One of the hardest job bloggers are facing nowadays is to retain the readership of their blogs. Some readers read our blog entries by directly dropping by our blogs, some read them via RSS syndicates. Well, coming over to our blogs or read the blog posts via RSS may be a hassle to the blog readers, now we have another option - by emailing them the latest post using blog email! So, why wait for the readers to come while we can go to them?

Zookoda provides free email marketing application designed specifically for bloggers, where we can send a daily, weekly or monthly summary of our latest blog posts directly into our blog readers’ email inbox. No, this is not like email spamming! Your blog readers have the full right to subscribe/unsubscribe themselves to/from the mailing list.

By using the free email newsletter service by Zookoda, you can design your own eye-catching newletters to match your blog design. Besides, you are able to track the visitor habits and whether emails are successfully sent. Each email is tracked during delivery, providing you with open, bounce and click through information in a real time reporting system.

In fact, Zookoda email newsletter service does not only limit to bloggers, you can still use the service if you are a service provider too. Well, since it’s free, why not try it out!

Hafiz Ismail sent me a comprehensive review of Smart2Go he did last week. He is a Malaysian reader of this blog who currently stays in the UK. Not to mention he is an enthusiast of mobile application too. I sincerely thank him for the wonderful review and for informing me Smart2Go now supports maps in Malaysia!

Download Hafiz’s Review of Smart2Go (PDF, 573KB)

In this review, Hafiz discloses 2 popular free navigation application for mobile phone as alternatives to some fee-based satellite navigation applications. Anyway, Smart2Go is the main focus of the review after all.

Basically, the review covers from the installation of Smart2Go to navigating the Nokia Maps using the Smart2Go. As a Malaysian, Hafiz tried on navigating from Jalan Ampang to Jalan Tun Razak in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia map. On top of that, Hafiz generously offers his priceless insight of the newly launched Smart2Go as well as provides some useful screen shots too. A picture worths a thousand words ya!

Thanks Hafiz for your time and efforts!

Well, usually we use major search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN or Ask Jeeves to search whatever we need on the Internet. What if we are looking for something special and can’t manage to find via these search engines?

I came across at least 3 search engines which respectively target different niche search items, one is specialized as Photo Search Engine, another is Programming Code Search Engine and another is Mobile Content Search Engine by Nokia.

Let me start with the first one of a kind search engine, Riya - The Next Generation Photo Search Engine. Well, of course I know Google has its images search feature as well but Riya uses proprietary face and text recognition which can intelligently recognize each and every instance of that person or place in the photo.

Quoted:
Riya’s bag of tricks is pretty big–besides looking at facial features, it also examines people’s clothing to help recognize individuals in multiple pictures. It does subtle analysis of the timestamps on photos to help it make further intelligent guesses about who’s who. And it also does optical recognition of signs and other text in pictures (if you’re wearing a nametag, it may be able to read it).

Wanna try it out now? Take a tour at Riya’s website now.
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Tips To Search Special Search Items

We have been waiting for this moment to come anxiously since the last Release Candidate version of Firefox (Firefox 1.5RC3) on November 17, 2005. Now the final version of Firefox 1.5 is available. Previously, we can reach the download page of Firefox from either www.getfirefox.com or www.spreadfirefox.com, but now all these websites will be directed to the main page of www.mozilla.com, which is the developer of the famous Firefox.

Since quite a number of bloggers have already talked about the release of Firefox 1.5 in PPS by providing the download link and some introduction of the new features, I will skip those parts as you can read it from the link.

I, Myself just downloaded Firefox 1.5 and started playing with it to see what are the new features and stuffs. I found out most of the themes are not compatible with this latest version. Out of 8 themes I have, only 2 have the latest compatible version, they are Noia 2.0 (eXtreme) and Aquatint. Anyway, you still can download whichever compatible themes that suit you from the themes page.
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Short Review Of Latest Firefox 1.5

Suanie posted an entry about some sweet memories in the 90s. It reminded me that I was still a teenager that time who only used PC for games and entertainment.

For some of you who were web surfers back in 1990s, might still remember how the old Yahoo! and Google looked like. Just to bring back the old memory of these 2 search engine giant, here I present you Yahoo! in 1996 and Google in 1998. For those who have not seen the old version of Yahoo! and Google, enjoy too.

Yahoo! in 1996

Well, back in 1996, Yahoo! was still a web directory itself comprised of around 370,000 sites. That time, Yahoo! was more or less a place served as Yellow pages and to search for latest news. For your information, this is the 2-year-old Yahoo! as Yahoo! was created in April 1994.
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Yahoo in 1996 & Google in 1998

I just got an invitation from Microsoft last Friday to test the forthcoming Hotmail service, Kahuna. I am definitely not the first to do a review for Kahuna but I hope this entry shares the experience of using it from a diffrent point of view. Well, there are quite a number of good reviews written, such as this article from PC World, this article from PCMag or even this comprehensive list of features from MSN.

Kahuna is the next version of Hotmail and it will have 2GB capacity. It utilizes the latest web technologies such as AJAX, which GMail is also using. Since Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express is still having the largest user base for Windows-based email client applicaiton, Kahuna tries to bring the same user experience into the web application.

Click To Enlarge

Mail Box

On the Today page, which happened to be the welcome page, we will see some messages from Microsoft regarding this beta version of next Hotmail. To give us the user experience of Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express, we will see the user interface of Kahuna is very similar to them with three columns design:-
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The Next Version Of Hotmail - Kahuna