Coming Middle of 2010

If the government were to proceed with the plans to change the fuel subsidy scheme, petrol price will increase.

Big vehicle prices may drop.

People's pocket money will be affected and hence this may affect that property market because there will be less demands. Actually this depends on the location, remote area property prices may be affected. This goes on to suggest that if car sales drop, properties prices should increase because people choose to mobile less and stay at fixed location and vice versa.

So, if you have got money, you can buy Honda City and get a house.

This will be a good time to promote work-from-home, webinars, web-conferencing and etc.

That is right, MDec should work out an initiative to encourage people to work smart, by traveling less frequently on the road.

Internet service providers' (ISP) business is set to boom (if there is any room).

Malaysian still needs plenty of bandwidth and efficient transportation.

If the above mentioned comes in any form of reality, you know what you should be looking out before and after 1st of May 2010.

But what if the crude oil price falls further during middle of 2010 ? Looks like this instability will be cushioned by sales of fuel efficient cars. In other words, if the government is going to float the petrol prices, more fuel efficient cars will be sold and this will affect the property market as well.

And if this is true, buy fuel efficient cars and properties a bit at the outskirt (because it may become cheaper) and invest in telecommunication companies.

Right now everybody is waiting for the government to call the shot.

JUNIPER NETWORKS INTRODUCES NEW SILICON TO PROVIDE UNSURPASSED CAPACITY AND SPEED WITH A SEAMLESS UPGRADE PATH TO MASSIVE SCALE

Telecommunications carriers are starting to make firm plans to upgrade most of their wireless and wireline core networks to 100Gbps from this year. The battle to move the goalposts for core routers is heating up, with Juniper Networks targeting high end telco and cellco deployments with the latest extension to its T-Series architecture - which will deliver a full duplex slot capacity of 250Gbps, and may beat other vendors to market in the race to ease the migration from 10Gbps to 100Gbps IP cores. Trials with products using a new 45-nanometer chipset fabricated inhouse by Juniper, will eventually support total capacity of 4Tbps in one half-rack system, and products should ship early next year. (Cisco has not yet formally announced any updates to its carrier core router line, but is expected to do so).

Check out details.

VB6 to VB.NET eBook

This eBook documented the first few things (50 things in total) that you should worry about when converting your software application from Microsoft VB6 to Microsoft VB.NET

This is will give you an idea of how much work you have to do in terms of the conversion.

One of the hardest part (in terms of VB6 & VB.NET conversion) is GUI, such as usage of ListView. (This doesn't imply that GUI development in VB.NET is the hardest topic in VB.NET.)

This eBook is written by me based on actual experience of performing VB6 to VB.NET conversion.

Download the eBook (in PDF Format).

It took me almost one year to compile. This is also a dream of many years. My next similar project will be VB.NET to C#.NET guide. I haven't study the feasibility but if there is a need, I will do it. Hopefully will come by 2011.

Stay tune and happy programming!

The world shall live on.

Malaysia Government Grants and Contemporary Financial Asistance (4 Feb 2010)

Ok ok, I went to this event briefly for the morning session.

It was held at Auditorium 1, Enterprise 4, Technology Park Malaysia (TPM).

I was late actually, the keynote was presented by someone representing TPM(i didn't get his name), he said he can help out entreprenuers as the capacity of business coach. He was mainly talking about the upcoming development of TPM.

Up next was MDec represented by Jamie. Jamie wasn't in great mood because his Windows laptop crashed on him yesterday. I guess that he must have lost a lot of files, yeah that is bad. And he blamed it on Windows. ok.

So, he presented without slides.

According to Jamie, Pre-seed funding is official halted and they have now like 300 ++ pre-seed entrepreneurs. There are funds available but is requesting permission from the government to extend for 2010. So far no news yet.

However, more interestingly, Jamie was talking about MSC is not just about MSC status. Right now, they are in the mood of nurturing from A to Z. He mentioned that now you can walk into MDeC and ask for just any help, they wanted to listen to you, you are the star and they wanted to help. He quoted two examples of having some initiatives with Nokia Singapore and Yahoo.

Nokia Singapore is interested to help out entreprenuers through MDeC as well as Yahoo is interested to help out those involve with Internet based business. Yahoo is willing to provide mentoring, PR and etc.

MDeC is also in the mood of helping out enterpreneurs to look for VC, you don't need to be anything like pre-seed or whatever. So, go talk to MDeC. Look for Jamie first.

The next presentation was from SIRIM. The speaker is a nice person and soft talker and he was talking mainly about manufacturing stuff which I didn't relate to a lot.

Up next before the first tea break was briefing about 'Mobile Youth Unconference Asia'.

It was presented by an energetic person.

What so cool about this event was it will be held in Malaysia for the first time on 11-12 March 2010, Berjaya Time Squares.

It is about gathering of 160 trendsetters and youth brands (corporate).

The highlight of the event is "Young Ideas Salon" where these corporate brands and products will pitch to participants about their ideas in groups (in break out sessions) in order to find the real insights.

Check out the web site for more details.

Finally, the following are the grants and financial assistant still available:

• Networked Content Development Grant(NCDG) by MCMC
• Soft Loan Schemes (by MIDF)
• InnoFund and TechnoFund (by MOSTI).
• CIP 500 (by Cradle)
• Micro and Corporate Financing (by Banks)

I didn't sit through the whole day and I don't have details.

By the way, this event was organized by MAD (Making a Difference).

The MAD Incubator BizStart Program is designed to help technopreneurs to create quality businesses through quality ideas.

Based on a one-to-one format, the BizStart Program is a 2-months business accelerator program where MAD Incubator will assist would-be technopreneurs in researching, developing and refining their ideas; and eventually coming up with a business model, project timeline and business plan that is investor-friendly and read for execution.

Fuel Subsidy Implementation

Ok, the proposed fuel subsidy initiative which is supposed to limit fuel subsidy to those really eligible.

'OutSyed The Box' creatively and analytically paints a better picture of what it is going to be, check out here.

"What this means is that owners of cars below 2000cc will not see any reduction in their living expenses. They will still pay RM1.80 per litre for RON95 like they do today - no change there, except they will now have to flash their MyKads every time they buy petrol, because they will only get say 100 litres of subsidised petrol a month."

What he said makes sense and fair.

For me, I think that the IT system to support that kind of initiative is really going to be a hard hard job.

And this may not work because there will be major changes to existing IT systems of petrol kiosks and it cannot afford to go wrong by 1st of May. I think the reason for delay of the implementation is due to the IT system.

And even if they managed to get it up by 1st of May, it is not tested as well given the short time frame.

What about those people whose MyKad is faulty, how do they able to claim for the subsidy on real-time basis ?

And let's say the roll-out failed, what will happen ?

Everybody will have to pay for RM 2.10 per liter ? Maybe.

So what's next ?

Based on my analysis, I think eventually they will scrap the idea of real-time and resort to reimbursement system.

So, I predict that this whole initiative will need some sort of receipt validation system as a backup plan to the proposed real-time validation system which supposed to come in phases. What I mean is that shouldn't non real-time system come first before the real-time system will slowly take over ?

To implement a real-time nationwide system is really not easy, just think about the case of e-Filling: LHDN.

This is probably the 4th or 5th (year) into roll-outs and it is getting better but still with issues. Do you remember all the issues with the first roll-out ?

And this proposed fuel subsidy system is many times more complex, real-time than the e-Filling (LHDN) system which involves:

• Telecommunication (hardware & software)
• Online system (software)
• MyKad (hardware)
• MyKad reader (hardware and software)
• Credit card (hardware, software, banks, etc)
• etc

I think suddenly, all petrol kiosks will need to hire at least one IT executive. Just like the old days when every company will have an IT executive stand by all the computer problems such cannot print, cannot read, cannot start, cannot stop, printer out of paper and etc.

Really hard job.

Tech Blog Malaysia Statistics (Jan 2010)

As usual, check out the analysis for 2009.

For month of Jan 2010, we have the followings.

• A proposed broadband initiative by TM
• The brand of this blog
• The largest ERP software in the world
• The name of this blog
• World largest online music store
• Support number for Malaysia's biggest broadband provider
• A common windows font issue
• A crystal report 8.5 issue

Overview:

• Total monthly traffic increased by as much as 6.73%
• Traffic from referring sites increased by 1.33%
• Google still top contributor (63.35%). Down from last month.
• Top 5 countries (Malaysia, US, UK, India, Singapore).
• New visitors 88.00% (down from last month).

Now check out the most popular contents.

1. The main page
2. TM HSBB Project May Not Be Realized By 2010.
3. Anti SPAM Campaign - Serenity
4. Unable To Find Database DLL (CR 8.5)
5. Server Has Not Yet Been Opened (Crystal Report 8.5)
6. 425 Can't Open Data Connection
7. Free MCSE and CCNA Training for Unemployed Graduates
8. Unblocking PUK Code
9. Connection to Remote MS SQL Server 2005 Over The Internet
10. RIP, IGRP, EIGRP, OSPF comparison

Write Text to File, Write Binary To File (VB.NET)

A quick note.

There is not such thing as writing text to file. Eventually, everything will be in bytes.

Thus, it is more proper to say that 'Save Text To File' and 'Save Picture To File'.

First of all, it is important to understand two things.

1. The difference between string and byte (binary)
2. The difference between ANSI and Unicode.

Refer to 'ANSI vs Unicode'

A Few Important Things:

1. If you want to create new file, you have to use SaveFileDialog , and open existing file, use OpenFileDialog. The latter will not allow you to create new file.

2. Since you can use FileStream to write data to the files, why do you still need BinaryWriter and StreamWriter (TextWriter ) ?

• BinaryWriter and StreamWriter(TextWriter) are extensions to FileStream. Using FileStream, you have to convert everything to bytes, using StreamWriter , no need to convert string to bytes.
• BinaryWriter and StreamWriter(TextWriter) has more overloaded methods for write() than FileStream? itself. Using streamwriter, you have a lot of overloaded methods, such as for writing data to newline.If using filestream, you have to manually add vbcrlf.
• FileStream supports asynch process via BeginWrite and BeginRead methods. For BinaryWriter and StreamWriter, you have to create custom asynch mechanism.

To understand this further, download the sample code in VB.NET (Visual Studio SP 1)

ANSI vs Unicode

How is it important for software programming ?

To keep it straight forward.

Byte is binary.

ANSI is the extention of ASCII. Thus when we speak of ANSI, we also speak about ASCII.

ANSI and Unicode are encodings. Encoding means how data is represented in binary.

Refer to

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Unicode.html

ANSI data is stored as 1 byte (8 bits) per character while Unicode data is usually stored as 2 bytes(16 bits) per character. (Means 16 bits are used to represent 1 character).

In VB6 and VB.NET, String variable is by default Unicode. (2 bytes per char).

To illustrate this, check out the following codes.

So, in terms of binary, ANSI of data ="a" is different from Unicode of data ="a".

This will give you one problem while communicating with different system, such as a home alarm system. Let's say you create a software to communicate with home alarm hardware. You talk to the firmware via TCP/IP socket. If the firmware supports ANSI while you send data as Unicode, then the communication will not work.

You have to convert the data to ANSI encoded bytes before sending over.

Apple iPad - What Steve Said

Refer to earlier comment.

Check out the keynote from Steve Jobs.

Key Facts:

• 250 million iPod have been sold.
• 140 thousand software applications available on the iStore.
• 3 billion applications been downloaded from iStore.
• $ 15.6 billion of revenues achieved.
• Apple is mobile devices compnay, the largest in the world. Winning over Nokia, Samsung, Sony

Steve Jobs said that the Netbook is nothing good and just a cheap laptop.

The iPad uses Apple's own microprocessor (it is not Intel). This will have edge over other tablet products.

And iPod, iPhone and iPad do not support Java. Check out here. This decision by Apple has both good and bad consequences. The one good thing is that it will keep Apple's software application in its own boundary; seemingly always high in quality. The bad thing is that who ever doesn't own an Apple device will not get the chance to write software for Apple. But the latter definitely is good for the economy because it promotes less monopoly and more competition.

What I really like about iPad is that it shakes the market for multi-touch devices. (Hello!!!!, you call yourself multi-touch ?) Not only that it brings down the cost of multi-touch, it also brings the technology expectation to a higher standard. I do not see the possibility that iPad will be used by ATM machines (at the banks) in the near future, which on current Malaysian standard, the sensitivity hangs occasionally. (Currently, Maybank is the first one to implement multi-touch screen for ATM and it hangs sometimes.) Nevertheless, the worst other multi-touch devices perform, the better the sales of iPad will do.

Conclusion:

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

• iPad sits in between iPod and Laptop.
• Apple is pretty much a 'cult' with very over protective culture.
• Apple business strategy is good to promote less monopoly, fairer competition and money making for all. In other words, anything which Apple produces simply will make people buy more and not buy less from others. This is very evident in Malaysia where people who buy Apple devices, will most certainly have a Windows machine side by side. This is probably the best contribution of Steve Jobs to the computer industry;of carefully crafted business strategies and product innovations that oversees all possibilities.  Apple has done better than Google in this sense. We have to respect this guy.(Thumbs up!)

TM RM 10 Plan

I just got a call from TM.

Exclusively for Streamyx subscribers, by paying an extra of RM 10, you will get the following benefits.

1. Free cordless phone (hardware)
2. Free local and outstation call to fixed line
3. Call to mobile phones is charged at 0.30/mins instead of 0.70/mins.

Check out here too, but that was in 2009.

So every year, they will have an exclusive period for this promotion.

My Comments on Apple's iPad

Check on iPad on Apple official web site.

Ok, based on the reviews by this url.

I can say a few comments:

1. Internet Data Plan

Tying up with just one telecommunication provider will definitely help in terms of everything of marketing and sales, but will it really generate the most sales ?

Perhaps it is a smarter choice.

Because if you think about all the cost saving that can achieve in terms of joint sales and marketing efforts, it is definitely a good idea.

And it is not easy to tie up with telecommunication provider if you are new in the market.

2. Waiting For The Right Time.

2009 recorded 3 millions e-readers sold, most of it are from Amazon Kindle.

3. Bigger iPod

iPad really looks to me like a bigger iPod or iPhone. Whatever limitation the latters have, iPad will make up for it.

Therefore, games, music,vidoes Internet and whatever that entertainment that you can think of.

Not just that, now it will also encourage you to read.

This suggests that it is not always bad that some big guys go and create a huge potential market and you can still benefit from it later by having your own product that is as good or better.

4. Old Business Concept

Similar to iPod or iPhone, iPad is priced according to the the hard disk size.

This is good plan because what it means is that you are not supposed to use the device forever, when you need to a bigger hard disk, you have to buy a new one.

And when the battery is dead, go get a new one too.