Michael Anti (aka Jing Zhao): Behind the Great Firewall of China

Not censoring, in China, has become a political tool.

Google Handwrite - Another Method to Search

Handwriting on mobile devices and then get it to search on Google is now possible. Google will read and convert your handwritten text into words in the search box. This is useful when you are on the move.

Handwrite may work differently on mobile devices, however, it should work best on Chrome on Android devices.

Here's how to try it out:

Step 1: Enable the feature

1. Turn the feature on or off in your search settings. Touch Settings at the bottom of the Google homepage or a search results page, or visit google.com/preferences.
2. Go to the Handwrite section, select Enable to turn on the feature, and then touch Save.

Note: You might need to refresh the homepage to see the feature.

Step 2: Use it to search

1. Tap the Handwrite icon in the lower right corner of the screen on your mobile device.
2. Use your finger to start writing your search terms anywhere on the screen.
3. While you write, your handwritten text converts into typeface in the search box. If you need to delete a letter, tap the backspace icon. Press and hold the backspace icon to delete more than one letter at a time. Click X in the search box to start over again.
4. You'll see a list of predicted queries below the search box as you write. Tap one of them to search for that prediction, or click the arrow to the right to build your query and keep on writing.
5. Tap the search icon to search.

Google Fiber - Fast Internet Access for Kansas

Google has introduced Google Fiber - fast Internet access for Kansas.

We embarked on a journey to bring ultra-high speeds to Kansas City, Kan. and Kansas City, Mo. And today, we’re excited to announce Google Fiber. Google Fiber is 100 times faster than today’s average broadband. No more buffering. No more loading. No more waiting. Gigabit speeds will get rid of these pesky, archaic problems and open up new opportunities for the web.

With Google Fiber's competitive plans & pricing, local incumbent ISPs must be watching cautiously.

Apples ads during London Olympics

Netizens were discussing on the ads by Apple played during the London Olympics. Comments on them were ranged from, "Not a fan" to "dreadful" to "terrible".

After having watched the commercial ads myself, I personally felt them simple and nothing close to distasteful.

The 3 commercial ads are:

Malte Spitz: Your phone company is watching

Google Scientific Calculator

When you tried to perform a search for 1+1 previously on Google, it will simply return you the answer in bold. Now, Google actually went one step further by giving you a scientific calculator for you to continue with more mathematical calculations.

This is good!

Chinese Woman and Elderly Lady Quarrel on Bus

McDonald and its 30 cents extra charge for extra curry sauce

McDonald Singapore has confirmed the charging for extra curry sauce. It is now official that the days of free unlimited supply of curry, barbecue and sweet & sour sauces is over. This is to discourage food wasting.

Here is the detail on the extra charging.

Source: McDonald

I personally feel 1 curry sauce for 4 nuggets is enough and pretty reasonable. What do you think?

Aurora, Colo., Shooting Suspect: Can He Stand Trial?

Watch video here.

Installing extensions from other websites on Chrome

From Chrome 21 onwards, adding extensions from other websites outside Chrome Web Store is now not allowed.

We're constantly looking out for ways to make your browsing safer. To that end, we recently changed the way you add extensions that are not in the Chrome Web Store to your browser. Previously, any website could prompt you to add an extension into your browser. In the latest version of Google Chrome, you must explicitly tell Chrome that you want to install these extensions by adding them through the Extensions page.

To enable installing of extensions from other websites (outside Chrome Web Store), the following workarounds can be considered.

1. You may set a command-line flag that disables this feature: --enable-easy-off-store-extension-install. Use the instructions from this page to add the flag.
   
   
2. Download the extension file from the website and save it to your computer and then drag the file onto the Tools > Extensions page.

Shooting in a Aurora cinema at a Batman 'The Dark Knight Rises' movie show

A masked attacker entered into a Friday midnight packed movie theatre showing Batman 'The Dark Knight Rises' show in Aurora, near Denver, Colo, and started a shooting spree, killing at least 12 people and wounding at least 38.

A video captured using a smartphone showed people leaving the cinema.

A witness gave his account on the shooting below.

Accessing Google Services for Slow Internet Connections

Accessing some of the Google services which are rich in content may be frustrating if your Internet connection is slow. Here are some helpful features as compiled by the unofficial Google Operating System blog.

1. Gmail's basic HTML mode

Access inbox using https://mail.google.com/mail/h/.

2. Disable Google Instant and auto-complete suggestions

Disable Google Instant at https://www.google.com/preferences?hl=en and then use https://www.google.com/search?complete=0 for search.

3. YouTube Feather

Access using experimental http://www.youtube.com/feather_beta.

4. The old Google image search interface

Access using https://www.google.com/imghp?sout=1.

5. Chrome's click-to-play feature

Type chrome://chrome/settings/content on your Chrome address bar and press enable "Click to Play" in the "Plug-Ins" section to loads content that requires plug-ins on demand.

6. Google's transcoder

Access website using http://google.com/gwt/n to compress websites before loading.

7. The text-only Google Cache

Load a simplified version of the page directly from Google Cache by accessing http://www.google.com/search?strip=1&q=cache:www.domain.com (replace www.domain.com with the URL of the page) on your browser.

8. Chrome's custom user agent feature

Load webpages in mobile devices user agent does the trick of loading pages quicker.

To change the user agent in Chrome, open the developer tools (Ctrl+Shift+I for Windows/Linux, Command-Option-I for Mac), click the "Settings" button at the bottom of the window, click "User Agent", enable "Override User Agent", select "Android 4.0.2 - Google Nexus" or "iPhone - iOS 5.0" from the list and disable "override device metrics".

9. Google Public DNS

Google Public DNS is a simple way to speed up your browsing experience if the DNS service you're using is slow.

10. Use a browser that supports SPDY

SPDY, a new protocol "designed for low-latency transport of content over the World Wide Web." Right now, SPDY is supported by Chrome and Firefox, while many Google sites use it.

11. Google+ in mobile

Access Google+ using https://m.google.com/app/plus/x/ loads Google+ on mobile version, saving precious bandwidth.

Introducing Microsoft Office 2013

Microsoft has introduced the new Office 2013 product with a whole new design, in line with its Windows 8 product.

And as soon as the product was unveiled, Microsoft uploaded a preview version of Office 2013.

Google's interactive unit conversion OneBox is cool!

Google's interactive unit conversion OneBox is really convenient and cool! Performing a unit conversation search e.g. on temperature "0 degrees celcius to farenheit" will provide us with a OneBox like below, convenient for us to change the parameter as well as a different unit of measurement from the list.

BOM Teardown analysis revealed Google Nexus costs $152 to make

A teardown analysis by the iSuppli revealed 8-Gigabyte (GByte) version of Google's new Nexus 7 media tablet carries a bill of materials (BOM) of $151.75. The high-end model with 16-GBytes of NAND flash memory has a $159.25 BOM, for a total cost of $166.75.

» Low-End Google Nexus 7 Carries $152 BOM, Teardown Reveals | iSuppli

Taliban publicly execute woman near Kabul in the name of ...

This action is shameful and cowardly.

Top 10 Dividend Bearing Stocks within the STI & Mid Cap index

The top 10 dividend bearing stocks within the STI & Mid cap index as indicated by Singapore Exchange (SGX) are as follows:

1. STX OSV Holdings (MS7)… 9.65%
2. Sakari Resources (AJ1)… 8.23%
3. Mapletree Industrial Trust (ME8U)… 7.37%
4. Suntec REIT (T82U)… 7.11%
5. Ascott Residence Trust (A68U)… 7.07%
6. Ascendas Real Estate Investment Trust (A17U)… 6.93%
7. Venture Corp (V03)… 6.92%
8. Pacific Andes Resources Development Ltd (P11)… 6.84%
9. Lippo Malls Indonesia Retail Trust (D5IU)… 6.81%
10. Mapletree Logistics Trust (M44U)… 6.70%

Andy Murray's Speech in Wimbledon 2012 Men's Final

How to check 32 bit OLE DB providers installed on a 64 bit machine?

One method to check the OLE DB providers installed on your machine is to create an UDL file and run it. However, if you are running a 64 bit operating system, running the UDL file will list all the 64 bit OLE DB providers installed and not the 32 bit ones.

To enumerate and show the 32 bit OLE DB providers, perform the following steps:

1. Create a UDL file with the name test.udl under the path, C:\.

2. To list the 32-bit OLE DB providers installed on a 64 bit operating system, run the below command on Command Line.

C:\Windows\SysWOW64\rundll32.exe "C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\System\Ole DB\oledb32.dll", OpenDSLFile C:\test.udl

NOTE: If we simply double click on the UDL file instead of running the above command on command line, it will list out 64 bit OLE DB providers by default.

» How to run 32-bit UDL file on a 64-bit Operating System | Chaitanya's Blogs -- SQL Developer findings

Iker Casillas asked the ref to blow the final whistle early out of respect for Italy

More respect for the Spaniard goalkeeper, Iker Casillas. Casillas actually called on the assistant referee to blow the whistle earlier after having already gained 4-0 advantage over Italy in the recent Euro 2012 cup final.

» Iker Casillas asked the ref to blow the final whistle early out of respect for Italy | Yahoo News

Microsoft Free eBooks

http://goo.gl/IycED

Updated as at Aug 4, 2012.

Google I/O 2012 - The Web Can Do That!?

Nice demo on Chrome.

Slides: http://www.htmlfivecan.com/#1
Source: https://github.com/ebidel/html5can

Google I/O 2012 - Keynote Day 2 (Compiled)

For Day 1 of the event, please click here.