Category: Info

Internet: Twitterfall for Dummies

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This simple guide on Twitterfall is written for Twitter users and the instructions are based on the Firefox Browser running on Windows. My recommendation is that you also download an add-on called IEtab as that will allow you to avoid launching more than one browser.

To start, launch Firefox, and go to the Twitterfall site at http://twitterfall.com. If you already have IETab installed, then open one more tab, and go to the same site, then right click to bring up the menu and select ‘View Page in IE Tab’ [1].

When you are done, you will now be running one session of twitterfall on Firefox, and another in Internet Explorer but embedded as a tab within Firefox itself. (If you do not have IEtab installed and have no intention to install it ever, then you can load another session by launching Internet Explorer [IE].)

Leave the IE tab alone for now and look the Twitterfall page loaded in Firefox. There will be 3 columns: the left column will contain several sections that allows you to customize what Tweets you can view, the center column is where all the Tweets will appear, and the right column I hardly used.

Now, on the left column look for the section that says ‘Login to Twitter’ [2], then click the portion that says ‘Authorize Twitterfall with your Twitter Account’. This will load a new page [3], and in here you enter your Twitter username and password, and click Allow. When completed, this should return you to the Twitterfall’s main page, and almost immediately you will get flooded by a whole load of irrelevant Tweets.

This will likely not be what you like to see, so look at the left column and under the ‘Trends’ section, move the mouse pointer over ‘All Terms’ and uncheck the box beside it [4]. The deluge of Tweets should now stop and at the top part of the center column, click ‘Clear Page’ [5] to remove all the Tweets currently displayed. If there are still no Tweets from the people you follow shown after awhile, then look at the left column again and look for section ‘Logged in’. Ensure that the boxes beside both ‘Timeline’ and ‘DM Interval’ are checked. For those who lacks patience (like me) set the interval to ‘1 min’. [6]

Once all these are done, you will now get auto updates of Tweets only from people you follow on Twitter. You can click on ‘Hide Panels’ [7] at the top of the center column to hide both the left and right columns if you no longer wish to see them. This will extend the center column to cover part of the now empty sections. [8]. (To reverse this, click ‘Show Panels’ [9].)

Now, move the mouse pointer over a Tweet, and you will notice that a set of six icons will appear at the right end of it [10]. Their respective function – Reply, Direct Message, Retweet This, Follow, Favorite Tweet, View In Twitter – is shown when the mouse pointer stops over any of them. I believe their functions are self explanatory to a person familiar with Twitter. As a reminder, replying to a Tweet would mean that the reply is public, while a Direct Message is sent in private to the recipient.

Now, regarding the Twitterfall session either embedded as a tab in Firefox or loaded in IE itself. This session is used for the purpose of following the current popular trends on Twitter, or for you to set up custom searches to see what other users have to say using certain keyword(s). For e.g. I have custom searches for Windows 7, Blackberry Storm and Psystar [11], and here’s a partial screen shot on some of the Tweets [12].

Note that Tweets from people you do not follow are in Brown, and people you follow are in Green. When someone sent you a direct message, they appear in Blue, and when the mouse pointer is over it, it is in Black.

Why set up 2 different sessions when one can have all of it in one session anyway? The reason is that Tweets from custom searches and trends comes in so fast and furious, they push Tweets from your friends or the interesting people you follow out of the screen too quickly. You end up missing some of the Tweets that might matter more to you. If not do not intend to use custom searches or to look at the trends [13] at all, then you might not even need to load this extra session at all. Alternatively, if you don’t need the auto updates that Twitterfall provide, you can still use just use Twitter itself to follow your friends and not use Twitterfall at all.

And oops, I almost forgot about this, if you need to start a new Tweet, just click on ‘New Tweet’ at the top [14]. A drop down window with a message box will appear for to key in your 140-character long message.

So, if anyone is wondering why am I ‘promoting’ Twitterfall when I am already using Plurk, let me just say Twitter’s block feature allows me to get rid of the stench from some of the cockroaches currently infesting Plurk. It is just too difficult to exterminate vermin and thus it might be better to move elsewhere. On top of which, I am to lazy to hit F5 to refresh my Twitter page.

Anyway, I hope this guide will help to resolve some of the issues and answer some of queries people have when using Twitterfall. Enjoy!

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Photos: Fort Canning Park

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I have always wanted to do this and so I went to Fort Canning Park with xinyun, her friend and chillycraps last Saturday [07.03.2009].

I personally hasn’t gone on Fort Canning for a long time – probably for 2 decades at least since the last time I went up there I was still in secondary school.

Anyway, we had coffee at the Dome in Park Mall for probably 1 ~ 1.5hrs as it was raining heavily. Even though we have umbrellas, we stayed put there for our own safety as there were lots of lightning and thunder throughout, not to mention that it might be slippery on the tracks.

When the rain subsided, we took a quick walk around and took as many pictures as we could, just in case the rain would return. Here are some of the photos we took. And thanks to the rain, it was a cooling and refreshing walk. I believe if time allowed we would be planning for another walk, this time at either the Botanic Gardens or the treetop walk around Mt Faber.

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Windows7 Beta Build 7000 – First Look

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Chronology of Installation (31/01/2009)
10:40am – Install begins (Build 7000)

10:42am – Select language
(Clicked Install / Accept License)

10:44am – Format away old partition
(This is pretty fast, I believe it merely removes the file allocation tables and didn’t do an actual format)

10:45am – Installation begins. There are 5 stages:
  Copying files
  Expanding files
  Install features
  Install updates
  Completing Installation

10:52am – First restart after completing first 4 stages

10:54am – Reboot completed & resumes at Stage 5
(Chews on my CNY bah kwa leftovers.)

10:58am – Second Restart

11:01am – Reboot completed: Computer naming and user creation stage

—>

Lenovo X61 (7674-DA3)

Specifications:
Core2Duo Centrino 1.8GHz
Intel 965 Express Chipset
2GB RAM
80GB Westerm Digital ATA HDD
LaCie d2 DVDPRO USB DVD-Burner

11:02am – Went looking for misplaced activation key

11:07am – Entered new activation key obtained from Microsoft

11:08am – Prompted to select Security Settings & selected ‘Recommended Settings’

11:09am – Select Time Zone and Set Time

11:10am – Installation complete


Time Elapsed: 30mins | Space used: 8.6GB

I have no extended experience with Windows Vista so I do not know what improvements or changes there are in Windows 7. I believe there are blogs on CNET with better entries than mine so you might want to search for those and read them for further details.

However, I must say I like it a lot when I looked at these figures. 30 minutes to install and roughly 1.5mins (87secs to be exact) to boot up a freshly installed copy of Windows 7 on the Lenovo X61 (bought almost 1 year ago) is quite impressive. Comparatively, I recalled a recent re-install of Windows XP (32bits) took me 39 minutes on my old HP dx5150MT Desktop (AMD Athlon64 3200+ @2GHz with 2GB RAM, bought in 2005) and it doesn’t quite match Windows 7 in terms of boot time. While that is not a fair comparison since the Athlon64 is a technology that’s 3 or more years old, I recalled that Windows XP is even older than the system. (After all, it says © 2003 Microsoft Corp on bootup in Windows XP).

Shutting down Windows 7 is a breeze too. On top of that, if you put it to sleep mode on the laptop, opening the cover will wake Windows 7. I believe this is what it should have been on all Windows versions, and only on this version they got it right.

Aesthetic wise, Windows 7 is nice. But gone are the old Pre-XP Start menu and themes. Even selecting the ‘Classic Theme’ does not restore it to pre-XP state. So it might take a bit of time to get use to navigating around Windows 7. The Control Panel is a little different as well, but it didn’t take me too much effort to try and find what I want. Controls are also more responsive and killing off offending programs that misbehave is far easier. In fact, on one particular occasion Windows 7 actually prompted me when a program has stopped responding, and ask me what to do with it.

That may have happened because that program is Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 Beta, but still, it actually just closed the offending tab (not the entire IE) and restarted it when I selected the option to leave it alone for awhile. So far I hadn’t seen a BSoD (Blue Screen of Death) so I am quite happy with it. In fact, I can’t even recall when was the last time I actually saw a BSoD even on Windows XP.

The Quick Launch Toolbar is also gone in Windows 7, though that doesn’t mean you can’t have your favorite programs on the taskbar anymore. You can now pin a particular program to the taskbar, and Windows Explorer, Windows Media Player and Internet Explorer are pinned by default. I recalled someone mentioning that this is stupid, but again, I liked it with the Aero UI since I can tell from the thumbnails the individual tabs opened in IE8 or which windows are opened for a particular application and go to them specifically.

So, the Aero UI from Vista is retained and I suspect its performance will be tied to the system’s GPU as usual. This is something I seriously dislike and I actually considered it the ‘Achilles Heel‘ of Windows 7. The reason being, users will probably find their experience varied between systems, and for users with older systems their experience may not be as pleasant as mine, and it might even actually be unpleasant. If that happens, sentiments from the loudmouths among these users may sink this otherwise decent OS.

Unfortunately, I do not have an older system with a less powerful CPU & GPU which is Windows 7 capable to verify whether the user experience will be different. On the other hand, I was told by some Mac users that installing a newer Mac OS on older Mac hardware does not usually give a varied performance. Granted, one may find a new version of Mac OS running a little slower on older hardware, but it’s not so significant that you will actually complain about it.

Thus, while UAC (User Account Control) may cease to be the chief irritant here, Microsoft may not be able to regain market share as long as it continues to build new OS where user experience is mostly affect by one single component on a system. Using the Lenovo X61 as the example, the Processor, RAM, even Gaming Graphics and Hard disk obtained a sub-score of 4.7 ~ 4.9, but a pathetic 3.5 for Graphics for the Aero UI. Just like my old gripe with Windows Vista, I have no idea why an aesthetic feature continued to be given priority over functionality. If this is done to appeal to Mac users, and the end result is losing more Windows users to the Mac, Microsoft should really give this ‘strategy’ a serious rethink.

Beyond this, I can’t say more about it. I have installed a number of stuff on it, from Google Chrome to VLC Player, and they all installed without problems. Nokia PC Suite (v7), however, refused to install in the beginning, and complained that it’s a version of Windows it doesn’t recognise. After toggling it to run in Windows Vista mode, it installed without much of a fuss. UAC comes up frequent enough, but not as frequent as it does on Vista. At least I no longer find UAC to be the pain in the ass compared to the time I was trying to solve a virus problem on a friend’s laptop running Vista.

I believe I’ll upgrade to a copy of Windows 7 when it is shipped. However, from what I gathered, even while there are not going to be much hassle for users buying a new PC, users who intend to upgrade will be confront with a myriad of versions just like Windows Vista where certain functions are missing from certain versions. Again I do not understand this business strategy. It is fine that network domain connection features are missing in the Home Edition, but having the Ultimate and Professional Editions with varying features is… rather annoying.

Sometimes I wondered whether Microsoft actually listened to our feedback at all! After all, the many confusing versions of Windows Vista have been one of the main gripes among Windows users for a long time.

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Coffeeshop Talk – Budget 2009

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I should have posted this a long time ago… since I attended this event hosted by the Young NTUC at the Wang Cafe in Basement 1 of NTUC Centre back on 05 Feb 2009. That’s like 10 days ago… and it’s a little stale to talk about the Resilience Package now.

The Guest of Honor: Mr S Iswaran, Senior Minister of State for Trade and Industry. (Also MP for West Coat GRC.)

This is the first time I had a close up with a minister. While I already had a good opinion of Mr Iswaran when he spoke up on the matter of NS dodger, the Penis Pianist Melvyn Tan, the way he handled questions at the event further reinforces it.

Mr Iswaran did not display disgust or displeasure even though I personally felt some questions were similar with earlier ones and the previous answers would have answered them to a great extent. He maintained a smile throughout the session, without a sneer on his face. This is unlike the elitist image some ministers or MPs like Mah Bow Mabok Tan, Lim HngGey Kiang, Ng Eng HenEng, Teo ‘You be grateful‘ Ho Pin or even Charles ‘You lesser mortals’ Chong have presented, even though that may not actually be who they are, or the message they tried to convey.

I noticed Mr Iswaran maintained eye contact with the audience who raised the questions, listened attentively and patiently repeat some of his earlier points without sounding like he was admonishing a child. This is very unlike Raymond Lemon Lim, and Iswaran gave me the impression he genuinely wanted to clear the doubts and engage his audience as an equal. At one point of time, he also tried to ease tensions by mentioning he’s checking whether anyone is taking off his shoes to throw at him.

I didn’t keep a record of the questions asked, so I will briefly touch on some of the topics which surfaced a few times.

GST
By the end of the session I believe most attendees understood why GST is not cut.

Going by the estimate that 1% of GST would be equal to roughly $750 million in revenue for the state, he pointed out that by cutting 2% of GST, most of that $1.5 billion will not be more than the sum of GST credits and other forms of assistance the government gahmen will be giving to Singaporeans. In fact, a larger amount of the GST credits will be actually going to those of lower income because they spent every cent they earn. Incidentally, this opinion that lower income families have low or zero savings and high spending, is also what Lin Yifu, the Chief Economist of the World Bank has once mentioned. In other words, there is no dispute that while the decision not to cut GST is probably unpopular and misunderstood by some, it is founded on sound, if not solid, economic principles.

Also on this topic, some also asked whether the gahmen has any intention to give cash vouchers like those of the Taiwanese gahmen or why the gahmen isn’t also doing that. It was pointed out that the objective of the cash vouchers in Taiwan was to encourage spending to drive domestic demand, and they can only be used for very selected purposes. On the other hand, ours is an export based economy and thus there is not much effect to issue such vouchers. On top of which, the GST credits is in itself a even more flexible than the cash vouchers as the recipient can use it any way they liked.

Jobs Credit
This is quite a novelty and I must say that some serious thinking has gone into this.

The primary reasons behind the decision to give jobs credits to the companies was because it was the fastest way to ‘pass’ money to the companies. Based on every employee that is paid CPF by a company, the company would receive the jobs credit. The main objective of course, is to encourage companies to keep their staff.

The main reason why the gahmen did not consider policies to discourage retrenchments was that such policies generally become detrimental in attracting foreign investments. This was a view that was also shared to me in a chit-chat I had with Mr. Gary F. Bell who is the best man at my friend’s wedding on Valentine’s Day. He mentioned that there is a country where the law requires that anyone retrenched be paid a full year in salary. While it becomes hell for any companies to consider retrenchments there, it also make it difficult for the country to invite investors.

Mr Iswaran and his NTUC hosts admitted that retrenchment is simply more convenient, and jobs credit does not stop companies from doing so. However, giving jobs credit would also encourage some companies to retain staff, since it will be a more sustainable solution than a retrenchment exercise. While no one could guarantee that jobs credit will prevent retrenchments, it is expected to reduce the number of employees being retrenched.

While on this topic, the matter of CPF cuts was also touched on and explained. The reason that CPF cuts is not considered this time round, was that back in 1997, it is a wage competitiveness issue and the quickest way for the gahmen to reduce wages was to cut employers contribution. On the other hand, the problem we faces today affects almost all regions and economies, cutting CPF would only goes further to hurt workers while contributing nothing much to the problems at hand.

Miscellaneous
There are also some other stuff that were brought up during the session. One of which is a survey conducted by the host and the question is: Would you pay 6% of your pay for a retrenchment insurance scheme?

The No vote outnumbered the Yes vote by a small margin of 6% (i.e. 53% – 47%). I find that understandable, since the general impression of this being a social welfare scheme instead of a personal insurance scheme. In fact, it was impressed upon the attendees that such a scheme would encourage workers to choose unemployment because of the easy money they can get out of this scheme.

While I had voted NO myself, I had a very different reason for doing so since no details of this scheme was really made clear. I would have supposed that if the attendees were told that this would be a personal insurance scheme, i.e. how much you can draw from the scheme will be equal to what you paid into it, then it might be acceptable. Anyway, we already have a mandatory personal saving scheme and it is called the CPF.

One of the audience also asked what avenue does he have if he is out of job, while he needs to juggle his bills, his housing loans, his kids educational fees, and also the fees for his retraining. Unfortunately, I could no longer remember what the full answer was to that, but I recalled certain points were made that there are definitely means for the person to seek assistance for all of the above, and some examples from the previous crisis were cited. Of course the main reason I did not record all of this was because I was getting quite… hungry.

Of course, among the questions there was also one that was quite amusing, if not funny. One person was asking why the NTUC did not consider setting up a bank to help SME.

It brought some laughter among the attendees and Josephine Teo gracefully thanked the person for his confidence in NTUC and pointed out that even if it was to be done, it would take years before a proper bank can be set up. She backed that up by referring to the time taken to set up Income Insurance, and also the Supermarkets. She then referred to the component in the Resilience Package which will stimulate lending to SMEs.

Here are some photos of the event.



Photos – Courtesy of Rachel

Current Affairs: Association of Bloggers Singapore (II)

It has been just more than a week and it appears that the Association of Bloggers Singapore is finished. As of the time this post is written, 7 out of 10 of its committee pro tem has resigned or stepped down.

What has really gone wrong? No one will really know what went on behind the scene in the tumultuous week after its hasty announcement, and one can only guess the reasons behind the departure of the majority of the committee.

This post is not an attempt to pin any blame or anyone but rather to report what is seen and known to me. The most apparent would be some of the comments made by the Association’s President, eastcoastlife to the press, the comments on Facebook as reported by other bloggers, and also on one of her blogs – To PM Lee Hsien Loong.

What started the uproar, was the following statement:

[Singaporean bloggers were] easily manipulated and even banned for standing up against the foreign tyrant from self-proclaimed ‘community meta weblog for Singapore bloggers’

It is understandable that this statement created an uproar, as the matter spoken above refers to a series of user bans beginning in July 2007 on ping.sg. To many, this is ‘ancient history’ and few would like to see skeletons dancing out of the closets. On top of which, several pioneers in creating online communities in Singapore are Malaysians. To name a few: Cowboy Caleb (Cowboy Bar), James Seng (tomorrow.sg) and Uzyn Chua (ping.sg). In simpler terms, it was a blanket attack that can only be viewed as: xenophobia.

It would have been more diplomatic had eastcoastlife simply pointed out that the Association is the first true effort by Singaporeans bloggers to create an online community for bloggers – both local and foreign – blogging out of Singapore. While it would have invited perhaps the same ridicule for being redundant, at least it would have drawn far fewer criticism, perhaps even with less viciousness in those criticisms as well. It might even have drawn some local bloggers to look upon it in a more positive light.

At this point in time, the position may still have been salvageable, since a very small amount of information about the association is released. With the exception of a few bloggers, it appears to me that the rest simply adopted a wait and see attitude. It is not really clear to me why eastcoastlife then went on rampage in a misguided offensive against some bloggers – viewed by some as a unnecessary resumption and extention of the dispute with ping.sg’s founder approximately 18 months ago.

What drove eastcoastlife over the edge? Was it this one particular comment by a Malaysian blogger, daphnemaia on a social media platform called Plurk that triggered it all?

Whether that comment was referring to the committee, or those in support of the Association, or even bootlickers in her own workplace is open to speculation. All who had that visible in their timeline had politely kept away from responding, since no one is any the wiser what the matter is about. (Note: This is an example of ambiguous and misleading comments which I have always made a fuss of. It generally failed to inform a reader on either of the following: perpetrators, or the act perpetrated. More often than not the reader is blamed for being presumptuous in the end, and the person who caused the misunderstanding is absolved from all guilt and responsibilities. This is yet another situation prevalent in local blogosphere, and it is sad when perpetrated by some self proclaimed social media ‘activists’.)

Whatever the comment was referring to, it obviously was one of the justifications for eastcoastlife’s reaction. Another reason for eastcoastlife’s response maybe Lucian Teo’s response to her statement to the press, and this opened a new can of worms about civil servants.

While indeed the behavior of some civil servants are less than commendable [see below], and in private among some of my friends we do share a less than favorable opinion – such as the lack of need for any of them to stand for elections and be accountable directly to the people makes them almost like the ‘true emperors of Singapore’, we will rap one another for such views and caution ourselves from making such comments on the public domain.

The reason is simple, even had these comments been justified, there are also other civil servants who are truly doing their jobs to serve the people. For e.g. my own experiences with the officers in ICA, no matter how much criticisms I have read about the ICA, have generally been positive, even when it was clearly my fault for losing my IC and passport on those occasions.

It is sad that the Association is almost like our National Day fireworks display, gone as soon as it sprouted. Perhaps this will be the last we will hear about the association, and it is sad it went down in flames for all the wrong reasons.

Addendum 12.2.09: It is to my surprise, cowboy caleb, an overrated ‘top blogger’ has-been who still rides on his past glories to think of this piece as simple-minded and boring. Certainly, it couldn’t be anymore exciting than his site which continually feeds scandalous and controversial nonsense to his audience.

It is of no dishonour for failing to measure up to his rather perverted standards. After all, I am glad I did not spin a story about things I know only in pieces because some of these things are personal perspectives of friends (former committee members as well) revealed to me in confidence. Writing a spicy little story that may earn me fleeting glory or irrelevant praises from those I considered despicable, but I have no regrets in disappointing the cowboy whom I have considered a scumbag. That sure beats adding on to the misunderstanding among my friends and have them angry with me.

Thankfully, there’s still reputable sites like Singapore Daily, which is providing quality links. At times, I truly wonder if the untermenschen feeding all that crap to the Internet is not part of the government’s gahmen’s effort to drown out the voice of the people.

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