Top 3 Prediction of Blogging industry Future

1. Part time blogger will over shadow full time celebrity

Main stream blogging community and alternative production house will eventually see their similarity and joint effort to create a new stream in entertainment industry.  This will further narrow the gap between online and offline content.  Popularity of nobody has become much more hotter than somebody.  Although nobody falls as quick as the rise, but the users and the advertisers do not really care ... as long as the volume is there and its entertaining.

2. Travel Blog will surge to new hike

3. Food Blog will deteriote by massive Advs.

2009 01 03 ... I just came up with a daring prediction.  KennySia blog will suffer from significant drop in readership but he soon recover it before end of the year !

Maxis Broadband Re-Review December 2008

This time I am testing Maxis Broadband again mainly because of the device that comes with it - B932.


  Size : 159 x 105 x 27 mm
  Weight : < 250g 
   HSDPA 3.6Mbps Download 384Kbps UL 
   UMTS 900/2100M 
   GSM/GPRS/EDGE 850/900/1800

Maxis center itself doesn't have this device.  Only a handful agents grab ALL the devices before it was released to the market hence you may only get it from those agents.  Unfortunately I don't know who they are but you can always ask for it.

At first glance, I saw the power adapter is a USB compliant port. So I was thinking this device can be used anywhere with a power supply USB cable.  It would be bulky but rather cost effective.  However, when I finally got the right cable plugged in, it won't power up !  I would guess I may need to configure using 2 USB ports to power this device up but I didn't think its worth while for me to spend that much time and money.

These are the accessories comes in the box. One big missing thing is the antenna, however, the device functions ok without one. Which is also a plus point.


This is how the device look. Quite a lot of blinking colors at front makes it quite cool. This button at the corner is to on / off


The SIM slot is accessible without taking any part of the modem off. This makes it hot plug and play. However, upon testing with Digi broadband with the correct settings, this device still won't work with Digi Broadband.  So I assume this device has been locked for Maxis only.


At the end,

. It cann't power up without power adapter so its not portable ( not that they claim it is )
. I cann't use it with other broadband services so its not a long term device I should keep

With that, there is really no reason why I should keep this package.  Read previous post about limitation on wireless telco broadband service and I could have bought a much better device at lower price and less contractual commitment.

So I had to return this to Maxis again within 7 days.  The difference is this time the return went through quite smoothly.  They didn't give much hard time nor any nonsense excuses.  The staff even 'make up' the reason as 'drop connection' in the form without asking me what the problem was.

How to use Google Chrome as a better browser

Google Chrome has been released for some time now but for some reasons Google didn't really push too hard for it.  Quite a lot of 'gadgets' are still mostly built for Firefox and IE compatible.  Surprisingly, quite some are not even supporting Chrome yet.

However, Chrome is still the Best architected browser and it still load the fastest.

I came across an article describing how to make full use of Chrome, read full article here.

Basically you will need to download some additional softwares to back and restore profiles, modify your own shortcuts etc.  After reading that article, my impression is that Chrome is designed either for no brainer web browser who care about security and crash proof AND programmer or tech savy folks who like to explore to find out how to make things work.

If you are those in between, then you may still want to stick to other conventional browser.

FREE Web Site builder - synthasite

If you haven't used any FREE web site builder, you can try this http://www.synthasite.com/

• 100% FREE no hidden fees
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What other web builder do you use ?

:) I know where u live ...

The transition between new and old generation ... its going to take a while to narrow down the gap ... or will it ever be ?

:) future of email

Not surprisingly, some people still find it hard to distinguish between sci-fi fictions and today's technology.

Did I watch it from a movie or Discovery channel ?

:) the affair btw IT and coffee

:) Help ! Help !

:) name, no password ?

how to deal with immature industry ?

I talked about IT industry is still very NEW in an old post.

New industry doesn't mean useless.  It just mean you have to be well educated when asking for services.  You will need to (1) know what you need, a broad idea of  (2) how it is suppose to be done and a clear (3) quantifiable way to measure the end result.

With that 3 things well prepared, IT will save tons of your cost or elevate your profit above your ceiling !

Maxis Broadband - bewares ...

7 days FREE Trial ?

When you return the modem and packages in perfect condition, you leave with nothing.  Then you have to wait patiently until they send you your refund in a cheque.  They claimed they will send within 12 weeks.  But sometimes they may come back and see you returned the modem more than 7 days and therefore will enjoy no refund.  Then they will charge you RM 200 extra for terminating in less than 12 months !

No Minimum Contract Period ?

CHEAT again !  If you stop in less than 12 months, you will have to pay RM 200 'handling fee'.  Whatever terms they call it, they want you to stay for 12 months ... even though they said they don't.

Performance

If you have use other mobile phone operated broadband before, then you already know you will almost NEVER get 3G not to mention 3.5G or HSPDA.  You average speed is as good as any GPRS connection, about twice faster than a 56K dial up.

3GB per month ONLY !!

It is NOT highlighted anywhere but you are expected to use up to 3GB per month only !!  After that Maxis will limit your bandwidth, drop your line and totally disable you to use more than that at all !

What kind of Unlimited broadband service is this ?

IT industry is Immature

Quite frequently people who work in IT industry feel very proud because they think they are walking ahead of everyone else.

What general public needs to realize is that IT industry is still very NEW compare to other industry like finance, automobile etc.

When an industry is new it always get the hipes and a lot of jargoon that make it look really cool.

However, not all jargoons are real and sometimes some are totally bullshit.  Sometimes when a technology gets neglected because it has been in market for a while, then IT folks will come up with new fancy name to make it hot again, even though it is actually an old technology.  And this is our current IT industry stage.

ERP - Enterprise Resource Planning solution is one example that 80% of it is useless marketing terms and only 20% of it may have some usefullness.

build your own PC

recently I built another computer.  Just so that you have my perspective, the first PC I built was 8086 more than 15 years ago.

So first I shop for one and found this cost $699 ( MYR )

- Celeron C430 1.8GHz

- 1 GB RAM

- 80GB HDD

- 20x DVD-RW

- 1.44 Floppy

- 56k modem

- 400W power supply

- speakers, keyboard, optical mouse

It seems like agreat deal especially you already have monitor at home.

However, my last few "LOW COST" PC always ended up with un-diagnostable cancer so I decided to pay a bit extra for quality.  So I ended up analysing which CPU and motherboard is best Value For Money in last post.

And then I also always face some problems in those $30-$50 power supply.  Their actual supply power is unknown ( ie. not 400W, not 300W.  sometimes 150W sometimes 120W)  So this time I bought a higher than 80% efficiency power supply.

At the end, this is what I bought :

Abit AN68SV	$150
AMD 62 x2 5000+	$204
DDR2 800 2GB RAM	$84
Acbel 510W	$177
	Total $615

$615 !!!???  Cheaper than the first PC I built ( USD 200 ) with MHz CPU, RAM counted in KB and a beautiful Disk Operating System (DOS) ... haven't these 15 years changed so much!

The total paid is slightly less than what you pay for a complete low cost PC but you don't have the casing, speakers, hard drive etc.  I am fine because I can reuse all those old stuff.

At least I ended up with a good performance CPU with reliable power supply.  The only thing I worry about this new system is how long can the mother board last ?

I may FRY this board as this system will be on 24 x 7

How to compare Value for Money CPU

Recently I have to build a new PC so I was analysing which CPU is best value for money.

First I got this CPU comparison data

I put the the selling price I obtained from local sellers.  Then basically I just divide the performance marks by price to get an indication what to buy.

From this exercise, I learned the following :

Worst Buy ( More Money, no more value )

Intel E8400

AMD 5600+

Intel E2180

Best Buy ( "Normalize" Value for Money )

Intel E2200

AMD Sempron LE1150

AMD 5000+

Then I examine the mother boards used for Intel E2200 and AMD 5000+.  The graphic in AMD 7025/7050 chipset is so much better than Intel 925/G31.  AMD boards also have more fancy stuff like more support SATA drives by default, dual display, DVI output, support up to 16GB RAM ( although we don't need it but what the heck, we are talking about value for money now, not usage by money )

And AMD motherboard is cheaper than Intel's eventhough with more features.

So I ended up buying AMD 5000+ with Abit AN68SV

Read all web sites at one place

You read a number of favaorite web sites and its quite troublesome to read them one by one ?  Sometimes you are not sure when they put up new content etc. ?

Well, just browse to google.com/reader and add your favaorite sites into the subscription.

The next time your fav site is updated, it will prompt you automatically.

You can even see all updated contents at one site without browsing away !

You can also browse to google reader from your mobile phone web browser too !

Its a great tool !