One Down, Another One Coming In

Today i went to my friend's house to finish up my project which had a critical bug due to different environment used to deploy the system which i talked yesterday. My team had finally fixed the bug after synchronizing the environment we used with the deployment environment and we were about to deliver the update today.

When i wanted to copy the files, suddenly the electricity went off. I couldn't do anything, so i left to go to the office. I finished up my work at the office and then i picked up my wife and settle other things up. Next, i got a text telling me that the electricity is back (it almost took 4 hours), but since i haven't finished my errands, i couldn't go there at that time.

In the next few hours, i finally go to the same place again and fixed the bug by replacing the files with the corrected one and also adding a stored procedure which was missing when i deployed it yesterday. Finally everything is working as intended.

Let's just hope that no more problems in the future, because starting tomorrow, i will start a requirement gathering and initial discussion about our next project with the same client. This time, it will be much more complicated than the current project.

Evolution of Nintendo

It's been more than 28 years of continuous evolution from Nintendo since they started at 1980 with Game & Watch and their latest product is Nintendo Wii. Some are well accepted, like SNES and Wii, but some doesn't get the same popularity, like N64. If you are interested to see the whole Nintendo tree, check this image (i don't put it on this blog, as it's too big, 1200x1333 pixels)

The interesting point is that Mario is always among the game published for each gaming console. Probably the second game is Zelda. It's as popular as Mario.

Pay Anywhere Using New PayPal Plugin

Paypal has made shopping in the Internet easier by developing a plugin which enables we use PayPal in sites that doesn't support PayPal. How's that possible? After you install the plugin, you can visit any site and do some shopping there. When you are ready to check out and pay, there's only a credit card form and you can't use PayPal to hide your credit card number. This could lead to fraud by the merchant or if you are in public place, it's very dangerous to put your critical information on the web, because people can sniff the data (if you are using public Wireless connection).

So this plugin can help you by generating random number which represents your credit card number and PayPal can track it automatically, meaning that you don't need to put your real credit card number. Cool huh? You can also add some description and it will be available on your PayPal accounts.

The problem is that this plugins are only available in US and not in other countries (for now). Let's hope they will include Indonesia in the future.

You can watch the demo here

Approved Request

Finally, they approved my request after i sent them proof that i'm the real owner of the card. Will this be a good indication for further requests? Well, if they support PayPal, i will be glad, since it hides your credit card number, so most sites (and users) are happy with them.

Fraud Victim

Few days ago i bought an item from Internet and yesterday, i sent a confirmation email to the seller, but today i got this reply (see image below). Most of us are victim to fraud activities that was done by other people

I hope she believes my card

GMail Ads

Here's one of the most creative GMail ads, created by the Russian team. It's uploaded in Youtube. This is the english version and there are the Russian version as well.

Advertising Rates

Last year (or probably two years ago), i got an advertisement proposal from a person who was willing to pay US$ 50 just to put two text-based on my blog (i wonder why would they were willing to pay that much, but i accepted it anyway since i have nothing to lose).

Today, i got another one (from different people), but this time, they want a banner (they provide three kind of banner) or text-based advertisement and they asked me how am i going to charge for it. Honestly, i'm confused with it. I never charged anything for my blog's advertisements, as i'm doing it not for commercial purpose. Any ideas how am i going to charge for this advertisements?

Any comments is welcomed ....

Apple Reseller in Jogja

Good news for Apple mania, there will be an official Apple reseller in Jogja. It will be located in Ambarukmo Plaza, besides theater 21, in the third floor. I just came back from there and i was quite surprised when i saw the board. I don't know when will they launched, but it's a big news for Apple community in Jogja, as i saw that there are a lot of people who uses Mac.

Coffee Treat A Friend Week From Starbucks

I got a SMS message from BCA about Starbucks' offering. It's called Starbucks Coffee Treat A Friend Week. You pay 1 for 2 all Frappuccino drinks by using BCA credit card. It's a good news for coffee lovers, but unfortunately, i don't like drinking coffee so this offering is not applicable for me

I guess you have an alternative options to celebrate valentine on Starbucks if you like coffee and have BCA credit card

Hearing Season

The clausal to buy Yahoo! is considered an important thing so that it will need further discussion. There will be a hearing season from Microsoft about this giant steps. Even though Yahoo! and Microsoft is going to be both happy with this deal (Yahoo's index raised 44% after the news), it means that there will be a change for monopoly in the future between Microsoft/Yahoo against Google. PCWorld has made several articles about this and you may find more on the web, since it's a hot topic for this week.

Microsoft to Buy Yahoo?

It has been reported in some news that Microsoft had offered to acquire Yahoo in a proposed cash and stock deal valued at $44.6 billion. If this happens, then i guess it will overlap Sun's acquisition to MySQL and i guess it will be the biggest (yet) buy out this year.

Reference:
InformationWeek
InformationWeek
ComputerWorldUK
EWeek

Nokia Acquires Trolltech

Earlier this year, Sun has bought MySQL for quite a big price and now, Nokia is going to the same, but not to MySQL again, but to Trolltech. It's already being published on their website. It's a big step for Nokia and also for Trolltech, since both are one of the big companies in the world. By combining this two companies, it will improve both's strategy to fight against their competitors around the world. Let's see if this acquisition is worthed to look for.