Earlier today, I read several plurks on my timeline saying that their karmas reached 100.01. I immediately checked my karma and yes, it was 100.01 too. At first I thought that they had a 0.01 karma give-away triggering a bug for those with 100 karma.

Just a few minutes ago, @plurkbuddy officially announced that they are removing the upper bound for the karma. The announcement said “Have you reached 100 Karma and are you bored now? We have a solution – Karma is unlimited now! Enjoy!”

Actually, I didn’t care much about my karma since I reached karma 100. What do you think about the recent change?

Plurk is a social networking and microblogging tool popular mostly in South East Asia, just like Twitter. Users post updates where people can reply. These updates are laid on a scrollable horizontal timeline. Replies are shown in a threaded way, unlike in Twitter. Karma is a measure of user’s activity.

Curious about Plurk? Join Plurk now.

Someone should have been or is gonna be reprimanded really soon for forgetting to renew bayandsl.com!

I can’t wait for the deletion of the domain. I’m quite interested on buying the domain once, or if ever, it becomes available.

Fortunately for those who are lazy enough to take a peek on their form 5 from time to time, there’s this Google Calendar SMS notification for you. Google will text you your next class minutes or hours before your class, based on your preference.

You just need a Google account (which is free) to enjoy this free service!

How to use SMS Notifications

Here’s a rough how-to on how to do it.

• Go to Google Calendar (http://google.com/calendar).
• Click Settings link located at the upper right corner of the page. Go to Mobile Setup tab and follow the instructions. A verification code will be sent to your phone. Enter the verification code on the page.
• Create a new calendar by clicking the Create link on the My Calendars pane and fill in the necessary fields.
  
• Click the dropdown arrow adjacent to your newly created calendar in the My Calendars pane and choose Calendar settings.
  
• Click the Notifications tab. Click Add Reminder link and set your reminder settings based on your preference. Be sure to choose SMS.
  
• Save all settings. Add entries to your Google Calendar and an SMS reminder will be sent to you from time to time.

Sample Calendar Entry

Here’s a sample calendar entry I made for my schedule.

I’ve learned about this website, Surviving the World, after a friend posted a link to one of their entries in Plurk.

Surviving the World is a webcomic focusing on all shades of life, from science to literature, politics to sports, romance to religion, and everything else in between. –Surviving the World FAQ

The website is updated daily so you don’t have to worry not having a daily dose of STW.

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Short rant. Wow, I am busy that I can hardly update this blog.

These WiFi minutes can be used in any WiZ hotspot (Wireless Internet Zones) around the country, including most Starbucks coffee shops.

Instead of paying a hundred bucks an hour for Internet on your next visit to Starbucks, just don’t forget to copy your Globe Broadband username and password and redeem your two free hours per month. The format of the username is [alias]@globelines.com.ph where alias is the username you gave when you applied. The default password is your account number which is reflected on your bill.

If you are quite unsure of your username or password, you may call their hotlines @ (02) 9198888. The number is toll-free if you dial the number from a Globelines landline, local landline or Globe Telecom mobile number.

I am officially enjoying Google Map Maker now.

Google Map Maker is Google’s crowd-sourcing tool to gather geographical information and turn them to maps. Google Map Maker was launched in the Philippines October of last year. Due to the positive response to the product, Google deployed Map Maker data in the Philippines to Google Maps.

I always loved the idea of crowd-sourcing (like Wikipedia, Yahoo! Answers, etc). There are other similar online tools out there such as OpenStreetMap and Wikimapia. My only problem with OpenStreetMap is that their default editor doesn’t have satellite imagery which makes it hard to point areas of interest or identify location of roads unless you have GPS. Wikimapia, though, uses Google’s imagery but their moderation scheme is not good at all. I find it very prone to vandals.

Google Map Maker, on the other hand, has a good moderation and trust algorithm which makes it less prone to vandalism. Chances are MOST vandals get approved. A new user editing a mature or large structure such as major road could be subject to moderation, but a user with very high reputation won’t.

Another (I think) new feature they had was Directions. On Google Maps, Directions doesn’t work YET in the Philippines but I hope they’ll make it available in the near future. But in Google Map Maker, it’s working pretty well. Here’s the sample directions from our apartment at Esteban Abada to the Quezon City Memorial Circle (where we rappel for CWTS).

Nifty, huh? I think they’re not deploying it yet to Google Maps since some big roads such as the one’s in Katipunan aren’t yet well-defined in terms of flow of traffic. Most people know that there are designated U-turn slots in the area but Google Map Maker assumes that one can make a maneuver at any junction. Feeding Map Maker better data would make routing more accurate.

I encourage everyone to try using Google Map Maker and map your neighborhood. It’s always easier to map your neighborhood, unless you have a really lazy ass that you stay in front of your computer 24/7. All you need is a Google account and enthusiasm.

See you on Map Maker!

Last Friday, we had our Globe Broadband connected at the apartment. Globe Telecom deployed a PROLiNK Hurricane 5200 as our ADSL modem. Since we wanted to share the Internet connection throughout the room, we bought a Linksys WRT54G2 wireless router.

Configuring the PROLiNK Hurricane 5200 to work with Linksys WRT54G2 wasn’t that easy. Here’s a rough guide on how to do it. This guide must work with other models (such as Hurricane 9200) and other brands, but the steps will differ.

1. Place the modem to bridge mode.
   • Connect your modem to the computer thru the Ethernet (CAT5) cable.
   • Fire up your browser and go to http://192.168.1.1/globe
   • Go to WAN Configuration under Internet Interface.
     • You will be asked for a username and password. Use this:
       Username: Admin
       Password: 3UJUh2VemEfUtesEchEC2d2e
   • At the bottom of the page is the list of existing configurations. Delete them all by clicking the trash configuration icon.
   • On the same page, create a configuration. Fill in the VPI, VCI  and Channel Mode settings with the following:
     
   • Disable DHCP Server. Under LAN Interface, go to DHCP Settings. Choose None and click Apply Changes. unnecessary according to motion55 of PinoyDSL
   • Disable routing. Go to Routing under Advance. Choose None in Default Gateway and click Apply Changes. unnecessary according to motion55 of PinoyDSL
   • Restart your MODEM. Under Admin, go to Save and Reboot. Click Commit and Reboot.
2. Disconnect the modem to your PC. Connect your PC thru Ethernet (CAT5) cable to your wireless router. Use any port in the wireless router EXCEPT the Internet port.
3. Configure your router.
   • Fire up your browser and go to http://192.168.1.1/. The username is blank and the password could be one of the following: admin, password, pass.
   • The default page is the basic setup page.
   • Find the local IP address field. Change it to 192.168.1.2 to avoid conflict with your modem’s I.P. address.
   • After the changes are committed, you need to go to 192.168.1.2 and login again.
   • Still under basic setup, change Automatic Configuration DHCP to PPPoE.
     
   • Enter your Globe Broadband username and password.
4. Connect, connect and connect. Connect the Ethernet cable from the modem to the wireless router’s INTERNET port.
5. Do a hard reset of  your modem and wireless router by depriving them power (unplugging) for at least 10 seconds. Power them up and enjoy!

If you run into any problems, just comment and I’ll try to answer them if I can.

URL of image when not cached.

I’ve noticed though that they replace the URL of images inside <img> tags with another URL on their server for caching. This, in turn, causes some problems with web applications that requires authentication and generates images on the fly such as StatCounter. This replacement/caching process is only done when Globe Telecom detects that you are using a web browser on a computer or on a mobile phone (I curl-ed this website and the output did not have any URL replacements).

URL after caching. Notice, the cached and compressed image is in Globe or a third-party partner’s server.

As a workaround, you can spoof your User-Agent by modifying the headers of your requests. You may do this in Firefox by:

1. Going to about:config. A warning will have to scare you but just continue.
2. Then, find the general.useragent.extra.firefox setting. Using the filter above may help you find it.
3. Once you find it, double click the entry and change it to whatever you want. For it to work, it should not contain words like Mozilla, Firefox, Safari or other web browsers. I’ve changed mine to MikkoFox.

Have fun browsing without cached images.

Some three days ago, I was complaining to RapidVPS that my websites were loading really slow. I logged on to my server thru SSH and checked the server load. To my amazement, it was on it’s 300+ mark. Way above my 1.00 average. The servers running my account could have been boiling by that time.

It was around 7 hours after my first ticket when they responded. They gave me a very surprising surprise. RapidVPS permanently suspended my hosting account after it sent mass-mails to tons of people, thus spiking the server load which was detrimental to their services. They said my data was too risky to host. Up to now, I don’t know how it happened. As far as I knew, I did not have any cron job on that account. Someone might have sneaked in to my server and ran a really bad script using my account.

So I was forced to host a 503 (maintenance) page thru DreamHost to avoid search engines to remove my pages from the index while waiting for the backup of my files to be sent back to me. It took me around 36 hours to get a reply. By the 40th hour, I got a link to a tarred file of my backups. I immediately logged in thru my A Small Orange (ASO) account thru SSH and wget-ted the file. Sadly, I can’t untar the file on my ASO server since I only had very limited web space. Tandandandan.

What I did was I sent a request to A Small Orange to untar my files and copy the files for The Geek Brewery to the root of conradmiguel.com. I also asked them to import my SQL databases. Within five minutes, I got a reply. They were willing to help me out even if it was not part of my subscription. A Small Orange, FTW!

DreamHost and A Small Orange Promo Codes

The Geek Brewery is hosted at A Small Orange again, whilst my other websites are on DreamHost! It’s surely time to celebrate. That’s why I am giving out DreamHost and A Small Orange promo codes.

THEGEEKBREWERY DreamHost Promo Code

Use THEGEEKBREWERY promo codes and get $97 off on a one-year unlimited web space and bandwidth order. That’s $119.40 – $97 = $22.40 a year or roughly $1.90 a month. It comes with a free domain, woot!

THEGEEKBREWERY A Small Orange Promo Code

You may also use THEGEEKBREWERY at A Small Orange and get $5 off on any order. It’s quite small but A Small Orange is more than worth the price. You get super fast support, faster than DreamHost and RapidVPS. Plus, they have plans for as low as $25 a year. The Geek Brewery is on a Medium Orange plan worth $10 a month. All of their plans come with a free domain!

I’ll be staying at A Small Orange, hahaha.

There are various reports in the Internet that says Microsoft is doing a rebrand of Live Search, their very own search engine. Live Search lost its luster in the search engine game, just as how Internet Explorer lost the consumer’s trust. Microsoft’s several failed attempts to buy Yahoo may have led them to do the rebrand.

Rumored potential names of the search engine reboot are Bing, Kumo and Hook. Both bing.com and kumo.com are already on the hands of Microsoft, while hook.com is still owned by another party.

The said rebrand will involve a $100-million ad campaign covering both traditional and new media (TV, radio, print media, Internet). Some speculated that the campaign would most likely attack Google, just like what they did to Apple barely two months ago (the Laptop Hunter ad).

$100 million proves that Microsoft is really serious in getting a big slice of the search engine market share. Google only spent $28 million in advertising last year. With the nature of computing and Internet industry where users choose a better product rather than what is “seen”, I believe the success of this rebrand depends on the quality of the service itself.

What do you think? Will it hit the mainstream or not?

Related Reads around the Internet

• Microsoft to Launch Ad Campaign to Attack Google by Advertising Age
• Is “Bing!” Microsoft Search’s New Brand by Business Insider
• Wait: Could ‘Bing’ be the new name for Microsoft’s Live Search? by All About Microsoft (ZDNet Blogs)
• Bing: Microsoft Launching New Rival to Google? by Mashable
• Bing.com WHOIS
• Kumo.com WHOIS