Hey hey hey, PortableApps.com have released a bunch of brand new applications such as winMd5Sum Portable 1.0.1.55, On-Screen Keyboard Portable 1.0, Notepad++ Portable 4.1.2, Virtual Magnifying Glass Portable 3.3, and some portable games for your pleasure.
Go ahead to http://portableapps.com/apps for your dose of portable apps.
I have been subscribed to TechRepublic’s newsletters for quite a while but never had many chance to read every article. However today’s article caught my eyes: Five e-mail habits that waste time and cause problems
As someone who is very dependent to emails, and hates using phones I agree very much with the content of the article. Do you?
Have you heard? Pidgin 2.0.1 has just been released two hours ago (as of the time of writing – 25 May 2007 20:10 GMT). This release fixed various bugs, where 112 tickets were closed. Go here to see the Milestone page and here to download Pidgin.
However my most waited enhancement is not in this release. Maybe some day.
I shall be building and testing my version of Pidgin Portable soon.
I have updated my version of Pidgin Portable to use Pidgin 2.0.1 🙂
I was browsing through some blogs when I found myself on this particular post in doBot’s blog. Here’s the official announcement.
Familiar Malaysian forums have been discussing this for a while, and as usual I’m left behind again. Some of them mentioned that the 4Mbps is nothing if TMNet still decides to limit/throttle traffic especially for P2P users. I’m actually neutral in this P2P throttling issue, even though I am a heavy bittorrent user. Why? Well actually the number of broadband users in Malaysia is not that high, and most concentrated only among savvy Internet users. If most of these users are using P2P daily and TMNet does no policing act on it, the whole Streamyx infrastructure will most probably overload. This, is not deniable due to the incompetency of TMNet but IMHO every company deserves a chance to improve themselves, provided that they are trying to improve.
As I read everywhere in the media, TMNet is heading a committee for the second submarine link (I don’t remember the project name). That is indeed very good if it can provide us a secondary pipe and a fail-over mechanism. I have no idea but I am really hoping that this will widen our International link in a massive scale.
On the introduction of the 4Mbps link, I think it is to soon if no International link upgrade has been done. If anyone from TMNet can enlighten me that would be great, as I have no idea of what is going on in there that they actually decided to offer the 4Mbps package.
The price of RM268 is indeed quite high, but it is very reasonable IF AND ONLY IF there would be a huge improvement to speed and reliability. I know users in some other countries pay a lot more for broadband, and of course some pay less. It’s really just business and you can’t really do much about it. I’d pay RM268 if the service is good and reliable, with superb customer support. I guess I’ll just wait and see before running to the nearest TM Point.
If you want to be the first to test this service, go quick as they are offering RM198 before 17 June 2007. I need your feedback on the service before deciding. Oh yes, check the availability/coverage in your area first before even thinking about it. And of course, you have to be with 3km or less from the exchange 😉
I wonder how they would consider/calculate a package upgrade?
What do you think… would you go for this package?
Have you ever downloaded a file with the extension .iso and have no idea what to do with it? It has been not once, not twice, but at least 6 times I have provided a .iso file to a friend / family member and the .iso file ended up to be a single file on the CD/DVD. I know there are many computer users out there who still have no clue about .iso images.
Newer CD/DVD burning applications usually will associate .iso files so that when you click on such file the software will launch and open the CD/DVD burning wizard. However, most often than not I see the files having ‘unknown’ icons and not associated with anything.
A normal user will encounter .iso files much less often than geeks like me. But there are circumstances where .iso files are needed. One good example is when I was asked for a MS-DOS boot disk for a laptop without any floppy drive. So I just took a bootable .iso image I created a while ago and send it via e-mail (the size is not that big, just about the size of a floppy).
So the .iso file usually ended up in a CD/DVD rather than the files in it.
Simply put, an .iso file is an image, sort of an archive to house many files in it. It is an exact image of a CD/DVD file system. I know some gamers who use illegal games have utilities like Virtual DAEMON Manager to mount .iso images and fool the game that there’s a CD/DVD inside the drive.
Tools like IsoBuster can also help Windows users to see (and extract) the files contained in .iso images.
So next time when you receive an .iso image don’t burn it using the normal burning wizard. For Nero, use the Recorder > Burn Image menu:
For more geeky technical reading on mounting .iso images on Linux, click on Continue Reading…
Latest Update click here.
I am a curious programmer, and was all the way wondering on how apps on PortableApps were made. Since Pidgin, the replacement for Gaim was released I was waiting for a while for Portable Apps but I guess they must be busy with the number off apps they have to handle.
So I went and analyze the Gaim Portable sources, read some info on Pidgin official site, downloaded NSIS and I managed to make it work! I was planning just to use it personally but as always I feel like sharing it.
You can download it here:
PidginPortable.zip md5sum: f4ea8c532f43166b7ef61ee915c1218e
And if you want spell checking support, extract this to PidginPortable\App\aspell
aspell.zip md5sum: 19a0d7cf3a384e17b642825220121462
They are zip archives since I have not learned about the install files from Portable Apps yet.
The Pidgin files were copied from my local installation, by guidance from the Pidgin FAQ: Running Windows Pidgin From a USB Drive.
The installed size is around 8.48MB. Like Gaim Portable, I’ve utilized UPX to compress the EXE and DLL files.
Modifications were done mainly to the NSIS script, to use new Pidgin variables and names. Many references to the original site http://PortableApps.com/GaimPortable were not changed, even in the quick splash image I made. In addition I just added my name in the source and version 🙂
There maybe some problems that I have not encountered, so you might want to use the official release from Portable Apps once it is released. They are the experts.
10 May 2007: Updated with GTK Theme Selector:
PidginPortable.zip md5sum: dabbfc11b03512e01d79fda935be8bb1 Updated below
*The GTK Theme Selector will override the settings by the Pidgin GTK Theme Control if used. If you don’t need the selector, simply delete the executable and it will disappear from the menu. The overwriting problem exists as I have to ask the Theme Selector to copy its settings written in settings/.purple/.gtkrc-2.0 to what Pidgin looks for: settings/.purple/gtkrc-2.0 (notice the dot before the filename).
I still can’t figure out how to enable aspell support so as you can see I have disabled the aspell download.
Ok ok I know this is old news for most of you. I just can find this time to write a bit about it.
Technically speaking WiMAX stands for Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access. It is a common misconception to consider WiMAX and Wi-Fi as similar technologies. The fact that they both start with same letter and governed by IEEE standard 802x. makes them easier to be confused.
Wi-Fi, which most of us are familiar with and use everyday is targeted for short range access (10m) and is suitable for Intranet or hotspot coverage for a small area. It was never meant for ISPs to distribute Internet access. Wi-Fi uses unlicensed radio spectrum, otherwise you’ll need to apply for a license from MCMC each time you buy a wireless access point 😉
In the other hand, WiMAX can go up to 70km and is suitable for last mile/km distribution of Internet access from ISPs. The issue with licensing that we saw in the news is because WiMAX utilizes a licensed radio spectrum so not just anyone can operate a WiMAX access point.
Do take note, however all of the maximum ranges are still effected by the line-of-sight limitation so even if you live very near to a WiMAX access point but you live behind a hill you might not get the maximum 70Mbps speed that WiMAX can handle. That’s a nice pair of numbers – 70km/70Mbps.
Lately when accessing Fotopages, there has been quite a lot of occurrence of this error: db error Lost connection to MySQL server during query . I wonder why. Maybe the database server is overloaded? From my analysis it looks like the database is located in a different server 🙂
Have you ever heard of the browser named Iceweasel? Of course not, if you’re not using Debian. One of my machine at home is running a Debian Etch installation (my torrent box), and a few days ago I ran apt-get upgrade to upgrade the packages.
I was quite annoyed at first, as it’s trying to install a new package (not to mention the huge size) but I let it anyway. Earlier today I launched the web browser in my Xfce and Iceweasel was loading…
Iceweasel is a rebranded Firefox, and exist in 2 independent projects: one by Gnuzilla, and the other one by Debian.
Iceweasel was created since Mozilla demanded that Debian complies to some of the policies and terms that Debian finds unacceptable.
The other products are also re branded. Thunderbird became Icedove and Seamonkey became Iceape.
The current release of Gnuzilla IceWeasel is based on the 1.5.0.7 version of Mozilla Firefox, while the current version of Debian Iceweasel is based on the 2.0.0.1 release of Firefox.
The most obvious reason for this name change was that Mozilla demanded that Debian retain all branding from Mozilla if they were to continue using the Firefox name. However, because of the Debian Free Software Guidelines that said no non-free artwork and plugins are allowed, they were unable to comply. This generic, non-branded icon on the right was used for Firefox in Debian.
What I can see so far is that only the name changed. All of my plugins can still be used and upgraded normally. As for my active machines, however I always use the extracted package from Mozilla so there would be no way I would realize about the existence of Iceweasel.
Iceweasel. Cute name?
While updating my phone using SEUS today, SEUS crashed in the midst of downloading the phone firmware and now the phone is dead. Looks like a trip to the service center is needed… 🙁
This is like my 7th time updating the phone firmware but like they say, there’s always a first time in everything. I’m not too worried though, as only the firmware is missing. I just hope they can restore it in one day without having to leave it. My poor baby…
Well, this post is not about my dad but about GoDaddy. Tonight, after my continuous disappointment with RegisterFly I decided to buy some domains from GoDaddy. I am still very impressed with their system. Top level automation. For my story I will need the following image to assist me.
As their promotion mentioned: Private Registration just $4.99 or FREE when you register three or more domains!
Even though I didn’t really need private whois information, it was quite a good offer especially with .com domains priced at USD6.95. So I went and add 3 domains to my cart, clicking the “private” button. That went well – all of the private registrations (rows 4-6) were inserted with cost of 0. At this moment all three domains were at their full prices, so my total cart amount was USD23.64.
Next I simply added a .info domain which costs me USD1.99. Nothing special about it, just the low price but I still get the free private registration. My cart now holds USD25.88.
Next, I needed a simple hosting preferably with unlimited domains so I signed up for a year of budget Linux hosting. That costs USD43.05 (3.59 x 12). The most exciting part here is that the first domain I registered (row 1) became USD1.99 as they promised with the hosting package: Your Domain is Just $1.99 With This Purchase. My total then was USD63.97.
Going further, I was ready to checkout and pay with my PayPal but I remembered a discount code provided by BLAUGH. So I entered it and further obtained 10% discount (even though 10% should be USD6.397 I was given USD5.20 – must be some other calculations). It brought my total to USD58.77.
If I consider my hosting to be paid in full (USD43.05) I only paid 58.77 – 43.05 = 15.72 for my two .com, a .net and a .info domain 😉
I was (am) happy. I would really recommend this service to everyone. And immediately after paying, I can already check my whois, and manage my brand new domains.
By the way, RegisterFly responded to my ticket about domains not registered (see related link), and they say it was a problem with traffic load being too high. That’s a bad excuse.
There’s a new service in town: LinkedIn
It’s a connection building site, more or less the purpose is like those of Ringo or Friendster but targeted to the professional community. It have a paid option where you can see more business information about other people in the community. The site looks professional and the system works really well.
If you ask me, this is a very good opportunity for you to get linked to others and find out if anyone is interested in your expertise. I does not matter if you’re still a student – the system supports it too. Maybe you’ll be able to secure a job after graduation, or even find a place to do your industrial training. As for me, well if there are opportunities to work abroad or remotely I would certainly be interested 😉
Connect to me now: http://www.linkedin.com/in/romantika. Drop me an invitation using my email ady [at] romantika [dot] name
This is not a paid post, and I will not gain anything from this except for valuable networking and contacts.
Urgh… RegisterFly did it again. Although I have officially become a GoDaddy customer, I still have like USD30+ in my RegisterFly account so I decided to spend the money on some domains I have in mind. Guess what? I registered and paid for the domains on the 5th of January 2007 but until today there’s no sign of the domain in any whois and they remain free for registration.
So, if someone were to buy those domains from other registrars they still can. It’s so stupid and disappointing especially since they took my money when I registered, and now that I want to use it they don’t exist!
I sent them a ticket two days ago, and until now there’s still no reply. That’s normal even though they boast of 24/7 support on the top of their page. Maybe I should try calling their support number.
Things ain’t that bad as I registered some not so very critical domains… and I can always buy them somewhere else as they have not been registered. 😉
After 51 year from the introduction of the first hard drive by IBM in 1956 (5MB in capacity), Hitachi has released a 1TB hard drive. For the technical readers, 1TB = 1024GB = 1048576MB. That’s a huge amount of data, and if the hard disk crashes and you don’t have any backups or a RAID setup, you’ll end up kneeling down and crying over your lost data. And just imagine what’s the cost for data recovery service…
In the future if I even consider buying disks this big, I’ll surely buy by pair and setup RAID.
The consumer version of the Hitachi drive is named Deskstar 7K1000 while the two other versions (which will be released later – 2nd quarter) are called CinemaStar for DVR boxes, and unknown name for enterprise with certified MTBF.
The disk contains 5 platters, in which each carries 200GB. The 7200 rpm Serial-ATA drive will have 32MB data buffer. It will be available in SATA 3.0Gb/s and Parallel-ATA 133 interfaces.
Of course, this big capacity drive was achieved by Perpendicular Recording.
For further reading this technology go to http://www.pcworld.com/article/….
Whatever it is, I am sure that late Reynold Johnson will be very happy with what has evolved from his invention and how it has helped mankind.
Thanks for Azidin for the heads up.
I tried to register to performancing today but it said I already registered (username and email taken). Tried using the request for password form, and it said unable to send email.
When I try to use the contact form, I received this:
Oh well, maybe just a bad luck day for me 🙁
Update: 18:54 GMT+8
It seems that the system was not wrong saying that I have an account in the system. The confirmation email have just arrived a couple of minutes ago, after more than an hour. Still, it seems weird about the forms failure.