A week ago, I wrote a post called Gmail’s Old Version, New Version. Well, I discovered that many people do not like to be forced to use the New Version because they prefer the old version. However, the default setting is the new version and every time we log into our Gmail account, we will have a new version and if we want it changed, we need to click on the link to revert to the old version.

I tell you, this gets pretty old pretty quickly.

You may wonder why we don’t like the new version. There are many little things that make the old version so much smoother than the new version but to write them all out would be tiresome.

Anyway, if you log into your Gmail account right now, you may notice that they are accepting feedback from users. This survey is called “Google Mail user happiness survey”. If, like me, you are unhappy with your new version Gmail, which I understand that they will totally do away with the old version later on, perhaps this is the time to let them know!

This morning, I received a message from a blog buddy who told me that her blogs all fell to ZERO. I was blur and did not know what happened. I thought the whole thing has stopped but it looks like the monster is still wrecking havoc and no one know when this will end.

When I had the chance to get online, the first thing I did was check my ranks. They are all ZERO. I did not know when this happened because I do not have the toolbar on my browser since Maxthon is my primary browser so I did not even know my hit bottom until the morning message

So what is next? I dare not think! Even though I know I am not the only person affected, I still have a horrible sickening feeling about all these. It’s just too stressful and I wish that I could just walk away, except that the internet connection is so damn slow the whole day (it was slow the past few days as well but it got worse today), that it’s dragging my time and render me unable to get work done. That’s why I can’t give this a rest.

When the majority of us are at the bottom, I think that it basically puts us at the same level once again.

Some of you may know that suddenly we all have so much free time on our hands! What I did this morning was to surf the internet looking for new stuff. What I discovered is a site called Quick Shop. This is actually a comparison shopping search engine where we get to key in a product or keyword and search stores across the UK.

For the past week, I have been very curious of the price range of the LG Viewty because it was released in the UK sometime back but just launched in Asia on Monday even though this is an Asian company. So the first thing I did was to search for LG Viewty. Using this search engine, I could compare prices from different retailers and merchants efficiently.

I find that the more refine I wanted for my searches, the results that were returned get better. At least I did not have to go though irrelevant items in the list. I also tested the search for some other products and the results were rendered quickly.

Quick Shop also has a sister site to cater to Americans. If you are shopping for Christmas then you may want to try this out. You’d be surprised with the price differences among merchants for the same item! Who does not want a little savings here and there, right?

Over the past week, I visited a couple of sites that provide reciprocal link exchange between members or a one way link for paid members. I wonder if it s a good idea to participate in or if this will be considered as a link farm.

One thing though, from what I understand, we have to install the code to enable automated link exchanges on a separate page. I wonder how strong a sub-page would be even though there would be many links pointing towards our own site.

Also, I understand that more weight will be given to links of our individual posts as opposed to a link to our homepage. Besides, reciprocal links are said to be useless nowadays. I don’t know how true this is, though. I am still finding an answer to see which works and which does not.

I noted one of the member sites only has a rank of three. It’s nothing to shout about and if I were to take the trouble to participate in such programs, I would expect a Five. Haha!

I read that being listed on directories would help in raising our ranks but from what I understand, quite a few of these directories have been spanked as well so how would that be helpful?

The problem is that with blogs like mine, not all directories would accept my submission.

Moreover, the thing that makes me lose faith in the strength of being listed in Directories is that we have to list on specific categories, usually no category for blogs and we end up with an incoming link from the inner pages of a directory. So yeah, a directory may have a rank of six or even higher but its inner pages most probably will only be a three or two. Four, at the most.

And it would be most disheartening if after all the hard work, we find that the directory has been demoted. Bah!

The other day, I was introduced to the services of a company that charges labour for manual submissions to 100 directories with a minimum rank of five. I still have not decided if I should go with them, or look for one that charges cheaper, or do it myself. Frankly, I cannot afford the time.

But in the first place, would listing my blogs be a problem to those directories?

In my post, Two Rejections, I mentioned that somebody thought that I have a magic wand so that I could improve on my P…R… just like that but this is even better. WICKO of LinkWorth has this image where this guy pumps up his P…R… enthusiastically and it just cracks me up. IF only it’s this easy I would be pumping away 24/7.

In his blog post not too long ago, WICKO mentioned the possible side effects of over pumping:

dizziness, over-clicking, constant looking at your toolbar, less focus, diarrhea, constipation, sleepless nights, drowsiness and confusion (I’ve had mine today). If you are pumping for more than 4 hours, please call a LinkWorth Account Manager at 866.LNK.WRTH immediately. This product is made for men and women as this issue is not gender specific.

I am surprised that he missed out “blindness” haha!

To everyone who has been penisized in this latest round of spanking a couple of days, take care.

P/S: I noticed that StatCounter is back at the top

I received an email from Windows Live Team yesterday. I am surprised that it was just yesterday because I had to dig out the email from the bottom of the page just now!

Anyway, it seems that we could download this Windows Live software for our desktop or something. I never bothered to check out what’s so great about it.

All I want is for Hotmail to support IMAP. Why is it so difficult to open up the mail and let every free Hotmail account holder to access their email wherever??? I do know that Hotmail has the option for us to forward our email to another email address but taking this action would cause the email to be deleted from out Hotmail account. That sucks.

And they require that we log into our Hotmail accounts regularly or the account itself will be deleted due to inactivity. This sucks big time.

So, MSN, are you listening???