pedocc

Looking for a widget for your place on Foursquare?

noreply@blogger.com (Philip Khor) — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 19:36:07 PST

Placewidget is the perfect blog widget for business owners who want to link their place on Foursquare to their business websites/blogs. Although it might not be as aesthetically pleasing as the Foursquare interface, it certainly is very functional.

Here's the sample widget from Placewidget's site. It shows the address, number of people who check-in, mayor and tips.

To create your own personalized widget, you have to search for the place using Placewidget's service. I would have preferred if an option to add a place using its URL on Foursquare was available. The search function leaves much more to be desired, since typing in the full name of a business doesn't always show it at first place.

Placewidget also has a Wordpress plugin, though I haven't tried it out.

Get a taste of Placewidget at http://www.placewidget.com/.

Windows 8 Beta - February 29

noreply@blogger.com (Philip Khor) — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 05:44:25 PST

The Windows 8 Consumer Preview will be made available starting February 29.
Some things to expect from Windows 8 are:

Super fast boot times
All new login screen
Less restarts after updating
Huge Start menu in Metro style, as shown above
All new Task Manager
Windows Explorer with the Ribbon
Internet Explorer 10
PC reset function
A tablet version

That's just the tip of the iceberg, actually.
Will I be downloading it? No. The gigabites of space required to download just puts me off. I'll love to have Windows 8 on my PC, but having to pay for it once the testing period is over? I'll rather hop over to test Ubuntu 12.04 despite its relative instability at the moment.

Firefox Theme Revamp (Australis) - New Mockups?

noreply@blogger.com (Philip Khor) — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 03:37:09 PST

Stumbled upon some very cool mockups of Firefox. My only issue with these Australis mockups is that it really looks like Chrome.

Windows 7

Ubuntu

More Australis mockups at http://people.mozilla.com/~shorlander/firefox-ui-design/firefox-visual-design-across-platforms.html

Firefox New Tab Page

noreply@blogger.com (Philip Khor) — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 18:20:59 PST

Finally, Firefox has a tab page that isn't empty. However it isn't available in the stable builds yet, for those builds (11.0 and previous) you will have to get add-ons if you insist on a tab page like those in Opera, Maxthon and Chrome.
The upcoming native Firefox tab page has been available in the UX builds of Firefox (currently 12.0a1) previously but have only recently been introduced into the Nightly builds (also 12.0a1).

Firefox UX builds are unstable builds meant for user interface experimentation by developers, while Nightly builds are also unstable, but they get other under-the-hood changes.
To test the new tab page in Nightly builds, go to about:config and:

Change browser.newtab.url to about:newtab
Change browser.newtabpage.enabled to true

Then restart Nightly. With the UX build, there is no need to change settings.
Again I recommend that you use Profile Manager with unstable builds.

Noteflight

noreply@blogger.com (Philip Khor) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 21:44:17 PST

Noteflight is a free online music writing service which allows you to type out music on any computer or device with Adobe Flash Player and an internet connection.
Noteflight allow you to preview you to preview your music once you're done typing it without installing additional software. It also allows you to add musical directions, chords, lyrics etc. easily. The quality of the printed score is decent, however adding support for Asian languages would be welcome.
Signing up for Noteflight is free. Notelight offers a paid service, Crescendo with additional features such as:

Unlimited number of scores
50+ high-quality instruments
Direct MIDI note entry
Print individual parts from scores
Audio mixing panel

and more.
Sign up for Noteflight at www.noteflight.com

Nokia 500 - Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Philip Khor) — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 02:33:58 PST

* part 1 available here

A few notes if you are buying the Nokia 500 or if you already have one:

UPDATE THE PHONE. Or else it will restart a lot. Seriously. Connect to WLAN, then dial *#0000# and initiate the update process. It's only a 2MB download via WLAN whereas via Nokia Suite it's 88MB if I'm not mistaken.
Be very careful when it comes to applications like Maps. Don't get it uninstalled. The preinstalled version of Maps, v3.06 seems to have been phased out and is no longer available on the Nokia Store.
There seem to be compatibility issues with many applications such as Wordpress. As such, these apps are not available for this phone at the moment. This seems to be attributed to this article on the Nokia Developer Wiki, though I don't see how graphics acceleration can affect a blogging app in any way. [*actually the version of Wordpress available here works OK so far on my Nokia 500, it's just not available on the Store.] Unfortunately there's no Blogger for Nokia at the moment, as far as I know.
It still restarts if you use Opera Mobile, Nokia Social and any other combination of memory-hungry apps at the same time. That's normal. At least it's compensated by the phone's exceptionally quick start up time. And yes I'm using v 011.033
Change the network settings so that it only connects to networks when you want it to. You can do this by going to Settings>Connectivity>Settings and setting Data use in home country/abroad to Always ask/WLAN only.

Well that's pretty much it. I'll fill this post with more on my Nokia 500 experience later.

Firefox 9 Released

noreply@blogger.com (Philip Khor) — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 01:28:02 PST

Firefox 9 has been released for Windows, Linux and Mac desktops, along with 9.0.1 several hours later (bug fixing release).

Firefox 9 generally improves JavaScript performance. There are no obvious UI changes, except for the Android version.

Upgrade to Firefox 9 by clicking on the Firefox widget on the sidebar of this blog or going to Help>About in the menu bar (for Windows). If you're still using Google Chrome or Internet Explorer, give Firefox a try. This version is definitely a huge improvement from previous versions. And if you're still stuck on Firefox 3, you should update Firefox by now.

Ubuntu users, however, should wait for the latest version of Firefox to arrive via Update Manager, or install via other Mozilla repositories, e.g. https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-mozilla-security/+archive/ppa.

p.s. Check out 10 Reasons to Upgrade to the Latest Firefox Version.

Facebook Timeline | Finally available to all

noreply@blogger.com (Philip Khor) — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 06:32:59 PST

The Facebook timeline is pretty much old news, as you can see right here - it's been available since September 2011! Now it's finally available to everyone. If you haven't gotten a notification on your homepage to switch to Timeline, go here to switch by clicking on the green 'Get Timeline' button.

Something to note - you're given a seven-day grace period/preview before your timeline goes live. Of course you can choose to publish it immediately by clicking on the 'Publish' button. Before you get your Timeline right it's probably best to choose a cover photo first. Get a large one - you can reposition it later.

Well, that's about all you need to know about Timeline. And if you're a privacy freak, you had better start tweaking your privacy settings once you switch because with Timeline, your likes and all your previous posts are easier to search for.

The new Twitter...

noreply@blogger.com (Philip Khor) — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 21:40:04 PST

... is beautiful.

As with nearly every other redesigned internet service these days (Youtube, anyone?), some people will disagree.

Speaking about Youtube, here's a Youtube video demonstrating the new Twitter.

It seems to be only available to people who use the Twitter app on their iPhone or Android device.

Plus it seems to be taking hints from Facebook. New profile page (timeline), home page redesign, etc. etc.

Read more about the new Twitter at http://fly.twitter.com/

Firefox Profile Manager - a must-have app for Firefox beta/alpha users

noreply@blogger.com (Philip Khor) — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 21:24:50 PST

Firefox's Profile Manager is a little-known app which would be helpful if you use unstable builds of Firefox. In case your profiles get corrupted you can start all over with a new profile.

It's a .zip file (for Windows) which you only need to extract to use. I recommend that you put a shortcut to wherever you've extracted Profile Manager to on your desktop, as shown below:

Download Profile Manager here.

Unstable versions of Firefox are available here (considerably safe) and here (super dangerous).

Black Bar/White Bar/whatever

noreply@blogger.com (Philip Khor) — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 19:54:55 PST

Google just redesigned their homepage again. Aarrgh.
The Little Black Bar is gone for good, however. It's meant for Google Plus integration with Google services, I guess.

Here's the 'RIP Google Bar, hello new Google Bar' video that introduces the new bar:

How do you like it? Personally I think it's a bit bland...

Nokia 500 - another review

noreply@blogger.com (Philip Khor) — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 05:15:00 PST

The Nokia 500, contrary to some of the comments on the Nokia forums, is one heck of a great phone for its price. I just bought one yesterday and it works great.

OK, not exactly. The restarting problem exists when you buy it by default (if its firmware is pre-011.033 - use *#0000# to check). And all you have to do to resolve it is to connect to a Wi-Fi network and update your software version to 011.033(the update's about 2MB if you do it by your phone - it's about 279 MB via Nokia Suite). This seems to resolve the restarting problems.

Back to the phone. It comes with Symbian Anna (upgradable to Symbian Belle in Q1 2012), three changeable covers, a pair of earphones, Nokia Fast Charger AC-15 etc. It doesn't come with a microSD card, however, so try to persuade your dealer to give you one for free (hehe). It supports up to 32GB microSD cards.

I've not tried using 3G on this phone yet, but the Wi-Fi internet connection seems fairly OK. Nokia Maps works great as always. If you want to save on Internet charges, set the connection (local and abroad) to WLAN only - that's what I did. Better to do so, since it seems to sap up a whole lot of prepaid credit even if you're just using Nokia Maps.

The interface is real fast with its 1Ghz processor, and with its RM655 (RRP) price, it's probably within your budget.

If you need any help with this phone or enjoyed this short piece, please feel free to leave some comments below.

Screenshots coming up soon!

New Youtube homepage preview

noreply@blogger.com (Philip Khor) — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 05:07:32 PST

Here's how to get the new Youtube homepage design, courtesy of GHacks.

Open the YouTube website.
In Chrome, press Ctrl-Shift-j to open the Developer Tools
In Firefox, press Ctrl-Shift-k to open the web console
Enter document.cookie="VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE=ST1Ti53r4fU"; in the console tab.
Reload the YouTube page.

Here's how it turned out for me in the Firefox UX build. Looks pretty amazing right?

UPDATE - Seems to be available for most people already. Never mind the complicated steps.

Firefox 8 released

noreply@blogger.com (Philip Khor) — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 19:54:46 PST

It's time to update your version of Firefox again! Firefox 8 was released recently with the following features:

Add-ons installed by third party programs are now disabled by default
One-time add-on selection dialog added to manage previously installed add-ons
Twitter added to the search bar
A preference to load tabs on demand, improving start-up time when windows are restored added
Improved tab animations when moving, reordering, or detaching tabs

and many more.
The complete version of Firefox 8 release notes can be found here.
* Download a fresh copy of Firefox from the widget in this blog's sidebar. See it?

Environment Quiz prize

noreply@blogger.com (Philip Khor) — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 09:45:01 PDT

I won't be updating for quite a while (SPM!!!!!) so here's a quick update:
I won a prize in the Penang Environment Quiz - a thumbdrive to be exact. Here's a photo:

Winners have to claim their thumbdrives at KOMTAR ICT mall, 3rd floor. It's a pretty interesting place actually, if not for the fact that the 2nd floor looks pretty much abandoned. Too bad I forgot to take any photos.
Until next time.

Google Web Fonts - a directory of free fonts for download

noreply@blogger.com (Philip Khor) — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 05:59:01 PDT

Google Web Fonts is a site where you can find fonts to install on your computer or embed on your blog for free.


About page

You can choose fonts to add to your collection. You can even see the font's impact on your page load time.

Download fonts by adding them to your collection then downloading them in a zip file.

Try Google Web Fonts today at http://www.google.com/webfonts#HomePlace:home

Blogger Dynamic Views - further updates

noreply@blogger.com (Philip Khor) — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 05:47:51 PDT

Previously I published a post about Blogger's Dynamic Views right here. Now more templates have been added to Dynamic Views. Now there are 7 Blogger Dynamic Views in total: Classic, Flipcard, Mosaic, Magazine, Sidebar, Snapshot and Timeslide.

These new templates still lack HTML customization, but search functions have been added. A background image can also be applied to the template.
You can try Dynamic Views on most Blogger blogs by adding /view to the blog's URL. For example: http://pedocc.blogspot.com/view

Timeslide

Snapshot


Magazine

Guess what this is?

noreply@blogger.com (Philip Khor) — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 06:59:35 PDT

Join the countdown at http://thisisthecountdown.com/

Firefox 7 released

noreply@blogger.com (Philip Khor) — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 00:16:29 PDT

It's time to update your version of Firefox again.\

A new version of Firefox has landed. In Firefox 7, there's:

Less memory usage

Bookmark and password changes sync almost instantly when using Firefox Sync

The 'http://' URL prefix now hidden by default

Not many changes, actually.
Get the latest version of Firefox by clicking on the orange Firefox button and going to Help>About, or download a copy from http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/fx/.
For those interested in downloading daily or alpha builds of Firefox, here's the link: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/channel/ and http://nightly.mozilla.org/. This is not recommended, however I've found the Nightly versions of Firefox to be rather stable.

How To Get New Facebook Profile Design - Timeline

noreply@blogger.com (Philip Khor) — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 06:35:00 PDT

Timeline is probably the most radical change that happened to Facebook ever since I started using it. It's a complete rearrangement of the profile page, and finally users get a chance at customizing their profile pages. Just slightly.

You get to put a cover photo.

So that's it, you ask? Oh no. You get a timeline of your stories. Finally you can view the Facebook posts that you made in August 2010 or something. Plus now you can star posts to make them widescreen. Here's mine:

Cover photo

Starred post

Still, Timeline is limited to developers only for now. Here's how you get Timeline. Basically, you have to become a 'developer'.
Follow these steps, courtesy of Mashable's Charlie White:

First, visit the Facebook developer page here. Allow the pop-up to "Access your basic information."

On the new page, click the button that reads "Create New App."

A pop-up will prompt you to enter an App Display Name and an App Namespace. It doesn't matter what you enter into either of those boxes, but make sure the App Namespace is in all lowercase letters. Be sure to agree to the Platform Privacy Policy, and then click Continue. Fill in the Captcha when it appears. You may need to verify yourself with a phone number or credit card. Once you do that, you can access the next step.

Once you've verified yourself, you'll reach the general landing page for your "New App." On the left side of the page under "Settings," click "Open Graph."

The next screen will read, "Get Started with Open Graph," and below that title will read "People can ___ a ___." Fill in whatever verb and noun combination you want for those boxes (I wrote "review" a "movie"), and then click "Get Started."

The next screen will read "What are Action Types?" Ignore everything on this entire page; just scroll right to the bottom and click "Save Changes and Next." The next page will read "What are Object Types?" Do the same thing, ignore everything, scroll right to the bottom, and click "Save Changes and Next."

The next screen will show your Open Graph dashboard, with options to create a new action type, a new object type, and a new aggregation. Ignore all of these buttons; if you've landed on this page, you've done everything correctly. Go back to your Facebook home page.

Once your home page has loaded, you should receive a pop-up prompt that reads, "Introducing Timeline - a New Kind of Profile." Click "Get It Now," and congratulations! You're ready to start fleshing out your brand-new Timeline profile.

Still, there are concerns that Timeline makes it easier for strangers to gather your information. Read about it here .

Personally, I think that Timeline's an interesting, although radical change to Facebook. How do you like Timeline?

Hibernate

noreply@blogger.com (Philip Khor) — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 03:51:00 PDT

OK, so PEDOCC is taking a break (hibernation/suspend/whatever you want) for the time being. Because of something called SPM.
In the meantime, stay updated to pedocc.tumblr.com for bite-sized updates.

sudo shutdown -h now

Windows 8 Updates - 24 September

noreply@blogger.com (Philip Khor) — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 23:46:58 PDT

There's been a lot of talk about Windows 8 lately. An early version of Windows 8 has been released and is available for download. (The smallest download available is 2.8GB, by the way)

I haven't been able to try Windows 8 for myself, but the biggest news about Windows 8 is focused around its new Metro UI and fast boot-up times. Here is a video from LifeHacker showing how fast Windows 8 boots up compared to Windows 7.

Windows 8 boots up to a tablet-optimized Metro UI, complete with an on-screen keyboard. Here's a closer look at Metro UI in a video posted by Microsoft themselves.

Windows 8 does look good. My concern is as to whether this is a new operating system for desktops or tablet PCs.

Google News is loaded with Windows 8 news and reviews from tech websites, and I won't be surprised if it becomes a Twitter trending topic. There's so much news out there added daily that I won't be able to summarize it in this blog post.

Even Technorati's gone down due to heavy traffic.

Some of the news so far includes:

Concerns about being able to dual boot other operating systems with Windows 8 - see here
Internet Explorer 10 won't support plugins and what that spells for Adobe's Flash Player - see here
Windows 8 is two operating systems in one? - see here and here
The widgets/Metro Apps - here
How does Windows Explorer look with the Ribbon? - here
Security in Windows 8 - here
Brand new Blue Screen of Death - here
New Task Manager - here
Doesn't need much RAM after all! - here
And of course - the download link for Windows 8 Development Preview here

Official updates regarding Windows 8 development are available at the Building Windows 8 blog here.

A review of Ubuntu 11.10 Beta 2

noreply@blogger.com (Philip Khor) — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 06:55:32 PDT

Ubuntu 11.10 logo design by DevianArt user ~icantthinkofaname-09. See here.

Ubuntu 11.10 is an upcoming version of the free Ubuntu operating system. It's due to be released on October 13, 2011 and features a more refined version of the Unity desktop, among other new features.

For Windows users, you can dual boot Ubuntu 11.10 on your Windows PC, preferably after its official release date. Dual booting is not hard, especially with the help of Neosmart's EasyBCD for customization. You can install Ubuntu like any other Windows program through the Windows installer for Ubuntu, Wubi (downloadable from the official Ubuntu site also). I'm a Vista user, and Ubuntu boots up fairly fast and is much less laggish than Vista on startup, so I use Ubuntu mostly for my web surfing.

It sports a rather nice interface, for one. The usual Ubuntu desktop may require fairly good hardware, so if your hardware isn't that good you can use the 2D version instead. It's fairly stable at this stage too, so I expect that there will be few issues once they reach the release date.

You may, surprisingly find Ubuntu easier to use than Windows. Here are some screenshots:

Unity on Ubuntu 64-bit - Dash

The interface simply consists of a taskbar with Indicators for you to see you recent messages, laptop battery level, connection status etc on the top of your screen plus a Panel on the left of your screen - it's like Quick Launch in Windows. The Dash, activated by the Windows button is something like a chameleon - it changes according to the colour of your desktop background.

As you can see in the first screenshot above, Firefox, Shotwell Photo Manager, Thunderbird and Banshee are installed by default in Ubuntu 11.10. There's no room for Microsoft Office - it's not supposed to be compatible with Linux (except through Wine - a tool for you to run Windows programs) but Libreoffice, an office suite similar to OpenOffice and Office 2003's interface comes preinstalled.

11.10 comes preinstalled with a messaging client called Empathy (for Facebook Chat, Live Messenger, Google Talk etc.) and the Gwibber social client (something like Seesmic Desktop). You can install Skype also.

Applications Lens

The cool thing about the Dash is Lenses. It "allow you to make mash ups of elements that integrate with the Dash and Launcher", according to the Ubuntu Unity Ideas Lenses wiki page.

Music Lens

For Windows users who fear the use of the command line/terminal, Ubuntu 11.10, or any other recent Ubuntu version for that matter actually requires very little or no use of the terminal. And even if you need to use the terminal for something, there are many forums online that can help you with those commands. (Google it.)

The good thing about using Ubuntu instead of Windows is:

It's open source, therefore it's free.
Updating is centralized in a single Update Manager. No more updating individual programs with their individual update managers. Less headache about Windows Update prompting you to restart in 15 minutes.
Less exposure to viruses compared to Windows. In fact there's little need for an antivirus software.
Free open source software alternatives comes preinstalled
A new OS every 6 months

Yeah, you're right. Most Windows games cannot be run on Linux. But you can try running them on Wine. Besides that, Flash and Silverlight actually work fine on Ubuntu - you can choose to install Flash and other plugins during installation of Ubuntu if you're connected to the Internet. For Silverlight, you'll have to download the Moonlight plugin.

If you're new to Ubuntu, wait till the release date to install this version. If not, it should be quite safe for you to try 11.10 - it's in its second beta stage. You really don't want to install Ubuntu, only to run a distribution upgrade just one month later.

You don't really need technical skills to install Ubuntu. There's loads of help forums online and on the download page: http://www.ubuntu.com/download.

Have fun!

Happy Birthday Penguins?

noreply@blogger.com (Philip Khor) — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 22:35:30 PDT

I spy... the Logos Hope

noreply@blogger.com (Philip Khor) — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 00:56:18 PDT

The Logos Hope, a ship which also functions as a book fair, has just arrived in Penang. And before you complain about not being able to go on board, here's a way to virtually get on board the Logos Hope in just a few clicks.

GBA Ships' website provides webcam images of the going-ons of the ship. Apparently those aren't live images (though they seem to be updated daily), and it isn't like those cool 3D tours of places like the Louvre, but you can take a look here: http://www.gbaships.org/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=174

*To get on board Logos Hope, head on to Swettenham Pier, Penang. The ship leaves Penang on 25th September. Entrance fee is RM1 for adults and free for kids below 12.