I know it was announced yesterday on the official Gmail blog that it now supports IMAP and they will be rolling it out in stages. This morning, I already see it in the Settings of my Gmail. YaY, I may hate Google at the moment for pulling the carpet under my feet but I have been waiting for IMAP support for so many months now.

I don’t know what Nokia has bee thinking for the option to retrieving email every thirty minutes at the fastest. Cat also sleep lah!

Now with Gmail’s IMAP support, I believe that we have the option to retrieve our email every five minutes. I would like INSTANT retrieval but five minutes is a huge improvement from thirty minutes. No doubt about it!

But then five minutes is still not as great as the two minute delay of Consilient’s Push. Here’s looking forward to an instant email retrieval sometime in the near future.

Now, let me go and change the email settings of my mobile device!

I wrote recently that my friends are encouraging me to start an online business because I am wasting spending way too much time on the internet and might as well earn some pocket money. I also have thought about it but could not find something that I would like to sell.

This morning, I was told of an online business by selling phone cards. I read through the business model briefly and I think that anyone who can operate the computer and navigate the internet slightly would be able to join the phone card affiliate program.

Set up fee is only $74.95 while monthly fee is $9.95. Our preferred domain name will be registered on our behalf and a website will be set up for us. We do not need any computer technical or HTML knowledge but to make a success out of this, we need hard work and business acumen. For every card that we sell, we will have the opportunity to be earn commission up to 42%.

Do you think I can do this? I think that now I am blogging less, I may as well do something with my online time!

Is there any blogger who blogs and do not care about whether there are people reading their blogs? I admit that I was one such person. And in fact, I still have this part of me that wants to express my thoughts without anyone knowing about me hence my new blog that is not linked to or linked from anywhere.

However, for the other more established blogs, I do want more website traffic because no matter how well one could put thoughts into writing, if it is not read or shared, it will be deemed not good enough. Based on this perception by others, I have been rather obsessed with my traffic and will check my statistics log every chance I have.

Also, I try various ways to get more website traffic like blog hopping and commenting on these blogs and joining social networking sites to expand my readership. However, I am sure you know that my efforts are all amateurish.

On the other hand, if you do have a site which is traffic dependent like a ecommerce site and hope for more browsers coming through from a better search engine placement, then you would need the help of a professional website optimization firm to tweak your site so that you will receive a new stream of traffic from organic search and hopefully, turn them from curious web browsers to your buyers.

I was talking to my friend about getting my Page Ranks dropped two days ago. I keep hoping it’s just a nightmare that I will wake up from. In fact, I DID have a nightmare about my Page Rank dropping a little while back. Anyway, my friend asked me what about the other bloggers? I said most of the sites were down by one or two ranks but I also know of bloggers who were down by FIVE or went unranked over night. A lucky few had their ranks intact. Oh, how I envy them!

However, does knowing that I am not alone make me feel any better? The fact of the matter is that no matter if I am alone or in the same boat as others, I will once again be locked out BIG time out of many opportunities.

And that makes me depressed

With a store, a personal website and a few blogs, I know all too well the importance of website optimization. In an earlier post, I wondered if with after having our Page Ranked bombed, a website optimization firm could help a website to raise its search engine placement despite its lower page rank. I am sure an optimized website where bots can crawl easily would help somewhat.

Some people may think that only commercial sites would require the help of website optimization firms to make their website search engine friendly but I think that as long as you have a website or a blog, even if it is not a commercial entity, it will do you good to have it optimized.

This would help in getting an improved search engine results ranking in organic searches, hence bringing in new people to your site and hopefully they will convert to be loyal visitors.

I used to think that it would be an expensive affair to have a site optimized but it need not be. There are many website optimization firms that also cater to small to medium sites with a smaller budget. In any case, look for one that would meet your needs and yet does not bust your budget. You can only reap the rewards of a well optimized website.

When I first started using the internet, Yahoo! Mail was my primary email address. I then changed to Hotmail because somehow my Yahoo! email address became spam haven so I moved. Even now that I have Gmail as my primary email, Hotmail is still used for many of my old contacts and as log-in IDs.

The problem with Hotmail is that it is totally web-based and the only way to retrieve your Hotmail without logging in to the web is by using Outlook Express or Microsoft Outlook. On my desktop computer, I retrieve, read and reply to all my Hotmail email on Outlook Express and it is very convenient. I hardly ever log in to my Hotmail account on the web anymore except to retrieve large attachments.

Since June 2007 when I bought my mobile device, Nokia E61i, I have been trying to figure out how to get my Hotmail like how Gmail is set up on my phone. I know many people are looking for this answer as well based on the organic searches that came from search engines.

Anyway, I am now trying Consilient for ten days already. There are some parts that could be improved on like visual notification, the option to retrieve new email only (I understand that this is Hotmail issue), the option to delete mail from my phone only but leave it intact in my email account, the option to increase font size and an instant connection once I am online instead of the two minutes I have to wait before my accounts are sync-ed. Like Samm, the sound alert of my Nokia’s default email client is also muffled if Consilient is connected at the same time.

What I like about Consilient, which I use solely to retrieve and read my Hotmail, is the many different colors that I change ever so often. The sound alert is also very loud which is good if we are out and about. When I take my phone to bed during the night so that I am alerted of new emails, I cringe because it is too loud and may wake the household. I end up piling my pillows on it until even I could not hear it and missed the notification. Haha

One thing though, I don’t know how to stop my 3G connection from breaking so that my PUSH mail is uninterrupted. I have already selected an ‘always on’ connection *sigh*

P/S: I wrote the above article, all 400+ words of it on my mobile device! Woot!

Don’t know what happened but yesterday, most sites went down by a further one notch in Page Rank. There are some lucky ones whose ranks were maintained. Some people say that these sites were penalized for selling contextual links but I find that does not really hold water because I know of blogs that are heavily laden with sponsored posts and yet their PR is still standing.

StatCounter, which I use for all my blogs for statistics and traffic tracking went from a Page Rank 9 (some people said it was a ten before) to a 6. There’s one blog that I know with a 6 and dropped to a 3. And these are only two of the sites that I visit daily.

Oh well, after a long nap, this still doesn’t look like it was a bug as my sites are still depressingly low in PR. However, when the majority of the sites are down then everyone is on equal footing again. Well, almost!

I guess I will be spending the next few hours reading what other people are publishing on their blogs. *sigh*