Kai Mai's Blog - Take Back the Web - Make the Web Suck a Little Bit Less

Free Security Software for Mac OS X Leopard: ClamxAV Anti-virus, NoobProof Firewall

Sat, 31 May 2008 00:02:08 -0700

I've been used to running Anti-spyware, Anti-virus, Firewall Programs on Windows. Mac is "supposed" to be more secure, but I always want to be safe than sorry. Mac is getting popular, so it will become a popular target for virus and spyware writers. Also, Leopard's built-in firewall, which is not activated by default, sucks.

so I did some research, and started using the following free programs for Max OS X Leopard:

ClamxAV Open Source anti-virus - The version on Mac doesn't let me scan my disk in one click cause it said it'd cause problems. I had to select folders to scan instead. Also, I needed to set up the preferences to monitor scan with progress bar, scan email files, alert on virus detection, and the schedule to do daily virus definition update and scan. These things should have been set up as default.

Tags: security mac osx firewall anti-virus spyware leopard

Web 2.0 Gone Bad: Wiki Host Stikipad Disappears

Wed, 28 May 2008 00:54:17 -0700

Wiki host Stikipad has been offline for a couple of weeks as confirmed by mentalized.net.

I have a free personal wiki hosted there, and I haven't backed up my data! Now there's no way to get my data back.

Stikipad had a fine wiki hosting service that provides both free and premium wiki hosting service. I've seen some popular open source software toolkits hosted on Stikipad. That's why I signed up to use it at the first place.

No matter what has happened at Stikipad, there's not even a simple email notification from them. This isn't how Web 2.0 is supposed to be.

Tags: wiki web stikipad free

Microsoft Has Nothing to Lose on MSN's Live Search Cashback Program

Mon, 26 May 2008 18:34:57 -0700

Microsoft(MS) recently introduced cashback on your purchases through participating merchants if you find your items through MSN's Live search. Given that Google has been gaining search shares again and again, it's not surprising that people view Microsoft's move as desperate. Well, they are trying something that have been proven to work by Ebates, Fatwallet.

Basically, MS has nothing much to lose in this cashback program. They are betting that price-sensitive consumers in this recession period will want to save a few more bucks via cashback. With a CPA-based pricing model, MS hopes E-commerce retailers will increase their spend on advertising through Live when they see more leads through Live and good conversion rates/ROI(return on investment). MS is just giving up a little bit of income to potentially increase their search market share and e-commerce's advertising spend.

Tags: google live search msn cashback

China Earthquake: 11-year Old Boy Carrying 3-year Old Sister to Safety Zone

Sun, 18 May 2008 23:34:46 -0700

Sichuan Earthquake:

11-years old Zhang Zhi from Bei Chuan carried his 3-year old sister Zhang Han on his back, starting at 5 in the morning, walking for 12 straight hours to Mian Yang safety zone. They walked together with their elderly grandpa and grandma to escape from the hardest hit area.

Their parents are working outside of the region.

Zhang Zhi said he loves his little sister very much.

Original story in Chinese with pictures:

昨日下午5点，记者第三次深入北川县城核心现场，发现一股从背后深山逃出的人流�

Tags: china earthquake disaster 2008 sichuan

English Diary of a High School Student Surviving 2008 Sichuan earthquake

Sun, 18 May 2008 21:50:09 -0700

"The earthquake destroy our hometown. We have nothing now. Many people have no home. Many children become a lonely. This is happen on 2008.5.12. In that time, we are just have the first class in the afternoon. The earthquake came too quick and have no expect. It was very fear. But I saw the death people, my heart is hurt, I cried, have no cry sounds except tears.

After earthquake. We all have nothing. It is the ChangHong Company give us the help. They give us food, water, and clothes. The important they will rebuilt the Bei yi Zhong. They give us help. We will not forget forever."

"the Bei yi Zhong" means Bei Chuan First Middle/High School.

Tags: china earthquake disaster 2008 sichuan

Please Donate for China EarthQuake Disaster Relief

Fri, 16 May 2008 23:43:21 -0700

A 7.9 magnitude earthquake hit Central China on May 12, 2008.

The death toll has risen to 21,500. Thousands of people are still missing, and thousands of people are homeless. The death toll is expected to rise above 50,000.

You can view the complete slide show

Tags: china earthquake donation disaster 2008 sichuan

eBay is still FeeBay(Not the Same Old, but Worse)

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 00:07:08 -0700

I used to sell on eBay a couple years back. I stopped because I got busier and didn't feel like paying ebay all the listing/final value fees/store inventory fee + Paypal fee.

Every time I hear some news about ebay, I've always hoped they'd reduce fees. But they've always increased fees.

Then I heard the news that they disallow sellers to leave negative feedback. This is getting ridiculous. I understand the feedback retaliation loop between sellers and buyers. I've been on both the seller and buyer sides. What EBay is doing is to improve buyer experience on the expense of sellers. This can't work cause sellers can't have their voice heard.

Tags: ebay

JBoss Tomcat SSL Cache Control Max-Age

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 23:21:29 -0700

If you are running SSL with JBoss, you'd notice that Tomcat always sends "Cache-Control: no-cache" http header which ask browsers not to cache any content. This is a big NO-NO for static content like images, Javascript, css which should be cached by browsers to improve page loading performance.

JBoss wiki has the detail of how to disable cache control.

Once you get that fix, you can use to JBoss's ReplyHeaderFilter to specify max-age header to tell browsers to cache your content.

Tags: ssl jboss, tomcat, ssl, max-age, cache-control

Java: Loading Resource Bundle File with UTF-8

Sat, 08 Mar 2008 22:47:19 -0800

You hear that UTF-8 is the gold standard in internationalization. so you prepare your JSP pages to use UTF-8 charset.

Then you get your resource bundle files(property files) to use UTF-8 encoding. Everything looks fine in your text editor.

Now you load up the pages. Every character retrieved from your resource bundles look garbled.

This is because Java loads property files using ISO 8859-1 character encoding. Resource bundle utf-8 hack comes to rescue.

Tags: java utf-8 internationalization

GreaseMonkey Script to Show MLS Number in My Homes Page at ZipRealty

Sat, 01 Mar 2008 01:02:29 -0800

ZipRealty is a pretty good site for researching/shopping houses. I can save homes that I am interested in and see all of them in 'My Homes' page.

Sometimes, I need to send the lists to my agents to ask them advices. They always want the MLS numbers.

So I created this GreaseMonkey script to show MLS numbers on 'My Homes' page.

Hope someone finds it useful.

Tags: greasemonkey ziprealty

Amazon Gold Box 5% Off Trick: Apple Macbook Pro for $1452, Macbook Air for $1654

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 12:10:32 -0800

Apple released new generation of MacBook a couple days ago. Amazon has slashed its price on "previous" generation of MacBook and offers rebates as well.

Here's a trick outlined by rabidrobin at SlickDeals

Create a new account
Go to the product page for an applecare for macbook pro
scroll down until you find the "I Own it" checkbox, and check it
At the top of the screen, click on Recommendations
Go through the list of 20-30 or so recommended items and click "Not Interested" for the ones that aren't macbook pros
Look in your goldbox, I was able to buy the mac pro 2.2 ghz today but sometimes it may take overnight

Tags: amazon apple macbook deal macbook_air macbook_pro laptop

Where to Find Baby Name Suggestions

Sat, 09 Feb 2008 21:21:12 -0800

Before my son was born, I spent a lot of time trying to find a pretty unique and uncommon English name for him.

Here are the web sites that I found most useful:

Nymbler - Your Personal Name Suggestions is the best one because Nymbler can give your name suggestions based on your favorite name. You can also exclude names, save your favorite names. The suggestion part is really the best to help you discover new names
Think Baby Names tells you the meanings of names, the origins, and their variant forms, and other names that sound like the ones you are looking at. This site has done the best SEO as it constantly comes up as the first result when you google "baby name the name to be checked"

Tags: baby name naming

Time to Vote for Goal of the Year at Fox Soccer Channel. My Vote Goes to Sebastian Larsson

Thu, 27 Dec 2007 21:08:43 -0800

It's the end of the year. Time to cast you vote for goal of the year.

I have to say that some of 5 candidate goals are not top 5 quality!

But no matter whose candidate goal they include, My vote goes to Sebastian Larsson's stunning goal at the 93rd minute help Birmingham City to defeat Tottenham on December 2nd, 2007.

Tags: soccer goal video sebastian_larsson fsc fox

Love OpenID, Hate Password? Get Your Password-less SSL Certificated OpenID From Certifi.ca

Tue, 25 Dec 2007 17:21:36 -0800

Slowly, more and more sites have supported login using OpenID.

The selling point of OpenID is that you can use one login to access varies sites. This is very convenient. But I am worried about losing the same passwords for all the OpenID supported sites I access. There are so many phishing activities going on to steal passwords. I need something that's not password-based.

I came across Certifi.ca which is a password-less OpenID provider using SSL certificate for public key-based authentication. The basic idea is that you store your public SSL certificate(public key) and the private key in your browser. Certifi.ca identifies you by your public key, and uses your public key to encrypt communication between your browser and itself. Your browser with the private key is the only one that can decrypt the communication. There's no password needed!

Tags: ssl certificate public key openid provider certifi.ca cacert.org

Initial Review of Wik.is Pro Account Powered by MindTouch's Deki Wiki

Thu, 20 Dec 2007 23:27:05 -0800

I started to host tahoewiki.org on Wik.is with a pro account a couple weeks ago. It's powered by Deki Wiki which I first learned through ReadWriteWeb. Time for me to give a review.

Reasons for choosing Deki Wiki:

It's open source
It has a suite of widgets and web Services mashing up contents. The mashup features are important because I want to bring in contents from other sites into the wiki

Tags: wiki mashup wik.is deki mindtouch review