Recently in Web Watch Category

I was at the Hitwise Singapore Online Performance Awards 2008 this evening. When I arrived at the venue, Indochine, surprisingly it wasn’t as packed as it was last year. It seems that one of the main taxi operator’s websites went down and people couldn’t book cabs. I joked to Hitwise’s boss that maybe next year that taxi site would win a Hitwise award!

Anyway. I’m sure the results will be announced on the Hitwise website eventually, but here’s what I can remember:

Kevin’s blog just got hacked.

You can still catch up with Kevin on other social media platforms such as Twitter.

Hang in there, Kev…

Update: Kevin’s blog is back! Risen from the dead.

After hearing the buzz about Gmail offering IMAP access, but also hearing that this new feature wasn't rolled out to everybody yet, I decided to check if my account had it. Sadly, it didn't look like it and I thought, maybe it's because they're enabling it for the earliest Gmail users first.

Then I checked out the Gmail blog which explains that the feature is actually available for all Gmail users. Then why wasn't it listed under my Settings? Because Google has only rolled it out for those using Gmail with the US language and will be working on the other languages in the next few weeks. I, being the typical Anglophile, had set my account to display UK English and thus had prevented myself from receiving IMAP access immediately.

So I switched to US English and voila! IMAP was enabled.

I'm now watching Thunderbird load up my mails. All my Gmail labels are appearing as folders. Wow, I haven't had IMAP mail since University days. This should be pretty useful.

A thought-provoking video on Facebook's privacy policy and the risks we face, along with background info of some people pulling the strings behind the scenes. It alleges that there may be links with the CIA and US Department of Defence.

Thanks to Overacuppa for sending me this link.

Two days ago, I received a desperate-sounding email from a friend of mine, telling me she had gone to Africa but had lost her money, was starving and about to be kicked out of her hotel. She asked for specific amounts of money.

Copied below, word for word, is the email message.

How are you doing today? I am sorry i didn’t inform you about my traveling to Africa for a program called “Empowering Youth to Fight Racism HIV/AIDS, Poverty and Lack of Education, the program is taking place in three major countries in Africa which is Ghana , South Africa and Nigeria . It as been a very sad and bad moment for me, the present condition that i found myself is very hard for me to explain. I am really stranded in Nigeria, because I forgot my little bag in the Taxi where my money, passport, documents and other valuable things were kept on my way to the Hotel am staying, I am facing a hard time here because i have no money on me. I am now owning a hotel bill of $ 1550 and they wanted me to pay the bill soon else they will have to seize my bag and hand me over to the Hotel Management., I need this help from you urgently to help me back home, I need you to help me with the hotel bill and i will also need $1600 to feed and help myself back home so please can you help me with a sum of $3500 to sort out my problems here? I need this help so much and on time because i am in a terrible and tight situation here, I don’t even have money to feed myself for a day which means i had been starving so please understand how urgent i needed your help. I am sending you this e-mail from the city Library and I only have 30 min, I will appreciate what so ever you can afford to send me for now and I promise to pay back your money as soon as i return home so please let me know on time so that i can forward you the details you need to transfer the money through Money Gram or Western Union. Regards from yours……………

It was signed off as my friend’s name but with an extra letter at the end. The hackers probably guessed her name, as her email address was exactly [hername]@gmail.com.

Bits of the story sounded plausible. My friend has travelled to exotic places and mission trips before. However, I felt the writing style was different. Her English was better than that (though if this was written in a hurry by a starving desperate person, it could still be believable).

To be sure, I forwarded her email to two of her good friends to ask if they had also received the email. Then I sent my friend a message on Facebook, which she had been actively using lately. Other friends also tried calling her. She responded soon enough, and posted a note warning all her friends to ignore the email as someone had hacked into her Gmail account. I know my friend had travelled to the US lately, and possibly to other places as well.

I told my friend to cancel her Gmail account as soon as possible. Who knows what other things the scammers are using her email address for. My friend replied that she was having trouble getting Google to cancel her account, as contacting Google required her to log in! Fortunately, another friend called Google on her behalf and got them to cancel her Gmail account.

In short, we have to be increasingly vigilant now with our login details. We know all about scams and phishing, but it hits home when you see a plea from a good friend asking you to act quickly. As we devise more ways to block spam and identify fake messages, the scammers also re-invent themselves.

Security tips

1. Don’t make your password easy to guess. Try something alphanumeric. Take it a step further - use a mix of upper and lower case characters.
2. Don’t leave your passwords lying around for everyone to see, such as Post-It notes on your computer monitor.
3. Reset your passwords regularly. High security systems usually prompt users to change their passwords regularly. Moreover, previous passwords cannot be re-used.
4. If you’re using a public internet terminal, remember to disable cookies. Don’t click on “Remember me” when logging in. Make sure you log off properly. Clear the history and cache when you’re done.
5. Don’t let people watch you type in your password. Some people tend to hang around when you’re logging in. Ask them to turn away. Or, lean forward and use your body to block their view.
6. If you feel awkward telling people to shove off, one trick is to type wrong characters in between your password, and then delete them. If you can repeat this sequence quickly, all the better. I’ve done this on a number of occasions.
7. Be vigilant about mails asking for password resets. Google and all credible service providers often repeat that they would never ever ask for user account password for resetting purposes.
8. Keep your passwords for email accounts separate from all other social networking sites.
9. Assume that passwords stored on handphones, diaries, documents in laptops etc. will be stolen. If you must write down passwords, use codes that you can remember in place of numbers.

(Any more to add? Do contribute. Thanks to Ivan for contributing points 7-9.)

More warning signs

Lately, I have received an increasing number of password-related requests, particularly from Gmail. It is usually about resetting my password. The emails are in English, Japanese or other languages. Sometimes I also receive alerts that someone’s registered for a new Yahoo! email address and is listing my Gmail address as the backup. Fortunately there is always a link I can click to tell Yahoo! that I did not set up any new Yahoo! email address, and that I wish for my Gmail address to be removed from their records.

Has this happened to you, too? Maybe the scammers are trying to make us the next scapegoats.

I’ve had more than a fair share of scam mail, myself. I’ve not only received emails but an actual snail mail LETTER back in 2003. You can view a scan of the letter which was sent to my office address. I suspect someone used my company name card and sold its details to the scammers. Again, there were inconsistencies in the story that can be spotted if you examine it carefully. The writer claimed he was from Nigeria, but the stamp on the envelope was from Cameroon.

I’ve written this post to warn everyone not to fall for the latest trick in the book. Please keep your passwords safe, and if you receive strange emails from friends, double-check the facts. And, do forward this message on.

I said it before, and I'm saying it again. A few years ago, Rojo was my favourite news aggregator - a news feeds reader with Digg-like properties all rolled into one. Then Six Apart bought it over. The design was changed and somehow I felt it looked less spontaneous and too structured. Many people seemed to stopped voting for most of the articles.

Then a major power outage happened, and since then Rojo has been reeling. After several days it still hasn't got back on its feet. To quote:

Rojo's collapse is a cautionary tale for Web 2.0 companies: When your entire service and brand are wrapped up in "always on" availability, downtime has a tipping point, where it transforms from a customer service problem into an unrecoverable death spiral.

It's been down too long in the Web 2.0 boxing ring. The countdown is over. Many say they're not going back. I too have stopped using Rojo because Google Reader is better at gathering the news I want, and Digg is so much more happening. And if I want to find out about user-contributed content in Singapore, there's already Ping and Tomorrow. For tech news, there are lots of good blogs out there, starting with Techcrunch.

So, I don't really need Rojo anymore and it seems that most of its users will get used to not using it, too.

[Update: Rojo is back up, as of 7 Aug 2007.]

It was 1.45am, Singapore time. I saw Steve Rubel's Twitter post on how he was going to test Google's search indexing speed by inventing a new word and posting it to Twitter.

Out of curiosity, I Googled for 'googlejewce' and it showed up! In fact the search results stated that the Twitter post was made '6 minutes ago', meaning that within 6 minutes or less, Google had already indexed Steve Rubel's post.

Now how's that for speed? The implication is that what you've just written on your own social media tools will start being reproduced within minutes on other platforms - in this instance, a Google cache record. I notice that other blogs have just started writing about this too. So it's now easier to get your presence logged on the Net, but also harder to wipe out traces of what you've written (should you ever want to).

There's a new Web 2.0 service called Fleck, which lets you make annotations on websites in a graphical format.

For starters, here's what I did for my own blog.

Fleck will probably be useful in making notes on academic websites and other sources which currently do not have any feedback mechanism, such as the comments feature in most blogs.

It can also be used as an instructional tool, guiding beginners on using certain technical online services.

Fleck has some room for improvement. For one, it is dependent on the annotator's screen resolution in its placement of notes. I'm using my Dell widescreen laptop, which is set at 1280x800. My current blog layout is set to 700 pixels wide. If you viewed the above link at a different resolution, some of my labelling may not make sense as the notes would be pointing to the wrong areas.

For blogs which are comments-enabled, it is very unlikely that Fleck will be used at all, because extra effort would be required from the person posting the comment. His comment will also be lost as most other readers will not think of going to Fleck to see if they missed anything (unless Fleck suddenly becomes as popular as Twitter, which is unlikely).

Still, it is fairly unique in its offerings and will probably be around for a while.

[Update: Duh, just learnt of a similar homegrown service, Sharedcopy. Why not support them instead! ]

Technorati tags: Fleck, Web2.0

CNN television reports that a woman caught two young men who stole her Palm Pilot. She went to Craigs List and arranged to meet with them. They tried to sell her Palm Pilot back to her. She also obtained identification of one of them, from his MySpace account.

Using social media to right wrongs...

Eric Meyer made a brave statement on the lack of gender diversity at web conferences (as previously posted by Kottke). He said it shouldn't matter.

I agree with him. Who cares if the speaker is male or female, gay or straight, white or black? If they are the expert on the subject, that is all that matters.

I'm saying this despite being female and Asian, which would probably narrow things down much further if you looked at the conference speaker demographics. Gender and ethnicity should not matter in a truly meritocratic society.

Surely we've got past the stage where we say, "Wow that was a great woman speaker," or "I've never seen such an outspoken Asian before". And I am glad for that. Just because there are less women speakers at web conferences doesn't mean that women are inferior overall. There will be more women experts in other industries. To each, her own :)

Just saw some unusual photos - Steve Jobs and Bill Gates having a conversation in public. Aww.

Possible captions

Bill: Hey Steve... er, about that iPhone ...

Just found this on the HP Singapore website, one click away from the home page:

I'm chuckling. Haven't seen this kind of thing on a commercial website in ages.

Avid followers of Second Life news would have heard of Crayon, the first new media marketing agency to be established in this virtual world. Well, since I couldn't break into IBM land (see previous post), I decided to try my luck with an agency that welcomed visitors.

Here's a shot of Crayon from the outside.

I touched the Crayon box at the door, and collected freebies. I wore the Crayon T-shirt and drank the Coke. Hey, it's only virtual calories.

Inside, I met another new Second Lifer who was looking for a Crayon employee. I gave him some tips on searching for people in Second Life. Then I teleported myself to the 2nd floor, and accidentally walked into a Crayon board meeting!

However the guys were nice and told me I could explore the place and ask them any questions. Now that's good PR. See, I'm blogging about them now.

One of them, Cleon Goff (CC Chapman in real life) offered Friendship. Yay!

I flew to the rooftop, picked up free drinks, posed with Fender guitars and played the drums. I flew the the ampitheatre, ate popcorn while watching a (blank) movie in the theatre, made another Friend and logged off.

See all photos tagged 'Crayon' in my Flickr blog.

Technorati Tags: Crayonville, Second Life

I have been visiting various campuses in Second Life to learn how visitors can be engaged and learn new things using this medium.

Worthy of mention is the Second Life Planetarium (Slurl:Second Life Planetarium) where you can view the constellations moving around you, with a guided voice tour. It felt like I was in an IMAX theatre all over again. Further up was the International Spaceflight Museum (Slurl: Spaceport Alpha), where I got up close and personal with a whole arsenal of rockets. Even cooler was the 3D moving planets. Just speak out a date (like your birthday) and the planets will move into position.

Another immersive but much creepier experience awaited me at Virtual Hallucinations (Slurl: Virtual Hallucinations) where you are treated exactly like a patient with schizophrenia. You hear voices which say nasty things to you, and you see things differently from normal people. After a while I had to turn off the virtual voices because it was just too unnerving, like watching the Sixth Sense all over again. It certainly is an eye-opener especially if you thought all along that schizophrenia simply means having 'split personalities'.

I visited Reuters (Slurl:Reuters Atrium). In real life, they have a Second Life News Center website and it is amusing to see how they keep track of the currency exchange rates between Linden Dollars and US Dollars. There is a goldmine of information on big businesses joining Second Life.

BTW, the links I've provided will only work if you have Second Life installed on your system.

What other Second Life places have you enjoyed visiting? Have you learnt anything new? Do share your experiences by posting a comment or trackback.

[Update: 5 Dec 2006 - The Sydney Morning Herald reviews Virtual Hallucinations]

Technorati Tags: secondlife, SL, social networking, education, mental health, planetarium, reuters, virtual worlds

This dude did something awesome with his Second Life house.

Technorati Tags: Second Life

Managed to sit on my bum after 2 hours of family choir rehearsals (I skipped the ballroom and salsa dance practice because of the swift movements required).

Yesterday I created my Second Life account and looked for Kevin and Ivan online. Met Alvin as well. Yay, our own little Singaporean community in Second Life.  Look out for my screen shots in Flickr. I already paid a visit to the library. It is cool, how you can search for millions of real books in here. There is a lot of potential for development here.

You can look out for me - I am Vantan Gray. Yeah, like I'm related to Jean.

Technorati Tags: second life, VR

A new search engine which claims to be 'more natural and intuitive', may pose a challenge to Google. Quoting Techcrunch,

I haven’t seen a demo of upcoming search engine Powerset yet, but reportedly many people who have are impressed, saying they’d never use Google again.

Sounds mighty powerful to me. I'll wait for the public launch. If it's any good, expect venture capital funding to come in.

Read/WriteWeb reports that AJAX will surpass Flash in 2007.

I remember in the late 90's and early 00's when Flash took centrestage. We all wanted to learn Flash. Yugo Nakamura, Joshua Davis and Gmunk were my heroes. Then Actionscript developed a powerful, object-oriented aura, and Director lingo became a forgotten language.

At the time, JavaScript, to me, was used minimally and for functional purposes. It was often associated with tickers, cheesy scrollers and annoying popup windows.

In time, people started writing about accessibility in Flash. Jakob Nielsen said Flash was 99% bad. Macromedia heard their views and hired Nielsen to improve things. After that was done, Nielsen said Flash was less bad but still not that great. Maybe he'll say something about AJAX soon. [Update: AJAX is discussed very briefly in a Q&A session. No strong objections so far.]

Around that time, a baby was conceived from the ashes of JavaScript. Jesse James-Garett gave it a name. AJAX is now a toddler and, being cute, everybody wants to play with it now.

My own comments:

• I was comfortable with ActionScript up to an intermediate level, until it got more complicated. Being a law grad who taught herself HTML and CSS, moving into the realms of Java was tricky. Then I changed career path, and now no longer design in Flash.
  
• I never quite understood what Flashpaper was all about. I don't like reading text-heavy documents in Flash. I'd rather use the software to convert my documents into PDF format.
  
• For what little I now know of the creative web community, Flash and AJAX are used by slightly different groups of people. Designers use Flash for visual effects. Programmers probably prefer AJAX for functionality. Some people can handle both.
  
• While AJAX allows the same drag-and-drop functions as Flash in many instances now, Flash is still the preferred medium for smooth multimedia animations, cartoons and audio playback.  However, there is a tendency for Flash movies to take a while to load, whereas AJAX-enabled websites I've seen so far, minimise the load time.
• Whichever you choose, I'd appreciate it if important information isn't hidden away in some JavaScript code or a Flash movie with tiny font sizes with the right-click zoom function disabled. In short, use common sense and think of the user's needs first.
  
• OK/Cancel has a parody - AJAX - 99% bad. Noooo... 

Look at who was surveyed, though. "Web developers" and organisations. Developers would obviously use a technology they're more comfortable with. Conduct the same survey with creative agencies whose focus is on more making visual impact and winning creative awards, and I'm sure Flash's popularity will be much greater than AJAX. Ask the Creative Director if his agency can do a website for you in Flash. "Sure," he'll probably say. Ask them if the website can sacrifice flair for functionality, and whether they can use AJAX instead.

There'll probably be more analysis coming in from other sites. I'll open this post up for trackback, if anyone wants to continue the discussion.

Technorati Tags: Web 2.0, powerset, google, AJAX, Flash, trends, usability,

I abandoned Friendster after a while, when it got slower and I lost interest in the whole social networking fad. But now that it's improved, I've logged back in and discovered:

1. Horrors - old incriminating photographs of me and my past lives!
2. Many friends have updated their profiles and photographs and it's fun going through them all.
3. I haven't kept in touch with many of the friends in my list. Eep.
4. I could have a personalised URL, then discovered that friendster.com/vantan and friendster.com/vanessatan were already taken!!! By teenage namesakes!! Argh. Oh well. I have to make do with friendster.com/vantanorg. (If you know me, add me. OK, this week it's social networking overload!!)
5. It's time I updated my own profile.

Technorati Tags: Friendster, social networking

Facebook has just opened up to public users who can associate themselves by region (instead of school or workplace). IMHO, it's a big threat to Friendster and Myspace. Now social networking becomes a triumvirate.

Join the Singapore network! If you're a friend of mine, add me. I've sent invites to some of you.

The first person to approve my friend request is someone I kind of met at SXSW 2006 - Baratunde, a very funny comedian who cracked us up at Fray Cafe.

Michael Arrington from Techcrunch (which I like to read) asked his readers to add him as well. So I will.

Finally, a cool feature in Facebook is the ability to import your blog. I've done just that.

Update 1: I understand why some users got upset with Facebook's new update feed feature. Hypothetically, if I changed my status from "in a relationship" to "single" or "it's complicated", I wouldn't want the whole world to see that. [Then again, if we really wanted to keep things private, why would we go online in the first place? :P]

At least Facebook lets you control some privacy settings and doesn't keep track of whose profiles you've viewed and people you've rejected as friends. Awkward stuff like that, it's good not to publicise.

Technorati Tags: Facebook, Myspace, social networking

To think I was celebrating the acquisition of Rojo by Sixapart in a recent post.

A few days ago I logged into Rojo for my daily fix of geek news and was surprised to find that the tag cloud was gone. Gone! When I first used Rojo I found it a bit overwhelming but soon grew to like the tag cloud. The cloud has been replaced with a boring-looking vertical nav bar which also has less tags. Not an improvement!

I usually don't bother to venture into the other sections of Rojo but I felt disturbed enough to read visit the forum. Then I learnt that other Rojo users were also up in arms. Our feeds went missing (I didn't notice because I tend to visit only the front page to view user-rated top news). And this has apparently been going on for 5 days.

What surprises me is how so many problems were allowed to happen. At a time like this, soon after the press release, it's not good for PR.

Technorati Tags: Rojo, Web 2.0, SixApart

My favourite news aggregator, Rojo, was bought over by my (still) favourite blog company, SixApart.

eBible is now open to the public. Now you can play 'tag' with Jesus ;-)

Outsiders may be able to join Facebook. Hmm I wonder if they'll add Singapore to the list.

I read on Reviewsaurus that thanks to some sponsors, certain videos on Google are now free.

Tried to view a cartoon but was told that the provider of the video had not authorised Google to display the video in my region. Aw shucks. [Update: While I couldn't view Mr Magoo, I could at least watch Felix the Cat, courtesy of Burger King.]

And we're still waiting for the iTunes Store to come to Singapore (next year)...

I'm pleased to announce the launch of websg.org, a joint initiative by Tribolum and Vantan.

We will be covering SXSWi on this spanking new blog, among other things.

You have to give it to Lucian for his kickass design. I'm sure Zeldman would be proud ;-)

Support this new blog on Singapore history.

Hmm ... if I had time I'd write something myself! But I'm slogging all the way through this weekend until I fly to Austin ... and even then I'll be working on my laptop. Phew!

I'm quite tired of getting so much referrer spam. Maybe it's time I paid for a Mint. That's Shaun Inman's latest project, and it sure looks fresh and pretty.

Anybody had a Mint yet? Tell me if it's good for you.

[Addition: Another nice flavour's out, Vanilla for forums.]

For those of you who missed today's Mind Your Body supplement in the Straits Times today: This responsible Singaporean has been alerting our National Environment Agency (NEA) to possible mosquito breeding grounds, through his blog. Well done!

While doing my research on Podcasting, I came across this Wikipedia entry which mentions that opposition member Chee Soon Juan has his own podcast. Hmm ... technically, I thought a a podcast requires syndication, so what he has is more like a typical download link to an MP3 file.

Conversely, George W Bush gets it right with a RSS 2.0 feed.

[According to this MSNBC article, our Media Development Authority is monitoring podcasts as it comes under current media laws. ]

I got my regular email from Sitepoint and was pleasantly surprised to see a fellow Web Standards enthusiast in it!

All I can say is: Support Chu Yeow and his book, Firefox Secrets!!

In his own words...

I was searching around for text-to-image converters, after being inspired by what Mr Brown did. Years ago, I also tried playing around with K10K's Sigmund but couldn't figure how to run it on my own server.

So I was intrigued when I found this site via Google. And since they could Matrixify me, why not?

I used an image of me with the background removed, so there wouldn't be any unnecessary distractions.

I updated my reading list twice this month, and realised I didn't tell anyone about it. Anyway, these are the books that have been keeping me awake late at night.

In other news, Zeldman announces that JK Rowling's site has been redesigned in accessible Flash. That's chic. I can do accessible HTML when I put my mind to it, but accessible Flash is just one league ahead. I'd like to find a Singaporean company that can do this. Then again, there has to be market demand for such skills in the first place.

And at this point in time, there isn't.

My last few days in the office have been spent 'lobbying' for using newsfeeds as a supplement to our website. I feel both public and private sectors in Singapore have been slow to make use of XML to disseminate information, preferring to use e-mails and more traditional forms of media for promotions and updates. And let's not even get into PodCasting yet!

Since I've been at it, I thought a list of my favourite feed pages would be handy.

Here goes:

• BBC newsfeeds
  • Podcast page
• The Guardian feeds
  • Newsblog feed
  • Podcast page (not very professional-sounding recordings! Even I can do better)
• The Times feeds
• CNN newsfeeds
  • Podcast page
• New York Times feeds
• BusinessWeek newsfeeds
  • Podcast page
• Reuters feeds
• Yahoo! news (you can add them to My Yahoo! page as well). What I like about Yahoo's services is that you can also create RSS feeds on specific subject matter. It's quite flexible and handy.
• Gizmodo (direct XML link)
• New Scientist feeds
• I just discovered Podcasting.net which has lots of feeds for everything under the sun. Of course, there's also Apple iTunes 4.9's Podcasting directory.

Feel free to contribute more of your favourite news feeds and directories.

For local readers:

• Straits Times newsfeeds. You may need to log in as a subscriber to access the full list. However I think the XML files themselves are free. Let me know if you can't get in, and I'll post the direct links to the XML files. (Anyway, SPH should give the feeds for free, so that readers will feel like subscribing for the full stories!)
• Business Times newsfeeds No problems accessing this directory, even though I'm not a subscriber.

For online aggregators, I use primarily Kinja, although my account's been neglected for a while. I might use it more now, with my O2 Mini as it's cheaper to access all my news and blogs on one page, rather than going to multiple websites. (BTW if you add my feed on Kinja, you will see an Avatar of my own face.)

For my PCs, I recommend FeedDemon (free trial available). For Macs, I use NetNewsWire Lite (free trial for the full version, available). I suppose Tiger users would have tried out the new features in Safari by now. How do they compare with the specialised feed readers?

Porn websites now have a new domain extension - xxx (why are we not surprised).

But I've felt all along that nobody really uses these fancy suffixes - I've visted a few .tv sites (which have nothing to do with the actual country, Tuvalu), and now there's going to be .jobs and .travel ... but who needs those when you already have sites like monster.com and condenast.com?

Whatever needs a website, already has a website, and it's most probably found at a familiar .com, .net or .org. Of course, this won't stop people from rushing to register new names, domain squatters and legitimate trademark owners alike.

Ultimately, it's the content that keeps people coming back to a site. I don't consider getting first-time visitors to the site as the ultimate achievement in online marketing - but getting them to come back again and again and actually buy your product or service.

Which is why I hate spam, but that's another story.

No, I didn't take part in it (like I have the time to redesign this site!). But you can check out the participants in this year's May 1st Reboot website.

There are too many sites to review, but a random sampling proved to be disappointing - some looking like normal weblogs with fancy backgrounds. Others were image-intensive and took a while to load - some without ALT text.

Voters have also been discriminating (or shall we say, 'stingy') with the 'Ayes', giving lots more 'Nays', resulting in most websites having a negative score! The top-rated site so far, Factory4, has had an impressive 3 points at the time of writing. It's in Flash, and doesn't look too bad, but I was actually much more impressed with this year's Reboot site because of its ambient music, minimalistic layout and highly functional data sorting in Flash. If I could, I'd vote for it!

The Guardian News Blog (through Wired) mentions a new tool that rides on other search engines, looking for people's names. Keying in my first and last name fetched two results, one of which was a correct reference to myself on Zeldman's External page. However it got my description jumbled up with the next website listed on that page. Oh well, nothing's perfect.

I was looking for a new mobile phone and realised that 02's my-xda.com website refused to let me in, even though I was using the latest version of Mozilla Firefox, and not Internet Explorer or Netscape.

It also refused to let me in using Safari. Fortunately, it did run on IE for Mac.

I had half a mind to write in to the webmaster, though there wasn't any contact address on the 'upgrade' page.

Then I came across this post and realised that I was not alone. In fact, there's a site for the Firefox Hall of Shame, where you can take part in some 'activism' in support of this new, superior browser.

[Update: turns out someone already has written in to 02. However they obviously haven't done anything about it for months.]

What's cool: Democratic National Convention speeches by the likes of Al Gore, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Howard Dean, John Edwards and of course, John Kerry, available for free download on iTunes.

What's not: You need a US credit card to download them.

Bah. Anyone has any better ideas?

I was browsing the Mozilla website and couldn't resist trying out Camino, a simple browser designed specifically for OS X. So far so good. Pages and images render pretty quickly, and since they use Apple's interface, all the buttons look like they're straight out from Mac OS X. It also has a Google search bar.

Bookmarks seem to be easier to manage than in Firefox, as I can drag them directly into subfolders, like in Internet Explorer (the only browser NOT to be installed in my G5 thus far) [Argh! The rogues ... they snuck IE in my Applications folder!].

When I hit Apple + T for a new tabbed window, the tabs appear in the centre of the panel, not from the left. They too have the Mac OS X look.

As I'm posting this using Camino, I can tell you that Movable Type 3.0's interface works fine - Bold, Italics, Underline and URL commands function as they should. However, the font size for my entry text fields is definitely smaller than what I'm used to.

While Camino's still in development stage, I'd say Safari has some competition in the Mac-only browser division :)

However, despite all these wonderful new browsers coming of age, I dislike the fact that one of my local banks doesn't allow me to log in if I don't use IE or Netscape for Mac. So I had to install Netscape on my Mac. Then, after installing Office for Mac, I suspect Microsoft threw in IE as well. So I now have Safari, Firefox, Opera, Netscape, IE and Camino. Phew!

As of time of writing, this UK computer magazine poll indicates that Firefox is the second most-used web browser with a respectable 17% out of 537 votes (including one from myself).

Sleeping in the public library? Another New Yorker deals with high costs of living by staying in a 27-foot camper van.

Nullsoft have done a Netscape and skipped a version of Winamp. They explain (rather lamely) what happened to version 4. And I'm more than a little put off by the fact that there is now a 'Pro' version that will give you the added advantage of ripping music into *drum roll* MP3 format. Namely because:

1. I donated US$10 five years ago when Winamp was still shareware, and Nullsoft was a young company scraping for donations. But now they say it doesn't count. We have to 'register' (that is, 'pay') again for this Pro version. Thanks, guys, you've made schmucks of all your early supporters.
2. There already are other quality programs that rip MP3s for free. Why would we pay US$14.95 for this?

I was pleased to notice that Hardwarezone.com, Singapore's favourite aggregator of hardware reviews and prices, has XML feeds. They're first local publication/content provider I know of that's taken this step (please let me know of any others).

Did you know that the BBC has 43 different translations of its website? I was interested to see what it was like ploughing through the different versions in languages like Russian, Chinese, Arabic and Turkish.

One of the greatest variations to the visual layout is the Arabic version, which is positioned from right to left. I was impressed that there was an RSS feed - in Arabic.

Apart from visual and linguistic considerations, I noticed that content has also been repurposed to suit the readers from those languages / cultures / territorial domains. The Chinese version (at the time of writing) has more photographs of Asian faces, even if it is a story on computer viruses affecting the entire world. [Yes, despite my poor Mandarin I managed to understand that much :)]

The Arabic version had much more coverage on the Middle East, retaining the main story on George Bush. Likewise the Spanish front page catered to local interests, such as the story of Saint James no longer being portrayed as a Moor killer (article in English).

No surprises: BBCPolish is at present focussing on Poland's entry into the EU, with two out of nine smaller thumbnails displaying the EU flag, and another possibly linking to a third EU story (there's mention of Brussels).

Not all BBC sections (such as my favourite, Sport) have been translated, but it's a good start. The BBC also seems to be promoting its own agenda on some of its sites (such as the Russian one) for learning English. It's all rather fascinating.

Behold, the world's first 400GB hard disk (from Hitachi).
NetNewsWire looks like a nifty feed reader designed for OSX.
Google can now search flash files. Link from Kottke via Waxy.org.
iTunes sells 70 million songs in first year.

A great way to use CSS for different devices.

Microsoft may be slapped with US$100 million fine, forced to split up software.

Yahoo versus Google - a comparison on 'word density'. Time to check out Yahoo's new search algorithms.

I was surfing around at the Digital Homes magazine website, and chanced upon an interesting service, Zinio. For a subscription fee, it lets you download digital copies of magazines, page for page, onto your hard drive.

It may be ideal for people who love reading magazines but don't want to clutter up the place / kill trees / spend too much money. Also, say you're looking for an interesting article you came across a while ago, but now can't seem to find the page. Zinio is able to search for terms similar to the way Adobe Acrobat reader does. There are hot spots for web links listed in articles, so you can visit the site in question. And the page-flipping effect make it feel like you are going through a normal magazine (you can turn it off if it bugs you).

To view the digital mags, you need to install Zinio's reader software. This allows you to view the magazines on normal PCs as well as tablet PCs and Macs (Panther). You can view your mags on different computers, as long as you download the magazine files again. You can even mark out certain pages to email to other people. One downside is the huge file space usage and download time - an issue of the image-intensive Architectural Record was 23MB. Thank goodness I have a CD writer. And broadband.

I'm trying out some free samples of back issues now. If I'm happy enough I may sign up for a subscription or three. [Assuming I can't find the same content online!] Coming to think of it, the paper equivalent would have cost me a good amount of overseas postage too.

...Or bits of tit? Janet Jackson's right breast has drawn 60 times more web searches than the 'Paris Hilton' sex tape and 80 times more than 'Britney Spears'.

People are blogging about Longhorn, the code name for Microsoft's latest operating system. Here's Microsoft's own RSS feed. Incidentally I will hopefully be getting a preview of good things to come at a seminar later in the morning.

One post in three days. That has to be my worst record ever since I renamed this blog 'The Daily Weblog'. Blog, I'm sorry I haven't done you justice. I really have a lot of work to do. You'd be so proud of me, if only you weren't my blog.

Elsewhere, people have been doing exciting things. Jason Kottke is going to review one new magazine each week. I always like reading the comments his readers leave, because they're choc full of interesting information. Here you can find out what sort of mags you can possibly pick up in Manhattan.

Also, while I was missing in action, it appears that Britney Spears got married and divorced in about a day. As if the champagne binges weren't bad enough. Or losing It to Justin Timberlake.

Lastly, I guess now is as good as any time to announce that I have firmly made the switch to Mozilla Firebird, both at work and at home. It's faster than plain ol' Mozilla and has almost everything I want in a browser. Unfortunately not all websites are designed to comply with anything but IE, which is a nuisance. I might elaborate on that another time (cracks knuckles).

I haven't, honest-to-goodness for the life of me, had time to review my favourite newsfeeds since I started work again. I nearly had to skip one friend's wedding this weekend because of contractor problems (but I made it, hallelujah), and nearly forgot about an ex-colleague's forthcoming wedding, AND I forgot the birthday of one of my oldest friends, which is completely unforgiveable and I know she is reading this and yes I will take her out for a really nice dinner when she gets back. And yes I promise to enter all important dates into my new phone so I will never forget again.

But anyway. For those of you who read feeds like I do, Boing Boing has a collection of popular comic strips which have their own newsfeeds. You can view each daily strip in your 'reader. Yay.

That's all for now folks ... back to work.

• Apple's iTunes for PC hits 1 million download mark
• Robin Hood's bones may have rested here
• Sony to release world's smallest 5 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss lens (Kristen may like to hear this)
• You may be interested to read the UN's Arab Human Development Report 2003 (2.11mb)
• The Guardian's Best British Blog 2003 nominations are out. Good choice of judges.

• Nokia phones exploding (link from Kottke). According to a book on security, Nokia allegedly rigs its phones to switch to full power mode when third party batteries are detected, and blames those manufacturers for the damage.
• Sharp producing the world's first 3D laptop monitor. No goggles required. I'd expect the price tag to be in the third dimension, too.
• An Iraqi boy who lost both his arms, his parents and 13 other relatives in a US bombing raid, speaks his mind and very likely echoes the sentiments of by many other countrymen frustrated and resentful of the war. (A small consolation: he got to meet his hero David Beckham, before the Turkey match.)
• The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a good post on How Not To Get Sued By The RIAA For File-Sharing. It also has a petition with a neat plan to legalise P2P file-sharing AND compensate artistes at the same time.
• Taking Stylesheets and XHTML further: Mozilla and Firebird have a secret weapon. Go to this page at mozdev.org and hit F7 to turn on caret browsing. You'll be able to edit and format text in a designated area of the page! This is done by using CSS to specify the editable region (link from Bitflux). This could be useful for editing pages in a real WYSIWYG browser environment. Oh - and it appears to be a CSS3 user enhancement.

After completing a website entirely in Flash MX, dashing off to the Macromedia conference (see pics in previous post), and having a satisfying flambé steak for dinner, I was more than pleasantly surprised to discover that my favourite web standards evangelist, Zeldman, has added this site to his list of externals.

Over 200 hits and counting. It is indeed a great honour.

• Zeldman and Stopdesign to revamp Apple.com. Can it get any better than this?
• CSS guru Eric Meyer launches his new consultancy website.
• One for the ladies: Eating dark chocolate is good for you, according to this Reuters Health report. It contains antioxidants.

Avid surfers: Suffering from information overload? Wired's top news story on news aggregators got me checking out a few alternatives to Feed Reader, which I currently use as a free, standalone program to read my favourite weblogs and other syndicated news. In the end, I settled for Newsmonster, which integrates with your web browser. This is what it looks like, when installed into Mozilla. Cool, eh?

It works pretty well, save for a few kinks. For instance, the aggregator managed to provide me with paragraph-long excerpts of CNN news, but didn't work as well with the Guardian website, where all it listed was the nav bar.

According to this British blogger, the Guardian has launched a new weblog outside its guardian.co.uk domain, with the sole purpose of eliminating agricultural subsidies. Check it out, because it kicks ass. I mean, AAS.

The Guardian also has an Online Blog, powered by Blogger Pro. Why didn't I discover this sooner?

Now this is something I'd pay for: a service that allows you to search and access over 140 publications online [linked off Ben Hammersley's weblog]. The price? Less than five American dollars a month. No ads, no dead trees. And it comes with a seven-day free trial that doesn't require your credit card number.

You might think, that's easy! These magazines would provide the same articles online, for free. That ain't necessarily so. A visit to Esquire magazine's website, for instance, brought up 0 hits on 'Schwarzenegger', while Keepmedia offered a July 2003 article from the same magazine. It appears that the publications included in this service are the ones that generally don't put everything online (duh).

You also get a vast array of professional and trade publications so specialised, I never knew they existed until I signed up for my free trial. Genomics & Proteomics, anyone? Well, actually, they do have something I want: Electronic Musician. [Update: I just discovered that EM has revamped its website and now has its own archives starting from 1999. So much for that!]

The search engine is decent, though it can be more sophisticated. It churns up accurate results, but won't tell you which page of the article your search term appears in, which meant I had to do a keyword search in my browser, skip to the next page, and repeat until phrase in question was found. You can however fine-tune your search by publication, topic or date. Alongside the article you're reading, it displays more 'Suggested articles' of relevance, which is helpful. You can also add articles to your personal list, and attach a note to an individual article. That would be useful for researchers.

However, as the site says, you won't get breaking news, but archives from previous months. In that sense it's better for people who want information on topics which don't require the very latest information. I get all my tech news online elsewhere, anyway, and for free.

The other thing you don't get with this online service, are photographs. So you might still be better off with the tree version of your publication if it is highly image-dependent. They should consider PDF versions for some magazines, because mags like Interior Design don't feel quite right without photographs. Of course, PDF files take up bandwidth, and it may be too troublesome obtaining and processing the files from design houses.

All in all, the service is very much a print-to-HTML text conversion. Don't expect to see hyperlinks in the content, as opposed to the fare offered in Wired magazine online (naturally, Wired is not included in this service). Then again, there's nothing you can't Google for.

I'm going to test out its features in full over the next week. Assume the best if you don't hear from me again.

[Update 20/8/03: I've found a rival.]

I know we Singaporeans are pretty obsessed about efficiency. We're an impatient lot, always wanting to find the fastest way to finish our work. So why am I surprised (well, actually tickled with mirth) to find that our beloved Government has an official website to Cut Red Tape?

An excellent dig at upmarket coffee vendors: Doonesbury drives the point home.

Wired gallery: Sony's new PEG-UX50 Clié is, like, totally amazing. And expensive. But yeah, amazing.

I just took the W3 Schools' CSS quiz, and am awfully mad that I only scored 18/20 (I took about 5 minutes). No cheating! If anyone wants the correct answers I can provide them for you later. *mutters* I misunderstood one of the questions!

Oo-er. In under 5 minutes (including some time spent writing an SMS) I did a little better on the XHTML test, scoring 19 out of 20. Darn!

Microsoft's CFO ranks Linux as its number one competitor, so to speak. It's technically number two on the list of threats, but I won't take the economic environment (listed as number one) into account, since it affects everybody. [Update: US States with slashed IT budgets are turning to Linux]

Take a look at Apple's comprehensive Aqua interface guidelines for developers (thanks to Seet for the link).

Gallery of cool pics taken by the Sony Ericsson t610.
Over 10,000 Germans join community to translate the latest Harry Potter book.
Jupiter Research has a paper on how clients' content management needs can be analysed better via the use of weblog software. Now we're talkin'!

I've finally cleared the backlog of work in the office and found a few interesting links:

X2 the movie: A brief feminist perspective. Uh, yeah.

MSNBC: Palestinians in Iraq now fear the worst after receiving preferential treatment under old Saddam regime.

Lastly, Zeldman's new book, Designing With Web Standards, is out: download two free chapters here.

Speaking of lengthy post blogs - our favourite Iraqi blogger, Salam Pax (of Where is Raed?), is back!

Netcraft's April survey is out. It seems that Apache is still by far the most popular web server software, more than doubling nearest rival Microsoft's share.

It is interesting to note that Apache and Microsoft appear to mirror each other statistically. If you look at the graph, June - October 2002 for example displays a sharp increase in Apaches servers and an equally sharp decline in Microsoft servers.

While I have much to learn about servers and software, I can give two good reasons why the Apache Software Foundation is still holding their ground:

1. It's free (thus, web hosting is cheaper, and you can still work wonders in PHP, Perl and XML. Hey! That's the stuff Movable Type is made of!).

2. It's open source. Along with the likes of Linux, I'd say the open source movement is giving Micro$oft a run for its money.

Two Safaris: take your pick, Apple or O'Reilly.

Blair's administration apologises for asking a British woman widowed by the war to return her late husband's pay and move out of her armed forces home.

The NY Times reports that coalition forces overlooked Iraqi museums, focus instead on protecting oil wells. It was always a question of priorities, after all.

BBC reports that the Iraqi national library has been razed. Ancient Islamic scripts have been destroyed. Check out the Iraq section of the UNESCO website for more information on how the UN is dealing with this destruction of cultural heritage.

Those who are getting crossed eyeballs reading too many different war blogs can instead point their browsers to Warblogs.cc.

More on my Iraq Special page.

A weblog is good for many things, but not if you're looking for a single page listing information on the war in Iraq. So I've just made one.

This page isn't exactly the definitive guide to anything at the moment but I'll update it regularly. Contributions welcome.

Michael Moore on why he made that speech.

Following Kristen's example, I have now incorporated a referral log. Check out the side nav to see what I mean.

[ Update: It seems that everybody is looking for my Talking Fish entry. ]

Macromedia is really taking their new site redesign seriously.

My domain remains down for yet another day. Network Solutions have just told me that it's my old host Veoweb who need to release the domain. Veoweb denied holding on to it last week. In the meantime, my new host Addaction is unable to do a thing.

And I promised myself not to swear.

Verisign has transferred its dot org registry powers to a new organisation called the Public Interest Registry (PIR), created by the Internet Society.

Fellow dot-orgers, not to worry: contrary to earlier speculation, it doesn't look like they're barring personal websites from using this extension. In fact, there will be some improvements in the registration process.

In fact, we don't have to do very much about it, although our registrars are involved in the transition.

Gurmit sent this link to me and I think it is positively ingenious.

Gripe, gripe, gripe. I was able to access my site at work yesterday afternoon, but not at home last night. I suspect a DNS update lag on different networks.

Anyway...

Out today: Nielsen reiterates on website real estate.

The new Movable Type 2.6 should be out anytime this week, if my calculations are correct.

Recently discovered: No War Blog. Independent weblogs are perfect for this sort of thing, really - providing analysis without having to worry about breaching state policies and commercial interests. Well, not as much as traditional media at least.

Kottonwool just drew my attention to the new Nokia 3650. Unusual interface, but the possibilities are almost endless - as far as we can imagine today.

The time is 10.43pm. I am now downloading the current/old St George's website as a backup (in case things go terribly wrong later).

11.06pm. The old site has been backed up. I have uploaded a placeholder page while I replace old with new.

11.36pm. Making some amendments before uploading virtually all the new files.

11.48pm. Uploading the new files.
There's an argument on BBC going on right now. Muslim cleric (presumably extremist) and the host of the show, from opposite ends of the spectrum. I hope nobody gets killed.

1.14 am. More amendments and uploads.

Some content is still pending. Check it out, anyway: www.stgeorges.org.sg.

Dang, Netscape 7 doesn't seem to recognise the margin spacing I've given the content. But it renders fine in IE and Opera. Any suggestions?

I'm sleepy. I'll leave it as it is tonight and see what the others think tomorrow, at the office.

I was shopping for a new domain name for my good pal Van Heng, when I decided to do a WHOIS on Microsoft. And you won't believe what the hackers have done to their registry. This is a sample of what was listed on their server WHOIS (with additional insights from me, in brackets):

MICROSOFT.COM.Z-IS-THE-BEST-Z.IFUD.COM (If these guys love Microsoft so much, why are they hacking their registry?)

MICROSOFT.COM.WILL.LIVE.FOREVER.BECOUSE. UNIXSUCKS.COM
(Allll riiiight...)

MICROSOFT.COM.WILL.CRASH.IN.6MN.ORG
(hmm I'm sure that's happened to my Windows OS before)

MICROSOFT.COM.WILL.BE.BEATEN.WITH.MY.SPANNER.NET
(Ah, this one likes a little S&M)

MICROSOFT.COM.WANTS.U.TO.HAXM.COM
(Ooh yes I see it's happened many times)

MICROSOFT.COM.WANADOODOO.COM
(Don't! Don't!)

MICROSOFT.COM.SHOULD.GIVE.UP. BECAUSE.LINUXISGOD.COM
(Okay. Linux is cool)

MICROSOFT.COM.RAWKZ.MUH.WERLD.MENTALFLOSS.CA
(Canadian hacker?)

MICROSOFT.COM.OHMYGODITBURNS.COM
(I know XP's fast, but this is too much)

MICROSOFT.COM.IS.NOT.SEXYCOOL.ORG
(They just need a little TLC)

MICROSOFT.COM.IS.A.STEAMING.HEAP.OF. F***ING-BULLSHIT.NET
(This guy is pretty direct. Sorry for the bad language, I have censored it accordingly)

MICROSOFT.COM.HAS.TEH.GAY.OMFGLOL.COM
(Can someone please decipher this for me?)

MICROSOFT.COM.HAS.ITS.OWN.CRACKLAB.COM
(Well the Cracklab better be doing something about you, young man.)
[ Update: Hey, this link exists! ]

MICROSOFT.COM.HAS.A.PRESENT.COMING.FROM. HUGHESMISSILES.COM
(I certainly hope that wasn't from Osama or Saddam)

MICROSOFT.COM.FILLS.ME.WITH.BELLIGERENCE.NET
(I can see that, fella)

The new St George's website will be up soon. As in, real soon. The folks at church need a new site to host their forthcoming activities like Alpha and Friendship Sunday.

In the meantime, click around the old site before it gets replaced. Try not to get lost >;-)

Back to working on the new site. *Yawn*

This is a really clever way of bringing the game to us. Watch how the last match progressed online, using Flash.