Malaysian Public Figure Blogs

I'm not sure why I'm reading blogs from the Malaysian politicians, artists, news casters, reporters lately. Maybe I'm wondering how they feel about their latest campaign, movies, programme or perhaps I might find some unofficial information that I don't know yet.

Ok I'm going to list down as many blog that I can find and reveal it here. If you know more perhaps you want add in the list.

Politicians
Lim Kit Siang - Parliamentary Opposition Leader (DAP). Update almost daily.
Shahrir Abdul Samad
Teresa Kok
Tian Chua
K. S Nalla
Anwar Ibrahim
N. Gobalakrishnan
Azmin Ali
Fuziah Salleh

Journalist
Ahirudin bin Attan
Jeff Ooi
Irin Putri - MedikTV Broadcast Journalist

Entertainer
Afdlin Shauki - Comedian, Artist, Singer, Director
Patrick Teoh - Actor, former radio deejay...NIAMAH!

Others
Marina Mahathir

Ok maybe it is not much for now. I'm too tired to read more.

Searching for the top MVC Framework

The last few days has been a very busy days for us all. Our office is now relocated in Kuala Lumpur, so last week we had to pack everything and say good bye to Phileo Damansara. I going to miss the place even though my stay were just 4 months. Within couple of days, all the necessities in our new office are restored. Now I can continue my research on the web application framework.

I can't remember when was the first time I heard about MVC driven framework. But recently I had opportunity to actualy play around with Rails framework. Since then I fell in love with it. Then I look for PHP based MVC framework on the internet and I astonished by the number of ready made framework.
If you want to ask why PHP, not the Ruby itself? Perhaps for now I'm looking for more PHP projects since it is the most popular programing language out there.

I'm looking for a suitable framework for my future projects. I manage to try out quite a number of frameworks but still I can't recommend any of it for a simple reason. There is no single framework that suit all web application.

But I listed it anyway for my own reference or perhaps you might find it usefull too.

1. Ruby on Rails: Ruby language, scaffold method.
2. Symfony: Based on Mojavi and inspired by Rails
3. Mojavi: The first MVC framework I fell in love with
4. CakePHP: Inspired by Rails PHP4/5
5. PHPOnTrax: a Rails port - PHP5 Only
6. Prado: The winner of Zend coding contest
7. Studs: A Java-Struts port to PHP
8. Phrame: A Java-Struts port
9. Achievo: A good RAD framework
10. WACT: Web Application Component Toolkit
11. Ambivalence: A Java-Maverick Port
12. Zend: PHP 5 Only
13. Seagull: PHP 4/5
14. Zoop

Based on my experience on some of the frameworks, to keep your frustration level on the lowest level:

• you must try it first before deciding to build your project
  
• check the changelog or trac (if available), make sure the development are still on
  
• look for the documentation, is it suffiecient enough?
• look for the framework community
• look for tutorials

If you had any idea or experience on some of the framework mentioned above, perhaps you can share it here too.

ChaCha.com - A social search engine

Do you feel lonely while doing your research using your favorite search engine? Guess what. You don't have too anymore because ChaCha.com is here to guide you and it is not any regular search engine. Despite using a complex search result algorithm, ChaCha.com uses human touch to guide your search in a real time.

ChaCha provides two ways of searching method. A normal search that shows a list of results. And their cool service is the search guide driven. They said that every time a query submitted an alert is sent to all appropriate Guides who are currently signed in to the system. Now who are this people and can we trust them. They claim that their Guides is knowledgeable in the topic you're searching but since they are still new most of the time you will be connected less knowledgeable but still an expert in internet search and will most likely find you exactly what you need.

Sound interesting, doesn't it? So I decided to test it myself. I ask a topic about Chinese New Year Zodiac animal and the Guide who accepted the query respond in a few seconds and he/she reveals the results. One of the url of course pointing out to the Wikipedia. After that the guide asked if I like to find out more about the topic and when you satisfied with your result the guide session will end.

I also check the ChaCha underground, a directory of ChaCha's guides group in several categories. Once I browse through the Guides profile page, I'm sure that these Guides are really human. I wonder how much they get paid?

LinguaWeb - Tools to translate from English to Bahasa Melayu

While having my breakfast last new year holiday, I managed to watch the "Malaysia Hari Ini", a morning TV show program by TV3. One of the segment featuring a local IT company, Linguamatix Sdn. Bhd. with their product called LinguaWeb. Basically it's web based translation tool that translate from English to Bahasa Melayu. Wow we don't see any new innovation from our local company recently, do we? So I decided to take a look. When I entered my blog url and hit the "terjemah" button, I cracked.

My entry on YouSendIt and DropSend was like ....

Not long ago Gerg asked me "How on earth I'm going to send 50Mb attachment email without breaking it up into pieces?"

Translated into

Tidak lama dahulu Gerg menyuruh saya "Bagaimana di bumi saya akan menghantar perlekatan 50Mb emel tanpa memecahkan ia atas terbelah?"

Despite the speedy respond on the application side, the translation engine still doesn't really make any sense. The translation is done word per word and not according to its context. But if you look at the footer, the disclaimer warned that this translation tool is just to give a basic idea to the user. This is the same issue haunted me few years ago. There is no translation engine better than the human itself.

However if we look at the bright side, maybe Linguamatix has a plan to sell the library to Altavista's BabelFish. Or perhaps the Text Translation mode can be very useful for student or professional.

How to send 100MB attachment through email?

Not long ago Gerg asked me "How on earth I'm going to send 50Mb attachment email without breaking it up into pieces?" I think I gave him a link to one of my favorite file sharing service "Kotuha". But today I found a service that does exactly what Gerg ask for.

YouSendIt is just like any basic webmail client. The only different is it allows you to upload large single file before sending it to your contact. I try to send 50MB file, it almost like forever. Maybe due to APCN2 cable disruption? And that's it. No fancy stuff, a straight cut app.

DropSend, developed by Carson Systems, has several plan for user to pick ranging from free to $99. It offers both web based and desktop file upload tool for user to choose. Each plan has different features like no of sends per month, storage size, encryption and max users. Neat stuff. If you like the idea, you can contact Ryan Carson the founder of DropSend and offer him $1M for your stake in DrpoSend. Recently he blogs how close he was about to sell DropSend stake to YouSendIt. Based on his long post about the deal, I must say volume does matter. Who knows, maybe some major tweaks and give it some time to mature, DropSend might worth $1 billion.

Happy New Year 2007

Photo by Dunny

Each year when the new year comes, I always look back for what I'd achieved and also what I missed. I never blogged about it before but this year I have the opportunity to share some of it.

2006 Achievement

Being productive
Half of the year I was so productive, working at average 12 hours a day and 7 days a week at least once a month. The work load seems never stop and it is all for the sake of the company and the clients.

Moving on and learn new things
Some said that helping company growth will eventually paid you off. In my case it was that close but I decided to leap of from the company as I realized that what could possibly I learn more if I continue working there. It was never easy for me to simply change job. Lot's of things need to be consider, but I believe what I did was the best for me and for my family.

Once I'm out, I realized how much free time that I could use to discover new things plus now I had time for freelance job. The buff around web 2.0 apps alone overwhelmed me. As you can see in this blog, there are lots of entry talking about web 2.0 apps. It's inspired me to develop my own web 2.0 app, my own masterpiece. I'll share about this later.

Bring home more bread
Believe me money is the best motivator for a family guy. RM90 increment a year couldn't coupe up with the petrol and toll price hikes. By changing job I drastically bringing home extra 40% of income. But to be honest, it will never get enough.


2007 Resolutions

For this year I planned to develop an enterprise level web application. I don't know how much exactly it's going to cost me but at least I could start by collecting some fund through freelance ob and paid off all my credit cards. Yikes !