The Official ShoutOut's Blog

Happy Chinese New Year, Gong Xi Fa Cai

2010-02-13T22:40:00.001+08:00

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

2010-02-12T22:24:00.001+08:00

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

2009-10-20T12:35:00.001+08:00

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

2009-10-06T16:15:00.001+08:00

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

2009-10-03T18:24:00.001+08:00

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

2009-09-25T12:00:00.000+08:00

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

2009-09-03T23:54:00.000+08:00

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

2009-07-16T01:55:00.003+08:00

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.

2009-07-11T23:04:00.001+08:00

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!

2009-07-07T21:08:00.001+08:00

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

2009-07-06T10:46:00.001+08:00

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….!

2009-07-05T21:03:00.001+08:00

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?

2009-06-30T18:02:00.001+08:00

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?

2009-06-29T15:47:00.001+08:00

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

2009-06-25T23:05:00.001+08:00

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

2009-06-15T15:55:00.001+08:00

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

2009-06-01T17:24:00.001+08:00

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

2009-05-29T12:03:00.001+08:00

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

2009-04-16T18:29:00.001+08:00

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

2009-04-14T18:18:00.001+08:00

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!

2009-04-13T12:09:00.000+08:00

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

2009-04-08T13:36:00.001+08:00

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

2009-03-09T16:50:00.001+08:00

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

2009-01-23T17:08:00.001+08:00

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

2009-01-20T11:40:00.001+08:00

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.

Coming Soon: Comments for your Pictures

2009-01-19T21:51:00.001+08:00

You have been posting pictures onto ShoutOutLounge for quite some time now. Some of you are lucky enough to try out Picture Fight, where a designated person choose a topic and everyone begin posting funny pictures that fit that theme.

Once again, it’s time for an upgrade. ShoutOut is now focusing on upgrading its Picture module and let us tell you first, it is pretty huge. Hence, our strategy is to divide the upgrades into multiple phases from Phase I to Phase V (maybe more). This is so that you can enjoy the completed modules while we continue to work on the others in the meantime. You also can give us feedbacks on the launched modules.

So what is in store for you in Phase I?

Commenting capability for Pictures. This means for each picture, you can comment on it and see what everybody’s comments are. Comments can range from something comical you see on the picture to some constructive criticism on how to improve the picture taking. As usual with all ShoutOut’s features, emoticons, web address detection and others will function as well.

After Phase I?

This commenting system is a base upon which other phases are build on. Stay tuned for Phase II! In Phase II, it will be about how popular the picture you uploaded is. Number of views will be part of Phase II and the other one, well, you have to wait and see!

We are truly excited to quickly launch this module and see what happens. We hope you are too.

(picture by Stewart)

Why SOMail to one when you can send to Many

2009-01-15T17:42:00.001+08:00

That’s what we thought too when we used SOMail after a while. We have cases where Shouters have to SOMail to individual Shouters one at a time just to get everyone into the communication. This is unacceptable. So we upgraded SOMail, again!

Now you can send to multiple user just as easily as how you send to one.

Here is how you do it.

Step 1. Open up SOMail by clicking on the envelop icon below ShoutOut.

Step 2. Next, you begin by selecting your recipient by clicking on ‘Click here to begin adding’ link.

Step 3. This will open up the user selection and you can type in the name of the person. This is a search function, so you can type the nick name of the person or the full name of the person. Of course, this depends if that person puts up his or her full name. Select by clicking on the person’s name in the list.

Step 4. Add more recipient! Simply by clicking on the ‘Add more’ link and user selection will open again. Select as usual.

And you are done. Enter the subject and the content and just click on the Send button. Voila, everyone within the To list will receive the SOMail.

Easy right? Now lets see what the Recipients get to enjoy.

So what about the Recipient?

First, Recipient can check all the recipient that received the same SOMail. Click on the ‘Show all recipients’ link.

Second, if a Recipient wants to reply just to the sender, click on ‘Reply’. If a Recipient wants to reply to everyone within the Recipient list, then click on ‘Reply All’.

So what do you think? Did you wish for this feature when you were using SOMail? Let us know at comments above.

Choose your favourite tagline for ShoutOut – Final Round

2009-01-06T22:09:00.001+08:00

This is it Shouters, the final round for choosing the very BEST tagline for ShoutOut. It’ll replace ‘Our Nationwide Café’. We have compiled all your previous suggestions from here and here. Take a look at the list below, it is not a lot now and hence, much easier to choose. Once done, please do the following:

Select only 1 from the list and put in the comment section
Let other Shouters know and ask them to come choose too

Alright .. ready? Here are names:

Your Daily Dose of Fun
Just Shout
SometHing yOU can’T live withOUT
Shout Out, Speak Out, Voice Out, Laugh Out
A Finger Gym
Where Boredom doesn’t mean a thing..
Where all Capalang People Combine under 1 roof
Your Daily Companion
ShoutOut, the best HangOut
Where Friends are Made
Blogger’s Lounge

That’s it. Short and sweet this time. Just one vote! Let’s get this over with and update ShoutOut’s tagline once and for all! The tagline with the highest vote wins!

But first, let me apologise for the delay, have been busy working on this upgrade. Sorry!

(Photo by Theresa Thompson)

Upgrade: ShoutOut’s Welcome Pane

2009-01-05T16:38:00.001+08:00

Dear Shouters,

ShoutOut’s latest upgrade called the Welcome Pane has arrived. It was launched on 5th January 09 afternoon.

As the name implies, the Welcome Pane will only be displayed when you first load up ShoutOut. It’s duty is to welcome you and provide you with information that will make your Shouting more enjoyable.

Right now, Welcome Pane contains the following information:

Number of Shouters that are currently shouting at ShoutOut. All Shouters who are Shouting for the last 5 minutes will appear here.
Number of people that are in the same blog you are currently in. Notice we used ‘people’. That means this includes any visitors regardless they are Shouters or not. Hence, if you see 5 people here with you, it could mean 3 Shouters and 2 non-Shouters (or who we fondly call friendly visitors)
ShoutOut Tips will display all sorts of ShoutOut features that you may or may not know. This section is more catered towards new Shouters for them to learn that ShoutOut is actually more than just a chatbox. Of course, it’ll also remind the regular Shouters who are more towards the ‘forgetful’ side.

Finally, with all new panes or windows, we must always remember to make it non-intrusive and non-annoying. Hence, you have got 2 ways to close it, automated or manual, your choice.

Automatic : Just Shout your first Shout and it will go away, replaced by your Shout.
Manual : Clicking on the top right X. This will close it instantly.

But that’s not all. Welcome Pane offers a lot of room for important information. Here are a few on our enhancement list :

How many times your name is mentioned while you are away
How many whispers you received while you are away
How many new picture posted while you are away
Feature blogs and their latest updated post
Welcoming message (low priority) where blog owners can put their own welcoming message (not very useful, in our humble opinion. What do you think?)

Hey! As always, all comments and feedbacks are most welcome. Just SOMail to us and we’ll listen, closely.

Logging Out and Lurking is One Click Away

2009-01-05T14:59:00.001+08:00

Dear Shouters,

By design, ShoutOut achieve high accessibility by allowing you to access ShoutOut from anywhere and at anytime. You can access ShoutOut from your home’s computer, office’s computer and even your mobile devices. Some Shouters will even access ShoutOut from cybercafés while taking a rest from a LAN game they just had.

ShoutOut knows, that with high accessibility, comes with its inherent security problems. Sometimes, you just can’t be sure if no one else will be using the same computer as you. This is absolutely true in a cybercafé environment. You’ll want to logout.

Actually, logging out is simple! In fact, you can do more than just logout. Here is how:

When you are done Shouting for the day, look at your top right corner of your ShoutOut. Notice the X? It will be there regardless which blog or website’s ShoutOut you are in. (refer to screenshot to the right). Click on the X.

You’ll now see a menu with 2 options. Here, you can choose to Hide or Logout. Hide is meant for Lurking which means you will ‘disappear’ from ShoutOut while still maintaining your login status. (Lurking will be explained in another article).

Select Logout and you will immediately be logged out. This computer is now safe for anyone else to use and touch without able to login to ShoutOut as you.

Technical Box:
When you select Logout, even your ShoutOut cookies are destroyed, hence you do not need to clear your cookies anymore

(Photo by elNico)

Instantly Type Shouter’s Name by Clicking

2009-01-05T00:07:00.001+08:00

Dear Shouters,

Some Shouters have short names and some have long names. The long names require you to take longer time to type especially if you are a slow typist.

But no worries, ShoutOut have a solution. Use the mouse and click on the names! Now, regardless the length of the names, you can just click on the name and it’ll automatically type for you. Yes, you can also click on multiple names or the same name multiple times and it’ll work just fine.

This is how you do it:

Take an example using Mr Aaron’s name. His Shouter’s name is Aaron@Axial and as you can see, it is not short and not typing friendly with the @. So instead of typing the entire name, you can either type a short form like AA or Aaron. Alternatively, you can simply click his name as indicated by the arrows in the screenshot. Go ahead and try it now.

Once you do that, the name will automatically appear as shown in the screenshot below. What you see below is if you click on multiple names. A spacing between names will be included automatically, too.

So with this feature, we hope that your experience with ShoutOut will be further enhanced and more finger friendly.

Coming Soon: Welcome Pane for ShoutOut

2008-12-28T22:28:00.001+08:00

Dear Shouters,

Yet another new upgrade is coming to ShoutOut and we thought you should know. It’s called Welcome Pane.

What you see on the right here is a sneak peek in from our development server. Just like its name, this pane will Welcome you to ShoutOut whenever you coming to ShoutOut. Its primary duty is to update you the latest and important things that is going on in ShoutOut. Here are some of the items you’ll be seeing from this new pane and it’ll be rolled out one at a time:

How many people are with you in the current blog you are in. This is a fun information to know because it has been far too long that we go from one blog to another alone; not knowing if anybody else is also reading the very same thing we are.
ShoutOut Tips. Did you know that you can Whisper? Did you know there are ShoutOut Family Photos? Did you know you can just click a name and it will be automatically typed for you? What is this orange bar that peeks appearing on the right? This section will randomly display tips and tricks that ShoutOut has, but you may not know about. Ultimately, this section will be most beneficial to new wide-eyed Shouters.
Welcoming Text (not shown in screenshot). Blog owners will be able to enter a welcoming text to anybody who entered their blog. The message will be displayed prominently for all to see. Of course, it will display different text at different blogs.
Featured Blogs (not shown in screenshot). A possible section that we have not decided if its a good idea. This is a section we can feature your blogs and why everyone should read them. A blog’s title and a short description will be displayed. How to get your blog in there? Still to be decided, but we think its fair if its effort based. Maybe if you help promote ShoutOut or if you bring in new Shouters. But it’s still to be decided.
What has happen since you left (not shown in screenshot). Also to be decided, but this is something we like. A section that displays things that you missed out while you are away. Whispers for example, photos of you being posted or even Shouts that contained your name in them.

Want to help ShoutOut? Here are some of things you can do:

Have any creative ideas what should be in this Welcome Pane? Let us know! We love new ideas and new ideas are usually implemented. Ask those Shouters whose ideas are now a reality in ShoutOut
ShoutOut Tips contribution. Here is one cool way to gain additional traffic to your blog and help out ShoutOut at the same time. We need contributors to ShoutOut Tips section. Just pick a ShoutOut Feature/Function/Ability and write a blog post (on your blog, of course) about it. Let us know and we’ll put your tip up on the Welcome Pane with a text ‘To read further, visit [your blog]’.
Comments, Constructive Criticism and Suggestions are always always welcome. Send them our way. Don’t think Welcome Pane is a good idea? Let us know! It should be at the bottom instead of on top? Let us know too!

So there ya go, stay tuned for more updates!

Merry Christmas

2008-12-25T11:19:00.001+08:00

Wishing all readers lots of joy and a Merry Christmas. Ho Ho Ho! May you enjoy a relaxing holiday with your family and friends.

Apology

2008-12-23T17:21:00.001+08:00

Dear Shouters,

I’d like to apologize for a statement I made this afternoon in ShoutOut. It came off as offensive and insensitive to the Penangite Shouters. Therefore, I would like to say sorry to all who was offended and make a public promise that I will not mention such things again.

One primary purpose ShoutOut was created is to bring people together regardless race, religion and location. The statement I made was a violation of this. I hope that we will move past this and a lesson well learnt.

Thank you,
Lasker

Coughing Server Causing ShoutOut to Sneeze

2008-12-09T17:45:00.001+08:00

Dear Shouters,

Recently ShoutOut have been experiencing frequent downtime. This is due to our hosting site’s server having some hardware problems. The details from their maintenance report are as below:

Immediate Server Maintenance - Acacia [210.48.157.101]
Date : 09 December 2008
Time : 5.20PM GMT+8
MySQL and Email service has been restored. We are now restoring the configuration of Exim for each POP3 mailboxes and MySQL database from our last night daily backup to the server.
====================================================
Date : 09 December 2008
Time : 4.21PM GMT+8
We have updated the HTTP. At the moment we are updating the mail and mysql db to a newer version.
Effect :
Website and other services is still inaccessible for the services is being updated and files is pending for restoration.
====================================================
Date : 09 December 2008
Time : 3.21PM GMT+8
We have reloaded a new hard disk to replace the corrupted /var drive. The existing /home has been braught online with all the files remain intact. As MySQL and cPanel related files are stored on the /var, we are now working to restore the MySQL database and cPanel services on the server.
====================================================
Date : 09 December 2008
Time : 2.01PMGMT+8
The OS reloads takes longer times as we are loading a brand new hard disk which requires a complete new partition. As the new drives size is 1TB and 640GB each, the formatting of the partition will takes some times to complete.
====================================================
Date : 09 December 2008
Time : 11:14 A.M. (GMT +8:00)
Expected ETA : Unavailable
Maintenance Details:
We found the /var which store the MySQL is corrupted. We are now reloading a new hard disk to replace the corrupted /var.
We will keep this announcement update from time to time with the latest progress.
====================================================
Date : 09 December 2008
Time : 08:27 A.M. (GMT +8:00)
Expected ETA : Unavailable
Maintenance Details:
We found the OS HDD is not responding. We are now reloading a new OS.
We will keep this announcement update from time to time with the latest progress.
====================================================
Date : 09 December 2008
Time : 06:00 A.M. (GMT +8:00)
Expected ETA : Unavailable
Maintenance Details:
We have found that there are hardware failures on the server. We are currently working on the server.
Maintenance Effect:
Users will encounter difficulty to access their mail, database, FTP and web services.
We will keep this announcement update from time to time with the latest progress.
====================================================
Date : 09 December 2008
Time : 04:30 A.M. (GMT +8:00)
Expected ETA : Unavailable
Maintenance Details:
The server is currently under immediate maintenance and we are still working to recover the system.
Maintenance Effect:
Users will encounter difficulty to access their mail, database, FTP and web services.
We will keep this announcement update from time to time with the latest progress.
Thank you.
Best Regards,
Support Team
......................................
Technical Department

We wish for your understanding and patience while the server go grab some cough medicine. We will be bounce back shortly, like we always do!

4 Grammer Mistakes You are 100% Sure to Make

2008-12-09T01:18:00.001+08:00

Dear Shouters,

As bloggers, we must always upgrade and improve our English to perfection right? I recently found a couple of grammar mistakes that we seriously do make on a daily basis. It’s so bad until we assume it is right and it actually sounds wrong if you use it correctly. Gosh.

Let’s take a look. I’ll try to post something like this once in a while to help us all improve our grammar

Afterwards
Did you know Afterwards is wrong? The correct word to use is afterward. There was never a word called afterwards.

Farther and Further
Farther is used for distance and Further is used to extend something. So you don’t say how much further to Penang. Its Farther.

Hopefully
We always use this ‘Hopefully, it will not rain today’. WRONG! Instead, it should be ‘I am hoping that it will not rain today’. As for hopefully, it can only be used to if we are describing some action a person does like ‘He looks at her hopefully’. (it means ‘full with hope’).

Towards
How about this? Did you know there is no such word as Towards? There is only Toward. Towards is not a word!

Shocking right? How many of you made all 4 mistakes above. I know I am guilty of all 4. Haha

Anyone misses ShoutFM?

2008-12-07T13:54:00.001+08:00

Dear Shouters,

Anyone of you misses ShoutFM?

For those of you who are new, ShoutFM was implemented a couple of months back and its purpose is for volunteered Shouters to select their favourite song on Imeem and share with anyone who might want to listen. It is an optional module whereby the you can choose to listen to it by clicking on the Play button. It is not played by default.

But a couple of things happened and we have removed it from ShoutOut.

As this is an Imeem software (not developed by us), we cannot control the what exactly to be displayed. Sometimes Imeem decided to change the interface and we have to scramble to change the positioning. Usually because the play button location changed.
It loads slow. One major drawback of Imeem is it takes a while to load on the browser. We have program it in such a way that ShoutOut does not take up much of your blog’s loading time but we cannot control for Imeem. Hence, it does make your blog loads a wee bit slower. And we believe that is a big no no.
Not much people use it. Despite what we thought it seems that not much people actually click on the Play button to listen. Some of the comments we received was “I am already listening to my own songs”, “Loads slow and buffers a lot”. Ugh, damn StreamyX.
Takes up space. Obviously, ShoutOut has to pay very close attention to the real estate of its application. Every centimetre is sacred and important. So by removing ShoutFM, we gained extra space to display about 2 additional Shouts.

So what do you think? Do you miss ShoutFM?

On another note

We have recently discovered some technologies out there that allows Streaming Video and Audio over the web. We can put a space that looks very similar to YouTube but it streams live webcam videos of a Shouters. This essentially means you can be a DJ for ShoutOut. Playing music and also speaking to the entire ShoutOut community.

What do you think? Does this excite you? Want something like this on ShoutOut? Let us know!

It’s a Bloggiful World

2008-11-30T10:16:00.001+08:00

Dear Shouters,

I have been keeping this post in the draft for quite sometime and now that it is officially announced, I would like to help its promotion too. Ready? Lets go!

aL, Ceddy, CheeHsien, Emily and Warren. What do these Shouters have in common? They, dear Shouters, are the event organiser of a bloggers event coming soon called ‘It’s a Bloggiful World!’

Mind you, we are talking about the first ever blogging event where we can call it ‘By Bloggers For Bloggers’. There are no ulterior motive behind this event other than the pure love for blogging and wanting to make a difference. We are not talking about an event where a company is behind backing it up for the purpose of promoting itself and of course, profit from it. The only motive these 5 guys and gals are ‘guilty’ of is that they may get more traffic to their blogs after the event. And if you consider that a bad thing, then you are obviously not a blogger (yet)

How do I know so much? Because I was once with them together in the team right at the beginning. But unfortunately, timing doesn’t allow, and with a with a heavy heart, I had to pull out of the team. Guess what, I played a part in the title ‘What a Bloggiful World’. Now, I am very proud of them. Many things that were just in the discussion stage have now become a reality. They have gotten themselves sponsors from Digi. Paradise Hotel, Exabytes, Baptain, Celebrity Fitness and GSC. That’s no small feat. They had to take their time off their work and studies to approach these sponsors and professionally beg for their money.

The detail of the event is as follows:

You have got to register yourselves for this event. So head on to http://www.roundegg.com/bloggers/register.aspx to do just that.

One thing that I honestly feel is a slight problem is the RM10 registration. But hey, if you have been with the team, you would know that they did not decide on this lightly. The RM10 is decided because the sponsors weren’t enough to give them enough juice to make goodies for the event-goers! So a balance has to be struck, a lil of money from the event-goers, and a nice surprise for all! What are the goodies you ask? How can I tell, go and find out!

I am still waiting for the full itinerary of the event from them. I’ll post it up as soon as I get them. Meanwhile, wait no more and go sign up at http://www.roundegg.com/bloggers/register.aspx!

--- UPDATE ---
HEY! I just realised something .. I think each of these character represents each of them. (I wasn’t around when they created the characters). The one I am 100% sure would be Emily. The rest? And who is that last guy?

-YEG Confirmed, y'all!

2008-11-17T11:36:00.002+08:00

Okay.
CONFIRMED DETAILS OF YEG 2008 -

Venue :
-Drew's house
18, Jalan Denai Selatan 4,
Desa Park City,
52200, KL.

Time :
-7.30-11.55pm
-Shouters, make all the noise you can till that time..then we gonna be silent shouters adey..

Entrance fee:
-Either you bring food, or pay.
P/s: I've only myself, SaeWei, Nath, and Wendy (finger foods, Wen? :P) confirming the food. The rest all dunno go where edi. Please confirm your food!!

If you need details, or help in transportation, etc, please contact me via SOM (find daphne) or tag me in my cbox at starsarereachable.blogspot.com OR email me at jjlovezjesus.89@gmail.com.

Or call me, find my number at WhatsNext.

With all that's said and done, I'm off to my war room to prepare for my STPM tomorrow.
I'm still reachable, though. (:

Mirror Mirror on the Wall, Which Browser is the fairest of them all

2008-11-14T16:35:00.001+08:00

Alright Shouters, its time for some statistician fun! This round, we’ll look at Which Browsers visits your Blogs the most. As you know, when you add ShoutOut to your blog(s), any visitor that come into your blog will also see ShoutOut. It also works vice versa, ShoutOut sees them too

This statistic represents the average of people visiting your blogs and every other blogs out there. It will give paint you a pretty good picture on which browser you should make sure your blogs work with.

Lets begin. This data is based the traffic received by ShoutOut for the past 30 days.

Total visits are 96,773
From October 14, 2008 to November 13, 2008

Firefox takes the cake with 51,311 (53.02%). Next comes IE at 39,051 (40.35%). Newbie Google Chrome comes at 3,525 (3.64%). Opera and Safari takes up less than 1%.

Firefox Version Drilldown

3.0.3 (70%) (looks like their auto update feature is very useful here)
2.0.0.17 (14%)
3.0.1 (3%)

Internet Explorer Version Drilldown

7.0 (73%) (who said it’s hard to get version 7.0, upgrade now, please)
6.0 (25%) (upgrade now, please)
8.0 (1.29%) (Huh? Anyone heard about this?)

Google Chrome Version Drilldown

0.2.149.30 (57%) (time to upgrade)
0.3.154.9 (41.67%) (this is the latest version)
0.2.149.27 (0.45%) (man, they need a better versioning numbers)

So what does this mean? Make sure your blog works for Firefox and forget about the rest? Haha .. that is if you want to forgo 40% of your visitors. Google Chrome is coming up, so its time to take care of it too. Opera and Safari, errr .. no comments

Oh, one more thing, what in the world is Playstation 3 doing there? Means someone is visiting your blogs while playing Playstation 3?

Choose your favourite tagline for ShoutOut - Round II

2008-11-11T12:54:00.001+08:00

Here we go! Round 2 of our search for the BEST tagline for ShoutOut. We compiled all your suggestions and votes from this previous list and will present it all to you now. Take a look at the list below. Once done, please do your part by:

Select 2 best choice from the list and put in the comments section
If you have a better suggestion, please put them into the comments too, but up to the maximum of 2 suggestions
Let other Shouters know and ask them to come choose too

So here we go, extracted from all your comments chronologically.

Your Best 24 hours Partner
Your Online Sofa
The ChillOut spot for Online Peeps
Colourfying Life
Chatting on a Whole new Level
Your daily Dose of Fun
Adding Colours to Life
Your HangOut Haven
Where Friends are Made
ShoutOut, the best HangOut
Your Daily Companion
Just Shout
SometHing yOU can’T live withOUT (note: the caps means SHOUTOUT)
Where Real Time Matters
Blogger’s Lounge
Reality in Cyberspace
Shout Out, Speak Out, Voice Out, Laugh Out
A Finger Gym
ShoutOut: Your Best Medicine
Where the Shooting Never Ends
Where all Capalang People Combined under 1
Capalang People Under One Roof
Shouting, the New Chatting
Chatting Differently
Colouring Life with Fun and Joy
VR Family (note: playing with Virtual Reality and We Are)
Your Curang Place
Just Shout
ROARRRRRRRR
Our Nationwide Cafe
Where You Talk Non-Stop
Where Boredom doesn’t mean a thing
Always a Friend
Cyberspace in Reality (note: C comes before R)
SitOut, HangOut & ShoutOut

Yes, it looks like the list is still long, but now all of them were chosen by you. The choosing process from now on will get much harder as you can only choose 2. So take your time and think it through before you put them in the comments. We’ll compile it again.

One more thing, please tell the rest of the Shouters to come and vote because to really get the best tagline, everyone has to be involved.

Cheers!

Year End Gathering (YEG) - Food confirmation

2008-11-10T09:44:00.004+08:00

alright mateys!

Decision made albeit not being the 25th yet- it's food.
We'll stick with potluck; that is, Option A.
Venue's quite a tough decision to make since we can't really decide on the number..yet.

Another thing is regarding the date. We(Saewei,myself and the agreement from Wendy as well) have decided to set it on the 20th.

Okay, to update all of you in regards to the organizing committee as we've roped in some other people..

Main organizers : Daphne, Wendy and Saewei.
Treasurer : Wendy.
Secretary : Anna
PIC on food : Nath Wong/ mrinjured.

*Edit by Lasker: Thank you very much for volunteering*

All of you who're confirmed coming (minus Saewei who'd promise to bring her potato salad even if she doesn't come :P ), please post. According to the previous post , there's only a few who volunteered to bring food. Right now I'm asking for 2nd confirmation : please DO confirm your food, or just comment saying you'd pay for the food and we'd prepare the food for you guys.

Penangites, as agreed, you'd not need to bring food since you need to travel all the way- we don't want to hassle you; but if you wanna bring, please do please do! :D

Do place a comment here guys so we can finalize plans and get it done ASAP for our convenience :D

Thank you!

Yipee Yay! ShoutOut now works on ALL Browsers!

2008-11-05T16:46:00.001+08:00

Ladies and Gentlemen. Today is a proud day for all of us Shouters. Especially for me, because Elise, our dear behind-the-scene ShoutOut Developer has solved the cursor problems for Google Chrome! Yes, that means you can now use Chrome to Shout and you’ll enjoy the same experience you had with Firefox 3 or IE 7!

What’s more, with the solution of Google Chrome, Firefox 2’s problem has also been solved at the same time. So as of now, ShoutOut is now fully compatible with the following browsers:

Firefox 3
Firefox 2
Internet Explorer 7
Internet Explorer 6
Google Chrome 1
Safari 3
Opera 9.6 (we need more tester for this one)
Flock 2.0 (thanks jor.wee for this info)

Why is this such a big deal? Well, ShoutOut is a complicated system trying to appear simple for everyone. It has a lot of things to track such as who is shouting, who is online, are there any new shouts, are there any new SOMail and more. On the administration side, it has to track are there any spammers, are there any special task to do and are there any icons to display when a person shouts. And all that tracking is on top of the fact we need to make sure the cursor stay in place for all browsers. Its not really that easy. But it can be done! :)

Please, lets give Elise a round of applause for solving this problem that has been plaguing us since (if you can remember) the announcement of Firefox 3!

You know you are addicted to ShoutOut when ...

2008-11-02T16:37:00.001+08:00

.. you purposely lengthen or shorten your blog post so that pictures in the post is in perfect alignment with ShoutOut. So you can 'inhale' the beauty of the picture while you enjoy Shouting. Here, let me show you some examples ...

Caught guilty from http://hungwei.blogspot.com/ and http://leaxx7.blogspot.com/

Caught Guilty from http://daisycave.com/ and http://danielctw.com/

Caught Guilty from http://willazz.blogspot.com/ and http://enegue.net/

Caught Guilty from http://saewei.blogspot.com/

Who here can guess what are these 6 guy's and 1 gal's interest?

Got anymore examples? Please send me so I can post them here for all to see! A very special thanks to AlvinC for being my part time 'Detective'.

Mini Upgrade - Find out who else have the same Birthday as you

2008-10-31T21:31:00.001+08:00

Ever wished you can see who have the same birthdays with you? Well now you can! ShoutOutLounge.com has just launched a mini upgrade that will show you in a calendar-like manner, Shouter's Birthday that are coming up soon.

To access this ShoutOut Family's Birthday List, just click on the birthday present icon. To make this even more interesting, you will not be seeing this link anywhere else. So the next time you see a Birthday Shouter, don't forget to click on the icon to get this list!

-YEG Change of Plans..vote?

2008-10-30T15:19:00.002+08:00

Hello! It's me again.

We haven't gotten much positive feedback on the Year End Gathering (YEG) - which's voted and collectively agreed to be held on the 20th December '08. Thus far, we've about 13 people agreeing, and roughly about 30 people who're unsure. We also counted in some of the last-minute people, estimating about 10 people.

Around this time, we also received news that some of the Penangites couldn't come as they're facing their exams, some who're going outstation, and some because of the Christmas celebration, they couldn't make it as well.

So the committee actually gave a big thought about it as there's not many feedbacks since Sept 1.

And we want your vote!

A) We stick to the initial plan - Potluck!
B) Change date change plan- and you give us the tentative date (after 1st week of Dec, please) and what you want to do, then we'll shortlist.
C) Change plan, don't change date- suggest plans!
D) Makan-makan at MidV.
E) Sunway Lagoon poolmania!

Give us your votes...by 25th November!
Thank you for your co-operation, guys.
We appreciate it much!

Regards,
Daphne.

Mini Upgrade - Oh look, your faces!

2008-10-30T13:57:00.001+08:00

There are now 2 types of view at our ShoutOut's Family Album. One with faces, one just a plain old list. 10 cents to guess which view we put as the default! You can also put your mouse cursor over the picture and see zoom into the photos.

We are also taking this opportunity to ask you to upload your latest photos up into your profile so that you can take advantage of the larger size that it allows. While you are at it, do update your profiles!

And by the way, the 2nd round of ShoutOut Tagline Voting will be coming up soon. Stay tuned!

Cheers,
Lasker

Psst Whispering in ShoutOut

2008-10-28T13:59:00.001+08:00

Dear Shouters,

In ShoutOut, do you ever want to talk to someone without everyone else seeing what you type? At the moment, the best way you can do that is by using SOMail or if it suits you, use MSN right? Time to change.

Based on feedback from a couple of Shouters and what we observed, we decided to add a Whispering ability in ShoutOut. That's right, Whispering. You can now whisper to a person and the content will never be shown to everyone else. Only to the Shouter you are whispering to. Others will only see you are whispering to that person but the content will not be shown. Cool right? We can't wait to launch it!

How to Whisper? At ShoutOut, we always always try our best to make things as user friendly as possible. So this is no exception. By now you already know that clicking on a Shouter's name will bring the name up to your Shout textbox right? Now, to Whisper to someone, click on the First character of the person's name. Like for Lasker, click on the character L. Instead of seeing Lasker appearing at your Shout textbox, you'll see @Lasker. This would trigger the Whispering process. Of course, you do not need to click, you can type this too by just adding @ in front of the a Shouter's name. Go and give it a try :)

We hope you enjoy this new feature of ShoutOut and may it bring shouting fun to a whole new level. This new upgrade brings in more future benefits like 'Leaving an offline message' and more that we cannot reveal just yet (but you are welcome to guess, winner gets a ShoutOut Sticker :D )

Cheers,
Lasker and Elise.

Oh, and one more thing, try to Whisper to multiple people. It is also possible!

Daniel suggested to use this picture to promote our new Whisper function. So I think .. why not? It might be smart promotion strategy .. who knows.

Picture grab from http://nicolekiss.blogspot.com/
With all due respect to Nicole

Choose your favourite tagline for ShoutOut

2008-10-26T17:18:00.001+08:00

Getting bored of 'Our Nationwide Cafe' ? We are too. Time to change. We are looking for a new tagline and this is where you come in. Squeeze that creative juice of yours and choose ShoutOut's future tagline from the list below. The rules are:

Select 5 best choice and put them into the comments section
I will compile them and re-list them again those that are chosen and we will go through a second and final round of voting.
If you cannot find what you like, feel free to put your own (but maximum of 5 please)
Let other Shouters know and ask them to come choose too

Its that easy. Just start by looking at the list below. Mind you, majority of them are actually your own suggestions a while ago. You might see your own suggestions in the list!

The list begins:

Your HangOut Haven
Reality in cyberspace
virtually yet real
Your Online Sofa
Your Best HangOut
ShoutOut,The Best HangOut
VR Family
Your daily companion
blogger's lounge
a place for companionship
Chatting under one roof
Share Your thoughts
Shout Out, Speak Out, Voice Out, Laugh Out
where friends are made
Always a friend
adding colours to life
Where you just type to shout
where it's cool to shout
your everything community
something simple yet powerful
simply irresistable
inevitable addiction
colourfying life
where all capalang people combined under 1 yeerrrr cute chatbox
ur curang place
Completes Your Life
a finger gym
Just Shout
where you get ppl to visit your blog
the community for the young and old
Where 2 hearts meet
Chatting on a whole new level
its where you're in
rumour spreading network
Chatting like no other
ShoutOut: your best medicine
Where real time matters
your daily dose of fun
where the shooting never ends
The chillout spot for online peeps
the virtual hangout spot
Where U Talk Non-Stop

Now pick 5 of your choice and post them in the comments. The link is above near the title, by the way.

Summary of Blogging stuff you might want to know

2008-10-25T11:50:00.003+08:00

Hi Shouters,

Recently I have started a blog of my own and I tried to make it focus more on fun stuffs you can do with blogging. But of course, as a newbie, I have also blogged about other things that I find interesting and some of them isn't related to blogging at all! Oh well ...

Anyway, since we are all bloggers and I thought you might find some of these post interesting, so I am going to put some links up. Check it out if it caught your interest. One thing I noted that WordPress users have all the fun. They have a lot of flexibility to edit and modify and tweak their blog to perfection with all kinds of tools. So from the links below, I have tried to duplicate what WordPress can do onto Blogspot. Can't just let Wordpresser win now can we? :D

How to put Google Adsense within your blog post
For those who are interested to monetise your blog with more than just Nuffnang and Adverlets. This is putting the Adsense WITHIN your blog post. Not outside of it by the side bar. So it will only appear when you are viewing individual post, not when you are the main page. The purpose of this is when you are going for pay-per-click, where it is important that the ads are focused only to your post.

3 Easy steps to create Partial Post on Blogpost.com
You'll see a lot of this on WordPress. Where you had to click on 'Continue Reading' on the main page to go to their individual page. This adds one additional page view per post *wink*.

SEO Report card for your blog and website
I used this all the time to check out where my website stands. I thought you should check out yours too.

How to add Digg button to Google Blogger
This is for those who know what is DIGG. Usually we asians do not know this. But its widely used in the western countries. Similar with del.icio.us.

Alternative Blog Editor for your blog
I highly recommend this. Simply because I am a living example. Notice that my blog posts are updated very regularly now? It's because of this! You'll enjoy blogging more with this Blog Editor. But if you find anything better, let me know too, I am interested!

Improve Google Adsense Targeting on Blogger/Blogspot
This is again, monetizing stuff. If you blog for fun and not for money or do not support Adsense, skip this.

Change your FavIcon for Blogger/Blogspot
I guess this is kinda good to know too. This can be easily done with WordPress, but not Blogger .. so now you can too.

Hope the articles above will help at least some of you enjoy blogging more and more!

Get well soon Shouters

2008-10-22T16:28:00.001+08:00

It's a Get-Well-Soon season, as a couple of poor Shouters fell into sickness or are hit by accidents. So ShoutOut would like to wish all of you to fast fast get your perfect health back! Here are a couple of poor Shouters and our wishes will go to them. Take some time to go to their blogs and wish them well.

Poor JJ for getting into an unfortunate accident and is now recovering well
Poor XiiaO Jiro who also got into an accident and now is all better
Poor Wendy who was hit by a dose of chicken pox virus and is also now getting well
Poor BlurJess who was down with flu and starting to get better already
Poor Drewnity who is also down with flu and gonna get better soon too

Take care of yourselves, take lots of vitamins and lots of fluids. Relax and no stress ... Get Well Soon you guys and gals!

P/S: Please let me know if I missed out anybody else.
Cheers,
Lasker

Congratulations to Mr FireWire and Mrs FireWire (Saewei)

2008-10-21T22:55:00.001+08:00

ShoutOut would like to take this opportunity to say its heartiest congratulations to Firewire and Saewei for a very special occasion! We at ShoutOut are very very happy for you. May you and your loved ones be strong, healthy and full of spirit to take on the world together.

Looking forward to seeing you both in KL at the Year End Gathering!

ShoutOut's blog gets a new template

2008-10-20T21:33:00.002+08:00

As promised, I set out on a hunt for a new template and this is what we settled with. So tell us,

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

I think it looks calming, with nice soothing blue to complement ShoutOut's ocean blue colours too. Its one of those minimalist template that the more you look at it the more you are going to like it. Darn it .. it seems to look more and more better than Revotra.com's. Now I wish I can do a switch .. grrr.

Ahhh .. anyway, here are the 2 screen shots for you to compare. Please do comment what you think of this template.

Minor achievement for ShoutOut's blog

2008-10-20T12:33:00.002+08:00

I still haven't found any good template for ShoutOut, got any advice? Anyway, I just want to announce something I found just a couple of minutes ago ..

ShoutOut's blog is now at PageRank 2! Surprising huh? Since in theory, ShoutOutLounge.com should be the one that has more links to it isn't it. Guess it's all about the inner workings of Google and it is something we'll never understand.

Doesn't matter. This minor achievement is a good thing .. yipee ..

Thank you to each and every one of you who visits ShoutOut's blog and and links to it on a regular basis. You have our thanks. We'll return that favour when the time is right, as promised before. You'll see.

Honouring your visits

2008-10-19T23:30:00.001+08:00

Dear Shouters,

I was going through my traffic reports on ShoutOut and I realised that we do have a couple of people visiting the ShoutOut's blog every once in a while. This has been going on without failed since day one.

Frankly, I am surprised, since ShoutOut's blog have not been updated much lately. No thanks to my heavy working schedule (yeah, one got to earn one's living).

So I can't let this continue .. I will honour your visits by putting up more effort to update post here. First of, I'll setup my Live Writer to link to this blog. Next, I am going to change the template to a more eye friendly one. If you do not know what's a Live Writer, click on the link to see a post I made on why I love it so muchhhhhh!

So stay tuned ... changes are coming up and I want to personally thank you once again for keep coming back! It will not go unnoticed!

-YEG!

2008-10-14T15:31:00.002+08:00

Okay guys. According to the list that I've done before 1st Sept 08, there are roughly about 40 people including the 50/50 confirmed people, coming for YEG.

SO.
For the people who are confirmed, what are you going to bring? How much are you going to charge for those who won't bring any food?

This is a potluck event, guys. I need at least 10 - 15 items to accommodate people. Let's remember that some of us could only confirm during the last minute, so more food's encouraged!

Please place a comment here so I can further plan.
thank you much, guys!

Daphne.

ShoutOutLounge.com is now PageRank 1

2008-09-28T16:29:00.003+08:00

Yay!
A small achievement but an achievement nonetheless!!

ShoutOutLounge.com is happy to announce to everyone that it is now at Page Rank 1. And its next goal is to move on to Page Rank 2.

Thank you to everyone for their support and link to ShoutOutLounge.com.

ShoutOut is looking for a new home ...

2008-09-21T13:27:00.006+08:00

Dear Shouterssss ...

As you know recently .. we had a problem with (yet again) ShoutOut sucking up too much server resources for our hosting site's liking. So here is an advice for you .. don't fall for high bandwidth and high harddisk space hosting plans .. you simply gotta make sure the resources they give you is enough too. After all, to need that high amount of bandwidth/harddisk speed, would also mean you'll be hosting something that will suck up resources too won't you? :aduh: (common sense that I did not have previously, learn from my mistakes, folks).

Anyway ... many days and many nights have been spent on finding our the best hosting site .. and finally I stumbled on this. (This is not a affiliate link, so feel free to click) http://www.ixwebhosting.com/index.php/v2/pages.compareAllPlans. I am thinking to go for the Business Plan.

What do you think? Any hosting experts out there can give comments on this?

ShoutOut needs a new homeeeeee!

-What's Next!

2008-09-13T11:49:00.002+08:00

I do not have to say a thing here - head to what's next on ShoutOut, and find out! :)

-update! Year End gathering!

2008-09-09T23:45:00.002+08:00

It's none other than me, again (:

So for the Year End Gathering...
Place : TBA (To be Affirmed)

Time : TBA as well, but it's around the evening.
Day : 20th December, Saturday.

Event : Potluck.
I'm going to need you all to list down what you guys can bring (KL/Cyberjaya Shouters on prior 'cos Penangites..don't tell me you want them here with luggages AND food on a 5-hour drive here?).

Then here's the catch : those who can't bring food, you pay those who do.
Win-win situation, no? :)

So.
Your assignment, Shouter readers :
1)Put on the comment box what you can bring, or if you can't bring food.
2) IN response to #1, if you can bring food, it definitely shows confirmation that you can come /not come, and if you can't confirm, do state!

Thanks much!

HI!

2008-08-31T19:39:00.004+08:00

This definitely isn't Lasker , duh.
I am a Shouter.
I am a Shouter.
I am a Shouter.
...
...
I am a Shouter.

OKAY OKAY I'll stop it :D
All thanks to our Mr Lasker, I'm now one of the contributors in SOLounge's blog. I'm Daphne and I blog here. So anyway, my name isn't a foreign name (I have a clone as well :P) here. So it proves that I am femes. And very VERY femes, btw.

Bow down at my feet, people; or I KILL YOU!!
Kidding :D
I'm so nice la right I won't kill people one..I'll just poison their food *evil grin*

ANYWAYS.

I'm here not to write rubbish (which I already did so it doesn't make any difference) to contaminate the blog; I'm here to CREATE A POLL!!
Lasker entrusted me with the responsibility to organize a year-end Shouters' party merging with Shouters from KL, Penang, all around Malaysia if possible as well as the Philippines (*AHEM!*); so it'd be a big big function held in one very special place.

The land of Kandang Lembus.
;)

Okay okay I serious now.
Um.
So, since it'd be held in KL (stop thinking kandangs, people or I kandang you *kungfu*), when's the right date ? It'd to be held in December after all the MAJORMAJOR exams (eh this organizer also having exams till December can?). So suggested dates are ;

After 25th Dec.
-27th, Saturday
-28th, Sunday

Before 25th Dec.
-13th /20th, Saturday
-14th/21st, Sunday

I chose the weekend because it's easier for *ahem* working ~~old people~~ Shouters from everywhere to arrange themselves (if you get the pun ;)) to get themselves here.
So the poll starts now! DO comment!

Muchas gracias,
Daphne (:

p/s: Happy Merdeka!

The Eighth of August, Two Thousand Eight, Eight Hour Eighth Minute Eighth Second

2008-07-27T15:01:00.006+08:00

08/08/08 08:08:08

ShoutOut's Open day is a success!

2008-07-23T16:27:00.005+08:00

What can we say? The kind volunteers all came on time and enjoyed every bit of it. There was a hiccup where one of our staff accidently off the server ... swt. But no worries, it was up within minutes and everyone is back again.

We tested 2 major enhancements and got very valuable feedback from them. Thank you once again.

But what are the 2 cool enhancements? Not telling! Let's wait for the Shouters to update their blog shall we?

Their links will be updated here when they are ready. Till then, rub your hands in anticipation ya!
Anna's Point of View!
Mac_Bone joins in!

ShoutOut Open Day is back!

2008-07-15T12:01:00.004+08:00

Ok Shouters, this is it. ShoutOut Open Day. We think this name sounds better than ShoutOut's Factory. What do you think? Who got a better name? :)

Ok, for those who do not know, ShoutOut Open Day works like this. A fixed time and date will be set and those who are selected (The SneakPeekers) will be given a special access to our Beta Testing ground.

Once inside, there will be no rules, feel free to test just about anything in ShoutOut. The idea is to try everything. Of course, the bonus here is there will be new modules set up ready for testing. That will be our key focus. As a SneakPeeker, you will have first hand access to the new modules and will be the first one to test it out!

So, we are inviting you to come in, take a look, take screenshots, touch all you want, give comments and feedback to us. We will take your comments and feedback and do any last minute changes before launching it. This is a special preview just for you.

Also, each of you will write a blog post (which ShoutOut's blog will link to) on the new feature. Either write it as a introduction to the new feature or as a step-by-step guide to the new feature. You can choose to write this in your blog or as a guest blogger in ShoutOut's blog.

The Open Day itself will most probably held on Wednesday 23rd July and 02:00 in the afternoon. Perfect way to take away your boring after lunchtime hours. Time and date may still change, so check your SOMail often.

Due to the good response we had the last time, we are opening up 10 tickets this time. So grab it while its still available. Just write your name below in the Comments area saying 'I want to come for ShoutOut's Open Day!'.

So Quick! Accept your invitation now!

The cute furry thing that we almost forgot ...

2008-07-14T23:15:00.005+08:00

As promised last week, today we are going to feature a very cute and furry animal which entertained us in Redang to no end. So its our great pleasure to present you with ... The Squirrel!

It spends the day jumping around the beams above our heads stopping occasionally to look at us and tilt it's head in curiosity. If it gets excited, it'll call out with this little shrieky noises like its saying 'heyyy heyyy'.

Its favourite food? Bread. Ever fed a squirrel before? It felt like fishing .. You have to extend your hand with the bread and do NOT move .. waiting for it to come closer ..sniffing all the way. If you make any sudden move, it'll freeze for a moment and just jumps away and the cycle repeats. But if you managed to wait patiently for it to come close, you'll be rewarded with the cutest thing ever. It'll come within reaching distance of its little hands ... touch the bread .. and softly 'snatch' it from you, and *whooosh* runs up to the beams overhead again. If you are very very lucky, it actually trusts you and stop just right next to your hand, and proceed to munch on the bread.

Goodness .. have your internal brain goes 'Awwwwwwww ...' yet? No? Watch the videos below. I bet you will!

Oh by the way, ShoutOut's Factory's Doors are opening soon ... so don't miss out if you are interested! First come first served!

Pay attention, you'll see a flying squirrel from the right.

Oh look food! Hmmm .. looks good, smells good .. lets take it upstairs to munch.

*munch munch munch*

Signing off ...

ShoutOut's Redang Trip - From another Angle

2008-07-05T17:27:00.008+08:00

Hey Shouters,

Its the time again for alternative views of the recent trip we had to Redang Island of the east cost of Terengganu!

From another Angle style post are post that attempt to show you things we see there but from another point of view. You have already seen the excellent photos captured by excellent cameras by equally excellent photographers, and now, its our turn to post ours. Don't expect great photos, but expect a different angle :)

Here goes!

This is where we stayed for 3 nights and 4 days. The floor is totally wooden and the walls are really thin. We can hear the girls (Wendy, Angeline, Lee May) from the other room laughing and chatting away :)

Toilet that we use for the same duration. It is surprisingly clean! I guess the salty water from our body and wetsuits does not encourage moss growth. The flooring is smooth but does not make you slip. Thumbs up, you dont get this kind of quality from Cambodia, I can tell you that! :)

Ah, the map that the dive masters referred to all the time.

Believe it or not, we actually brought a stack of ShoutOut's stickers to be given away to the Shouters who doesn't have it yet. But we TOTALLY forgot about it .. oops. Anyway, this is the only piece of ShoutOut we left behind at Redang. Drew by me and enhanced by Wendy .. If you don't get it, its ShoutOut doing a little dive under the sea :D

A large collection of Wet suits. Goes to show how successful Redang Kalong as a business is. All these are owned by the customers here. Ours are somewhere in there too :)

This is the boat that took us to all the dive sites.

The boat that took us to and from Redang.

Don't forget our bags! This is a sad sight actually, its about 1 hour or so from departure from Redang. Our bags are packed, and prepared to take our things home. Sad!

Oh by the way, there is just one more picture we would like to show. Somehow it was not featured in all the other blogs, so we gotta take that honour. Stay tuned on our next post! :)

ShoutOut's hosting site coughed and sneezed, left to search for tissues

2008-07-01T00:33:00.007+08:00

Dear Shouters,

Sad! Our hosting provider is having some problems and we are not informed of what went wrong. But we saw this being posted at our hosting site's website and thought this may be the cause. (I know the time difference, but it may be related)

https://support.exabytes.com/index.php?_m=news&_a=viewnews&newsid=561&group=default

I sure hope that this has nothing to do with our server resources and/or overused bandwidth problem ...

Anyway, please bear with us and I will post updates here as soon as I get any additional news.

We are very sorry for the inconvenience.
Lasker.

-UPDATE-
And we are up again .. woopeedoo .. Thank you for your patience :)

-UPDATE-
Received this mail from our hosting site.

Hello Lasker,

Based on our monitoring, the server is having high load due to one of the domain that same server with your hosting account is running cron job. We have terminate the process and send an AUP warning email to the account owner.

We will continue the monitoring and if the account still overload without any prevention/feedback from the owner then we will suspend the account.
If you have any enquiries, please do not hesitate to contact. Thank You!

Best Regards,

Gaveen
......................................
System Engineer (Level 2)

Thanks Gaveen .. !!

Cordless Vacuum

2008-06-25T14:10:00.002+08:00

Guys guys guys ... tell me how much do we hate cleaning up? It is still kinda ok if the floor is hard, that is to say it is cement or marble. Spill water, no problem, can wipe. Drop pizza, can pick up then wipe. Drop a glass bottle, pick one by one, then wipe. Still ok right?
Now imagine a carpet. *faint* Try even hitting a simple office dustbin and it turned over. How do you clean it up then? Heh .. scary thought.
You need a vacuum cleaner! Not just any vacuum cleaner, an vacuum cleaner that has earned an Energy Star approval. This little vacuum cleaner right here will use 70% less energy than any regular vacuum cleaner. So you spend less on electricity doing the same amount of cleaning up. Dirt Devil is the name of the product and you can click on the link right there to visit its website. Guess what? It is also wireless. So you can just plug in to charge and then remove it to clean those hard to reach places. On its webpage, it is priced at $44.99 which should be somewhat affordable for a normal family. But like I said earlier, it is the money you saved from the electricity which makes sense here. So if you are just out shopping for a new vacuum cleaner, go to this website now for a visit :)

ShoutOut Factory open day was a success!

2008-06-16T12:47:00.012+08:00

Dear Shouters,

Whew ... just closed the door to ShoutOut Factory. It was fun! At least thats what they all told me. Thanks you guys.

Anna was the first to arrive on the dot 11:00am
Jeannie was sleeping, and need Anna to wake her up. When she enters, we all can smell her fresh morning breath :D
Ping Ping arrived right after that.
CharlesKey was late :P Dont late again next time ya :v:

Once everyone is ready, they are presented with all 4 very new features of ShoutOut. Everyone had fun because they can just click anything they want and test every portion of it out. Its a nice experience, even for us (Elise and me). It opens a new channel to receive feedbacks in a controlled environment.

So to all you Software Developers out there .. I recommend opening up a beta site and get your users to test it. Not only it helps in the obvious ways, you'll also see some new bugs that you never expected. After all, not every users are thinking the same way, so they might do things you least expected. Seriously, open up, its a good thing :)

Anyway, back to topic, the SneakPeekers have agreed to help out by posting a blog post regarding the new upgrades and in return, this blog will link to them. So visit their blogs for more info ya? :)

PingPing is the first!
The World Through My Eyes
Jeannie is second!
Muse Princess
Next is Anna!
Me and My Dreams
(will insert their links here when I receive green lights from them)

ShoutOut would like to thank you Anna, Jeannie, PingPing, Charles once again for agreeing to help out and we appreciate it a lot! Hope you enjoyed it as much as we do :)

Oh, and one more thing. As this whole exercise has turned out to be a success, we'll be opening up ShoutOut Factory again soon when our next set of enhancements are out. So stay tuned, first come first serve, sign up early to avoid disappointment :D

An Invitation to ShoutOut Factory

2008-06-11T02:17:00.001+08:00

Dear Shouters,

Here are 5 invitations to you, a Shouter, to enter the top secret development center of ShoutOut's Factory!

The idea is like this, the first 5 Shouters who accepted this invitation will be invited to come into our beta staging area of ShoutOut to preview the latest features of ShoutOut. This is where we will do our testing on the new features of ShoutOut before launching them out to the world! You will be informed of a specific day and time, and with a new username and password, you'll be given access to a separate ShoutOut website. Then we (Elise and me) will meet you inside and guide you through the new feature(s)!

So, we are inviting you to come in, take a look, take screenshots, touch all you want, give comments and feedback to us. We will take your comments and feedback and do any last minute changes before launching it. This is a special preview just for you.

Also, each of you will write a blog post (which ShoutOut's blog will link to) on the new feature. Either write it as a introduction to the new feature or as a step-by-step guide to the new feature. You can choose to write this in your blog or as a guest blogger in ShoutOut's blog.

This will be first of many special preview invites to you as a Shouter. Any suggestion and ideas to make it better are most welcome. We got this idea when we are about to launch SOMail .. but couldn't implement it in time.

So what say you? Put your name below in the comments area to accept your invitation!

Zoooooookoda your blog

2008-06-10T00:49:00.002+08:00

Anybody here heard of Zookoda before?
If you haven’t, then a minute to read on what I just found out. Of course, this is free stuff. Yeah .. you pay nothing for using this application.
So what is it? Imagine if you have the ability to inform your friends and readers of your blog that you have just updated your blog. Yeah, RSS comes to mind, but think it through, what if you want to inform people that have not heard of your blog. They won’t have RSS now would they? Enters Zookoda. What it does is it collect your blogs post and compile them into emails and sends it out to your friends and readers. Like newsletters. So in effect, with Zookoda, you can create a newsletter system for your blog just like that. Of course, it offers you full controls such as time to sent, the frequency and who do you want to send to. Its reports are also quite comprehensive where it gives you information like bounced mail and who clicked on the mail and come to your blog and so on. Neat right?
So if you are a blog owner and if you are interested to keep your reader coming back, kinda like a reminder service that your blog is updated, you can give Zookoda a try. All this for free and you do not need to install anything on your server. Its completely hosted by Zookoda. Give it a try today. Create a newsletter for your blog :)

Keracut Part IV (finale)

2008-06-09T00:08:00.001+08:00

Ah .. after relaxing by the rocks, we moved on to the another location at the beach. There are very cute baby turtles there. Ok, raise hands for those who doesn't realize that there are turtles in Penang. Yes! This well known island with dirty beaches seriously have turtles coming back to nest! Surprise or not?!

Cuteness to da max! You should see the video of them moving below. You are going to go awwww ...

This is kinda geli. They take out the immature turtles from their eggs and preserved them. Of course, I believe they took out the dead ones. But still .. looking at it gives da goose bumps.

Here you see MacBone entertaining us with card tricks. I tell you, some of them were good! Now I got a few tricks to show and impress already!

Another angle from where were were sitting.

So we sat there for a while, got some pre-interview preparation from kind Jessie (topic for another day). Then we hike back. We almost sat the boat back, but nah, we are tough guys and gals, so we hike back!

Reward? Or just hunger? I think both! When we are back, we just sapu la .. its a northern indian restaurant. So the food are pretty good in my opinion.

Yummsss ...

So there you have it, a different viewpoint of the keracut hike with the Shouters of ShoutOut.
Would you like to join us the next time? ;)

I signed up for SocialSpark

2008-06-08T13:51:00.003+08:00

Hey everyone, this is a sponsored post. This post is meant for spreading the word on the very company that is giving out this sponsored post in the first place. That’s right, its called SocialSpark.

Looking for ways to monetize your blog? Why don’t you try this SocialSpark. Believe it or not, its by the same guys and gals that does PayPerPost way back. Of course, your next question will be, whats new and different?

Take a look at this list.

-100% Audit-able In-Post Disclosure
-100% Transparency
-100% Real Opinions
-100% Search Engine Friendly

The one that strike out at me most is the Search Engine Friendly. Most of you would have heard of the issue that PayPerPost had with Google where the page rank was dropped for those who are doing PayPerPost. Well, the guys and gals at SocialSpark seems to have the solution. By putting a nofollow link, the search engine will not follow that link to the sponsors that you are linking to. This way, Search Engine will not assume that this is a bad thing, after all, that page you are linking to is not indexed 

Ok ok .. is it way too technical? I’ll tell you something that is not then. This Social Spark is slightly different from PayPerPost, if you are qualified for the Opps, it doesn’t mean you’ll get it. Apparently there is this queue up feature where you have to queue up and wait for your turn. If you get it, you’ll need to post it up within 12 hours, if not, you’ll opp will be lost. So keep a look out to your emails when you queue up! 

So go now and give it a try.

Keracut part III (are we done yettttt)

2008-06-02T21:27:00.012+08:00

... no!
Got plenty to show leh .. :)

Here we go .. pictures and more pictures ...

So we have reached the beach. See how clean it is. This will be the cleanest beach in the whole of Penang that is accessible. The rest, are private beaches which we are not allowed to go (I think)

Rocks contracting nicely with the sea water :)

Another nice beach view. We picked this spot to rest for a bit because it is well shaded and have plenty of spot to sit and relax.

So good, so attractive, I almost lost my mind and want to ....... sit down and admire it even more.

The waves are heavy here. Wind is strong .. very peaceful I tell you.
Here, have a look at the video of the waves ...

Calming right?

Then suddenly a dog came over to our resting site. (see the left of the pic)

Immediately Saewei 'cik cik cik' asking the dog to come over. The dog must be hungry and is hoping we have some food for it.

Alamak! No food, kena camwhored pula .. hahaha.

Terus all the Shouters take up camera and shoot shoot nonstop. The dog just parade around.

Here is a nice pic of Mac_Bone .. nice shot by Elise :)

And here is an excellent pic of Michie .. resting on the rock. Also nice shot by Elise .. !

Thats it ... prepare for Keracut IV!

Keracut Part II

2008-06-01T09:40:00.004+08:00

Here we go .. Keracut Part II! Keracut Part I is here.

We have arrived! We came upon a very unique lake. In fact, there are only 19 of them in this world. So 1 down, 18 more to go .. But first, why is it unique? Here, let you read the description of the lake first.

If you read carefully, you'll see that the lake changes once in a while. Where if the dam is 'built' the water of the lake will rise and when the dam is 'destroyed' the water will flow out. Guess what? I have managed to see BOTH!!!! Yaaaaa! See the pic below.

Both the above picture are taken that day. This clearly show that the dam is up and the water have risen very high indeed. Now see below. That picture was taken a while ago when I had my first Keracut hike. See if you can notice the difference.

Water levels are lower and you can clearly see the water flowing into the sea!!

Suddenly, Mac_Bone decided to sit on the bridge and disallow passage.

We keep calling after him but he wouldn't budge

Until Saewei came and show him who is the boss.

Two more closer shot of the lake. Taken by Elise who I am proud to say are getting better and better in photography. Yes!

That's all about the lake. Stay tuned for Keracut Part III!

Keracut Part I

2008-05-31T12:11:00.003+08:00

Hey Shouters,

Finally, here are the photos for the ShoutOut's Keracut outing! As usual, I'll try to present the alternate views from the camera instead of the usual shots you see :)

But hor, this round tough a bit as there are not much competitor out there. Only Michie and Jessie has posted some photos. I think thats it. Saewei didn't do a blog post worrr.

Anyway .. without taking up more time .. here goes! Part I.

The day started with someone dropping her car keys into the McD longkang! Thank you must be said to that girl who actually went inside and picked it up. Wah, very brave of her lo.

So after 45 minutes of driving, we reached the entry point to keracut. Here we are waiting for the rest to sign up their names before getting a ticket (free!) for entering the hiking path.

And the hike begins! Can't say this is tough hike .. it does go up for a while but its not as tough as you think because ....

... we had help! The song sang by Mac_Bone made us hike up even faster with haste!

After nearly an hour and a half, we arrived. This is the beautiful scenery right here. I'll post them up in Part II of the Keracut outing .. :whee:

See you then!

After a few days with Facebook, I felt ......

2008-05-29T22:57:00.007+08:00

.... Blue.
Yep, thats right, I felt blue. Blue in the sense of Monday Blue kinda blue.

Cause the entire application is blue in color? Heh. No. What I did was had Facebook opened for 24 hours a day. I had it open on a separate tab. And I check back very often to see if there are anything new I can see.

I have added like .. ermm 27 friends but none of them moved much muscles, in Facebook-wise. They are in ShoutOut instead :whee:. So I felt blue, I guess its because of the lack of activity. Yeah, I get an occasional wall post, so I post back on their wall, but after that, silence. I don't know, I guess I am too much addicted to constant activity kind of environment. Once a while I see friends posting other things on other people's pictures or walls, but not exciting enough to make me want to click on their pic to find out whats in it.

I tried a few applications here and there but nothing strikes me as addictive yet. Human Pets's magic didnt get to me yet. I hope it is going to tho :) Most application I saw (those top of the list, most popular ones) are frankly, not my cup of tea. I still don't 'get' the idea of buying some kind of pet which you need to feed once in a while and then send it off to a fight (all of this completely text based with some graphics here and there). I mean, how can this be fun in the world of computer games and PS3/XBOX360/WII which certainly has much more depth and provides richer experience. Its not because its multiplayer, most of the games I mentioned are multiplayer possible. Think MMORPGs (free ones even). Think viwawa.com.

I know I know, its extremely early to set my opinion on Facebook, so I am not gonna. For one thing, I should add more friends to increase activities. Perhaps I should add more 'adult' themed applications to really appreciate the custom applications. But for now ... I am still not addicted to Facebook.

Don't get me wrong. I have no negative feelings towards Facebook whatsoever. Millions of users cannot be wrong, for that I am sure. I just do not 'get' it yet. And my mission is yet to be completed. And I will keep trying until I am able to feel the pull of facebook, that I will.

Oops .. time to go refresh my Facebook. *F5*

Changing Template to da Greens

2008-05-29T08:43:00.002+08:00

Hmmm .. if you haven't notice it already, ShoutOut's blog is in the process of changing the template color to Green.

Why green? Cause that is my favorite color since young and would like to finally put it up.

Seriously, why green? Ok ok! I don't know about you, but the original tangy orange color is kinda hard on the eyes no? I actually felt the orange blog is kicking my eyes away from the site. Too bright or too something. The text are hard to read and pains the eye.

Anyway, so I change to Green. See if it can make any difference :)

Giving Facebook a try ...

2008-05-24T12:30:00.000+08:00

Haha yeah ... Lasker has succumb to the neverending pull of peer pressure and will try my best to make myself addicted to Facebook!

Well, actually, the truth is .. I want to see what makes Facebook tick. And if possible, see what can be learn from it to be implemented in ShoutOut! Yala .. how can Lasker forget about ShoutOut leh? :) :)

I'll actually try my very best to be addicted to Facebook. Really really make myself. So one of the things I'll try is this Human pet thingy, which I was told that it took Facebook by storm. Making everyone login to Facebook every single day just to see if they are sold, bought, new flirting messages and more ... (still a newbie, so I may be off).

So umm .. wish me luck? Or if you can save me the trouble, just simply tell me what makes Facebook tick ... or more directly, what do you think is extra great about Facebook that you want to have in ShoutOut? Hahaha ... I could save months :D

Cheers,
Lasker

Let lurkers be lurkers? Or Lurk no more?

2008-05-16T08:33:00.006+08:00

Yo Shouters ...

Here is a poll. Want to ask everyone what do they think about lurkers? Or to be more direct, do you want to know who is currently at ShoutOut but not Shouting at the moment? Or even better yet, do you want to know who is currently online at ShoutOut.

You know, those 'Who is online' list that you see in Cbox or ShoutMix premium edition.

Hmmm, say if you come online to ShoutOut and you Shout something, your name will now appear in the 'Who is Online' list in ShoutOut. And then say if you stop Shouting for the next 15 minutes, your name will then be moved to a 'Who is Lurking' list. But I suggest this list to just contain the number of Shouters, like 'Lurkers(20)' Thats it.

What do you think? Come come give comment. You can even tell me that this list is utterly useless and there is no point spending time creating this module :D

Thanks in advance!
Lasker

Alternative views ...

2008-05-08T21:51:00.006+08:00

... isn't that what blogging is all about? We are suppose to be here to offer our alternative views to those who would read us regarding a certain certain subject. Thats why we blog, if everyone have the same view points as us, we would be bored to death when we hop from one blog to another.

Example : Yes, I think he is tall. Yeah, I agree he is tall. Oh yes, he is tall. Tall, he is, isn't he? His looks tall to me. Yup, tall is what I think he is. Tall man, he is.

Ok ok .. don't fall asleep yet. So here I am, going to post some alternative shots of the Tropical Spice Garden's outing! Muahahaa .. have fun!

A picture of JJ posing with a photographer taking a photograph. Hmmm...

4 ladies preparing to pose for a photo ..

Another angle of the famous shot with 4 heads. Now you know who actually took that shot.

A shot from behind.

Preparing to take a model quality shot.

Tadpole eggs that nobody seems to realize while they are having their foot spa.

Nobody likes the poor frog. But I do! :)

While sharing alternative views are healthy, actually acting it out is not :P

--- My best shot for this outing --------

Wheeeeeee ... red contrasting nicely with the green.

Thats it .. so now its time to give me your alternative views by commenting below .. lets go go go!

ShoutOut Creates a Milestone!

2008-04-23T22:56:00.011+08:00

~ As seen from the eyes of guest blogger, Nalini
(thanks Boss, for the exclusive preview!)

Guess what, shouters! You've got mail!

ShoutOut launches its very first email module ever! Yes, you heard it right - SOMail is now officially released. Out of beta, totally.

Check out its winning features!

User-friendly interface - designed to be fun and simple, anyone can easily grasp the art of SOMailing at their fingertips!
Instant new mail alert - so fast that you can even use it to chat privately with another shouter! Now, how cool is that!

Super duper secured - With the same security you enjoy in ShoutOut, you too have to login before having your own access to your SOMails. Thats why we ask you to take care of your password. Read if you haven't already!
Very easy to access - Hmmm .. because its so easy, not gonna mention it here. Go find out yourself .. haha .. woohoo. *evil laugh*
Report Spam - ShoutOut treats spam seriously, so keep your mailbox squeaky clean with a click of this button!

Fingers itching to try it out already? More features to be explored inside - do it now! Hesitate no more, your first SOMail is waiting for you! Shout that mail privately!

This enhancement marks an important milestone for ShoutOut. Keep your eyes peeled for more!

Cheers and long live ShoutOut!

PS: Dear shouters, we welcome your valued suggestions and bug reports (if any), as always. Speak up and be heard, keep your suggestions coming!

Oooo .... it tickles!!

2008-04-23T21:46:00.001+08:00

Stay tuned ....

The importance of your Password in ShoutOut

2008-04-17T21:20:00.006+08:00

Consecutive BlogPost on-time count : 10

Stuffs you may not know about ShoutOut

Dear Shouters,
This is a very very serious post. Most of you who have been with ShoutOut for at least a year will know that ShoutOut does not require you to login in its early days.

You can just enter your username and just begin shouting and that username you entered will be shown for all to see. ShoutOut will then use cookies to remember your username and will then use the same username each time you come back to a blog with ShoutOut in it. This is exactly how Cbox or ShoutMix works today. They too, remember your username whenever you come back to it.

As predictable in an environment built up completely on trust, someone has to come and exploit it and make it un-fun for the rest of us. Spammers will come in and change their username to any one of us and begin shouting as one of us. As you can imagine, this creates a lot of confusion and mistrust.

So we decided to be different. We ask ourselves, how can we create an environment where login is a must but yet not troublesome for the good people. The rest, as they say, is history.

Today, ShoutOut has username and password mechanism that is secure, but not troublesome for the good people. Login once and you do not have to login again unless either one of the below happens.

Your password expires at a time that you set when you login

You login from a new computer or from another computer

You purposefully log out from ShoutOut

Besides the above, you will continued to be trusted by ShoutOut and do not require to login all the time.

However (here comes the serious section), with all these flexibility also comes with its own responsibilities. Because ShoutOut will soon be rolling out upgrades that are more and more useful and personal, you will want to protect your identity more and more. As a Shouter, you have to remember the following:

If you are a public computer which is shared other people, ask ShoutOut to remember your password for only 1 day maximum

To be extra secure, logout whenever you leave a public computer

Make sure your password is hard to predict. Do not put 'abc123' or put your birthday or 'yourname89'. These are standard weak passwords and will be the first few to be tried by someone that wants to login as you

Do not share your password with someone else.

Therefore, ShoutOut would like to urge you to please go Change your password if you used one of those easy to crack password for ShoutOut. Yes, for now, it doesnt matter if someone logs in as you and play around. You have nothing much to lose in terms of information.

But as mentioned before, as you build up your own reputation in ShoutOut and with more social related upgrades in the pipeline for ShoutOut, your reputation will be become very valuable (imagine if someone logs in as you in your Facebook/Friendster). Do not lose it. Change your password today!

Just go to your own profile and click on Change Password!

ShoutOut's Birthday is so close!

2008-04-10T21:57:00.006+08:00

Consecutive BlogPost on-time count : 9

Where is Lasker off to? Find out more on 12th April SO-Odd Partay!

Answer: Off to ShoutOut's Birthday Party la .. where else wor??? Hee Hee Hee ...

The Rush

2008-04-04T23:42:00.004+08:00

Consecutive BlogPost on-time count : 8

Hang on, let me rush up this blog post now because I need to finish this by today.

Hmmm, damn it. Why nowadays everything we are are doing is all based on rushing. Where have all the simpler times gone? Now its all rushing from doing a task to rushing to do another task. Sigh.

Take a moment and think. Everything we are doing nowadays are things that we HAVE to do, not because we want to. Take for example, answering an email that was sent to you last week. Now you have to rush to finish it because you have not answered for 7 days now. If you do not answer, you'll be perceived as not responsible and/or not responsive. But common! Its not like we didn't answer that email because we are shaking legs! We are actually rushing to do something ELSE!

So if you take a step back and check the last 10 things you are working on, its all rushing to finish things you couldn't finish earlier but have to do it NOW because it will be too late if you don't. Of course, many things will be split over and pushed to another day because you simply do not have enough hours in a day to kautim all the things you HAVE to do today!

Oh my god. 24 hours in a day is really not enough!!!

Guess what is sacrificed? Sleep time. Yep .. you sleep lesser and lesser in the effort finish what must be done. Lack of sleep time = bad for the brains. Your brains gets weaker and weaker after long term of 'lack of sleep'. When that happens, you do things even slower than usual and it contributes to even more things to do because you are doing things even slower now.

So I realised this like a few years back after been working for some time. Since then I have put into place some 'system' that helped (and still do) me to reduce rushing and give me more chance to do things that advance me in life, rather than just being reactive and do the things that must be done.

I'll try to share them with the Shouters when I am not rushing :)

Oh, one more thing. A new module to ShoutOut is very close to completion. Stay tuned! :)

Cheers,
Lasker

SO-Odd party. The Odd and the Oddess ...

2008-03-28T16:28:00.009+08:00

Consecutive BlogPost on-time count : 7

Thousand thanks to Wendy for designing the lovely banner for the SO-Odd party this coming 12th of April.

*psst, click on it for a larger version and put it up your blogs! :)*

Please please put your name up at WhatsNext if you are coming. We need to be as accurate as possible by the end of March! That number there will help us estimate correctly when we order the buffet! :)

See you soon Shouters .. looking forward to it. Be ODD!

Oh by the way, we will be having Eden Buffet. :)

ShoutOut's Birthday on 12th April 2008

2008-03-20T23:32:00.006+08:00

Consecutive BlogPost on-time count : 6

Happy Birthday ShoutOut! Almost 2 years have passed since the day ShoutOut displays the 'Shout!' button.

Since then, millions of mouses have clicked that button and hundreds have ShoutOut on their blogs and webpages. Since then, ShoutOut have shifted servers once and was almost closed down twice. Since then, we have made hundreds of new friends that we never thought we would meet. Some even take it to the next level where 2 hearts become one. Since then ... I can go on and on until there are tears in my eyes and you'll be yawning to death.

To me, ShoutOut is the closest thing to having a child. I have spent my waking hours with it, sleeping with it, dreamed of it plenty of times. Laughed with it, cried with it, shocked of it, surprised by it and most of all, proud of it. It is in fact, the greatest thing that has ever happened to me.

But, thinking back, I wouldn't say ShoutOut on its own does anything at all. In truth, it is the Shouters who are to be acknowledged. Every Shout from day one, makes what ShoutOut what it is today. I mean it, every Shout. From the pioneer Shouters to Senior Shouters, to regular Shouters and to newbies Shouters. From Friendly Visitors to Spammers. It is the Shouters, each and every one of you that make what ShoutOut what it is today.

I guess its safe to say only a few pioneer Shouters and me today are the ones that seriously know what the this post really mean. Deep down, we have gone through every step of the way, seen its best and its worst. Hoping against hope that ShoutOut will one way be on every Malaysian Blogs and beyond!

Long Live ShoutOut!!!

From the bottom of my heart, thank you.
Yes, to that end, ShoutOut is holding a celebration buffet just for Shouters. The details are here.
ShoutOut's Birthday on 12th April
This event, dear Shouters, is for you.

Due to popular demand, the map to the location is here below! B marks the spot! See the satellite imagery for a clearer pic. However, that image is old, so the building shows up as a construction site .. haha.

View Larger Map

Sorry! Keracut hike is postponed ...!

2008-03-17T13:33:00.007+08:00

Consecutive BlogPost on-time count : 5

Dear Shouters,

Due to unforseen circumstances, we gotta postpone the Keracut hike. This is due to many reasons and one of them is we want more more more more Shouters to be able to come together. More fun mah!

This trip is special because it is going to be the first time Shouters are going to bring their doggies to have them meet each other. Woof!

So please choose your best date and comment it below. If you can come at anytime, please put 'Anytime' or 'All Weekends in April'. Go vote now!
Extra note: There will be an event mid of April 12th weekend. Please be around Penang at that time. ShoutOut is going to organise something. Must come ya! :)

Thousand appologies in advance for any Shouters whose plan I spoiled :(
Cheers,
Lasker

Fun Shortcut keys to know when you Shout

2008-03-14T00:45:00.005+08:00

Consecutive BlogPost on-time count : 4

Stuffs you may not know about ShoutOut

This is post are mostly aimed at those Shouting during their free time while in the office. Yeah! Only during free time, yes?

Learning from the previous comments for this post, I'll go directly to the point ya?

Imagine my surprise that some people still Shout using the mouse. That is to say .. when some of you finished typing your Shout, use the mouse to click on the Shout! button. You don't have to do that! Just press the 'Enter' key will do. :)

Now lets get to the fun part. While you are in office, you want to be able to close the window instantly with key strokes instead of a mouse. So how? There are 2 ways. I learn this the hard way during my college days when I am chatting during my 'free time in class'. Yep.

1 -- The easiest one will be 'Windows Key' + 'M'. This will immediately minimize all windows and leaving your desktop wallpaper to stare back at you. Go ahead, try it now.

2 -- This is my favourite. See, when you type, you usually have your right hand clicking the enter key and resting your right hand near the space key area. So try this. 'Alt' + 'Space' + 'N'. Yes .. it looks complex. But you try to do it in a sweeping motion. First press 'Alt' then 'Space' then 'N'. All the while holding on to the previous keys. Take it slow, press one by one .. see what the keys actually does on your screen.

Why I like numbar 2?
First, its very near my hand resting area, and its more natural to type.
Second, note that your boss or your teacher are not complete clueless. If they walk by and see your wallpaper staring back at you, they know something is up. Common! True or not?
Thirdly, doing the sweeping motion I mentioned just now actually makes it look like you are typing!
Fourthly, you can close more than one windows this way. Open 5 windows and press the keystroke in rapid succession.

Well .. thats about it... short and sweet I hope. Do you have any other cool short cut keys that you use while Shouting? Let us know!

Disturbance in ShoutOut

2008-03-09T22:56:00.006+08:00

Consecutive BlogPost on-time count : 3

Hey Shouters,
I am back to Penang and resuming my duties to take care of ShoutOut. I know recently there are a few Friendly Visitors coming in and making a scene and shooting our wonderful and warm ShoutOut Family.

Kinda gives a new meaning to 'Friendly' Visitor eh? I would like to take this opportunity to express my sincerest apologies for not being there to take care of this issue. But no worries, lessons learn and some preemptive repairs are in place.

Lets talk about this new Friendly Visitor that comes in at at around 6.00 on 9th March 2008. After some research, I have pin point the location of this Shout which is coming from WESTERN AUSTRALIA PERTH THE UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA. This is confirmed and I can reconfirm it if anyone would like to dispute it.

So dear Friendly Visitor, I understand your frustration if you are unable to accept some of the shouts in ShoutOut. But please bear in mind that everyone is entitled to their opinion and therefore have the right to say anything. The key I purposefully want to imply again and again is ..
1) No vulgar words in ShoutOut. Be respectful to owners of other blogs that have added ShoutOut. Friendly Visitor, you have a blog too, I am sure you do not want your blog visitor see vulgar words in your own blog yes?
2) Do not offend others. Everyone is free to voice their opinions, but not to the point of offending other people (this is just common sense). It is also common sense that not everyone can accept what everyone else says. Until such times when ShoutOut is updated with a new channeling module, use MSN that only contains people that are 'compatible with you'.

Friendly Visitor, this is not the first time I have politely asked you to stop what you are doing. In fact, this is the 3rd time. I think its time to take the cue, don't you?

Edited -- Removed the last paragraph of this post. Clarification, for those of you who knew who XYZ was, he did login as someone else, but he DID NOT do worse than what the original Friendly Visitor has done.

Going off to KL

2008-03-05T17:21:00.004+08:00

Consecutive BlogPost on-time count : 2

Yipeee, thats right. It has been a long time coming since the day J.Co touched down in Sunway Pyramid. Been seeing a lot of pictures in all your blogs and drooling over em.

Well, times up. My turn has come! Beh tahan liau!

Gonna be going down to KL this Thursday and checking out a few places (business related lah). Then meeting Shouters at J.Co on Sunday Morning 9.00am. Try to come ya? Wanna meet you guys for the longest time .. and play with your greatest asset, DSLR :)

The event is here, go see go see and put your name if possible to come.

As for the previous post, I heard you. I have to cut down on text. Too much = cheong hei. And we don't want that :)

Cheers!

How does the website know who you are?

2008-02-29T00:33:00.012+08:00

Consecutive BlogPost on-time count : 1

Friendly reminder, ShoutOut's blog link has been changed to blog.penangpenang.com.

As a user, most of us would like to know how do the things we use work in the background. Some would love to break the pieces apart, learn it up, and put it back again. Granted, not all of us are like that but ya know, humans are always curious.

To quench that thirst, ShoutOut's blog would like to open a new channel called
"Stuffs you may not know about ShoutOut". (banner pending)

So today, we'll like to talk about How ShoutOut knows who you are.

Many of you would have realised that once you login to ShoutOut, the very next time you enter ShoutOut again, you'll see your name there, ready for you to Shout. Its convenient and it does not annoy you by repeatedly asking for your password.

In simple terms:
ShoutOut does this by putting a small text file on your harddisk. Each time you enter ShoutOut, your browser will send this small text file to ShoutOut. So what is the best thing to be stored in this small text file? Yes, your user ID number. Once your user ID number match, ShoutOut considers you are who you say you are and poof, automatically logs you in.

In a more technical term:
If you are a more technical person, you would already know the answer :) Its called Cookies.

So what is this cookie thingy? Can I eat them? No, in fact, it is quite tasteless. This is the way all our browser works, it is a facility for the website to leave a piece of information onto your browser so that it can refer to it again. To see the actual cookies stored on your computer, try this.
- Firefox users, go directly to C:\Documents and Settings\Lasker\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\2a1x27da.default (replace Lasker with your name)
- IE users, go directly to C:\Documents and Settings\Lasker\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files. (replace Lasker with your name)

Mostly, the webpage uses this facility to store your credentials. If you are a regular web application user, you should know. GMail, Yahoo Mail, FlickR and even blogspot does this. In fact, there are many more that uses this without you even know about it. Think MyBlogLog. Every blog you go that has it will immediately show your name on top.

From the security standpoint, this is relatively safe. Only the correct cookies will be sent to the correct webpage. Meaning, blogspot's cookies will never be sent to ShoutOut. Therefore, ShoutOut will only receive its own cookies which it has already put on your computer in the first place.

At ShoutOut, this is how we implement the cookies.

Whenever you enter ShoutOut for the first time in a new computer, ShoutOut will not recognise you. Hence, you have to login to be able to access to your username

When you login, you are required to choose for how long ShoutOut will remember your password right? Here is why. Its for the expiry date.

Once you have login, ShoutOut will take your User ID number, put it in a cookie and send it to your browser. ShoutOut will also set the date and time the cookie will expire on your browser. If you put 1 day (when you login just now), by the end of that day, the cookies will no longer work from the same browser

Your browser saves the cookie in a secured location

You had fun and decided to stop Shouting for the day

Tomorrow, when you enters ShoutOut, your browser will send the cookies (with your UserID) to ShoutOut

ShoutOut will check the User ID against its list of all User and confirm it is indeed a correct ID

If it is a match, ShoutOut automatically logs you in

You continue Shouting

There you go, it is not that complex now is it? :) You'll notice that when the cookie expires, ShoutOut will no longer receive the cookie from your browser, hence, it treats you as a new user from a new computer and the cycle begins again.

Few interesting facts
-This is not a per computer but a per browser basis. If you login to one browser, opening another one will require your to login again.

-Notice that while ShoutOut says it will remember your password, at no point in the process above that your password was ever involved. It just felt like ShoutOut is remembering your password which in fact, it doesn't.

-While ShoutOut's cookies will expire maximum 3 months from the creation, there are many cookies that are set to last forever. One of them is Google's.

-Each cookies in IE is stored as a file. While all cookies are stored in one file for Firefox

-Clearing your cookies will make ShoutOut 'forgets' your password.

-Clearing your cookies doesn't make your computer any 'safer', it just make you harder to track by all the website out there and make it very inconvenient for you. You'll have to login all the time.

-Cookies are also used by webpages to track you while you surf from pages to pages. Like a shopping cart, if you browse to another page, the shopping cart still holds your items. Therefore, it is very inadvisable to disable cookies.

-Cookies are called cookies because they are small, they have a limited size. Therefore, it is impossible to store large amount of data about you into a cookie.

So, how do you like this kind of post? Would you want to know more and more details about how ShoutOut functions? Future post will get deeper and deeper into the inner workings of ShoutOut. Let me know if it interests you ya! :)

Blogging is not as easy as I thought

2008-02-23T23:55:00.004+08:00

Argh Argh .. I am such a bad blogger. I want to dive into the world of blogging but I seems to unable to pick it up correctly. I do have things to say on my mind, but always always when I sit down to write it, words escapes me. Grrrr.

Bloggers, you have a lot of my respect. How do you come up with things to say day after day without fail is beyond me. Furthermore, you do maintain the frequency of your blogging. Like once a day, (Miss Dolphin comes to mind) to weekly and monthly. Some do blog on a random basis, yeah .. as and when new things excites you .. tada, a new blog post appears.

But meeee ... I can't seems to do it! I need help! Ok .. ahem.

So I am trying to put a schedule for myself. I will blog at once every week, at a set frequency. No more dilly dally, not more procrastination. If I got nothing to say, I'll just say something anyways. Haha.

Must support me ya? Wheeee...

ShoutFM needs DJs!

2008-01-31T21:08:00.002+08:00

Jeng Jeng Jeng! *play intro music here* The time has come for another round of ShoutFM DJ Recruitment!!

Yes!! For those of you who have waited so an opening, this is it! Faster head to the comment below and put your name. We have slots open for the next 6 Shouters. Again, SIX slots available!

Of course, terms and conditions apply *play scary music*, a DJ Shouter must:
- Have great taste in music
- Know how to differentiate Britney Spears from Paris Hilton ;)
- an Active Shouter (blue orb)
- Bising! (appeared at least once in the Top 10 Shouter)

What does a DJ Shouter have to do? Its easy, very. You'll be able to access your DJ function by clicking the headphone icon at the ShoutFM area. Please choose your songs or playlist from imeem.com and the rest should be easy :) Please give the system some time to update the new music for the rest of the Shouters. It will not be immediate, but it will, within the range of 5 minutes.

Thats it .. sign up now before the 6 slots are taken up! *play credits music*

--- 6 DJ Slots status ---
DJ Saewei
DJ Angeline
DJ Chee Hsien
DJ Cedric
DJ JJ
DJ AlvinC

--- More Slots are now open ---
DJ Anna
DJ Daphne
DJ Smilega1

.. request for your slot now!

Mini mini enhancement

2008-01-30T21:37:00.000+08:00

Dear Shouters,

Due to popular demand, ShoutOut has added extra 3 fields just for you. The HandPhone field and Flickr field and Picasa field.

As you can see, the HandPhone field has the same thing as Email field. You can put it up but hide it from the public or you can display it for all to see.

Whewww ... was rushing for this one. Anymore fields you think is important? Come come let us know about it! Wheeeee.
Meanwhile, go update your profiles now!

Glasses at $8

2008-01-29T00:33:00.000+08:00

Zenni Optical: Sell Rx Glasses $8 with case! Yeah, its really cheap. It says on its webpage that its so cheap because they sell only their own manufactured frames direct to the customer, with no middlemen. That’s what I like. Cheap and good without all the money being sucked up by the re-seller in between. What for? Just buy from the source!

Minor but cool updates

2008-01-23T21:34:00.000+08:00

Dear Shouters,

We got 2 minor updates for you today. Take a look at your profile page! (psst, its at the orb beside your name, click it!)

There, see it? Lots of new fields for you to fill it in. Fill in whatever you think is good for all Shouters to know. Leave it blank if you do not have those accounts but do fill in if you have. Makes it easier for Shouters to contact you :)
As for the Email, ShoutOut understands you may want to keep it private. So to keep it private, do NOT tick the check box beside it that says 'Allow others to see'. This will then not display your email. But ShoutOut do wish if all Shouters will put in their primary email here because there will be sometime in the future we will need to contact you this way. You'll understand when it comes :)

Next update is very minor. Its a repair actually. The Topic. Due to popular demand, instead of removing it, it is now repaired and will display the latest topic without refreshing anymore.

Cheers!
If you see any errors or problems, please do let me know. My contacts are in my profile :D

ShoutOut is Hiring [Creative Designers]

2008-01-22T22:27:00.000+08:00

Are you good with computer graphics? Able to draw cuddly and cute icons that makes people go 'awwww'? Or design a catchy logo and banners.

ShoutOut Needs You!

ShoutOut always values your continuous effort to support ShoutOut. To that end, ShoutOut will be paying you for your assistance. We are looking for dedicated Creative Designer that is able to give us creative graphics within a reasonable timeframe.

If you want to try out your skills at ShoutOut, please send some of your best work to lasker@penangpenang.com. Anyone can apply, we are not planning to hire just one *wink*. As this is a freelance position, you are not required to work in office or anything, just work anywhere you want (CoffeeBean comes to mind) and send the product over to ShoutOut via email.

Looking forward to hear from you!

Presenting ....... ShoutFM

2008-01-21T21:57:00.000+08:00

Dear Shouters,

After a week or so of beta, we have completed the system and its now freshly baked. This new and improved system's official name is .... ShoutFM.

That's right, ShoutFM is here to satisfy your hunger for music while having a Shouting good fun with the rest of the Shouters! As mentioned, it will never automatically play, only after you press the play button would it play.

A very noticeable enhancements here is, you do not need to refresh your browser anymore. It will be done automatically whenever a DJ updates a song!

Ok, as for the DJs you'll be able to access your DJ function by clicking the headphone icon at the ShoutFM area. Please choose your songs or playlist from imeem.com and the rest should be easy :) Please give the system some time to update the new music for the rest of the Shouters. It will not be immediate, but it will, within the range of 5 minutes.

Please note that this service is provided by imeem.com and we owe our thanks to them for provide embedable music for us to enjoy. Please do visit their site if you are interested to add the songs to your own blog.

-- DJs wanted! --
We will be opening up more DJs slots in the near future. As the system stabilizes, we will opening up to 15 DJ Slots. Once it is full, any DJ can choose to 'resign' and nominate someone else to take over. So please stay tuned. Slots will open up pretty soon. For anyone who wants to experience choosing songs for all Shouters, don't miss it!

The Official ShoutOut's Blog

Happy Chinese New Year, Gong Xi Fa Cai

Categories for Daily Dose of Fun

Looking for the next Big Idea

What’s Coming, What’s Going

Sharing Interesting Videos on Daily Dose of Fun

Daily Dose of Fun Launches

The Explorers in us

50% Web Hosting Discount for Shouters

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

Planning to host your Blog? Hold your horses!

It’s Moving Day

Opinion Received: Shhhhhh….!

Opinion: Should Whisper be really really quiet?

ShoutOutLounge down for a while. Could it be?

Thank you Exabytes, Malaysian Web Hosting Company

ShoutOutLounge may be down on 18th of June

ShoutOutLounge might be moving

Earning report from Nuffnang as of 29th May

Tomorrow, ShoutOutLounge supports OpenID

Happy Birthday ShoutOutLounge

Coming Soon: One Click sign in for ShoutOutLounge!

Promote Your Blog for Free with ShoutOut

Upgrade: ShoutOut Photo Album Phase III

Upgrade: ShoutOut Picture Phase II

Upgrade: ShoutOut Picture Phase I

Coming Soon: Comments for your Pictures

Why SOMail to one when you can send to Many

So what about the Recipient?

Choose your favourite tagline for ShoutOut – Final Round

(Photo by Theresa Thompson)

Upgrade: ShoutOut’s Welcome Pane

Logging Out and Lurking is One Click Away

Instantly Type Shouter’s Name by Clicking

Coming Soon: Welcome Pane for ShoutOut

Merry Christmas

Apology

Coughing Server Causing ShoutOut to Sneeze

4 Grammer Mistakes You are 100% Sure to Make

Anyone misses ShoutFM?

It’s a Bloggiful World

-YEG Confirmed, y'all!

Mirror Mirror on the Wall, Which Browser is the fairest of them all

Choose your favourite tagline for ShoutOut - Round II

Year End Gathering (YEG) - Food confirmation

Yipee Yay! ShoutOut now works on ALL Browsers!

You know you are addicted to ShoutOut when ...

Mini Upgrade - Find out who else have the same Birthday as you

-YEG Change of Plans..vote?

Mini Upgrade - Oh look, your faces!

*Psst* Whispering in ShoutOut

Choose your favourite tagline for ShoutOut

Summary of Blogging stuff you might want to know

Get well soon Shouters

Congratulations to Mr FireWire and Mrs FireWire (Saewei)

ShoutOut's blog gets a new template

Minor achievement for ShoutOut's blog

Honouring your visits

-YEG!

ShoutOutLounge.com is now PageRank 1

ShoutOut is looking for a new home ...

-What's Next!

-update! Year End gathering!

HI!

The Eighth of August, Two Thousand Eight, Eight Hour Eighth Minute Eighth Second

ShoutOut's Open day is a success!

ShoutOut Open Day is back!

The cute furry thing that we almost forgot ...

ShoutOut's Redang Trip - From another Angle

ShoutOut's hosting site coughed and sneezed, left to search for tissues

Cordless Vacuum

ShoutOut Factory open day was a success!

An Invitation to ShoutOut Factory

Zoooooookoda your blog

Keracut Part IV (finale)

I signed up for SocialSpark

Keracut part III (are we done yettttt)

Keracut Part II

Keracut Part I

After a few days with Facebook, I felt ......

Psst Whispering in ShoutOut