The real world has been pretty hectic lately so I was forced to postpone blogging, but hey, now I’m back! It feels good to have a leisure time again. Anyway, I got a new Toshiba laptop (the first one actually) – not really powerful but very much usable for work and fun. The purchase includes a Windows Vista Home Professional (or Premium? I don’t really bother reading it >.<) – an OS I’ve never tinkered with. Read more »

I have just watched this lecture from the local TV. The speakers were the founder of Microsoft, Bill Gates, and the Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (henceforth SBY).

SBY did not particularly said lots of things, he was mainly concerned about how technology can help Indonesia to face the current trend of globalization. There was really nothing much to know.

Mr. Gates then talked about the massive growth of IT technology with reference to the Moore's Law (which says that processor capabilities doubles every set amount of years). Then he advertised the current Microsoft research focus such as Microsoft Surface (if I am not mistaken, it enables mobile devices to talk to tables that they are over them and synchronize everything without intervention). Gates also previewed another Microsoft plaything on astronomy which looks very much like Google Earth but it is for the outer space, not for the Earth. Furthermore, he mentioned how IT boosts a lot of other sectors important to humans such as medicine. MIT OpenCourseWare were also given as an example of the profound effects of the internet (although the name was not mentioned explicitly). Read more »

In the last month things were going against this blog. The readership of Leap On! dropped significantly from about 2000 visits a month to only 1100 or so visits a month, which was a huge 40 – 50% drop!

Looking into the statistics, I found out that the real culprit was Google: the search engine cut the traffic to about a third of its usual level. Add to the fact that Google search comprised a huge portion of traffic to my blog (about 50%). Seeing the graph gave me the impression of drilling down a hill… oooh T.T

The graph for traffic from Google over the last month (which was April 2008)

It’s not that the human species will become extinct after that last roll-down-the-hill, it’s even worse – I can’t get the motivation to continue blogging, and I might get rid of blogging altogether…

— positive thinking mode ON — Read more »

OMG, and she learned materials science and engineering too!

Perhaps in Alia Sabur’s wildly advanced studies she came across a famous quote from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

“Knowing is not enough. We must apply,” the German writer once observed.

That could serve as explanation for what prompted the 19-year-old to become the youngest college professor in history.

Armed with prodigious wisdom, Sabur told TODAY’s Ann Curry on Wednesday that knowledge is power — especially when sharing it.

“I really enjoy teaching,” said Sabur. “It’s something where you can make a difference. It’s not just what you can do, but you can enable a lot of other people to make their changes.”

Sabur, from Northport, N.Y., has clearly been ahead of the learning curve since an early age.

She started talking and reading when she was just 8 months old. She had elementary school finished at age 5.

She made the jump to college at age 10. And by age 14, Sabur was earning a bachelor’s of science degree in applied mathematics summa cum laude from Stony Brook University — the youngest female in U.S. history to do so.

Read more »

I don’t have a credit card and am unemployed, so web hosting has always become a problem for me. This condition forced me to look for free web hosting services since I ever considered learning web development. It was a rather unhappy odyssey – posting boringly in forums, whining for account approval, moving hosts here and there (probably more than five times)...

Journeys, however, always award us with invaluable experiences. Here I outline 7 characteristics of a successful free web hosting service, based purely on my knowledge (some of these may apply to paid hosting as well): Read more »

Stolen from The Cherry Avenue!

Google has been known for a long time as the best place in the world to work. They offer free massages, gourmet meals, and professional haircuts at their beautiful campus in California. That right there puts them above 99.99% of the other companies in the world. At any rate, you already knew all that so lets move on.

Have you ever wondered how much a Google employee makes? Well this data isn’t extremely easy to find, if you don’t believe me just search Google. However, here is some interesting statistics.
Google Programmer in Phoenix – $174,000/year
Google Programmer in California – $197,000/year
Google Programmer in Chicago – $222,000/year
Google Programmer in New York – $242,000/year
(according to Indeed.com)

...and thats just in salary. What other financial benefits does Google offer it’s employees? Read more »

Today I noticed Qassia, a website so ambitious to be a knowledge repository – directly rivaling Wikipedia. What I really like about it is that it will credit the people who wrote in the knowledge, paying off your hard work instead of throwing it away to the society like Wikipedia (it’s not that charity is evil, but most people want to be known). The website says,

Qassia is fantastic because you get credit for sharing your intelligence. The more credit you earn, the better your websites will rank. And you get a backlink to your website for every intel you add – only Qassia gives you unlimited quality backlinks.

In other words, you can quality backlinks (perfect for SEO) by adding up more intelligence to the website. Also, they offer a revenue sharing scheme, which may give a boost on Google Adsense earnings.

If the concept of Qassia really rocks, it can be the next best thing after Wikipedia. It can also really build up money and fame if done right. Currently it is in closed beta, but feel free to use my Quassia invitation/invite! Let’s try this one and see whether it will work wonders.