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College life has been keeping me occupied with a lot of work. I remembered that I was complaining of boredom when I was waiting for college to start but now I am pretty occupied with a lot of work especially assignments. I believe that college life is indeed much more fun than secondary school but it is just the work and assignments that I need to cope with. Computer graphics class is quite pressuring at times given that the assignments only have a one week deadline and I suppose it will go on every week since there are no theory tests for computer graphics. Until then, I hope all of you are doing fine and take care alright.

As I posted out in one of my earlier post, I have been selected for the National Service program in June. I then submitted an application form for postponement because my Diploma course will be starting before the date I have to report in to the camp. So I submitted the form on the 28th of March 2008 and was just hoping that it would be approved because if the application isn’t approved by them then I would be wasting my time since I would then have to wait for January 2009 to start college. I then called the postponement department to check on the status of my application, one lady then told me to wait for a postcard. I waited and waited and have not seen any postcard in my letter box. I received the notice letter notifying me of the camp I’m in and the date to report in on this week’s Tuesday (27th of May 2008), I was disappointed because there weren’t anything about the postponement. I called up the department to check knowing that something is not right, I was then told that there were no information or should I say no records of me submitting an application for postponement, to me it indirectly means that they have probably misplaced or lost the form I submitted because if they did received the form then I would at least know the status of it even if it was rejected. I went to their office the next day to double check if there really was no record of me submitting it and yes there really was no record of it. I then had to resubmit another form for postponement. I am really disappointed with the way they handle this, how could there be no records of me submitting it when I went to their office on the 28th of March 2008 and passed the form to them with my hands ? It was a lot of hassle taking public transports down to their office just to resubmit another application form. To all of you who wish to submit an application to postpone your National Service program, I advice you to always check on the status of your application or else you might be the next victim just like me.

So finally I am able to check which camp I’ll be going to, it is at Beranang, Selangor. Well of course I do not really want to skip it all but since this is the third batch for 2008, if I choose to go then I’ll miss out my college studies for this year and will only start next year. That is too much time to waste. Hopefully I’ll receive the approval letter for my postponement.

I was searching through my folder of photos and found some photos taken with my trusty SonyEricsson w810i. Although the photo quality of a camera phone can never match a digital camera, I feel that it is still good enough to take some candid shots and also snapping some moments if you do not have a digital camera with you. Below are two photos which was taken with my camera phone and I did submitted it to an Exabytes photo contest in conjunction with the Merdeka celebration last year.

The above photo was taken in Melaka on a beautiful morning. I was amazed by the quality of it when I got home and transferred it to my computer. Well, to a photographer this photo might not seem very attractive but to me and I believe some others will think that it is amazing for a camera phone to take such photo. There are even better camera phones in the market now, I am only using an old SonyEricsson w810i so I assume the newer models could even take much better photos in terms of the photo quality.

I believe many do know the famous Petronas Twin Tower or rather known as KLCC. Again the above photo was taken with my camera phone and I submitted it to the Exabytes photo contest as mentioned earlier on. I was shocked that this photo made it through to the last round but eventually lost badly in the last round as this photo only received two votes. For a photo taken with a camera phone being able to make it through to the final round is really amazing because it won’t be surprising if it lost considering the other photos were taken with digital camera and some even with prosumer and dSLR cameras.

I am actually trying to say that camera phones are still good if you aren’t taking photos seriously as a profession, minus the focusing ability, zooming ability and the photo quality would make camera phones a close competitor to digital cameras. For those who thinks that camera phones can’t take good photos, never underestimate camera phones again alright ?

In Malaysia, we have two big players of the blog advertising scene which are Advertlets and Nuffnang. Both Advertlets and Nuffnang launched their company/service at about the same time and as far as I know based on my experience, Advertlets had a flying start capturing many bloggers’ attention to use display their ads while Nuffnang didn’t have as many users as Advertlets did. I was a previous member of Advertlets displaying their ads and I was pretty happy with their service as well as their payouts. After that it was just a pretty bad experience for me.

Many have been searching or asking “Why Advertlerts Suck ?”. Recently many bloggers displaying Advertlets ads were so furious that they had to let out their anger on their blogs as well as some forums. One big problem that bloggers on the Advertlets network mostly complained about their pending payouts, we’re talking about months of earnings still pending. I’ve read many blogs that complained about Advertlets and those who have months of pending payouts usually will be held because of a suspected click fraud or illegal activities such as getting involved in a traffic driving activity so eventually the earnings will then be forfeited. I am shocked that many blogs on the Advertlets network are usually suspected to be involved in either click frauds or illegal activities which doesn’t make sense. If there were a few cases then it is probably acceptable but just look at the amount of blogs suspected, it is unbelievable. It is as though that this is a standard procedure to suspect blogs for click frauds or illegal activities, this is just my assumption and I have no solid proof to back this statement, well if you did read about the complaints in many of the blogs currently under the Advertlets network then you can judge it yourself.

Now some of the complaints on Advertlets, one of them is by 5xmom and another is by jayceooi. SlowCatchUpKuan has posted an interesting entry on click frauds here. I was also previously suspected to be involved in a click fraud, some of the bloggers argued that it might be a sabotage issue and I thought so too considering the amount of blogs being suspected. However, sabotage or not the main point here is that there are so many blogs that were suspected and even if a person is trying to sabotage I don’t think he is able to sabotage that many blogs. Of course there are people having no bad experience with Advertlets but those bloggers are usually either celebrity, famous or high profile bloggers. Now I begin to wonder why bloggers like Kenny Sia and Jeff Ooi chose Nuffnang instead ?

As a conclusion, if you are a happy blogger under the Advertlets network then I am really happy for you. If you aren’t then don’t worry as you are not alone. Want to share your stories as well ? Perhaps you could leave a comment with a link to your blog post on this matter. Don’t be afraid to share your thoughts if it is a fact.

Maybank has just announced a phishing site that imitates Maybank2U by randomly sending e-mail requesting customers to update the security of their accounts to obtain the username and password of Maybank2u.com customers. Maybank also clarified that such e-mails are not issued by Maybank and advises customers NOT to log in to any of the website links contained in the e-mail. If any of you received such e-mail and clicked the link, you are advised to change your password immediately.

A sample of the e-mail provided by Maybank2U :