My Life With IT

I use a laptop and I store quite a number of data in it. It’s my precious. With today’s mobile technology getting more robust; free Wifi being offered at Starbucks, McDonald’s and more, it isn’t a wonder to see laptops being setup in those places.

To protect my data, Fast N Safe has a new product, easySafe that will protect the data. This is a hardware based cryptography product. Software tends to be decrypted more easily as we can see from websites that have experienced such cases.

For the mobile warriors, data such as clients’ and company’s information is very important. The loss will mean the integrity and the confidence level of the clients are affected badly. It is important to know that your laptop is safe from being compromised when someone steals it or lost.

Installation of easySafe is easy as you just plug it into the USB drive that can be found in the laptops or computers. easySafe will create a virtual storage space to store the sensitive and confidential data. This is transparent to the users and will not affect the user in anyway.

Hardware security is safer because without the easySafe, anyone else attempting to pry their eyes to look for the data will be disappointed as the data is encrypted and can only be decrypted by easySafe itself. easySafe is portable and it takes up not much space as most thumb drives these days are getting smaller too.

With easySafe, you can travel with a peace of mind.

easySafe can be purchased at the following places.

• E2000 shop at Funan #05-02.
• Tec-Drome Technology at Sim Lim Square #05-78 and #06-74.
• IMM Challenger L2-49.

[Sponsored by Blog2u.sg]

I have blogged for more than 2 years with different platforms. When I first started out, I thought it was just to voice out my thoughts and feelings on things that affect me deeply. Albeit too deeply at times.

What I thought blogging was about:

• I can just voice my thoughts.
• I can vent my anger.
• I can write anything I want.
• I can earn some money.
• I can blog for life.

What blogging has evolved:

• I can’t just say anything about the bad bosses I had encountered.
• I can’t identify the companies unless it’s positive. This is still debatable.
• I can’t write about anything I want.
• I get spammed.
• I get comments about posts that I have written that talk about my perspective being wrong.
• I can’t really earn peanuts if I am not famous enough in the blogsphere.
• I can’t just rely on blogging alone.

I haven’t really lost interest in blogging here. I have been busy with looking at other concepts because I am jobless in a couple of weeks. I have tested a few of my concepts and it’s picking up slow because I haven’t inserted any sexy images for them. Besides, seductive images don’t work because they aren’t about exotic tastes.

I may reveal more of myself but at this moment, I am not ready. I hope to be able to do something useful in life for once besides mindless working. As for the perspectives being wrong, I am not wrong. You are.

I have come a long way. Testing various platforms before deciding on Wordpress that didn’t give me headaches until the widget part for 2.5.1. I have long suspected that I wasn’t famous enough, still isn’t despite my attempts at garnering more blog exposure.

There were even times I was suspecting that blogging could be bad and it is wrong. However, my love for penning my thoughts got the better of me. Since I have been blogging my way for a long time, I have discovered a few things along the way. It was a long and arduous path (inspired by Cobalt Paladin).

Blogging Pros

1. You can earn some money online.
2. You can join blog directories and improve your blog’s traffic.
3. You can post hundreds and thousands of photos online.
4. You can tell your friends that you own a blog and the domain is under your name.
5. You can start shopping sprees, sales and hurl insults online.
6. You can freelance more easily as web designers have their names as credits in the designs.
7. You can find more like-minded people.
8. You can blog about niche topics that you have talents for but never discovered.
9. You can sell your handmade items online.
10. You don’t have to rent a shop for selling small items.

Blogging Cons

1. You don’t really earn thousands of dollars online.
2. The money doesn’t always come constantly.
3. Being anonymous doesn’t mean you won’t be found. Photos and details of you can and will be displayed in full glory.
4. You get known for something that you wished it hadn’t come to light. Such as Edison Chen, Fragrance Prince and many others.
5. Being anonymous also means that Asian advertisers distrust your reviews and you don’t get invited to events much.
6. Your photos of you being drunk or behaving wildly can turn off potential employers.
7. Freelance becomes a problem when someone accuses you of ripping clients.
8. You have to upgrade Wordpress constantly. So do other platforms.
9. You get flamed, spammed and even accused of wrong-doing.
10. Your words are dissected and scrutinised and probably mis-interpretated half the time.

These could just be the tips of the iceberg but I stick to blogging because it’s a way to voice out without requiring a license for the soapbox in that park. Lord knows how long it’ll take to grant a paper license for public speaking.

[via Flickr]

It seems that the net-savvy would like to play a part in helping the needy. Given that Violent Acres is raising funds for West Valley Child Crisis and LLY is also doing the same for every Pong/Nang. It got me thinking if any local charities accept Paypal, the popular e-payment standard adopted by eBay. Even eBay does support charity.

A quick search from Charity Portal reveals that NCSS charities are using credit card donations while Paypal isn’t supported. I’m not sure why but perhaps it could be difficult to monitor the donations via Paypal despite its ease for payment history?

UNICEF supported online donations but due to some technical problems, they have changed to the pen and paper method. With hackers loving to attack hack take over any website, especially if it’s a widely read site, problems do occur.

If donating the IT way is anything to go by, no matter how secure a site is, hackers are bound to make it vulnerable and deterring genuine donators from doing their pay.

Chatting online has never been so hot until now. Even robots are in the game. You can chat at CyberLover.ru and never know that the erotic or flirtatious messages could be coming from a robot. A very clever robot indeed.

It’s so wonderful to the point where you would be giving out your contact number to it. You won’t know who would be sitting in between the transactions and culling your very personal information that should be kept in private and given out only when asked.

Privacy is no longer the “in” thing. Just look at the Facebook issue with Beacon. That reminds why I’m not into online matchmaking sites. You can’t be sure if your information will be kept confidential or not. Remember, they are watching you.

[via Mashable]

Every move you make is being monitored. Sometimes I wonder why I am still online or using so many gadgets. Our privacy is no longer in our hands. Even applying for contests online need you to fill in your NRIC number that is supposed to be highly confidential. Physical contest forms also require NRIC number. And I thought we were supposed to protect the number at all costs?

At which stage do we draw the line where our most intimate details are not supposed to be given out just like that? Why can’t I just give you my name and contact number? You call me when I’m the winner? Isn’t that easier? I can submit more entries this way and save me time in filling up the forms.

I often cringe when I see an email whereby all the email addresses are in the To and CC list. This is because when the email is traveling through the hops and servers, they leave a digital mark that can be culled by robots which are collecting email addresses and that’s when I start receiving spam emails.

This is especially more important if a company provides newsletters via emails, it’s supposed to use BCC instead. This reduces the robot’s chances of retrieving the valid emails and I don’t get spammed and neither will I need to write an email to inform them that it’s violating the privacies of the subscribers.

I have friends who forward emails using the To list. I use this only if it were to gather discussion and feedback on the dates availability. How I wished that all of them have Yahoo accounts so that we can just dump everything into the Yahoo Groups. However, not all of them have and some don’t want to create new accounts. So, I’m stuck with emails.

If you need to forward anything, please, please, please use the BCC since it doesn’t require any interaction between the recipients and sender.