Twitter blocked by Websense
A few days ago, Twitter became semi-blocked by the SBTS‘ Websense Internet content filter — I need to click on “Continue” to view the site for “work-related purposes”.
What in the world is up with this!?!? What’s next? They gonna start blocking MSN, Skype, and GMail?!
(This is why my Twitter updates have been slow, fyi)
Christmas Web Hosting Deals
I thought I’d post this for anybody who is looking to get some cheap deals on web hosting this Christmas!
Sixsteps.org is hosted by 1and1 servers, so I might as well tout them:
Consider also the very reputable (mt) Media Temple who is offering 1yr their (gs) Grid Service Lite package for $95 with 1 included domain name:
Storage: 5GB
Network Transfer: 500GB /mo
GPUs: 500 /mo
Websites: 5
Databases: 5
Email Accounts: 100
Support: 24/7
If you want to be really cheap, Netfirms is offering 1yr of their Advantage hosting service for $10 via http://www.netfirms.com/mac
2 FREE domain names
250GB of disk space
2,000GB data transfer per month
Host unlimited websites with a single account!
Support for PHP, Perl, and MySQL
24-hour technical support
(note: it’s $10/month after the first year for Advantage hosting)
Offers for my Domain
Aviva plc first contacted me in the spring concerning their interest in buying my domain here (www.sixsteps.org). Talks in the spring went quiet as the summer dawned, however, they have recently contacted me again concerning their keen interest purchase the domain from me.
Aviva is the world’s fifth-largest insurance group and the biggest in the UK. We are the leading provider of life and pensions products in Europe and have substantial businesses elsewhere around the world.
Why are they interested in my domain?
They recently started a website at http://www.six-steps.org/ (note the “-” hyphen), that is a “free, unbiased planning resource to help you make informed financial decisions for retirement.”
**They have just emailed me this morning with an offer of $2,000 for my domain, www.sixsteps.org.
I am considering it. It is a somewhat low offer, considering the appraisal I had done on my domain in the summer, valuing it at $3,322 - $8,637.
What do you guys think I should do?
Does anybody have any experience with selling their domain? I’ve put in my own request for a detailed certified appraisal, so hopefully I can get a more exact number of what my domain is currently worth.
TNSEGTA
The New Social Etiquette Guide to Abbreviations
The Ol’ Standbys
LOL (Laugh Out Loud)
-Here’s the deal. People like to think they are funny. So if you want to make a lot of friends online, just go ahead and throw LOL around like you’re spending somebody else’s money. What you shouldn’t do, though, is actually say LOL instead of laughing when you’re hanging out with your friends. I saw this once and it scared me. Just joking. Not really. LOL.
BRB (Be Right Back)
-Go ahead and stop freaking out right now. Your friend is not ignoring you. When people type this, it simply means that they’re doing something else for a minute. This is also known as going AFK (Away From Keyboard), so don’t expect to hear anything back for a few minutes. If it takes longer than that, then we’ll admit it, there is the small possibility that he/she really is trying to ditch you. But hopefully, it’s just a pee break.
JK (Just Kidding)
-This is a very important abbreviation. Why? Because when you’re texting or IMing, people can’t hear your tone or see your face. This means that your friends can and will take every opportunity to be offended, hurt or angered by your seemingly obvious attempts at sarcasm. Think I’m joking? Well, I’m not. If I were, I’d say JK, you moron.
Unchartered Waters
ILYBYFIWH (I Like You But Your Friend Is Way Hotter)
IHFY (I’m Hot For You)
WYSMC? (Will You Sign My Cast?)
INWAU (I’m Not Wearing Any Underwear)
CIBYAD? (Can I Buy You A Drink?)
PPTSC (Please Pass The Sour Cream)
DTMITY (Don’t Text Me, I’ll Text You)
STBY (Sucks To Be You)
IHACBOH (I Have A Clean Bill of Health)
YMMFS (You Make My Fingers Sweat)
GA (Go Away)
HLBOM (He Looked Better On MySpace)
(Source: Helio)
Book Lovers: Alert!
Amazon.com is currently in the midst of a remodeling! Coming soon, a revamped design — helping book lovers everywhere to more easily find the books they oooh soo want!
(HT: Shahine)
Josh Harris on Facebook
Josh Harris deserves the quote of the week, or even “best Christian / pastor’s quote” of all time about Facebook:
Enjoy Facebook. And if you’re a godly single man, receive it as a gift from God to assist you in nonchalantly building a friendship with a godly Christian woman. I’m serious, men! If you’re mature enough to pursue marriage, Facebook should be “Courtbook” for you. Don’t just sit there, get on the ball and go “poke” a godly girl.
Amen to that, brother!
If you missed it, Josh Harris joined Facebook last week, but he only lasted a week, and tries to clarify his personal decision. (I can proudly say I was Josh Harris’ friend for a week!)
Why Flickr is the best
This is a shameless plug for Flickr. (No, they are not paying me for this.)
May I be honest with you? If you share your photos online and you’re NOT using Flickr — you’re not kool! Ok, I can forgive you if you’re using the Flickr wannabe Zooomr, or overpriced pro services from SmugMug or PhanFare…but other than that, I must be blunt — you suck =D (Of course, you know I’m just joking. Unless I really know you, then I cannot justifiably say you suck LOL) From my research of the photo sharing services that are available, Flickr is the best of them all! After all, Flickr is the award winning photo sharing community that Time Magazine called “completely addictive” 
Why? One word: community.
It is the buzz word of our times, especially in today’s postmodern emerging generation where we want church and our experience of the Christian faith to be genuine and missional. Flickr is so popular because it focuses its photo sharing on sharing with the world-wide community of photographers — you don’t just post your photos online to share with your friends, but you share your hard work with like-minded photographers around the world. This provides the opportunity for mutual edification — building each other up, encouraging one another, critiquing each other’s photos, giving constructive criticism where appropriate.
How does Flickr do this? I could think of 3 ways.
- Blogging
- Groups (photo Pools, discussions)
- Commenting & Favorite’ing
- Explore
1. Blogging
With Flickr, it’s very easy to share your photos on your blog — especially since Flickr automatically creates different sizes of each photo you upload! So, if you have a domain for a photoblog, you can even save on webhosting space and bandwidth by having your Flickr photos shared there!
2. Groups
There are many groups on Flickr, created by users on just about any conceivable topic/idea (doesn’t even need to be about photography). Here you can discuss each others photos, and “Send To” the group’s Pool so you can see each other’s photos! It’s an easy way to collaborate and share photos from an event.
3. Commenting & Favoriting
How can you sense a community unless you have conversations? Along with discussions in Flickr Groups, Flickr gives you the ability to Comment and Favorite on photos you like (or dislike). It’s great way to help each other grow as photographers and tell each other what we really think of their still captures!
4. Explore (Interestingness)
Explore is unlike anything else I have ever seen on any other photo sharing service. If you’re ever bored, go to the Explore page. Flickr has a feature (algorithm really) called “Interestingness” that ranks photos upload according to where the clickthroughs are coming from; who comments on it and when; who marks it as a favorite; its tags; etc. It’s all done by the Flickr servers, so that everyday you visit Explore, you can see the most interesting photos on Flickr! How kool is that =D
Flickr certainly has many areas of its service which it can improve on. It’s far from perfect. But since it is an entity of Yahoo!, it has the resources to be anything we the users want it to be!
Check out these reviews from other websites: (more…)
Discerning Reader
Fellow Reformed Baptist, the famous Christian Canadian blogger, Tim Challies has recently relaunched his Christian book reviews website, Discerning Reader. New book reviews will be added every week, and coming soon is Subscription content for those among us who want more than just book reviews.
If you do not know already, Tim is a prolific reader of Christian literature and as such, is also a prolific blogger. Prolific, as in he has now blogged for 1321 consecutive days — that is daily for over 3 and a half years! And his posts are no fluff too. Along with commentary on Christianity and book reviews, Tim is also a commentator on blogging itself — most recently sharing tips for better blog writting.
Furethermore, Tim has spent the last year or so writing a book that will be published by Crossway on January 7, 2008 called “The Discipline of Spiritual Discernment“. As the title testifies, the book is about spiritual discernment–the ability to decide between truth and error, right and wrong. He just received back the first endorsement for his book, from none other than the renowned, Pastor-Teacher of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, Dr. John MacArthur!
If you do not yet frequent Tim Challies blog (www.challies.com) or his Christian book review website (www.discerningreader.com), then I commend these two great web resources to you!
Safari for Windows
Yay! Apple has just released a new version of their browser, Safari 3 Public Beta–all ready to run on Windows 
Audio and MP3s
- Southern Baptist Todd Schaffer of Montreal has a blog called “Faith by Hearing” which collects and categorizes a huge selection of Christian audio.
- Desiring God has released 20 years of Pastors Conference audio on their web site.
- Resolved 2007, theme around Jonathan Edwards, has conference audio available free.
- The ground-breaking book, Pierced for our Transgressions, has some great sermons on penal substitution on its website.
- Josh Harris’ church, Covenant Life Church, has a strong Christ-centered singles ministries called “One” that has relevant sermons on singles issues.
- And New Attitude, the annual conference for singles & young married couples on humble orthodoxy, has a continuously growing free Downloads section of sermons, music, and workshops.
I have so far resisted the temptation named Facebook, but I have joined the glorious Twitter phenomenon! http://twitter.com/sixsteps/
(If you Twitter, add me as your friend! I’ve also added a Twitter badge to my sidebar )
Want my domain?
My goodness! I just got this email, and somebody wants to buy my domain here @ www.sixsteps.org! Unfortunately, it’s not Passion Conferences or Six Steps Records that’s interested in buying my domain, but the 6th largest insurance company in the world who already owns www.six-steps.org. Check out below. What do you guys think I should do?? Should I put my domain up for sale?
Dear Mr Leung
We are an online communication consultancy based in London. The reason for this email is that we act as an advisor to Aviva plc, the sixth largest insurance company in the world.
Aviva has recently launched a not-for-profit web site called Six Steps (www.six-steps.org).
Six-Steps.org is a free, unbiased financial planning web site that helps people understand what they need to know to start planning for their retirement. There is no commercial sales angle, just advice and planning tools.
As a leading pensions provider in the United Kingdom, Aviva wanted to do something to help. However, to help people to find the site Aviva would like to make an offer to buy the URL sixsteps.org that is linked to your site.
We recognise that you have an established site and we would need to compensate you for the changes that would be involved. However, at this stage we would like to know if you would be interested in selling.
Please let us know if this is something you would consider.
To find out more about us or Aviva you can visit www.the-group.net or www.aviva.com.
Kind regards
Adam LetchfordAccount Director - Online Consulting
The Group
PO Box 4387
6-10 Great Portland Street
London, W1A 7SP
www.the-group.net
New Theme
FYI: I finally changed to a new theme & website design! Check it out;-)
(I took a risk & upgraded to WP 2.1.1 without testing! LOL)
