I have some gadgets. Among them is my PDA phone that I like most. To begin with, my PDA phone is small enough for me to put it into my pocket. I can install any small application on it such as English to English dictionaries, Microsoft Money, e-Book, calendar, weather prediction, and so on. Besides, I am able to use it as my navigation system. Moreover, I am able to watch movies through my PDA phone, though my screen is a little bit small. When I forgot to bring my laptop computer, it also gives me the ability to surf the Internet via a Wi-Fi card. As to typing, it supports Bluetooth technology so I am able to use a Bluetooth folding keyboard as my input interface. I believe that such kind of PDA phone will support even more applications and compatible hardware in the years to come. I can expect it will become a trend.

I do not have least favorite gadgets on hand mainly because if I dislike a gadget, I will sell it over eBay or return it immediately. But I can describe why I dislike a gadget. The most important point is that a gadget is hard to use. It cannot save my time or make me even more annoyed. Probably the problem is that I do not know how to utilize it.

Response to Nathan Garrett’s “Circuit City has a relatively new service by which you can order an item via their Web site, and then pick it up at your local store. What advantages do you think this service provides? What disadvantages do you think this service provides?”

I do not assent to some words written by Garrett. I agree that the advantage of physical store is that people are able to touch the commodity and to feel you like it or not. Besides, you can compare similar products at physical store and ask sellers relating questions. However, how many commodities can be stored in a physical store such as Circuit City? What are potential risks and costs to store large amount of physical commodities? Indeed, today one can go to a physical store compare products, but the point is that how many products one is able to compare? Based on my experience, I need to go to many physical stores such as Best Buy, Circuit City, Fry’s, and so on to compare them. From my point of view, one evident advantage is that I can go to Circuit City to see whether I like it or not. Not only can I tough it, but also return it immediately if I do not like it. That is, I need not to pay shipping fee twice. One is for sending; another is for returning. Besides, I need not to wait for my refund or ask for a returning number.

Meanwhile, it is also free for one to pick up his or her thing at their convenience. In other words, one needs not to worry about losing UPS or FedEx’s delivery due to not being at home.

Response to Jung Sook Lee-French’s “A popular online auction site is eBay. Have you ever purchased an item on eBay?”

I agree Lee’s point that eBay is an excellent place for people who do not have enough time to go out to shopping malls or outlets. By the feature of comparing price and commodities at eBay, people are able to buy and sell their things at any place that they want. However, one thing I do not completely agree with is that eBay is not the best place to have the best price. When it comes to the best price, people are supposed to compare prices among some famous online stores such as Amazon, Nextag, Buy.com, and so on. By doing so, people will be surprised how violent competition among these online stores.

I consent that the history of feedback for buyers and sellers is imperative. It is a great record to build trust between a buyer and a seller. Often I just take a look at sellers or buyers’ positive or negative feedback first to decide whether I am going to buy certain commodity. Negative feedback is not necessarily to say that a buyer or a seller is not trustworthy. You are supposed to look into detailed description of the feedback. Meanwhile, providing a buyer is not sure the quality of certain commodity or cannot tough it, reviewing feedback from former buyers is an excellent way to make a decision. Yet, people at times need to rely upon their instinct if no feedback exists. Before buying things, one needs to read or ask the returning policy first simply because no one wants to put his or her money at stake.

Sometimes, I just wonder why eBay cannot succeed in my country Taiwan. Possibly, it is about cultural difference. However, eBay is a good place for me to buy commodities and then sell them back to Taiwan. The eBay just made an acquisition of the famous Internet phone company – Skype last year. I am looking forward to seeing that a buyer and a seller are able to communicate immediately through the platform of Skype.

Response to Kevin’s post “What do you see as positive outcomes of e-mail and instant messaging? ”

I do not totally agree with the negative aspects that mentioned by Kevin. He points out that there is no definite way to know whether recipients received an e-mail or not. However, by looking at some popular software such as Outlook, Outlook Express, and Thunderbird, we can get into detailed setting to check the option of requesting read receipts. Once your friend received your e-mail, your friends will be requested to send an acknowledgement back to sender.

As to instant messaging (IM), I agree that the pop-ups window is a little bit annoyed while I am working. Nevertheless, my belief is that it is not a negative aspect in that you can go the “Tool” function and choose “Alerts and Sounds” option. Then looking at detailed options, you can check or uncheck display alerts in many occasions.

Still, E-mail does have some negative aspects. The most notorious one is the junk e-mail. If you have two or more e-mail accounts, you may have a need to cope with ample of junk e-mails by daily basis. Or you are likely to be inundated with junk e-mails. Imagine three or four hundred e-mails you receive every day, how many of them are useful or worth to look into the content? Not to mention that a lot of viruses or malicious software such as Trojan perfectly hided behind your e-mails. Indeed, you may say by using firewall or virus protection software you can detect these malicious virus or software. However, the fact shows that most people still not trust such types of software primarily because their computers are still likely to infect viruses due to various reasons.

IM does enhance our communication even better. However, nowadays an increasing number of children surf the Internet talking with their friends all the day. Their parents may be too busy to keep an eye on their children. IM can pull people even closer, but it could quietly steal people’s time without noticed by users. Simply put, technology itself can enhance our working or communication with no doubt as long as people are aware of what they are doing and have a sense of time elapsing.

Bring in a research article/piece from your field. Not just any article, but one that has significantly influenced your thinking, academic career, research, and/or professional career.  Specify how it has influenced you. Post your article under your personal files and post your answer to your personal blog.

During recent two decades, the famous system design principle called “The End-to-End Arguments” [4] has worked very well. However, because of ever changing technology, a lot of new Internet media come into being, namely, You Tube stream media, peer-to-peer Internet TV, and voice over Internet, end-to-end principle may be no long feasible in the years to come. After viewing some recent research papers, I find that there is no clear direction where to go right now so I am typically interesting about this article. There are several reasons that our future Internet needs to have some changes. The most important reason is that we are living in the untrustworthy network. One person does not trust another person or the third party. Under such circumstances, the initial idea with regard to checking end-points is longer reliable. Suffice it to say, this paper makes me think twice that if our future network becomes extremely unstable, our world will become a mess. I hope in the future I am able to come up with some good ideas to guarantee our next generation Internet, I call it Internet 2, will be a secure and a reliable network. It is now a hot topic in that it needs to have many researchers’ contribution to think a feasible way to go. 

1. Clark, D. D., J. Wroclawski, et al. (2005). "Tussle in cyberspace: defining tomorrow's Internet. Networking, IEEE/ACM Transactions on 13(3): p 462-475.

2.  Moors, T. (2002). "A critical review of "End-to-end arguments in system design"." Communications, 2002. ICC 2002. IEEE International Conference on 2: p. 1214-1219.

3.  Reed, D. P. (2000). "The end of the end-to-end argument"." from  http://www.reed.com/dprframeweb/dprframe.asp?section=paper&

4. Saltzer, J. H., D. P. Reed, et al. (November 1984). "End-to-end arguments in system design." ACM Transactions on Computer Systems (TOCS) 2(4): p. 277-288.