Sunday, December 31, 2006

How I First Learned English

This post is brought to you by Answer English.

My first language is not English. I am more comfortable speaking in my local language rather than English. However, being exposed to English language since I was at the tender age through cartoons, English advertisement and Sesame Street, I am more comfortable reading and writing in English but not in speaking out. When I was 5 years old, my parents brought me to Sunderland, England. My father pursued his degree at Polytechnic of Sunderland (now known as University of Sunderland). So, he sent me me to a primary school where I was there for 2 years. As a result, my local language became limited and my English became much more better.

So, when I came back to Malaysia, I hardly can speak my local language properly. The people I know began to put pressure on me and I had to restore my local language skill for my own social well being. Since then, English became my favourite subject eventhough I couldn't really speak it up fluently. I must admit that being an introvert person, it is my fault that I couldn't really stand out and speak up. However, I'm turning that around and screw the people who pressured me not to speak in English.

The point I'm making out here is, the environment can very much determine your verbal ability. If you want to be the best, learn from the best. If you want to speak the proper English language, what is more better than English Courses in London. I went to London once when my parents brought me over there. It is a beautiful place to be apart from expensive. If you need the best English language course, I believe London English School is the best place to sign up.

This post is sponsored by:

Wednesday, December 27, 2006

Why Today's Internet Connection is Down

This morning, I realized that the internet connection was unusually slow. I thought maybe it was just my area that was slow since I've accustomed to the slow broadband connection at home eventhough I'm on a 512kbps. So when I got to the office, I logged on internet and it was still excruciating slow. My office uses a 1MB broadband connection. I had no other choice but to do some other offline work instead of bothering to do stuff online.

My web hosting where I host my company's website is already dead more than a day. Shooting them an e-mail didn't work and trying to call them doesn't seem like something worth trying since the data center is located somewhere in the United State. Nevertheless, for a web hosting fees of less than USD10 a year, it's no big deal. The sad part is, I've parked 3 other domains using the same web hosting and incoming traffics to all of the other websites is also compromised.

So, why is the internet at my place here in Kuala Lumpur down? A friend of mine who happened to work at TM Net, the main Internet Service Provider told me that their internet exchange server in Taiwan got hit by the earth quake last night. The magnitude of the quake was 7.1 and 7.2, less than the previous 9.3 magnitude quake that went off the coast of Indonesia. It triggered the tsnunami warning after 2 years since the last one but the tsunami didn't happened though. More of the news here.

This is what TM Net official website announced:


I had to use Googlepages to host this image since my Photobucket image hosting can't establish any connection from where I am. It also made me realized how dependable I am to the internet. I wonder why Google is still accessible at the time of writing while Yahoo is out of reach already. Maybe the have a server farm nearby where I live. Content and web pages hosted in my country and nearby is accessible however apart from that, it's dead or extremely slow.

Here's an announcement by Jaring, another internet service provider:



They are more or less the same boat because they also share internet infrastructure. I hope they could find a way to overcome this problem.

Tuesday, December 26, 2006

How I Discovered John Chow Dot Com

Last September or so, I was actively seeking for methods and some sample of niche websites that I can model. While browsing and searching for information, I discovered WickedFire Forum, an active forum for webmasters. The forum is a established by a super affiliate marketer by the name of Aojon. His blog was established June this year and has an extremely valuable information that is in my opinion is better than paid e-books that is selling in the internet marketing world. Because of his online success, I read all about his writing in his personal blog and this is where I found out about John Chow's The Tech Zone. John Chow was a featured guest on Aojon Radio Show talking about Ways to increase your CTR with contextual ads.

Landing on John Chow's blog, I saw this traffic graphs:



I was hooked on John Chow's writings. I've also discovered a lot of valuable information and tips on building websites and online related activities. Although I'm still far behind in the online publishing industry, John Chow is one of my many idols that I wish to model. Looking forward for his brilliant writing and hope he could share a lot more of it for aspiring Dot Com Mogul like myself.

Friday, December 22, 2006

I Am A BattleStar Galactica Fan

I love Sci-Fi movies and stories. The reason is because it is logical instead of magical. Magic can be tricked or manipulated but science fictions can be backed up with theory.

I love BattleStar Galactica. It is aired on my local 8TV every Monday night. However, the show has now reached Season 3 in the United States while I'm still watching Season 1. Check out the YouTube video below, I just loved the music blended with actions with the right timing. Always give me the goosebumps and excitement.

BattleStar Galactica




Since I love this show too much, I've created a special page containing BattleStar Galactica (BSG) Videos that summarizes everything you need to know about BSG if you've never knew or watched it before. Enjoy!

Widen Your Bathroom Choices

This post is brought to you by http://www.Taps4Less.com

Some people like designer bathroom. Some people love to renovate their bathroom. Both has something in common, you need to have a bathroom design ideas. Whether you want to design your own bathroom or you pay someone to design for you, the most important thing is to have at least a basic bathroom images in your mind. At Taps4Less, there are ample of images of bathroom taps, bathroom showers and bathroom furnitures just to name you a few.

These are some of the items that had my interest in building my own futuristic bathroom:

Futuristic bathroom item


So head over to Taps4Less and make your dream bathroom a reality.

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

How To Share One Computer With Up To 10 Users

When I was younger, the internet was sort of like a luxury. The first time I went to a high speed internet cafe in Penang, I had to pay RM7 an hour but it's worth every penny of it since it is so lightning quick compared to my nowadays TMNet Streamyx connection. It reminds me of the speedy internet connection when my family first installed the RM111 TMNet Streamyx package which includes the ADSL modem when it was first launched. Despite of the slower speed my ADSL connection today, I can't live without an internet connection since I'm hooked on it most of my daytime.

When I see FREE INTERNET ACCESS, I get very excited. Last weekend, I brought my digital camera and took these pictures at level 3 of One Utama New Wing:



Those guys are on school holidays so what is better to do than hanging out at the mall. Why are they there? They are checking out their e-mails and their Myspace account. During my school days, Myspace doesn't exist yet but MIRC was the craze at that time. MIRC is still active but with today's media rich services I guess the number has decreased compared to last time. I'm going off the subject already, what I wanted to show you is how you could have multiple consoles just by using one computer host. I tried and build one during my employment in on of the company I worked with but the sad thing is, the console was even slower than I thought.



I forgot the name of the previous product I've used to create multiple console last time. This console you see here is built using "Office Station", a product by NComputing. What I like about this product is it is faster than the other product I've used. If I have my own small company, I would definitely install this product, this way I would save on:
  • Cost: because I can just buy one PC and the rest is just on other peripherals such as mouse, keyboard and monitor.
  • Security & Maintenance: I'm a hands-on technical person, so I know what to do just in case something goes wrong. It'll save me time to repair just one PC instead of 5.
  • Power: A PC can consume quite a lot of electricity. With the latest hike on the new electricity tariff, it is better to save up on whatever you can.
  • Space: I like my desk to have some space where I can write comfortably.
You can read further on the advantages of OfficeStation. I don't want to touch on the disadvantages of this product eventhough I'm not getting paid of writing about this product. I guess you can pretty much figure out yourselves.

Monday, December 18, 2006

Bullet Proof For Protection

This post is brought to you by http://www.pacificbulletproof.com

When we talk about bullet proof, the first thing that will come to our mind is probably an image of a bullet shot at a glass but the glass doesn't break. Another image is a police wearing a vest got shot but soon gets up with a pain on his chest as shown on many movies or TV series. If you are a fan of the popular Crime Scene Investigation (CSI), you'll be familiar with gunshots and ballistic measures they take to solve difficult crime cases.

Let's look at this video explaining about how to build bullet resistant cars:





Based in Anaheim California, Pacific Bullet Proof Co. offers bullet proof product such as:
  • Deal (Cash) Tray
  • Bullet Resistant Glass
  • Bullet Resistant Doors
  • Bullet Resistant Fiberglass
  • Bullet Resistant Acrylic
  • many more
Other benefits of using bullet proof made material is:
  • Protect from potential terrorist attack
  • Protection from explosions
  • Protection from high impact knock
Interested to see list of all products and a free educational video, visit Pacific BulletProof Co. and "Make your world a safer place".

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Saturday, December 16, 2006

The Lucrative Business of Credit

This post is brought to you by http://www.tradelinebroker.com

If you have never heard of credit before, then click here. You should read, learn and understand what credit is because it can be a life changing one. If you are:
  • a US Citizen
  • own a major credit cards for 2 years
  • have a minimum credit limit of $5000 for each account
  • never missed any payment (Good Credit Report)
  • Have nothing to do or looking for some additional income
Seasoned Trade Lines is inviting people with the above qualification to help other people raising the score for their personal line of credits and at the same time reward yourself with $50-$150 for every person (or clients if you assume this a business) you've helped.

Your work if you choose to participate is to do some simple phone calls to your credit card company or maybe some visits to the bank. If you love dealing with financial documents, then this job is perfect for you. To learn more about what I mean, visit:

Explore The Business Of Credit


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Car Insurance Financing For Malaysian

Earlier this month, my car insurance expired. Being in a low income bracket and living in Kuala Lumpur, renewing my car insurance requires almost a month of my salary and my savings can get depleted. What other choices do I have? The first thing I had on my mind is to get a loan. I'm not getting any personal loan just to pay for my car insurance because of their high interest rate. My only choice is now to get AEON Car Insurance Financing. By the way, I'm not getting paid for this post by AEON or any other party, this is just to share with you what I have found. Maybe I should ask them for a small fee to promote their products and services online, that would be a good idea.

The most interesting feature I like about AEON Malaysia website is their estimation calculator:



As you can see above, the maximum length of repayment is 10 months. Breaking it down, an insurance premium of RM1000 requires you to pay only RM114 per month. Eventhough the interest rate is calculated to be 14%, however it reduces my financial burden so I don't have to decide to withdraw my savings. Of course, if you can find the money the total amount, then there is no need to apply for this car insurance financing. This could have save you RM140. For more information, you can go to the nearest AEON Malaysia branches.

Eventually, I borrowed some money from my family since it is interest free. To not take things for granted, I recorded the money borrowed in my personal financial sheet. Well, at least now you know what other choices you have if you are stuck in a financial dilemma.

Friday, December 15, 2006

Seeking For More Blogging Income? Blogsvertise!

I've known a few local exceptional bloggers who achieved a full time income just by blogging. They love what they do and they passionately speak about it and show their love towards blogging. From my observation, if you love what you do and you get paid doing it, that is the greatest job in the world. Can we do the same as what they have done? Of course you can. However, not everyone can follow the footstep of those who had succeeded. As in any jobs available on the planet, there is always a price to pay for success.

So, how do you earn cash and generate income from your blog? Personally speaking, I make a small pocket money which I haven't been able to cash in yet. The most easiest thing you can do is to put Google Adsense script on your blog and for every click on the advertisement shown on your blog, you earn a portion of what the advertiser has paid Google. Pretty simple don't you think so? Well, not quite. If you have never fiddle around with HTML, then installing the Google Adsense script is a pretty scary thing to do. If you are not careful, your whole blog could be messed up. Is there another option apart from Adsense?




How does Blogsvertise work? In a nutshell, a blog or a website has space on it. It's like a piece of paper or billboard where you write information on it. Those spaces on your blog could be sold for a piece of other informations. The person who buys that space is oftenly called the advertiser while you are the publisher. A publisher get paid whenever the spaces are sold to the advertiser. In Blogsvertise's context, your post would be the advertising space and Blogsvertise would pay for it. The only thing you need to do now is to write whatever you feel or according to what the advertiser has requested. That is all, pretty simple right?

For more information, read and re-read the whole FAQ page. I love reading FAQ more than reading a whole page of introduction. Try and register yourselves on Blogsvertise for yourself and let me know about it.

Monday, December 11, 2006

BCB MasterCard Electronic Has Been Discontinued?

This morning, I went to my nearest BCB or now it's called CIMB Bank branch. The reason I went there was to update my savings account passbook. I hadn't update my passbook since July 2005. Using a saving account for all my financial transaction, I couldn't track every spending I've made because there was no records available for small transactions made. I'm planning to open up a current account since there would be more benefits using that account. However, I'm not opening up an account so soon, I have to wait until I'm ready before I can do that.

So, while updating my passbook, I asked the officer for an application on BCB MasterCard Electronic. The officer then searched and searched for the application form. 5 minutes later, the officer came back to me and said that ever since BCB is now merged with CIMB, the card is now discontinued for application. Former card holders can still use their cards but new application is no longer available. I was quite disappointed because it wasn't easy for me to come to the bank, there was not enough parking outside, furthermore I had planned to apply for a debit card since last October.

End of last month and earlier this month, I tried to search for Ambank NexG Prepaid MasterCard at a few 7 Eleven branches. After asking several branches around my workplace and also around my home, one of the personnel told me that they have stopped distributing AmBank NexG Prepaid MasterCard. I have no clue why they stop the distribution but I was again disappointed. I wonder why there wasn't enough promotion and recommendation to use debit cards. Maybe financial institutions doesn't want you to use debit card and urge you to overuse your credit cards so that they can profit from you even more.

My only choice now is to apply for Public Bank Visa Electron.

Public Bank Visa Electron

I'm heading to Public Bank this week for an application form. Hope my application would turn up well because I don't want to be disappointed again this time.

Sunday, December 10, 2006

Kuala Lumpur Wordpress Meet Up

If you have installed Wordpress blogging software before or simply registered a blog on Wordpress.com (I've done it both), you must be very much familiar with the default template that Wordpress blogging software is using. It's called K2. One of the developers is Zeo, a Malaysian webmaster. He is organizing a Kuala Lumpur Malaysia Wordpress Meetup. Although this blog is not developed with Wordpress, I'm considering to migrate this blogger blog into a my own domain name (www.ashrufzz.com of course) using a shared self hosted Wordpress somewhere. The reason I'm still considering is because I don't have any budget to buy the domain and hosting plan since it'll cost me a minimum of RM65 a year. I can park my domain name using my company's shared hosting for free and I can save my money even more but anyway, I think I'll remain on free Blogger at the moment.

I'll check my schedule to see if I can come to the meetup. Eventhough I'm using Blogger, I blog using my company's blog using Wordpress blogging software and I loved them. Here's the detail of the meet up if you are interested:

Date: 16th December 2006 (A Saturday)
Time: 2.30pm
Place: Starbucks, Berjaya Time Square, Kuala Lumpur
Person to look up for: A guy with a Wordpress t-shirt (A big W)

Friday, December 08, 2006

Do You Really Believe In Multiple Stream Of Income?

I just watched a video by John Reese. He's one of my favourite online entrepreneurs and for many others that I have much respect. The topic he came out on his video is:

The Biggest Myth About Wealth Building


You can click on the above image to watch his video. It shatters all my belief of creating multiple streams of income. Well, come to think about it, it is quite true. If you are struggling in creating one stream of income, then how on earth can you create more. We all have an equal 24 hours a day in our everyday lives.

I bought this book 2 years back:



It's an eye opener to a whole different ways of creating incomes. By then, I found another one which I couldn't find at my local store:




Having a lot of information is good. Having a lot more FOCUS is even better.

Update 11/12/2006: John Reese has came out with a sequel of his video titled - A Focused Flood of Income. Check it out!

Wednesday, December 06, 2006

Micro Credit Loan: AEON Cash

In my previous post, I've have written about Xpress Cash by CIMB Bank. Yesterday, while browsing through The Star newspaper, I've spotted another one of these no hassle Micro Credit Loan by another financial institution called Aeon Fast Cash. Here's a screenshot of what they are offering:




Interested to see more about the information, click on the image above for a larger portion of the newspaper advertisement. Here is what Aeon Malaysia website is offering:




So, now we have an almost detail information in our hands. Let's do some calculation and some analysis on what we have. Assuming that we are not a member of their club, we would like to take a RM3000 loan from Aeon Fast Cash as opposed to Xpress Cash from CIMB Bank. Wait a minute, I don't have to calculate it myself, they already have a calculator, how cool is that?




So, now we calculate RM170 times 24 months, that would sum into RM4080 of repayment. That's RM1080 of profit for the bank. Comparing that to my previous CIMB Xpress Cash encounter, that RM168 less. Not bad, but still a lot of money you have to repay if you come from a lower income group. I haven't dig out any additional cost that comes with the loan term but you get the picture right?

Last week, the nation was shocked by a family who couldn't afford to pay back their loan from a loan shark and cost them their children and nearly their lives (click here to read about this sad story). So, this piece of information could be useful but can only be a useful tool if you have a strategy to repay it. Eitherway, I'm going to bootstrap and not going to apply for any loans at the moment.

Monday, December 04, 2006

Accessories To Control Laptop Heat

I've been writing about laptop heat for quite some time now. Previously, I wrote about Keeping Your Dell Laptop's Heat Under Control. This time, I'll write about the accessories that can be use to physically keep your laptop's heat within the suitable operating heat. My boss is currently using this laptop accessories for his Sony Vaio laptop:

Laptop small desk

This accessory provide a dock with a 12 degree angle and raises your laptop about 1" - 2" from your desk. This allows ample of space for heat dissipation. The palm rest is a gel-filled wrist and is quite comfortable. It comes with a built-in cable management and an AC adaptor which my boss doesn't really use them. However, it's a useful and comfortable docking place for your laptop.

Other dock station I've found is this one:




Adding a few more dollars, now I can a mouse pad since I don't really like using the touch pad. The reason I hate a touch pad is because there is no accuracy when using it. If you are a Photoshop power user, then you should know better. Check it out by clicking on the image above. You can also buy it directly from Amazon website.

As for me, I'm looking for one for myself at my local IT Shop at a bargain price.

Friday, December 01, 2006

Making Money With YouTube Videos

I can spend all day long waiting, downloading and viewing videos on YouTube. If you haven't browsed YouTube before, you should try it and you'll be surprised on what other people are sharing. YouTube gets an enormous amount of traffic from all over the world and they are raking millions from advertising. While some people thought YouTube would never survive the high cost of bandwitdh which they have to pay up every month, eventually Google bought them over on a USD1.65 million deal of stocks. You can read about YouTube history on Wikipedia.

So, how can you make money with videos? The answer is by using Google Adsense. Personally, I've never got any Google cheques yet but I'm working slowly building websites, blogs and add in some Adsense Ads while building traffic to the websites created. I don't know when I'll get the cheques because it is really up to me to work or not. Recently I found other ways that could make my Adsense ads scripts/code to get more exposure thus increasing my chance of getting a click and some money.

The place is called TheVideoSense. After more than 2 weeks joining and submitted 11 videos that I've selected from YouTube, I've managed to get about 134 views for the videos submitted and 103 impression of my Adsense Ads. Not bad, however I'm not so sure videos can increase the Click Through on ads because for me, if I'm watching videos on YouTube, I never give any attention to the surrounding ads. Anyway, it is worth a try. Either way, thinking positively, the more you can exposed your Adsense Ads, the more chances of money you can earn: