July 2010

There were 13 posts published in July 2010 (this is page 2 of 2).

Elaine starts walking & knows how to say iPad

About 10 days ago Elaine took her first steps without any help. Just 2 steps, after that someone had to catch her. But she is learning very quickly, because today I took the kids to the City Supermarket after work and Elaine walked around everywhere. I still had to hold her hand in case she would lose her balance, something that happened every couple of steps, but most of the time she was basically walking without my help. I love my little girl!

Scott was not so happy that Elaine was suddenly getting all attention. To protest he decided to sit in Elaine’s stroller and he refused to get out. I tried to carry him but he was stubborn and completely ignored me. Luckily I figured out a trick for this: after I told him that the stroller was now a race car (making fast turns and race car sounds) he was a happy boy right away again and forgot all about the fact that he was supposed to be unhappy with us. Scott is a great little boy, I am so happy to have him around every day.

Another interesting thing that I happened this week had to do with Elaine’s vocabulary. She knows about 100 words I think, mainly Chinese ones but also a couple of Dutch ones. But yesterday she surprised me when I came home an she said something like “papa eye bat”. At first I did not realize what she was trying to tell me, until I noticed that she was pointing at my iPad. She is just 13 months old and now already asks for my iPad, she is a real Apple fan girl! When I give it to her she knows which button to push to turn it on, how to swipe to go the home screen and how to launch her favorite app. To me it proves that the Apple UI (=user interface) is the most intuitive in the world and that the iPad is the perfect toy for all ages.

My latest gadget: Concept 2 rowing machine

When I do sports in Shanghai I normally only run on my treadmill or occasionally do a spinning work-out. I felt something was missing in my exercise regime and so I decided to invest some money in a good rowing machine. After a bit of research I found that the best rowing machine on the market is probably the Concept 2, so I decided to order their latest model.

I have the machine for about 2 weeks now and I am very happy with it. It makes a lot less noise than the Concept 2 rowing machines that I used while in university (I did a bit of rowing there, but to be honest I spent more time in the bar of the rowing association than in a boat). Furthermore, on the Model E that I bought you sit much higher than on a conventional rower, so it feels much better. The computer display that is part of the machine is quite sophisticated, it does a lot more than measuring your time, speed and distance. There are some games on it for example and you can save your work-outs to a computer. Pretty cool stuff.

Scott also likes the machine. When I use it he laughs really loud, like I am a clown (I probably am in his eyes, sliding up and down on a seat while pulling a chain). But after 2 minutes he gets bored and tells me in Dutch that I should stop. If I don’t do that he tries to stop me by grabbing the rowing chain, which is quite dangerous. So from now on I only row with the door to the gym closed and him on the other side of the door. When I am not rowing he likes to slide the seat from the back to the front, for him the machine is just a big toy – like most things around him!

If you live in Shanghai and want to buy a Concept 2 machine as well you can buy it from http://www.concept2china.com/en/how-buy. Mine was delivered within a day and for a small fee (RMB 200) they also installed the machine for me.

Using the iPad as a restaurant menu

Yesterday I came back from a trip to Europe, so last night we decided to have a family dinner. We couldn’t decide where to go (too much choice in the Hongmei Lu area & some of the best places had no tables available), but when I walked back from a visit to the wine shop on Saturday afternoon I got a flyer from a Japanese sushi/sashimi & BBQ place. I had been there once before and I remembered it was pretty good, so after a phone call to check if they would have 2 kids chairs available we decided to go.

The food was excellent indeed, esp. the barbecued beef, but what was even more remarkable was their menu: they used the iPad as a menu for their restaurant! A great idea, because the pictures they took of their food looked much better on the iPad screen than in a regular menu. I had seen the iPod Touch in hotels as a directory before (e.g. in the Upper House in Hong Kong), but of course the iPad is a much better device for this.

The app was quite basic, mainly pictures and prices, but of course it gave me a business idea right away. It should be fairly simple to develop an app that makes the user experience even better, for example by being able to choose the food in the app (we still needed a waiter) and show an overiew of everything you ordered.

Or go even one step further and let clients log in with Facebook Connect, Twitter or a Chinese non-blocked service, so they can see what they ordered last time. Show stats of the most popular food today, this week and this month, and give people the chance to log in at home to leave a review that appears in the iPad app. I am sure many restaurants would love an app like this, and I am convinced that 10 years from now something like this will be quite standard.

During the dinner I realized that it was no coincidence that this restaurant had an iPad, because they were quite innovative with the presentation of their dishes as well. See for example the picture below of the way the sashimi was presented. It looked very cool and the kids loved it as well!

Someone asked for the name & address of the restaurant in the comments, I found their website: http://www.gudumami.cn/en/shop/cs08127/index.html Address: 3211 Hongmei Road, 3/F