I remember that Yahoo! is launching their new homepage redesign today, so I went to check. I don’t have the new homepage as my default Yahoo! homepage yet but I am able to preview it. Frankly, it has been such a long time that I even accessed Yahoo! that I thought that the homepage that I got was the new one.

Anyway, I kind of like the new homepage, especially the ability to add our favourite links to the sidebar. It’s supposedly very helpful that when we hover our cursor over the links, we could see an extension of box with links. I like this when it comes to previewing my new Yahoo! email but I can’t say the same for other links. The box is too large and would not be good if you are using a slowing internet connection. Also, does Yahoo! really have to bombard us with an advertisement in these boxes?

Luckily, we can opt to access Yahoo! homepage in compact view which means that we get to do away with the sidebar of links. And so we get a very clean homepage, sort of like a blog using a media template.

In any case, I do not think that a new homepage redesign would make me spend more time on Yahoo! than what I am spending now.

I received a message through this blog earlier this morning with the question, “Do you help us spread the voice?” I ignored it because poor grammar turns me off and at the same time, as a blogger running numerous blogs, I get a fair share of messages like these asking me to review or promote such and such a site or service without compensation.

But I visited the link out of curiosity and realized that the website in question was set up to push Google to release the top 100 ideas for voting which were submitted to Google’s Project 10 to the 100th which was launched late last year and till now, have no news on.

I did not personally submit an idea but I did it on my father’s behalf so I do see myself as a victim and see myself as being scammed, though I am not saying that this was a scam. We just don’t know at this point.

Therefore, I am doing my part in promoting this website, Project 10 to the 100th NOW at http://project10tothe100now.org/ and with a united voice, let’s call on Google to proceed with the next step of Project 10 to the 100th; releasing the top one hundred ideas submitted to the project so that we could vote for the best ideas worthy to win ten million dollars.

I read about this 14-year-old Australian student, Chanelle Rae, who took her own life after being bullied online. This probably wasn’t the first instance for her and I assume was a continuation of what transpired in school. The bullying seemed continuous from school to home and home to school.

However, just like I mentioned in my post about sexual predators on instant messengers, I wonder why these “victims” do not use the BLOCK feature. It is very easy to STOP receiving messages from people whom we do not want to. Just block that person off and delete him or her off our messenger. Is that so difficult?

I don’t understand why victims would still want to continue talking to people who they think bully them or being lecherous to them. Some victims even continue to bait these predators and then go to a corner and cry that they have been bullied or taken advantage of. Whatever for?

The internet is a wonderful tool with many advantages but we must not misuse it or even allow small unfortunate incidents to mar our experience. In any case, we must be careful with the kind of information that we want to disclose online because you never know who will get hold of them!

A little while back I introduced InTheRooms , which is a leading recovery website that caters to people who are recovering from any form of addiction. I think that this is the kind of support that recovering members welcome because everyone in the community is going through something similar and they can provide the friendship, understanding and support that people who are not in the same boat cannot.

If you use Facebook (who doesn’t these days?), you would be happy to know that there is a new InTheRooms Facebook App that allows you to add a box to your profile which displays your time in recovery. On the other hand, if you would like to protect your identity, you could also add your time to In The Rooms community.

Time is very important for someone who is recovering. Even though I do not have personal experience, I have friends who would report to me jubilantly how many days or months that they are clean, from smoking for example. That is one difficult habit to kick!

If you are coming out of one form of addiction or another, using this Facebook app by In The Rooms would probably strengthen your resolve to be clean. Try it out, and good luck!

I am not surprised that despite the high traffic of Google, Facebook is found to be stickier than even Google. But of course. I personally spend many, many hours, practically my whole online time logged in to Facebook, either updating my own status, checking out my friends’ activities, viewing their photos, or play games.

Yes, there are many simple yet fun games on Facebook thanks to their game apps that make my friends, I dare say about 80% of active Facebookers, stick to Facebook. Games alone, you know.

Really, compared to Facebook, I use Google to search and read the news which have outward links which take me AWAY from Google. I access Gmail via Windows Live Mail and while I also use its Reader, like Google Search and News, Reader also consists of a list of links that take me away from a Google product.

Web users used to spend a lot of time on eBay as well but traffic to eBay’s slew of marketplaces have seen a decline in traffic. This is probably due to the fact that many of us are trying our best not to shop, not to spend. Facebook, well, it’s free.

Logging into my Gmail account the other day, I was alerted to the fact that I did not enter a secondary email address to my Gmail profile. It is kind of dangerous in the sense that should I forget my Gmail password, Gmail would not know where to send the password hint to since there is no alternative email. It could send my password to my Gmail account but if I have forgotten my password to it, there is no way I could retrieve it.

Anyway, Gmail has innovatively enabled us to request for our password in the event that we have forgotten it to be sent via short message service. Although it is not stated on their blog, I am going to assume that this service is only available to Gmail users in the United States.

Also, Gmail did not state if this is a free service or if there will be a nominal (or even premium) charge, either by Gmail or the respective telcos. Also, I understand that this is an option to “change” password recovery and not an alternate way. I think we should have both options available simultaneously; not either or.

I remember writing about Yahoo!’s announcement that they will be closing Geocities sometime at the end of the year, though they did not mention an exact date. Well, it is now revealed that 25th October, 2009 will be the final day that our GeoCities website will be live.

I remember telling a friend, who still has a GeoCities website about this and she said that she would have to copy her posts from GeoCities to WordPress free blog. No, she will not be moving her website to Yahoo! Web Hosting.

I know of another friend who is still keeping his GeoCities website although he has his own popular website now. I thought that he had already migrated all his content but he said that he hasn’t. I will have to remind him of this and let him know the deadline. Yahoo! says that from 26th October, 2009 onwards, GeoCities webmasters will not be able to access any of their files or photos.

If you still have a live GeoCities website, you may want to take up this friend’s idea of copying all content over to free WordPress or Blogger blog.