Tech at Play

In my first post of 2010 (Yes, I know it’s already February), I am proud to announce that I’ve just launched a new site over the weekend. TheTechBlogger.com is meant for me to express my views on various topics pertaining to areas such as IT, technology, and blogging.  And yes, this includes book reviews and updates on what I’m currently writing/working on too.

In a way, it’s also like a catch-all site for anything that doesn’t fit with my paid gigs, if you must peg a description to it.  Anyway, you can read more about my rational at its about page.

In any event, TechatPlay.com remains the blog for me to talk about more techie stuff on topics such as enterprise IT and mobile computing.  And yes, I promise I’ll update on a more regular basis this year.  Really.

In fact, I am typing on a review unit of the Microsoft Arc keyboard now, which I’m very eager to share about.  For now, I’ve waiting for my post for AsiaOne Digital to go live before doing a comparison of the Arc keyboard with the Apple wireless keyboard.

Well, there’s all I have to say for now, so stay tuned.

Tech at Play was set up with a view to focus on interesting technology or trends that adds value to the business arena. I covered push mail technologies pretty extensively a couple of years ago when it was still relatively new. Now, I cover a wider breadth of enterprise technologies.

Of course, you didn’t browse to this section just to read the above paragraph. To know more about who I am and what I do.

Public relations agencies might be interested to read more on my policy on review units as well as press releases.

Editors in need of a writer for both ad-hoc articles or regular columns are welcome to contact me. I can write to required length.

You can use the following form to get in touch with me.

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Ran the Benchmark in the HD Tune Hard Disk Utility this week as part of the topic this week.  Realized that I never did post the performance of my upgraded laptop before, so here is the screenshot of it below.

The average result appears to be in the region of 30-40 MBps for most students, with an access time of about 15-20 ms.  As you can see, the “Summit” Samsung SSD however performed at 4-5 times as fast.  Observe also the extremely low access time courtesy of the solid state technology.

Convinced about upgrading to a solid state disk yet?

HD Tune Benchmark of Samsung SSD

The HTC Tilt 2 arrived yesterday.  I haven’t had the chance to unpack it yet, given that I had an evening appointment and arrived home late.  This isn’t my first Windows Mobile smartphone, though it is my first WM 6.5 device.

Basically, I’ll be using it over the course of two weeks as a part of a challenge put together by AT&T.  The relevant site isn’t up yet, so I can’t tell you much at this point.  Let’s just say that I’ll be blogging a lot more about the HTC Tilt 2 though.  Anyway, I’ll link to the “challenge” site once its up.

Just purchased a Microsoft wireless mouse earlier this week.  What is unique about the Wirelsss Mobile Mouse 4000 is its tracking sensor, which uses Microsoft’s BlueTrack technology.  You can see the Wireless Mobile Mouse 4000 in the photo above, shown just beside the Logitech wireless that I am currently using.

So what’s so special about Microsoft’s BlueTrack technology?  According to the Microsoft product site, BlueTrack “combines the power of optical with the precision of laser for remarkable tracking on virtually any surface.”  Of course, this isn’t Microsoft’s first mouse to use this technology, but it is the first to use a nano-sized RF receiver that started with Logitech.

So just how good is BlueTrack?  Well, that’s what I’ll be finding out.  I will be using the Wireless Mobile Mouse 4000 everywhere I go from today onwards (Actually, it was yesterday), sans my mousepad.  Do check back in a while to see how I would rate it.

The maker of the REDFLY Mobile Companion has just announced support for the RIM BlackBerry smartphone.  According to Celio Corp, the BlackBerry solution will be offered free-of-charge for existing and new owners of the REDFLY Mobile Companion C8N and C7.

The actual launch of BlackBerry support will be mid-Q4 2009, with initial compatibility for the BlackBerry Bold 9000, BlackBerry Curve 8900 and BlackBerry Tour 9630.  Plans are in the pipeline to support additional phones as they are released by RIM.  At the moment, the REDFLY is compatible with more than 70 Windows Mobile devices.

If you are wondering what the REDFLY is, you can check out the below description which I got from the REDFLY product page:

“REDFLY is a smartphone terminal with a large screen and full keyboard with no OS, no CPU, and no storage that lets you use your smartphone like a laptop. REDFLY links to your smartphone via a USB cable or wireless Bluetooth connection.”

At this point, I’m not so sure about usefulness of the REDFLY Mobile Companion given that a new wave of ultra portables like the Sony Vaio X series – weighting 700 grams and just 15mm thick – is due to be released soon.  Then again, I’ve never used the REDFLY before, so I might find it useful yet.  As readers will know, I am a BlackBerry smartphone user, so I’ll check back with my opinion of it once I can get a review unit with the new BlackBerry driver.

A spokesman for Celio Corp told me that it might be a few weeks more before review units are available, as the company is still developing the BlackBerry solution and wants to make sure it works really well first.  In the meantime, you can see the video of the BlackBerry support in action.

This came in the door over the weekend.  You see, it has been years since I last used a speech recognition software, and I’ve been wondering how the technology has evolved.  Well, Dragon NaturallySpeaking Professional 10 by Nuance Communications Inc is considered as among the best speech recognition software around, and I was eager to give it a try.

The boxed software (no download or trial available) comes with an installation DVD, and a couple of simple installation and usage booklets.  A wired microphone rounds up the speech recognition suite.

I’ve given the product a preliminary spin over the last couple of days, and I must say that I am impressed overall.  Not that it doesn’t make any mistakes in recognizing my voice – but my out-of-the-box, skip-the-manual experience has proven to be surprisingly good.  It does look like it can help me substantially in my writing and also transcribing of interviews.

As I understand it, the accuracy is supposed to get better with time.  Anyway, I’ve hardly scratched the surface of its feature list, so do check back on my experience with it in another 3-4 week’s time.

You can get Dragon NaturallySpeaking Professional 10 from Amazon. Alternatively, you can find out more from its product page here.

I decided to bite the bullet last weekend and activated BitLocker encryption on my Windows Vista Enterprise laptop.  Before you start looking for the BitLocker option in your Control Panel, this is only available for the Enterprise and Ultimate versions of Windows Vista.

Anyway, what the process does is encrypt my primary hard disk partition. Essentially, because the encryption key is kept securely on the TPM chip in the laptop, it will no longer be possible to access it by using the old trick of removing the hard disk drive and connecting it to another machine as a secondary device.

Of course, if you own a Sony Z, you will know that cracking it open to take out the hard disk in the first place is definitely not for the faint of heart!

For more information about BitLocker and why it might for you, do check out my SMB blog over at ITBusinessEdge.com where I elaborated about why BitLocker is relevant and how it works.  I also talked a lot more about my experiences with BitLocker so far, so you might want to check it out too.

Read more…

Did I mention that I finally subscribed to the femtocell service by StarHub in Singapore called Home Zone?  Yup, did that last week, and StarHub was kind enough to offer me the original promotional rate of SG$16 (About US$11) per month, which is half of the standard rate.  Anyway, it appeared that the model I was been using has since been retired, so StarHub delivered a newer model to my place today at no additional charge.

The new unit looks slightly slimmer than the previous set, but otherwise features the same connections: a power connector and an RJ-45 port.  A SIM card could also be found pre-installed  in the SIM slot in order to authenticate the access point.

Performance

I only had it for a few hours so far, but I can say that the reception for this newer unit is definitely improved.  I must confess that I insisted on installing the access point unit in my study room – where it can be on the same rack as my server and gigabit switch.  This setup was convenient to me, though it wasn’t ideal from a technical point of view – there were at at least three concrete walls between the unit and the kitchen area.

As you can imagine, the previous femtocell access point has some trouble reaching that particular blind spot; not so with this unit though.  In addition, the transfer from Home Zone to the normal base station appeared to be completely seamless with my BlackBerry Bold now.

Other observations

A peek at the box yields some interesting information.  As you can see from the sticker on the box, Huawei does make an “Enterprise AP” variant of the femtocell access point.  At this point, I’m not sure what “GSM Sniffer” means, since the femtocell access point works only on UMTS and is clearly labeled as such.  And probably due to government regulations pertaining to maximum broadcast power in Singapore, the unit was capped at 20mW of transmit power only.

Interestingly, the user manual inside the box does warn for the device to be kept “at least 20cm” away from people for “personal safety.”

Anyway, that’s all I have for now.  I will blog again if anything significant turns up later.

This guest piece is written by David Walsh, editor at WebHostingSearch who loves to explore and evaluate anything hosting related. When he’s not geeking out about things such as cheap hosting and dedicated server hosting, you can find him sipping on a glass of red wine while listening to an old Stones record.

Servers are today a critical component of any business operation. If anything should happen to the servers, your entire business could potentially shut down. Having a monitoring service or software application monitor your server is a wise decision. Consider it as similar to buying insurance. The cost of your business shutting down could be millions in lost sales, not to mention the expense of fixing your servers and the lost time spent fixing all the problems associated with it. Compared to those potential costs, the cost of server monitoring seems insignificant.

Below is a list of 10 server monitors you can find with a simple search on the Internet.

Read more…

Just bought a new Apple Wireless keyboard to use with my Sony laptop mid-week.  I’ve been eyeballing it for a while now, due to the much smaller footprint compared to my Logitech Cordless Desktop MX 5500 Revolution keyboard that I have been using.

As you can see, I have decided to document my thoughts on it.

Why Apple Wireless Keyboard?

Having used computer keyboards since the days of mechanical – and noisy! – full-stroke keyboards, I suppose it is somewhat ironic that I now consider the shallow depth of laptop-style keyboards to be superior where reduced typing effort is concerned.

I guess what really tipped the balance is my increasing fondness of the chiclet style keyboards found on my Sony laptops.  And yes, contrary to popular speculation, Sony didn’t “rip” that one off from Apple.  After all, Sony had laptops based on that design as far back as 2003.  And even then, chiclet keyboards have already existed for a while.

Read more…

As of 17 July, 2009, StarHub customers on MaxOnline Premium will get a speed boost up to 100Mbps when accessing locally hosted online content.  The changes are done purely at StarHub’s end and no configuration or reboot of equipment is needed.

Obviously, you can only get the full 100Mbps if you already have a DOCSIS 3.0 cable modem.  Customers with a DOCSIS 2.0 cable modem – that’s me – will get a speed bump of up to 32Mbps instead.  Internet access to international sites will remain capped at 12Mbps.

According to the official press release that came in to my mailbox last week:

Ms Ong Bee Lian, StarHub’s Vice President of Home Solutions said, “As an award-winning broadband player in Asia-Pacific, we continue to push the envelope in delivering more value on our service offerings to our customers. This new upgrade will empower our MaxOnline Premium customer base to experience true next-generation broadband speeds now.”

This is a free upgrade, I am certainly not complaining about the additional bandwidth.  You can see the test I did above with Speedtest.net; below is my download speed as recorded by StarHub’s own speed measurement applet.

Samsung sent me a Samsung PB22-J 256GB Solid State Drive (SSD) to review last month.  That’s 256 gigabytes of blistering fast flash-based storage for you.  Only when it was in transit did I realize that my Sony-Z16GN laptop was quite different from other laptops.  You see, there was no friendly, user-accessible compartment underneath the laptop from which to remove the hard disk drive unit!  None!

Instead, I came to the belated conclusion that a disassembly was in order before I could even see the hard disk.  I love technology, but I’m no technician or engineer.  Time to call for help.

Sony PR in Singapore responded initially, and then my request to speak directly to a technician fell into a black hole.  Could have been the mention of the Samsung SSD, but I can’t really be sure now.

At my wits end, I turned to Google, and thankfully managed to find a copy of their actual technician’s manual that documented the process of opening it up.  Yes, I cheated.

Anyway, before I could snap the above picture, I had to take out 10 screws, remove the battery, use a modified paperclip (my idea) to shift two hidden, sliding locks into release position, and begin a careful, heart-wrenching pull to forcibly release the keyboard from their snug plastic indentures.  Ouch.

Seriously, I would have permanently damaged my laptop without the technician’s manual.  So don’t try this at home.

In the meantime, do check out the rest of the pictures (I’ll spare you the exciting screw-removing portions) I took of the process!

Read more…

I posted a couple of posts at the ITBusinessEdge.com blogs recently, drawing upon my previous work and freelance experiences working with the PHP programming language.

A scripting language written in plain text and hosted by a compatible Web Server, some might scoff at PHP being nothing more than a glorified scripting tool.  Yet the fact that a C or Java programmer would feel very much at home with PHP is probably fueling its popularity beyond the wildest dreams of its creator.

Indeed, PHP is probably the prmost popular Web development language at the moment!

Some of the advantages of PHP looks like this:

• Availability of code samples
• Diversity of functions
• Popularity

PHP is not a perfect language though, and have its fair share of weaknesses:

• Complex project demands a certain level of experience
• Not everything in PHP is easy to do
• Code is available in plain sight
• PHP is Web development

I elaborate more on the above points in Advantages of Web development using PHP and Disadvantages of Web Development Using PHP, so be sure to check out my SMB blog there.

I am no iPhone hater.  However, I find myself getting annoyed when I come across reports around the Internet proclaiming that the iPhone is “finally” ready for the enterprise.  And this seems to be happening every time that Apple announces improvements to the iPhone.  The fact that people are truly in love with their iPhone aside, I had to do something to set the facts straight.

First of all, let me qualify that I think of the iPhone as a very nice smartphone to have.  In fact, it certainly raised the bar for mobile devices in terms of attractiveness and intuitive usability.  In addition, the iPhone team has made strong inroads in its enterprise-centric capabilities – specially at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference 2009 last week.

Having said that, there are still many areas where it lags behind in the enterprise.  To straighten matters out, I wrote a blog pitting the Apple iPhone against the RIM BlackBerry.

I highlighted three crucial areas where the iPhone falls behind where the enterprise is concerned.

• Data efficiency of the BlackBerry
• Installing third-party software
• Weak enterprise management of the iPhone

For the details, do check out my Why the BlackBerry will continue to triumph in the enterprise article over at TechRepublic.