Yahoo! has decided to open a South-East Asia chapter of its developer network. This will be a pleasant welcome to the developer community in the region as they have felt left out and had to join other larger developer communities all along. Further to this new development, Yahoo! hopes to offer a platform for developers in the region to showcase their talent.

I personally feel that this is a step forward to the IT industry in the region. I may not be directly involved but I do have a few friends in the industry and they tell me that there are many things lacking here in Malaysia and one of them is a developers’ network.

I am not sure how this step will shape the future of software/application programming but I know that many people, users, will benefit from this in the long run.

I read with interest the launch of Symantec’s latest anti-virus and computer security products Norton Internet Security 2009 and Norton AntiVirus 2009 which has been rebuilt and reengineered for speed and performance.

I wonder why it took them this long to see that their products, though good and offer the kind of protection that internet users need for their computers, has been so damn slow that many of my friends and I would rather use some other anti-virus and computer security products. This does not necessarily is because of the cost, you know?

Sitting in front of the computer for extremely long hours, you can be sure that i would like to accomplish tasks as fast as possible and I do that by multi-tasking. This is not always possible when bogged down by resource hogging programs which takes a while to fully load and respond. Talking about anti-virus software, I really do not mind about the daily updates because I know that it is essential for a safe web environment. However, I would be very thankful if anti-virus programs could update in the background smoothly without affecting the performance of the computer.

I can’t wait to try out the new Norton to see if they are really so much improved.

I have been involved in the development of a new web project recently because my friend thinks that I have the time to manage it. He knows well that I would not be able to contribute to programming, web designing or technical development of the project, yet he says that I am best suited for the job of overseeing the whole project.

I have been searching shopping around for a company that could help me with the overall programming and design including hosting but I have not been too satisfied with my search. Either the companies charge too expensive or they ask me to select a template for my site from a pool of ready-made templates. I am not satisfied because I would like my project to be one of a kind and have no intention to run into another website using the same template. Those who have worked with me before know that I have pretty high standards when it comes to web design, particularly in its visual aspect and user-friendliness.

Earlier today, I was introduced to Heritage Web Solutions. I have browsed through their website and am impressed with their portfolio of web designs for their clients. I like the fact that each client gets a different web design, unique to its own nature of business. Heritage Web Solutions knows that even though a small company may not have the big budget for web development, this does not mean that we should compromise on the quality of our website. With price packages starting from US$199 for a custom build website, I have to say that this is a very affordable rate from the research and price comparison that I have made recently.

I was pretty surprised to learn that Heritage Web Solutions is in the top 1% of hosting companies and top 25 companies in the Inc. 500 list of fast-growing, dynamic and innovative young companies. Too bad I only just learned of them earlier today; and to think that they have over 30,000 global clients and counting!

If you are planning a new website, or planning to revamp your existing one, I think you should check out the services of HWS and the solutions that they offer. Requesting for a quotation is free and you can take your time to review your options.

I think I have one problem solved!

It’s kind of hard to believe that in the blink of an eye, Google is now ten years old already. It felt like only yesterday when Google Search was launched and how the word “Google” was in everyone’s mouth and how it suddenly became the default search engine. Well, whatever!

The good news, though, is that in conjunction with Google’s tenth birthday (ten years in internet speak is a LONG time), Google is looking for five “world changing” ideas from around the world. And these five projects, after going through a panel of judges and votes, will be awarded with a US$10 million in funding each.

According to the press release from Google, these projects need not be technology driven but I guess that the ideas that would stand a chance must be innovative, creative and something that would change the way some things are done. That’s why I mentioned “world changing”.

By the way, this is the website that Google has setup to celebrate its tenth birthday: http://www.google.com/tenthbirthday/

And this is the website for the world changing project search, dubbed Project 10 to the 100: http://www.project10tothe100.com/

Today, I was surprised when I received an email from a company wishing me Happy Mid-Autumn Festival. It was a little odd as Mid-Autumn Festival was on 14th September, 2008. And today is already 26th September, 2008.

I opened the email and saw that it was time stamped 11th September, 2008. Sending by email, there was more than enough time for it to reach its recipients and nobody would want to send any Mid-Autumn greetings AFTER the festival, right?

This time I am not even sure what went wrong. I used to say that hotmail eats my email; sometimes they go totally missing, sometimes there is a long delay, like two weeks.

However, this time, the email was sent to my Gmail. I know there was an issue with Gmail that I experienced that caused me to not trust it fully but it’s a pretty fast webmail service all these while. Perhaps this two week delay could be due to the company’s own email server. Well, I don’t know and it is so hard to tell. The thing is, although we have sent out email, it does not necessarily mean that the recipient has received it.

As someone who virtually spends the entire day online, you can be sure that I have played my share of online games and earned my share of virtual currencies. The latest “IN” thing in virtual currency is metaPoints at metaRL. The difference between metaRL from the other sites that I have played in is that metaPoints are universal and these points could be exchanged for free lindens in SecondLife, free peds in Entropia, credits in IMVU and even free habbo credits at Habbo.com.

When I talked to my friends about metaRL, one of the top questions they ask is if this is free. Yes, it’s free to play and free to collect metaPoints. And best of all, there is no limit to the amount of metaPoints that one could collect. Of course, the more you play in the games or participate in the contests and win, the more points you will get, right?

Basically, the concept of metaRL is very simple. Think of it as a virtual universe to all the other virtual worlds that you may be a part of. Use the virtual currencies that you have earned here on metaRL, called metaPoints, and transfer them to your other virtual world accounts, whether it is Habbo, IMVU, SecondLife or Entropia.

Yesterday, I received an email notification from Exabytes informing of the Webmaster Malaysia Gathering that is scheduled to he held in Penang.

This will be the fourth official webmaster Malaysia gathering and if I am not mistaken, the first to be held in Penang. This one looks like it is supported by Exabytes, a company that provides web hosting solutions, based in Penang.

* Admission – totally FREE.
* Halal Buffet Dinner will be served at 6:45pm.
* You are welcome for Exabytes New Office Tour from 6:00pm to 6:30pm.

Featured speakers include Rohan Thomas, Technology Advisor from Microsoft Malaysia, KC Lau, Personal Finance Money Tips Blogger from KCLau.com, Vincent Cheng, Internet Marketing Trainer & Consultant from JeVince Solutions and TL Guan, Security Engineer from Exabytes Network.

This looks like an awesome gathering to attend. Hey, I may not be a popular webmaster but with twenty blogs, an ecommerce site and a personal website to my name, if I am not a webmaster, then what am I?

If you are interested to participate in this gathering of Malaysian webmasters, do email your name and telephone number to limcs@webmastermalaysia.com today. I guess there’s just limited space so there’s not much time to confirm a seat. Do it quickly.