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Tien Soon's Tech Blog

I'm Going On Leave

Posted: December 26th, 2006, 7:56pm MYT by Law Tien Soon

Just like majority of the working community, I'm going on leave from tomorrow (27th Dec) onwards, and will be back to work on 2nd Jan. Ya, I know 2nd Jan is public holiday, but our HR Department sent us an email with the following message days ago:

Is Tuesday, 2nd January 2007 is a holiday? The Ministry of Human Resources has left this decision to the private sector. Hari Raya Haji falls on two separate dates this year - 10th January and again on 31st December. For that reason, there will be no replacement holiday for Sunday, 31st December.

In other words, I have to work on 2nd Jan lo.

I'll be away for a short vacation in the next following days, and thus might not update my blog for a few days. Don't miss me too much hahaha.

OK la, it's time for me to leave office now. Ya right, I'm still in office covering up some works before going for a break.

To all my readers, Happy New Year 2007!

Jason, don't eat too much a.... haha

Kleio, have an enjoyable festive weekend with your son and hubby ;)

Ellone, hope you don't get stomachache again approaching New Year Eve hehe

Shal, you syiok la, Melaka liao continue with Penang. Taking leave much earlier than I do.

Cheers!
Internationalization and Localization

Posted: December 21st, 2006, 8:57am MYT by Law Tien Soon

I prefer to use a computerized system in English interface, but another colleague from Taiwan prefers Simplified Chinese, and there’re Spanish users who prefer to use the system in Spanish language.

If you’re working in a MNC, and currently evaluating a business information system solution, the above scenario is what you must address. Can the system be personalized across each individual in terms of language? We call this internationalization, or i18n.

If a business system is designed for enterprise environment in mind, it should be able to support internationalization with great scalability. So to say, each user can choose their preferred language, and additional languages can also be easily added into the system without any architectural revamp.

What about localization?

Localization is referring to the support for localized environment, in various aspects such as time zone, currency unit, date format, and decimal format.

Just a simple example, 13th of January 2007 can be written as 13/01/2007 (dd/MM/yyyy), 01/13/2007 (MM/dd/yyyy), 13-Jan-2007 (dd-MMM-yyyy), Jan 13, 2007 (MMM dd, yyyy), and a lot more other formats. Each country and organization might have a difference of preference in date format. Can the system be easily configured anytime to activate a particular date format? The same concept applies to other localization factors like decimal format.

Time zone is a tricky issue. Some of the business systems are actually storing any kind of date values in the data store, according to the time zone where the server is physically sitting, and not the place where this system is used.

Let’s imagine you have an executive information system, hosted at a server located in Central America. However, the actual users of the system are actually residing in Malaysia. So, if the system is stamping all the business transactions in Central America time zone GMT-06:00, isn’t it inconvenient for Malaysian users to interpret the data?

Just two simple words – internationalization, localization – but presenting one of the most critical and technically challenging architectural factors.
Stealth Mode Browser – Ghostzilla

Posted: December 19th, 2006, 6:31pm MYT by Law Tien Soon

Opening up Outlook Express to act like reading email, or Microsoft Word to act like reading document, and Visual Studio to act like you’re coding; but, you’re actually browsing Internet web pages! Is this stealth mode possible? Yes, it is possible with a browser called Ghostzilla ;)

This is a screen shot of Outlook Express in normal operation.

This, instead, is the Outlook Express activated with Ghostzilla. Notice that a web page is actually loaded and displayed in the message pane. Without a close investigation, the contents inside message pane looks very much like a normal email.

In the highest level of stealth or invisible mode, images are not shown. But, as you mouse over on a particular image, it will be shown as gray or pale. There is a total of 6 stealth levels available for selection.

You may check out Ghostzilla screenshots gallery to find out other advanced ghostly appearances featured hehe.

Never think that Ghostzilla is your ultimate saver allowing you to happily surf Internet during working hours without getting caught. If you think so, you are absolutely wrong :) In some environments, network traffic is monitored by network administrator. Worse still, if your company network has a proxy server, your Internet usage behaviors are practically tracked. Don’t ever try using Ghostzilla as your weapon to full-time workplace surfing, or you bear the risk hehe.
Review: Great Discounts and Rebates at HotelReservations.com

Posted: December 17th, 2006, 7:49pm MYT by Law Tien Soon

This time around is the peak season for vacations and travels, as people are clearing leave during year-end, and on top of that, seasonal celebrations like Christmas and New Year are approaching.

Accommodation and flight, being must-haves in a vacation, but often introduces a relatively big portion of expenses. Personally, I prefer to book hotels prior to a trip, via online reservation facility, as the rates published online are usually much lower than walk-in or over-the-phone. Better still, if you could make up your mind earlier on the traveling date, early-bird promotions are usually available online.

Where to Get Discounts and Rebates?

So where to get discounts on accommodation?

I've conducted a review for HotelReservations.com, and I'm showing you in this article, my findings on the great discounts and rebates as claimed by HotelReservations.com.

Let's see if HotelReservations.com makes a difference in saving, or whether no difference at all; or perhaps worse still, paying more? Hehe... never judge a book by its cover *winks*

Usability Analysis

In terms of the layout design in general, frankly, it's just a typical white/silver theme. No feel of Web 2.0 factor is seen. Though the site design is not considered trendy, but it is content rich. The layout is appropriately allocated to fit in relevant information. In the landing page itself, all that I was looking for in a hotel reservation portal are found! We can search and browse for hotels by destinations and regions, access to contact and hotline numbers, navigate to other services offered, select other languages and currencies, and get relevant policy-based information. The hotel search panel is also highlighted with red border to catch immediate attention.

Pricing Analysis

By searching for my hometown Melaka as destination, on the duration from 26th Dec to 28th Dec, I got a listing of results for hotels in Melaka, as well as suggestions on expanded area, Kuala Lumpur in my search context.

I've selected Hotel Equatorial Melaka as the basis for my pricing analysis.

For the purpose of making comparison, I visited the tariff rates of Hotel Equatorial published at its official website.

As shown, the Superior Room is charged at RM410 of nightly rate. For your information, this tag is exclusive of 10% service charge and 5% government tax.

Now, take a look at the nightly rate for Superior Room of Hotel Equatorial Melaka offered by HotelReservations.com.

I was offered at USD76 (RM267.52) of nightly rate. I think your mathematical brain will tell you the difference between RM410 and RM267.52 :) It's a difference of RM142.48, just for a night!

So, a 3D2N stay will save you approximately RM284.96 (USD80.95). This is definitely not a small amount ;)

Price Guarantee and Cash Rebates

For whichever hotel room tagged with Special Internet Rate, it comes with price guarantee as well. According to the guarantee, if there is a lower rate available for the same dates and same hotel that you've booked, you can lodge a request within 24 hours, and your booking may be rebated to match the lower rate.

Besides, you are also entitled for cash rebates after your completed stay. For example, USD20 will be credited to your credit card with a 3-night booking, USD30 with a 5-night booking, USD50 with a 8-night booking, USD75 with a 10-night booking, and maximum of USD100 with a 12-night booking. This promotion is valid for reservations booked online through Jan 31, 2007 for travel through Mar 31, 2007.

Credible Supplier

Based on my personal experience, it's not hard for me to spot that HotelReservations.com is affiliated to IAN's TravelNow as supplier :)

However, I've never seen any other IAN's TravelNow affiliate site which is doing this hotel reservation portal so seriously and dedicatedly. Unlike HotelReservations.com, most of the affiliate sites I've seen are not complemented with customer care services. Furthermore, IAN's TravelNow is a credible leader in providing technical and business solutions for hotel and flight reservation facilities. This makes transaction at HotelReservations.com a trustable and reliable one.

- This is a sponsored content -
Your Contribution Needed on Malaysian Blog Survey

Posted: December 15th, 2006, 10:11am MYT by Law Tien Soon
A friend of mine, June, is doing her Master Degree research on Malaysian bloggers. If you are a blogger or a blog reader, your contributions are very much needed to make the research subject a success.

If you’re interested to find out some background information related to the research on Malaysian blogger, you may visit her research blog.

OK. Here’s how you can contribute to the research. Proceed with the following links to questionnaire based on your preferred language.
- English
- Bahasa Malaysia
For each person responded to the survey, June will buy you a meal.

Sorry, June never say the previous statement actually. I made it up one :p
iPod Cannot be Turned Off

Posted: December 15th, 2006, 8:55am MYT by Law Tien Soon

Look what’s the label on this box ;)

Yes, it’s a box for iPod 30GB Black, designed by Apple in California and assembled in China.

“Hey! You had shown the box, but where’s the iPod?”

Aaaahiiii~~~ the iPod was sent back to distributor for warranty claim.

My girlfriend is working in National Semiconductor. As some of you might have read from paper, National Semiconductor actually rewarded their staffs by giving away iPod 30GB for FREE! Yup, my girlfriend is one of the beneficiaries.

But, a little bit unlucky. The iPod that she got can be turned on, but cannot be turned OFF. I’ve googled around, and found that quite a number of similar issues are raised in online forums. No choice lo, have to send it back and claim for replacement.

The faulty part aside, but Apple is really good in overall packaging of the iPod. From the box to its standard accessories, everything is reflecting the design concept of “simple, sleek and elegant”.

iPod Earphone

iPod USB Connector

I’m surprised that Apple is generously giving a set of Capdase universal charger for iPod, instead of just giving you the appliance specifically designed to meet the electrical specification of the country.

By carrying this set of universal plugs, there’s no worry about iPod running out of juice in foreign countries. I love this thoughtful design.

Till we get a new replacement iPod, I will not be able to write further review for it.
BorderWare MXtreme Image Spam Filter

Posted: December 15th, 2006, 8:33am MYT by Law Tien Soon

Email spamming is always a challenging issue in Internet communication arena. It costs corporate world a significant amount of monetary investment and human resource efforts in the fight against email spammers.

The conventional text spam is always on the rise, but its significance and degree of user-reach is inversely responding. Various free and commercial spam filtering engines are proven effective in analyzing textual messages, and keep inbox practically spam-free.

However, just as spam filters are getting more sophisticated, spammers are getting smarter too! Recently, there’s an emergence of new form spamming, called image spam, which defeats the analyzing engine of conventional spam filter designed to infer textual messages.

Image spam works by incorporating an image and a small amount of text into an email. While spam filter can easily analyze and interpret textual messages, but inferring the contents contained in an image is not something that can be easily done programmatically.

While all image spam messages may look the same to an end-user, spammers have programs to automatically create each image to have slightly different coloration, speckle patterns, or fonts. This combination of computerized image tweaks introduces uniqueness in each image. Thus, it poses a greater degree of difficulty for spam filters to classify and analyze common features from a group of related image spam.

Anti Image Spam

BorderWare, a software company specializing in Internet communication security, is introducing a new age anti image spam called BorderWare MXtreme, designed to intelligently counter against image spam.

MXtreme is featuring a patent-pending image analyzing technology – Intercept Image Analysis, which inspects over thirty attributes about each image including positions and relationships to other message characteristics and is designed to adapt and learn about new image spam campaigns.

If you’re interested to learn more about BorderWare MXtreme, you may visit MXtreme’s official site. MXtreme is awarded email content filtering "Best Buy" by SC Magazine.

Free evaluation copy is available for you to have some hands-on before further deciding on purchase.

- This is a sponsored content -
How To Run Multiple Versions of Internet Explorer?

Posted: December 14th, 2006, 6:37pm MYT by Law Tien Soon

By now, a lot Windows XP end-users would have installed Internet Explorer 7, whether by self-initiated upgrade or automatic download from Windows Updates.

To the non-technical end-users, no big deal for replacing IE6 with IE7. But to communities like web developers and web engineers, running IE7 instead of IE6 as the core IE browser is not a good idea, as web applications behave differently based on browser versions. At this moment, though the Windows XP home users are steadily adopting IE7, but corporate users are still standardizing on IE7 in general. Thus, if a piece of JavaScript codes or CSS styles is working fine on IE7 but not IE6, then the web developer gonna have some big time tracing on the root cause.

Customer: I clicked on this button and I get an error!

Engineer: Well, I've tried in my IE but everything looks fine. I can't attend to your problem if I can't duplicate it.

Customer: I believe you should look at this issue no matter what, as we can't proceed using this functionality without the button.

Engineer: What browser you use?

Customer: IE lo

Engineer: What version?

Customer: How to check?

Engineer: Click Help and select About Internet Explorer

Customer: ooo... it's 6.0.2900.2180.xpsp_sp2_gdr...

Engineer: Ai yo… why you use IE6? Use the new IE7 la...

Unfortunately, we can't reply the user with the last statement mentioned above *winks*

OK, enough of topic introduction hahaha. Back to the main topic. How to run multiple versions of Internet Explorer browsers in a PC?

Download Standalone Internet Explorer

First of all, you need to download standalone version of older IE. Go to Evolt's archive of Internet Explorer and pick the version you're looking for. The archive dated back to IE3!!!

The standalone versions of IE doesn't require any installation. Just unzip the package, and double click on the exe will do.

A Bit of Easy Tweaking

In order for Internet Explorer to work, it requires some relevant registry entries and DLL tweaking. But, all these tweaking are hustling.

No worry, just proceed to TredoSoft and download a small setup program will do. This small goodie is exploiting a known workaround to DLL, and helps you to get all the necessary entries done in order to run multiple versions of IE in your PC.

Today a colleague of mine has faced an issue which requires her to install standalone IE6 along with IE7. I've not tested this trick personally, but my colleague has confirmed that TredoSoft's workaround works!

However, since this is a workaround by skipping routine installation, I don't expect the secondary standalone IE to work perfectly. In TredoSoft's discussions, a few issues are also pointed out. However, to serve general needs of web application and web site testing, it should work satisfyingly.
Java 6 is Released

Posted: December 13th, 2006, 6:27pm MYT by Law Tien Soon

Everyone in Java community is excited about it. Java 6, the first version of Java platform developed under Sun’s Java Research License, is officially released!

The significance of Sun’s Java Research License, is that Java 6 is benefitted from supportive bug fixes. When Java 6 was in Beta, the number of bug reports is almost flat! What a great surprise to the industry.

Improved Performance

To me, the most exciting improvement featured in Java 6, is the boosted out-of-the-box performance. Working in the field of enterprise solutions powered by Java, I’ve seen a number of obstacles in handling performance issues, especially in Java 1.4.2 and earlier versions. In pre Java 5 era, the Java virtual machine wasn’t architecturally optimized to utilize new opportunities of resources offered by 64-bit hardware and multiprocessor environment. Though Java 5 is packed with enriching list of improvements on performance to take advantage on new hardware architecture, but tweaking the runtime parameters to achieve optimized performance isn’t an easy task either. It often requires some efforts of runtime tracing in order to decide on the tweaks.

Java 6 has changed the norm. Out-of-the-box performance is offered! David Dagastine has published an article to provide an insight to Java 6 performance on server environment. Based on a number of testing scenarios, Java 6 is proven to display improvements without troublesome tuning.

Scripting Language Support

Java 6 also provides scripting language support, by formalizing a standard called JSR 223. With this standardized support, developers can call Java classes from scripting language, and vice versa. This is not a breakthrough in technology. In fact, it can be done prior to Java 6. But, the formalized standard and specification help Java community to promote homogeneity.

Java DB

Besides, Java DB, Sun's supported distribution of the open source Apache Derby 100% Java technology database, is packaged and supported in Java 6.

No Language Change

Unlike Java 5, Java 6 doesn’t introduce language or syntax changes. Java 6 is about better feature and enhanced stability. Yes, I strongly agree that performance of Java should be addressed with higher precedence than introducing fatter features.

More about Java 6 at Javalobby
Where Was I for Past Few Days?

Posted: December 13th, 2006, 5:00pm MYT by Law Tien Soon

Good question. Where was I for the past few days? I’ve not updated this blog for almost a week ;)

Pretty occupied I would say. I was away for company advance meeting 2007, held in Hotel Equatorial Melaka. Ya, it was in my hometown, but I stayed in hotel instead of my home hehehe. After all, meals and accommodation are paid for. Might as well I enjoy the stay right ;)

Surprisingly, contrary to my expectation, the restaurants in Hotel Equatorial Melaka is serving delicious foods. More about it later, I have plenty of updates in the queue hehe.

However, there’s no free WiFi at Hotel Equatorial Melaka. Though wired broadband is available, but expensive. The 256K broadband is charged at RM9 per hour or RM39.95 per day. So all I can do, was to check my Gmail on phone using Gmail Mobile, and read POP3 emails on the simple mail client on my phone, via GPRS.
I've Got Paid by PayPerPost

Posted: December 6th, 2006, 9:32am MYT by Law Tien Soon

Some of you who have noticed my first sponsored post titled “Publish Disclosure Policy to Promote Content Integrity” affiliated to PayPerPost, might be wondering if I’m no longer interested in PayPerPost sponsorship, as I’ve not written any more PayPerPost sponsored articles since then.

Hehehe… there were a few readers who asked if I found any glitch in PayPerPost ads on blogs system, and thus discontinue from writing sponsored posts *winks*

Actually, NO, I’m not losing interest in PayPerPost. And YES, I’ll still be writing sponsored posts without superseding the purpose-of-existence of this blog. The reason why I have paused from writing any more PayPerPost sponsored post since the first successful attempt, is to verify the actual payment arriving in my PayPal so that I can tell loudly to my readers that PayPerPost works.

I’m Paid

The moment I was waiting for, has finally arrived. Yesterday, I got an email message from PayPal in my Gmail, notifying that I’ve got paid by PayPerPost. I shall explicitly accept the fund within 30 days or otherwise it burns.

For your information, the post titled “Publish Disclosure Policy to Promote Content Integrity” has made me richer by USD10 :p According to PayPerPost’s regulations, you will only be paid for an approved content, if it stays visibly active in your blog for 30 days. Now that the 30 days window has passed for this sponsored post, and I really got paid in cash.

Of course I clicked Accept la. So stupid to make it Deny meh hahaha.

Friends, if you are blogging, why not give PayPerPost a serious consideration? Of course, I believe there should always be a limit in monetizing of blog content. We shall try not to post sponsored contents at interval higher than write-for-free-and-interest articles. Similar to newspaper, advertisements occupy lesser density than the actual news and authored contents.

Charity is An Option Too

If you would like to contribute in charity without burdening your pocket money, PayPerPost is a good option too. Everytime when you accept an opportunity, you can actually choose to automatically channel/donate the earning to American Red Cross or Habitat for Humanity :)

- This is a sponsored content -
Samsung 932B LCD Looks like Apple Monitor

Posted: December 5th, 2006, 3:58pm MYT by Law Tien Soon

The Samsung 932B 19” LCD monitor has just arrived in Malaysia consumer market for approximately 2 weeks. Some of you visited the recent Pikom PC Fair might have noticed its attractive presence.

You see, I bold the word attractive, and I really mean it. At a glance, from top to bottom, left to right, it portrays the signature design of Apple monitor. Not only it’s white, but its outer build material is similar as well. It reflects the idea of sleek and smooth white surface.

Last weekend, my roommate has just bought the Samsung 932B from PC Fair at RM800. It’s a little bit pricier than other 19” alternatives; but its physical look is simply tempting! Frankly, I was drooling over its Apple-like design when I first saw it.

With Magic Bright II and Magic Color, the color and calibration is vivid and eye-pleasing. It supports a maximum resolution of 1280 x 1024 pixels, and response time of 4ms.

I’ve yet to locate the Samsung 932B in Samsung Malaysia website. But, the details of this model is already available in Samsung Thailand.

I heard that another model with the same design, but at 17”, will be rolled out soon as well.
Dramatic Dawning Sky at Kelana Jaya

Posted: December 1st, 2006, 1:32pm MYT by Law Tien Soon

This is the most satisfying dawn sky picture I’ve captured with my Lumix FZ30. This beautiful autumn sky is not a scene from oversea countries, but locally in Malaysia – Kelana Jaya of Selangor.

Specifically, this picture is captured at the pedestrian bridge of Kelana Jaya LRT station.

Now in year end, the sunrise in Malaysia is getting earlier. By 7am, the morning sky is already greeted with the red sun. On 12th Nov, the day I went for HSBC WWF Tiger Trail, while waiting for the arrival of my friend, I saw this dramatic sky at Kelana Jaya. It was amazingly tempting, and luckily I had my camera with me, or else I will waste an opportunity for a nice shot.

Last week, when this picture was shown in my laptop wallpaper during an external presentation, the attendees thought this wallpaper is a scene from foreign countries haha. Hey people, don’t la so underestimate the beauty of our place *winks*

Actually, the Kelana Jaya pedestrian bridge is a very good location to take picture of dawn and dusk. FYI, the side heading Damansara is facing east, while the side heading Puchong is facing west. Just nice to spot the place where the sun greet and bye the daylight.

Every morning, when I’m walking at the pedestrian bridge, I can’t control my temptation to look at the east. Sometime, the formation of clouds is really very nice.