Jan Leow's Blog Page

IE vs Firefox, Opera, Chrome browsers

Internet Explorer is still bloated and slow as ever. And it is very telling. Just open your Gmail account and click on any inbox entry. It takes 5 long seconds for the message to open. It takes just as long to return to the Inbox list. In comparison, Firefox, Opera and Chrome takes only an instant. I couldn't even start counting the seconds (you know, one thousand one, one thousand two, etc to denote an estimated one second duration) for any of the 3 alternates to IE.

In terms of page loading, Firefox, Opera and Chrome browser all wins hands down against Internet Explorer. Much as I would like to avoid using IE, I still need to check my web site display every once in awhile to see if the layouts and alignment are in order or not.

Too bad for us Web Developers like us who dislike using Internet Explorer, but there are still a large number of people out in the World Wide Web who don't know about the better browser alternatives. And so I have to keep IE around just to make sure the web site will load up properly. And still Microsoft seemed to be aimless and aloof about their slow bloated inefficient browser and feel rather contented about their browser market share of about 60%-70%. Even with Firefox and Chrome slowly eating up small slices of the browser market ever so slowly, is Microsoft doing anything to improve their browser or are they going to strong arm their competitors and hobble them with a law suit like what they did with Netscape Navigator?

Twitter for Palm - MoTwit

Can't have enough of Twittering? Own a Palm mobile phone like Centro, Treo or something like that? Then give this freeware app a try! It's call MoTwit (formerly known as TreoTwit). Useful for those who own a Palm mobile phone and wanted to twit using mobile phone but not residing in US, UK, India or Sweden. Actually you can SMS but the cost would be very expensive since it will become an international text message. So use MoTwit instead which uses 3G/GPRS/EDGE service. Would save you a bundle and still have the ability to Twit!

http://www.mitreo.com/motwit_twitter_palm_os/

Build a free web site with Yola

Build a free web site using Yola. So what is it? Well, free web site hosting is good for those who do not wish to pay out of the pocket. So I decided to sign up and see what's it all about, after all it is free!

This site is fairly new, so don't bank on it just yet. They still need to work out their monetizing model to support their freebie. It they can't find a way to generate income, they will fold soon after or at the very best take over by some other company with usage rule changes.

From the initial try out of their build a free web site system, it looks interesting. This is not your normal web hosting company. It works more like Google Sites. ie you can't upload your own HTML files. However the difference is that Yola provides unlimited storage (versus 100MB given by Google Sites) and unlimited bandwidth. AFAIK, there is no way you can use up that much storage space especially with the cost of storage coming down, many web hosting company are giving unlimited storage capacity.

Like Google sites, You build your free web site on Yola online using their sitebuilder tools. Good for those who don't want to sully themselves with HTML/CSS codes and still create a web site with a zing! However it takes some getting use to their system. You are given two choice of web site creation: a normal web site or blog web site, or you could even go for both!

Anyway it's free, so just go sign up and see what's it all about and see if this Yola.com build a free web site is suitable for you or not.

This is my site using Yola.com:

http://yola.JanLeow.com

(Yes, you can use your existing domain, create a subdomain and A Record it to Yola's DNS)

Cheers!

Windows 7 RC is free! For awhile anyway.

Microsoft is releasing a preview version of Windows 7 RC (release candidate) which you can use until it expires in June 2010. That means about 13 months free usage from current date (May 2008).

PC World reported that this is the longest trial usage ever given by Microsoft. The Vista trial usage was given about 7 months usage from release till its expiry in June 2007. Once it expired Windows Vista will auto reboot every two hours to remind users to get a paid copy. I guess Windows 7 will be of a similar vain.

Anyway 13 months is quite long. And for some of us, we do reformat the hard disk every year or so, and 13 months seem like a good duration. In fact I was already thinking of reformatting my hard drive so it might be a good time to give Windows 7 RC a try. Only problem now, Microsoft server is swamped from too much download request. Guess I will wait awhile before going for a download.

PC World article reference:
Use Windows 7 free (for awhile)

Format FAT32 big partition using Linux

I was attempting to format big partition size >100GB for a FAT32 file system for the WD My Passport portable hard disk. Turn out to be very tedious because the FAT32 format utility provided by Western Digital could not work in Windows Vista. So I tried to find alternative way, but to no avail, until...

There is limit to the FAT32 partition on your hard disk. It cannot exceed more than 32GB. To format larger than 32GB I will need to use the manufacturer software. Turn out it cannot run in Windows Vista. So I searched around for alternatives.

I found one software called SwissKnife, but turn out that this too was outdated and could not run in Windows Vista. It could only run in Windows 2000.

There were many post in forums about using command prompt to format large size partition. Many said it was very slow, you can't do a quick format, and there seem to be limit to the format size. NOt sure about the actual limit, but I believe it could not exceed 100GB. Since I need it bigger than 100GB I decided not to try this way.

In the end, I have to fire up my old PC running in Windows XP to install the WD FAT32 formatter program. It requires at least the dotNetFx 2.0 version so again I have to take time to install a .Net software. Than installed the WD FAT32 formatter. Finally got them all installed.

But... it wouldn't allow me to partition it!

So in the end, I used Ubuntu Linux Gnome partition manager. Before using it, I have to delete the partition using Windows Disk Manager. For some unknown reason I couldn't delete the partition in Gnome partition manager. Using the Ubunto Linux Gnome partition manager, I could partition the WD My Passport portable hard disk and format a FAT32 partition bigger than 100GB size.

Thank goodness for Linux!

Expandable Post

Finally it was done. It wasn't too difficult to understand and implement expandable post in Google Blogger. Now the post functions just like those Wordpress websites. ie the front page will show a teaser of paragraph, if the visitors likes it, can click the "Read More" link to expand the the teaser to a full post for further reading.

Now the frontpage don't have to be a looooong page of many posts, it just shows short teasers, making the page neat and tidy.

Initially the steps were a little bit confusing in that the Google help files do assume you know you know something like where to put those codes. Those were a matter of trial and error to get them into the correct location to insert the codes. Once done, it was a matter of tweaking the display to make it look nice and functional.

There are plenty of help topics too about customizing your blogger templates from the old classic templates to the new layout version. Should be enough info there to get you started to build your own free web site using Google Blogger. There was even a chapter on how to make the site look like a book. Could be useful if you want to make your own web site into hierarchal format rather than a chronologically linear type web site.

Not too bad for a free web site.
Cheers!

Can always use this like Twitter

I can always use this blogger like Twitter minus the 140 character limit. Instead of calling it micro blogging, just call it mini blogging! Plus you can tag it to and with more options! Yeah!