My Life With IT

Facebook is such a hot site that even hackers want a piece of the pie. Having been using Facebook for a while, I find that there are people who are very good at maximising the use to promote their sites while I have been just using it for other things. Youtube has a long list of how to make use of Facebook. Check out the videos here.

Personally, I have encountered being added by total strangers just because some of my friends are friends with them. It’s even a higher activity level if there are guys adding females and I have seen a few requests with guys having more than 1000 female profiles added. I wonder if those guys do know of them or they are just collectors. I even had one who is out to snag a girlfriend by constantly sending requests for contacting me on a more personal level than just using Facebook’s messages. My avatar? It’s a cartoonised version that doesn’t look remotely like me either.

ProBlogger has a problem with adding strangers and is now limiting the friends list to just real people he knows or has interest in continuing the contacting. While adding friends seems to be showing off the power of your network, I know that there are some I’ve added without knowing them at a personal level and there are some I added just because I was playing certain games and the larger network in the games applications, I have, I have a faster way to progress up the games faster.

Ultimately, I got tired of playing the games since being games, they tend to be repetitive after a while. The games developers have been hard at work trying to add new features to the games every few months just to keep up with the interest. That said, I know why I didn’t choose my career in the games industry. That will kill my brain cells in just a few months.

There are so many applications in Facebook to help promote websites and one of the application I’m using is called Network Blogs. It’s rather simple and much like Technorati in a way. Just a few conditions for it to showcase your blog posts; there must be more than 5 followers and for more tracking, more than 20 followers for the most frequented followers.

To me, Facebook is a tool. A tool that can be used up to the individual’s imagination. It’s a neutral tool just like the Internet. It’s the humans who choose to do what to use the tools for, like what a knife is being used for.

It was scary when I discovered that I couldn’t log in to myPHPAdmin just now. The mySQL server was hit by my connections being maxed out. After a few tries I managed to get in only to see that I couldn’t create new databases. I’m not sure if that’s supposed to be that way.

Now that I have managed to login, I’m still puzzled by the max number of connections error. Is it because someone tried to hack the SQL server? How can this happen when I don’t have a high traffic at this site?

I used to be casual about blogging. It was supposed to be a place for me to rant and vent out my frustrations. Over a span of two years, it has changed into something more complex than just typing out what I want to say online.

Advertisements came into place. Followed by being paid for posting some positive only reviews on products and services. Now, we are supposed to disclose that we are being paid to post stuff. Others expect us to post positive only reviews when we attend their functions. These posts are a mandate if we were to attend those functions.

First off, the mandate posts for attending the functions aren’t paid. Even the goodies given aren’t even enough to cover the transport and time spent. Second, posting only positive reviews is too one-sided. It’s like a one way connection to a destination. A read only CD.

Second, all paid per posts aren’t that easy to write; even a 50-word advertisement can take hours just to draft out something decent.

Third, other prominent bloggers have taken blogging to another level, coming out with e-books and even printed books on how to blog. All I thought was blogging was simply just typing out the words and put them into paragraphs and that’s it. However, online text can be difficult to read since it’s more taxing on the eyes.

The internet is unregulated. However, there is a fine line between over-scrutinition and ensuring that it is safe for children/innocent people who believe in the fantastic results of earning tons of money with just some automated online sites.

Wordpress has fast become a popular blogging platform since it was launched. I have been rather impressed with its simple dashboard and ease of navigation. Hence, it is fast becoming a hot ground for hacking too. Hence, its constant versioning has kept the developers busy. This reminds me of Windows being a hot ground for hacking too.

This time round, old Wordpress versions are being attacked with strange categories being created. Usually, the default Admin ID is being abused and it is always a good idea to remove the default ID and use another ID as an administrator. The ID shouldn’t be the same as the screen name since the attacking time will be shortened. Telling the world that your user name and screen name are one and the same is inviting thieves into your house to just take all your valuables away.

For those with old versions of Wordpress, upgrade fast. You never know when it’s your turn to be hacked and you won’t want to waste a day trying to get your blog back up again. As more people upgrade, the attackers will soon target your blog just because you are an easy target.

I love Wordpress themes and it’s time to update the theme too! This time, Felix of RichWP has generously agreed to give 3 WPLuxe readers a license for the theme of their choice from his range of premium WordPress themes. It’s so wonderful to win premium themes!

I am also given a choice as to my preference to win which one too! My 2 favourite themes are shown below.

Superblogger Magazine Theme: Demo | Theme Info

DailyNews Magazine Theme: Demo | Theme Info

Both themes are neatly arranged and best of all, they can be won! Thanks to WPLuxe!

Want to win a premium Wordpress theme too? Check out the contest!

The never ending wars online. It goes to show how interesting and lively our lives are when we decide to use wars to start a war; online. Just wasting the electricity on picking on the sentences to words and finally to twist the meaning on everything.

What’s worst is that a neutral platform meant for the sole purpose of being neutral was being dragged into the foray. With different accounts each posting only once for the sole purpose of defaming(?) the said party, the fury of such negative remarks gets on the nerves and a long post about how the initial accusations were wrong and totally abusing the platform that wasn’t meant for explanations.

I find that when words are exchanged in the moment of anger, everything else is skewed. When the involved parties decided to take to arm, in this case, using the keyboard as a form of fighting, I am reminded of the children. They will go screaming, “Teacher! He/She copy me!” when telling them to build the tallest tower.

How do we know what came first? Chicken or egg?

How does one become a success with blogging? With so many blogs out there vying for the attention, it is a miracle that some blogs are having much better success than others. Mine? It’s just anther blog with some random IT stuff thrown in here.

Now, Liz Strauss is a well-known blogger and I’ll have you know that blogging isn’t dated no matter what Tan Weizhen from Straits Times says. I still have a reasonable number of traffic to this blog. I must say that I’m impressed with the information that is dished out on how to make your blog into a community.

If you want your blog to be a success and stand out from the web, check out her book. Otherwise, continue struggling to write paid posts, paid links, paid surveys, setup your own online store without worring about the logistics and sell your products online.

Although, I won’t complain about residual income.

Having blogging for quite sometime both to record my random thoughts and niche, I never knew that I needed to follow a set of bloggers’ guidelines. If one day, bloggers need to follow a set of stated guidelines, I imagine the following will happen.

1. All blogs look and feel like reading the newspapers online.
2. All blogs will have the same tone.
3. All blogs will have to go through numerous editing before being published.
4. All blogs will repeat what was said in another site.
5. All blogs won’t feel personalised; as in the blogger is not engaging the readers into contributors.

Frankly speaking, I might as well stop blogging now since it may happen. I can’t get myself published on the print media due to my unorthodox writing that isn’t even print friendly. That is why I am blogging on so many sites including random photo sites that are half developed.

The print media is already regulated. Those bloggers who are making money online are doing their own self regulation, stop trying to control the people’s thoughts! You wanted us to be able to think instead of depending on you, so stop controling the online world!