DropBox 1.2.0 Released

If you happen to use DropBox service, you might want to download the latest version 1.2.0 which should fix security vulnerabilities found by Derek Newton described in H-Online.

Here are the changes in the latest 1.2.0 version:

• Security enhancements, an attacker will not be able to steal your computer's account credentials just by copying configuration files to another machine.
• New encrypted database format to prevent unauthorized access to local Dropbox client database.
• Other small fixes
• Continued 10.7 support
  

They have released an update for Windows, Mac, and Linux version.

Royal Wedding

The Royal Wedding is over and now Prince William is officially married to Princess Kate. God bless both of them and also to the British Royal Kingdom

We all wish for your success and bless your family

Double Gift

Today is my birthday and surprisingly, i got two gifts from my fiancee and also from Patrick Volkerding. He released Slackware 13.37 the same day as my birthday and i really didn't think it would be released today. I'm so happy and i think it's one of the best gift from someone i never met before. Thank you for the surprising gift Pat

Anyway, it's a busy and also wonderful day. Thank you for all who have posted a greetings on my Twitter, Facebook, SMS, and many other media i usually use. Please forgive me for not replying all of them (i just put a LIKE on FB), but believe me, i'm sincere with all those message sent to me. Thank you for your concern of my birthday

iPhone 4 White

Apple redesigned their home page, removed the iPad 2 announcement and now they changed it into 4 column with an interesting news on the third column. IPhone 4 white will be announced tomorrow at April 28. The same day as my birthday

Many people have waited and started to talk about this since last year, but until today Apple finally decided to officially launched iPhone 4 white. I hope they already fixed so many problems in the original iPhone 4 with this new release, mostly the signal and bad camera quality.

I wish Apple sees this and give me a free iPhone 4 White

Update (9:54 PM): It seems Apple has redesigned it again and now they shows only one big ads about iPhone 4 White

iPad JailBreak

It seems that Google pays attention to my posts recently. Just now, i saw an iPad Jailbreak ads displayed on my blog. I did post some news about my own experience on iPad jailbreaking and how i managed to do so with Redsn0w tool. Looks like it's a bit interesting and Google decided to put ads based on it.

The ads sold iPad jailbreak for $24.99 and here are what you get:

Unlock & Jailbreak iPhone 4 3GS 3G 2G.

Jailbreak iPad.

Jailbreak iPod Touch 4G 3G 2G 1G.

Jailbreak Apple TV.

Use any GSM Sim Card Worldwide.

Lifetime Access & Updates.

Full Support.

Instant Access.

Install Cydia & Installous.

Works in over 240 Countries.

Translation in over 40 languages.

Tech Support in over 40 Languages.

Untethered Jailbreak 4.3.2.

Will work or your money back.

Members Support Blog.

Free Bonus Inside.

Free Tutorials.

Free Reviews.

Easy, Safe, & 100% Risk Free.

GPS & 3G Fully working.

No Knowledge Needed.

If you really need good tutorial on Jailbreaking, just go to Greenpois0n and iPadJailBreak website and you will find a lot of tutorials there

New KDramas

Recently, i have been watching 49 Days and Paradise Ranch. Both are Korean Dramas. 49 Days is still airing, while Paradise Ranch has been completed.

IMHO, both are good dramas. Paradise Ranch was a bit boring at the beginning, but lately, it turned good in the middle and it's getting better on each episodes onwards. Luckily i endured myself to watch it until now (I'm at ep 12 currently, but i can finish it in the next two days i guess).

In the other hand, 49 Days is interesting since ep 1. I have predicted that it will be a good one since i read the synopsis and i was correct. It turns out to be a good drama. I wanted to wait until the drama finished airing, but i can't hold it anymore, so i completed all 12 eps in just 2-3 days and then i have to wait for the next week to have the final 2 episodes (2 episodes will come out this Wednesday and Thursday).

ASUS-Switcheroo Project

For two years, i have spent my time to find a way to make my NVidia card works on my ASUS laptop since it's a hybrid (it has Intel and NVidia combination). Since i only have Linux on it, and Linux doesn't seem to be supported by Asus, so the only thing i can do with it is disabling NVidia so that it consumes less power than when both of them are working together.

Dave Airlie's switcheroo project doesn't help much, as it doesn't work on my hardware, but there's hope by the new project by A. William called Asus-switcheroo. Basically, he tried to hack Airlie's work but focusing on Asus laptop only. He made it for his ULV30, so what i need now is to try to hack it so that it will work for my ULV80vt

The script provided only for Fedora, Ubuntu, and ArchLinux. I need to hack it so that it will work on Slackware as well

Happy Easter

Today is Saturday and it's few hours before Easter and i want to say Happy Easter for those who celebrate it

Small Reunion

I have just a small reunion with my friends just now. Some of us are working out of town and also abroad, so it's very hard to meet everyone. Since one of us came back for Easter break, we decided to have a small reunion party, but unfortunately one of our member got sick and couldn't join the party, but we will held another one next Monday

Upgrade to iOS 4.3.2 and Untethered Jailbreak

After upgrading my E71 firmware, i took another upgrade process, but this time, it's my father's iPad. When i bought it, it already filled with iOS 4.2.1 and the only thing i need was to jailbreak it. Since then, newer iOS has been released by Apple and i never paid attention to it, since the tool i used previously (Greehttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifnpois0n) hasn't released any update which can be used to jailbreak newer iOS.

Finally, i decided to upgrade to iOS 4.3.2 this morning using Redsn0w 0.9.6 RC 14 which already supports for iOS 4.3.2 untethered jailbreak. Why do i have to wait for the untethered version? Because i don't want to jailbreak everytime i turned off my iPad completely. It's really time consuming since i have to switch back to Windows just to do that (iTunes is still not yet available for Linux).

After reading the Changelog for all iOS 4.3.x series and considering that Redsn0w has completely supports for it, i braved myself to upgrade to iOS 4.3.2 and by using this tutorial, i'm able to upgrade to iOS 4.3.2 and also jailbreak it. There was some glitch, but it was resolved after restarting the iPad by completely turning it off. This also confirms that my iPad is already fully untethered jailbreaked

Easy Application Installation on iPad

When you have jailbreaked your iPad (like what i did with my iPad), you can install any application from outside Apple's AppStore, for example from Cydia. You can also install Installous application from Cydia which can be used to find other applications outside Cydia. From there, you can download the apps from Fileape hosting site.

The problem arise when you wanted to download big size application. One solution is to find the direct link of fileape and then download it using your PC or laptop and then transfer it to your iPad. If you have installed OpenSSH on your iPad from Cydia repository, you can use this command to transfer an application to your iPad's Installous directory, so that the next time you run Installous, you can skip the download process and continue with installation phase only:

scp filename.ipa root@<ipad-ip-addresss>:/private/var/mobile/Documents/Installous/Downloads/

Please note that this command works on Linux/Mac only. If you use Windows, please try to use WinSCP.

Last Day Before Holiday

Today is my last day working before long holiday due to Easter this weekend. The students has taken their holidays starting yesterday, but for us, it would be tommorrow. So, what did i do today?

In the morning, i went to Nasmoco to have my car a scheduled maintenance process. It took me about 2.5h to finish. Luckily i brought my iPad since the hotspot was not functioning . I played Infinite Blade, which was said to be one of the must-have application for iPad. I think the graphics are great, but the storyline is kinda boring. That's why i decided to delete it from my iPad.

Next, i went to Church to buy text book for next Thursday, Friday, and Saturday ceremonial. After that, i went to my office and we had a meeting since 1 PM until 3.30 PM. That's my last meeting for this week as i'm going to have a long break until next Monday.

I'll use this time to finish my personal todos and also relaxing a bit before i will start working again next Monday.

Upgrading E71 Firmware

I always tried to stay up to date in most of my computer/cellphone applications. The same goes with my E71 firmware. It's been some time since i upgraded my firmware and it was last year since it's April now and Nokia doesn't release a new firmware as often as new Linux Kernel. My previous firmware version was 410.21.010 and now, the latest one is 500.21.009.

Before upgrading the firmware, i need to know the changelog for this firmware, so i browsed the Internet and found the answer. Not only i found the changelog, i also found several problems regarding this firmware. Many people reported that they are having some problems with their camera and GPRS connection after upgrading to the latest firmware. I never had that problem before, so i decided to take the risk by upgrading it.

First thing: BACKUP!!!. Never update your firmware without doing proper (full) backup on your data as in most cases, the process will wipe all of your data. My last backup was in February, so it's also a good timing to backup my data as well. I managed to backup all of my data in about 10 minutes and then i downloaded the latest Nokia PC Suite applicationa and also NSU (Nokia Software Updater) which will update the Nokia PC Suite with the latest firmware for my E71.

Next, the upgrade process. I turned off my E71 and removed my memory card and then turn it on again and start the update process by clicking the updater and plug my E71 to my computer using USB cable. It will detect my phone and start upgrading it. It took about 10-15 minutes until the process completed and while upgrading, it will restart your phone and your phone might look like a dead phone, only displaying a white screen and also other error messages saying that there are hardware problems and blablabla.... Don't worry. It's all part of upgrade process.

Once everything is done, you need to restart your phone and you will have to re-enter all the settings again. This is the worst part of upgrading if you don't have backup. You need to set it up from scratch. If you have backup, simply restore it from your backup and the only thing you have to do is to make sure everything works as intended. In my case, i only need to reinstall three applications after the upgrade process and everything else works like charm.

I don't have problems with camera and my GPRS connection works as before. So far, it's been a nice upgrade process

If you are curious about what changes included in this release, check it below:

NEW FUNTIONALITIES:
Following baselines/functionalities have been upgraded.

• Maps 3.03 Lite which has Free Navigation support
• Music Player upgrade
• Quick Office v6.2 which has Office 2007 support
• Ovi Store upgraded to 1.6.0.18 and Download! Removed
• Lotus Notes traveler v8.5.1 -> Localization support is present only for 10 languages.

CHANGES AND IMPROVEMENTS:

• Windows Live removed from the memory card
• Ovi Suite included in Memory card
• CS Helps baseline upgraded to fix localization issues
• Start Up settings baseline upgraded
• Ovi Store Link provided in “Set Up Internet Telephony”
• Download! removed

GENERAL

• Portuguese Localization issues fixed
• Functionality improvements in E-mail configuration
• Qwerty keypad improvements

CALL HANDLING

• Emergency call termination with RSK key corrected
• Corrected Bluetooth link drop when an outgoing call is made in a carkit

CALENDAR/CLOCK

• Fix for Israel written instead of Jerusalem in World Clock
• Corrected Argentina names issue in World Clock
• Corrected localization issues in world clock

BROWSER

• CMCC Java application download corrected
• Fix provided for accessing a link that has appended space characters

EMAIL

• Fix provided for selecting desired mailbox when multiple mailboxes are configured

QWERTY KEYBOARD

• Key mapping issues fixed

MESSAGING

• Nokia IM chat: Localization support provided for Malay and Indonesian languages
  

No Time to Relax

Even though it's Sunday and it was supposed to be used for refreshing, i don't take Sunday for that reason. Yes, i know i should get some rest, but there are some plenty days for upcoming week, so i think it would be better if i finish up my work this Sunday and that's what i did.

All materials for computer security class are finished. All i need was revise it a little bit since i already taught the same class last year. Next, i need to create questions for final exam. It took me a bit to make this questions, since i turned on my YM and my colleague had a chat with me. At the end, i finished it around 10:15 PM and it's ready to be used for the final exam which will be hold in around May.

Good luck for your exam

Basketball

I finally had a chance to play basketball again, thanks to my students. They offered me a basketball session this morning at 7 AM. Actually, they asked me to join two weeks ago, but i completely forget it even though i already woke up that morning. But i wouldn't miss this chance

We will play again two weeks by now, since next week will be Easter break and most of the students will be off, so not many people will be playing next week.

Step By Step

Finally, i have completed 5 day course without having any problem at all

It's been a busy week and lucky me, i have one week of Easter break next week, so i will use that time to take some rest while taking care of other personal stuffs i still have to tackle.

At least one problem has been solved. One step at a time.

Custom Background Image Themes

After enabling themes and setting a background color for GMail, now Google let you decide if you have better background image and want to customize it for you GMail. It's called Custom Background Image Themes.

It's a very pleasant features as might have better images and we want to use it but we are limited to Google's image themes. Now, we are free to customize it as we like.

Thanks to GMail engineers

Take a look on this screenshot example by Google Engineer

Busy Day

Today is my busiest day this week. I have three classes to teach from 7.30 AM until 4 PM in the evening and then continue with a course starting from 5 PM and finished until 7.30 PM. That means i only have about 30 minutes to take a rest before going out again and finished the course.

At the end, it's finally over and there's only 1 day left for my course it tomorrow, it will ends at about 9.30 PM at night. Let's hope everything is OK and i can complete my course

Parted Magic 6.0

The latest parted magic 6.0 is now officially released and it has several interesting components such as better hardware detection (due to newer kernel), removal of kernel modules, udev, and firmware which is now moved to initramfs, nice graphical boot menu is now removed and replaced with a favor of a very basic one

Since it incorporates quite big changes, they issued a major upgrade, so that's why you see 6.0 release instead of 5.0.x series.

Here's the complete updated components: cryptsetup-1.2.0, lvm2-2.02.84, nwipe-0.03 (downgraded), util-linux-2.19, linux-2.6.38.2, udev-165, btrfs-progs-20110327, glibc-2.13, jfsutils-1.1.15, usbutils-002, xfsprogs-3.1.4, squashfs-4.2, simpleburn-1.6.0.2 (downgraded), busybox-1.18.4, memtest86-4.20, ntfs-3g_ntfsprogs-2011.4.12

Download it now

New Hash Function from Google

Google has just announced a new variant of Hash Function called CityHash.

Here's what the project's description taken from their site:

CityHash provides hash functions for strings. The functions mix the input bits thoroughly but are not suitable for cryptography. We provide reference implementations in C++, with a friendly MIT license: city.cc, city.h. To download the code with svn use these instructions.

CityHash64() and similar return a 64-bit hash. Inside Google, where CityHash was developed starting in 2010, we use variants of CityHash64() mainly in hash tables such as hash_map.

CityHash128() and similar return a 128-bit hash and are tuned for strings of at least a few hundred bytes. Depending on your compiler and hardware, it may be faster than CityHash64() on sufficiently long strings. It is known to be slower than necessary on shorter strings, but we expect that case to be relatively unimportant. Inside Google we use variants of CityHash128() mainly for code that wants to minimize collisions.

As usual, Google's approach of speed is so incredible. They have a lot of scientist working in Google and two of them (Geoff Pike and Jyrki Alakuijala) has just created another cool product.

15 Top Paying IT Certifications

If you are looking for IT certifications, you should pay attention on this article: 15 Top Paying IT Certifications. It should give you a brief summary of what IT industry is looking for currently. What amazes me is that CEH (Certified Ethical Hacker) is still on 14th position.

Here are the list along with the salary (approximately)
1. CCDP: Cisco Certified Design Professional ($107,878)
2. ITIL Expert Certification ($107,092)
3. PMP: Project Management Professional ($103,570)
4. CISSP: Certified Information Systems Security Professional ($100,735)
5. CCDA: Cisco Certified Design Associate ($97,995)
6. CCNP: Cisco Certified Network Professional ($97,296)
7. ITIL v2 Foundation & ITIL v3 Foundation ($96,128 & $93,250)
8. CCNA: Voice ($92,837)
9. AIS: HP Storage Works ($91,158)
10. AIS: HP ProLiant ML/DL/SL Servers ($87,332)
11. VCP: VMware Certified Professional ($87,151)
12. CompTIA Project+ ($87,057)
13. APS: HP Blade System Solutions ($86,554)
14. CEH: Certified Ethical Hacker ($86,053)
15. MCDBA: Microsoft Certified Database Administrator ($84,683)

Finally, Long Holiday

I will have one week of long holiday starting next week due to Easter day. I really need a long vacation due to personal matter that i have to finish. Let's just hope that most of it will be completed by next week so that i can solve other things i have to take care of.

Meanwhile, i will be busy on this week. Every evening, i have to attend a course from 5 PM until 8 PM until next Friday, so i will be mostly away.

Despicable Me Parody

I really loves Despicable Me, especially the yellow minions saying BANANA!!!! They are so cute. I even downloaded the mini series of Despicable Me which only less than 10 minutes long, but it was really really funny. I watched it with my fiancee few months ago and i couldn't stop laughing after watching it.

I just found another parody about Despicable Me, but it was single-played by one man, but he can turn into other person. Very nice and as always, very funny

Picking Up Photos

Usually, when i took some pictures, i never think about how much pictures i took since i have enough space on my memory card (2 and 8 GB is more than enough for me). When i went to Singapore and China, i didn't even fill up the 8 GB and that already contained more than 500 pictures.

Last Tuesday, i had a photo session and i got 398 photos and i have to pick 45 out of it . Picking 45 out of 398 is so hard since i think there are a lot of nice pictures in it. I have to sacrifice some photos just to get the best of it.

Echofon Firefox 2.0 Beta 2

Echofon, my favorite Twitter client has posted development update for Echofon Firefox 2.0 which is now on Beta 2 phase. They have integrated many feature request by many people and one of the most requested feature is the old UI. It seems that people doesn't like to change much so they bring it back the old Panel mode from Echofon 1.x.

So far, the new panel mode only works with Firefox 4.0, so if you are using Firefox 3.6.x or below, probably this is a good time to upgrade to Firefox 4.0

The full changes in Beta 2 are:

• Added "Panel Mode" (works with Firefox 4 only for now)
• Added menubar on window mode with several keyboard shortcuts
• Added spell check and suggestion in the context menu of the compose text area
• Added "Popup tweet while Echofon window/sidebar is open" and "Always open a link in a new tab" option
  
• Echofon follows "Open new tab in background" settings to open links
• Click Photo View to open its original photo page
• Do not open Photo View if user clicks a photo URL (Photo View will be opened only by clicking thumbnail)
• Fixed an issue that unread border doesn't appear in certain case
• Fixed an issue of missing tweets
• Fixed an issue that retweet function doesn't work
• Fixed an issue that mute settings disappears after user restart Firefox
• Fixed an issue that default keyboard shortcut is conflicted with Firefox 4 on Windows
• Fixed several other minor issues

If you are interested in trying this beta version, download it from their Beta page

Addicted to Defender Chronicles

Few days ago i downloaded Defender Chronicles from AppStore and lately, i have been quite addicted with it . I played it few hours a day and i enjoyed it.

Basically, the game is like tower defence. You have to defend your kingdoms from Orch's invasion by putting a defender such as Archers, Knight, Mage, and so on.

What makes me enjoyed the game is to find the perfect strategy to get the perfect score and unlock the next level of the same area (there are four levels and one hidden level only if you managed to beat the last level with perfect score).

KDE 4.6.2 Released

KDE 4.6.2 has been released as part of monthly updates after they released 4.6.1 last month. This is the third release in 4.6.x series and it's considered as a safe upgrade to all people as it doesn't introduce new features, but instead they offer bug fixes and translation updates.

One interesting news is that they pick a nice codename for KDE 4.6.2 called Congrats which is dedicated for GNOME project which released their major release GNOME 3.0 on the same day as KDE 4.6.2 release date. It was officially announced on their web page.

The ChangeLog gives you all the changes on this release and it's not really particular interesting as there are no new features at all. Their focus right now is on future KDE 4.7.x release which is aimed on this year as well. Many new features are already being planned to be included on this release and it should be another great release from KDE project.

We shall wait and see about that later on

Special blogger contest

Are you a blogger and you like to win an iPad 2? The Dealy is creating a nice contest for Bloggers around the world called Special Blogger Contest and the grand prize is an iPad 2.

All you have to do is to write about this contest and spread it out to the world and let them know by sending an email to contest@thedealy.com just like what i did on this post.

If you live in US, you can join another contest called badge contest by placing contest badge on your blog. Please visit the contest page for more detail. Unfortunately, i'm not in US, so i can't participate on the second contest.

What is the first price for badge contest? It's quite interesting:

• Choose your 10 dream cities from Dealy´s cities
• Enjoy free flights and hotels
• Enjoy 3 free Dealy Deals per city
• That's right, all free!

The second price is another iPad 2 and the third price is 10 people * $100 worth of deals in your city (also available in US only)