Yes, it looks like Google is really going to setup shop on the moon. You will never escape Google, even if you are out of this world. Google is everywhere, and now, it’s going to the moon. Please read more here. Although it claims to be helping or sponsoring to fund some exploration to the moon, I am sure we all know how Google behaves right? Google and their adwords.

Anyway, this Google Lunar X Prize is supposed to create a so-called “Global private race” to explore the moon, AGAIN. They hope to get people around the world involved to help mankind. I think that it is good if it helps mankind, but why not fund an expedition to Mars to something, where no human has ever set foot? I am not sure whether exploring the moon (again) will really help mankind, unless we miss something the first thing we humans were there. Or could it be it was all faked? Conspiracy theorists would love that!

If you read the website, you will see the reason why they choose the moon. One of the main reasons is that you can see the moon very clearly from Earth at night where the vampires roam. So if they project advertisements, even just textual advertisements, people on the Earth can see them. And if it is the full moon, they can have the round shaped video advertisements, but only for big companies who pay millions. Way more than the superbowl ones. The problem they face now is audio. It’s going to be difficult to project audio from the moon through radio waves. It’s too slow. But they may decide to use Helium 3 to propel audio waves at the speed of light to their viewers. However from what I heard, Helium 3 is very rare and it may not be altogether practical.

I think it is brilliant for Google to go out and expand. I mean, humans are just dumb, it’s easy to trick humans to buy stuff which they don’t need. But Aliens are another thing. Some are definitely smarter than humans, which would make them harder to trick. So if Google develops methods to counter them, just think of how many more humans they can trick into buying useless stuff like golden golf balls, silver werewolf-killing knives or even Google PageRank. If it works on Aliens, humans won’t be any problem.

We are all so looking forward to it.

I have been checking my Singapore business directory’s statistics and I realized one thing, it’s getting more hits than before. My business directory has many categories like food catering, restaurants, travel, education, beauty, health and so on. However, the increase in the number of hits come only from a few categories, namely travel and catering. The rest like restaurants, education and so on are not getting more hits. They remain stagnant more or less. Thus I think, one of the most important things in the web business directory is to cater for seasonal changes.

Since, the holidays are coming (in Singapore, it’s the school holidays where parents would bring their children for trips overseas), the interest in tours and travelling increased. Thus, more people are searching for tour and travel agencies. And so, the number of hits to these pages increase. We can use this seasonal “change” to do our Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as well. So now, I am increasing my efforts on the terms “travel agencies”, “tour agencies”, “food catering” and ”christmas parties”. In the past, I don’t really bother about seasonal changes, but now, I realize that it is a very important part of SEO which a lot of people overlook. Knowing what terms to optimize and when to “jump in” are both equally important. Don’t expect a lot of people to search for holiday related terms when it’s the wrong time of the year for it. I mean, you will definitely get less hits unless you are optimizing for terms which a lot of people are searching for.

So my advice to you guys is to know the current market and situation. For example, if there is a important soccer match coming, it will generate interest in soccer. So optimize for it. Of course, you need to give it some time for your SEO to work, so plan ahead. Usually, it takes about 1 month or so. I mean, we all know when the holidays are coming right, so start optimizing beforehand.

It seems that some Windows Vista users are experiencing weird things, like their machines updating and then rebooting by itself (automatically). You can read the story on ZDnet here. According the Microsoft (those people who created Windows), they have no idea what is causing this behaviour. They are claiming that some third party software is responsible for that. But I guess it is not a smart excuse, since what they are saying is that Windows Vista is not secure. Just think, if some sotware can force Windows to update itself, what else can they do without your knowledge! Perhaps it is some antivirus or security software which automatically enables the Windows Update?

I mean if the creators of Windows are at a lost, what can normal users like us do? Or perhaps it is the idea of Microsoft all along? Sure, sometimes updates are good, but how do we know what Microsoft is “updating” for us. And what information is Micrsoft taking from our systems? We have no idea how it works and to what extend this type of updates will affect our system. In fact, we will never know. And how about the updates themselves? What do these updates do to our systems? I am sure most of us want to know what updates are being done and whether we need those updates in the first place.

How many of you face this behaviour in your Vista machines? Do you face the same problem in Windows XP machines as well. From what I know, none of my company’s Windows PCs have this “problem”, so it is very likely a third party software causing it. But what do I know, right?

Perhaps one day, Windows Machines can updated themselves and when they reboot, presto! Linux! The best update to Windows ever. Now, if only I can teach others to use Linux.

How many of you guys have read the book “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” by Robert Kiyosaki & Sharon L. Lechter. Well, if you have not read the book, it’s actual theme is about investing and managing your money. It is telling it’s readers that instead of just working for money, they should learn to properly manage and make “their money work for them”. Well, in my opinion, this book is a good read and it does a good job making me understand about finances and money handling. It’s a motivator of sorts.

However, the problem is it does NOT actually tell the reader how to go about doing it. It tells the reader to invest in “income generating assets” but doesn’t say exactly what these “assets” actually are. And this results in readers feeling so motivated that they ironically stop thinking straight and start pumping all their money into stocks, shares and whatever shithole they can find. Whenever they see some opportunity to “make money” just by pumping money into, they go for it. The idea is to invest in all and every “income generating assets” they can find. This has make me worry about the financial situation of those people who cannot afford to go investing but are still doing it anyway. Even the situation for the middle class is worrying. This book has created a “greed is good” culture with no concrete way to go about doing it. It makes people blind to the risk and dangers of investing. I think this group of people will get burnt pretty soon. Just like in many economic “corrections”, the rich will get richer, the poor will get poorer (the poor includes the middle class as well).

The root problem of this book is that it tells readers to go out and start investing smartly but with no real action plan. It has tons of very cool phrases, which you can splew to your friends and whom will get “motivated” as well. The phrases like “The only way to get out of the “Rat Race” is to prove your proficiency at both accounting and investing, arguably two of the most difficult subjects to master” and “”The sky is falling. The sky is falling.” Most of us know the story of “Chicken Little,” who ran around warning the barnyard of impending doom.” as well as “The Rich have money work for them”. I am sure they do impress your friends, but if it is just words, then it is as good as useless. It draws people to act, but they will usually act in a wrong way. It tells you not to “fear the risks” and to get out of the “rat trap”, but in actual fact, the book has created nothing more than a lure to unknowing and ignorant investors out to “get rich quick”. That’s what this book preys on - Greed. And it’s infinite. This greed will lead to a lot of people becoming a “poor dad” oh so soon. It’s exactly like those pyramid/MLM selling schemes we see a few years back where only the top few are making real money.

This book is more of a “sell” than a book about managing your finances. Although it doesn’t really tell you what it is actually selling, the idea behind it is pretty obvious. People with no idea how to go about investing will try every “get rich quick scheme” out there in the hopes of hitting the jackpot. History is filled with such people, and most of them never hit the jackpot.

If you are interested in reading something about Rich Dad, Poor Dad, try reading John T. Reed’s analysis of Robert T. Kiyosaki’s book Rich Dad, Poor Dad. No I am not such a critic of Robert, but seriously, this book has a lot of flaws and really some bad advice. It’s a good motivator but that’s about it. Good education, good outlook in life, good working attitude, brilliant ideas and general understanding of money is better than such get rich quick schemes. Don’t fall easily to such a trap.

Have you ever wondered how some sites get crawled so often? I mean, they updated it and in no time, it gets indexed by Google and you can see them on the index already. Usually you can see those like news or media sites which get the most love from Google. How do you get Googlebot to crawl your site more often? It’s actually very simple really. I will provide you with some tips to get your site indexed faster and more often.

1. Push Googlebot to updated pages. Use robots.txt wisely to get them spiders to those new pages which you would like to get indexed. Disallow spiders from entering those pages which are of no use to your site like those contact pages and so on. And make use of Sitemaps to tell Googlebot where to crawl and which pages are new. Whenever you update or add a page, you should always update your sitemap. Use Google’s Sitemaps to help find out any problem with your submitted sitemaps. You will also need to ensure that your site is crawlable and navigable.

2. Update your content. Yes, you should update your content often. Once Google knows that your site is updated often, they will send their spiders your way more often as well. You see, Google loves new content and they want their own index to be up-to-date as well. I would recommend updating your site once per day with real content which your visitors will find useful. Or just to tell them that you are alive.
3. Authority. Well, it’s same as content but Google seems to like sites which they believe to be an “Authority” on a particular subject. So, your content and information on your site should be useful and informative as well. Usually for experts in a certain field. Once you get into Google’s good books, they will send Googlebots to your site like crazy. And you will rank better as well.

4. Links. What else. Probably the most important is backlinks to your site. You will need plenty of them and from various and related sources. This is possibly linked to how Authoritative your site is and vice versa. Usually Authority Sites get a lot of backlinks and this will definitively get some spiders coming your way. And as with authority, having good content will ensure of that. If you get strong backlinks, you will most likely be crawled more often.

The reason why getting your site indexed and crawled often is important is that it gives you an edge in Search Engine results. Only once you GET your content into Google’s index before you can rank. If it is not indexed at all, then it will never rank and anyone searching will never get to your site. Basically, you need to get indexed first in order to rank.

while the rest of us are stuck in the bottom of the shit hole. Well, not exactly, but it looks like Physicists will be the first to test out blazing fast Internet access in the near future when Internet2 launched it’s high speed Internet connection. Currently Internet2 has a theoretical limit of 10Gbps but soon, it can go up to 10 times faster. What they do is to send data by 10 different colours or wavelengths over a single cable, thus increasing the bandwidth 10 times. Wow, pretty neat eh? Who could have thought of that!

The best part of this is now Physicists can send each other porn movies super doper fast. Or even just high resolution jpeg pictures of beautiful women? That will certainly help them integrate back into mainstream society. Maybe they can finally come up with a String Theory which normal people understand? Or perhaps a Unified Theory of Something which really is unified and does not come with a big fat headache? Super blazing fast Internet will also make sure that Physicists will keep close contact with each other, is there any better way for human to evolve than combining the brilliant minds of geeks and wild haired people? Yes, we are all looking forward to more brilliant theories of coloured balls from these Physicists as well. Maybe they can create a award-winning play we can all enjoy? So give them that fast Internet access, pronto.

And it seems that in the near future, Internet2 will be providing a network speed of 400Gbps to their customers. Heehaa! Hold on to your horses, it’s going to be a wild ride that even party animal Albert Einstein will be shocked and awed.

You can read the article here if you want to. Or you could just complain to your ISP that your Internet connection is too slow.

Woohoo, I am on a roll. I have yet another defrag program to introduce to you guys. It’s JKDefrag. And it’s Open Source too. Hahaha, I am sure some of your Open Source geeks will be pleased about this. You can download this software and distribute it freely.

Anyhow, JKDefrag uses the standard Windows API to defrag your HDD thus your data should be quite safe. It seems that a lot of commerical “defragers” use the same API as well.  However, JKDefrag is much faster than the Windows Defrag program and it is optimized for everyday use. It allows you to set different defragmentation strategies so you can optimize your data to your heart’s contend. What is also interesting is that it allows you to defrag individual directories or files! So you won’t need to spend hours defraging your entire HDD when all you need is to optimize a certain directory. And you can even use this program as a screensaver. It will run whenever your Screensaver starts and it will display a detailed defragmentation map of your HDD.

JKDefrag allows you to defrag your HDD even when your HDD is full(or near full), unlike most other defrag programs out there. And because it is meant for the causal user, it’s pretty simple to operate and use. You shouldn’t have any problem using this software even if you never touched a defrag software before.

JKDefrag works by analyzing the data on your HDD to determine which files are located at which part of your HDD and figure out how to optimize your data. It will then provide you with the optimization strategy and then start moving your data around. Although it is much faster than your Windows defrag software, for a large HDD, it may take some time to complete. That’s why I recommend the screensaver mode. Let JKDefrag defrag your HDD when you are not around!

Yes, Open Source rocks!

This one is not exactly open source, but it’s free for all. You can download it and use in your office, home or your school without any charge. And what do you use it for? I am sure you know that whenever you write data, your data is randomly placed on your HDD which is not optimized for access (it’s actually optimized for writing). So one part of your data can be far away from the rest of the data. This kind of slows down access to your data because the HDD head needs to move around to get those bits and pieces. What a defrag software does is that it moves the related data together and thus makes access more efficient. And IOBit SmartDefrag is one of the best defrag freeware you can find.

It’s more powerful than the defrag software you find in Windows. And it works continuously and transparently. What this means is that you don’t need to defrag your HDD manually, all you have to do is to install the software and then let it do it’s work. It will try to make your HDD access more efficiently without the need for prompting. This software is designed for modern HDDs which are usually larger and it is optimized to be faster than all the other defrag software. IOBit SmartDefrag uses an efficient algorithm to optimize your system files and this will enable your PC to run at the fastest possible speed. And you won’t need to learn any complicated commands. It’s a very simple to use software, even a beginner shouldn’t have any problem using it.

You have the option to either do a manual defrag or let IOBit SmartDefrag does it’s magic itself. It will do it’s work on the background, continuously defraging your HDD and making sure it is optimized. If you do a lot of installing or uninstalling (or have a lot of data being copied), you should really have this software set to auto mode.

This software is designed for Windows 2000, XP and Vista. Note that it comes with a little advertisement when you load the program but it really isn’t that bad. And if you set to auto mode, you won’t see the advertisement at all. So….

As you guys should know, I am a web directory owner. I had been a web directory owner for over a year already and during this time, I have learned a lot and I have also gained some insight on the web directory industry. Currently, I have 3 directories, one a Singapore business directory, a general web directory and a niche directory. Although they are from different categories and segments, basically it’s all the same. Sure, I am not saying that my directories are a success like those big name directories you see on the Internet, but from what I see, they are successful because all of them have achieved what I wanted them to archive. The traffic to these directories are quite reasonable too. That, I am proud of.

Anyways, here are some tips and advice which I have for anyone thinking of setting up a web directory.

1. Patience. You will need a lot of patience to setup a web directory. Don’t expect like 15 minutes of work per day. Having a web directory requires you to sort out all the junk from the legitimate sites. You will also need to write proper descriptions for each submission. This would require you to visit the site in question and know what that site is all about. There is no other way about it.

2. Uniqueness. Get that brain working and think of something that no web directory has and implement it on your own directory. And get a unique design as well. Anything to stand out from the crowd. Don’t follow the crowd! Lead it! Everything is about being different here.

3. Advertisements. Yes, there are so many other web directories out there, you will need to do a lot of advertisement in order to stand out. Even if you have a unique site with some very interesting features, it still won’t stand out too because of the sheer number of web directories. Other than conventional methods, you should also look at directory forums and SEO forums as possible places for you to advertise your site. And if you are in a niche market, aim for related websites.

4. Niche. Having the correct niche will work wonders for your directory. If you know a particular niche which is not crowded or no one has thought about, you can quickly corner that market. And being first in the field, you will be able to gain a reputation which a lot of people will remember. Of course, you need to be at least knowledgeable in that field first. At the very least, you should read up and understand the particular subject or topic before entering the market.

5. Hardwork. I guess this is the same thing as patience. You will require a ton of effort to setup and maintain your web directory. Don’t expect submitters to do the work for you. It isn’t as easy as that. You need to check your submitters’ descriptions, your submitters’ spelling and so on. And you need to add your own useful websites to your directories in order for your directory to be of any use. For me, I try to add twice as many websites as those being submitted. Get ready to spend at least a few hours everyday on your directory, if you want it to be successful.

Hope these little tips help.

I am here to introduce to you yet another Open Source Software. This time, it’s for recording your screen movements. It’s called CamStudio. This powerful software is mainly used for program demonstration or for tutorials. Basically what it does it to record what you do on your screen into a video file. And it’s supports audio input as well. So you can give an audio presentation along with your video. What better way to present something with both audio and video right? You get to show your viewers where to click, where the key in stuff or where to find certain information. And now, you can convert those video files to flash files (SWF). This comes very handy for website developers, especially now since broadband is becoming more and more commonplace and bandwidth is less a problem. We see a lot of websites which incorporates streaming videos.

However, I mostly use this software to create little tutorials for my company. I usually create simple tutorials like how to create email signatures in MS Outlook, how to add contacts and so on on my company’s Intranet. The users just access it on the Intranet with their browser since I have converted them to flash. Nothing is easier and it saves me a lot of time and effort. I don’t need to go around explaining to my company users how to do those simple stuff. And video is a whole lot easier than a written tutorial. I also use it for creating presentation videos to explain my company’s IT policies.

CamStudio has it’s own audio codec which is supposed to be of a higher quality. However, I would not recomend using it since the other party who is going to watch the video may not have the codec installed and the audio will not work.Or you can easily add captions to your video files if you are worried about the audio problem. CamStudio comes with high quality, anti-aliased screen captions to add to your videos. If done properly, your video will look professional.

If you are going to use this software, get the latest Beta version (2.5). The older version has a problem with creating SWF files which may result in the flash file not displayed on certain browsers. CamStudio is for Windows only and is free( It’s open source, of course it is free). You can also read up on the development of the software through their blog. Oh, please support the software by donating something if you can.