March 2011 was another great month filled with lots of comments! Exciting moments for us at Bear, Diah and Pasha!

Leading the pack and winning the 125 x 125 sidebar ad spaces are Mie from Bukan Sebarang Mietos with 40 comments and Vviisshhnnuu from Gvishnu.com with 37 comments. Congratulations guys! I will be using your previous artwork and let me know if you want me to use a different one. So, the top two winners swapped places but remain at the top.

Cheqna from Sekali-sekala (Once in a while) retains the third spot with 31 comments. We have a new face at the fourth spot. Behrad from BioTecK.NET with 28 comments.

Amry from Amry’s Blog moved up to take the fifth spot with 21 comments and another new face, Yas from YastroOnLine made it to the sixth spot with 14 comments.

Apak Cikidong from Cikidong Dong Dong Cikideng Deng Deng lost a spot and moved down to the seventh place with 13 comments. Sharing the seventh place, another newcomer, Sufian from Sufian.info with 13 comments.

Blogs that fell off from the list are http://thesnowwybear.blogspot.com/, http://guessthisisacityofthesky.blogspot.com/, http://www.mdhafiz.net/ and http://www.miecyber.com/. Looking forward for them to be up in the list again next month..

Thank you to all commentators including those who did not make the list last month. You can always try again for this month. Happy commenting!

Oh bumpers! Lightning struck our house killing both our Maxis Wired Broadband modem and wireless router. We were away in Melaka, picking up Mama Pasha’s parents at the jetty when that happened. By the time we got back, the main switch was already tripped. I only realized that the Maxis equipments were damaged when it took longer than usual to get connected to the Wi-Fi signal. Upon checking, I found that the modem, wireless router as well as Pasha’s PC are dead.. duh..

The good news is that Maxis will replaced both devices FOC. The bad news no. 1 is that we might only get the new devices by Monday. The bad news no. 2 is Pasha’s PC might have to be repaired and suspected that the power supply is already toasted. Not sure how much a power supply unit would cost. Hopefully it would not be more expensive that the PC, which cost only RM 299 when I bought it..

For the time being, we have to depend on the Maxis Wireless Broadband, which is something that will really test our patience when it comes to speed and stability. Maxis wireless broadband connection in Shah Alam is best described as a yo-yo. When you are lucky, your yo-yo will still spin while going up and down. Otherwise, it will go down, stop spinning and never come back up again. Just like playing a yo-yo, all you need to do is wind up the string and restart your play..

So, tonight Mama Pasha used the broadband on the HTC Wildfire, connected via the HTC Portable Hotspot  and I used my other wireless broadband connected via the Maxis USB device. Not that fantastic but enough for us to check email, run Facebook and let me post this entry..

Till then, have a good weekends folks while we play with our yo-yo..

People who arrived at this page were looking for:

Read an interesting article titled Growing shift from blogs by Verne G. Kopytoff in NST dated February, 28 2011. The gist of the article was about the waning interest in blogging by the younger generations who prefer social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter to blogs. Do you think that blogging is at its ending? For me, I just don’t think so..

Blogging started about 10 years ago by services, such as Blogger and LiveJournal, became so popular that Merriam-Webster declared “blog” as the word of the year in 2004. I remembered that.. Now, blogs are being challenged by Facebook with its all-purpose hub for posting anything under the Sun and Twitter that becomes part of the so called microblogging services, which allows messages of no longer than 140 characters..

Let me share some quotes from the article that would be of interest to bloggers..

According to Elisa Camahort Page, a co-founder of BlogHer, “If you’re looking for  substantive conversation, you turn to blogs. You aren’t going to find it on Facebook, and you aren’t going to find it in 140 characters on Twitter.”

“The act of telling your story and sharing part of your life with somebody is alive and well — even more so than at the dawn of blogging. It’s just morphing onto other platforms.”, said Lee Rainie, director of the Internet and American Life Project.

How is Blogger, owned by Google, doing? It had a 2% decline, to 58.6 million unique visitors in the United States in December 2010 compared to a year earlier. However, globally, its unique visitors rose 9%, to 323 million. Have you ever wondered what would happen if Google decides to shutdown Blogger?

On the other hand,WordPress and Tumblr, which also calls itself a blogging service, seem to have avoided any decline. Isn’t that interesting? According to Toni Schneider, chief executive of Automattic, the company that commercializes WordPress blogging software, bloggers often use Facebook and Twitter to promote their blog posts to a wider audience thus making them complimentary rather than competitors. He also mentioned that WordPress is mostly for serious bloggers, not the younger novices who are defecting to social networking.

“There is a lot of fragmentation. But at this point, anyone who is taking blogging seriously — they’re using several mediums to get a large amount of their traffic.”, said Schneider.

Looks like blogging will still be around for a long time folks!

People who arrived at this page were looking for:

February 2011 was a great month. Visitors were more talkative than the previous months and the number of comments received were simply encouraging. Without further ado, here are the most talkative visitors last month.

The two winners of the 125 x 125 ad spot on our sidebar are Vviisshhnnuu from Gvishnu.Com with 64 comments and Mie from Bukan Sebarang Mietos with 39 comments.

Cheqna from Sekali-sekala (Once in a while) with 32 comments and Isabelle from Isabelle… frankly with 29 comments.

TNSkY from Story Pondok Kecil with 25 comments and Apak Cikidong from Cikidong Dong Dong Cikideng Deng Deng with 23 comments.

MdHafiz from MDHAFiZ.NET with 22 comments and Amry from Amry’s Blog with 18 comments.

Miecyber from Miecyber’s blog with 14 comments.

This month only 9 blogs made the cut. The minimum comments required to be featured here for last month is 13.

Congratulations and thank you to those who have supported our blog, including many others that are not featured here this time. To all, please visit their interesting blogs and may we all have a great time blogging!

Happy commenting and hope to see your blogs featured here next month. Don’t forget, 2 ad spots on the sidebar for the top 2 commenters!

Happy Hari Wilayah 2011 and happy commenting to all my faithful readers and friends. The time has come for the Top Commenters for January 2011. We have some new blogs and some regular blogs this time around. Here they are…

The two winners of the 125×125 sidebar ad space are TnSkY from Story Pondok Kecil with a whopping 41 comments and mie from mie with a grand total of 31 comments. They will get a 30-day and 15-day free banner ad on the sidebar respectively. To TnSkY and mie, please give me your 125 x 125 banner to replace the default banners.

The rest of the winners, who will be mentioned here are the following…

MdHafiz from MDHAFiz.NET with 30 comments and mata from mata-matsany with 18 comments.

cheqna from Sekali-sekala with 15 comments and iniialahaku from iniialahaku with 15 comments.

apak cikidong from Cikidong Dong Dong… with 14 comments and isabelle from Isabelle… frankly with 12 comments.

Lastly, vviisshhnnuu from Gvishnu.Com with 12 comments and zik from zikrihusaini.com with 12 comments.

Thank you to all of you as well as those who did not make the top list as all of you have made this blog an interesting site. To all my friends and visitors, please visit them and read their interesting contents.

See you all in February and happy commenting!

Checked my mail this morning and this is what I got…

Congratulations, you’ve been selected as one of the 50 Nuffnangers to experience Tune Talk Mobile Prepaid, and get rewarded for sharing your experience with your blog readers!

As mentioned in the Nuffnang blog, you’ll be receiving a Tune Talk Mobile Prepaid SIM card + RM 100 credit preloaded. You’ll then be required to compose one blog post highlighting the features and reviewing your experience with Tune Talk Mobile Prepaid, and you’ll be rewarded for your write up.

Oh wow! My comments was among the 50 comments selected. Oh wow!

This is for the Nuffnang Tune Talk campaign that was held recently. We were asked to leave a creative comment on “why you want to experience Tune Talk Mobile Prepaid” and 50 of the most creative would be selected to try out the product.

Here’s my comment:

papabear Says:
January 23rd, 2011 at 12:06 am
Well, WTF About Tune Talk Prepaid? WTF? Really?

Talk about the telecommunication market in Malaysia and we have to settle for nothing but the Blue, Green and Yellow. Everyone knows that and remember those colors by hard as if they are all primary colors or something.

Then you, Tune Talk, come to the scene. Walking brazenly trotting your read colored package. WTF about your redness? A brave new contender, is it?

Talk is cheap. That’s what the others said and that’s what you need to prove. Dare you make promises and deliver them? Look at what you have said.

- An opportunity to win one of ten Free AirAsia E-Gift vouchers everyday
- Free RM100,000 Personal Accidental Insurance Coverage underwritten by Etiqa
- Option to change your number anytime
- Super low flat rates nationwide to any number, anytime
- And lots more! WTF! More!!!

If you do those, they are all going to envy you. It used to be where people said Green with envy. Because of you, now we would be seeing Blue with envy and Yellow with envy as well… What a scene it would be!

Now I dare you. Let me be the judge whether you, Tune Talk, can walk the talk or not.

I am waiting…

So, tomorrow morning, I am going over to Nuffnang office to pick up my Tune Talk SIM card.

People who arrived at this page were looking for:

Read about this at Cikidong Dong Dong Cikideng Deng Deng (what a long name!) this morning. His post titled Blogger Kaya caught my attention. It’s about how some bloggers who made tons of money blogging!

As things get warmer, Jabatan Penerangan Malaysia on its Facebook page hopped on the bandwagon reminding bloggers the need to pay tax. Mixed responses received from the public, mainly bloggers…

My personal response to this can be summarized into 3 words… WTF… Oh wait! Another 3 words… LOL…

By the way, here is my snapshot of my current Nuffnang earning since last year!

I am a rich blogger, am I not? If that is in RM, I would be happy to pay my blogging tax. Blogging tax? Oh boy! Does this mean that Nuffnang must provide income statement to all its members for tax declaration purposes? Can anybody answer that please?

So my fellow bloggers, how do you feel about LHDN taxing your blogging income? Would love to read about your comments on this!

P/s:
I am definitely, as of this hour, richer than Apak Cikidong as far as Nuffnang earning is concerned…

P/s/s:
Rich bloggers that earn thousands of RM a month should pay tax – I agree!

P/s/s/s:
Sometimes seeing my Nuffnang earnings in other currency makes me happier – Denial syndrome…

People who arrived at this page were looking for:

Most of you must have noticed this. An advertisement that appears persistently on your blog and yet it is not of of those Buffered Earning Ads from Nuffnang. Global CPC ads only appear at specific time. BE ads only appear at selected blogs. This new ad is everywhere and appear most of the time…

I am sure the ad below looks familiar…

Could this be the first cost per action (CPA) ad since the announcement from Nuffnang recently?

Not everyone has a constant stream of ads running all the time so we’ve been experimenting with methods in which to further optimize the ad space from your blogs and increase earnings. After consulting some of our loyal Nuffnangers, we’ve decided to roll out our first Cost Per Action (CPA) ads. With CPA ads, you get rewarded whenever there’s a specified action desired by the advertiser e.g. a product being purchased or, a registration form being submitted as a result from clicking on the ad from your blog etc. The amount earned will range from the transaction involved. The more difficult it is to do the transaction the more you earn. For example, if users who click on a banner are meant to just fill up a form, a blogger can earn say RM1 to RM20 per sign up (depending on the advertiser). However if it’s something more challenging, say if something of high value is bought then the amount rewarded can be even over RM50 being rewarded per transaction. – Quoted from Introducing another way to optimize your Nuffnang earnings.

Anybody has any idea or any comment on this?

People who arrived at this page were looking for:

This is a follow up, as promised, to the Maxis In and P1 Out post.

After two months using the Maxis Wired Broadband, under the 2 Mbps package, We would say that this WBB is satisfactory. Previously when using the Jaring and P1 services, the connection was not as stable as this Maxis WBB. Here are a few of the improvements that we are enjoying at the moment.

1. With all 3 computers connected to the internet, no noticeable impact on the surfing speed.
2. Downloads, such as movie files, can be done at any time without affecting others who are surfing.
3. Able to watch online streaming video or TV with almost no interruption.

Below are the results of 3 speed test that we did with different sites.

Maxis very own speed test site gave the best results. Up to 1.95 Mbps download and 0.33 Mbps upload. Was it because we were testing its own service?

Let’s see what P1 said. Actually not that far off from the result from Maxis. 1.826 Mbps download and 0.421 Mbps upload.

How about an independent party? Speedtest.Net returned 1.79 Mbps for download and 0.42 Mbps for upload .

In conclusion, speed is stable and acceptable. Theoretically, the speed can be further improved if we were to replace the modem + wireless router setup with a 2 in 1 modem and router box. At the moment, bridging mode is being used between the modem and the router.

Lastly, we also did a ping test using Pingtest.Net and the line obtained an “A”. That should be good and hopefully it will remain that way for its lifetime.

Any downtime so far? Yes, there were a few downtimes but the main problem, until today, is not so much of the WBB but the competence level of the customer services. None of them that we talked to have sound knowledge on modem, router or broadband. A few could not even differentiate between a modem and a router. We had officially complained to Maxis about that. Nowadays, any problem encountered, we would first call the contractor, instead of Maxis, and so far, the few problems that we had were quickly resolved.

Earlier this evening, P1 called us up and made an offer on their 4G broadband services. The thing about P1 is that it is no more a case of once bitten twice shy. They bit us twice already…

People who arrived at this page were looking for:

Love to me is about being near to the heart and yet far from being fully describable. If you somehow managed to fully describe your love, it only goes to show how limited of it that you have… Poor you…

Nevertheless, for the purpose of fulfilling the love of blogging friendship aka a contest initiated by Cik Peah, here is an attempt to describe what love is by narrowing the scope of love to a predetermined time of about 8 hours during a day of my life…

Here goes the love story…

Love to me is about having to wake up early in the morning just to leave my loved ones behind and go to a dreaded place where the majority of the inhabitants have almost everything but love. For love, I have to be at a place where people who love to talk more can work less and get lovely perks…

You know where that is…

And then, I would spend lovely hours reading the alphabets that have been put together and some of those that have been fused to many sheets of papers, covering the aging of my otherwise, lovely desk…

And later on, love to me is about making the sadistic decision to join the madness of the evening Klang Valley traffic with the singular aim of being back with the loved ones.

Only love can make me do all that…

Ok! Enough love already for now…

Those who want to join this, please visit Cik Peah! The more the lovelier!

P/s:
This was composed under the intoxication brought by too much of chicken mandy. So, excuse me if it seems pointless while meeting the requirements in full…