He's on Android, I'm on WebOS

I just love Geeksugar's series on "He's a Droid, I'm an iPhone". In my case it's more like He's on Android, I'm on WebOS. My husband and I share an unlimited data plan on Sprint. My boss had originally recommended the network because it had the most cost-effective plans according to her research and calculations.

We didn't use to need smart phones. We just needed devices to call each other on when we started out, but I work on web development and eventually got into social media marketing.

I lasted a long time on my flip phone - but with all that I was doing online, it was becoming ridiculous not to have a smart phone. And I love my Palm Pre. When I first held it in the palm of my hand, it snuggled right in. It was the perfect size. I love the touch screen and have to admit to catching myself trying to touch the icons on my desktop or laptop at times. I also love the QWERTY keyboard, easier to text and email - even to blog at times. I've gotten used to being able to check my emails without booting up my computer. I play Scrabble when I have some free time. I use apps for checking weather forecasts, looking for places to go to nearby or to see what movies are playing. And when we're lost, I pull up Sprint Navigation. Getting a smart phone certainly made my life easier, information right at my fingertips. I love it!

My husband lasted even longer on his Motorola Razor than I did. But as his battery slowly began to die out - he finally succumbed. He has a Google-enabled phone. I love it too! He lets me download games on it. He loved my phone's touchscreen so I made sure his phone had one too. His QWERTY keyboard has different placement than mine, but the keys are wide apart - perfect for his big fingers. The blue back light makes it look very cool, very high tech. My husband never used his phone for anything other than for calling before. Now he listens to music on it, watches video, uses his calendar, texts and surfs the web. I can tell he enjoys it very much. The best thing about it is, he figured it out all by himself - it was all so user-friendly, we didn't even need to go through the manual. My only complaint so far is that his phone is a bit bulky compared to his Razor. But I love the big screen for playing games, so I can deal with the bulkiness!

Do you and your spouse/significant other have totally different phones as well? Feel free to share your stories about them in the comments section. I would love to hear them!

#126: Computer Engineer Barbie

"When I grow up I want to be a computer engineer."

I certainly never answered with that statement as a kid, but with Barbie's 126th career in their I Can Be doll series, young girls of this generation just might want to be computer engineers when they grow up.

Engineers, designers and tech geeks came together and voted for computer engineer as Barbie's next career choice - making it the most popular choice in their polls. So though they did launch a News Anchor Barbie as their 125th career, they had to launch a 126th. Way to go, girls!

Why shouldn't girls aspire to be beautiful and brilliant at the same time?

I think this is also a sign of the times. Computing, social media and over all geekiness are no longer male domains. The attractive female engineers are coming into their own and with Barbie inspiring more young, smart and talented ladies to go into the field, who know what can happen.

A future filled with computer engineering possibilities for women everywhere. If Barbie can, so can you!

New Rear Seat Entertainment: Value Add or Not?

I asked my dad once, what vehicle he thinks I should get and he said I should get a Volvo. At that time, Volvo's were boxy vehicles that did not look pretty at all - but they had long been considered very safe vehicles and I think that was why my dad suggested it. He's very protective!

I have been thinking about what type of vehicle I would get once I start driving. I don't think I want to drive a truck like my husband. I don't like the vans here, their suspension doesn't impress me at all. And SUV's are too common and most of them are gas guzzlers. Our first car was a very old Maxima station wagon - it was very luxurious and we could load lots of stuff in it. Both Mercedes and BMW have wagons - I was leaning towards the Mercedes. And then I noticed the new Volvo models. I love how they look from the back, the front still needs a little styling I think.

The new rear seat entertainment system of the XC70 SUV was featured in a tech blog I frequently read. This system boasts of an internet broadband connection, which means you can surf the web, check emails and do all the fun stuff you do online. Auxiliary input devices lets you connect gaming consoles and MP3 players to it. It even has a 500 GB hard drive to store your music, videos and photos. Wow!

I only see one major flaw in this setup - it's a rear seat entertainment system. This means that unless you have a driver to drive you around, you will not be able to use it while on the road. While I agree that it makes the vehicle safer the way it's set up, I still don't see how this would benefit me - the driver.

So will you buy this vehicle so your kids can be preoccupied while you're driving? Will you tolerate your wife seating in the back so she can get some work done while you drive? Share your thoughts in the comments section, please. Happy driving!

The New Google Buzz

I finally see the Google Buzz link in my Gmail account. Now to figure out what to do with it exactly is another thing all together. It automatically got me to follow my two sisters who I email most often apparently. And then it connected me to other Google stuff I use like YouTube, Google Reader and my Blogger accounts. There was also an option to connect to Twitter and Flickr.

I see it pulling my most recent posts in my blogs. And I still don't really get it. It's organized and clean. I guess if my sisters start using it I will find it more entertaining, more social. So it will just pull together all my activities in the sites I've connected and post it on the accounts of people who follow me basically.

I'm not quite grasping the whole value of the application, but that may change as activity rises. For now it is there - in my email box. Do you find Google Buzz useful? How have you used it so far? Share your thoughts in the comment section.

Happy experimenting, my curious friends!

HipHop: Rocking the PHP World

A lot of techie friends ask me why I chose to program in PHP instead of JSP, ASP or even Java (which I studied formally). Facebook developer, Haiping Zhao, has the same point of view as I do. PHP is simple - to learn, to write, to read and debug. It's in English and makes logical sense even for lay people who know nothing about programming.

Now when you've programmed in PHP for a while, you feel like you can make it do anything - and you can. It's just not as fast as compiled languages like C++ or interpreted languages like Java - it does not use memory and CPU resources very efficiently. When I brought up knowledge discovery and data mining systems to my former programmer/leader, he said that to be able to process huge amounts of data, we would have to learn C++ and that's a completely different ball game from our simple scripting language. This became a limitation that I had to live with - and piqued my interest in learning C++. But all my side projects, full time work load and church responsibility made learning C++ nearly impossible.

A team of engineers from Facebook were faced with the same limitation. They needed the speed of C++ to scale the Facebook application, but their small team were mostly PHP programmers. Instead of making the programmers learn C++ and rewrite the whole application - the engineers came up with HipHop for PHP, which converts PHP code to C++ code programmatically. Isn't that just brilliant?

Use a program so that you don't have to learn a new programming language! And there's an added bonus, you don't have to write great code, it optimizes your code for you - less headaches for senior programmers, I'm thinking. They are releasing the open source project to a select group of PHP developers tonight at 7:30 PM PST and will be streaming it live for our viewing pleasure. Check the Facebook Developers Blog for more details.

Happy coding, everyone!