The Proper Spreadsheet

Spreadsheets represent one of the most popular applications on the planet. This is because they are the reporting and analysis tool of choice for many professionals.

Philip Howard, Bloor Research wrote an article on the problem of spreadsheet last April. According to him, there are five major problems with spreadsheets: the potential for errors, lack of security, the absence of an audit trail, the misperception that spreadsheets are not an enterprise resource, and productivity issues.

After 10 months, Philip reckons that the best solution so far to the problems is Mobius ABS for Spreadsheet Compliance.

ABS for Spreadsheet Compliance reduces the risk of errors and restores confidence in your financial reporting by ensuring that spreadsheets are used correctly and managed responsibly. It centralizes and manages the lifecycle of enterprise spreadsheets, including versioning, security and audit trail.

As a spreadsheet lover, I am more anticipating Microsoft Office Excel 2007. The only problem I have with Microsoft Office Excel 2003 is the lack of security. I am not very comfortable to see so many products on the market that can help you to recover or break into Excel sheets (often by brute force) that might store sensitive information.

Playstation 3 Delayed

According to Merrill Lynch analysts quoted in the Financial Times on Sunday, the PS3 could be delayed by between six and 12 months, meaning an autumn launch in Japan and a late 2006 or early 2007 launch in the United States. The initial bill of materials for PS3 could approach $900, falling to $320 by three years after launch.

From the start, I am skeptical about how Sony can produce such an exaggerated console in a low enough price that is affordable to all. The more affordable price can only come in 2010 which by then even a low-end PC has the same power of PS3. How much money is Sony prepare to lose in this business?

A Laptop with Desktop Look

As a laptop lover, I always look for new laptop to compare with my Dell Inspiron 700m. Here is a glimpse of what you can get in the future. I wonder how heavy this laptop is.


- Cinematic 20.1" HD Wide Screen (1920x1200) Display
- 12ms Typical Grey-to-Grey Response Time
- Integrated 1.3MP Camera
- High-end Array Microphone
- 8 Integrated Speakers & Woofers
- Portfolio Design with Brushed Anodized Articulating Hinges
- Detachable Wireless Keyboard & Mouse

Source: Dell Computer

Private P2P

How do you share your files with your friends these days? Still using FTP server? Take a look at private P2P which offers you online chatting as well as file sharing in a secure mode. Two of the services that are free and offers file sharing of anything are QNext and Grouper.

is a Windows XP based application (.NET) that allows users to share their personal media with the world and/or safely within private groups. With Grouper users can upload video and photo previews to Grouper.com where anyone can view them and then choose to download them via our distributed download network. Grouper also uses P2P technology to connect you directly to your friends' hard drives where they can share large media files in a safe, encrypted environment. Grouper is a simple install and requires no firewall reconfiguration.

claims to be everything. Universal Messenger, Audio Chat, Video Conferencing, Photo Sharing, File Transfer, File Sharing, Group Text Chat, Online Gaming, Remote Access, Music Streaming, IRC, just to name a few. The QNext client is a J2SE application.

Which one is better? Personally I prefer Grouper. However, MSN Messenger, Yahoo and AOL will soon catch up. The latest MSN Messenger 8.0 Beta has the file sharing feature built-in.

Ten to Avoid

Busy looking for new toy to buy? Here is the list that will kill your buying mood instantly:

- Oakley Thump (Sunglasses with a built-in MP3 player)
- Voodoo Doll D210 (Breadbox-sized PC)


- H2i SimplyTouch OpticalBar (Monitor into Touch Screen)


- ROKR E1 (The First iTunes Phone)
- Cinego D-1000 (Projector/DVD player)
- PQI mPack P800 Media Player (Portable Music and Video player)
- Dual XNAV3500P (Portable GPS Navigation)
- PepperPad (Handheld Media Computer)
- Sony S2 Sports Network Walkman NW-S23 (Network Walkman)
- Samsung Digimax V700 (Digital Camera)

Source: Worst Products of 2005

Your FM Station

I always want to listen to Internet radio just like a normal FM radio. Why? You can be away from your PC and still listen to the Internet radio that you like. Running the radio on FM isn't the only option but I consider it the better solution than a typical wireless media player.

Here are the two products (RocketFM & Aurius) that have reasonable price tag and simple to use. It can encode any audio source in your PC or Mac to FM. Yes! Any audio source. You wouldn't want to limit yourself to only certain Internet radio service, would you?

The Aurius should be attached directly to the computer's USB ports and not via a USB hub. While the Aurius should work when connected via a hub, it is by no means guaranteed due to the low latency / high bandwidth requirements of USB Audio.

Review: RocketFM & Aurius

10 Commandments of Email

1. Thou shalt include a clear and specific subject line.

2. Thou shalt edit any quoted text down to the minimum thou needest.

3. Thou shalt read thine own message thrice before thou sendest it.

4. Thou shalt ponder how thy recipient might react to thy message.

5. Thou shalt check thy spelling and thy grammar.

6. Thou shalt not curse, flame, spam or USE ALL CAPS.

7. Thou shalt not forward any chain letter.

8. Thou shalt not use e-mail for any illegal or unethical purpose.

9. Thou shalt not rely on the privacy of e-mail, especially from work.

10. When in doubt, save thy message overnight and reread it in the light of the dawn.

Universal Applications on Mac

When you see the Universal symbol on Mac applications, that means they’re made to run on both Intel- and PowerPC-based Mac computers. Simply install them as usual. They’ll automatically run at peak performance for your Mac’s architecture. And, it bears repeating, if your Mac is powered by the Intel Core Duo, that performance will be nothing less than astounding — up to 4X what is possible on PowerPC-based machines.

Time to Build a Portal?

Building an enterprise portal is an expensive, time-consuming, culture-wrenching endeavor.

Your portal planning must include high-level commitment, user involvement, defined sponsors and stakeholders, and the goals for your project—including having a university-wide portal with single sign-on.

Internet Doctor

"Search is also a conversation. It is the talk that occurs between a database or index, and a human. It is not human-to-human conversation per se, but it is, nevertheless, a conversation. A dialog."

Gadgets are too Complex!

"Too often manufactures want to load the face of their stereos up with as many buttons, dials, and gadgets as they can, simply to impress buyers."

"The PC geeks who build features into devices that no one needs and then consider it a badge of honor if the user can understand all the acronyms and struggle through their documentation to make it work."

"..we're moving from "Early Adaptor" to "Wait and See!" "

"No matter how I hook something up, there's always a better, more “high quality” way to do it."

"what media do you get free and what do you have to pay for?"

"Even more pressing is the fact that consumers have a relatively fixed amount of media consumption time that’s not going to increase just because there are more choices."

Sound familiar? I guess we are all confused.

Tiffany Sues eBay

Tiffany & Company, the famous New York-based jewelry retailer, is suing San Jose, California-based online auction firm eBay for allowing its Web site to be used to sell counterfeit jewelry.
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The landmark lawsuit also alleges that eBay, in addition to facilitating sales of fake Tiffany goods, also makes millions of dollars from fees charged for counterfeit sales. Two years ago, Tiffany bought several hundred items on eBay and found that three quarters of the items purchased were counterfeit.

How much can we trust the Internet? Think again!

Web Censorship

Politicians on Wednesday attacked Cisco, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! for declining to appear at a briefing about China's internet censorship and called for a new law to outlaw compliance with such requirements.

"With all their power and influence, wealth and high visibility, they neglected to commit to the kind of positive action that human rights activists in China take every day. They caved in to Beijing's demands for the sake of profits, or whatever else they choose to call it."

Cisco, for its part, distributed a statement at Tuesday's briefing confirming its attendance at Smith's upcoming hearing. The company acknowledged again that it sells its routers in China but that their inherent features, including the ability to filter content, are no different from those sold in any other country, including the US.

Microsoft and Yahoo! issued a joint statement in which they encouraged the US government to step up and take a leadership role in opening "government to government" dialogue with China and other countries "where internet content is treated more restrictively". Google's senior policy counsel, Andrew McLaughlin, echoed that idea in a blog entry and apologized for Google's absence, which he put down to "previously scheduled commitments".

Before we start echoing the politicians, we should really start to think what censorship really is.

How old is the computer you do most of your programming on?

According to Java.net, 56.4% of Java programmers use a PC of less than 2 years to do their work. 93% of them use PCs that are less than 5 years old. Given that programming can be a frustrating work, it is not surprising that most
programmers want to use a newer machine.

Technology Behind Google

How exactly does Google manage to find the right results for every query as quickly as it does? The heart of Google's search technology is PigeonRank™, a system for ranking web pages developed by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Stanford University.

"PigeonRank's success relies primarily on the superior trainability of the domestic pigeon (Columba livia) and its unique capacity to recognize objects regardless of spatial orientation. The common gray pigeon can easily distinguish among items displaying only the minutest differences, an ability that enables it to select relevant web sites from among thousands of similar pages."

"Google uses only low-cost, off-the-street pigeons for its clusters. Gathered from city parks and plazas by Google's pack of more than 50 Phds (Pigeon-harvesting dogs), the pigeons are given a quick orientation on web site relevance and assigned to an appropriate data coop."

Thinking this is unbelievable. Well, the answer is right down to the bottom of the page.

>>It's a post for April Fool's Day, 2002.

Tired of PSA

I have been getting Public Service Ads (PSA) on some of the pages in my blog for quite a while. It is becoming worse now having PSA right on the main page. Why am I getting PSAs instead of paid Ads?

Well, according to Google, it is simply because,

- Our system has not yet crawled all the pages of your website. -maybe
- Your page may contain sensitive content for which relevant paying ads will not be displayed. -maybe

- Your website is using session IDs in the URL. -negative
- Your site has restricted access using a robots.txt exclusion. -negative
- We are having trouble crawling your web pages. -maybe
- Your website is using frames. -negative
- The AdSense code was placed within an IFRAME. -definitely not
- Your web pages are behind a login. -nope
- Your ad unit is set to display image ads only. -nah
- There are too many URLs added to your account filter list. -empty
- Your web page may not contain enough content. -no....
- Your site content is primarily in an unsupported language. -English

The official whys vs. the unofficial whys.

Watch How Popular Keywords Grow!

Trendmapper is a tool to generate historical data from search engines.

Trendmapper contains a list of search phrases and will do a daily search for all of them. The amount of hits is recorded, and a chart is made on basis of the data that is collected.

When you submit a new phrase it will be added to the list and picked up at the next search. The first chart that is generated is not interesting. You will have to wait until trendmapper has built an amount of data on your phrase.

For example the keyword "podcast" steadily grows over the months. A search on the three major search engines, Google, Yahoo and MSN reveals the following results.

Google

Yahoo!

MSN