A million hits within 1 month blogging!!

Who is the super blogger that can achieve one million hits within one month of blogging and less than 20 post?

This is a blogger dream. As a blogger we always wanted a lot of traffic, so how does this blogger did that? This is simply amazing!!

Check it out.

Phone from Google. An iPhone killer?

Just in case you haven't realize that Google has been rolling out the android platform for mobile phone sometimes back. Now you can more appreciate after you watch the demo video. The demonstration was features in the recent Google I/O.

The android platform is an open source OS for mobile phone and is supported by a lot of major player in the industry -Open Handset Alliance. It has a lot of built in function and SDK to help you develop the applications. Java developer, you are allow to built your own handphone applications.

Can't wait for the phone to hit the market. I am sure it will be a frenzy and a great competitor to iPhone. You will know why after you watch it. A must watch video !!!

Be part of the Guinness world record! Set a Firefox World Record!

Firefox 3 is going to release soon. They wanted to set a world record on the most downloaded in 24 hours. So, if you are firefox fanatic like me. Go and support firefox 3!!


The are currently 714 (and counting) people from Malaysia already pledge for it. They will send you an email to let you know when is the download date.

I have a high hope on the new release, and tested the beta version already, it's great. Looking forward to the day! Go go go!

How to subscribe and read news from your homepage by using rss?

Sometimes ago, I was aware of RSS or Atom, I know it is kind of a news feed and a lot of people is using it to read news. However, I wasn't sure how to use it to my convenience. Normally I will browse to the news website or blog to read the news.

But there is another easier way, where you can have all the news from different source combine into 1 page.

Here is the step-by-step guide:

1. Log in to www.igoogle.com


2. Sign up or sign in by following screen shot below.




3. Key in your google account username and passoword.




4. Then, it will lead to iGoogle page. Here is the screen shot of my iGoogle homepage.




5. Click to add a new tab by following steps below. Check the box "I'm feeling lucky. Automatically add stuff based on the tab name." if you want Google to search for you all the news related to your tab name.
   



6. Go to your favourite blog or news station. In this case, I use Tun Mahathir Blog as an example. Log in to www.chedet.com.
   
   


7. Scroll down to the page and look for the atom/rss to subsribe.
   
   



8. It will lead you to this page, select Google from the drop down list and click subsribe now.
   
   



9. Select "Add to Google homepage" in this case.
   
   



10. Here is the result that we get. Click on the '+' sign to expand the news.
    
    



11. If you want to subscribe to my blog, click on the "subscribe in reader" as below
    
    

Good luck and have fun.

Photoshop on the web? Splashup

Ever wanted to edit your image when you are using a public computer where your favorite photo editing software is not around?

Have a look on Splashup. Splashup offer an online photo editing tools that mimic photoshop in terms of interface, but of course it offers much less than the powerful photoshop.

You don't need registration to test out the application, just click on the "Jump right In" image on the home page. I expected the Splashup application to take a longer time to load, but it does load quite fast to my surprise.

Here are my result using Splashup and webcam image capture capability offer by them.



Other than the photo editing capabilities, such as basic tools, layering, filter, crop, resize.. etc. Splashup also offer various ways to save your image. Including saving to:

• Your own hard drive
• Picasa
• Flickr
• Facebook
  

The experience of using it is quite fun, I almost forgot that I am using a web application, I feel like I am using a desktop application. The down side of this is it doesn't support right click and keyboard shortcut, but what can you ask more. This can be very useful, especially when I'm on travel and need to upload and edit some photo.

Give it a try!

How to print large image to several paper: DIY your own poster

Let's say you have a large photo and would want to print it to several paper and combine as a poster like this one.




You can go to this website, The Sect of Homokaasu. They offer two choices for you to do that.

1. Online services - You can upload your photo and they will split your file into several pdf, you can then print out to A4 paper can combine it like the poster above. You need to have Macromedia Flash plugin installed.
   
2. Software - They offer a software which is similar to the online services. You can always do it without the internet connection, and of course faster. .NET Framework 1.1 is required.

More importantly, it's FREE !!!

Use your imagination, a lot of creative project has been posted on their website. Here are some example:

Malaysian Own Chat Widget/Shoutbox !!

I've just installed a shoutbox on my blog. It's called shoutmix, and more importantly it's a Award Winning Malaysian made widget.

I've been selecting among few chat widget to install, namely meebo, cbox, shoutmix, plugoo, zoho chat.

• cbox - this is the first one that I found, the website looks too simple to me. So I proceed to find the next alternative.
• plugoo - I thinks it looks promising, because it can link to my IM, I installed with linked to my gtalk. But after I tested, it's more a IM than shoutbox, I wanted the message to left on my blog instead.
• zoho chat - So, I move on to the next this one. Anyway, I don't like it because it needs visitor to put in their name first before posting and looking at previous post. I prefer those allow direct put in name and chat.
• meebo & shoutmix - meebo and shoutmix is the last two options for me. I choose shoutmix mainly because it's made by Malaysian, but it does offer all the features that I need. Simple interface, shoutbox (that stored previous message), fast loading time.

So, please leave your message there, I will definitely reply you.

Which website is the hottest among Malaysian?

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Alert!! Your daily news is arriving

Imagine this, you are following the news of Earthquake in China, and every morning when you open up your email, there are latest news/blogs of your choice arriving.

You want to know the latest release of Justin Timberlake, and you got your mail instantly once there are latest news and press release on him.

You are studying the technology of Ruby on Rails, and you get the summary of what's happening with the technology everyday. You are updated with the truly latest happening news, blogs, opinions related to this technology.

Below are the screen shot taken from my GMail - showing the news on Ruby on Rails.

Sometimes, you might found that some company is hiring peoples to work with the technology, and sometimes you get free ebook recommended in some blogs. Yeah, it's a lot of fun and rewards!!

So, you want to setup you personalized daily or instant news alert?
Follow these simple steps:

1. Go to Google Alert website.
2. Put in the search term. That means the keywords of your news. Eg: "Andy Roddicks"
3. Choose the type (of the alerts). Choose "comprehensive" for maximum coverage.
4. Choose how often you want to received it.
5. Finally key in your email address. The alerts will be sent to this email.
   

Free book from the popular Sitepoint.com

The ever popular site Sitepoint.com is giving out their latest book [ The Photoshop Anthology: 101 Web Design Tips, Tricks & Techniques ] for free. It's a complete book not a sample chapter and it cost USD 29.95 to buy. It's will expire soon, so get it fast!








The Principles of Beautiful Web Design is the iconic book that Sitepoint had been release. It has influence many of the website existed today. You might want to refer to this book when you are designing your new website. If you are struggle to make your website looks good, buy a copy of this and you will know why.

A quote from the website about this book:

If you’re working on the Web today, you need a copy of this book to understand exactly why some designs work, while others don’t. It covers graphic design principles in a very straightforward and easy-to-follow way: you don’t need to have had any formal art or design training to benefit from this book.

Are you powered by Google?

How much do you know about Google free service? Please help me complete this survey. Just 2 question. The result will be share out.

Some of you might have already know Google Docs, where you can create words document and excel spreadsheet and share it for free. However, instead of inviting your friends or colleagues to collaborate and write on a topics, you can create a survey forms and ask the public answer it. The answer will be stored into the spreadsheet and can be edited or downloaded. Just like what I did with this.

Here is a screen shot of how you can create a new form.


This can be a marketing tools to collect the data you need. For example, you are going to launch a new product, and you not sure what is the right price. So, create a simple survey form and email to all your customer and collect the data so that you can make the best decision.

Tips: Keep your survey short and simple. Most people won't spend more than 10 minutes to complete it. They will just browse away. Keep it to less than 5 question with at least 3 question on MCQ instead of asking them to write.

Form are great to collect data, it's not just used in survey. For instance, you and your groups is doing a research on collecting website that are related to pets, and you want to categorize your collection into groups such as Dogs, Cats, Bird, Fish, Turtle and others. What you can do is create a form with 2 questions,

1. Enter the website (text)
   
2. Groups (Multiple choice or choose from list)
   
• Dogs
• Cats
• Bird
• Fish

Thus, everyone in your groups can key in the data once they found the a website related to pets.

By using this form, you can collaborate with your group member instantly instead of combining data after that. Moreover, you do not need to key in each entry manually, because you can just click on the multiple choice answer or choose from the drop down list. collaboration

It's very easy to create the form, what you need is a Google Account, and then click on this link spreadsheets.google.com/newform.

Introducing Sandy, my new personal assistant.

Dear friends, please meet my personal assistant Ms. Sandy. Now, I can afford to have my own personal assistant to help me organizing my schedule, contact, reminding me for appointment.. etc.

Look at the following scenario.

=====================
To: someone@email.com
CC: ms-sandy

Dear Someone,

We shall discuss the matter over the lunch on next Monday. See you then!

Regards,

Leow Tze Wei

ps:
Sandy, please remind me the meeting with Mr. Someone on next monday 1pm.
=====================

Thus, Sandy got my mail and she will remind me about this meeting through email, sms or twitter.

Cool! How much do I pay for her services? Free. Yes, it's free.
How can you have it? Just shout "I Want Sandy!!" and log on to iwantsandy.com

The concept is simple, I just need to email to her and ask her to remind or remember for me. More example how Sandy can help me organizing.

Reminder:

• Remind me about yoga class on Friday at 8am
• Remember to pick up dry cleaning in 3 days

Contact:

• Remember Jack's number is 012-012012021 and address is 3-1, Jln Malaysia, Tmn Malaysia.

Birthday:

• Remember Jeff's birthday 8 June @birthday

Make a list:

• remember groceries @weekly
  * eggs
  * milk
  * bread

and a lot of interesting stuff... find out more at iwantsandy.com

Earthquake relief - Find your relatives through google

Google is helping you to find your relatives in China. It's actually gives some result that is related to the earthquake victims.














I tried using the search a random name - "刘明", and I get some forum actually looking for this girl, with her picture attached.

There are a lot of other interesting links on this website. You can even view the maps where you can see how the relief operation is operating and of course picture and news from this tragedy.

If you want to help them, please check this out

援助中国抗震救灾

Google is connecting your friends

Google is bringing social networking to another level, where you can have Myspace, Facebook, hi5, orkut, Plaxo...etc on your own website (without any programming).

Look at the video on how it functions.



I've already send in the request to be one of the early preview user. Hope that they will approve my request. I will share with you on this blog, once I have it.

ShapeWriter

Take a look at this touch screen writing methods. There are always a problem when I was using my PDA to type. The screen was too small to poke at individual key on the screen keyboard. The hand-writing recognition on windows mobile was awful, I couldn't get the correct words most of the time. May be this is the solutions to touch screen input. Not sure whether they support "1 hand typing", which I only need to use 1 hand in order to type.



They are also one of the finalist for Google Android challenge.
Download.com Blog on Google Android 50 Finalist.