Darren Sim's Blog

Free technical support on Windows Vista SP1

Technical Bits — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 08:19:00 GMT

If you're currently running Windows Vista SP1 and facing some problems with the installation, you're in LUCK! Microsoft has opened up the their technical support for free (which usually might have cost quite some money per incident), unlimited installation and compatibility support is now available for customers using Windows Vista SP1, until March 18, 2009. To get help, visit http://support.microsoft.com/common/international.aspx?rdpath=1&prid=11274&gprid=500921 to get your local help support line....(read more)

Aggr from ASP.NET Blog: Creating an Outlook Message File with C#

Technical Bits — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 00:42:00 GMT

Following's a post I made on my ASP.NET Weblog ( http://weblogs.asp.net/darrensim/default.aspx ) I've been working with a government agency lately, and came to notice that the software system they're using dates back to the stone ages. Many a time, the head of department is required to send an email to other head of departments within the same organization, each with a similar content, yet with attachment of nominal roll of folks under each of the departments (PS: HR Stuff). On every occasion that I observe, this poor balding guy has to create a template in outlook and copy it 20 times, adding the list of recipients to the individual MSG file and attaching the relevant set of excel/word document file for each of these departments. Of course, as a software engineer, the first thing on the mind is definitely, "AUTOMATION"! Microsoft Office Outlook does have an interop dll which specifically allows for this to be done, easily! Another altanative would definitely be making use of Visual Studio...(read more)

Speed Browser

Technical Bits — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 13:23:00 GMT

The war of the browsers had been persisting for many years. First with the Netscape Era, and now the Internet Explorer Era. Of course, not forgetting potential contenders such as Opera, Firefox and Safari! I've been a big fan of Microsoft IE for quite some time now, and have noticed that as the number of addons and etc come into place, the application just begins to crawl. Which sometimes can be a really bad thing! Apple's Safari Browser has been really good with the SPEED issue, with really fast rendering. Although still in its early stages (in my personal perception), it can certainly go far if it continues to provide users with such lightning speed. But of course, there's also a fair amount of criticism with regards to this new kid on the block, particularly, with regards to security, such as the PWN 2 OWN Browser Exploit. However, if you are just using the browser for basic research and surfing which does not include credentials or private data, it could be a good alternative when speed...(read more)

Microsoft Silverlight Training

Technical Bits — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 20:48:00 GMT

It's been sometime since I last blogged about Silverlight light and the landscape has changed quite a fair bit as compared to then (while I was still with MS Singapore). Following's a timeline on how had silverlight has progressed. Version Name Version Number Release Date 1.0 CTP 1.0.? December 2006 1.0 RTW 1.0.20816 2007 - 09-05 2.0 Pre-Release (As 1.1 Alpha Refresh ) 1.1.20926.0 2007 - 09-05 1.0 service release 1.0.21115.0 2007 - 11-20 1.0 service release 1.0.30109.0 2008 - 01-15 2 Beta 1 2.0.30226.2 2008 - 03-05 1.0 service release 1.0.30401.0 2008 - 04-08 2 Beta 2 2.0.30523.6 2008-06-06 2 RTM TBA Late summer, 2008 Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silverlight As we are currently moving nearer to the RTM version of Silverlight 2 this coming summer, Mike Taulty and Mike Ormond from Microsoft UK had came out with this set of really cool video screencasts of using Silverlight 2.0 at http://www.miketaulty.com/SLVideos.html...(read more)

Windows XP SP3 Overview

Technical Bits — Sun, 25 May 2008 20:56:00 GMT

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 Functionality Description MMC 3.0 MMC 3.0 is a framework that unifies and simplifies day-to-day system management tasks in Windows by providing common navigation, menus, toolbars, and workflow across diverse tools. Microsoft Knowledge Base article 907265 describes this functionality in detail. MSXML6 MSXML6 provides better reliability, security, and conformance with the XML 1.0 and XML Schema 1.0 W3C Recommendations. It also provides compatibility with System.XML 2.0. Microsoft Windows Installer 3.1 v2 (3.1.4000.2435) Windows Installer 3.1 is a minor update to Windows Installer 3.0, which Microsoft released in September 2004. Windows Installer 3.1 contains new and...(read more)

Windows Live Free 5gb Storage Space

Technical Bits — Sat, 24 May 2008 05:16:00 GMT

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...(read more)

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

Technical Bits — Thu, 22 May 2008 12:23:00 GMT

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...(read more)

CBS to buy CNET Networks

Technical Bits — Wed, 21 May 2008 20:03:00 GMT

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, CSI: TechRepublic Everybody Loves Redhat The Late Late Late Show with Jason Hiner The New Adventures Of Old CPUs How I Met Your Motherboard 60 Megabytes The Young And The Wireless Two And A Half Network Administrators Survivor: Vista Vs. OS X Without A Tracert Read more on the 10 new blogs at http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/10things/?p=354&tag=nl.e112...(read more)

How much are you worth?

Technical Bits — Sun, 18 May 2008 23:41:00 GMT

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!...(read more)

Security Compliance Management toolkit

Technical Bits — Sun, 18 May 2008 21:09:00 GMT

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 securit y 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 ....(read more)

IT Workers Among the Top of Wages Chart in Singapore

Technical Bits — Sun, 18 May 2008 20:31:00 GMT

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 Industry 2005 2006 2007 SSIC 2005 TOTAL 3 444 3 554 3 773 C15-36 MANUFACTURING 3 495 3 618 3 764 F45 CONSTRUCTION 2 513 2 517 2 646 G-V SERVICES 3 498 3 615 3 862 G50-51 Wholesale & Retail Trade 3 017 3 101 3 262 H52-56 Transport & Storage 3 507 3 525 3 797 J58 Hotels & Restaurants 1 360 1 381 1 442 K60-63 Information & Communications 4 553 4 745 5 018 L65-66 Financial Services 5 949 6 291 6 768 M-O Business Services 3 207 3 314 3 518 M70-71 Real Estate & Leasing Services 2 732 3 053 3 355 N73-76 Professional Services 4 231 4 383 4 633 O78 Administrative & Support Services 2 196 2 238 2 368 P80-V99 Community, Social & Personal Services 3 704 3 831 4 074...(read more)

HP's aquisition EDS

Technical Bits — Wed, 14 May 2008 21:15:00 GMT

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...(read more)

Made-in-China Jumbo Jet

Technical Bits — Sun, 11 May 2008 21:21:00 GMT

(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? As quoted by Xinhua news agency, Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (CACC), will be responsible for researching, developing, manufacturing and marketing a made-in-China large passenger aircraft, where the chinese goverment with a major stake in the company which has a registered capital of USD 2.7 billion as of May 08. 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...(read more)

BIOR 2008: Presentations made easy and guidelines to using Keynotes

Technical Bits — Sat, 10 May 2008 02:40:00 GMT

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....(read more)

Why Men and Women Leave IT Jobs

Technical Bits — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 17:19:00 GMT

Source: http://www.cioinsight.com/slideshow_viewer/0,1205,l=&s=26301&a=219756&po=13,00.asp...(read more)