Jaxon’s Review

Nevermind that I’m a Malaysian from Sabah, I still get to enjoy the free water in Selangor.

As I mentioned in earlier post, consumers in Selangor — those who receive bills from Syarikat Bekalan Air Selangor Sdn Bhd — are given free water of up to 20 m3 per month or equivalent to RM11.40, starting with the June water bill.

The latest water bill I receied (see above) is RM6.84 but I don’t have to pay the amount because the usage is still within the 20 m3 of free water.

In some ways, the free water has helped cushion the hike in electricity tariff.

Starting today, consumers in the peninsular will have to pay more for electricity, that is if they use more than 200 kilowatt hour (kWh) per month.

Average users will have to pay around RM5-8 more

My average monthly bill is around RM70 a month under the old tariff of 21.8 sen per kWh and subsequent 28.9 sen per kWh unit. My household is using about 290 kWh per month.

Under the new tariff, I will have to pay about RM75 a month for the same amount of usage.

One little piece of good news, is that there will be no change to the rate for the first 200 kWh of usage.

The bad news is the charge per kWh unit will now be increase to 30 for the subsequent usage between 201-400 kWh.

Calculate your headache

Below is a rough estimate of our headaches, sourced from Tenaga Nasional Bhd website, assuming there are no drastic changes in the way we consume electricity.

Which category of users are you? If you are in the low-kWh type of users, the tariff increase won’t be too hard to take, especially if you are in Selangor because you now get to enjoy a free water amounting to 20 cubic metres a month or an equivalent of RM11.40.

Here is a screenshot, also from Tenaga Nasional website, of the new tariffs.

Too bad I don’t have the old ones. It would be good to make a comparison.

At 72, John McCain, is still eyeing for the toughest job in the world. From The New York Times op-ed article:

John McCain, when I was born, you were nearly six years older than my mother. Now, seven years into her retirement, you want a new job: the hardest job in the world. Wow!

Read the article, here.

I surely can beat the hell of a 60 something man who are out to threaten me, unless of course he was some kind of a bull.

I know a traffic puller story when I see one and the latest sodomy accusation against Anwar Ibrahim is one such story.

It’s about a police report lodged against Anwar by a 23-year-old aid, claiming that the politician had sodomised him on Thursday, June 26.

Anwar’s news hit the blogs after midnight

I came to know of the story well before midnight last night. Had I blogged about it, I would have been among the first tell the story in the form of a blog entry.

Heck, I could have been the first to blog about it in the whole wide world as other bloggers, I noticed, only started to post entries about the issue after midnight.

This blog would have benefited in the form of a spike in the number of visitors, notwithstanding that most Malaysians were asleep during the hours when the story unfolded.

Information everywhere but not a post to blog

I was at home, sitting in front of the computer at around 11pm when I came to know about the story. I had all the information I needed to write a blog entry — enough to tell that a police report had been lodged against Anwar.

Had I blogged about it and consistently updated the blog entry right till the wee hours, I could be assured of hundreds of visitors to Jaxon’s Review in a matter of hours.

It’s all in the intention

But I chose not to blog about it and in a sense, failed in my task as a blogger.

Why? It was because I had problems with my intention in doing so — that is, to take advantage of the situation just to pull traffic to this blog, and not so much about wanting to inform others. I guess it’s a problem of conscience. Too much of it.

Timid blogger

In a way you can call me a timid blogger — one who had difficulties getting past his conscience; who could not bring himself to blog about other people’s embarrassing situation.

Strangely, it had happened to me before — in the case of the sex video scandal involving a former health minister.

I had the information more than a day before the minister himself confessed that, “Yes, I’m the man in the video.”

Yet, I had chosen not to post a blog entry about it. My conscience failed me.

Blog world is no country for timid bloggers

Looking back and on hindsight, I should have gone on and blog about Anwar last night for I have now come to realise that the world of blogs — I hate the term blogosphere — is no country for timid bloggers. It’s a cruel world out there, offline or online.

So from now on, if I ever find myself in a similar situation again, I will just let my conscience go down the drain.

Adobe Photoshop is perhaps one of the most widely used graphic manipulator and photo editor around. But it’s expensive for most users.

If that being the case, not to worry as there are substitutes to the programme and one of the more robust ones is GIMP or GNU Image Manipulation Programme.

Best of all it can be downloaded for free on the Internet.

The image on the left is a sample of what GIMP can do. I didn’t draw the picture. My 14-year-old son did and he didn’t know much about computer graphic, and image manipulation. Yet. He was just doing trial and error.

Imagine what the programme can do if it is used by people experienced on both — graphic art and image manipulation. If you want to give it a try, you can download GIMP for Windows here. More information can be obtained from this GIMP Wikipedia page and GIMP website.

I wonder if there are other free photo editing/graphic software out there. If there are, I haven’t come across it.

A friend of mine emailed me about two weeks ago about the Adsense ads on his blog which he said had kept on displaying public service ads.

He asked me what was going on and how to make Google display real ads.

I had to tell him the truth that I don’t really know the reason. Perhaps, I said, it had something to do with ads placement.

I’m not sure if I’ve given him the right diagnostic but for those of you who want to give your Adsense ads some power-ups, here’s a YouTube clip which might be useful. Its 11 minutes 46 seconds but worth watching even if that would mean you will have to wait for sometime for the clip to load, especially if you have slow connection.

I hope with this new layout I’ve stayed close enough to the tips given. One thing I haven’t done is to display large ad block. Will experiment with that later.

A lot of things can go wrong if you are blogging for money and the wrongest of them all will be when the money just refuses to come even when you think you have done all the things you think needed to be done.

Giving up will be the most tempting option, which itself is one of the biggest mistake a make-money blogger can do.

Quitting is easy

Heaven knows how many time I feel like quitting but each time, just as I was about to throw in the towel — and then what, dance naked? — there is always something from my blogging past that will show up and spur me on as if saying, “Hey, look, you past efforts have not been futile.”

Something like the selling of text link ads on my blogs (see screenshot below). The email came at a time when I felt quitting was the best option. In a way, this small note lifted my spirit.

If you quit now, there will be nothing more to look for in the future

Yes, indeed my past effort have not been futile and if I quit now, there is nothing more for me to look forward to in the future.

In fact over the months, I’ve successfully sold nearly a dozen of text link ads across several of my blogs. The good thing about this kind of ad is that you will continue to receive payments months after months, without you doing anything, so long as the text link remain in your blog.

Perhaps this is what they call autopilot in that once you get the critical mass in the number of text link ads sold, you can quite afford to sit still and just wait for the payment to come months after months.

This is definitely one of several monetisation options a blogger can go into. Of course, to be profitable, one has to have several blogs which are generating good traffic and rank high on Technorati and Alexa. Not to mention lots of contents — and I mean a lot — in them.

The government today announced the extention of petrol and diesel subsidy cash rebate to owners of private vehicles up to 3,000cc in the interior areas of Sabah and Sarawak.

But even with the new rebates, I’m still screwed. My car is 2,800cc but I won’t be eligible for the rebate because I’ve brought it to Peninsular Malaysia where I am currently working.

As you know in the peninsula, only cars up to 2,500cc are eligible for the rebate. So no matter what measures the government is introducing to lighten the burden of the people, I’m still not qualified to take it. It’s the case of head I lose, tail you win.

Two top executives have left. Three more a leaving. Is Yahoo a sinking ship following the fail bid by Microsoft?

An article in the New York Times is asking: Has Microsoft sent Yahoo into a death spiral?

Malaysia Airlines has stripped the discount given to Tony Fernandes, the CEO Of AirAsia:

Malaysia Airlines has withdrawn the massive discount given to AirAsia’s group chief executive Datuk Tony Fernandes following his criticisms against the airline.

Its managing director and chief executive officer Datuk Seri Idris Jala said the airline had received many letters of protest from employees about the travel privilege in the wake of Fernandes’s negative statements about the national carrier.

“We have provided the travel privilege out of goodwill since 2006 in response to Tony’s request for interline facility for his own travel on our international routes although AirAsia does not have an interline agreement with Malaysia Airlines,” he said. [Source]

But Tony said Idris was just being “petty”:

AirAsia Chief Executive Officer Datuk Tony Fernandes said his Malaysia Airlines (MAS) counterpart was being “petty” for withdrawing the big discounts he enjoyed on MAS flights.

Fernandes told Bernama Monday night that such discounts were actually “standard practice” similar to those given to him by airlines such as Cathay Pacific, Virgin, Qantas and others.

“It’s a courtesy extended to airline CEOs. Just like in the music industry, I gave free CDs to Warner Music or vice versa,” said Fernandes, who was in the music industry before he started Air Asia six years ago, which has grown to be Asia’s largest budget airline. [Source]

I guess, Tony should have had reciprocated Malaysia Airlines’ gestures by offering Idris massive discount on AirAsia flights. No?

Let me repeat the title of this blog, “cheating cases set to rise amid spiralling cost of living” and add this phrase to it, “including on the Internet.”

Desperate times

These are desperate times and there will be more people wanting to make extra income to cope with the spiralling cost of living, which is not a bad thing if the measures taken are still within what is acceptable as norms.

But it becomes something else when people eager to make income turn to prey on others by offering quick, easy and just-shake-legs way to make money, that turn out to be a scam.

Make money blogging newbies more vulnerable

Those who have been blogging, and have heard about the success stories of bloggers who make decent money online, would be tempted to try out blogging for money and inevitably they will come across people offering “secrets” to making money blogging.

Let me tell you I’ve been through some of those.

In the past one year of trying to make money online, I’ve entered into deals — mostly paying monthly fees purportedly to make me eligible to be part of the inner circle of money-making elite — but gained nothing in return in terms of monetary profit.

The problems is, as many as there are tricksters online, there are also many others who are genuine, offering real opportunities to make money online.

The tricky part is, it’s quite difficult to spot right away which one is genuine and which one is not. And if you are new, it will be more difficult to spot a scam.

The key is research

… and interactions with other bloggers who have been into make money blogging for at least a couple of years. Experienced make-money-online bloggers should be able to tell a scam from the genuine ones.

Research is another great way of saving oneself from being swindled of his or her hard-earned money.

The thing with the Internet is, while it is easy to spread scams online, it is also easy to expose them.

The next time you are presented with too-good-to-be-true offer to make money online, just Google the source of the offer and add the word “scam” in it. It is very likely that others have written about the offer and posted online what they think about it.

When it is too good to be true

… it probably isn’t true. That has been my philosophy each time I see an advertisement offering easy way of making money online.

Let me tell you this — making money is never easy, online or offline. You have to sweat it out or if you are working in air-conditioned room, you have to shiver it out!

One last word for this entry… the internet is full of trickster; the last thing we want to happen in this era of rising costs is to be swindled of our hard earned money. So do be careful, will you?

Man, I’m screwed. For me, there’s nothing that can mitigate the effect of the fuel price increase, except to swallow everything — lock, stock and barrel — and hope that my stomach could take it. Not even the cash rebates announced by the government can lighten the burden.

Here’s what the government said:

“Owners of cars up to 2,000cc, as well as pick-up trucks and jeeps up to 2,500cc, will get RM625 for each vehicle while motorcyclists with vehicles up to 250cc will receive RM150 each.”

But I don’t have a motorcycle and my Toyota pick-up truck has an engine capacity of 2800cc. In any which way, I’m screwed.

Tengah malam tadi barang naik lagi. Bukan alang-alang. Melonjak-lonjak sehingga tidak keruan. Kusangkakan subsidi sampai ke pagi, rupanya subsedih di tengah hari.

Jika beginilah keadaannya, dari kenaikan sampai keturunan, tiadalah kedudukan.

What is the measure of Google’s financial success? A whopping US$2 million or about RM6.28 million an hour, according to an article in the New York Times titled “The Humans Behind the Google Money Machine.”

“Google runs a complex auction-based system that determines which ads will appear where, and in what order. Every time the team alters the formulas that select and rank ads, Mr. Fox can run a test and quickly see the effect of the changes on users, advertisers and Google’s revenue — which, in this year’s first quarter, came in at the rate of more than $2 million an hour,” the report says.

Mr. Fox in the report is Nicholas Fox, who is among Google’s small group of employees “who keep a watchful eye on the vital signs of one of the most successful and profitable businesses on the Internet.”

Ah, in that case, there’s still hope for the Adsense ads on this blog. No?