UPDATE 8 April 2009
Check out the all new P1 WiMAX USB Modem. It’s so small and sexy you will want to bring it with you all the time… and flash it when you see some hot chicks around.

Click here to read more.

Looks like many of you are interested to know what are the big broadband providers in Malaysia, or at least those who are happening and actively promoting their broadband services. Easy, they were in the recent PC Fair. I have not only seen them, I have took a few pictures too. Check these pictures out.

Streamyx. Although Streamyx is still the market leader in Malaysia, at least in terms of number of subscribers, but they are still very active in promoting their services. Remember the “Merdeka RM77″ promotion? I think they are scared the other players are catching up.

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I have just got back from the year end edition of PIKOM PC Fair 2007. Held at the KL Convention Center, next to KLCC. The venue is good as it’s big and new, definitely much better than the old PWTC. But the traffic was damn heavy this afternoon, for a moment I thought some street demonstration was ahead of me! Freak me out as I was wearing orange today! Totally forgot that orange is a sensitive color these days!

Anyway, after some bumper to bumper delay on the road, I finally reached PC Fair in one piece.

The crowd was hugh as expected. People from all walks of life from around the country flocked to this most talked about IT fair of the year. I pushed my way through the crowd, … and was happily greeted by the above Christmas girls from Ricoh. Haha… not bad, very Christmas feel. Red and with the Santa hat! Looks like a good PC Fair start.

A few big players such as Twinhead, Ricoh, Samsung, Epson and Olympus were in the first hall. The Ricoh girls were … ah, but wait till you see the Epson girl.

There, a very friendly and helpful girl from Epson. She was obviously bored standing there for the whole day distributing brochures. When I asked her for a photo, she agreed almost instantaneously and gave her best and sweetest smile for my camera. She was like the girl from next door, little or no makeup at all, young and innocent look. I was delighted.

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I do not usually use webmail to read and manage my emails. I prefer using Microsoft Outlook, all my various email accounts from the various providers are all configured in my Outlook… this includes those from Gmail, Yahoo and my own hosted domains. Remember, Gmail has recently opened its IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) feature? This allows you to use Outlook or any email client on multiple computer… I guess.

Anyway, today I was a little itchy and tried poking around the webmail system that comes with my web hosting account. We are using SmarterMail Professional. All the features are pretty basic… but what interests me is the RSS Feed reader function.

Click on the above image for a bigger view.

Looks like these days RSS Feed reader is so popular it can be found anywhere, even in a webmail system.

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There is nothing worse than cannot login to your own WordPress blog… By login I mean logging into the wp-admin control panel where you can manage your posts. You have so many interesting articles you want to post, but all of a sudden your own blog denies your entry! How can, you are the Admin, the boss of the blog, remember??? As much frustrated as it can be, that’s exactly what happened to me today!

The error message was:

Error 403

We’re sorry, but we could not fulfill your request for /wp-login.php on this server.

Your Internet Protocol address is listed on a blacklist of addresses involved in malicious or illegal activity. See the listing below for more details on specific blacklists and removal procedures.

Your technical support key is: 3c31-b82c-1288-62ac

You can use this key to fix this problem yourself.

After Googling it only I know the culprit was Bad Behavior – a very popular WordPress plugin which prevents spambots from accessing your blog by analyzing their actual HTTP requests and comparing them to profiles from known spambots.

As detailed in the Bad Behavior site, since the past two days many users have found themselves blocked from their own blogs while using recent versions of Bad Behavior. A third party blacklist which the plugin queries recently began sending false positives for any IP address queried. To fix this problem, you will need to download the latest Bad Behavior 2.0.11.

That has fixed my problem and headache, and should fix yours too. No need panadol when we come to blogging.

If you found yourself suddenly couldn’t send out emails from Outlook or any of your email clients today, don’t panic. Thanks to Tmnet for blocking port 25 for all out going emails.

What is ridiculous is Tmnet did this without any prior notice. I receive no notification from them other than lots of junk mails although I have been using Tmnet dial-up and Streamyx for so many years… My friend however did receive an email notification from them today. Yes, he received it today only when the block is in effect! If my friend didn’t forward the email he received from Tmnet, I would for sure have called up my web hosting company and started an argument. Lucky I didn’t do that and lucky my friend forwarded the notice from Tmnet to me!

Following is an excerpt from the email:

… many anti-spam organizations have blacklisted a large number of IP addresses from TM’s network. Due to this many customers have been unable to send emails from their mail server to companies who might be using database from the abovementioned anti-spam organizations.

These spamming activities by a small group have affected a large number of our customers, regardless of the nature of their Internet usage.

Therefore, TM is taking immediate action to address this issue. Effective 3 December 2007, TM will block OUTBOUND Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) traffic or port 25 for all out going e-mails from dynamic IP addresses. Only Outbound SMTP traffic from smtp.streamyx.com and smtp.tm.net.my will be allowed. …

With this implementation, we will not be able to send out emails if our dynamic IP address falls within the affected IP address range. We are thus forced to use Tmnet’s open relay server, at least until our web hosting provider configures an alternative SMTP port.

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