Sony close its online photo sharing service

I received an email a few days back. Sony is going to close its online photo sharing service, ImageStation.

Sony to close down ImageStation.

I am not surprised. If the photo sharing web site can not build up its community or not as interesting as flickr, it will be closed down as a matter of time.

In another word, you must upgrade your web site to version 2.0, or at least make it as interesting as flickr. Is easy to browse, upload and add comments in flickr, there is a lot of third parties application build for flickr.

Yahoo already have its online photo sharing service, but Yahoo acquire flickr in year 2005, deal amount is not disclose, there is rumors says is about 30 million, that will be a very good buy for Yahoo, and Terry Semel has do something right before he left Yahoo.

On June 2007, Yahoo announce to close down Yahoo! Photo which has been launch for 7 years, move their online photo service to flickr. It start with Yahoo! Photo and now ImageStation, who's next?

Go green

I notice some company started to be environmental friendly, running some campaign and conform to the ISO 14000 standard. The ISO 14000/14001 is an environment management standard. Simple steps you do may help the environment, like switch off the light before you leave your office, don't keep the water pipe running if you are no using it...

IT people try to be environmental friendly these days, by cutting down paper usage. They use email, and not fax, they exchange documentation using PDF attachment in email. They use electronic yellow stickies on desktop...

Most software developers read their program source on their screen (monitor). I notice a lot of the junior programmers (or you can call the rookies if you want), always print out their source code on papers for reading, it is a waste of paper usage. Read it on the monitor or read it on printed paper is just a habit. Once you get use to it, is not a problem for most software developers to read program source code on monitor.

I know some senior programmers still need to print out their source code on papers, they must be born at 60s or earlier, then be it. If you are newer generation, please read your source code on your monitor, just get a bigger (19", 20") monitor, if one is not enough, get two.

My first job as a programmer in a MIS department, print a lot of papers. When they found out any bug in a program, the first thing they will do is print out the program source code (on paper). Even is just a minor change like adding an arithmetic operator or one line if condition checking code, they still print it out. Even we use up both page of the paper before we recycle it, is still a waste of paper.

The modern CPU design is not just go for speed, but target for low power consumption. It generate less heat, save more power and more cost efficient. Especially for those data center, running hundreds of cpu, lower down the power consumption will save the cost.

blackle.com, dark surfing experience.

Black web page surfing idea, try to create web page with back insteed of white background. They claim that back display consume less watts compare with a white display (refer here) on cathode ray tube (CRT) monitor, but not LCD. Some software developer quickly develop a dark google search page, like Blacke. But there is a debate on white web page display really consume more energy or not.

This girl send 30 to 35k sms per month!

Recently I read a news on the internet, an iPhone user (Justine Ezarik) received a 300 pages bill, printed both side, from AT&T. The phone bill are so detail that, every call and data transaction was listed on it. The user has posted the video on youtube. AT&T announce that they will simplified the phone bill. That is good.

VMWare and VMWare server

I should buy VMWare's company share. VMWare was acquired by EMC in 2003, EMC is a company provide storage solution, I was wandering why they are buying VMWare. I think buying VMWare is a good decision, VMWare has good products, and they keep improving it.

(VMWare listed on 13 Aug, when I write this, VMWare is not listed yet)

vmware server, boot with OLPC image.

I have seen a lot of people using VMWare, especially my friends who use linux. VMWare normally refer to the software which allow you to create a virtual machine on you desktop (or server) machine, which allow you to install another operating system on your machine. VMWare will create a virtual machine with clean environment, without affecting your existing system. My friends will normally install and tried the latest Linux distribution on their windows system using VMWare, after they have finish testing it, they just remove it from their system.

I have not tried VMWare before, even I know this product for many years. VMWare is not free (at that time), and you need more resource like hard disk space, memory to run the virtual machine. VMWare release their VMWare server and VMWare player as freeware (you can download from their website here), which runs on Windows, Linux and even Mac OS X. The OS X version of VMWare called VMWare Fusion. Since WMVare products only runs on x86 base machine, VMWare Fusion only runs on OS X intel.

A few months back when I attended the Sun Tech Days, VMWare has a product which work together with a Sun Ray machine which attract me. According the representative from VMWare, you can install Windows and Solaris operating system at the server end and access it using Sun Ray thin client, I assume you can install Mac OS X and Linux operating system too. When I asked for more demos, the representative suggest visit to their customer site. Seems like VMWare does not have a good support here, they should closely with other company, not just Sun, but those company have a strong sales and support team.

Apple introduce new iMac

As most people and media expected, Apple introduced new iMac on Tuesday.

thiner, faster and cheaper.

Earlier news reported that Steve Jobs might not appear on this special event, but don't worried, Steve Jobs will always be there. I think Steve Jobs enjoy to be on stage, and he is good on it.

A new Apple product launching event without Steve Jobs, is not an Apple event.

Show girls at PC Fair (2) 2007

I don't know since when computer exhibitions are like motor show, employ a lot of show girls to promote their products, it happens these few years in PC Fair exhibitions. It did help to attract a big crowd. Even without those show girls, PC Fair exhibitions are just too crowded.

I can’t move, but luckily I still can breath.

I don’t really like to go to PC Fair like exhibitions, is just too crowded, sometimes you could hardly move around, you don’t have the luxurious to just stand there and take a close look at those products. They have just make the PC Fair like sales carnival.

There is not much new IT products to be displays and shown in the exhibition. If you are looking for new product and technology, you should go to CeBIT. If CeBIT is too far, you can consider attend ACM.

HTC Touch, the phone.

There are more show girls than new products, busy distributing flyers. What I can do is just take a few pictures and practice my shooting skills.

Size does (doesn't) matter

I always like to tell a 'joke' about my idea, about web site business.

Many years ago, I ask my friend to start web site business together, he ask me to give him a good idea about web site.

I told him, how about free web mail? "We already have hotmail, Yahoo! Mail." I said, "hotmail give 2 Mb email storage, Yahoo give 3 Mb (to 5 Mb), then we give 5 Mb, or may be 10 Mb."

Does it sounds like a joke for you now? Because Google is giving out 1GB email storage.

When Google launch its GMail services, instead of giving a 3 Mb or 5Mb storage quota, it gave gigabytes of storage, and increasing every seconds. It outshines Yahoo and MSN hotmail. Everyone started to get an gmail account, and so proud to own one.

MSN and Yahoo need to catch up, MSN increase their email quota 100 times, which is 250Mb. Yahoo give 1G for free email account and 2G for a paid email account.

So, size does matter!?

Gmail increase to about 2.8G by now, Yahoo must be so tired with the catch up game, so Yahoo give you unmilited email quota.

If you are a gmail user, are you going to switch to Yahoo! Mail?

So, size does matter, or size doesn't matter?

Please write a better software

Yesterday I tried to sync my Palm with Google Calendar with goosync, but fail.

They sync procedure just hang there like never ending story. I do a soft reset which results a non-stop reboot on my Palm device. I do a warm reset while stop the reboot, but my system data already mess up, most of the application on the Palm device is not able to launch properly.

I have no choice but perform a hard reset (what is all these reset?). Since I learn from experience, I always backup my data before I try new software, unfortunately after I retrieve my last image with NVBackup, I go back to the non-stop reboot again!

I have tried a few hours with different images and different solution, including restore back from Palm Desktop, It doesn't work. Restore image from InnerBackup was fail half-way. Finally I use "Selective restore" function in NVBackup, it works, I hope I did restore back my records.

"Selective restore" can restore a single or selected database, click on NVBackup menu, you should see the restore function there. "Selective restore" is not for casual user, because you need to know the original database name you need to restore, which was hidden from the user.

I retrieve the following database for my PIMS data (Palm OS 5):

CalendarDB-PDat, CalendarLocationsDBPDat.
DatebookDB
ContactsBDIndex-PAdd (may be this is from HappyDay)
ContactsDB-PAdd
MemosDB, MemosDB-PMem.
TasksDB-PTod

(This is just for reference, not guarantee it will works for everyone)

Palm OS 5 (Garnet) is a good OS, it support ARM cpu and support Non-Volatile File System (NVFS). It make backup and restore on the storage card so easy. But I think Palm need to re-design the OS architecture, because it just crash too easily, this remind my the early days of Microsoft Windows.

I hope the next Palm OS will be stable and efficient, but I really have no confidence when this will happen.

Universal Music may not continue contract with Apple

The Universal Music Group of Vivendi, largest music company may not renew their contract with Apple Inc, which will expired soon. If this is true, a long list (estimate one third) of songs will be removed from iTunes online music store.

There were five largest music publishing company, British's EMI, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group, German's BMG and Universal Music Group which is own by French's Vivendi. BMG joint venture with Sony and form Sony BMG in 2004, and become the big four record labels (EMI, Sony BMG, Universal and Warner). Universal has proposed to buy BMG Music Plublishing, and Warner is actively seeking to buy EMI (refer Warner Music mulls new offer to buy EMI).

Why don't Apple just buy one of the music company, since iPod and iTunes online music constribute a significant profit to Apple. Oh! Yes, they can't, in name infringement settlement with Beatles' music company-- Apple Corp (England) in 1980s and 1991, Apple Computer agreed not to enter the music business.

How about iPod and iTunes music store? In September 2003, Apple Corps (Beatles) sued Apple Computer again, for breach of contract. The court ruled in favor of Apple Computer, base on section 4.3 of the agreement, Apple Computer field of use include software, hardware and broadcasting services. Apple Computer using the Apple name on their (online) store and not the music. Beatles catalog is not available on iTunes music store.

May be Apple Computer should have just bought over Apple Corps. Apple did consider to buy a music company, read a cnet story here, "Apple may buy Universal Music", which dated back in year 2003. The Apple share price is $13.20 at that time, and now is $127!

"When your customers are iPod addicts, who are you striking back against?," said Ken Hertz, an entertainment lawyer who represents artists like Beyonce and the Black Eyed Peas (refer to the CNet news). Recently Apple Inc. and Apple Corp agree to reach a settlement (finally!), Apple Inc. are allow to use the Apple name and logo in all area including music.

I have a clean iPod

After collected a few hundred megabytes of songs on my iPod, I decided to backup today. When I try to copy the songs in my iPod using the iTunes software, it doesn't work.

I think may be I can do a sync again. I deleted everything in my iTunes library and do a sync, and hope iTunes copy the songs on iPod to my desktop. No, it doesn't work.

I search internet and read this:

"... iTune disable copy function since version 4.x... you have to use third party software like ephPod or iDump... sync a black iTunes library will erase all songs on iPod..."

I check my iPod, all songs has been deleted. Oh! Great, I lost all my songs, the ratings, and many hours of work, and I have a clean iPod now.

Hei! Apple, what you have done with the iTunes software?

You can't just copy back the songs from the iPod back to your desktop, after you encounter a system crash and re-install your PC.

I heard Apple disable copy function in iTunes to prevent users to copy DRM songs from the iPod device. I though Steve Jobs said that "DRMs haven't worked, and may never work, to halt music piracy,"?

Backup your Palm data

I do a hard reset for my Palm after encounter a crash in Y! messenger software and a non stop reboot, this is the second hard reset in between one week time.

There are three types of reset for Palm PDA, soft reset, warm reset and hard reset.

Soft reset. When system crash or application just hang there, press the reset button at the back of the device.

Warm reset. When soft reset doesn't work, eg. when you encounter a non-stop rebooting sequence, try this, hold the up key and press the reset button.

Hard reset. Sometimes warm reset doesn't work, because your system or data already messy. Hard reset will remove all data on the device. If you are not sure take a look at Palm site.

I must be very lucky this time. The earlier hard reset, cost me one whole day to recover about 99 percent of the data. After that I decided to backup data quiet frequently.

Normally we do Palm backup with HotSync, backup using the Palm Desktop software, but recovering all data from Palm Desktop could be quiet slow. I have tried NVBackup and InnerBackup.

When I recover back using InnerBackup, records in Contacts and DateBook are double, and application doesn't recover. I try NVBackup, it works, I have recover 99 percent of the records, in just about 15 to 20 minutes, so I must be lucky.

What is the lesson of the story? Do you backup frequently, especially before you try to install new software on your Palm.

Eclipse europa release count down

I read a news about Eclipse europa will be release on 29 June Friday as scheduled, and today is Friday!

1 day count down to Eclipse europa release

Asia time is much earlier, one more day to go.

I just upgraded to Eclipse 3.3.2 a few days back. Eclipse is a very powerful IDE for Java, and not just Java, I can compile my C program through the CDT plugins. Learning how to setup and configure the IDE is quite painful, as I use vi (a notepad like editor on Unix, if you know vi you know what I mean) for my software development all the time.

I can't wait to see, how's the new Eclipse will looks like.

Palm Desktop, Disk is full

I only encounter this error message on Mac OS X.

Palm Desktop background
Disk is full

After the message pop out, the Palm Desktop software just refuse to start.

I tried to reinstall the software, but is now working.

I google for answer, many encounter such problem, but seems like no answer, or it doesn't work for me. Some user bring it out at Palm's forum, but no answer since year 2004 (refer here. How poor the Palm's support!

I just try my luck, remove those files related to palm disktop at my home directory:-
$ cd
$ rm Preferences/Palm Desktop Info $ rm Preferences/com.palm.* $ rm Application Support/Palm Desktop $ rm Logs/CrashReporter/Palm Desktop.crash.log

It works! I don't know which files to be deleted, better make your backup before you try.

Safari 3 beta for windows

I have download Safari browser 3 beta version for windows for a try.

Apple's Safari browser 3 beta is now available for Windows

The only thing it surprise me is, Apple make it available on windows. It seems like running very slow on windows, if it is the only browser that you prefer to use, I bet you will switch to Mac OS X. It doesn't seem that slow when running on Mac OS X.

Someone (and more than one) founds security issue on it, so I just try for while and remove it.

A long way for Palm

Some history and interesting story about Palm.

Recently there are some rumors and news about Palm is looking for buyers, company like Nokia and Motorola could be the potential buyers. Finally Palm sell 25 percent stake to a private firm, Elevation Partners (read here). I am not worried about who will buy Palm, but after it was bought, Palm will still on its right track?

Palm started as Palm Computing in 1992, founded by Jeff Hawkins, Donna Dubinsky, and Ed Colligan. The first successful PDA products are Pilot 1000 and Pilot 5000. Palm Computing is not the first company who develop PDA device, but their Palm Pilot PDA is the first successful commercial product.

Palm Pilot has done a few things right. Simple and easy to use operating system (Palm OS), working hand recognizing software (Grafitti) and a device with the right size, small enough to fit into the pocket. Before Jeff Hawkins start Palm Computing, he research on handwriting recognition, later he decide to create a successful PDA device.

Palm Computing was acquired by U.S. Robotics in 1995 to bring in more funding to support the company, later Palm become the subsidiary of 3Com, after 3Com acquired U.S. Robotics in 1998. Palm III together with Palm OS version 3 was introduced in 1998, and is a great success. The same time, Jeff Hawkins and Donna Dubinsky left Palm and founded handspring, which create PDA devices like Palm, and using Palm OS license from Palm.

Handspring is not the only company license Palm OS, Sony is another company license Palm OS on their CLIE PDA products. IBM also have a Palm III like PDA which look exactly like Palm III but with their own brand name on it.

3Com listed Palm on Nasdaq in year 2000. After that a few things happen in Palm, and Palm doesn't know when they are heading to. In year 2002, Palm spin off the software as a wholly-owned subsidiary--Palm Source to develop Palm OS, from now onwards Palm split into a software and a hardware company.

Palm OS was originally designed to run on Motorola Dragon ball cpu. In year 2002 Palm introduce Palm Tungsten T PDA which using ARM cpu, the OS was upgraded to version 5, code name Garnet. Garnet consider an important milestone of Palm OS, it runs on new cpu architecture, with backward compatibility with those old Palm program. The old palm program can run on the new OS through the PACE (Palm Application Compatibility Environment) emulator. Garnet is still widely used on most Palm device.

Palm OS was designed as a simple and easy to used operating system, but its lack of full multi-tasking and multimedia capability was critized by most users especially when it was compared with Microsoft's Windows Mobile operating system. In year 2001, Palm bought BeOS after Apple computer drop their 'Plan Be', BeOS being a multimedia capable OS, but this doesn't help much in Palm OS development after Palm had acquired BeOS.

In year 2003, the hardware Palm merge with Handspring and rename to PalmOne Inc. Palm trademark was held by a jointly-owned holding company by PalmOne and Palmsource. Two years later (2005), PalmOne bought back the Palm trademark from the software company for USD 30 million, Palm trademark was own by PalmOne, then PalmOne rename as Palm again. Many people will say that Palm spend 30 million just to drop the 'One' from its name.

In year 2004, PalmSource introduce version 6 of its Palm OS Cobalt, but unfortunately it was not widely accepted and consider a fail. At the end of year 2004, PalmSource acquire China MobileSoft, a company developing mobile Linux. Palm OS is moving to Linux platform.

In year 2005, after the Palm name was bought back by the hardware company, PalmSource was acquired by ACCESS, a Japanese company which is popular for its embedded browser software, Netfront. PalmSource continue develop its new version of operating system base on Linux.

In year 2006, Palm (the hardware company) introduced a Treo smartphone version which using Microsoft Windows Mobile operating system. This surprised a lot of Palm users out there, Windows Mobile is a long time competitor of Palm, if using Windows Mobile is a success on Palm device, what is the future of PalmSource?

At the same time, most Palm device still running on Palm OS, which is own by ACCESS company. Other than Windows Mobile, Palm did venture into other solutions including Linux as the replacement of their current OS. This Linux solution is not the the same platform as ACCESS is developing. Speculate from Palm is hiring Linux engineer, Palm is developing their own Palm Linux OS. Both Palm and PalmSource is developing a Linux base OS, but could be heading to different direction.

The development of Linux OS doesn't seems to be successful for both company, Palm and ACCESS. At then end of year 2006, Palm decided to pay ACCESS USD 44 million to get the rights to the source code of Palm OS Garnet (version 5.0).

Palm use to write good software like the PIMS (Personal Information Software eg. Datebook, Contact...) and the synchronization software, but no more. They add more and more functions to their PIM software like graphic memo, which I don't use. Their new synchronization software give me more problems compare with the old one, deleted the category that I created manually and move everything to 'unfiled', convert the telephone number to xxx-xxx-xxxx format which I don't want. The palm desktop for Mac OS is much harder to use compare with the Windows version.

This is how I look at Palm and PalmSource company, they lack of vision and direction, doesn't know where they are heading to, try each and every available opportunities, but so far is not very successful. When Palm started in 1992, they are not creating the hardware or operating system, but on application software. Their first product--Zoomer is not so successful, but the application software-- Graffiti and HotSync is. When Palm sold off PalmSource to ACCESS, they seems like forgotten what they are good at.

In one way or another Palm is similar as Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.), both produce hardware and software, not many company is doing that, and most company did not success by making hardware and software. Palm is not the first one who create PDA, Apple is not the first company start making personal computer but both are very successful launching a good product that everyone likes it. Both have fanatic users. They are quite similar, just Palm has a harder way to go along the road than Apple.

New news system for web 2.0

Users are changing their habit on reading internet news. We used to visit CNN, BBC website for news, these are the traditional news website. I visit cnet to read technology news, but now I read google news. I only read news header from the google news, if I think the news are interested, I just click on the url, it will link me to the original news website. (RSS and mash up)

A lot of readers like slashdot, where users subscribe stories that may be interested to the others. Readers not just reading the news but discuss news in slashdot, exchange their ideas. News are not recommend by editor, but recommended by readers. (User community)

These days blogger write their own news (eg. Techcrunch), readers rate them. Website like digg, where readers subscribe hundreds of news everyday, is getting more popular. Readers read the news from digg before it link to the original post.

These are the trend in web 2.0 that you can't miss out. Editor has less control but users have more, with web 2.0, things change, don't just ignored.

a million dollar question

Why this software run so slow on this machine?

If your answer is, the hardware is too old, you should not continue reading this.

If you are still reading this, congratulation! The above question is not the million dollar question, you have to keep reading till the end for the million dollar question and answer.

The software is running slow because the software has performance issue.

The next question will be, how to improve the software performance?

This is the million dollar question.

There are many ways to solve it, upgrade the hardware is one of it. If one cpu can't perform, buy a two cpu machine. If money is not a problem, you can buy a Sun E10000 (e10k) computer which support up to 64 cpu.

E10k is a few years old product, I am sure they have a much better product now (check here). E10k is not my solution.

I don't like java and java script, because the performance is slow. Even today's hardware can boost up the software performance, but is not my prefer solution. That is the reason they invented Java Just In Time technology, with JIT, Java application can perform as good as a native application.

(Note: Java application was compile as byte code binaries, which need an interpreter environment to run it. Normally application which need an interpreter can't perform as good as the native application compile by C, C++ or the other computer language)

To bring down the cost of the hardware, some CPU was build without the floating point unit, it is common for embedded cpu. The drawback is, software which need extensive floating point calculation can't perform, eg. mpg123 for audio playback.

You are still able to bring down the hardware cost after added in the floating point unit in the hardware, but that's Intel's job, not for us. There are people invented algorithm which do the same job as mpg123, with integer calculation only, which is mpg321.

There is more than one answer for a million dollar question, is either cost you a million or save you a million. You just make your choice.

The new venture capitalist

For me, Google, Yahoo, and some other established web company are venture capitalist.

The story for a typical internet new startup company, get venture capitalist like Sequoia, later sell to Yahoo/Google like company, which have strong financial support and expanding their business.

Here are some of the recent news.

Yahoo may buy bebo, for one billion.

Yahoo buy Right Media, for $680M.

Google buy feedburner?, for $100 million.

Google invest in 23andMe, a bioinformatics startup founded by Sergey Brin's just married wife Anne Wojcicki.

Microsoft acquired aQuantive, for 6 billion.

AOL acquires Third Screen Media. Seems like these big players are competing in speed on acquire new startup company, and with a lot of money, so they are the new venture capitalist.

Reference:
Google vs. the venture capitalists

iGoogle name official

Google personalize page change the name to iGoogle.

I can't really remember what is the original name of Google personalize page, it always end with ig like this:

www.google.com/ig

I seldom access to Google personalize page, I believe a lot of people doesn't access Google personal page as well, because they like Google for its simplicity, not a page crowded with a lot of information.

iGoogle Screenshoot

Google's personalize page is a better and easier to use compare with Yahoo!'s personalize page, iGoogle is like netvibes.

iGoogle remind me of Apple Mac OS X's dashboard. I don't agree with the dashboard idea, or iGoogle or netvibes. Web application is popular because we can use the browser as a common platform access to web services. Dashboard is using a different client access to the same web services. Why don't we just launch a browser? People who like the dashboard idea, will still like it, same for iGoogle.

When a web services information can be displayed as a iGoogle module, it should work on PDA, right?

Google and Yahoo catch up

I always like to tell a story about Yahoo and Google, which I read from the internet. Larry Page (Google) once tried to sell their search technology to David Filo (Yahoo) for one million, but David Filo turn it down but encourage Larry Page to setup their own business.

Yahoo was using Google search engine from year 2000 to 2003, Yahoo always outsource their search engine to other company like Google and Inktomi, Yahoo focus on their portal business. You all should know what happen later, Google's search portal is getting more and more popular and become a treat to Yahoo. Yahoo drop Google search engine in year 2004.

Google and Yahoo just announce their first quarter financial result (here). Yahoo's revenue was $1.67 billion, less than half Google's $3.66 billion. Two years ago, the two company have almost the same revenue (refer to the cnet story here). Yahoo started three years earlier than Google, now Yahoo try very hard to catch up with Google.

Yahoo and Google are two very successful company, there are many company out there tried to be Yahoo and Google but fail. Yahoo started as a website directory, later transform to content portal and tried to be a media company. Google started as a search engine and focus on it. All Google services are build around their search and online advertisement business.

Yahoo is far behind from Google, in terms of revenue or profit figure, and user experience of their products (email, search engine ...), is time for Yahoo to work harder for a catch up.

Let's play with text

Do you know that, you can play mpeg video on text mode terminal?

Aalib (ascii art library) is an open source software library, render graphic and display in pure text (ascii) mode.

Is totally out of imagination, why people want to convert graphic to ascii text, especially for those windows users which never use dos before. There is a lot of reasons why people are doing this.

Reason 1: I only have daisy wheel printer. What is a daisy wheel printer (take a look at the picture here)? In the 80s, there is no such thing as laser printer (I mean normal people do not own such a printer), a laser printer may cost more than your desktop computer. The most commonly used printer is either dot matrix or daisy wheel printer. Most people will use a dot matrix (either 9 pin or 24 pin) printer because it can print both graphics and text, some people might prefer a daisy wheel printer for a better text output quality.

You can take daisy wheel printer as a type writer, which has a printer cable connected to your pc. Daisy wheel printer output a better text quality than your dot matrix printer, the down side is daisy wheel printer can't output graphics. With aalib (or similar graphic to ascii software), you can print graphics to a daisy wheel printer.

Reason 2: I am unix administrator. If you are a unix administrator, you might use a lot of telnet or only deal with a green color display dump terminal. With aalib you can view and manage your graphics (eg. gif or jpeg) files on your unix server with your text base terminal. Since you can view jpeg graphics, is should be easier for you to imagine, play mpeg video or video conferencing (streaming) on monochrome dump terminal is really possible.

display by aalib, move further to get a better view

The original portrait

Since aalib is an open source software library, I like to compile it myself. Aalib is well written, is easy to compile:

$ tar xzvfp aalib-1.4.0.tar.gz
(extract out the source code)
$ cd aalib-1.4.0
$ ./configure --prefix=/usr
$ make
$ make install
(if you know how to make software package like rpm or deb, you should install the rpm, other than install the library directly from the source)

aalib will link with the X windows library (strange right?), aalib use X Window terminal for ascii display by default, if it can't get a X Window display, it will use the dump terminal automatically.

$ aafire

To play video on terminal, you can try apron, but since MPlayer and xine support aalib, apron development is discontinued.

There are people who ported VGA library to aalib, so you can play Doom and Quake game on console terminal. You might be still thinking writing such a library like aalib is just a waste of time. As I told you, aalib is like a Mercedes smart fortwo, if is not applicable, is just for fun!