Is Lowyat.net hacked? The most visited technology forum in Malaysia tonight (at GMT 10:55pm9.00pm) greet its visitors with simple dark background, an image of a rabbit, and couple of text. Whoever did this, also include a chatbox at lower-fold of the page.

Update #1: Site recovered at 11.50pm

About 3 months ago, we mentioned about Mygazines – a site that allows you to upload, share and read almost any magazines online. However, the site is now officially offline due to insufficient of funds to sustain the business. That’s a pretty bad news. If you happen to visit Mygazines.com, the team has put up a brief explanation and apology of the close down.

Any Alternatives?

Yes, thanks to Richard. Digi-Zines is a site similar to Mygazine where you get to read range of magazines for free, online. You might also want to check out our previous post on free e-books:

• 20 Best Websites To Download Free EBooks
• 20 Best Websites To Download Free E-Books, Part II

It seems pretty much like a fact already, that more and more people are relating the term ’search’ with ‘Google’. I bet you’ve heard dialogues in movies that sounds like these, ‘Let’s Google it’, ‘I found this in Google’, etc. No doubt Google has done a terrific job in their search engine, but have you ever wonder, how intelligent will Google’s search engine be in the next few years to come?

Folks at The Vacationeers has a clue. Check out these funny video clips, demonstrating how sophisticated and intelligent Google search engine has evolved.

Google Maps

Google Moon

Google My Maps

Google SMS

Here’s a quick heads for those who missed the 9rules submission last May, you should be aware that tomorrow is the 2nd round of 9rules’s intake. These folks only have 3 rounds on intake this year, respectively 7th May, 6th August (tomorrow) and 5th November. The submission period for tomorrow’s submission starts midnight EST 6th August 2008 and the submission only last 24 hours.

About 9rules | More about joining 9rules

Here’s a heads up for you guys who read and deal with PDF files on regular basis. Folks at Adobe has just released the latest version of their PDF reader, Adobe Reader version 9. The new release comes with sets of interesting features, amongst is the capability to work with Acrobat.com (beta). That means you can go directed to Acrobat.com, create some PDF files or even share your screens with Adobe ConnectNow.

Here’s a full set of new features in Adobe Reader 9, you can grab more details here.

• Work with Acrobat.com (beta)
• Interact directly with Adobe Flash® software
• Realize more secure document workflows
• Get more done with a simplified user interface
• Search single or multiple PDF files
• Complete forms online as well as offline
• Leverage CAD and geospatial functionality

Click here to download Adobe Reader 9

Thanks for the heads up Anne

I believe the main reason why AdSense Referrals program is shutting down is because it’s not performing as good as the measured and it’s best that the team place their effort on the more successful product. If you are using these referral ads, you should take them down, at least before the end of August 2008 as they’ll be no more ads after then.

Here’s Google’s suggestion for referral ads publishers:

• Google Affliate network
• Google AdSense

Here’s a word from Google

We’re constantly looking for ways to improve AdSense by developing
and supporting features which drive the best monetization results
for our publishers. Sometimes, this requires retiring existing
features so we can focus our efforts on the ones that will be most
effective in the long term. For this reason, we will be retiring
the AdSense Referrals program.

If you are a web designer, developer, blogger, or your job and interest has something to do with the Internet and technology, here’s an event you will not want to miss – Barcamp Malaysia.

For the first time, we are organizing Barcamp in Malaysia and it will be held in Jalan Ampang (near KLCC), Kuala Lumpur. Registration is open, and the venue can only fit 150 people, so if you are interested, you have to act quick. Click here to sign up (it’s free).

What is Barcamp anyway ?

Directly quoted from Wikipedia:

BarCamp is an international network of user generated conferences — open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants — often focusing on early-stage web applications, and related open source technologies, social protocols, and open data formats.

. In short, it’s an informal gathering for those who are passionate about the technology.

Barcamp Malaysia

Barcamp had been held numerous time throughout many states in the US, also in other countries like Australia, Italy, Singapore, India, etc so we thought it’s time Malaysia has its own. It’s interesting to bring people of the same industry and same interest together, share our ideas and see what in the end we can come out with. To learn and know more about Barcamp Malaysia, I suggest you these following sites:

• Barcamp wiki
• Malaysia Barcamp blog
• Malaysia Barcamp Wiki
• Malaysia Barcamp Facebook group, last but not lease,
• Barcamp Malaysia, registration page

If you have question about the event, want to sponsor or would like to give a talk during the event, leave a comment here. I should be able to direct you to the personnel in charge.

Are you using yourname@gmail.com by Google? If you are, chances are you might be interested in grabbing yourname@ymail.com by Yahoo! too. Yahoo! has recently released 1 new mailbox – ymail.com. it’s new fresh so if you’d like to get yourname@ymail.com (especially if it’s a common english name like Sarah, Mark, etc) you better do it quick.

Apart from ymail, folks at Yahoo! are also releasing @rocketmail.com, a company they acquired way back in 1997. So to sum things up, Yahoo! now offers free mailbox in @yahoo.com, @ymail.com and @rocketmail.com.

Is Google AdSense testing out new formats again? Folks at Technospot spotted a different AdSense block on the blog and this time, it’s nothing to do with positioning, instead, it’s a different font.

We all know AdSense allows ads customization. Publishers get to change the ad text colors but never the font type. A large rectangular AdSense block with Comic Sans font type was displayed earlier in Technospot today. Comic Sans is amongst standard font type that most platforms will have. Other examples of font type that can be properly displayed cross platforms are Arial, Helvetica, Georgia, Century Gothic, etc.

Is this a sign that Google AdSense will allow font type customization in future? Well, if they do it’d certainly be something really interesting. Imagine a blog using Georgia throughout with AdSense blocks using Georgia font type – a perfect blend. There’s no news yet from folks at Google AdSense, but we’ll be watching.

If you prefer to blog with your iPhone, you now have another good alternatvive. Typead, the developer of Blogit, a software that allows you to post blog entry to Twitter, Feedfind, Facebook, etc has just released a Blogit for iPhone. This is a web application, so no installation is required. Just point your iPhone to this URL – http://blogit.typepad.com

Steve Job announced the highly anticipated iPhone 3G as expected yesterday in WWDC. So basically the new iPhone comes powered with 3G, slimmer, better connection speed and a slight twist in the back cover where they’ll be using glossy black plastic instead the current aluminum. The new iPhone will be launched on the 11th July, exactly 1 month from now. Starting with $199 for a 3GB, $299 for the 16GB. But where can you buy it?

Apple will be launching iPhone to more than 70 countries worldwide but only 22 countries will get the taste of the iPhone 3G on the 11th July. The rest, well, maybe end of the year (but at least you are in the list).

Here’s the few countries to launch iPhone on the 11th July:

Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Hong Kong, ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, UK and the United States.

Check out the full list here.

Singapore will be among the other countries in the ‘coming soon’ list but you can now order if you are Singaporean (or in Singapore). Wait a minute, where’s Malaysia? Not again! Anyway, I’ll be be Hong Kong middle of July and will definitely check out the new iPhone 3G.

The Google design team took more than 100 approaches before they came to this simple ‘g’ favicon. However nothing is final yet, and if you think you know how a Google favicon should look like, Google is inviting you to design one.

Requirements

• resolution: 16 pixel x 16 pixel image
• format: .png, .gif, or .ico
• size: 5 KB
• transparency: 32 bit alpha transparency

And here’s where you can submit your favicon.

via Google blog

WWDC is tonight! (or moning, wherever you are) and if you want to get live update on the event or being the first to cheer and get all excited when Steve Job announced what’s new in Apple product line, here’s few sites you can logged on to, where live news/blogs on the event will be provided.

Event: Apple’s annual WWDC conference

Day: Monday

Time: 10 a.m. PDT

WWDC live update on

• MacRumors Live
• MacWorld
• The Apple Blog
• CNet
• Gizmodo
• Engadget
• TechCrunch
• Popular Mechanics

Just one more thing, don’t rely too much on Twitter tonight, I got the feeling it will crash, just like the previous few events :-)

If there’s any cell phone out there (currently before the WWDC) that will make me abandon my iPhone for, it has got to be this – HTC Touch Diamond. For Malaysians who live in KL, you should know that there’s now a HTC concept store over at Low Yat Plaza. ground floor. So if you are interested in knowing more about this cool mobile phone or just wanna touch and feel it, I urge you pay the shop a visit.

Now your YouTube video can be more interactive. These guys have added Video annotations, commentary feature sort of, into YouTube videos. As an uploader, you can create stories, descriptions or just simple dialog at any scene of the video. The video above is an interactive video with annotations.

Add annotations to videos

Too add annotations to your existing videos, simply go to Account -> My Video and click on the ‘Edit Annotations‘ on the right. Video owner can add unlimited numbers of annotations, that gives you an idea how fun your video can be.

Turning Video Annotations off?

So what if you are annoyed by these annotations that keeps on popping up, or you wanted to add some on your videos but fears viewers might get irritated? You can switch the video annotations off by clicking on the last button on the menu.

Read more about YouTube video annotations.

When I was logging into my Google AdSense account, I noticed the favicon did not look quite the same. Instead of the previous capital ‘G’ in ‘G’oogle, they now used the ‘g’ of Goo’g'le. At first I thought I end up in some kinda phishing site or it’s a web browser cache, but then I soon found out that even Google SERP pages are using the same favicon.

ICQ Chat Logs

I’m not sure if any of us are still using ICQ, but if you are using the online version of ICQ (instead of the ICQ app), you should know that your chat logs will be stored online. Best part of all, it’s searchable. Dangerous?

How to – Search for intitle:”Index of /” ICQ in Google search box.

Other Chat Logs

This one targets something more general, basically if they are chat logs and matches the search keywords, it’ll be exposed too. If you are performing a search with the following keyword, you are so going to find something interesting.

How to – Search for “Index of” / “chat/logs”

in Google search box.

Fast Solution

The quickest way to make sure private files are not crawled by Google bots is to have this following code in your robots.txt

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

or include a <meta name=”robots” content=”noindex, nofollow”> inside your HTML, before </head>.

Touch systems have been long used in kiosks, ticketing systems or even amusement park game machines. These are not rocket science but somehow a year back when Apple launches iPhone, it gains popularity and also increases the interest of end users towards multi touch system/devices. Also a year ago, Microsoft showed off their Surface computing technology, which I find it pretty convincing, and if they were to put on mass production it will be dominating. So gadgets like phones are touch’ed. The next big thing would probably be implementing them operating systems. Although non of us have a clue when technology like this will be make available in our neighborhood computer stores, but we have at least have an idea that – it definitely will, and I got a feeling it’s near.

The video above, is a Windows demonstration of their version of Multi touch, powering Windows 7 platform at the back. Again, it’s yet another exciting technology we want to have in our living room and offices.

It’s good to know that even Pizza Hut is adapting the Adobe AIR technology by distributing to its customers a desktop ordering applications by the name of Pizza Hut Shortcut. And because it’s build on a AIR platform, you can expect this Pizza Hut ordering application to run on almost any platform, let it be mac, WIndows or Linux.

The bad news is, this is only applicable to PIzza Huts in the United States. You still can download the application, install and play with it, but don’t expect the pizza hut guy to knock on your door. The idea of using desktop app to make orders are great, I really hope more local stores will adapt this idea.

Earlier today, folks at Adobe released 3 applications of the Creative Suite 4 (CS4) line-up, respectively the Dreamweaver, Fireworks and Soundbooth. These applications are available for download and test drive over at Adobe Lab. For Dreamweaver and Fireworks, you can enjoy full version for at least 2 days, and for existing customers you can request a serial number to activate the respective beta for the duration of the prerelease period. For those who are interested in Soundbooth beta, you can request for a beta serial number, provided that you have a legit copy of CS3 product (Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Fireworks) serial number.

Download these CS4 beta at Adobe Lab now.