Zainal Arifin

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2

IE 8 Beta 2 from Microsoft is available today and can be downloaded from here . It has some new cool features which you may want to give them a try, and feel free to provide feedback .

We can't be always right

Nice excerpt from How to Win Friends & Influence People book: When Theodore Roosevelt was in the White House, he confessed that if he could be right 75% of the time, he'd reach the highest measure of his expectation. If that was the highest rating

Image reflection in XAML

It's relatively easy writing code in XAML to create a UI to display a reflective image. I'll demonstrate it in this simple Silverlight 2.0 app, the same code also can be applied to WPF app. You need to have Visual Studio 2008 and Silverlight SDK installed

Tips for improving software responsiveness

There are a few software responsiveness techniques I pick up from GUI Bloopers 2.0 book , and I think it may be useful for other UI designers/programmers as well as for myself. The basic principle is responsiveness is different from performance . Performance

Our listening level

As I read from this book , apparently there are five listening levels .We usually listen at one of these levels (from worst to best): We ignore the person We pretend to listen We selectively listen We attentively listen We do emphatic listening The last

Invisibility cloak

I read this recent article about the invisibility cloak , and wow! we're almost there actually. I wonder what will happen or its implication when it has become a mass product in the future. I guess at that time we may see another invention is born to

Using [] and ESCAPE clause in SQL Server LIKE query

I innocently wrote this SQL SELECT statement to query all rows that have column value started with "[summary]": select * from MyTable where Description like '[summary]%' Then I was wondering why I could get a lot of rows returned and none of them started

Virtualization For Dummies Free EBook

A short version of the ebook (sponsored by AMD and SUN Microsystem ) can be downloaded free from here

Good book on UI design

I recently read a very good book on user interface (UI) design. GUI Bloopers 2.0 shows us a lot of common UI mistakes on many software applications including software we are using daily, such as: Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office. Even I haven't

08/08/08 08:08:08 AM PST

The timestamp above doesn't mean anything to me, except that's the time I am posting this blog. Still, the numbers look pretty good and interesting, don't you think? Of course I prepared this posting already few minutes earlier, and just click the Publish

Let's start saving by using this free energy-monitoring software

Today I ran into an article about Microsoft's join effort with a Seattle-based start-up company, Verdiem campaigning the energy-saving opportunity in PCs by distributing a free software tool, named Edison to help customers saving the energy. Very good

Using %0 inside the batch file to get the file info

Ok, writing a command/batch file to automate tasks in Windows may be outdated already, but sometimes it is quicker and easier to write and call the batch file to achieve what we want. Pretty often I want to display the the batch filename which being called

Try Office Live

Few years back I signed up for free account on Office Live from Microsoft, which then it allowed me to create pick my own internet domain name, and I believe Microsoft pays (on behalf of me) for registering and retaining the domain name annually. I was

Intelligent Mail Barcodes

I just learned about this and thought it's worth to share. Currently, the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) is using the Postnet Code and PLANET Code to track mailpieces. The Postnet Code is a special barcode that encodes ZIP Code info, which it improves the

Biggest live event on the internet delivered with Silverlight

I'd like to see more people are using our cool Silverlight technology for delivering rich internet application. NBC indeed is going to stream thousands of hours of live Olympic 2008 coverage over the internet, and relies on Silverlight . This is the recent