All posts by The Artist

160GB iPod Classic

My sister, who is living in the United States, tells me that all her friends, no matter which age group they are from, owns an iPod. Of course, there are different generations of iPods but it looks like everyone can’t live without one!

Frankly, I have thought of buying an iPod as well, particularly iPod 8GB Nano Red, which spots my favorite red color and it’s one of the products that supports the Global Fund to fight AIDS in Africa.

However, as good luck would have it, I won an iPhone and I didn’t need an iPod anymore. If at all I were to buy anything from Apple right now, it would probably be an iPhone bluetooth headset. I don’t have any headset for my iPhone and can’t enjoy my music and videos without one.

Sometime in the future, I probably would buy an iPod Classic because of its sheer 160GB so that I could store all my music and videos and take them with me when I travel. The best thing is that iPods are getting cheaper and cheaper with better specifications and battery life too. We just have to shop smart.

Have You Requested For Free Gmail Stickers Yet?

Gmail has issued a last call for people who have yet to request for free Gmail stickers; that is, if they are interested in these free stickers. According to Gmail, postmark has to be no later than 14th February, 2009. Valentine’s Day, woot!

If you are interested, send a self-addressed stamped envelope to:

Send me some Gmail stickers already!
P.O. Box 391420
Mountain View, CA 94039-1420
United States of America.

Although Gmail mentions about sending out stickers to Gmail users worldwide, there’s no information on what kind of stamps or payment for postage that they accept. I have not read about how Malaysians are requesting for their free Gmail stickers or how much they are sending for postage.

I am not requesting any free Gmail stickers because my concern as a Gmail user has not been addressed. If you have read an old post of mine, I received an email to my Gmail box that was intended for another Gmail user with the same name. My email address and hers are similar, except that hers has a “dot” while mine does not.

Of course, I am not able to tell if this bug has been rectified, but it would be great to have my email replied to, reassuring me and other Gmail users that this would not happen again and that it was just a one-off incident. Well, perhaps they can’t even promise this.

MySpace Boots Off 90,000 Sex Offenders

MySpace has booted off 90,000 users from the social network whom they suspect are sex offenders. This is the second time since 2007 where they banned 29,000 accounts. This is in line with stricter measures to keep sexual perverts from the social site to create a more conducive environment for its users.

I don’t know what it is with MySpace but it seems to be so, so popular with under aged girls. They don’t even know how to differentiate between good and bad, friend or enemy, that’s why sexual perverts like to register with MySpace with and target these young girls.

The problem is that while MySpace says that they will be restricting contact between members who are under 18 and above 18, I feel that this wouldn’t be effective since sexual offenders will register with fake profile, name, address and age.

Facebook so far hasn’t done anything similar but they say they do keep tabs of user accounts. However, I think that no matter how hard they work at keeping their social networks safe, no matter what technology they adopt, it is up to us to protect ourselves.

Free Web and Application Hosting

Although it looks like the internet is highly popular and it’s not surprising to know that even young people have their own web space, there are still many people, and particularly, companies, without a web presence.

I have a couple of friends who would like to build a website but they are unwilling to pay too much for it becasuse basically they are not web savvy and don’t know the power of the internet.

I told them that under such circumstances, it would be better to build a website on a free host. They should sign up for Free Web and Application Hosting at ByteBooth.com where they would be provided with a free custom domain name, 2 Gigabytes of disk space, 150 Gigabytes of monthly data bandwidth and immediate FTP access where they could upload their files and go live.

I like the fact that ByteBooth has a very simple interface that even beginners could get started easily. On the other hand, more experienced users could make use of their standard FTP interface. Best of all, all these are provided free, and free for life to boot.

Sign up with ByteBooth.com now if you have always wanted you own web space. You can have it now, and free too.

Blog Housekeeping

After blogging for about three years now, this month, I am starting a blog housekeeping exercise. My main concern would be to clean up my dead links, if any and to update my old posts with more relevant information. I normally do not do this because I expect readers to check the date of my posts so they would know if the information in my post would still be relevant.

Well, I realize that there are MANY people who somehow do not check the date of posts and then they say that my information is incorrect. I find this annoying and at the same time amused. However, it just shows the importance of updating older posts with more relevant information.

Other than these, my blog housekeeping tasks seem pretty easy to accomplish except that I am doing from the beginning of my blog until December 2008 and I am doing it across all my blogs. LOL

Block All Unwanted Advertisements

If you are reading this, then you surely are a web user. I believe you would have noticed advertisement all over the internet, not just on websites but also blogs, forums, social networks and other online spaces. Normally, i am fine with these ad units but there are some that irritates me and distract me, especially pop up windows and bubble ads.

Just now, I was informed that Ad Muncher is able to block almost all kinds of advertisements no matter which popular browser we are using but that’s not all. I love the fact that even advertisements on messengers and other programs are blocked. This means that we no longer have to pay to enjoy an ad-free program. I would like to Try Ad Muncher now.

With almost zero advertisements to load on each web page that we visit, we are actually using less bandwidth and at the same time, shorten load times of webpages. No longer do we have to bear with increasing online advertisements, although I do understand that web masters and program creators need them to keep their services free.

AVG Anti-Virus (Free) Settings

I have been using AVG Anti-Virus (Free) for the longest time in all my systems. Anyway, since yesterday, after a regular update, I don’t know what happened to this copy of AVG Anti-Virus (Free) that I am using on my laptop, that I keep getting the pop up notification at the bottom of my screen, near the system tray.

I know that I am able to turn off this notification in the Settings panel, which I have checked, double checked and even triple checked. I have even restarted my laptop since the multiple checks but I am still getting these notifications of this or that suspicious cookie from websites that I know are legitimate, that I have been accessing all these while.

I find this notification totally distracting but the thing is, it’s only the laptop that is having this issue and not my other computer systems.

If you have updated AVG Anti-Virus (Free) these past couple of days, are you facing this problem as well? If you did, how did you disable this notification?