Craving Tech -Technology and Reviews

How my friend found her lost dog through social media and the net

Michael Aulia — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 08:58:01 +0000

Who says that social media makes your life more miserable? Who says that social media is made only to make you lose your privacy?

Recently we’ve been hearing about how a person got caught in Facebook faking his illness to get a sick leave, how 2 girls shouted for help on Facebook rather than calling the emergency service, or how a mom got sacked because she made an inappropriate comment about her workplace on Twitter.

This time it’s different. It’s the story of my friend, Huiwen, in Singapore (well, we met briefly on the Nuffnang Blog Award 2009 last month) whose dog went missing. By some miracles, she then found Scruffy (the dog) through series of tweeting, plurking, facebook-ing?, and who knows what else!

I’m not gonna re-tell the story again here in this blog but feel free to check out her blog posts to find out how the social media helped her in finding her lost dog! It was quite an amusing story especially on how fast and helpful the people at social media are!

At the end, my friend was contacted by the people who found her dog through the contact form on her blog!

The story goes as follows:

I believe her story should have been made onto the media! This is quite an amusing experience and deserves a coverage!

Good on you, Scruffy! Maybe you want to blog about it? *pet*

Olympus launched the stylish and artistic PEN E-P2

Michael Aulia — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 07:10:06 +0000

A digital camera that delivers a digital SLR performance and quality in compact size? That kind of news always interest me. It seems that nowadays, lots of digital camera vendors are heading toward that direction: to provide a DSLR quality camera in compact mode.

The PEN E-P2 is also an interchangeable lens digital camera, so you’ll be able to “customize” it as you take pictures in different environment and settings.

Below is the official PEN E-P2 press release from Olympus.

The digital camera market continues to transform with the launch of the new Olympus PEN E-P2. Delivering high-resolution digital SLR image quality in a compact size synonymous with the Olympus PEN E-P1, the Olympus PEN E-P2 boasts enhanced usability with the addition of a VF-2 Live Viewfinder and new creative Art Filter effects to encourage creative expression for both still photography and movie capture.

The Olympus E-P2 is the latest member to join the Olympus PEN camera range. Building on the innovation and creative capabilities of the E-P1, this new model similarly eliminates the traditional digital-SLR quick-return mirror and uses a SLR-sized image sensor. This results in a radically compact and highly portable interchangeable lens camera that takes superb SLR quality pictures.

VF-2 Live Viewfinder

A new detachable high-definition VF-2 Live Viewfinder that is included with the E-P2 takes the PEN shooting experience to a new level with its superbly clear 1.44 million dot resolution and a 100 per cent field of view. This new electronic viewfinder allows you to see real-time previews of selected settings before taking a photo and is especially useful for bright outdoor shooting. With a sophisticated optical design that utilises aspheric lens elements, distortion is minimal and live picture quality is outstandingly clear across the entire viewing frame. The VF-2 attaches to the E-P2 body via a new accessory port.

Expanding the range of Art Filters to eight with an additional two new filters, the Olympus E-P2 encourages you to express your creative genius in both still shooting and movie capture modes. Making it easy for virtually anyone to take more creative photos, the new Diorama and Cross Process filters allow you to recreate effects reminiscent of those achieved through selective focusing with a tilt-lens and traditional film processing methods.

A new picture mode, i-ENHANCE, works to ensure the key photographic subject stands out with exceptional clarity and presence. i-ENHANCE can also be used in iAUTO mode for users who prefer easy fuss-free automatic exposure photography, popular on the Olympus range of compact digital cameras. The Olympus PEN E-P2 also offers HD movie recording at 720p resolution with CD quality stereo sound, and the ability to apply Art Filter effects to movie capture.

Olympus’ Product Manager, Ray Okubo commented: “Just like the Olympus PEN E-P1 launched earlier this year, the Olympus PEN E-P2 is set to revolutionise the digital camera market. Its sophisticated and stylish form complemented by the latest innovative features is set to give both beginners and more experienced photographers the chance to take their photography skills to a completely new level.”

Key features:

Iconic, classic design: Mirror-less design for light, go-anywhere portability with metal exterior for a premium, high quality feel
Effortless creativity for powerful images: Shooting functions include an expanded range of eight Art Filters, including the new Diorama and Cross Process filters and an i-ENHANCE Picture mode that make the key photographic subject standout with exceptional clarity and presence. Like the PEN E-P1, the Olympus PEN E-P2 offers HD movie and CD quality linear PCM audio recording with the ability to apply Art Filter effects to movie recordings
New accessory port expands possibilities: In response to feedback from many PEN E-P1 users the new Olympus PEN E-P2 includes a new accessory port enabling the use of the VF2 – a detachable high-definition Live Viewfinder
Even easier to use: A live control icon display allows for easy, intuitive selection of camera settings, while Continuous-Tracking AF makes focusing on moving subjects easier than ever
Built-in Image Stabiliser: The E-P2 features a sensor-shift image-stabiliser (IS) built into the camera body that is effective up to 4 shutter speeds for handheld photography. Image stabilisation can be applied to almost any lens mounted to the camera body, inclusive of Micro Four Thirds and Four Thirds types lenses (via the MMF-1 lens adapter) without lens-based IS capability, and even non-dedicated lenses such as legacy OM (via the MF-2 mount adapter) and other brand lenses (via suitable third-party lens mount adapters).

The Olympus E-P2 will be available in a stylish black finish with a stainless steel and aluminium clad body. Scheduled for release in Australia in December 2009, pricing is yet to be announced. For detailed product and accessory descriptions, please visit www.olympus.com.au.

October 2009 Traffic & Income Statistics

Michael Aulia — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 07:15:43 +0000

Last month’s traffic statistics (from http://www.michaelaulia.com/blogs, before I rebrand my “Michael Aulia’s Blog” to “Craving Tech”): 34,787 unique visitors and 47,650 page views.

Traffic details:

Referring Sites: 9,476.00 (27.24%)
Search Engines : 22,037.00 (63.35%)
Direct Traffic: 3,241.00 (9.32%)
Other: 33 (0.09%)

Total money made online in October: around USD 157.47.

Referring Sites breakdown

A quite stable traffic for last month, nothing fancy. A new referring site traffic came from the Nuffnang Blog Awards page (272 visitors). Not much, but maybe it was because nobody knew about this great blog yet (before the award night).

Money made online in October 2009

Google AdSense: AUD 117.09
Nuffnang: AUD 23.94
BuzzLogic: USD 16.69
Amazon Associates: USD 10.38

Total around USD 157.47.

Not a bad month even though I know I could have racked up more with that kind of traffic (what my readers said). Amazon has been slowly catching up ever since I’ve put more Amazon ads on the review posts. It’s weird though how people actually bought unrelated stuffs on Amazon but I still got the commission out of it (the good thing about Amazon). So if you want to try making money with Amazon, don’t hesitate to join the Amazon Associates program.

October 2009 Post Highlights

Looking forward for next month’s traffic which might go down or go up since I’ve changed my blog from “Michael Aulia’s Blog” to “Craving Tech” (http://www.michaelaulia.com/blogs -> http://www.cravingtech.com).

I was quite surprised looking at the Google Analytics though as this blog actually got more traffic after the switch (a big boost from Google Image search mainly):

On Saturday 7th November, I got 1,754 unique visitors and on Sunday 8th November, I got 1,777 unique visitors! Normally this blog only got around 800-1,200 unique visitors (and that’s during the weekdays!). Not sure that I did anything but this move seems to make the Google Bot Image happy? Or it can just be a pure coincidence…?

If you compare my Google Image traffic on the referring sites’ figure for last month on the top vs the one below (just on the 7-8th November alone), you can imagine the crazy traffic I might be getting in a whole month from Google Image! It’ll be exciting to see.

(Or maybe I made a mistake somehow on the robots.txt, sitemap, or any other settings from previous blog?? I still don’t understand why)

I am planning to switch to the Thesis theme one day too just to test whether it can really bring more search engine visitors as people said in the past. But yeah, one at a time, I guess.

Having a YouTube Slow Loading problem?

Michael Aulia — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 13:02:00 +0000

Recently I was having a YouTube problem at home every time I wanted to open up a YouTube movie. This never happened before and I knew my internet was fast enough to handle the connection. The YouTube screen went blank for a very long time as if the movie couldn’t be loaded at all. Sometimes I could then see/play the movie and sometimes the screen was just plain blank.

If you are experiencing this very same problem like I did, here is what you need to do to fix the YouTube slow loading problem.

First of all, delete your browser files (cookies, cache, etc). Normally you can access this via the browser options. Then, restart your browser. If this doesn’t fix your problem, then you need to update your:

If you still have a problem after updating these, the last resort should be to download and install CCleaner. After I did a sweep and clean of my system using CCleaner the YouTube loading problem went away!

All the best!

Craving Tech goes live! Please update your bookmarks!

Michael Aulia — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 07:28:57 +0000

Craving Tech goes live today! I’ve done a permanent redirection from my old blog’s URL at http://www.michaelaulia.com/blogs to here. It’ll be some time before Google notices this change so I’ll sit still and stay tight! Meanwhile at your end, please update all your bookmarks (especially the RSS Feed because I’ve changed the feed address).

So to summarize this post:

My new RSS Feed address is @ http://feeds.feedburner.com/CravingTech. Subscribe to this great blog if you haven’t If you prefer to get my latest posts via email, subscribe to CravingTech via email.
My Twitter is still the same: http://twitter.com/michaelaulia. Follow me if you haven’t as I’ve been more active now since I’ve got some real friends in there (thanks, Nuffnang guys & the great bloggers I’ve met in Singapore last month)

If you’ve been my readers for months (or even years), I’d appreciate if you spread this new domain on some social bookmarking sites. So please do stumble, Digg, mixx, tweet, and any other things you can think of to help me spread this great new ‘empire’

And of course, as always, thank you for all of your support to this blog and to myself personally. Looking forward for a greater year ahead!