Category Archives: Computing & Internet

YouTube Starts Streaming TV Shows With Ads

If you love YouTube, then this would be great news to you. YouTube will start to stream full length TV shows on their website but these videos will come with advertisements.

If you do not mind some ads, then you would probably enjoy watching sitcoms from CBS on YouTube. I actually spend so much time on the computer that if given the choice, I prefer to watch my favorite shows online. However, I do not have a good broadband line and all the buffering drives me crazy.

My friend recently bought a netbook tablet and he told me that it’s awesome watching YouTube videos with it. Now, he no longer needs to make do with short clips but full length TV shows! I wish I could get my dose of complete Korean dramas and TVB serials on YouTube. What about full length movies on YouTube in the near future?

Local Bands Online

I may not be a musician myself but I have friends who are and they tell me that it is really not easy to get that big break. I feel that local musicians need to have enough exposure to get noticed but there are not that many avenues for them, unfortunately.

This morning, I was told of LocalBandsOnline.net, a website that allows local bands in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Australia to showcase their talent and bring attention to their music to event planners, promoters, talent scout, music executives and everyone in the music industry around the world.

LocalBandsOnline.net is a paid membership site. If you are interested to sign up, please email: info@localbandsonline.net. The official launch of the website is 15th October, 2008.

Changes in Facebook

Facebook has confirmed that co-founder and head engineer Dustin Moskovitz, will leave Facebook in a month’s time along with manager Justin Rosenstein to set up a new start up internet company. A number of top executives have left Facebook this year alone and they are planning to move their headquarters to Dublin, Ireland.

As a Facebook user for a long while now, it’s exciting to see so many changes not only site-side but management-side as well. One has to wonder if Facebook will be sold to larger internet corporations like MySpace, Bebo, PayPal and others.

Currently, Microsoft Corp. has a minor stake in Facebook so I think if major shareholders decide to sell Facebook, Microsoft Corp. would probably have the first option.

Whatever the case, it’s amazing how, within just a few short years, Facebook has exploded among internet users around the world. It is said that there are more than 100 million Facebook users now but I personally know of individuals who hold countless accounts to level themselves up in the various games in Facebook. These are the people who inflate the membership number.

DNS Poisoning

I read an article on the New Straits Times Online yesterday on DNS poisoning and it mentions that it is a step up from phishing. While we have a slight control over email phishing and all we have to do to safeguard our information is not to simply click on any link that come in via email, Private Message or Instant Message, for DNS poisoning, many people would unsuspectingly surf on replica websites because the DNS servers have been changed by hijackers. That is certainly scary and dangerous, isn’t it?

Also, I am glad to be reminded that free public wi-fi is great, like the Penang state-wide wi-fi project that I mentioned in my previous post, we really have to be extra careful using free wi-fi which is not password locked. Never use free wi-fi to surf financial websites or websites that require you to disclose personal and sensitive over the web. You would be better off performing internet banking or online transactions in a secure environment like your home.

Is State-wide Wireless Internet Connectivity Harmful To Health?

I was happy to read about Penang’s state-wide wireless internet connectivity project a couple of days ago. It’s great news even though I am not in Penang and may never get to enjoy it but I love the concept and I think that it’s awesome to have access to free wireless internet connectivity wherever one is within the State.

Perak also had such a project before but it was not successful. I do get to connect to the free wifi but I never get to do anything with that connection. I don’t know why. Perhaps it’s due to congestion or maybe they require specific setting or something.

Anyway, yesterday, the Chief Minister of Penang mentioned that if such a project of state-wide wireless internet connectivity is harmful to health, he will scrap the project. So my question is if wireless internet connection is harmful to health. That is certainly news to me and I am concerned because my home is wirelessly connected too.

South Korea Curbs Cyber Bullying

After the apparent suicide of South Korean actress, Choi Jin-Sil, who was rumoured to have lent a huge sum of money to a South Korean actor Ahn Jae-Hwan, who committed suicide in early September due to business losses.

South Korea, who enjoys heavy penetration of fast broadband internet, has a very high rate of cyber bullying. These two suicides are not the only two incidences of victims taking their own lives. I recall the case of another beautiful South Korean actress who killed herself due to cyber bullying.

And if you are a fan of Goong, you will know how fans of the highly popular Korean drama split into two camps and “fought” online in various forums, blogs and fan sites of the main actors and actresses on Goong.

In the wake of this latest suicide by an actress due to cyber bullying, Seoul Government has now imposed a cyber law which requires the owners of major portals to record the particulars of users and commenters who have mostly been using fake IDs so that should victims want to sue for libel, they could.

However, I wonder how this could be imposed. We all know how easily one could register for an account with websites and forums with fake names, identification numbers and telephone numbers, right?

AdPropel

As the owner of an online business, internet advertising is one of the ways I drive traffic to my ecommerce site. If you have a similar business or are offering a service or have a resourceful blog to promote, I am sure you are facing the same problem that I faced; signing up with individual advertising websites, creating various advertising text or banners and then publishing them one by one, most of the time going OVER budget.

Just now, I was introduced to this advertising service that is called AdPropel that many small and medium business owners have found extremely useful in the internet advertising campaigns.

AdPropel is like a central control panel where users can create advertising campaigns with guided instructions and then publish the advertisement that has been newly create in a list of internet advertisers. In short, AdPropel provides a place for users to easily manage their ad campaigns, from the creation of ads to budget management, tracking, managing and most of all, easily seeing if a particular ad campaign is successful or not, and what changes could be made to rectify the shortfalls.

AdPropel has created a simple and hassle-free, and most of all, user-friendly internet advertising solution and interface. Most of all, their “pay as you go” internet campaign advertising model is most welcome as it reduces the risk of buying web advertising. AdPropel also has an advertising calculator which you could use to calculate your budget for internet advertising and to see if this is what your business needs.

Did you know that more and more businesses are now dependent on web advertising instead of other conventional media advertising like print media? If you have a business that you are currently advertising, you should check out AdPropel, a one-stop advertising solution that makes it easy for businesses on a tight budget to reach as many people as possible via various web advertising streams.