If you have been reading my other posts on Desktop Search Applications from Apple's Spotlight, Google's Desktop Search to MSN Desktop Search.

Today, I'm proud to announce that there is one hidden feature (not exactly hidden, really) but this is one feature that would make your desktop search experience a GAZILLION times better. Over the past couple of months, I have been ranting about how annoying it is for Desktop Search Engines from Google and Microsoft for not being able to update it's search index quick enough. Meaning to say, after creation of a file or document on your computer, it would take sometime before the desktop search engine recognizes the new file and adds that into it's index - this would typically take a couple of minutes to a couple of hours dependant on your computer's usage.

Fortunately, the Microsoft has been listening and thus a tiny little option has been created. I'm not sure about the older versions of MSN Desktop Search but I recently discovered this option which would solve the problem I mentioned earler. If you don't have the latest version of MSN Desktop search, just drop by MSN Toolbar's website and download the utility. It comes with both the latest version of MSN Desktop Search and adds tab browsing capability to your Internet Explorer browser.

All you've got to do is the following:



1. If you don't have MSN Desktop Search GO DOWNLOAD :P
2. Right click on that little magnifying glass icon on your system tray (the one with your clock - bottom right)
3. Click "Desktop Search Options..."
4. Under the "Desktop Search" node - expand it to reveal the "Advanced Section"
5. Enable "Prioritize Indexing"

Once you have done all that, MSN Desktop Search will be SOOOOO ACCURATE and UP TO DATE that you'll do double back flips :P

Anyway, with all the positive remarks, there is a little drawback that I didn't tell you. Now that we have enabled the "Prioritize Indexing" option, MSN Desktop Search will continuously monitor your drive's activity - to ensure that it keeps it's index up-to-date at all times - with this continuous monitoring, your machine's performance might slow down.

With that said however, I'm running MSN Desktop Search with this option enabled on a Notebook computer with 512MB RAM, a 40GB Hard Disk and an Intel Centrino processor. I haven't really noticed any lag.

Either way, give this thing a try, you'll be amazed by the search results. If your computer can sustain such intensive monitoring, why not? :P

Enjoy! :P It's official - Google Desktop Search has now been removed from my machine. Yay! Good bye plain interface, welcome to a world where aesthetics rule :)

The time has finally come. It's been, what seemed to be a very very very long time - three years to be exact.

I still remember the time when I decided to switch my full-time job of being a producer of the Hitz.fm Late Net Show (a radio show in Malaysia) to something part-time - the voice of TGV Cinemas. Spotting pretty lengthy hair, there I was in Monash University Malaysia - a junior.

Just three years down the line - I have arrived at yet another milestone in my life, a point where I'll be embarking myself into a journey of the working world.

I am proud to say that:

I AM FINALLY A GRADUATE!

I HAVE DONE IT!

The feeling is incredible. My heart was thumping as I was logging on to the online results page to view the results. The page revealed and there I was - speechless - moments later, tears of joy were formed as I slowly accepted the fact that I have graduated from Monash University Malaysia.

My thank you's goes firstly to God for everything, my parents for supporting me throughout, m sayang, my friends in Monash University Malaysia and last but not least to all the lecturers who have been extremely helpful.

Another incredible life experience gone through - next stop - job hunting!

Okay, I was super excited when I read an article reviewing Microsoft's first attempt in enabling it's browser with tab-browsing.

I got so excited that I didn't even have the time to download the 'plug-in' and have it tested on my machine prior to posting this entry.

This so called 'plug-in' is not exactly a plug-in per say. It is actually a little enhancement that's built into Microsoft's latest Popup blocker + Search toolbar - MSN Toolbar.

Once you get the latest version of this toolbar installed, have the browser restarted and voila! - Internet Explorer 6.0 with tab-browsing!



I can't believe its out. I can finally push Mozilla aside. For me, when it comes to research - especially when I need to open multiple web pages on one go, I would go for Mozilla's Firefox browser - as a matter of fact, that's the only thing I like about that browser.

Now that I have tab-browsing enabled in IE - it's time to say sooooo long... Firefox.

Next step - User experience, let's see how Microsoft has implemented the tab-browsing feature in IE. There are still questions left to be answered:

Will it be user friendly?
Will it have seamless integration with the browser since it's just an add-on?

More soon...

Yes, I admit it. I want everyone to know about it. It's my birthday today (9th of July) and what better place to place my announcement than my very own blog? :)

The past couple of years have been speeding past. First I was 21 and now, I'm 23! Okay, not officially yet, I think I'm a couple of hours short (if the time is based on this post).

So here it goes...

Image from GettyImages.com

Happy Birthday to Ben Jern
Happy Birthday to Ben Jern
Happy Birthdaaayyyy to Ben Jern
Happy Birthday to Ben Jern

TWENTY-THREE CANDLES
how great is that? the cake hasn't arrived, but i think it would be cool to have 23 candles on the cake instead of 2 big ones and 3 smaller ones

What do you think?

More on this BIG day soon :)

Jeez... how 'perasan' am I ~ closest translation I can get to that is 'how shameless can I be?' :)

I was woken up at 9:30 this morning, got a call from my dad asking me about some server upload and download questions.

After the questions, I headed over to my sister's notebook. The moment I got it started, it (OS X) began to load the startup applications - one of which was MSN Messenger for Mac. It got loaded but for some strange reason, it insisted on not connecting to the MSN Messenger network. Her iBook has been giving erratic WiFi problems. As such, I attributed the issue to her wireless connectivity.

I then returned to my room, turned on my notebook, pumped up MSN Messenger and true enough I got this message:



There are only two reasons to this:
1. The MSN Messenger Service has 'left' the Internet
2. My broadband connection is down again

After much troubleshooting, it was obvious. Everything else was loading correctly, connection to the Internet was as fast as ever. With option 2 down, the Internet's worst fear has dawned upon us - MSN Messenger has left the Internet!

It's amazing how reliant we have become of a simple messaging client - MSN Messenger. Without MSN Messenger, we are ALONE on the Internet.

1. No more seeing friends online
2. No more publishing your status - on what you have been doing
3. No more annoying your friends with Winks / Nudges
4. No more sending files to your friend in real-time
5. No more sharing desktop apps
6. No more games via MSN
7. No more dressing up / accessorizing up your meego and placing it on MSN
8. No more letting your own meego see the world
9. and the list goes on and on and on...

MSN Messenger, dear MSN Messenger, when will thou return to us...

I've been travelling up and down between Singapore and Malaysia; so much so that I have lost track of the developments in Malaysia.

I was helping Stella to shower the 4 pups when Stella turned on the radio. It sounded pretty good. Latest hits non-stop, back-to-back and strangely - no ads. At first, I thought it was one of those Live365 stations which I subscribed to and Stella was just broadcasting the music from a nearby notebook using an FM Transmitter.

After showering the pups, I took a peek at the station's frequency and it showed "95.8FM". It wasn't one of the presets on the FM Transmitter so it couldn't have been broadcasting from the notebook.

Later, the radio station's ID was played and it mentioned "Sky FM". After much research on the Internet, I found that the station was operated by KLIA (Kuala Lumpur International Airport) and it is one of KLIA's efforts in becoming a world class airport by offering one of a kind services - in this case, being the first airport in the world to operate it's own radio station.

If you live within the vicinity of Kuala Lumpur, do tune in - 95.8FM. ZERO ads... finally... or at least for now :)

It's one of those times when a friend gives me a call and asks for assistance in reformatting a brand spanking new notebook followed by a complete reinstall of all the device drivers, applications and an upgrade to a Pro edition of Windows XP.

This time around, it's a brand spanking new Dell (yes, I like the word spanking) and the task was to format the machine which has Windows XP Home Edition installed and have a fresh new copy of Windows XP Professional installed along with Visual Studio .NET 2003 and a number of other apps.

You see, the task of reformatting, the installation of apps and device drivers are very common events in the life of a person who is in touch with his / her computers. Occassionally, these machines can drive you crazy due to strange and unknown circumstances. This was exactly what the Dell did.

The machine was beautiful. Nice and WIDE WXGA screen, nice specs, bluetooth, wifi, multimedia buttons and such. Built quality is perhaps one of the best I have seen in notebooks. At least when you start opening and closing the lid, you don't get squeeks like what I get on my Compaq - all you get is a smooth, light, yet solid feel. Before I digress further, making myself sound like some Dell salesman, let's get into the meat of this post.

The installation
There were a fleet of applications waiting to be installed into this baby. All went in smoothly, it started with Windows XP Pro, a service pack upgrade to SP2, installation of the various device drivers, Microsoft Office, Symantec Security / Antivirus solution and finally came Visual Studio .NET 2003 - this is when everything halted.

For those who are familiar with the installation of Visual Studio .NET 2003, you would recall having at least 6 CDs for the installation. The first one is the requisites disc, this is then followed the application itself (2 discs) and another 3 for the MSDN Library.

I popped in the Requisites Disc, clicked install and the process halted - indefinitely. I tried many things, restarting the machine, reinstalling - but still to no avail.

So after all those hours (4 hours approximately) spent on the prior installations, the last resort was to reformat the machine go through all that installation again.

So here I am, Visual Studio .NET 2003 has finally been installed (this time, I got the application installed before upgrading Windows to SP2). Approximately 2 hours down, 2 more to go? :) I've been staring on that machine for almost 6 hours... let's just hope I don't get those funny glitches anymore.

Update - the following day Sunday (1340hrs)
I'm awake. Just got up from bed. Yesterday (erm or shall I say this morning?) was quite an experience. The installation lasted all the way until 11:20pm and that's a total of 9 hours staring at the Delll. Progress? Mixed. Everything went well until I installed Symantec's Internet Security Suite 2005. 11:20pm, just minutes away from my long anticipated movie (yes, I forgot to mention that I was doing this instsallation at 1 Utama - Dome Cafe, simply because I reserved tickets for a movie called War of the Worlds; more on the movie later).

After installation of Symantec's suite, everything slowed down, internet applications started to act funny, further installation of software halted. This was BAD.

Since I paid a pretty hefty price for my movie tickets (RM 70 - 2 tickets for the Gold Class), I told myself, I'm going to enjoy this. I bid my friend good bye, told her that I'll be taking custody of the notebook for the night and promissed that her notebook will be ready before her flight at 10am today.

Stella and I left for the movie and yes, Gold Class was certainly Gold Class. It was comfortable, clean, plenty of leg room, you could literally lie on the leg room they have for you. Let's just say, it's like a First Class airplane experience with more room and certainly a MUCH LARGER screen ahead of you.

Since this post wasn't really meant for a movie review, I shall just give a super short take on the movie. Fantabulous sound effects, visual effects and plenty of exciting scenes. There were mixed reviews of this movie. The friend (Sylvia) whom I am fixing the notebook for, claims that it wasn't great. In my opinion, it was erm... perhaps not the best Steven Spielberg movie I have watched but certainly worth the money.

Anyway, back to the notebook. Movie lasted till about 2+. Got home and started troubleshooting. The problem? It was a no-brainer, "Symantec Internet Security 2005". This Symantec thing is actually a suite of Symantec's applications which include Norton Antivirus, Norton AntiSpam, Norton Firewall and so on - intergrated into one application / interface called Symantec Internet Security.

I uninstalled the application and the machine literally came back to life again. No more hiccups, smooth installation of applications, Internet applications started working again. I was telling myself, there has to be something I can do to fix this. A big company such as Symantec couldn't have created such a CRAPPY software.

Since I had quite a bit of Windows Updates to perform and a number of other apps to installed, I went through all the updates, installations and re-installed Symantec's app last.

IT WORKED!

It was almost 5:30am. Stella and I delivered the notebook to our friend's place, she thanked us profusely, we said our "all the best's", "take care's" and off we went for BREAKFAST!

The meal? Best porridge in Malaysia's China Town. The streets were clear, traffic lights were green and it was smooth sailing all the way to our destination. We had porridge with pork balls, century eggs and raw fish. It was great. Arrived home at approximately 7am

Took a shower and hit the bed.

As Yoda would say : "A long day, it has been
and I would reply : "indeed, indeed"

To my friend in Australia - Saliva Binti Mohd Dewi (not her actual name) have a GREAT TIME IN the land of Kangaroos and Koala Bears! Study hard, play hard and have plenty of FUN! See you back here in exactly 15 weeks!