Asian Tiger

How many of us can really say that we have seen UFOs before? In general, the moment the letters U-F-O are mentioned, we will think of little green beings with long limbs, big heads and bulging black eyes.

Many do not realise that UFOs are really Unidentified Flying Objects which means anything that flies and cannot be identified. It could be a odd-shaped balloon floating in the air or it really could be an intelligent alien being flying in spheres, cylinders and disc shaped crafts.

UFO sightings are nothing new nowadays. Even in our country Malaysia, various UFOs were reported in the past. For example, sightings of a disc shaped UFO right smack in our capital Kuala Lumpur.

But from my personal encounters with close acquaintances, there were sightings of an orange sphere the size of a soccer ball hovering about 12 feet in the air ironically at a soccer field at night. This happened in Sri Gading, a small town just outside of Batu Pahat in the state of Johor. Eye witnesses said that on one particular night they saw an orange sphere hissing and hovering for a moment about 12 feet in the air before fizzing out of sight.

My curiosity got the better of me and I’ve searched around for some possible scientific explanation. My search has led me to phenomenon known as St. Elmo’s Fire and Kugelblitz. I’m not sure which of these phenomenon happened in Sri Gading but it’s great to know that science could prove that these occurrences are not paranormal.

If you are into paranormals and UFOs, do pay a visit to http://www.ufoseek.org/, where a large and updated collection of UFO news can be found.

Tags: Malaysia, UFO, sightings, UFO sightings, paranormal, St. Elmo’s Fire, Kugelblitz

Checking domain names that are still available can be a daunting task for any webmaster especially for those much sought after .com extensions. iWebTool has developed an AJAX tool that I find to be very simple to use and easier on my blood pressure. This tool is used to search the availability of domain names entered into the search text area in real time. Upon keying in the intended domain name, iWebTool will display the availability along with keywords suggestions.

A quick summary about iWebTool’s Instant Domain Check tool: This easy tool will allow you to check the availability of domains instantly. There is no page load, you simply type your domain and the system will automatically query your input.

The real value when using this tool is first and foremost, the keyword suggestion feature that would help us to me more creative in choosing domain names. Secondly is the time saved in checking the availability of domain names. Countless time has been spent to key in specific domain names and submitting the same for checks. With iWebTool’s instant checker, we get it in real time as we type in the domain names, alphabet by alphabet.

Having said that, I would like to point out 2 main drawbacks that I’ve noticed when using this tool:

1. There are only 4 types of extension (com, net, info and co.uk) that can be selected for checking
2. The tool is only able to check only 2 extensions at any one time.

A user-friendly and idiot-proof domain name checker, the iWebTool’s Instant Domain Check tool can be accessed here: http://www.iwebtool.com/instant/

Webmasters, in a bid to further enhance the asthetics of their sites (particularly those involving directories), have mostly relied on Alexa’s site thumbnails. For newer sites that do not make it into Alexa’s thumbnails, a “Not Available” image placeholder is displayed.

For this purpose, I use a tool called WebShots by Velocity, that is capable of capturing a screenshot of sites in 3 different resolutions; 800 x 600, 1024 x 768 and 1152 x 864. Inset, you see a thumbnail of www.amoswong.com which I captured using this tool. Besides the resolution options, you can also determine the image quality and scale percentage that you desire. The best part is that the website screenshot is real time unlike Alexa’s.

The image above is an example of what I captured when I used WebShots on MSN.com (800×600, 60% quality and 50% scale percentage). Have a go at WebShots and I hope this tool will prove useful to you.

Tags: screenshot, thumbnails, website thumbnails, webshots, velocity, screen capture