Alter Ego

After pondering for quite a while about getting back on Facebook, I decided to do it anyway. Reason is quite simple; to keep in touch with friends. And believe it or not, my friends nowadays no longer use Fotopages (tonnes of ads; idiots) or Flickr (very very nice) to share pictures. They use Facebook, seriously (except for my photographer friends, most of them still use Flickr; understandable).

Sooooooo... yea, I am back. Yes, Michelle, I am back on Facebook. You win.

BUT I AM NOT PLAYING ANY OF THOSE GAMES! PERIOD!

Ever since I announced that I won't be signing in to FB, ever, my friends have been trying to coax me into FB. How? By causing FB to send tonnes of emails regarding updates on my applications (read: stupid, brainless applications).



I don't mind, because I have my GMail filter up and all emails from Facebook are sorted out nicely in my Facebook folder. I rarely look it up anyway, but was surprised to see 100 unread emails from FB only.

Friends, you can stop now; don't worry, I am still contactable via GTalk and this blog. Yes, Michelle, this post goes out to you in particular :P

Update (31/03/2008; 7:50PM GMT+8): And the exploit is gone. So its safe now.

I just read the latest news from Lowyat.Net, and found out that the official website of Golden Screen Cinemas (GSC) of Malaysia, has been hacked. Apparently it is using some sort of malicious javascript that allow it to be installed to steal passwords. Err, does that make any sense? Here is an excerpt from SANS website:

Over 10,000 legitimate websites have been compromised and now have a javascript link that will direct visitors to a malicious website hosted on 2117966.net. The malicious website attempts to exploit the vulnerability described in MS06-014 MS07-004, MS06-067, MS06-057and a number of ActiveX vulnerabilities.

Successful exploitation result in the installation of a password-stealing malicious program that attempts to steal the logon credentials from websites and online games.

Apparently this will only work on Internet Explorer (ActiveX anyone?). So, if you are using Firefox, you have nothing to worry about. In fact, I tried to load that website, and Firefox gracefully told me that the website is not safe.


If you are running Windows (but most of this blog's visitors are using Linux of some flavor; good for you!), you might want to update your antivirus definitions, and start scanning!

I don't care if it's the 'in thing' among my friends now, I am totally starting to hate it.

It's full of garbage.

It's full of stupid, brainless and mindless games.

It's full of crap applications. Why bother? There's already tonnes of great applications via apt-cache search application_name.

So, from now on, I am declaring today as my first starting day of not logging into Facebook. And I will not log in there anymore, ever again.

There I've said it. No, I cannot say why, let's just say that I am very emotional while writing this. Anger, hate, jealousy, unfairness, stupidity; I am feeling all these at the same time.

So, let the counter start.

No of days not logged on to Facebook: 1

I love Firefox, that's for sure. But I have stumbled into this page that should be very interesting to most of you.

It's a demonstration how your remembered password can be stolen by an 'evil' page.

Go check it out for more info.

heise Security

Popups have been some kind of a defacto standard a few years. Most websites at that time love to use popups as a mean to make their website as interactive as possible. Like when you click on a 'Login' link, you will be presented with a small window to enter your login information.

Everything was fine until online advertisements came in! Banners and skycrapers ad units are fine, they are not intrusive and some of them are very subtle and adds to the creativity of the web layout. Those popups that suddenly pops on your screens are the ones that make me swear every time that happens. It just sucks, simple.

Fret not, my friends, here comes the popup blockers. They work great and solve the popup problems 99% of the time. Now even Mozilla Firefox comes equipped with one of the best popup blocker around. That was one of the main reasons why I switched to Firefox a few years ago. Tabbed browsing and extensions simple rocked my web browsing experience.

Why am I ranting then?

It's those stupid websites that are still using popups for their websites! Put aside web advertisements, they are still using popups for their website to function properly. Take for example, GSC online payment ticketing. If you care to look at my screenshot above, you can see that the website is actually asking me to turn OFF my popup blocker. How stupid is that? Just use some other means to make your website usable. POPUPS ARE OBSELETE. Just like how 486 PCs are obsolete. Just like how my 1-year old Opteron is obselete. The same goes to our own Maybank2u. Terrible web design, and I can't believe they are still utilizing the 'blingbling' design. People, please, move forward.


Forward how? Just go to this website. Now try clicking on the Login link located at somewhere on the top right of the screen. Seeee??? How clever is that? It's intelligent, it's clean, it's neat and its brilliant.

That is called AJAX. That's the way of the future. Why? It looks great, and web applications will now be able to work like a normal desktop applications. Definition of AJAX:

A scripting technique for silently loading new data from the server. Although AJAX scripts commonly use the soon to be standardized XMLHttpRequest object, they could also use a hidden iframe or frame. An AJAX script is useless by itself. It also requires a DOM Scripting component to embed the received data in the document.

Come on, people. We need more Web 2.0.

About a week ago, I got an SMS from JobStreet Malaysia saying that there's an employer requesting for an interview with me. Upon logging in to JobStreet Malaysia, and after clicking on the Employer Requests link, I was greeted with this screen:

As you can see, the position says SAP. In SAP, there are many things that you can possibly do. Out of curiosity, I clicked on the SAP link, and this screen showed up, telling me what is the job description:

THAT'S IT! There's not much information there. I don't even know what is it that I am going to do, and the job description was so basic that I am not intrigued enough to go for an interview. At the same time, I do need a new job. Thus, this has put me in a dilemma whether I should Accept or Reject this request.

Anybody know this company?

Help!

You can laugh all you want, the fact is I just got pwn3d on Friendster!

Despite of my vast knowledge in Internet technologies like webservers and programming stuffs, I thought that if I don't simply punch in my password in simple any website, I would be safe.

I was wrong.

If you see any bulletin board messages like in the image above, whatever you do, don't open the link contained in it. Reading the message board is fine, but clicking on the link in the message will redirect you to another website asking for your Friendster password. I quickly realized that it was a scam, so I closed my browser. The fact is, even if I just view that fake Friendster homepage, they somehow managed to grab my Friendster account info. A few minutes later, I have automagically posted 2 new bulletin board messages!

Whoever did this is clearly brilliant. I admit, I got pwn3d really badly this time.

Time to change my Friendster password.

If you have been keeping in touch with the local industry, you might have realized that we have 2 local blog advertising companies. One of them is, Nuffnang and the other Advertlets. Now I am not going to compare both of them because that has stirred up quite a storm a few months ago. So right now I am just sticking to what happens when we have local blog advertising players.

There are goods and bads, of course. The good thing is, local renowned blogger like Kenny Sia and Jeff Ooi to gain some extra income. Don't blame them for wanting some extra money as their blogs are costing quite some amount of money. Web and domain hosting is not that much, but bandwidth usage can really burn a hole in their pocket.

Now here comes the bads; some of which I despise a lot.

Asking to click on Adsense ads, or any other ads
No really. There are local bloggers out there who actually ask for their readers to click on their advertisements for the information they have given you. Even though that is not much to ask for from you, but in all honesty, its against the Terms and Conditions of any ads provider. Asking your readers to click on them is just pure lameness.

Very disturbing pictures of people getting beaten up; at every single post!!!
I have no reason to believe why this sort of blog should even be a blog. You are just showing to the world of your brutal inner instinct for killing and love for blood splatters. Maybe that's fine with you, but I just couldn't stand even 5 minutes reading this kind of blog.

Pictures of sexy models, lots of them
This is by far the easiest way to get traffic boom for your blog. I don't care if you want to do this on your own PAID hosting. This people are actually doing it on Blogger! How low can you go?

Technology focused blog
Very very good idea, I don't mind this at all - but not when the blog writer is actually doing the art of 'copy pasting' from various huge PC hardware sites like Anandtech, Hothardware, and Extremetech. Why by the god's name would you want to do that for? So that people get updates easier? These sites do have RSS, and you can pop one here and get instant updates from these sites everyday. Pointless and brainless.

Yes, I do have some anger to vent out today.

This is the age of IT, where almost everything is done by an IT related technology. You name it, communication, collaboration, c****tion, anything, is done by the means of using IT. If not completely all of it, IT would come in some part of it. Definitely.

And then comes Wedding Announcer. Yep, you guessed it. It's an online wedding card, or sort of. You get a free website to announce your wedding. It's a great way to announce your wedding compared to the traditional style of wedding cards. Mind you, I am not saying that wedding cards are obsolete, but this a great way for initial announcement, and then the cards can come later. This is a great way to get the biggest audience in such a short time. Create a website at Wedding Announcer, shoot out a few hundreds of emails, and you are done. Here's a Wedding Announcer website from a friend of mine.

Especially this year, many of my friends are getting married, and a whole lot of others that I don't know. It's no surprise though. It's the year of 2007.

Who wouldn't want to get married on July 7, 2007?

I don't know when was it updated, but I found out about it some time yesterday.

The content of the website is about the same as it was, with major changes to its flash animation; rendering my laptop useless to play the flash animation smoothly.

Nevertheless, it looks great and you can clearly see Optimus Prime this time, up close and personal.

Join the Autobots here.

Update: Oh btw, you can grab the tickets for this movie starting this June 22, 2007. About a week earlier than its premier.

Blogs has always been words for me and maybe for you. If there's going to be any pictures in the blog, it will be right before the words came in.

And essentially, the words would add up to thousands of words per blog post.

That's okay if you don't mind reading on that specific topic for a good 5 minutes, but sometimes you feel like you are forced to read the long post just because you have always been visiting that blog. I stumbled upon some blogs that has no point in her post at all; maybe she really loves typing and don't mind typing rubbish.

How about friendster's bulletin board? I got tired of it as there's nothing useful there. No one seems to really understand what's a bulletin board and start posting useless forwards like 'What are you doing right now?'. Who the hell even reads all that? You think people care?

And here comes Stickgal! The only blog so far that a friend introduced me to that requires no words at all to express her feelings at that point of time. I suggest you check it out. Here are some samples. I hope Stickgal won't mind me doing this.

More here.

I mentioned enough about torrent throttle before, and it's really refreshing to see a new site has been given birth for the sole purpose of helping out people plagued with torrent throttle.

Welcome Amavant.Net. IF you really cannot understand what I am trying to say, just read this:

We supply you with a web based torrent client that runs on our servers. Using the service is as simple as uploading the .torrent file and clicking the run button. Upon completion, you can enjoy our unlimited download bandwidth via direct http or ftp. This service can be used by anyone when the venue doesn't allow torrents.

Sounds nice isn't it? I guess this will be very helpful for people whose TMNet accounts are torrent-throttled.

Or maybe students who live in hostels with no direct Internet connection.

Account packages start from RM30/month.

This month's Prasasti e-magazine is out. This time they came out with 2 versions, a Malay version, and an English version. Hmm, I see that they are trying to get in touch with more readers/audience. I have to say that the Kapasitor.net team is going to the right direction.

And to top it off, one of my blog entry got into the featured blogger section! I suggest that you grab a copy to to kill some time instead of posting forwarded/chain/spam messages on your email/friendster/myspace. Get out of that stagnant state your mind is currently in right now, and start reading.

Did I mention that I got featured?

I've talked about e-Commerce websites and the things that you need to make it happen. Basically the process goes like this.

1. Get a business idea
2. Get a developer for your website
3. Upload content
4. Deploy
5. Do some marketing
6. Get revenue
7. Update new info on website
8. Get revenue
9. Repeat step 7 and 8

Okay, the flaw of these steps is the costs. You will be spending on these areas:

1. Web developer (RM1.5k - RM2.5k)
   
2. Hosting (RM199/year)
   
3. Domain subscription (RM30-100/year)
   
4. Excess bandwidth usage (≈RM5/gigabyte)
   

That's the cheapest I can think of. Still, what if I tell you that you can drastically reduce this cost?


Here comes MaxMedia. MaxMedia is a web development company targeted specifically for development of e-commerce websites. Basically business-based websites. It sports the conventional web development and also outsourcing. The outsourcing option looks very promising, but first, let's take a look at the conventional option.

Conventional

This is what you have always heard of. Basically you dump all your requirements to them, MaxMedia will build your website for you. After everything is done, your website will be deployed by MaxMedia. This is basically the points that I have said earlier. The cost is definitely higher, but you get FULL CONTROL over your website. This also means you have to do everything on your own for maintenance. Of course, MaxMedia can be the source of consultation if you need any.

MaxMedia Outsourcing

Here is where it gets interesting. I have not seen this on any local company. No, wait, I have seen some before, but none of them get as cheap as this.

The cost it takes to get your website up and running is basically zero. MaxMedia will do your website branding, customizations and requirements for you. They will host your website for you. You only need to pay them once you get some revenue. MaxMedia states that you only need to pay them a percentage of your revenue for the month, or a fixed amount of RM5k/month. I assume that the percentage to be paid to MaxMedia is negotiable.

The man running the show

We can call him the boss of MaxMedia. I personally know him. He has extensive experience in deploying e-commerce websites. One of his own e-commerce website and has been successful for quite some time is Maxtrition.

My take on MaxMedia

Okay, here is my take on MaxMedia. It's good to see a local company doing something a little different. First, I have to say that the company is still new, but I like its idea and their website demonstrates what they are capable of. The idea is fairly new, but it fits any newcomer who wants to deploy an e-commerce website. For people who wants to start their business online, the barriers to set one up have been drastically lowered to a level that anyone can do this. For other established businesses, if you are tired of doing everything on your own, this is a viable option.

I have taken a look at MaxMedia's clients. The website looks simple, yet elegant in some way, and the functionalities does work. The features look great and very useful. After some observation, I am sure that the websites are built off from OSCommerce - a famous open source e-commerce web application. Nothing wrong here. You actually pay them for their customizing effort and also the hosting and bandwidth usage.

MaxMedia has a good idea. What it needs right now is a good start. The only worry about customizing an open source application is whether you can really do what the customer ask for. There are limitations, mind you, but honestly, OSCommerce is very thorough and has bunch of plugins for you to choose from.

I wish them good luck, and maybe one day I might have my own e-commerce site too.

I have been looking at web hosting options, specifically servers that are hosted in Malaysia. I have also been thinking of getting my own domain for my blog. I had various reasons for all this but for now, I am still at that 'research' stage. There are so many options now. A few years ago, there weren't so many options on Malaysian web hosting, but now there are.

Thus, I have come up with a few pointers on what to look out when considering one.

Web space. 5Gb would do for me. Since it is going to host just my blog, I don't think I am going to need a lot of space.

Email. Most hosting companies offer unlimited email address. This doesn't matter to me as I don't plan on building a company. So just one is more than enough.

Subdomains. I have no use for this right now. For sake of future expansion, its nice to have at least 3 of these just to be prepared.

Monthly traffic. I did some calculations on my own, 30Gb/month should be able to cut it. Some companies even give out unmetered bandwidth. I wonder if this sort of hosting has any impact on performance. Hopefully no.

FTP Access. This is a must. I am not going to use shell commands to edit/download/upload my file. As much as a programmer I am, there are times when I like to be the dumb user for a change.

Web statistics. Doesn't really matter. I have always preferred Google Analytics.

Operating System. I prefer Linux over Windows. Reason being is, PHP is native on Linux and based on my experience, Linux tend to run more stable.

PHP, MySQL, PHPMyAdmin. Essentials for a php-based website to run on. I need these 3 to make this happen.

Control Panel. Honestly I don't care much about this. This is really useful for dumb users. Dumb means users who do not want to fiddle around with technicality and prefer GUI and point and clicks. I am fine with just FTP access.

Free Domain. This is quite hard to find nowadays. So I guess I am gonna have to get separate subscription for my domain. I was quite surprised to find out that '.com.my' domains are a lot more expensive nowadays. It can simply shoot up to RM100.

Setup Fee. Free, free, free. It's ridiculous to see people charging for setup on web hosting. The process is already easy enough. If I have to pay for this, I would run away to another hosting company.

Payment. Preferably by credit card of course. Reason: hassle-free.

Having my own domain and hosting allows me more control and Google crawl will certainly work better than here.

Oh, I don't know, maybe I will only do this next year.

Took them long enough, they finally updated Hotmail and renamed it to Windows Live Hotmail. Other than having a Windows Vista-ish looks, it still sports the more or less same features like the ones you see in the previous version of Hotmail. I don't have many friends who are still using Hotmail. Even if they do have an MSN id, they would be using it for Windows Live Messenger; the email service is left unused.

Upon logging in the new Hotmail, you will be greeted with the new look, those Vista-ish blue-green waves and color scheme. I was surprised at first, but after looking around a bit, I saw that you actually need to opt for the Full Version of Hotmail to see the maximum potential of the new Hotmail. Thankfully, its still free. So what's the catch?

There is a warning before you sign up for the full version. You declare that you have a fast Internet connection. While I was doing this, I was in the office, and the connection there was fast; but I have no idea how it works on our lovely Malaysian broadband, so I decided to give it a try now.


The speed is not bad, not bad at all. The best part of it is, the full version looks exactly like Outlook with Vista-ish looks. The other best part of it is, I was using Mozilla Firefox when I was viewing the new Hotmail, and it still works flawlessly! I was quite surprised by this because Microsoft Exchange 2003 Webmail is not working very well on Firefox. I guess the earlier warning about having a fast connection was meant to be 'if you are on broadband, then proceed'. I have no idea to believe that you would have any problem with broadband on the new Hotmail. Because of drastic challenges by other email service provider, Hotmail also provides 2GB of mailbox space.

My thoughts?

Too late. It's just a little too late. People are not amazed by 2GB anymore. GMail's mailbox space is always expanding. The old Hotmail was around for too long and I was really bored of it. The new one has a fresh look, but I'm already accustomed to my Gmail. I like the simple layout and the non-intrusive advertisements. Hotmail have these advertisements. Yahoo Mail advertisements are a lot worse. There is a huge flash advertisement on the right side of the screen. Bad. I hate intrusive advertisements. It hurts my eyes, it distracts me from my objective.

Simple is always good.

I don't know how many of you heard of this before, but I am sure most of you have. I don't know many of them, but I sure do know NOW which one is safe, and which one isn't. I am writing this as a warning for you, to help you not to fall the way that I did and be more thoughtful of what you are going to do; even online.

Okay so listen up. There are 3 types of investment I would like to categorize in an online investment.

1. Advertisements
2. HYIP - High Yield Investment Program (the internet version of 'skim cepat kaya')
3. e-Commerce

Those are the types I have come across before when we talk about making money online. If you have any other that you have heard of, please do tell me, I would very much love to hear about it.

Whatever you do, stay away from point number 2, I will tell you why. Advertisements are fine. It's like you come up with a website of your own, and generate a lot of traffic on your website. From there you offer advertisement space, and people pay you to place their ads on your site. Purely simple and legit.

e-Commerce is just business in online form. Its the same type of business that you see everyday when you buy something from a shop; the differences are a few things, of which you can read about in my previous post about e-Commerce.

Now, HYIP, here is where the danger is. There are lot of them on the Internet. I have no idea whether its legit or not, but they have been news that these sort of investments are banned; well at least in Malaysia. Usually they don't show up in search engine results. You will have to know where to get a list of HYIP sites.

You will be tempted with investment options, some with profit rate of up to 300%. Yes, that means if you invest USD1000, you will end up with USD3000. Usually these investment programs are given a timeline/period. Like if you invest USD1000, you will get 300% in 100 days. Sounds good doesn't it?

BEWARE.

I have seen none of these to be legit. All of that I have came across are scams and lies. Trust me on this one, because I tried one before and lost some money. Thank god I didn't put in much, but I hear of people crying because they just put in USD10,000. They lost the money. I didn't put in much because I didn't have much money; and also it was a trial for me. I was curious to see if it's all real or not.

Well, I got my answer.

Just, stay away from all that. I tell you what. If you really need the money, be sure to put a lot effort into it. There's no such thing as shortcuts in this world; especially not in making money.

You want money, then get ready to work for it. This Malay mentality of wanting easy money really have to stop. We get scammed everyday because of that.

Hold your breath, and feast on the web based Yahoo Messenger!

No no, I am not talking about Meebo or any other 3rd party web based messenger.

This one comes from Yahoo itself. Its based on Flash, so you do not need to install any 3rd party software for this. The best of it is, if your company's network blocks YM, you don't have to rely on Meebo anymore, use this. Here are some screenshots. It's still in BETA though.


I really don't get why any company should ban YM. Even if it increases the network traffic, by how much? Does it really affect the network? Does it really bring the network to its knees? Most big companies nowadays at least have 4Mb of leased lines. That should be enough even for everyone to use YM. YM has helped me a lot with my work. I can get instant replies from my colleagues and being a programmer, its just so much easier to show my codes to others. Emails works fine too, but I prefer something more interactive. Email is just... so much slower.


YM is the way to go to improve communication among colleagues.

I have to admit that some people really do abuse YM while at work. Even though I myself ended up chatting with friends, but I still do use it more for work while I'm in the office. But hey, if someone really does abuse it, then it would be reflected in his/her work, right?

Nowadays, e-commerce sites are appearing like mushrooms. I have friends who embark on online selling by having an online shop. Why not? I agree with them. It's cheap to set up; for RM200/year you can get a web hosting including domain. Registering a private limited company is so cheap, anyone could do it. It doesn't mean having your own company requires a shop/warehouse.

Sadly most of them doesn't have the 'internet knowledge'. You really think that by popping up your website, you will start getting revenues? It's not fairly that simple, and here, I am going to tell you why.

Marketing. Hell I don't know much about it. People always come to me to develop websites for them, but they need to understand that the website cannot attract visitors on its own. It needs your help to tell your existing customers/or future customers about your website. Make sure your website can be found via search engines.

Payment Gateway. This is an ultimate importance. Even if you have a super product that will surely sell well, you need a way for your customers to buy it. Credit card, credit card, credit card. For the love of god, spend a few hundred ringgit to get a credit card gateway up on your website. It really is worth the investment.

Get to know the technical. You need to learn a little on web development. After you get your website, it needs to be maintained. Learn about (X)HTML, RSS, CSS, PHP etc. They are the foundation of a website. If you have no idea how to maintain at all, you are screwed. It is never wrong to consult experienced people.

Web design. It has to be attractive!! Attractive doesn't mean a pink/yellow/green background. Attractive means it looks professional. You have to present yourself as a serious salesman; but pleasant at the same time.

T&C. Terms and conditions are important, important, important. Learn from other websites. T&C is important to save our ass if something happens later; but be reasonable and always think about customer satisfaction shopping online.

Web features. These are for experienced web surfers/shoppers. They would love to see newsletters, RSS feeds, wishlists, email to friend, etc.

Pictures of your products. Good quality pictures. A low resolution version, and a high resolution version, for every variant, for every color, for every size of your products. They can't hold your products with their hands, so present it to them as best as you can. 3D versions are helpful (if needed especially if you are selling action figures).

Promotions. Finally, promotions. Give them incentives for shopping online. Tempt them, lure them. Buy 5 free 1.

I might have left a few other stuffs here. But these points should get you started well enough. I learned all this from my 2 years experience in doing web programming freelance. Most of them are e-commerce sites so it might be of use to you too.

And please, patience. E-commerce websites aren't supposed to grow money, so be patient and find out what's wrong from business point of view.