Sunday, October 31, 2010

Back to Jogja

Today i returned to Jogja after spending few days in Jakarta attending my sister's wedding party. I have a chance to visit her new house this morning with my family and other relatives before leaving to airport. It's located in a nice environment, but it's not yet finished yet. Some modifications are still needed to further make up the house.

My plane to Jogja was on time this time and my plane was quite big, since it just came from Singapore flight. I had a chance to talk with Yahya Kurniawan because we were on the same plane, (even though we were not in the same seat, but since the plane wasn't completely full, we changed our seat so we can have a chat). We took a different route to Jogja due to bad situation that relates to Merapi mountain and also, we used the different path to land in Jogja. No wonder i was a little bit confused with the environment when i was about to land in Jogja.

Anyways, it's good to be back and i still have to clean up my house due to Merapi activities yesterday. I think i will have to take some rest today and starts a new week by tomorrow Yahoo

Saturday, October 30, 2010

Chromium 9

Just when Google has announced Google Chrome 8 in Beta version, Chromium, the open source project is now releasing Chromium 9. I think that means Google Chrome 8 will be released on Stable dev soon enough and then the focus will be on Google Chrome 9 which should be released probably early next year.

Oh my..... Chrome is now has surpassed any other browser in terms of speed of release and version numbering (except for IE). Perhaps they are now pursuing IE in terms of version numbering lmao

Friday, October 29, 2010

Security Updates : Glibc and Firefox

Two security updates has been released under Current and Stable which are glibc and Firefox. Glibc updates fixes more vulnerabilities described earlier by the same person who found the bug.

Firefox update fixed a zero-day exploit discovered yesterday.

Air Asia Web Check In

Last night, i tried the new feature from Air Asia: Web Check In. The concept is simple. You can now print your own boarding pass up to seven days before your departure date from your house and you will have more time at the airport (mostly if you don't have any luggage since you don't have to queue).

I must admit that it makes easier for the users to have better flight experience, but in the other hand, if it's functioning, then it can make problems. This is what i experienced when trying Air Asia's Web Check In.

I'm leaving to Jakarta today with several of my family members and i'm planning to do a web check in in order to speed up things, but ended up with a split seats. I bought 6 tickets and i didn't choose to pick a seat (another paid feature from Air Asia which enables you to pick your own seat) because i think i can have the seat close to each other when doing the check in at the airport.

The problem arose when i tried to print the boarding pass after i selected all the passengers that were listed on the itinerary. Even though it listed all of them, but when i print the page, it will only print the first passenger and not the others. In the end, i have to re-print the boarding pass and i got a split seat for some of us.

Another problem that has been around for some time, but it hasn't been fixed by the airways is the session management. I think they are quite messed up for such big company. I know they can do better than that Gym

My suggestion for now:
  • If you don't have luggage and only travelling alone, use the web check in
  • If you are travelling with other people and want to have seat next to each other, don't use the web check in (until Air Asia fixed the printing problem).

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Mozilla Users, Upgrade Again

Just now, i have upgraded to Firefox 3.6.11 on my Ubuntu, but 3.6.12 has been released to fix one nasty vulnerability discovered by Morten Kråkvik described on this article: Heap buffer overflow mixing document.write and DOM insertion.

I think it will be included in tomorrow's update in all major Linux distros. Just wait and see Goodluck

Mozilla has done a great job of giving their user a better and safer experience in browsing the Internet with their products. That's why i sticked to Firefox even though Google Chrome is getting more and more interesting on each release.

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Four Ph. D

I had a discussion with my colleague this noon. He went to Gramedia book store and found a good book and guess what? The author is an Indonesian people and he had four Ph. D in four different disciplinaries, which are Electrical Engineering Applications From Tokyo Technology Institute, Japan (1985), Doctor of Medical from Tohoku University, Japan (1988), Doctor of Pharmacy from Tokyo Science University, Japan (2000), and Doctor of Education from Waseda University, Japan (2003) Panic. His name is Ken Kawan Soetanto. Salute for him Rock


I had to admit, i had a dream of pursuing Ph.D or Doctorate degree, but not in the short time. But i can't imagine of having for Ph.D degree from four different disciplinaries. I think i am quite happy with one Ph.D degree Evil Grin

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Merapi Eruption

After has been reported for few days, finally Merapi mountain have started to erupt this evening and the effect of dust rain has reached several places in Jogja. Some people were late to evacuate and they became the victim of a hot cloud (called Wedhus Gembel in Javanese language).

Let's hope this won't bring any further damage and casualities in the future Worship

Monday, October 25, 2010

Another Taiwanese Drama

I started to watch Love or Bread, a Taiwanese drama with the main actor of Joe Cheng and Ariel Lin, the perfect combination to make you laugh and cry, just like what they did in It Started With a Kiss and They Kissed Again.

Too bad, the fan subs had this drama hold on until they completed another drama to subs and it has taken one year since the last update Doh so i decided to watch it on YouTube, thanks to some people who translate it and upload it on YouTube Worship

Sunday, October 24, 2010

Another glibc vulnerability

Last week, all Linux vendors were busy with glibc vulnerability that struck them after Tavis Ormandy published a report along with the working exploits. The patch were released quickly as it is considered a critical hole and people feel safe about it.

But hear this out. The saga is not yet over, as Tavis pointed that there might be another vulnerability that relates to the previous one. This is discussed on this thread. I think another fix will be released next week.

Another vulnerability that struck Linux is RDS Exploit reported by Dan Rosenberg. This fix has been included in the Linux Kernel committed by Linus, but i think it will be backported into -Stable kernel by Greg in the short time.

I tried this exploit few days ago on my Slackware box and it failed. I thought i got the wrong exploit, but evidently it's working on Ubuntu, OpenSUSE, and Fedora. Please be ready to hear an advisory from your vendors next week Rolling

Monthly Backup

I'm doing a monthly backup for my Nokia E71 phone this morning. I should have done this in monthly interval, but since i was too busy last month and Nokia PC Suite is only available to Windows, i have to reboot to Windows or else i would have to use VMWare, which is very slow in operation to backup around 800 MB of my data.

Doing a backup is very important as it might saves months of works when your cellphone is stolen or gone. This happened to my sister who has just lost her BlackBerry in Jakarta. She didn't backed up her data to her laptop, so when the BB was gone, she had to ask for contacts to all of her colleague and business partners.

Doing backup will take few minutes of your time, but it will save months or years of your works Funky Dance

Saturday, October 23, 2010

Windows: Updates and Reboot

After some time, i came back to boot my Windows and guess what? A bunch of Microsoft updates are waiting for me to download and after that, i had to reboot and when i logged in, another updates are coming again angry

Is Windows is all about updates and reboot?

Friday, October 22, 2010

Pidgin 2.7.4 Fixes Many Bugs

For some time, Pidgin users are left with bugs lurking on 2.7.3, but that will (hopefully) ends now, since Pidgin developers has released 2.7.4, the latest version which incorporates a bunch of bug fixes along with several security fixes that filled the Changelog.

Since it hasn't been released under -Current tree, i took an early step building it using SlackBuild from -Current and created the 2.7.4 for Slackware-Current. It works just as expected and i'm now running 2.7.4.

For those who have used Pidgin, please be patient as it will be released on -Current soon (hopefully with the next batch of updates).

Thursday, October 21, 2010

Linux Kernel 2.6.36 Released

Finally, after having a bit of delay with the last RC, Linus decided to give a go to the Linux Kernel 2.6.36 and leave the merge window open for new features that will be included in the next Linux Kernel 2.6.37 which should be released next year (or the end of this year if it make it on time, which i doubt).

Many interesting new features included in 2.6.36 has been written on KernelNewbies, such as:
Besides the above new features, there are some other changes, such as the drivers and architecture which now get a new separate page for it.

For me personally, i would like to test the new patch from Linus that resolves the desktop responsiveness on my laptop. It has been very slow, mostly when copying from/to USB devices, such as flash disks and portable hard disks.

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Image Positioning

I just checked in on Blogger Draft and i saw what has been my wishlist for some time, image positioning improvement on the Blogger Editor. I have posted about this long time ago, but i just realized that Google is now working to have this feature implemented.

So the problem with the current version of Blogger is that we can't position our images and it's always positioned on the left side. More over, when there's a text next to the image, it will mess up the design. I hope that this problem will be solved too when the feature has been released to the public.

Viva Blogger Yahoo

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Marking

I got a lot of exams and assignments which i should mark ASAP. It's a cumulative task that has been in pending queue since i left to Shanghai early this month up to now. I should get going to finish all of this or i will have to work harder when the semester ends Gym

OOo vs LibreOffice

OpenOffice.org 3.3.0 RC 1 has been released and after looking the Release Notes, it seems that there are a bunch of new interesting feature, such as increasing row size in Calc, better usability in Extension Manager, better PDF export feature by embedding 14 PDF Standard fonts, and support for better password compatibility with Microsoft Office files, even though only up to Word and Excel 97.

After the release of LibreOffice, people seems to start moving to LibreOffice, since it includes many features that were never get included in the main OOo trunk, such as Multimedia integration, better compatibility with Microsoft Office documents thanks to OpenXML filter, and many other which was the work of go-oo.

So, what's your future decision? Still using the old OOo which is now fully supported by Oracle, or moving to the new LibreOffice which is community-based and has more features?

Monday, October 18, 2010

Traffic Jam

Today i was leaving back to Jakarta after spending one night at Bandung to attend my cousin's wedding party. I was stuck in a heavy traffic jam in Bandung. I never expected that the traffic in Bandung would be so crowded compared to the last time i visited Bandung. It's worst than in Jogja since in some places, there are two sections that can use the roads, making it more complicated and jammed-prone.

The Purbaluenyi and Padalarang highway were not that crowded, but when we reached the inner-city highway, don't asked. Every car were like crawling with an average of 5 KM/hour. It's Monday and it's time for the people to go off the work, so no wonder about that.

If you are planning to visit Jakarta, don't go around 7-9 AM and around 5-7 PM, since it's the peak time in Jakarta where people go to their office to work and where people leave their office to go back to their house.

Sunday, October 17, 2010

MODs are Back

Before i left to China, there was a problem with the database of Indonesian Linux Forum and apparently, there was a miscommunication problem between me and the technical support people. I thought that he will fix the problem for me as i will leave to China and i wouldn't be able to fix the problem after i got there due to Internet connection.

The result was the forum was offline for almost more than one week because he thought the problem had been solved, while it wasn't. So after i got back to Jogja, i asked him again to restore the database and restore everything back. This includes the files, so all the MODs were gone in the progress (it was actually renamed to other directory and it was copied from a fresh phpBB files).

Before i left to Jakarta few days ago, i have finished adding all the MODs that were used in the past to the forum again so that all of the members can enjoy better discussion on that forum.

I'm sorry for this inconvenience and i hope it will not happen again *finger-crossed*

Saturday, October 16, 2010

More Crowded

After half day tour in Jakarta, i can conclude that it's definitely clear that Jakarta has become more and more crowded from the last time i visited Jakarta. In the past, i could reach Blok M from the airport in less than one hour, but right now, it took me more than one hour to get there. Every road was jammed and the progress was so slow.

I think the government should think about this problem seriously. Also, think about the pollution that is caused by the growth of cars and motorcycles without reducing the old cars/motorcycles.

When i was in China, i saw that most of the people were riding electrical motorcycle. It was silent, pollution-free, and less accidents since they can only travel around 30 KM/hour. I wish that people should realize this and start working on more environmental solutions.

Friday, October 15, 2010

Leaving to Jakarta/Bandung

Only days after i arrived in Jogja, i have to leave to Jakarta again today. Actually i am going to Bandung to attend my cousin's wedding party, but since my sister is in Jakarta and we planned to go together, i had to fly to Jakarta first and then we will go to Bandung together.

I will come back at Tuesday from Jakarta again and by then, i will have some time before i have to leave again to Jakarta by the end of this month.

Oh my... this month is full of flying....... Yarr

Last Day: Leaving to Indonesia

We left our hotel early in the morning. We got our morning call at 5 AM, one hour earlier than it used to be because we have a plane to catch and we were flying an international flight with a big number of people (around 95 people), which means we have to get an long imigration checking and that would take some time, so that's why the tour leader decided to go early.

We departed from China around 10 AM and we reached Jakarta at 4.30 PM. Next, we left to Jogja around 6.40 (it was 15 minutes delayed from the original schedule) and finally we arrived back in Jogja.

That ended my trip in China.......... wave

Eight Day: Free Day

Our last day before leaving China was a free day. Some of us left to Shanghai Expo 2010, the biggest expo ever happened in China which will end in October 31 and it has been running for the last five months (probably the longest expo ever conducted) while the rest were free to go shopping as they like.

Me and my girlfriend decided to go shopping instead of going to the Expo because the queue to enter to one paviliun was very long and in one day, we can only enter two to three paviliun at most. The most crowded one is from Saudi Arabia. It's rumored that for one to enter the building, he/she has to wait up to nine hours Panic

At night, there was supposed to be a farewell party, but it was cancelled due to some member of the group still hasn't came back from their activity and the other were too tired and they wanted to go to bed because we had to wake up early in the morning to catch the plane.

Thursday, October 14, 2010

Seventh Day: Water City of XiTang

After breakfast, we left Hangzhou and we were heading to Xitang, the oldest water city in China. The last Mission Impossible 3 was filmed around this city too when Tom Cruise ran in a crowded street full of people searching for his wife which has a bomb wired on her body.

Once we had lunch at Xitang, we went to a knife factory before heading back to Shanghai. We had to switch to another bus due to some problem on our bus. We left to Shanghai and on our way, we visited the medicine factory. We arrived at the evening and we headed to a shopping mall which mostly sold replicated items from famous brands, such as IPhone, IPad, Blackberry, etc.

Around 6 PM, we headed to Oriental Pearl TV Tower to see Shanghai from 263 m above the ground. It was splendid. You can see most of Shanghai from it and you can even sit on top of a thick wall and see the ground (don't do it if you are phobia of height). It was scheduled on our first day of the tour, but due to time constraint, the trip to TV Tower was re-scheduled.

We came back to our first hotel when we arrived in Shanghai at day one and take our time to rest before having a free day at the last day in China.

Sixth Day:Many Legends in Hangzhou

After spending two days in Huangshan, we left to Hangzhou which is the hometown of Xiang Xiang, our tour guide in China. She told us a lot of stories that happened in Hangzhou, such as the famous White Snake Legend and Xi Hu Lake. Hangzhou was once described by Marco Polo as one of the most beautiful and splendid cities in the world and one of the US president in the past only wanted to visited three cities in China, Shanghai (Center of Economy), Beijing (Capital), and Hangzhou (due to it's beauty). It is considered the most green city around China. There were a lot of plants around the streets and the air was so breeze as it has less pollutions.

We had a busy schedule this day since we visited so many places while we were in Hangzhou, including taking a trip on a boat around Xi Hu Lake, Dragon Well Tea/Mei Jia Wu Village, watching Songjen Show (Romance of Song Dynasty) which described five stories that happened in Hangzhou in a splending laser and real man show. I recommend you to watch this show if you have time to visit Hangzhou. You will be amazed and you will not regret it even though the ticket fee is quite expensive (around 250 RMB for VIP seat).

Our trip in Hangzhou was ended with a shopping session in He Fang Street as usuall and we went to our hotel to rest.

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Forth and Fifth Day: Natural Scene of Huangshan Mountain

We left Suzhou to Huangshan in our forth day in China using the same bus. We left our local tour guide because the regulation stated that we must take another local guide when we reached other place (Huangshan in this case). The same event happened each time we visited another cities. Xiang Xiang still accompanies us from the beginning until the last day because it was her who coordinated all the trip while we were in China. Our local guide in Huangshan was David (his English name) and he could speak English, so i'm a little bit happy to hear that, since i can't speak Chinese so fluently.

On our first day in Huangshan, we didn't climb the mountain yet, as the trip itself took about 5 hours. We arrived there at the evening and we only had some free session at night before we rest because on our fifth day, we were climbing the Huangshan mountain.

From our hotel, we left to pick up our another local guide in Huangshan area and we had to switch to mini bus since the road to the mountain was smaller, so our bus was not allowed to entered. When we reached the entrance, we got in into the cable car which took us to the top mountain before we had to walk in order to take a look around the natural beauty of Huangshan mountain. The cable car was so high and i couldn't imagine what would happened if the cable was loose. I don't think anyone can survive from that height.

I must say i'm very impressed with the beauty of Huangshan mountain. Everything was so natural and i don't think there's any other mountain that is as beautifull as Huangshan. You must see it by yourself if you don't believe what i said in this blog Rolling.

Even though the tour leader said that the temperature was supposed to be very cold, but after getting there, i didn't think it was colder that i thought. I didn't use my jacket while i was walking around the mountain. But, i still recommend that you should bring your jacket, hat, and glove just in case you can't take it.

We left the mountain before 4 PM because the cable car stop operating at 4 PM. We went down and have an early rest because next day, we were going to other city again. This time, we were leaving to Hangzhou.

Third Day: Leaning Tower in Suzhou

Again, we our third day was started by a morning call at 6 AM and we left to Suzhou for another trip. We met a nice local guide tour and he could talk in Indonesian language more fluent than our Xiang Xiang since he has a wife which is Indonesian people and he had been a tour guide for 8 years.

Our first trip in Suzhou was in Lion Forest Garden (Shizilin) where we could see a man-made rock of mountains that symbolize the nine lion that was carved in a rock. We learned so many ancient cultures in this place.

We then left to Tiger Hill, where there was another leaning tower like in Italy (Pisa Tower). Local people said that this tower has an older history than in Italy, so they called it father of the Pisa Tower. Our local tour guide explained the history behind the tower and why it's called a tiger hill although there were no tigers around it.

Next, we went to silk factory in Suzhou. We saw how silk was produced from the beginning until it ended into a final product such as pillow or clothes. I bought one set of pillow from this factory as well Evil Grin.

Our last session was another shopping session in Quanqian street and before resting at the hotel

Second Day: Watching Three Kingdom Studio

Our second day started at 6 AM where we got our morning call from the hotel since we were going to leave to Wuxi and the trip took few hours. We had breakfast at the hotel around 7 AM and we left around 8 AM.

When we reached Wuxi, we visited some places, including the Three Kingdom Park where the Romance of Three Kingdoms movie was filmed. It was built by CCTV, one of the biggest TV station in China. We saw the Three Kingdom and it reflected the battle between the three heroes against Tsao Tsao.

Next, we visited Taihu Lake and we took a tour using an old war boat around the lake. We could still see the building used in the movie when we rode the boat. The trip took about half an hour before we left to teapot factory and Sanyang Square to have our shopping session before going to our hotel and rest.

First Day: Couldn't Sleep

My first day of the trip was my way to China. I left Jogja at 4.30 using Garuda Indonesia to Jakarta with all the group from Jogja and Solo and cities around Jogja, such as Kutoarjo and Klaten. We arrived in Jakarta one hour later and we went to Hoka Hoka Bento to have dinner together at International departure terminal (2 E).

Around 11 PM, we were asked to go to boarding room and we left Indonesia to China around 11:50 PM. The trip to China took us about 5.5 hours and we were heading to Pudong International Airport in Shanghai where Xiang Xiang, our local guide picked us up at the airport. She can talk Indonesian language after learning about 8 months, which i think is very fast. During our flight, i couldn't sleep since i'm not used to long flight. My longest flight was when i went to Manado and at that time, it wasn't as long as this flight and i never take a night flight as well, so this was my first experience.

Our first trip was having breakfast because we reached Shanghai around 7 AM (Shanghai is one hour ahead of Jakarta). From the restaurant, we went to one of the biggest shopping place in Shanghai in Nanjing Road. It's a crowded place where people around the world gathered there to buy many items. We didn't have time to get it covered since it's very big place and you might get lost if you didn't pay attention about the entrance and the sign.

Netx, we took a photo session across the TV Tower, one of the tallest building in Shanghai. Then we went to Bar Street where there were so many cafes filled with expatriate in that place since that place was originally made by the France people when they invade China in the past. After that, we took a walk in Shanghai for a bit before finally we rested in our hotel.

That completes our first day in Shanghai.

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

I'm Back

After about ten days in China, finally i'm back here in Indonesia. It was a wonderful trip to China and i have visited some cities in China, including Shanghai, WuXi, Suzhou, Huangshan/TunXi, Guangzhou, and XiTang). I never expected that China would be at this level even though i have known that they have a strong economic level and their growth are outstanding. Even a small city in China is way more ahead of Jakarta, the metropolitan city in Indonesia. I must say that China is probably 10-20 times ahead of Indonesia regarding the city/town management. They have a strong vision and a good long-term planning on building a city. In the coming years, they will introduce more and more facilities that would make people's life get easier, such as faster express train, more highways, and many more.

Nevertheless, nothing is perfect. China is not an exception. There are some points which i think Chinese people are lacking of. One of them is the personal behavior. I will not publish them here, but i think you will know what i mean if you have visited China before. Don't get surprised when you have experienced them Evil Grin

I will try to rewrite my trip in China in the next posts, but i think i need some sleep now as i didn't get enough sleep today and i spent most of my time on plane today. I had a 5.5h of flight from Shanghai to Jakarta and another 1 h to go to Jogja, my home town.

Monday, October 04, 2010

Fighting Plagiarism

Plagiarism is a heavy sin in education world. You can get a maximum penalty of being expelled if the staff found an evidence that you conduct this act. Many education places have created a string rules about it and it was used effectively for each assignment. I also have done the same thing for my class.

Detecting plagiarism is not an easy task as it would take a lot of efforts and time when you have so many students taking your class. For paper work, you can use Turnitin service which i think is the best plagiarism checker available for now. It's not free, but i think it's worthed, mostly if you ask for your students to create a journal which will be published.

For code plagiarism, this is even more interesting as source codes are available on the Internet and all you need is browse on search engines and you will get a bunch of codes. Stanford has created a system which can help us to detect software plagiarism called Moss (Measure Of Software Similarity) and i'm using it currently. It has been developed since 1994 and it has been updated constantly with new algorithm and mechanism.

Currently, Moss can detect this languages: C, C++, Java, C#, Python, Visual Basic, Javascript, FORTRAN, ML, Haskell, Lisp, Scheme, Pascal, Modula2, Ada, Perl, TCL, Matlab, VHDL, Verilog, Spice, MIPS assembly, a8086 assembly, a8086 assembly, MIPS assembly, HCL2.

If you want to find out about Moss, visit their website or see the background paper about this research. Moss is created by Alex Aiken Worship

* This is a scheduled post *

Sunday, October 03, 2010

Leaving to China

I am leaving to China tonight and spend some time there. It's just part of a holiday. I'm not staying there for months or so. It's because this week, the students will face their mid test exams and the lecturers are having some breaks so i took this chance to go somewhere else where i have never visited before.

This will be my first trip to China and i hope this will be an interesting adventure. I have heard so many rumors about China, both good and bad issues and let's hope i won't experience the bad ones. It will be my second abroad trip after i went to Singapore early this year and this time, it will take longer time.

I'm not sure whether i'm going to have Internet connection or not while i am in China, but let's just assume i can't get Internet connection there, so i will be off from the Internet for a while. You know what i mean. That means a delayed email responses, no updates on this blog (except when i have found a nice infor and i will set a scheduled post), pending membership requests on Indonesian Linux Forum, pending SlackBlogs updates, and i will definitely miss the Ubuntu release since i will be back in Indonesia around October 12. When i got back home, most of Indonesian mirror will have Ubuntu ISOs and that will ease me to update the UKDW ISO Center.

OK, time to enjoy the rest of my day in Indonesia before leaving tonight Wave

Saturday, October 02, 2010

Testing Ubuntu 10.10 RC

I have been using Ubuntu 10.04 on my old laptop since few months ago, since i wanted to test my Ubuntu repository at my campus. At least that was my initial purpose of installing Ubuntu on my old laptop. If not, i wouldn't replace my Slackware on it Evil Grin

Since Ubuntu 10.10 is going to be released soon, i decided to try to upgrade to 10.10 Beta (it's still in beta at the time i was upgrading it) and it took me about one full day to upgrade (some package were missing and i left my laptop running at home while i was working at the office, so i resumed it after i got back from work).

At the end, it was upgraded safely and no harm. Everything works just like it used to be. Wireless connection still intact (in fact, i didn't get any delays anymore after connecting to my access point just like i had in 10.04), the boot and shutdown process is getting a little bit faster, and everything else just work out of the box (including NVidia driver). I just love it when the process is going smoothly. Right now, i'm updating it daily and it has reached RC release. Since i will not be available when the final version gets released, i am trying to make it up to date as i can so i won't miss too many updates when i return Rolling

But still it's far away from Slackware. I can do a full upgrade in less than 10-20 minutes using Slackware. But since i'm running -Current, i don't have to do any full upgrade any more. All i need is to follow -Current and i will be running the latest version of Slackware all the time, but that's another story.

Friday, October 01, 2010

WebP: New Image Format From Google

Google saw that images take around 65% of the bytes transmitted on the web (what would a web could be without images?) and they think it's problematic to slow connection network, such in mobile network which is mostly slower than any wired connection. Therefore, an image with lower file size is a must while retaining the quality of the images itself.

After working with VP8, they have decided to release a new image format called WebP, which is a method of lossy compression that can be used on photographic images. A WebP file consists of VP8 image data, and a container based on RIFF.

So, when will this new format available to users? It depends on the browsers that will support them. Google Chrome will support it shortly (they are the official product by Google anyway). I think others will follow soon if they see that this will benefit the users (i don't see any objection of this).

For now, you can see the comparison between an original JPEG and WebP-converted image in the Gallery page.