Emily Chang - Blog Archives

Shouldn't there be a free trial period for paid iPhone apps? Read more...

I came across Goosh.org yesterday through someone's tweet and I'm in love. Goosh, a "UNIX-like command-line interface for Google," combines the search functionality of Google with the simplicity of command line. It brings me back to the days of using Pine for email. Read more...

Tonight browsing Plurk, I saw heyitskenn's plurk about the service being acquired by Pheltup . Read more...

I really enjoyed O'Reilly's Web 2.0 Expo this year, which took place in San Francisco on April 22-25. The Expo is a companion event to the Web 2.0 Summit, and "an expanded, inclusive gathering for the technology and business communities through a combined conference and tradeshow." Read more...

It still strikes me as fascinating that the iPhone and the OLPC (or XO) laptop were both released in the last year, and yet they're such radically different "computing" and communication devices and concepts. I've spent some time playing simultaneously with the iPhone, the XO or OLPC laptop, and my regular computer combo - an Apple slim keyboard and MacPro tower. I thought about the emotional attachments I've formed based on user experience. Ignoring the discussion of their obviously different markets and functions for a moment, I wanted to share my experience of using each. Read more...

Botanicalls is a project by students at the NYU Interactive Telecommunications Program. It's "a system that was developed to allow plants to place phone calls for human help. When a plant on the Botanicalls network needs water, it can call a person and ask for exactly what it needs. When people phone the plants, the plants orient callers to their habits and characteristics." Botanicalls Twitter DIY is a version for Twitter so your plants can send Twitter updates when they need water, or send you their thanks. Read more...

In an article at the NY Times last week, the writer states that "research shows that among the youngest Internet users, the primary creators of Web content (blogs, graphics, photographs, Web sites) are not misfits resembling the Lone Gunmen of "The X Files." On the contrary, the cyberpioneers of the moment are digitally effusive teenage girls." Read more...

It's the weekend and I'm going through my digital archives and files again. I know, it's an obsession. While I definitely output a lot to the web and the social sites I use, there's always an exponentially increasing amount of digital data that I'm collecting on my computer and storage devices. The more I collect on my hard drives, the less fluid I'm feeling. So, I plan to start a process I've done before - transferring everything I create or collect from my many hard drives to my site, including notes, designs, references, observations, art, writing, photographs, videos and screenshots... a living archive of personal ephemera. Read more...

Looking through my site FTP directory, I came across a folder for "photos" and remembered that I never finished setting it up or linking to it on my site. There's now a photos link in the navigation of this site, where you can see recent photos I post to Flickr, as well as my current photo sets. Read more...

I've been a supporter of the open source movement since I first got on the web in the early 90s. Almost everything I've learned about the web and programming, I learned from downloading open source software and giving it a try, then hacking it to customize it to my own needs. Read more...

I always get excited when it's an election year, but particularly this one because it's been eight long years. Two web projects related to the U.S. election caught my attention today. Read more...