Darren Sim's Blog

Windows XP SP3 Overview

I guess by now many would have head about the Microsoft Windows XP SP3 pushout. Many might ask, so what is this about? Is this another major fix that is going to break some other applications?

The answer is NO!

Before we begin describing why not, let's go ahead to look at what are the updates.

Previously Released Functionality

New and Enhanced Functionality

Click here to download complete overview

Basically the new features isn't particularly noteworthy, and the rest has been available already through Windows Update.

SP3 functions primarily as a collection of past fixes with a few security additions. SP3 is most certainly essential for anyone who hasn't applied SP2, and for those who haven't kept up with the Windows Update downloads, but if you've been on top of things, SP3 won't do much for you.

The most obvious new additions are the latest versions of Microsoft's browser and media player—Media Player 11 and Internet Explorer 7.0—both of which have been downloadable for quite some time. You'll also notice (if you look hard enough) new and clearer descriptions of some settings in the Control Panel Security Options applet, changes designed to help users avoid configuring system security incorrectly. The only other significant user-interface modification lies with the taskbar, which no longer has the Address Bar—a change Microsoft describes as a regulatory request.

Click here to read more from PC Mag

Windows Live Free 5gb Storage Space

Many would have been familiar with Microsoft Live offerings such as Hotmail, Messenger and etc. Recently, Microsoft have released another much anticipated service, Windows Live SkyDrive!

So what exactly is skydrive? Skydrive offers consumers 5 GB of free online storage, which equates to approximately 30,000 Microsoft Office documents of average size or 30,000 digital photos at a resolution of 1200x1200. However, there is a 50MB limit on each file uploaded.

Initially, SkyDrive was available with a 1 GB storage limit in the United States, United Kingdom and India only. Recently in the release of its final service offering, Microsoft opened up SkyDrive to 35 countries, including Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Finland, France, Guatemala, Honduras, Italy, Japan, Korea Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan and Turkey.

The good news to those in south east asia is "MICROSOFT SKYDRIVE IS NOT AVAILABLE IN SE-ASIA", starting last week, with a 5GB offering! What's more? There's also a SDK accompanied with it.

To register for your free account, simply go to http://skydrive.live.com and click on "Get Started", which would bring you to the following login screen.

After successfully using your Windows Live ID to sign in, you would see the following page. Basically, what SkyDrive allows you to do is to upload and share documents between public, friends and yourself.

You can upload documents that

• only you can see (Personal Folders)
• only friends can see (Shared Folders), however your friends would have to have a Windows Live ID
• everyone can see (Public Folders)

If you're a developer, you might be interested in the SkyDrive Viewer in C# at http://www.codeplex.com/SkyDriveViewer.

Free Magazine Article on Custom Controls, Silverlight and ASP.NET 2.0 Reporting

ASP.NET PRO has just released it's PDF version of it's printed magazine for free for all to download.

March 2008	April 2008	May 2008

Some really cool articles on the following topics for your reads:

• Ajax Enabled Services
• WCF Services
• ExpertPDF HTML to PDF
• Silverlight
• On-demand XAML
• Extention Methods
• GMP CMS 2.0
• Server Viewstate
• Visual Studio 2008 Options
• RadControls for ASP.NET

CBS to buy CNET Networks

CNET Networks (owner of CNET, ZDNet, GameSpot, TV.com, MP3.com, CNET News.com, UrbanBaby, CHOW, Search.com, BNET, MySimon, and TechRepublic)  will be acquired by CBS for at a dealed value of $1.8 b making CBS one of the 10 most popular Internet companies in the United States, with a combined 54 million unique users per month.

CBS Broadcasting Inc. (CBS) is one of the largest radio and television networks in the United States.

The good news is, for those who have been following blogs at TechRepublic (like myself, relying on it as a great resources to keep updated on technology news), these blogs will remain, primarily as follows,

1. CSI: TechRepublic
2. Everybody Loves Redhat
3. The Late Late Late Show with Jason Hiner
4. The New Adventures Of Old CPUs
5. How I Met Your Motherboard
6. 60 Megabytes
7. The Young And The Wireless
8. Two And A Half Network Administrators
9. Survivor: Vista Vs. OS X
10. Without A Tracert

Read more on the 10 new blogs at http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/10things/?p=354&tag=nl.e112

How much are you worth?

Was just chancing across this really interesting tool/survey by ZDNetAsia, which helps IT Professionals identify their real worth with data from industry averages.

Are you underpaid/well paid?

Click here to find out!

Security Compliance Management toolkit

The Security Compliance Management toolkit provides customers with best practices from Microsoft about how to plan, set, get and remediate a security baseline, along with tools that you can use to verify the implementation of recommended security baselines from Microsoft for Windows Vista, Windows XP SP2, and Windows Server 2003 SP2.  The toolkit helps customers quickly and easily provide this compliance information to auditors to demonstrate how their organization is meeting important compliance regulations.

The toolkit helps customers manage the compliance process by enabling:

• Automated security checks in their environment.
• Verification of security baseline in their environment, and identification of baseline settings changes or “drift” from prescribed values.
• Implement regulatory compliance through security checks.

The current status of this toolkit is Beta, and could be downloaded here.

IT Workers Among the Top of Wages Chart in Singapore

I was just randomly reading some statistics on the SingGov-MOM site and stumbled upon this interesting finding...

Information & Communications employees are earning a mean salary of SG$5018 in 2007!

ANNUAL AVERAGE (MEAN) MONTHLY NOMINAL EARNINGS PER EMPLOYEE BY INDUSTRY

HP's aquisition EDS

I guess this news on the possible aquisition of EDS by HP might have came as a surprise to some while expected to some.

Well, as some would have known that the Singapore government had award EDS (and it's consortiums) a billion dollar project to streamline the technology infrastructure in most government organizations, over other vendors like HP and the likes. Is this move of aquisition in anyway impacted by that?

Eric Lundquist from ZD Enterprise has the following analysis of 5 reasons why HP customers should rejoyce or fret.

Rejoyce

1. Customers want one stop responsibility for their purchases. HP with EDS will have a longer stack going all the way from printers, through PCs, through data centers and now all the way to IT services.

2. Customers want to see how a vendor treats its customers. EDS has a lot of big customers, including General Motors, and has learned a lot about measuring and delivering on customer contracts.

3. Customers want a local contact. While HP and EDS use a substantial amount of outsourced services, but they are both still headquartered in the U.S.

4. Customers want to choose from a mix of channel, service providers, hosted services, open software and big one stop direct contracts. HP is the channel's best friend these days and is at the forefront measuring hosted services and now with EDS can be a big one stop shop.

5. Customers want to do business with a company that has a focus on their needs. Buying EDS translates into HP displaying its commitment to the business to business market with serious dollars. This is not a Microsoft/Yahoo foray into consumer markets.

Fret

1. Big acquisitions are awfully tough to get right. Remember HP's nearly disastrous purchase of Compaq? Let's hope they have learned from past mistakes.

2. Big, wide ranging companies have trouble being all things to all people. Carly Fiorina (now replaced by Mark Hurd) got into corporate trouble by trying to build a company spanning consumer to enterprise. Trying to run a company that ranges from printer ink to big corporate service contracts can tax anyone's resources.

3. IBM has services in its genes. IBM has been racing to becoming primarily a services organization for at least ten years. HP has a lot to learn about jugging business application development, channel services and hardware development.

4. Hardware companies and technology service organizations have an inherent conflict. Can Hurd keep EDS from simply becoming an organization that always recommends HP hardware as the solution to every problem?

5. HP is technology and IBM is business. The biggest issue for customers is to engage with a vendor that understands their business and then makes tech recommendations from that understanding. HP has not shown that capability while IBM is all business all the time.

 Read more at http://blogs.eweek.com/lundquist/content/five_customer_reasons_for_and_five_customer_reasons_against_the_hp_purchase_of_eds.html?kc=EWKNLNAV051408STR1

Made-in-China Jumbo Jet

(Source: Channel News Asia)

China has just announced it's own private jumbo-jet company yesterday, set to potentially rival global commercial jet leaders such as Boeing and Airbus. With recent advancement in chinese Aviation industry (space/commercial air/military air), would it have enough "fuel" for this massive embarkment?

However, with it's limited experience experience in the larger jet arena, would they resort to hiring chinese expats who are currently working in competitors such as Boeing, Airbus & the likes?

When the chinese company produces it's first plane, would it emerge as a mainstream aircraft for budget airlines with already great pricing pressures from surged fuel prices?

Original article at http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-05/11/content_8147854.htm

BIOR 2008: Presentations made easy and guidelines to using Keynotes

Download presentations slides here... 

Hello to all! Yes, it's been a really long time since I last blogged about any content. Yes! A WHOPPING 5 months! Apologies to all for this long period of silence. Had been really distracted with other things in life.

Now I officially declare that I'm back to commited active blogging after the long silence (good/bad news?)

The above presentation is one that I'd recently done at the Bali Ophthalmology Retreat 2008, on presentations techniques as well as presentation tools such as the latest Microsoft Powerpoint 2007 and comparisons with it Apple counterpart, Keynotes.