Michael Yuan

Ever since we put an Obama campaign sign in our front yard, I kept getting questions from neighbours and friends: why do you go against your own self interest to support Obama? Haven’t you read his tax plan? Indeed, my own short term financial interests suggest that I should NOT support Obama:

* He already said that he will raise tax for families making $250k per year (or, was it $200k?). Either way, we can fully anticipate our income tax to go up under Obama.

* Obama’s tax plan is also not very friendly to small businesses. As I am starting my own company in a reccession, this is the last thing I need.

I hate higher tax as much as the next guy. But, I am supporting Obama since he at least is honest about the tax sitution. Bush has created a trillion dollar debt for the country. The US borrowed so much money from China –it is not even funny. The money to pay the debt and it’s interest will have to come from somewhere. What alternative do we have?

Let’s say that McCain keeps his promise not to raise tax on anyone. Let’s say that he manages to cut all the $18B / yr so-called “pork spending”. He is still not nearly close to find the money to pay the debt. Let alone the fact that McCain would like to spend $120B / yr of tax money indefinitely in Iraq. The pork McCain talks about so much is a rounding error for what he wants to spend on the useless war.

So, under the McCain plan, the only choice would be to let the US dollar slide in value — as it did all through the Bush years. This way, we run a cruel scam on China — the debt China holds will be worth much less since it is calculated in US dollars. Do you think China will continue to lend money to the US if this happens?

A much weaker dollar also has very bad consequences for everyone living in America. Think about higher costs for everything, and drastically reduced the standard of living.

In the end, Obama might have to raise tax and borrow even more money to create government spending that compensates the weak consumer spending. He may even need to raise tax on people making less than $250k a year. None of these is pretty. But it at least is a honest plan.

I truely believe that we need a president who can talk about shared sacriface to get us through the crisis, as opposed to someone who promise even more fantasy of “tax cuts”.

Next week is a busy week for me. I will be attending both the Texas Wireless Summit and InnoTech conferences. I am invited to participate in the Seed Stage Form at TWS and an iPhone panel at InnoTech. Ping me if you are in town for either events and would like to meet up!

To see more details on exactly what I will be talking about, please visit my new blog focusing on mobility and mobile / social mashup technonologies.

http://www.mobilitymashups.com/

I also plan to update this blog more often to discuss Java / Seam / server-side related topics. Stay tuned for both blogs!

The SXSW interactive conference has this great tradition of letting “the crowd” have a say in shaping up the conference programs. You can do so by getting on to the panel picker web app and rate the 1200+ proposals they have received for SXSW 2009.

I went over the proposals and found many great session ideas. This definiately gonna be a great conference!

In the menwhile, please vote up my proposals on iPhone related talks!

One of the great things about SXSW is the vibrant party scene! There are literally over a hundred vendor parties during that week in places all over the Austin downtown. How do you keep track of all these parties? Well, with the SXSW Mobile Companion http://webclip2go.com/sxsw08 (try iPhone), you can track those parties right there on your phone!

First off, we make it really easy to view the conference’s “official” parties on your phone. Just click on the “Official SXSW Parties” link from the web page. Here is how it shows on my Nokia.

Of course, the official parties are only a tiny portion of the SXSW party scene. A good place to find all SXSW parties is the Upcoming.org service from Yahoo. We adapted the upcoming service for mobile and displays SXSW related parties by day as they are announced or changed. Here is how it looks on the iPhone.

Keep track of your parties!

Apple announced the iPhone SDK today. I have to say that the demos are very impressive and the “app store” concept is very well thought of — it gets around the carrier and lets Apple become the “deck” for iPhone applications. I am sure that mobile developers would much rather work with Apple than with wireless carriers!

Now, with the $100m iFund bounty, I am sure every mobile developer is learning Object C as we speak and race to develop the coolest iPhone application now. But what kind of applications should you write? What kind of applications can best take advantage of the native SDK capabilities?

Some applications, for example our SXSW Mobile Companion: http://webclip2go.com/sxsw08, is quite sufficient as an iPhone rich web application — the additional hurdle of having to download the native app may not pay off.

Well, an obvious place to search for cool application ideas is the native application landscape for other smartphone devices! You can then adopt / optimize those applications for the iPhone! To see what people have done on the Nokia Symbian platform, and give yourself some inspiration on your big iPhone application, come to my SXSW book reading on this Sat for the Nokia Smartphone Hacks book!

For those who cannot attend, I will post the slides later this week …

Michael Yuan
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SXSW 08 Mobile Companion
http://webclip2go.com/sxsw08 (iphone simulator)

If you are among the 6000+ technologists / entrepreneurs / designers attending this year’s SXSW conference (or are just interested in following what’s going on in the conference), check this out: The SXSW 2008 Mobile Companion (http://webclip2go.com/sxsw08) is a free mobile web application that lets you access everything about the South by Southwest conference right there on your mobile phone. Try it in a web-based iphone simulator (Safari and Firefox only). It works on iphone, Blackberry, Palm, Windows Mobile, Nokia, and just about any smartphone out there. The way it works is that it takes live content about the conferences from all over the web, and make the content suitable for display on small mobile phone browsers. Through the companion, you can check:

* Panel / presentation schedules by day
* Session abstracts
* Film / music performance schedules by day
* Official and unofficial conference news, blogs and wikis
* Blogs of conference speakers (full posts w/ comments)
* SXSW parties!
* Austin local news
* Music and film listings by venue in the Austin area
* and much more …

All you need is to load the following URL in your mobile phone browser. Or, if you do not want to type the URL, simply text the word sxsw08 to phone number 41411 to get a link returned in an SMS message (the SMS works in the US only!).

http://webclip2go.com/sxsw08 (Try web-based iphone simulator in your Safari or Firefox browser)

Why did I create it? Well, as a veteran technology conference speaker / attendee, I can tell you that conference WIFI is flaky at best in most big conferences. In fact, WIFI was the #1 problem in SXSW 2007. It is quite frustrating to take out your 8 lbs laptop just to find out that the WIFI is down or has no coverage in the Hall. Well, with the mobile companion, you can check out just about anything about the conference / speakers in real time on your phone. I personally would use it a lot. And I encourage you to try it out if you have an iphone / blackberry or other connected device. I plan to do the same for most other conferences I attend this year as well.

The technology behind the SXSW Mobile Companion is WebClip2Go. The goal was to let people clip live content from any existing web site / blog, so that those content can be viewed from mobile phones. It has become a hit among my friends — especially those with iphones, since the web content loads much faster and requires simpler navigation in WebClip2Go, compared with directly loading the original web site in iphone. Much still needs to be done to make WebClip2Go ready for the general Internet audience (e.g., we need a Firefox plugin that lets people “clip” web content via drag and drop). In any case, I will blog about WebClip2Go in a separate blog entry later this week. Stay tuned!

BTW, for my Seam readers, it might be comforting to know that the application is built on top of JBoss Seam technology.

New York Times had an article on The Risk of Innovation: Will Anyone Embrace It?. Overall, I think the article made some excellent points on how people embrace or resist innovations. It is a great read for people who try to sell new technology solutions to the general public.

However, I think the primary example used in the article was all wrong: The article talks about how the controls in Toyota Prius are un-intuitive (e.g., tap twice to start the car), and customers embrace the inconvenience anyway since Prius represents the kind of “green” innovation people want to be part of. Well, as a Prius owner, I can tell you that the “un-conventional” control is exactly what prompted me to buy a Prius. If I want conventional controls, I would have bought a Camery Hybrid or a Civic Hybrid — neither of those hybrids are sold nearly as hot as the Prius. Why?

The Prius has a rather large price premium over a comparable Corolla. Even with gas price at $3 per gallon, it still makes little economic sense to buy a Prius over a Corolla. The Prius is a “statement car” or a “fashion car”. People buy it for the same reason they pay extra for a low end luxury car. It is hence essential for Toyota to distinguish the Prius from the Corolla — to make people feel that they are driving a totally different car, not only in gas milage but also in “look and feel.” I think the “feel” of an “futuristic” car is what made a lot people forking over the extra cash.

The “usability barrier” here accelerates the adoption of innovation rather than impeding it. I think this is lesson we could also learn in designing a consumer mobile application.

Forbes.com ranked Austin TX the #3 best city for jobs in America for 2008. Of course, we all know that. It is kinda a tough for tech employers though — we have been trying to fill several Java / web positions for months. Almost every developer I know in town is gainfully employed.

In fact, according to the article, Texas in general is the best place to look for a job in 2008:

The Lone Star State shines brilliantly in a list of the best places to work in the U.S. when some economists peer into their crystal balls for 2008.

Austin, Fort Worth, Houston and San Antonio all rank high on the latest forecast data from Moody’s Economy.com. McAllen, Texas, is expected to have the highest job growth rate, as its leisure and hospitality, educational and health services and commercial construction jobs flourish.

Here is the detailed statistics for Austin. I noticed that Austin’s ranking is probably dragged down by its lower median income — that is very misleading since we have one of the nation’s largest public universities in town, and the students make very little income while they are still counted in the median. For people in the software field, Austin probably pays 10% less than San Francisco in raw salary but the cost of living is much much lower.

It is not an everyday event that an object in our cosmic neighborhood suddenly brightens by 1 million times and bloat itself up to 100 times the size of earth. Well, that is exactly what happened to Comet Holmes in the past week. It is an one of those rare opportunities for see a very bright comet with naked eyes!

The best way to view Comet Holmes is through a binocular. The small one you use for sports events and opera should be enough. The comet looks like a yellow-ish star from naked eyes, but when viewed through a binocular, it is a fuzzy yellow ball in stark contrast to the “real” stars close by. I personally use a 7×50 field binocular and it gave a fantastic view of the comet.

The easiest way to find the comet is as follows:

* Stand face North at night (2-3 hours after sunset) in a clear field, and look at the sky to the north east direction.

* Locate the constellation Cassiopeia — it is a group of stars forming a W shape. It is really easy to spot. The size of the W is about the size of your fist extended at arm’s length. Notice that the W is probably rotated.

* From the W looking East (if you can see the milky way, just follow the milky way east), you will see a very bright yellow star. The yellow star is called Capella and it is one of the most bright stars in the entire sky. The distance between the W and Capella is about 3 fists at full extend of the arm.

* Now, half way between the W and Capella is the constellation Perseus. It is also in the milky way. The brightest star of Perseus is called Mirfak. Mirfak forms a small triangle with two other stars. The yellow star in that triangle is Comet Holmes. To confirm, point your binocular to the triangle, you should see that Mirfak is a point-like star, while the comet is a yellow-ish fuzzy ball of light.

Sky and Telescope magazine has a real nice figure showing the relative positions of things (go to the article to see a larger version of the image).

Have fun star gazing!

Time flies. It has been 3 years since I joined JBoss in August 2004. In those 3 years, we went from the “bad boy of open source” to one of the most successful software companies since the dotcom era. We went through a 350-million-dollar acquisition by Red Hat and made a few millionaire open source developers in the process. We fought and won battles against industry mammoth like IBM, Oracle, and BEA with style and vengeance. It is a great pleasure to work with such a talented and passionate team of professionals. Yet, the time has came for me to move on. I will be leaving Red Hat by the end of this month to join an Austin-based startup, eZee Inc., to work on mobile payment applications.

As someone who wrote 3 books on mobile technologies, I always had a great passion for mobile. eZee has a very experienced management / business development team, leading technologists (pat on the back for myself!), strong connection with University of Texas, and adequate funding to push a consumer product. It is too good an opportunity for me to pass up … Read more about the company here. My role in the new company will be “mobile strategist.” What the hell is that, you ask? Well, as typical in a startup, I will do everything from product design, project management, writing code, to taking out the trash.

We have around 10 employees now and look to grow aggressively. If you are interested in joining us, let me know. I cannot promise the future but I can guarantee that you will be working on some of the most exciting technologies (server side and mobile client side) today. As technologists, we set out to change the world (i.e., to change the way how people use money). If we happen to make some money in the process, that would be very nice too.

While the software we write in eZee will not be open source (financial and payment stuff are highly sensitive), we will certainly use a lot of open source products and contribute back to the community. So, I will continue to be an active committer on several JBoss / Red Hat open source projects, in particular JBoss Seam and JBoss Tools. I will continue my writing on JBoss Seam in this blog and plan to publish a second edition of my JBoss Seam book early next year.

The 60 mph wind last night uprooted an oak tree in our backyard. Well, we liked this tree very much. It provides a lot shades for the plants at the west end of our yard. It will be missed!

The tree is blown away

A photo from last year when the tree was standing (the one to the right)

But we were surprised to find how shallow its root is — maybe there is no point re-planting it. Time to get out the (Texas) chainsaw …

In a very stupid parking lot accident, I rear-ended our favorite car (sorry Ju) — the Toyota Prius — against a wall. It was a very low-speed accident (less than 5mph). But because of the hatchback design, the tail lights, rear bumper, and back door all have minor damages. As soon as I see it, I know the repair bill will be high with so many parts to replace. But still, I can drive it just fine on the highway. The repair cannot cost more than $2000-$3000, right? Very wrong!

The repair shop told me that the estimated repair cost runs around $8000! I can buy a new car (or two) for that kind of money! Good thing that the insurance pays for that! The costly part is that the bodyshop has to send the car to the Toyota dealer to remove the hybrid battery and store it in a special storage facility. Then, they work on the body. After the body work is done, they send the car back to the dealer to install the battery and re-test all the electronics. Notice that we are not talking about some no-name bodyshops here — we are talking about one of biggest and best bodyshops in the area! Yet, they have no in-house experience to work on a Prius hybrid car.

Is this going to be a problem when the current hybrid car fleet age? When we bought our Prius in 2004, we had to wait for months in order to get one. But now hybrid cars and SUVs are readily available in a variety of popular models. The body shops have to get themselves more prepared!

We love the Prius. It has exceeded all our expectations (reaching 55mpg in normal driving) except for this repair sticker shock (although this is really my stupid mistake). We are planning to buy a second Prius next year (the 100mpg one!). But we really hope the readiness of repair service will improve soon in the future (not that I will have any accident again! knocking the wood …).

Remember the happier days …

I have been living in Texas for 10 years and was never part of the “gun culture” here. Well, part of the reason is that I have always favored tighter gun control laws. On the other hand, I realize that the Texas gun law is not going to change any time soon, and the best outcome from the current law is for lawful citizens to learn how to use a gun — to fend off the bad guys when needed. Oh well, when in Rome …

So, I went out to the shooting range with my colleague Thomas Cameron today to play with his AK-47 and AR-15 (a.k.a M-16 in US Army) assault rifles — they are basically the guns we see every day in Iraqi news (the bad guys use AK-47 while the good ones use M-16). I fired more than 100 rounds on both guns.

Turns out that my AK-47 score is not too bad — all 30 rounds in the magazine are accounted for on this target — of course, I did hang the target fairly close so that I can point and shoot.

Did I enjoy this? You bet I did! Firing a loud, powerful weapon is a great stress reliever (for a guy anyway!), and the shooting range is probably the safest place to fire a gun. I will probably do it again when I have a chance, although I am not going to bring home an AK-47 any time soon.

My first cousin Junying Yuan has always been the “smart kid” in our family. She is a professor at Harvard University and has made major discoveries in medical research.

This year, she was elected into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. This is one of the highest honors an American scholar can achieve in her/his professional career. I am so very proud of her!

It is very sad to hear that one of the Navy Blue Angels F-18 jets crashed today in an air show. I remember the first time I watched Blue Angels perform in south Texas almost 5 years ago. It was very inspiring and I was hooked in air shows since then. Here are some Blue Angels pictures we took over the years.

May the force be with the Blue Angels!