Better Chat Feature in GMail

GMail team has updated GMail's chat feature with some interesting feature, which are group chat and new basic emoticons. Now you can have conference-like conversations with your friends. It's very convenient when you want to discuss something with more than one people at the same time. Rather than switching to different window every time, invite them into a single group and chat together

The second feature is a new basic emoticons. If you have used with Yahoo Messenger's emoticons, you will feel that the emoticons built on GMail's chat is very boring, but it's better than nothing at all.

Full of Spammers

I approved almost 30-40 new Forum members everyday and today, almost 50% of the registered members were spammers I can't believe it was that high. Usually only 5-10% of the new members were spammers. I don't know why. Does it have any relations with the end of this year? The spammers became more aggressive when it's almost new year

Forum Linux Beta

me and Budi from Baliwae (we both represents Slackware-ID community) is proud to announce an availability of a new Indonesian Linux distribution (based on Slackware) that (hopefully) can be used by peoples who wanted to have an offline version of Indonesian Linux Forum. This idea comes from Forum members about two years ago (23 January 2005). At that time, i tried to provide the database dump for people, but it's quite useless, because people still has to install phpBB and modify the application first. It's not suitable for everyone.

So at the last ILC 2007 Conference, Budi was offering a help for a new Linux distribution that can be used for that purpose. He has finished making targeT Linux, so it will be quite easy for him to modify it again for this new distro.

After working for about two days, he finally managed to create a new Linux distribution that we called Forum Linux. It's still in beta version and we hope that we can release this distribution at the end of this year (so it's like a new year gift from both of us ). We are planning to update this distribution every six months (like any other popular Linux distribution), so that your version will not be very out-dated.

Like targeT Linux, this new Linux distribution will be able to be executed via LiveCD or via USB, so you have more choices.

There's no ISO available for now (since Budi is trying to make the final version smaller by removing unneeded application so it's very prone to changes. So far, he managed to make it 230 MB, but it will decrease again soon). BUT, you can see the screenshots on http://cd.slackware-id.org/.

We wanted your feedbacks on this idea. Please send your inputs, critics, comments on this distro via mail to feedback@cd.slackware-id.org

Rainy Season But No Rain

It's very strange. Right now, it should be rainy season, but for the past few days, there hasn't been any rain until tonight (it was only last for 2-3 minutes). I wonder what happened here? Does it only happened here in Jogja or also in other cities? Any stories?

Planet For Linux Community

At the last ILC, i have been discussing about a need to have a central site which will aggregate all of Linux community in Indonesia. At that time, i talked to Vavai and Budi. Vavai was willing to provide the space for hosting, so my job was to lobby Ronny Haryanto to add a new sub domain under linux.or.id for the new planet and point the NS to Vavai's NS. We agreed that the sub domain will be http://planet.linux.or.id.

Few days later, i got a reply from Ronny and he agreed with the idea, so the process was very smooth. In just a few days, the Planet has been up and now it's already officially launched. It's made by Vavai and so far, we have managed to aggregate Slackware-ID, Ubuntu-ID, and some LUG (there are others, like Fedora-ID, OpenSUSE-ID, but they haven't been aggregated yet. Perhaps they haven't submit any posts).

We really appreciate your comments on this new idea, so please share your thoughts to me and Vavai via our email address.

If you want your organization to be included in the aggregation, please email Vavai for this, as i don't have any account on the server. For now, we will only aggregate LUG and Linux communities. We don't plan on aggregating an individual, since sometimes the topics is out of context.

Congratulations for the Planet and enjoy them...

* Credit goes to Vavai and Ronny to make this idea comes true

Secure Your Browsing Activities

Continuing my previous article about securing your laptop, this article will give you ten Firefox extensions that will help you secure your browsing activities. We might have seen some of them, but i don't think we know all of them, so it's a good reason to start reading it.

GMail Offer Old Version

Not everybody likes to change and GMail realize that fact. That's why they offer the old GMail interface to their users via a link on top of your screen (near the sign out). I personally likes the old one, since i tend to have my Firefox hang up while loading the inbox or when i wanted to delete the spam messages. So i switched back to the old one. It's also faster when you want to permanently delete the previously deleted messages. Here's the screenshot on my account:

Secure Your Laptop

Do you work mobile by using your laptop and like to browse the Internet while working? If the answer is yes, then you should read this article from Information Week about 10 Tips to secure your laptop. Although the article is a common thing, but most people forgot about them and it could risk your laptop's security when you are accessing public connections, such as public hotspots.

Replication In MySQL

In some forums, i often saw a question asking about how to synchronize a database to some database servers (it could be local servers or even public servers via Internet). Using a dumped SQL is not very efficient if you want a real time access. Using mysqlhotcopy needs some resources, so it would rip off the performance of the system. The solution is by using Replication. Here's some information from MySQL's manual:

Replication enables data from one MySQL database server (called the master) to be replicated to one or more MySQL database servers (slaves). Replication is asynchronous - your replication slaves do not need to be connected permanently to receive updates from the master, which means that updates can occur over long-distance connections and even temporary solutions such as a dial-up service.

Today, at UGM, i got a material about replication (actually it was last week's material, but many of us had failed, so we had to restart it again. I was absent last week since i had to go to ILC 2007, so this is my first class actually). As always, Manual is the best place to start. I managed to set up one computer as a master and another computer as a slave in less than 10 minutes, so i guess it's pretty straightforward. By using this scheme, the slave would only have read-only access, meaning it only retrieve the updates from the server. Changing the slave wouldn't affect the server. In order to get a round robin model, we should use the daisy-chain model, which is like a P2P technology, where a computer became a server and also became a slave. To do this, it only requires some modifications and it won't take more than another ten minutes to configure it.

The steps needed to configure a replication can be described as below:
- Configure the master (set server-id and enable binary logging)
- Configure the slave (only set a different server-id)
- Obtain the master status information (this will be used for setting up the slave)
- Setting the master configuration in slave (you need the information from the master status information)
- Start the slave and you're done

After executing the last steps, any changes to the master will be replicated by the slave and you will have a clone of the master in slave. Of course, it's the most basic configuration and you will need to adjust it for more advanced needs.

Replication is pretty useful when you have several machines acting as a database servers and all of them are connected to the networks. You can use several database to ensure high availability on the data needed by the application.

Another Culture War?

According to KR, Malaysia has started another "culture war" by claiming that Reog is from Malaysia (even though they use another name which is Barongan). Reog ponorogo has been filed as a patent since 2004 and people knows Reog is from Ponorogo, some area in East Java, not from Malaysia.

Ohh well... i guess there will be some virtual war again

Here's the photo from Malaysian's site:

Midas Touch

Kind Midas is a well known king from Greek Mythology that has an ability to turn everything he touched into gold. That's why it was known as "Midas Touch".

Right now, that touch perhaps belongs to Guus Hiddink, the current Russian national football team coach. He has just made Russia goes through the Euro 2008 competition after removing England. Before Russia, his golden touch has mde South Korea became a semi-finalist on the FIFA 2002 World Cup before it was beaten by the Germany. The South Korean government gave a big reward to Guus Hiddink by making him as a honorary South Korean citizenship with other rewards also They also rename the stadium in Gwangju as Guus Hiddink Stadium.

After South Korea, Guus Hiddink's golden touch moved to Australian national football team, even though it's not as successful as South Korea.

I wonder what will happened if Guus coaches Indonesian national team? But that should wait after 2010, since he has extended his contract with the Russian until 2010.

Blogger Reviews

Few days ago, my friend notified me via that my blog (this one) was reviewed by Fatih Syuhud and i became one of his Blogger of The Week #76. I am amazed on how diligent he is to make such a review (he did this every week before his database was lost). I know lots of new blogger from his reviews.

Since i'm curious about the reviews, I tried to find the information via Google and i came to his (old) website. Apparently, the site is no longer maintained and he has moved to his own domain. I got this URL from Technorati which tracked blog or websites that has a link to my blog and finally i found the review.

One sentences that tickles me is this part:

Unless the readers is one of your most die-hard fans

I don't think have a die-hard fans yet like Priyadi or Budi Raharjo.

Anyways, thanks for the heads-up and the reviews

So Sudden

In the last few days, i got a lot of sudden activities that requires my attention. Sometimes it messed up with my current schedule, but i do have to give more priority to some event. I hope most of it will be fixed in the next few days and my scheduled plan will be smooth like before

Another New Feature From Blogger

Blogger team has published and launched another new feature, called Slideshow. This feature only works with the new Blogger, so this blog won't be equipped with the new feature. There's a reason why i don't upgrade to the new blogger, and it's related with theme. I have tried to upgrade, but the modifications i made will be gone and i have to do it again. The problem is that some hacks are not working in the new blogger, so i'll stay with the old one for now.

According to Blogger Buzz:

This feature lets you add a slick little slideshow of your photos from Picasa Web Albums, Flickr, Photobucket, or any site that supports Media RSS.

The photos will show up in your blog’s sidebar, gently fading into one another. Your readers will be able to go forward and backward, pause, and click through to the photo’s web page.

You can also make a slideshow of public photos based on a tag or label.

Nice one

Planet For Linuxers

At ILC 2007, i had a chance to talk with Vavai about a plan to make a new planet which will aggregate all news from Linux communities, like Slackware-ID, Ubuntu-ID, Fedora-ID, OpenSUSE-ID (and probably LUG's website), so people could read them easily using RSS Reader application without having to visit them all every time they want to read a news about Linux development in Indonesia. We (me and Vavai) are planning to put this application using a new sub domain, http://planet.linux.or.id. I already asked Ronny Haryanto as the maintainer and i'm waiting for his answer (i know he's busy, so i don't mind waiting).

Another idea was about distributing a new LiveCD that contains a phpBB application that is already equipped with all post from Indonesian Linux Forum. We hope that this CD can be distributed for those who can't access the Linux Forum daily. We are planning to release this version once a year, just like IlmuKomputer. For this, i'm coordinating with Budi from Baliwae. He has just finished making targeT Linux, so making a new variants won't be a big deal for him. I will try to supply the data from Linux Forum with some help by Ronny (again), and hopefully, we can make it happen (even though i can't promise you the exact date).

Any suggestions about this ideas will be accepted...

XMMS Is Not Dead Yet

XMMS Is Not Dead Yet. They have just released an update to XMMS (1.2.11) after 1211 (coincidence?) days ago (last release was Feb 23, 2004).

Meanwhile, XMMS2 has released 0.4 version (codename DrKosmos). This release also includes new logo for XMMS2 which is pretty cool to me

ILC 2007: Great Success

I have just came back from ILC 2007 KPLI Meeting that was held in UII where more than 100 peoples were attending this annual event. I had to skip two of my class today to attend this event, but no big deal about it. I met Vavai, Budi, Martinus, Rifqi, Ahmad from Makassar-Slacker, and many other people here. Most of them represents their LUG (Linux User Group) and also some distro-based community, like Ubuntu-ID, Slackware-ID, Fedora-ID, OpenSUSE-ID, etc.

I came to the place at about 10:30 AM, since the place was quite far from UGM, so it took me some time, but i managed to get there safely. At first, i was quite confused with the location, as i never came to UII before. I contacted Fathir to help me out and i managed to find the location of the event.

Since the auditorium was equipped with hotspots, many attendance post their reports online in Kronologger and perhaps on their blog (so far, i don't see their post on Planet Terasi yet).

For you who couldn't come to the event, you may see the photos, materials and the discussion results that will be published on the ILC's website soon. I hope they published the videos also (and probably distribute it to each KPLI and community).

I think it's a great success and we'll see you next year in BALI!!! (YES, BALI!!!)

KPLI Meeting

Tomorrow, KPLI Meeting will be held. This is an annual event, so i can't miss this one. For this, i must skip one class and one practical class tomorrow. I have promised to come and meet other people who have spent their spare time to go to Jogja. It should be a great event where most people who usually met only via email, chat room, and mailing list meet each other face to face

Updated PHP Binary

It seems that i was right about broken PHP Build for Windows. Today, i visited PHP site and i saw an updated package which should fix the problem i (and probably most of PHP users running on Windows) encountered last week. I'm downloading it right now, and hopefully it will be the correct build.

Playing With Android

I have just finished downloading Android SDK and also Eclipse that is recommended for playing with Android, since it's based on Java language. I tried to play with the most simple example, but i got a different result. The example should have displayed a simple text widget with a text "Hello Android", but on my emulator, it showed up a default OS in Android Emulator, just like what has been presented by Steve Horowitz (and in the below screenshot). I don't know why. Perhaps i misconfigured or missing some packages (but i doubt that). I wonder if the code always tried to connect to the Internet, since i got a timeout when the Android emulator boots (check the other screenshot). It tooks quite some time to boot, but it has a nice bar, just like KITT had on Knight Rider.

Removing Trojan Using Ubuntu

My cousin's computer was infected a trojan (i guess) and it was acting very strange. He tried to remove it manually, but the file couldn't be deleted. Then he asked for my help and my first action was looking at the suspicious files on the task manager. I saw several files with strange names, so i tried to stop their process, but it keeps coming out again. So i guess, i had to do the hard way, using a Windows CD to boot and remove it using Recovery Console.

Unfortunately, it didn't work so smooth. I couldn't access Program Files directory where the files were located, so finally, i boot using Ubuntu Gutsy (7.10) and mount the NTFS filesystem using ntfs options and delete the files manually. It worked flawlessly. Ubuntu (or let's just say Linux) once again is very useful, not only as an operating system, but also for rescue system

Any other experience using Linux?

Two In A Row

Two more electricity problem today The first one at campus, which caused me to delay another class for next week and tonight, i also had electricity problem at my house. I was streaming Heroes 2 episode 8 and it's all gone I had to restart again. It's getting annoying.

Electricity Problem Again!!!

Arrgghh... I got an electricity problem again during my class. It has caused my class to be canceled and i have to make a replacement class for Wednesday and Thursday. Why two days? Since some students can't attend if i only make one replacement. The most convenient day for replacement should be in Saturday, but i couldn't do that, since i have to attend my master degree also. Arggh.... Rainy season caused a lot of problems

For those who take my class, please have a look on my lecturer site...

Wrong Keywords

One of my students were asking about a testing software for disabled people. She wanted to make an application that can be used for disabled people, mostly for visual impaired people and it was the same project i did with OWG, back in 2005-2006 when i was in QnAp Asia. I thought i saved the program on my hard disk, but i was wrong. I didn't save it when i went back to my home town. I searched via Google, but i still couldn't find it.

So i asked my friend in Netherlands who was my client, Dick Lunnenborg. I haven't got any reply from him, so few hours ago, i started my MSN account and lucky me. Albertine was online (even though it's stated busy on her account). I asked her and after thinking for some time, she pointed an URL and yes, that's the correct application i need. It appears that i used the wrong keywords when i wanted to search the application. Previously, i used keywords like "visual impaired software testing" or "visual impaired simulator", and i got nothing (it's not pure no results, just not the correct application i need). Later on, after i browse the site, it's said "Visual impairment simulator", so i tested this keyword in Google, and voila..... it appears in the first rank

A single mistake when choosing keywords can take you in different results....

By the way, the software is called VIS (Visual Impairment Simulator) and can be downloaded from here.

PHP 5 Build Broken?

I have downloaded the latest PHP 5.2.5, but when i wanted to install a new version, i always get the error messages below. Any ideas why this happened? FYI, i have checked the MD5 hash value and it matches the hash value described on the websites. I have also tried downloading from other mirror and i still got the same results. It also happened on default install (no custom path made), so i guess it's broken build. It only applies to Windows build, as i already managed to upgrade my Slackware box with PHP 5.2.5 successfully

PHP 5.2.5 Released

Yes, it's finally here. PHP 5.2.5 has been released officially and contains more than 60 bug fixes, including some updates on the components. Full information can be seen on the PHP 5 Changelog. Happy downloading and compiling...

It's a good time to release an application. During the weekend...

Expiry Date

One bad habit that some people does without noticing is when they buy something (food for example), they didn't check the expiry date of that product. It's quite important to check the expiry date, since sometime the stock is still there, where it should be returned since it's already out-dated. Looking for expiry date won't take you more than one minute and yet most people forgot how important that was. Eating out-dated product can cause illness or any other disease to your body, so start protecting your body by looking at the expiry date. Don't hesitate to ask if the expiry date is not where it supposed to be. Your healthy is more important

Faster GMail

Lately (well, in the last one or two days), i had a feeling that GMail has changed slightly, regarding their performance. I think GMail has gone a little bit faster than it was in the past. Common operation became faster, like deleting emails, marking emails as spam, etc. Does it has any relation with this news? The URL for main site (after logging in) has also changed (if you notice it).

Do you feel the same experience i had?

Waiting For PHP 5.2.5

If you visit PHP's official site, you will notice that PHP is working on PHP 5.2.5 which is now on RC2 and soon it will be released as final 5.2.5. One thing that bothers me is that the time needed to release one version is almost three months. During this three months, are there no major bugs in the current 5.2.4 version? Hopefully 5.2.5 does meet user expectation about new features or bug fix that has been waited by lots of people around the world. Lets just wait and see....

IMAP on Gmail

GMail has officially release their IMAP feature to every users. Check the screenshots for more information about IMAP feature on GMail. By default, they have activated IMAP, so in most cases, you won't have to change anything in the server side (in this case, GMail's mail server). The only configuration needed is in the client side, which is usually your favorite email client application. You can use GMail's Help to configure your application. For a definition and brief information about IMAP, you can check on Wikipedia.

Postponed Activity

Today, i was planning to go to computer fair at JEC (Jogja Expo Center) where YOGYAKOMTEK was held. But as i'm too tired after two days of full throttle of working and studying, i postponed my activity and i'm planning to go there tomorrow. I hope i can be there before it ended. My students also told me that there were a book fair which ended two days ago. I didn't know that there was such an event. I would love to go to book fair, mostly for searching import books (and yesterday's event was about import book)

Google First

Sometimes people asked other people when they had a problem. It's a common thing. But before you ask other people, it will be better if you do some investigation first, or use Google first to find similar issues. You might find the fix in no time just by using the correct keywords. Doing pre-investigation can be useful as people will ask you about some information related to your system or application before they can help you debug the problem. When you have done the preliminary investigation, you can supply that information right away and the chances that they will help you will be much greater. People don't like to wait or they don't want to waste their time waiting for you to do some investigation which should have been done in the beginning.

If you can't find the answers on Google, then you can start asking people in forum, mailing list, chat rooms, or any other media. Don't forget to read Eric S. Raymond's HOWTO about how to ask Smart Questions. Some people doesn't like if you send him/her PM (Private Message) on IRC without asking permission (well, it's one rule in ##Slackware. I think other channel will do the same).

Stroopwaffles

Thanks to Widya and Vina, i can enjoy Stroopwaffles again. It's been some time since i enjoyed Stroopwaffles. It's one of the popular cookies in Holland. Since my ex-company had a headquarter in Netherland, we often enjoy this cookies when somebody came to Indonesia. Widya has just came back from Holland and she was willing to share her Strropwaffles to me and send it to me via Vina, a new person on QnAp Asia which visit Jogja today and directly came back to her hometown for her holiday i guess. She brough the cookies to me

Rudi, one of my ex-colleague in QnAp Asia said that StarBucks sell this kind of cookie on Jakarta, but i am not sure whether StarBucks in Jogja would sell it too. I

I gave some of this cookies to my parents and also my girlfriend's family and they enjoyed it. Looks like i had to order again via my friend who still in Holland and they will came back to Indonesia in the next few days.

What are Stroopwaffles?

2 thin, hard rounds of waffle-indented biscuit, wedged together with a kind of syrup. They are chewy when you bite them and taste of cinnamon and mixed spice and aren't too sweet. All stroopwaffels are made with 100% roomboter (cream butter)

Google VS Spam

GMail team has published a new page dedicated to introduce their spam technology to their users by using video published on YouTube. One sentence that tickles me :

Our users report getting almost no spam, leaving them with more time to do things they enjoy, like learning a new language, or giving that special someone an extra hug.

Unfortunately, it didn't happened with my account lately (or should i say in the last few months). While i was in Jakarta, things like spams do existed, but not as wild as right now and GMail works great to prevent spammers get into my account. Lately, spammers are getting smarter and they have find a way to pass the spam filter technology. It's not only in GMail, but also in most other email services.

I'm really looking for GMail's improvement like what this graph displays:

OOo Presenter Screen

Andre Fisher, one of Sun Microsystem's employee that works on Impress and Draw components has just announce a new extension for Impress that (hopefully) will be released on the next major release of OpenOffice.org, 2.4.0. It's called Presenter Screen.

Taken from OOo's Wiki:

It's a feature that aids a presenter during a slide show. It provides information on a second screen, that typically is not visible to the audience. This includes
* a view to the currently displayed slide (for when the presenter faces the audience and can not see the primary screen)
* a preview of the next slide or next effect
* the notes of the current slide
* the current time and/or the elapsed time
* navigation buttons for going to the previous/next slide

When you look on the screenshot, it's very promising. The author can do better job while presenting his/her presentation, since notes can be displayed on his screen, while not visible to audience. He/She can also measure the time since there's a clock that displays the time (it would be better if they give some small calculation about duration, so author can set time for that presentation and show the remaining time).

Great job Andre and his team