Personal Money is a good local financial magazine under The Edge which always has discussions about the simple investments,the strategy,the concept of saving money etc and so I can keep my track of growing up my family fund by a right way.I believe the difference between a rich man and a poor man is of their thoughts.Thus,learning towards richness is definitely necessary.

I hope my friends could also know it and learn it from Personal Money.It’s monthly published and only RM9.00 if you are in Peninsular Malaysia.

I have to say that I’m so lucky.My parents always love me as well as my grandma does.I also think my grandpa is blessing me somewhere too.I got married in the beginning of the year with my dear whom I sincerely love with.Of course,there are friends surrounding me,often bringing fun and sharing sadness together.All these keep telling me that I am one of the luckiest man in the world.

Maybe life in this century will never be easy as living in a modern city is so complicated,but I believe nothing is going to be tough with the support from all people around.In fact,I will not expect any wonderful party or some big surprises there because no trouble is the best gift for me.

Happy birthday to me!

Nexus One Developer Phone

from Android Developers Blog by Tim Bray

We’ve always offered unlocked phones for direct sale to registered Android Developers. As of today, the Developer Phone is the Nexus One, at a price of $529. To see the details or order a phone, you need to sign in to your Android developer account and click on the "Development Phones" link.

The Nexus One combines an up-to-the-minute platform (Android 2.2), modern hardware, and the pure Google Experience software suite. It’s a good choice both for people who want to build Android applications using either the SDK or the NDK, and those who want to experiment with modified versions of the Android platform. Note that the Nexus One still ships with Android 2.1 but will download 2.2 soon after you turn it on; make sure you’re near a fast network.

As well as being an outstanding developer platform, it’s a really nice everyday phone; we’re really happy to have connected the right dots to make this happen.

So if you are an Android developer,you still can use that provided method to get a new Google Nexus One which has advanced hardware and designs.If you’re not,you can find some way to get it too.Google Nexus One will never die.

Basically,it is a 7200RPM hard disk with 32MB cache and 4GB SLC NAND solid state memory.Seagate applies Adaptive Memory™ technology to utilize the solid state memory when it’s necessary.The performance will be improved by normal usages and also boost the boot speed.

I did some simple tests using HD Tune.Here are the snapshots.

The pics show the read speed,the health of the disk and I/O speed.You will find the figures maybe are quite similar with other 2.5 inch 7200RPM hard disks because the SSM can’t be utilized in such kinds of tests and so no enhancements for the overall figures.In fact,you can see the real differences between Seagate Momentus 7200.4 conventional hard dish and this Seagate Momentus XT hybrid hard disk.

The price of this hard disk is almost 1.5 times than the normal 500GB 2.5 inch 7200RPM hard disk,but if you always eager to save your time on opening files or loading some programs,this new product from Seagate will give what you want for your laptop.I enjoy it!

The following long lists are the things done by the engineers in this latest version.

• Firefox 4 Beta 2 is available in 24 languages.
• Tabs are now on top by default on Windows and OSX - Linux will be changing when the theme has been modified to support the change.
• You can turn any tab into an "App Tab" by right-clicking on it and selecting "Make into App Tab" from the context menu.
• Web developers can animate content using CSS Transitions.
• Responsiveness and scrolling improvements from the new retained layers layout system.
• JavaScript speed improvements due to engine optimizations.
• Changes to how XPCOM components are registered in order to help startup time and process separation.
• See the complete changelist from the previous beta.

As well as these features from previous Firefox 4 Betas:

• You can search for and switch to already open tabs in the Smart Location Bar
• New Addons Manager and extension management API (UI will be changed before final release)
• Significant API improvements are available for JS-ctypes, a foreign function interface for extensions.
• The stop and reload buttons have been merged into a single button on Windows, Mac and Linux.
• The Bookmarks Toolbar has been replaced with a Bookmarks Button by default (you can switch it back if you’d like).
• Crash protection for Windows, Linux, and Mac when there is a crash in the Adobe Flash, Apple Quicktime or Microsoft Silverlight plugins.
• CSS Transitions are partially supported.
• Full WebGL support is included but disabled by default at this time.
• Core Animation rendering model for plugins on Mac OS X. Plugins which also support this rendering model can now draw faster and more efficiently.
• Native support for the HD HTML5 WebM video format.
• An experimental Direct2D rendering backend is available on Windows, turned off by default.
• Web developers can use Websockets for a low complexity, low latency, bidirectional communications API.
• Web developers can update the URL field without reloading the page using HTML History APIs.
• More responsive page rendering using lazy frame construction.
• Link history lookup is done asynchronously to provide better responsiveness during pageload.
• CSS :visited selectors have been changed to block websites from being able to check a user’s browsing history.
• New HTML5 parser.
• Support for more HTML5 form controls.

Developers can find out about all the changes and new features at the Mozilla Developer Center.

However,what I like here is the new feature-App Tab.You can see how it works in my pics:

I always open Google Reader and Facebook when I’m surfing Internet.The normal tab occupies unnecessary spaces.Well,now I can just simply make a right click on the tab and select to ‘make into App Tab’ and it then is reduced to a lovely size.It’s nice,isn’t it?

The bad thing is most of my existing add-ons are not yet supported.I think the developers will catch their work up.I just hope it won’t be too long.

If you wanna try this new Firefox,please get it here and install it.You will have a fresh experience.

I think Malaysia will be in the next list of countries to sell iPhone4.Most people believe that it will be around mid August.In this competitive industry,no doubt that DiGi and Maxis will open their mind to promote iPhone4 with some attractive plans.The past history tells us that normally DiGi will win some fields.Well,nothing could be confirmed.I guess some of mobile service providers may offer some exchange program,trade-in your iPhone 3Gs for a bit rebate.

Let’s wait for the further information!

Seagate finally makes this kind of products.Seagate Replica is a very new product which has a sharp outlook and a smart ‘mind’.It could automatically back-up the whole system when you connect it into PCs.I think it will be an impressive product for people lacking of time and knowledge to deal with it.

Let’s have a close look!

I bought it at Lowyat Plaza,Kuala Lumpur,costing me RM369(USD115).I think the 5-year warranty and the good reputation of Seagate is worth the price.How do you think?

I’m happily using it.

From Friday, the subsidies for sugar, petrol, liquefied petroleum gas and diesel will be cut as part of the gradual subsidy rationalisation programme, according to a statement from the Prime Minister’s office on Thursday.

The price of sugar will go up 25sen to RM1.75 per kg; LPG will go up 10sen to RM1.85 per kg; petrol RON95 will be up 5sen to RM1.85 per litre and diesel will be up 5sen to RM1.75 per litre.

RON 97 will no longer be subsidised. It will be subjected to a managed float, where the price will be determined by the automatic pricing mechanism, the statement said.

(Reported by TheStar)

In fact,I have totally agreed the movements of cutting the subsidies and I had talked about it one month ago.Oil and gas have been limited resources all over the world and they will create a lot of pollutions.By increasing the prices of them,it could reduce such issues.Eating too much sugar will cause diabetes.Higher price of sugar will let people reduce the consumption of it and so being much healthier.However,I also care about how the government will monitor on spending on savings of those subsidies to affirm that the savings will put into places where it could benefit all Malaysians.

I do hope that the accounts of Malaysian government could be more transparent and the officers could also do the jobs hard and think of the citizens in every second as they are public servants.

Some insiders of Google told that they were still doing the testing and bug-fixing and so only app developers and some press were given to try the new version first.However,today has a different story.In the early morning,I had got some information over the Internet that some builds for all Nexus One phones were found in the Google server and the direct links were exposed very quickly.I’m the one who downloaded and installed Froyo manually in my Nexus One by referring the instructions from the comments in Engadget.

One hour after I installed Froyo in my device,I caught an article from Google Nexus One board declared Froyo is starting to OTA to all Nexus One users from today.Most Nexus One users will receive the notification of upgrade by the end of this week.

So if you are so patient,you could wait for some more days to get the automatic upgrade;if you are just like me,you can download and install it manually to enjoy the power of Froyo first.

For Build number ERE27:http://android.clients.google.com/packages/passion/signed-passion-ota-42745.dc39ca1f.zip

For Build number EPE54B:http://android.clients.google.com/packages/passion/signed-passion-FRF85B-from-EPE54B.75b107d6.zip

Please follow the steps to get Froyo correctly running in your device:

1.Rename the downloaed file to update.zip
2.Put it at the root of your SD-Card and then turn off the phone.
3.Hold down the volume button and then press the power on button, it should go into a boot screen. Wait for a few seconds for it to load up proper and then select "Recovery" with the volume down/up button and press the power button.
4.Once you see an android holding a sign with an exclamation mark push volume down+ volume up + power button _at the same time_.
5.Select "apply sdcard:update.zip"(or something similiar) with the trackball and press it.
6.After the update is finished select "reboot system now" with the trackball and press it.
7.Wait for it to reboot, it can take a long time mind you.

(Thanks the reader afinite in Engadget for the detailed information.)

The default view has rich contents there,including ‘highlights’,’photos’,’status’ etc.It’s a real mixture of social network tool and instant message software.

It also has a traditional view aka a compact view to slim the windows.

Once you open a chatting window,you can find nothing changed except a bar with some functions.

So from now on,if you want to disappear to some of your friends,you can set to appear offline to the person whilst other people can still see you there.
Here are my rough comments on the very new Windows Live Messenger beta and I think I should take more time to dig out more knowledge on this.You guys could download and install this new stuff to try it out too.It may make you look cool,huh? 

Get it here…

(BTW,I edited this article on the latest Windows Live Writer beta,the experience is much better than the old version.Thumb up!!!)

• A sexy new default theme called Twenty Ten.The new theme is awesome.It comprises some modern elements in the design and leaves quite a lot of spaces for being customized by the different groups of users.
• Merge of MU and WordPress.That means from now on,WordPress could also support multi-users/multi-sites.
• Lighter interface
• The better contextual help for every page
• 1217 bugs fixed and enhancements
• Bulk updates for plug-ins as well as themes

…

Let’s see the introduction from the official:

Just upgrade your current WordPress by a single click and you could then enjoy the fun from the new one.

Malaysia government provided RM18.6billion as the subsidies to petrol price,gas price and so on.It is almost 11% of GDP for the year,higher than many other developed and developing countries in the world(France-1.4%,UK-0.7%;Indonesia-2.7%,India-1.6%,China-0.7%).However,the expenses on subsidies are actually only ranking at No.4 of total expenses.The No.1 expense is for salary and other bonus of civil servants-1.22million of civil servants cost RM52.9billion for the last year-it’s around 3 times of subsidies and 33.7% of the total expenses.That means each public servant could get average income for the year at RM43360,at the same time,the Per Capita GNI(Gross National Income) of Malaysia is RM23567(ie. Malaysia has approx. 27.7million citizens in 2009.)

From the points I can see,I suggest the government smoothly cuts down the subsidies,but also need to cut down the number of public servants by increasing the operational efficiency and applying e-solutions and automation systems in order to facilitate the administrations among different departments.

Malaysia might not be another Greece so soon,but if the government doesn’t know how to control the debts and deficit,I don’t think a better future will be close to the people in this land.On the contrary,the whole country will probably suffer the pain later.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs pushed out the new iPhone 4 in front of the media several hours ago in the WWDC.

iPhone 4 has a new high resolution screen called Retina Display which shows 960 x 640 pixels in the screen.The phone could support GSM / UMTS / HSPA（HSDPA 7.2Mbps、HSUPA 5.8Mbps）and has 5mega pixel back camera with a LED flash as well as a front camera which could be used on the new app namely ‘Facetime’ by WIFI only currently.

The core of this brand new iPhone is A4 processer that is the same as the one in iPad.This powerful processor can provide to record HD video at 720p / 30fps.This time,Apple puts a backside illuminated sensor in the phone,that means the performance in the dark environment will still be fine.

iBook function introduced in iPad will also be a part of new iPhone.A new app-iMovie will be the great tool for the users to make HD video easily.

The new iPhone will have two available colours:blank and white.With starting of selling the new iPhone 4 from 24 June in the selected countries(US, France, Germany, UK, Japan),the previous versions of iPhone-3GS will sell at US$99 and 3G will be off the market.Another 18 countries will get the new iPhone in the coming July.

I’m wondering when it will arrive in Malaysia and what the price will be tagged.Stay tuned!

(Thanks Engadget for the detailed information and real time blogging.)

Update:Maxis just announced that iPhone 4 will be available in coming months in Malaysia.This is the first Malaysia’s mobile provider sending out the message regarding with the new iPhone.

The highlights of the changes are in the following part:

1. New User Features

2. New Platform Technologies

3. New Developer Services

You can get the details from Android official website.

One week ago,there was a beta version of FroYo sending to some group of Google Nexus One users.Upon the feedbacks from them,it seems quite a number of bugs still stay in that beta version although the users feel satisfied with great movements in this new one.

Anyway,I hope someday in this month,I could get an OTA notification once I wake up.

Well,I believe the real thing will not be so simple at all.

DiGi has a wide coverage of EDGE,the 2.75G network which is able to provide the downlink speed up to 144Kbps in my experience.However,it could not be suitable to load most websites fast because nowadays those fancy pages always embed with flash and pictures where the size is easily over 1MBytes,meaning that I have to wait at least 10 seconds for each page.I can’t imagine how I could watch a YouTube video or play some Facebook games by using such a wireless service.

I hope when I visit Malacca next time,I could enjoy 3G connection there.Do you hear me,DiGi?

My wife and I like to visit Jonker Walk(Jalan Hang Jebat,see the map below).In fact,we went there 3 times in 2 days.I would say that the view there day and night is totally different.At the daytime,the street is quiet,but there are still some souvenir shops and restaurants opening,including the very famous ‘chicken rice ball’;at night,all street stalls start the business along the street and the linked area.Locals and foreigners can always get their fun somewhere.

Enlarge the map

We also took Cendol in a local Nyonya restaurant.I have to say that was the most delicious cendol I’ve tried.It just took away the heat of my body in a sunny day.

Now I’m planning to visit Malacca again to enjoy the nice moments.

According to Wikipedia,a matrix code (or two-dimensional bar code) created by Japanese corporation Denso-Wave in 1994. The "QR" is derived from "Quick Response", as the creator intended the code to allow its contents to be decoded at high speed.

QR Codes are common in Japan, where they are currently the most popular type of two dimensional codes. Moreover, most current Japanese mobile phones can read this code with their camera.

I find that is a very interesting tool.In fact,if all products have QR code,we could use our smartphone with QR scanner to get enough information with just one click or something.

You could find a lot of QR code generator online,so you’re able to create a QR code to match any stuff you have,including your blog.

This is the QR code for my blog:

If you have Google Goggles or Barcode scanner in your mobile phone,just try to snap the QR code and see what you get.Is that great?

I feel grateful to my dearest that she always tried her best to comfort me during that worst time.I can’t imagine if I’d faced it alone.I also want to thank other friends and families of their supports.

I will have a further consultation with the doctor tomorrow by checking up the blood platelet level.Frankly speaking,I’m still feeling quite tired and so I hope the blood test report will show a good result.

And currently I’m really scaring of getting dengue again.Scientists,please discover some sort of medicine/bacterin for it as soon as possible.

Dengue is H-O-R-R-I-B-L-E!!!