Just engraving a pen

We wanted to have two pens we bought for a friend, engraved with her name. So yesterday I drove down to a shop near the university offering engraving services.

Found out that engraving four letters on each pen would cost me around five pounds. I agreed but the guy (the engraver) told me that it won't show up that well on the metallic silver surface of the pen. I was OK with that as well. He then told me that it would take around an hour to do it.

One bloody hour to engrave 8 letters. "Shakes head"

That was it. I told him I couldn't wait that long and left the shop.

As I was walking to my car, I was thinking about the numerous places in Kuala Lumpur, where I could have a whole sentence engraved on almost ANYTHING (including metallic silver surfaces) for less than RM 20 (FYI, £1 = RM6.94 approx.) and it would take them less than 10 minutes.

Making email interactive

Can email be interactive? If you said "No!" then you are wrong.

Leading email marketing company, iContact has launched a unique feature around email content, called the iContact Community. It allows visitors to comment, rank, and discuss email newsletters with their subscribers which opt in.

It works by allowing email marketers to create a public profile, publicly archive their newsletters and blog posts, tag and categorize their newsletters and blog posts in categories like Automotive, Business, Entertainment, shopping and more.

At first glance, it looks very much like Digg and it's not surprising as the community employs a similar model - more interesting and relevant the content published, the higher the chances for it to get votes.

This should definitely interest those publishers who are looking to get more visitors and subscribers, as the community profile will be indexed by Google and the major search engines.

When I last checked, the Community had already 213,458 Articles, 120,876 Members and 119,016 Publishers just a few days after launch.

iContact certainly has one of the best features and one of the best prices in the market. Their user-interface is quite intuitive and streamlined. You don't have to take my word for it as you can try it out for free. Use their service to create, send and track Email Newsletters, Surveys, and RSS Feeds. They have different pricing packages from 500 to 100,000 subscribers. Anyone can join as a iContact publisher by paying $9.95 per month. This is for 500 subscribers. However, you have to contact them directly for a quote if you have a huge number of subscribers, exceeding 100,000 contacts.

If you are a non-profit organization, you are in luck as iContact is now offering a 20% discount, provided you can prove your non-profit status.

Do check out the iContact Blog as well. They have a number of tips for improving email marketing campaigns and of course updates on iContact and informations about the Broadwick Corporation.

When PhDs party

Just got back from a party at a friends house near the University. It was nice, quiet party. Was thinking how different it was during our undergraduate university days, when parties meant smoky rooms (sometimes with a hint of cannabis), lot of booze, loud music, etc.

Here someone actually turned the music volume down and nobody complained. Ended up talking about intellectual and philosophical stuff - what do you expect when you have too many PhD students in a room.

Some might say, "that's not a bloody party!"

The odd part is that, it was still fun.

I am getting old.

Wifi with BT Total Broadband

Our broadband contract with AOL ends this month and we are seriously thinking of moving to another service provider. Even though I have had no problems with my present service, broadband speed is a priority for me.

After doing a bit of research I discovered that BT broadband provides the fastest broadband speeds in the UK. The most attractive package is their Option 3 package. This package offers up to 8Mb download speed with unlimited downloads, 5GB FREE secure online storage with BT Digital Vault. It also comes with the wireless BT Home Hub and Hub Phone so that you can easily set up a wi-fi network in your home.

I already have a wifi broadband network set up in my house so that I can even use my laptop in the garden. However, the threat of intruders do worry me a bit. This is why the BT Home Hub is quite attractive to me. This next generation wireless router has an built-in firewall that blocks viruses and unwanted intruders and even updates itself automatically.

With all these features I am seriously considering changing to BT's Option 3 deal.

Boring academics

Yesterday, I attended the most boring seminar ever! I don't know whether it was due to the fact that the lecturer was dealing with a topic which was certainly of no interest to me or because this guy kept on droning on and on for hours in a monotonous tone.

I nearly dozed off twice even though I had a cup of coffee just before the seminar. Don't ask me why but I couldn't leave the hall. I asked a friend sitting next to me if he understood anything. He had been listening attentively (or so I thought). "I lost him in the first 10 minutes", he replied. Felt a bit better when I realised that I was not alone. Noticed a guy in the row in front of me dozing off as well and he was a lecturer.

It's funny but I suddenly realised that a lot of renowned academics have such poor presentation skills. Then I thought to myself "Am I this boring as well?". I don't think so but it is something I have to watch out now I am on the way to become an academician as well.

Loads of fun quizzes

If you are a blogger, I am sure you would have taken one or more of those online fun quizzes and tests. If you don't know what I am talking about, here's an example: Ladies, take the sexy test to find out how appealing you are.

Quiz Rocket has loads of online personality quizzes and fun tests. it's pretty amazing how these simple tests can tell about your personality. I don't really take them seriously and just reading the answers make me laugh. They have a few trivia quizzes to test your general knowledge as well.

Mommy blogger

Here's a long long overdue review. Sometime back, I had promised to review blogs for free but along the way I somehow forgot all about the list of blogs to review, until today.

Saw that on top of the list is "My Little Tribe", a personal blog of another mommy blogger. It has a really neat and clean template and the font used for the title is quite unique. Carla, the "matriarch" of the tribe blogs about her life as a mother and a wife. I like the pics she posts up - quite artistic. The fact that her blog does not carry any noticeable ads will definitely appeal to a lot of people who are sick of blogs plastered all over by ads (including my own).