Yahoo Retires Geocities Free Website Hosting Service

I remember the 90s really clearly because it was when my interest in HTML begun. Thanks to a friend of mine who was talking about creating a website of his own gave birth to my curiousity which grew into a hobby and now, a career. Thanks, Wei Wern. Let’s take a step back and remember Yahoo! Geocities when it was, where it was.

In 1996.

In 1999.

In 2000.

Now I noticed from 1999 onwards, Yahoo had actually did some optimization of the website. Then in 2000, information was more organized and the login panel was more prominent. Well, those were the good old times. In 2009, Yahoo has now decided to retire Geocities and is upselling their website packages at 50% off for current Geocities owners.

All I can say is, I’ll miss you Geocities. We had some really good and fun times. Thanks for being there when I bought my first RM50 book as a 13-year old and allow me experiment with HTML. Do you know anyone still using Geocities?

Simpleet on The Inside Matters

Besides the rumored economy crisis, many company directors I’ve recently met asks me if I know an ASP.Net developer, Flash designer, Project Manager and etc. I remember reading an article before a lot of undergraduates are unemployed because they’re being too picky with their job opportunities.

I guess the priority of company benefits has fallen down the scale for undergraduates or unemployed people to decide if the company is, the one. Thanks to Google, they’ve created a benchmark for all companies around the world to adopt a similar enjoyable working environment.

Where else can you find an office with a slide built-in for employees?

Or, free flow of jelly beans and M&Ms!

Though not all Malaysia companies are open to this change, some have begun to adopt as much as they can to keep their employees motivated and healthy. During the bloggers tour of the GreenPacket office, they’ve prepared a floor for employees to get on the massage chair, play fussball, play pool or even game on the PlayStation 3 (coming soon).

So why are companies doing (or, should do) this?

Well, many are beginning to realize their biggest asset of the company is the people in it. The people who sweat to fix your telephone line in the hot sun or even, the lady who brings you tea every morning. Everyone deserves respect and a fulfilling experience where they work.

This is why Simpleet won’t only be a company but a group of people who are specialized professionals. In Simpleet, it’s the inside which matters most to us. We want people who mean it when they say their passionate about website design or website development. Not someone merely looking for a job.

And one of the things Simpleet’s office must have later is a long white board for our brainstorm sessions. We want people who look to the future and not only the present. This size should do.

In the future, I want to teach and ask for all Malaysia companies, interactive agencies especially, to realize what matters most inside a company, is its people.

Don’t you think colleagues or employees inside your company matters?

Where is Danny Foo?

So where am I and why have I not been updating my blog as frequently right now?

Blame my Internet Service Provider (ISP)

Ever since TM had international cable problems and restored (so they claim) it back again, my Internet connection has been crappy. Here’s a speedtest performance I only did this morning.

And this was tested connecting to a local (Kuala Lumpur) server. Plus, they have claimed in the Streamyx website you should ideally be getting 70% of your subscribed bandwidth as a “best effort”. Also, did you know they’ve a new policy added into their Terms & Conditions?

xv. Streamyx download and upload speed is guaranteed for local content access only. TM is not responsible for the low speed of either download or upload of international content access.

Our online future is so doomed to eternity. In addition, I’ve found dialing their Interactive Customer Centre a waste of time. Because when you dial and go through the instructions, you’ll end up with a request asking you to call them back only to find it engaged – again and again.

Simpleet is prevailing in the economic crisis

Besides the Internet problems, the website design business in Malaysia I’d say is not entirely affected by the economic crisis. My Malaysia website design company; Simpleet, is still getting request for quotations and we’ve a number of big projects lined up already.

So where is Danny Foo? I’m sitting behind my computer completing my work and continuously complaining about my Internet connection problem now.

Here’s something fun for you to do in the meantime. Find Wally or Waldo!

The above is basically a children’s puzzle game which can be still played by anyone irregardless of their age. It’s called; Where’s Wally? or some call him, Waldo. He’s this dude in a red/white sweater with red/white stripes with a hat and wears glasses.

Let me know in the comments know if you found him.

Fancy Font Replacement Support For The iPhone

There’s now another method besides sIFR (scalable Inman Flash Replacement) or even @font-face for fancy text replacement. It usees Javascript and is called; Cufon.

Easy to explain technicality is you’ll have to convert the font library you want into a font Javascript library – hope that makes sense. Then, get the Cufon library running and define the headings you want to replace.

And yes, Cufon now only promotes usage of text replacement for headings. While some may argue it’s not flexible enough, it’s enough for me. Sitepoint has done a good job comparing between the pros and cons of existing text replacement methods.

Do you use an image text replacement technique for your projects now?

Attended Ureka Weekend Without a Physical Presence

UrekaWeekend was a 3-day event organized by the folks from Entrepreneurs.MY who also brings you BarCampKL. It’s an event of intense brainstorming and business idea churning – not to mention, networking. People from geeks to entrepreneurs attend it to find collaboration and connection in forming new companies or producing new products over 3-days.

And yes, I attended UrekaWeekend without physically being present at the location in Megan Avenue 1. Thanks to Vernon from Scratchdisk Creative. And here’s how he did it.

Look out for slide #17 as you’re viewing – it’s me!

By the way, Vernon was giving a speech on where ideas come from. So happened me and Wilfred were with him, so we threw him those lines.

In addition, yes, I stand firm to believe ideas are everywhere. Even staring at your monitor or how your fingers are rolling the middle scroll now puts your unconscious state of mind into an idea generation environment.

How was your Ureka Weekend?