If you are a Hotmail user, I am sure you know already that Microsoft has kindly offered POP3 for Hotmail users worldwide. At first, they only opened this feature to accounts in selected countries.

Since Hotmail is still my primary email account, you can bet I was so happy with this piece of news. I set up Hotmail on my iPhone and Nokia E61i with the Incoming and Outgoing Mail Servers and Port numbers for Windows Live Mail.

I could receive and send out email from my iPhone but could only receive email on my Nokia E61i and not send out. I tried so many times with different Port numbers and failed. For that matter, I also could not send out email on my Gmail account on Nokia E61i unless I selected IMAP, and not POP3.

At this point, though, Hotmail only supports POP3 and not IMAP, which means that even if we are able to access our new Hotmail messages on our mobile devices, we are not able to view the other folders except for Inbox. This means that giving us POP3 is not much different than logging into Hotmail via our mobile browser, which was what I have been doing and still doing since Hotmail POP3 is quite slow!

The time-based computer virus which was programmed to be activated on 1st April, 2009, has infected more computers than anti-virus and security companies anticipated. It is said that this virus actually started circulation on the web, planting itself on unsuspected computers since October, 2008. Wow, that is a mighty long time for computer viruses to be dormant.

It’s too bad that computers that are vulnerable to Conficker and other viruses are those connected to the internet all the time, like my always on broadband connected systems. My friend told me that the only way to avoid an infection is to disconnect the computer from the internet but then to me, the computer will be pretty useless already!

I am happy to note, though, that although Conficker has infected way more systems than other viruses previously, I seem to have escaped it even though I am a chronic downloader.

Google has agreed to only allow South Korean Google product users to only register accounts with their real names. This is in line with new Korean Government policy which takes effect this 1st April, and no, it’s not an April Fool joke, that will only allow posting o material, content and comments on Google’s suit of products, particularly YouTube, with their real identity.

While Google users the world over are allowed to use Google services with only an online ID, password and email address, South Korean users will, beginning 1st April, 2009, have to confirm their resident registration number, which is like our MyKad number.

Personally, I think that while free speech is ideal, cyber bullying has come to such a point in South Korea that measures like these have to be taken before more victims of cyber bullying are driven to commit suicide.

Apparently it is because of the video footage of what happened in Tibet in 1988 that China does not want its people to watch.

Actually, I am not surprised. China is a communist country and there will always be a form of censor or other and the fact that people in China have internet access speaks a lot of how open China government is. Look at some other communist states. Ordinary folks don’t even have internet access.

This is not the first time that China has blocked video sharing site, YouTube. In fact, they are not the only country to do so. While blocking a whole site is extreme, there have been times previously when only certain videos have been blocked only.

YouTube is not the only site blocked. It really is not uncommon for China and/or other countries with similar ideology to censor news website for content that may reveal the “truth”. In fact, I think this happens in a lot of countries, even in Malaysia.

Earlier this month, I wrote that Google’s Project 10 to the 100th has been postponed to 17th March 2009. However, that day has come and gone and today is already 24th March, 2009.

You know what? A couple of days ago, I went to visit the website of Project 10 to the 100th at http://www.project10tothe100.com/ and it looks like they have already taken down the date of revealing the top 100 projects for voting by public (17th March, 2009). Instead, we are asked to check the website later or leave our email address with them to receive an email notification when the list of 100 shortlisted projects is announced.

So what does this mean? I think that Google owes it to us to inform us if a new date has been set, or if they have decided that none of the 150,000 submissions are good enough or if they no longer think that they could afford the US$10 million to support such project(s) due to the global economic downturn.

Over the past week, there are a few new tools added to Gmail Labs. I really like the one that allows us to “Undo Send”. I have always wondered why that was missing when we have undo delete and undo discard and other similar features that allow us to undo our action.

Although Undo Send would only work for the first five seconds after the email has been sent and if the browser is still opened, it is still an awesome feature to have. How many times have you sent out an email only to have an after thought to add something, edit something or remove a word or two from the email?

I have already enabled this feature but do not have the chance to use it yet. I hope that I don’t ever have to use it, after all, it only works for the five seconds upon hitting the Send button but I like it that I have a safety net, just in case, you know?

If you have been using the web for a while, I am sure you would already have your favorite search engine. Mine is Google because it loads fast and provides fairly comprehensive results. However, after that awful episode with Google 1.5 years ago, I have been searching for another favorite search engine.

However, as I become more web savvy, my requirements of a good search engine have changed. I now not only want a search engine that loads quickly with the most accurate results, I also want one that provides me with the highest cash back rewards. After all, I shop online so often, why not take advantage of some savings?

My search led me to AAfter Search a couple of weeks ago. I have to admit that I did not pay much attention to it and underestimated its usefulness judging from the design of the page. I had the opportunity to read up on what AAfter Search could do today and am amazed by its powerful tools.

Not only is AAfter Search a regular search engine, it is also a domain and IP checker, a reverse phone search engine, Yellow Pages, name and background searcher, spell checker and a host of other utilities. Moreover, we could also update our Twitter status from here. Oh, did I forget to mention that it has a very good cash back incentive program too?