At the early of this year, I visited Japan. I saw a Pepper Robot in the mall. I tried to talk with him in English. I do not think he can understand. But when I tried to shake hand with him, he can understand and shake hand with me. That is cute. I think his AI can read human gestures.

I love Xamarin, which a cross platforms mobile development framework. I can use C# to build apps for iOS, Android, and Windows. However, it doesn't mean I can get away from learning Android and iOS development. Using Xamarin is not always the best option. If we know the native platform, that should be more flexible. For example, an app only planned in running for a single platform, that may be a better choice to be built in native or if the app is too complex or memory critical, I suggest that should be constructed in native. That is a better way to utilize the resources.

I got a lot of friends in Hong Kong. They are very very rare to use SMS now. The most of them are using WeChat, Line, WhatsApp, those of IM to communicate. That is because IM is free and SMS need to be charged. In contrast, most of my friends in Australia is still very popular to use SMS. I think that is because most of the phone plans come with unlimited SMS. Sending SMS is the core feature of a mobile phone; you do not need to install any app. It won't slow your phone too. For them, that is a better option to use SMS.

Recently, I went to a road trip from Brisbane to Coffs Harbour, that is about 5 hours driving distance from Brisbane. I found I got the 4G connections in major towns, such as Byron Bay and Coffs Harbour. Also, even the small towns, such as yumba, I got 3G connection and I got a stable 3G connection when I travelled on Pacific Highway. That is not bad, a few years ago, there were a lot of back holes of mobile connections. So, I used the Google Map as a primary navigation system and GPS as the second. Google Map is even better, the Map in my GPS is quite old around 2011. A lot of sections in Pacific Highway have changed, GPS cannot work very well in those sections. I has to use Google Map. Another advantage is Google Map has the live traffic data. It helped us to use a different route in Gold Coast for avoiding traffic.

I got a mobile office, I need to work in different clients' office, that is the reason I need to use a laptop. However, when I work in my work, a laptop is not good enough for me and I cannot always work with a smaller screen. Buy a dock station is the best solution for our kind, I can connect an external disk via USB 3.0, which is the data storage for videos and photo and most of dock stations have video card inside, I can connect with monitors from the display ports from dock stations. Then I can have a better work equipment at home! Alternative, there is a cut-budget option, just using an external usb 3.0 hub, which is the solution I am using. I connected the mouse, keyboard and external disks from USB hub. The only down side is only a monitor can use, because I have to the HDMI from the laptop.
By the way, I wish in future, some one can built a dock station with a CPU and ram, so when I park my laptop to the dock station, I can have a better computer. Currently, Microsoft surface is using a similar approach. When the tablet part connected with keyboard, it can connect with the graphic card in the keyboard side, then it can performance better.