Thoughts: A little miffed
As of now, I am officially miffed. My Internet Security software is going to expire soon and I can’t seem to activate the new subscription.
As these companies protect their interest more, they seem to complicate the registration issues. Currently trying to find a free solution, but these free solutions seem to fall short in certain ways… Probably I can’t expect much, but for someone going to spend online for a while, a review that says the firewall lets in browser based attacks isn’t very assuring…
I will probably post my final choice sometime, but need to do serious consideration now…
Thoughts: Deviation
I guess I should deviate from my usual tech-focused posts once in a while…
It’s been a while since I have stopped keeping my blog as a personal diary of my life, opting instead to blog about things that are of interest to me or issues that I can’t seem to get off my mind… Frankly, after stopping personal posts for a while, I am now a little puzzled as to how to go about writing a post that is personal and documenting my personal life.
This change in attitude to blogging was probably due to reading too many privacy related articles and spending too much time online that it became hard to resist the instinctual urge to have my posts redacted.
Looking back to the time when I started my first blog at blogger on October 14th 2004, writing about personal feelings and thoughts, I can see the transition my posts had in terms of content. I can vaguely remember which post I had written more, but had it cut before posting. All seems well then, but after a substantial amount of posts, I began to wonder if its worth my time to write something only to have it cut. The essence of the posts seems to be lost. Furthermore, as time goes on, I began to question the rationale and the need to post it online. Shouldn’t your thoughts be kept in the good ‘ol locked diary
However, I must admit that having posts that are closer to the heart (and less in the head…) does have some perks. Reading them again (like now) really brings back memories. Its something like engraving your history on a piece of the web…
Unlike dairy pages which would oxidize over time and thus become unreadable, putting thoughts on the web is like immortalizing your thoughts as it will be kept there and not expire as long as the web exists.
Anyway, from my previous blog… 10 memorable entries for me (these aren’t necessarily the top 10 as there are a few more…)
- Emotions: http://gyeojz.blogspot.com/2007/12/troubled.html
- Losses (Family): http://gyeojz.blogspot.com/2007/11/douse-of-flame.html
- Economics: http://gyeojz.blogspot.com/2007/09/economical-savings.html
- Crowding a crowded train: http://gyeojz.blogspot.com/2006/11/scene-from-nel.html
- Abolish Homework!: http://gyeojz.blogspot.com/2006/11/news-article-abolish-homework.html
- Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology: http://gyeojz.blogspot.com/2006/09/back-to-normal-and-imcb-photos.html
- So-called holidays: http://gyeojz.blogspot.com/2006/05/start-of-so-called-june-holidays.html
- Graduation: http://gyeojz.blogspot.com/2005/10/153rd-anniversary-speech-graduation.html
- Christmas ecstasy: http://gyeojz.blogspot.com/2005/12/haha-yea.html
- Exam Withdrawal Syndrome: http://gyeojz.blogspot.com/2005/11/exam-withdrawal-syndrome-ews.html
Reading the aforementioned entries had me re-living the emotions and thoughts I had at the point of time — events which I seemed to have forgotten… It actually felt quite refreshing…
Although moving to this current blog on December 22nd/23rd 2008, I had limited myself with regards to the posting of personal information because of future concerns, maybe its time again to let myself a little loose and reintroduce some of the personal aspects I had in my old blog…
However, these type of personal post would most probably not appear as frequently as they do on my old blog, but I guess once in a while, its good to take the monotony out of the usual stuff.
I.N: Facebook’s Money Pot
Main Story: Most technology websites and news sites would already have announced that Facebook has recently rolled out a “verified apps program”. According to Techcrunch, the “program was first announced over the summer at their F8 Developer Conference”. From now on, Third party facebook applications will be categorized into into “Great Apps”, “Verified Apps” (trusted apps), and everything else.
So how to get in? You pay. After going through facebook’s initial vetting process, you have to pay $375 to get the verified badge… However, that’s not the end. The badge is only good for a year. In order to retain it, you pay again.. annually.
Reading the details of the program, one would no doubt have to agree that the scale is tipped very much in Facebook’s favour. There is a huge money making potential in this program, especially since many developers put many hours into developing the application.
It is still early to say whether this program will be successful as some applications are already used by so many that the developer doesn’t really need to get it verified unless FB steps in and decides to take them out till they get verification. However, if FB were to do that, it may backfire.
Over to Microsoft, the Windows Live SkyDrive Team announced that Window Live Skydrive storage limit will jump “soon” to 25GB. Furthermore, new features like, downloading of photos directly to your Windows Live Photo Gallery, downloading an entire folder in one compressed file will be made available.
For those who store lots of files online and are running out of space, I guess we’ve got one new service to store them. Coupled with Office live workspace and Live Mesh, we can comfortably store a substantial amount of our lives online (not that we aren’t already doing so… with facebook, flickr and our blogs…).
On the issue of having our lives online, the recent move by youtube may put our lives in a clearer, and sharper view. YouTube was reported to be testing a even higher resolution videos. Up till now, YouTube already provides an option to view higher quality versions for some videos and you can also append “&fmt=18″ to the URLs. However it seems that if you add “&fmt=22″, some YouTube videos are now available at an even higher quality.
Looking up the web, it is reported that the difference in quality are as follows:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEOID (standard format – mono, resolution: 320×180)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEOID&fmt=18 (stereo, resolution: 480×270)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEOID&fmt=22 (stereo, resolution: 1280×720)
The higher resolution videos aren’t available for all videos yet. But is something to look forward to for those frequent YouTube video viewers..
Cheers!
Opinion: Can you give up your email?
According to BBC News, the new U.S. President Elect, Barack Obama may be giving up his email during the course of his presidency as “transparency laws would open his correspondence to public view.” In fact, I was surprised that that neither Bill Clinton nor George W Bush used their email duing their presidency.
Reading that report, I wondered how things would be like to actually give up your email. This question got me thinking for quite a while…
Would I be able to do it?
My Conclusion: It is possible… Only for a short while.
I thought of a few possible scenarios after giving up email. Yes, we can stop using our emails and depend solely on new web trends like Facebook Private messages, Twitter or FriendFeed messages. Going one even further, we can create a private blog on services like WordPress.com or Blogger and get your friends to direct any messages there. WordPress.com also has a theme like the prologue theme which would be perfect for such usage.
However, if we look further into all the “solutions” I came up with, the essence of all these “solutions” is still the act of sending and recieving of messages a la email..
So, physically, you might seem to have given up on using the email, but psychologically, you did not…
At this juncture. one may start to ask about other services such as Instant Messaging (IM). However, unlike email, IM does not have the benefit of allowing the recipient to be absent at the point where the chat is being initiated. Sure, you can use offline messaging, but email is still more suited for large amount of text per message compared to IM.
Reading through this post, it seems that I am just finding reasons to hold on to my email… This may be true to a certain extent, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that it is an addiction. Rather. it is because email is just crisp and simple.
So…. What do you think?
Articles mentioned in this post:
.
I.N: Microsoft and Google.. updates on services.
Google and Microsoft has been pushing constantly into the domains of one another. Microsoft has been playing the catch up game with Google’s online services while Google is trying to use its online services to encroach into Microsoft’s desktop territory. It is an unspoken competition for users.
I.N. this week
Opinion: Web Browsers
Last week there was news on Firefox 3.1 beta as well as the release of version 2 of Flock (a Firefox based browser)…
Flock has been dubbed a Social Networking Browser, and Version 2 of it doesn’t disappoint. However, much of the features can be replicated in Firefox via countless addons, but having Flock support so many services “out of the box” and having tighter integration is definitely a much needed bonus.
That said, isn’t the browser market getting crowded? Current commonly used browsers are Opera, Firefox (Versions 2.0 and 3.0), Internet Explorer (Versions 5.5, 6.0, 7.0), Safari and Konqueror.
With the recent entry of Chrome (coupled with Google’s brand name) into the foray, the browser usage distribution may change yet again.
It is said that:
Competition may be good for the progress of oneself, but too much competition may be detrimental instead.
However, taking the quote into the context of this browser war, browsers have, (without any doubt) came a long way since the first Netscape browser. But is adding so many browsers desirable to the overall online demography? I am really doubtful…
Anyway, on a sidenote, Hitwise also released the Top 20 websites in the U.S. for September…
Listed by Rank.
Market Share is in brackets.
- www.google.com ( 6% )
- mail.yahoo.com ( 4.7% )
- www.myspace.com ( 4.01% )
- www.yahoo.com 3.88% )
- mail.live.com ( 2.14% )
- www.ebay.com ( 1.61% )
- search.yahoo.com ( 1.48% )
- www.facebook.com ( 1.2% )
- www.msn.com ( 1.08% )
- www.youtube.com ( 0.93% )
- www.gmail.com ( 0.79% )
- www.wikipedia.org ( 0.53% )
- images.google.com ( 0.52% )
- mail.aol.com ( 0.42% )
- search.msn.com ( 0.41% )
- news.yahoo.com( 0.41% )
- my.yahoo.com ( 0.4% )
- address.yahoo.com ( 0.4% )
- www.pogo.com ( 0.37% )
- www.craigslist.org ( 0.33% )
Not surprisingly, Google is leading the race.
I.N: Even less privacy?
According to BBC News,
China has been monitoring and censoring messages sent through the internet service Skype, researchers say.
Citizen Lab, a Canadian research group, says it found a database containing thousands of politically sensitive words which had been blocked by China.
The more worrying part is that:
…a report revealed that its (Skype’s) Chinese service not only monitors text chats with sensitive keywords, which it had earlier admitted, but also stores them along with millions of personal user records on computers that could easily be accessed by anybody. (Source: Reuters)
That’s one more point to the list on the “Great Firewall of China”.
Am I surprised by the news?
No.
Privacy concerns are pertinent, and have been around for almost as long as the internet revolution. However, it really does puts the spotlights on companies providing such social services on how far are they willing to go to secure one of the biggest market: China.
On a side note, while reading the newspapers this week, I found a comment by Warren Buffet interesting.
As published in the Straits Times on 0 31/0/2008:
The US economy is “flat on the floor” after a cardiac arrest as companies struggle to secure funding and unemployment increases….
A very subtle way to describe the current economy… He compared the economy to a heart attack patient:
“Paramedics have arrived”… “and they shouldn’t argue about whether to put the resuscitation equipment a quarter of an inch this way, or they shouldn’t start criticizing the patient..”
So I was thinking… does that mean that the US$85 billion loan for AIG was early “CPR” and the recently senate approved US bailout plan can be described as an Electrical Cardioversion?
Back home in Singapore: Three people contracted the dengue virus after receiving infected blood from a donor in Singapore… The infected blood came from a 52-year-old repeat donor who gave blood on July 15 last year. (Source: CNA).
That’s definitely something new. I’ve never really heard of dengue through blood till now. According to CNA again:
Health Sciences Authority (HSA) said this is the first local case of dengue fever transmission via blood. The other reported case of transfusion transmitted dengue was from Hong Kong.
Well.. now we know..
Also in Singapore:
For the first time, heritage structures such as bridges and towers will be included under a national programme to conserve Singapore’s architectural heritage…
The bridges gazetted for conservation are:
Anderson Bridge…., Elgin Bridge at Boat Quay, the Cavenagh Bridge just outside Fullerton Hotel, the Ord, Read and Crawford Bridges.
Its really good that they decided to gazette all these bridges for conservation. But I do wonder… Even if they aren’t gazetted, what are the odds of them being demolished and rebuilt? Anyway, its still a nice thought that we will see such familiar structures some 50 years down the road…
Ciao.
leave a comment