So much spam nowadays, that post like human but of course the contents are very general and has nothing to do with the actual post of mine. Even Akismet can’t  filter them all (though already filtered out many), and I still get like 5-10 spams skipped through Akismet daily, which is quite a headache and trouble for me to delete them manually each day.

So, I have decided to just close the comment feature at my blog. That shall keep my blog clean, but sorry to those genuine poster who want to comment about the post.

Our deepest condolence for those who are affected in the earthquake in Japan (11th March 2011, around 2.45pm Japanese time)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jSKaiONzYs

Having lived in Japan for 3 years…I love the country, and I somehow feel sorry when I heard about the news of the disastrous earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan on 11th March 2011. More than 10k people are dead…many are missing and injured.

Japanese is a very organised society. No panicking around the city, people are still trying to recover from the disaster…we can only prayed that those who are still missing or trapped will be saved soon…and those who are injured or hurt both mentally and physically will be healed.

In Jesus name…amen.

Blog…was such a HOT word in in the first decade of twenty century.

Now? Facebook is the word everyone is talking about.

Where does blog stands? Will it continue to SURVIVE? (I won’t use the word shine now…since it is no longer being talked about…)

Personally I threat Blog as my own diary, and Personal (only me or my family can write) and Open (for everybody or those I selected to view) diary. Yes, it is a diary to me.

So is blog dying? For me no. As long as I am still writing, my blog will continue to exist. However, blogging can be lonely, as you don’t get many comments from your friends or visitors. Facebook has taken over the heat nowadays. People use facebook to share their feeling, their thought, their friends, their photos.

I still prefer blog. Why? Because it is under my own domain, my personal domain. It is something that belongs to me, I can grow with it. Facebook though is still facebook. Famous websites come and go, one day there might be no more Facebook, but my blog will still continue to be here as long as I want it to be.

Have a personal website of your, have a personal diary of yours, have a blog. Start sharing.

Have you ever notice that your blog loading time is very slow due to Nuffnang ads?

Seeing the below message at the bottom left of your FireFox browser?

On some blogs, I have event noticed that the page does not load up for loading forever due to Nuffnang ads. This is especially for those who have the ads place on top of their blog, or at the left column of their blog.

By using FireFox, it loads from Top (Header) to Left to Center to Right to Footer. So if one placed Nuffnang ads on top or right column, then the main content of the blog (usually in the center) will not load until Nuffnang ads has finished loading.

Of course, sometimes Nuffnang ads load up fast, sometimes slow. I am not sure of the reason, but my advise is that if you want to put external ads banner into your blog (including Advertlets, Adsense, etc…), put it at the footer or at the right column.

Managed to move BlogMalaysia website to Malaysia’s local hosted server. Loading speed is much faster now for those who surf from Malaysia. Since it is BlogMalaysia, our main audiences are from Malaysia, so the move.

That should also speed up my time to review and approve submitted blogs to BlogMalaysia.

Started on 12th January 2008, in a year+ time, I am glad to see that BlogMalaysia has grown to become the largest blog directory in Malaysia! First blog about BlogMalaysia can be read at:

http://shashinki.com/blog/?s=blogmalaysia

Yeah, that’s the good thing about blogging…you can trace back history of your life with just a simple search. I don’t have photographic memory so cannot remember every little or big things in my life.

Some Statistics of BlogMalaysia:

Total Blogs : 3610
Total Category : 26
Featured Blogs : 3
Regular Blogs : 3607
Pending Blogs : 11
Blog Clicks : 48191

There are around 10 new blogs each day and growing fast. Thanks to bloggers who have volunteering put a linkback of BlogMalaysia logo on their blogs.

Eg.:

Codes:

<p><a href=”http://blogmalaysia.com”><img src=”http://blogmalaysia.com/images/reciprocal.gif” alt=”BlogMalaysia.com” border=”0″></a></p>

Thank you all for the support to BlogMalaysia!

I have been using Adsense for over a year, on the biggest photography forum in Malaysia – www.photomalaysia.com.

Performance of Adsense has been quite disappointing to me. There are less than 50 clicks per day (we have around 7000-9000 unique visitors per day). No, publisher is NOT allowed to invite his/her members to click on the ads, that will lead to your account being terminated.

I have heard story of bloggers getting USD1000 or even more per month from Adsense. I only get about USD120 per month. What went wrong?

I am still experimenting different ads banners and locations. Recently I introduced 250×250 px square banner to my forum and I noticed some increment in clickthrough. I need to experiment more…but if you have some tips or experience to share, please post a reply. Thanks!

Join ShaShinKi Affiliate Program Today and Start Earning!

Features

• Free to register / sign up at:
  • https://shashinki.com/shop/affiliate_signup.php
• Low minimum payout amount of RM50.00 monthly! If your accumulated amount is less than RM50.00, it will be brought forward to the following month.
• Choices of payment method: Shopping Points, Cheque, Bank Transfer (within Malaysia only), and PayPal.
• Various size and design of banners / text links to suite your websites.
• Detail reports: Sales, Clickthrough, and Payment reports.

We Pay

Monthly commission begins at 0.5% with the possibility for increased percentage based upon performance.

Terms and Conditions

Affiliates must comply to ShaShinKi Terms and Conditions before signing up which can be read in the link below:

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BlogMalaysia has been growing…healthily! It has quite a number of new submitted blog daily, till some times I do not even have time to go approve all the submitted blogs… (sorry bloggers…please be patience…). Currently with over 2500 blogs and growing…it is definitely one of the largest and most popular blog directory in Malaysia nowadays!

I just checked the pagerank of BlogMalaysia, and to be surprise…it is now ranked at PR5!

http://oyoy.eu/google/pr/?url=http%3a%2f%2fblogmalaysia.com&#r

My last check it was PR4, which is around 3-4 months ago. Google sure like blogs…and I am glad that Google has increased the ranking of BlogMalaysia now. What is PR? That’s a different topic…you can wikipedia for it.

So, how is the statistics of BlogMalaysia? Below is what I get from AWSTATS:

Some people got confused with hits and unique visitor. Hits can be a lot, but unique visitor is what that counts (IMO).

With my busy scheduled, I have actually appointed two admins to assist me at BlogMalaysia…but sadly…both of them are now MIA and probably got scared by the mass volume of work (many blogs) that they have to review and approve daily. I can’t just appoint anybody to be the admin, as he/she will have access to the INSIDE of BlogMalaysia. Hence I will have to bare the work load myself now…

Just reviewed over 100 blogs this morning…another 200 to go…yeah… … …

BlogMalaysia.com – Malaysia Bloggers Directory!

I am happy and proud to announce that BlogMalaysia has over 1500 registered blogs now!

In terms of registered bloggers, we have 1698 bloggers as of this second. I wonder why some registered but not submitting their blogs…or maybe their blogs were rejected due to not fulfilling the requirements (spams?)

BlogMalaysia was born in January 2008. I am glad that within a year, we have already achieved over 1000 registered blogs and growing exponantially! With many bloggers putting BlogMalaysia link logo as of the above, many gets to know about BlogMalaysia and submitting their blogs to the Malaysia Blog Directory!

BlogMalaysia is a free directory, and it shall remain free forever. The existence of BlogMalaysia is to gather Malaysia bloggers information under one roof, easier for friends and family to search for their blogger friends at the directory.

Ok…have to rest now…hope to see your blog soon if you haven’t registered yourself there…seeya!

Read this news at The Star:

22 sites, blogs investigated by MCMC

http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp…

Quote:

Deputy Energy, Water and Communications Minister Datuk Joseph Salang Gandum told Senator Sharifah Azizah Syed Zain in Dewan Rakyat on Monday that out of those blogs investigated, the commission had also forwarded three investigation papers to the Attorney-General’s Chambers.

“Most of the blogs and websites are being operated using platforms from overseas and efforts to obtain evidence necessary for action often come to a dead end.

“Therefore, it’s very hard to take legal action against these blogs,”he said.

Since my blog is just a personal blog, I guess I won’t be in that 22 sites list (there are hundreds thousands of blogs out there), but they have raised an interesting issue of blogs hosted oversea are very hard to take action against. I believe this includes those using bloggers.com, blogspot.com, wordpress.com or personal hosting using oversea server/hosting company.

Beside the high price of local hosting, this is a good excuse/reason to host your blog or website oversea.

Last month, I blogged about BlogMalaysia registering over 500 blogs and target to reach 800 blogs before 1st June 2008 at:

http://shashinki.com/blog/2008/05/01/blogmalaysia-over-500-blogs-now/

No, it has not been achieved but we still have 5 more days to go. There are currently 768 registered blogs at BlogMalaysia.com now (we have actually removed quite a number of blogs which we do not think qualified to be listed, eg. spams), 32 more blogs to go before hitting our 800 target.

I would like to thank bloggers who have submitted their Blogs to BlogMalaysia.com, especially those who have put a link back to BlogMalaysia to promote the site. What is a link back? See logo/link below:

Some bloggers have this logo/link in their blog. This is how they help to promote BlogMalaysia.com. You can see I have this at the lower right column in my blog as well.

With BlogMalaysia getting busier and busier nowadays, it is beyond my ability to go through each and every blogs before approval. Still, I do not want to approve blogs without checking every one of them (I still missed one or two from time to time). So, in order to serve more effectively, I have assigned A.P.P.L.E, a very responsible and knowledgeable blogger to be the administrator of BlogMalaysia.com for the blog directory approval. Yes, she is helping me with the approval of blogs, sharing the burden or should I say taking away much of the burden from my shoulder in BlogMalaysia.com.

Thank you A.P.P.L.E! [ http://www.xiaoyenzi.com ]

Project Petaling Street website (http://www.petalingstreet.org) has been filled with SPAMS today (as of now…there are just way too many spam posts to distinguish the real blog post.

I guess spammers have found out the trackbacks URL of petalingstreet.org newsfeeder, hence sending lots of spam post to that site.

We shall see the site admin cleaning up the spam posts soon, and ban that spammer site from posting again. Hopefully there will be no change of the trackback URL.

Google Analytics is a free statistic software provided by Google. Yes, it is free, it is from Google (anything from Google you can expect it to be really good!

I have been using Google Analytics for quite some time, more than a year or two if I am not mistaken. It gives a lot of details information about my website, which are actually more accurate than AWSTATS software in my own server cPanel. Eg. the visitors of my website should be from Malaysia majority, but AWSTATS shows that majority are from USA whereby Google Analytics shows that the majority are from Malaysia (which should be correct).

However, I have heard from others that Analytics does not give accurate tracking of your site statistic. For example, say your site has actual 5000 visitors in a month, Analytics might only tracked and showed you 3000 visitors in that month. I am not sure how true this is, but I do see some difference in number of visitors at Analytics and AWSTATS.

Besides the number, what I find really useful from Google Analytics is the [b]Traffic Sources[/b]. This shows you where your visitors are from (links). So you can take a look of which website gives you the most visitors or refer people to your site. In all of my sites, Google search is always the main source of my visitors. (Don’t under estimate the power of Google search engine). Yahoo search only brings me less than 10% of what Google search brought me.

So, how to use or activate Google Analytics to start taking information or statistic of your site? First you need to register an account at Google (if you already have an Google account, eg. gmail, then you can sign in to Analytic page directly using the same username and password):

[b]http://www.google.com/analytics/[/b]

After sign in, you need to add your website to Analytics. After adding your website, Analytics will give you a simple code that you need copy and paste to the page or website that you want to trace/keep statistics record. Take note that Google will only trace pages that have that codes in, so you have to place the codes wisely.

For blog, the best place to put the codes is in your header or footer. Personally I prefer footer to header, as it does not interrupt with the speed or loading time of my site. Details of how to put the codes is explained by Google in the Analytics page, so I will not elaborate long here.

Try it, you will love it! 8)

Yes, just before 1st May 2008, BlogMalaysia has achieved its target by having over 500 registered blogs! There are actually more, but I have chosen to delete some blogs which are just created for advertisement with “no content” but copies of articles from other online websites.

In the beginning of March 2008, we have slightly over 300 registered blogs. Within the month of April, we have managed to achieve 500 registered blogs. There are around 200 new blogs registered to BlogMalaysia within the month of April, which I think is a very encouraging figures. With many generous bloggers use reciprocal link of BlogMalaysia Link Logo at their blogs, growth is in a rapid rate!

Our new target for May2008 – Reaching over 750 800 (let’s set a higher target) registered blogs before 1st June 2008! 

Besides blog statistics, I am proud to announce as well the Link Logo design contest winner, APPLE!

A.P.P.L.E
[ http://www.xiaoyenzi.com ]

Her design is great, which you can see below:

This new link logo has been activated few weeks ago, which means that those who put BlogMalaysia link logo at their blogs will have the new design appear automatically. Hope you like it.

Happy blogging!

Yes, after some RC versions…finally WordPress 2.5 full official version has been release 16 hours ago.

http://wordpress.org/development/2008/03/wordpress-25-brecker/

I have blogged about my problem with RC1 previously…so I am in no hurry of upgrading this time…especially since I am quite busy recently and have no mood of upgrading and doing the major backup or restore if something bad happened. My blog (WP 2.3) is still serving me fine, and I am happy with what I have now. Of course there are some new features in WP2.5 that are worth having, but I am just not in the mood right now especially after the failure just a week ago.

Good luck to those who are upgrading and do share your experience with us.

WordPress has just announced the RC2 version of their upcoming WordPress 2.5.

http://wordpress.org/development/2008/03/wordpress-25-rc2/

In the link above, there is a video demo of how WordPress 2.5 works. The gallery feature looks nice, and the multi upload feature looks cool. However, after trying RC1 and faces some problems with FireFox, I think I will not waste my time for RC2 again this round. Better wait till their full release and then think again if I really want to upgrade or not.

Related posts:

• WordPress 2.5 RC1 – Bad Experience

• WordPress 2.5 RC1 – Released!

I tried WordPress 2.5 RC1 today. Spent some time to upload and backup my original files.

Again, my main concern and attraction is the multi-upload as told by WordPress in their latest release. I was hoping to get good and easy way of uploading photos to my blog, as I share a lot of photo at my blog, which makes file uploading an important feature for me.

After installing WP2.5RC1, I have to spent some time to get use to the new interface. I think the orange dashboard is ugly, but nevermind…just personal preference.

I reactivated back all my plugins (I deactivated them before installing the new version), all works without problem except for WP-STATS software I have to re-keyin the API key. No problem, easy job since I have ASKIMET that uses the same key. Just copy and paste and done.

Lightbox plugin works without problem.

Now…I tried with my first post with WP2.5RC1.

1. Typing is easy, posting is no problem.
2. I want to upload some photos…how? Yeah…found the new insert picture button. There is an insert video feature too…I wonder how it works…but nevermind for the time-being as I have no video to share.

Read More

WordPress has released their latest version of the ever popular blog software – WordPress 2.5 RC1 on 18th March 2008 (5 days ago)!

It seems to have some new features that make posting and using wordpress more fun, but I have yet to try it…backuping my site at the moment before I upload the new version over my site.

RC1  – what does it means?

With a RC1 at the end of 2.5…it means the software is not a full release yet. RC = Release Candidates, which is very close to full release, and according to WordPress team, the software is very stable and has been tested by many, and is very close or same as full release. Software cycle normally is beta, alpha, RC then only full release. So, you can see that RC release has actually gone through beta and alpha stage, so it should be relatively stable and safe to use.

Yes, I am going to install it later and post a report on it. My most wanted feature: Multiple upload – is now in the new release! I have wanted this feature for a very long time (currently using an multiple image file upload plugin which got errors after uploading). Standard feature on WordPress is definitely BETTER than plugin, and I would want to keep the number of plugin to the minimum in my blog.

You can read about WordPress 2.5 SEAK PEAK at:

http://wordpress.org/development/2008/03/25-sneak-peek/

Happy blogging!

In Malaysia…

1. Can we post and blog about who we like and who we don’t like (Politics in Malaysia)?
2. Will we get detained by ISA without trial and behind the bar forever?
3. Are we allowed to share our personal view and dissatisfaction in our own blog?
4. Will we get charged for blogging without solid proof?
5. Can we reply to comment in other’s blog related to politics in Malaysia?
6. Are we FREE TO TALK in our own blog?
7. Is politics blogging dangerous?
8. Can we hide behind blogger.com, wordpress.com, blogspot.com?

What do you think?

At BlogMalaysia.com, we have successfully added RSS Feed to every blog that submitted to BlogMalaysia.com directory! Of course, members will have to key in the URL of their Feed, else our system will not be able to resolve the RSS Feed URL address and will not be able to retrieve the latest posts from the member’s blog.

Here’s a screenshot of my blog at BlogMalaysia.com:

Click the picture above to see the actual page in action!

So you asked: Why is this got anything to do with me?

Yes, it does. BlogMalaysia.com as a free bloggers directory will promote your blogs and gain more visitors to your site at now charge! When a member or visitor views your blog details at BlogMalaysia.com, if they have the chance to read about your blog posts without having to go to your blog first, then the chances of them visiting and clicking the links of your blogs will be higher.

How about search engines?

Yes, with your blog posts being feeded to BlogMalaysia.com, it means more links to your blog and will definitely get search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN…etc.) to rank you higher! Again, this is FREE! You don’t have to pay a cent to promote and advertise your blog freely at BlogMalaysia.com!

What’s next?

BlogMalaysia RSSFeed is still at its infant stage. There are more new features to come…but of course…start joining us in the directory and don’t forget to check out our FORUM too!

Happy Blogging!

BlogMalaysia.com is a Malaysia bloggers directory, provide FREE LISTING to all bloggers in Malaysia!

By submitting your blog URL to BlogMalaysia, not only it will help increasing your blog’s PageRank, but directly will help drawing more visitors to your blog!

Why BlogMalaysia?

• Free!

• Featured Blogger

• High PageRank (we have advertisement of BlogMalaysia in some high PR websites)

• Detail Statistics (Statistics of your blog PageRank, backlinks, indexed page at Google, Yahoo, MSN, Alexa)

• Free publicity/promotion to your website. Did I mentioned FREE?! Yes!

Recently, BlogMalaysia has an added new feature that is able to show and list down the latest 5 posts from your blog, feeded via RSS feed which you can include the RSS Feed URL when submitting your blog to BlogMalaysia.com! All feeds are automatically updated and you only need to submit your RSS Feed URL ONCE!

See example at:

http://blogmalaysia.com/detail/link-2.html

Join us today and submit your blog for FREE at:

http://blogmalaysia.com

I read some blogs registered at BlogMalaysia today…and in one of them I read about the latest (is it latest?) computer game called Age of Empire III.

I still remember the AOE first version, very very nice graphic and very interesting strategy game. Yes, I used to play that, together with Command and Conquer. I am not expert in these game though (one of my room mate was really good in this strategy game, set the game speed to the fastest and he can still manage to conquer).

No…I don’t play computer game anymore nowadays. Not interested anymore. My last PC game was Final Fantasy X. Spent a few months finishing the game…quite tiring and addicted. Waste of time actually…

Instead of computer games, my not so new hobby is actually computer related as well. I kinda like to spend my time in my websites (ShaShinKi, BlogMalaysia, PentaxWorld, PhotoMalaysia…etc.). Today I spent US$20 bucks to purchase some codes and improve the design and features of BlogMalaysia. I have always wanted the Browse by PageRank feature, but can’t justify to spend the money for the codes before seeing BlogMalaysia is going to last or not. I am not a programmer myself, so I can’t write the codes myself. So I will have to get some codes and modify it to my existing BlogMalaysia design. Yeah…still have to spend hours in merging the codes to BlogMalaysia, but the final result is quite satisfying.

Hope more will join BlogMalaysia…we have over 100 blogs now…and we are growing. Be the early bloggers to join us!

I don’t play computer games…I play with my websites.

I just found out that Google has just updated their PageRank recently.

Some of the blogs in BlogMalaysia has jump from PR0 to PR3! Congrates!

Here’s the PageRank changes of the blogs in BlogMalaysia.com:

(P/s: Negative PageRank means that the site has not been assigned a PR by Google yet.) Read More

Glad to see that BlogMalaysia.com has more than 100 blogs registered in the directory now!

Just a month+ old, BlogMalaysia.com is growing well…and many bloggers has show support by volunteering adding BlogMalaysia link logo in their blogs:

Besides directory, BlogMalaysia.com is having a forum for bloggers too now! We have a two very dedicated forum staffs at the moment, one is:

APPLE – a very dedicated blogger who is great in blog design as well as art design. Her blog updates frequently, with various type of informations and news. A good example for new bloggers to follow.
http://www.xiaoyenzi.com

Another one is:

Alvin – a buddy who I know personally, very knowledgeable person with good experience in forum management and serving.
http://alvinjani.mylovepress.com

Do take a look at their blogs, and of course don’t forget to register your blog for FREE at BlogMalaysia.com!

Happy blogging!

I notice that WordPress has really really poor thumbnail image quality when I upload my photos online. It really spoil a photo or even discourage people to view/click your photo.

To change the thumbnail image quality:

Edit File:
/wp-admin/includes/image.php

Change:
if (!imagejpeg( $thumbnail, $thumbpath ) ) {

To:
if (!imagejpeg( $thumbnail, $thumbpath, 90 ) ) {

90 is the image quality of your thumbnail. My personal experience is that 85-90 are of very good quality. Not encourage to use 100 as it will generate big file size with virtually very little different in image quality.

Here’s the thumbnail from original WordPress default setting (I used trial and error to check the compression setting of WP default, should be around 60-65%, which is definitely TOO POOR for photography work):

File size = 19.52 KB

Here’s after (80):

File size = 22.31 KB Read More

Ten Ways of making a Blog Looks Terrible

By following the 10 steps below, 99% chances you will be success in making your blog looks terrible… Try it at your own risk…

1. Use default design
Be it at Blogsphere, Bloggers or WordPress, use the default design given and don’t add any new things/widgets to it. Use the default colour and layout, so that everybody that use the same blogware will have the same look as yours. Users will come and forget about your blog in no time. This is the first successor move in hit and forget blog.

2. Blog name / Domain
Create a blogname/domain url with more than 10 characters and more than 4 vocal sounds.
Eg. http://www.blogextemehardremem.com

People will never be able to remember your domain name, even if they did, they will never spell it write (because you spell it wrong in the first place).

3. No photo, no picture
Use only TEXT in your blog. Make sure there is no picture and no text. A picture worth a thousand words? Nevermind, type one thousand words each time, don’t replace it with any picture. Show that you are a great typewriter.

Read More

I checked my blog statistic today and notice something “weird“.

I have a dramatic increment of visitors since 11th Feb 2008. That’s more than doubled!

That was the day my blog becomes Featured Blogger at BlogMalaysia.com!

Yes, the impact seems huge…especially since BlogMalaysia.com is still a new site.

Every month, there will be newly selected Featured Blogger. How to qualify? Makes your blog unique and nice, with banner in your blog, then you will stand a chance to be featured!

Just updated some new smilies to my blog…I like smilies…but I don’t like the one that WP supplied.

Here’s mine…

smilies	smilies
8)

Now I can smile more often…

I installed WordPress.com Stats few weeks ago, it is an official blog statistics software by WordPress, which I find it easy to install and use.

It is good to know how busy or popular your blog is, by studying the statistics.

Here’s the statistic of my blog for the last one week…average around 100 visitors per day…hmm…quite low. Anyway, that’s not my purpose of blogging (just want to have a place to release some of my thought from the little brain).

I got quite addicted to blog recently…thinking of starting a forum to discuss about blog (installing, features sharing, promoting…etc.). However, no time for it at the moment…and the burden is going to be quite a lot maintaining a site…so let’s keep it aside first.

(Got another project in mind at the moment…)