HTNet - A Notepad of Tech, Business, Science and Self Improvement

While the local Malaysian media are applauding Budget 2006, with the same phrases that has been used since the mid 1990s, the average guy on the street is getting sick and tired of hearing the same old things which was supposed to solve the same old problems, but in the end, there doesn’t seem to be much progress.

Read the rest of Budget 2006: New Fiscal Year, Same Old Stuff »

It’s been a very frustrating day for me so far. This is mainly due to my mobile operator network being down for the whole day so far. I’m using the Hotlink prepaid service provided by Maxis.

What added to the frustration is that on both web sites, there was no information on the disruption at all. No details, no apologies, just loads of Flashy ads and graphics. Very typical of large Malaysian companies. They mainly use the Internet (their web sites especially) as a near infinite billboard where their advertisements are broken up into pages.

What’s supposed to be an excellent communication tool is only used for marketing purposes and almost nothing else. Whatever happened to using the Internet to relay useful information? Clearly Maxis and most commercial organisations have failed to use the Internet to the fullest.

It’s because of issues like this that the tech circle are usually reluctant on unleashing their pet projects on to the public. There has been way too many instances where corporations disfigure their creations into commercial monsters.

Is anyone else having this problem? Especially those outside Johor Bahru.

Adobe and Macromedia now have the shareholder votes necessary to complete their proposed US$3.4 billion merger.

This CRN article has interesting observations and predictions on the fates and destinies of some applications in the merged company. A very interesting read.

More information available on Adobe’s press release on the approval.

There’s been updates to the AdSense programme, now publishers can have a total of 200 active channels (both URL and custom channels) at their disposal. This will give AdSense programme participants more customisation and tracking options when it comes to ad placement on their web sites.

There’s more goodies from the guys at Google Adsense, we now have the ability to save custom reports. This feature is excellent for people who use multiple computers like myself to access my AdSense account. Usually the last viewed settings is saved (most probably through cookies) on a per PC basis, and these settings tend to be lost whenever you clear the browser cache and saved cookies. Well, the addition of this custom reports not only solves this problem, but gives you much more statistical analysis leverage… not to mention saving you tons of mouse gestures and keyboard presses

You can read about these new features here.

There’s more good news for AdSense publishers… We can now suggest sections of our web pages where we want to emphasize or ignored to improve on the relevancy of AdSense ads that appear on them. Basically, this can be achieved through the use of the following tags…

For areas you want to emphasize:

<!-- google_ad_section_start -->
Content that you want AdSense to emphasize on
<!-- google_ad_section_end -->

For areas you want to be ignored/downplayed:

<!-- google_ad_section_start(weight=ignore) -->
Content that you don't want AdSense to emphasize on
<!-- google_ad_section_end -->

Bear in mind that it might take up to two weeks for your optimisation to take effect, so be patient! Read more about these tags here.

…with these ultra-special glasses for finding golf balls! Talk about really specific function devices! Here’s a quote from the gizmag article (which has a picture of the glasses):

The special lenses are claimed to make the lost ball almost appear to glow, making it easy to locate and resume play quickly.

When I read the article, the first thing that popped in my mind was, “How the heck is this possible?!”. I then noticed a link to the manufacturer’s web site; Visiball. Naturally, the first page I looked for was some sort of a demo on how the world looks like through the glasses; I found them here. Pretty interesting! My interest peaked, even though I’m not really a golfer… I’m just amused by useful technologies

I’m happy that Visiball included a page devoted to the Science of Visiball; in other words, how the glasses work. It’s really an interesting read… and when you’ve done with that, read up on what Purkinje Shift means.

And if you work for Visiball, kindly ask your boss to post me one of those glasses… These things might sell well in Malaysia