In the past two months,I had tons of stuff to do for the renovation of my new house.It makes me busy and tired every day,even no time to get online.

Well,it’s gonna be competed soon.Recently I have settled all basic furniture and electronic items.In days my wife and I will shift to this lovely place officially.After that,I could spend more time on investments and other interest which should be the important parts for me.

Of course,I will try to update my blog more frequently to share with you.

Have a great day!

As a blogger,I think no one will ask what is WordPress.Now it comes to another milestone WordPress 3.0.This new version makes a lot of improvements and changes.I will just list out the points which are great in this latest WordPress.

• A sexy new default theme called Twenty Ten.The new theme is awesome.It comprises some modern elements in the design and leaves quite a lot of spaces for being customized by the different groups of users.
• Merge of MU and WordPress.That means from now on,WordPress could also support multi-users/multi-sites.
• Lighter interface
• The better contextual help for every page
• 1217 bugs fixed and enhancements
• Bulk updates for plug-ins as well as themes

…

Let’s see the introduction from the official:

Just upgrade your current WordPress by a single click and you could then enjoy the fun from the new one.

Hours ago,WordPress 2.9 was officially released.It isn’t a major upgrade,however,some cool functions are still giving us a reason to make an upgrade.The whole upgrade procedures are very easy.You can upgrade easily from your Dashboard by going to Tools > Upgrade, or you can download from WordPress.org.

The official video clips introduces all things about the new release.Here we go:

The cool points of the new version for the users are:

1. Global undo/”trash” feature, which means that if you accidentally delete a post or comment you can bring it back from the grave (i.e., the Trash). This also eliminates those annoying “are you sure” messages we used to have on every delete.
2. Built-in image editor allows you to crop, edit, rotate, flip, and scale your images to show them who’s boss. This is the first wave of our many planned media-handling improvements.
3. Batch plugin update and compatibility checking, which means you can update 10 plugins at once, versus having to do multiple clicks for each one, and we’re using the new compatibility data from the plugins directory to give you a better idea of whether your plugins are compatible with new releases of WordPress. This should take the fear and hassle out of upgrading.
4. Easier video embeds that allow you to just paste a URL on its own line and have it magically turn it into the proper embed code, with Oembed support for YouTube, Daily Motion, Blip.tv, Flickr, Hulu, Viddler, Qik, Revision3, Scribd, Google Video, Photobucket, PollDaddy, and WordPress.tv (and more in the next release).

The new WordPress also ensures the smoothest experience as it’s out of thousands of bugs which exist in the previous versions and many improvements have been done here.So I think you’d better to make the upgrade as soon as possible.The benefit is GREAT!

If you’re used to read online material,I think you will always adopt Google Reader as a reliable online RSS reader because of its simple but useful interface.Now Google Reader adds two more functions to make the reading experience more relax and funny.

1.Explore section

Google Reader is always searching your Web History and Reader Trend and make the recommended sources fit your demand.That ensures that what we’re able to read in the Reader is what we’re most probably willing to read.Smart,huh?

2.Sort by magic

Well,sometimes you’ve subscribed a lot of materials,but you have limited time to read.I think you could now use sort by magic.It sorts all posts by your personalized ranking.That means it definitely knows what you want.It’s saving your time,right?

So just go to try it out for the new improvements.Google Reader is for a good reader.

I just upgrade my blogging platform into WordPress 2.8 by integrated upgrade function.WordPress 2.8 was said to do a lot of enhancements for themes, widgets, taxonomies, and overall speed.You could get the detail in the following clip:

More than 790 bugs have been fixed in this latest version.Thus,to do the upgrade is a necessary thing for all WordPress users.

If you want to know more about WordPress 2.8,please visit here to get a brief reading.

Happy blogging!

I received RM100 fund transfer from a personal account of Josh Lim,the founder and managing director of Advertlets.com.What’s up?Here’s the story.

I started blogging from 2006.I suppose to be the early blogger in Asia.During that period,tons of new stuff related to blogs appeared,including blog ads.I joined Advertlets once the business was launched.However,I’ve never been a celebrity blogger so that I spent around 2 years in Advertlets in order to earn my first RM100.I was happy that I could get some extra money from blogging.But later on,my bad experience also was coming.

I requested to cash out on 4 Feb,2009 and then sitting quietly at home for the funds.After 2 months,it was still so quiet and no sign telling me that I could get it.Thus,I wrote an email to Advertlets Customer Service and I hope that they were able to help me process that withdrawal.I felt so sad because I wouldn’t get any reply from them.All right,I kept on sending emails and finally I got a reply saying that the fund will be transferred by 15 May,2009.How many emails did I send regarding to cash-out?Four.It’s not the end.

Yesterday was 14 May,2009-the deadline that they promised to pay-up.Unfortunately I couldn’t get that fund.With my depression,I wrote another email to customer service and at the same time left my words in Advertlets official blog.I think Josh saw my message there and that’s why he did the fund transfer immediately.He gotta know how upset I was.

Thanks,Josh.You let me see the hope of Advertlets since the big boss still wanna hear the true words from people like me.But then,why are those staff working so inefficiently?I don’t know.

I just leave my doubt to Josh and I think he has to find out a solution as soon as possible because I’m not the only one facing such a problem.

Finally,I do wish Advertlets grows healthy and wealthy.(Ehm…By the way,you still owe me RM22.59,Josh!That could be a mini pack of Haagen Dazs probably.) 

If you have seen my post days ago,you certainly know what it is.I think it makes classical music live in a grand palace of a new era.Let’s enjoy!

YouTube just did a great thing that young generations may turn their eyes on classical music again and bring out another golden age of it.

Bravo!

Do you recognize the change?Yes,I adjusted the width of main container from 970 pixel to 1024 pixel as regarding to my recent analyse of visitors’ screen resolutions,around 95% of people are using 1024×768 or above nowadays.

This slight change gives more visible areas in every page of my blog and looks nicely,doesn’t it?

Adding ads into sidebar is not a hard work because nowadays a lot of themes have reserved some spaces for it.However,most people want to put ads in between a post title and its content so as to catch visitor’s eyes.How could it happen?It’s just several steps.

• Log in control panel(dashboard) of WordPress

• Going to left column there looking for “Appearance” and click the sub-button “Editor”.(The layout is based on WordPress 2.7)

• Now you should see the theme editor.On the right of the editor window,it’s listing all themes files.You need to find out “single.php” and click it in order to edit this file. (The file names may differ because of different themes,but you have to get the file related to single post.)

• Search the line “<h3 class="storytitle"><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h3>” and then add your ad code below this line. (The line may have a few differences on wording.)
• Finally don’t forget to click “update file” to save your edit.

Only 5 steps in total and it won’t take more than 10 minutes.Therefore,if you want ads performing better in your blog,just try to insert your ads in some nice places like where I indicate here.

Damn simple,right?

Yesterday I received an email from Google Adsense team telling me that my Google Adsense account is approved.It’s out of my expectations because previously I tried more than 5 times there but rejected with reasons of uncompleted contents.I think that could be a second key of making money online.What is the first?No doubt,it’s about starting a blog.

Allocate ads into appropriate spaces is important.From experiences of many probloggers,in order to generate a maximum profit,an optimum space is needed to be arranged.Thus,I still need take some time on research and test the performances of my current settings.I hope I could get some results before Christmas.

However,my knowledge on this is extremely limited.I sincerely welcome your guys to give me some advice.

Have a nice day!

I feel it’s really close to the final release now since WordPress 2.7 RC2 is just open to public.

If you have installed RC1,you could use the built-in core updater (Tools > Upgrade) to download and install RC2 for you.Or you have to download the files here and install by yourself.

Matt said this version had fixed most known issues and being pretty much exactly as the final.

Count down for the next!

Google Reader is a simple but powerful online RSS tool.I have used it for more than two years.However,though many other applications having changes frequently,Google Reader seems not always be in that list.Now it’s the day.

(NEW)

(OLD)

I just can say that is a comfortable appearance.But the external change is not all,the Google Reader team adds some user-friendly elements here like collapsible navigation.

You can easily find that previously I only can collapse the whole column with only one button.It has been the history as now I can separately appear the sidebar with a way I like.

New features are also around,such as promoting friends’ feed,hiding unread counts and achieving more feed bundles.You could refer them to the official blog.

So after all,I think I like the changes.How about you?

WordPress Release Candidate 1 was released on 1st of Dec and now my blog had clothed it.It was announced that 280 commits have been polished and a new admin UI introduced.However,the bug I met is still undone.

I think the final version of 2.7 will come within 1 week.I hope at that time more issues can be solved so that I could run it much comfortable.If your guys want to try it in advance,you can download it here and install to your server.All are minutes’ work.

Have a good day!

Recently Gmail has decided to change its plain interface to be colourful and so themes for Gmail are available now.

Inside ‘settings’,you can choose your preferred theme which fit your own style.I saw that there is a place to fill up location.I think some themes will be displayed the differences for different locations.

The login page has been with a nice background too.

I believe that this is not the only thing Gmail team is concerning.More surprises will be known in the near future as perhaps a Christmas gift.I really expect more new stuff. 

Beverly is a girl who is very good at shopping,collection and making up herself.I know her from her blog for over a year and read many posts about her lifestyle.

Currently she displays some authentic-branded collections on her blog and want to sell them out to the persons who have the same interests.It’s really hot that most of all items she introduced have been sold out in only two days.I had tried to reserve one lovely bracelet just now and hopefully I can get it finally.If yes,that would be a wonderful gift for my girlfriend as a Christmas or New Year gift.

Willing to get more?Please go and have a look on her blog.

I have heard thousands of times about WordPress 2.7 since it was claimed to have many improvements in every corner.Now it has gone to the third beta and RC1 will be introduced in perhaps next week.Thus,I just upgraded to this version first because the main bugs had been inspected by those senior testers and fixed by the development team.

At my first glance after installation,a highly integrated dashboard displayed.

It makes things to be easier as you can do most of those in a very short distance.And if you remember,when converted from 2.5.* to 2.6.*,a new function created which allows automatic upgrades of existing plug-ins after several clicks.Now it’s further more.The latest WordPress allows us upgrading the whole platform in that simple way.

I’m not the professional fellow and I only used it for minutes.So I can get a very skin-deep thing only.I think you’d better to try it by yourself to know better.

Finally I should remind you that this is still a beta version and some risks may need to be concerned.

Download here

Bug:

Once I was publishing posts,it shows the following words:

‘You attempted to edit a post that doesn’t exist. Perhaps it was deleted?’

Thus I try to edit and publish my post by Windows Live Writer which I always use,it shows another words:

‘403-bad login/pass combination’.

However I didn’t do any changes and those error messages only were shown after upgrading to 2.7 beta3.

It has made me a lot of confuses and I hope it can be solved as soon as possible.

Refer to this topic on official forum.

ACCA December exams will come in less than two weeks.I think all candidates are hard working on revisions.I just found some exam tips from Kaplan which may give you some idea of the emphasis on every subject.

ACCA Exam Tips From Kaplan(Dec 2008)

However other resources are of the same importance as those which I indicate here.I hope the tips will be really helpful to you.

*Kaplan reserves the copyright of the above tips.

To do past years’ questions as much as possible is a way to pass ACCA exams.But since last update of its official website,they only retain the exam paper resources from 2007 onwards.So here I provide the full set of past years’ questions from Year 2002 for Paper F5.I hope this could be helpful to some people.Download the resources here.

And the candidates who enter December 2008 exams can get your exam docket on MyACCA now.

Good luck for everyone.

I did some online search and I found that OpenTuition.com is a very good website which provides a lot of free resources for accountancy students.

In addition,you can simply register to be a member of the forum there and submit your questions and some of seniors will always come to work it out for you in detail.At the same time,they also provide some revision notes and exams tips before exams so that we can do our revision work more efficiently.

I hope this info can benefit more people who are trying their best to pass the exams.Good luck for everyone.

I checked my exam entries last week and got that I was sent to KDU college to have my coming exams.So I called to UK head office directly and was informed that Unity College is unable to be exam centre in this coming session so that all candidates who choose that centre will rearrange to other available exam centre.

That is a real bad thing for me as KDU College is so far away from my living place.Therefore I had written a letter to HQ,requesting them for changing of exam centre.If they can’ t do it,I have to redesign my exam schedule.

I hope other candidates will not meet the same terrible matters.