Hi, good day everyone! Like I said, I am going to try to have some guest posts on other people's blogs, and this post is to inform you all that I managed to do it. My guest posts were published on Bloggin-Ads and Borak Bola. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Mike and KakiBangku for giving me the opportunity guest post on their blogs.

Anyone interested to read my guest posts can do so by clicking on the below links (and kindly comment there too, please?) :

Divine Blogging Tips by The Bloggin-God
Jamie Carragher dan Skuad England (in Malay language)

I hope you like them. I am trying to improve every day and I hope to do better the next time around :)

Any of you doing guest posts too? Where do you usually guest post? Do you like guest-posting or not, and why? Kindly share your experience here by commenting, they will surely be replied to by me and others. Thanks first!

I am joining another contest with 3500 entrecard credits as the prize. I was going to join Joe Tech's contest, but there was a huge competition to win there, so I decided to join Marko's contest instead.

This contest will mainly interests bloggers because of the nature of the prize and the ways to join in this contest are standard:

1) Subscribe to Marko's feed. You get 5 entries for doing this.
2) Subscribing by email. You get 20 entries for this.
3) Blog about Marko's contest. You get 30 entries for doing this.

You are not required to do all 3, any one will do, but if you do more, you will stand a greater chance to win. As there will only be 1 winner, Marko has thrown in an incentive for bloggers to join the contest, there will be some ebooks to download when you subscribe by email. So what are you waiting for? There are only a few days left until the contest ends (end of February!), come on give it a go and you might be just in luck to win it! Click on the link below to join the contest:

3500 EC Credits Give Away Contest

My Search Funds will pay money for every internet search that you make. With Mozilla Firefox, you can just install the extra search engine toolbar and start your search from there. The search toolbar is powered by Ask.com. OK, I am rather excited by this programme, and rather anxious to share it with everyone.

I am going to break down the pros and cons of this programme, I beg you to just give me 3 minutes time, I'll keep it real short, then you can decide to join or to move on, OK?

Pros
1) Easy to use, step by step installation guide for Firefox is provided
2) There is no minimum payout amount! (note it in bold, :D )
3) You get paid no matter how many referrals you have (get paid even if you have none!)
4) Detailed report of your current earnings are provided
5) Easy payout method, by Paypal or by cheque. By Paypal, don't even need to provide address.
6) A revenue sharing referral system up to 4 levels of referrals!

Cons
1) Slow payout time (up to 45 days after a month's search, money for January will be paid out in mid March)
2) Ask.com search database obviously could not challenge Google's. If you are unsatisfied about the search results generated you can simply switch to Google search toolbar with just 2 clicks (don't even need to restart Firefox!).

Below are two screenshots, one is to proof to you how much I have earned in 4 days, the other one is to show you how the referral system works:

From rough calculation, each search is worth about £0.025 or 25 pence ($0.05 or RM0.16!). My Search Funds expect everyone who does 5 searches per day to earn about £3.75 per month or £45 per year. If you want to make more easy money than that, you will have to refer more people to join this programme as your downline (up to but not limited to £120.00 per month!). If you are interested to start making money now or just to find out more about My Search Funds, click here. Enjoy and happy making money :D

Yes, you read the title correctly, Nuffnang actually serves a literally vibrating advertisement sponsored by our earth-friendly population control authority and condom-maker Durex.
I have read that there are some Nuffnang-ads serving members who are unhappy because many of them are showing only 1 same advertisement all the time (most Nuffnang ads that I see are LG phone ad). However, apparently Nuffnang now has a new advertising campaign and I find the ad to be quite interesting! Presenting, a vibrating vibrator advertisement:

The taglines in the last row are of course my own, feel free to interpret them as you see fit (of course, they could hardly beat *"Job satisfaction guaranteed"*, hehe). You can also see the ad life in action here. I wonder if Advertlets will serve such interesting ads?

Beware people! There is a new up and coming social bookmarking/networking site. It is blazingly hot too. With an attractive name and cool voting graphic, PostOnFire has been quietly converting some experienced users of other established social media sites to its service while at the same time gaining a loyal followings of its own. PostOnFire is only 2 months old, and although there are not too many users there now, submissions there are highly organized into neat categories and are quickly noticed by all other users once they are submitted, which is just the right formula for major success in the future.

Submissions will be viewed by users and once they received enough vote, they become "hot" and are moved to "hot posts" section and get "published" (another word for being featured as hot posts in certain categories, I think). Personally I see many active new bloggers participating in PostOnFire, and if you are a blogger, I highly recommend you to test out this service. On the other hand, if you are a regular web surfer who doesn't blog, you should also check out this site, you might just get your regular fix of quality blog posts in a clean new environment with the possibility of knowing new friends too! If you decide to try out PostOnFire, don't forget to add me as a friend, my ID is bobbytoat. Enjoy :)

Good day! I hope you realize the change of template on this blog. Do you like it? Happy Belated Chinese New Year 2008! I hope the year of rat will bring me much luck because I am going to join quite a few contests in the coming weeks. By joining contests, I can help others to promote their blog as well as bringing more exposure to my own blog, a win-win situation, especially if I can strike a few prizes along the way too!

Now, the 1st contest I am joining is 1st 'Dat' Money contest. 3 prizes are up for grabs, 1st place gets 75% prize money and EntreCard (EC) credits, 2nd place gets 25% of the amount, and 3rd place gets a custom banner design (and possibly some EC credits) courtesy of Jay aka 'Dat'. The best thing about this contest is that the prize money and EC credits are not fixed, Jay will add $0.50 and 20EC credits for every new joining subscriber (with 127 subscribers as point of reference during launch of contest)! So if you want to win big prize, go spread words about this contest and get more people to subscribe to Jay's RSS feed. However bear in mind that there is a maximum cap of $300 and 12,000 EC credits being offered.

Sounds attractive to you? Head over to 1st DM Contest for more information as to how to join the contest now! Hurry up, the clock is ticking, the contest will end on February 29, 2008 midnight (Eastern Time). Good luck contesting!

P.S. Forgot to mention, non-bloggers can also join this contest to win money via PayPal. In fact, if non-bloggers got 1st or 2nd placings, they get the contested amount of money and the next blogger in line will get the EC credits :P

Anyone tried adding Mixx button to Blogger blogs? I have tried pasting the HTML code provided by Mixx in the Blogger template but it does not work for me. It can only submit the permalink of a post when that page is load and viewed individually but it failed to submit the permalinks of posts when they are read on my main Blogger page (the URL of my main blog got posted instead!). I wanted the button to appear after my post footer automatically for every post, this way I don't need to paste the code each time I have a new post.

So, being desperate to add the Mixx button as I was promoting my article Have you tried Mixx?, I tried to modify the code and finally got it working! Here's the following code to add a Mixx button to your Blogger template:

<a expr:href='"http://www.mixx.com/submit?page_url=" + data:post.url' target='_blank'><img alt='Add to Mixx!' border='0' src='http://www.mixx.com/images/buttons/mixx-button2.png'/></a>

If you want your button to appear after your post footer like mine at the end of this post, you should paste the above code after the following lines in your template (you have to check Expand Widget Templates to see the code):

<p><data:post.body/></p>
<div style='clear: both;'/> <!-- clear for photos floats -->

</div>
<div class='post-footer'>
<div style='float:left'>
<!-- the above line in red is not found in template, it is beginning of formatting for Mixx button so that it appears to the left of your post footer -->

You can test out whether the button works by pressing the my Mixx button at the end of this post.
Talking to myself: What an ingenious way to get my article voted (laugh sinisterly!)

References:
Mixx Buttons & Badges

Have you tried Mixx? Mixx is a user-driven social networking and bookmarking site, user-driven meaning that users can submit or find content by peers based on interest and location. Like all social media site, you can share good story, photo and video here.

I know that there are numerous other social networking sites, like StumbleUpon, Digg and Reddit, just to name a few main players. You probably won't even visit Mixx if you are highly contented with your favorite social networking sites or if I do not list any of the good points about Mixx, right? So, guess what, I'm going to do just that. Here are a few reasons why I recommend using Mixx:

1. It is new (started in late 2007)

I think the its interface is cleaner than other established social networking sites and it is less cluttered. I am comfortable using it frequently. Seriously, I feel intimidated by Digg's environment.

2. You can be a powerful authority

This being a new site, you have a much better chance to establish yourself as a good reader, reviewer and bookmarker. People will look up to your lead if you submitted a lot of good stuffs here. If you make a lot of new friends, you can share the media you submitted and probably influence them to cast a vote if you have a good reputation. This will give you certain power to influence whether an item submitted will make it big or not on that site. This will come in handy if you plan to submit your own articles or that of your friends. Surely your friends will appreciate having you as a worthy affiliate in this case.

3. You can create your personalized group here

Want to feel more attached to a social networking site? Create your own group, based on location, interest, topic, occupation, etc. so that you can interact with people who share common traits with you. Each group created have its own messageboard, announcements and shout outs can be posted here. Articles can also be submitted to be shared only among members of a personal group, pretty cool feature!

4. It has diverse categories and flexible tagging system

Mixx offers plenty of categories for item submitted and you can also tag them with your own words. This not only makes it easier for you to submit items, it is also easier for users to search for items of interest based on categories.

5. Mixx has a good karma system

I like the karma system here. You get points for every submission and comments that you made and the points are clearly indicated. For example, I don't really know yet how the Made Popular stat in Digg is calculated and the requirements for a submission to be made popular. Likewise I could hardly assess whether I have been a good contributor on StumbleUpon. The karma system in Mixx makes it easier for other users to rate you, see your contributions and probably make you a friend or leader in submitting and reviewing stuffs.

That's about all for now. If you have the slightest dislike for the social networking platform that you are currently using, you can try Mixxing now and see for yourself if it's better, after all there is no harm in trying and it is free! You can also add me as a friend on Mixx, my ID is bobbytoat. If indeed you are joining, consider submitting this article or vote for it, just to test out or to show some love :)

Do tell me what is your experience with Mixx, new and old users alike. What are the most significant features that you look for in a social networking site? Anyone who would like to educate me on the finer details about Digg and StumbleUpon can kindly leave their comments or point me to the right article. Thank you!

Recommended articles:
Allen Harkleroad's Mixx testimonial
Mixx Democratizes Categories: Something Digg Should Have
Digg Refugees May Be Heading To Mixx
Digg.com vs Mixx.com

Sorry for not posting for several days, going to post this to tell visitors that I am not dead, just doing some background blog promotion stuffs, thinking, contemplating and taking up some opportunities.

Firstly, I have joined an email advertising programme called Take the Internet Back (TIB). I think it is the easiest way to make money (if it is not a scam!), you just have to read daily advertising emails sent to you (each email takes up to maximum of about 12-18 seconds) to earn points. A word of caution though, the point awarded does not directly convert to a fix monetary value, it just denotes the value of your ownership of TIB and you will receive money according to the proportion of your ownership. I personally will continue to participate in the programme with long-term benefits in mind, I don't expect to be able to have my first pay-out until 3-4 months later at the very least. The minimum payout is $20 with the condition that you have to have a minimum of 2 active downlines, on registration you are awarded a bonus $10 and after reading for 6 months, you will earn a membership for life title.

Interested? Read more by clicking on the following banner and if you are really keen, you can sign up as my downline (I can promise to my downline that I will help in setting up of a Blogger blog and technical stuffs like placement of ads in their blog).



Secondly, I know that my blog is unsightly at this moment although I have done so much customizations in a few days' time. I am thinking of using a much better template, perhaps one with 3 columns, especially looking forward to removing the clutter in the sidebars. If there is any more experienced blogger out there who thinks that my article have a chance of making it big, and is willing to help, kindly allow me to contact you (by leaving a comment or your contact details in the tag board). I need so much advise regarding template, design, content, site promotion and general direction of a blog. Thanks for the trouble.

Thirdly, I am thinking of doing guest post on other more popular blogs, it will probably help to establish myself as an upcoming blogger and also drive more traffic to this blog. So been doing some thinking to come up with appropriate topics as well as which popular blogs to co-operate with. Other blogs which would like to have a guest post on a certain topic can also try to contact me (of course you can decide whether to accept or not after reading my post, to ascertain the quality). Thanks again.

Well, I was writing my post Free Facial Recognition Software: LemonScreen, and I mentioned about a horse's sound, I could not figure out the proper verb, so I had to google a little. Guess what I came up with? A list of animal sound verbs. There were quite some verbs of sound in that list of which I am not sure were emitted by what type of animals, so I figure I could find out what I did not know and share it in my blog.

However, don't expect to get it easily. I want to play a game (watched Saw, anyone?). Below is a table of the verbs of sound on the first column and the second column will contain the animal type that makes that particular sound. You begin to think, where's the game? What's the catch in the table? The catch is the animal type text will be the same colour background as this site and it will seems to be invisible to your eyes. Now, I want you to try to guess the animal first, and if you can't, only then are you allowed to highlight the animal text to solve the puzzle. Sounds fun? (with pun deliberately intended!). One last tip before you jump right into it: at any instance, do not guess man, right, you may proceed then...

verb of sound	animal producing the sound
cuckoo	bird
crow	cock
grunt	pig
pipe	bird
drone	bee
cheep	bird
coo	bird
yap	dog
twitter	bird
caw	crow
neigh	horse
whinney	horse
honk	goose
growl	dog
hiss	snake
trumpet	elephant
bray	donkey
bleat	sheep
low	cattle
mew	cat
chirrup	bird
buzz	insect
bleat	calves
fink	chaffinch
bell	deer
click	dolphin
quack	duck
chant	falcon
dook	ferret
croak	frog
chirp	grasshopper
laugh	hyena
gibber	monkey
talk	parrot
gobble	turkey
ort	walrus
sing	whales
howl	wolves

Finished? Hope you are not bored by this task... Anyway, I also found a wonderful page listing the verbs of sounds made by animals in various languages (German, French, Russian, Spanish, etc.) at Derek Abbott's Animal Noise Page. Go read your heart's content out!Lastly, no discussions about animal sound will be complete without mentioning of the Old McDonald and his favorite classic song - "Old McDonald Had a Farm."

Come on now, don't be shy, let's sing together:

Old MacDonald had a farm,
E-I-E-I-O
And on his farm he had some ducks,
E-I-E-I-O
With a quack, quack, here,
And a quack, quack, there,
Here a quack, there a quack,
Everywhere a quack, quack,
Old MacDonald had a farm,
E-I-E-I-O

Yeah, very good! Keep on singing, I'm gonna pay Mr. Old McDonald a little visit. I will check on you guys later. You have 1 minute 30 seconds (awww, I have Saw tendency now, figure I should go to sleep). Hope you had fun here...

I don't want to post unnecessary content on this blog. So for those who are interested to know how is this blog averaging after 1 week, kindly click on the following link:

BobbyT Blogging To a T Blog 1st Week Report

This report is hosted on Google Page Creator, essentially Google's version of free webhosting with subdomain support and it differs from Blogger in the sense that Blogger is mainly optimized for blogging and may not support certain functions not needed for bloggers.

Google Page Creator, on the other hand have better file upload and management system, as well as the possibility of integrating Google Gadgets in the webpages that you create. Google Gadgets are miniature objects made by Google users that offer cool and dynamic content that can be placed on any page on the web, it is sort of like Blogger widgets which can be implemented on other platforms.

Lastly, I will like to call on anyone who enjoys reading my posts to continue showing your support. Kindly subscribe to my feed and also submit and vote for the posts that you like, they are not the same thing. Voting for my posts will bring in more readers, which is exactly what this blog needs now. Thanks and hope that my request does not place too much burden on you.

Security has become increasingly important nowadays. What we previously see on science fiction movies are now being implemented for real, i.e. fingerprint recognition, facial recognition, voice recognition and even eye recognition. However, as for facial recognition, this technology is still pretty new and the current capability of hardware and software don't really do justice to the possible potential of this technology.

Aspiring programmers can visit the libface project homepage to find out more about how to implement facial recognition functions yourselves. Anyway, I have the privilege to test out my first facial recognition software today, it is LemonScreen version 1.30 (yes, I'll like to do a review because it is my first facial recognition software). It is a software that will lock your computer screen when you are away from your computer and the way to unlock it is by scanning your face with your webcam.

LemonScreen was previously known as BananaScreen, it is a free software, you don't have to pay a single cent for it. I really don't mean to intrude, but I can't help it but to wonder, why such strange names? I wonder what the development team did with their screen or what did they try to display on screen. Perhaps they should read my post Choose Names Wisely! Right let's continue with the program then. LemonScreen can be used on WindowsXP webcam-enabled computer. When you first use it, you will be able to type a master password, in case LemonScreen locks your computer and it is unable to recognize your face to unlock your computer again. You will also have to create a face model, so that anyone's face in front of the webcam can be compared with the face model when your computer is locked. This program can bet set-up to lock your computer after a predefined time of inactivity or the locking feature can be activated manually with mouse or keyboard shortcut Alt+L. If you are feeling adventurous, go straight to LemonScreen's site to download and try it out yourself!

I must add though, that the security provided by LemonScreen is not foolproof (yeah, what is?) and it is not even reliable enough to be able to recognize your face all the time. The recognition capability is of course, influenced by factors such as quality of webcam, amount of lighting, etc. As you can see from the picture above, my 2 year old webcam costing about $15 still works pretty decently with this program. [*Ehmm, wondering whether exposing part of my face will provide me with the chance of knowing single lady suitor aged about 20 before the looming February 14th Valentine's Day?*]

Using this software reminds of a Hong Kong Cantonese movie I watched when I was a child, its name is Security Unlimited (1981) starring Michael Hui Koon-Man and his brothers, Sam and Ricky. Michael's character is a security bodyguard who is entrusted for the security of an artifact exhibition museum, the most advanced security feature he used is a voice-activated safe door, and the voice password incidentally is the imitation of a horse's neigh. To cut a long story short, he eventually faced plenty of troubles with the safe door when he could not reproduce the same voice password (if my memory doesn't fail me, his throat was attacked by some robbers). This actually illustrates the drawback of certain security systems, i.e. a good key-based security system has to be durable and secure while its key has to be non-obvious and reproduceable (where else human voice is impression based, hard to reproduce, not stable as is the current implementation of facial recognition in this program) . I would very much like to include here Michael Hui's imitation of a horse' neigh, but unfortunately I could not find anywhere on the Internet, I hope any reader who has the DVD can help me to rip the imitation and send it to me so that I could update this post (hint, it's funny!). Right, I have drag on too much, yet again, my apology, signing off here then.

What's in a name? How does your choice of names affect you? In every possible way you may think of! Of course, just how severely one can be affected by one's choice of names varies greatly, mostly depending on the nature of objects/subjects named (whether they are people, inanimate objects, organizations, etc.), the culture of the place and the possible interpretations by different people.

This post is not going to deal with the "how-to" of choosing good names, whether they are for your future children or website (hint, hint!), rather I am trying to highlight the possibly highly embarrassing situation you may find yourself in if you do not heed the advice of the old and wise. Consider the following conversation between husband and wife:

Husband: We must choose a good name for our baby. According to my father, a name will make or break you.
Wife.......: Is that why you are named Sukhdeep and so many guys are looking for you?

Note: Blatantly copied from Russell Peters' stand-up joke and adapted to fit this post. Visit his blog at http://www.russellpeters.com/Blog.aspx

Right, we all understand just how bad names will affect us for a lifetime, don't we? In that case, let us not ponder further on that case and move on. On a less serious note, where could bad naming of other inanimate objects (web domains, car names, organizations, etc.) be found? You'll be surprised! Visit the two following links, to look at some hilarious mistakes people make when choosing their website names (kindly read their rich comments too!):

• Webmasters who didn't think when they registered their URL

• Hilarious Domain Name Mispronouncings

I believe the 2 posts are rather old posts, but I figure I should share the good stuffs and laugh here. That's not all though, I have my own experience regarding bad naming too (at least I think it is bad, and no, my name is not Sukhdeep or Hardik!). Below is a picture of the signboard of a cyber cafe, I am not sure though whether it is deliberately named as such (probably to attract attention, to create brand name awareness? I must say that it would have been quite successful at that). You may not get the joke immediately, unless you are a Malaysian Chinese, who speaks cantonese dialect.
Well, even if you are, you still have to upgrade your imagination a little, pronounce the 'c' as 's' in English language and you probably would catch the joke! Indeed, a 'c' sound varies when it is used in different context in English language and the pronounciation of 'c' if it is in Cyrillic script would roughly translate to the English sound 's' too.

The literal translation from cantonese of 'laisimau' would be
diarrhoeic cat. The adjective 'diarrhoeic' is used as a derogatory remark by Kal Penn in National Lampoon's Van Wilder: The Rise of Taj, where his character's last name "Badalandabad" is also a play of word in Hindi, though I would not speculate more on its meaning (if you insist to know, check the link I provided which links to Wikipedia!).

I guess it is safe to assume here that after all this, we will pay more attention when we try to name someone or something, won't we? Now, this we do us all good, and if you are unfortunate enough to make a silly mistake in naming, gladly laugh it off and move on :)

I am afraid that after presenting all the good stuff, we are near the end now. I realise that I could hardly keep to my original topic whenever I blog and I tend to weave out of the topic (hopefully) at the end of post. Probably I am still new to this trade? Kindly tell me what you think of my style, whether you prefer me to keep it this way or I must indeed improve on my skills. Comments are most appreciated.