[Survey] Are we depends on MSN/Yahoo Messganger too much?

I just discovered that many of my team members like to communicate with each other over MSN, even they just sit beside with others!
Out of curiosity, I pull one of them in my office, and ask them why, and here are their "official" reasons:
a) Keep it low - They don't wants to bother other people, and prefer quiet conversation.
b) Audit log - They could record the conversation
c) Is the "in" things, and I belong to older generations..

Wow, the third point actually hurt me..but I tend to not agree with the first two points.
First, I believe verbal communication is far more effective than typing words in the chat windows, one can't simply shows his/her emotion or body languages over MSN (Although some will argue of using Smiley icons is as effective as our body language). And two, we are team mates, why we like to record our conversation? To protect ourself?

I am lost here, can't imagine what will happen 5-10 years later? Do I have to SMS my Son for dinner, even he is just upstairs playing computer game?

We are living on a very unfriendly world..

My post about Car Pool idea created a lot of heated discussion. Couple of my friends commented that although, in general, they like my idea. they do concern about security, question like "what if car pool partner is a crazy person, or a rapist", or "how could I trust my Car Pool Partner if we never meet before", and etc.

This has strike me a lot of thinking, and wonder what's happening to our world?
I still remember when I was young, I always go out and play with my neighbor's kid for hours before dinner time, and most of time, out of our parent's vision. We always go back on time for dinner, and Mom/Dad seldom question us where we went, how's our school, as long as we finished our homework before bed time.

I remember back then, where there 's not Astro (Our Boardband TV provider), we always pass our rental Hong Kong TV series video tape to each other, and returned our tape just before the due date. My mom always exchanges food with my neighbor, and we always "pijam" (i.e borrow) things from each other. When there is new people move into our area, we always go and help, and that always ends with a welcome tea party.

I can't recall there is many crimes back then as compare today. Now, kids always closely monitor by their parent. I hardly know my neighbor, and people in general, just don't open their heart easily as compare to the pass. What's has change?

It's is due to all the media (TV, news paper, radio, internet) like to cover bad news then good news? Or people in generally poorer as compare to past, and hence the increase of crime rate?

I have no idea...could anyone enlighten me?

Ideas to Google (Part III) - Google CarPool Portal

This is the third part of my series of articles published with the intention of "selling" my ideas to Google and subsequently to be recruited by Google. By the way did anyone from Google notice my blog .... ?

My third idea is the Google CarPool Portal, my contribution to make our earth greener. I admit this idea is not new as there already many CarPool portals on the web. I visited some of portals, and have yet to come across a portal that I consider a successful one. Most of portals I visited have been inactive for a long time, and for those still consider active, I only see an average one or two posts of interested looking for carpool partner per week. In my opinions, some of the reasons why such portals fail.

1) Lack of big marketing push - Success of this kind of portal is pretty much depends on users participation, the more user participate, the better. Most of the portals I visited are run by personal or community, and usually only have limited funds for Marketing.

2) Poor Location Selection - Most of CarPool portal offers only limited origin/destination selection, and often limited to zip code selection, which in my opinion, it's not comprehensive and customizable enough.

3) Poor user interface - Due to budget problem, most portal offer very basic UI for user to locate CarPool Partner.

4) Lack of incentive to do so, let's admit that, people are motivated when awarded by something.


So how can Google help?
Well, if Google do roll out a CarPool Portal, we already iron out our first problem, and if Google adopt my second idea, we solve our fourth problems. Thus, we only needs to deliver a fairly easy to use CarPool Portal to solve problems 2 and 3.

Here's my vision of Google CarPool Portal:
1. Upon login to Google CarPool Portal, user could post one or many CarPool adv, specifying travel origin, and destination using Google Earth/Google Map, where user could specify the location up to street address, or select buildings (such as office building) from Google Earth/Map. User could also entered their prefer travel time slot (e.g From 7-7.30am), and repeat of the travel (e.g Everyday excepts Weekends, once only).

2. Google will attempt to find closer match per CarPool adv, and will present user a list of adv that matches user's CarPool criteria. User could sort the list by origin, destination and travel time slot. User will get notify via Gmail on every new match found when they are not online.

3. While browsing the CarPool match list, if the match adv owner is online, user could chat (via Google Chat) to the owner to seal the deal. Else, user will have to send a private message to the adv owner, and schedule a time to discuss the CarPool adv

4. User and adv owner identity are protected throughout the conversation. The only way for user to communicate with adv owner is via private messages, and online chat from CarPool portal. Is up to the user, and adv owner when is best time to reveal their identity.

5. Once both parties agree to seal to deal, the adv will close. User and adv owner have the option to claim Google Earth points from the Car portal. Also, for security reason, user could opt on telling the portal when the CarPool going to start, who is driving, the Car Plate number, identity of both parties. This is to protect user in case of any unwanted accidents.

6. There is a forum for users to post FAQ, success stories, experiences, and etc.

7. There is also a running counter from Google CarPool Portal main page showing how many Carpools adv being seals, how many petrol has been save, and most importantly, how many CO2 is save from emitted to the air.

So, what do u think? do share me your thoughts on the comments page, stay tune for my next idea.

PS: As always, if anyone (perhaps Yahoo Inc.) find these ideas interesting and wants to further build up those ideas, do drop me an email.

Introducing Mimi, my new Pug

I just realized that a lot of people are still not aware that we have brought back a new pug call Mimi few weeks ago. Mimi is a female black pug, which is rare in Malaysia, and like her brother, she is very naughty and always begging me to play with her.

Here is Mimi's Picture:



As always, we will constantly update Mimi's journal at , do drop by to visit Mimi and leave a comment.

Cheers.

Ideas to Google (Part II) - Saving Our Mother Earth

This is the second part of a series of articles to impress Google, if you are a Google employee and reading this could you please forward this to your Recruiter, thanks.

My second idea is to make our Mother Earth a better place to live. We can't deny that our environment has change dynamically in past few years, the temperature is increasingly hotter each year, CO2 is rising, and there is more frequent floods, typhoons and thunder storms almost everywhere. Seriously, if we don't do anything now, things will get worst, and our children may be victims to this global warming phenonmenal. We need to do something and should Google take the initiative to step in to help and create an awareness (I think they should ....)?

Here I would like to introduce Google Earth Points...

FAQ
1. What is Google Earth Points
Google Earth Points is a points reward system for individual who have take extra effort and making our earth greener, and help slowing down Global Warming effect, thus everyone has better place to live.

2. What can one do with Google Earth Points
Well, a lot, Google earth points can be use to redeem any non free Google services, for example, we could redeem 100,000 Google Earth Points per 100 MB Gmail storage, or redeem 10,000 points to download a mobile application from Google partner, or increase photos upload limit, and etc.


3. How can one earn Google Earth Points
I have a lot of ideas how one can earn Google earth points but in general it could break down to the following categories:

By Personal Pledge
One will pledge how he/she is going to help to save our mother earth on Google Earth Portal (by submitting a youtube video), and the pledge must be verifiable by third party with upload video showings the promise be carry out. Google Earth Portal then will calculate Google earth points base on the pledge, and award points accordingly.

Here are some of the example:
-One could pledge to cycle to work at least one day a week to his office. His office is about 10KM away from his home, thus in a way, thus save X amount of CO2 emitted to the air, and Google Earth Points is the awarded base on X amount of CO2 emitted he save per week

-One family could pledge they will plants 4 trees at their backyard, now 4 trees will recycle X amount of CO2, and thus, they will get certain number of Google Earth Points.

-One lady pledge she will carpool with her friend.


By summiting cool ideas on saving Earth resources to Google Earth Portal
Anyone could summit cool ideas on how we could save our limited earth resources like how our electric, water, petrol usages to Google Earth Portal, a monthly competition will be carried out to all of us to vote the most coolest idea, and Google Earth Points will then be awarded base on the ranking.


From Consumer Product Vendor
Google could partner with any Consumer product vendor that produce "Greener" product (which needs to certify by some environmental control body, like organic vegetables, non chemical detergent, energy saver computer, and etc), and to give away a number Google Earth points when we purchase those product.

Why Google Earth Points
Most of time, average people (me included) do aware the environmental issue, and we do sometime put in our effort on making this earth a better place to live, but there is still more we could do..

For example, in my previous company, I know 3 of my colleague are staying nearby, but it never come to our mind of car pooling, even though the petrol price is expansive that time. I never planted a single tree in my life, I take my car out for breakfast even is just 5 minutes walk from where I stay..

Thus, with Google earth points, I am hoping this service will start cultivate people habit of doing their part on saving our mother earth.. including myself, as people love accumulate points, and get awarded, isn't it.


So, what do u think? do share me your thoughts on the comments page, stay tune for my next idea

PS: If anyone (perhaps Yahoo Inc.) finds these ideas interesting and wants to further build up those ideas, do drop me an email.

Google Please Hire Me (Ideas to Google)

I always wanted to work at Google so that I can bring my dog to work, enjoy yummy yummy meals and work with all the cool people at Google. Given my current status:
- A 35 years old bored software development manager and performing mostly boring management stuff.
- Technically strong but yet I believe I am not as good as most of Google staff.
- Does not hold any working permit for US/India/China

Thus, the chance Google granting me an interview is very, very slim, :-(

Thus, instead of going via the normal route of applying a job at Google (i.e upload my resume to Google jobs portal and throwing my CV into giant black hole), I will try another route.

Starting from today and for every two weeks, I will try to post some of my crazy ideas to Google in my Blog. Hopefully, Google HR will one day notice my creativity and call me for an interview. Wish me luck.

My first idea to Google is "Google Mobile Phone Address Book" service.


Summary:
Google mobile phone address book services comprise of the following modules:

1. A web portal for user to manage their contacts
2. A mobile application for user to upload and sync contacts to Google mobile phone address book portal

Why:

1. Each phone vendor uses native address book format so there isn't an easy way to migrate our address book from our vendor to another (When you are switching phone, or lost your phone).
2. It is difficult for user to backup their address book.

Propose Features:

1. The propose web portal will understand address book format from different vendor and provide data conversion service.
2. User could login to the web portal to manage their contact (insert, delete, update)
3. User could download a customzied mobile app from the web portal that allow them to sync/update their contact to the address book portal.
4. If user change to a new phone, he/she could download the mobile app for the new phone and request full address book download from the web portal. Web portal will automatically convert to address book data format
5. Integrated with Gmail, user could send SMS to his/her contact using gmail interface.

That's all for now. Stay tune for my next crazy idea.

PS: If anyone finds this interesting and wants to further build up those ideas, do drop me an email.

I lost my little hero

My beloved little hero Donut went to Heaven 0n 3rd July 2007. No words could describe how sad and heart broken I am. He was my little hero and my best friend. Always there for me step by step. Unconditional sitting there beside me, and sharing my ups and downs.

I still remember he was always there to cheer me up, even whe he's in the great pain in his last few hours with us.

Donut..U will be missed...

100% Unit Test Code coverage using Mock, does it really matter?

I always believe delivering a comprehensive integration/functional testing code is far far more important/productive than blindly try to achieve 100% unit testing code coverage. I believe:
a) A integration/functional testing code will always deliver more test coverage then unit testing code.
b) Integration testing code allows us to capture our program error as earlier as possible, and avoid “big bang” integration error at the end.

Thus, I always have “heat and interesting” discussion with some developers where they always believe:
a) Achieve high percentage of unit testing code coverage is very important
b) unit testing code must be “unit testable”, all dependency classes/resources should be “mocked”, even sometime is so so difficult to mock such objects.
c) if our code is not testable, that must be something wrong with our design. We have to change our code to make it testable. Thus making our class final, or our class not implementing an interface, or using static methods are all bad!.

Don't get me wrong, I am not 100% against points above, and I understand important of unit testing. But believe the unit testing code we deliver must return good “Return of Investment” (ROI). Investment here mean our effort of delivering/maintaining the unit testing code. A good ROI unit testing code have the following characteristic:
a) It use “black box” approach , where we pass parameters to a method, test the method and we verified the return value against expected result, we should not care how's the methods executed, and what underlying resources being called.
b) The testing code should be easily promoted to functional/integration testing code, why reinvent the wheel?
c) The testing code must drafted base on agree use case, and tight back to your application's features. Thus, using HR application as an example, to unit test you annual leave application is always approved by your manager produce good ROI value. but to unit test your database connection pooling utilities, or utilities to read properties files or parsing a fake XML file does not produce good ROI value.

To illustrate what I mean by good ROI unit testing code, consider the following examples:

Public class OrderManager {
public boolean proceedOrder(OrderVO anOrder) {
return ( inventoryManager.hasStock(anOrder) &&
accountManager.customerGoodCreadit(anOrder.getCustomer()) &&
shipmentManager.shipmentDateOK(anOder.getPreferShipmentDate()
);

}

To unit test proceedOrder() methods using Mock:

1. First, create InventoryManager, accountManager, and shipmentManager mocks

2. Instruct our mock framework on mock methods that called, and for each mock methods call, we instruct expected return value.
3. And finally, we test return value with our expected result, and ensure mock methods being called.

Does the above code give us good ROI? IMHO, it does not...

a) It's breaking the black box testing approach, we are telling our mock framework steps by steps what mock methods will be call, and specifically ask them to return the value we set, and test method proceedOrder() return value with our expected result, which we already know what it will return in the first hand.

What happen if we wants to change the implementation, do we have to change our testing code as well.

b) It does not bring any business value...

A ROI testing code for the above use case:
1. Set a InventoryManager product (say product “A”) quantities to a specific amount (say 50)

2. test the proceedOrder() by placing product A with various quantities
3. Verify the result against expectedResult

So, to conclude, if a unit testing code does not produce good ROI, do spend more time on delivering functional/integration testing code, and delivering good "ROI" usable code coverage

Apply my points to Automobile industries, we will not hear an engineer that create mock of car tires, or create a mock for road surface to test a car braking system, he/she will actually “integrate” the braking system with a set of tires (make by different rubbers), and conduct braking test on various surface (maybe on a rolling board with different surfaces)

Share me your thoughts...

If u have PS3...

Please get the Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion...

Read the review here and here

Cheers

[quick tips] To Speedup your junit testing in Ant

If your development project get bigger, and have incorporated thousands of test cases, u may find that unit testing target getting slower and slower. It may come to a point your developers start to ignore test cases, or worst, don't write any test cases at all, as it will slow down build process.

Now, before u look into your unit testing code to improve the performance, why don't have a check on your Ant Junit Target (I discovered this accidentally yesterday, as I am frustrated by the slow build process). If u have setup ur Ant to fork a new JVM for unit testing target, by default, Ant will fork a new VM per Test Class, which is slow, and expansive (imagine forking 1000+ jvm for your project). To correct this, we just needs to set correct forkmode="perBatch".
i.e
junit fork="true" forkmode="perBatch"

My test result, before forkmode="perBatch", my test process take ~= 16 minutes
after, my test process take < 2 minutes

Cheers, and happy coding

[Tech Tips] Implementing Command Design Pattern via Spring Framework - Part II

The RemoteControl class needs to hold list of supported commands, and needs to delegate request to respective command class base on the pass in command string. Here is the RemoteControl source:

 1
 2 package blog.coolboy.springexample.cp;
 3
 4 import java.util.List;
 5 import java.util.HashMap;
 6 import blog.coolboy.springexample.cp.command.CommandType;
 7 import blog.coolboy.springexample.cp.command.Command;
 8
 9
10 public class RemoteControl {
11
12   private HashMap<String, Command> supportedCommands = null;
13
14   public RemoteControl() { }
15
16
17   public void setListOfSupportedCommands(List<Command> commandList) {
18         supportedCommands = new HashMap<String, Command>();
19         for(Command cmd : commandList) {
20            supportedCommands.put(
                      cmd.getCommandType().getCommandString(), 
                      cmd );
21         }
22
23   }
24
25   public void execute(String cmdString) {
26         Command cmd = supportedCommands.get(cmdString);
27         if(cmd != null) {
28             cmd.execute();
29         } else {
30             System.out.println("The cmd->" + 
                             cmdString + " is not supported!");
31         }
32   }
33
34 }

The RemoteControl will transfer a list of supported commands to internal HashMap using commandString as object key, thus, removing the needs of iterating commands list for each new command execution.

Here's the fun part, we will inject list of supported commands to the RemoteControl above using Spring XML configuration, as shown in code below:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-2.0.xsd">

<!-- listing  of supported Commands here -->

<bean id="tvOnCommand"
  class="blog.coolboy.springexample.cp.command.impl.TVOnCommand"/>
<bean id="tvOffCommand" 
  class="blog.coolboy.springexample.cp.command.impl.TVOffCommand"/>
<bean id="lightOnCommand"
  class="blog.coolboy.springexample.cp.command.impl.LightOnCommand"/>
<bean id="lightOffCommand"
  class="blog.coolboy.springexample.cp.command.impl.LightOffCommand"/>

<bean id="remoteControl" 
  class="blog.coolboy.springexample.cp.RemoteControl">
   <property name="listOfSupportedCommands">
       <list>
           <ref bean="tvOnCommand"/>
           <ref bean="tvOffCommand"/>
           <ref bean="lightOnCommand"/>
           <ref bean="lightOffCommand"/>
       </list>
   </property>
</bean>
</beans>

That's all, our remote control class is finished. To roll out new Command, developer just needs to
1. declare the new command type, and it's command string at the CommandType enum
2. implements the command, and
3. inject new command via Spring Configuration.


Here are remoteControlService class to test the remoteControl

 1 package blog.coolboy.springexample.cp;
 2
 3 import java.io.BufferedReader;
 4 import java.io.IOException;
 5 import java.io.InputStreamReader;
 6 import org.springframework.context.support.ClassPathXmlApplicationContext;
 7 import org.springframework.context.ApplicationContext;
 8 import org.springframework.jms.listener.DefaultMessageListenerContainer;
 9
10 public class RemoteControlService {
11     public static void main(String [] args) {
12         ApplicationContext context = 
                                new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext("/conf/remoteControlConfig.xml");
13         RemoteControl remoteControl = (RemoteControl) context.getBean("remoteControl");
14         BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System.in));
15         System.out.println("Remote Control Ready, enter 'Quit' to terminate the program");
16         String txtCommand;
17         try {
18            do {
19                 System.out.print("Enter your command->");
20                 txtCommand = reader.readLine();
21                 if(txtCommand.equalsIgnoreCase("quit")) {
22                     break;
23                 } else {
24                     remoteControl.execute(txtCommand);
25                 }
26                 System.out.println("");
27             } while(true);
28         } catch (IOException ex) {
29             ex.printStackTrace();
30         }
31        
32     }
33 }

Here are the try run:
------------------

Remote Control Ready, enter 'Quit' to terminate the program
Enter your command->tv.on
Switching On TV
Enter your command->tv.off
Switching off TV
Enter your command->light.on
Turning on Light
Enter your command->light.off
Turning off Light
Enter your command->quit

----------------

Isn't this fun? In the next article, I will explain how I would extends the app to support JMS and SOAP command request, using Spring, stay tune.

[Tech Tips] Implementing Command Design Pattern via Spring Framework - Part 1

I been using Spring Framework for pass few months, and I am big fans of the Framework. The framework help a lot, as we don't have to write lengthly, repetitive boring code, most application code are wire via Spring XML configuration, the framework also make our code cleaner, as it provide out of box AOP engine, developer could focus on implementing module core function, and “AOPing” other programming aspects such as transaction control, logging, security, and etc when require.

Thus, to say a big thank u on providing such great framework, and contribute back to the communities, starting from today, I will use this blog to share my experience, tips, and journal of using Spring here. Most of the write up will assume u have some basic idea of using Spring (Just do a google search on Spring tutorial).

So, my very first 2007 technical topic is “Implementing Command Design Pattern using Spring”. I will use the remote control example from very popular design pattern book, “Head First Design Patterns” from OREILLY.

The original requirement of the remote control are

1 . The remote control will have multiple buttons,
2. Each button could be program to turn on/off a household device.

I change the requirement a little, the remote control will not have any buttons, but:

1. It will accept command as a string from a console
2. Each device's command will have unique command String, such as

The very first thing we need to do is to roll out the command interface

1 package blog.coolboy.springexample.cp.command;
2
3 public interface Command {
4     public CommandType getCommandType();
5     public void execute();
6 }

Next, we needs to define an enum to hold all possible supported CommandType, each CommandType holds it's command string, which is unique. That's a helper method to return CommandType base on passing command string.

 1 package blog.coolboy.springexample.cp.command;
 2
 3 public enum CommandType {
 4     LIGHT_ON("light.on"),
 5     LIGHT_OFF("light.off"),
 6     TV_ON("tv.on"),
 7     TV_OFF("tv.off");
 8
 9     private String commandString;
10
11     // return CommandType base on passing 
12     // commandString
13     public static CommandType valueOfCommandString(String cmdString) {
14         CommandType theCommandType = null;
15         for(CommandType cmdType : CommandType.values()) {
16             if (cmdType.getCommandString().equals(cmdString)) {
17                 theCommandType = cmdType;
18                 break;
19             }
20       
21         }
22         return theCommandType;
23     }
24
25     CommandType(String cmdString) {
26         commandString = cmdString;
27     }
28
29     public String getCommandString() {
30         return commandString;
31     }
32
33     public void setCommandString(String commandString) {
34         this.commandString = commandString;
35     }
36
37 }
38 

Now, implements all supported commands, below is sample code TV ON Command;

 1 package blog.coolboy.springexample.cp.command.impl;
 2
 3 import blog.coolboy.springexample.cp.command.Command;
 4 import blog.coolboy.springexample.cp.command.CommandType;
 5
 6
 7 public class TVOnCommand implements Command {
 8
 9     private final static CommandType cmdType = CommandType.TV_ON;
10
11     public TVOnCommand() {
12         // U suppose to pass in a TV instance here..
13     }
14
15     public CommandType getCommandType() {
16         return this.cmdType;
17     }
18
19     public void execute() {
20         System.out.println("Switching On TV");
21     }
22
23 }

The rest of commands (TV.Off, Light On, Light.Off) follows the same structure..

In part II, we will roll out the RemoteControl class, and use Spring to inject supported commands to the Remotecontrol, and provide remoteControlService as an interactive shell for user to test out the remote control, stay tune.

Good morning Nut!

Captured at this morning, isn't he cute?

Ever since I got my Wii

Donut is not very happy!!!

Latest US TV Series that I enjoyed

It's been a long time since my last update, anywhere..
Listed below are few TV series that I am really enjoyed:

1. Heroes (From ABC network) - A series about a group of people all over the world on discovering their special power (e.g. reading people mind, stopping the time, paint the future, and others), and how the discovering process affect the surrounding world, This series is far more better then the "Lost" in terms of character building, plot, and the story. Highly recommended.

2. Justice - "CSI + LA Law", and the formula works..

3. House - Still the best TV series on Medical/Hospital, like the character House, very cool and cruel..

and finally

4. Desperate House Wives, yeh yeh, call me sissy if u like, but I still like the series...So what..


So, whcih shows u will recommends?