Make, all about DIY

MAKE is one of thousand blogs that interest me a lot. If you like DIY and interested in design then this might be the blog for you. There are a lot of ideas and tricks that you can do it yourself to help save a few bucks daily. Now that the price of oil is increasing rapidly, we all should start the saving habit. Either it is money, energy or time, any action that helps on saving in these areas will eventually reduce your expenses burden. Don’t forget that recycle all your useless junk or rubbish also helps. Let’s get back to MAKE site. Some of the DIY requires some electrical knowledge and skills. Some projects even need a work shop in order to build. Whatever the DIY projects, most of them will make you say “Interesting, why haven’t I thought about that. Looks easy and simple. I might be able to make it too.” If you really want to try it, just make sure that you do it with cautions. You don’t want to cut your finger or hurt yourself doing it.

Making copies of your PC

Macrium Reflect is a free software that allows you to make disk imaging. This type of software is mostly use by IT people where he has hundreds or thousands of PC to prepare. Instead of installing each and every PC one by one, it’s much faster and easier to just make copies. That is if all the PC are identical. Here are some of the features available for this software.

• Create a disk image whilst running Windows using Microsoft Volume Shadow copy Service (VSS).
• Image to Network, USB, FireWire drives and DVD.
• Built in scheduler.
• 32 bit and native 64 bit versions.
• Industry leading compression levels and speed.
• Linux based Rescue CD with Network access and full GUI. Only 6.5MB in size!
• Built in CD/DVD packet writing engine. Supports packet writing to DVD DL media with Windows Vista.
• HTML log files.

Coffee cuffs, anybody?

This is really something for coffee drinkers that always order to go coffee - Coffee cuffs. When you’re not using it, you can just wear it on your wrist. These coffee cuffs also helps identified which coffee cup is actually yours. Especially when you’re having a meeting and everybody is ordering the same type of coffee from the same coffee shop. Unless you put a mark on the cup or holding it until you finish it, there’s a big chance that you might sharing the same cup with others. Well, this is sure a cool way of having your coffee.

More Good news for Coffee Drinker

You may check out the latest articles from Yahoo Health. The article is by Will Dunham with title No Higher Death Risk in Long-term Coffee Drinking. Basically coffee drinkers don’t have to hold back on having their favorite drink. Below are few of the points that I can summarize from the article.

1. Drinking coffee up to six cups a day was not relate to increase of death among the middle-ages. Women experience a small decline in death rates from heart disease.
2. There is no association between coffee consumption and cancer deaths. So far most of the test and reports are showing positive in coffee drinking.

Until there is a solid prove that shows coffee drinking is bad for health, I think I’m going to stick with it. Any way I think even if there are prove that coffee drinking kills, I don’t think people will stop drinking coffee. Take for example alcohol and tobacco. People rather die than stop having them.

Some Thought About Writing

I've been writing blogs for quite some time now. I can say that it's really a fun and interesting experience. Particular in the writing section. The only time that I ever write something is back in university. Back then writing an essay for my English 101 lesson is hard work. An essay will took me about 2 weeks to really squeeze it out from my brain. Now you can imagine how things are when I started to write again. Lucky for me there aren't any rules on how you can write your article. Even so, it took me about 5 days to actually write something out. It's not that I can't write it out, just that I need to check and recheck several times so that I feels it's alright to release it on my blog. I think that's what we call confidence. That's what I went through in the initial stage of my blogging. Now I'm able to write at most 3 articles per day without catching my breath. Things get easy after a lot of practices.
In the beginning, moving a solid rock is extremely difficult. After getting the rock to start rolling, the next steps is to try controlling it. That means I need to fine tune the way I write, the content quality and the topic that I should be focusing. Pretty much getting the rock rolling the way I want and the direction I want. The question right now is where is the right direction and which is the right method. My final destination is simple. That is to earn sufficient money online so that I can have a better life. That is the goal but the process of working towards it is the most enjoyable part. There is nothing better then doing what you enjoy and reaching your goals.

This is one R2-D2 that I got to have

Talking about gadgets of star wars and R2-D2, this is really a must have for the fans. I think almost everybody will love to own one of this. This is something that you can show off to every guest of your house.

Get in touch with your website visitors

Having a website to help promote business is not a new thing. Almost any business form small scale companies to big companies are able to make full use of the internet. In most cases email is the only method used for communication between customers and business providers. Business still can be done but sometimes emails might be confusing and misunderstanding. It will be much better to discuss business out loud directly to avoid misleading and mistakes. That is why most of the big business discussion is held directly face to face in a meeting room. Instead of using emails, calling customers directly might be a good idea. ProCallBack by Mercia Networks is a product that allows website visitors to leave their phone number and send it to you directly. The info will be send to you immediately using SMS text messages. You may then call back you customers for further discussion. It is a good feature as customers don’t have to spend any money on it. A lot of the website that we seen have a contact number for customers to call in. Most of the calls charges are bare by customers. That way some business opportunities might be lost because some customers don’t feel like paying for it just to ask couple of questions. Taking these expenses away from customers might just happen to increase your sales. This can be considered as a type of customer service that most people like.

Download Free Ebooks

Part of saving the trees and forest is to reduce the usage of papers. It’s what we call saving the environment. It is one of the methods to slow down global warming. Green forest is the air conditioner for the world that we live in. Reducing the usage of trees, woods and papers is the best method to reduce cutting down the forest. That means reducing the production of books. One way of doing this is to digitalize the books. Saving and selling it in a form of ebook. As long as information can be kept and transferred then it should be fine. Country like Japan is transferring hardcopy books into softcopy where people can read it through laptops, palm or cellphone. Here are couples of sites that I found giving out free ebook. Check it out, you might just find some information that benefits.

Etext Center
Online Book Catalog

Free Product Samples Site

The Free Site is the place for you to grab some free product samples. The site will try to keep things up to date so that you won’t miss the samples. Unfortunately free stuffs come and go pretty fast, so you need to act as soon as it is available. The offers in this site are mostly for US. That’s a bit disappointed but there’s nothing much we can do about it. All we can do is to keep on searching free stuffs that are available in our country. There is nothing personal about this but business. All of the free samples listed in this site are absolutely free. There are no postage fees, shopping fees, stamping fees or handling fees. All you need to do is to sign up forms.

Cut down your fuel usage

The price of gasoline is increasing rapidly these couple of years. It’s still increasing at this moment as you’re reading this post. It is said that the price will go up until $200 US dollar per barrel. No doubt with the increase of oil price, many related products will increase their price too. The first direct effect will be transportation. That means taxi, bus, trains, ferries and planes will increase their fees. So what can us as a consumer can do to reduce the price? Well, just do the obvious one, cut down the fuel usage. Besides, it’s saving the environment too.

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

Entering The World of Magic Online

Lately I downloaded an online game call World of Magic Online. I was bored and looking for some online games to spice up my Internet life. World of Magic Online happens to be one of the latest online game that is free to play and it seems interesting. After playing it for couple of days and it sure is a nice game to play. The size of the installation client is about 2G and it is better to download it through BitComet. That way you don't have to worry about broken file and the download process is faster.

World of Magic Online is just like any other MMORPG with a special feature of video chat. That means you can see your teammates of guild mates. The things that I like about the game is easy to play and tons of things to do. There are 4 types of characters that you can use which is summoner, warrior, mage and archer. The things that you can do in this game is basically leveling your character. Other features of fun are building your own house, complete quest, raising pet mount, making cloths and armor. As far as I know, you won't feel bored playing this game. There are more events available that you wish you have more time for it. If you're worried about having to press buttons frequently during battles, then there is a solution in this game. There is a robot feature that you can configure your character to auto pick, battle, repair, dig and harvesting. Makes you online gaming much more easier and relax. Check out the video below for a clear understanding how the game is.

P/S: You may notice that some people are advertising their sites in the game. You'll know it once you've login the game. That's one interesting part. This proves that this game is so popular that people are advertising in the game.

Drivers Guide for Windows

PC Tools Software has a collection of drivers guide for Windows that is very useful. You might notice that the site is always trying to sell related software but still there is some useful information that we can benefits from. Some of the features that are useful are registry guide, security guide, software guide and scripting guide. The only guide that I found interesting is the registry guide. There are some nice tips and tricks provided so that you’re able to customize your PC. If you intend to modify your registry, do it cautiously and with your own risk. Any action done incorrectly might crash your Windows. There are also some configuration help available in this site, for example autoexec.bat, boot.ini, config.sys, msdos.sys, and system.ini. Basically if you’re trying to fix or tune your PC, this site has a lot of information that might helps.

Get Sparkle at SocialSpark

IZEA has just introduced SocialSpark lately and it seems that it’s going to be one of the fun sites this year. SocialSpark is more like payperpost that includes social network. It’s a place that you can promote your blog, get to know other bloggers and earn some money by blogging. SocialSpark is not just for bloggers only but also a place for advertisers. That means bloggers and advertisers are able to communicate with each other by giving comments, feedbacks and messages.

As a blogger you can first create your own profile by filling up your details, upload your picture and include all the blogs you have. After you have introduced yourself, you may start to request others to include you as their friends. If you’ve been actively involved in other social community networking, I’m sure many already know you.

The best part of SocialSpark is the new method of taking paid posting opportunity. You get to queue up for the opportunity if there are no open slots. In this case you don’t have to keep on checking the site for open slots. You’ll receive an email once an open slot is available for you.

The only thing that I don’t like about SocialSpark is that the site is sending out too many emails. Every activity that you involve will be an email send out by the site. If there are 100 people approved your request as their friend, then you’ll get 100 emails. That means if you’re actively involves in SocialSpark then you’ll get lots of email. It will be better if the site can summarize everything into an email and just send out once a day.

This post is sponsored.

Agree or Disagree, that is the question

SoapBoxxer is a site where you can voice out your opinion and let others judge it. Well, maybe not judge but just vote for agree or disagree. It’s just a simple site that you can have fun asking question and see how others response. There are few categories like politics, news & event, society & people, science & people, science & tech, arts & entertainment, sports & leisure and others. You can check out others opinion as you might be surprise to see what people are asking. Just be nice when you asked a question. You might get flag inappropriate if you’re being bad.

Get an online locker

iLocker is a site where you get to lock away text that you type. Sounds a bit strange? Well, to it does really sound strange. Normally we used a locker to put our personal stuff and things that need to be store so that people can’t get to it. When you take this idea and do it online, it doesn’t sound right. What does this sound to you - “Store important personal information online”? The best way for me to store important information is not to put it online. That is the absolute safest way to keep information. It doesn’t matter how safe an online site claims, if hackers really want to get the info then there is no guarantee that they won’t succeed. Any how I find iLocker interesting as an idea.

Drink your coffee before going to work

Seriously, you have to make sure that you're totally awake before going to work. Next time you might not be just getting into the wrong car.

Prepaid phone card still the best

No matter how you calculate it, prepaid phone cards still have the cheapest rate compare to the offer given by the fix phone line. I still remember there is one time that I try the offer for the international call for a certain fix line company. It started out pretty good even if the rate is a bit higher. The problem with this kind of offer is that they have a time period. After the offered time, the rate will shoot up high. That’s the time that you started to scream “I should have remember to cancel it”

Finally I decided just to stick with the prepaid phone cards. It makes my life easier and less worried. I don’t need to keep an eye on it as the most that I’ll loss is the amount of money that I bought the card. I don’t have to make phone calls after seeing my phone bills. In fact I won’t be getting any phone bills by using the prepaid phone cards. Life is happier with less payment to make.

Another thing that I like about prepaid phone cards is that it is convenient to use. All I need is the card and I can carry it along in my wallet where ever I go. If I need to make an international call, I just need to fine a phone. I know that nowadays that a lot of café are offering free wireless internet access and I’m able to use my notebook for emails, messenger and video calls. But seriously, it’s easier to just carry a card then a notebook. Besides, if you’re calling your parents, it is much better to do it the old fashion way.

Having a prepaid card as a present to your friend that plans to study aboard is just perfect. You can just give him/her the card and said “Remember to call me”. That’s better than getting flowers, cookies or teddy bear. It’s a way to tell them that you’ll be there to listen if you ever felt lonely out there.

Don’t understand SMS send by youngsters?

Mobile phone has become popular nowadays. Almost everybody have it. This is one of those things that you need to have in order to survive in big cities. Learning to use a mobile phone is a must. That’s the technology side that we can learn from the mobile phone maker. Mobile phone maker needs to teach customers how to use it. That’s part of their sales services. They even print out a manual for customers just in case people like to study it from a book. Nowadays mobile phone maker even included “Easy to use” as part of their mobile phone design. So we don’t have to worry about don’t know how to use a mobile phone, just let the mobile phone maker deal with it.

What I’m really concern is the new language created due to the birth of mobile phone. I’m talking about the language that is used to send out SMS through mobile phone. I’m telling you it’s not English, not even close. If you really want to communicate with youngsters, you need to learn up. Unfortunately, you can’t learn it from anywhere because nobody teaches and there are no reference books about it. Lucky for you here is one site that is able to translate those text messages into something that we can read – transL8it! The site also enables us to translate our text messages into something that youngsters can read. Check it out.

What’s really inside a Battery?

I’m kind of surprise to watch this video. Sometimes you’ll never know what you really bought. It’s still acceptable for things like battery. What I’m really concern about is food. Especially now that rice supply is insufficient worldwide, we never know how those unethical businessmen will take advantage on this.

12 Volt Battery Hack! You'll Be Surprised... - Watch more amazing videos here

Get an IT/Multimedia job in Malaysia

TechBeat is site where you can find jobs related to IT/Multimedia in Malaysia. The site is not as famous as jobstreet.com but you still can find some jobs listed. The site is still new as it was launch last year. If you’re looking for a programmer or web designer for your company, you can post for job vacancies through the site. It’s a free service and no charges for that. That’s the only good thing that I can find on the site.

I think TechBeat has the potential to become one of Malaysia Top 100 site. At this moment the site is too empty and lots of work needs to be done on the site. The only attraction is the jobs listing. Only people looking for jobs or companies looking for programmer will be interested of stopping by. It would be better to hired couple of bloggers to post about current issue related to computers, programming and web design in Malaysia. This will make it a site for people searching for jobs and info related to IT/Multimedia in Malaysia. It gives people another good reason to visit the site.

P/S: IT/Multimedia job seekers will also be interested in knowing the free courses offered by Microsoft, HP, Xerox and other software companies.

Get your Dilbert Widget now

Dilbert reminds me of a class that I attended when I was in college. I still remember it was a programming class and the lecturer is really into Dilbert. I mean really obsesses with it. Before the lecturer starts to teach, he’ll put up a strip of Dilbert using the projector and share it with the class. That’s what I remember about him rather than the things he teaches. Thanks to him I was introduced to Dilbert.

After so many years reading Dilbert from the newspaper, I finally get to put it into my blog. Dilbert.com is where I can get my own Dilbert widget for my blog. You get to choose widget size from 400x300, 300x250 and 160x300. The widget is compatible with almost all the well known social network like blogspot, facebook, myspace, friendster, Xanga, Multiply, Typepad, LiveJournal and many more. Go grab it. Having to watch Dilbert on your blog should be interesting then reading it from the newspaper.

What can we know from Alexa Top 100 sites Malaysia?

Did you ever check out your country Alexa top 100 sites? You can easily check it by visiting the Alexa site. There is some information that you can gather from the top 100 list. The most obvious info is that you get to know the favorite sites in that particular country. That means you get to know what the people in that particular country likes. It’s one good way to do market research if you’re planning to do business. You just need to remember that this market is only for people who have access to the internet. Take for example – Malaysia Alexa Top 100 sites. You get to know where Malaysian surfer hangout. Plus if you’re a foreigner that planning to visit or travel to Malaysia, you can check out Malaysia Alexa Top 100 sites for information regarding the country, culture and the people. You’ll also get to know what’s really going on in the county at that moment. If you plan to buy something for a Malaysian friend that you’re going to visit than you really need to check it out. You don’t want to get a gift that he/she doesn’t like but pretend to like it.

The Million Blog List

Building links to your blog is a must if you really want to get more traffic. It’s an ever continues work that keeps on going and going. Here’s a site that you can add your blog into their million blog list project. The site is trying to get 1,000,000 blogs to list themselves on their site. The project just started on April 10th, 2008 and just reaches No.1139 as I write. You just need couple of seconds to add your blog into it and you have the chance to be chosen as Blog of The Week. That will increase you blog exposure and more people will visit your blog. This blog is listed at No.1107 and that seems to be a good number. You can also wait for the list to reach your favorite number and add your blog. If you have a lot of blogs to add then I suggest you spread them out. That might work better in getting more exposure without others feeling annoying about it.