Starhub TV Free Preview for Chinese New Year 2014

Starhub is offering 30 FREE TV channels this Lunar New Year from 30 Jan, 12pm to 3 Feb, 3pm.

And if you are on the move, download StarHub TV Anywhere App which is available on both Android and iOS.

Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws

The Three Laws of Robotics (often shortened to The Three Laws or Three Laws) are a set of rules devised by the science fiction author Isaac Asimov. The rules were introduced in his 1942 short story "Runaround", although they had been foreshadowed in a few earlier stories. The Three Laws are:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

» Three Laws of Robotics | Wikipedia

Share Your Android Screen to PC or Laptop

I came across this BBQScreen app few months back and I thought it worth a mention to blog it. With BBQScreen, it is possible to share your Android screen right onto your PC or laptop. What you need to do is to install the app on your Android and also on your PC or laptop. BBQScreen support Windows, Linux and Mac OS. What's most important is that it is absolutely free of charge!

15 jQuery Tips and Tricks to Increase Performance

jQuery has been widely used in several websites to make use of available libraries. Though the API itself is already optimised, it is still possible to enhance its performance.

Here are 15 tips and tricks by the Web Revisions.

1. Always Use the Latest jQuery Version
2. Always load CDN-hosted copy of jQuery
3. Always use ID as Selector Instead of Classes or Name
4. Always Cache jQuery Objects before use
5. Always use Tags Before Classes
6. Use Chaining
7. Just give your Selectors a Context
8. Storing Data
9. Preloading images
10. Try to make code simpler using group queries
11. jQuery Lazy Loading
12. Always Return False
13. Use join() for Longer Strings
14. Try to avoid DOM Manipulation
15. Check if an Element Exists

10 Awesome Infographics to Guide your Marketing Plan for 2014

The Buffer blog has rounded up 10 infographics and suggestions on online marketing to help us get our 2014 marketing strategy off to a great start. Visit the page now.

Typography: Care about how sentences are looked, read and understood

Do you care about words and how they look, read, and are understood? 24 Ways mentioned the need to manicure the right rag. There are 5 possible violations that we should be mindful of.

Violation 1. Never break a line immediately following a preposition
Solution 1: Are there any prepositions in the text? If so, add a   after them.

Violation 2. Never break a line immediately following a dash
Solution 2: Are there any dashes? If so, add a   after them.

Violation 3. No small words at the end of a line
Solution 3: Are there any words of fewer than three characters that you haven't already added spaces to? If so, add a   after them.

Violation 4. Hyphenation
Solution 4: Are there any emphasised groups of words either two or three words long? If so, add a   in between them.

Violation 5. Don't break emphasised phrases of three or fewer words
Solution 5: Are there emphasised phrases of three or fewer words? If so, try not to break the line among them. Group them.

To implement the above on your blog or website itself, you may try out this script on GitHub.

» Run Ragged | 24 Ways

How to defer loading of javascript efficiently using the Google way?

If there is a piece of code that is intended to be loaded after a webpage finishes loading, one efficient method as recommended by Google is to use listeners. An article on feedthebot illustrates the Google's method. The following code should be placed in your HTML just before the </body> tag. Also, all code blocks supposed to be delayed are to be placed in an external js file (defer.js in this case).

<script type="text/javascript">
function downloadJSAtOnload() {
    var element = document.createElement("script");
    element.src = "defer.js";
    document.body.appendChild(element);
}

if (window.addEventListener)
    window.addEventListener("load", downloadJSAtOnload, false);
else if (window.attachEvent)
    window.attachEvent("onload", downloadJSAtOnload);
else
    window.onload = downloadJSAtOnload;
</script>

2013 In Review (In Short)

#2013 in review:- Work) Little change » Status quo. Life) Pursued » Achieved. I know #2014 will be very different.

Video guide on the Marina Coastal Expressway

"White Christmas" (original version), being played on radio for 1st time in 1942 for World War II comrades

Convert Any Files to PDF

One common question many asked is "How can I actually convert a document or even image to a PDF file?". In some of my earlier articles, I wrote about converting a webpage into a PDF without installing any tool [option 1, option 2] and also manipulating existing PDF file(s) like merging, splitting, etc with an absolutely free tool.

Today, I just chanced upon toPDF. toPDF provides the capability to convert text documents, presentations, spreadsheets and images to PDF format. Some of its attractiveness include free service and needless to install any tool onto your PC since it is web-based. This free service supports up to 5 files (25Mb max).

10 Tips For An Effective User Experience UX Debrief Meeting

How should one conduct an effective user experience (UX) debrief meeting such that all stakeholders in the team can benefit from and do better in the next round? Userfocus offers 10 practitioner tips for running an effective UX debrief meeting.

1. Don’t wing it. Prepare thoroughly. Have a plan.
2. Don’t think of the debrief as a wrap-up meeting — think of it as a springboard to the next step. And make sure UX is part of the next step.
3. Co-chair the meeting with a lead member of the project team.
4. Make sure the main decision-makers attend.
5. Don't give a PowerPoint presentation, and don’t rehash the report. If you have 60 minutes talk for 20 minutes, then discuss for 40 minutes.
6. Insist that attendees must read the report and prepare comments and questions.
7. Before you summarize the study findings, ask the team to share what they learned from the study, what surprised them and what usability issues they feel are most important or most serious.
8. Simplify your message. Focus on just the 5 most severe usability problems. Don’t overwhelm the team by trying to cover everything (they can check the report for those details).
9. Get consensus on the problems rather than argue over solutions.
10. Don’t expect or insist that everything must be fixed. Focus next steps on things that can realistically be changed within the budget and timeline.

» The UX debrief: A tale of two meetings | Userfocus

Comprehensive and Complete Guide to Facebook Ads

Read The Complete Guide to Getting Started with Facebook Ads by Buffer Blog. Very comprehensive.

Security Practices When Making Calls to Server From Client Side

With HTML5 getting more widely adopted and more application logic done on client side, better (a different type) security should be considered to mitigate risk. Nettuts+ discussed some of the measures that can be deployed for just that. The topics are:

• Don’t Even Think About HTTP
• Make XSS Less Harmful With Content Security Policy
• Use Cross Origin Resource Sharing Instead of JSONP
• Sandbox Potentially Harmful Iframes

» Client-Side Security Best Practices | Nettuts+

Outlook.com launches automated tool to migrate from Gmail

Microsoft is continuing its attack on Google by launching an automated tool to migrate Gmail to its very own web-based Outlook.com (successor of hotmail.com).

The blog post claims emails, contacts, labels and even calendars can be imported. Immediately after the import is completed, Microsoft will send an email notification to your inbox.

Though I am not a fan of Outlook.com, I thought I should give the tool a try one day for curiosity sake.

The Essentials of Writing High Quality JavaScript

Nettuts+ wrote an article on some of the essentials of writing high quality JavaScript. It is largely based on a book "JavaScript Patterns" written by Stoyan Stefanov. Though lengthy, I strongly recommend it.

Happy Birthday from Google

The birthday doodle from Google is in fact same as last year's.

HtmlEncode and HtmlDecode In JavaScript

In web development, we often need to encode a string especially input from user so data with potential malicious intention when displayed will be safe. On server side, we can use e.g. HtmlUtility.HtmlEncode (in ASP.NET for encode) and HtmlUtility.HtmlDecode (in ASP.NET for decode).

What if we need one in JavaScript? Here's how to do just that!

<script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.9.1/jquery.min.js"></script>

<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">
<!--
    function htmlEncode(value) {
        return $('<div/>').text(value).html();
    }

    function htmlDecode(value) {
        return $('<div/>').html(value).text();
    }

    var s = "<b>hello's world</b>";
    var encoded = htmlEncode(s);
    var decoded = htmlDecode(encoded);

    alert(encoded);
    alert(decoded);
//-->
</script>

How to give your Web apps a real speed boost?

Few tips published on the The Next Web on how to speed up your website and making sure user experience is not impacted especially on mobile.

1. Check for unnecessary or oversized images
2. Don't ignore Android
3. Consistent measurement
4. Multitask

The article also introduced a few tools to get you started.

Time Saver Generation Tool to Create Java Classes From JSON Data

An easy time-saver to create Java classes from JSON data, this JSON generation tool is certain to save you loads of time. All it needs is to feed in a JSON url and DONE!

» An easy timesaver to create Java classes from JSON data | IT World