I started this blog during my working life, after July, 2009 you may find my blog posts at http:lbms2u.blogspot.com

7/30/2008

Tracking Printers to Fight Crime

Q. Is it true that laser printers put an invisible code that contains the printer’s serial number on every document printed?

A. Some, but not all, laser printers do leave a series of nearly imperceptible yellow dots on the printed page. These dots usually contain the encoded serial number of the printer and may also include the time and date that the document was printed.

The so-called yellow tracking dots have been found on more than 100 colour laser printer models from major manufacturers. The dots are used by Secret Service to track counterfeiters. As anyone with a colour laser printer of good quality should know, the ability to print fake money has become much easier but no less illegal.

The Secret Service has said it decodes only the information contained in the dots to investigate counterfeiting cases. Once it has the serial number of the printer, the agency can work with printer companies to find out where the printer was sold.

The existence of these dots has long had privacy advocates worried. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy rights group, has been closely following the yellow dots issue because there are no legal provisions to stop government agencies from using the technology to track documents in cases unrelated to counterfeiting.

Source: J.D. Biersdorfer, New York Times
Extend reading: Is Your Printer Spying On You?
Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF):
List of Printers Which Do or Do Not Display Tracking Dots

7/27/2008

Website traffic driving strategy

YOU have invested your time and energy to build your organisation a great new website, but you are not getting quite the results you were hoping for.


Few customers are visiting or interacting with you and rarely do you get prospects to contact you through the site. So what can you do to improve the odds that you are reaching your anticipated audience?

1 PAPERWORK

This is the easiest and most economical method of advertising your site. Make sure you place your domain name on every form that is generated by your organisation. Some of the forms to consider: quote, invoice, orders, bill of lading, purchase order, checks, statements, labels, letterhead, envelopes, fax forms and e-mail signature.

2 VOICE MAIL ANNOUNCEMENT

Announce your domain name and an attention-grabbing message on your corporate and individual voice mails. A great way to attract users to your site is to offer an incentive that is available only on the web. Some examples: “For additional and current specials, check out our website…” or “Check out our website for the article regarding the seven deadly mistakes people make when planning a party.”

3 E-MAIL SIGNATURE

Include your demographic information such as name, address, telephone and fax numbers, your web address and promotional information.

4 VERBAL

Make sure you and your staff are constantly promoting your website and its content and value to your customers.

5 NEWSLETTER

Develop an electronic newsletter to advise your customers and prospects of your products and services and all of the incentives available on the web.

Provide an easy link within the newsletter to direct the user to the appropriate web page. My recommendation is to strive for a monthly frequency distribution.

6 LINKS

Trade links (URL) with other business associates, customers and vendors will drive traffic your way. When providing a resource link on your site to take the user elsewhere, make sure to open that link in a separate session. Once the visitor is on your site, keep them on your site voluntarily and do not force them to leave your site by clicking on an outside resource.

7 MEDIA

Always include your website domain name when advertising or writing about your company in newspapers, magazines, trade publications, radio, TV, web and banners.

8 SEARCH ENGINES

Optimisation and Pay-perclickSEO and PPC is a huge growing segment of the economy and is the reason why companies such as Google, Yahoo, Overture and others have grown as much as they have.

The basic concept is to properly optimise your site using certain key words and phrases to increase the odds that people can easily find you when they surf and search the web. This area requires professional assistance.

Implementing the proper plan to drive traffic to your site is a complicated task that requires strategic and tactical planning. However, you may find that some areas I illustrated above are pretty easy to embrace and are economical as well. Don’t lose the opportunities that are out there. Finish building it so they will come.

– Source: Straits Times/Asia News Network

7/21/2008

Is your savings safe?

The answer is YES! If your have deposited your hard- earned money in the bank of Malayisa, Perbadanan Insurans Deposit Malaysia (PIDM), a government agency is providing deposit protection against your savings.

Eligible deposits are protected up to RM60,000 per depositor per member bank. Member banks are commercial banks and Islamic banks in Malaysia.

Eligible deposits include savings and current accounts, fixed and Islamic investment deposits, joint and trust accounts - for individual depositors and business entities.

Find out more by calling 1-800-88-1266, visit PIDM's website at www.pidm.gov.my or pick up a leaftlet from any of member banks.

Now you could win RM25,000 by entering the "PIDM & You contest", from 14 July to 31 August 2008, check it out.

7/19/2008

WALL-E Free Movie Passes

WALL-E (promoted with an interpunct as WALL·E) is a 2008 computer-animated adventure-comedy-romance-science fiction film produced by Pixar Animation Studios. The film was directed by Andrew Stanton. It follows the story of a robot named WALL-E who is designed to clean up a polluted Earth. He eventually falls in love with another robot named EVE, and follows her into outer space on an adventure.

In conjunction with "RECYCLE and you could save the world" promotion activities, Petrosains is give away 2 complimentary movies passes for the first 10 people daily who purchase Petrosains admission tickets from 22nd Jul - 31st Aug.

Beside learning more about the science of recycling, also enjoy FREE viewing of WALL-E, so hurry up to Petrosains today!

WALL-E will be in cinema on 14th Aug 2008!



Wikipedia on WALL-E
Trailers at YouTube on WALL-E

7/11/2008

Your online data is safe?

I used to spend a lot of time nagging people to back up their PC hard drives. Now I'm spending a growing amount of time telling them to back up their online information. It's great that users can now tap into so many services that exist in "the cloud" - which was a graphical representation of the old phone system, but is now used to stand for the internet. But the fact that your data is online doesn't mean it's safe.


Microsoft's Hotmail has been the great teacher. I can't imagine that any other web-based service has reduced so many people to tears. If you've never had the pleasure, Hotmail's most important feature has been that your email only survives as long as you log on every 30 days. Miss the deadline due to, say, a delayed flight, illness or simple forgetfulness, and Microsoft deletes your mailbox. If you had anything important in there, too bad. It's gone.

If you're still playing Russian roulette with Hotmail, then at least upgrade to the new Live version. This doesn't delete your email unless you fail to log on for 90 days. Better still, you can download a version of Windows Live Mail to your desktop. This will collect your email from Hotmail and other services, and save it on your PC's hard drive. So if Microsoft deletes the online copies, you haven't lost them forever. There are many other ways to lose your web-based data. A nice example was the chap who had all his email, his photos and a website with Yahoo, and some of these services were paid for. Sadly, he wrote something on Yahoo Answers that apparently violated the provider's terms of service, so they deleted his account.

A friend who took my advice and switched from Hotmail to Gmail also lost all his email, because he hadn't downloaded it with, say, Thunderbird. In this case, it's not clear if he just forgot his password or was hacked. Either way, his mailbox wouldn't let him in, and Google made him wait five agonising days before he could say he'd forgotten his password and answer the security question. Which he couldn't answer, as it happens. Oh, how we laughed.

And if you assume most of these software-as-a-service providers have foolproof backups, think again. If a service has 200 million users, spread over thousands of servers in various locations, it could have many terabytes of data and gigabytes of mail arriving in a continuous stream.

Taking daily backups is a non-trivial task. Sure, they could have operators stacking thousands of tapes in underground bunkers, but how much would it cost to find the bit of tape you need? If you are not paying anything for a service, it's best to assume that there are no backups, and that no one is going to provide any real personal help.

In fact, those are wise assumptions even if you are paying top whack. If you are wrong, you may get a nice surprise, but don't bank on it. Even cloud-based services that are reliably set up, well run and have great backups are not invulnerable. Companies go bust all the time. Your data ends up on the back of a lorry, destined for some other underfunded web 2.0 startup. You won't even get chance to bid it a fond farewell.

I think personal computing is wonderful, but hard drives fail and laptops get lost or stolen, so it makes sense to back up your data. I think cloud computing is wonderful too, but operators make mistakes, passwords get lost, servers get hacked, companies fail and so on, so it makes sense to back up your data.

As Schofield's Second Law of Computing asserts, data doesn't really exist unless you have two copies of it. Preferably more. And the only person who can be held responsible for that is you.

Source: Jack Schofield, Guardian Newspaper

7/05/2008

Buy Nothing Day

FOMCA declares 'Buy Nothing Day' on July 16


Why? That day has been declared the "Buy Nothing Day" by the Federation of Malaysian Consumers Associations (Fomca).

Fomca, with the cooperation of its partners, wants the Buy Nothing Day to be a day for consumers to review and reflect their personal values, especially in relation to consumerism.

It is also a time for consumers to think of their spending patterns, and about their values in relation to the importance given to family and friends, and the goods they acquire.

The Buy Nothing Day is organised in conjunction with the National Consumer Campaign (NCC), which is on from June this year till June 2012 under the theme of Change Begins With Me.

"The focus of the NCC is for Malaysian consumers to change their consumer behaviour and to take greater responsibility to face challenges that have an impact on their lifestyle," Fomca president Datuk N. Marimuthu said at the launch of the Buy Nothing Day.

"The time for cheaper fuel and foodstuff is over. Malaysians need to re-examine their lifestyle and make changes to the way they live to adapt to global challenges like increasing fuel prices," he said.

Also present at the launch were representatives from the campaign partners – Cuepacs, National Council of Women's Organisation (NCWO) and the Malaysian Youth Council.

Meanwhile, following are some of the positive measures consumers can do:
· Packing lunches/snacks at home and having them at the office;
· Having more meals at home and eating out less;
· Reducing electricity consumption, such as reducing the amount of time the air-conditioner is switched on or using the fan more often;
· Planning travel in advance;
· Using public transport more often;
· Buying only when necessary, and evaluating the needs versus the wants;
· Using energy-efficient equipment, like a front-loading washing machine rather than a top-loading one;
· Stop using credit cards; and
· Buying house brand goods instead of branded goods.

More on 'Buy Nothing Day' at Wikipedia

7/02/2008

Mobile Art by Zaha Hadid

Zaha HadidZaha HADID于2004年获颁被誉为建筑界诺贝尔奖的普利茨克奖(Pritzker Prize)。她每一项充满动感和创意的建筑,都是累积了30多年革命性实验和研究的心血结晶。HADID不时突破界限,探索新的空间概念,在城市、建筑和设计三个互相关连的范畴内,追求完美的视觉美感。

HADID作品的其中一个特色,是以先进的技术,把天然地形和人为的建构融为一体,令建筑、景观和地质精妙地接合一起,结果为她的作品带来几何、天衣无缝和无懈可击的澎湃活力。

 Phaeno Science Center位于德国沃尔夫斯堡的Phaeno科学中心,正好引证了HADID一直追求的流质形态。其它影响深远的前作包括辛辛那提的罗森塔尔当代艺术中心和德国莱比锡的BMW中央大楼,均以崭新的空间意念和大胆而前卫的外型设计,把我们对未来的展望整合为真实的建筑,赢尽赞赏。

Central Building -BMW PlantMore on Phaeno Science Center, BMW Central Building

7/01/2008

Mobile Art 2008

那天在等人的时候,习惯性拿起身边的杂志,发现了这个崭新的艺术品,在这里让大家品味品味!可惜的是它只经过香港和日本。。。

Zaha HADID建筑公司设计的香奈儿 Mobile Art展览馆的外形是从品牌著名的菱格纹手袋的创作理念撷取灵感,以自然组织的模式构想,亦兼顾实际的用途。

Zaha HADID说:「Mobile Art展览馆的奇妙之处,在于如何把身心的感受,转化为感官的体验--以完全天马行空和令人着迷的环境,在世界各地为香奈儿这件经典作品喝采。我认为这个展览馆也是一项完全的艺术品,从亚洲出发,然后到美国和欧洲,在于期间不停的演化。」