Facebook last week won a judgment against a spammer who used Facebook as a mechanism to spam Facebook users with porn and other adult-related content by phishing account login information from other unsuspecting users. Not only did this guy, Adam Guerbuez who runs Atlantis Blue Capital, spam the private messages of other users, he also spammed the “Wall” of users, causing embarrassment to the real account holder and their friends who may read such public messages on the Wall.

Although Facebook do not expect to be able to collect the whole award of US$873 million, they will surely go all out to get at Adam Guerbuez, if only to teach him a lesson and serve as a deterrent to other people who have similar thoughts of spamming social networking websites.

This is by far the largest award to date compared to the one won by MySpace in May, 2008. As mentioned, unlike other spammers, Adam Guerbuez utilized the Wall feature of Facebook, sending out public messages, which is deemed more damaging.

Yesterday, Gmail surprised us with a collection of colours and themes for Gmail. I wasted no time checking them out since Gmail has been way too plain for my liking. My favoruite is the CANDY theme. It’s so sweet. I am using it for two of my Gmail accounts but I believe I am not the only girl who likes it. Some of my male friends like Ninja. So which is your favourite theme or colour?

I used to swithc my Gmail from default new version upon log in to the older version because I felt that the older version is faster. After installing a theme, I no longer do that since the theme would not work with the older version. LOL

Actually, I have been looking for a WordPress theme that is as cute and sweet as Candy but so far, could not find one. There are a handful though, but not suitable for my needs.

Anyway, I think that before long, creative people would start to submit their Gmail themes to Google and share their designs with us. For people like me who are not creative at all and have no idea how to make these themes, well, let’s just wait and hope for a larger pool of themes to play around with!

I have been trying to reverify my Blogger blog after upgrading it from the old Blogger to new Blogger with a new XML layout but I keep getting the error message on Google Webmaster Central that my blog could not be verified.

I swear that I have copied the code exactly and pasted it just after the HEAD tag but still, I have not been successful and it is stressing me out. Before you ask me to check if I have my blog address right, yes it is correct since this blog was verified before I upgraded it to Blogger XML.

Also, yes, I copied the right code and pasted it in the right place. I know, I have a few other Blogger XML blogs that have been verified successfully. It’s just this one blog that is giving me a headache.

Well, I don’t know if it’s such a big deal to not be verified since many people don’t even know of the existence of Google Webmaster Central, right? Still, I hate it when something doesn’t work out as it should. GGGrrrrrrr

Somebody, please help me!!!!!

Those of us who are making a living off the web would know how important search engine optimization is. It does not matter if you have a website, ecommerce site or a blog; I read that if your site is on the first page of the major search engine, you will receive as much as an extra 70% of traffic. Think how much more sales you will enjoy if you have a niche product to sell to your targeted traffic just from the search engines.

Frankly, although I have been a webmistress for about four years now, I am still learning the ropes. It’s an ever evolving industry. For people who could not spare the time to read and research and implement their new knowledge; testing new grounds by trial and error, they should just engage the services of reputable companies that offer search engine optimization and provide unparalleled SEO management services.

This would ensure that the website in question is always optimized. Like I said, it’s always evolving so it could be tough for us to keep up with all the changes.

Living up to his manifesto of “Change”, Barack Obama steps into White House 2.0 in January and one of the things that will be changing is that now, not only will Americans get to listen to the President of the United States weekly on radio, they will get to see him weekly on the internet as well.

Although it is not a bad idea, many of my friends in America, especially the web-savvy ones, concur that once a week online is way too excessive. How about a monthly address or even just once every six months? Heck, as the President of the United States, he should just address the people online when something really major has happened, like 911.

The first such address will be live on YouTube this Saturday, reaching out to millions of YouTube users, Americans and non-Americans alike. Obama’s “Change” website, will then embed the YouTube video on its website www.change.gov.

With a conservative period of four years in office, I have to wonder how long he could keep up with his weekly YouTube addresses. LOL

Google has extended its lead on search engine use for October, 2008, gaining on Yahoo! and MSN. Well, I certainly am not surprised. In my household, most of us are using Google search exclusively, even if I HATE it for dinging my PageRank.

I think that for 99% of the time, I use Google search. I only use MSN and/or Yahoo! if I could not find what I want using Google, which rarely happens, unfortunately for Yahoo! and MSN.

I think that most web users my generation are the same as well. From the search engine war results that I see from my stats tracker, most browsers who land on my blogs and websites from search used Google as well.

I think that Google is the preferred search engine not because of its accurate results but because of its clean homepage and easy to load results page. Yahoo! and MSN come with plenty of frills that only distract me from the information that I would like to search for.

Many people, like my sister, still do not feel secure shopping online. However, once they trust a store, they would have no problems paying for their online purchases.

My sister recently purchased a bottle of shampoo from Allegro Medical and she was very impressed that when a friend told her that she is on the market for shower chairs, my sister told her about her experience with Allegro Medical.

This friend would not only be able to buy a shower chair at a good price because of the discount but also have it sent to her home, saving her the hassle of shopping at a neighborhood store.

Even though I have no qualms shopping online, I still take basic precautions like only disclosing my financial information over a secure payment gateway.