Have you calculated how many websites you open when you turn your computer on? I just did and it’s a grand total of thirty (!) sites. I have to fire up two FireFox windows to open my two bookmarks lists of ten sites each, selecting “Open all in tabs”.

And then I open Maxthon, which is using Internet Explorer’s core yet supports tab browsing, and open yet another ten sites. Wow… the other day, I timed myself and just going through all these thirty sites takes approximately two hours!

Sometimes I feel like I am wasting time browsing them all but sometimes when I do not browse them, I will feel like I have too much free online time and then don’t know what to do with the time!

I wonder what the online habits of other surfers are. How many websites MUST you visit when you turn your computer on?

How many websites are launched every minute nobody knows. Even before I have the chance to move my butt over to Squido and Facebook, I received an invitation from an acquaintance to register with Gather. I have never heard if Gather prior to this mainly because I am not a huge fan of social networking.

I read through the site and it looks like this fler could get himself a $20 Borders gift certificate if he could get five people to register with Gather under his name. But why should I benefit him when he took the trouble to stab my back last month? Don’t think I don’t know it was you, sucker!

Even if I do join Gather later, I will never be joining under him but at the same time, if I am in, I would not be soliciting others to join under me just so that I could get that $20 Borders gift certificate. What good is a Borders gift certificate?

A friend told me that his friend told him to register with Facebook. And I told him, “If you join, I will join you!” Whether I am in Facebook or not depends on my friend, despite all the raving about Facebook. Whether I am in there or not makes no difference either way.

Not too long ago, I was given the task of looking for companies that could get the paper documents of our company scanned into digital files. That was not a responsibility I want because the management was looking for a reliable company that would keep our company matters private, destroying the hard copy safely and securely and yet charge us the best price. As far as I know, my management is not easy to please so I figured that I would have a long night ahead of me.

Soon after, I discovered a company that offers Document Scanning Service and all that my management would want and this company is called Records Nation.

According to the website, although many companies are supposed to have gone paperless, there are still many companies with hard copy documents lying around and these companies should get the professional Document Scanning Service offered by Records Nation to help them scan and file those documents.

Going paperless can be hassle-free if companies leave the work to companies like Records Nation. They can expect to safe storage space, make file searching a whole lot easier, make hard copies if required and then shred and recycle the hard copies once they are done with it.

If your company has yet to go paperless, perhaps you may want to request for a free quote from Records Nation!

A couple of days ago, I wrote about looking to buy a domain name. Well, that is only half my problem. The other half is looking for a reliable host. I checked a couple of places but found Web Hosting Unleashed at http://www.webhostingunleashed.com/ with the most comprehensive comparison chart of major web hosting companies, with over two thousand companies in their database, and counting. Not only could I read reviews from customers of these hosting companies, I could also grab a coupon code if I would like to take up a hosting package from one of these companies. This feature is really nifty and it is a time saver.

Although I have do not have an issue with my current host, touch wood, a friend of mine told me recently of her experience with a particular hosting company which she called “web host from hell”. Poor customer service, over charging and endless downtime were only SOME of the problems she faced. Needless to say, she cancelled her subscription and had to pay a small penalty. Unfortunately, my friend is only one of the many caught in a quandary.

I am confident that if more people know of the good reviews and comparison chart provided on Web Hosting Unleashed, they will not have to suffer like how my friend did with the web host from hell. Can you imagine having the fate of ten websites at stake? I would have suffered from a nervous break down if ONE site of mine is threatened!

If you are also hunting for a web host like I am, do check Web Hosting Unleashed right now for news and views of all major hosting companies in the market!

I was blog hopping just now and came across quite a few bloggers who have joined the site called Suite101.com

Hhmm I wonder WHY would anyone join such a site and write articles for them. They mention that writers have a share of the revenue from Google AdSense, but the quantum is not stated. I mean WHY don’t these writers start their own blogs and fill them up with their own original content and earn 100% of all revenue from their own Google AdSense?

Obviously the main reason is the traffic, getting their name out and the networking.

But then I am not sure it there are people who would read these articles at all. I browsed through the site just now and it is simply saturated with one article after another that my eyes glazed over. Simply put, I would not spend time reading the articles, let alone click on Google AdSense ad, unless friends ask me to read their specific articles.

That being said, if I have the time to go through all the categories, I believe I would find something that would be of interest to me.

If you are an email user, you would probably be facing spam problem like me. Don’t be surprised that in this technology age, there are still people who are not using email at all. Well, lucky them!

I have about five email accounts that I use actively and it amazes me that I am being spammed right, left and center daily. One thing that puzzles me is how these spammers are able to obtain my email addresses even though some are kept private among family and friends only.

I used to get spam mails that are in an image format and then not too long ago, spam mails came with attachments. What is scary about attachments is that they could carry Trojans and other scripts that could be harmful to our computer or even steal our personal financial data. I know I am being paranoid here but one cannot be too careful!

Attachment spam – the latest trend being used by spammers, have caused my friend my headache. His wife is someone who still is surprised that there are people sending her cards and other things in the form of attachments and she would open them all even though they are from total strangers. So my friend ends up cleaning after her.

I came across a whitepaper by GFI, a leading software developer, which explains thoroughly the methods of spamming employed by spammers. I am going to get my friend’s wife to read it so that she will be extra careful when she clicks on links or open attachments that come in by email, even though they are purportedly from people we know.

This whitepaper in .pdf format is completely free to download. If you know of anyone who would be interested in learning more about spam and how not to get caught by scammers’ tricks, feel free to tell them about this whitepaper that at http://www.gfi.com/whitepapers/attachment-spam.pdf

Since the day I thought that I would start a couple of new blogs, I have been checking the availability of domain names and I have been so unsuccessful. All the good ones that I could think of have already been registered. I was told that I could offer the owner some money or I could wait for it to drop back into the pool. That would be a long wait, wouldn’t it? And there is also no certainty that it would ever drop back into the pool. I mean, IF I like the domain name well enough to register it, I don’t think I will let it expire.

Actually, I did manage to find a couple of names that are variations of what I actually wanted but my friend told me to specifically get DOT COM addresses and not any other.

At first he said that if I were to get a DOT NET or whatever and if the DOT COM is also a blog, it would cause confusion. I do agree, though, because normally, everyone would assume it is DOT COM first.

But then my friend changed his mind and told me to better get DOT COM. He said that if I were to get some thing other than DOT COM and the DOT COM is already an established site, Google may penalize me for apparently leeching or copying the DOT COM site and it would be a struggle for me to get a decent Google Page Rank. Is there such a thing?

So now it is back to the drawing board again!