Yes I succumed to the temptation. After reading how effective Adsense was in driving side revenue, I decided to give it a try.
As a pragmatic, I’m really neutral on internet ads. Money got to come from somewhere to run those web sites. So if ads helps to keep them alive, that’s fine. This is especially so for sites that runs free service like open source projects.
My sympathy though stops at sites that exist simply to run ads. Sites pretending to provide imformation that are effectively ads. They use all kinds of methods, the primary method is by getting to the top of search engine result.
Now one got to start thinking. If people bother to do all these, either there are real gold to be dug or they are just trying their luck? Maybe I will soon find out.
Gone crazy about toolbars lately. Trying out a few of them which are quite interesting. Get more from Firefox extensions.
Installing too many extension can cause Firefox to be unstable and crash unexpectedly.
Published on
27 May, 2005 in
Online.
Just noticed that my Yahoo Mail is now 1G. All the more no reason to go Gmail now.
Published on
26 May, 2005 in
China.
Just today I came across this entry, he wrote
" I also want to learn Chinese because 20% of the world speaks Chinese and I fully expect that China will quickly join the ranks of "Super Power" along with the United States within the next 20 years or so. "
I totally agree with him and he is not the first I’ve heard expressing this opinion in recent years. According to Wikipedia List of languages by total speakers, Chinese is the most widely spoken language. As stated, it does not take into account second languages. As many people can speak more than one language, I suspect English is still the de facto business language.
This article, GDP by Language, may provide some illumination. According to it, English only accounts for 30% of the world’s GDP. And from the graph that chinese is rapidly expanding.
The influence of a language is examined here. Chinese is ranked a low 6th after English, French, Spanish, Russian, Arabic. I believe that is set to changes in the few years to come.
Also I think there should be a difference between spoken and written language. This is particularly important for the web because almost all the material are in printed (textual) form. For example I often watch or listen to Chinese news, but I hardly read Chinese news.
Wikipedia has another interesting statistic, Wikipedia articles per population. Of the huge population that China has, it has only 19 articles/million native speakers. One wrong conclusion that could be drawn is that the number of Chinese internet users is small so there is not much article contributed. However the number of internet user in China is second after the US. Take a look at this statistic. At 7.3% penetration and 10.6% of the world population.
After all these and thinking back, Singaporean has the government to thank for the bilingual policy that allows us to conversant in both English and Chinese. Of course this advantage is eroding away fast.
Filezilla has nothing to do with Mozilla or the numerous “-zilla” out there. It is an FTP client (there is also a Filezilla FTP server). After the web browser and email client, FTP client is probably the next most used net-application.
But unlike web browser and email, there are far more choices for FTP programs. Commercial, sharewares, freewares/open source, some has really long history. I still remember back around 1995 there was WS_FTP. A quick search shows that it is still around. And there were CuteFTP, SmartFTP…
I had not try alot of FTP clients though, and there might be good Open Source FTP client around that I am not aware. However Filezilla had served me well for a few years now and I’m sticking with it.
If you are using an unregistered or cracked copy of shareware FTP client, give your conscience a break. consider switching to Open Source.
What I like about ?
- support SFTP
Must FTP client nowaday support SFTP. But this wasn’t the case before. Back then we were using SFTP in our company and had a hard time find a good client. Filezilla had some basic support and I gave it a try.
- Upload, download queue.
Good for selecting files across different directories and transfer at one go.
- Mutiple connections
- Switch interface language on-the-fly.
Wish List
- Better file overwrite options
- Easier way to save current connection/location setting for account. Automatically save?
- Faster SFTP? The directory caching seems to work not so well in SFTP.
- Connect to multiple sites in a single windows
Where to get it?
http://filezilla.sourceforge.net/
Current version: 2.2.13c
Function: FTP client
Pure serendipity! I literally, stumbled upon StumbleUpon. And boy had I spend time on it!
If you use Firefox, get the plugin from Mozilla extension update and start stumbling. What a name, what an idea, what an execution. This is definitely one of my "woah!" in a long time.
I had not aimlessly surf the net for a long time. Back when "Cool site of the day" really picks cool, un-commercialised, honest sites, I used to sit in front of the terminal in the computer lab surfing all day. But as the web became more commercial, small sites are hidden under tons of irrelevant information, good sites start to require sign up, search engine just pulling up "search engine optimised" site. I lost all interest.
What joy to surf again! Click on the Stumble! button and StumbleUpon pulls out really interesting site that human had recommended. And not only that the site recommended are really relevant to me. That’s some matching algorithm. Now it would be interesting if the "I’m Feeling Lucky" button on Google is integrated with this.
Not sure if this is still one of the best kept secret to internet marketer. But imagine people start do "Stumble optimisation". Plenty of room for misuse. Already I see sites on review appearing in Google. But as the old chinese saying goes "water can carry a boat as well as capsize it" (水能载舟，也能覆舟).
Multi language support would be a nice addition. I have a feeling that someone in China might already be building the same idea, in Chinese. I saw a report somewhere that the chinese language reader is almost 20% of the total internet user. This alot of people and that’s what keeping many of the sites in China up.
This looks like a killer idea. Now let see, who is inline to buy out this company. Yahoo, MSN, Google?
"The original Notepad shipped with Windows is probably the handiest program of all times, small, fast, without frills! Notepad2 tries to follow this principle, it’s a small, fast and free text editor with syntax highlighting for HTML and other common languages." - Notepad2
I have to agree with the author. For a quick edit, Notepad2 is without peer. Small and fast, all the most used features are there. Powerful search and replace, open large file, syntax coloring, line number, change file format…
It is just one file, so there is no install involved and can directly replace the Windows Notepad.
There are 2 ways to run the program - separately as a standalone program or as Notepad replaced.
Standalone is simple. Just unzip the file anywhere, Program Files or Windows are good choice. Create a shortcut and put it on the desktop or start menu.
As Notepad replaced is slightly more complex. Here’s what I do on Win XP. Try it at your own risk. You can search the net for more information.
- Unzip the file to Desktop.
- Rename notepad2.exe to notepad.exe
- Copy the file to C:\WINDOWS\system32\dllcache and overwrite a copy of notepad.exe there first.
If you cannot see this folder, enable viewing of hidden folder.
- Copy again to C:\WINDOWS and overwrite the current copy of notepad.exe
- The first time Notepad (Notepad2 now) is run, there will be a warning message. Just ignore it and select the necessary option to dismiss it.
The reason it seems is that Windows is protecting system file from being modified. Again use with care and at you own risk.
What I like about ?
- UTF-8 support.
I can open and edit files with chinese characters. This is very important as I can quickly open a file and change a few words.
- Small quick light. Many important features without the bulkiness.
Where to get it?
http://www.flos-freeware.ch/notepad2.html
Current version: 1.0.12
Function: Simple Text Editor (Notepad replacement)
Published on
19 May, 2005 in
China.
Many Singaporean, including myself, claimed to know something about
China yet do not know enough depth about it. I often stumble when
talking to the local Chinese. Often they would quote or reference from
their huge repertoire of Chinese history, events, person, books as if I
knew them as well. The amazing thing is that almost every local can
start a running commentary once a topic is mentioned. They seems to be
a natural ability to remember facts and to deliver in a very seemly
learned way. My reaction was to simile back in agreement.
Wikipedia is a great source for any kind of information. Firefox has a Wikipedia search engine plugin which I use very frequently to search and look up information.
Recently I often use Wikipedia to look up China related infomation. To boost my knowledge of one the oldest continuous civilizations. A good starting point would be articles like People’s Republic of China, China, Chinese language, Wikiportal on China.
I had also made some minor contributions to some
content on Wikipedia. To share back knowledge to the internet community because sharing is the one of the best way to learn. As I go along however, I started to discover that there are many undercurrents going on. Especially on the different definitions and how people understand certain terms. I am rather indifference and neutual about the topics although I can appreciate the contention behind them.
Take for example the terms China, mainland China, PRC; Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR; Taiwan, ROC. I think sometime as Singaporean, I do not appreciate the intense sentiment behind the differences. To me I am very clear what they mean. But to Wikipedia which avocates a neutual point-of-view, a delicate task.
Some critical update it seems. Notice the little red button with an arrow at the top-righ corner of the Firefox windows? Click it to instantly download and install. Simple!ÂÂ
One thing about opensource software is that tons of features are added but never mentioned. In commercial software, every feature gets hyped as the best thing since [fill in the blank].
Here’s one nice little feature I just discovered on Firefox.
- Go to Bookmarks and right on any bookmark.
- Select Properties.
- Under Keyword: enter a short keyword. For example for www.simplebusiness.org, I entered sb.
- Click OK to save it.
- On the address bar (or URL bar - the thingy that you key in the web address) enter the keyword.
- Hit Enter.
Cool! Most of my favourite sites are now keyworded.
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