Archive for the ‘News Only’ Category
The biggest joke this year… goes to Ah Bian!
Ex Taiwan president, Ah Bian deserve the biggest joke of the year! Ridiculous! Shame of his family and those blind supporters who still support him after all evidence is uncovered! That’s Taiwan… 😦
Now… he’s out on bail!!! Come on… get ready to see him disappear!!!
Windows 7 Feature List…
Here’s a great summary list of Windows 7 feature list from Paul Thurrott SuperSite for Windows… I am been using Windows 7 on my home machine and laptop for the last 4 days now and it’s been pleasantly surprising to me how stable and better it is compare to Vista SP1. Granted, there are still some issue since this is pre-beta build like the sleep feature on the laptop does not work and the Aero glass has some quirks in it from time to time (turning to black color bar instead, though still with Aero on)… The rest of the new features, particular Libraries… I just love it!
Can’t wait for the actual beta release early next year…
Singapore iPhone 3G price plans is out!!!
Singapore iPhone 3G price plans is out!!!
Man… that is expensive… but it will sell well despite that.
(sorry for the lack of updates lately… been swamped with work plus Olympics does not help! 🙂 )
Skeptical as it is, being a controlled environment, Vista’s been good to me
I have been on Vista since Beta 2 days and till today. from AMD x2 to Intel Quad (DIY built, as always… Never own any branded PC in my entire life) now to all sorts of motherboards and graphic cards and RAMs… Vista has been nice to me, with no hardware drivers issue but only software compatibilities in the early days.
They are all modern stuff (less than 2 years old) and of course the experience with Vista ought to be all right. My short statement of Vista is simply this, ‘It’s the best Windows operating system ever, the most secure, the more elegant… and it’s still a Windows after all’ I won’t even be bullish to claim it is the BEST Operating System out there… cos that really depends on what you measure.
Vista will run fine on modern machine! Linux fanatics will brag about their five year old machine running modern Linux OS fine and blah blah… Tell that to Apple OSX! But OSX won’t run well with old machine and needs, just like Vista a modern machine… Why? Cos it got all the bells and whistles on top of the core OS stuff… and THAT is exactly what bogs Vista down on a less than modern machine.
The software issue are more of less fixed by now after Service Pack 1… just like XP days as well. The delays and the over promised under delivered feature stuff, in my opinion has been what kills Vista before it even open its gate to showcase. Negative press after another on that… just sank the whole thing and Microsoft did nothing.
I for one thought that Microsoft management were noble enough not to retaliate like the Coke – Pepsi ads in the 80s and 90s… there is just no end. I don’t know if that was part of the reason of not retaliating or simply too ashamed to speak up. :)
Here’s a recent campaign from Microsoft to finally, turn the marketing pitch on Vista up another notch. After almost 2 years of bashing… It’s finally time! What took them so long? 🙂
Microsoft Live Wave 3… coming
According to a discussion with a friend in the localisation (translation of content to localised language) industry whom is in charge of Microsoft account, that there’s some exciting stuff coming this year end of the Live initiative front! I asked him what is that all about as they are already localising the contents (help, menu…) but he refused to disclose due to NDA, which is very respectable.
That only left me to speculate what could possibly be coming from the new Live stuff?
Guess this might be the only clue I know for now…
Could this be true?
A little trick and the truth about Vista came out?
It’s all in the perception… and Microsoft certainly did nothing in the last 18 months… simply because Vista and its’ compatibilities & drivers issue are real. Since SP1, things have changed.
Have fun with Vista!
Technologies behind Google Ranking…
Following up with a previous article from Google on Google Ranking Explained… we now have the so called part 2 of it which talks about the technologies behind Google Ranking. Not a must read for anyone in the online digital space as understanding the technologies behind does not necessary gives you any advantage to ‘fool’ or ‘trick’ the system… but it’s just amazing to see many of the academia stuff are making head ways into commercialisation. Google being heavily on that, recruiting professors and top scholars out of universities… Microsoft with it’s Research arm… The explosion & speed to market is getting more crucial in this day and age. Not necessary the first mover advantage but how to do the same thing, better. Google was never the first in online search… Alta Vista, Yahoo were some of the earlier pioneers… but Google with a ‘better’ system just came from the back and took over.
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In my previous post, I introduced the philosophies behind Google ranking. As part of our effort to discuss search quality, I want to tell you more about the technologies behind our ranking. The core technology in our ranking system comes from the academic field of Information Retrieval (IR). The IR community has studied search for almost 50 years. It uses statistical signals of word salience, like word frequency, to rank pages. (See "Modern Information Retrieval: A Brief Overview" for a quick overview of IR technology.) IR gave us a solid foundation, and we have built a tremendous system on top using links, page structure, and many other such innovations.
Search in the last decade has moved from give me what I said to give me what I want. User expectations from search have rightly increased. We work hard to fulfil the expectations of each and every user, and to do that we need to better understand the pages, the queries, and our users. Over the last decade we have pushed the technologies for understanding these three components (of the search process) to completely new dimensions.
When we talk about queries at Google, we use square brackets [ ] to mark the beginning and end of queries (see "How to write queries" by Matt Cutts), a notation I will use throughout this post. (Pages and search results change frequently, so in time, some examples used here may not behave as explained.)
- Understanding pages: Over years we have invested heavily in our crawl and indexing system. As a result we have a very large and very fresh index. In addition to size and freshness, we have improved our index in other ways. One of the key technologies we have developed to understand pages is associating important concepts to a page even when they are not obvious on the page. We find the official homepage for Sprovieri Gallery in London for the Italian query [galleria sprovieri londra], even though the official page does not have either London or Londra on it. In the U.S., a user searching for [cool tech pc vancouver, wa] finds the homepage www.cooltechpc.com even though the page does not mention anywhere that they are in Vancouver, WA. Other technologies we have developed include distinctions between important and less important words in the page and the freshness of the information on the page.
…
I hope my two posts about Google ranking have made it clear that we live and breathe search, and we are more passionate than ever about it. Our fervor for serving all our users worldwide is unprecedented. We pride ourselves in running a very good ranking system, and are working incredibly hard every day to make it even better.
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Time to replace your Internet Explorer on Windows Mobile… with Opera Mobile 9.5
To all Windows Mobile user out there… it’s time enhance your mobile browsing experience, not by replacing your device and get an iPhone but install Opera Mobile 9.5 Beta!!!
Have fun!
Former head of Ren Ci Hospital, Ven Shi Ming Yi, charged in court
Singapore news…
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Former head of Ren Ci Hospital, the Venerable Shi Ming Yi has been charged with alleged forgery, conspiracy and misuse of funds.
Venerable Ming Yi, who was also the former Ren Ci chairman, was slapped with 10 charges on Tuesday morning.
The monk faces four charges under the Penal Code involving two counts of alleged criminal breach of trust. He also faces one count of alleged forgery for the purpose of cheating and one count of abetment for allegedly falsifying accounts.
He also faces six charges under the Charities Act for allegedly providing false information.
Two of his associates, Raymond Yeung and Phua Seow Hua, were also alleged to have gone into conspiracy with the Venerable and were also charged in court on Tuesday.
Separately, a volunteer from Ren Ci was charged with allegedly possessing some 70 copies of obscene film.
Venerable Ming Yi, also known as Goh Kah Heng, is out on a S$200,000 bail. His case will be heard in court on August 4.
…
“
The rest of the article can be found on Channel News Asia.
This is the guy that always get most attention on many charities by taking on challenging stunts and has always been very well respected in Singapore community… Now, this!!! This is probably the results of the tightening rules & policies & auditing needed after the NKF incident…
Let more be exposed…
The biggest news last week & this week… iPhone App Store & iPhone 2.0
Check out Ars in depth review of the iPhone 3G.
Their conclusion:
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The $199 (or $299, or $399, or $499) question is: is it worth it? As usual, the answer is "it depends." If you’re using some old, crappy cell phone, you’re looking for something new, and you’re not allergic to AT&T, then go for it. Do it now. Well, maybe wait until the lines subside.
If you’ve got a smartphone for personal use—iPhone or otherwise—then the answer depends on how much you value the new features. Are 3G, the louder speaker, and GPS worth at least $200 plus $10 more per month for two years? Remember that you can get the iPhone 2.0 firmware and the App Store on an older iPhone as well. For us reviewers who are using the iPhone 3G as a personal phone, we feel happy with the decision to purchase it. Sure, it’s not a religious experience, but we’re definitely satisfied. If you want to wait and see what comes out of Apple in another six months to a year, however, there’s no huge reason not to do so.
If you’re a business user, then we feel the answer is no, it’s not worth it. The original iPhone was not made to be an enterprise device, and the new iPhone isn’t either. Although some baby steps have been made, BlackBerry users will find themselves frustrated with the lack of complete Exchange support and may even end up returning their devices, or at least carrying an iPhone alongside a BlackBerry. We already know several who have done this, and it will happen to many more.
Although we have dropped numerical scores from our product reviews, we feel the need to enumerate the iPhone 3G in comparison to our original iPhone score. A year ago, we gave the iPhone an 8 overall (with significant caveats based on personal use). The original iPhone was truly an innovation in the mobile space and it has most certainly shaken things up over the last 12 months. The iPhone 3G is being marketed not only as a faster device, however, but as a business-capable device as well. So, not only is it being compared to the original iPhone, it is being compared more heavily to its competitors in the smartphone space than its predecessors. Because of this, we at Ars have agreed that the new device deserves a 6. It’s great as a consumer device, but with enterprise users’ expectations having been raised this time around, we feel it still has quite a ways to go.
The good:
- Data speeds are faster (duh)
- External speaker is louder, better
- Third-party apps, finally
- Screen still virtually unscratchable
The bad:
- For most casual users, battery gets sapped quicker thanks to 3G chip, power-sucking apps
- Still locked to AT&T and still requires a new two-year contract (US-only. Contracts in other countries vary.)
- Plastic back means potential for scratch city
The ugly:
- In-store activation requirements crud up the previously-smooth process, Apple caves to the broken mobile system (at least in the US)
- Battery life, combined with non-user-replaceable battery, make for an ugly situation for road warriors
- Not yet fit for serious business users, as Exchange support is pretty weak
…
“
After Picasa, Windows Live Photo Gallery… here comes Pictomio!
Check out this new free image organizer, Pictomio! Now you can add cover flow style to your gallery viewing!
Here are the excerpt on the features:
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Image Management
Conveniently mange entire photo libraries and archives with several thousand images. When managing photos, browse directories on your hard drives or add photos to a virtual photo album by using drag-and-drop.
Library
Use the library to sort your photos by date, rating or category.
Create albums and sub-albums
The main internal difference between albums and categories in Pictomio is the fact that albums can be nested, that means an album can have sub-albums. Use the "Add Folder" button when an album is selected in the library tree view to add a sub-album or just create new albums.
Smooth Image Browsing
Use the scroll-bar or the mouse-wheel to scroll the thumbnail view (in grid or filmstrip mode) to take advantage of the smooth scrolling function which is much smoother than in most other applications.
Liquid-Zoom
Smooth high-quality zooming, utilizing mip levels to reduce aliasing, allows you to continuously zoom into your photos. You can also disable bilinear filtering to view every pixel of your photos.
3D Image Carousel
Scroll through your photos quickly and easily by flipping through the 3D image carousel. Use your mouse to specify the direction in which you want your photos to move.
Exif-Editor
The integrated Exif editor allows you to view, edit, and save meta data associated with JPEG files.
Browse database by image information (EXIF value)
You can browse for images by their EXIF meta tags in the Library. For example you can easily select all images that where taken with a certain camera model or at a certain shutter speed.
Image Rating
While you are viewing your photos, you can use a dynamic toolbar to access all of the main software functions. The rating system uses stars, which makes rating your photos quick and easy.
Tools
Web designers can utilize the color pipette and the measuring tool to determine the color values of pixels and precisely measure any section of a photo.
Slideshows
Pictomio makes it easy to create slideshows simply by using the drag-and-drop option. Elaborate transitions are now available with Pictomio by utilizing the capabilities of modern 3D graphics cards.
Tagging support
An arbitrary number of tags can be attached to individual pixel positions or to an image as whole.
Search functionality
You can enter search terms in the search box at the top right of the Pictomio main window. The text you enter is searched for in several attributes of the image files, e.g. filename, tags, categories, albums, description etc.
Video & audio-playback
Simple video and audio-files can be played in the zoom-view and in the carrousel view (even with a mirror-effect on the virtual floor).
Image information collapsible window
A collapsible window in the main window shows the most important information about an image and lets you consistently change rating, annotation, categories and global image tags from one central place in the application.
Start external applications to edit an image
You can start your image editing programms that are registered for its file-type. Click with the right mouse button on an image and select "Open with.. “(choose your editing programm) from the context-menu that appears.
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Just installed it and it does look sleek… more sleek than Picasa and Windows Live Photo Gallery which by the way is excellent. I would use Picasa for uploading to my online Picasa account while my default photo viewer on my Vista machine is Live Photo Gallery. Now with Pictomio, I will have to try it out… to see if it is useful enough for me to make it my default image viewer. It does seem like there’s a huge community around it and improvements should be very accelerated.
Everything is hardware accelerated!!! Cool!
Good Deals. Good Ideas. Good Designs. Good Health. 