Desktop anywhere, Desktop 2, a virtual Internet desktop

DesktopTwo, a virtual Internet desktop software, which allows you to access your files, your blog, your emails and personal software application such as word, spreadsheet from any Internet connected PCs. DesktopTwo, a product of Sapotek, a company started in Mexico in 2002. DesktopTwo, which is FREE for consumers, the english version of Sapotek's Spanish-language version of Flash-based webtop software, which was developed using open source tools.

Here are some good features of DesktopTwo that I have just explored

1. Storing of your files, which you get 1GB of harddisk space, this is great for those who's been traveling around, which you can access your file as long as you get to access an Internet-connected PC. Uploading files have options from Internet or your local PC, the uploading process has great speed..


2. Email account, you get an email account @desktoptwo.com or you can add a POP3 account from your POP3 service provider


3. Blogging tool, using the blogging tool at DesktopTwo allows you to create your own blogspace for a choice either on blinkinblog.com or myblogtwo.com. I've just created mine on ketyung.blinkinblog.com. Nice and easy posting of blog entry without the need to wait for post-back as using some other online blogging, such as Blogger :)


4. Bookmark your URL, tag it such as you do with del.icio.us, but this lets you tag it to mysitestwo.com


Some more great features, such as MP3 playe, RSS reader, live chat using MSN, find out more from http://DesktopTwo.com

Warning! Threat on open source security

Open source such as Linux is NO more secure? I do agree that open source software, the Linux platform has been more secure and stable than the Windows platform. In my experience when handling servers on both the Windows and Linux platforms, I prefer Linux, as the fundamental is I do NOT have to worry about worm attack and virus infection!

Being a Linux user, I guess now is the time to be more alerted with the security of this platform. As told by well-known Linux developer of UK, Alan Cox, who now works at the RedHat for Linux kernel development, the Linux platform is the next target for hacking. According to Alan, when speaking to delegates at London's LinuxWorld conference on Wednesday, he emphasized that considerable sums of money were being spent in attempting to hack into open-source systems.

And he cautioned that many open-source projects were far from secure.

"There is a lot of money going into security, but the situation is worse, because there is a lot of money going into breaking security. People are being paid to work breaking down software systems," Cox, who is employed by Linux seller Red Hat, told delegates.

Oracle offers web 2.0 integration for portal users

Since web 2.0, especially AJAX is getting more and more popular, Oracle has no choice but to offer web 2.0 technology to be integrated for its enterprise portal products. Oracle needs to catch-up!

The Oracle Web Center Suite, a middleware module that extends JSF (Java Server Faces) and NetBeans with support for portlets with a client based on AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript And XML). The software is designed to let Oracle customers build in Web 2.0 tools such as blogs, wikis and RSS feeds into company intranets, internal dashboards and other portals.

Futhermore, Web Center Suite will allow enterprise IT organizations to create “mashup” applications that combine content from databases and other repositories such as their PeopleSoft, JD Edwards or Siebel systems. Business users will be able to access this data through MS Office applications such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint. They will be able to do the same thing with personal digital assistants or voice-over-IP clients etc.

Google wanna be King in American Politics!!

Some facts gathered from different pieces of news sources, showing that Google is trying to gain more influence in American Politics or they are trying to create "king" in the American Politics...

1. Google had registered a political action committee (PAC) with the US federal election commission.

2. Google has included 2006 election guide on Google Earth to help U.S. voters prepare for November's elections. Google Earth is free for download, it offers live newsfeeds on those candidates, as well as links to campaign finance information and somemore it directs you to voter registration information for your state.

3. Google employees have been involved with leftwing groups such as MoveOn.org

4. Google-bomb, a sophisticated one, carrying a double warhead containing manipulated search results and an AdWords campaign. It is targeted at the 70 Republican candidates running for Congress across the US. For example, the Google search engine, if you have a search for "bush", it would have come up with at least 5 out of the top 10 results having hyperlinks to websites that have negative write-up on the politician. Somemore, the Adwords might carry negative political AdWords campaigns, eventhough Google bans political advertisements.

According to Google, its involvement in politics is hoping to gain influence on the US government to protect net neutrality. Well, this is good, I surely support, which preserves the Internet as a free and open platform for information, communication and innovation

Scheduled outage of Blogger

Blogger is up now!!Iit was down or having an "Internal Server Error" around 9am to 10am, GMT+8:00. I was a bit frustrated when it was down, I even switched to my other blog for posting. Very big thank you to the effort of the Blogger tech team managed to bring it up in such a short time. According to blogger's status page, the cause was due to some failure of networking equipment, a time for upgrade ? :)


Sigh ! Before I managed to post this successfully, there was an interruption again!

Be smart and avoid being the victim of Phishing

What is phishing ? You have proibably heard of this term recently, especially those hooked up to Internet always.

Phishing is by far the most common method used for online fraud. Phishing involves sending out legitimate-looking emails that seem to come from a trustworthy website or institution. The most common examples seen today are those emails from a bank or payment handler such as PayPal etc.

Fraudsters normally would create a fake website, which looks like the homepage of a reputable company, e.g PayPal. Then they send out millions of emails to consumers, asking them to follow a link on the email to login to their account and update thier profile etc. Once the consumer responds and follows exactly what they have been told on the email, then thier identities will be stolen by fraudster for financial again. For example, if you are the victim and you have followed what you have been told on the email and login to the fake website, then your login information will be captured by the frausters, which they can then make use of your login information to get on to the real website and do what they want, such as transfer some fund from your account to thiers. The attached in the followings is a sample of the fake email, which claims is from PayPal.
As a consumer like us, to avoid being the victim of phishing, what can you do ? Well, be smart, at first you should check the mail header, most email clients allow you to do so, by viewing the full header. You would have found that the fake email does NOT originate from the reputable company, e.g the example above, the email is received from 93.Red-80-35-54.staticIP.rima-tde.net. A real email from PayPal should originate from a host with paypay.com domain, such as the followings

I have a similar post on here, when Blogger was having an "Internal Server Error" problem this morning around 9am to 10am, GMT+8:00

Surprise! Most RFID credit card failed basic security test

This is terrible for credit card users! According to New York Times, most of the RFID credit cards failed basic security test. Most credit card companies claim that data on credit cards are encrypted with 128-bit encryption technology. The Times has found that cardholder's name and other data are being transmitted in plain text only, i.e with NO encryption. Besides, the cards can be scanned with some fairly basic radio gear worth about $150. The data can be sniffed from the card through clothes, purses and wallets.

Google Ajax Search API

I've created a little search box and place on this blog, by the use of the Google AJAX search API, which you can try out as followings.

WebOS AppsBuilder for rapid AJAX-app development

The WebOS AppsBuilder, by Australia-based Morfik, provides a complete platform for building AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript And XML) applications. WebOS Apps Builder provides the tight integration of an embedded HTTP Web Server - Apache, an embedded RDBMS Engine - Firebird, and the business logic of an application inside the application's executable space. The user interface for the application is through a standard web browser. This configuration allows the application to run online as well as offline and be accessible both locally and remotely. WebOS AppsBuilder applications can operate in both standalone and client/server environments.

The WebOS AppsBuilder comes with highly easy-to-use visual designer, offers well integration with web servers and RDBMs. The great thing is you have various choices of high level languages such as C#, Java, Basic and Pascal that you can choose to implement your business logic. The WebOS AppsBuilder permits you to remain focused on your client needs. You will be able to offer your clients a faster, easier and more profitable way to have web-based applications without sacrificing functionality or power.

Another great feature on the WebOS AppsBuilder is the visual designer. This feature enables you to create database tables, link these tables, maintain their schemas, and create complex forms and dynamic data-driven PDF reports in a familiar visual environment. There is no need to learn complex SQL syntax, as queries involving multiple tables, sorting, parameters, and programming functions can be built using the intuitive and powerful visual query builder

ZohoWriter , another online word processor

ZohoWriter, another online web 2.0 based word processor similar to Writely, which is now Google docs. ZohoWriter lets you export and import word documents from your PC or create new ones online and share them with anyone.

ZohoWriter is one of the products of Zoho.com. Zoho.com offers several good online web applications other than ZohoWriter such as the followings:

ZohoSheet, which you can create spreadsheet online as what Google Spreadsheet does.

ZohoShow, this is what Google doesn't have. Google provides only words and spreadsheet processors. ZohoShow is an online presentation slide creator, this is another way that you can create slide presentation easily online, publish and share it.
ZohoProjects, which allows you to manage projects and collaborate online easily.

All the Zoho's web applications were developed using JSP/Struts framework with the use of AJAX and DHTML for greater user-interactiveness

Zoho is one of the brands from AdventNet, a software company started in 1996 focusing on building affordable software for businesses.

TheAdCloud, a free web 2.0 classifieds

Here is a web 2.0 global classifieds ads, TheAdCloud, offers the simple tag-based interface for classifieds. TheAdCloud is the brainchild of a single Chilean programmer,Roberto Alamos Moreno, who built this web 2.0 classifieds in his bedroom.

TheAdCloud allows you to post your ad for free. Your ad will be listed on the site for 90 days only. If you need your ad to remain for more days, you just have to repost it after it's been delisted !



When posting an ad, you can choose which city you wanna your ad to sit in. The homepage of TheAdCloud presents a tag cloud of the cities those having ads posted. The tag with bigger font size will have more ads attached to it! Besides, you also can simply add more for your own tags.

Lift Assistive, converts your website for disabled and PDA

With the advance in technology, more and more websites are going into multimedia, i.e web pages loaded with full of graphics, animations and even video clips. Such a multimedia-loaded webpages will face problem for delivering the content well to disabled users such as those having visual problem and also to portable devices such PDAs, cellphons with tiny screen layout.

Lift Assistive, a product of UsableNet, a software that moves you backward of technologies as it helps generate the text-only version of your web content ? What does this mean? Try this out here for the text-only version of this blog http://demott.usablenet.com/tt/http://ketyung.blogspot.com/, then you will get what I mean! Why do you need
a text-only version of your website? Well, this benefits disabled users, such as those visually impaired and
also "text-only" content can be easily fit onto mobile devices (PDAs and cellphones) with screen
layout limitation!

Lift Assistive, basically is a server-side technology that creates a dynamically generated, text-only, and accessible view of your web site to meet W3C and section 504/508 standards and improves support for people with disabilities and users of assistive technology. The software also has other functionalities such as enabling for larger font size and converting data tables into a format which can be processed by a screen-reader.

A little web search gadget for your webpage

Inspired by Google Webpage Gadgets, I have built a little web search gadget, which you can use it for searching the web, try out yourself the search box as follows. If you'd like to put this gadget on your webpage, put a javascript tag which the src is
"http://smartborneo.com/se/jsp/gadget2.jsp"


<script language="JavaScript" src="http://smartborneo.com/se/jsp/gadget2.jsp"></script>

Sedo parking! Sell your unused domain here !

Sedo domain parking, lets you earn money from your domain names without needing to develop your own site! If you have unused domain names and you do NOT bother to run a site with it, you can resell it at Sedo.com. Sedo provides a free domain parking and it helps you sell your domain. It costs you absolutely nothing for parking the domains at sedo. Sedo's statistics show that domains parked with Sedo are 5 times more likely to be sold!

I've just signed up at Sedo and putting my 4 unused domains, 3wordslink.com , ratea2z.com, rateadds.com and ajaxapp.com for sales

Internet Explorer 7 is out !!!

After a long wait. The Internet Explorer 7 is finally out, which is available for public download on Microsoft's website. I've just got my copy. If your OS is Windows XP, you need the service pack 2 to get it run! For those having Windows XP Pro 64 Edition or Windows Server 2003, you need the Service Pack 1!


Basically the new features added onto the IE7 are emphasized on the ease of use and security. A built-in anti-phishing filter, which installation of Activex objects are rejected by default! Besides, it also copies quite a number of popular features
from the open source Firefox such as search box and browser tabs for users to organize multiple web pages in a single window

Other than that, Microsoft is catching up with recent changes to internet standards such as CSS and HTML. The first thing I wanna try out is to test the few AJAX applications that I have with this new browser, I will keep you guys posted !

What's an MX record in DNS entry?

A staff of mine walked inside my room this morning and asked me "how to setup a mail server to receive email destined for my own domain?". This guy's got few unused PCs at home, therefore he is trying to setup a little Internet servers farm in his bedroom. He's hooked up to the Internet by Streamyx broadband service, the home user package, which does NOT allow him to have a fixed IP address, but he managed to set it up using the no-ip.com for a dynamic DNS service. This enables public to access for a sub-domain name at no-ip.com, which is then redirected to his broadband router. By the use of port forwarding on his broadband router, his webserver and mail server are publicaly accessible from the Internet. He' got so excited as he's got a little Internet server farm running in his bedroom, which he has web, mail services accessible from the Internet. Unfortunately, he failed to receive any email sent to this domain.

He's really keen on doing this, but he got stuck, frustrated as he seemed to get everything going all right, but he failed to receive email to this sub-domain of no-ip. (He sent several emails from all other email domains but not even received any single one).

Well, the crucial part here is the MX record, which he failed to setup an MX record in the DNS entry at no-ip. He does NOT understand what an MX record means. He's been googling around, what he has found is MX record is the "Mail Exchange Record", which he claimed no further information that he could find out of this !

MX Record, which represents the mail exchange record in DNS entry. This is what a mail /SMTP service needs to lookup when trying to deliver an email , which is destined for a domain For example, when someone is sending email through his/her local mail service to Yahoo.com, the local mail service will initiate a DNS lookup for the MX record of Yahoo.com. Once it's found the host of the MX of Yahoo, it will then communicate or establish an SMTP session with the MX of Yahoo, then handing over the email to the MX of Yahoo ...

Mozila Thunderbird, a great email client

I guess Mozila Thunderbird is the best email client software on earth. I personally do like the great features very much. Especially on the junk/spam filtering, it really does a great work. I was so frustrated with junks, when using Lotus notes or Outlook Express, as we do NOT have a centralized spam/junk filtering solution. I used to be getting over thousands of emails pouring into my mailbox if I had NOT checked my mail for more than 2 days and more than 90% of them were junks!!!! With that kind of frustration, I even missed out quite a number of important emails from customers or business partners etc. It's really frustrating when you need to have your eyes scanning through more than thousands of emails to pick up what you need. The message filter on Outlook or Lotus could help only a little !

With Thunderbird, I'm now totally out of junks, by using the great SPAM/junk filter that comes with it. Junk is recognized and self-learned by Thunderbird, after you have first marked a mail as a junk! Besides, Thunderbird also comes with other great features such as message filter, which allows you to setup filter for mails containing certain subject or sender to be routed into certain folders. Other features such as theme selection, address book, multiple account settings are also great !

If you hate junks as I do, you should opt Thunderbird as your email client software, as it's FREE, which is easily downloadable from http://www.mozilla.com/thunderbird/

AJAX web application

It is a quiet night, I'm sitting in front of my computer, working on enhancing a software tool, which I have developed and used it for my major web-applications development project over years. It's a great tool, I personally feel, although it's NOT commercial, but it has helped me produce several enterprise-wide ajax-based web application over years and it eases all the taxing task involved in software development. It reduces more than 80% of the time needed to develope a web-based application. Its approach is almost like 4GL, which help me generate all the 3 tier of codes needed by mapping to a database table.

I do NOT even have to write a single line of code for building an ajax web-form that handles the data entry, such as adding and updating record, as well as querying and navigating thru records. It's really such a great tool, which I have used over years and have made some bucks out of it, as I have used it to successfully developed and deployed more than 20 enterprise-wide web-based applications, which include web-based ERP, forum, photo blog etc .... It's a great tool, a JSP/Servlet/AJAX framework of its own.. You can have a feel by logging into one of the demo apps here, at http://smartborneo.com/epho/jsp

The need for server auditing for organization

Servers auditing is the critical process and procedure to be carried out on every organization that relies on computer server system, which serves as the backend and front-end processing of their daily operation. The auditing is a routine procedure that must be carried out periodically, e.g once a month or on a more frequent schedule dependent on environmental need.

Server auditing, which involve both performance and security, provides the benefit to an organization as follows:

1. An effective tool for preventive maintenance. Early detection of server hardware or software or security problem, which action can be taken earlier to prevent any major breakdown

2. Proper future capacity planning A guideline or pattern can be derived, which helps the management and IT team to have much precise planning on future capacity expansion

3. Ensure compliance, enhance security and improve service quality

4. A guideline or schedule of necessary actions such as tuning tasks can be derived

5. To derive a guideline or best practice for the IT team for future deployment of servers

6. Provides management and IT team the supporting evidence and confidence that security measures are effective and IT systems integrity is maintained

Why did Google buy YouTube?

Why did Google buy YouTube ? Perhaps Internet advertising has embraced multimedia technology that has sound, moving images, i.e video, in order to be effective as what seen on TV!!!

What to sell to make money online ?

It's getting more and more people looking for the opportunities to make some money online. Especially myself, although I've been extremely tied up with my office projects, I will spend every minute possible on my free time to look for ways to make money online... huh!

How to make money online? I guess everyone knows that the Internet is the information superhighway. Whenever you need some info, you will search the net, googling around ... The main reasons that people use Internet is finding information!

To make money online, I guess the easiest is to sell information, as it's easiest to market and make profit. How to sell information ? Here is a summarized list that can get you going with it.

1) You need a website, a webspace, e.g a space like this blog, which you can sign up for FREE
2) There are several programs out there e.g ClickBank, which you can sign up for a FREE account and start promoting thier products and earn the commission (You can get up to 70% of the commission). Besides, you also can act as an affiliate by selling advertising space on your webpages or website for Internet Advertising Program such as Google Adsense etc.

Sounds easy ? Well, it can take a lot of work to become successful selling information. Initially, it will take at least lot of your time to write up and submit 20, 30 or more articles to those websites for FREE article submission (such as ArticleCity), in order to attract more and more visitors to your web site. Besides, it also takes a lot of work to learn other techniques for driving traffic to your web site.... All you need is a continous effort, research on keywords, books and papers, writing interesting topics etc.... But at least you do NOT have stock costly inventory, you do NOT have to pay monthly rental for a shop and you don't have to worry about delivery charges or shipping your products etc.....

Pictures of Orang Utan

Orang Utan, the endangered species in Borneo .. I have a few cool pictures of the orang utans, I guess this is still a baby, taken by a friend, who claimed himself a pro. But in fact, this guy is really a pro. He has taken and produced lots of local exotic photos, which are some being made and distributed as poster, post cards and as other embeds .... Here are 2 permanent links found on Smart Borneo demo's photo blog, the pictures of orang utan in action

http://smartborneo.com/epho/jsp/space/demo/i/?aid=12&pid=71&Photo_l=demo
http://smartborneo.com/epho/jsp/space/demo/i/?aid=12&pid=15&Photo_l=demo

Internet advertising program

If you have been surfing and spending hours on the net everfy nite, you will be wondering as I do, how bloggers make money from the Internet, The answer is Internet Advertising, the main stream for blogger to make some bucks out of the Internet

There are just so many options of advertising programs out there which bloggers can ride on.I have included some here :

Google Adsense and/or BlogAds,
Adgenta, CrispAds, Text Link Ads, Intelli Txt, Peak Click, DoubleClickTribal Fusion, Adbrite, Clicksor, Industry Brains, AdHearUs, Kanoodle, AVN, Pheedo, Adknowledge, YesAdvertising, RevenuePilotTextAds, SearchFeed, Target Point, Bidvertiser, Fastclick Value Click and OneMonkey ,MSN Adcenter and YPN

Introduction to some Sabahan company websites

Here are few new Sabahan's corporate websites that I'd like to introduce... They are warisanharta.com.my and commontower.com.my

Warisanharta.com.my owned by Warisan Harta Sabah Sdn. Bhd. (WHSSB) was incorporated as the investment arm of the Sabah State Government (SSG) initially as a public limited company on 6 April 1995 and later changed to a private limited company on 15 September 1995 under the Malaysian Companies Act, 1965. WHSSB has an authorised share capital of RM1,000,000,000.00 consisting of 1.0 billion ordinary share of RM1.00 each. Presently, the paid-up capital is RM 393,184,002.00 which is divided into 393,184,002 ordinary shares of RM1.00 each.

Commontower.com.my, owned by Common Tower Technologies Sdn Bhd (CTT) was established in 2002 to own, manage, develop and lease communications towers. CTT offers complete engineering, design and fabrication services along with full construction planning/management and tower erection.The goal of CTT has always been to be the premier provider of the highest quality towers and to continuously strive for complete customer satisfaction. We accomplish these goals through a rigorously high work ethic, ongoing technical training and employee safety.

RSS feed, and new theme template added for Smart Borneo Photo Blog

Well, RSS feed is now available with Smart Borneo Photo Blog. A new theme "Red Brick" has been added, now you have 3 options of themes, they are "default", "oceanic" and "red brick". The "oceanic" and "red brick" are having slide show feature. Take a look at the sample here for the new theme "red brick", the photo blog by Jason , http://smartborneo.com/epho/jsp/space/jason

Ajax slide show of SmartBorneo Photo Blog

I've been very passionate on AJAX since it was introduced and got hot in year 2004.. Now I've given you an AJAX slide show photo blog, which I haven't got a clue yet what to name it. I just simply call it SmartBorneo Photo Blog .... A product of SmartBorneo.com ,which I develop during my leisure, hope to deliver the best web applications to the net surfers... Take a look and have a feel at http://smartborneo.com/epho/jsp/space/demo or sign up for a FREE account to try out youself. Create your own photo blog at SmartBorneo.com, you can easily organize your photo, have multiple albums created and organize them easily....

SmartBorneo Photo Blogging ...

A cool and rich feature photo blogging web portal by SmartBorneo Photo Blog . It's worth for your try-out. Signing up for an account is FREE. You can try out using the demo account, a sample demo blog space is here, http://smartborneo.com/epho/jsp/space/demo . The photo blogging application is very interactive, based on web 2.0, AJAX technology... You can create multiple albums and organize your photos in there easily....