It’s amazing how technology moves. I remember the days when we did not have mobile phones let alone internet connection. A friend of my father’s generation said that he would “die” if there was no mobile phone. I guess I would say the same if I did not have internet access!

Besides the fact that I run an online business, I am also a chronic online shopper and try to encourage everyone I know to shop online, especially older people who may have difficultly going out to local stores, or those who are beset with mobility problems.

This group of people could independently shop online, no matter if they are stocking up on home medical supplies like knee brace or even groceries!

I wrote that my father participated in Google’s Project 10 to the 100th by submitting an idea to Google at the end of last year. The voting was supposed to start in February, 2009. So the other day, my father was asking me if Google has already selected a winner. LOL Frankly, I don’t even remember about it!

So off I went to check the website of Project 10 to the 100th and realized that the voting has been postponed to March 17th, 2009. Knowing me, I will totally forget about it again and have submitted my email to receive an email alert to vote.

Of course, I will be voting for my father’s project because I believe in it. Let’s hope that Google believes in it too!

After the hue and cry by users of Facebook on the new terms of use which came into effect quietly in early February, 2009, Facebook has decided to put the new TOS into a vote, allowing ALL existing members to have a say; going where no company has ever gone, yet.

Basically, right now, Facebook is still using their old copy of TOS but in the new one is stated clearly user content will belong to the users themselves though Facebook will store them for a limited time after that content or an account is deleted.

Voting will be open for a duration of 30 days and will close on 29th march, 2009, where upon it is hoped that a new Facebook TOS will be used that complies with the company’s policies and not violate each individual’s privacy and rights to the content uploaded to Facebook and shared among friends.

Although I have no plans to get married yet, I have on numerous occasions been roped in by friends to help them plan their wedding. I am not an expert and frankly, all my ideas were taken from the web.

One great resourceful website for wedding couples is at WeddingChannel.com. I am sure you would have read about it if you followed my blog. This site is wonderful in offering Wedding Planning ideas and tips for brides to be who like to be hands-on in planning their own weddings.

When I get married, I too want a DIY wedding planning instead of hiring a professional wedding planner. With so much resources at my fingertips, I am sure the outcome would be great.

Yesterday, I received an email from my domain name registrar Name Cheap asking me to verify my contact data for domain names that will be expiring in the following month.

According to NameCheap, this is a new rule stipulated by ICANN and I certainly can understand why. It’s fine to use Who Is Guard but some domain owners just would rather save that Who Is Guard fees and put some fictitious name and address as the domain owner. This would solve that problem.

By having our real contact details associated with our domain ownership, this would help ICANN identify people who are misusing their domains for fraud activities like the recent phishing attack via Gtalk.

So I have installed Windows Live Writer a couple of days ago and since then have used it to publish more than ten blog posts on both Blogger and self-hosted WordPress blogs.

While it is a very simple to use desktop publishing programme, I find that the HTML coding for my posts rather messy and I usually have to view source and edit them before posting on my blog, particularly when I have included images in my posts as well. That’s why when I have images, I usually post directly to my blog without using Windows Live Writer.

I like Windows Live Writer generally but wish that it comes with grammar suggestions and auto-correction of words like Microsoft Word. That would help us blog a whole lot faster too! And one other thing that I wish it has is the ability to nofollow links.

For those of you who blog with fancy rainbow coloured text, I am sorry to say, you can’t do that with Windows Live Writer, but then this isn’t something that I would miss.

As a blogger, I have come across quite a number of blogs that live off the content of original blog posts of other bloggers. Truly, I get extremely pissed off when I see my posts on other people’s blogs!

I have a friend who once told me that she somehow stumbled upon a blog that stole her posts, including photos of her children! Could you imagine how angry she was? We thought that the content was scrapped from her blog feed but we could be wrong.

Back then, unfortunately, we did not know of any avenue to force this scrapper to remove the copied post, except to report to Google AdSense and I am sure for those who had done so, there was no action taken at all.

Just now, I read on Web Pro News that we now have an avenue to make a report on violation of scrapped content. The post by Web Pro News has step by step instructions on how to lodge a report. The only bummer is that in today’s technology age, Google doesn’t accept such a report by email.

Source: Web Pro News