Facebook and madness

I was searching for some extreme programming stuff on FB and I bump into the single result showing this…

Very sad state of things…

Facebook is pretty smart

I was on the road up north when I logged into Facebook and saw this.

I am quite impressed with the option and the fact that Facebook is engaging its users in a good way.

The only minor bug is probably the fact that it did not remember that I have rejected the offer.

Hmm… perhaps it is by design. I rejected it twice and it disappeared.

Adobe Acrobat Woes

I was trying to update a old laptop when I hit into this crazy dialog from Adobe Acrobat 9.1 on my Windows Vista.

Adobe 9.1 bug on Vista

Apparently Adobe expects the user to know how to kill a “Windows Explorer” process and also the “Ignore” button is disabled. Kill Windows Explorer process ? You miss be nuts !

What was Adobe thinking when they did that ? I have no choice but to revert to Adobe Acrobat 8.1.3 to get things working. Which is by the way HALF the size of Acrobat 9.1 !

I may have to get rid of Acrobat if it still continues to bug me to heavens. FoxIT here I come !

http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php

Incredible Lenovo

Oh my goodness !!! Lenovo takes 1 MONTH or more to migrate their automatic system update ?

You must be kidding ?

Does it mean that Companies and Customers do not need to buy anything from Lenovo till May 2009 ?

The Craziest Dialog Box

I am wondering why in the world would my Bluetooth Manager expire ???

Oh my goodness, I was not the only one…

“Thank you for evaluating the Bluetooth Stack for Windows by Toshiba. The evaluation period has expired. Please obtain a license for this version of Bluetooth Stack for Windows by Toshiba.”

Thanks Toshiba.

Something odd about Lenovo Batteries

For those who know me and my rants… recently my extended Lenovo battery died after just 3 months of service.

3 months ! Yes you hear me right…

Basically, it jumped from 100% charged to 0% and caused my operating system to panic and crash. After which it refused to startup without a external power adaptor. Orange light keeps blinking.

Then when I popped in a new battery and take a look at the Power Manager. Below is what is said:

“Enabling Long Battery Health mode allows your computer to automatically set the optimal battery charge start and stop levels based on battery usage. Doing this will increase the overall lifespan of your battery but may also result in shorter battery life”

Can Lenovo make up their mind ?!?!?

Is that utility used inadvertently suppose to make batteries die faster so that Lenovo can sell more batteries ?

I wasn’t the only one… some lucky folks’ luck ran out in 15 months. Some like me, not so lucky (part number 93P5032)…

So much for a greener Earth…

Woes with Yahoo Mail

I guess by now everyone knows about the GMail incident affecting millions… (6 downtime events in 6 months ?)

Then there’s the other under-reported problems with Yahoo! Mail.

Yup ! No service or product is unbreakable… Only Larry Ellison is in denial (I always say… then comes hundreds of patches for all their products)

Now back to Yahoo! Mail… if you look at the big 3 “Free” Email providers (for non-US users), namely Live.com Mail, GMail and Yahoo! Mail. Yahoo! Mail stands out in the sense, it is the ONLY one don’t does not provide “free” POP3/SMTP or IMAP service to anyone unless you pay for it for “Yahoo! Mail Plus”.

Basically Yahoo! wants to force you to use browser for Email access and refuse to provide an offline mode that others provide. The only other “offline” mode available is via your smart phone in-built client or using Yahoo! Go which claims to be the “The best Internet experience for your phone. Period.”. Being there, done that… it does not wow for me.

So I and like everyone else is forced to use YPOPs! which was previously named YahooPOPs! until Yahoo stopped them. Basically YPOPs emulated a local POP/SMTP service on your local machine while using regular HTTP commands to pull and send your emails.

It was working fine until Yahoo put a stop to it recently… It was not the first time nor the last. I cannot really blame Yahoo for it as any change in HTTP Email services will break YPOPs!

So I tried to use their email service via the browser. Oops… no joy.

My next batch of woes are with SPAM. Lots and lots of them…false positives.

Look at it ! My regular mailing lists are still flagged as SPAM !

My problem is that the Yahoo’s SPAM filters does not learn. I am using Yahoo since the start of their service in 1997. So every time I login I need to do email recovery. Mostly by then, the email is too old to act upon. Yes, I actually missed some important stuff due to late discovery of the email trapped in the SPAM filter.

Yes, I used to be a SGI Geek way back in the heydays… but yet I need to recovery SGI emails every time till today !

sigh…………………………

Google Toolbar Custom Button setup

If you use Google Toolbar on MSIE (not yet on FireFox 3.x from my setup) you will notice some custom buttons.

In the screenshot below, you see BBC RSS feeds in the toolbar.

E.g. you will have a key for

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Google\Google Toolbar\4.0\Options\Custom Buttons\U_s94057670.onlinehome.us_LJEM2YKD9LEAOCSW86YU.xml

for a physical file called.
C:\Documents and Settings\MY_USER_LOGIN\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Custom Buttons\s94057670.onlinehome.us_LJEM2YKD9LEAOCSW86YU.xml

For CNN’s feed, the definition is at:
http://edition.cnn.com/browsers/widget/cnn_gtb.xml

which in turns points to:
http://www.cnn.com/browsers/widget/cnn_bn_button_feed.xml
for the data feed.

You can hack around only about 2 RSS variables; search method & feed menu, which is enough for my RSS hacks & tests.

Nothing much but at least you can customize your own buttons if your favourite is not available in Google Custom Gallery.

For more advance hacks… learn from examples !

http://charles447.googlepages.com/dictionary-reference.xml
http://hosting.gmodules.com/ig/gadgets/file/100080069921643878012/facebook.xml
http://hosting.gmodules.com/ig/gadgets/file/100080069921643878012/gmail.xml
http://hosting.gmodules.com/ig/gadgets/file/100080069921643878012/hotmail.xml
http://s94057670.onlinehome.us/news/bbcnews.xml
http://www.google.com/ig/modules/driving_directions.xml
http://www.google.com/ig/modules/youtube.xml
http://www.invisiblepinkunicorn.com/google/enwikipedia.xml

Edited via Windows Live Writer Build 14.0.8050.1202 en

I thought I would never get to see this…

When I was pushing JAVA as an Evangelist back in the old days, the battle between Sun Microsystems (mostly Scott McNealy) and Microsoft (Bill Gates) was really hot and furious.

Sun (even myself) took every opportunity to spit on Microsoft’s Technology during the dotCom days.

Now things have changed… both Sun and Microsoft has mellowed, they worked together and compete on a higher level rather than below the belt tactics.

Would You Like Live Search With Your Java?

“Our goal is to provide Java users with compelling and immersive business and consumer solutions powered by Java technology and value-added solutions from world-class software partners,” Rich Green, Sun’s executive vice president of software, said in a statement.

Sadly Google do not think lightly of the decision…

Sun Chooses Microsoft Over Google, StarOffice Dumped From Google Pack?

StarOffice dropped from Google Pack

Well the option is yours ! You don’t have to install MSN toolbar if you don’t want to. But I find it pretty cool with all the non-typical features that other toolbars do not do provide.

Give it a try ! You can always uninstall it cleanly.

Kick start your Web Development with Microsoft !

Previously you hear a lot of news about cloud services (Yahoo, Google and Microsoft Live mostly…)

But what is available for you if you want to host or create your own web applications ?

Traditionally, you would use Open Source Operating Systems like Linux/BSD/Solaris and the Open Source Software (PERL, PHP, JAVA, AJAX, etc…). I know I did that in the past to save cost on everything (except your paycheck).

Wouldn’t it be good if you have access to a simple set of installers to kick start your development instead of spending precious time and effort on configuring stuff?

Or perhaps you came from an Enterprise background in the past (working for MNCs etc…) but decided to strike it out on your own. Don’t you miss those Enterprise tools ?

Now you can get them in a couple of simple installers.

Microsoft Web Platform Installer [installs Microsoft's entire Web Platform, including IIS7, Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition, SQL Server 2008 Express Edition and the .NET Framework.]

Microsoft Web Application Installer [Graffiti CMS, DotNetNuke, WordPress, Drupal, OSCommerce and phpBB]

Yes, FREE. Yes, you still can build mash-ups with Yahoo, Google and Microsoft Live Services with it!

You can read more about the announcement here.