The Official ShoutOut's Blog

Happy Chinese New Year, Gong Xi Fa Cai

noreply@blogger.com (Lasker) — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 14:40:00 +0000

We would like to wish all our readers a very Happy Chinese New Year. It is the year of Tiger and may your year be a roaring success. Roar!

Categories for Daily Dose of Fun

noreply@blogger.com (Lasker) — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 14:24:00 +0000

The engine for categorization of items in Daily Dose of Fun is underway. Specifically, the backend and database layer is done and now awaiting the interface section to be completed. Just a day or 2 left!

When this module is up, you can begin giving categories to each of the item you post on DDOF. You can give a single item more than one category. This will then be carefully stored in the database will sort each of the items accordingly. The main advantage of categorizing is when you in the mood of browsing through DDOF. You can then select by categories and all items related to the category will appear.

While waiting for the interface layer to be completed, any suggestions as to what categories should be up the moment it launches? Let us know in the comments. DarkHorse category anyone?

Looking for the next Big Idea

noreply@blogger.com (Lasker) — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 04:35:00 +0000

Let’s be honest, ShoutOutLounge has been on a decline for a while now. I am not one who refuses to see a problem when it’s staring right at me. I have tried a couple of remedies to prevent this decline but it looks to me like it is unstoppable now.

So, instead of letting it slide into nothing-ness, I would like to take this opportunity to invite the most loyal users of ShoutOut (the ones that support ShoutOutLounge since the beginning until now) to the next big project I want to begin on.

What is the project about?
I don’t know yet.
What is it going to do?
I don’t know yet.
Who can join?
I don’t know yet.
Can this project earn big bucks?
I don’t know yet.

What I do know is this: The very first step is to gather a team of really hard-core entrepreneurial individuals with skills that complement each other. We are to be able to work well together, willing to sacrifice time and sweat into something we believe in and most importantly, sick of working for someone else.

We’ll then meet up, web conference or in person, and then discuss what we want to do, responsibilities of each team members and move on from there.

The objective of this is :

Create something huge that will impact people’s lives
Embrace the entrepreneurial spirit within you
For the Experience, regardless success or failure
If someone is going to do it, why not us? Create something you can call your own

I am sure some of you have felt something is not right since you begin your work life. Working for a boss is not something that excites you and does not make you look forward to work. You love to create, you love to let others use your creation, you love to compete with others creators. You respect companies like Google, Twitter, Facebook, Mint, YouTube, Amazon and closer to home, Jobstreet and Nuffnang. If something have been nagging at you to be like these companies, then it’s time to take the plunge.

Experience gained from developing and maintaining ShoutOutLounge really helps out a lot. Not only in terms of technical skills, also friends and contacts. Elise and me can fill some of the IT skills needed in the team. What we need now are more IT skills, designing skills and marketing skills. If the idea involves hardware, then engineering skills is needed too.

Intrigued? Let’s get started. MSN me at lasker_saw@hotmail.com, email me at lasker@penangpenang.com or comment below.

Not sure? Test yourselves by reading these articles. See if they excite you. Mint’s success. Meebo’s views. Google’s way.

What’s Coming, What’s Going

noreply@blogger.com (Lasker) — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 08:15:00 +0000

Dear Shouters,

This round of upgrade has a couple of new things but also has a couple of things removed. Let’s start and see what’ll be going away. (if anyone disagree with the removal, please let us know in the comments too ya).

The ones mark in X will be leaving us soon. We’ll sad to see it go .. but we think it has outlived its purposes. What do you think?

Now, for what’s coming in … Due to popular demand .. ShoutOut Lite Edition!

We had a couple of good names to choose from for this edition. They are SO on the GO, Mobile Edition, Office Edition, Stealth Edition and Lite Edition. So from private votes we have gotten, we decided to go ahead with Lite Edition. It will be lightweight, loading only the essentials and also meant for mobility.

Accessing this is easy, there is a new option at the top right corner of ShoutOutLounge called ‘Lite Edition’. Click on it and a new window will popup with only ShoutOutLounge loaded in it. Perfect for office use or someone on a mobile devices. I know I’ll use it once I get my new phone!

You can also store the URL to this pop up page and load them up on your mobile phone whenever you have Internet access.

With this new upgrade cycle, we have also inserted a couple of new functions within DDOF (Daily Dose of Fun) that will enhance user friendliness. See if you can discover it yourselves!

So what do you think? The removal of the above modules and this new Lite Edition are welcomed changes ShoutOutLounge needs? Or do you have something else in mind, let us know at the comments below.

Cheers,
Elise and Lasker

Sharing Interesting Videos on Daily Dose of Fun

noreply@blogger.com (Lasker) — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 10:24:00 +0000

A week has passed since the launch of Daily Dose of Fun. And now, we are launching yet another upgrade! As the title suggests, you can now share videos on Daily Dose of Fun.

That’s right, we have been busy sharing photos for quite some time now, and its time to take it to the next level.

To share a Video all you need to do is to:

Step 1. Click on the Daily Dose of Fun Icon
Step 2. Select the Video tab
Step 3. Fill in the blanks. The Video URL is the web address where the photo is originally from.

For advanced users, there is a shortcut for you to share your videos :

Step 1. Click on the Daily Dose of Fun Icon
Step 2. Select the QuickShare tab
Step 3. Follow the format below:
[Topic] [URL (Web address) of the interesting stuff] [Your notes regarding the interesting stuff]
Example: Puppy meets the stairs for the very first time http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8PQVW1dG38 Aww, this puppy is so cute! :love:

Tip: You can do this on the ShoutOutLounge textbox too!

The result you’ll get is this:

Once again, thank you very much for all your suggestions and feedbacks. Please keep them coming as it helps paved a way for better and better ShoutOutLounge.

Cheers,
Elise & Lasker

Daily Dose of Fun Launches

noreply@blogger.com (Lasker) — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 04:00:00 +0000

After 2 months of deep development cycle, we are now very proud to announce the new and very much improved ShoutOut’s Photo Album! But wait, it also comes with a new name : Daily Dose of Fun.

Let’s take a look at how far it has come :

We have received many many feedbacks from everyone and many of those changes are incorporated. Our objective is to give the backend engine a complete overhaul so that it can take more future upgrades we will throw at it. The overhaul is done and its now time to launch it for testing. During these we’ll continue on with enhancing it further.

Lets take a look at some of the changes :

The interface. The design has gone through a major retouching and we hope this will present a much nicer-to-use interface for you. The Top and Left menus has also been added in preparation for future enhancement such as Videos and Albums/Groupings. We have also added ShoutOut Panel to the right of the screen due to popular demand whereby Shouters would want to Shout from here, rather than from the ShoutOut’s own main page. So now you can Shout and Share at the same time!

Auto Refresh. Using our existing technology from ShoutOut Panel, we also designed this page to auto refresh itself. So you do not need to click on the refresh button to see the latest item. It is set to refresh at the interval of 5 minutes. Do let us know if this is too long or too short in the comments below.

More Details at a Glance. Now each Item has more details for you to glance at. 3 new icons are introduced, the Comments, Views and Likes. The name of the Last commented person is also displayed. At the top right, the like icon will be displayed on any item that you liked before.

Better navigation. All page now has a back to top button that will take you straight back to the top. All pages will also have a better paging function at the top right and bottom right. The new [First Page] button will bring you directly back to the first page.

Individual Highlight. Items are now highlighted when they are updated. And unlike previously, if you did not view them, it will remained highlighted. You will not need to worry about missing out any new updates from now on. But, what if you want to skip all the latest updated items? Just click on the Mark all as read button on the top middle of the page. It’ll set everything to read and all highlights will be removed. Any new updates after that will still be highlighted.

Instant login. You can also login directly from this page. If you enabled OpenID, which we highly recommend, you’ll enjoy a single-click login. No more usernames and passwords hassle!

Individual Item Page. This also received a couple of changes most notably the interface changes. One of the most highly requested changes are to open the individual item page on a new tab instead of a pop-up. We heard you loud and clear. Now each time you click on an item from the main page, a new tab opens and displays. Closing this new tab will bring straight back to the main page.

Comments, Views, Likes and Owner’s Note. At the bottom of each Item on the Individual Item Page, you’ll see this red box that shows you:

Number of Comments
Number of Views
Number of Likes. Here you can click on Like or Un-like button (displayed above) if you like what you see.
Owner’s Note is a special space for the sharer to tell everyone anything he or she wants about this item.

Better navigation. Also highly requested are these new features. Clicking on Add a comment … button will jump you straight to the new comment input box where you can immediately type your comment. Jump to latest comment button will take you to the latest comment that you have not read yet. This saves scrolling time for someone who is closely following that particular Item.

Better Commenting. Commenting system has also been upgraded to include the following visual cues:

When the Sharer comments, a thin red outline will appear around his or her comment.
If a commenter calls your name, a orange line will appear to the right.
All new comments will have a brighter background to indicate new-ness. This is also where you will jump to if you click on the Jump to latest comment button.
As the person who shared the Item, you can remove any comments made.
If you are not the sharer, you can only remove your own comments.
Say button removed. There is no need to click on buttons anymore. Just press enter key to comment!

Better Highlighting. Highlight system also received a healthy dose of upgrade. All designed to make it friendlier to use:

The Input textbox now moves with you. Whenever you drag the highlight box, the input textbox will move with you.
The Add button is removed. It may take some getting used to, but all you need now is just type and press the enter key. No need to move your mouse and click on the add button.
The highlight list on the right is now sorted by time. So the bottom ones are the newest highlights and the top ones are older. This helps when you are scanning through the highlight to find the latest highlight.
Highlight list is also highlighted (lighter font colour) to indicate new highlights that you have not seen before. This makes it very easy to notice new highlights.

New Logo. You noticed the new logo too don’t you? Well, the reason we change the name from Photo Album to Daily Dose of Fun is because it is no longer limited to Photos. There are plenty of stuff that can now be shared here thanks to the entire engine overhaul. The very next upgrade will be Video, stay tuned for that. So with the new name, we’ll need a new logo to go along with it.

This logo represents a Daily Dose like a bite of watermelon on a daily basis. It’s sweet, it’s tasty and it’s healthy. It like a dessert you take a bite out of when you are taking a break from office work or studies. That’s what we think anyway. Tell us what is your first impression when you see this in the comments below!

While we are on this subject, I wonder if you have a suggestion of what to call the ‘Items’. If you noticed, I refrain from calling ‘Photos’ and called them ‘Items’ instead. That’s because it will not be limited to photos, also videos, links .. so on. Any suggestion what to call that? ‘Fun’?

Cheers and thanks in advance for all your comments,
Elise & Lasker

The Explorers in us

noreply@blogger.com (Lasker) — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 15:54:00 +0000

Majority of Shouters simply love to travel. Going to a brand new location, soak up its culture and take lots of pictures. What makes me say that? Just take a look at the DSLR ownership level at ShoutOutLounge. I mean, getting a DSLR camera is a serious investment! “I’ll be going to plenty of places where lots and lots of photos must be taken!”.

Lets take a look at the places Shouters have travelled for the year 2009. These are the 'semi-official’ ones where Family Photos are taken to indicate ‘Shouters was here’.

Angkor Wat, “City Temple” of Cambodia. aL, Satkuru, Angeline, Emily, Aaron, LeeMay, William travelled there on 18th of January 2009.

Hong Kong, “Fragrant Harbour” of China. Wendy and Hugolim travelled there on 1st May 2009.

Penang, “Pearl of the Orient” of Malaysia. Thily travelled there on 24th May 2009.

Langkawi, “Jewel of Kedah” of Malaysia. David, Evie, Jane, Blurjess, Stevezen, Prettypink, Daniel, Aaron, William travelled there on 19th of June 2009.

Road Trip to Penang, “Pearl of the Orient” of Malaysia. Satkuru, Angeline, Blurjess, Aaron and Daniel (not present in photo) jumped onto a car and drive up to Penang on 4th of July 2009.

As young adults, we enjoy the freedom we get from our parents to travel to any location we want (as long as we remain responsible). However, there is one problem that comes from being in that age group, money. Most of us are not in a financially stable position, heck, most of our paycheck are just barely enough to sustain our everyday expenses.

So what do we do? Whenever possible we hunt for cheaper travel deals. When is the best time to hunt for it? Matta Fair of course. Guess what, its going to be held in KL on 4 – 6 September 2009. Don’t miss it Shouters!

For those going there to hunt for cheap and good travel packages, do take a look at Mayflower’s offers. I was browsing through and found a couple of interesting travel plans. Some of them are:

2D1N Penang free & easy : RM83 per person
3D2N Langkawi Mutiara : RM320
2D1N Kota Kinabalu free & easy : RM80 (Hey! I want this!)
4D3N Taiwan Shopping and Hot Springs : RM438
4D3N Hong Kong free & easy : RM238 (I want this too!)

Plenty of interesting trips right? As with all promotions, these prices are only available during Matta Fair. So if you have been planning for a trip all along, don’t forget to visit the Mayflower’s booth!

On top of that, there are some cool events lined up by Mayflower too. Maria Cordero (also known as Féi Mā), will be making a special appearance at 2:30pm on 6th of September. She is a singer, chef and an actress from Macau. If that’s not enough, Mayflower is giving away a lot of goodies such as a Nissan Grand Livina worth RM85,665, free trips to Europe, China and Bali for any lucky purchaser. Who knows, you might be getting yourself a cheap and good trip AND bringing home a new car!

Great isn’t? It’s fairs like this that gives young adults like the Shouters ‘access’ to the joy of travelling. Since the fair is just round the corner, I can’t wait to see more where Shouters would travel to next. Hey! Remember to take Family Photos!

50% Web Hosting Discount for Shouters

noreply@blogger.com (Lasker) — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 17:55:00 +0000

Dear Shouters,

Thank you for waiting. The time has come to announce a great news for Shouters! For the first time, ShoutOutLounge actually have the opportunity to give special promotions for Shouters and Shouters only. Special thanks to Exabytes for graciously providing this welcoming gift in conjunction with the sponsorship of a dedicated server for ShoutOutLounge.

We know that some of you have been itching to get a hosting package for your very own domain, please do not miss this opportunity. This is your chance to host your own WordPress powered blog, your own forum powered by phpBB or vBulletin or even your own web application.

Who is Entitled

In short, Shouters. Yep, you must be a Shouter to be entitled to this promotion. Does that make you feel special? This promotion starts now until the end of this month which is 31st of July. It is also limited to the first 20 sign up.

What Do You Get

A very large discount of 50% off the price of selected hosting packages. Below are the prices for each of the web hosting packages before and after the discount.

I can’t be sure, but if I am not mistaken, this is by far the best promotion I have seen from Exabytes. This means, your new blog/forum/web application will be up and running with as little as RM134.50.

How to get

Very simple. Just 2 steps. First, you must comment on this blog post with your Shouter’s username and what will you be using this hosting for. Second, catch me (Lasker) at ShoutOutLounge and ask me for the Coupon Code. I'll then Whisper that Coupon Code to you. You will then use that Coupon Code when you purchase the hosting package.

Please note that receiving the Coupon Code does NOT automatically mean you will get the discount. It is still a first-come-first-served basis, if you sit on your Coupon Code while others go ahead and use it, you will NOT be able to get the discount if you are the 21st person to sign up.

Argh, I Already Paid for Another Hosting Package

We anticipated this and have asked Exabytes for an arrangement for Shouters with this scenario. This is how it is going to work.

Once you have successfully purchased Exabytes’s hosting package with the Coupon Code, you can provide Exabytes with receipt/agreement or any proof of purchase with your other hosting company. The proof must contain the remaining months of hosting period. Submit this to their customer service via info@exabytes.com.my. Their customer service will then extend the same remaining period towards the new hosting packages you just purchased.

Let us explain with an example: Mr. A is currently hosting with XYZ company and their hosting expiry date with XYZ company will be on 14-Dec-2009 (5 months from now). If Mr. A subscribe for hosting services with Exabytes now for 1 year basis, his hosting expiry date suppose to be on 13-Jul-2010. If Mr. A is able to provide proof of his agreement or receipt with XYZ company that his hosting will expire 5 months from now, Exabytes will extend additional 5 months for his hosting with Exabytes. In other words, Mr. A just need to pay 50% of the hosting price with Exabytes (while stock last) and his hosting expiry date with Exabytes will be extended to 13-Dec-2010.

That’s about as clear as we can get. If you need further explanation, please ask me at ShoutOutLounge.

This is Recommended

At the risk of sounding like a promoter, I would like to say that this is a highly recommended purchase if you are already leaning towards getting a hosting package. ShoutOutLounge was actually hosted with the exact same package as Ebiz Gold Windows mentioned above. When we first bought it, it was priced at RM700++ per year (this is including database purchase). Now, you can get it at RM199.50. The price alone is already worth it.

Update: We received replies from Exabytes and here are the answers.

Unfortunately, this promotion is not applicable to Exabytes renewal. It is applicable with new signup for a new web hosting package.
This is a one time discount. After the purchased period (1 year or 2 years), the renewal price will revert back to it’s original price as stated in the table above. Therefore, it is recommended to get a 2 years discount instead of just one to appreciate this discount fully.

(photo by Ronnie Garcia)

Upgrade: Couple of upgrades to take advantage of the New Server.

noreply@blogger.com (Lasker) — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 15:04:00 +0000

Dear Shouters,

Thanks to Exabytes, ShoutOutLounge is now sitting on a brand new server (here is the news). Instantly we are blessed with plenty of Server Memory, Server Processing, Server Bandwidth and Server Database.

To take advantage of that, we have gone in and remove some of the artificial constraints we put in place. The artificial constraints were there to ‘slow down’ ShoutOutLounge so that it will not take too much resources or else we’ll get a warning letter from our hosting company! But thinking about, we did get a couple of them before.

So here are the constraint that we have removed:

You can now type more characters per Shout. In fact, 50 more characters. Previously, it was 200 characters.
More shouts are now loaded on your ShoutOut box. Additional 5 more messages. Previously was 30, now 35.
Refresh rate has been improved by 20%.
Shouts are now retained longer. Now up to 30 days. Previously was 20 days.

Have anymore constraint that you think ShoutOutLounge should remove?

Oh! By the way … Whisper are now silent. Meaning, only the Whisperer and Whisperee will see the Whisper. The rest of the Shouters will NOT see a thing! Go ahead and try it!

(Photo by Charles & Clint)

Planning to host your Blog? Hold your horses!

noreply@blogger.com (Lasker) — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 13:08:00 +0000

Dear Shouters,

If you are planning to host your blog or going to renew your current hosting plan soon, please hold your horses. Yes, please take a deep breath and relax. You won’t regret it.

An arrangement is coming up soon by none other than Exabytes. Here’s the best part, Shouters and only Shouters will benefit from it.

So take a break and stay tuned!

(photo by law_keven)

It’s Moving Day

noreply@blogger.com (Lasker) — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 02:46:00 +0000

Dear Shouters,

Today, we’ll begin to move all critical modules and functions from the old rented home to a new mansion for ShoutOutLounge. As mentioned before, this new home for ShoutOutLounge is kindly sponsored by Exabytes.

So please do not be alarmed if you see intermittent downtime for ShoutOutLounge. We assure you that everything is well. Once all these are done we’ll let you all know.

Can’t wait!

Opinion Received: Shhhhhh….!

noreply@blogger.com (Lasker) — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 13:03:00 +0000

Dear Shouters,

We heard you loud and clear. Whispers should be quiet, really really quiet. As such, we have added into our priority pipeline to modify the whisper function. So in the future, when you whisper, no one is going to hear you except you and the person you whisper to. We believe this can have a huge impact where it is now practically the same as if you open up a separate MSN channel and chat with your fellow Shouters.

While we are on the subject of the whisper function, we want to reinforce that your whisper is safe. We (Elise and Lasker) have not and will not view your whispers. This is exactly the same as your MSN messages, Gmail messages, private messages within forums and also your private mails in Facebook. Technically, all of the owners of those systems will be able to view your messages. But we need you to trust us that we do not. Your trust is very important and it will be foolish of us to disregard that trust. We do not have a special webpage that will display all whispers or anything private, for that matter.

We would like to thank you for your opinions about the Whispers. Now that we have getting a newer and more powerful servers, we have also decided to try out what we call Shouters Guided Development (SGD). Where we will post up 2 or more choices and what you decide will be our very next development work. I believe this will be fun because whatever you vote on, will be created within a week or 2! So stay tuned because you should not miss out this opportunity!

Cheers,
Lasker and Elise

(photo by striatic)

Opinion: Should Whisper be really really quiet?

noreply@blogger.com (Lasker) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 10:02:00 +0000

Dear Shouters,

What do you think? You have been shouting and whispering quite a lot of times on ShoutOutLounge. Do you think our whispers are too loud?

Since the launch of the Whisper module, we have been receiving mixed feedback from Shouters. On one side, it is said that whispering should emulate real life and if someone actually whispers to someone else in front of you, you should know about it. After all, you are looking directly at it happening. Also, it shows activities. Imagine if everyone is whispering, it would be a quiet day at ShoutOutLounge. On the other side, whispering is said to be a sensitive activity that can cause misunderstanding just by suddenly whispering to someone. Someone would be sensitive and thought the whispering is about you and all sorts of bad thoughts may occur.

So what do you think? Which side do you think is right? Let us know what you think in the comments. Just type in ‘Whispering should be private’ or ‘I like Whisper just the way it is’. Please give your reasoning behind the suggestion

Let’s say we got more votes on Whispering should be private, then we’ll change way whisper works. Whisper will no longer be displayed for the public to see, only the whisperer and the whisperee will see it. Of course, if the vote go the other way, we’ll leave Whisper as it is.

(photo by apesara)

ShoutOutLounge down for a while. Could it be?

noreply@blogger.com (Lasker) — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 07:47:00 +0000

Dear Shouters,

As of now, ShoutOutLounge is down and not functioning. We did not receive prior notification from Exabytes regarding the downtime but I am suspecting this has very much to do with the new Sponsored Hosting.

We’ll give them some time before sending a query over to them. So in the meantime, please sit back, relax and enjoy a moment of silence.

See you soon,
Lasker

Update: ShoutOutLounge is back up running. Hmm, there seems to be some miscommunication. Maybe the maintenance team disabled ShoutOutLounge because we have not been paying the bills to continue hosting? Regardless, we are glad it has been solved. See you there!

Thank you Exabytes, Malaysian Web Hosting Company

noreply@blogger.com (Lasker) — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 15:05:00 +0000

Dear Shouters,

It is with greatest joy and happiness we announce to you that ShoutOutLounge.com now has a new home. Not just any home, but a mansion in the world of web hosting. We now have a dedicated server from which to run ShoutOutLounge. Can you feel the overflowing potential? Hundreds of new opportunities just opened up to ShoutOutLounge and we are all going to watch it rise together.

As you are well aware, ShoutOutLounge’s 2 year hosting plan has just expired on 16th of June. But behind the scene, we have tried to ask around for sponsorship for ShoutOutLounge’s web hosting. That very first letter ended like this :

You may check out http://ShoutOutLounge.com to have an idea how it is run. Meanwhile, consider our proposal and further discuss this possibility. I look forward to your positive reply.

And then we got a reply! Since then, emails has been exchanged between us and the Sales and Marketing Manager of Exabytes. Terms are discussed and ShoutOutLounge’s server requirements are also acknowledged. Then, on Thursday, 25th of July 2009, we got a final reply that ended like this:

I hereby confirm the sponsorship for ShoutOutLounge.com on dedicated server. I will recheck with Technical Department and come back to you on the server specs in a day or two and more details in terms of migration.

That night, I slept with a smile on my face

Moving Forward

So, what can we see after this? There may be a couple of anticipated *happy* downtime where we move everything from the current apartment to the bright new mansion of a server. And we cannot wait.

Oh, of course, we will display a couple of Exabytes’s ad too. We have discussed and decided that besides just the logo, we’ll also display the latest promotions for Exabytes’s hosting package so that all Shouters will be updated with the latest offerings from Exabytes. I am sure it is a useful information to know for those still on the fence seeking for a hosting package.

Thank You Thank You Thank You

I want to say Thank You to all of you who have supported us during what I would call the lowest point of ShoutOutLounge’s history. Your wishes and encouragement has, believe it or not, made me decide to write that faithful email to Exabytes. Some of you even send me some possible alternatives paid hosting plans within and outside of Malaysia. I thank you.

As for Miss Sales and Marketing Manager, if you are reading this, I want to thank you for giving a new life to ShoutOutLounge and like we said in the emails many times, this is truly a win win situation. We will make sure of it .

(photo by by fmc.nikon.d40 ( On a flickr break ))

ShoutOutLounge may be down on 18th of June

noreply@blogger.com (Lasker) — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 07:55:00 +0000

Dear Shouters,

3 days remaining. As mentioned in the previous post (ShoutOutLounge might be moving), 18th of June is the day our 2 year hosting plan expires. We have tried to put some plans in place in the attempt to extend the hosting with the same or different hosting company. Unfortunately, as of now, we still have not received any confirmation of a sponsorship. However, it is important to note that some conversation are going on, and we hope to reach a very exciting conclusion. *cross fingers*

But meanwhile, it is important to realize that discussion and negotiations will take time, hence this announcement. ShoutOutLounge may go down on 18th of June. We’ll keep everyone updated to the progress over here at this blog. Please check back often for the latest news.

To keep everyone on their toes, here are the 3 possible outcomes:

1) One possibility is to receive a sponsorship whereby ShoutOutLounge is given a home on a dedicated server. This means an entire server to ourselves! Imagine the possibilities, we will be able to implement a lot of super complicated features that we had to put on hold due to the current server limitations. Real Time update of your blog’s post on ShoutOutLounge is one of them such features. Oh, don’t forget Shout history too.

2) We may get a sponsorship on a shared hosting plan. This is good. This means ShoutOutLounge is given another chance for another year. We’ll be running as usual, and you can shout as usual. We’ll take this opportunity to continue upgrade and enhance ShoutOutLounge so that it’ll attract more and more Shouters. Some new upgrades will be the further enhancement of SOPhoto to include video and text-based updates. Better alert system will also be put in place on ShoutOut’s chat space. Also, pictures on SOPhoto will be embed-able on your blogs, complete with comments, highlights and more!

3) Request for Sponsorship rejected. Yes, we need to face the brutal truth that ShoutOutLounge is still unable to stand on its own 2 feet. By the end of June, if nothing happens on the sponsorship side, we’ll assume we hit this outcome. As mentioned to some of your over at ShoutOutLounge, I’ll need to wait for my June’s paycheck to come in and will start a new hosting at the best and cheapest hosting company I can find that is located within Malaysia.

So there you have it. The lowest point of ShoutOutLounge’s life. But we will prevail, one way or another. There is no where else to go but up from here.

Cheers,
Lasker

(photo by theakshay)

ShoutOutLounge might be moving

noreply@blogger.com (Lasker) — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 09:24:00 +0000

Dear Shouters,

2 years has come to pass. I remembered we were at Foodloft 2 years ago meeting Shouters up for the very first time. Good times, I remembered plonking down a large sum of cash to purchase a 2 year hosting plan with Exabytes a day before that gathering. Elise and me figured “Hey, never try, never know”.

Now look at how far we have come. http://shoutoutlounge.com/Panel/ShoutOut/Album.aspx. Contained within that link are every single ShoutOut Family Photo we have ever taken. If you are into collecting things as a hobby, this Collection of Memories here will make you proud. I am sure I am.

So as mentioned previously, 2 years has passed. Which means dreaded renewal is also just around the corner.

Hence, the hunt begins. As you are well aware, despite all its greatness, ShoutOutLounge.com has one major problem. It cannot stand on its own 2 feet, financial-wise. It is a non-profit community based chatting service that is built by the community for the community and we need someplace to call a home. We have sent 2 proposals to both Exabytes and Shinjiru regarding sponsored hosting and we are now waiting for a favourable answer. Their answers would determine where ShoutOutLounge.com will be moving to next.

Also depending on their answers, we might be required to display advertisements of their website prominently throughout ShoutOutLounge.com modules.

Deadline? 18th of June. That’s the date the hosting plan is expiring. 17 days remaining. All the best to us all!!

Earning report from Nuffnang as of 29th May

noreply@blogger.com (Lasker) — Fri, 29 May 2009 04:03:00 +0000

Dear Shouters,

As promised, we will openly declare our earnings from advertisements fees from Nuffnang once in a while. Also as mentioned before, the money earned from ShoutOut will be used to pay for its hosting fees and any left over will be used to fund ShoutOut events throughout the country. Backpacking trips, SOYEG (ShoutOut Year End Gathering) and many more exciting activities. Because the earnings will be used by the community, it is only fitting that all the earnings must be declared openly to maintain transparency (or ‘telus’, in BM)

Earning from Nuffnang has not been much despite we getting quite a lot of traffic for the pages we put those up. The ads are displayed at:

The main page of ShoutOut’s Photo Album http://shoutoutlounge.com/SOPhoto/ which receives an average of 5,500 visitors per month or 180 visitors per day.

Individual Photo pages such as http://shoutoutlounge.com/SOPhoto/Photo.aspx?pp=b55c77e9-6bee-4a55-be42-48388b23c2d3 which receives an average of 10,000 visitors per month or 300 visitors per day.

Here are the earning details:

Nuffnang ads are inserted on 02 April 2009
The total earning has so far been calculated to be RM14.85 with RM5.85 coming from other blogs which are www.revotra.com, 50mmclicks.blogspot.com and blog.shoutoutlounge.com
ShoutOut alone earns RM9.00

Yeah, we suspect the reason for that is because we only get CPC ads and not CPM ads. We are also currently looking out for other methods of revenue generating.

We would like to thank everyone who has been clicking on the interesting ads which will help (even if its a tiny bit) to go towards the hosting fee that is coming up very soon in 18th of June.

We will continue to report more over the months. Stay tuned. If you want to know any further details, please do not hesitate to ask.

Tomorrow, ShoutOutLounge supports OpenID

noreply@blogger.com (Lasker) — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 10:29:00 +0000

Dear Shouters,

We are very excited to announce the next major upgrade for ShoutOutLounge!

Take a look at the screen to the right. You are now given 2 simple choices whenever you need to login to ShoutOutLounge.

First Choice. Highly Recommended. Use either Google or Yahoo! to login.

Second Choice. Login the traditional way with ShoutOutLounge’s username and password.

No worries, it is not as complicated as it seems. What this means for you is a more secured login using trusted 3rd party like Google or Yahoo.

Once you click on their respective buttons, you will be bought to their login page.
If you have previously login into their application such as Gmail or Yahoo Mail, you will not be asked to login again.
You will then be asked to allow ShoutOutLounge to login for you.
Once you click on allow, ShoutOutLounge will automatically login for you.

Done! Elegant. With this, ShoutOutLounge do not require you to send in any password through the internet, reducing security risks. You will also enjoy one click sign in without having to type in your username and password all the time.

How about your first time?

But for the very first time. There will be some additional steps. You need to bind your Google or Yahoo! accounts with your ShoutOutLounge’s. So you will need to type in your password. If you are a new user, you will be asked for your Username (what do you want others to call you) and a couple of other information such as gender and blog’s address.

Once done, from that day on, you will never need to type in your password ever again into ShoutOutLounge.

What to Prepare

So, please get ready your Google account and/or Yahoo account and prepare yourselves for a new way to login into ShoutOutLounge!

Oh, and one more thing, you can bind both your Google and Yahoo! account to your username. That means you can login with either one of those. Very convenient, I have been using it for a while now and find it very addictive. You will too, you’ll see.

Technical stuff

Interested to find out how this work in the background? Please feel free to ask Lasker or Elise ya? We will be more than happy to explain to you. OpenID is a good initiative and we should support it.

Happy Birthday ShoutOutLounge

noreply@blogger.com (Lasker) — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 10:18:00 +0000

Dear Shouters,

Today, 14th of April 2009 is ShoutOutLounge’s 3rd Birthday. Yes, how time flies when we are having fun. 3 years is a long time. It also means we know some of you for 3 years already! Imagine that. All this from meeting up online 3 faithful years ago.

We have come a long way, oh yes. Lots of Ups and Downs along the way. Some exciting ones are SOYEGs (ShoutOut Year End Gatherings), Close Encounter with Mr Spammer, Tug of war for resources at the hosting sites, Mari Berpantun and many many upgrades that we have launched along the way.

Many Shouters have asked how did we keep ShoutOutLounge up and running without making any cent off it. It is a very tough question, but we will try to answer anyway.

There will always be 2 forces pulling ShoutOutLounge from exactly 2 opposite directions. The Economic Reality and Friendship. It is doubtful if anyone can put a value on both of these forces.

Economic Reality tugs at us daily because to host ShoutOutLounge, there will always be a hosting cost. We do not have any marketing cost because thanks to all Shouters, ShoutOutLounge is spread by most efficient manner possible, word-of-mouth or word-of-blogs. However, the Bandwidth, Memory and Processor demands are not small due to that fact that we have up to 200 or more concurrent connections at any one time. We are thankful that we had purchased a 2 year hosting plan back when the economic climate was peaceful. But now, the hosting plan is about to expire and we are worried.

But we are not complaining. No way. Because there is another force pulling at us. The other side of things. This is the very thing that kept us energized for more ShoutOutLounge development and upgrades.

Friendship. ShoutOutLounge changed our lives (Elise and mine). We made more friends on ShoutOutLounge than all our schooling years combine. Granted that we are not an extrovert type of person, but that doesn’t change the fact that the friends we made on ShoutOutLounge are stronger and lives longer and most of the friends we made elsewhere. Sometimes, our bonds are so strong we actually share deep secrets with each other that we will never share with our other friends. This, dear Shouters, is priceless. At its deepest core, this is the very reason why we continue on with ShoutOutLounge without regret.

Hope this answers your question.

What’s Coming Next

Moving forward, ShoutOutLounge will begin rolling updates that attempts to address the Reverse Network Effect problem. It is a very real problem that we are facing now : As more people join, others are motivated to leave.

One of our next upgrade will be called ‘One Click Sign In’. It’s objective is to make signing in easier for new and current users alike. If properly setup, you can sign in securely with one-single-click. Technically, this is known as OpenID.

With this in place, more upgrades will be coming to ShoutOutLounge’s Photo Album. Features such as Tagging, Notification, RSS Feeds, Embed and many more are not far behind. Be sure to check this blog to see any updates.

Please continue to support ShoutOutLounge. Please spread the words on what do you think of ShoutOutLounge. Blog about it, Tweet about it, Plurk about it, MSN about it. But above all else, appreciate the friendships you gained from everyone on ShoutOutLounge. I know I do, deeply.

Thank you.

(picture by *spud*, Unhindered by Talent, Björn Söderqvist)

Coming Soon: One Click sign in for ShoutOutLounge!

noreply@blogger.com (Lasker) — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 04:09:00 +0000

Let’s face it, too much password is bad for you. You either set your password to be the same throughout all your applications or you write it down somewhere so that you will remember it. It is time to stop that kind of thinking. Time to change.

ShoutOutLounge.com is undergoing another round of upgrade and soon, you will see the screens below. So it’s good to get familiar to it now. Ladies and Gentlemen, ShoutOut presents to you, One Click Sign In.

Stay tuned for more updates!

Promote Your Blog for Free with ShoutOut

noreply@blogger.com (Lasker) — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 05:36:00 +0000

Yes, Elise and me has decided to open up the space below ShoutOut for any interested Shouter. This space has been sitting there unutilized for many moons and we felt it is time to stop wasting such a valuable space.

We thought, what better way to thank all Shouters for supporting and sticking with ShoutOut all this while by giving them the ability to promote their own blogs. If you are interested, please follow the steps below:

Create an image with the size 160px X 50px
Send it to Lasker@PenangPenang.com
Remember to add which URL you want that image to be linked to

To make sure the space is loaded smoothly, we are going to limit the available slot to 20 for the time being. We’ll then monitor the bandwidth and processing requirement before we will open more slots. First come first served basis, we will give higher priority to Shouters who are more active compared to Shouters who has just signed up.

Here are a couple of stats that you might ask:

We are registering monthly average of 183,655 page views
100,000 of the monthly visits are from Unique Visitors
Averaging at 3500 Unique Visits per day

Once again, this is one of the ways ShoutOut says Thank You to all Shouters who have stuck with us through thick and thin.

Upgrade: ShoutOut Photo Album Phase III

noreply@blogger.com (Lasker) — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 08:50:00 +0000

Dear Shouters,

You can read about Previous Phase I here.
You can also read about Previous Phase II here.

A long while as passed since we bring you further news for this new upgrade. Truth is the upgrade took longer than usual, no thanks to the spike in our meeting schedules. No matter, since you are reading this, it means a new Phase is out .. Welcome to Phase III!!

Let’s see, what are the difference you can see and enjoy in this Phase? The first most obvious one would be the fresh new Photo Album itself.

Before

After

The ShoutOut Photo Album consist of many new features such as the following:

Comments and Views are displayed here to show how popular your photos are
Top Photo of … shows the most active photo in a specific timespan (check out if your photos appear here!) (special thanks to AlvinC for contributing the formula)
Photos that I Like displays all the photos that you have liked. You can view them here even though they have ‘disappeared’ from the main Photo Album
Photos are arranged by time. Latest Photo posted or Photos with the latest comments. Now, it even comes with highlight to clearly identify latest photos
Of course, better colours, icons and layouts to maximise the photo viewing experience

Individual Photo’s design has also been upgraded from the previous Phases.

More details are now displayed on the right. (actually, more are coming soon)
The Owner of the photo’s comments will be highlighted
If anyone calls your name in the comments, it will also be highlighted for you (see the orange bars to the right?)

What’s Next?

Plenty! Frankly, what you see here is about 40% of the entire project. So stay tuned for the next Phase of ShoutOut Photo Album! As we have been pressed to give more information of what is to be coming next, here is a clue for you. A single word : Tag.

Comments!

ShoutOutLounge lives on ideas contributed from you, you and you. That’s right, we are not shy to tell you that a huge portion of the features you see in the Photo Album are all ideas we received from Shouters. So please, send in your comments, feedbacks and suggestions to us!

Take a look

Here, take a look for yourself how does ShoutOut’s Photo Album looks like and drop a few comments yourself!
ShoutOut Photo Album

Upgrade: ShoutOut Picture Phase II

noreply@blogger.com (Lasker) — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 09:08:00 +0000

Dear Shouters,

You can read about Previous Phase I here.

This a short and sweet update on Phase II of ShoutOut Photo Upgrade. As mentioned, this small phase is about how attractive or interesting your photos are. So we track ‘em. ShoutOut will automatically track 3 items.

Number of views
Number of Shouters who like the Photo
Number of comments or conversation it generates

All these 3 stats will be combined and stirred to produce how attractive a photo is. The formula is yet to be figured out (any suggestions?). For now, Phase II is about tracking these numbers. And that is what you’ll be seeing when you view each individual picture.

So as you can see, this photo has been viewed 15 times and 2 people liked the photo.

What’s new for you?

With this Phase, you can now choose to like a photo. See the screenshots below. When you see a picture for the first time, you’ll see the first screenshot below. If you like the picture, you can do so by clicking on the ‘+ count me in’ link. What if you have already liked a picture and changed your mind? Just click on ‘- count me out’ and its done. Simple right?

So hope you enjoy Phase I and Phase II of ShoutOut Photo Upgrades!

This is Lasker and Elise signing off for the year of Rats and wishing you a happy and relaxing Chinese New Year! Tong tong chiang people!

Upgrade: ShoutOut Picture Phase I

noreply@blogger.com (Lasker) — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 03:40:00 +0000

Dear Shouters,

And … it’s up! Phase I of ShoutOut Picture module. This is Phase I of Phase V (maybe more) of a major upgrade for ShoutOut Picture. So what you see here is just the tip of the iceberg.

So What’s In Phase I?

In one word, it will be ‘Commenting’. You can now Comment on any photo uploaded into ShoutOut. To Comment, click on the Picture to open up a dedicated page where you can see the large version of the picture. The comments section will be at the bottom. Just type what you want to say and off you go, your comment will be captured immediately. Here, you can see any comments left by others too.

For naughty comments, the owner of the Picture can delete any comments that he or she doesn’t see fit. Just click the ‘X’ button on the right of the comment. The commenter can also delete his or her own comment.

Additional information such as Caption and Upload time will also be displayed on the right. (Thanks to William for the suggest)

So, What’s Next?

As repeated again and again, this is just Phase I of what is to come. We want to cut the upgrade into smaller pieces so that we can get feedback while working on the next. The next Phase will be more about ‘Popularity’ of your Picture that you uploaded. Things like Views and Likes will be displayed. So stay tuned!

(picture by William)

Update: Phase II is up and running on 22nd January! Phase III is coming soon.