Phuket, Phi Phi island

I made the second trip this year to Phuket and still much enjoy it. See photos of some beautiful scene...

The return airfare by Tiger Airways costs S$140 plus various taxes & surcharges of $146 -- nowadays the hidden "extra" for taxes & surcharges exceeds the airfare itself, especially when it comes to budget airlines and short-distance flights. Probably due to the peak season, it is more expensive than my previous trip in March, when the Jetstar airfare was only S$76 + taxes & surcharges $123.

I stayed with the same hotel, Patong Beach Lodge, at US$82 per night per room of 2 adults incl. breakfast. It was US$53 last time in March. The hotel is conveniently located in the short walking distance to Patong beach and to the main street for bars & massage houses. Though not as elegant as the near-by Holiday Inn, it is pretty clean, cosy and non-expensive...

Taxi fare from airport to Patong is standard, at 550 Baht per cab payable at a counter inside terminal; the driver does not take cash payment. Our driver drove very fast (probably... rude :) and took less than 45min dropping us at the hotel. He said he usually does as many as 7 round-trips a day in peak season.

The Phi Phi island day tour is at 1400 Baht, picking up at hotel lobby at 8am and back around 6pm. The ticket is available in many tour desks along the street, with list-price ranging from 2500 to 2800 Baht. It includes drinks & fruits on board, a buffet lunch and about 6 places / activities for sight-seeing, relaxing on beach and snorkeling, among them are Maya bay / beach, Phi Phi lay, Khai Nui Island... I'm also impressed by the tour guide who is friendly and caring and thanks everyone for coming back after the tsunami.

Among the two local beers, Chang and Singha, I prefer Chang beer as it is stronger and tastes like Carlsberg at some extends.

I can't remember the street name that is full of good bars and night activities, it faces the Fantasea at its east end and links the beach and the main commercial road (Raj-U-Thid Rd). It is the place that one shouldn't miss... Sitting in a bar by the street or walking along the street seeing people at the bars are both of fun and form an interesting scene for each other parties.

Christmas 2007

Merry Christmas!

See photos of X'mas@Singapore at my flickr... more photos are coming in the next a few days...

Linked-in

LinkedIn is a business-oriented networking site mainly used for professional networking. It had 16 million registered users over 150 industries in Nov 2007.

The main purpose is to allow registered users to maintain a list of contact details of people they know & trust in business. A contact network is built up consisting of their direct connections, each of their connections' connections (2nd degree connections) and 3rd degree connections. It can then be used to find jobs, people and business opportunities.

Web / application server

Web server refers to a computer or program that responds HTTP requests from a client (browser e.g. IE or Firefox). The HTTP response usually consists of HTML document (i.e. web page) and other raw file such as image. A commercial web server should include other features like HTTPS (allowing encrypted connection), logging, authentication / authorization etc. Wikipedia gives a comparison of web server software.

Application server is distinguished from web servers by the extensive use of server-side dynamic content & frequent integration with database engines. It handles the business logic & data access fo the application. The term refers to web-based applications such as e-commerce & content management system.

One particular and prominent example is the Sun Microsystems J2EE platform. J2EE includes Enterprise JavaBean (EJB) that implements business logic, Servlet for the request-response model, JavaServer Page (JSP) that puts servlet code into a text-based document, as well as Java Message Service (JMS) / Java Transaction (JTA) / JavaMail / Java Naming & Directory Interface (JNDI) etc. APIs. The Sun Java System Application Server Platform Edition 8 is a fully compliant implementation of the J2EE 1.4 platform. It includes two technologies -- JSP Standard Tag Library (JSTL) and JavaServer Faces -- and a list of tools, e.g. admin console & asadmin, a command-line AS admin utility.

Other well-known Java enterprise edition application servers are Tomcat (Apache), JBoss (Red Hat), WebLogic (BEA) etc. See also a wider list of application servers at Wikipedia, including non-Java based products e.g. .NET framework (Microsoft).

Started off as a servlet reference implementation by a software architect at Sun Microsystems, Tomcat implements the Servlet & JSP specifications and provides an environment for Java code to run in cooperation with a web server.

JBoss is another free software, open source Java-EE based AS. Version 4.0 is a J2EE 1.4 application server, with embedded Tomcat 5.5.

With .NET interoperability, WebLogic is a J2EE 5 platform. Bundled with product support, it is priced at $4,840 for online purchase.

Gizmo

Gizmo project uses the Internet connection to make free calls to anyone with a Gizmo account, just like the Skype does. Furthermore, it allows to call other voice networks for free with the one client: Yahoo Messenger, Windows Live, Google Talk and of course Gizmo project. It is also possible to chat with AIM & MSN buddies directly from Gizmo project.

With inexpensive Call-Out feature, user can call any normal phone (mobile or landline) at some 2 cents per min. With its Call-in option, at about $3 per month, user gets a phone number in over 50 US/UK cities that goes (roams) with him and lets people call him at local rates. Other features like file exchange, chat history, voicemail with customisable messages, Instant messaging (IM), conference calling and call recording are pretty useful too.

Except the chargeable Call-In add-on, the free Access Numbers (unfortunately they're all US/CA numbers) enable the user to receive call to his Gizmo account from the traditional phone system.

Unlike Skype, it always assigns a SIP number (looks like 1-747-XXX-XXXX) with your Gizmo identifier so you can make calls to and receive calls from over 100 VoIP networks all over the world, for free.

GizmoProject introduced 4.0 beta with video calling and a new look in Dec. Except free video calls, it allows Meta-IM to chat with AIM, Yahoo, Windows Live, GTalk, iChat and more. Chat logging and tabbing are also of interesting features.

Gizmo project is also available on Nokia & Treo handheld, called GizmoVoIP. It saves money making Internet calls with the WiFi phone. The GizmoVoIP plug-in is tested with N80, N96, E61i & E65. A special version for N800 is available.

Gizmo5 beta is recently released to generic mobile phone users. Note that calls are charged differently than with Gizmo project (it charges for the two legs of the call). For example, USD 3.8 cents per min. for calling China from Singapore, as compared to USD 1.8 cents with Gizmo project.

Facebook

Facebook is a social networking website that was launched in Feb 2004. The name refers to the paper facebooks depicting members of the campus community that some colleges & schools give to incoming students, faculty and staff as a way to get to know other people on campus. Initially the membership was restricted to college students but has been extended to anyone since Sept 2006. User can select to join one or more networks e.g. high school, place of employment or geographic region. It reached 55 million active members worldwide and 7th traffic ranking in Nov 2007. It is the number one site for photos in the US, ahead of public sites such as Flickr.

User with a valid email address can register a facebook account, for free. He may then join various networks (sometimes requiring to verify an email belonging to the network e.g. institution's email, or referrals from that network) and create his profile & photo album etc. I have registered an account using my gmail address and started to upload some of my personal photos, and accordingly invite all my friends here to login & be my facebook 'friends'. Let's keep in touch via facebook and have fun!