Journal at chansiulun.com

An example of a bad apple in Hong Kong web design and development scene

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 15:26:00 +0800

Today I made yet another startleing discover at how bad the Hong Kong web design and development scene is, and no, I don't go out of my way to look for them, but I do believe I have see a case of bad web development and design in Hong Kong almost once every month.

This example I am happy to list as it isn't discovered due to me working on a client's website or a propsective site... read on to find out more.

How Open Source breaks the principle of fair trade and induce competition to website and business owners

Sat, 05 Nov 2011 17:59:00 +0800

Open Source is fantastic. What's better than gaining software and functional libraries for free (as in beer). A lot of people owe it to the open source 'community' to reach where they are today because they have been able to experience functions and features for free (as in beer).

Similarly, if you commission an open source software to be built. Not only are you standing on the shoulders of giants and able to build something for next to nothing (free as in beer). You are also (directly or indirectly) contributing back to the open source community who gave you all the basic features.

This system is Progress! for humanity itself. Fantastic. Love it. But if you're a business owner, please ask yourself this question: Are you a charity? or a capitalistic venture? If you consider yourself a charity and you enjoy giving free lunches. Fair enough, and good for you. If not, please read on...

Having trouble with that Google +1 button even after going through all the post and discussions on their site? Check this out.

Sun, 23 Oct 2011 02:54:00 +0800

If you have been a visitor on this website and tried to do a +1. You would notice that it never worked and I gave up trying to fix it until today. I found that...

Cloud file services round up, October 2011

Sat, 22 Oct 2011 01:27:00 +0800

I've been changing the way I work recently. Moving to full time development from a Windows 7 machine with Ubuntu and CentOSVM via Virtual Box to a OSX 2007 top of the range Macbook Pro that has 1/4 of the power my Winodws 7 machine has.

Part of the requirement meant I could no longer use my Wndows only security token. Which is a shame, but you know, I can live with the failure of securty companies to cater for xplatform developers.

Because of all those change I now need to move sensitive files to the cloud, which I would never do - unless I have Truecrypt encrypted with a secure key file and password. I used to use Dropbox, but heard how it was unsecure and the fact that there was an incident that left all Dropboxes exposed to the world for 4 hours at one point in the past meant I was curious to see what other alternatives there are...

Open vs closed, a personal view

Fri, 14 Oct 2011 19:09:00 +0800

In my last post I wrote about how open sourced CMS are damaging to the industry, but my personal opinion, is a little different.

Open vs closed, a trap that many Hong Kong web agencies are falling into.

Tue, 11 Oct 2011 17:54:00 +0800

I've had a number of discussions and thoughts recently into open-sourced vs closed-source CMS and while I was once an advocate and developer for open-sourced websites. That is no longer the case.

But because recently I've seen more and more and more Hong Kong agencies dropping into the Drupal bandwagon. I have to write this blog post about why these agencies may have been a little naive.

Read more for my comparison between the two, and why I think these agencies are spelling the doom for itself and it's clients.

The best Cloud Infrastructure round up for Hong Kong, September 2011

Sun, 25 Sep 2011 00:26:00 +0800

I took a look at the cloud infrastructure offerings today as my EC2 server's "pre payment" period ended. After some disappointing start, I found what I wanted and migrated over. You're already seeing this post on the new server!

Enterprise security at your fingertips, how to secure your passwords and sensitive data

Fri, 16 Sep 2011 02:51:00 +0800

In this guide, I'll tell you why exactly you need to secure your passwords and files today and then I will show you exactly how to bring enterprise security level to your own home without spending the dough.