Personal Blog 

- Out of catchy taglines

Review - Internet Explorer 7

3.25  a.m. 20th October 2006

Internet Explorer was officially launched on 18th October 2006. It is available for free from the Microsoft IE site. The file is just under 15 MB, and of course, it's available for Windows XP SP2 and Windows Server 2003 only at the moment.

Installation was a breeze. However, it does need to validate your copy of Windows to see if it is genuine. Since I use a genuine copy, I do not know how pirated system will cope with that. Installation took not more than 10 minutes on my machine. (I wasn't watching. It could be under 5 minutes).

The system has to be restarted after installation. On first use of IE7, it will bring you to a customization page, where you can make several changes such as using Clear Type, enabling Anti Phising and such. After everything has been set, you will be brought to the Add-on page. 

Microsoft Clear Type did make a difference. The font is significantly smoother and friendlier on the eyes, although similar effect can be achieved even without IE7 by enabling Clear Type on your whole system.

One thing you will notice is that they have discarded the menu bar and the links toolbar by default. The navigation bar is also thinner than IE6 or Mozilla Firefox. The end result is a larger viewable area of webpages. The navigations button has been redesigned and repositioned. However, I do like the idea of having the refresh button next to the forward button and things like that.

IE7 has several main features, namely Tabbed Browsing, RSS Feed, Search Bar, Improved Security and Improved Printing Layout. For all the features and improvements, click here.

Tabbed Browsing and RSS Feed work nice. There is a special Quick Tabs function to view all the tabs in a special page. The feature will be more useful if we could browse and resize in the Quick Tabs page, such as in the case of comparison shopping. 

RSS Feeds are automatically detected and can be easily added by a few clicks. Once you click the RSS button, you can select your feed of interest from all the feeds available from the page. A page will load for you to decide if you want to subscribe to this feed. This page is very useful as it provides functions like sort by date, author, title as well as only browsing certain interest. Clicking on the Favourites Centre reveals a pane with all your favourites, RSS Feeds and History.

Search Bar function is similar to that in Mozilla Firefox, although by default they only has one single Search Provider - Google. This is odd as Google is their biggest competitor in Internet Search. Search Providers can be added, and there's a column (in yellow) in that page to very easily create your own Search Provider. This is a function Mozilla Firefox should consider to add to thier Add Engine page.

All webpages I have tested showed that there is a very significant advantage in using IE7 for printing compared to Firefox. Automatic printing resize and layout made a lot of difference between those two browsers, with IE7 leading the way. Firefox has a lot to catch up in this aspect.

IE7 has a Add-on feature. However, this is not as extensive as the extension feature in Firefox. Most of the Add-ons are sharewares or commercial programs which require you to pay before downloading. As of the writing of this post, only 2 freewares are available for IE7 and another 13 for IE6. Firefox's extensions clearly surpass IE7.

I have yet to see any site that warn me of Anti-Phising, although  IE7 automatically checks for sites that is reported to have phising activities while a page is being loaded. Using PopupTest, Firefox managed to block 10 out of 10 pop-ups, while IE7 manages to load 8 of them. Then, I realised Pop-up Blocker wasn't turn on by default, another odd thing for IE7. With it turned on, IE7 manages to block all the pop-ups.

IE7 doesn't have any function to change the theme of the skin of the browser. It might be able to achieve this by hacking and 3rd party applications, but currently I do not have the knowledge or the know-how to test it. 

I conducted an experiment to test the memory usage of Firefox and IE7. For this, I disabled all the extensions in Firefox use the default themes, and run similar services and exactly the same websites in both browsers. I ran the test several times with different number of tabs loaded. Some of these tabs are simple webpages while some are memory intensive Flash or Ajax based sites. My purely empirical data showed that on average, Firefox uses about 25% less memory resources than IE7.

Overall, I would say IE7 is one of the big contender in the browser market, but not a serious threat to Firefox. Firefox still has a lot of advantages, and with Firefox 2 coming out, we shall see what has improved. Although IE7 does has several nifty features that Firefox could learn from it.

I will wait for Firefox 2 to be released, but in the meantime, Firefox 1.5 is still my browser of choice.

Review - Eggdisk

11.29  p.m. 17th October 2006

Some people might have noticed I have added a Links column, as well as the first link - Eggdisk.com. Well, actually no one notices as no one visits my site, except when I tell them to. And I only tell it to one other person.

Anyway, let's get on to Eggdisk. Eggdisk is a file hosting service, free at the moment, that provides you with 6GB of space and 30 GB of bandwidth which resets every 30 days. If you do not want to register, they provide a image hosting service with a maximum file size of 20MB.

If you decide to be a registered member, things get unbelievably good. You can upload files to a maximum of 150 MB each file. Batch uploading is achieved by using a .zip file. They support numorous file types, except the ones that could be used to harm their system such as .html and javascript. These are the currently supported file types:

jpg, jpeg, png, gif, bmp, txt, mp3, wav, mov, wma, wmv, rar, zip, tar.gz, swf, xml, xspf, flv, m3u, asf, 7z, rm, esp, avim, flac, ogg, bsp, res, mdl, spr, wad, tga, doc, ppt, wrl, mp4, aac, pdf, pup, iso, nrg, tgz, avi, qdf, idx, qel, qph, qsd, phf, rtm, dir, sit, sitx, dmg, flv, mkv, ogm. 

Whenever a file has been uploaded, Eggdisk will automatically generate the linking code to that file in several formats. This is useful for posting pictures in a forum or embedding files in your website. 

The uploading process 

The automatically generated codes. 

You can set a folder to public or private, in which case you can share it with just your friends, your family, or both of them. If you decide to set your folder to publically available, anyone will have access to the files inside the folder, althought they can only download the files. With just a single click, we can get the link to the public folder to be shared with your friends, in case they haven't joined or decide not to join Eggdisk.

One cool feature is that you can designate a folder as a photo folder, and any image file uploaded into that folder will be shown as a thumbnail. Thus you have sort of a online photo album. As I was writing this post, I noticed they included a new "View as Slideshow" feature. The interface is very nice, and you have the option to pause the slideshow, go forward of backward, as well as control the interval between each photo.

 The thumbnails in a photo folder.

 The slideshow features.

Click here to embrance the Eggdisk experience. It's a photo folder I uploaded specifically for this post, just to show you the thumnails and slideshow features. 

Overall, I have found the system extreamly reliable. I have trouble with uploading and downloading speed, but that is entirely my ISP's fault (and I am entirely sure of that). Users in the forum have experienced much faster speed. And that is another advantage of Eggdisk. There is a forum where you can ask question if you have problems. The administrator, or other helpful users normally reply within days (or hours).

There are a few places for improvement though. I personally would like to see a progress bar so I would know how much is uploaded and how long do I have to wait. Currently you can't download all the files in a folder at once, create folders within a folder and rename a file after being uploaded. The user interface could use a little improvement as well.

Although you only have 6GB space and 30GB bandwidth, there are several promotions to boost your space as well as the bandwidth. Click here to view all the potential upgrades.

As a conclusion, Eggdisk to me is a free service similar to blending online photo album (Flickr, Webshot), image hosting service (MyImageHub, ImageShack), and file hosting service (DropSend, Box.net) all together and giving it a very good improvement. I highly recommend it to anyone needing a similar service.

Eggdisk.com
Eggdisk Blog 

Taking a break

1.47 a.m. 12th October 2006

Okay. I am now in the middle of a huge assignment accounting for 25% of the final mark of one of my subjects. Wow, I just used four of's in one single sentence, and I bet I can extend it even further. Anyway, the due date for this assignment? Friday 5.00 p.m. Why am I doing it now? Well, in short, laziness and procrastination.

The assignment is a report on a Australian Biotechnology company, and I am assigned to pSivida Ltd. pSivida group of companies has many subsidaries, namely pSivida Inc., pSiMedica Ltd., pSiOncology Pte. Ltd., pSiNutria Ltd, and AION Diagnostics Ltd. (finally a company which doesn't start with pSi).

Why all the pSi's? I guess the creator of the company just love the Greek letter pSi, ψ so much that they use it in every single frigging company. I bet after all these works, I can become a pSiChic - I sense the next subsidary will start with the letters pSi. I shall start pSiChic Sdn. Bhd. (a Malaysian company for a change), a company specialising in fortune telling. I might even end up being a pSiCho.

pSiGh~ Work, work work - the result of endless procrastination during the pass say 10 weeks. It's an endless pSiCle, me procrastinating, regretting and procrastinating again. FINE, enough with the lame pSi jokes. Anyway, after this I will have a 2500-word document contributing to My Work. 

More about procrastination next time. Right now I just found out pSi stands for porous Silicon, which might be why pSivida chose the name as their main product is nanostructured porous Silicon, called BioSilicon. (Wikipedia is such a wonderful thing)

Back to work now. Tune in next time for your personalised fortune telling, brought to you by our sponser, pSiChic Sdn. Bhd. 

One week without Internet

2.47 p.m. 2nd October 2006

"How was your holiday?"
"It's over."

That's one of the most amusing answer I have heard so far. For the last two weeks, it was the mid semester break. I pretty much did nothing, except hanging out with friends once in a while and going to DFO. I found two clothes there at JayJay for AUD$15. Now that's cheap.

Anyway, back to the topic. Although I had a two weeks holiday,  one week in particular felt like hell to me. I was disconnected from the internet for a full one week. That's 168 hours gone from the internet. My life practically revolves around the internet. Being disconnected means no more YouTube (Lonelygirl 15, DanielBeast, TheWineKone) and no more StumbleUpon, which is how I spent most of my productive time. It's a good way to gain knowledge and find interesting pages from the internet.

I spent the whole Wednesday afternoon diagnosing my internet, thinking my router or modem is acting strange again. Nothing worked. I called my internet company at night and was told the Veridas network was down.

The next day I went to the university INTENTIONALLY just to be online. That is how bad the craving is. Turns out Veridas, a network wholesaler was having some problems and there were around 30000 people in Australia without internet. The exact cause of it: Not known. I would say it's mismanagement.

Whirlpool.net.au provided me with the up to date news and forum post of what is actually going on, and I thank them for that, for I would have been bored to the core if it weren't for them.  People there seems to hate Veridas very much, but this is the first major problem I have with them, the only problem I have with Veridas.

I was eventually transfered to another company called GoldenIT where I do not have a very good experience with some of the customer service staffs. Hope it's all good or I am going to change my service soon. ADSL2+ here I come, with a freaking huge price tag. Damn you.

Thus, from the one week I was disconnected from the internet and thus the world, the wealth of information, I hereby declare I am officially addicted to the Internet. 

New pages created

4.40 p.m. 1st September 2006

I have created several new pages. One of them being My Works. It is a site where I upload all of my typed work for any subject in university. Please note that all of the material there is copyrighted. If you wish to use any of it, please make sure you contact me first.

The second page being a chinese page called 天干地支. It was copied from another website, but I acknowledged the source and I made a few correction to it. The page is is about the chinese calendar and time system. There's a list there to let you check your Chinese zodiac sign and your, erm..五行, which I do not know how to explain in English. It's a Chinese thing. Have fun. I will update it next time with more info.

10 years

8.00 a.m. 18th August 2006

I have been too busy to write anything here. Uni started weeks ago and I am seriously falling behind. Things are not looking good.

Anyway, back to the title of this post. 2006 marks 10 years since I began using a computer. I know, that's a bit late. But it's never too late to start learning. =)

10 years ago, my household had 1 computer. That's 1 computer for 5 person at home. 10 years later, the number increased to nearly 1 computer for every person, and 1-PC-per-person is approaching soon.

10 years ago, we had a X brand computer with Intel Pentium 133Mhz and 16MB RAM. 10 years later, I have a Dell Dimension 4700 with Pentium 4 3.4Ghz with Hyper-Threading and 512MB RAM. That's 25x increase in computing speed and 32x increase in memory space. The hardrive space also increased 20 folds.

10 years ago, all I had was a 56K modem, with the top speed of say, 33.6K. Now, the house back in Malaysia is equipped with 1024K broadband connection, albeit a lousy one.

10 years ago, there's no such thing as "social networking website". 10 years later: Friendster, Myspace, MSN Space, Yahoo 360, Tickle, and a hell lot more.

10 years ago, due to the average internet speed of home user, many technology was not even available. This includes BitTorrent, YouTube, PodCasting, Subscription-based MP3 Downloading and more.

10 years ago, Netscape Navigator, ICQ, Yahoo was the trend. Now, Internet Explorer or Firefox, countless IM clients and Google is in. 

We sure have come a long way. 

Why don't I use blogging tools?

8.00 p.m. 22th June 2006

Yes, I do know Blogger, Wordpress, Myspace and all the countless blogging software and websites exist. My main point of creating this blog isn't to blog. The main reason I created this website is to learn HTML and web developement. This is one of my starting points.

The second reason is that I want to be different. I want to learn how things work and not just use them blindly. However, some day soon when I feel I have learnt sufficiently, I will go to a blogging website to start my own blog. My preference would be to Blogger, then Wordpress. I do not really like to support Microsoft's services, although I do use a lot of them.

I would like to first continue learning HTML, which started when I was in high school but somehow never quite finish it. Then, I would tackle CSS, or Cascading Style Sheet. No, I don't know what is that, yet. But they make websites look damn organised and professional. Having learn both of that, I would register my own domain and start my own website.

Speaking about domain names, while searching for suitable domain names, I notice my name has been taken. Damn that. Damn all of those who have the same name as me and register the domains before I did. Sadly, some of them make websites which I personally do not consider up to par. There's one worth mentioning though: Click here. Now that IS what I am talking about. Having a very personal name associated with such a meticulously designed website, is an honour.

I am trying to contact the owner of the domain name though, to see if he is interested in selling the domain in the future. Unfortunately, there's no contact information listed. I do know, however, that he is in Australia.

Right, this post is getting way too long. So long for now.