Firefox 3 – June 17 – Pledge Now and Set Guiness Record

I’ve been using firefox for a long time now… and I love it! Ver 3 is coming out on June 17 and they want to set a Guiness World Record… Firefox is free to download, lets at least show our support to them on June 17. Click on the image above to go to their site.

Livescribe – I’m getting one.

I found Livescribe today while browsing… I’ve looked at dozens of site regarding Livescribe and here’s how I propose you find out about it – in order:

1. Intro Video

2. Never Miss a Word

3. Video showing features

Nice marketing wouldn’t you agree?

Note taking is standard for most people – whether in a meeting or training or lectures… But, I have been recording audio for trainings / meetings for the past years and the problem was always finding the exact place of what I needed to hear. I usually end up listening to the whole audio clip again – what a waste of time… it became meeting time x 2 or 3. This technology seems so natural for my next step…

The set is US$149 (1GB) and US$199 (2 GB) and I’m ordering soon.

Together with it, I’ll probably order more ink of different colors and paper.

I just hope I don’t lose the pen.

Some FAQ answered:

• It needs special paper with microdots on it – but on August, they will come out with a solution to let users print themselves
• I can’t find other companies selling it – only from their website – so no discount
• It have built-in microphones (2) but you can also connect a headset with microphones and this would make recording clearer
• It have built-in speaker – which can hear what was recorded or it can give answers to some features (like calculator)
• Price of 6 pack ink is 5.95
• Price of 4 pack single rule 100 page paper is 19.95
• It have features like for calculator

Other stuff that would be nice with this – a very presentable leather clipboard to contain the papers, instructions and the pen.

Another one for my daily gadgets…

Some good reviews:

http://www.gearlog.com/2008/05/hands_on_livescribe_pulsethe_l.php

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,2305672,00.asp

SQL Database Designing

Reviewing about designing SQL database… instead of a tutorial, I think its faster to relearn it by this list of Ten Common Database Design Mistakes which are:

1. Poor design/planning
2. Ignoring normalization
3. Poor naming standards
4. Lack of documentation
5. One table to hold all domain values
6. Using identity/guid columns as your only key
7. Not using SQL facilities to protect data integrity
8. Not using stored procedures to access data
9. Trying to build generic objects
10. Lack of testing

Tutorial on MySQL is here.

How Clean Are Hotels?

I travel a lot and I have always trusted hotels to be clean… I use the glasses without thinking twice or washing it… but, after seeing this video, I better be careful…  here’s the video

Have to find out how to embed video...

Programming Language to Use

I’ve programmed before – more than 10 years ago. I was good with BASIC, C, FoxBase / FoxPro and a lot of other language. I did program a bit with Visual Basic as well. Now, it all seems so far away… But, I believe whatever programming language, I can learn or relearn it… its just a matter of time.

I can analyze systems very well… I can design very thoroughly taking into consideration special cases and I believe my designs have always been very efficient. But when it goes to Coding and learning to code it takes time…

So,  right now, I have a few software / hardware / interfacing project in the pipeline… Some projects require quite a large database with multi-user configuration in a LAN. Some of it needs to communicate through RS-232 and USB. In the future, I want to use it for some automation work so it may also need to connect to PLC using, I want to decide on a platform to use – one that would be easy to learn and relearn, would stand the test of time and have a large pool of programmers available and would not be expensive to maintain.

There are so many choices on programming language to use and I’ve been searching for that perfect language out there… at least perfect for my need.

I’m looking at SQL or mySQL as the database to use… while for the programming language, I’m considering the open source Python… What is Python and Why Python? See this article… which describes Python as agile:

• excellent for beginners, yet superb for experts
• highly scalable, suitable for large projects as well as small ones
• rapid development
• portable, cross-platform
• embeddable
• easily extensible
• object-oriented
• you can get the job done
• simple yet elegant
• stable and mature
• powerful standard libs
• wealth of 3rd party packages
• And don’t forget that with Python, programming is fun again!

Some questions on my mind that needs to be answered:

How to distribute without giving away the code:

- Distribute the *.pyc (precompiled) / *.pyo (python object) files
- Run the py2c program to convert python source to C
- compile

Can compile?yes in different OS example:

http://www.effbot.org/zone/python-compile.htm

http://starship.python.net/crew/atuining/cx_Freeze/

To program Python in Windows users: ActivePython (freeware) or Idle (opensource) – I am trying idle

Use this style guide for consistent result in a big project.

Can use for automation work? See this site and this one – at ILM from George Lucas

Can use with Database like SQL? yes – see this and this article shows a nice sample connecting to Oracle.

Is this the perfect programming language for me? I don’t know yet but I’m also looking into Intouch and others… which have libraries built in for hardware interfacing functions.

Rentacoder

Just found out today about this site called Rentacoder – its a bidding like system for programmers but the lowest bidder would not necessarily win…

This site have video about rent a coder secrets…

There are similar sites like:

• odesk
• elance (costs money to register and charged per category)
• GetAFreelancer
• ifreelance
• writer’s row
• gofreelance As it a completely paid to join
• Scriptlance

I’m sure I’ll use the service.

My Next Treo

I love my Treo 650… its the most solid phone that I have owned… I love the messaging chat log… but, there’s no 3G, no Wifi and with the new smartphones around – its getting too big. I’ve been using my Treo 650 for almost 2 years and I’m thinking of upgrading… the current line still does not have wifi, 3G… the next high-end Treo is rumored to be out by middle of this year – see this. Its also on windows platform… I hope it will come out in the Palm OS, its solid and will come out sooner.

January 19 – Considering Treo 680 as the next gen treo is still far away… Initial research suggests that battery life is the compromise for the Treo 680. Plus side is there is no antenna, its faster, bigger memory… Will programs that I use on the 650 run or on the 680?

• Butler – yes
• Verichat – ? but, free Agile Messenger (Beta) for PalmOS which allows you to simultaneously connect to ICQ, AIM, MSN and Yahoo is avail
• mreset – yes
• clock5
• … and found a thread for 650 to 680 compatibility

Since the price of the 680 is reasonable… and my treo 650 is falling apart (I dropped it more than 20 times)… I just might get one. 1 more month to decide…

January 20 – A lot of people have been saying they want an iphone… It never was my type… but for those who still plans to  get one – Here’s a list of what iphone doesn’t have.

Expression Engine with Ecommerce

Expression Engine does not have very good ecommerce solution yet… it can accept paypal but not credit card… here are some posts in the forums about it:

http://expressionengine.com/forums/viewthread/60948/

http://expressionengine.com/forums/viewthread/65810/#331124 

I do hope SimpleCommerce will improve in the future so that I can finally lay this search for CMS solution to rest…

Understanding about Accounting

I’m not very good with accounting… and I’ve been looking for courses on accounting both in the real world and on the internet… I’ve found one that looks promising – Bionic Turtle…  It have a nice 11-minute overview of the financial statements.  It also have a Financial Statement Analysis that it says is a popular series that is referenced in several college curricula.

One thing that I keep hearing is when investing in stocks – look at the fundamentals… and I ask them what exactly am I looking for? How do I know when a company have good fundamentals? Well this should answer my questions: Fundamental Analysis: Introduction

I would be delving deeper into the informative site! Thanks David!

I think David Harper also uses Expression Engine on his site. And seems like we’re looking for similar thing – ecommerce on website. But he’s done it.

Maximizer 10

I’ve been looking at Maximizer for a long time now – this is for Customer Relationship Management or CRM. Last week, I found out that they have released Version 10 that links to Quickbooks as well as Microsoft Dynamics GP (Great Plains) and Blackberry and they have loads of other great new features – that have made me want to implement Maximizer CRM ASAP…

It comes in three editions – Group, Professional and Enterprise. Comparison here. Some quick notes on diff’t editions:

• Group uses SQL Express while Pro and Enterprise uses SQL Server
• Group Min 1 user and Max 15, Pro Min 5 user and Enterprise Min 10 User and latter 2 have unlimited maximum.
• Blackberry and windows mobile are add-ons to all edition while Palm device sync is standard to all (great as I use Treo 650)
• Customer self-service is add-on for all
• No Web Reporting for Group and included for others
• Microsoft SRS report only supported in Enterprise and Professional

Available in Enterprise:

• Territory management is only available in enterprise
• Automated fax and print campaing in enterprise only
• Real time alerts is included in Enterprise and add-on for the other versions
• Knowledgebase is standard with enterprise and add-on for the others
• For business activity monitoring and alerting, Enterprise have KnowledgeSync Lite included
• For out-of-the-box queries and events to monitor business, Enterprise have 40 included

Price: Around US$600 for each Group License. Ver 9 have the option for downloading a trial version, not so for ver. 10 ver. 10 trial version here. The users manual and installation manual are all available for download.

Some questions on my mind:

Upgrade Path is easy and affordable or not?

More to this later…