A friend asked me to check out an email that was sent to him. It says somebody sent him a package or was that a bank draft of a large sum of money. And the company was asking for my friend’s personal information. I told him, it’s a fraud!

Criminals took advantage of the world wide web as we are now in the Internet Age. Online fraud is very popular nowadays. Phony email messages and scheming web sites are powerful tools for these crooks. They will trick you to give out your financial or personal information and use them in many possible ways for their financial gain.

You might be entice to reply to an email message that says somebody has left you a fortune. And you might think that you won’t lose anything since the email’s not asking you to send them money. But without realizing the severity of your answer email, you have already given them your name, address, phone number, birthdate, and bank account numbers. These information they can and will use to apply for and get credit in your name, max out your credit cards, or empty a bank account.

Phishing sites are fake websites. They often use real organization’s name and logo. They will trick you to submit your personal information by making you answer application or sign-up forms. And they will surely get hold of your email address and passwords, which could be very useful to them.

Before getting excited, you have to ask yourself some questions. Who would send you a large amount of money? Why would a stranger entrust millions of dollars to you? If you can’t give a logical answer to these questions then you’re facing a fraudulent scheme waiting for you to fall into their plot.

And these are ways to avoid phisher sites and online fraud:

Never reply to e-mail messages that request your personal information
Don’t click links in suspicious e-mail
Use strong passwords and change them often
Don’t send personal information in regular e-mail messages
Do business only with companies you know and trust
Make sure the Web site uses encryption
Help protect your PC
Monitor your transactions
Use credit cards for transactions on the Internet instead of a debit card

WordCamp Philippines 2008 was a success. It was great meeting other developers, and learning a thing or two from them. The camp was not solely for programmers and developers but there were the bloggers as well, ofcourse. I’ve learn some bits and pieces from some programmers I happened to sat beside with in the sessions, who shared their expertise and how-do-they-do-it stuff and all. The talks were enriching, especially Hans Koch’s on SEO.

And to top it all, it was amazing to meet Matt Mullenweg in person, and hear him talk. To those who didn’t know, Matt’s the founding developer of Wordpress.

  me, my husband, and the genius behind WordPress development _Matt Mullenweg

The whole activity was well planned and organized by the Mindanao Bloggers. And there were cool prizes and give-aways for everyone, too. Mig tossed me a cool foldable USB keyboard from one of the many sponsors, Smart Bro.

My husband’s pc was broken few weeks ago and he haven’t got the time to fix it yet. He was so careful with his laptop that he decided to make my pc his crash machine. I’m not sure what he was doing but fretted when I experienced slow browsing, and was impossible for me to upload images, or even access my admin page for Wordpress. Then eventually the Blue screen.

The Blue Screen of Death (or BSOD), or Windows Stop error, is an itch on the nose. Everytime Windows define a faulty software,hardware, or driver it will not allow your computer to continue to work properly. This always happen with so many different reasons. From a defective hardware, such as a malfunctioning power supply or a bad RAM.

I bugged a friend for tech support because my husband was so busy on a meeting, and he suggested to just take my pc subsytem to a technician. He can’t walk me through hands-on technical troubleshooting on the phone because it might be risky. But I took the risk to open my subsystem and cleaned off dust on my hardwares. The fans are working alright. So my system didn’t overheat. I unplug and replug everything, making sure that devices were strongly corked in to the sockets and ports. And when i powered it on, it still gives the bleeping sound that means its trying to read my device. It just wouldn’t boot to Windows. I assumed it was a faulty hardware since I already painstakingly deleted suspected programs through Safe Mode earlier. But after a few tries it wouldn’t let me proceed even on Safe Mode.

When my husband came home, he took the other RAM, surmising it’s faulty. Then we were able to reinstall WindowsXP. And all was well. My husband’s pc is another issue. I’ll know when he will have the time to check it, he’s always busy. If I did not nagged him to help me with my pc he wouldn’t have moved to help me.

With WindowsXP most of it’s issues can be solved easily by a simple reboot. But this is not always the case, such as if you need to repair a bad hardware. Some of the original Windows components can repair the wrong steps and misses we made. You just need the WindowsXp installer on hand and boot in Safe Mode. But for hardware issues you’ll be needing your screw driver and a good eye  to check your devices.

I do not take time to change my Friendster account’s layout and all because I like it as simple as it is. Plain and dainty like how I wanted it to be, just like my Multiply account. But if your thing is glittery and fun style of skins and layouts, and amazing themes, check my list of sites that gives cool layouts, glittered graphics, generators and widgets to suit your style.

glitter-graphics.com

Spider Layouts
Bigoo
PingaFriend
Friendster Layouts at Glitter-Graphics
Friendster Style
Free code Source
FriendsterLayouts

More than anything else, this Friendster Layout Creator from Spider Layouts’ so great. Think of creating your own layout exactly the way you feel and fancied it to be.

There are widgets like the Look-alike Meter , Horoscopes, BunnyHeroLabs and more. Youtube and MetaCafe video uploaders. And slide-shows from Slide and OneTrueMedia . Also, you can have mp3’s on your sites that you can get for free from mp3-codes.

And my favorite tickers from Lilypie. Pretty background and markers for your kids’ birthdays, anniversaries, and any occasions, too.

Friendster’s growing network is very influential. The site is a highly recognized online social community. You’ll get to connect with family, friends, long lost friends and classmates, and everyone else. I’ve noticed many people go gaga over their Friendster profile page and took endless effort inserting CSS codes on their pages.

It wasn’t so long ago since I started blogging seriously. But it’s been ages since I’ve created websites for clients, for personal and business. From the basics of html to xhtml, Static to Dynamic, website designs became more interesting and flexible as time passes by.

As a Flash Designer, I have found inconveniences and curbs on my projects esp. on editing and revising of designs. I had Flash for personal sites before, and found it exhausting to edit pages whenever I think of updating my contents. CMS is so reliable and amazing when it comes to such needs. All you have to do is check your PHP codes or/and HTML, edit and save. Then you’re done. Also for content creators to submit content without necessitating expertise in HTML or FTP.

Lately, I devoted my spare time in blogging, or I’d much prefer to call it writing. But what interests me more is my site’s layout design. A friend told me not to focused more on the site’s design when blogging. The content’s more important than anything, he says. Well he could be right. But my heart says I’d like to post my articles in a way that would be attractive to the viewers.

From modifying other WP Developers’ designed, I’ve learned many things, and wanted to do more. Good timely, the MindanaoBloggers are up to something really great. They organized WordCamp Philippines 2008. To be held on 6 September 2008 at the Augusto-Rosario Gonzalez Theater, College of Saint Benilde in Manila.

Sponsors of the WordCamp Philippines 2008:

• i.PH: the Domain for Individuals
• Free Online Flash Games
• Wazzup Manila Philippines
• Real Estate CRM
• Real Estate Website Designers
• Orange County Real Estate
• Auto Insurance Quotes
• Lane Systems Inc.
• RedMedia
• Orange County Business Lawyer
• Cebu Pacific Air
• Buddy Gancenia Reality TV
• SmartBro Wireless Broadband
• SPOT.ph
• Make Money with Performancing Ads

And the wonderful people behind this event:

• Blogie
• Andrew
• Ria
• Migs
• Winston
• Juned
• Dave
• Chuckie