Tuesday, August 19, 2008
A lot of eBayer are furious about the new eBay's feedback system that took place a few months back. I am ok with most of the changes but couldn't stand the fact that neutral feedbacks were counted just the same as the negative ones and I had no idea why they are doing this way.
Gladly, eBay finally realized it and changed the formula probably just a few hours ago. Now, I have 100% positive feedbacks, which tells all potential customers that I am a very honest, trustful seller who treats customer's satisfaction very seriously.
Monday, August 18, 2008
Here are the 10 Firefox extensions you can’t live without on 10 Things. Interestingly, I have none of them installed on my Firefox. So what's are on mine? Simple, only a few, here are the top 5 firefox extensions I can't live without:
- Gmail Notifier - A notifier for Gmail accounts. That's the one I used every day to manage three my Gmail accounts.
- Google Toolbar for Firefox. I have no idea why there are still people who doesn't want it on their browser.
- IE Tab - enables you to use the embedded IE engine within Firefox.
- Web Developer - nonetheless to say, it's a must have being a web developer.
- Remember the Milk for Gmail - it's sweet having task manager right in the Gmail.
What's yours then?
I was shocked, astonished, and a little disappointed when I heard the news that Liu Xiang has quitted the 110-m hurdle game in Bei Jing Olympics. But he's still the man and he's still a hero that looks even more like a human than before. It required more courage deciding to quit than continuing in the situation like this and even more, Liu has been dreaming of winning a gold medal in the national stadium in the Olympics for 7 years.
Some of the people said that he could walk to the end, and yes, I agree, I would do the same if I were him. But hell no, that's why we can't be at his level and we can't never be at the top. The warrior can not be beaten in the battle field, and Liu is definitely a warrior who is never afraid of battling. His quit is telling all his opponents that he hasn't be beaten in the Olympics and he will come back.
Stand up, China Liu, you are always the hero to us...no matter what!
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Yeah, it's finally done. After spending hours to try to figure it out, I finally got my iPhone 3G hooked up with our office Exchange server.
One nice thing about the new iPhone 3G and iPhone 2.0 software is the native support for Microsoft Exchange because Apple finally licensed Microsoft ActiveSync from Microsoft. It delivers pushing email, calendar, and contacts. The first thing I tried after I had my iPhone 3G is to try to connect it to the office Exchange server but no success. It passed the authentication part but sync'd null after.
I left there for a week or two until my assistant Lee passed around this Microsoft KB which obviously related to the issue we were having. I didn't follow all of them but changed some obvious ones and all of sudden it started working, email flows in while events shows in my calendar on iPhone. Here is things I thought is necessary to get it work.
- Port 80 and 443 need to be opened on firewall.
- The site that has OWA and OMA has to have both 80 and 443 opened.
- OWA (domain/exchange) has to be put on SSL as required to secure the communication.
- Follow the Microsoft KB 817379 to make an alternative exchange-oma for Microsoft ActiveSync Server with SSL not required.
And last, if the Exchange email account you created on iPhone isn't working, you have to delete it and recreate it as new to test. I still have the following error message showing up on Exchange server event log but it doesn't seem to matter anymore as emails still flow.
Unexpected Exchange mailbox Server error: Server: [xxx] User: [xxx] HTTP status code: [400]. Verify that the Exchange mailbox Server is working correctly.
Exchange server 2007 offers a better tools and ways to manage mobile users and devices but not so many on 2003. So next step, I will have to find a way how to secure the system tightly.
Monday, August 11, 2008
It was down for more than an hours and all my Gmail accounts including the Google App one were all inaccessible during the time. It wasn't a big deal for me but I am deadly sure it matters for a lot of others. I can't just believe it happened on Gmail, a solid-stable system that never failed on me.
Just don't know if we should ever trust the cloud computing. Is moving all data online especially your business critical data still a really good approach?
Saturday, August 09, 2008
I don't know if it has changed your behavior but it did change mine. I found myself washing or cleaning my both hands way more often than before ever since I started using iPod touch actually. :) But it's a good way of doing so.
Anyway, enjoy the rest of the Olympic weekend. Can't wait to watch the basketball game tomorrow morning. Yes, Yao Min versus US.
Thursday, August 07, 2008
ididwork, a recently launched web application, could be useful to you through your busy daily work activities. Works ok on my iPhone but wish they can either make a mobile version or a twitter thing, or even an iPhone app to make it easier to use.
ididwork is an online tool that allows employees to keep track of the work they do over time. Employee logs can then be shared with other employees, and submitted to superiors for review. ididwork can be used by an individual to keep track of work completed, and by the enterprise to increase awareness of employee activity.
Time for the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics. The opening ceremony will start tomorrow morning but some of the games has already started, like man and woman soccer. The team man China tied the game with New Zealand, the weakest team in the same group. However, they scored the first goal ever in team China's soccer history. So I really wanted to see how they did it. But unfortunately, even with the Wired's Watch the Olympics Online, I wasn't able to watch it. After trying for over 1 hour, I gave up.
Apparently, every country only has one major television company granted for distribute the news for Olympics. I used to just watch all sports games on Sina Sports. But due to the agreement signed with Olympics' committee, it only opens to local users, not the users overseas like me. NBC is awesome too. It has tons of Videos on the site free to watch but again, only restricted to US residents. CBC is the one for Canadian, but sadly, I couldn't locate a piece of Video on the site for me to watch. Really sucks. All they have are the stuff that I can easily read or find from other places. Too bad, I never missed a free fast Proxy service that much, and the first time ever I even want to be in the states.
Hopefully, as the games start, everything will be turning better and better on CBC.
<update>
Another thing CBC didn't do it right and on time is the lack of mobile version on their website for the mobiles while NBC has one that fits my iPhone smoothly.
</update>
Saturday, August 02, 2008
I fell in love with my touch almost instantly the minute when I got it. The more I use, the more I love. It's deadly a thing I am just simply waiting for so long. Now, since my 3-year cell phone contract is up my company thought it would be a good opportunity for me to give a try out for the new iPhone. So yeah, I am on it now, even though I have the mission to determine whether or not it will be a good approach to be used in a business environment. And yes, I will be keeping any progress here for sure.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
It's still in beta though but the new features and fixes in this version are the ones I am exactly waiting for so long. Can't wait to see the final release coming up.
Features in GFI MailArchiver 6 BETA 1 build 20080717:
- NEW: Microsoft Outlook Connector – Users can view archived email from Microsoft Outlook.
- NEW: During installation, the setup will ask to customise the language analyser to be used during email indexing.
- NEW: Download archive emails in Microsoft Outlook format (.msg)
- NEW: Users can access archived emails from web UI folder structure.
- NEW: Indexing processes can be paused and resumed at will.
Monday, July 28, 2008
I had been using MS Word to make all my IT documentation and saved in a structured folder but found it's hard to maintain and catch up. Oftenly, the steps to make a document made me reluctant to do so. I had tried a few Wiki tools but found it's hard for me to make a quite format rich documents in Wiki, besides, its non-standard HTML format makes it ever harder for me to do even a very simply instructions.
Finally, I tried and finalized to use telligent's new released Graffiti cms system as my IT document library. Its simplicity and flexibility totally meets almost all my needs. I can easily customize the layout and move content to or from wherever I want. It also works seamlessly with my favorite blogging publish tool, Windows Live Writer. Whenever I want to document something, I can simply fire up my live writer, write something down, pick up which category should belong to, and publish it right after I finish it. Yes, comparing to Wiki, it lacks of the version tracking but this is not what I am concerned the most. However, if the revision control weights pretty well in your list, you should be considering Wiki instead.
Saturday, July 19, 2008
This lifehacker's definitive comparison did a pretty good job comparing the most two popular email tools, in a business aspect. The conclusion that Gmail wins though shouldn't be the key point when choosing the email platform.
My point, simply is, for a company with less than 20 users go for a Gmail solution. For any company with more than that, going with Outlook with Exchange is a no brain.
Home user? Always go for Gmail. Or if you really like Outlook, use it with Gmail IMAP configured.
The blackout that happened in Vancouver downtown on Monday morning July 14 lasted 3 days to have everything back in order. Unfortunately, our office is among those who had no power for more than two days. It's totally a disaster. Imagining how damage could be to a business like us that heavily depends on the deadlines. We are fortunate that we got over it by renting two 3000w Honda Gas Generator, having them sitting on the patio providing the enough juice to our servers for one and half days. We are lucky because 1) we have a patio that leads to the open air close to our server room so we can have this giant machine sitting there and running in the open air; 2) the blackout didn't interrupt the telephone line so we still have our ADSL on, or there would be no point to have the generator powering on all the servers.
Looking at the bright side though, we learned and saw what the disaster or emergency situation looks like when it happens. It's such a valuable experience that we need to benefit from it, do more planning, so to be ready or at least not being panic when next one comes, even though it most likely will be something different.
The crisis is over, but the business contingency plan just begins.
Monday, July 14, 2008
After a few days getting update notification SmartFTP forced me to go and updated to the latest version, which pops up every time now when I open it, telling me that the free time is over.
Well, after being "cute" (CuteFTP) , and "smart" (SmartFTP) for many years, it's time to move on to something neither "cute" nor "smart". It turns out, being "zilla" (FileZilla) is not bad at all. After all, life is not just being Cute or Smart. :)
Sunday, July 13, 2008
It all happened all of sudden on Gmail first and the other sites too after I checked more closely. I did a quick Google search and someone mentioned that it's because Firefox 3 somehow screwed up the Windows System fonts, Arial in particular. And it was suggested that in order to fix I need to manually delete or remove the fonts and reinstall it. In my case, the font Arial even went missing and I could find it in Fonts folder at all.
So I downloaded a System Arial font for Windows which fixed the problem perfectly after I manually installed it back into Windows Fonts fold.
It's still interesting though what exactly Firefox 3 did to make it happen and I am also surprised that there were number of people having the same issue.