My Life With IT

I completed the bag design for a competition. I’m quite happy with it as I love hearts and floral brushes. The heart was made using Hawksmont Hearts brush in Photoshop. The green leaves are from Hawksmont too. And the curling yellow vines are from Melemel.

The bag’s theme is Love Nature. I love nature and would have included more but it would have killed my initial intention of keeping it not so cluttered.

I don’t know if there are payments for working with Agva in this case. I would love to be able to repay the brush designers though.

I use images linking to other websites. Even my affiliates link to my affiliate sites. Will I be sued? Or it would be a better idea to close down all my sites to prevent being sued till I have to sell myself? I can’t believe that Singapore is known for such news.

Perhaps absurd news bring about more publicity than normal news like the robot team won some robot competition or we have more entrepreneurs than before. Maybe the idea of this patent came about due to the drastic changes in the oil? It’s so much faster to earn big bucks with such a patent as almost every website has images linking to other websites?

Hyperlinking has been coined by Ted Nelson. Whenever we use the various forms of this word, should Ted Nelson sue us because it’s a word that is supposedly coined and owned by him because there is a patent for it? This feels like Odex all over again like what one forumer in Talkback states. Not to forget that map license problem with LTA too.

In this case, will Zemanta be sued too? Will Google be sued too as it has an image search function whereby images are displayed as thumbnails for quick viewing. How does being Slashdoted for the patent, Hardwarezone-d, ZDNet-ed, Dugg, and many more sound?

I just don’t understand why VueStar was given the patent to sue anyone who uses the patent. Wait, is the patent granted yet?

Image via Wikipedia

I decided to try out Zemanta after FoxTwo introduced it. I am so loving it except for the times when the photo gallery keeps giving me the same photos. It’s a Firefox extension and doesn’t take up much space. The updates are at every 300 characters live.

I find it easy to use except it will default to displaying the photos to the right. Thus, I have to edit the codes each time. A little bit of a hassle but then again, it’s free, I won’t penalise it for much except for the photo placement.

In addition, the photos are mostly from Wikipedia, I don’t know what sort of keywords would let it search from Flickr or PhotoShack. Perhaps the search is based on PageRank? Anyone knows?

The links are automatically placed in the first word that it finds. The links aren’t necessarily localised. I did try using Flickr Dropper but unfortunately, the search results with the same search terms aren’t what I see in Flickr itself.

Since then, I’ve used Zemanta a few times and use it when I’m lazy to search for images via Google. If some script is able to search for photos or images for me, I might as well let it do its job, right?

I’m starting to be more popular. With splogs, that is. I’ve my posts plagiarised yet again. What’s new? My posts on hotel reviews, sponsored posts and whatever seems to have been well-thought on my part have been stolen and violated.

If my sponsored post has been violated, will I still get paid? I just did it and it’s immediately stolen although there is a link back. However, what’s the point? What if I get banned? What should I do? What can I do? Sue? Email the webmaster? Email doesn’t work. You get ignored. Even if you are an A-list blogger.

What can Copyscape and Creative Commons do in this case? Do my copyrights even get protected? Apparently, being online has its perils besides the paranoid feeling of being stalked by invisible intruders such as Torjans, viruses, key loggers and other fantastic spyware.

I’m disturbed. I’ve been reading Blogigs for quite some time and this question on asking if splogs will harm our blogs. I’ve been the target of such especially my posts about Bali got me thinking. I think I’ve approved a few as a trackback.

I must say, I went to those sites and was attacked by Adsense and Kontera and other money making schemes. Basically, the sites provide link to the original source and some excerpts. In addition, they contain various topics and are not focused in any topic. I’m starting to wonder if I should mark them as spam. Maybe I should.

Here’s why sploggers splog, one theory is that Google is not the target. However, isn’t Google the most used search engine? As someone who had 2 whole posts plagiarised, I started using Creative Commons a.k.a. CC. However, it seems that CC was a double-edged sword in 2005.

Sploggers made use of its vulnerability at that time to plug more clicks. Another way to check if your posts have been boldly copied and posted elsewhere without linking back to you would be using Copyscape or writing your own copyrights such as using a certain number of words and must always link back to your source.

Besides blogs being plagiarised, RSS feeds are also targets. The creative ways of sploggers. If you’re in control of your RSS feeds, make use of adding footer. For Wordpress (own hosted) users, you can make use of plugins. Here’s one by Ankesh Kothari called Feed Footer. Another plugin would be RSS Signature formerly known as Sig 2 Feeder.

What are the ways you have tried to protect your blog and has there be an increase or decrease on the attacks? 

Here’s a blogging mad-lib from Essential Keystrokes.

1. Copy the unfinished story below into your post box.
2. Fill in the blanks to finish the story. For most of the blanks use a blogger’s name, a trait, a post title, a blog title — get creative. Finish each sentence in an unexpected way. You can find plenty of links to spark your imagination at the A-Z directory.
3. Link the text you added back to the blog or blogger you’re referencing.
4. Be creative. Change the words or storyline as you wish in order to fit in the links you like.
5. When you’re done, leave a link with the title to your version of the story in the comment box at Successful Blog.

Liz will do something creative with the links you leave. She will collect the links to your titles at 2pm CST on Saturday, September 7, 2007, that way folks who are traveling can have a chance to play.

My version of the story is below the blank one.

Title: _______________________________

_____ was _____ , when out of the blue _____ . You might think this is strange, but in _____ such things happen all of the time. Our brave and quirky hero knew exactly what to do — _____ , but our brave and quirky hero had no _____ .

Seeking help for this dilemma, our hero headed down the road to _____ .

The road passed three creatures — each of them was more interesting than the next. The first was _____ . The second was _____ . The third was _____ . Our brave and quirky hero ran the rest of the way, and when _she_ got there, she got another surprise!

“_____ !” our hero exclaimed.

“_____ ,” _____ answered.

“I was _____ , when out of the blue _____ .” our brave and quirky hero said, knees shaking. “Could you spare _____ ?”

And so it passed that _____ gave our brave and quirky hero _____ AND _____ and all was well.

You might think this is strange, but in _____ such things happen all of the time.

—-

What’s underneath your clothes?

Eastcoast Life was trying to set up the posters for spaying, when out of the blue her courage was lost. You might think this is strange, but in the land of sotong such things happen all of the time. Our brave and quirky hero knew exactly what to do — have faith in Christ alone, but our brave and quirky hero had no interest in new food.

Seeking help for this dilemma, our hero headed down the road to drive while under influence.

The road passed three creatures — each of them was more interesting than the next. The first was Message of the Day with questions on Odex’s legal costs. The second was a heavily pregnant lady with 175cm waistline. The third was Keropokman at the smallest bus interchange. Our brave and quirky hero ran the rest of the way, and when she got there, she got another surprise!

“Shanice!” our hero exclaimed.

“Oh Lucretius,” Endoh answered.

“I was setting up the spaying posters, when out of the blue my courage escaped me.” our brave and quirky hero said, knees shaking. “Could you spare good resumes?”

And so it passed that Endoh gave our brave and quirky hero some tiddlywink dolls AND tips on a healthier lifestyle and all was well.

You might think this is strange, but in the land of sotong such things happen all of the time.

Time to have my own logos for my blogs. I mean, how can I maintain just the title and not a logo for them? It’s so empty, right? Ok, for this blog, the theme has not been settled yet. My bad. However, it doesn’t mean that I won’t be settling on one.

My requirements for this blog is detailed below.

Size: 16 x 16 (favicon)

Theme: IT related, of course.

Remarks: All images must not belong to anyone else so as to reduce copyright issues.

So, anyone can help me design it for free?

Had a nasty shock just after lunch. I was looking through the spam in the old URL for this blog when I saw that one of it was a trackback and I decided to check out. The post was copied whole sale from my other blog. I felt violated. I wrote a short comment requesting an immediate removal of the post.

I will take more drastic measures if that post still exists by the end of today. Tried to look at ways to display a Creative Common License. I should put it up soon. Linking to me is fine, but copying 100% and claiming it as your own is not fine. No one likes it either. So, link!

Now, I shall go calm down and read up on how to take action when your posts and articles have been violated stolen .