Friday, 22 November 2013

The Touch of Windows 8

Windows 8 was introduced by Microsoft as a personal computer operating system which is part of Windows NT family.  The aim is to compete with other Mobile Operating System, such as Android and iOS.  With Windows 8, Microsoft has made old hardware almost obsolete to usher in a new era where 'touch' devices are the norm.   

Photo taken from Andrew Kalinchuk collection

Windows 8 is an interface that practically pleads us to touch it.  After a while, the touch commands become intuitive and natural.  At the end, we feel completely in control.  This is what I felt on the first day I bought my ASUS S400C.  I would recommend all Gen-X 'tegar' to try Windows 8.  They will love it so much! 

ASUS S400C taken from www.kompiki.ru

I must admit the excitement and amusement in learning to use Windows 8.  Thanks to Microsoft for the marvelous invention.  Some of the advantages that I can list down are as follows:
  • Quick Boot as it only took me less than 10 seconds to get to the START screen;
  • Shutdown feature also seems to be as quick as pressing POWER button;
  • Built in Screenshot to capture what' happening on our display by pressing the Windows key and the Print Screen button together.  A PNG grab will be automatically saved to our Pictures library;
  • Internet ready Interface as there is no waiting time.  I can surf Internet as soon as I get started;
  • Windows 8 enabling users to dock a Start page app (for example, Weather or Bing) to the side while we are work on the spreadsheet; 
  • Reinstall Windows function is available, which can brings back all the default operating system settings, keeping our personal files, settings, the programs that came with our PC and any applications that we have downloaded from the Windows Store;
  • A user friendly touch screen, where it has almost similar function to our tablet;    

I had downloaded a commercial video from youtube on Windows 8.  Let's feel the touch of Windows 8 together!  Happy viewing!;) 


The Touch of Social Media towards Our Children

Hi Friends!  Social Media plays an important roles in our daily live.  It will not only impact our way of thinking and how we react to it, but the vital part is, it do impact our children.  Currently, we can still see a group of people talking, discussing and even flirting at a coffee shop, but I believe, the figures is much lesser compared to old days!  This is where 'the touch' of social media come into picture and shape the life of our younger generation.  The way they communicate will be much different compared to us.

I would like to throw this question to you guys!  I don't have any answer to it!  I need your help to comment on 'What will really happen in near future, as our younger generation (The Alpha's onwards), is more onto their gadget or smartphone instead of playing with their friends?'  They were no longer seems to be fighting and screaming for a toy.  Instead, each of them, sitting quietly and focusing on their gadget.  Our first judgement for sure, 'they are a good kids', but given a second thought, 'Oh No!'  they are not even say 'Hi!' to the person next to them...There is not even a word came out from their lips....no communication at all!  This is bad!  Really bad!

There were few studies done on the impact of social media towards teenagers.  I had downloaded a video from youtube, on 'Teens and Social Networks' (published on June12, 2012 by MySecureCyberspace.  As an adult in the house, we need to look into it seriously, as there seems to be a lot of negative impact compared to positive, unless there is a proper control measure were in place.  Let's 'touch' our heart to see what is the best for our children.  At the end, we can generate positive result from the touch of social media!  The answer is within our 'touch'! 




Thursday, 21 November 2013

The Touch of Whatsapp

Hi!  I am back again.  The touch of a Gen-X 'tegar'...towards Whatsapp.  Everybody would agree that communication is a very important part of our daily life.  We communicate with a lot of people daily in need of some urgent work or even with an intention to keep in touch with our friends.  As a Gen-X 'tegar', I use to communicate using sms or phone calls.  What can you aspect from a Nokia X2-01?  It is not possible to connect to wi-fi as it does not have the required hardware to do that...Poor thing!
My Nokia X2-01

Nowadays, with the advancement of technology, there has been many ways of communicating with people.  One of the cheapest way is by using Whatsapp Messenger.  It is an application supported by many smart phones of the present day.


What we need to have is the internet connection (example 3G or wi-fi), to send messages using the Whatsapp application to someone who had also installed Whatsapp.  Whatsapp has thus reduced the charges that incur due to the text messages.  We now just have to pay for the internet connection and can send numerous number of text messages using Whatsapp.  The application is available for free from the online stores that we downloaded and installed in our mobiles.  I really feel that this is really cool, especially when you want to communicate and share photo's or links from our smartphone to someone else.  This is actually the main reason why I had invested in a smartphones.  'Terjebak sudah'.  I have no other choices actually.  All the other classmates are using smartphones to stay connected with each other.  So do I!  ;) 
  
My Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 with 3G and wi-fi

Besides that, with Whatsapp, I can easily communicate with my siblings in Manhattan & Kobe.  They normally share their experience and photos to keep in touch with us in Malaysia, especially when they are in different season and daylight hours.  As we learn in geography, the changes in seasons occur due to the rotation, revolution, and the inclination of Earth on it's axis.  And from their input and status update from time to time, we are aware on those changes, and how it affect their lives and learn from them on how they deal with it.

This is an exiting journey, as we know that, we can actually find all those sources from other social network, but, with Whatsapp, it is just like a messenger where we can receive a 'live' information that we can trust!  Apart from that, with a group Whatsapp created, we can even share all information with the rest of the family members.  Live update from each one of us from different location, keep us together as one Happy Family.  ;)  For sharing purposes, appended below the latest photo from our family gathering during Adik's wedding, that was taken 2 years ago.    
           
Family photo taken in Dec 2011, during Adik's wedding



Friday, 15 November 2013

The Touch of Cincinnati...

Cincinnati is a city in and the county seat of Hamilton County, Ohio, United States. Settled in 1788, the city is located on the north bank of the Ohio River at the Ohio−Kentucky border, near Indiana (Wikipedia).  What I gain here, is what I am gonna share...It is all from 'the touch' of video calls, dishwasher and U-scan.

john-a-roebling-suspension-bridge-and-cincinnati-skyline (www.hiren.info)




I am very lucky to have the opportunity to visit Cincinnati for 2 weeks, even though it is on a business trip.  The adventurous part is that, I travel alone.  With a journey of almost 30 hours (inclusive of 6 hours transit at Narita & Los Angeles), I am really exhausted, but yet feel very excited, as this is the longest journey that I will always remembered.  Special thanks to Katie Radzhabova, to initiate the trip! ;)

A tired looking face...Selfy! ;) Photo taken at Narita Airport

At first, this is a very difficult decision to make as I need to be far apart from family, with a 12 hour different timezone.  Luckily with the existing technology that we have, make our life easier.  Thanks to Janus Friis from Denmark and Niklas Zennström from Sweden, the Skype founder in 2003.  According to Wikipedia, Skype is a freemium voice-over-IP service and instant messaging client that is developed by the Microsoft Skype Division. The name was derived from the word "sky" and "peer".  It is really easy, as we only need to download and sign up for an account.  We can start to use the instant message, voice or video call, to anybody that have the Skype account for FREE!  Our telecommunications become more lively with video call.  This is superb!  Whenever I have the opportunity to call, which we usually did around 7pm (MYT), my 2 year old son was the happiest person, as he said, I was 'on air'.  His mummy is an 'actress', as he can see me from the television???  Oh my goodness!!  Cannot imagine if this is true!!! ;) 
Print screen from my Skype account

Apart from that, I had a chance to fast for more than 16 hours since it is Summer.  The fasting time is between 4am to 9.30pm.  I feel excited to had a chance to break fast with my colleague, Zamri, at his house with his family.  Her wife is a good cook.  I feel like being in my own country.  Here, I got a chance to use a mechanical device for cleaning dishes, called a dishwasher.  The touch of dishwasher is amazing.  It cleans by spraying hot water at the dishes. A pump is used to mix the water with the detergent.  Water is pumped to the rotating spray arms, which blast the dishes with the cleaning mixture.  Once this is done, the water is drained, and more hot water is pumped in and later rinse the dishes.  Finally, at the bottom of the tub, the heating elements heats the air to dry the dishes.  Thanks to Josephine Cochran for her 'magic' invention in 1887.  What a history! :)

Zamri's and Family at his house in Cincinnati
A dishwasher ;)

The next touch that I want to share is regarding the U-scan.  So far, I have never seen one before in Malaysia.  My friend, Zamri, took me to Kroger to purchase some groceries.  I take this opportunity to buy some fruits for his kids.  During payment, I did not see any cashier sitting in-front of the scan machine.  How can this be?  Ohh...it is a self check out?  When it comes to our turn, Zamri started to scan one by one all his items purchased.  Next, he took out his credit card, and started to key in the credit card number and once completed, a receipt being printed out.  Hmm...In this case, I do think that the benefit mostly goes to Kroger...and not consumer.  What a pity!  We need to self scan the items before check out.  The worst part is, there is no discount given for all the hard work of scanning hundreds of items after waiting a long queue.  To make long story short, I had a chance to do it myself.  But this time, I am using cash!  It really works something like "Please insert your parking ticket...please insert your coins or bank notes...."...yup!  It happen when we want to pay our parking ticket at shopping mall!  I can remember this very well. :)  It is a very user friendly system, but if we have 2 or more of the same items, we still need to scan one by one.... ;(  This is disaster but a very good experience on what IT can do in replacing the human manpower. 

Example of Self scan machine: Photo by pin add / by NCND 2.0 CC

All these are few pieces of IT experience from the touch of Cincinnati...Memories in Cincinnati will always be treasured.  ;) 

Dinner with counterpart in Cincinnati












Friday, 8 November 2013

The Touch of Ultraman



Ultraman or in Japanese it is called Urutoraman is a fictional superhero that is made from light.  It is created by Eji Tsuburaya from Tsuburaya Productions, a pioneer in special effects who was responsible for bringing Godzilla to life in 1954. It was first aired in 1966 in Japan by the Japanese Tokusatsu television series.  

http://wallws.com/ultraman-background-hd.html


Ultraman is my son’s SUPERHERO.  Faris loves very much with this Japanese character.  It started in a one fine day when Faris accompanying his sister watching Astro cartoon channel 611.  He was very excited and even can stay watching for more than three hours.  Unfortunately, the series last only for half an hour from Monday to Thursday.  In order for him to stay watching the series everyday, I had purchased a tab for him to browse himself from the Youtube’s.  This is what I called the ‘Touch of Ultraman’.  Ultraman had introduced Faris with the technology world which he never meets before.  This is amazing.       
 
Faris and Daddy in action with Gaia and Agul

Smile...with one his favorite character (Agul)

Prof Zaidi was right on Alpha babies.  He is only two years old, but able to use the tab without proper training from an adult.  He cannot even read and write anything from the tab, but with a glance he is able to use it as like he has been using it for years.  This would not happen if it is me, a Gen-X ‘tegar’.  I can still remember during my childhood, when my mum first bought a computer, she would tell me to stay away from the computer, until I had completed with my computer class.  During that time, I am really scared to touch anything as I was afraid that I would ‘hurt’ them.  Haha...very old way of thinking.  Well, that is really true, even now, I still have that thinking of ruining the appliances without reading the guides’.  I have to admit that even though this is tough.  Huhu...


After few months of browsing the Ultraman Series, Faris has a few favorite series and some of it is just either a songs or a games that people posted.  To name a few, his favorite characters are Mebius, Cosmos, Taro, Zero, Tiga, Max, Nexus, Agul and Gaia.  

Part of his favorite collection, from left, Gaia, Tiga, Zero and Agul
Attached, the video of Faris in action with his tab and his buddies, Ultraman from youtube.
Happy watching! ;) 




 

Sunday, 13 October 2013

The First Touch...

Hi friends!  In our life, everything start with the first touch.  When we were born, we cried until we got what we want!  As an adult, we try to compromise and fulfill our own needs.  This is what I called 'The Touch'.  The touch can be in a form of anything...whether we use our hands to touch, eyes to see, ears to hear, or even heart to feel... all these links to our emotions and interpretations.  Good or bad....doesn't matter.  It mixed up and being part of the ingredient to serve our life. 

As a Gen-X 'tegar', and I will always be....I feel very tough and unenthusiastic to start with this 'first' touch!  This is really ME!  Things get complicated.  Questions arose in my mind.  Can I become a blogger?  Would I succeed being part of the group?  Would anyone out there, read my lettering?  AM I DREAMING....This is really the ‘first touch’…. that I need to accomplish as this is part of my MIS750 assignment...There is no other choice given... Whether it is 1 km per hour (I know it will, as I am not able to speed up), I have no other choices, I need to go through it! Common Fara, I know you can do it!  I am half way through it!  Yes!  I am gonna make it!

Welcome onboard FARA.  Your first ‘touch’ will be shared for good.  Thanks to all EMBA colleague, for their 'touch' and synergy.  I am really grateful.  Luv you all! ;)


Property of EMBA 771A