Saturday, November 14, 2020

The difference between TikTok and DouYin

DouYin (斗音) is a short-video sharing social media introduced by ByteDance in China in 2016. In mid-2017, ByteDance launched DouYin's international counterparts called TikTok.

Although both DouYin and TikTok are sharing the same app icon that looks like below, they are in fact completely separate app, with respective user base and content.


Initially, both of them looks similar in functionality. Just that, DouYin operates and serves in Mainland China, and TikTok operates and serves the rest of the world outside Mainland China.

You can find TikTok app in Apple App Store, Google Play Store, Amazon App StoreHuawei App Gallery, etc. but you can find DouYin app in those mobile apps marketplace.

To download and install DouYin, you can visit to DouYin official website and click on the respective download button there for iOS or Android.

DouYin is opened to users from all around the world, which you can register an account and verify your identity using a mobile number in your own country.

Over the times, DouYin and TikTok have been developing separately, and now also have quite a lot of differences in looks-and-feels as well as functionality.

The main difference between TikTok and DouYin is still their separated user base, which results in totally different content uploaded by the separated community.

The user interface and content in DouYin is in Chinese. You can find thousands of official account of Chinese celebrities there. Chinese singers are also using it as one of their channels to release and promote their songs.

There are several leaderboards in DouYin's search function, as shown below.


On the other hand, the user interface in TikTok is English, and the content can be multilingual. There is no leaderboards in TikTok's search function yet. In fact, you can find a list of trending hashtags there.



There is no issue for you to install both TikTok and DouYin in your phone, and register as user in both of the app separately. You just need to treat them as different apps sitting together in your phone.


Friday, November 13, 2020

Online free personality test to get accurate description of who you are and why you do things the way you do

Since the dawn of time, humans have drawn up schematics to describe and categorize our personalities. 


From the 4 temperaments of the ancient civilizations (sanguine, choleric, melancholic & phlegmatic) to the latest advances in psychology, we have been driven to fit the variables and complexities of human personality into well-defined models.

The 16Personalities website developed by a small group of enthusiastic researchers in Cambridge UK, NERIS Analytics Ltd, provides a free online personality testing tool for all of us to understand ourselves better just by answering a few questions and get a pretty detail result about our personality type, role (i.e. our goals, interests, and preferred activities) and strategy (i.e. our preferred ways of doing things and achieving goals).

The analytical model used is based on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), which in turn based on Carl Gustav Jung's theory of psychological types. It also incorporated frameworks from other renowned researchers, including Socionics, Keirsey Temperament Sorter, Linda Berens’ Interaction Styles, etc.

You can click here to visit the 16Personalities website and press on the Take the Test button there, to start your personality test and get your instant result report.

You will find yourself in one of the 4 roles of analysts, diplomats, sentinels, or explorers.


Each of the 4 roles is grouped by 4 personalities respectively. And each of the 16 personalities can be further analyzed into 2 different strategies. Therefore, there are altogether 32 strategies available in this model.


If you are curious about the statistical information of the personality of the people around the world which has taken this test, which can be further zoomed in to regional and country level, here is the link to show the big data result.





Sunday, October 18, 2020

Maxis officially supports Voice Over LTE (VoLTE) calls, finally

Among the major mobile carriers in Malaysia, Digi is the first mover in Voice over LTE (VoLTE) service, enabling voice calls, video calls and SMS to be handled through 4G LTE network since a few years ago, in 2016. UMobile had also followed suit in 2017.

Without VoLTE, only data is handled by 4G LTE. When the phone is calling out or receiving an incoming call while it is in 4G LTE network, it will need to temporary fall back to 3G network to handle the call, and revert back to 4G LTE network after the call hang up. The switching from 4G to 3G will take some times (can be as slow as a few seconds). You can experiment and feel the latency time by putting 2 phones together and make a call from one to another, then calculating how long you need to wait to pick up the call.

Celcom and Maxis are among the last to offer VoLTE service to their subscribers. Celcom has made available VoLTE service to selected iPhone models only in March 2020.

Now, Maxis finally also rolls out VoLTE to both Maxis postpaid and Hotlink postpaid subscribers who use selected iPhone and Android phones that support VoLTE function. Currently supported brands include iPhone, Huawei, Samsung, Xiaomi, Oppo, ZTE, and Vivo.


VoLTE enables much faster call connection, since both of the connecting phones no longer need to fall back to 3G network to establish the call.

The voice quality will also improved by making good use of LTE higher bandwidth. If the caller and recipient phones are both using VoLTE, the call can be established with High Definition (HD) voice quality.

When you are on VoLTE call, switching between voice and voice call is possible. Your Internet activities and data transfer also won't be affected during the call, unlike the previous GSM call that will pause your Internet activities during a call.

Note that your phone needs to be within the coverage of 4G LTE network in order to enjoy the benefit of using VoLTE. If the phone is connected with 3G network, its call will still be using the traditional GSM method.



Hint: Click on the "Older Posts" link to continue reading, or click here for a listing of all my past 3 months articles.