Rovio Released Angry Birds Lite Beta
September 5, 2010 by mhisham · Leave a Comment
Angry Birds from Rovio
Rovio released on Android Market. However, most users of Samsung Galaxy S could not find it on the Android market. So I am taking this opportunity to host it on my site. All trademarks and support services still belong to Rovio.
You may click here to download the app.
Image from http://www.rovio.com/index.php
A World Without Emails
Mashable Social Media - A World Without Emails
I just read a Mashable article entitled, A World Without E-mail, commented to it and thought that I should write about it too. In the article, the protagonist, Luis Suarez, Knowledge Manager, Community Builder & Social Computing Evangelist in the IBM Software Group division, wanted to prove to his colleagues that it is possible to work sans emails and maintain interactions, all through the use of publicly available social tools like Facebook and Twitter.
He have listed down several things that make a lot of sense. Even with Google Mail’s latest iteration of Priority Inbox, it is still a lot of work to sieve through important and not-so-important mails. And every now and then, you sometimes still have to check into your Spam box to see which important mail has landed there instead.
I commented that since I am also living on the edge of social media usage, I should live it and cut down my use of emails. Recently, I wanted to share the White Paper Research for The Social Customer Engagement Index, with some close friends on Twitter. I asked the usual suspects to give me an email as I know directing them to the actual site means, they may need to enter an application form(the paper was sponsored by SAP afterall!) and therefore I wanted to save them the inconvenience by getting their email addresses through Direct Message and then sending them via email!
I could have saved all that trouble further by putting it up somewhere and have the link shared out, of course with a note not to further share it than needed. It was one of the more recent actions that I have done, to show that I have not outlived the need for continued use of email. Luis is right. Ten years ago, email is an important business tool. However, social media tools like Facebook and Twitter, can further that business transaction, with the inclusion of streamed presentations, video overlays and audio feed, which email cannot provide, unless between specified and customised team application!
Hence, I will try my best to reduce my dependence on email and try to use the most available tools we have, unless they whale! 
Explaining the Gaming with Antivirus Shootout Methodology
September 1, 2010 by mhisham · Leave a Comment
Comments
There have been several concerns about the shootout post I did yesterday. They are valid concerns. My overall aim is not to put down any particular antivirus, rather, it is to show that, with antivirus, one is still able to have it installed and turned on.
Installed & Turned On
I mentioned installed and turned on because some users would prefer to uninstall an AV if it became too disruptive, especially when it warns you that the game you are about to launch have behaviours similar to keylogging programs. This is especially true for BlackShot as the game was included with GameGuard. GameGuard is used by the game to monitor for cases of cheating by Blackshot gamers. Since it records keystrokes in-game, most of the antivirus will flash a warning. One way to overcome this is to include the blackshot launcher into the Exclusion List. I also mention turned on because some users will temporarily turn off their antivirus when they are about to play their games with the reason that it will slow down the computer.
Baseline & Benchmark
So, my shootout was really to show that having antivirus on-board do not really affect gameplays. The video that I have embedded show that I do a benchmark on my baseline so that I have a standard of system performance before installing any of the antivirus products. I used Cinebench R10 which measures computing performance as well as graphic performance. Let me emphasise that I do not benchmark antivirus performance, I benchmark the system performance before and after installation of antivirus.
Application Checksums
Symantec Norton 360 & Kaspersky PURE are two of the antivirus that did not fair as well during the shootout. I need to clarify that both products employ an application checksum checking mechanism. This means that, given a set of whitelist(kaspersky) & quorum(symantec), a particular application can be identified as safe to run or run with caution flags. This may be the reason why the performance under benchmark as well as gaming, did not fare as good as the first two products which does not have these services – yet.
Conclusion
Given the statements above, and the shootout post I did, I still believe it to be necessary for everyone, to have antivirus on their system and to have it continually updated. Hardcore gamers are much more powerful machines need not be unduly worried about the antivirus affecting their gameplay performance. Casual gamers like me, can probably live with the slightly sluggish performance when we turn on every settings on the game to the maximum level. Nothing beats having a clear thought that the system is safe from online malwares.
