Yahoo! has been closing various products for the past couple of years. From memory, I remember the closure of Yahoo! Photos and Yahoo! Briefcase. Now, they will be closing Geocities, the very easy to use free web page hosting and building.

I remember many of my friends had Geocities homepages about a decade ago. Many of these people have already moved on to host their websites, learning website building and designing along they way. Yes, they started with Geocities and then realized there were many limitations to it. However, those who are not as adventurous continued with Geocities.

It’s hard to imaging that Yahoo! acquired Geocities for US$4 billion back then, when Geocities was the third most visited website after AOL and Yahoo! That’s a lot of money.

It looks like Yahoo! isn’t providing any alternative to current geocities users except to offer them to upgrade to paid hosting by Yahoo! I wouldn’t want to be in the shoes of these effected users right now!

Many people keep wonder if it is possible to make money online. In fact, yes, it is possible and one of the most popular and effective ways is to sign up for freebie offers.

I am sure you have seen before websites that offer you cash rewards or gift items for signing up for a trial and referring a few friends to sign up for the same. Although I have not been successful in benefiting from Internet Freebie Websites (IFW), if you read the Business Model Review on Making Green Online blog, you would know how the system works and how you could make the system work for you.

I understand that there are many people helping each other to fulfill the required number of referrals needed to claim a reward. This is a loophole but no one seems to mind as long as everyone could make some money. There are people who would willingly sign up under you, so that you would do the same for them. This is called trading referrals.

And then there are people would be rather receiving cash to sign up under you. Of course, what they will be receiving from you is always less than what you would receive from the company, so you would still profit!

I received the latest newsletter from Windows Live a few hours ago and I am delighted to note that we are now able to link our Windows Live accounts without having to sing in and out.

I love this because I have two Windows Live email accounts; one for business related email and one is for personal email. Yes, I also have Gmail accounts and use them. Gosh, that’s too many but I believe I am not the only one. Hahaha!

Linking our Hotmail saves a lot of time, besides the fact that we do not have to log in and out from one account to another, we could just switch inboxes with just a few clicks. If you have a fast internet connection, the transition is really smooth.

Do you have more than one Hotmail account? If yes, you should try this! I already am using this new feature!

Since the outbreak of swine flu a few days ago, I have been reading nothing else online but news of the flu. There really is no escape from reading out it, where it has spread to and how many people have been infected, or even, unfortunately, killed.

As soon as the first news reports hit, though, there is a guy on my Twitter buddy list who followed me again, and I thought, “Hey, did this guy delete me and add me back or what?”

It turned out that he created another Twitter account for swine flu updates only. This account is used by him to send out tweets on nothing but the swine flu, which are primary links to media websites.

Frankly, does he even need to do that as if we do not know how to update ourselves from media websites? I know he wants to be the “first” to break the news among his friends, but still, couldn’t he have done it with his regular account?

Malaysia experienced something similar about ten years ago. It was known as the J.E. virus. Quite a few people died but many pigs were culled. Farms were shut and owners and traders alike went bankrupt. This, like J.E., will pass, so don’t panic and just take the best precautionary measures possible.

I don’t know about you but the new Gmail Lab feature that suggests more recipients is rather creepy to me. I already am always emailing the wrong people because of the auto-completion of email address. To enable this, I am afraid that there would be more people receiving email from me when they shouldn’t.

The more intelligent the internet is, the creepier I feel. Like in my previous post, the Friend Finder advertisement on a random blog that I surfed to while looking for certain information could tell that I am in Ipoh. I wouldn’t be as surprised if it could tell that I am in Malaysia, but Ipoh? It’s just an almost insignificant city in Malaysia!

Are you already using this feature? If so, what do you think of it? Frankly, I don’t want Gmail to know the regular people that I email to at the same time. I think I would rather send out the email again to the recipients that I missed out the first time.