The Edge Financial Daily app for smartphones and tablets

Digital format of The Edge Financial Daily business paper has been made available to smart mobile devices including iPad, iPhone, iPod, Android smartphones and Android tablets for quite some times.

It is delivered with the free The Edge Financial Daily app available in Google Play Store and iTune AppStore. Currently, the digital format of the paper can be downloaded for free too.

However, this app doesn't bring good and convenient user experience to its readers yet, and still need quite a lot of improvement.

• The app is running on Adobe AIR, which requires user to install Adobe AIR app before able to run The Edge Financial Daily app. Adobe AIR consumes about 9 MB of storage space of your smartphone/tablet.
• Before we are able to read the paper, we need to download it from the Internet. The file size is around 30 MB per paper, taking some times to download, and consuming quite a lot of precious storage space of your smartphone/tablet too. Worse still if you are not connecting to the Internet via WiFi or HSDPA and need to download with slow speed, it really tests your patient.
• Probably because it is an Adobe AIR app instead of native app, its navigation respond is sluggish, page loading and rendering is slow too.
• The navigation buttons don't respond well. Sometimes need to tap a few times before it start working.
• It does not support multi-touch gesture. To zoom the text, you need to double tap the screen instead of pinching.
• I don't find any feature to jump to a particular page. Everytime you open the paper, you need to start reading from its cover page.
• Deleting the downloaded papers (especially to save valuable storage space) is a pain. There is no multi-select deletion. You need to delete the files one by one, and each deletion takes a few steps to complete.

It is very nice to be able to read the digital format of The Edge Financial Daily anytime, anywhere with our smart mobile devices. With this digital format delivered through the Internet, we no longer need to look for the paper in newspaper stand, or need to wait for the paper boy to deliver at our doorstep. Being paperless, it is environmental friendly too.

However, it would be better if the app can be redeveloped as native app instead of using Adobe AIR, optimize on the download time and file size, and improve on user interface and experience.

MFM Custom POI 20121023 for Garmin released - including AES cameras alert

Contributors in MalFreeMaps (MFM) forum have just released MFM-CPOI 20121023 (WAV format only) Point-Of-Interest (POI) files for Garmin GPS navigators.

These custom POI will enable your Garmin GPS to alert you on the following points when you approaching them:

• MFM-Accident Area v2.6
• MFM-AES Cameras v2.1
• MFM-AES Mobile Camera v1.8
• MFM-AES Traffic Light v2.0
• MFM-Checkpoints v3.0
• MFM-Expressway R&R Stop areas v5.0
• MFM-Latar_Toll v1.0
• MFM-Ngvstations
• MFM-Night Market POIs v2.22
• MFM-NKVE_Cameras v1.0
• MFM-Pasar Tani v2.3
• MFM-Power Grids v2.0
• MFM-Railway Crossing V2.5
• MFM-Redlight Cameras v1.9
• MFM-Road Junctions
• MFM-School Zone v2.0
• MFM-SGRC_B_W_091206
• MFM-SGRC_S_W_091206
• MFM-Sharp Bend v3.6
• MFM-Speed Traps & Camera v5.3
• MFM-State Border V1.0
• MFM-Toll Plazas v2.1
• MFM-Tunnel v1.3
• MFM-Touch n Go Hubs v1.0

You can install the full list, or just some of them, by copying the respective GPI files into the Garmin\POI folder (create one if it doesn't exist) of your Garmin GPS.

 

This compilation contains POI alert for the Automatic Enforcement System (AES) installed by JPJ recently.

 

Click here to download the MFM-CPOI installation file from MalFreeMaps forum.

 

yEd - freeware for professional diagrams drawing

Talking about professional diagrams drawing, including Organization Chart, Venn Diagram, Flow Chart, Entity-Relationship (ER) diagram, Use Case Diagram, UML Class Diagram, Network Diagram, BPMN Business Process Diagram, Semantic Diagram, Decision Tree, Family Tree, Swimlane Diagram, ... and so on, what would be in your mind?

I am sure you will think of MS Visio, which is now part of MS Office suite. Visio is superb, but it is not free. For the free one, you might think of the open source Dia, now under GNOME project. Dia is good enough for most of the people looking for free MS Visio alternative, only that you need a lot of effort to use Dia to produce nice looking diagrams, and to maintain a relatively large diagram.

I've found yEd, a freeware developed by yWorks of Germany, which enables us to draw and maintain professional diagrams easily, and able to produce nice looking diagrams. One of its selling point is that it has a powerful feature that enables us to automatically rearrange all the elements in the diagram into well organized nice looking position, just with a single click.

The video below is a 90 seconds introduction to yEd.

yEd is running on Java, therefore it is cross-platform, able to run in Windows, Linux, Unix, Mac OS X, etc. It can import diagram/data from multiple format, including GraphML, GML, MS Excel spreadsheet, GEDCOM, TGF, XML through XSLT, etc. It can also export to multiple format, including JPG, GIF, PNG, BMP, PDF, SWF (Flash), SVG, EMF, EPS, HTML imagemap, etc.

Here are some sample diagrams drawn with yEd:

 

Click here for more information and download of yEd.