Google Knol The Wikipedia Alternative?

Google recently launched the public beta of Google Knol on the 23rd of July.

Knol is similar and yet different to Wikipedia in some ways. Firstly, Wikipedia users can create and edit any article they like (although there are some restrictions to seniority) but Knol is has articles created by authors who can choose whether to let other users or specific authors to edit their articles.

What makes Google Knol so interesting is that it allows you to place Google Adsense advertisements on your Knol’s, which means if you have a very popular Knol, you can earn a decent bit of income from it. As I had experimented a few days ago, Knol’s are indexed by the Google search engine, which means that your Knol has the potential to rank very high in the search engines results (just like Wikipedia) and if you have implemented your Google Adsense code into the Knol, you might earn a decent amount of cash. Who would have guess Google Knol becoming into a money making opportunity whilst building up reputation of the author at the same time.

Anyway, after learning about this I was kind of sad as I had gotten banned from Google a few years ago and as Google Knol currently does not accept other kinds of advertisement code on it, I guess I’ll just have to pass up this unique opportunity.

I’m still experimenting with Google Knol and seeing how it works and what other functions it can play, but for now it looks quite promising. And as Google Knol is still relatively young, we’ll give it sometime and who knows, maybe it might become the next big thing since Youtube

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I Just Got Paid $10 By BlogToProfit

I just found out that BlogToProfit had sent me payment for 2 posts I made this month, which is $10.00, $5 per post I made for them. So far I had 3 offers this month but I only took up 2 offers as I felt the 3rd offer to be too troublesome, but now on looking back I wish I had take up the 3rd offer too

I know some of the paid blogging networks out there are scams and don’t actually pay you, but I want to tell you that BlogToProfit isn’t one of them as I really received payment from them. I must admit I was skeptical at first, which was one of the reasons I didn’t want to take up their 3rd offer.

The 2 offers I had completed were confirmed by July the 14th and July the 16th respectively, I then received a message from them on the 20th of July stating that I would received my payment lastest by the 25th of July. After checking my paypal transaction I realized that I got paid on the 26th of July, hmm, one day late but still they paid.

Cheers to BlogToProfit, the paid blogging network that does actually pay you

Sign up here (please put ddkoh92@gmail.com as your Referral’s Email, I would really appreciate it), or leave a comment and I’ll send you an invitation to sign up.

BlogToProfit payment proof:

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Dropbox Invites Giveaway

Dropbox makes secure backup, sync and sharing look easy. Here’s my short review about Dropox with instructions how to get invites from me to Dropbox at the end of it.

I recently got an invitation to Dropbox a few weeks back, and after using it and playing around with it, I can see how invaluable a tool it can be for everyone as it does its job well and seamlessly. Dropbox is a backup, syncing and sharing services which lets you easily backup certain files to its servers or sync files with multiple users and computers or sharing pictures and other things with friends. Currently all invited users get 2Gb of free space and once it Dropbox which is still in beta is officially launched, invited Dropbox users get to keep a higher space limit compared to the free members but less then that of paying members.

Lets look at the backup service which Dropbox helps you perform. After installing the Dropbox client, which essentially places a folder in your My Documents (Windows), you just drag any folder you want to backup into the My Dropbox folder and it automatically gets uploaded and synced into the Dropbox server. Everything happens securely, all files are transported over SSL and are encrypted with AES-256 before being stored on their backend.

Green ticks are files that are already uploaded and synched while the blue icon is for files that are currently being uploaded and synched.

Dropbox isn’t just any old backup and storage service, it actually synchs folders that your Dropbox is linked to. Because of this, Dropbox is invaluable in the sense that team projects can be carried out with relative ease as project members can be sure that they are always using the most current version of the file without resorting to other members emailing back and forth the most current file. It also comes in handy for those of you who like to share certain things with your friends as all you need to do is just drag the thing you want to be shared into a folder on your computer and you’re done.

Dropbox also can be used as a file sharing service. Whenever you drag a file into the Public folder in Dropbox, you can right click the file, hover your mouse over Dropbox and actually copy the link of the file. This comes in handy whenever you need to share a file that is larger than what can be sent as email attachments and is much more convenient then using file sharing services such as Rapidshare as you don’t need to upload the file and then worry as to when the thing you uploaded might get deleted. By using Dropbox, you just need to drag the folder you want to share into your Dropbox Public folder and get the link to share it and then forget about it. . Simple.

Yup, you can virtually use Dropbox to substitue Rapidshare.

By using Dropbox, you can easily share your pictures and photos with friends. After dragging images into the Photos folder in Dropbox, you can get a link from Dropbox to a gallery of collection of pictures which you then can share with your friends. Cool huh

Images and photos uploaded into the Photos folder automatically becomes a gallery with a link.

OK, the Dropbox client is pretty cool, but we both know there are times when we can’t install the client for some reason and that is when the web interface comes into play. When you login to your Dropbox account, the first thing you see is your homepage which gives you a summary of recent events and shows the files you have including when you last changed the file.

Really helpful, what with all the information being shown.

Besides seeing a summary of recent events and files, you can also upload and download latest copies of files right from the web interface of Dropbox.

Upload without having the Dropbox client, simple and fast.

As you can see, the possibilities with what you can do with Dropbox is virtually limitless due to it’s versatile nature. In fact, if you even want to use to have conversation through a normal text file it can be done . The only thing limiting how you use it is your imagination and creativity.

As I mentioned just now, Dropbox is currently in invite-only beta, and those of you who get an invitation now gets to keep your account when Dropbox goes live with more storage than a free account but less than a paid account. So hurry up and get your comments from me.

To get your invitation to Dropbox, please comment here with your reason you deserve and invite to Dropbox and your email address. Invites shall be given out on a first come first serve basis, so don’t be shy

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I’m Impressed By The Singapore National Education Show

I went for the Singapore National Education Show 2 of 2008(NE Show) a few weeks back on the 12th of July and I must say I’m really impressed with everything about the show, from the events to the way things were organized.

National Education show is actually a preview and rehearsal of the National Day Parade (NDP) and it aims to instill a sense of pride, patriotism and  sense of unity among Singaporeans. The National Day Parade 08 (NDP) celebrates the 43rd birthday of Singapore on the 9 of August and has the theme “Celebrating the Singapore Spirit”.

Usually if you wanted to get tickets to watch either the National Day Parade or even the NE Show, you usually have to go through a process called e-balloting by submitting applications through either sms, internet and phone and then have an extremely slim chance of getting the tickets. However, the Ministry Of Education (MOE) has kindly reserved a certain amount of NE Show 2008 tickets for scholars and I was one of the few who got nominated to go for it.

I took lots of pictures, a couple hundred of megabytes worth of pictures, many which I guess you guys won’t find interesting, so instead of posting everything, I’ll post the “cooler” pictures.

These are the Red Lions in action, they are a 12-man team of elite jumpers.

Some more pictures of the Red Lions, hmm, I have to admit I take pretty nice pictures.

Reds……

This was taken during the National Anthem, 4 helicopters flying the flag of Singapore over the Marina Bay.

These are the F16 airplanes performances and some of my favorite pictures here. I can’t remember what the squadron is called, but I think it was called the Black Eagles or something like that .

The 6 F-16’s.

This was one of the tricks performed by the squadron. 2 F16’s passed very close  by each other.

This one was pretty and cute. A heart shape thingy.

The rest of the pictures below are during the night performance.

Don’t ask me what performance this is, as I can’t remember, but it was quite nice.

This was near the end of the whole Singapore National Education Show, all the performers came onto the stage.

And the Singapore National Education Show ended with fireworks, quite nice ones mind you. This is just one of them.

Oh yea, during the National Education Show, each person who goes receives a funpack full of goodies. There was the Singapore flag, a bag, a whole book of coupons with discounts and stuff, drinks, food, a National Day Parade cap with blinking lights, wet tissue, and inflatable gaint glove and even a rain coat. Haha, the planners were good, they prepared for everything, even for rain.

One of the most creative thing I saw in a while was a lucky draw that had it’s “entry forms” on disposable waste plastic bags. The whole idea was to help encourage the viewers of the National Education Show to throw away their rubbish. You have to admit it was creative.

Let’s keep Singapore litter free. Yea

Well so this was the Singapore National Education Show for you, which is nearly exactly the same as how the National Day Parade would be. When all is said and done, I’m really impressed with Singapore and I wish I could see something like this during the Malaysian National Day.

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Sorry For The Downtime Recently | I’m Now Using Wordpress Version 2.6

I just want to take this time to apologize for the downtime recently. Basically it was due to me trying out the InstantUpgrade Wordpress plugin to upgrade my Wordpress from version 2.5.1 to 2.6. The plugin broke my blog, and I stupidly didn’t make a total backup of my site -  I only backed-up the database. Anyway, to cut things short, my site was online off and on for the last few days and as the database had a bit of problems, I didn’t get to save al the comments during that period of time. Really sorry guys, I have learnt my lesson and am going to make full backups of my site from time to time now

One other thing,  I’m now using Wordpress 2.6 and it has quite a few useful features. The one I like most about the upgrade is that now when choosing a theme I get to preview the theme. It’s quite cool. For those of you who have not upgrade, I suggest do not upgrade yet as 6.1 is coming out soon (I heard) to fix some bugs in this version of Wordpress, and besides, Wordpress 2.5.1 works perfectly fine.

Oh, and for those of you who use Windows Live Writer with Wordpress, you have to turn on the XML-RPC option in Wordpress to able to use Windows Live Writer with it. To do that, go to Settings, then to Writing, and tick the enable XML-RPC protocol box. XML-RPC is now turned off by default in Wordpress 2.6, and to use Windows Live Writer with it, you need it to be turned on.

That’s all the site news for now guys.

Note: I’m still trying to get back my blog to how it was before the upgrading fiasco. So please bear with me. Thanks

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