To all our loyal readers! Have a good one!

Opera 9.10 is launched today with an advanced fraud protection to protect users from websites that try to “phish” your personal information. You can view the demo of how the fraud protection works here.

The fraud protection is disabled by default, so remember to enable it after installation.

When Opera Fraud Protection is enabled, you contact a server at Opera every time you request a Web page. HTTPS sites are checked via an encrypted channel, while IP addresses on the local intranet will never be checked. The server checks the domain name of the requested page against live whitelists compiled by GeoTrust, and blacklists compiled by GeoTrust and Phishtank. Opera’s fraud protection server downloads blacklists directly from Phishtank, and sends a query to GeoTrust.

Well, this feature is in addition to the (old) features of Opera like its built-in bittorrent application, mouse gestures, email client, IRC chat client and many more.

I’m still a fan of Firefox but that doesn’t stop me from using Opera from time to time.

Opera 9.10 for Windows Changelog | Download Opera 9.10

Nintendo will allow customers to exchange the old straps, which have a 0.024 inch diameter, for a beefed up strap that has a diameter of 0.04 inch, company spokesman Yasuhiro Minagawa said. The worldwide recall is expected to cost the company several several million dollars.

“People tended to get a bit excited, especially while playing Wii sports and in some cases the control would come loose from their hands,” Minagawa said. “The new strap will be almost twice as thick.”

The control wand is one of the unique features of the Wii, which Nintendo introduced as its counterchallenge in a fierce competition with the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

Source: Nintendo to replace 3.2M Wii straps

 Mark Huffman of ConsumerAffairs.com published an interesting article about the top 10 scams of 2006. Probably as you read along, you may think that the scams are ridiculous, but you’ll be amazed by the number of people falling for these!

The author concluded the article with the best solution to deal with scams:

The solution? Keep your wits about you, be skeptical and remember — trite though it may be — if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Article link: http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2006/12/top_ten_scams.html

Today, Skype officially launched its latest Windows version - the Skype 3.0. Some of you who tried the beta version of Skype 3.0 should probably know the new features, especially the public chat feature. I like this feature a lot, as it reminds me of the good ol’ ICQ day - getting to meet new people and also stay connected with friends. Instant messengers like Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo Messenger still lack this feature, despite their popularity.

Well, enough talk I guess. Download Skype 3.0 here: Link

On first look, Stikkit looks just like an online version of a post-it note/notepad or an online note taking service like Google Notebook. But behind the good looks, this is a very intelligent version of a notepad!

I have to admit that despite owning a PDA, I can be lazy at times and miss out on what to add to my organiser and just leave it as a note on the notepad but Stikkit aims to reduce all this pain and trouble of manually updating your organiser by automating this process!

So here as an example, I attempt to just type in an event that I need to do the day after - “email me at 10pm tomorrow!”:

Stikkit automatically recognises that as an event and schedules it into your calendar! How cool is that? You can also share your Stikkit notes with your friends/colleagues, bookmark pages and more! Definitely a very cool webapp, and IMHO a likely acquisition target for Google!

Link: http://www.stikkit.com/

Finally, a search engine built for girls!!! Still in alpha, Like find things that are similar! This might not sound cool to you guys, but it definitely is for us girls! Now we can get hold of items that look similar to a star’s accessory at real world prices =P

For example, have a look at Madonna’s bracelet here:

A Likeness Search returns results like this:

A closer look at the controls gives you the idea that you can customise the search so that it will tune its result according to your preference for the color, shape and pattern! OMG, this is what I call a search engine for girls and I think this will bring my online shopping experience to another level!!!

Anyway, would this be the end of the endless chats we girls have of “Where did you get that?”, “Oh my God, I need to buy that!”, etc? Unfortunately, that won’t be true at the moment, since we can only search for the accessories that are on celebrities in their database. It would be really great if we can upload our own pictures and point to a bracelet/necklace/handbag and the search engine will return results which are similar! So, let’s keep our fingers crossed and hopefully this will come true in the beta version =)

Like - visual search

ReviewMe is the latest service which pays bloggers to write reviews for them, very similar to other sites like PayPerPost and CreamAid. But I bet most of you guys here are thinking: “Yet another Pay Per Post service?” Is this going to be the start of a new era in blogging when blog readers can’t differentiate between a paid post and a post that gives the true picture?

Well, I’m hoping that that won’t be the truth and I think ReviewMe has what it takes to offer a win-win solution for all parties. The part that differentiates ReviewMe from other similar services is that it requires bloggers to disclose that they are being paid for the post and advertisers cannot force bloggers to write only the positive things about their products! *Psst…I have to tell you guys I’m writing this review for cash but it’s also for me to tell you all what it’s like inside =P Also tell me in the comments page if you think I’m selling my soul to the devil…or not

Anyway, now back to the ReviewMe site. It’s easy to register and submit your blogs for approval. However, you’ll need to have an established blog to be approved (I’m guessing PR4 and above) i.e. lotsa links to your blog, quite a few visitors and loyal readers. Once accepted, your blog will be ranked based on an algorithm which considers the blog’s Technorati, Alexa ranking and an estimated amount of RSS subscribers, where a price will then be determined for your review. Obviously, the more popular your website, the higher payout you can get. Anyway, here’s a screenshot of how it looks like:

So, once you’ve submitted your blog, you can sit back and wait for advertisers to advertise their product on your site. If an advertiser approaches you for a review, you’ll then have to read their guidelines (e.g. minimum no. of words, deadline for review) and decide if you’re willing to review their product. Once you’re done with the review, you’ll have to submit the link to the article back to them to let them see if they liked it.

All in all, I would say it’s an extremely interesting concept with alot of room for growth. It’s not only another avenue for bloggers to make some pocket money but it allows people to get more detailed reviews on products - good/bad. As for the blog readers, from my point of view, it might lead to more detailed reviews of products from the man/woman nobody knows about in the street instead of those we normally get from experienced product reviewers who depend on this for their livelihood.

I used to remember using AnimationShop for creating animated gifs, and although the wizard made it easier, it’s still quite troublesome if you compare it to Gickr! This webapp animates your Flickr photos in like seconds, and the options are easy to figure out. Choose pictures from your Flickr collection/grab them from a tag search; choose the size and the speed at which it changes frames and voila…you have an animated gif:

Here’s an example I made, an animated gif about Malaysia:

So there you go, an extremely simple webapp which can create a simple animated gif. No registration required but the animated gifs you create will have the gickr.com watermark.

October 20, 2006 (Computerworld) – The final version of the new Firefox 2.0 Web browser will be launched Tuesday, just eight days after the last review candidate for the software was released for public use. A spokeswoman for the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation, which maintains the open-source browser code, said the Release Candidate 3 (RC3) version of Firefox 2.0, which was posted for download on Monday has been doing well among users and is ready to be finalized as Firefox 2.0 for distribution. “RC3 is substantially the same as the final release,” the spokeswoman said. The final version will be branded as Firefox 2.0 and will be available for free download on its own Mozilla Web page sometime on Tuesday afternoon. “That’s definitely scheduled,” she said

Source: Final Firefox 2.0 browser to be released Tuesday

This is the news that I’ve been waiting for so long! Firefox 2.0 is finally going to be released this Tuesday (Oct 24). I know I can try out the RC3 version as they will be the same as the final release, but the feeling is different, if you know what I mean.

It has been claimed that Firefox 2.0 will use significantly less memory as compared to Firefox 1.5.  I’m really looking forward to that as the memory problem has been bugging me ever since I started using Firefox with all the nice extensions.

Well, to all Firefox lovers, remember to download the latest version when it’s launched this Tuesday!