Award Winning Professional Photographer & Technoprenuer » technology

Social Doodle 1

Willy Foo — Tue, 18 May 2010 13:47:10 +0000

Just one of those social experiments I do from time to time..
Go ahead to add on your creative strokes via Google Docs

You can post this on your own blog too by embedding this code

How fast are USB 3.0 Hard Disks?

Willy Foo — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 07:11:21 +0000

I was browsing South Asia Computer at Funan Centre one day and saw an ExpressCard for USB 3.0 and wondered if USB 3.0 devices were available already.
It turned out that Buffalo had a USB 3.0 DriveStation that was paired with the expresscard adapter since USB 3.0 notebooks aren’t available yet.

Bought them back and did a transfer..

showed approx 30MB/s

A 2nd transfer showed a little better results 37.8 MB/s

So being really curious what the speed jump was, I removed the ExpressCard slot and plugged the hard disk directly into the normal USB2.0 slot

It showed 20.7 MB/s .. meaning the USB3.0 almost doubles the transfer not too impressive, for the extra trouble of putting in the ExpressCard which needed some extra power via a USB power cable.

Makes sense when the computer/notebook already has USB3.0 slot, in which case you get double the speed without additional hassle.

Note: The tests are not entirely accurate as the files transferred on the last try were 4 large files, while the first 2 were many smaller files. But this should give an indication of the rough speed. Will have to do more precise measurements with benchmarking software later.

Google Earth view now available within Google Maps

Willy Foo — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 22:02:46 +0000

Check this out.. now I don’t need to install the standalone Google Earth. It’s available as a plug in instead.

New York in 3D

Take a look at the Niagara Falls.. (you may have to install the plug-in first to view)

View Larger Map

How about Singapore?

Very little buildings in Singapore has the 3D version.. but with this plug-in being available to the very popular Google maps, I hope more will come soon.

View Larger Map

Creating the Facebook ‘Like’ button on your website/blog

Willy Foo — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 16:08:40 +0000

It’s much simpler than I expected! I originally wanted to leave it till i’m back home but did it in less than 5 mins..

All you need to do is to fill in the boxes to generate the code at
http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like

My code looks like

&width=280&action=like&colorscheme=light” scrolling=”no” frameborder=”0″ allowTransparency=”true” style=”border:none;
overflow:hidden; width:280px; height:px”>

If you’re using Wordpress, just go to Widgets and create a text widget and paste it in! Simple as that!

Update (27th Apr) : If you want to add the ‘Like’ or ‘Recommend’ button to individual blog posts, just add a plug-in.
There are a few available, I’m using http://blog.gunnjerkens.com/2010/04/facebook-like-plugin-for-wordpress/

Collaborative Project Management via Google Docs

willyfoo — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 02:44:36 +0000

Here’s an example of how the new tools provided can help make our lives easier.. a few of us are planning for the Singapore Photographers 1st Anniversary.

At 3.37pm, I sent a message to the core team members via facebook if anyone had time to do up a proposal.
At 4.25pm, another message sent to say I’ve created a google doc so we can work on it together
At 4.43pm, we have 4 persons working on the same doc simultaneously adding in info, asking questions etc.
By 6.30pm, we have brainstormed on most aspects already.

Within just 2 hours with no prior planning, we were able to achieve what would have taken days to organise a brainstorm session. We’ll be working on the same document in the next few days…

You’re welcome to see the work in progress at
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dh3kwmb_49cbxrp63c

Mobile Blogging: WordPress for iPhone vs WPhone

willyfoo — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 04:03:40 +0000

Wordpress for iPhone (hereafter called the ‘Native App’ )allows creating and managing blog posts and pages offline and sending the update to the server when ready. You may also choose to save as a local draft or save the draft on the server.

This first part is composed on this native app.

* Insert with WPhone *
Seems like I can’t scroll down so I have to insert this edit onto the top of the post.

WPhone is a wordpress plugin that formats the admin pages for the iPhone. (Gosh it’s too frustrating not being able to scroll around that I’ve to switch back to the native app now)

Navigating around is slower than the native application as it has to load each page from the server.

——
* Editing via native app*
All your blog posts are listed out in the familar iPhone style lists and editing it is simple. I do wish I could upload images in the iPhone photo library like the Facebook for iPhone app. (Update: Just saw the option to upload picture option).

——
* Editing via Browser *
In summary, the WPhone has more options available than the native app. But the native app is probably a much better choice if you want to write and edit a blog.