Updates

Woah!  Finally a blog post.  I haven’t updated this thing for over a month now.  Been very busy lately with other stuff lately.  Studying for my next certification exam, catching up with games, figures, and a lot of anime.  Most of the time is spent on games and anime. XD  Well, that’s my excuse.  I’ve been also busy getting another blog ready to talk about my other hobbies besides technical stuff: Games, Anime and Figures.  Be sure to look out for that a few weeks from now.  I’m just waiting for my stuff to arrive next month and also preparing a mini indoor photo studio for figure photography.

While I was away I noticed I was getting quite some traffic because of my How To posts so I’ll be rolling out more of them starting with my next post.  It’s also great timing that WordPress has put up a source code tag for easily integrating code into blog posts.  I’ll try to put up these posts on a regular basis from now on.  Keyword there is try.  LOL.  That’s about it for now.  Stay tuned.

I’m Back In Town

I’m back in Davao again, and this time it’s for good. ^^  A few weeks ago I resigned from my post as SDE in NCR to accept a job here, still a developer.  Last friday was my last day of work there and although it’s sad to be leaving I’m also happy to be able to move back here.  There is just no place like home.  ^^  The next time I’ll be in Cebu it’ll be for vacation and not work.  XD

I’ll be starting at my new job today, which I’m pretty excited about by the way.  I was really hoping that I get to take a few days off and be a bum but I guess that isn’t happening as they needed me to start immediately.  I’m not expecting anything as of yet but I do hope everything would work out fine.  More about my new job in later posts.  :D  I need to unpack my things and get my stuff ready. 

Later. Ciao!ü

Windows Live Folder Beta

Another Windows Live service made its way to beta (limited beta) recently.  Windows Live Folder is Microsoft’s answer to the online personal storage arena and one of its latest in its line of S+S products (Software + Service). 

As for now, they’re allowing at most 500mb of free space to use for each account in Windows Live Folder.  But I’m guessing this will increase by the time they release it.  With all the similar services sprouting up from the web every now and then, what does Microsoft have to offer?  Well, I tried it out yesterday and I noticed a few things.  For one, the UI seems to follow the sleek look of several Windows Live Services which has its roots in Vista.  Another is that the there are three categories for which you can share your files and folders: Private, Public and Shared.  You can also choose the type of permissions you can set for each folder you have.  What I liked about Live Folder is that you can set other users to make changes to the contents of a specified folder.  This feature would fall under the Shared category.  It’s works just like how one would share a folder in their hard drive to a local network. 

One thing I did hope for Live Folder to have was the ability to select multiple files/folders for uploading.  Right now, it’s such a hassle when you want to upload dozens of files because you’ll have to select them one by one and there is a limit of 5 files that can be uploaded at a single time.  It’d also be nice if the the team could also introduce a client-side tool that lets users upload and retrieve files within the tool itself.  Sort of like a Windows Explorer whose contents is based on the users Live Folder account.

Seeing though as it is still in the early stages of development (it just went public recently) I’m sure we’ll be seeing more improvements and added features in the future.  Some other things I could probably hope for this service to have is integration with other Live services like file sharing in Windows Live Messenger and content (images and other files) uploading with Windows Live Writer. 

Safari 3 for Windows (Beta)

Tried out Apple’s Safari browser recently since they made it available for Windows XP and Vista users just a couple of days ago.  There are some things that I like and not so like about it.  First, the bad stuff.

One of the first things I noticed out of the box is that the application responsiveness is annoyingly slow.  That in itself is a big minus on the user experience points.  I also noticed that they use the same theme for the UI with iTunes which IMHO is rather boring to look at. 

If you take a look at the screenshots below you’ll notice a difference in the font rendering between IE 7, FireFox 2 and Safari.

Internet Explorer 7:

FireFox 2:

Safari 3 Beta:

  (Safari 3 Beta)

Among the three browsers, Safari seems to be the least admirable browser in terms of font rendering (for me that is).  It is not that pleasing to the eye compared to IE 7.  Even with the Font Smoothing option set to Light I still prefer IE and FireFox’s font rendering.  Although I’ve read somewhere before that Apple’s texts are rendered so as to look closer to print so that might be the reason for the font rendering.

Now on to the good stuff.  First, I like the way they integrated the progress bar into the address bar.  Gotta love that.  Plus the inline search is really nice (check the screenie below).  One of the things I really like about FireFox is its inline search and Apple took it up a notch with Safari.  In IE you need to have to install an add-on to have inline search which doesn’t work 100% of the time. 

Other things I like about Safari is its SnapBack feature, private browsing and tabbed browsing where you can drag the tab to create a new window.  In terms of performance, Safari is fast compared to Firefox and IE and I also like the fact that the page doesn’t stop responding when the browser is loading a lot of stuff just like Firefox (unfortunately for IE…).

Given that it’s still in beta, Safari still has a lot of potential and I think it was a good move for Apple to make it available for Windows users.  This move could significantly increase their market share if they just play it right.  One thing that they need to really improve before their next release would be the performance of the application.  Right now, it just keeps on crashing and the performance is really annoying.  Ex: After clicking on Edit (or any of the menus), it takes about 5-10 seconds before the options show up.  Get the picture?  Oh and I really think they need to change that iTunes look, it’s so bland.

Update: A couple of folks just found some vulnerabilities with this release of Safari.  Hope Apple fixes these issues in the next release.

Windows Live 2.0 Betas

Microsoft just released several new betas in their Windows Live program.  These are Windows Live Messenger 8.5 Beta 1, Windows Live Writer Beta 2 and Windows Live Mail Desktop Beta.

Some of the changes I immediately noticed among the three is that their UIs have been updated.  All of them are now sporting a sleek new look similar to that of Windows Vista.  The setup portion have also undergone some updates for all three Windows Live clients which made the experience frustration-free.  Anyone planning to use any of the products might want to read the release notes first before going ahead with installation.

Windows Live Writer Beta 2

   

I’ve been using Windows Live Writer Beta 1 since the early days of this blog and I’ve been quite happy using it.  It makes blogging really easy compared to the built-in blogging tool in WordPress.  One of the changes you’ll see besides the new look is that there’s a revamped toolbar below the menu.  Also in that toolbar you’ll notice a table icon.  Yes, Beta 2 of WLW now supports table editing.  Other significant updates are: paste special, adding categories, changes to adding images or links and inline spell checking.  The team also provides an API to enable providers like WordPress to develop extensions for WLW.

Updates: Some users encountered a few issues with WLWriter regarding installation failures and the application stops responding.  Check out solutions over at the WLWriter team’s blog.

Windows Live Messenger 8.5 Beta

                               

There’s not much changes to Windows Live Messenger with this beta.  Out of the box, the only things I noticed were the look and feel of the application.  They made several improvements to the menus and conversation window.  By improvements I mean they moved a couple of things so you’ll notice them more. heheh.  There’s also a new emoticon available - the (’.') bunny.  Maybe we’ll see a couple more things once it’s out of beta.  I would love for it to support additional carriers for SMS messaging just like YM have been doing for the past couple of years.

Windows Live Mail

I haven’t tried Windows Live Mail yet so you can just go on over to the WLMail team’s blog to get a scoop of what improvements have taken place.  I can’t seem to get it working as of the moment since an internet connection is required during the first run.

Among the three, I would say Live Writer has seen the most improvements (although that may change since I haven’t tried Live Mail yet) since their previous releases.  I’m hoping that for the future releases we’d see a couple more improvements especially with Live Messenger since there certainly is a lot of potential there.

Microsoft Surface! Coolest Thing Ever

Microsoft recently unveiled their newest toy at the Wall Street Journal’s D! conference calling it Surface.  What is it?  It’s the coolest toy ever.  That is if you can consider a $5k-$10k interactive multi-touch screen table a toy.  Checkout a demo (an 18minute video) of it over on on10 and I was simply blown away by the product. 

Microsoft is suppose to start rolling this out by the end of the year to a few partner organizations like hotels, casinos and etc.  As for now, this isn’t available yet to the local market but eventually after a couple of years Microsoft should be rolling this into mass production.  By then I think we can expect that the price may be significantly lower compared to today.

The team behind might make it possible for third party developers to develop applications for the table.  Just think of all the possible applications one can put into it.  Now that’s a lot.  I want to get my hands on one. >_<

JavaFX And SilverLight, The New Flash?

It used to be that whenever you wanted to build a rich internet application (RIA) you’d have to go and build it using Adobe’s Flash.  For years it has been like this and only recently, with the advent of AJAX, that developers were able to bring to users an interactive web application without resorting to Flash.  Then Microsoft came out with a new product to compete with Flash in the area of RIAs which they called SilverLight.  And not wanting to be left behind in the competition, Sun also released just a few days ago a set of products into the RIA scene which they call JavaFX.

The appeal to users that Microsoft and Sun’s products brings to the table is the ability to easily create these applications and also its accessibility.  With SilverLight, you can use a variety of programming models that suits your needs, either through Javascript, C# or other .NET languages, to create RIAs.  The best thing about it is that it has cross-browser and cross-platform compatibility which really is the problem with past .NET platforms since it tends to limit the users who can access these applications.  With JavaFX, it is somehow similar to SilverLight except for the fact that it tries to go beyond our browsers.  It would also support set-top boxes, mobile devices and etc. which is actually their edge right now compared to the other products. 

My question now is: With the majority of people using Adobe Flash today, will people (users and developers) actually switch into these new technologies?  I don’t see why not.  I most definitely would.

If you want to get started using SilverLight and JavaFX, go on over to these sites:

• SilverLight - demo (warning: video link)
• JavaFX - demo 

Work! Work! More Work?!

Yesterday was kinda (yah, kinda) an important day for me.  It marked the second year since the time I first started working.  Woah.  It’s been two years?!  Time sure goes by slowly.  hahahah.

These past two years have been really great.  Just to sum it all up,  I’ve learned more in every aspect of my life within those two years compared to the time I spent while I was in college.  I’m not saying that I didn’t learn anything in college.  In fact, my college experience really prepared me to be able to tackle the most demanding of situations (most especially at work).  And believe me, I’ve had my fair share of them. 

Here’s some of the things I’ve done in the past two years:

• moved out of Davao City
• passed a few MS certifications
• passed the PhilNITS (formely JITSE) exam
• came to know and love web technologies (thanks to my first job…heheh)
• learned a lot of stuff about security, mostly security on the Web
• managed to live without an antivirus software in my pc (I handle viruses and etc. manually now)
• became active in tech organizations/groups
• and most importantly, got back my gaming lifestyle (which I lost when I moved here last year) XD

I can easily say that I couldn’t have done most of this if it weren’t for my first job.  heheh.  That was truly a memorable experience.  The work was good and the people even better but I had to go and pursue my goals.  Hopefully I can work with those guys again in the future. :D  I hope this year would bring in more opportunities and better experiences for me.  I know I still have a lot to learn and there’s no better teacher than experience, right?

Reviewing C++ & DirectX

I’ve recently been thinking of getting back to learning C++ but I simply haven’t had the motivation to do so for the past few days.  Whenever I think of reading a C++ book my brain switches immediately to tired mode.  Grrr!  I was able to start reading just today since I badly needed to learn about it for me to proceed with my current project. 

I’ve tackled with a few minor C++ projects in the past but they don’t require knowledge of advanced topics like COM and such.  I’m mostly a .NET (C# and VB .NET) developer (with a little java from time to time) so going back to C++ is a helluva lot tougher than I thought it would be.  Hope I get to finish this ASAP so that I get to move on to the next stage of my tasks.  Anybody got any suggestions on a good C++ book?  I’d truly appreciate it.

I’ve also been brushing up with my DirectX programming and I seem to be enjoying it a lot lately.  Here’s hoping to my dream of breaking into the game development scene a success. That’s the sole reason why I went into programming in the first place.  Games. heheh!  Any game developers out there?  I could sure use some tips. ^^

Broadband Internet In Cebu

I’m currently looking for a broadband solution suitable for a residence with about 1 or two users.  I’m specifically interested in a fixed wired broadband line as I need a stable connection.  Top things that I would really be considering would be stability (no frequent disconnections) and cheapness affordability.  Right now, I’m choosing whether to go for Globelines Broadband or PLDT’s myDSL.  Back at home in Davao, I’m subscribed to PLDT’s myDSL and I’m actually happy about it and don’t have that many complaints compared to the others I usually read in forums.

If there are any other options you could suggest do tell me in the comments as I’m still looking for other alternatives. ^^  Do take note though that I’m no casual surfer but a heavy downloader, hence the importance on stability. heheh.