliminate the used book market, and they're probably right. But this could also have some negative (for publishers) side effects as well.

Apple is lowering the distribution costs of textbooks dramatically. Assuming that schools actually pay for a set of iPads for each student, it becomes trivially easy (with the iBook publishing software) to create free textbooks for schools. Who would want to give textbooks away for free? Teachers. There are cases of teachers self-publishing for their own schools, but for this idea to really work, I think teachers would need to collaboratively create a textbook that meets either regional or national standards and release it for free on iBooks. If you don't believe this will happen, take a look at Khan Academy.

Previous attempts to create free textbooks have been hit or miss. I am not quite sure how popular Wikibooks are in the classroom. The problem is probably that of traction and scale. Previously, no one has created a standard for e-textbook distribution. Apple is doing that with iBooks. The beautiful part is that they're bootstrapping it with traditional publishers who are probably digging their own grave.

Of course, this could play out in a number of ways. Maybe iBooks will prove to be too costly for most public schools to adopt (I'm guessing this is very likely). If only private schools or schools with a lot of funding can support them, it may not become worthwhile to create free textbooks for all.

What I'd hope to see is a slow adoption of iPads in the classroom using iBooks as textbooks. Once a critical mass of schools is using iBooks, free textbooks will be developed and adopted by certain school districts and spread to others.

I'm glad to see that Apple is trying to “disrupt” (I lose some points here by using a word I hate) the textbook industry, and it's awesome that they're partnering with that industry to do it. I'm really looking forward to seeing how this plays out, hopefully for the benefit of our education system.