My Life With IT

We have come a long way since the start of using blogs to record our thoughts. When someone is known by the real name in the online world, things can get ugly or good. It has been made known that a name is identified and he/she is blogging constantly. The updates can be about anything in the personal blog but often, the identity is linked to the company that this person is working at.

We somehow link to the company having a blog when the company’s blog already has an official blog while this person is just voicing out the thoughts and opinions. This leads to ugly blog wars. Hence, Ignorant Soup has a question and some thoughts of how to learn from mistakes.

A finance consultant has a blog about investments and he declares he is working for a certain company. At times, he will introduce ways to invest and will mention his company’s schemes for the people. Does that make him a blogger for his company or himself? He could be mentioning the schemes as he feels they are the best after making his personal comparisons among similar schemes.

I have never declared the companies I have worked for online. I don’t wished to be accused of doing any free publicity when all I have done is to vent out my frustrations that I can never tell the bosses directly. I don’t want to be named as someone who is against the company when I am not.

I am not sure if I still want to reveal myself online after all these sagas. 2 years and the thinking is of a 2 year-old child. Utter disappointment.

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.

Image via Wikipedia

There are certain policies to be known. It is known that there are certain companies that dislike their workers blogging about work even without giving away any clues. I can also see why a certain company dislike bloggers. That company has official bloggers in its portal. In addition, they look as if they are able to voice their own opinions.

However, after going through it for some time, I realise that the topics are outdated. As any good blogger know, data must be fresh online. You must be the first publish any data so that you will be the pioneer of the data and all the trackbacks or ping backs will belong to you most of the time.

Google is known for indexing sites that have been around for a long time. Work isn’t meant for the online eyes. Companies are not ready for that. I doubt they ever will as the cache is known for its long memory. I have blogged about work but never where I have worked in.

I don’t give out names of the companies I have worked for and neither do I even dare to reveal to any manager that I am blogging. It’s dangerous. However, with my Facebook account linking to the blogs, I’m starting to wonder if I should have even linked them in my Facebook.

The 1st rule of blogging for personal sites is never to blog about the company’s name. You never know when your boss is going to google for you. 2nd rule, no real names on blogs. I am wondering if some blog awards like omy is giving out has a purpose besides giving out awards. They require real names and NRIC for identification purpose.

[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.

There are things that can’t and shouldn’t be posted online. The Internet remembers it forever. It’s so easy to get a screenshot as evidence to prove the claims later. Take for example the case of a video posted by this andrewteo77. It got the netizens buzzing with theories and finally condemning him because he was the one spewing self-righteousness but with vulgarities at the taxi driver who was merely waiting for a potential passenger.

Others were saying he was a black sheep for the company. It led to the Internet CSI searching for his personal details, including his LinkedIn.

I’m not saying that I haven’t been failing to keep certain things offline where it should be. Everyone makes mistakes and I’m sure this Andrew Teo, whoever he is, has learnt from his. There are things happening while isolated to a blog aggregator, it doesn’t mean that others won’t be picking them up.

For all I know, Rednano would be picking up localised blogs very soon as long as they are indexed and cached. Soon, world domination by a blog will be seen. This is taken from DK’s refraining phrase.

I’m not sure what to make of this but it smells like what Felix had received before. I received this in my private message in Yebber. I thought something might be interesting and boy oh boy, I’m the trusted recipient to help some guy named Serge who is yet of age 24 to help him keep the money. Does this count as a hoax or spam or abuse?

Dear Friend,

I came to you because i saw your profile and contact in this site and believe that your names has planted you in the centre of relevance in my life.

Before I go further I will like to introduce myself to you. I am Serge Micheal Konan, 17 years of age, the only child of my parents, Dr. and Mrs. Arnaud Leonard Konan. My parents were Natives of Cote d’Ivoire before they migrated to the United States where I was born and we lived at No 215 West Wieuca Road Northeast Atlanta, Georgia USA and I attended the famous Frederick Douglass High School, 225 Hamilton E.Holmes Drive, N.W. Atlanta, GA 30318, Georgia USA, but when my mother fell sick and died June 2004, My father became weak every now and fall sick often, i believe it was the shock of my mum’s sudden death that deteriorated his health. He got retired from his office, Fidelity National Insurance Company at No 200 Galleria Parkway Southeast Atlanta GA 30339 USA October 2005.

Then December 2005 my father called me and told that he doesn’t want to die in a foreign land. That he has made so much money, he felt the best thing for him to do now is for us to relocate back to his home country of Cote d’Ivoire so that he can set up his own Insurance company and give job opportunities to his people and he also told me that he wanted me to learn about his people and their culture. On the 14 of December 2005 we returned back to Cote d’Ivoire, On our arrival, my Dad deposited all the money we came with that we want to use to set up the company in a security company as family valuables because according to him, he doesn’t want anybody to know anything about the money till he has settled and ready to use it, for the purpose of which he suffered to bring the money down home. Then after some time my dad started to look for properties to buy
to use for an office, in several occasions i went out with him to inspect for this purpose.

But unfortunately On the 6th of February 2006 My father died, but before his death he brought out all the documents he used in depositing the money with the security company, name and address of the security company i will also give you later, and gave them to me. So four months after the burial of my father, i approached the company and asked for the release of my deposit to me as the only child of Dr. and Mrs.Arnaud Leonard Konan but to my surprise the company refused my request. I have been to the company time without number and all they said was that the only way that they can release the deposit to me will be when i am 24yrs old or if i can find a guardian that will stand for me. Please i would like to ask for your help here, i want you to please accept my humble request that you stand as my guardian and i then introduce you to the company and you receive the deposit for me.

My situation here is so unbearable that i cant really wait to possess this money.

This is the true situation of things as it stands now. Please, take your time, go through this mail and let me know the best way you feel you can help me. On my email: smkonan225@yahoo.fr

Yours sincerely
Serge

Seriously though, I can’t see why on earth I am chosen to be the one to look after his money when he doesn’t even know me. And it’s been 2 years since his daddy passed away. Oh, I’m so touched that I’m the centre of relevance in his life.