Friday, September 05, 2008
There was a discussion today on the forum I participate regarding the spam whitelisting. The forum is specifically aimed in legal industry so we are all talking about how the technology works in the legal field. The question was whether or not whitelisting the client email address, quite common one but I was surprised about some of the answers that mentioned lawyers are responsible for their own emails, meaning that they should spend their time going through the quarantine to find their own false positive. And the more reality that shocked me even more is that this is quite common in many of the firms.
I just don't get it. Isn't lawyer's time worth more spent on something that generates more revenue? Asking lawyers to go through their own quarantine is just like receiving emails without anti-spam protection at all. Yes, the job going through the spam is probably one of the dirtiest job in the world but that doesn't mean no one is willing to do so. We have one in our office, part of whose job is going through the nasty spams. She averagely checks 4000-5000 spams a day and does a wonderful job catching the false positives. I just can't imagine how many time she had saved for lawyers just by doing this.
IMHO, whoever said or suggested the idea that lawyers should check their own spams needs to learn a bit of more business lessons.
Tuesday, September 02, 2008
Another big day in web browser history, the day Google finally announced the release of their long waiting and already forgot web browser, Chrome, shortly after they renewed their sponsorship to Firefox for another 3 years. I couldn't wait for a second once I heard the release, rushed to their website and had it running on my Vista one minute later. The first impression, blazing fast; the second, deadly simple; the third, just amazing. To be honest, never had the same feeling when firstly touching the IE.
What's good? Google's legendary simplicity, and the renovated home page layout. The Chromer team even thought about completely getting rid of the bookmarks but I am glad they didn't.
What's cool? The performance. It's fast, deadly fast. Thanks to the awesome Webkit, the fastest rendering engine that powers Apple's Safari. And their own developed JavaScript Virture Machine that really speeds up most of JScript-rich web 2.0 websites.
Speed may be Chrome's most significant advance. When you improve things by an order of magnitude, you haven't made something better — you've made something new. "As soon as developers get the taste for this kind of speed, they'll start doing more amazing new Web applications and be more creative in doing them," Bak says. Google hopes to kick-start a new generation of Web-based applications that will truly make Microsoft's worst nightmare a reality: The browser will become the equivalent of an operating system.
What's best? The multiprocess architecture that allowed each opened tab run as a separate program. One tab crash won't affect other opened tabs, a huge benefit against all other current browsers in the market, which is also the reason that makes drag the tab to a new Window thing in real. Thanks to their acquisition of Green Border Technologies, a software security firm that developed the "sandboxes" for Chrome.
What's the killer? Open source. The source code will be released to public shortly after the release.
But all of these nice killer feature would make me to a switch, not really, at least not now. Why? Because I am so Firefoxed, can't leave without the add-on extensions. That's the fundamental different between these two browsers. The add-on extensions used to be the most innovated feature in Firefox, but not any more in Chromers' eyes, who can't stand on the fact that any innovation made in browser will be broken without all the updates to the extensions.
The conclusion was obvious: Only by building its own software could Google bring the browser into the cloud age and potentially trigger a spiral of innovation not seen since Microsoft and Netscape one-upped each other almost monthly.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Man, that's the reason why I love lifehacker. They constantly review and share stuff like this, free replacements for paid tools. They know exactly what's best for their readers. Well, they are also the killer to the owners of the paid tools.
I have already been on half of them, specially AVG for protecting my computer, Mozy for backing up my data, and Google Docs, alternative to Zoho, for documenting. Right now, I am loading reQall over on my iPhone, and will be remembering Gparted next time when I need to repartition my hard drive.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
MochaSoft, the provider of VNC app on iPhone, released the Remote Desktop app for iPhone, a long waiting iPhone app for me since the first day I had my iPod Touch. As always, the lite version is free. According to the description of the app:
None of these features I need on my iPhone, so the free lite version fits me perfectly. Besides, I am using it only in emergency. RDP on a 3.5" screen isn't actually very enjoyable. The limitations say it only support for Windows XP pro but I have no problem RDP in Windows 2003 server.
Now, with a paid app NetShare from nullriver through which you can get your laptop on Internet by tethering you iPhone's 3G network while you are on the road, every piece of application I had been dreaming for on a mobile device are there. Dream finally comes true...well wait, NetShare has been took off the Apple Store again at the moment.
By the way, MochaSoft's other little app Telnet Lite should be added too.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
A lot of eBayer are furious about the new eBay's feedback system that took place a few months back. I am ok with most of the changes but couldn't stand the fact that neutral feedbacks were counted just the same as the negative ones and I had no idea why they are doing this way.
Gladly, eBay finally realized it and changed the formula probably just a few hours ago. Now, I have 100% positive feedbacks, which tells all potential customers that I am a very honest, trustful seller who treats customer's satisfaction very seriously.
Monday, August 18, 2008
Here are the 10 Firefox extensions you can’t live without on 10 Things. Interestingly, I have none of them installed on my Firefox. So what's are on mine? Simple, only a few, here are the top 5 firefox extensions I can't live without:
- Gmail Notifier - A notifier for Gmail accounts. That's the one I used every day to manage three my Gmail accounts.
- Google Toolbar for Firefox. I have no idea why there are still people who doesn't want it on their browser.
- IE Tab - enables you to use the embedded IE engine within Firefox.
- Web Developer - nonetheless to say, it's a must have being a web developer.
- Remember the Milk for Gmail - it's sweet having task manager right in the Gmail.
What's yours then?
I was shocked, astonished, and a little disappointed when I heard the news that Liu Xiang has quitted the 110-m hurdle game in Bei Jing Olympics. But he's still the man and he's still a hero that looks even more like a human than before. It required more courage deciding to quit than continuing in the situation like this and even more, Liu has been dreaming of winning a gold medal in the national stadium in the Olympics for 7 years.
Some of the people said that he could walk to the end, and yes, I agree, I would do the same if I were him. But hell no, that's why we can't be at his level and we can't never be at the top. The warrior can not be beaten in the battle field, and Liu is definitely a warrior who is never afraid of battling. His quit is telling all his opponents that he hasn't be beaten in the Olympics and he will come back.
Stand up, China Liu, you are always the hero to us...no matter what!
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Yeah, it's finally done. After spending hours to try to figure it out, I finally got my iPhone 3G hooked up with our office Exchange server.
One nice thing about the new iPhone 3G and iPhone 2.0 software is the native support for Microsoft Exchange because Apple finally licensed Microsoft ActiveSync from Microsoft. It delivers pushing email, calendar, and contacts. The first thing I tried after I had my iPhone 3G is to try to connect it to the office Exchange server but no success. It passed the authentication part but sync'd null after.
I left there for a week or two until my assistant Lee passed around this Microsoft KB which obviously related to the issue we were having. I didn't follow all of them but changed some obvious ones and all of sudden it started working, email flows in while events shows in my calendar on iPhone. Here is things I thought is necessary to get it work.
- Port 80 and 443 need to be opened on firewall.
- The site that has OWA and OMA has to have both 80 and 443 opened.
- OWA (domain/exchange) has to be put on SSL as required to secure the communication.
- Follow the Microsoft KB 817379 to make an alternative exchange-oma for Microsoft ActiveSync Server with SSL not required.
And last, if the Exchange email account you created on iPhone isn't working, you have to delete it and recreate it as new to test. I still have the following error message showing up on Exchange server event log but it doesn't seem to matter anymore as emails still flow.
Unexpected Exchange mailbox Server error: Server: [xxx] User: [xxx] HTTP status code: [400]. Verify that the Exchange mailbox Server is working correctly.
Exchange server 2007 offers a better tools and ways to manage mobile users and devices but not so many on 2003. So next step, I will have to find a way how to secure the system tightly.
Monday, August 11, 2008
It was down for more than an hours and all my Gmail accounts including the Google App one were all inaccessible during the time. It wasn't a big deal for me but I am deadly sure it matters for a lot of others. I can't just believe it happened on Gmail, a solid-stable system that never failed on me.
Just don't know if we should ever trust the cloud computing. Is moving all data online especially your business critical data still a really good approach?
Saturday, August 09, 2008
I don't know if it has changed your behavior but it did change mine. I found myself washing or cleaning my both hands way more often than before ever since I started using iPod touch actually. :) But it's a good way of doing so.
Anyway, enjoy the rest of the Olympic weekend. Can't wait to watch the basketball game tomorrow morning. Yes, Yao Min versus US.
Thursday, August 07, 2008
ididwork, a recently launched web application, could be useful to you through your busy daily work activities. Works ok on my iPhone but wish they can either make a mobile version or a twitter thing, or even an iPhone app to make it easier to use.
ididwork is an online tool that allows employees to keep track of the work they do over time. Employee logs can then be shared with other employees, and submitted to superiors for review. ididwork can be used by an individual to keep track of work completed, and by the enterprise to increase awareness of employee activity.
Time for the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics. The opening ceremony will start tomorrow morning but some of the games has already started, like man and woman soccer. The team man China tied the game with New Zealand, the weakest team in the same group. However, they scored the first goal ever in team China's soccer history. So I really wanted to see how they did it. But unfortunately, even with the Wired's Watch the Olympics Online, I wasn't able to watch it. After trying for over 1 hour, I gave up.
Apparently, every country only has one major television company granted for distribute the news for Olympics. I used to just watch all sports games on Sina Sports. But due to the agreement signed with Olympics' committee, it only opens to local users, not the users overseas like me. NBC is awesome too. It has tons of Videos on the site free to watch but again, only restricted to US residents. CBC is the one for Canadian, but sadly, I couldn't locate a piece of Video on the site for me to watch. Really sucks. All they have are the stuff that I can easily read or find from other places. Too bad, I never missed a free fast Proxy service that much, and the first time ever I even want to be in the states.
Hopefully, as the games start, everything will be turning better and better on CBC.
<update>
Another thing CBC didn't do it right and on time is the lack of mobile version on their website for the mobiles while NBC has one that fits my iPhone smoothly.
</update>
Saturday, August 02, 2008
I fell in love with my touch almost instantly the minute when I got it. The more I use, the more I love. It's deadly a thing I am just simply waiting for so long. Now, since my 3-year cell phone contract is up my company thought it would be a good opportunity for me to give a try out for the new iPhone. So yeah, I am on it now, even though I have the mission to determine whether or not it will be a good approach to be used in a business environment. And yes, I will be keeping any progress here for sure.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
It's still in beta though but the new features and fixes in this version are the ones I am exactly waiting for so long. Can't wait to see the final release coming up.
Features in GFI MailArchiver 6 BETA 1 build 20080717:
- NEW: Microsoft Outlook Connector – Users can view archived email from Microsoft Outlook.
- NEW: During installation, the setup will ask to customise the language analyser to be used during email indexing.
- NEW: Download archive emails in Microsoft Outlook format (.msg)
- NEW: Users can access archived emails from web UI folder structure.
- NEW: Indexing processes can be paused and resumed at will.
Monday, July 28, 2008
I had been using MS Word to make all my IT documentation and saved in a structured folder but found it's hard to maintain and catch up. Oftenly, the steps to make a document made me reluctant to do so. I had tried a few Wiki tools but found it's hard for me to make a quite format rich documents in Wiki, besides, its non-standard HTML format makes it ever harder for me to do even a very simply instructions.
Finally, I tried and finalized to use telligent's new released Graffiti cms system as my IT document library. Its simplicity and flexibility totally meets almost all my needs. I can easily customize the layout and move content to or from wherever I want. It also works seamlessly with my favorite blogging publish tool, Windows Live Writer. Whenever I want to document something, I can simply fire up my live writer, write something down, pick up which category should belong to, and publish it right after I finish it. Yes, comparing to Wiki, it lacks of the version tracking but this is not what I am concerned the most. However, if the revision control weights pretty well in your list, you should be considering Wiki instead.