Saleh Blog

After ditching OneCare, Microsoft has released its new free security package called Security Essentials software to offer protection against malicious programs such as viruses and spyware.

According to Microsoft, it is design to run quietly without affect the system performance much like what many other security applications that users complain about. I haven’t tested it yet and I don’t think I will do it soon since I’ve already installed Avast free edition and I don’t feel like formatting my PC anytime soon. However, since it is made by Microsoft itself, it should integrate well with Windows but you have to have a genuine copy of Windows XP (SP2 or 3), Windows Vista or Windows 7 to work. It is also compatible with Windows XP mode in Windows 7.

For more information about it, check out this blog post from The Windows Blog.

Not all of us can tweet all the time for many reasons. I’m one of those who can’t tweets all time even though I own a PDA with a Twitter client. This is when scheduling your tweets could come handy.

There are many online services that schedule your tweets. The one I’m using and might interest many of you is FutureTweets. It is easy to use by writing your tweets on a form then select the date and time you want it to be published. You can also see all previous tweets you have scheduled.

It has been sometime now we have been waiting for this announcement. Tickets for the web based conference, Singularity 2008, is now available for sale for $99 USD.

Aral Balkan has been working hard to make this project happen and it is finally happening. This conference is a web-based, means you can attend the conference from your PC without the need to travel.

More information about Gumbo is now made available on the Gumbo page. Gumbo is the codename of the next version of Flex.

According to this post, Metal Gear Solid 4 is now out in Rihab’s shop in Kuwait since yesterday. That means it is out 3 days before the official release date which is suppose to be in June 12, 2008. I’m confirming the availability of the game. I bought it 2 hours ago and now I’m going to get drunk in this game.

For all fancy web developers in the globe, Adobe has announced Dreamweaver CS4 beta which is now available for public testing. If you are a Dreamweaver fan or you are a programmer geek race then you might want to grab this software.

Sitepoint and 99designs are offering a free complete book, The Photoshop Anthology: 101 Web Design Tips, Tricks & Techniques. This book is aimed for web developers looking forward to add Photoshop in their technique basket. It is available for a limited time. Hurry and grab it now! 
As for me, I have a week off between summer and fall semester. I’m going to get my hands dirty with books and programming! This book should be a good start. Long live fall break…

Ajaxian has posted a book for Adobe AIR developers called “Adobe AIR for JavaScript Developers”. The book is under Creative Commons license so it is free. The book has been out for sometime but this one is updated for AIR 1.0. You can get it here.

Of the top ten winners at the 2008 ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ACM ICPC) competing to be the best computer programmers in the world, four teams were from Russian universities, one was from Ukraine, a former member of the USSR, and three were teams representing universities in North America, including Canada and the United States. First place went to St. Petersburg University of Information Technology, Mechanics and Optics (Russia), followed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (U.S.), Izhevsk State Technical University (Russia), Lviv National University (Ukraine), and Moscow State University (Russia). Also among the top ten finishers were teams from Tsinghua University (China), Stanford University (U.S.), University of Zagreb (Croatia), University of Waterloo (Canada), and Petrozavodsk State University (Russia). This international competition, now in its 32^nd year, is hosted by ACM (the Association for Computing Machinery), a society of 88,000 computing educators, researchers, and professionals worldwide.

Read the press release.

You can see videos and photos of the event available here. You’ll notice that the interface of the web site has changed 🙂

Dr. Craig R. Barret, Intel’s CEO, has visited Kuwait University last Thursday April 10th, 2008. He was hosted in a Q&A session arranged by CS Club and Computer Science Department in Kuwait University.

In his talk he focused in how to establish a good education system that can be compared to education systems around the world, not only in the Middle-East. Three characteristics have to be available to create an excellent education system which are: smart people, smart ideas, and good universities to provide a good environment for smart people to look for smart ideas.

Smart ideas can be found when doing basic researches, not in developing ideas. Companies like Intel spends millions of dollars in developing, however, Intel cooperates with universities to conduct basic researches. Stanford University in Silicon Valley is a good example of a university that spends millions in basic research. Intel spends 6 billion dollars in research yearly, but only 200 million in basic research.

We do not need a huge research budget to create a good idea, what we need is passion, training, and good universities.

Dr. Craig Barret will continue his trip to visiting Dubai, Saudi Arabia, and Abu Dhabi. His goal on the trip is to see what’s happening in the ground with his own eyes and visit some technology professionals in universities in the Middle-East.

The session was so informative, and I am so happy to attend it. I also have to say that not even 1 instructor from our department, computer engineering, was there, how pathetic! That’s not like it wasn’t expected. However, a faculty member from electrical engineering has been sighted there!

I’m also glad that some of my friends had shown up.