17:28 by FoxTwo
Increase Your Traffic with Scoutle
As an aside - yeah I'm plunging headlog into work. The new place wasn't really what I expected when I went to be interviewed. It was MORE. In other words, better.
Anyway, during my random surfing and stumbling around, I came across yet another Increase-Your-Blog-Traffic website called Scoutle. To describe it, it's similar to Blogrush in that you install a widget and then the traffic is supposed to start coming in.
However, that's where the similarity ends. In Scoutle, you create a robot, a web-crawler called a "scout". You program your scout to start scouring the web and "connect" to sites which you programmed it to. The scout then will trawl the web and hit websites with the widget installed, and "make contact". They call the widget "a stage". The different versions offered at the Scoutle website offers differing levels of traffic when installed, and it's up to you to select the levels of traffic you would want.
I think of this as a sort of "robot social networking" where the bots talk to one another, and then shows the URL and links up in your dashboard on the Scoutle site. What you do is to visit the Scoutle dashboard every couple of days and check up on the new "connections" made, to discover new blogs and interesting websites.
I'm still new in Scoutle, so my connections aren't alot right now. It's been just a couple of days and I can't really tell if Scoutle's worth the hype right now. I will post again a couple of weeks later to see how it goes with Scoutle.
Labels: blog, internet, scoutle
13:23 by FoxTwo
Have You Gotten Your Firefox 3 Today?
Usually, it is with trepidation that I download a new browser on the actual release day itself. The main reason is the add-ons. I have come to rely on certain extensions and add-ons in Firefox in my daily surfing and other internet activities, and without those, the browser seems.... naked.
So yes, I actually bit the bullet and downloaded Firefox 3 today. It is with some relief that my extensions are 99% intact - only 1 was incompatible, and I can certainly live without it, since I hardly use it. However, the majority of my themes have been disabled. When Firefox 3 started, it was the "default" theme, and I must say, it doesn't look bad either. I could actually like the default theme enough not to go looking for other themes!
As for "faster".. well honestly, I don't really feel it. Feels about same to me, but of course, I do not have any benchmarking tools running to see actual figures. In normal usage it just feels... "normal".
The main feature, if you could call it that, is the new URL bar, dubbed "Awesome bar". You can type the letters as usual and it'll show you the previous URLs you have been to. In addition, now the URL bar offers you suggestions from web page TITLES too!
Now, you can even tag your bookmarks (like how you tag blog posts) and the Awesome Bar can pick up those tags too. So in other words, you now also are able to search via tags too! For people like me who has a massive collection of bookmarks over the years (mine stretches back to 1996), it's going to be quite daunting to go back and re-tag all the bookmarks...
There are other features too, but right now I'm just exploring them. Firefox 3 isn't that much different from Firefox 2 aside from the Awesome Bar, cosmetics wise and functionality wise. I will, of course, need to read the changelog to see what's new, but as it is right now, Firefox 3 just seems a more streamlined version of Firefox 2.
Labels: FireFox, Firefox 3, internet
15:29 by FoxTwo
Plurk And Twitter, Which Is Better?
Wow it's been a WEEK since I last wrote an entry here. This is my longest "haitus", so far, on my blog since 2005. Sorry guys, Real Life (tm) happened.
To get right to it - recently Twitter had some problems. People who used Twitter heavily were badly affected (withdrawal symptoms, hiak hiak!). For me it was little more than an annoyance that twitter was down.
Then, when Twitter came up in spurts a little later, uniquefrequency from ping.sg had a tweet - he'd found a good replacement to Twitter called Plurk. Since Twitter was, at the time, not stable, I thought I may as well check it out.
First thing that hits you after you sign up on Plurk - the timeline. It's sideways scrolling so it will definitely take some getting used to. Within a few hours of signing up, I had 18 to 20 friends on Plurk and ALL of them are pingsters.
Secondly, replies in Plurk are threaded, like in forums. A little to structured for my liking. When someone replies to a friend's plurk, you get notified, and you have to go hunting for a plurk that might be a few hours old just to see the reply. That means alot of backtracking (and sideways scrolling if you don't click on the "view responses" link at the bottom of your screen).
In any case, this post isn't a "review" on Plurk. It's more like my opinion on which service is "better", in my own context. The initial push to check out Plurk was that Twitter was down. I was impressed that Plurk supports more than just GoogleTalk as the IM of choice. You can choose between the popular ones on Plurk - MSN, Yahoo, GoogleTalk, Jabber, and AIM. All major protocols are covered. Personally, since I use Digsby, it didn't really matter which I chose. The fact that MSN was unavailable in Plurk at the time didn't really bother me much too, even though I would have really preferred to have an MSN IM bot.
However, a couple of days later, the IM bots disappeared. They were offline all the time. This seems eerily the same problem that Twitter had - IM went down. The bots aren't up yet, even today.
When the IM bots went down, Plurk suddenly had none of the perks (to me) to use it over Twitter. No 3rd party clients, no IM, and Plurk definitely doesn't have SMS support. To be "updated", I had to keep the webpage open again, which I hate. Intensely.
Twitter also has the advantage of being "mainstream", so more people use it over Plurk. This is only natural since it's more established. That also means that integration with some other services like Facebook, Mybloglog et al, is already available. Plurk is just a new kid on the block and it will definitely take time for people to come use it, let alone be integrated. Even so it may never overtake Twitter, just like Jaiku and Pownce hasn't, even though they may have been around for almost as long as Twitter has.
If I were to move to a new platform, let alone just to Plurk, I'd have to persuade my friends to do so too. I don't like doing that, since my friends will have their own personal opinions on what they like and do not like. I can gush and enthuse about how great something is (like Digsby), but it's really up to them to take the plunge.
So what's my take?
I have Twitter up all the time on Digsby anyway, so I guess my answer would be - Twitter for me. Plurk is a nice distraction, and I'll still pop in occasionally, but it won't be my "main", so to speak. Also, Twitter isn't "down" now anyway. It works fine, it's up, so no complaints from me.
Labels: internet, plurk, twitter
16:02 by FoxTwo
If You Want To Make Money Online....
.... you really, REALLY have to look at this link. Without reading that link, you will be wondering why you failed in your attempts, or why your efforts are not bearing fruit. That link will be an eye-opener if you never knew those before. Trust me.
Don't worry it's safe to click on the link. You can examine the link yourself - it's not an affiliate link, no hidden gotchas to make you click so I earn money off your click. :)
I know you've heard it all before. Making money online is fast. If you have a blog you can make money easily. You can live off the income you generate online. The link above will tell you THE TRUTH.
I mean, who wouldn't be persuaded, especially if you keep seeing these being said time and time again? Every Make-Money-Online blog or website you come across will always definitely tell you the same thing - it's easy, you don't need much skills at designing web pages, it's automatic and so on.
Like everyone else, I *have* been tempted before. I even broke out my credit card on a couple of times. However, it's always at the last minute that reason reared its head and I kept my card, and navigated away from those pages.
Nowadays there are some of those sites that vary those motto slightly. They will tell you it's not that easy, and that you need to put some work in. Well they're only toning it down and telling you something a little less untrue.
The bottom line - most of these sites are commonly referred to as "scam sites". As the old adage goes - "If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is".
Incidentally, this goes for those "warning" emails you get from friends too.. you know, about a new fantastic virus that can infect everything. It sounds so fantastic, that it's impossible to be true. But, that's another topic.
Don't say I didn't warn you! :)
Labels: internet, make money online
16:57 by FoxTwo
Death To The Google Sorry Page!
In the early part of the week, I was cut off by Google from accessing 2 of my blogs. I kept getting the damned "Google Sorry Page". At first, like everyone else, we thought it was a temporary problem. Common ways to resolve the "Sorry Page" problem was to use a different browser, clearing cookies, clearing cache, etc. However, it seems that this time Google has it in for us. All these measures did not work. I even made sure to disconnect from Starhub and reconnect with a new IP address. Same thing, no go. Google still showed the "Sorry Page".
Ok before we go further, this is the "Sorry Page" I'm talking about:
Yeah it was driving me nuts since I couldn't access my blog to do maintenance or reply comments. I kept hoping it would be a temporary problem and it would go away. It never did. Even up to today, I still see people twittering about this. A very good example is shown below:
All my blogs were hit except this one. The only difference? This one's self-hosted, ie not stored on Google's free blogspot.com servers.
It was VERY fortunate though, that the 2 blogs that were hit, had already had the default Blogger commenting system replaced with the more powerful Intense Debate and Disqus ones. Thus, I could still reply to their comments via email. In the case of Disqus-powered commenting system, I could even head to the Disqus website and reply to the comments from there if I wanted to.
So I set about converting my blogs from the nifty Layouts format to Blogger Classic templates, so that I can publish them to my own server, away from Google's reach. I succeeded early on in the week with my fitness blog. I was lucky - I found the same exact template which I used, all ready and waiting to be used as a classic template. That one was fast.
However, there wasn't any classic version of my gaming blog template, so I attempted to manually convert the template by hand into a Blogger Classic template. After 3 failed attempts, I gave up. I have no clue why they failed - the CSS was left mostly intact, yet it looked haywire upon previewing. After having wasted 3 days trying to hand-code the XML template into a HTML one, I gave up and thought seriously about finally moving away from Blogger platform. I was deciding between Drupal and Expression Engine but the theme I used was not available on those platforms. Thus my decision was primarily forced by the need to use the same theme, and to get it working FAST. So Wordpress became de facto platform of choice.
Long story short, it was only today that I completed the migration of my gaming blog to Wordpress. I only used Wordpress due to convenience, not because it's a "all powerful" system. The migration had numerous hiccups, and even their much-vaunted import functions FAILED. Utterly. Wordpress forums were no help. Everyone just said "it SHOULD work!". Yeah it should, but it didn't.
Wordpress was, and still is, very finicky with some themes and javascript not playing nice together, so even though you might like a theme, you can't use it because of some javascripts that you're running. Even worse, some themes look fine on one browser but sucky on another. I know Wordpress die hard supporters will not like me saying this but it's true - Wordpress is almost as good (or "bad") as Blogger.com. The only difference is that Wordpress runs on a server out of Google's reach, which solves my current problem.
I do not have a problem with Blogger platform, just Google blocking me from accessing my blogs. I also do not have have a problem with Wordpress as a blogging platform, just the Wordpress fanbois. I can use either, and I am happy to say that I like (or hate) both equally. None is "superior" to the other in my opinion and usage. No wait, I take it back. Blogger has an edge - I can write 3 blogs from one Dashboard even if the blogs are all self-hosted and externally published. With self-hosted Wordpress, 1 blog per installation please, thank you (without using WPMU and having to muck around with Apache settings and such).
So, now that I've finished addressing my more immediate concerns, ie getting the blogs OUT from blogspot.com servers and onto my own, I can slowly concentrate on perhaps, migrating them completely out from Blogger and onto other platforms. Perhaps I will revisit Drupal, or try out Chyrp. One thing's for sure - the CMS system that I pick to migrate THIS blog to, will need to have this theme readily available and useable.
Now, with Intense Debate or Disqus as my choice of a commenting system, I wouldn't even mind trying out other CMS systems and see if they would be a better, or at least, more interesting choice, than Wordpress. After all, ID or Disqus can be used with any sort of web site, even if commenting systems were not originally available on them!
Labels: Google, internet, Rant
05:02 by FoxTwo
Leveraging Entrecard To Get More Traffic
So anyway, I was a little surprised to see an email coming in via my Entrecard inbox. Well, I've been getting alot of emails from Entrecard because I just put my fitness blog up on Entrecard, so I have been getting advert approval requests. However this is different - this is an email from a real human :)
Well, before I get to the email, let me just say that Entrecard finally added the ability to add multiple blogs to one account! YES FINALLY! Therefore you don't need a separate email for each blog you want to register there now. Seeing this new function, naturally I added my fitness blog. After all I don't need an extra email address now, so it's very convenient. Plus, Entrecard just naturally draws traffic in.
But, to really increase traffic from Entrecard, you need to give it a little "boost". You don't just sit back on your laurels and "watch it happen". To this end, Bogdan Ionescu from Learniacs.com has written a nice little PDF e-book. Click on the picture on the left, or here, to grab the book.
I tried to get it, but apparently the site is now hit by a high load of traffic or something (perhaps trying to grab this free e-book), so it's unavailable to me right now.
However, I'll still be trying to get it. After all, who doesn't need/want more traffic for their blogs? Even if the blog isn't really a money-maker type (like mine).
Update: Ok finally got the book. What I can tell you is, Bogdan writes in a no-nonsense way. Eg - You want this? Do this. No running around in circles telling you stories of when he was a kid and what he did . And did I mention I just added my 3rd blog to Entrecard? Using the tips Bogdan has in his e-book should prove useful and probably will draw traffic in much faster than my original blog did when I first joined Entrecard last year.
We now return you to your regular programming of useless stuff, nonsense and ramblings.
08:06 by FoxTwo
Cool Way To Screenshot A Website Part 2
Back in January, I wrote this entry here, about a web service called Kwout. For those not familiar with it, it's basically a service to screenshot a page and provide ready-made code for you to insert into your blog to show a screenshot.
Now they've come up with a FireFox extension to do the same thing!
You don't have to to go their website to screenshot a website anymore with this extension. Here's how the extension works in Firefox:
You click on the small "k" in your status bar in Firefox. That will pop out the small options box you see in the screenshot.
Then you select the portion you wish to "cut", like as if you're on the actual Kwout website. Once done, you click on "CUT", as usual.
You'll see the final box appear once you've clicked on "CUT". The extra feature here is that you can SAVE the picture to your own computer, or if you click UPLOAD, it'll bring you to the Kwout website for it to be processed and the code generated for you to be put into your blog entry.
Again, in case someone forgets, Kwout is cool because not only does it screenshot a website, the screenshot image contain working links (if you allow)! In other words, if the screenshot has a button labelled "home", and you allowed image mapping, you can click on the "home" button in the screenshot image, and you will be brought to wherever the link points to. Think of it as a "miniwebsite".
Seriously, try it on my previous post. Click on the links in the picture, and you WILL be brought to the bloggers' actual blog entries!
Labels: Extension, FireFox, internet, website
17:58 by FoxTwo
Feedblitz Does More Than Just Email Now
If you don't know what RSS is, in a nutshell it's a consolidation of blog entries in a simplified format, so that you can use a reader to read it instead of visiting every blog you like to read the latest entries. All you need to do is subscribe to the RSS feed and add the RSS URL into your reader, and you can read all your favourite blogs in one place - your reader.
Yeah most blogs have a "subscribe me" button that asks you to enter your email address, and Feedblitz emails the RSS feed to you. Well, at least that was what it USED to do. In the intervening months where I've left Feedblitz alone, I just realised what it can do when I had to reinstall its code on my new blog templates.
Yeah look at the options now - MSN, Yahoo, Twitter. Now you can get the whole RSS thing beeped to you wherever you are!
I just can't imagine how your Twitter will look like if a full blog post comes in via RSS through your Twitter... your followers would probably see a whole bunch of tweets coming from you (assuming you used the public option as shown in the picture).
And if you have subscribed to the feed via your MSN or Yahoo or AIM, Lord help you when you're in the middle of a presentation for your bosses and a new blog post comes in :)
12:17 by FoxTwo
Shareaholic - The One Button To Rule Them All
For example, I discovered the Intense Debate commenting system and implemented it here. Then a day or so later, I came across a competing commenting system, which also garnered rave reviews, and implemented it on my gaming blog. Well yeah I am still "in the process" of implementing the commenting and forum features to my third blog, and even thinking about using it on my website in general too.
Before we go further, I'd just like to jog your memory a little. When you read blogs, do you notice that a vast majority of them have some sort of "share this" button or link at the end of the entry? Yeah, those that you click or mouseover, and a list of services will be shown, like StumbleUpon, Digg, Twitter etc?
Well today I'll just touch on something similar, and it's available on the browser. It's a FireFox extension, called Shareaholic. and it's your own personal "share this" button on your own browser.
Remember when you first joined StumbleUpon? Yeah they told you that "it is highly recommended" that you install their toolbar. Then, you joined de.licio.us. They told you the same thing - "install our toolbar". You joined Technorati. Although they don't have a toolbar, you can use the many bookmarklets they have there to "bookmark" your faves.
The list goes on. For every of these "social sites" you have yet another toolbar to install, or more bookmarklet codes to put on your browser bar to "share" your favourites.
This is where Shareaholic comes in. This one single add-on will render all those toolbars and bookmarklets useless! Ok I exaggerate, but this can replace all of them in one fell swoop. Well check out the picture below for a better idea:
As usual, click to enlarge if you can't see it clearly.
As you can see, this one single add-on allows you to share the current page you're on with a multitude of services. I personally only picked those I really use. After all I doubt anybody would have an account on each of those services!
Well, is that it? Not quite.
Shareaholic also works very much like StumbleUpon. Well I think of it as "StumbleUpon without stumbling". What do I mean? Well when you click on the icon in your browser, you will see a selection called "Community links". This is where people using Shareaholic have bookmarked stuff and are sharing it across the various services that Shareaholic supports. The stuff they are sharing all appear here (although not really in real-time). The more impressive thing about this is that, you need not necessarily have an account in whatever services those links are bookmarked to - as long as you have the Shareaholic extension you can see every link passing through the system.
Yes indeed, by using this link, I "stumble" upon new stuff, almost exactly like "stumbling" :)
Labels: Extension, FireFox, internet
21:32 by FoxTwo I saw the first mention of it here, at Lisa C Writes. Then a few weeks later, I saw another mention of it here, at Bloggerfocus.com. What am I talking about?
It's about a new commenting system for the Blogger.com platform. (edit - oops, it is not just for Blogger platform. It is also available for Wordpress, Typepad etc too). Yes I know, stuff like Haloscan has been around for quite a while. However, this new comment system, called Intense Debate, appears to be much better than plain old Haloscan.
So is this going to work on this blog?
I hope so. I have, like a typical kiasu Singaporean, made backups of my original templates before slotting in the new codes for the new commenting system. I have also decided NOT to retro-fit this "upgrade" to all older entries. That means I won't lose all the old, precious comments that are currently stuck in the (old) Blogger.com system.
It would have been better if I could have made a complete switch - that means, importing everything from Blogger.com into IntenseDebate and then do a one-time complete template overhaul. Since it couldn't be done, I have to be VERY mindful about not "republishing entire blog" from now on inside Blogger.com.
Henceforth, until such time that this system shows itself to be unstable, this blog will be on the new, Intense Debate commenting system!
14:02 by FoxTwo
Facebook Is A Stalker's Paradise
Facebook has this "feature" which all other networks do not have. Or, even if they did, not to this level of detail. The feature I'm talking about is the newsfeed. You know, when you log in, you are given a summary of what your other friends did, like "commenting on a photo" or "joined xyz group", or even "kissed, hugged, punched" someone etc in the various apps.
Again, let me relate a story. Again, I am not directly involved, and names have been changed to protect the guilty and innocent. App names have also been generalised - ie I will not make references to any specific app by name.
Stella is a very friendly and outgoing person. She also has a soft heart, she can't say "NO" because "it will hurt his feelings" type of person. Like everyone else, she installed many apps due to her friends inviting her to do so. One of these apps is a flirting/dating type app. How this app works is to show her picture rather anonymously, and show only her first name without her last name. Also, in this app, there's no direct link to her profile. Thus the only way for potential suitors to communicate is via this app itself.
So Stella got to know a guy through this app. Let's call him David. David was browsing profiles in this app and saw Stella. Thinking she looks hot, he initiated contact. Stella, being the friendly sort, always replies. At first things were cordial. They sort of "clicked", and more info about each other were exchanged. She gave him a link to her Facebook profile, and accepted his friend request.
Then he started to hint at something more.
Stella recognised the hints and started to back off, but yet still always replying, and never making any ambiguous remarks. She even came right out and reminded David that she's married (as shown in her profile) and that she's only looking for FRIENDS, nothing more.
David, being a resourceful kind of guy, some how managed to obtain her email address (never shown on Stella's profile). Let's not speculate how he got the info. The fact is he did. So he started to send her lovey-dovey messages to her personal email as well as doing all the "sexy" and "naughty" poke actions to her on Facebook.
Every time Stella sees those, she gets upset. At first she tried to ignore them, but when she did, David very angrily demanded to know why she was specifically "singling him out" yet she responds to her other male friends. He insisted she respond to his "pokes" and email, and says that he could see, via the newsfeeds, that she got his "pokes", why wasn't she responding? David kept harping on one point - if she wasn't interested in him, why did she tell him her profile address and accept his friend?
Stella was in a quandry - she confided in her friends, not knowing what to do as it was stressing her out. She didn't want her husband finding out, or else he would think she had been flirting with guys on Facebook (which she didn't). Her friends advised her to totally block David on Facebook, and to set up a filter in her email to automatically delete anything from David's email address.
Stella, the soft hearted girl, didn't want to do any of those. She didn't want to "hurt his feelings". Yet, she's the one being traumatised. Also, in a way, she was afraid of what David will do.
As of right now, this situation with Stella isn't resolved. She now avoids Facebook like a plague. She is afraid to open her email. In a sense, Stella the friendly and outgoing girl, became withdrawn and afraid. All because of one guy.
Stella isn't alone in this. I know of at least a couple more female friends who are in a similar situation - unwanted attention from guys, who won't take NO for an answer. They also are soft-hearted and "don't want to hurt his feelings".
Guys - when a girl says NO, it's not a "maybe" ok? Being "determined" makes women afraid of you, not admire you. There's a fine line between "determined" and "harrassing".
Girls - don't be soft-hearted. Block the irritating ones immediately. Once you block, no matter what kind of threats he issued, you won't even see it. Also when you block, the "newsfeed" no longer updates on the guys' end. Set up filters in your email to automatically DELETE email from these stalkers. In other words, cut him off totally.
If you don't, the only one suffering is YOU, not the guy. He's not soft-hearted towards you, why should you be nice to him?
Labels: facebook, internet, social networking
11:27 by FoxTwo
A Lot Of Women Read My Blog...
If your blog is on Pay Per Post or you have joined Social Spark, the piece of code they tell you to put into your blog helps them to rank your blog using their own "Realrank". So far, their stats seem ok, no weird flukes like "Nigeria" listed in my stats (for those sensitive to the word "Nigerians" and "Scam", read my post PROPERLY. I have nothing against Nigeria, but I hate the scams. And this post is NOT about Nigerian scams, got it?)
As seen in the picture above, the stats are pretty standard. All counters (except Alexa) say the same thing - majority of my visitors are from Singapore and USA. The percentages vary, but essentially saying the same thing.
The thing about Izea's Realrank code is - I'm curious just how Izea's code manages to differentiate between male and female visitors. Not only am I impressed that they can differentiate between genders, I am even more impressed they can separate them by age!
If I really get 48% female visitors, then dangit I need to change my content slightly to cater for the female population! Perhaps more pink? Talk about lacey lingerie? Latest makeup and fashion maybe? Or how about boy-girl relationships?
If I continue to prattle on about techy geeky stuff like HTML and codes and what-nots, I'm gonna bore them all to tears... So, come on, tell me what you wanna see! :)
09:04 by FoxTwo
Join Facebook, Make Friends! Enemies Thrown In As Bonus!
Why do you join a social network, such as Facebook? Well I could have used other social networks like Friendster, Orkut etc but right now, Facebook's the "in-thing", and almost everyone has an account.
So back to the subject at hand. Why do YOU join a social network? I bet it's more likely peer pressure. "Everyone has joined, I should too!". Although none of your friends actively "pressured" you, the mere act of them sending an invite to you is already "pressuring".
We all like friends, definitely. But, did you know you can now use Facebook to find new enemies? Yes you can!
Facebook takes the cake in that it's the first social network thing I know of, where you can make enemies really quick. I'm not kidding.
Previous incarnations of social networking sites, like Friendster, only let you add friends. You can't do much except to send each other private and public messages (Facebook calls the public messages "Wall Messages"). If you uploaded pics of yourself, people can write comments on them. That's basically the extent of the "interaction".
So now Facebook comes along, ups the bar by allowing 3rd party applications. All fine and good. Then people who write "apps" need the apps to be competitive. After all, competition is what keeps nature alive, and ever changing. We compete for food, mates, etc. It's natural. So we have apps that buy and sell friends.
This is the fun part. First, let's set a hypothetical background:
On Facebook, Ah Kow has a friend, Ah Mei. He installed this "Buy Your Friend" app and bought Ah Mei because she is his friend. Ah Mei has another male "friend", Ah Gu. Ah Gu doesn't know Ah Kow, but he knows Ah Mei. So he installs the same app, and buys Ah Mei.
So, this is the part where people get too serious and personal.
Ah Kow is not happy that a stranger buys "his" Ah Mei. So Ah Kow buys Ah Mei back from Ah Gu. Ah Gu, however, is a businessman. He finds that Ah Kow is a good candidate for "quick sales". So he buys Ah Mei again, driving her price up. He knows Ah Kow will buy her back and he'll make more money.
But, Ah Kow is totally pissed off that this weirdo Ah Gu keeps buying "his" Ah Mei. Pissed off, he goes to Ah Gu's wall and writes some threatening notes.
Tada! Ah Gu just got a free enemy from a social networking site!
You just gotta love Facebook... enemies are provided too!
Yes, the story I related is actually happening inside Facebook. This post serves to explain my sudden disappearance from all buy/sell apps, because I no longer wish to be asked to decide whose side I'm going to be on, because EVERYBODY TAKES THESE APPS TOO DAMN SERIOUSLY!
Labels: facebook, internet, Rant
16:30 by FoxTwo
Showing Pictures In A Pop Up Web Page Window
WARNING! Geeky Post Ahead!
Today, for some weird reason, I thought I'd inject some pizazz into my blog. I remembered how some websites had this funky function that is able to pop a picture up in a window INSIDE the web page.
No, it's not the usual javascript prompt or messagebox window. Some people refer to it as a "web 2.0 popup box". What it actually is, is a piece of Javascript code (or several pieces). So, Google being my friend, I went searching for one. Yeah I could probably write one myself but I'm lazy. Besides, why re-invent the wheel when someone else already has done it?
So, Google, my good friend, threw up several links, and I found a website offering the code for FREE, right here.
As a demo, here's a picture of my hamster, Dufus. Click on it to see the javascript in action.
Nice eh?
If, like me, you just want to pop a picture up in a box, the code is very simple. Just add a class='thickbox' into your <a href="...."> part of your link. So the code will look like this:
<a href="http://yoururl.com/images/picture.jpg" class="thickbox"></a>
Well, if you've followed the instructions on the website correctly, you can easily install this script into your own blog/website too. Also, this script is so flexible you can show just about ANYTHING inside a box, not just pictures. Look at the website for demos of how to show websites, text, video or anything that you can hyperlink, inside a box.
Labels: internet, JavaScript
10:31 by FoxTwo Remember when I wrote about Digsby the multi-protocol IM wonder?
Well the devs have outdone themselves this time. Just about a week after Facebook launched its "chat" feature, Digsby is now able to chat with your friends that are on Facebook! This feature is available with the latest version, just released yesterday even, on 1 May.
So that means you don't have to put up with the sucky Facebook interface anymore! No longer do you have to keep popping your chatbox out after every page visit in Facebook. No more asking your friend "What did you just say?" when it loses the last line before the new page in Facebook loads up.
So how does it look? Check it out:
It looks exactly like the rest of the protocols. A big F on a blue background shows that it's a Facebook contact, and on the right, your friend's profile picture in Facebook. In fact your friend wouldn't even know the difference. He/she will think that you're inside Facebook. I just tested it out myself. Works fine on Digsby's end. My friend didn't know the difference and she didn't even think it would be possible to chat to people who aren't "physically" on Facebook.
I really love this new feature - that means I don't have to keep the Facebook page loaded up on my browser all day long if I wanted to chat with my Facebook friends. Let's face it - some "friends" you meet on Facebook, you really don't want them even knowing your MSN or your Yahoo ID. For women, this is a great "excuse". Get Digsby, and then tell all your unwanted suitors to use Facebook to "chat" with you :)
As a quick recap, yes Digsby can do MSN, Yahoo, AIM, ICQ, GoogleTalk and other protocols too, so you don't lose anything by switching to Digsby. Well, since women love the cute custom emoticons that MSN has, they will miss it if they switch to Digsby. Yeah, you can't see those funky animated pictures when your friend uses them on you. You'll just see the raw text that forms the picture.
Labels: Digsby, facebook, internet