The Web Tech Reviews

I had a chance to check out and implement a service which I have been using quite commonly when shopping online on Futureshop, BestBuy or any other online shopping sites. Store locator is a very convenient way of finding the store nearest to you. ZIPCodeWorld Store Locator Live provides the exact service as the ones you use on other online shopping sites to businesses with multiple stores.

This service is perfect for businesses with multiple stores spread across Canada, the United States as well as more than 30 other countries worldwide. With the Store Locator Live, webmasters can simply copy and paste a few lines of code into their websites without the need of handling or programming any code. It is currently available in PHP and .NET as well so it can be installed onto the local servers for more control.

Why choose ZIPCodeWorld Store Locator Live? Well, it is currently supporting 1089 companies and total of 30692 unique stores and growing as well as over 30 countries worldwide as mentioned above. This service is free for businesses with less than 100 physical stores and/or dealers but in return you have to have a banner link back to them which is worth it. Price starts at $499.95USD for less than 500 physical stores and/or dealers, $999.95 for less than 2000 and 1,999.95 for less than 10,000. Prices are for one year subscription.

Here are the key features and benefits from the site:

Aside from testing the Client Demo for finding the RadioShack, I registered with an account because I wanted to know more about it. The registration took less than a minute to confirm and activate my account. Once logged in, I was presented with a simple and easy to use interface where I could add stores into the system based on a ZIP code or Postal Code if you are in Canada. Or I could bulk load multiple stores using the Import feature which is a great feature if I had multiple stores, it just wouldn’t make sense to upload one by one unless I was opening new stores in the future (it has a sample import text file so I could just follow the format).

After adding all the stores, I was able to preview what I have entered by testing the Store Locator. And finally, I just obtained the HTML code and pasted onto my site and ready to be used! (assuming I had a business with multiple stores) The process was quick, simple and to the point!

As a related side note, ZIPCodeWorld also offers a comprehansive ZIP code, posta code, city name, province/state name, province/state abbreviation and phone area code for the United States, Canada and Mexico.

Google Chrome, a new web browser released today to compete with Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Firefox, Safari and others. I’ve beta tested with IE 8 and I was not particularly happy with the bug I found. Let’s see if Google’s first ever browser will be better or worse.

I immediately tried to load my Project Mobius web site up to see if something funny would happy. I assumed it was because Flash plug-in wasn’t installed for this browser. While downloading, I went to this blog page for a quick test. The page loaded fine it seemed, but there was a popup that disappeared way before I was able to read the sentence which was really annoying. If the message was meant to be displayed for a mere half a second, why even bother? After refreshing the page and trying to read the error message word by word. I managed to figure out that it was complaining about addition plug-in (again related to the Flash plug-in) was required to display some elements on the page and those elements were shown at the bottom left of the page. The problem was fixed right away after installing the Flash plug-in.

Overall in terms of user interface, its almost like using any other browsers out there. Even the buttons look similar although the placements are slightly different but you will never be in a situation where you cannot find a particular function, well most of the time. I actually prefer the button placements for Chrome over IE8 Beta because in IE8 Beta, the Favorites button is located right next to the Refresh button with little space in between. Where as in Chrome, there is at least some space between the two buttons. It has the Favorites or the bookmarks bar just below the location bar much like in IE8 Beta which I dislike (I hid it right away). Chrome can also have the option to hide the entire bar along with the double arrows. I would rather have the double arrows remain there like IE8 Beta, instead of pressing Ctrl+B to toggle the entire bookmarks bar section on and off. But overall I think Chrome is very clean, a little bit too plain I should say. They should work on the top frame because I am not feeling the plain blue bar at all.

I opened a new tab by clicking the little plus sign and it displayed pages I’ve visited. I could also see a full history and delete a certain day’s history similar to IE. Would be nice if there’s a button somewhere on the page to go back to the previous page instead of always clicking the Back button on the top left. Sorry just being a little picky here.

One minor problem I encountered was when I mouse overed the title, it would not be displayed as a clickable link because somehow I’m guessing its still referencing the top layer when the two div tags were too close to each other, as with my blog’s navigation links and the newest entry’s title link. , which was the navigation links. I couldn’t even select the text from that title.

I only use the basic functions during web surfing such as finding a particular text on a page, going back to previous pages, bookmarking interesting places and etc. I don’t see why I would switch from one of the existing browsers over to Chrome as I’m a very casual web browsing user. But one thing for certain is that, Chrome’s stability is much higher than that of IE which I had problems with while testing IE8 Beta. I definitely will look forward to future releases of Google Chrome.

For more information, please visit the learn more page on Google.

Sony PSP-3000 will be released in Japan on October 16th. The newest version features faster response time, higher contrast and color depth that result in better display quality. It also has an anti reflective screen, I’m guessing its something similar to the TFT technology on most of Sony Ericsson’s cellphones starting from the T630. Video-out option now supports outputting to analogue televisions as oppose to only progressive televisions.
Display improvement aside, a built-in internal microphone will also included in the new PSP located just below the screen which supports Skype.

The new PSP will come in three colors - Piano Black, Pearl White (my favorite) and Mystic Silver. Again in two trims - the basic version with the PSP, AC adapter and a battery while a value pack will have all those plus strap, cloth for cleaning the screen, a nice pouch (specially the white one) and a 4GB Memory Stick Pro Duo which is something extra. It used to come with a 256MB one if I remember correctly.

I am happy Sony is adding so much more features to the PSP, features that will actually be useful! Unfortunately I’ve already got one, the oldest version in Pearl White.

Microsoft released Internet Explorer (IE) 8 Beta last week. I was relunctant to download it and give it a try because of chance of instability not just to web browser but the entire OS, or operating system as a whole. But my curiosity won and I installed it today and writing this review using it.

The first thing I noticed was the Favorites is now part of the top section of the browser where the common File, Edit View etc bar and the navigation buttons are. I found it somewhat pointless if I have more bookmarks that the width of the browser can display because in that case I STILL have to either click the double arrow to the far right of the Favorites or click the Favorites in the File, Edit and View bar like in previous versions. Needless to say, I got rid of that right away, although a Favorites button remains on the top, it still takes up less space than before as I prefer a cleaner browser with as little as possible. Another related feature is the One Click Favorites which will save you a few clicks when trying to favorite a page.

IE7 introduced tab navigations which was long implemented in Firefox and Mozilla, IE8 further enhances that feature with Quick Tabs where you will be able to view thumbnail size of pages in each tab. You can go to that page by selecting the corresponding thumbnail.

On the Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 features page, it stated Increased performance. I have yet to notice any differences, and I actually crashed while surfing other websites once. I’m not sure if its a coincidence or because of IE 8.

There are two features that I think are relatively more useful - Web Slices and Compatibility View. Web Slices allows you to “favorite” or subscribe to a web page in your Favorites. When new information is available, the tab will be highlighted, when you click on the tab, it will then display a preview of the updated page. Clicking on that preview will bring you to the actual page. This is very handy for people that often buy/sell on eBay. The compatibility View is also a great feature because I can assure you not every website will be fully compatible with this new version of IE. Wordpress for one isn’t 100% compatible. With this new feature, all you have to do is click theCompatibility View button located just beside the Refresh and Stop button on the url section and you can view the page, and only this page, as if you are using IE7.

The URL bar, where you type in a website address also received enhancements. For example, if I type in the word “game”, it will display all matches from History, Favorites and RSS feeds. Neat feature but probably not as useful as the previous two mentioned.
Finally, IE8 also introduces a feature called Accelerators. Basically the idea is to save user’s time by eliminating the copying and pasting. It is sort of like an auto complete by using stored input data. I haven’t had time to play around too much with it.

I have also found a bug that will crash IE8 everytime, at least on my PC. Simply right click on any links and it will crash. Although IE can recover and display the page again. Basically I cannot right click on any links until either I downgrade back to IE7 or wait for an updated version of IE8.

There are some nice features in this version of IE but nothing “must get”. So for those who are not as curious as me, its better to wait for the “live” release. I have not written all the features of IE8 but rather some of the obvious ones but I hope this review can give you some ideas of what is to expect from IE8. For an overview or the full list click here.

Looking back these years playing Second life, an online virtual reality game. Friends come and go, though I’ve gained a few more friends who initially were my customers. The only thing that is missing in my second life is I need to socialize more, I have to admit it plays a huge part in the game. That is also one reason why I don’t have too many friends in there. All I did and still am doing is login, build and logoff. By build, I mean building houses, stores, malls and bunkers you name them. I really love building in SL, because it allows me to release my imaginations through the use of software tools.

When I first started with no money, I didn’t have my own land and thus I didn’t have my own store. I had to rent from someone. The place was called Mobius Village, it drew my attention because my avatar name is Mobius Hashimoto, so it meant something to me. Not sure if it still exist though. Also the rent there was resonable so I had my little store there for about half a year or so. Then I found another place called Armory Island which, as you can guess, sells military related products and is the biggest place for your military needs. There is no rent but AI charges a 25% commission, which is somewhat steep. But with the traffic there, I thought it was worth it and its also good for exposing my products to more people. About a year had passed, my business was stable enough that it would cover the monthly land ownership fee as well as the premium membership fee. I decided, with the help of some friends, to buy my very own piece of land, its a 4096 sq feet of space, which was and still is more than enough to build a relatively spacious store. You have no idea what the feeling was like to own your first piece of virtual land!

So here I am, still building things and running my little business. Although I don’t build as much as I used to, my passion for building and this game overall is still as strong. Lately I’m just occupied with other things that I haven’t built for months until now.

If you are into virtual reality type of games. You should definitely give Second life a try. It is free so you have nothing to lose other than some of our first life. There are just many fun things to do there like clubbing/partying, building like me, or just socialize with others and play many different types of interesting mini games that are built by others in Second Life.

Time flies, its already been 2 years since I’ve joined Second Life. So I have decided to design and build a 2 year anniversary prefab. As usual, I tried different ideas and came up with this. Hope you guys like it!

Mobius

I just read an article on DailyTech and thought I should write my thoughts here. Its been known for a long time that some professional sports athletes use performance enhancing drugs. One recent accusation comes to mind is Roger Clemens, a famous Major League Baseball or MLB player who used to play for the Toronto Blue Jays (I’m from Toronto so that’s how I know him, not that I watch a lot of baseball though), using these drugs.

Back to pro gaming.

Whether its illegal drugs like marijuana, amphetamines or any other ones that I don’t know of, or legal ones such as caffeine pills or sodas. Even if it doesn’t “boost” your gaming skills while in effect, it is still harmful to one’s body. And if these drugs do prove to enhance gamers’ ability to play better then there is an unfair advantage to those that can afford these drugs. As mentioned in the DailyTech article, one immediate and obvious solution that comes to mind is drug testing. But this solution is very expensive to implement in the pro gaming industry.

If money is the problem for implementing this solution, should the Government get involved? This is public health related after all. Since gaming has become a profession, I believe it should be taken look into more seriously like any other business or profession.

I was going to wait til Friday (day off) to get a copy of Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice from EB Games, I couldn’t wait and got it yesterday I have been waiting for an RPG game for my PlayStation 3 since I got it last November. Until Final Fantasy 13 comes out, which is hopefully end of this year, I would need some RPG to satisfy my RPG hunger til then. And what can suit me better than a Japanese anime style, level grinding RPG game? None except this game. Obviously I have not finished the game, and most likely I won’t in the foreseeable future. Here are my thoughts so far.

As mentioned, this is a RPG game and turn-based with 2D sprites with 3 camera modes (bird’s-eye view, zoomed in view and really zoomed in view). First thing I noticed about this game is the graphics, which is pretty outdated in my opinion. They remind me of an online RPG gamed called Ragnarok Online, which has been out since 2001 and still remains popular even after it started charging monthly fees instead of being free like in the beta period. This shows that a game can still be a considered a good game even without fancy graphics, a game with fancy graphics but with no game play value is still a bad game, well most of the time. Disgaea 3 is exactly the case, even though its graphics are outdated. Its game play more than made up for the short coming.

The game starts you off with your main character, a netherworld student from Maritsu Evil Academy called Mao, a son of the overlord in the Netherworld. You actually play on the evil side for once as oppose to other games where most of the time you are on the “good” side fighting off evil. Here’s the fun part, in the netherworld school, an honor student is a person who skips class and not doing homework as much as possible, whereas a delinquent is a person who acts the exact opposite. And as you can guess, Mao is an honor student. The story is ok, its more suited for teens since most of the conversations are pretty childish, which is ok because the characters are after all, kids. There are also humor here and there as well and some are pretty funny. There is also an option to skip any story telling and conversation between characters by pressing triangle button which is a huge plus since I don’t find the majority of the story interesting, at least not yet. You can also change the voice over from English back to Japanese, which is yet another big plus since it just feels different having English voice over.

Game play of this game is what made me want to buy this game right away as oppose to wait for a couple of months and let the price drop. The play value as well as replay value is amazing. For those of you that are into leveling up your characters, you can level them to level 1000 and each stage can be played repeatedly or you can just play through the game by clearing each level once. Since it is a turn-based game, you get to move and attack/use item and end the turn, then your enemies will do the same. A very noticable difference, or I should say improvement over any other turn-based games is that the enemies move all at once as oppose to one at a time which can be annoying. The game pace is fast even under normal speed setting. Your characters can counter attacks and enemies can do the same randomly, so you can see counter-counter-counter attacks for example. Characters, again enemies as well, can combine attacks and form combos and which also happen randomly. There are also monsters in the game and they can “magichange” which pretty much means morph into weapons and allow human/demon characters to wield them, another fun feature. I’m pretty sure there are other fun features as I play more, but as you can see, this game is packed with so many features. Oh and by the way, I look forward to my first million point damage!

Control is pretty standard and straight forward like any other similar games. You can rotate the map 360 degrees so you don’t miss anything and 3 different views mentioned above.

While I like this game a lot, there is one thing that really bothers me, the music. While the music is very upbeat, it gets boring and down to annoying if you remain in the same area or in the same battle for too long.

That’s all I got to tell you guys for now, I’m sure I have missed something but there are just too much to talk about and I need more time to digest. So if you are an anime fan and are into level grinding, you should really check this game out.

You might save some money by buying on ebay link. I saw some good deals there, even the limited addition version. I would buy games off ebay if there were more Canadian sellers, sending from the US is not worth it and is often more expensive than buying in local stores.

My first non tech related article.

I came to Toronto, Canada when I was one month shy of being 12. Back then, Toronto was a more affordable place to live in compare to now. I’m no expert in politics nor I know much about how our Government functions but with a ridiculous tax that will be effective on Monday September 1st as well as recent decision made by our Prime Minister Stephen Harper just make me think why do we keep on electing incompetent leaders to lead our city.

After the land transfer tax that became effective since Feb 1st of this year, we now have yet another new tax coming that will haunt us for as long as I can foresee. The new vehicle tax, which will be effective on September 1st will be applied to all personal vehicles only. The tax will charge motorists $60 for a car and $30 for a motorcycle every time a license plate has to be renewed. That is on top of $70 something dollars that we have to pay to renew our plates for one year. And you can’t just not pay it, no pay no plate renewed, simple as that. Those who submit for renewal before August 31st and are renewing for two years can escape the fee until 2010.

I just read the news today (August 27), that our Prime Minister Stephen Harper is calling for an election after being in the office for two and a half years. The first thing that comes to mind, with common sense, is that he is trying to walk away from all these troubles and difficulties that we are facing in Toronto. He stated he has trouble working with the opposition party and that if his office cannot be productive then people should elect someone that can. Yet another irresponsible statement in my opinion.

Finally, what was the point of reducing GST, that was barely noticeable when buying everyday needs? The GST reduction was quickly blanketed by all these taxes that were introduced this year. There was really no tax breaks at all, the government is basically taking some percentage here and put it elsewhere, if not adding more. Living in Toronto is getting so expensive nowadays along with the gas hikes (but I won’t discuss it here since its not just in Toronto, gas prices are rising everywhere). I feel unjust that we have to pay for all these taxes and the government is still having trouble balancing our budget, where did all our money go?

Thank you for hearing my rant and please feel free to correct me as I’m only writing based on what I see and how I feel.

Sony and Spanish based WiFi provider FON have joined forces to provide free WiFi access for PSP owners in Japan. Imagine surfing the net, watching streaming music and movies on the go! But in Japan only, which is somewhat expected since Japan has a history of keeping the goodies to themselves. For those lucky enough to be in Japan and own a PSP, they will also be able to download custom Dissidia: Final Fantasy themes which the game itself will be released in December. I wouldn’t have heard of a new Final Fantasy release if it wasn’t for this WiFi deal.

It would be great if this offer became available to us in North America, but chances are pretty slim in my opinion, at least it won’t be free. One reason is that Japan is much smaller than say, Canada, so setting up those hot spots is much easier and less costly. They are already setup in Japan which made the setup even easier. Its just a matter of integrating with each other’s system.

Although we will most likely not get this free WiFi access anytime soon. It is still good news to those living in Japan, again the Japanese always gets the goodies. Think I have one more reason to go to Japan since I have a Japanese version PSP.

At last, after such a long wait, I finally got my hands on Star Wars: The Force Unleashed demo. The demo starts you off with the young apprentice having a conversation with Darth Vader (I spelled it Dark Vader before, oops) and facial expression is top notch. Then you start the level inside a ship, no surprise there. You are presented with a bunch of containers right in front of you in which the auto aim will target one of them for you, you can also lock-on to a target. You get to dash, defend, the saber attack, jump and 3 forces - Force Lightning, Force Grip and Force Push. Force Grip is extremely fun. I spent the first 20 minutes just to play around with Force Grip, grabbing every object I could and just toss them around, it was that fun! The environment is very destructible, you can literally break the windows and shutters will be down to stop air from escaping or you can hit the wall and parts of it will break apart. Force Push is another fun force to play with, you will be using it to “open” large doors which I’m sure will take you awhile to get bored of. I have not used Force Ligtning in any special occasion except shocking and frying storm troopers. Almost forgot, you can also chain and discover new combo attacks as you progress.

Near the end of the demo, you get to go head to head with an AT-ST, it wil not be an easy task though! I almost died fighting it lol. You get to finish it by following a set of button clicks similar to Heavenly Sword. If you get it wrong you have to start over again, but its not a show stopper.

Graphics-wise, its just amazing, I have nothing negative to say, facial expression like the way the young apprentice talks is very realistic as well as special effects like explosions and things getting sucked out of a broken window. The character movement is also silky smooth and fluid! Control-wise and game play, being able to chain and discover new attack combo isn’t new. But given the 3 forces, you will have hours of fun chaining different combos, shocking enemies and opening doors by “force”.

So if you have not had a chance to get the demo or you are hesitating, which you shouldn’t be, you should get the demo now and feel the FORCE.