Maybank2u access denied

Have you encoutered the "access denied" problem when you try to login to Maybank2u website, even though you are very sure the username and password that you keyed in is absolutely correct?

I just found out that Maybank2u will suspend your online banking account if you didn't login to it for more than 3 months. You will need to call their Customer Care number, verify yourself, then only can reactivate it.

If you didn't login your Maybank2u online banking account for more than 6 months, it will be deactivated. You will need to go to the ATM machine of Maybank to get a new PIN number with your ATM card, and reregister a new online banking account in Maybank2u.

Is this "security feature" good or bad? You comment.

Calculate the recommended power supply wattage for desktop computer

If you are going to DIY build a desktop computer, you might be wondering how much wattage of power supply unit (PSU) should your computer use, that will be sufficient and not overkill.

In fact, you can calculate the recommended power supply wattage using the online eXtreme Power Supply Calculator, claimed to be "the only power supply calculator trusted by PSU manufacturers and computer enthusiasts".

Just click on either one of the links below:

• The default eXtreme PSU Calculator Lite
• Thermaltake Power Supply Calculator
• Cooler Master Power Supply Calculator

This handy tool will calculate the estimated power consumption based on information including the motherboard, CPU, video card, RAM, harddisk, disc drives, PCI cards, PCI Express cards, USB devices, fans, cooling system, etc.

Online group purchase Dell computer at lower price with Dell Swarm

If you plan to buy a Dell computer (either laptop or desktop) with Intel processor (oops, not for AMD), you can possibly get it at a lower price in Dell Swarm website.

Dell Swarm Malaysia is an innovative website to enable anyone residing in Malaysia to group purchase computers with Dell Malaysia.

The group purchase option is called a Swarm, and will active for 72 hours (3 days) for buyers to place order. The more buyers swarm for it (up to a maximum of 15 committed buyers per Swarm), the more discount they will get. Buyers can also pledge for a lower price, and they'll get it if more buyers join the Swarm. Once the price is lowered as they wish, they'll become committed buyers then.

The price will be finalized when the Swarm ended, all buyers will get the same lowest price resulting from number of committed buyers as well as their pledging effort to bring the price further down. The buyers will get a unique coupon code via email, and they can proceed to Dell Malaysia's website to customize the items and place the order.

If you don't see a Swarm with the computer specs that you want, you can suggest for a new one by specifying your specs, and get your supporters to follow your suggestion. Every 2 weeks, the most popular suggested Swarm will be chosen to become an active Swarm.

You might also probably be interested with:

• Buying Dell computer online with Dell Coupon codes for more discount

Buying Dell computer online with Dell Coupon codes for more discount

Dell Coupon is a kind of promotion code offered by Dell so that you can enjoy special discount when you place your order with them to buy new desktop, laptop, computer accessories, etc.

The tricky part is: How and where to know what is the Dell Coupon codes? Even some people might question: Do Dell Coupon codes ever exist?

I'll share this precious information to you now!

• If you buy Dell computer from Malaysia, click here to look for Dell Coupons.
• If you buy Dell computer from Singapore, click here to look for Dell Coupons.
• If you buy Dell computer from Hong Kong, click here to look for Dell Coupons.

You might also probably be interested with:

• Online group purchase Dell computer at lower price with Dell Swarm
  

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Travel to outer space at no cost in NASA shuttle

Do you want to fly into the space? Now, at least your photo can reach the orbit, and it is free.

NASA is currently inviting the public to send their portrait into space aboard one of the two remaining space shuttle flights - STS-133 and STS-134.

It is very easy to participate. Just upload your picture to NASA Face in Space website: http://faceinspace.nasa.gov. Another option, you can also just fly your name without a photo.

You can select which space shuttle to fly - Discovery in September 2010 or Endeavor, targeted for November 2010.

Upon successful registration, you can print and save the confirmation page with your flight information.

After the flight and shuttle landed on earth, you can return to the website to print your Flight Certificate - a commemorative certificate signed by the Mission Commander.

You can also check on mission status, view mission photographs, link to various NASA educational resources and follow the commander and crew on Twitter or Facebook.

Let's fly together!

Most recent interest rates from commercial banks in Malaysia

For your information, the Association of Banks in Malaysia (ABM) makes available the most recent interest rates from commercial banks in Malaysia in their website.

The interest rates information covers:

• Fixed deposit rate (from 1 month to 12 months) of each bank
• Savings account interest rate
• Current account interest rate
• BLR rate (for lending)

It is not so straightforward to reach the information, if you don't know where is it located in the ABM website.

Well, here is its URL. You might want to bookmark it if you find it useful:

• http://www.abm.org.my/Interest_Rates_from_Commercial_Banks.aspx

Know what people are searching for with Google Trends and Google Insights for Search

Are you interested to know what are the current hot topics and hot keywords that many people are searching for in Google?

You can actually track them using the awesome online tools namely Google Trends and Google Insights for Search.

In fact, Google Trends has been around for quite some times, and many webmasters, bloggers, twitterers, etc. are using it to come out with new hot topics of attraction for their websites. Google Insights for Search seems to be an enhanced version of Google Trends with more features.

Although Google Insights for Search is more advanced, Google Trends is still handy and useful, because you can access information from Google Hot Trends right in its front page.

Lets pay a visit to Google Trends:
http://www.google.com.sg/trends

As you can see, once you enter the website, you are displayed with a list of Hot Topics as well as a list of Hot Searches, and those are the most current info.

In fact, the RSS feeds of Google Hot Trends are available, including the following:

Global Server:-
http://www.google.com/trends/hottrends/atom/hourly

Singapore Server:-
http://www.google.com.sg/trends/hottrends/atom/hourly

Try search for a keyword in Google Trends, lets say "iceland", and click the "Search Trends" button, and you will see the search trends of your keyword.

When there is a surge in keyword search, it will be labelled, and at the side you can see the news headlines which probably able to give you a hint of why people are suddenly so interested to the topic during those particular periods of time.

You can also refine the result by region and by timeframe. At the bottom of the page shows where the searching people are residing in.

Now lets pay a visit to Google Insights for Search:
http://www.google.com/insights/search/

As you can see, you have more advanced tools to refine your search by comparison, filters (including filter by categories), etc.

And the result has more information, including these:

And last but not least, if you want to know what kind of keywords that have actually brought traffic to your own website, you can find the precise answer in Google Webmaster Tool.

Show PageRank and Alexa ranking of websites in status bar of Firefox / SeaMonkey / IE with SearchStatus

By using the SearchStatus add-on, you can show at the status bar of your browser, the Google PageRank and Alexa popularity ranking of all the websites you are browsing.

This allows you to have a rough idea about the website's link importance and traffic importance, which is referenced by major search engines and Internet advertising services.

It could be useful to bloggers and webmasters in improving SEO for their websites. For example, you might want to get the high ranking websites to link to your own website, and SearchStatus can immediately tell you if the website you are visiting is of high ranking or not.

SearchStatus is available as add-in extension for Firefox and SeaMonkey. Beside Google PageRank and Alexa popularity ranking, it can also show the Compete.com ranking and SEOmoz Linkscape mozRank as well. It is also able to provide many Internet search related information of the website through its extensive menu items.

For Internet Explorer users, SearchStatus is included as a plug-in in the IE7Pro add-on. IE7Pro is a very famous plug-in which can be used in IE 6, IE 7 or IE 8 to enhance tremendously the IE features and usability.

Note that the last version of IE7Pro is 2.4.7, released on 16 Sep 2009. Its development and maintenance has stopped at this point.

The SearchStatus plug-in in IE7Pro is not on by default, but it is very simple to turn it on and include it in the IE's status bar.

Note that in order to gather information to produce the ranking statistic:

• Google PageRank sends your current URL and a hash of it to Google
• Alexa ranking sends your current URL domain, your local IP address and a unique constant to Alexa Web Services
• Compete ranking sends your current domain and a unique constant to Compete
• Linkscape ranking sends your current URL to Linkscape.

Click here for more information and download of SearchStatus for Firefox and SeaMonkey.

Click here for more information and download of IE7Pro for Internet Explorer.

You are welcomed to inform me if there are similar tools for other browsers such as Chrome, Opera, Safari, etc.

Hiding your Internet web surfing trace with UltraSurf

UltraSurf is a very small program (less than 500kb) that will automatically change your Internet Explorer's setting to make use of anonymous proxy server in the United States. It is free. It also has add-on for Firefox browser.

It can be used to hide/obfuscate your computer's location, and be a workaround to overcome possible web censorship and blockage.

Any website you connected with your web browser is able to trace your computer's IP address, and use it to find out your location. What UltraSurf do is to connect your computer to their server, and then connect to the destination website with the IP address of their server instead of yours.

This will make any websites you surf on or browse into, to trace that you are coming from United States instead of your actual location.

You can see how the IP address is traced by visiting to http://whatismyipaddress.com/. See what's the different before and after you run UltraSurf.

UltraSurf also has options to allow you to remove your trace in your computer (what webpages you have visited) by deleting the cookie and history information automatically the moment you exit the program.

Click here to find out more about UltraSurf and to download it.

Online Customer Service (OCS) website of mobile operators (Digi / Maxis / Celcom / Yes)

Do you use a mobile phone? If yes, are you aware about the Online Customer Service (OCS) website of your mobile service provider?

In fact, all major mobile operators in Malaysia (Digi/Maxis/Celcom/Yes) have their free OCS website accessible by all their prepaid and postpaid customers.

Among the services available in the OCS website are:

• Manage account detail (such as contact info, etc.)
• View and print itemized bill statement (including prepaid account)
• Pay bill online using credit card
• Check for SIM card PUK code (required to unblock a SIM card with too many wrong password retries)
  
• Make change to account plan
• Subscribe/unsubscribe to certain value added services (VAS)
• Change IVR settings (PIN, language, etc.)
• ... and many more.
  

To access Digi OCS, go to https://www.digi.com.my/ocs/

To access Maxis OCS, go to https://www.maxis.com.my/ecs/

To access Celcom OCS, go to https://onlinecustomerservice.celcom.com.my/application/wss/

To access to Yes OCS, go to https://www.yes.my/myselfcare/

I notice that many people are unaware about the existence of their mobile operator's OCS website, or not making use of it. Perhaps this article can bring some awareness to such free service available on the web.

Have you signed on to the 1billionhungry petition?

Are you aware that there are 1 billion people live in chronic hunger now?

30 or more countries are currently experiencing food emergencies. At the rate of every 6 seconds, 1 child in the world die from starvation.

In the effort to defeat hunger, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations has setup the 1billionhungry - Petition to End Hunger website in conjunction with the Hunger Summit to be held on 16-18 November 2009 in Rome, Italy.

"Ending hunger is the humanity's top priority, change will follow," urged FAO.

The global food insecurity situation has worsened and continues to represent a serious threat for humanity. With food prices remaining stubbornly high in developing countries, the number of people suffering from hunger has been growing relentlessly in recent years.

“The silent hunger crisis — affecting 1/6 of all of humanity — poses a serious risk for world peace and security. We urgently need to forge a broad consensus on the total and rapid eradication of hunger in the world,” FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf comments.

Don't wait. Please visit to http://www.1billionhungry.org and sign on to the "I AGREE" petition now!

 

New property website by The Edge

The Edge has just launched a new property website at http://www.theedgeproperty.com/ with the tagline of "Everything property".

The website features news reports related to the property industry, as well as a wide array of differing topics for the property owner and investor taking advantage of the Internet’s global appeal. It looks pretty informative.

However, the registered username and password in The Edge Malaysia website cannot be used here. You have to register for a new account in this The Edge Property website in order to be able to post comments and enjoy some other priviledged features.

MalFreeMaps moving forward with improved free map

The mapper community supported Malaysia & ASEAN Free Maps Project (MalFreeMaps) releases a new version of free map covering Malaysia/Singapore/Brunei for Garmin GPS every Monday morning without failure.

Today (14 Sept 2009) they've gone to another milestone by releasing an improved version of map with a new versioning scheme, also with new coverage to Indonesia.

The new version is called MFM-Garmin 090914 with the following additional features from the previous version:

• Link to NavNet map in Kalimantan
• Coverage of Southern Thailand (coming soon)
• Optional Chinese POI
• Improved SG Postal Code & Address map with instant search result
• New POI icons
  
• New POI categories with custom icons (coming soon)
• New MFM map generator with option to generate either Full or Lite version
• Topo contours are added into Full-version map
• New multi-language installer
• No more error when uploading map through Mapsource

Click here for more information and download of the free MFM-Garmin 090914 map.

Latest Garmin GPS pricelist of vendors in Malaysia, Singapore & Brunei

If you are planning to buy a Garmin GPS navigator, either the Nuvi, Fitness or Zumo, there is a place for you to check the price offered by various vendors in Malaysia, Singapore & Brunei.

Click here to access to the shared Google spreadsheet about Garmin latest pricelist.

Let's express our great thanks to Noah, the creator and maintainer of this pricelist info.

Website to download free firmware and map updates for Garmin GPS navigator

Garmin provides free firmware update and maps update (if applicable) for their series of GPS navigator products.

Before you can perform the updates, here are the prerequisites:

• You need a suitable USB cable to connect your Garmin GPS to your computer.
• You need to have internet access.
• You need to create a user account and register your product in the Garmin customer support website.
• You need to download and install the Garmin Communicator Plugin Software to allow Garmin customer support website to be able to communicate with your Garmin GPS via your web browser.

After you login the Garmin customer support website and registered your GPS product, just go to the myDashboard tab and you'll find the section to update your firmware (software) as well as your maps that eligible for update with Garmin.

If your Garmin GPS is a localized Sing/Mal or India product, you can also download the update file from their Singapore customer support website which does not need to create any user account nor install the Garmin Communicator Plugin Software.

• Click here to go to Garmin localized products software update webpage.
• Click here to go to Garmin localized products free map update webpage.

Step by step instruction will be provided on how to perform the update.

Alternatively, you can also perform software update by using the Garmin WebUpdater application. This application will help you perform the update easily in a step-by-step manner.

As normally advised, always backup all the important content in the flash memory of your GPS before you perform any update to the software or to the maps. A copy-and-paste from the GPS flash memory to a folder in your computer will do.

The Edge chosen 65 Malaysian Websites That They Like

The Edge Malaysia Business & Financial Weekly has included a pullout about "65 Malaysian Websites That We Like" in their March 2009 first week edition.

Those 65 sites were picked according to the aesthetics, content, functionality and also personal preference of their journalists.



And here is the listing of the 65 websites:

• http://www.adoimagazine.com/
• http://www.airasia.com/
• http://asia.cnet.com/
• http://asiaparttime.com/
• http://www.astro.com.my/
• http://www.axcess.com.my/
• http://www.babyjaya.com/
• http://www.bharian.com.my/
• http://www.bluehyppo.com/
• http://www.btimes.com.my/
• http://www.cari.com.my/
• http://www.cimbclicks.com.my/
• http://www.digitallibrary.my/
• http://www.emmagem.com/
• http://elevyn.com/
• http://www.estate123.com/
• http://www.flowers.com.my/
• http://www.friedchillies.com/
• http://www.halaljournal.com/
• http://www.gua.com.my/
• http://www.hardwarezone.com.my/
• http://www.hotcourses.com.my/
• http://www.iamfreelancer.com/
• http://www.iproperty.com.my/
• http://www.jobsdb.com.my/
• http://kclau.com/
• http://www.lelong.com.my/
• http://www.lowyat.net/
• http://www.malaysiaairlines.com/
• http://www.malaysiabrides.com/
• http://www.malaysiakini.com/
• http://www.maybank2u.com.my/
• http://www.mis-asia.com/
• http://www.mobileworld.com.my/v2
• http://www.money3.com.my/
• http://www.motortrader.com.my/
• http://www.mph.com.my/
• http://ms.wikipedia.org/wiki
• http://www.myeg.com.my/
• http://my.jobstreet.com/
• http://www.myresipi.com/
• http://www.nst.com.my/
• http://www.paultan.org/
• http://www.penangtuapui.com/
• http://www.popteevee.com/
• http://www.positivemoneyideas.com.my/
• http://www.redesignmalaysia.com/
• http://www.sabahtourism.com/
• http://www.sarawaktourism.com/
• http://www.shashinki.com/
• http://www.skmm.gov.my/
• http://www.smeinfo.com.my/
• http://www.studymalaysia.com/
• http://www.syokkahwin.com/
• http://www.thebookaholic.blogspot.com/
• http://www.theedgemalaysia.com/
• http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/
• http://www.thenutgraph.com/
• http://www.thestar.com.my/
• http://www.timeoutkl.com/
• http://www.travelmalaysiaguide.com/
• http://www.virtualmalaysia.com/
• http://www.what2seeonline.com/
• http://www.wwf.org.my/
• http://www.youthsays.com/

How many of the above are also in your favourite?

Website to look for latest home loan packages information

Do you know what is the most attractive home loan package in the market now? Which bank to approach to?

The Money3 website has the information you are looking for. They have compiled and made available quite a complete home loan package information of most if not all the banks in Malaysia.

Here are some of the useful web pages in their website that you might like to bookmark on:

• List out all the home loans of all banks, and allow you to perform sorting to the list, as well as compare side-by-side on 3 of the packages in the list
• Online Home Loan Finder tool
• Recommended home loans based on the loan type/nature
  
• Select a bank and list out the home loans offered by the bank (made available in ThinkProperty website)

There are many more useful online tools, articles, commentaries and useful loan related resources in their website. As such, they are no doubt one of the "65 Malaysian Websites That We Like" selected by The Edge Weekly and published in March 2009 their printed edition.

Website to check for latest price of IT products in KL

Which website do you use to check for the latest price of your desired IT products in Klang Valley? I believe many already know about Lowyat.NET which you can download the pricelist of several shops in Lowyat Plaza.

However, I found that some of the pricelist in Lowyat.NET are not instantly updated. There is a better place, which I make use to check for the latest price of my desired IT products nowadays, in the Price Guides section of the Malaysia HardwareZone Community website. There are more pricelist available for download than Lowyat.NET, and the pricelist there are updated on weekly basis.

Now that the 2nd PIKOM PC Fair for 2009 is around the corner, you might have something in mind that you want to buy, and would like to check for their current price before go shopping in the PC Fair. I would recommend you to visit the Price Guides section of the Malaysia HardwareZone Community website and get the latest pricing information available there.

Help to fight hunger by playing quiz in FreeRice.com

FreeRice is an innovative brainchild of a programmer John Breed launched in 2007. It is a website where you can answer a series of multiple-choice quiz questions, and if you answer correctly, the site's sponsors will donate 10 grain of rice to the United Nations World Food Program.

FreeRice has two goals, which are made possible by the generosity of the sponsors who advertise on the website:

1. Provide education to everyone for free.
2. Help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free.

The default quiz is about English vocabulary, and you can take the quiz of different subjects covering art, chemistry, English, geography, language learning, math, etc.

John has won the Harvard University's Berkman Award in 2008 for creating the FreeRice.com website. In March 2009, John has already donated the site to the UN World Food Program. The website is also a winner of Yahoo! Finds of the Year 2007 (Charity Category).

This is not a scam. You can really take the quiz and feed the hungry with FreeRice.com. By 13 April 2009, 62,751,284,800 grains of rice already donated in this interesting way.

Here are some examples of where FreeRice rice has been distributed:

• In Bangladesh, to feed 27,000 refugees from Myanmar for two weeks.
• In Cambodia, to provide take-home rations of four kilograms of rice for two months to 13,500 pregnant and nursing women.
• In Uganda, to feed 66,000 school children for a week.
• In Nepal, to feed over 108,000 Bhutanese refugees for three days.
• In Bhutan, to feed 41,000 children for 8 days.
• In Myanmar, to feed 750,000 cyclone affected people for 3 days.

The new Maybank2u website is extremely slow

Maybank has changed their Maybank2u website to a new design since yesterday. Unfortunately, extensive use of AJAX has render the website extremely slow, to the extend that it is unusable most of the time.

Maybank should be well awared that although AJAX could bring some fancy user interface experience, as a trade-off, it greatly reduce the web application loading speed. Even great application from Google such as GMail which started to use AJAX extensively recently also experiences the same problem, and that's why Google has made available a special link to access GMail without AJAX as a backup plan for their users.

The slowness intensifies over secured SSL connection, which is a must for the bank online services. There is also increase vulnerability for the server to encounter Denial of Service (DoS) Attack, since even without attack, the service is already close to useless due to time-out respond time.

In addition, AJAX application performance is largely depends on the performance of JavaScript execution and browser DOM operations. This mean, the user's web browser play an important role in the AJAX performance too. AFAIK, Safari performs much better than Firefox in handling AJAX, and Firebox performs much better than IE 7 in handling AJAX. Unfortunately, I'm sure they have the most users using IE7, and least users using Safari.

Therefore, too much of AJAX on any website (or a full-Ajax-enabled website) is not a good idea. Maybank2u must find ways to resolve this problem, either to reduce usage to AJAX, or invest more money in upgrading their network equipments and servers. Luckily, they still maintain a link to fallback to their previous website interface. Not so fancy, but at least usable.