I admit that I’m so far off when it comes to social networking sites — I just can’t keep up. So you can’t imagine how crazy I went when, while in my mood to listen to David Foster’s songs, I searched and found a site that’s not only a social networking site, but also a music sharing portal!

Imeem! (I can already hear the guffaws coming out of most of you)

If you haven’t heard of the site, though, then I sympathize with you and understand your plight.

Anyways, the site is filled with all sorts of music you can imagine. You build your playlists from the assortment of songs already in there, then share it out with others in your network. The streamed songs are amazingly fast, and extra options such as linking to your Twitter status makes Imeem fun to use.

But if you just want to download some MP3s, MP3Raid is the place to go. You have the option to purchase and download full albums for darn cheap prices, going for as low as 90 US cents per album. I think that’s an awesome deal. They even accept PayPal, which is very convenient for me and I’m sure is for you, too.

Do you have any free music sites that you know and would like to share with me (the legal ones of course)?

I pwnd WebGrrrl yet again, this time in Facebook. Where it used to be a long unintelligeable URL is now just http://facebook.com/webgrrrl. Facebook officially rolled out this option around the middle of this month which enables you select a profile name (sort of a user ID if you will) that you can use to invite others.

If you have a Facebook account and very often go under a pseudonym, you need to heavily consider registering that nickname to avoid other people from misleading and disguising themselves as you.

No idea how to go about personalizing your Facebook profile address? Easy. Just go to http://facebook.com/username, get logged in, and type in the user ID you desire. Hopefully your chosen ID hasn’t been taken by anyone else.

Alright, so I kind of lied about the getting a date part, but being a social networking site, Wakoopa does get you connected with other people. But wait, there’s more.

The twist to Wakoopa is that it also keeps track of the software and sites you use, as long as you install and run its lightweight tracker as soon as your computer is on.

You might think it sounds a little lame. But just wait till you see the stats it collects, as per my Wakoopa profile:

According to Wakoopa, “So far webgrrrl has used 157 different applications for 298 hours in total.” The stats even breaks down the type of tasks I was doing most of the time based on the software I was using. From the looks of it, here’s the 5 top tasks I’ve been doing on my computer:

1. Surf the web
2. Is social (it means I’m spending a lot of time on social networking sites)
3. Word processing
4. Present (not “exist”, but as in doing presentations)
5. Search the web

Pretty darn scary — and accurate!

Another cool thing about Wakoopa is the ability to discover new software, sites and tools that friends in your network are using. Leo Laporte was the first person I added into my network (I actually found out about Wakoopa through his FriendFeed update and I have him to blame for my Wakoopa addiction), followed by the creators of Wakoopa. You won’t believe the myriad of software I found just by following their usage.

Enough said. Try it yourself. And remember to add me as your friend while you’re at it.

Since my last post concerning WordPress as a content management system (CMS), I’ve seen a few more sites that showcases this type of setup. Even WordPress.org has jumped on the bandwagon by highlighting sites that are deemed to be well-designed CMSes, and if any WordPress-powered site should aspire to look like a CMS, this is the place to go for inspiration.

One site in the list is definitely noteworthy, like the New School University Student Senate web site. Golf Royalty is another nifty site and should have been ranked up there in the top 10, not those vote-rigged sites you see right now. Need more inspiration? Here are 10 more fantastic-looking WordPress CMS that Adrian from Rubiqube recommends.

A few tips to make your WordPress site less blog-like and more CMS-like: don’t go for the boring ol’ header-topnav-post-post-post-sidebar-footer layout. Get user interactivity into it (polls and such). Highlight important content and group them well (highlights, news, announcement). Snazzy graphics are welcomed, but not required. There are so many themes and plugins out there that can help your WordPress site stand out and not look like a blog.

If you’re still at a loss, you can always hire me

This short post is a heads-up to mrBadak’s announcement on his blog concerning the logo competition. Please hop over to his blog for more details.

We currently do not have any prize in mind, other than a permalink from giuk.net to your site. Do you? Add your comment here or at mrBadak’s site, and we’ll see what we can do.

The development of this plugin has been largely delayed by the robbery that happened to me earlier this year, so I had to start from scratch.

However, I’ve made my plan a bit more simpler, as I now plan on just adapting from a GPL-based genealogy software of my choice that’s running on PHP and MySQL. The same development concept was used when I developed the Top Commentators Widget, since I figured I shouldn’t be reinventing the wheel when there are better and more developed genealogy software.

I’m looking into adapting either phpmyfamily or GeneoTree, albeit in a smaller scale than what is offered by either one application. I’m hoping to achieve the following by the time a beta release is ready for public testing:

• Include a simple administration page to upload GEDCOM (.ged) file
• Provide the ability to display ancestry in a list order
• Provide the ability to display a person’s details

And that’s it, really. I’m putting off the rest of the options because, honestly speaking, this can grow into a pretty huge application that would match its original counterparts. If I’m bogged down with too many features, I’m worried that I might not be able to complete this by the end of this year. So, better something than nothing, I say

I still need your help finalizing the official name of this plugin. FamilyPress and WP-Genealogy are currently in equal footing as of the moment of this posting. Please use the poll below and vote for the official name. I’ll be announcing its official name the moment a beta is ready for deployment.

I just realized I didn’t have a post for June 7! I did schedule an article for that day, but I forgot to publish it, having it still set on Draft mode. The silly thing was, I was working on two posts to show up, one in this blog and the other is my maiden post up at Blogging Fu, and even that was still set as a draft!

And both were suppose to be such cool posts

I’ll reschedule them to another future date. In the mean time, I’ll also cheat a bit and schedule one newer article to appear as the June 7 post, so that I won’t feel too bad about missing that one day.

Sheesh.

It all started when I noticed that PayPal tried to deduct my monthly subscription to Keyword Academy multiple times, whereby two of the transactions got through. So I e-mailed Mark & Court using the e-mail address stated in the PayPal details.

Their response was pretty fast, i.e. within the same day I sent my query. The last e-mail I received from either of them is this:

Trusting that action was to be taken, I waited. Since then, I had not logged into the Keyword Academy members site, being busy and all.

So I was surprised when PayPal sent me an auto-notification saying that my subscription was cancelled due to insufficient funds (boy, was I glad I was using a debit card!). This meant that not only was PayPal still trying to deduct my balance, but Mark and Court didn’t actually look into solving my problem.

Now, I realize that the deduction were PayPal’s error in the first place. But even after a week since my request for refund of one of my payments, there was none coming from either of the guys at Keyword Academy.

I waited still. I finally received an e-mail from them.

Too bad it was an autoresponder! Nothing about the subscription problem was mentioned. I replied to that e-mail, and sent a couple more over the next few days.

By the way, before any of you cry “scam” over this, let me be frank with you and say that nothing about this program is a scam — they’re very legit and give good information about how to build your site right to make money. However, their response so far leaves little to be desired.

What the heck is going on, people (and in people I mean Court and Mark specifically)? Did my e-mail fell into your Spam folder? How long does it take to refund a measly $33? Reply already!

Is my frustration obvious enough for ya?

I was this close to buying a book called Rhythm Programming at the local book fair this afternoon, but my guts told me to hold off the purchase. After reading the reviews in Amazon.com, I’m glad I did. After all, it was printed in 2002, and I’m sure a lot has changed since then.

So here I am back on the Net, doing a small research on how to set up a PC recording studio at home so I could achieve that lifelong dream of composing my own songs. The few sites listed below should be good enough for a beginner like me:

Digital Trends’ Setup a Recording Studio on Your Computer: This article tells you exactly what kind of hardware and software you need to have in order to set up your PC for recording music. This is perfect for me since I plan on playing a few instruments myself instead of relying too much on synths that are built into the computer. I especially like their software recommendations which are almost always focused on the freewares.

How to Configure a Recording Studio Rig: Oh, this one is excellent. It shows you the different recommended setups you can do depending on your budget and computer hardware needs (PC/Mac). Very detailed. My rig will probably be no more complicated than this:

DrawMusic’s How to Write Music: This is actually the site of a music composition software called ChordSong, a very bare-bones version if you’d like to dabble with one, but without the hefty cost. The tutorial is good enough that it may even allow you to compose your very first song within hours. It’s not so flexible when it comes to the beats, but it does its job alright. Here’s what I got after playing with it a bit for 10-15 mins (guess what song it is).

How to Write a Love Song: You can never go wrong with a love song. A guy named William Brooks converted his book into electronic form and shared them out for free in Scribd. I haven’t read it yet, but I will. “It doesn’t matter if you are brand new to songwriting or hammering out your 100th tune, there is something for everyone in this book. You will be walked step-by-step through the process of writing your first love song. It’s just as if I was sitting next to you and just hanging out and showing you what to do next. ” Ooooh….

More Google Book Search results for my reference and future reading.

The main thing that have prompted me to buy all WebGrrrl domains under the major TLDs is because of this very reason.

My first encounter with the domain name scam is earlier this year. I received an e-mail from some Andy guy claiming to be working with Hong Kong Network Service Company Ltd (which is actually a real and valid company from what I’ve researched).  The e-mail read something like this:

Dear Sir/Madam,

We are Hong Kong Network Service Company Limited which is the domain name register center in Asia. We received a formal application from a company who is applying to register “webgrrrl” as their domain name and Internet keyword on <date removed>. Since after our investigation we found that this word has been in use by your company, and this may involve your company name or trade mark, so we inform you in no time.

If you consider these domain names and internet keyword are important to you and it is necessary to protect them by registering them first, contact us soon. Thanks for your co-operation and support.

My first thought when reading it was, ooooohhhh, I’m famous! I’m there! People want me! People love me! WebGrrrl’s cool! I’m cool! … and other such thoughts that would make your head explode with pride.

I should have deleted the e-mail right away, but it didn’t occur to me at first that it was all bull. So I replied the fella back, saying “yeah, WebGrrrl’s all mine” or something to that effect. Around the same time, I gave way to my paranoia and bought webgrrrl.org, while webgrrrl.com was still owned by someone else (who, by the way, offered to sell it to me about 2 years ago for the cheap price of US$100++). ONLY after I bought the .org did I suspect that the e-mail was a scam. I decided to trash it.

A couple of days later, I got a reply from him stating that since I didn’t follow up on him, he’ll continue with registration of the .asia — and other dots to that effect — on behalf of his client. Oh really?

Since that day, I’ve been eyeing on the .com version, patiently and quietly waiting through the extra 3-month holding period even when it was expired way back in March.

Then, a week before the .com domain was available, I began receiving more domain name spams. One was from InTrust Names, with the following e-mail:

Domain Sale Notice:

webgrrrl.com is coming availabe for sale in a few days.

Since you own the domain webgrrrl.net, we thought you’d be interested in webgrrrl.com.

If you do have interest in acquiring webgrrrl.com, please fill up priority notice form availble here: <some .us url>

the domain is available for purchase.

Another e-mail followed suit a couple of days later from Zip Domains:

Our company specializes in acquiring expired domain names to help individuals and businesses protect their brand online.

The domain name WEBGRRRL.COM expired recently and we were able to secure it.

We noticed that you own WEBGRRRL.NET and felt that you may be interested in acquiring the .COM version of your existing domain name.

It is available for a one-time fee of only $49.00 USD.

To purchase or learn more, please visit <their url>/buy.php?domain=webgrrrl.com

Do you know how these companies scam you? They’ll ask you to fill in their forms, including payment options and so forth. Once the domain is available, they’ll buy the domain el cheapo, then charges you at least 50% more than the actual price, and lastly reassign the ownership of that domain to you.

Why would you want to pay that much for something you can do by yourself and cheaply?

My months of obsession with WHOIS came to an end yesterday, when the domain was available for sale around 10.00am GMT+8. I immediately grabbed it through my GoDaddy account and coupon, and parted with US$7.15 to be the proud owner of that coveted .com.

The moral of the story: patience pays.

I love happy endings, don’t you?