I won't be available online for a few days, or maybe even few weeks from today onwards. So it's only fair to put this site on hiatus.

I'll return to blogging once the internet connection is set up again.

If you need to contact me, do e-mail me at: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Until later!

---

The offer of $31 a share represents a 62 percent premium over Yahoo’s closing stock price of $19.18 on Thursday. It would be Microsoft’s largest acquisition ever.

Microsoft said the combination of the two companies would create efficiencies that would save approximately $1 billion annually. The software giant also said that it had an integration plan to include employees of both companies and intends to offer incentives to retain Yahoo employees.

Steven A. Ballmer, the Microsoft chief executive, said that he called his Yahoo counterpart, Jerry Yang, on Thursday night to tell him that Microsoft intended to bid on the company, and that they had a substantive discussion. “I wouldn’t call it a courtesy call,” he said in an interview.

Mr. Ballmer said he had decided to pursue a takeover because friendly deal negotiations would most likely be protracted and would probably become public.

“These things are hard to keep quiet in the best of times,” he said. He said his conversation with Mr. Yang was constructive, but suggested that a deal may not come easily.

Yahoo said in a news release Friday that its board would evaluate Microsoft’s bid “carefully and promptly in the context of Yahoo’s strategic plans.”

In a letter to Yahoo’s board, Mr. Ballmer wrote that the two companies discussed a possible merger, as well as other ways to work together, in late 2006 and 2007. Mr. Ballmer said that in February 2007, Yahoo decided to end the merger discussions because its board was confident in the company’s “potential upside.”

“A year has gone by, and the competitive situation has not improved,” Mr. Ballmer wrote.

As a result, he said, “while a commercial partnership may have made sense at one time, Microsoft believes that the only alternative now is the combination of Microsoft and Yahoo that we are proposing.”

---

1. ...is patently offensive to the online community, such as content that promotes racism, bigotry, hatred or physical harm of any kind against any group or individual,
2. harasses or advocates harassment of another person,...

---

A method is provided to predict a value for a particular characteristic of a particular user of network-based services. A plurality of other users, other than the particular user, is determined, wherein the particular user has social ties to the plurality of other users.

The predicted value for the particular characteristic of the particular user is monetized, such as by selling advertising to be caused to be displayed to at least the particular user. For example, requested compensation for the advertising is determined based at least in part on the predicted value for the particular characteristic of the particular user.

---

"Screen technology is getting better, not just the high definition displays, but projection that will let us project onto every wall. Your desk, we won't just have the computer on the desk, but in the desk, so a meeting room table as you're collaborating, and the living room if you want to briefing up and play games with something like a Surface, or organize your photos. It will just be there, and easy to manipulate, easy to change and have multiple people connect up."

"The first digital decade was largely driven by the keyboard and the mouse. Just in the last two years we've started to see the emergence of other modes of interaction. Touch on the Windows PC, touch on the iPhone, the Surface device that we're talking about. We started to see speech, - the Tellme capability - built into the phone, the Ford Sync, where you get to talk and interact with your media or your phone capabilities."

"The idea that when you take a photo that it shows up in the place that you'd like it to show up, that would be extremely simple. No longer will users have to bridge between the devices, and they're the ones who have to remember what's where. By having essentially the master of what's going on stored up in the cloud, things like docking up, connecting, searching across devices will be very simple, and the information, of course, can be shared across many users in a very strong way."

---

"In case any of our Advertisers or Publishers were wondering, last night we moved to a new hosting company to offer an even better experience for all our users."

Hi everyone, 
 
I apologize for not notifying anyone earlier. I would have notified all our advertisers and publishers in advance had I had the ability to do so. 
 
Our previous webhost shutdown our account because Nufflets wasing using too much resources from the servers. 
 
Due to that, and plus the fact that many websites around Asia are still using the Nufflets code, this made the Nufflets website inaccessible to everyone, including me. 
 
We were left to only do one action, move as quickly as possible to another webhost. 
 
But this issue till now is still not resolved. Our team had completed a full check on the system at around 4.30pm 9/1/08. Everything was working fine. 
 
Until two hours later, our website and our webhost's site are inaccessible. You will receive timeouts when trying to access Nufflets.com or JaguarPc.com, which is our new webhost. 
 
Very sorry for the incovenience. 
Nabil Feisal 
Nufflets Team

---

Although Wikipedia's influence seems to expand beyond the unseen horizon, they don't seem to be making much money, according to founder Jimmy Wales. But that does not discourage him, for his brilliant mind sees another opportunity to further strengthens Wikipedia's territory. Thus 7th January 2008 will witness the day Wikipedia launches it's very own search engine, Wikia Search. The new search engine will launch with only around 50 to 100 million indexed pages, which will grow in number with time.

Wales' goal  is to get his network of volunteers to decide how search engine results should be ranked instead of letting the computer algorithms do the whole process on auto. It's not hard to detect the sarcasm directed towards Google Inc there. In short, what Wales aims to do is to provide a search engine where no one should be able to manipulate the rank - like Google but without loopholes for rank exploitation.

But we know how evil Google can be when it comes to competition. Just as Wikia Search launches, Google is targetting Wikipedia by announcing Google Knol, a new user-generated encyclopaedia.

Let's keep a close watch on how this will turn out.

---