Visiting the Friendfeed Global International Headquarters ...

... and helping out with the move.

Since I was in Mountain View, CA for the first half of this passing week, I used the chance to make up for all the missed friendfeed open house and TGIFF invitations. On Monday afternoon I took a break from preparing my slides for EclipseDay at the Googleplex and dropped by the Friendfeed Global International Headquarters - new and old.
It was great to finally meet up with the team behind the service of which not only I think that it is excellent in scope, execution and promise.
After a warm welcome by Ana and a chat with Paul, I joined the team in moving from the old office to the new location, contributing my share to friendfeed's continued success ;)

Among the non-trivial tasks of relocating a global international headquarter was mounting a high-tech mailbox to the precise specifications laid out by Ana - that is "So that our short and chubby mailman can reach it". Paul and I had to make more than one attempt to get it right.

Over the course of my stay I was successively introduced to the rest of the team and I have to say you guys rock. I had a blast talking to you all and I am sure that my Monday afternoon friendfeed diversion helped with the success of the talk at Google the following day :D

P.S.: Ana thank you for the shirts. I took mine out for a walk in Munich today. My girlfriend says thank you for thinking of one for her too - since you and I could not find the girl cuts in the box, it looks like as if I'll get around to wear that one too though :)

Corresponding items on my friendfeed:

• blog post
• T-Shirt flickr photo

Hot Off the Press: Slides for Cola Tech Talk "Wiring Hacker Synapses"

These are the slides for my Cola: Real-Time Shared Editing talk at Google for EclipseDay.

You can download the PDF version of the slides by clicking through to the scribd page for this presentation.

The embedded slides/PDF version have been stripped off any animation, that is are fully built and thus should be well suited for non-presentation style consumption.

Wiring Hacker Synapses - Upload a Document to Scribd

Read this document on Scribd: Wiring Hacker Synapses

Cola: Real-Time Shared Editing - Screencast

The Ganymede release is looming on the horizon and the Eclipse community is busy wrapping things up. Our team - the Eclipse Communication Framework - is no exception there.

In the course of getting ready for launch, I have put together a short screencast, showcasing the first incarnation of "Cola: Real-Time Shared Editing" for Eclipse.

Follow my friend Thomas K. and me, lead you through an exemplary shared editing session.


Cola: Real-Time Shared Editing from Mustafa K. Isik on Vimeo.

You can enjoy high resolution versions of the screencast at the vimeo page (higher than the embedded version) or by clicking on the HD icon when doing a mouseover (full 720p glory).

EclipseDay hosted by Google: Attendee list filling up fast

On Tuesday June 24th, 2008 we will hold an Eclipse event at the Googleplex. The first of its kind, hosted by the great folks of the Google Open Source Programs Office (OSPO).

As Ian noted on his blog, I suggested an event of this type while I was interning with the Build Tools team at Google last year. Soliciting the eclipse committers mailing list for feedback concerning a potential DemoCamp at Google revealed great interest in the community and knowing of Google Engineers' love for all things technologically slick - and Eclipse definitely qualifies ;) - ultimately led to an event of larger scope.

Ian Skerrett, Marketing Director for the Eclipse Foundation, Leslie Hawthorn, Program Manager for Google's OSPO and Rob Peterson, Manager of the Google Build Tools team, signed up for the idea right away.

We started brainstorming ideas for the conference and bouncing them off of each other via emails and phone conferences late last year and have since been supported by more members of the Google Build Tools team and OSPO. I would like to single out my host Rob Konigsberg, colleague Rob Clevenger and Tiffany Griffith for their efforts on making this event happen.

Even with so many people involved and the event having developed a dynamic of its own, I like to think of EclipseDay as my personal Waynestock and if you attend, it shall be yours too.
I hope for a similarly fun get-together :)

The Google-hosted very first EclipseDay will manifest as a gathering of one hundred eclipse-enthusiast developers. The talks will provide for a general hands-on approach and should prove to be insightful for a broad audience. I suggest you have a look at the agenda.

Space is limited so please sign up if you would like to join - only nine spots are left on the attendee list.

It would be great if you could make it to the talk Scott Lewis and I will give on ECF work: "Wiring Hacker Synapses: Collaborative Coding and Team Tooling in Eclipse"

See you at the Googleplex.


View Larger Map

On Being an Easter Egg

This morning I woke up to the realization, that I had been easter egged.

I can't tell for sure whether it had something to do with the fuzzy feeling in my head or an email I got from my Google Santa Monica buddy and Wine hacker Lei Zhang, asking me to have a closer look at a screenshot in his Google Lat Long Blog post.

Thanks Lei, this made me feel a little like Sam & Max in various LucasArts adventures. I'd like to share the spot in the limelight though - Lei is the second from the left :)

Macbook Pro Modding: Resurrection of the Rainbow Apple

The first computer I consciously laid hands on was an Apple II.

It must have been sometime between 1983 and 1985 while visiting family in Dortmund, Germany. The exciting beige box, crowned by an amber monochrome monitor, belonged to Uncle Celal, a cousin of Dad and computer science student at the time. 

I vividly remember playing Choplifter on the huge, at least to my childish eyes, machine for years to come - and I remember the Apple logo on the box. The prominently featured, colorful symbol of joy. 

Even though given this early and intensive experience, I did not turn into an uncritical fanboy. For most of the early nineties I was much more interested in the Amiga - for the games - and IBM-compatibles for their flexibility, my teenage love for Turbo Pascal and even more games. I enjoyed to hack then popular fire demos with inline assembler, devise systems for my friends and then assemble them.

But the Apple logo stuck with me ... unfortunately it did not with Apple Inc.

Apple came up with Mac OS X, I started to use their machines as of 2001, but gone was my chance to ever own a piece of equipment bearing the Rainbow Apple.

Until recently that is. Browsing the web for a classic Apple logo sticker that I could use on my Macbook Pro, I came across iColours.ca, a Canada-based retailer selling plastic inlays to be used with the backlit Apple logo behind notebook screens. I was instantly sold.

Below I have documented the process of opening a Macbook Pro and replacing the standard white fill with a custom inlay.

1. In order to remove the back panel of the notebook display, you have to unscrew two tiny screws to the far right and left on the bottom of the screen frame.
        
2. Once you are done, use a sturdy but thin credit card to carefully pry open the screen casing. I suggest you start inserting the card/your-other-tool-of-choice towards the very bottom of the screen. Work on the inner side of the thin plastic rim that circumvents front and back part of the notebook screen casing.
        


3. Work your way towards the top on both sides of the screen. Three latches on either side of the screen hold the front and back parts together. Be careful not to break any of them.
4. After loosening the sides, the back panel will slide off towards the top of the screen.
   
5. Remove the white fill cover above the logo window.
   
6. Use some heat-resistant adhesive to secure the custom inlay in place.
   

The rest is straightforward reversal of the opening steps to close and finish your custom logo MBP mod.

     

Augmented Reality Tracking with Wii components

The AR Roadmap spin-off prototype we built for BMW Research in 2004, relied on tracking a large number of items equipped with (passive) infrared reflective markers. We used high-end tracking cameras built by advance realtime tracking GmbH, capable of tracking a high number of markers with good resolution/precision.

If you would like to play around or even build your own homegrown AR system, Johnny Chung Lee from CMU's Human-Computer Interaction Institute, shows how to use components of Nintendo's Wii game console for active marker-based tracking. The WiiMote  is used as tracking device, transmitting location data of active LED markers, as for instance the Wii sensor bar, to a PC via Bluetooth. His C# SDK and more info on his approach are availabe via his project website.

The results are impressive, well unless you need surgical precision, but then again that can easily cost you 10K+ USD/EUR.

Enjoy Johnny's video on the head tracking system built by utilizing the WiiMote.

Feature Detection with Phosphorous Make-Up @ GDC

Sometime in 2002 and to no little extent thanks to Prof. Gudrun Klinker, I developed a profound interest in Augmented Reality. Until 2004 I attended all classes and lab courses offered on the topic and worked on a couple of related research projects, e.g. FixIt: An Approach towards assisting Workers in Diagnosing Machine Malfunctions.

FixIt: Diagnosing Machine Malfunctions with AR - Upload a doc

Read this doc on Scribd: FixIt: Diagnosing Machine Malfunctions with AR

At some point in 2003, Gudrun approached me with an offer to collaborate on a project at BMW Research, yielding the BMW Augmented Reality Roadmap, which doubled as my Bachelor's Thesis. I helped with the realization of a spin-off from the BMW AR Roadmap, project Ida: An AR System for Visualizing Deviations between the Real and Planned Shape of a Car Body.

Ida: Visualizing Measurement Data on a Car Body - Upload a doc

Read this doc on Scribd: Ida: Visualizing Measurement Data on a Car Body

I figure given this intro on how I was involved with AR, it is understandable that a video on facial feature detection, that Joystiq recorded at this year's GDC, got me all fired up. Tracking of real-world elements is key to all Augmented Reality systems, integration of reality and virtualizations usually being a primary concern.

There is a wealth of sensor- and marker-based techniques to aid with the detection of real-world objects, specifically their location and orientation. Though the holy grail of tracking is feature based tracking, that is tracking of objects without the need for modification of objects of interest.

Steve Perlman of motion capture studio Mova describes more-or-less markerless (aside from phosphorous make-up) tracking of facial features with impressive results.

GDC - Mova Contour Reality Capture Technology from Joy Stiq on Vimeo.

If all this AR talk made you curious, I suggest you head over to Gudrun Klinker's sites for her Introduction to Augmented Reality and Advanced Topics in Augmented Reality courses. Her slides should provide for a good introduction to the subject.

Google Talk and GMail Unicode Support

Due to my Turkish heritage, my name is riddled with non-ASCII-conforming characters.

The small letter "s" at the end of my middle name "Kurtulus" is actually a "ş", that is a small s with a cedilla.
It is pronounced like the Latin small letter "esh", the sound of it being described as voiceless postalveolar fricative, represented via ʃ in the IPA.

Both, the capital and small letters "i" in my last name, written "ı" for the small one, represent the Turkish alphabet's respective dotless letters, also known as close back unrounded vowel to the linguistic community, I suppose :)
The IPA uses the Latin letter "m" turned upside down ɯ to represent it.

Even though my German passport reads

Mustafa Kurtulus Isik

following the correct and intended spelling of my name should result in

Mustafa Kurtuluş Işık

Well did you know, that if you have to deal with such letters in your name, Google Talk and GMail won't leave you out in the rain? They support all the Unicode goodness you could ask for.

If for instance you feel like changing your GMail sender name, just go to Settings->Accounts->edit info and re-enter your name with the special characters.

You can use a UTF-8 character table to look up the four-digit hex code point encoding, which you should enter holding Ctrl+Shift on the keyboard. Upon entering the last of the digits, your desired special character will appear auto-magically.


If you lack the name, but not the desire to play around with this, why don't you go for a trademark sign ™ or an end of proof ∎ in your Google Talk status messages?

By the way this blogpost follows a marathon debugging session of open source code that I am in the process of reviving ... makes you do weird things ... ☻

Web Crash 2007

Were you wondering why your office internet connection was so slow this morning?

ONN has the Breaking News on it.



Breaking News: All Online Data Lost After Internet Crash

After wiping off the tears of laughter from my face, I came to think of redundancy in the internet's topology.

Even though most of us consider internet routing paths to be laid out greatly redundant, the truth requires a little more thought, as for instance becomes apparent by some comments on Bruce Schneier's blog.

The whole concept of the internet is not compatible with the notion of being breakable. It is parts of the network of networks that carry the risk of being weakly linked to the rest of the world.

The internet protocol (IP) does not require packets to follow predetermined paths, thus allowing for data to be routed flexibly and with a high probability of arrival at its intended destination.

Just too bad when an ISP does not provide enough redundant connections out of its own network. All the routing flexibility of IP does not help, if there is only one path to the outside world, constituting a single point of failure.

Redundancy costs money, without necessarily providing any imminent and easily perceivable benefit to customers.

The lack of redundancy marketability and network outages being potentially cheaper to ISPs than continuous investments into redundancy measures, makes such efforts even less attractive.

For ISPs having to cater to the free market, costs and prices are much more powerful figures.

With the internet becoming more and more important for almost everybody's personal and business lives, wouldn't this be an area where government regulation, such as requiring a minimum number of connections to different Tier 1 ISPs and/or IXPs, would make sense?