Tamer’s Tech Blog

I often get asked this question on job interviews; (not that I am going on that many of them, however this question somehow always pops) “What are your favorite’s website to visit?”

Well my favorite websites are:

• Betanews.com: Because it always fresh with beta software reviews and sign-up links. That where I go to find out about what companies are working on.
• Webware.com: I used to think this website is dedicated to FaceBook, because of the many posts the writers have on FaceBook. However lately I have given it a second chance and I really like all the articles that have on web applications and website reviews.
• DownloadSquad.com: I really like all the freeware software they find. You can practically find all the software you need for your PC that is free there.
• Crackberry.com: I LOVE this website. I am a BIG time Blackberry user and I love all the info this website gives on upcoming blackberry products and current blackberry app and product reviews.
• Engadget.com: I love gadgets. So any website that can tell me about current gadgets and upcoming ones is OK by me.

I have a few more that I like as well. However the ones above are the ones I always check daily.

So my brother just bought a new MacBook laptop. I was impressed with the sleek looking laptop. So he asked me to install Windows Vista on his MacBook. My experience can be described as”EASY”. The folks over at apple really made it easy to install a windows OS on the Intel based apple machines.

• I loaded Boot Camp in Leopard
• I partitioned the hard drive
• I rebooted the laptop
• Windows vista started
• Formatted the partition for NTFS
• Installed Vista

Overall the installation was pain less.

Here are the few hick up and issues that I ran into post installation.

• Keyboard: the MacBook, does not have a full keyboard, so the layout of the keyboard was slightly different, however there are no “insert, backspace, right click” keys to name a few. I had to go and look for a keyboard remapping software to remap some of the keys. that turned out to be a difficult task; since there a few easy to use programs. I used Sharp Keys software. it is free and pretty easy to use.
• The f1 to F12 keys are hardware keys, for example when you press F5 you are increasing the volume. SO I had to go and change that

On the pro side, Vista was flying and working very well on the instal-based mac hardware.

Overall if you are looking to pay for a laptop, then get the Macbook, as it gives you both apple and Microsoft windows OS.

A friend of mine referred me to indeed.com to check it out. I browsed the site and snooped around. I found the site to be interesting. Here is why:

• It was so easy to sign up for the site. unlike other sites it didn’t take me forever to sign up with forms and questions.
• It search all other job sites like monster, dice, and yahoo hot jobs
• IT showed me the avg salary for the job title I was looking for based on a location (see below)
• you can view your search results on a map
• you can view trend on the job title. Thus you can tell if companies are searching for lets say “product managers” or not.

Here is a sample of the salary graph:

View Larger Salary Graph