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Cheap stuff – we love them. It started with all those bargain shops we find at our local neighbourhood areas and they have since spread to even our supermarkets and other major retailers offering budget items are a supposedly low cost. Inevitably, it has spread online – now we have all these cheap online Chinese retailers selling all sorts of things on their website. I mean if eBay is not enough for you, maybe you should take a look at what they are offering and see whether their products interest you or not.

However, I would like to caution you that the quality of the items sold are often questionable. In fact, many of them are downright bad. I have purchased so many products from these stores and hoping to get a real bargain, but I never did. What do you expect? Cheap stuff usually are of a good quality. If you are not willing to accept low quality and potentially “not-working” items, then you should not buy from these retailers. There are many reputable retailers out there for you to choose from. And of course their service is not that great either. Maybe because English is not their main language so you might have some communication problem. Again, if you are not willing to accept that, you should NOT buy from these retailers. And I don’t recommend them to anyone. The lists below is just for those who are into online shopping and don’t mind getting a poor quality product just for fun. Oh, I usually don’t spend more than 10 bucks per item on these sites. Anything more than that, I would rather buy from other more reputable retailers.

Remember, never to buy expensive items from such sites. I am not saying that they are scammers but you will never know. There is always an element of risk when purchasing online and in my opinion, why risk it on such high cost items? Buy those little items like maybe cables, card readers and even those electronic watches is okay. But for items costing hundreds of dollars, go to a more reputable site for a peace of mind.

Dealextreme – http://www.dealextreme.com/

One of the more popular cheap online retailers. They have been spending a lot of money and effort to advertise their website. You can see their adverts everywhere, which is a good thing for us. It means that they won’t just drop off the face of this earth with your money. But honestly, I think their items are priced slightly higher than their competitors. I have used them several times without any problems though. The quality is well……not really that extreme. All their items are from China.

The below are some of the Dealextreme alternatives.

Focalprice – http://www.focalprice.com/

Yet another cheap online retailers hawking Chinese-made products. I am currently using this site to purchase my stuff. Nothing too serious though – as with all these site, the quality of their products aren’t that great. Get a few lemons/crap as well. But at least they do respond to my queries pretty fast. I have asked them for refund for one faulty product and they did it promptly. Quiet good service, but their system (as in their website) seems to be a bit slow. Items take about 2 weeks to arrive. Sometimes faster, sometimes slower. I guess it depends on the season and the postal service that you are using. I usually use the airmail service which is free.

My advise to Focalprice is to separate the sex toys from the rest (like in a completely different section). Does not boil well for Focalprice since young kids might be surfing their site as well. Do the same like Dealextreme.

ChinaBuye – http://www.chinabuye.com/

Just started using this retailer. Will update further. Their system is slightly different what I am used to but that shouldn’t be a problem. I ordered a few stuff from them already and all of them arrived within 2 weeks. Not too bad, but of course this could be due to the lull period.  Price wise, they are pretty cheap even compared to the other online Chinese retailers.

DHGate – http://www.dhgate.com/

Wholesaler. Did a lot of advertisement on the Internet as well. Never tried. Why do I need so many thumbdrives? Bought 200 pieces of bubble mailer (or bubble envelope) for my office use. The funny thing is that DHGate actually automatically cancelled my order and refunded me because the seller didn’t deliver the goods to me within a period of 5 days. And from what I read, if you purchased something on DHGate and you are not pleased with the item, you can actually stop DHGate from paying the seller. Well, definitely good for the buyer but a bit unfair to the seller. It never came. DHGate did refund me the money. A bit irritated since the accepted the order but did not fulfill it. Waste of time.

Chinavasion - http://www.chinavasion.com/

Never tried.

EPathChina – http://www.epathchina.com/

Never tried.

MilkHoneyLand – http://www.milkhoneyland.com/

Never tried.

ChinaSaleDeal – http://www.chinasaledeal.com/

Never tried.

Discovery Bargain – http://www.discoverybargain.com/

Never tried. Bought a few stuff from them recently. Their stock of items is actually quite nice – you can buy those *OEM* stuff from them pretty cheap. If you don’t know what *OEM* means, don’t bother. Delivery is a bit slow though. But I guess sometimes it is due to the postal service rather than the actual business. Anyway, I don’t expect speedy postal service from such sites.

China Shopping World – http://chinashoppingworld.com/

Never tried.

TomTop – http://www.tomtop.com/

Never tried.

Mint In The Box – http://www.miniinthebox.com/

Never tried.

SuntekStore – http://www.suntekstore.com/

Never tried. Looks kind of interesting though.

AliExpress – http://www.aliexpress.com/

Never tried.

TradeTang – http://www.tradetang.com/

Never tried.

Lighttake – http://lightake.com/

Never tried. Just bought some small stuff from them. See how fast they deliver. Delivery speed seem to be okay. They do have some unique items not found elsewhere. Prices are quite low as well.

BudgetGadgets – http://www.budgetgadgets.com/

Never tried.

DinoDirect – http://www.dinodirect.com/

Never tried. Seems to have a very wide range of items for sale. Just bought a yogurt maker from them. From what I know it was supposed to be free International shipping. But somehow when it came time to pay for the goods, they added a shipping cost to it. Anyways, it was still cheaper than what you find in the local stores and so I went ahead and bought it. It should arrive soon. Hopefully. Sadly, it took more than one and a half weeks and still had not arrive. I guess the reason could be I was a first time user and they had to verify that my payment is correct. That took 2 days. Then it took 3 days for them to get ready the item. They claim to use DHL which should take 3-7 days. Still not here yet.

Light In The Box – http://www.lightinthebox.com/

Never tried. A lot of girly stuff.

Sungwin – http://www.sungwin.com

Never tried.

GearTaker – http://www.geartaker.com/

Bought a few stuff. Pretty fast to arrive even for extremely cheap items like LED light sticks. Their prices seem to be cheaper than the rest. In my opinion, a good place to start get your feet wet when you are starting to buy things online from such Chinese online stores.

Cosiz – http://www.cosiz.com/

Never tried. Their main focus is those DVD box sets.

Price Angels – http://www.priceangels.com/

Never tried.

Tmart – http://www.tmart.com/

Never tried.

TinyDeal – http://www.tinydeal.com/

Never tried.

PickEgg – http://www.pickegg.com/

Never tried.

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We all love shopping. Who doesn’t love shopping? In fact, most of us can’t get enough of shopping. That is why they invented online shopping. You can shop from the comfort of your home, even after a hard day’s work at the office. But rather than the usual online shopping sites like shop.com or eBay.com, why don’t try something different? Yes, those sites do have variety and they carry a wide range of items for sale. But let’s be different for a change. Please find the following sites which offers a different take on shopping.

I Want One Of Those - http://www.iwantoneofthose.com/

A site especially catered as a “gift-giving” site. You will find many interesting items which you and your friends most likely won’t need but seeing how unique these gifts are, it is kind of difficult to resist buying them. Also check out their cool gift ideas for certain holidays and events.

Woot – http://www.woot.com/

One day one deal.  I don’t know how to explain it, but this site is just too addictive. Everyday I must visit this site to check out what new deals they have. Perhaps that is the draw! It is like they have this urge not to miss a great deal that makes me need to visit their site everyday. Furthermore, they provide the information of the item in great detail which helps you choose whether you need the item or not. You can also read reviews by others and even comment on the item in question. They claim that they do not filter the comments by their visitors at all.

Redenevlope – http://www.redenvelope.com/

Something different. This is a personalized online gift service. Personalizing your gifts makes it more unique and the person receiving the gift will be more appreciative. You can send gifts to anyone, your girlfriend, your husband, your daughter, their baby, his dog…..There is always a reason to send gifts to others. And some of the gifts are exclusive to Redenvelope.com, which makes it even more exclusive.  Of course, do not expect super low prices from their items. Check out their great gift ideas.

Zazzle – http://www.zazzle.com/

Yet another one – this site allows you to personalize your gifts. You can upload your own design or have one of their professional artists design someone nice for you. They claim that the items are all made-on-demand. Browse through all the great works by professional designers and artists which makes the end products unique and different from the rest. The prices are on the high side, but no matter what, uniqueness will always come at a price. But if you are looking for something different, then this is the site for you.

ShopLocal – http://www.shoplocal.com/

I find this pretty interesting. It is some sort of online catalog and ads service for most of the big name retailers in America. They partner with retailers like  Sears, Home Depot, Best Buy and Target. This makes it easy for their users to compare prices across the board and make their decision based on the prices. Their slogan is “Your Local Weekly Ads – All In One Place”. Check out their great deals section and coupons.

Overstock – http://www.overstock.com/

Great deals galore on this site. Overstock.com is all about getting you the best prices for big name brands.  Although they started by often selling surplus items (hence the name Overstock.com), they have started selling new merchandise as well. For new merchandise, they attempt to sell the products at heavily discounted prices as well. They also have a range of merchandise made specifically for Overstock.com.

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If you did not realize by now that I have been using Photobucket as my photo hosting site, what have you been doing all these time? I have used Photobucket to host my images since March! And to tell you the truth, I am quite impressed with the speed. Again, I would like to stress that I am not paid by Photobucket to say nice things about them, nor did they offer me free premium photo hosting services if I kiss their ass more often. Nothing of that sort. I am using their free service already. Basically they have 2 level of service, one is the basic free service while the other is the Pro, which is a premium service. Well, the Pro account gives you a bigger storage space, more bandwidth and ability to use FTP to upload or download your images. And the cost is US$39.95 per year, which I think is quite reasonable.

When I first started this blog, I actually wanted to host the pictures and photos on my own webhost. Then I realize that images do use up a lot of bandwidth and this will eat into my allocation for the month. So in order to save on bandwidth, I decided to use another third party hosting for the images. And I found Photobucket. I was rather impressed at the speed they provide. I am sure that their servers are always overfilled with images and photos, but yet for most time of the day, I do get some fairly decent speeds. Of course, I am not saying that the speed is blazing fast, but acceptable to me and I am sure acceptable to most webmasters out there. I mean for god’s sake, it’s free.

I am now very tempted to get the Pro account. But I think for the time being, I don’t really need it. I doubt that the number of visitors to my blog will go so high as to finish all the bandwidth allocated to my free account. So, I am sure that I will find better use for my money. However, that doesn’t mean that you can’t go ahead and apply for their Pro account.

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Check it out here: Kuku Klok

But in all seriousness, why? Why would someone want an online alarm clock? You need to switch on your PC while you are sleeping for no other reason than to use as an alarm clock? You are probably wasting electricity for no reason and the money you saved would probably be more than enough to buy an cheap alarm clock for a few bucks at the local electronics store. Although this online alarm clock is Swiss made and will probably be very accurate, all you need is an electronic alarm clock which will be just as accurate as the online one. Maybe it is more used users of computers who are actually in front of the PC? Like when you are doing some work on your PC and you need to be reminded of an important meeting in an hour’s time, you just set this alarm clock and it will alert you in an hour’s time.

However, I have to admit that it is pretty cool. And that’s not just the website itself. Very Web2.0. It allows you to set the type of noise it makes for the alarm sound. You can set it to produce Cockerel, classic alarm clock sound, electronic or slayer guitar. Would be much cooler if there are more choices like mobile phone sounds or dog barking sounds. Also another thing about this online alarm clock is that it even works when the Internet connection goes off. So once you set it and the browser is not closed, the alarm will still work, regardless of whether the Internet connection is up or down.

I myself would prefer something more functional. The novelty of the site will fade soon enough and everyone will stick to some very small software which have more functions like with notes, email messaging and reminders.

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Yes? Well look no further. We have found the place for you to search for icons. And it is brilliantly named Iconfinder! I have tried using Google’s image search to look for icons and although I done quite a number of images (not icons), I guess there are many ways the search can be improved. Especially if you are specifically looking for icons.However, you can easily convert images to icons as there are software which can do that for you. Iconfinder on the other hand is used only for searching for icons. Sure, the number of listings they have is limited but I still got what I wanted. One of the flaws is that searches sometime gives you the wrong result and most often that not, you will get nothing from your searches. I am also not sure how Iconfinder arranges or displays the results. I am guessing that it is not arranged in any order. In my opinion, this will be a problem as the Iconfinder cache gets bigger with more icons.

All the icons are in PNG format. This should be good news for most of us as this format provides a better quality image. Plus it allows transparency. You can submit icons to the site by sending them an email. I doubt Iconfinder sends out bots to look for icons, unlike other Search Engines. If they only cache images from submissions, then the number of images they have is very limited. It would be better for them to have graphic bots out to look for images and add them automatically to their cache. They shouldn’t wait till people submit icons to their site. With the vastness of the Internet and to be a comprehensive site for icons, that’s the way forward.

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I chanced upon this site recently and I found that it is pretty interesting and perhaps very useful to some of our viewers. It is a document sharing site, a subset of the file sharing sites we see on the Internet everywhere. However the concept is the same, you upload your documents and well…..share it online, where others can view your work. So if you are a writer and would like to showcase some of your literature or writings, then you can make use of this site to do it. They support a huge number of format and you can distribute your work for free.

If you are a writer, I am sure that you may like to keep the rights to your work. And with Scribd, the document you submit to their site, the rights still remain with you. So in actual fact, you are only granting Scribd the right to distribute your work and you can withdraw the right anytime you want. I guess this makes authours more willing to share or showcase their work.

You can upload technical manuals, tutorials, short stories, magazines, school papers, novels, research articles and even powerpoint presentation. I have found quite a wealth of information on this site. I am quite impressed with the quality of some of the works published there. Of course, if you don’t have the right to distribute the document, then you can’t upload it to Scribd.

Anyway, you can visit the site here: Scribd

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I often use photo sharing host to well…host my photos. They are a great bandwidth saver for me as my webhost has a limit on the amount of bandwidth I can make use per month. Text usually don’t take up much bandwidth. However, photos and images do. Not to mention videos or audio which could really leech up tons of bandwidth if your site goes viral! Just check out those sites that got “dugg” and how fast they collapse due to the huge surge in bandwidth usage (and server load as well).

Anyway, I have complied a list of photo sharing (and video sharing) websites where you can “share” your images with your friends. Take a look below:

1. http://photobucket.com/ - My favourite. Fast, stable and you can upload multiple files into your account at the same time. Free service.
2. http://www.flickr.com/ - Another very popular photo sharing website. This site really attracts a crowd. Free service.
3. http://www.dropshots.com/ - Themed as a family photo sharing website. Not really, but it works. Free service.
4. http://www.smugmug.com/ – Another good photo sharing website. Seems to attract the same crowd as flickr. Not sure whether that is a good thing or not. Paid service.
5. http://atpic.com/ - Simple photo sharing host. Doesn’t have the flash of the other sites which makes it all more attractive to me. Free service.
6. http://www.myalbum.com/ - Based in Netherlands. Free service.
7. http://picasaweb.google.com/ - Google’s answer to photo sharing. The software works great but this image sharing service I did not try yet. But it’s Google, so…. Oh, free service.
8. http://www.webshots.com/ - Formerly the site that offers some nice screen savers which eats up tons of resources on your PC and cause your PC to crash. They are now offering image and photo sharing as well. Free service.
9. http://www.23hq.com/ - Looks good but I never tried it. Free service.
10. http://www.bubbleshare.com/ - Claims to be the easiest photo sharing and hosting site on the Internet. Well…I don’t know about that one but at least it is free.
11. http://www.ringo.com/ - Looks decent and very web2.0. Actually it looks like one of the many photo sharing sites out there these days. Free service.
12. http://www.fotki.com/ - Tried this one. Very fast photo and image host. Free and paid service.

Well, go ahead and try them out. I don’t understand how these photo sharing sites make money? I am sure that their bandwidth usage is extreme and since a lot of them are free, how do they make money? The advertisements I see on their sites will probably not make them a lot of money and the images hosted on their servers do not display any advertisement captions either.

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Well guys, I have bad news. One of my directories got attacked by someone or something. Not too sure how it works but they did leeched about 28GB of bandwidth this month. I have checked my weblog and discovered that it all goes to 404 pages, which are the error pages. So apparently someone or something is hitting on a page which doesn’t exist at all on my directory and they are doing it pretty frequently. The bandwidth transfer goes to 1Mbps from 10am to 12am Singapore time and for my website, that’s just amazing. I have ruled out normal visitor usage as nobody would hit the 404 page so often (that is using 1GB of bandwidth per day!) and exactly around the same time everyday.

I didn’t discover this problem till my webhost complained that I have been using too much bandwidth. So I checked my weblog and told them the problem. Luckily they did check and later told me that it could very likely be a DOS attack on my site. And I have to agree. My human visitors didn’t increase so much till the bandwidth jumps 28GB for this month as well as the previous month. Those are the 2 months that hit such a high peak. The rest of the time, I barely clock up 10GB per month in total. Plus the search engine bots used up about only 500MB in bandwidth total. So, that scenario of search engine bots hammering my site is not very likely. One of the forumers suggested that it could be due to the fact that my site is too slow (like server overload) and that users kept on “refreshing” my site and thus there are tons of wasted bandwidth. Again, I doubt that to be the case. From my end, the site loads fine during the peak periods. I have tested it myself. It doesn’t seem to be the server load issue. More of a bandwidth issue. Plus, the majority of the bandwidth still goes to the 404 error pages. In my opinion, I think this is also another very unlikely scenario.

I think the most likely reason and as stated by my webhost is DOS attack. However, I am at a lost at what I should do. Other than asking my webhost to deny the attackers IP addresses, there don’t seem to be anything I can do. Is there anything I can do to help prevent such attacks in the future? Or is my webhost not having the proper firewall at their site in the first place? I have been using their service for over 2 years now and I am sure that I didn’t face such problems in the past.

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Check this out: http://www.interactivepulp.com/pulpcore/sketch/

All you have to do is to move your mouse around that black rectangle area and you will see what I mean. It’s just like those brushes you see in the video creation software. And on the same page, you can see the actual code to create that little applet. Isn’t it just amazing that just a few (hundred) lines of coding can create something so beautiful and interactive at the same time. Sure, it is of not much use to anyone, unless that someone is just too free but I guess it shows that some programmers just are amazing. And surprisingly, the coding doesn’t look that complicated. So, sure I am no Java programmer, heck, I am not even a real programmer who any real experience in programming, but it still looks easy to me. They really streamlined the code till people like me can understand at least a portion of the coding. Bravo!

Anyway, this is just a short post to show you this site. If you really don’t have anything else to do, you should take a look at it. In fact, you should spend some time playing with the screen. I mean, it is interesting for perhaps 5-10 minutes, but if you stay there for longer than that, then you have a serious problem. And I am not kidding. I am sure that they took hours and hours perfecting the coding, but it won’t get my attention for longer than 15 minutes. Maybe I have a short attention span, but how long can you draw imaginary lines on the screen with your mouse?

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Link here.

So if you are pretty free and don’t have anything to do at the moment, you should take a look at the link I have just provided. It list down some of the more interesting pranks you can play on your office mates on their computers. This is all good clean fun without the porn or the naked female pictures. I am sure that it is very boring in the office right? Everyday, you go around doing your work and after getting scolded by your boss a few times, you will want some fun to relieve stress. Hey, who doesn’t? In Singapore, where stress and pressure is a everyday occurrence, we really need an outlet for all our anger issues. What better way than to sabotage your friends? And you don’t have to be good at IT, most requires just one or two files and some setting changes on your friend’s or office mate’s computers. Some don’t even need to make use of the PC. Of course, this is assuming that you can access their computers.

In Singapore, we take everything too seriously. I look at Singaporeans and I believe that we are about to reach the boiling point. The level of stress and pressure has gotten out of hand as Singaporean workers now face stiff competition from foreigners who are coming in large numbers. I see a lot of Singaporeans being replaced by foreigners in all sectors of the workplace. Even bus driver positions are now being taken over by foreigners. I am a practical person. Sure, foreigners do help Singaporeans economy. But importing too many foreigners will only benefit the rich and the powerful while the Singaporean worker face increasing downward pressure on their salaries. This coupled with the rising cost of living in Singapore, I don’t know what will happen to my country soon. I always say moderation is the key. But apparently, some powerful and rich people who are controlling Singapore disagrees and thus we are left with poorly paid Singaporeans in the streets. Sad.

Don’t know how this became bitching about the government. But it did.

And here is one more prank.

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