Well, good news is, there is a workaround for this! And it’s from Quora themselves.

Recently Quora released its iPhone app in the appstore, which allows you to signup right on the app itself. However, you have to make sure that you are using your US iTunes account, otherwise you won’t find the app in the appstore as it’s restricted to US only. If you don’t have US iTunes account, you can get one following these steps.

Once you download the app, it will ask you to login or signup for new account. If you choose signup, you can then signup using either your Facebook, Twitter or Create New Quora Account from scratch. Enjoy!

* Thanks to my friend Yusri for the heads up.

As the story goes.. In 1999, Jimmy Wales had an idea, he wanted to create a free encyclopedia to be written by experts and PhD holders, it was called Nupedia. He reasoned, only scholars, academics and experts in a particular field would be able to write such articles. It made sense, as scholarly articles needed a lot of referential data and research, not everyone would be able to write such articles. However, in its first year, his team of “experts” were able to write only a dozen articles. They were simply too slow. This was due to many reasons, most of the academics were too busy, it was difficult to convince them to write for Nupedia, research normally took few years..etc.

So, Jimmy Wales saw that it was not working, something had to be done. He came out with a new idea. He suggested to his team, why not make it in a way that anybody can create an article, others can edit it, etc… basically early years of crowdsourcing. But the editors of Nupedia and Advisory Board were not very supportive of the idea. For them it was the opposite of what they were doing at the moment. Non-academics, and uncontrolled editing and creation of articles, they thought, would jeopardize the credibility of the articles and company as a whole. They reasoned, there would be too much error in the articles, which would render the articles useless for any scholarly reference or research.

This new idea ended up separated into different project and was called “Wikipedia” (wiki – hawaiian for quick). Within a year, there were more than 20,000 articles in it. Clearly it was a success and it was working. As for the margin of error, it was 3.86% per article, compared to 2.92% for Encyclopedia Britannica according to 2005 research by journal Nature, which is acceptable. And usually these errors get corrected over time.

Eventually, Nupedia was shutdown in 2003, and it had only 23 articles at the time of closing. And as they say, the rest is a history…

Lesson to Startups and Entrepreneurs..

Sometimes the initial idea for your startup may not work out, and you might end up doing something totally different for your startup and its direction. And this phenomenon is actually very common in startups. As Jawed Karim of YouTube said in SVC2M event in Kuala Lumpur, their initial idea for youtube was “a dating site with videos“.

So, if your first version of your product (MVP) didn’t take off, don’t despair. Find out why it didn’t take off, get feedback from your potential customers/users on what they want, after that iterate and try again!

Note: If you want to read more about wikipedia story, check this Business Week article here

Please feel free to comment about your own experiences or of any companies that you know which changed their business model, direction, idea drastically from the original one.

Below, you will find some of these websites:

Code Academy

Codecademy is an interactive and fun way to learn coding. By asking you to type set of words and answers to questions, it will involve you in a two-way communication. By the time you realize, you will be coding and understanding the concepts of object oriented programming. It also employs social elements to the site, so that you can learn together with your friends.

Website: http://www.codecademy.com

Khan Academy

Khan Academy has a huge collection of 2700+ free videos. And it’s a work of one man, Salman Khan. What started of as a casual online tutoring sessions for his relative’s kids, turned out to be one of the largest non-profit educational organizations in the world.

He has MBA from Harvard, he has three degrees from MIT: a BS in math and a BS and a master’s in electrical engineering and computer science. His website is mainly popular for his maths videos, which are easy to understand and appealing to school kids. You can read more on Khan’s story at the following sites; Money.CNN, Wired, and SiliconPrairieNews.

Website: http://www.khanacademy.org

TreeHouse

Treehouse is a fairly new website that concentrates on providing instructional videos on Web Design, Web Development and iOS Development. As a part of its teaching method, it uses ‘badges’ similar to what FourSquare does, you will get a badge for answering questions correctly. However, unlike CodeAcademy and KhanAcademy, Treehouse charges for its service, starting $25/month.

The project is backed by one of the well known investors, namely; Reid Hoffman, Kevin Rose, David Sze, Chamath Palihapitiya and Mark Suster.

Website: http://teamtreehouse.com

Veri

Veri is a veri good website :) It’s a community managed website that have a wide range of topics, from online marketing to understanding term sheets to parenthood. Yeah that’s how wide their array of topics are. Teaching method employed at Veri is multiple choice based questions, if you answer the question wrongly, you can learn the right answer.

You can also invite your twitter and FB friends and see their progress and classes that they are taking. You can also create your own lessons or contribute new modules to the existing topics.

Website: http://www.veri.com

Code School

Last but not least, Code School is a paid service ($25/month) that teaches variety of programming and web design subjects. Their teaching method combine video, coding in the browser, and gamification principles to make learning more fun and therefore more effective. There is a selection of free courses that you can take.

Website: http://www.codeschool.com

What you say?

I hope you liked the resources. Do you know of any other resources that are making a difference in online education/learning? If you do, please plug them in the comments section.

UPDATED: JAN 19, 2012

• Skillshare.com – marketplace for teaching and learning. Find people to teach or learn from. All classes happen in real life/offline.
• Udemy.com – create your own video lessons, take courses from others.

Failure is given, and it should be celebrated

Throughout the event, speakers and panellists have time and again reminded entrepreneurs that they have to take risks and prepared to fail, because they were told, for the first (few) startup(s) they were definitely going to fail.

As we know, failure is celebrated in Silicon Valley, but not so much in other parts of the world, especially in Asia. In most Asian countries failure is stigmatized, it’s especially true in Japan.

“From olden times, if you were defeated in battle you committed seppuku [ritual suicide by slicing the belly, also known as hara-kiri],” Mr Honda says. “That’s in our genes, so people don’t try if they think they might fail.”
Stigma of failure holds back Japan start-ups – FT.com

For this reason, it’s not an easy feat for us Asians to take risks and celebrate our failures…

Failures == (Hopefully) Learn How to Launch Successful Startup?

For me the whole message of failures and embracing failures sounded a bit like, to put it very bluntly – “i don’t care what you do, just go and try and learn it by yourself. I don’t have time for this. Surely after few startups you will know how to launch successful startup/product“.

Cartoon (C) CartoonStock.com

Because let’s face it, not everyone’s startup will be next Twitter or Facebook. And not everyone is in the position to take risks. So, I thought and had desired that these successful entrepreneurs show some sort of “guidance”, “methodology” for starting a successful business or at least minimizing failures and maximizing success rates of new startups. But alas, the message was, again to put it bluntly “i don’t want to hear anything, just go do it yourself“.

Which brings me to next point…

Success of Incubation Centers
Incubation centers like Y-Combinator, TechStars have been quite successful in the US. These centers provide extensive training, mentoring and funding for startups if it passes their selection criteria. This is a very good development, and it’s very beneficial for the first-time entrepreneurs.

In Malaysia, MDeC provides somewhat similar program for entrepreneurs. Also the newly launched AllStars incubation program is a good start for the local industry.

Success of these programs is, I believe mostly due to the vast experience of the mentors who run these places regarding startups. Also their gut feeling about the next big thing when it comes to selecting ideas. Basically they are very hands-on with the startups that they mentor. They share their domain knowledge and expertise in the product development, marketing, team building etc. It’s an end-to-end program, which is what first-time entrepreneurs want. And not “go and do yourself” kind of message.

There is a way to successful startups

Until now, entrepreneurs have believed that there is no recipe for successful startup. And I believe, SVC2M speakers did genuinely thought that they were giving the best advice when they said that there is no one way to launch a successful business. You just had to try it for yourself, and once you have enough experience, a keen eye for “the next big thing” ideas, then you would finally hit a bull’s eye, hopefully.

However, Steve Blank, thinks otherwise. After founding 8 successful startups, he says that he saw a pattern in making startups work. And he has come up with, what’s called “Customer Development Methodology” for Startups. Some info on Steve:

After 21 years in 8 high technology companies, I retired in 1999. I co-founded my last company, E.piphany, in my living room in 1996. My other startups include two semiconductor companies, Zilog and MIPS Computers, a workstation company Convergent Technologies, a consulting stint for a graphics hardware/software spinout Pixar, a supercomputer firm, Ardent, a computer peripheral supplier, SuperMac, a military intelligence systems supplier, ESL and a video game company, Rocket Science Games.

Total score: two large craters (Rocket Science and Ardent), one dot.com bubble home run (E.piphany) and several base hits.

In his book “Four Steps to Epiphany” Steve talks about Customer Development Methodology extensively. He argues that “Product Development Methodology” is not the right methodology for running startups and making plans, especially sales and marketing plans. Because it exclusively concentrates on the product and totally ignores the customer part. He argues that, startups who use “Product Development Methodology” for running startups have higher chance to fail.

One important thing to remember though, he doesn’t advocate replacing “Product Development Methodology” with “Customer Development Methodology”. He says that PDM, should be used for developing and managing a product, and CDM should be used to manage, plan and run Startups.

CDM is a big topic in itself, so if you are interested, I highly recommend that you get the book.

MVP or Minimum Viable Product

Coupled with Customer Development Methodology, getting your product as soon as possible to the market with the most basic version first, in order to get customer feedback is gaining popularity now. MVP has been popularized by Eric Ries for web startups with his book Lean Startup. You can watch his video course on Lean Startup at Udemy.com.

“The product is typically deployed to a subset of possible customers, such as early adopters that are thought to be more forgiving, more likely to give feedback, and able to grasp a product vision from an early prototype or marketing information. It is a strategy targeted at avoiding building products that customers do not want, that seeks to maximize the information learned about the customer per dollar spent.”

Summary

I think there is a light at the end of the tunnel. I strongly believe that Steve Blank is right, and coupled with concepts like Lean Startup, every startup can iterate successfully and if not become the next Twitter, at least they will be able to minimize the failure rate. Sometimes, entrepreneurs are just happy to see their idea to be alive and profitable, even though it doesn’t become the multi-million startup.

And I hope that successful entrepreneurs, will guide beginners to these concepts and methodologies, rather than just sending them to battlefield with no weapons. Your thoughts?

Related useful book: Business Model Generation

But the main question is – Does it worth to launch at these events?

Joel Spolsky has a long post on this subject, for TL,DR people (too long, didn’t read), he basically argues that if you have a decent product, then it’s worth to launch at these events. Otherwise it’s a waste of time for everybody.

As Openera posted on their blog, they didn’t have the expected results from TC Disrupt SF 2011 with their startup launch. It’s interesting to read. Make sure to read the comments section too.

How about you? Have you launched any of your products/startups at similar events? What was your experiences? Please share.

Was it affective? In my case no, because I didn’t signup. However I did have a look at their page. So, it was effective in getting the traffic to the website, but ineffective in converting the leads.

Below diagram shows how mobile companies are suing each other for patent related things:

Source: Reuters

Update: list of Steve Jobs (Apple) patents http://www.nytimes.com…

Basically, Flattr wants users to reward i.e give money to their favorite websites or people. Favorite websites here actually refers to all internet content eg; websites, articles, images, audio files, videos, text etc. People here refers to people who are on Twitter or Flattr itself.

How it works

You signup with Flattr and add some funds to your account. How much money to add is totally up to you. Once you are done adding, you just surf the web as you normally do. However, whenever you see a Flattr button on some websites and if you like the content of the website you can “Flattr” it, it’s similar to Facebook’s Like button. But instead of just “liking” the website, here you are actually giving them some money.

How much money websites will get?

They have done it very straight forward, all your money is divided into equal portions and distributed to all the websites that you have Flattred within the month. Let’s say you have added $1.00 to your account and you have flattred 9 websites. That means at the end of the month, each website that you have flattred will get 0.10 cents. And the remaining 10% which is 0.10 cents, will go to Flattr system.

What’s the catch?

From first glance, there seems to be no catch. Especially for people who are giving money away. However the idea behind Flattr is that, the founders believe that there are some people who do donate money to websites, normally via Paypal donate button. These are mostly websites with freebies or open-source stuff. So people behind Flattr want to make this process of donating or distributing money to your favorite websites simpler – as simple as pushing the “like” or “flattr” button.

As for the bloggers, it’s just one more avenue to make money. You just have to integrate the buttons into your website and hope that someone will flattr it :)

Below is the diagram on how it works:

My suggestions to Flattr

1. Very few people actually donate, and that’s a fact. I have experienced it personally before. I had done some freeware software and free website templates myself but got back very few bucks over the years. With this problem as a backdrop to Flattr’s business model, I think if it’s going to solely rely on “hope” that people will add funds to their accounts every month and diligently distribute it to all the deserving websites, then I think they are (gravely) mistaken.

2. Change the “flattr it” to something more simple and generally understandable, eg; “like it” or “love it” or just heart icon –

3. Currently only people who are registered with Flattr are able to “like” the websites. I think they should allow anyone (even non-flattr users) to click “like” buttons. Because asking people to register is a hassle, not many people will register. Let alone they have to make a little research on Flattr itself and how it works and add funds to their account and come back to your blog again and then click on “flattr” button…. i think it’s not gonna happen.

3. Here is a suggested tweak to their business model: Let anyone click on “flattr” button. But put security measures such as you can only “flattr” the same website once a week or once a month etc. So that people won’t game the system. Regarding the funds, instead of individual funds, combine all the funds, perhaps into different categories. So for example if I have selected “blogging” as my preference in my account, my funds will be allocated for “blogging” related websites together with all the other flattr users who have selected “blogging” as their preference too. At the end, you have a huge fund for “blogging”.

So this combined funds for “blogging” will then be distributed to all the blogs that people have flattred for the given month.

5. Introduce some promotional modules to the system. Instead of just me donating to others, let me submit my blog to the system and somehow allow me to promote it to others. StumbleUpon type of promotional opportunity would be ideal. Idea is to attract both: publishers and advertisers.

Website: http://www.flattr.com
AdesBlog on Flattr: https://flattr.com/thing/385363/AdesBlog-com

Newly launched GhostBloggers.net is a platform for people to buy and sell ghost articles. Each article is manually reviewed for plagiarism and quality, so you can be sure that you are getting the real deal. Check it out.

Website: http://www.ghostbloggers.net

Google Web Fonts is a project by Google to provide webmasters and designers with high quality, free, open source fonts for website usage. What I like the most about this is that, Google has made embedding the fonts very easy. Basically you just point to them for the CSS source, and apply the fonts to your website via standard CSS styles. You can see the example here.

URL: http://www.google.com/webfonts

What’s Bloapp?

It’s a free tool for bloggers to create their own iPhone app for FREE. It supports self-hosted blogs, plus blogs that are hosted in these blogging platforms; Blogspot, Posterous, Tumblr, Weebly, Blogdrive and Tripod.

I have already created my iPhone app with Bloapp, here is how you can get it:

1. Download the app from iTunes click here.
2. Scan this QR code or search for my blog “Ades” and you are done! You can now read my blog in your iPhone.
   

Bloapp iPhone Screenshots

Here are some screenshots of the iPhone app for my blog. For your own app, you can choose different layouts and can customize your own logos, headers, backgrounds…

Web Screenshots

Creating iPhone app for your blog with Bloapp is very easy. Just 1, 2, 3 and you are done. Below is some screenshots from the website.

Dashboard: List of your added blogs/apps

Step 1 – Choose Layout

Layout 1 – layout with thumb, title, and post excerpt

Layout 2 – layout with blog post title and date

Layout 3 – title only clean and woody layout

Layout 4 – layout with thumb, post title and post excerpt, for techy blogs…

Step 2 – Customize your logo, header and bg

Step 3 – Customize your font style, text size and text color

Your are done – QR code for your blog

Promote – Counter chicklets
Counter script – display on your blog how many people are reading your blog via Bloapp

I hope you like it. Your feedbacks on this project is most welcome.

Sign-up for free: www.bloapp.com.

At the end of 2009, I joined local, young technology company called Infindo Technology and ever since I have been really enjoying the experience. Since then, I have worked on many exciting products and projects, starting with conceptualizing and managing Infindo’s main product Polygon, which is a white-label cross-platform appstore solution for telcos and enterprise. I’m proud to say that it’s now successfully implemented to Brunei’s leading mobile operator bMobile and it’s in the middle of implementation for other Telcos in the region.

I have also worked on many internal and client iPhone/iPad app projects, such as; EPL for iPad, EPL for iPhone, Formula 1, WorldCup for iPad, WorldCup for iPhone, WinterOlympics, iProperty, HSBC Brunei to name a few. Infindo has over 40 apps in Apple’s appstore alone.

Currently I’m heading Infindo’s Product Department, overseeing company’s product portfolio. My bosses have been extremely supportive of my initiatives in the company thus far, and I’m greatly appreciative of that. Infindo, as a company has experienced tremendous growth too, from just 10 employee startup to now over 50 employees, having offices in Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore.

Since I am a blogger at heart, I wanted to develop something for the blogging community. It’s a way of giving back to the community. So, with the support of my company and team, for the past few months, I have been working on a new free product that is going to benefit all bloggers greatly. You are going to find out more about it shortly in the next post. Till then, stay tuned and thanks for your support!

So when the day finally comes when you see enough of your competitors coming up with flashier and fancier websites, will you be prepared to do something yourself? And when you do something, will you have given it enough thought and preparation to do it in a way that will help your business more than hurt it? Here are some tips to help you make your online presence most effectively complement your offline business:

1. Invest in your website. Managing the site properly takes time and effort. So don’t skimp on the resources you devote to site management. If your budget allows it, hire a full-time site manager who knows what he/she is doing – or even better, develop a web team. Make sure they have a wealth of knowledge about the Web and that they understand design techniques, color theory, spacing, etc. Many companies make the mistake of assigning web management as a corollary duty to a person already busy with “higher-priority” assignments. In some larger firms, web maintenance is often relegated to junior staff members who have neither the experience nor the clout within the organization to push the site forward to its rightful prominence. Invest in your website so that it can become a good investment for you.

2. Keep your message consistent. Your website is an online reflection of your business. Therefore, it should have the same look and feel as your store, your ads, your signage, and your business vehicles. Your brand identity should be mirrored on your site in every way possible. Pay attention to thinks like colors, logos, fonts, visuals, and even the style of language you use on your site. Remember that one of the biggest advantages to having a website is that it gives you a permanent conveyor of round-the-clock publicity for your business.

3. Use social networking properly. Prominent links to social media tools such Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn are great ways to extend your reach and interact with new and diverse audiences. But you have to be sure that you do this in the right way. Always keep in mind that the primary purpose of social networking is for people to engage with other people. It is not there for people to look at sales pitches or build relationships with businesses. Instead of creating corporate accounts on these sites, you may want to encourage your employees, as individuals, to Tweet, blog, and interact socially online in a way that lets them engage with your target community. But be very careful to institute clear guidelines on acceptable behavior and what they should and should not do.

4. Don’t try to please all of the people all of the time. If you attempt to construct a site that targets everyone, then in all likelihood your site will end up appealing to no one. You should know who your target audience is and which demographic is most important to your business. And this audience should become the primary focus of your site. Make your site appealing to everyone, but make it captivating for your target audience.

5. Pay continual attention to your site and keep improving it. Your business climate is constantly changing. Therefore, your website needs to constantly change too. Neglecting the site can quickly become an embarrassment for your business. Content can become out of date. So can design and style. And we all know how fast technology changes. You take great pains to keep your business current. You need to be just as careful to keep your website up to date.

The online world can often seem like a strange beast to a businessperson accustomed to dealing with customers in a much more tangible way. But with a little investment and forethought, the beast can not only be tamed, but trained to help your business thrive. Your business is offline and that will never change. But you can add a vital online component to it. And if you go about it the right way, that online component can be maximized in a way that will also maximize your
profits.

Donate: MuslimHands.org | RedCross.org | GlobalGiving.com

These are works of Freelance Interface Designer, Sam Brown. And as with other great designers, Sam is not available for freelance projects at the moment. And this is the case with almost all the good designers. Most of them are already busy and has no time for your projects.

But Sam was kind enough to do a project called Endor.se to solve this issue, where busy freelancers can endorse/recommend other equally good freelancers who might be free to take up your project.

For example, you can see who Sam himself is endorsing at http://endor.se/sambrown

Website: Endor.se

Now just imagine being able to host dedicated servers on these! Maybe in the near future!

In a few weeks time, they are coming up with iPad, Android and Browser versions as mentioned in their blog post here.

Website: http://www.6wunderkinder.com

Now one of my to do list is to upgrade my website hosting soon and gather all my sites together in on hosting plan. But the problem with this is that when the server goes down all of my sites goes down with it. Hmmm…

Google is already into it as we all know it, they are trying to figure it out at the moment. But there are so many great products and services can be built for bringing internet to the TV. Just a food for thought!

Update: Watch it on youtube here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H69IK0B2ods

However the founder of Alibaba.com, biggest online company in China, says that for him “the most important groups are customers and then employees. He says that customers are the ones who pay him and employees are the ones who stick with him but shareholders come and go. And for this reason, shareholders come last for him.”

That’s a very interesting point that he makes. Read his other two company philosophies on TechCrunch here. Watch the full interview here.

URL: http://the99percent.com/videos/5822/seth-godin-quieting-the-lizard-brain

The Payvment tab couples PayPal’s API with Payvment’s shopping cart, allowing you to sell products directly on your Facebook Page… for free! This is a comprehensive app which allows you to add products and assign those products to a category. Payvment’s tab allows you to upload photos, list terms of service, provides shipping options, offer coupons and much much more. Your customers can shop for products like they would from any other e-commerce site, right on Facebook.

One of the coolest features of the Payvment tab is that it is integrated with all other Payvment stores, both on and off Facebook. If a user adds a product to their cart from your store, and later goes to check-out after shopping at another Payvment store, your item will still be in that user’s cart.

URL: http://www.facebook.com/payvment

Places will directly compete with foursquare, another most popular location tagging application at the moment. Foursquare is not easy to beat though, since it has a competitive advantage; people can use foursqare to get discounts in restaurants, boutiques, shops etc, users also receive funny badges and become a mayor of the places…

It’s going to be interesting in the next few months, how these two apps will be competing with each other.

App costs just $2.99, much cheaper than the iPhone 4 investment :)

URL: http://www.getreviewapp.com/

There is no charges for unlimited revisions of your logo samples, so you can be sure that you will get your logo in exactly the way you want.

Also check out their portfolio and string of testimonials from satisfied customers.

Website: http://www.logodesignteam.com

URL: http://twitter.com/goodies/tweetbutton

That means it’s the retweets that really matter, and if you are a social networking advertiser you might want to find out the retweet rates of your twitter users that you are advertising on. Otherwise, if no one retweets their tweets, you might be wasting your money.

Because the research suggests that there are users with: 1) many followers and low relative infuence, and 2) users with fewer followers but high relative infuence. If you were to choose one of two, you should go for the second type of users. Because that way your message will be heard by a lot more people.

As we know twitter is like a river, at any given time you can only see the latest tweets and everything else is a history… So unless your “message” is retweeted, it’s as good as it’s dead.

I am just rumbling here, but I hope you know what I am getting at. Here is the research:

Influence and Passivity in Social Media – HP Labs Research

I hope font designers will support this project and contribute more free fonts to the directory.

URL: http://code.google.com/webfonts/preview

This image is probably one of the most memorable images of WC 2010 – Brazilian football player Felipe Melo stamping Dutch player Ruben, and subsequently getting a “red card” and leaving the field, leaving Brazil with 10 players, which was a huge blow and ultimately cost them a semi-final?

Ok, now let’s read your opinions :) I am sure many people are angry, and equally many people must be happy.

Also, if you are Malaysian and Maxis 3G subscriber, you can try this iPhone app b.player from Astro. The bad thing is it detects your connection and if you are on wi-fi or if you are on different carrier line than Maxis the app won’t work.

Which other websites do you recommend for watching WC matches online? Please share.

Personally, it was very disturbing to use Google with Pac-Man sound constantly looping at the background. If you don’t know what I am talking about go to google.com now and see (before it expires).

I think Google’s Doodle Team went too far this time. Should have just sticked to graphic logos and not games.

Btw, Google TV is launched at this week’s I/O Conference. TechCrunch has the details here. What is Google TV for bloggers? Well, it’s another channel for you to reach out to wider audience with your ads, probably your ads can be seen on TV in the near future. And for vbloggers (video bloggers) it probably means more money since people can watch their videos on TV. More banner impressions == more money.

Update: now you can see this page at http://www.google.com/pacman/ anytime.

The result for Android phones:

Website: http://www.gsmarena.com/search.php3

It’s a new startup that puts simplicity as the core value of their business. Normally auction sites are huge and forum-like. One of the advantage of huge sites are that, you can come the next day and see the auctions that were posted prior to that. You can also browse all the auctions and find the domain name/website that you like.

So, let’s see how people will respond to such business model in the domain auction business. What is your thoughts on this website and its business model? Does Google’s simplicity model suits auction sites?

URL: www.auctionpus.com

If you need WP Plugin version, you can get it here. Once implemented, plugin will generate “Like” button for each post, similar to the one you see on top of this post. You can customize the position (top-right, top-left, bottom-right, bottom-left…etc).

P.S I have integrated to my blog already. So, if you like any of the blog posts, don’t forget to “Like” them! :) Thanks!

Plugin URL: http://www.minddevelopmentanddesign.com/blog/wordpress-facebook-like-button

For some, it sounds like an invasion of privacy but for Mark Zuckerberg of FB, it’s one way to get people closer to each other. Read more on Mark’s plans here.

Last year they had released a plugin that could potentially replace blog comments, but that didn’t really take off. Similarly, Google’s Sidewiki project for the “web” also didn’t go well with people. Let’s see how people will respond to “Like” button strategy.

Download from iTunes: click here

XE Currency (Utility)
I am a long time user of xe.com and XE app is a great utility to have in your iphone if you want to keep tabs on the latest rates of World Currencies.

Download from iTunes: click here

Dictionary! (Reference)
Easy to use dictionary app. When offline, 200,000+ words are available for your reference.

Download from iTunes: click here

TIME Mobile (News)
While it’s rated 3 stars on iTunes, I found myself browsing this app everyday and found the navigation of the app really usable.

Download from iTunes: click here

Facebook App (Social Networking)
Well known for its simple, yet very usable design, Facebook app is one of the best apps in appstore.

Download from iTunes: click here

Battery Master Free (Utility)
You will never guess your battery life with Battery Master. It will show exactly how much talk time, video, audio, internet surfing time left… and whether your iPhone is fully charged or not, something that iPhone fails to show.

Download from iTunes: click here

Paypal App (Finance)
Need to send or receive paypal funds on your iPhone? Well, use this app…

Download from iTunes: click here

Skype (Social Networking)
Skype is great, Skype app is even better. One thing I like about this app is that you can call anyone on your iPhone contact list. No need to save their contact no in your Skype.

Download from iTunes: click here

How about you? Which apps are your favorite?

Maxis was the first telco given exclusive rights to distribute iPhone in Malaysia last year. This year they lost that exclusivity and now DiGi – another (3rd largest) mobile operator started offering iPhone 3GS + packages. Celcom unfortunately, again, couldn’t get any iPhone deals. Not yet.

All these info leads to next two screenshots. It will be apparent why Celcom is the runner up and why Maxis is the leader. Both companies offer Blackberry services, however searching for “Blackberry” in their respective official websites will yield totally different results.

Search for “Blackberry” in Celcom’s Website

Search for “Blackberry” in Maxis’ Website

Millions of funds are spent on marketing and outdoor advertising, yet they cannot even optimize their website for one of the most important products/services they offer – blackberry. Celcom, come on! Get your search fixed!

click to view full image

via crenk.com

It can basically serve you as an alternative backup space for all your important data. Google also makes it very easy to share your files with your friends. And if 1GB space is not enough you can easily add up to 16TB (yes terabyte) additional disk space. For example additional 20GB disk space will only cost you $5 per year, more details on pricing here.

It seems Google really wants to know more about you :) The more info and files you give to them, the happier they will get. But frankly, what would we do without Google and it’s free services?

Website: https://docs.google.com

I personally think that it’s an amazing product, it will be particularly popular with marketing professionals who would benefit from this kind of beautiful tablet PC (Mac) for their presentation purposes. As with normal people, they would enjoy it for reading e-books and browsing the internet. And of course, there will be tons of great apps that will make the iPad more valuable and usable than it actually is.

One thing disappointed me though… the photo-frame like edges of the iPad. I thought some of the photoshopped ones prior to the launch looked a lot better. I know that they did this out of usability, so that there would be a place around the device that is not-touch-sensitive. This would make your handling of the iPad easier, it wouldn’t interfere with your work, you wouldn’t accidentally launch some apps..etc. However they could have left the preferences of the not-touch-sensitive margin to the user. Don’t you think?

For example, if you like all four sides to be touch-sensitive you could set all four margins to zero. If you like to hold the left-side while using, you could set only left side margin to 1″ and the rest of the sides to zero…. you know what I mean? Basically, it would be just like the Word document where you can specify the margin of your paper before you print. But anyway…

How about you? What’s your thoughts on this product of Apple? I would like to know your opinions, leave your comments under this post.

Download script: http://www.unwrongest.com/projects/password-strength/

Website: http://www.woorank.com

Website: http://www.anypdftools.com/pdf-password-remover.html

And the links in the breadcrumbs actually point to different sections of the website, just like the navigation on actual website. That’s cool.

I didn’t know they did that. Looks very user friendly to me. So, if you can, try implementing breadcrumbs in your online projects.

Breadcrumbs and Usability: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/breadcrumbs.html