Snippet IT » Software and Hardware

Google Wave Invitation Giveaway

szehau — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 12:20:12 +0000

I got my free Google Wave invitation from LiewCf, thanks for the invitation! Ok, now is my turn to give you guys, my blog readers, the free invitations.

First impression to Google Wave

To me, Google Wave is like a chatting program (e.g. MSN) where a few people can have collaboration in a channel (the Wave). Everything can be happened in real time (e.g. the message you type) and everyone in the Wave can see the chances in real time (almost). And it is also like a social website (e.g. Facebook) too where you can put in applications (Gadgets) and use it within a group of people.

How to Get a Free Google Wave Invitation?

It's very simple. All you need to do is to leave a comment in this post (with your email address) and state that you want to have a free Google Wave Invitation.

You will not need to do anything else in order to get the invitation but it would be appreciated, if you could subscribe to my blog feed. Thanks.

Be hurry, I only have 8 invitations in total. First come first served.

Invitations left: 1

Note: It may take some time to get the invitation arrive to you inbox (as according to Google Wave).

Adobe Acrobat Reader: Possible Security Vulnerability When Acrobat JavaScript Is Enabled

szehau — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 16:16:43 +0000

It is possible to have security vulnerability in Adobe's Acrobat Reader if the Acrobat Javascript option is enable.

When the option is enabled and you open a crafted PDF file with Adobe Reader that allows JavaScript execution, your computer will be exposed to security risk - hacker may able to access your valuable data from your hard disk.

JavaScript is a scripting language that is tend to be safe to be used in web browsers due to its limitation to access to client computer. Since it is safe, your antivirus software may not able to detect a pdf file with Javascript is actually contain an virus.

To prevent the security vulnerability, you should now check whether your Adobe Acrobat's Javascript option is enabled. If it is enabled, disable it as soon as possible. The default setting for Acrobat Javascript is set to enabled for most of the Acrobat Reader version.

To disable the option, open your Acrobat Reader application, click on Edit -> Preferences and a window will pop up. Select the "JavaScript" option from your left and make sure the "Enable Acrobat JavaScript" option is un-ticked.

Thanks for Walker for heading up the Acrobat JavaScript issue.

SherWeb: Hosted Exchange, Web Hosting, SharePoint Hosting, Hosted CRM

szehau — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 05:54:36 +0000

SherWeb is a hosting provider that delivers high quality service at the reasonable price. SherWeb guarantees 99.9% uptime at both application level and network level. That means you will have less downtime on using both software and hardware.

SherWeb provides a wide range of hosting service including web hosting, exchange server hosting, SharePoint hosting and hosted CRM. You can sign up their packages with risk free because all Web Hosting and Hosted Exchange packages include a 30 day money back guarantee.

Web Hosting
There are various tiers of web hosting to accommodate customer with different needs. Web hosting packages' price start from $7.25/month only, run on Linux servers, in addition to supporting PHP, ASP, RoR, Python and MySQL database applications.

Hosted Exchange
Hosted exchange price is $8.95/month per mailbox. No minimum number of users required. You will have 3Gb of storage per mailbox and free setup (mobile synchronization, antivirus, copy of Outlook 2007 and SharePoint) when you signed up the package. Take a look at their exchange demo to see what it can do for you.

SharePoint Hosting
SharePoint provides you or your business an environment for collaboration, document sharing and also mobile access. The plans' affordable price start from $8.95/month. All SharePoint plans include unlimited users, unlimited subsites, free webparts and exchange link.

Hosted CRM
CRM or client relationship management system is one of the essential tools to a business. With start from only $29.95 per month from SherWeb, you can get a quality hosted CRM for your business. SherWeb hosted CRM plans range from entry level online CRM or a comprehensive system fully customizable to your complex business needs. Contact Sherweb to design a perfect package for you!

Google Chromium OS

szehau — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 13:29:16 +0000

Google Chromium OS or Chrome OS is an open source project created by Google that aims to build an operating system that provide fast, simple and more secure computing experience. The new OS is target for people who spend most of their time on the web.

The following videos explain in detailed what Chrome OS is:

What is Google Chrome OS?

Chrome OS Security

Chromium OS & Open Source

Chromium OS Fast Boot

The basic architecture of Google Chromium OS is pretty simple. Instead of loading all the stuffs by ordinary operating systems (like drivers, detecting hardware, kernel and etc.), the computer that runs Chromium OS directly load the necessary softwares (in this case, the Chrome browser and other multimedia stuffs) and does not need to load other inessential stuffs.

It is pretty interesting to go through how why Google builds up the Chromium OS. Although the project is still in very early stage, you can get involve in the project or to download the source code to have a test run. You can join them at the Chromium Projects website for Chromium OS.

Chrome OS will be available for consumers around end of next year. If you can't wait for the final release of Chrome OS, you can download Chrome OS VMWare/VirtualBox image and run it as virtual machine on top of your current operating system (Windows, Mac, Linux).

Download it at your own risk because it is still in early development stage. However it should not have much risk since everything will be running in a virtual enviroment.

Stay updated with Google Chromium by visiting The Google Official Blog and The Chromium Projects website.

Wordpress: 2.8.1

szehau — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 02:59:05 +0000

Wordpress 2.8.1 is now available for download. The main changes in Wordpress 2.8.1 is mainly to tightens security for plugin administration pages and also to fix many other bugs.

The upgrade is not a compulsory and it is recommended as some admin pages added by certain plugins could be viewed by unprivileged users, resulting in information being leaked.

Below are some of the highlights:

Certain themes were calling get_categories() in such a way that it would fail in 2.8. 2.8.1 works around this so these themes won’t have to change.

Dashboard memory usage is reduced. Some people were running out of memory when loading the dashboard, resulting in an incomplete page.

The automatic upgrade no longer accidentally deletes files when cleaning up from a failed upgrade.

A problem where the rich text editor wasn’t being loaded due to compression issues has been worked around.

Extra security has been put in place to better protect you from plugins that do not do explicit permission checks.

Translation of role names fixed.

wp_page_menu() defaults to sorting by the user specified menu order rather than the page title.

Upload error messages are now correctly reported.

Autosave error experienced by some IE users is fixed.

Styling glitch in the plugin editor fixed.

SSH2 filesystem requirements updated.

Switched back to curl as the default transport.

Updated the translation library to avoid a problem with mbstring.func_overload.

Stricter inline style sanitization.

Stricter menu security.

Disabled code highlighting due to browser incompatibilities.

RTL layout fixes.

Certain themes were calling get_categories() in such a way that it would fail in 2.8. 2.8.1 works around this so these themes won’t have to change.
Dashboard memory usage is reduced. Some people were running out of memory when loading the dashboard, resulting in an incomplete page.
The automatic upgrade no longer accidentally deletes files when cleaning up from a failed upgrade.
A problem where the rich text editor wasn’t being loaded due to compression issues has been worked around.
Extra security has been put in place to better protect you from plugins that do not do explicit permission checks.
Translation of role names fixed.
wp_page_menu() defaults to sorting by the user specified menu order rather than the page title.
Upload error messages are now correctly reported.
Autosave error experienced by some IE users is fixed.
Styling glitch in the plugin editor fixed.
SSH2 filesystem requirements updated.
Switched back to curl as the default transport.
Updated the translation library to avoid a problem with mbstring.func_overload.
Stricter inline style sanitization.
Stricter menu security.
Disabled code highlighting due to browser incompatibilities.
RTL layout fixes.

To start upgrade, simply click on the upgrade link on top of the admin page after you have logged in as an administrator. If you don't see the link, you can kick start the upgrade by clicking the "Tools -> Upgrader on your left side bar of admin page.

WordPress: Version 2.8

szehau — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 17:02:46 +0000

WordPress.org has released its latest WordPress Version 2.8, named for noted trumpeter and vocalist "Chet Baker". WordPress Version 2.8 is now available for download.

WordPress Version 2.8 has some noticeable improvement to its to themes, widgets, taxonomies, and overall speed. Besides, it is now much more easier to use than the previous versions.

Like the plugin's auto-installation feature in Version 2.7, you can now install WordPress themes with clicks in the Admin panel itself. You can browse, preview and then install the theme you like right from your blog admin panel.

The widget interface was completely redesigned to allow you to do things like edit widgets on the fly, have multiple copies of the same widget, drag and drop widgets between sidebars, and save inactive widgets so you don’t lose all their settings.

Here’s a quick video overview of everything in the new release:

Other WordPress Version 2.8 Highlights

New drag-and-drop widgets admin interface and new widgets API
Syntax highlighting and function lookup built into plugin and theme editors
Browse the theme directory and install themes from the admin
Allow the dashboard widgets to be arranged in up to four columns
Allow configuring the number of items to show on management pages with an option in Screen Options
Support timezones and automatic daylight savings time adjustment
Support IIS 7.0 URL Rewrite Module
Faster loading of admin pages via script compression and concatenation

Read more at WordPress Blog and WordPress Codex about Version 2.8.

You can download WordPress Version 2.8 and install/upgrade your existing WordPress blog or you can use the automatic upgrade feature in WordPress itself (for Version 2.7).

Make sure you have backup your WordPress directory and WordPress database before doing the upgrade.

Wolfram|Alpha: A Computational Knowledge Engine

szehau — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 06:45:42 +0000

Wolfram|Alpha is a computational knowledge engine. Unlike regular search engines (Google, Yahoo and Live) which return a list of relevant websites on queries, Wolfram|Alpha processes the queries to return an actual answer.

For example, key in "Who is Bill Gates?" in Wolfram|Alpha, instead of returning a list of relevant websites, it will tell you that Bill Gates is a business person, his date of birth is 28/10/1955 and place of birth is Seattle, Washington, United States.

You can also key in a mathematical formula, for example " 200 + y = 300", and it will find the solutions for you.

Wolfram|Alpha's creator, Stephen Wolfram, described the search engine as "a new paradigm for using the computer and the web". Wolfram|Alpha is a long-term project to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable by anyone. Enter your question or calculation, and Wolfram|Alpha uses its built-in algorithms and a growing collection of data to compute the answer.

Visit Wolfram|Alpha.

Bing: A New Search Engine from Microsoft

Google Desktop: Google Reader, A New Gadget for Your Google Desktop

szehau — Sat, 30 May 2009 09:11:34 +0000

Google Reader is a very useful online tool that allows users to subscribe their favorite feeds at a central website and manage the feed subscription under the same website too. Google Read is now available in desktop version.

You can now read and track your feeds and Google Reader subscriptions directly from your desktop. The new application is called Google Reader gadget and it is designed to be familiar for existing Reader users. It is also compact like other Google Desktop gadgets.

To install Google Reader gadget, you will first need to install Google Desktop (a desktop application make search your PC faster and come with gadgets and sidebar).

To start, download and install Google Reader gadget. Sign in your Google account. If you select a subscription, your gadget will update automatically with new posts. Clicking an item opens a larger view where you can see the item preview and perform familiar actions such as star, share, and email.

[Read more at Google Reader Blog]

Google Chrome: How to Stop Youtube Loading Data from the Internet

szehau — Mon, 25 May 2009 17:36:27 +0000

I love Youtube and I believe many people love it too. Many people like to embed the Youtube video into their websites or blogs so they can write something about the video and share with friends.

Sometimes, after I have clicked the play button on the embedded video in somebody's blog but I would like to stop it because I found that the video is not interested to me at all. I can only pause the video and I can't stop it from loading data from Internet because there is no stop button at the embed video.

At the same time, I also feel don't want to leave the page because I haven't finished reading the post content or comments left on the page. But to stop the video from loading, I have to navigate to other page and back to the page again.

It's quite useful to have a stop button at the video because I don't want the Youtube application to keep consuming my network's bandwidth (which is pretty slow in my country). A typical video can have size from a few mega bytes to hundreds of mega bytes.

To solve the problem, I found a really simple trick to stop the Youtube video from loading in Google Chrome browser. I'm not sure whether you can perform it on other browser or not.

Google Chrome runs plug-in in other process. A Youtube video is a Shockwave application which is a plug-in to Google Chrome browser. So to stop the video from loading, you simply kill the Shockwave plug-in process. Please note that killing the process may cause applications (e.g. flash animation) at other tabs in Google Chrome browse not working.

To kill the process, right click on Google Chrome at your windows task bar (or right click Google Chrome Windows' title) and select "Task manager". This is the task manager for Google Chrome only and not for the whole Windows Operating System. After that find the process with name "Plug-in: Shockwave Flash" and click on it. Then click "End process" button to end the process. To reload the video again, simply refresh the page.

Again, please note that killing the process may cause plug-ins / applications (e.g. flash animation) at other tabs in Google Chrome browse not working.

Windows Live Messenger: Beware of Unsolicited Messages Sent From Your Friends’ Live Account

szehau — Thu, 21 May 2009 17:49:01 +0000

Recently (Starting from the beginning of the year), I received quite a lot of messages with links from my friends' Live account on Windows Live Messenger. The messages were sent by my friends' intention and some of the messages were sent as offline messages.

As discover by a few other bloggers (LiewCf and CyberHQ), the links in the messages will redirect you to a MSN phishing site and ask you to key your Live account's username and password. The phishing site tries to trick you by showing you "your images" that have been uploaded to Live website if you login into your Live account.

The person's PC which sent you the unsolicited messages might have infected by virus or spyware. Among my friends who sent me the unsolicited messages, some of them are IT professionals. They are not aware what had happened to their PC. Some of them even do not install antivirus software on their PC and some of their antivirus software's virus definition database is not up-to-date!

Here is a list of the messages that I have received from my friends:

Phishing site - hxxp://CooolStufff.com
Phishing site - hxxp://PictureHostz.com/?user=msn_user_name&image=DSC00684.JPG ?!? ... HAHAHA!!
Phishing site - hxxp://SweeetOfferz.com
Phishing site - hxxp://Just.LikeItSoMuch.com
Phishing site - hxxp://PicBuckets.com/?user=msn_user_name&pic=DSC01425.JPG (A)
Phishing site - hxxp://img78294.PhotoBukkets.com/?user=msn_user_name&pic=DSC00425.JPG
Phishing site - hxxp://thats.nicestufff.com
Phishing site - hxxp://yeah.checkthizz.com/?msn_user_name
Phishing site - hxxp://my.greatestpicz.com/?msn_user_name
Phishing site - hxxp://ImageTalez.com/?user=msn_user_name&image=DSC00245.JPG ?!? ... HAHAHA!!
Phishing site - hxxp://img168.ImageStickz.com/?user=msn_user_name&image=DSC00678.JPG ?!? ... HAHAHA!!
Virus site - damn, saw naked pics of yours or maybe the one in pic is similar to you .... crazy lol hxxp://my-secret-gallery-download.com/pic_gallery.html
Spam message - I am done trying all the different fat burner pills out there. I finally found one pill that forces your body to drop a lot of weight very quickly. Its called Acai, costs just 5 dolars and I always order from hxxp://ridelock.com
Spam message - do u send me "Ever since Derek and I seen those Acai pills on Cnn and Oprah we have been taking them and losing so much weight so fast with no diets or excercise , we are living proof that it works like magic and they are only five dollars now to try from hxxp://dotedote.com"?
Spam message - Did you see the Acai Berry pills on Oprah the other day. I found a good source for 5 dollars. They really do work because I lost 6 pounds in a week. Try it too hxxp://tealrears.com
Spam message - I got so many messages about those acai berry pills that I decided to order them and guess what? I lost 23 pounds so far and its only been two weeks. I am living proof that they work and best part was, they only cost me five dollars to try over at hxxp://greatcan.com
Spam message - A word of advice from a friend here, I ordered those acai pills that I kept hearing about from everyone and on oprah too, well its been two weeks now and I lose 22 pounds and still losing more, I am living proof that they do work, try them for only five dollars at hxxp://lampbed.com

Note the website URL "http" has been replaced with "hxxp".

Some of the identical behaviors of the above websites are:

Ask you to enter your Live/MSN/Hotmail username and password so that the website can show your something (e.g. image and videos).
Redirect you to your localhost but remain the same domain.
Redirect you to your MSN's website but remain the same domain.

What you need to do when you receive this kind of messages:

Ask your friend if he or she sent you the message before you open the link. If he or she did not send the link, you should tell he or she that his or her PC might be infected by virus or spyware and ask he or she to install a good antivirus to scan their PC for spyware and virus. I'm using AVG Free antivirus which is pretty good and fast.
Do not open the link. If your still want to try your luck to open the link, do it with Firefox or Google Chrome. Do not use Internet Explorer because it enables VB-Scripts which allow malicious software to be installed automatically to your computer.
Do not download any executable file (e.g. exe file and exe in zip file) or screen saver (with file extension .scr) from the site.
Ask your friend to change his or her account password.

If you found a similar message that might harm user's PC, you can let me know by leaving your comment here and I will update the list above so that everyone aware about it. Help me to help others

Wordpress Plugin – Default Trackbacks

szehau — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 16:14:14 +0000

Default Trackbacks is a wordpress plugin that sends trackback to a list of preset URLs. It is enhanced version of my old Default Trackback. The old Default Trackbacks plugin store a list of predefiend URLs in text file while the new one store the list of URLs in Wordpress database.

Features:

Send trackback to the URLs in the list when a post status is changed from "any" to "publish".
Configure the trackback URLs under Wordpress’s admin setting page.
Default setting for sending trackbacks (to send trackbacks by default or not each time publish a post).
Option to override default setting above at edit/new post page.

Requirements:

Wordpress 2.5 or above.

Installation:

Download and unzip to a temporary folder.
Upload all the files to your wordpress' plugin directory so that you end up with "wp-content/plugins/default-trackbacks/default-trackbacks.php" in your blog filesystem.
Activate the plugin called "Default Trackbacks".

Download:

Default Trackbacks - Latest Version (2.0)

Alternately, you can download the plugin from http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/default-trackbacks/ or directly install from your Wordpress admin page by searching the keywords “default trackbacks”.

After you have installed and activated the plugin, you will need to key in the trackback URLs at the Default Trackbacks setting page. You can find the Default Trackbacks setting page under "Settings -> Default Trackbacks".

Wordpress Plugin – Blogtal Trackback

szehau — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 18:10:58 +0000

Blogtal Trackback is a wordpress plugin that sends trackback to www.blogtal.com. It is enhanced version of my old Default Trackback. Unlike Default Trackback, Blogtal Trackback will send trackback to www.blogtal.com only.

[Updates 19-04-09: Release 1.1]

Features:

Send trackback to www.blogtal.com when a post status is changed from "any" to "publish".
Configure the trackback URL under Wordpress's admin setting page.
Default setting for sending trackback (to send trackback by default or not each time publish a post).
Option to override default setting above at edit/new post page.

Requirements:

Wordpress 2.5 or above.

Installation:

Download and unzip to a temporary folder.
Upload all the files to your wordpress’ plugin directory so that you end up with wp-content/plugins/blogtal-trackbacks/blogtal-trackbacks.php in your blog filesystem.
Activate the plugin called ‘Blogtal Trackbacks’.

Download:

Blogtal Trackback - latest version (1.1)
Blogtal Trackback - version 1.0

Alternately, you can download the plugin from http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/blogtal-trackback/ or directly install from your Wordpress admin page by searching the keywords "blogtal".

After you have installed and activated the plugin, you will need to key in the secret URL at the Blogtal Trackback setting page. You can find the Blogtal Trackback setting page under "Settings -> Blogtal Trackback".

System Architecture Analysis – Google Chrome vs Internet Explore 8

admin — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 07:01:34 +0000

If you have read about the technology behind Google Chrome, you will know that each tab in Google Chrome is running on a separate process and why the Google Chrome programmers do it that way. If you are a software developer and don't know anything about Google Chrome, you may find interesting in reading the story behind Google Chrome.

Microsoft launch their new Internet Explore 8 and one of the feature is the tab isolation where if a website or add-on causes a tab to crash in Internet Explorer 8, only that tab is affected. How it do that? It is actually same idea with Google Chrome where each tab or add-on is running on separate process.

You can ensure this by viewing iexplorer.exe processes from your windows task bar. When you open new tab in Internet Explorer 8, a new process will be created. Internet Explorer 8 takes futher steps on this, instead of creating process each time a tab is open, it stores the unuse processes in pool and reuse them when necessary when a new tab is opened. Besides, one iexplorer.exe process is used for multiple tabs when it thinks it is neccesary. You can see this by opening tabs to 10, and 6 to 8 process will be created, closing the 9 tabs, the 6 to 8 process is still running in your system.

From Windows's task bar, you will see that Google Chrome's process use fewer threads than Internet Explorer 8's (Google Chrome 4-6, Internet Explorer 8: 10-14). I think the addition threads in Internet Explore 8 are use to handle multiple tab in a process. You can see this open 10 tabs browsing different websites, refresh each browser, and check againts Windows' taskbar on which process is working. You will see more than one tabs are running on any one of the process.

The initial memory usage (tab opened but not browsing any page) in Internet Exporer 8 (16Mb in my laptop) is much higher than Google Chrome's (7Mb in my laptop).

In this case, whose design is better? Google Chrome - new process for each new tab; or Internet Explorer 8 - new process for each tab (or more than one tab) and reuse the process?

Personally I think Google Chrome is better. I guess why Internet Explorer 8 do it that way is because they think the cost of creating process is high and it would be better to reuse them to save some CPU cycles of creating process. But with nowsaday computers technology, it shouldn't have any negative impact to create processes frequently on a normal PC. Somemore Internet browser is just software to browse web site and unlike server programs, which process hundreds or thousands of requests in one seconds. Besides, when you resuse the process for another new tabs, any bugs that haven't crashed the process will bring forward to the new tabs making browser become more fragile.

So, what do you think? Which is better?

Another free icon search engine – veryicon.com

szehau — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 18:10:38 +0000

Just found another useful website. Other than the iconfinder.net that I always use for my software projects, now I have another alternative - veryicon.com.

Veryicon.com claims itself to be "The Best Icon Search Engine". You can search and free download Over 20,000 high quality ICO, PNG Icons for Windows, Macintosh and Linux. Using a simple test, I search for the "search" keyword to look for icons related to "search". Suprisingly, veryicon.com returns 82 icons while iconfinder.net returns only 27 icons.

Besides the search function, you can browse icons by categories and also download the icon in packages.

Iconfinder.net – New Logo New Features

Iconfinder.net – New Logo New Features

szehau — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 17:26:43 +0000

I used to use icons from iconfinder.net for my software projects. It is good to see that iconfinder now comes with new features and more icon in their database. Thanks and keep up good work! iconfinder.net now has launched a new logo for its website and the new icon is designed by Turbomilk.

Besides new logo, iconfinder.net also comes with new feature:

Everybody can add tags for the icons. When new tags are submitted other users can vote. If new tags don't get enough positive votes, the changes will be reversed.
Lots of new icon sets and a nice way to browse them all without searching.
Setting limits to the sizes of the icons shown, changing the number of results per page and changing the background color is now possible with just a few clicks.

Another free icon search engine – veryicon.com

Snippet IT » Software and Hardware

Google Wave Invitation Giveaway

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