At first, Facebook was different from other online social networking sites because they wanted us to use our real names and not nicknames and other online IDs. It doesn’t matter if there are a hundred or even a thousand people who share the same real name, they just want real people on their networking site. I understand that Facebook deletes accounts that are found to use nicknames or online IDs and not real names.

Of course there are loopholes and I personally know of people with fake “real names”, names that are common but are made up so that they could have multiple accounts to play games on Facebook and level up their game characters easier.

Since Facebook set this precedence, other social networking sites or communities have followed suit. Off hand, I can remember Yahoo! Profiles, Friendster and MySpace doing so.

However, in a strange turn, Facebook will soon allow us to use an online ID to associate with our “real name” profile. I am not sure how liberal they will be since at this point of writing, I haven’t actually seen this yet but I understand that it will be happening soon. And of course, I will be one of the firsts to claim my online ID on Facebook!

I told a friend that I have been having intermittent problems with my computer whereby it would shut down and restart by itself. Besides that fact that it is mighty irritating to have to start all running programs again, there were occasions when I lost part of my work and I had to redo.

It’s probably time for an upgrade and this time, I am going for a computer powerful enough to play games and work at the same time. Working from home, I definitely have the freedom to do both simultaneously whenever I feel like it. I just need a system that could cope!

For my earlier systems, I just bought whatever that came in a package. Now that I am more knowledgeable in computers I prefer to customize my new system. Of course, right now, I have no plans to upgrade yet but I already have in mind the kind of system that I want.

Computer Planet is an online retailer which allows us to customise our computers. Using Computer Planet System Builder you can design your own personal computer confidently. Of course, they also have pre-designed PC but I think you should try building your own PC, a PC that would be able to meet your every need.

Quite a number of friends have been complaining that suddenly, they have been faced with a deluge of spam mail in their Gmail inbox every day since April or May. Sometimes the spam would number up to a hundred! That sounds terrible.

Yesterday, Gmail apologized and explained that it was due to a wrong configuration of their spam filter in a number of servers. Apparently, only about 1% of Gmail accounts were affected. 1% is ALWAYS the percentage they give, did you notice?

Through it all, 5 Gmail accounts that I manage seemed to be free from spam in the inbox. Of course, there is occasional spam but those landed where they should; in the Spam Folder. And even so, I get about 15 – 20 spam mail per account per day only. Way lower than what I get in my Yahoo! Mail account.

I recently discovered that a friend keeps his computer running in the office even when they have closed for the weekend. I asked him why he is wasting resources like that but he said that he has to send out emails to his clients. I was confused. He then explained that because the company sends out thousands of emails a day, they have to schedule to send about 100 every half an hour so as not to be banned by the internet service provider for spamming. It never crossed my mind that there are companies doing something like that and this is just a smallish set up with 8 staff!

For companies that depend on email as much as my friend’s and using Microsoft Exchange Server for this purpose, 123Together.com is a company that offers shared or dedicated Hosted Exchange. Because email is mission critical to business, I am sure such companies cannot allow any downtime which is why even for shared server, 123Together.com guarantees 99.9% uptime while 100% uptime is guaranteed for dedicated servers.

The good thing is that 123Together.com has three packages that are tailored to suit the size of your business. And if you run into technical problems, worry not. 123Together.com provides 24/7 live support. If you would like to try the services of 123Together, com, which was named by Microsoft as 2008 Hosting Partner of the Year, you can do so for free for 30 days.

Just when I was wondering when we would no longer be able to use Outlook Express, Microsoft Office Outlook and Entourage to retrieve our Hotmail email, I received an email notification from Windows Live Hotmail Team early this morning with information on how to continue viewing our Hotmail email once Microsoft decides not to support DAV protocol anymore.

Well, the good news is that when this happens on 1st September, 2009, we would still be able to use Outlook Express, Microsoft Office Outlook and Entourage to view our Hotmail email.

Since I use Outlook Express, I found out that I would need to add a Hotmail POP3 account in Outlook Express. Of course, it is not perfect but this is better than nothing if I opt out of using Windows Live Mail. I use this on my laptop. Neither is it perfect too!

For instructions on how to make use of Outlook Express, Microsoft Office Outlook and Entourage to retrieve Hotmail email after 1st September, 2009, view this Microsoft Help Page.