Troubleshoot: People can't hear me on Skype - iOS7

This post aims to help people I know who experienced trouble with international calling on Skype. Issue was that can't be heard by the call recipient. This is a permission diagnostic seeing if microphone is successfully granted to skype.

这个电脑科技解读的博客论文主要是为了帮助我认识的人解决一个问题：对方听不到你的对话。这篇文章是为了诊断问题所在。初步怀疑是没有成功准许Skype使用话筒（应该是一个iOS7 的常见问题）

iOS will prompt you to grant permission if you accidentally denied permissions causing apps to be non functional, you will need to right the wrongs in Setting.

Codecademy: Hour of Code review and significance

Codecademy has developed a mobile app to deliver a version of the Hour of Code initiative for CSEdWeek. This new development is significant: Codecademy is making its mobile debut! It also is spearheading initiatives introducing young people to code. Furthermore, it puts Codecademy easily accessible on mobile, which is often an on-and-off short interactions (unlike its website presence), and makes it a contender for your time. Competing with games and "less productive tasks", that is. See this useful CNN article for analysis. 

I was at one time the Codecademy girl, so I can't pass on the opportunity to write about my passion.

Summary review: this app is convenient, meant to be used on the go, zero experience required. It's Codecademy doing what it's best at teaching people to code by making it easy and fun, without the hassle of setting up. Learn coding *concepts* just got a whole lot easier. If you can use an iPhone, you can code.

Read about the mobile app and download it here on Codecademy.com

Continue the education on the website later click here also on Codecademy.com

Download from App Store right away use this

To access the app on iPad, be sure to search "codecademy" and change the filter to "iphone only" from "iPad only". This is the way to make all iPhone apps show on iPad.

• Differentiating factor: a simple tap and code, or tap and learn approach. Students reach correct answers faster. Less frustration, and less need for full computer based research and workout
• Of course no answer is ever free from Codecademy. Users still have to think and guess a bit. That's the part that Codecademy does the best: remove traditional computer science learning obstacles, but still make the lessons engaging, educational, and gamified with fun. 
• De-myth: if you know how to use an iPhone you can code! And a lot of people can use iPhones. Codecademy is doing its best to get everyone to understand how to code.

• Works out of the box: no need to log in.
• JavaScript, the language of the web
• iPhone ready: flat design, responsive works well visually on iPhone and iPad, tap and type features, tap and select 
  
  
  
• Gamified
• Push notification for new updates
• Popup overlay displaying results of your code, i.e. console results
• Multiple choices, there's a correct answer, no more frustrations
• Walks through important basics


• String, text, string concatenation
• Printing
• Calculations
• Boolean true or false evaluation
• Data types
• Control Flow basics, if ... else ...
• Variables
• Functions
• .... this is a living document and it will be updated. Even for experienced folks like myself I cannot get through codecademy's basic app in 15 minutes. It's indeed non-trivial.
• Instant Feedback

Every person is different and has different learning styles. Codecademy may work for you, or not. Check out for Hour of Code +Hour of Code 2013  options on iPad, a mobile device.

President Obama's call to action.

Productivity Tips: Winning at Searching

Possibly one of the most important skills in the web 2.0 era: searching. As a student, a researcher, even a programmer, searching is as critical as reading and writing. Did you know that programmers use Google to debug codes a lot? They search the error messages constantly. It's actually considered a part of the process! So, searching on Google isn't unprofessional or illegitimate.

Here are some tips to be more productive at searching.

Search Operators
Use search operators. Almost all search engines support search operators like AND OR + -
Here's a list of Google search operators

Say you are searching for celebrity: Amazing Joe (made up name), but Amazing just had an accident, or a tabloid feature, you can't find any valuable material to write a legit essay. You can search "amazing joe" -accident 

It will take out some of the unnecessary search results.

Check out this example of excluding movie from the search results will show mostly Ender's Game book and literature results rather than the most recent box office results.

Gmail Search
Have inbox-to-zero problems? When you go to your Gmail you can see a search bar. Gmail really wants you to use it. Go ahead, use some advanced search (the down arrow) and notice how the search box changed? Yes, no more clicking everywhere. You can search your inbox without clicking

Search a particular sender?
from:(email@gmail.com,)

Search a particular subject with attachments?
subject:test has:attachment

Using labels that are too hard to use (collapsed on the left nav)?
label:yourLabelName yourKeyword

See the full list of Gmail search operators here

Use Bing.com ... rewards!
Okay, let's use Bing! Why? It isn't the most amazing experience, but it gets simple tasks done: basic search, trip search, obvious sites like Yelp ... You can try it out on Bing It On testing. http://www.bingiton.com/  I think the whole marketing value is that: Bing doesn't suck like you expect it would.

I really use Bing for the rewards: a month's search can turn into Amazon $5 gift cards. Here's a list of the rewards http://www.bing.com/explore/rewards. Set any gold you want, earn bonus points, and make progress towards your goal (me love gamified everything). You can join the program on your own, if you feel kind, you can use my referral code . I get some bonus points, and you should do the same to spread the love.

Fancy Scrolling Animation via SUPERSCROLLORAMA

Reading a TechCrunch article : iBeacon Pioneers Estimote Raised $3.1 Million Seed Round, thought the product looked funny (I like funky products that's why I run an ebay store called dotpink http://stores.ebay.com/dotpink for creative products).

Reading about the product on the website, scrolling downward in a smooth motion, then within the same frame, this happened.

As you scroll, you wouldn't be able to scroll pass this frame, instead you watch the little guy walks through the store as you scroll and tooltips popup. This is like front-end candy, gasp. http://estimote.com/ With a bit a inspect element and research, yielded a beautiful GitHub library for this wonderful effect called SUPERSCROLLORAMA forkable and playable. Enjoy. 

Lessons Learnt from Chime Hack and Hackathons in General | Hackathon Tips

Chime Hack is a cause, NGO oriented hackathon, aims to solve real problems with programming. Chime comes from Chime for Change, a foundation supported by Gucci.

These lessons learnt may apply to any hackathon.

Prototype not reinvent the wheel
Hackathons are meant for generating great ideas, fast and effectively. You don't have to invent a startup idea and build the entire company in 24 hours.

The sweet spot between BUSINESS and TECHNOLOGY
If your team is all engineers, or all business, all design... any 1+1 = 1 combinations, you may be running risk of group thinking, and not solving a real business / real world problem and provide a technical solution.

Business Visions
Ask yourself the question: what problems does my app / solution solve? Are they even relevant problems to these organizations? One mistake our team made was that we didn't get to talk to the NGO staff. We don't know what they really wanted.

Product > Feature > 1's and 0's
Real world solutions take product vision, not a bunch of fancy APIs or features chained together, and definitely not loose code libraries. Our apps had fancy mobile UI, overlay, panels and geolocation, but it sort of missed the point of solving the NGO's problem. Again, we didn't quite know the problems, because we didn't interview the user.

Hackathons take product management tactics, product vision, and technical skills, and productivity and efficiency via prototyping.

Teamwork
Under stress, teams crumble unless, the program management is skill, goal, and merit based. It's important to not get too personal. Fights will rise, 15 minutes before submission.

Teams can be formed before hand. There's strength in knowing "what to expect" from known teammates. Bootcamps and communities have found successful moments competing as a team. Hack reactor for example has students who scored winning positions and mentions on publications like TechCrunch.

Be Nice Stay Cool and Be Productive

Series: economics for freaks @ codesumblog
This is a series where codesumblog turns a bit lifehacker, and talk a bit Freakonomics.

It's hard to be nice in this jobless, all tech no meal market. Work loads are high and salary not so much. Yet many good things are happening, sweet tips for jesus (viral $5000 dollar tip sensations). Wouldn't it be nice to combine it all. Be sustainably nice.

Those who know me personally know that I tip generously, complain loudly, and speak passionately. There are rewards and punishments for all the services and attitudes that I receive. Recently, I pledge to NOT HONK. Not a big deal? It's actually tough not to road rage in the windy, hilly streets of San Francisco and with many new BMWs and fancy cars. Bikers are awesome, sustainable, they also sometimes knock on cars and at times, and gosh pedestrians are angry and endangered at the same time!

So I experimented, what if I don't honk no matter what. Some meanies stay that way, but many let me go through more often, even pedestrians. And my heart rate doesn't go up. I don't get scared when people get angry after my road rage ... and best of all, my friends don't get scared in the shotgun.

Don't honk, let the meanies be meanies, because they will be, and make others feel so guilty that they have to be polite to you! I PLEDGE NOT TO HONK week has been great for me, try it out for yourself.

There's a funny WIFI device called Karma on http://yourkarma.com so every time you take this device to a crowded area, others can join and whenever they do you get 100 MB free! That's a lot of text (of course don't you use Youtube videos, it will run out like in minutes, and nor are images encouraged), but it's 4G, and it is fast if it gets signals at all (that's the caveat)... if your device is "viral" enough at comic cons, conferences, Dreamforce, Oracle World... you name it... you may never run out! So far, I didn't have to buy data packages more than twice. Make an investment on the device, $99 may seem like a lot, but it runs 50% off promotions so sign up to the newsletter and purchase device later.

And now you remember all those referral links you have from Treehouse, Threadflip, Amazon, you can make good use of them, make each of your social share count! They can all end up earning money for you. When you stumble upon an item, your friend will like, you can show them right away. They don't have to waste time finding it. Is it pay it forward?

OKAY, back to this jobless market. I read my friends cover letters. They help me look for positions (more tedious for me, one friend of mine is a human machine can digest thousands of job posting). We share our skills and be nice.

What's your pledge?

Here are some good deeds that will make you happy:

I pledge to not honk this week.
I pledge to help one friend looking for jobs.
I pledge to read a good poem, and share it on Facebook.
I pledge to _________ .

Job for the Makers | Tips on Building for Interviews

This post is a prequel to a series of posts that I want to write: productivity tips learnt from developers and the valley. 

It seems that jobs are falling off to never-land at many places except the startup tech scene. Hold your horses. The jobs are abundant but they aren't easy to get. Got talent for business? Be prepared to answer some tough questions. Got talent for coding? Show me your code, your GitHub and your algorithm.

Today I saw this job posting. Twilio, a familiar name. Partner Account Manager, a familiar position. Then at the bottom of the page:

Oops. Homework!

Such is the case with many startups now. Be prepared to do some homework before they even hand an interview to you. Good old school names almost don't matter.

As a consultant and a hacker, I learn new tech and concepts all the time. Here're some tips for my business pals.

• Get to know the concepts fast and furious. 
• Because you aren't a natural developer, use visual aids, multi-media, tutorials, alternatives, whatever you can get your hands on. Youtube. Khan Academy, Coursera, you name it.
• Reading books may not be fast enough, get through a full Coursera course may not be fast enough. Grab what you need and hop on.
• Stay high level at first
• Understand the process, ask the question, in order to integrate the API, you have to do ______ first, then  ______ , and then ______. You will also need ______ . Fill in the blanks
• What is the MVP? the minimum viable product? Prototype
• Build the parts first, and the modules. These are your lego building blocks
• Then worry about the fancy problems. You have to demonstrate that you can use the tech first. You aren't applying to YC yet.
• Wireframe your superb game changing idea that you can't build yet
• Don't invent the wheel every second
• Developers use other people's libraries all the time. While you can't do that for interviews, but you can look under the hood and see what else are available on GitHub, open source, and whoever is willing to publish their codes.
• Bootstrap
• Ride on a unicorn to get to the rainbow fast and furious
• Is there an event that Twilio sponsors? Off you go. Join the conversation, build what they want you to build and get all the help you can at that event. There your incentives are aligned: they want you to use the API, you want to learn it. 
• Recruiters probably don't like that you want them to teach you APIs that they don't know