Clonezilla – The Open Source Norton Ghost

1747 days ago

I am pretty sure everyone here knows what is Norton Ghost right? Well, if you don’t know, I will tell you. It is used to “clone” or backup/copy your harddisk. What...

I am pretty sure everyone here knows what is Norton Ghost right? Well, if you don’t know, I will tell you. It is used to “clone” or backup/copy your harddisk. What I mean is that this software creates a exact duplicate copy of your existing harddisk to another harddisk or to a file. Let’s say for example, you have 10 sets of identical PCs which you are going to setup. Instead of doing the tedious job of installing the Operating System and various drivers and software on 10 PCs, all you need to do is to install on 1 PC. Then using a cloning software, make duplicate copies on the rest of the PCs, saving you perhaps hours or even days of hard work. It is also very useful for IT guys to easily restore any harddisk from their backup. Cloning is just like copying, and so it will take less time to restore a clone than to install your entire Operating System and software from scratch.

There are numerous software out there to do that. The most famous is Norton Ghost, but it is a commercial software. Which means that you need to pay for using it. I mean, someone did all the hard work to write the software and test it, so it should be right that they are paid for it. But anyway, if you are a cheapskate or just plain poor, you can try an open source version. It works just as well, if not better. The software is brilliantly called Clonezilla. If you don’t know anything about Linux, not to worry, they have a LiveCD which you can boot from. No need to key in any commands! Hooray! And it comes with a little “graphical” interface for you to play around. you can backup your harddisk into a file (called an image) or to another harddisk. You can also restore an image back to the harddisk too. Another impressive feature is that Clonezilla allows you to copy through the network to a server. Overall, no bad for a freely available piece of software.

I believed that there are many other open source disk cloning software available out there. But I think the best are the ones which works, have ample features and is easy to use. Sure, a cloning software is more of a technical program for more advanced users, but still, why waste so much time trying to learn to use a software when you can better spend the time doing something more useful, like getting piss drunk?

Webwobot Is Becoming Famous!

1748 days ago

My friend’s Search Engine Site – WebWobot is becoming more and more recognized on the Internet and there have been several people blogging about the website. And I am sure, with...

My friend’s Search Engine Site – WebWobot is becoming more and more recognized on the Internet and there have been several people blogging about the website. And I am sure, with that, there will be a massive increase in traffic to WebWobot. I am glad for Scolls (the webmaster of WebWobot) and we all wish him the best and continued success. He build his site from a wee little Search Engine to what is it now, a powerful and well respected Internet Portal. Hey, I am very active in WebWobot’s Search Engine Forum as well, so if you see me there, give me a call as well. I go by the name of Solidghost, because you can put your hands through me. And when the time comes for Scolls to go knocking on Google’s gates, I hope that he will allow me to hold his cloak. It’s my honour!

Why do I often frequent WebWobot forum? Well, the thing that attracts me to the forum is the core group of members (5 to 6 of them) who are pretty easy going. This makes the forum rather relax and visiting the forum enjoyable to say the least. This kind of atmosphere I like very much. And they are very helpful. Unlike other forums where you will get assholes and morons or some big shot moderator trolling the forum, you would not find such members here. You won’t be kicked down hard if you are a newbie in something. You won’t get your face smashed if you disagree with some of the main members. And you definitely won’t get screwed when you make a little joke here and there. This forum just isn’t like that. I guess that is what makes WebWobot forum so damn great to be part of.

The thing is I am afraid that as WebWobot continues to grow and more and more people start to join, we will become like those big forums you see on the web. Oh I am sure Scolls will work hard to prevent that from happening, but we all know how big forums are like and it’s very difficult to control what goes on in a huge forum. Oh well, only time will tell. And we all wish Scolls the best of luck in making his Search Engine one of the best on the Internet.

Short Stories – World Of Peter

1749 days ago

If you are interested in reading about far away places and destinations, you should take a look at World of Peter. It’s a blog done very nicely by Peter le Roux,...

If you are interested in reading about far away places and destinations, you should take a look at World of Peter. It’s a blog done very nicely by Peter le Roux, brother of the now famous Paul le Roux of Webwobot. I believed I have introduced this little blog before to you guys before, but it deserves another introduction for those who have missed the first one. You can read about exotic travels and places which you have only dreamed about traveling to. I know, it’s not the same as being there, but this is the next best thing.

And oh, check out this little post on South Africa. The ironic thing is that it is posted under the category Short Stories. I wonder how long will the post be if is posted under the some other category? 1 million words?? Anyways I have always enjoyed reading stuff like these. You know, stuff like brand new places, it’s history, it’s beauty, interesting events and the people and accomplishments they done there. And Peter writes it so well, makes me all both weepy and fuzzy inside. I didn’t know that South Africa has so many natural beauty and landmarks. It makes my head spin! After reading Peter’s blog, I feel the urge to drop everything and row my little leaky raft from Singapore to South Africa. If I only knew which way is West and if you can stand me saying “Are we there yet?” every few minutes. I mean, comparing Singapore to South Africa is like comparing this blog to Matt Cutt’s. There is no real fight. In Singapore, we have just the hot sun and ugly concrete buildings. The women here are not even pretty.

Let’s drink a toast to our South African friends with extremely strong alcoholic drinks!

PS: My keyboard is a bit flaky these days. The spacebar seemed not to work at will, so if you find the some words are stuck together, blame the keyboard, not me. Or just blame the years of accumulation of bits and pieces of food stuck beneath the keys. Have any of you wonder what lies beneath the keys in your keyboard? I don’t want to even think about it. Yucks.

Bittorrent Goes Software-less

1749 days ago

Take a look at BitLet. It looks like now you don’t need to install any software in order to download a torrent file. Well, not exactly, it makes use of the...

Take a look at BitLet. It looks like now you don’t need to install any software in order to download a torrent file. Well, not exactly, it makes use of the Sun Java Applet platform to perform the download for you. All you need to do is the copy the torrent URL and paste the link on their address bar and click on “Download Torrent”. I tried a few times with different URLs but all failed. It says that it could not “download metafile”, whatever that means. Anyway, it’s in beta or perhaps even in alpha, so you should keep your fingers cross and hope that they will improve this system. It could mean a lot to people like me who enjoy abusing every network I see. :-)

Anyway, I find this little project very interesting. No software to install. You can download torrent files in your office PC without your IT administrators knowing that you are doing it since there is no software installed. You still need to open up ports 6881-6889 on your firewall to allow incoming connections though. This is too bad as any IT administrator with half a brain intact will block those ports to stop the staff from using bittorrent which may suck all the bandwidth. It would work better if the applet allow us to change the ports needed for bittorrent access.

I would also recommend you to use a full-featured Bittorrent Client in your home. The Java Applet site is the simple and basic torrent client without any frills or additional features. That’s not what it is supposed to do and I am sure that the developers will not concentrate on adding features to their applet. And it looks like Java is now taking over the Internet.

Somebody Claimed That SEO Doesn’t Work….

1749 days ago

Yes, in the great little SEO (Search Engine Optimization) forum called Digital Point Forums, somebody claimed that since he/she couldn’t get results from SEO, it means that SEO and PageRank doesn’t...

Yes, in the great little SEO (Search Engine Optimization) forum called Digital Point Forums, somebody claimed that since he/she couldn’t get results from SEO, it means that SEO and PageRank doesn’t work. I don’t exactly understand what PageRank got to do with rankings on Search Engines, but this is exactly what he /she claimed! What happened is that this person spent a lot of money buying videos on SEO and SEO books but nothing works. This person that proceed to buy a software which “post to groups” like 100,000 posts per day, but instead of getting the results he/she wanted, the only thing was that his/her site was “taken down.” Worse, he/she claimed that although his/her site reached number one for “some terms” but there were little traffic from it. I mean, what gives?? If the terms don’t bring in traffic, it doesn’t mean that SEO doesn’t work, it means that you are targeting the wrong terms!

I am very surprised that people who read and study SEO, don’t actually understand SEO at all. It’s mainly about keywords and getting the right terms to attract Search Engine traffic. It also involves getting links and choosing the correct anchor text (which comes from the keywords and keyphrases). But it is not really as simple as that. A lot more effort is needed for SEOers to further optimize their websites. These include constantly updating content, keywords density, networking among your peers, linking, directory submission and so on. It’s true that SEO is not an exact science, but more of an act. But the basics are always there, and if you work on the basics, you should be able to do pretty well. Oh, and SEO is an continuous process, you will have to constantly improve and update your site to get ahead of the game.

I had mentioned web directory submission as a good method to help optimize your site. Directory submission is a pretty easy way (and sometimes even free) to get backlinks to your site and this in turn helps you rank in the Search Engines. I would recommend beginners to start by choosing some good keyphrases and do frequent directory submissions. It’s easy and it works. Just make sure that the listings in the web directory is crawl-able by Search Engines.

The Prime Society

1750 days ago

That’s the name of a Singapore restaurant which sells steak. I wonder how good their steak is when they call themselves The Prime Society. They must have very great steak to...

That’s the name of a Singapore restaurant which sells steak. I wonder how good their steak is when they call themselves The Prime Society. They must have very great steak to call themselves that, I guess. At least there is some uniqueness and innovative down here in Singapore. And they have this The Prime Society Districtus Commandments which seemed rather ridiculous but it somehow still makes sense. Their commandments are as follows:

1. Thou Shalt Not Consume Inferior Cuts.

2. Thou Shalt Honour Thy Meat With The Finest Cuts.

3. Thou Shalt Not Share Thy Meat.

4. Thou Shalt Not Steal Thy Neighbour’s Meat.

5. Thou Shalt Not Dishonour Thy Meat By Ordering Well Done.

6. Thou Shalt Gaze Lovingly At Meat Before Attacking.

7. Thou Shalt Love And Respect Thy Meat.

8. Thou Shalt Not Have A Vegetarian Friend.

9. Thou Shalt Not Be Distracted By Conversion.

10. Thou Shalt Not Leave Room for Desserts.

Very nice. And from what I read, their steaks, ribs and seafood is pretty respectable as well. With their well-stocked alcoholic drinks, you won’t even remember that you had had no Buddhist/Hindu friends after eating all those steaks. You will be drooling drunk very soon. Steak or no steak. So please do not drive to this restaurant. Take a bus or something. They are located near Overseas Family School Football Field.

The Importance of Doing Backups

1751 days ago

You will be surprised to know that a lot of webmasters don’t do backups on  regular basis. Well, I myself once did not believe in backups. Okay, the truth is that...

You will be surprised to know that a lot of webmasters don’t do backups on  regular basis. Well, I myself once did not believe in backups. Okay, the truth is that I was too lazy to do backup and I trusted that my webhost will do backups for me. Hey, that’s what they claim anyway. I need to tell you, that most of these claims are false. In fact, a lot of webhosts don’t even do weekly backups! They tell you that they have daily backups in whatever redundant system and what other nonsense but they usually don’t do it. It takes up too much resources on their server for them to do backups on all their accounts, especially if you are on a shared hosting plan. And just think of the space they need to store those backups.

And even if a webhost do have backups, they may charge you an amount to help you restore your files and database. And lazy webhosts may take a long time to restore your website, all the while you are losing visitors and customers. If your website is a directory, then you will lose even more than just visitors. All the submissions will be lost as well and you will pissed off those customers who have paid for their listings. In the web directory market, trust is everything and if your customers think that you are conning them, then you will not last long in this industry.

You may think that it will never happen to you, but that’s what I had thought too. I thought I was too small and insignificant for hackers to target. Well, nowadays hackers do server-wide hacking, which means that the entire server is compromised. My website was hacked due to someone else’s crappy excuse for a script. And all my files and database was damaged. And my webhost didn’t have any backups. I had to get one that was several weeks old from my own backup. This meant that since my site is a forum, all the posts and new members were lost. I had received a lot of complains from irate members who had to re-register or had to post new topics again. But that was a lesson well learned. I do backups everyday now and immediately after I did something significant. You should too.

Live Messenger Is Taking Over The Instant Messaging Market!

1752 days ago

Oh no, it looks like MSN/Live Messenger is now the most popular instant messaging platform in the world. I remember when I first used instant messenging, it was the famous ICQ....

Oh no, it looks like MSN/Live Messenger is now the most popular instant messaging platform in the world. I remember when I first used instant messenging, it was the famous ICQ. And it was during the time of dial-up! And during those time, the power of being able to write a message and have it delivered instantly was, well, cool. It’s just like chating where replies can be received instantly as well. And when ICQ introduced file delivery, I was stunned by it’s usefulness as well. But somehow along the way, ICQ fell out of favour. A lot of people started using MSN Messenger which came bundled with their Microsoft Operating System. They were just too lazy to download and install the ICQ software, thus MSN Messenger grew in popularity, just like Internet Explorer.

But luckily, unlike Internet Explorer, which remained stagant for a long time without any additional features or upgrades, MSN continued to evolve. When Skype came out and proved that audio and video messenging is workable and with broadband becoming more popular, MSN also started to add these features into their messenger. And not surprising, it became even more popular with the younger generation. Old folks like us still have our ICQ account.

A lot of users didn’t realize that compared to ICQ, MSN Messenger lacked a lot of features previously. Only recently did they started adding powerful features like offline messenging, file sharing and whiteboard sharing to their communication software. And competition like GoogleTalk and Yahoo! Pager were no fight at all. Although their software were capable instant messaging platforms, they don’t stand out against the ever so popular MSN Messenger and nobody saw the need for change, especially for the newer generation. Too bad, I would go for ICQ over MSN Messenger anytime but if you use ICQ and you are alone, you might as well don’t use Instant Messaging.

Paid Directories = Quality Directories?

1753 days ago

Do any of you think that paid directories are good directories? It seems that a lot of people, even experienced webmasters believe that paid directories are good directories and those free...

Do any of you think that paid directories are good directories? It seems that a lot of people, even experienced webmasters believe that paid directories are good directories and those free directories are just spam listing sites. I wonder how did they come to this conclusion? Does a paid directory has good quality content which free directories don’t have? Does a paid directory means that their editorial integrity is higher? I don’t think so. I mean, a lot of paid directories will accept any site which pays them a sum. They don’t really care about whether the site being submitted is of a high quality or not. So how can anyone say a paid directory is a quality directory? Sure, there are paid directories which are of high standard in design, content and user-friendliness but there are also free directories having the same thing.

I think I need to burst this ridiculous idea that paid directories are always better directories. They are not. In fact, I would be more suspicious of paid directories, since their sole purpose is to make money through paid submissions of websites. Would their editorial standard be up to mark? Would they accept a site just because they are paid? I am sure that there are a number of paid directories which do. And how do you definite quality sites in the first place? The problem propaganda. Paid directories often have the means to “brainwash” us into believing anything they want. Their constant media blitz led us to that paid directories are good directories, which in my opinion is mainly a lie.

Of course I am not dishing paid directories. There are indeed good quality paid directories out there. And since these directories have a higher income, they will be able to hire editors to help manage and maintain their directories. This will definitely raise the standard of the directories.  My main objective of this post is to tell you that there are free directories which are of very high quality as well. You should look out for them in your next website submission job.

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