The Return of DSK

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When someone is giving you clues that make you even clueless - it's time to try Google Street View

First of all, I've never been to New Zealand, and currently I am in Malaysia.

So my sis is now currently having her holiday in New Zealand - she wanted to find a honey shop that she forgot the name. Her only tips for me:

1) It's opposite Wellington city library
2) It sells manuka honey fudge
3) It's at the corner

She wants me to find out the shop name + street name for her.

With every 10 minutes asking me whether I'm able to find.

That 3 tips only manage to find me the street name, not the shop name.

So, for the first time, I tried out Street View.

I 'strolled' along the street, found the corner - and I found the shop name.

So, it's certified, I'm the living Siri, and my sister liked it.

DSK Guide #1.2: Search the Sites With Google

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Imagine you have a forum, a sites that publishes the articles, but their search engine isn't that great.

Good news is, Google will most likely have indexed those (popular) sites.

So how to search?

Challenge: I want to search for "That's not my name" (by Ting Tings, and for 24 hours demo listen purpose).

But Google results gave me crap - with mostly results from "rapidlibrary.com" that doesn't provide full link

However: I do know some collection sites such as taringa.net, freshwap.net, rlslog.net. But some needs registration which I'm pretty lazy to do so (then probably you should remain lazy)

Solution:

Use Google site search.

Use the following keywords in Google:

i) site:taringa.net "that's not my name"
ii) site:freshwap.net "that's not my name"
iii) site:rlslog.net "that's not my name"

Of course, if you wanna fine-tune the search, with download provider such as mediafire, megaupload or rapidshare, consider the following keywords:

i) site:taringa.net "that's not my name" mediafire
ii) site:taringa.net "that's not my name" megaupload

Last tip:
Consider the Google "Cache" result if the post has been removed

DSK Guide #10: Google Chrome beta (Conclusion)

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To read the review I had one month ago, please click here and here.

Final verdict: A cool browser that still has glitches (slow performance on third party plugins, particularly on Adobe Flash) Recommended only for users who's keen to try out new software. Else, stick with Mozilla Firefox.

After a month of using Google Chrome - the internet browser from the search giant, I can testify that Google Chrome is indeed an innovative product - tab placement, really fast JavaScript engine (website like Gmail, Facebook will load happily with Chrome), smart website selection when you key in the link address box etc

The bad part, however, is something that Google needs to fix it, and I can see that they are trying, with the developer build, these includes:

1) Third party plugins
i) Flash - if you try to load several Youtube, which uses Flash technology, you'll see Chrome crawls or hangs. (but it won't crash) From what I understand, the flash plugin is not upgradable like Firefox or IE's. Which means, it's wrapped up by Chrome. I wonder why they do this.
ii) Java Runtime - somehow, I've already got JRE 6.0 installed, it still asks me to install again
iii) Etc (e.g. Real codec, which crawls at certain points)

2) High resource usage
One thing I notice was that, my processor + memory usage was quite high. Though the reading shows it's lesser than FireFox, but it causes the computer to crawl

3) Bad Memory Allocation?
If you leave a tab loaded with webpage, then you open another tab to actively surfing.

After a while, you go back to the "old" tab - you'll see the page is blank, and it takes a sometime for the page to load back. You'll have the crawl-feel when you close a tab as well.

I don't know why, but it does remind me of the problem that FireFox 1.0 faces as well. But it was fixed in the next few release.


4) Microsoft-wannabe?
Google Chrome is not as customisable as Firefox. It doesn't have the search box like Firefox because Google claims "The address bar is smart enough to help you out"

That's not true because there are websites like Wikipedia that I can search on the same tab instantly, with the customised search box in Firefox.

With the dominance of search engine market, Google does remind me of Microsoft back in 90's, with the style "Take it or leave it, but you'll eventually have to take it too"

5) Privacy
Google created this free browser for reason - they'd like to know your internet usage behavior.

So, use it at your risk (but i'm fine with the information colllection, somehow... muahahaha)
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Google Chrome has increasingly become my favorite browser, but the customisation part and the resource usage would sometimes put me back to Firefox.

But the Javascript engine is something that other browser should take a look - cos its innovative build made it really fast.

DSK Guide #5: Use Google Pinyin

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It's time to introduce this little addictive Chinese typing tools, which I've been testing in the past two months.



The reason is because it's a lot improvement over the Microsoft's PinYin. With that old-without-update software, you need to press "space bar" key while you type.


I'm here to demonstrate the convenience. The 3 examples I've shown below - are typing out all without pressing a single space bar


"I've no comment on Jay Chou and Jolin Tsai"


"The Hobbits love to watch Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away"


If it comes to the word which Google PinYin can't recognise as you type, you can use the selection option to get the right selection... The sentence I typed was "Be exhausted for 1 billions years while loving you for ten thousands years"



You can also do your customised type setting. For example, when I type tmd, it'll show "his/her mother's". If I type zo, it'll become Cantonese's 咗, which means "already"

This customised dictionary is tied to your Google account. Which means it'll upload the dictionary and if you login in another machine, you can use the dictionary again.


If you have the Google PinYin turned on, you can switch between English and Chinese typing by just pressing "Shift" key once.

You can read the rest of functions on Google's site
Best of all, Google PinYin is FREE. Get one to try today ;)

下载谷歌拼音输入法

P/S: I asked my sis (she's been using it for one month) what will happen if I uninstall Google PinYin from her comp, she said she'll wallop me.