Internet Affects Real Life

How has the Internet affected your life?

Link To Kill Spam

Has the Office of Strategic Influence come up with a great way to kill spam?

Better yet, if you’re sick of getting bulk mail clogging up your HDB mailbox, here’s another non-tech idea, but so hilarious I just had to mention it.

You know those obnoxious “refinance your home” or credit card scams offers that you get in the mail? This is called direct marketing, where marketers use a reduced bulk postal rate to send entire forests of paper mail to you.

So this is something you can do in response.

Find a shoebox, or a storage bin, or any cardboard box you have laying around. Fill it up with bricks, big blocks of iron, or maybe cement. Tape the box up with everyday packaging tape. Use a junkmail’s postage-paid envelope and tape it neatly to the top cover of the box. NEATLY. And mail it off. Envelope revenge!

A few days later, your package shows up at the junk mailer’s location, and they have to pay for every cent of delivery. Once the cost outweighs the benefit, they will stop sending out direct mail marketing material. And that is my goal.

Doing this has the following beneficial side effects:

-Since these companies pay the post office, this lightens the load taxpayers need to pay to keep the post office operating

-This creates employment opportunities. The post office keeps cutting staff because of lack of buisness; this gives the post office a huge source of income from the credit card scam companies.

-This will lead to more cautious bulk mailing. Maybe these junk mailers simply don’t know they are annoying people? Hopefully they will learn very quickly!

-This makes me laugh maniacly, like a cartoon supervillan.

-This saves trees. Once enough of us do this, the junk mail companies will stop sending us junk. Or at least they will be more discriminate about it. It will save trees and keep the landfills empty! Yay!

-If we do this enough, the USPS will make so much money, that they will lower postage costs.

via

12 great Mac Applications cheap, MacHeist retail bundle

 image via tuaw.com

Always wanted to get great applications for your Mac but felt the pinch to fork out your hard earned money for other people’s work? Well MacHeist has come together and bundled up some of their popular software for all those Mac users. 12 fabulous applications packaged at a amazing deal of USD$49, Cha-Ching is a good application for managing finances and those looking to pimp up their music playback experience can play around with Coversutra. So what are you waiting for 12 great apps at 1 great price. [MacHeist Bundle]

MacBook, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air EFI firmware updates

Improve your stability of your Mac portable with EFI firmware update from Apple.

“Today, Apple updated the EFI Firmware for the entire notebook line. MacBook, MacBook Pro, and MacBook Air all received the EFI update. Here’s what Apple says about the updates:

This update fixes several issues to improve the stability of [MacBook, MacBook Pro, and MacBook Air] computers.” - via TUAW

[TUAW]

MacUpdate Promo, really big deal

Lots of great software with one great price! Includes the popular Parallels, wonder why I would not get this bundle myself. Going on sale from 16th - 29th April 2008. Time to save your money for this fabulous bundle.

Hope this is not an April Fools joke, scan from MacWorld Magazine May 2008

Parallels, http://www.parallels.com/en/products/desktop/
SoundStudio, http://www.freeverse.com/apps/app/?id=5012
Leap, http://www.ironicsoftware.com/leap/index.html
StoryMill, http://www.marinersoftware.com/sitepage.php?page=127
MenuCalendarClock, http://www.objectpark.net/mcc.html
ArtText, http://www.belightsoft.com/products/arttext/overview.php
Typinator, http://www.ergonis.com/products/typinator/
DVDRemasterPro, http://www.metakine.com/products/dvdremaster/
Hazel, http://www.noodlesoft.com/hazel.php
BannerZest, http://www.aquafadas.com/bannerzest/

[Hardwarezone Forums, Apple Clinic]

GTA IV for DS

According to source, GTA IV will be hitting the Nintendo DS soon.
Will it really come true ? With prior GTA series being released in the Nintendo Gameboy series, it would not be impossible.

Smart Car Purchased by Toyota!

April 1, 2008: Breaking news Toyota just announced they bought 100% control of smart and have stopped production of the 2008 smart fortwo as they will be selling the Toyota IQ instead.

During the transition of the two companies smart and Toyota have formed the smarToyota Corporation and the website http://www.smarToyota.com which will allow people to get more information about this breaking news and how things will be moving forward.

Source: 451s.com - smart purchased by Toyota!

I wonder if this is a sound business move :), learn more about the smart car

Update - If you didn’t realize, the above mention report is a April Fool’s Joke

How Long Does One Need to Hack OS X?

Well it seems with preloaded software, the time it needs to hack into Mac OS X would be 2 minutes. A team of security researchers participating in the CanSecWest security conference had managed to hack into the Mac OS X using a zero-day vulnerability in Apple’s Safari 3.1 Web browser.

The team of researchers are from Independent Security Evaluators (ISE), and they were presented with 10,000 prize money. It was reported that Apple has been informed of the venerability and no information would be release until Apple manages to issue a fix for the hack.

Wonder would Apple release the patch first or would others be able to find the venerability first.

Source: InformationWeek.com - Apple Air Hacked in 2 Mins

Singtel to launch iPhone in September

According to ThomsonSingtel have reached an agreement with Apple in bringing the iPhone to Singapore come this September. Should this be official launch come through on September, Singaporeans will be the first in Asia to get the hands on the iPhone offically. According to DBS report, there has been an estimated 10,000 units already imported into Singapore soil since the it was launched in the US last year.

So how would Starhub and M1 react accordingly ? How much are you willing to pay the official iPhone in Singapore ? What’s next ? Do bookmark us if you have not already do so, stay tuned for the next update on the iPhone launch in Singapore.

Free online movies/tv videos

Here’s something to try if you had enough watching YouTube’s videos.
What OVGuide provides is help you hunt for video content from YouTube as well as from other video providers. Thus making this a one-stop video hub for your video needs. You might be surprise some of the videos coming from unknown or unheard video sharing sites such as photobucket and such.

They have videos covering from pretty much everything from movies, TV programs, Anime, car, Pay-per-view, sports, news, etc…..from around the net. Alright enough said, time for you to try it for yourself.

OVGuide

Any potential video sites that we missed out ?
Share with us.