Hanxue and IT

Tribute to Steve Jobs, Visionary of Computing World

2011-10-06T08:52:00.000-07:00

Steve Jobs passed away at the age of 56 on October 5th, 2011. One of the greatest luminaries in the computing world, he brought us the Macintosh II, iMac, iPod, iPhone and most recently the iPad. A vast number of must have gadgets started out from One Infinite Loop, with Steve's vision and leadership.

Even if you are not a fan of Apple products, like myself, we can all agree that Apple products are in a class of its own. Very rarely does other products able to rival the elegance and naturalness of Apple's gadgets. More than creating great products, Steve also inspire us to dare to dream and follow through on it.

Stay hungry, stay foolish

One of the most popular quotes by Steve - do zou remember when a PC means a beige box? When music sharing online were threatened by RIAA and the music studios? How impossible it is to move beyond the desktop/laptop into smaller, more user-friendly devices? With one sweep of his hands, Steve manage to revolutionize the whole industry.

Listening to Steve's inspiring speech during the 2005 Stanford Commencement Address

Here's to the crazy ones.
The misfits.
The rebels.
The troublemakers.
The round pegs in the square holes.
The ones who see things differently.

They're not fond of rules.
And they have no respect for the status quo.

You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them,
disbelieve them, glorify them or vilify them.
About the only thing you can't do is ignore them.

Because they change things.
They invent. They imagine. They heal.
They explore. They create. They inspire.
They push the human race forward.
Maybe they have to be crazy.
How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art?
Or sit in silence and hear a song that's never been written?
Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels?
We make tools for these kinds of people.
Because while some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius.
And it's the people who are crazy enough to think they can
change the world who actually do.

Test

Google Analytics Update - Increase Your Website's Effectiveness

2011-09-11T10:13:00.000-07:00

Recently Google Analytics has had a major upgrade to v5. Some of the new features, as well as demonstration of how to effectively use Google Analytics is covered today at Go Measure in Malaysia.

These are some of the notes I have taken at the event.

First off, you need to activate the new features by clicking on

Instead of the drop-down list of all your sites, you will see a much cleaner interface of all Google Analytics profile at the home page. Accessing the dashboard for each of the site is as easy as clicking on any of your tracked site.

The main features in Google Analytics such as Reports, Intelligence, Goals, E-Commerce and Multi-Channel Funnels are just one-click away at the top navigation bar. There is much more focus on what you are trying to achieve with Google Analytics, rather than focusing on just plain statistics. So less about visitors, content and traffic sources, but more about assists and conversions.

Measurement

“Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted”
Albert Einstein

Go Measure Keynote: Rethinking Measurement and Attribubtion

When you build your website, you care a lot about the overall theme, photos that you use, font type and all the little details to project your brand. Most people hire a professional web designer to create their websites. Once the website is launched, is that the end of the story?

Certainly not. Unless you are assuming that the website is already perfect, and will automatically get new customers, and ensure all existing customers stay loyal. You will not know how website visitors got to your website, what pages they browse and how many of them actually make a transaction if you do not measure.

The core concept of Google Analytics is to gain Insight into the current visitor's behaviour, and then take Actions to attain your website's Goals.

Go measure 2011 - URL Tagging & Campaign Variables

Goals

If you don't know where you are going. How can you expect to get there? - Basil S. Walsh

Defining & Measuring Goals

Similar to an organization, a website also have goals. Without a goal, a website is simply one of those random, "me-too" collection of HTML pages.

Do you remember the Geocities, Tripod and AngelFire homepages in the '90s?

Surely you will want to design your website to achieve certain goals such as strengthening your brand, increasing loyalty among existing customers or converting visitors to customers and closing sales.

The example in the slides above shows that Brazil has the 3rd highest number of visitors. But if you look at the conversion rate, Brazil is not even in the top 10! This is the type of valuable insight that Google Analytics gives you, and you can turn into some actions such as:

Creating Portuguese version of the website
Find out and use the most popular online transaction method in Brazil, etc

Assists

A typical activity flow shows a user clicks on an advertisement, and provided that the landing page is attractive enough, there will be a conversion. In reality, there are many assists before conversion (>10 is normal).

The new Google Analytics now has much more focus on goals, and how to link your goals to actual conversions.

Take for instance Amari's advertisement campaign for their hotels in Thailand. The results from Google Analytics shows that there are a lot of click-throughs from Google Adwords, which brings the user to a typical landing page with a very clear call-to-action and minimal information.

This tactic does not result in much conversion, show that the current landing page is not effective. Amari was courageous enough to increase the amount of information on the landing page, such as details of the hotel room and services available. The result: 44% increase in conversion rate in one month.

This Mckinsey's model of Consumer Decision Journey captures the full life-cycle of a customer making purchases. To learn more, head over to the full article including interaction diagram at Mckinsey's website.

Social Networks

We have heard about the phenomenal growth of social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Google+, and how much these networks shape the behaviour of Internet users. No web campaign is complete without taking into account the approach for social networks, as well as measuring the Return on Investment.

Google Analytics now provide a one-stop solution with a single view of your campaign in other advertisement as well as social networks.

Are there any product listing pages on e-commerce websites without a "Share on Facebook / Twitter / Google +1" button? Blogs, including this one, and news websites have been effectively using the link sharing ability of social network to increase the trustworthiness of their content as well as loyalty among users.

Measuring Social using Google Analytics

Using the social plugin in Google Analytics is as easy as adding an additional line of Javascript code

_trackSocial(network, action, target_url);

In fact, if you are using Google's +1 button, no setup is necessary.

A good example is MilkADeal.com using Facebook's Like button, Facebook's share (a URL), Google's +1 button and share via email. Facebook being the most popular social network, especially in Malaysia, we can logically expect Facebook Like / Send to have the most users as well as highest conversion

What's surprising is email conversion is 40%, compared to Facebook Like's 27%. Having known this fact, MilkADeal.com can then make email sharing more prominent.

The best source to learn more about Google Analytics is at Conversion University. The slides are very well: see for example the lesson on Campaign Tracking and AdWords Integration.

Learn more about Google Analytics at http://www.google.com/analytics/education.html

Check your about.me email in Gmail

2011-09-10T11:36:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, about.me made personalized email address publicly available. Instead of having to manage yet another email address, why not consolidate it with your existing Gmail account? Note that your about.me email is actually AOL mail.

There used to be an option to enable forwarding of all emails to another address in AOL mail. Although mail forwarding is no longer available, you still can access your about.me email from Gmail via POP or IMAP.

This is AOL mail's IMAP and POP settings

IMAP Setup Information

Email Address: <your_username>@about.me
IMAP Username: <your_username>@about.me
SMTP Username: <your_username>@about.me

SMTP Password: same as used to login to Mail
imap.aol.com (Use port 143 for standard or 993 for SSL connections)
pop.aol.com (Use port 110 for standard or 995 for SSL connections)
smtp.aol.com Set the port to 587

Within Gmail, click on the Settings icon on the top right corner, and select Mail settings. Next, in the Import mail and settings section, click on Import mail and contacts

In the pop-up window, type in your about.me email address and click Continue.

Key in the password

If it does not work, you may have to specify the pop server to pop.aol.com instead of pop.about.me

Once Gmail is able to connect to the AOL about.me mail server, you can now create a new label (for example: about.me) and choose to leave a copy of the email on the server

There you go - your about.me email accessible from your Gmail inbox

Personalized about.me email address

2011-09-10T10:41:00.000-07:00

about.me is now offering personal email address, in the form of user@about.me

If you are an existing about.me user, you may have received an email today for you to sign up for a personalized email address.

You can also sign up manually by going to http://about.me/dashboard/#!/offers, and you should see an offer for a free email address

Click on the "Claim Your Free Email Address" button, fill in your date of birth, and you will get your email address. Do take a quick look at the Privacy Policy as well as the Terms of Service. They are pretty standard as far as I can see, and even allow you to opt out of interested-based advertisement.

about.me is owned by AOL, so what you will get is AOL mail.

If you like to, you can check your about.me email at http://mail.aol.com/, using your about.me logon email address and password.

How to move your Gmail signature above quoted text

2011-09-10T00:17:00.003-07:00

By default, Gmail's auto-signature will post the signature at the end of the email, even if you are replying to an existing email with long, quoted text.

If you are like me and tend to reply above the quoted text, you may find it annoying to keep cutting and pasting the signature from the bottom of the email to the top.

There is actually a Gmail feature that can automatically move your signature to the top of quoted text by default. Click on the settings icon on the top left corner of Gmail, and click on Labs.

Search for this feature called Signature Tweaks, and when you have found it, enable it.

Remember to Save Changes before going back to your Inbox. Now, when you reply to an email, your signature will be automatically on top.

Get more information on your goo.gl URL

2011-09-06T21:45:00.000-07:00

When I started using goo.gl, I was surprised why statistics for older URLs went missing. Turns out that by default the goo.gl Dashboard shows only the statistics for the last week by default. Here you can see that goo.gl shows very few clicks

One of the URL has 0 clicks, which I know to be wrong because I always click on then short goo.gl link as soon as I created it to make sure its working.

If you notice on the top right corner, goo.gl Dashbord view defaults to last week's statistics. Click on all time and you will see the updated statistics.

Detailed Statistics for Short URL
Similar to bit.ly, you can easily view the statistics of the Short URL by appending a '+' character to the end of the URL. For example, the statistics for http://goo.gl/LiFgI is available at http://goo.gl/LiFgI+

Another way is to use the URL http://goo.gl/info/LiFgI. To filter the statistics by period of time, use http://goo.gl/info/LiFgI#all_time, http://goo.gl/info/LiFgI#month, http://goo.gl/info/LiFgI#week or http://goo.gl/info/LiFgI#day

QR code for your Short URL
You can get the QR code by appending '.qr' at the end of your goo.gl Short URL. For example, http://goo.gl/LiFgI.qr

Notice that when you type in this URL into your browser's location bar, it will expand to http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=qr&chs=150x150&choe=UTF-8&chld=H&chl=http://goo.gl/LiFgI

You can change the size of the generated QR image by changing the chs parameter. For example, to generate a 300px x 300px image, use the URL

http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=qr&chs=300x300&choe=UTF-8&chld=H&chl=http://goo.gl/LiFgI

The maximum allowed size of generated QR image is 1000x1000 pixels.

Adding Facebook Like Box to Google Sites

2011-09-04T21:25:00.000-07:00

To build up a cohesive presence on the web, you will naturally want to cross-promote all of your web presence. Especially when you have a website, but also want to connect to customers via Facebook.

Facebook have a useful tool to generate an embed-able iframe for the Like Box.

Unfortunately, Google Sites does not allow you to embed any code, or use CSS directly. The workaround is to use the Code Wrapper Google Gadget to embed iFrame.

Embedding Facebook Like Box in iGoogle

This section shows you how to add the Facebook Like Box into your iGoogle page at http://www.google.com/ig Feel free to skip to the next section

If you wish to test it first, go to http://www.google.com/ig/directory?dpos=top&root=/ig&url=hosting.gmodules.com/ig/gadgets/file/105629041657992777031/code-wrapper.xml and click on Add It Now

Now click on Back to iGoogle home. In the embed code text box, key in the full iFrame url. For example:

<iframe src="http://www.facebook.com/plugins/likebox.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fpages%2Fi-Renocom%2F116267735141293&width=250&colorscheme=light&show_faces=true&border_color&stream=true&header=true&height=250" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" style="border:none; overflow:hidden; width:250px; height:250px;" allowTransparency="true"></iframe>>

You can tweak the box's dimension and colors. For example, to change the width and height to 250 x 250

&width=250&colorscheme=light&show_faces=true&border_color&stream=true&header=true&height=250

You should see something like this:

Adding Like Box to your Google Site page

Sign in with your Google (or Google Apps) account, and browse to the page you wish to embed the Facebook Like Box. Start by clicking on Edit Page. The webpage is now in Edit mode. At the top left navigation bar, click on Insert > More gadgets... . Type in "Code Wrapper" in the search box, and select the Code Wrapper gadget.

You will see a short description as well as the hosting URL. Click on Select to proceed.

Type in the Embed Code you get from Facebook earlier. You may want to adjust for height and width, for example 250 x 250

<iframe src="http://www.facebook.com/plugins/likebox.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fpages%2Fi-Renocom%2F116267735141293&width=250&colorscheme=light&show_faces=true&border_color&stream=true&header=true&height=250" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" style="border:none; overflow:hidden; width:250px; height:250px;" allowTransparency="true"></iframe>

Remember to change the width and height settings of the gadget if you have changed the Facebook Like Box's URL.

Note that the Facebook Like Box already has a title bar with the text "Find us on Facebook". Unless you have something unique to add, a generic Gadget title such as "Check us out in Facebook" is redundant. I recommend you leave it blank.

Click on Preview gadget if you want to see how it looks like before adding to your page. Once you are satisfied, click OK.

Turn on Text Wrap and change the Alignment if you need to. Once you save your page, the update will take effect immediately.

This is how the Facebook Like Box will look like.

Move a Google Site to another domain

2011-08-25T04:30:00.000-07:00

Image via WikipediaGoogle Sites is the fastest, cheapest (Free!) and one of the most powerful service you can use to host your business web presence. In this article, I will go through a scenario where you have a Google Site hosted on one domain, and wish to move it to another domain.

If you prefer text only, direct instructions, Steegle.com has an excellent article.

In this example, I will show you a website I host at the domain elegant-solutions.com, and moving it to another domain i-reno.

You will need to add the owner of the new site's email address to your contacts. Otherwise you will get this error "You cannot transfer ownership to jibby@i-reno.com. Owners must have a Google Account."

Go to http://contacts.google.com and add in the contact.

Next, navigate to the URL of the Google Site you wish to move, then use the shortcut key g then m. Alternatively, click on More Actions on the top right corner, and then click on Manage site.

On the left hand navigation panel, under Site Settings, click on General. Scroll down until you can see change who can access this site.

In the Add people box, type in the email address for a user from the target domain you wish to transfer to. Set the role to is owner.

Now the user from i-reno.com domain will be listed to have full control of the site.

Next, sign in with the account used to manage your i-reno.com domain. Go to Manage Site again, and on the left navigation bar click on Site Settings -> General. Scroll to the bottom and click on Copy this Site

Now give it a new name and web address (URL). Don't see an option for http://.domain.com ? Don't worry, we will get there shortly.

Go to your Google Apps Dashboard, and navigate to Settings -> Services -> Sites. Under Site Settings, click on the Web Address Mapping tab. This page is accessible using the URL https://www.google.com/a/cpanel//SetupWizard#ServiceSettings/service=sites&subtab=1

Click on Add a new web address

Type in the full http://sites.google.com/a/// URL, as well as the desired sub-domain. In this example, I wish to map http://sites.google.com/a/i-reno.com/reno-beta/ to http://reno.i-reno.com/

Address Book wherever you go

2011-08-25T01:50:00.000-07:00

Remember the days when you use a Rolodex to organize all your contacts? Perhaps you store your business cards in an organizer, exchange emails and save them in your email provider's address book, and have another spreadsheet containing important contacts. Why bother with all the fuss when you can have your address book accessible everywhere?

If you own an Android phone, link your Contacts on the phone with your Google account. Here's an example: after meeting Steve Jobs at a press conference, I go to Google Contacts and save his contact details.

Now when I want to give Steve a call, I just go to my list of Contacts on my phone, and I will see Steve's details.

If you are too busy to key in the details from your business cards, use a service such as Shoeboxed.com or Cloud Contacts.

The Life of a Web Designer is Great... or Not!

2011-08-18T21:12:00.000-07:00

So you think the life of a web designer is great? Just have to get your creative juice flowing, do some fancy designs with CSS, HTML and Javascript, use an effective layout and bam, you have created a kick-ass website for your client and their customers to drool over. Right?

Think again. Let's say your client has a godawful design straight from the 1990s. You ask 'em about their business, what are their target clients, and come up with a beautiful mock up.

Fantastic! Now the client wants to add more colour, cute kitty, some "thoughts from his dog who means a lot to his life". And then some more. So here's the "polished" version.

Weeeeeeeee!

You either think

Just clench my teeth. Hey, I need to put food on the table.

F**k You, Pay Me!

Get a decent job with an anonymous Big Company.

Your choice, but sure is one heck of a ride!

Read more of the journey from Heaven to Hell at http://theoatmeal.com/comics/design_hell. Shared by Jason.

Is there a bandwidth limit for Google Sites?

2011-08-17T07:27:00.000-07:00

Latest Update: Google is aware of the problem and currently fixing it http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/sites/thread?tid=22b37829037bef0e&hl=en

I was about to update my Google Sites page at http://sites.google.com when I see this error

Image via CrunchBaseIn Google Sites' help area, the only limit that is published seems to be the total Google Sites storage limit of 100MB.

A little bit of digging shows this help article http://www.google.com/support/sites/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=115255, quoting it verbatim:

If you receive the error message "Bandwidth limited exceeded" it means that your site has drawn a lot of traffic, exceeding the limit that we allow for Sites.

Currently we are not sharing the bandwidth limits for Sites

Once the web traffic to the site in question has lessened enough to bring it below our limits, the notice will vanish and your site will once again be viewable.

I am hazarding a guess that Google uses the App Engine's free quota, with a 1GB/daily and 56 MB/minute limit. Google should do a better job of publishing this information though.

What's odd is when I go to the Google Sites Contact Support page, there is no option to actually submit a request to Google.

What can we help you with?

Our goal is to help you get the fastest answer to your question. Here's how you can find what you're looking for:

Easier way needed to add appointment to Google Calendar

2011-08-09T11:28:00.000-07:00

Let's say somebody send you a meeting invite with all the details in a iCalendar (.ics) file. You would expect Gmail to be smart enough to allow you to automatically add the appointment to Google Calendar right?

Especially when Gmail is smart enough to parse the body of the email, to determine if it is a potential meeting invite.

If it does look like a meeting or appointment, Gmail will provide a link on the right to create a new appointment.

If the email sender attach an .ics file, wouldn't that make Gmail's job easier? Unfortunately, Gmail does not seem to understand .ics file. You can only download it, but there is no option to add the appointment to Google Calender. How odd, when both products come from the same stable.

I have added the words "Add to Calendar" to show how it can be more intuitive.

In fact, someone emails you an appointment/meeting request directly from Outlook or another email client, Gmail seems to perfectly understand it, automatically blocking your calendar and allowing you to respond by Yes / Maybe / No.

Why not parsing the ICS file and offering a similar option? Google?

Another pain is when a meeting invitation is sent with a link to download the ICS file. So you try to add the appointment to Google Calendar by the URL.

Paste in the given URL and click Add Calendar. Should work right?

Nope, not for Google Calendar. You will get an error message.

The only option is to download the .ics file, and then manually import it to Google Calendar. So much so for Internet based product.

I know a lot of friends and colleagues who stay with Microsoft Outlook/Exchange because it simply works, and covers most of the real world situation.Take a look at a meeting invitation sent to your Inbox. Outlook automatically detects that it is a meeting invite and display it differently, with options to accept the meeting, propose a new time, etc.

Once you accept it, the meeting will appear automatically in your Calendar, all in a single application. One-click, and a meeting is confirmed.

Email, Calendar, Instant Message, they should all be made to work seamlessly and have Unified Communications. Microsoft has the first suite of Unified Communications applications in the form of Outlook 2007 (and Exchange of course) and Office Communication Server 2007. As much as I like Google's innovations and generally ease-of-use, they are still way behind what Microsoft offers in Outlook 2010 / Lync Server.

The ball is in your court, Google.

Using Google Tasks to organize your life

2011-08-07T01:21:00.000-07:00

There are a number of planning tools and personal organizer online, and some of the good ones either have a freemium model or pay-only. For example, I have been using Remember The Milk for a few years now. Some of the really useful features, such as Android app and sync to Microsoft Outlook will cost $25 per year.

Why bother with paid options and having to use yet another tool, when you can use Google Tasks for free? The most beneficial bit is having Google Tasks integrate directly with Gmail.

When you log on to Gmail, click on Tasks on the left navigation bar. You will get a Task List appearing as a pop up window in the same page.

Whilst it is handy if Gmail is your primary email provider, or if you log in to Gmail frequently, it gets a bit distracting to have to sign in to Gmail all the time to look at your tasks. If you want to only see your tasks online, go to gTasker. You will see only your tasks in a full page view, and you can even adjust the number of columns to match the lists you have created within Google Tasks.

Now that the API is released, hopefully someone can hack up a desktop application where Google Tasks is available offline.

To learn more about Google Tasks, click here.

NetSurveyor - handy utility to view wireless networks

2011-08-04T14:20:00.000-07:00

I was at a friend's house and had difficulty to connect to his wireless network. A quick search brought me to http://www.nutsaboutnets.com/ , creator of various WiFi analyzing software. Specifically NetSurveyor is useful to list out all available Wireless networks, their settings as well as channels.

Take a look at the following output

If the network you are trying to connect to is in the same channel with many other wireless networks, considering changing it to a quieter channel. For further troubleshooting, you may want to use a wireless sprectrum analyzer software.

You can download NetSurveyor directly from https://nutsaboutnets-downloads.s3.amazonaws.com/NetSurveyor-Setup.exe

How to advertise on Twitter without spamming

2011-08-04T14:10:00.000-07:00

Spammed in Twitter

I was just sharing a discount coupon for Namecheap. On a side note, I realize a lot of my friends use GoDaddy. I have written before on why GoDaddy's business model is not sustainable, and the renewal fee is high. Easy to sign up, but difficult to switch to another provider.

So yes, my tweet elicited an almost immediate response which turned out to be spam.

In case you receive spam tweets, you can report it via Twitter's interface. Read more at https://support.twitter.com/entries/64986-how-to-report-spam-on-twitter Most Twitter apps, such as Seesmic, also has built option to report spam.

How to Advertise without Spamming

Around 2008, advertisers realize they can hack the Twitter firehose, by searching for keywords and immediately advertise their product/services in reply to a tweet. Spam has arrived in Twitterland.

How to be effective in advertising in Twitter without resorting to spamming? Social media marketing is not that different from brick-and-mortar marketing, really. The only differences is the fact that the reach and responsiveness requires the marketer to be very responsive. There are some differences such as a shorter attention span, and consumers seeking relevant information. Nothing radical as we see these differences as we move between different mediums such as printed press, radio and television.

Social graph - the really powerful part of Social Network is the word "Social". As a marketer, you can tap into the connections between people, to add weight to your message. Instead of reaching out directly to all potential leads, built upon the goodwill from existing customers, and have them recommend your products or services. This element of trust will increase the likelihood of the message recipient making a purchase.

As a consumer, what do you like to see on social network?

Useful, relevant information. Provide useful tips, links to articles and how-to pages that will help make the customer's life better.

Ask a question. Unlike printed media or television, you can ask, and expect to receive instant replies on Twitter. That is how you increase engagement and increase trust.

Send exclusive, time-limited offers. Forget Groupon. Why not use Twitter as your own Daily Deal channel?

Be responsive to your followers. Answer their questions. Provide relevant suggestions. Let them know that there is a real person behind the Twitter handle.

Avoid over-promoting. Simply by engaging your Twitter followers and building up a large following, you are already promoting your brand. Make sure the Twitter account's bio contains link to your website, or better yet a landing page with an effective call to action.

Use hashtag - make yourself discoverable.

Be consistent - Stay on the same message. If you are selling cookies, and you also tweet about the weather, politics and the latest social network, wouldn't that confuse your audience? For example, if I follow @BarackObama, I will be most interested to know about USA current issues, politics and foreign affairs. I am not so interested on his views on NBA teams, Google's share price, etc.

Be personal - Whilst you want to be consistent with your message, you also want to build up trust with your followers. Whilst that may be difficult to achieve using traditional media, you can do so effectively by tweeting personal updates. Your audience will know there is a real person, rather than a cold company tweeting facts all the time.

Its one-to-one - Once you have amassed a large following, it is easy to think that twitter is a loudspeaker to get the message across to as broad an audience as possible. Make use of the fact that you know and can personally connect with each of your followers. Connect with them on an individual level.

Shell IT Malaysia hiring Oracle / SQL Server Application DBA

2011-08-03T23:09:00.000-07:00

We are seeking to recruit Information Technology Professionals (i.e., BAM SQL/Oracle Application DBA) as per the following requirements:

Job Purpose

• Provide database support for BAM business critical applications.

• Troubleshoot database issues related to a specific application and perform necessary database enhancements.

• Liaise with System DBAs to incorporate system database changes

Requirements for SQL Application DBA (JG5):

• Preferably a relevant education at degree (bachelor / master) level

• Minimum 4 to 6 years SQL Server DBA experience
• Experienced in SQL Server 2000/2005/2008
• Strong db performance tuning experience
• Extensive T-SQL coding experience, in particular Set-based SQL
• Experienced in SQL Server replication/failover support

Requirements for Oracle Application DBA (JG5):
• Preferably a relevant education at degree (bachelor / master) level.
• Minimum 4 to 6 years Oracle DBA experience
• Experienced in Oracle 9i/10g/11g support
• Strong db performance tuning experience
• Extensive PL/SQL coding experience

Send your resume to SBSC-Recruitment@shell.com

Closing Date: 31 August 2011

If you are feeling generous, send your resume to me so I can get a bit of reward:

Google Chrome resolved bug in less than a week

2011-08-03T11:23:00.000-07:00

For those of you who are not on Chrome yet, it is by far the best web browser so far for desktops/laptops. I have been using the bleeding edge version of Chrome called Chrome Canary for a few months now, and love having the new features available to me as soon as it is pushed out by the Chrome developers.

Although it is supposedly bleeding edge, with no user testing (Chrome Canary users are supposed to be the testers ;-) ) prior to the launch of a new version, I have been using it without any problems at all. Until I was trying to view a webpage that demonstrates HTML5 features at http://html5-demos.appspot.com/static/html5-whats-new/template/index.html#1

Chrome Canary crashes, whilst my stable version of Chrome (version 12 at the time of testing) worked perfectly fine. Sounds like a defect to me.

Reporting the Defect
How do you report an issue in Chrome? Very simple, just click on Google Chrome controls (spanner) icon, Tools -> Report an issue...

You will be redirected to this internal page chrome://bugreport/#6

Some of the details are already pre-filled on your behalf: the URL where the defect occurs, and a screenshot of the page. Select the type of defect, type in the description, and click Send feedback.

Alternatively, you can submit the bug report online at http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/entry

Contrast this with Microsoft's Internet Explorer. There is no obvious option within Internet Explorer itself. You need to

Go to http://connect.microsoft.com/ie/
Register for Microsoft Connect
Sign up for IE Public Feedback program
Then submit your bug report

To be fair, there is behaviour tracking in IE itself, which will submit information directly to Microsoft when IE crashes. Still not very re-assuring when you do not know if the issue is being worked upon or not.

Getting A Response

Once the bug is accepted by the Issue Tracking system, I can access it via its unique URL http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=89316

I reported it on the 15th July 2011. On 18th July, the bug is picked up by a developer. 19th July falls on a Saturday, mind you!

On 20th of July, the developer updated me (via an automated email in the Issue Tracking system) that the bug is fixed in the latest release. Since Chrome automatically push out updates, I did not even realize the bug is fixed. Did a quick test, and confirm Chrome Canary no longer crashes.

All within 6 days. It took less than a week to resolve a bug in Chrome. See the timeline below

Yet another reason Chrome is simple awesome!

Google Website running on ASP.NET?

2011-08-03T10:35:00.000-07:00

I filled up a survey form on Google Apps, when I just realized the URL ends with .aspx Does that means the survey website actually runs on Microsoft technology?

That is really strange indeed. I am guessing why the googleratings.com website is running ASP.NET are.

Its not running .NET anyway. The URL can be anything, but backend is different. For example, I could be hosting my website in PHP, have the scripts named filename.jsp and configure Apache to pass .jsp files to the PHP interpreter. Silly, but could be useful in terms of IT Security via security through obscurity.

A weak reason at best.

Online surveys are outsourced to an external company, which decides what technology they use. Very plausible reason. However, if you query the domain name (try http://whois.webhosting.info/googleratings.com for example), the result will be returned from Google's DNS nameservers, and the registrar shows that it is owned by Google. A search on Netcraft shows that survey.googleratings.com is running Windows 2008.

Still possible for Google to be owning the domain but letting anther company perform customer survey.

A bit odd, but that seems to be the case. If you go to http://www.confirmit.com you will find that all the pages are in .aspx anyway.

Even on Google's website, they explained that "GoogleRatings.com is a domain used by Google for conducting customer and user surveys. We rely on feedback collected through these surveys to improve our products."

Being a Husband is tough

2011-08-03T05:00:00.000-07:00

Some say that being a husband is a full time job. Its more than that, after slaving around in the office, there is Round 2 of slavery at home. I was chatting with a female colleague when she said she was so excited to go home

I shall buy an Obedient Husband's Club T-shirt for the husband.

If you are interested, you can buy one for yourself here.

Set up Kerberos authentication on Firefox

2011-07-18T07:47:00.001-07:00

Have you ever used Firefox in a corporate environment, having Active Directory and Sigle-Sign On (SSO) authentication all over the place? Must be annoying to see those username and password prompts when Internet Explorer works perfectly well.

Fret no more. For users of Firefox 3 and above, you can make these changes so that Firefox will automatically pass on your Windows logon credentials to the website that is requesting for it. Just make these changes:

network. ntlm. send-lm-response = true
network. negotiate-auth. using-native-gsslib = true
network. negotiate-auth. trusted-uris = https://
network. negotiate-auth. delegation-uris = https://

Not sure how to set those? You can do it in these few simple steps.

First, open up a new tab in Firefox and type in about:config in the address bar.

You will see a warning message. Click on I'll be careful, I promise! to proceed

Now that you are in the configuration section, type in ntlm in the title bar, to list out all configuration item names containing the letters "ntlm". Double-click on the option network. ntlm. send-lm-response to toggle the value from false to true

Next, type in negotiate-auth in the configuration title bar. Toggle the option for network.negotiate-auth.gsslib from false to true, and set the values for the other 2 options to https://

That's it! When you open your intranet websites again, you should no longer be prompted with username / password again.

Technical Details

Not comfortable with the changes? Here is the technical details of what happens under the hood (to borrow an expression from Google Chrome).

network. ntlm. send-lm-response when set to true will send LM hash will be included in response to a NTLM challenge. Servers should almost never need the LM hash, and the LM hash is what makes NTLM authentication less secure.

network. negotiate-auth. using-native-gsslib when set to true will Use the GSS lib that comes standard with the host operating system, instead of using the settings specified in network.negotiate-auth.gsslib

network. negotiate-auth. trusted-uris A comma-and-space-delimited list of sites that are permitted to engage in SPNEGO authentication with the browser. This means you can specify only limited sites to use Kerberos authentication, for example https://www.companyx.com You are strongly recommended to include SSL (https://) only and not plain, unencrypted http:// traffic

network. negotiate-auth. delegation-uris A comma-and-space-delimited list of sites for which the browser may delegate user authorization to the server. See above for recommended settings.

Further details on Mozilla's integrated authentication can be found at https://developer.mozilla.org/En/Integrated_Authentication

For more information on Mozilla Firefox configuration settings, read this MozillaZine's Knowledge Base article

What happens if your Twitter account is hacked?

2011-07-15T02:59:00.000-07:00

I do not know how exactly it happened, but my Twitter account sent out 2 spam tweets without even my being logged on to the computer.

asd

If that happens to you, the first thing you should read is Twitter's My Account Has Been Compromised article. You will need to:

Change your password
Revoke application access
Request for access again from 3rd party applications

Here is how I do it step by step. First, I head over to the Change Password page to have my password changed. To make my password more secure, I use LastPass to automatically generate and remember all my passwords. This will ensure if one of my accounts is hacked, the same password cannot be used on other accounts.

There is a nifty generate password functionality.

Since you do not have to remember it yourself, try to make the password as complicated as possible to prevent a password brute force attack. I use 10 characters and a combination of alphanumerical as well as special characters.

P/S: Don't bother trying to log in to my account using the password above. I definitely use something else. I have just reported the issue to Twitter, so my account may be monitored. Continue reading the blog post please :)

Once you click accept, LastPass will automatically fill in the password for you. You will of course need to type in your current password.

Click on Change and Twitter and confirm that your password is now updated.

When you next attempt to log in to Twitter's website, you will see the AutoLogin and AutoFill prompts by LastPass on the top right corner of the web page.

AutoLogin will fill up the username and password for you, and then automatically log in to the website. If you have more than one account, like myself, then opt for AutoFill.

Now that my password is successfully changed, I want to see the list of 3rd party applications that have access to my Twitter account and to revoke and renew the permissions. The best way is to revoke all of the applications, and when prompted again perform an OAuth authentication.

Disclaimer: I am not saying the 2 apps above caused the spam; just showing an example. I revoked the permissions of practically every 3rd party application.

When you log in to one of the applications again, you will be ask to re-authenticate. If you trust the application, go ahead and allow it to access your Twitter account.

Google+ helper extension for Chrome

2011-07-14T09:40:00.000-07:00

Have you been exploring Google+? Love the interface and the game-changing features there? You can further improve your experience by installing the Google+ helper extension from https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hehfpbphnjppmganambkgdnkfliaipgd#

Some of the cool features you get:

Share Google+ Posts with people on twitter.
Translate posts with Google Translate to language specified by you
Notifier - Get desktop notifications on new posts, also with sound. (mouse over notification to freeze it)
Linked hashtags in posts for better search
Search in Google+ posts and profiles directly from your omnibox (address box), just type there"plus" (see screenshot) and type your search query.

I like the fact that you can now "integrate" Google+ with twitter, and you can now search via hashtags.

The extension's configuration is very straightforward too

Have more fun with Google+!

Why Firefox 8 is much faster than Firefox 5

2011-07-12T12:20:00.000-07:00

There’s a lot of buzz about Firefox 8 being at least 20% faster than Firefox 5. That is certainly great news, because competition is always good for web browser users (i.e. practically everyone on the Internet). As it stands today, Firefox 8 is at least as fast as Google Chrome on stock benchmarks.

To understand why Firefox 8 is now much faster, take a look at the Firefox Trunk build changelog. These are the relevant changes:

595601 - Don’t load tabs from inactive groups on initial browser startup
573948 - Perf - Replace libjpeg with libjpeg-turbo
595601 - Don’t load tabs from inactive groups on initial browser startup
651858 - [Windows] Implement Direct2D Azure Backend and use it for

The Direct2D Azure Backend apparently has the biggest impact. Here's a good performance comparison between Cairo and Azure.

Can’t wait to get your hands on it? Download Firefox 8 from http://nightly.mozilla.org/ WARNING: This is a nightly build which is as unstable as it can get. Use only for testing purposes.

How to Filter LinkedIn notification emails in Gmail

2011-07-10T23:36:00.000-07:00

If you are like me, you turn on email notification in LinkedIn, so that you are notified when there are new messages and job postings. You will probably get a lot of these:

Click on any of the messages. Notice that the emails are sent from group-digests@linkedin.comThis makes them easy to filter. Click on More -> Filter messages like these

Gmail is smart enough to automatically filter out emails by the sender group-digests@linkedin.com . You should see a list of LinkedIn group discussion notification emails below. Click Next step to proceed

You will want to skip the Inbox so you can read it at your leisure. Apply a label such as Social media notification to easily group these emails together. See my previous blog post on how to filter out Facebook and Twitter messages. Click on Also apply filter to xxx messages below to filter out existing emails, and click Create filter.

That's it - all new LinkedIn notification emails will be kept aside and properly labelled so you can read it at your leisure.

Facebook's new Messaging

2011-07-10T23:20:00.000-07:00

If you have logged in to Facebook since 7th July, you would notice this huge, intrusive notification on the right-hand side of your Facebook page, asking you to "Try it now"

If you click on it, what will you get? If you are hoping for some uber-cool new feature from Facebook, you will be disappointed. It merely creates a permanent messaging area to the right where you can see who is online, and chat with them.

How annoying! Thankfully you can disable it:

Contrast this with my previous blog post on Gmail's new theme, where you can decide whether to turn it on or not. http://hanxue-it.blogspot.com/2011/07/gmails-new-look.html

Fed up with Facebook already? Come over to Google+, the better social network where your privacy and preferences is truly respected.

Gmail's new look

2011-07-10T23:04:00.000-07:00

If you have logged in to GMail recently, you would have noticed a new link Preview Gmail's new look.

Click on it, and you will be brought to https://mail.google.com/mail/help/about_whatsnew.html#utm_source=en-et-na-us&utm_medium=new-features-link&utm_campaign=en with a list of new features in Gmail

Click on the link to Gmail themes. Choose either Preview or Preview Dense.

Here is how the new Inbox looks like under the new theme.

If you want something fresh everyday, select Random for a randomly-picked theme for you every day.

You can also read more about it in Google's official Gmail blog http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/preview-of-gmails-new-look.html

Irritating Active Keys in HP G42 laptop

2011-04-18T11:16:00.000-07:00

I got myself a new HP G42 381TX laptop. The Active Keys "feature" - pain for a heavy user like myself - is enough of an irritant for me to write about it first.

We are all familiar with the function keys - F1 to F12 at the top of the keyboard.

HP reckons that most users would rather use the shortcuts such as change brightness, player controls (rewind, stop, forward), volume controls and Wifi hotkey, rather than the actual Function keys.

When I am editing a spreadsheet and press the F2 key, my screen keeps getting dimmer. Not amusing when I am trying to get some work done.

To solve it, I need to reboot and change BIOS option.

Can't even do it from the installed HP software. Very handy eh?

Here is the actual HP link for the instructions to disable it.

Intel Core i5 1st vs 2nd generation

2011-04-18T10:56:00.001-07:00

Now that Intel has 2nd generation Core i3, i5 and i7 chips, are they worth the money?

This comparison chart from AnandTech tells the story

Here is the full impact

Take a look at this article for a better explanation.

Recommendation: Unless you are getting >10% cheaper, opt for the 2nd generation Intel Core i3/i5/i7 chips

Internet Explorer 9 - final version available or not?

2011-03-14T21:20:00.000-07:00

Microsoft announced the launched of Internet Explorer 9 on 14th March 2011. Great news, we now have the final version of a significant update to the venerable Internet Explorer!

So let's head over to Microsoft's website todownload. If you head over to Microsoft Download Centre , then click on the link for Internet Explorer:

that will lead you to the IE9 download page. Let's click on the link for the 'final' version, and select the correct version to download:

It still gives me the Release Candidate version. Its 12:00 pm on March 15th, yet I am still getting the outdated version.

I manage to get the final version from the specially created website for Internet Explorer.

To be sure, check for version 9.0.8112.x for the installer. See the list of version numbers for IE9 below.

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

Name	Build	Release Date	Acid3 Score	New notable features
Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview 1	1.9.7745.6019	2010-03-16^[10]	55/100^[11]	Support for CSS3 and SVG and a new JavaScript engine called Chakra.
Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview 2	1.9.7766.6000	2010-05-05^[12]	68/100^[13]	Better JavaScript performance.
Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview 3	1.9.7874.6000	2010-06-23^[14]	83/100^[15]	HTML5 audio, video, and canvas tags, and WOFF.
Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview 4	1.9.7916.6000	2010-08-04^[16]	95/100^[17]	JavaScript engine integrated into the core browser components.^[18]
Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview 5	1.9.7930.16406	2010-09-15^[19]		New IE9 icon.
Internet Explorer 9 Beta	9.0.7930.16406	2010-09-15^[19]		New user interface.
Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview 6	1.9.8006.6000	2010-10-28^[20]		CSS3 2D transforms and HTML5 semantic tags.^[3]
Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview 7	1.9.8023.6000	2010-11-17^[21]		Better JavaScript performance.
Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview 8	1.9.8080.16413	2011-02-10^[22]		Performance, interoperability enhancements, and can allow websites that track your location.
Internet Explorer 9 Release Candidate	9.0.8080.16413	2011-02-10^[22]		Improved performance, InPrivate Filtering renamed to Tracking Protection, a refined UI, support for more web standards and other improvements.
Internet Explorer 9	9.0.8112.16421	2011-03-14^[2]		TBA

Table copied from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_9

Here's one way of checking:

Way to go for the biggest software company in the world.

Funny and Weird events in Data Centre

2010-08-16T03:58:00.000-07:00

From a Slashdot comment

Orientation: As a co-op student at DEC in 1980, I was told this (possibly apocryphal) story. On seemingly random occasions, a fixed-head disk drive would crash at the main plant in Maynard, Massachusetts. Not all of the drives, just a couple. Apparently the problem was isolated when someone was midway between the computer room and the loading dock. They heard the bump of a truck backing hard into the loading dock followed very shortly by a curse from the computer room! It apparently caused enough of a jolt to cause platters to tilt up and hit the heads... but only on the drives which were oriented north-south; those oriented east-west were not affected. So came the directive that all drives, henceforth, needed to be oriented north-south.
Hot Stuff: Seems that a mini-computer developed a nasty tendency to crash in the early afternoon. But only on some days. Diagnostics were run. Job schedules were checked and evaluated. All the software and hardware checked out A-OK. This went on for quite a while until someone noticed that there was a big window to the outside and that in the early afternoon the sun's light would fall upon the computer. This additional heat load was enough to put components out of expected operational norms and caused a crash.
Cool!: A friend of mine was a field engineer for DEC back in the day when minicomputers had core memory. He was called into a site where their system had some intermittent crashes. He ran diagnostics. All seemed to be within spec. He replaced memory boards. Still crashed. Replaced mother boards. Reloaded the OS from fresh tapes. Still crashed. He finally noticed that one of the fans on the rack was not an official DEC fan. Though it WAS within spec for airflow and power draw, it was NOT within spec for magnetic shielding... it would sporadically cause bit flips in the (magnetic) core memory. Swapping out the fan solved the problem.
This sucked: Another place had a problem with a computer that would sometimes crash in the early evening after everyone went home for the day. Well, not everyone. The cleaning staff apparently noticed a convenient power strip on a rack and plugged their vacuum cleaner into it. The resulting voltage sag took down the server!
Buttons: Every couple years, IBM would hold an open house where anyone in the community could come in and get a tour of the facility (Kingston, NY). This was back in 1984, IIRC. PCs were just starting to make an impact at this time... big iron was king. We're talking about a huge raised-floor area with multiple mainframes, storage, tape drives... MANY millions of dollars per system. A few hundred users on a system was quite an accomplishment back then and these boxes could handle a thousand users. We were also in the midst of a huge test effort of the next release of VM/SP. I had come in that Sunday afternoon to get several tests done (death marches are no fun). All of a sudden the mainframe I was on crashed. Hard. I'd grown accustomed to this as we were at a point where we were "eating our own dog food"; the production system was running the latest build of the OS. But, an hour later and it was STILL down. Apparently, a tour guide had led a group to one of the operator consoles and a child could not resist pressing buttons. Back in those days, booting a mainframe meant "re-IPL" Initial Program Load. Unless the computer was REALLY messed up and wouldn't boot. Only then would someone re-IML the system. Initial Microcode Load. Guess which button the kid pressed? It left the system in such a wonky state that it had to be reloaded from tape. All the development work of that weekend was lost and had to be recreated and rebuilt. (It was a weekend and backups were only done on weekday nights.) It took us a week to get things back to normal.
Drivers: A friend of mine at IBM told me of an assembly language programming course he took learning how to write a device driver for a printer. This was back before laser printers... the printer he was writing for had a band on which each of the letters, numbers, symbols, etc. spun rapidly behind the ribbon and paper. Behind the band were 132 hammers. When the appropriate symbol for each location on the page spun into place, the driver would tell the printer to fire that hammer. Once all the characters for that line had been printed, the paper would be advanced one line and then the next line would be printed. Well, Joe had the bright idea to find out what would happen if he instructed the printer to fire all the hammers at once. Almost gave the computer operator a heart attack to hear what sounded like a machine gun going off! He was instructed in no uncertain terms that it could have broken the print band and to NEVER do THAT again!
Seek: I was working at Computervision (custom CAD/CAM hardware/software) in the mid-80's when I heard this one. Someone was developing a program that, for performance reasons, was directly reading data off a disk drive. This was back in the day when each drive was the size of a washing machine and had HUGE magnets to move the heads to the correct track. His program would slowly step from the center track out towards the outermost track, while reading and writing data to the drive. He was optimizing data access to reduce head motion. Problem was that he was still in the early phase of its development so he had not yet coded it bi-directionally. So, instead of queuing the seeks back to the center, too, he just had the heads rapidly seek back to the center and then slowly step back out again. So, it would step, step, step, ..., step, and then seeeeeeek back to the center. This would have been fine except the drive's casters were not locked down and it slowly walked the drive across the floor. It tumbled over the lip of the ramp leading into the raised floor area. And kept running! He didn't know there was a problem until an operator powered down the drive before trying to move it back into place!
Cables: I was working at a telecommunications company which was developing a new PBX. All custom built. We had a couple of prototypes under development and I was responsible for testing some software. My system would sometimes boot up, but often would not. Once it was up, it ran fine. We checked the equipment. Swapped chassis and boards. Reloaded software. No Joy. Still would occasionally fail to boot. Hmmm, "If it can't be what it has to be, then it has to be what it can't be." I expanded my search and finally isolated the problem: one of the power strips in my system's rack had a 14-gauge cable going to the plug. All the other power strips in the racks had a 12-gauge cord. The CPU, comms and disk drives spinning up caused enough of a voltage sag to draw just a bit more than that cable could supply. Replaced the power strip and all was well!

Email Management Framework

2010-02-04T11:29:00.000-08:00

Email is now essential for almost all companies. Yet there isn't often a comprehensive framework for email management. Ideally it should have these 3 components:

Message maintenance - basic provisioning of email including high availablity, filtering, quotas and usage reporting
Message store - storage and availability of email messages, collaboration
Message management - content & records management, compliance and e-discovery

Vendors
Besides Microsoft and IBM, interesting vendors includes:

Google Postini
Zimbra - Open Source (i.e. totally free)
MessageLabs
Permessa
Oracle Mail
OpenText ECM Mail
AXS-One
EMC Mail
Computhink - Groupwise Email Archival
Iron Mountain
Sherpa Software - Archiving and e-Discovery
Arcmail
Mimecast
Quest Software
Proofpoint

Selecting A Vendor
Selecting a vendor is not going to be easy because there isn't any comprehensive product or solution that address all message related requirements. In addition, the a lot of the available solutions overlap. For example, Microsoft Exchange and IBM Lotus Notes have basic retention and search ability, but not sufficient for enterprise use.

What you should do:

Create solid email policies - retention, security, tagging
Integrate enterprise records management with email
Filter out important messages to be kept
User-friendly solutions to ensure effective users - large mailboxes, retention, effective search solutions
Having an accurate cost model
SaaS vs in-house: still immature and vendor lock-in

Productivity Suite

2009-10-14T10:44:00.000-07:00

Just read a recent Burton Group research that shows the Productivity Suite market is heating up again.

I find it surprising that Microsoft Office is becoming less dominant, when Windows market share is still almost 90%, and Microsoft Office market share itself is often quoted at 95%

I doubt if factors such as simpler product functionality, pricing, and SaaS delivery model will appeal to the bulk of business users. Even a small/medium company will need to exchange documents extensively with the rest of the Microsoft-dominated world.

Then again, a well planned Data Lifecycle and in fact, coherent Enterprise Architecture will ensure IT solutions that fits in business needs without compromising on extraneous features or compatibility issues. For instance, once you have defined Architectural Principles such as "Open Source Platforms" and "Interoperable and Open standards" , together with well defined interfaces (how exactly is data exchanged from an internal system/process such as Sales Tracking with external entities) will ensure the IT systems will always be fit-for-business.

The Bane of PowerPoint?

2009-09-18T18:47:00.000-07:00

There is an active discussion going on in my company's internal web forum on PowerPoint misuse. Once upon a time, a presentation requires meticulous preparation, drawing some charts and graphs on to transparency slides and a well rehearsed speech.

Every since Windows and Microsoft Office gained widespread usage, PowerPoint became the de-fact presentation, or even meeting "tool". There is no doubt about the usefulness of presentation information in a series of bullet points, but this has gone into overdrive, where each presentation is expected to be in this format.

Here is a very good article on how badly formatted slides caused the Columbia space shuttle to crash.

Remember to always find the most effective way to get the point across; if a photograph or a 2-page document is more useful, then use them.

There are very good examples at Slideshare. Here are 2 articles that help with presentation.
Presentation Zen
Art of Making Effective Presentations the Steve Jobs Way

Hosted Services and Cloud Computing

2008-07-10T08:48:00.000-07:00

These business models have been hot topics for the past 3-5 years. Alas I have been too focused with daily work to investigate in more detail. That said, I am excited and hoping to see these models truly maturing. I am in an organization where the IT services is just piss poor (in my opinion and experience), and the only thing World Class about it is the price we are charged, or shall I say extorted?

There's an interesting article on Microsoft's Hosted Services. Interesting highlights include:

Exchange Online + Sharepoint + Office Communications Online (IM) + LiveMeeeting = US$15 per license per month
Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online = $44 per user per month

I wonder if there is some additional catches. I was a happy user of Livemeeting, until I found out the tariff, something like 13+ cents per minute per user. For a simple collaborative tool, I find that to be ridiculously expensive. However, I must admit Livemeeting hit the sweet spot with its ease of use and seamless integration into the Windows / Office environment.

There is also another interesting summary of the pros and cons of Cloud Computing. Has anyone used a Cloud Computing service before? I wonder what is the experience, and how flexible the pricing and scaling options are.

Agile or Enterprise Architecture

2008-06-01T05:06:00.000-07:00

Having been neck-deep into Enterprise Architecture recently, I must say some of the concepts and principles are opposite of the Agile Methodologies which I have been familiar with. Even a simple need such as do we need to design, and do we really need the role of IT architects keep popping up.

Agile development simply works. It has been proven successful, it has many benefits. So why are some companies still sticking to the older methodologies? Why do we need those reams and reams of documentation, and creating software by phases?

In a large enterprise, control is of essence. One needs to know where the cash is going, for what purposes, and how is it being executed. Therefore, an enterprise architecture will give you a top-down view, understanding the inter-relationship of all components.

While theoretically you can live without an architect or software design, how is the implicit design going to be shared across business units, if not through diagrams and documents? How can we standardize interfaces, fields and other specifications in an organization that spans many countries and have tens of thousands of IT staff?

On the other hand, the argument against agile methodologies in a corporate environment is that requirements are well defined. In practice, that is never the case. People are often confused, and no one person has a complete, end-to-end view of everything.

The same goes for commercial software as opposed to open source software. Paying a software vendor gives you control, or at least the illusion of control. Unless you are actively taking part in the development of the software, and able to expend effort to create new features to meet your business needs, oft-times open source software is much too chaotic to be acceptable to most people in large corporations. However, this is slowly changing as some open source software community begins to understand business needs better and responds in a much more helpful manner: as opposed to "RTFM" whenever someone asks a valid question.

I am still trying to find the balance, and to convince the powers-to-be that just with a slight change of our viewpoint, we can possibly gain so much more out of software and IT staff. Its a long and challenging journey ahead, and I am looking forward to it ;)

Filtering Facebook

2008-05-17T12:09:00.001-07:00

Facebook is probably the most popular social networking at the moment. You can find an interesting comparison here; you can even get detailed geographic breakdown.

I was reading a whitepaper from MessageLabs about the security and economic impact of Facebook in a corporate environment, titled Facebook: Networking or
Notworking . Again it is a question of how much control and access should we allow for IT users in an organization. This is a question of the principle and/or culture of a company, and how policies are applied. That is where the question lies, rather than finding a the best tool to solve the problem.

I have heard of so many horror stories where almost all incoming and outgoing traffic are blocked, thus hindering productivity. What is the point of procuring the latest and greatest technology, when most of the functionality is disabled and so crippled as to not working at all? On the other hand, mostly unintentional abuse of IT services can also cause a lot of damages to the company. Staff productivity is probably your least concern: issues such as company reputation, IT security, information theft etc will cost the company much more.

Therefore, cultivating the correct behaviour using both soft (culture) and hard (policy, enforcement) approach is the more appropriate approach, rather than buying into these thinly veiled marketing brochure.

P/S: Note that everytime there is a hot trend, software vendors will quickly provide a "solution" by taking a different angle. Web filtering can surely be configured in many existing tools.

Delver - Social Search Engine

2008-04-16T13:08:00.000-07:00

Delver is a very interesting concept: it returns search results based on your social graph.

The main drawback is that the result will be very biased against your interests, and you may find it difficult to go out of your current circle. Follow the insightful discussion here at Slashdot.

Symantec Internet Security Thread Report

2008-04-09T06:49:00.001-07:00

There's a post at Slashdot on Symantec's Internet Security Threat Report for July-Dec 2007 [ Executive Summary | Full Report ] . Some interesting facts:

A person's full identity is worth $1 - $15
Bank accounts $10 - $1000
Email password $4 - $30
Web is rapidly gaining ground as a preferred attack vector
89% of web browser vulnerability comes from ActiveX compared to 1% for Mozilla extensions
Trojan (71%) and Worm (22%) are still the top potential infection types
Phishing is mainly targeted at Financial (66%) and ISP (18%)
Underground economy consolidates and matures
More than double malicious code threats from Jan - Jun 2007 (212,101) to Jul - Dec 2007 (499,811)

IT Budget Reduction

2008-04-09T05:31:00.000-07:00

The current sentiment with IT budget is further reduction due to the unfavourable economic condictions. One of the latest article I have read is this TechTarget article. The gist of it:

On the whole budget remains the same, with minimal reduction
Most reduction is company-wide, not focused on IT
There is budget growth in Europe (3.9%) and Asia Pacific (6%)
Budgets are better-managed, in a proactive manner, and more aligned to business needs
Reductions - postponing IT investment, IT operations cost-cutting
Lack of contingency budget plan

I think budget reduction is not necessarily a bad thing; it is a good opportunity to Re-Align, Re-Focus and Revitalize.

Re-Align : Since projects will be "sacrificed", and operational costs reduced, it is a good opportunity to look at the issues which impact the business the most (i.e. Pareto analysis) and make sure what IT is doing is fully aligned with the business direction.

Benefits:

More effective results to the business
Increased influenced through interaction with CFO / CEO

Re-Focus : As the IT landscape changes rapidly overnight, IT management is always looking at ways to leverage technology to meet business needs - sometimes implementing new solutions just to keep up with the competition (!).

When there is a budget reduction, it is a good opportunity to take a long, hard look at the core competency, and outsource / eliminate the peripheral services.

Re-Vitalize : A respite from the head-long rush to create business-enablers, consolidation and aiming at excellence. Time to focus on the really important issues, and focus on the soft side of leadership, i.e. staff development and motivation, building up the culture.

Additional interesting reports by Gartner:

Findings: Preliminary Survey Data Suggests Healthy IT Budget Growth for 2008

Overall IT spending increase between 4.8% and 6.4%
Largest organizations expect the smallest increases in their IT budgets
Could be a beginning of a multi-year cycle of renewed growth in IT spending
Spending fueled by

IT infrastructure upgrades
Business intelligence
Enterprise Content Management

Caution on (lack of) contingency budget

Findings: Poll Shows Budget Reductions in 50% of Application Organizations

Responses to 'Have You Been Asked to Reduce Your Application Budget?'

No, and I don't expect to 38.3%
No, but I expect to 13.0%
Yes, by 10% or less 26.1%
Yes, by more than 10% 22.6%

Clients Should Prepare a 'Recession Budget' for 2008

(title says it all)

Photobook

2008-04-05T17:54:00.000-07:00

I was surfing around and stumbled upon this online Photobook service.

You just need to register yourself, download the software, design your own photobook layout, and upload to them. They will then print it out and deliver to you. Pricing can be a bit steep, in my opinion.

Initially I thought this is a US-based service, with Malaysian localization. You know what, this is actually a Malaysian company! I applaud the courage and the entrepreneurship.

Their brick-and-mortar address is at

23, Jalan Anggerik Tainia AW
31/AW, Kota Kemuning
40460 Shah Alam, Selangor

For further contact information, try

Telephone:

03-5122 2232

Fax:

03-5122 2231

Email:

support@photobook.com.my

012-389 8119

Map available here.

Ray Ozzie on Mesh (Microsoft)

2008-04-02T08:09:00.000-07:00

Recently Ray Ozzie hinted at a cloud computing initiative. What is really interesting is to see Microsoft moving from a traditional PC-bound, heavy client model into something much more distributed and collaborative in nature.

There's some opinion about how Google Gear will make its Google Office platform much more effective compared to Microsoft's Mesh. Read more on an interesting debate at Slashdot. In summary, there are those who thinks Microsoft's Office Live and Sharepoint are viable business solutions today, while Google Gear is merely press release (i.e. hot air) at the moment.

Microsoft's approach as a top-down, easy-to-deploy (and own minimal responsibility) business solution, whereas Google's is a bottoms-up approach allowing a more free and individualistic collaboration style. I think 1-2 years from now the landscape for collaborative office productivity tools will evolve into something quite different, with additional influences such as governance, security, and adaptabiliy (easily mashed with other solutions/technologies).

For more information:

Google Gears FAQ
Microsoft's Mesh technology preview

Ubuntu: the best distribution for family use?

2008-04-01T07:15:00.001-07:00

I need to set up my home computer for my mom to use, and it still has Windows on it. Its easy to do a re-install, but Windows comes with a BIG can of worms. Since the computer will only be used for "light" tasks like web-surfing and emailing, I am going to install Linux.

As Debian is my preferred distro, and there is lots of rave review for Ubuntu recently, I am going to give it a try.

Hmm.. I wonder if there is a more user-friendly distro. Let me play around with it a bit and see what's it like.

I have installed Kubuntu on my company's laptop, and so far it is proving easy to maintain.

Eclipse plug-in Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools (BIRT)

2008-03-25T21:02:00.000-07:00

I stumbled upon BIRT today - it may be just what I am looking for. I have tons of raw data, and I need a simple tool to effectively slide-and-dice, analyse and present it.

Maybe it is my poor skills with Excel, but I cannot get it do to what I need it a quick, simple way - unless I come up with complicated macros?

Anyway, BIRT has features such as lists, charts, crosstabs and compound documents. Looking forward to giving it a try.

http://www.eclipse.org/birt/phoenix/

Avant Window Manager

2008-03-21T10:01:00.000-07:00

Stumbled upon this nifty Window Manager during random surfing. The really cool part is the docker; instead of having a section of the status bar representing an open window, it uses graphical icons, and displaying summary of information.

For example, you can see the progress of download in Firefox, or the temperature in the docker itself without having to maximize the window.

Take a look at the screen shot here: http://img505.imageshack.us/my.php?image=snapshot28xj7.png

Additional screenshots available at AWN Forum.

For more information on AWN, look at:

AWN Project
Avant Window Manager Wiki
Wikipedia article on AWN

Unfortunately I only have Kubuntu installed now, so I will have to try it out later. Or maybe using a test machine at work ;)

Introduction to Scrum - Agile Development

2008-03-19T20:31:00.000-07:00

All this while I have only been associating Agile Development with XP, until I have stumbled upon scrum today. On the surface it seems to be (I can't remember the exact term now) released-based software development.

A Scrum team consists of 3 primary roles:

Product Owner - represents customers. Brings the business perspectives, create Use Cases, prioritize them and place them in the backlog

Scrum Master - A facilitator / coach that does everything possible to remove obstacles to the ability of the team to reach the goal. Enforces the scrum rules and sprint processes

Scrum Team - 5-9 people with cross-functional skills. Perform the actual work

Some of the interesting characteristics of Scrum:

A list of Use Cases added to the Product Backlog. Product Owner will constantly prioritize and the highest priority task is added to Sprint Backlog
Sprint period takes 15-30 days (30 days recommended for balance of comfortable work pace and adaptability

Daily Scrum where 3 questions are asked:

What have you done since yesterday?
What are you planning to do by tomorrow?
Do you have any problems preventing you from accomplishing your goal?

A Burn Down Chart showing how much of effort remaining

More information:

Scrum in five minutes (Slideshare.net) - PDF
http://www.scrumalliance.org/Scrum and the Toyota way (PDF)Agile Project Management with Scrum (Microsoft Professional) [Book]

yahoo IM is not working on Gaim

2004-06-24T21:30:00.000-07:00

The posting at Slashdot.

Two of my friends prefer Yahoo! IM to ICQ. Most of my friends use ICQ. So on Linux, I use Gaim. And now YIM is not working in Gaim. No big deal for me: those friends that use YIM also use ICQ. I don't know how much better is the official Yahoo! IM client compared to the official ICQ client on Windows. From my past experience, the ICQ client is simply terrible.

Anyway, there are lots of discussion, and of course complains. Some people think it is fair, Yahoo! providing all the servers, bandwidth and resources and those 3rd party apps are just piggy-backing, not contributing any revenue to Yahoo!. Personally, I think it would be good to have an alternative to the official client. At least it does provide some form of competitive pressure. Maybe there can be some compromise. In the mean time, I am sticking by Gaim.

Something cool about Screen

2004-06-24T21:26:00.000-07:00

Found out something cool about screen from Slashdot:

Start up screen with a temporary screenrc file that contains:
multiuser on
addacl other_username
detach

Note that I have the screen session detach. Type "screen -ls" to get the screen session name (for the other person), then type "screen -r" to reattach. The other person ssh'd into my machine and typed "screen -x session_name". It is possible to script all of this to make it easier.

Original comment here.

No one's perfect

2004-06-24T02:49:00.000-07:00

I was always under the impression that Richard S. Stallman is a fanatic. Yes, he has contributed a lot to the free software/open source movement, but that does not mean everyone has to agree with him that free software will be the future and we have to call Linux, GNU/Linux.

I chanced upon a Slashdot comment that has a link about Eric S. Raymond. Gruesome! Start here.

Hanxue and IT

Tribute to Steve Jobs, Visionary of Computing World

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Telephone:

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Introduction to Scrum - Agile Development

yahoo IM is not working on Gaim

Something cool about Screen

No one's perfect