LiewCF.com

“Malaysia Today“, a Malaysia political news portal, has been blocked by local ISPs as ordered by Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC). Here are the workarounds to skip the block and access Malaysia Today like normal.

1. Use the new website address — Malaysia Today has been migrated to a new server and has a new website address (mirror?): http://mt.harapanmalaysia.com/2008/ Simply use the link to access Malaysia Today like normal.
2. Use proxy server — find a free proxy server and apply it to your system or web browser network setting. Hola! (Read “how to use free proxy with Firefox“)
3. Use OpenDNS — Stop using local ISPs’ DNS server and switch to OpenDNS, a free DNS service. It is easy to setup, simply follow the OpenDNS setup instruction. Using OpenDNS also skip any ISP level website blocks in the future.

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By referring to Google AdSense placement heat map, we put Google AdSense ads above blog content (below post title) for better performance. But Google AdSense team does not quite agree with the ads placement.

QuickOnlineTips received an email from Google AdSense support pointing out the issue on their site.

In fact, Google Adsense Blog published 2 guidelines earlier and one of them is “ads shouldn’t be placed under a title or section heading in a way that implies that the ads are not ads.”

I didn’t take much attention to the guideline because I thought mine is different than the example. My AdSense ads was separated by categories and date. But it seems AdSense team think the different.

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What a surprise! You unbox your brand new Apple iPhone 3G, switch it on but discover that the iPhone wallpaper has a girl smiling at you! Not bikini girl though, but she is cute! She is, the iPhone Girl.

An Apple iPhone 3G owner, markm49uk, published a forum thread on MacRumors.com about the interesting wallpapers inside his brand new iPhone.

Not sure if this is or is not the ‘norm’ but I just received my brand new iPhone here in the UK and once it had been activated on iTunes I found that the home screen (the screen you can personalise with a photo) already had a photo set against it !!!!

Who is the young cute girl? It has been confirmed that the girl is a production line worker of FoxConn company (Apple iPhone manufacturer). It is believed that the girl was testing iPhone camera but forgot to delete the test photos.

Would you like to buy a special and limited edition of Apple iPhone 3G like that?

[hat tip: liewzy]

More information:

• “Marware Sport Grip for iPhone 3G (Black)” listing at Amazon.com
• “Kensington LiquidAUX Auxiliary Car Kit with Remote for iPod and iPhone (Black)” listing at Amazon.com
• “Marware CEO Flip Vue for iPhone 3G (Black)” listing at Amazon.com

After the success of Malaysian Chinese Blog Award 2007 in last year, the crew is now preparing for the Malaysian Chinese Blog Award 2008. They have started accepting nominations on August 4th, 2008 and it will be closed at September 30th, 2008.

The Malaysian Chinese Blog Award 2008 has more categories than last year, that is 21 different blog categories. Your blog probably already fits in one of them.

Malaysian? Blog in Chinese? Click here to register!

My two cents

It is glad to see that the Chinese Blog Award is still going on for the 2nd year. When am I going to have a Chinese blog? Soon.

Where is the Malaysians English Blog Award, or better, Malaysians Blog Award? Nobody plans to do that?

[hat tip: Duller]

Beijing 2008 Olympics Games is over. I had a great time sitting in front TV most of the time and watching the performances of world’s greatest athletes, hadn’t you? For Malaysians, the biggest item of interest in the 2008 Olympic Games was our badminton team.

But you probably never knew the other Olympics-related matters that Malaysians are interested in. With the help of Google Insights for Search Malaysia, here is the roundup of the Malaysian Olympics-related search habits:

1. The Beijing 2008 Olympics was twice as popular with Malaysians as the 2004 Athens Games.
2. [Badminton] takes the lead in Malaysian searches over [gymnastics], [swimming], [diving] and even [football] largely due to the silver medal win of Lee Chong Wei in badminton singles. No surprises there!
3. [Lee Chong Wei] also tops the athlete searches from the start of the Olympics and surges ahead of other famous Olympians like [Michael Phelps], [Usain Bolt], [Rafael Nadal] and [Liu Xiang].
4. There was also little doubt whose side Malaysians were on during [Chong Wei]’s eventual defeat to China’s [Lin Dan] for the badminton singles final.
5. Movie-loving Malaysians were also tuning-into the Olympics rather than checking out the latest movies with [Olympics] getting more hits than both [gsc] or [tgv], abbreviations for cinema chains Golden Screen Cinemas and Tanjong Golden Village, combined.
6. Despite the by-election fever heating up for [Anwar Ibrahim], Malaysians were still upbeat in their search for [Olympics] news and material. The Malaysians’ search for [badminton] tipped the scale on 17 Aug. That was the day the men’s badminton singles finals between Lee Chong Wei and Li Dan was held.
7. Interestingly, searches for the [Olympics opening ceremony] and [Olympics closing ceremony] follow the same trends, with the opening ceremony taking a slight lead. With last night’s fireworks-ridden closing ceremony featuring appearances by Jackie Chan and David Beckham, among others, it’s no surprise that viewers were just as excited to see it!
8. It seems like most KL-ites were hot on the trail of the Olympics by topping the other States in Malaysia on online search of the [Beijing Olympics] followed closely by Selangor and Pahang.

Google Insights for Search is a new tool for advertisers, marketers, and Internet users who are interested in finding out what’s on top of Malaysians’ minds and looking to compare search patterns across specific regions, categories, and time frames.

[Hat tip: Jana Ponnudurai]