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Barcode tag is one of the common tag system in daily products. Don’t believe? Check your keyboard bottom, you should see a barcode tag. Not only electronic products, tag even exist on your shampoo, lotion, drink can, etc.

Normal barcode tag look like image below. I have experiment to scan barcode on screen, but failed. The class II laser light reflect from monitor and unable to decode barcode. Normal barcode tag must print out hard copy (either paper or sticker label) in order for scan.

3 dimension (3D) barcode scanner used in Watson, Guardian store more info and easier to scan. But still lack in data manipulation and cannot use in common device. Since then I keep an eye to see if any better barcode tag system solution.

Microsoft Mobile Tag Technology

The new Microsoft Tag technology invented by Microsoft Research solve problem mention above. Microsoft Tag construct with 4 colors (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black) call High Capacity Color Barcodes (HCCBs). It is a mobile tagging. Which mean not only provide basic information, but any mobile content that you store online.

When you scan Microsoft Tag in real life, it bring you information that access from Internet. (more…)

The new hot awaiting OS: Microsoft Windows 7 beta is now available for free download. Beta testers should be able to answer how the new Windows perform.

Talk about Windows 7, we all doubt on its statement in my previous post. Anyway, Microsoft claim they listen to us for the past few years and build the new Windows 7 faster, more reliable and easier to do what you want. Download, setup and try out Windows 7 at your own should answer you up to certain extend.

Before heading to the download page, let’s check out the minimum recommended specs:

• CPU: 1 GHz 32-bit or 64-bit processor
• RAM: 1 GB of system memory
• HDD: 16 GB of available disk space
• Graphic card: Support for DirectX 9 graphics with 128 MB memory (to enable the Aero theme)
• DVD-R/W Drive
• Internet access (to download the Beta and get updates)

If your computer meet the minimum requirements, then heading to the Microsoft Official Windows 7 download page. Register yourself as Beta tester and download the DVD ISO. It should provide you an activation key to activate your Windows 7 evaluation copy. Although there are lots of leaked BT download, I still recommend to download from Microsoft Official latest build release (Of course, try at your own risk). (more…)

Microsoft launch its first Online Store to beat Apple Online Store? Can Microsoft Store compete with Apple Online Store?

Microsoft has total of 7 categories, from Home, Entertainment to Business. The items available is pretty complete. Good to see no more Windows Server 2003 and replaced with Windows Server 2008. Still no chance to try it yet.

Why Microsoft Store can’t beat Apple Store? (more…)

One of my baby (Windows 2003 small business server) was having low disk space error yesterday. Its not the first time this Windows Server low disk space on its C: drive (system drive). I have do necessary housekeeping, cleanup temporary files.

After a day, the warning pop up again. It cause my application can’t proceed data into SQL database. I wonder why it eat up disk space so fast?

Root Cause: System Volume Information

Without anymore files to clean, I need to find out the root cause. I compare folders one by one in C: drive. Finally, found the folder “System Volume Information” contains 8GB files! It is under C:\ root drive after uncheck “Hide Protected Operating System files”.

It is the root cause. Lots of system files inside, looks like growing too everyday. In Windows XP, system volume information is location to store restore point. In Windows 2003 small business server, it contains shadow copy of shared folders or drive depends on settings. (more…)

Many blamed Windows is lousy for decades. Even some don’t really go deep into OS have followed the trend to criticize.

In fact, nothing is perfect. From Windows history, at least we together saw its improvement from Windows 1.0 to Windows Vista (or the New Windows 7 in near future). Although its main problem is on stability, no doubt it did bring up the PC computer industry to the whole world. If not, I don’t think we all can have a computer at home now. Also, don’t forget it still leading in its user friendly GUI.

Myself never see Windows version earlier than Windows 3.11. My first OS installation was Windows 3.11 (over 10 diskettes) and Office 4.0 (more than 20 diskettes) 10 years ago!

Windows Boot Up Screens

Let’s go through the Windows boot up screens history. It may remind some of our hard learning memories.

1985.11.20 – Windows1.01 —— The earliest “Blue Screen”

1987.11.1 – Windows 2.03 —— Official “Microsoft” Logo

1990.5.22 – Windows 3.0

1992.3.18 – Windows 3.1 —— Windows flag exist for the first time (more…)