Satellite Center visit

After subscribing to Smart Malaysia's satellite broadband service, a buddy of mine who worked for company invited me their satellite receiving center in Bukit Jalil for a visit.

The center itself is located in Technology Park Malaysia in Bukit Jalil. The place wasn't as big as I expected. But, it was quite fun to get to walk around and looking at the BIG ass satellite dishes.

Some of the biggest measures about 9 metres in diameter, some of smaller ones are probably 1.8 metres.

Basically , how the satellite broadband works is like this:
1) The Internet user types in the website address , eg. donkeykong.com
2) The satellite modem receives the signal from the computer and beams the signals via the satellite dish installed on-site Internet user's home.
3) The satellite in (space?) will receive the signal and beams it back down the satellite receiving center in Bukit Jalil.
4) The satellite receiving center will receives the signals from satellite and goes through its myriad of equipment and 3 major pipelines (which they leased from 3 companies, Jaring, Paneagle and .....?)
5) Once the data related to donkeykong.com is found, it is sent back to the satellite, and the satellite sends it back to the satellite dish installed in the user's home.

The conclusion, it still needs to go thru wires at sometime (step 4). But, most of the transmissions are wireless. So, unless there's heavy rain (or something that disrupts the ISP network that is on land), then basically there's no problem at all.

Overall, this has been 25th day I've been using satellite broadband. The service has been quite satisfying. Though there were occasionally downtime during the early March, but the quick response from their support centre indeed impressed me.

Lotusphere 2007 in Malaysia Part II

The high turnout in the morning session. There are basically 2 big screens in the ballroom which is used for the Lotusphere 2007 launch. After a long speech from Pam Chandor (Director, Global Portal and Connections Sales, IBM Software group) and Stephan Wiseel (Lotus Technology & Productivity Advisor , IBM Singapore), we had a short coffee break, which everyone rushed for tadaaa....













Orange juice and some beehoon and cupcakes.


After that, we few more speeches from
1) Christian Nybye of Business Strategist ASEAN, IBM Software Group
2) Sven Mashake , Deputy Head (Global Data Center) of DKSH Corporate Shared Services Centre Sdn. Bhd.
3) Cheah Kok Hoong , General Manager of Sunway IT Shared Services
4) Jane Lim , Regional Manager of Information Platform & Solutions, IBM SOftware Group ASEAN / SA.

Most of them are quite well prepared, but presentation-wise, some of them do fall short by a bit. By far, I give 2 thumbs-up for Cheah Kok Hoong humourous intro during his speech.

After lunch, the speeches are different into 2 track sessions:
a) Business & Infrastructure
b) Technical & Developers

You can only attend 1 at a time. Though you can attend the other track while it's going on.But, I chose not to do so.
Since I don't I'll be able to understand technical stuff, I chose the Business & Infrastructure.
Then, it's more and more speeches.

Chicken n erm .. forgot what's that (from coffee break).

After the coffee break, a colleague from another office , joined me instead in the Business & Infrastructure track because the Technical track was "boring" according to him.

Then, after the final 2 speeches from
Simon Lee , Business Strategist ASEAN/SA,Workplace Portal & Collaboration Software and
Jonathan Wong, Technical Leader, Lotus Mobile and Wireless , IBM Singapore.

Simon Lee has brought a quite energetic feel to the whole Lotusphere 2007 event. Everytime I longed for to talk more on-stage, but he's also quite funny , cracking jokes here and there to make the speech exciting.

Jonathan Wong on the other hand, has very Americanised-English accent which I kinda liked too. Overall, he's quite okay too.

Finally, it's time for lucky draw.As you can see the people have gathered around the demo booth from various Lotus products vendor, waiting for the lucky draw results.



Here's a picture of the funny guy of the day, Mr. Simon Lee.

Overall, it was quite great experience attend this conference despite my initial reluctance to attend it. I also met my mom's classmate (yes you read that right.) who works for Sime Darby too. I'm definitely looking forward to attend more conference like these.

WiMAX License Winners (Malaysia) Announced!!!

The 4 winners for WiMAX License has announced:

Bizsurf , MIB , Redtone-CNX and Asiaspace.

This is certainly bad news for Digi (after not being awarded 3G) , again missing the opportunity of having the WiMAX license.

For more information, you can refer Reapfield Technology.

Update:
At the time of my posting(17/02/2007) 10.30am(+8H GMT), I went thru Bizsurf, YTL Corp. Berhad, Green Packet, and Redtone-CNX and found nothing related to the WiMAX winners.
MIB Comm. Sdn. Bhd. website was unable to be located as well.

Lotusphere 2007 in Malaysia Part I

Lotusphere was up and running in Sheraton Hotel and Towers in Subang, Malaysia. Photos will be uploaded soon. Tada..... turn left to Lotusphere 2007.
The breakfast for the morning. Kueh (something) with curry. (After some discussion with my colleague, I found out that it's called Roti Jala because of the shape of kueh looks like a net (jala) not Kueh Lapis as we initially thought).

Splinter Cell : Double Agent Soundtrack

While this is not exactly tech-related,

but this is especially useful for those who are interested in 1 of persons behind the Splinter Cell : Double Agent (SC:DA) soundtrack,
Michael McCann (aka Behavior)

Here's some soundtracks created by him in SC : DA
http://www.behaviormusic.com/artists/michael_mccann/music.htm

My personal favorites are:
1) Cozumel Fight Theme
2) Okhotsk Fight Theme
3) Iceland Infiltration Long Intro
Here's an interview on him about his involvement in SC : DA
http://www.music4games.net/Features_Display.aspx?id=112

Wii Bot

How to make good use of your Nintendo Wii Mote?

here's one good way.

http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/25/wiibot-cuts-other-wiimote-hacks-down-to-size/

Learning Visual Studio

A paid site to learn Visual Studio , it also provides some free tutorial videos as well.

Go try Learn Visual Studio now!

you can also download the Visual C# tutorials from
Microsoft Visual C# website.

Free online file conversion

Want to convert your MS Word files to PDF, but you don't have PDF converter?
Don't worry, do it with Zamzar - Free Online File conversion.

Just upload the files that you have to convert, then select the format that you'd like to convert. After that, enter your email address. The converted file will be emailed to you shortly.

4 easy steps.
1) Upload file,
2) select format,
3) enter email address,
4) Check your mail for the converted file.


So give Zamzar a try!

For more info on what file format that it supports,click here.

The way to meebo

Most of you guys who are familiar with IMs (Instant Messengers), should heard of Meebo.
Meebo browser based Instant Messenger that lets you sign in on multiple IMs like Trillian, except that it's browser based.

Check this on the meebo evolution.

So what are you waiting for?! ,Meebo today! and share your opinions in the comments section.