Trying out IE8...

Today, I installed Microsoft's version 8.0 of their infamous web browser, Internet Explorer. Although I really don't have plans to make it my default or even as my backup browser, I installed it anyway out of curiousity. I dowloaded the installer from Yahoo's because Microsoft's download site was not working when I tried dl'ing it there. After restarting my notebook, I gave it a test run right away. I "used" it for an hour to browse my favorite sites. It seems to work pretty well, however, I've still got issues with it:
- its still seem "heavy" compared to Firefox and Chrome.
- there's still a few seconds delay when opening a new blank browser tab. Just like in version 7.0.
- there's no way of removing the Favorites button/bar. I dont have a use for it. It's quite annoying and takes up precious space.
I know for most you, this issues are very tolerable but I'm really hoping for the MS folks to fix them up because other than these said issues, I think MS has done a very good job in improving Internet Explorer. Even the problematic rendering of pages that might have rendered properly in other browsers like Firefox and Chrome has already been fixed (fingers crossed...). Anyways, its still Firefox and Chrome FTW!!!

Cebu MS Web Ramp Up event last Friday...

The 200 bucks I paid for this Microsoft event is/are/was/were definitely worth it.   The food was great and the presentations were quite interesting.   Honestly I was expecting the event to be some kind of how-to's to help us developers but it turns out to be a technology demontrator as well.   In the morning,  there was a presentation about Windows Azure and a demonstration of features we're supposed to expect from MS Visual Studio 2010 and Windows 7, the latest OS from MS.  According to the gal (sorry, forgot her name) who did the presentation and demo about Windows 7, mas paspas na daw ni compared sa Vista.  She even claimed to have run the said OS on a PC unit with just a 512MB RAM, hopefully she was'nt talking B.S. on this because being a resource hog was one of the reasons why a lot hate Vista.  If it does run well on 512, then this is definitely a very very good news for us Windows users.  Kung samokan ka sa UAC sa Vista, naa napoy feature ning Windows 7 para imong ma change ang iyang settings, so pwede na nimo ma turn off or ma change kung nus-a nimo ganahan mo pop-up ang UAC.  Kudos to Microsoft for hearing the cries of the Vista users whose got annoyed by their UAC technology... 

After, we had our 45 min. lunch.  It was buffet type, and lami kaayo ang mga pagkaon.  Pagkahuman kaon, the group sessions started.  There were three types of sessions you could join -Architect, Web Dev, and Devloper sessions.  I joined the Developer sessions.  The first presentation was again about Windows Azure. The second two were about the opensource NPanday and NFixture.  They were presented by the Exist Team (A very well known dev. company here in Cebu na dagko kuno mo hatag ug sweldo...).  They were also the one who developed it.  Both NPanday and NFixture seems to be similar to Java's Ant , jUnit and DBUnit.  If you're not familiar with NPanday, NFixture, Ant, and jUnit/DBunit then I really suggest you try to know about them.  They are a really good tools to have during develoment and testing.  Again, kudos to the Exist Team for releasing an opensource filipino made software to the world!!!

After the group sessions, we went back to the main conference room for another set of presentations and for the raffles.  The only presentation worth mentioning was a cellphone tracking program demoe'd by a chinese geek named Sowy for their LBS (Location Based Services) API.   It was web based.  You enter a certain cellphone no. (I think it works only on Globe numbers) and then it will give you the coordinates of the target location which is 100meters accurate.  If you're a fan of the tv series called 24, then you're familiar with the CTU agent named Chloe o Brien.  A cheek geek.  And one of the characters that the leading hero can trust on.   She has a tool in her arse-senal which can also track cellphones.  The program the geek Sowy presented works similar to it.  Very very interesting indeed!

Sadly, I did'nt win any prizes during the raffles and went home after it because I was very very sleepy already...

If you've missed out on the DVDs given at the end or if you've missed out on the event itself, they you might as well download the file below.  It contains the PDF files, which is the contents of the said DVD...

http://www.sendspace.com/file/yby4mq

Uploaded this on March 15, 2009 - 7:45 AM

Yahoo Imonoid search... working awready...

Heyey! At last! Imonoid.com is now on the search results on Yahoo when you be searching for Imonoid or Imon... Very exciting! Will definitely be updating my site's looks because of this. My goal to study CodeIgniter and at the same time develop a web-based expenses tracker software is going according to plan. I'm expecting to finish the program within 2 months... if my work load in the office remain lite...

Microsoft Web Ramp Up...

I've bought a ticket (on sale now, costs 200 bucks instead of the 500) for this upcoming Microsoft event which will be held on March 13, 09 at the City Sports Club... I'm quite exciting for the giveaways err... I mean the "knowledge" I would receive from them MS gurus... Hopefully the 200 bucks I'm spending would be worth it...

Site submitted to Google and Yahoo, is #1 result in Google...

I submitted my site address a few days ago to both Google and Yahoo so it can be indexed on their search engines. Searching for imonoid or imon in Google ranks my site #1 on the search results however Yahoo can't seem to find my website... huhuhu...

Going according to plan...

At last! My site's already up and running... but it's not worthy of being bookmarked yet... as of now... Hopefully I'd be able to improve it later on. At the mean time, I'm planning to start work on my much anticipated project -an online expenses tracker. I have already got a name for it -Extrac, short of Expenses Tracker... eewww... very corny name... hehehehehehe. I'd also be using CodeIgniter framework for these and I'm planning on either ExtJs or YUI for the javascript framework... Hopefully I'd be able to start working on it ASAP... while I still don't have any tasks yet at work...