Syakhir Jaafar

First, preview of the 3 services:

• LastPass is a Cloud based password manager. The auto login and favorites are awesome. Though for me, the killer function here is the plug-ins for most major browser.
• WordPress.com is a blogging platform (like Blogger, only better). A child of my favorite Automattic. You don’t need to blog there to take advantage of it. You just need an account.
• IntenseDebate is a commenting system. Also a child of Automattic. You don’t need to register for this one. Just use your WordPress account.

The facts:

1. WordPress, Gravatar, IntenseDebate (and some other Automattic services) exchange data among themselves. So your Gravatar’s avatar is used on WordPress and IntenseDebate, vice versa.
2. IntenseDebate recently announce that logged in WordPress users are ‘automattically’^^ logged in on any blogs using IntenseDebate.
3. It’s still a hassle to login to WordPress.
4. With LastPass, you can login to all your favorite services, in one click!

I think you can figure the rest by yourself right now. Plus I’m damn lazy to elaborate anymore.

This is the first week of my initiative to leave facebook, and bring my friends along with it. My plan on how to do this:

1. Find and alternative, preferably without friends registering. Twitter or Buzz. And I chose Buzz!!
2. Promote my choice above on my facebook. “My Google Profile” (see what I did there?)
3. Support XFN on this site. To check, view the source of my blogroll below.
4. Promote those to my friends.
5. Less updates on facebook, more on Buzz. I start by not uploading anymore pics to facebook. Go for Picasa instead

So in the next few weeks, I might share some insight on how this progress. Wish me luck.

These images are taken from from my gravatar.com account. Left to right, latest to oldest.

In life, we face with millions of encounters. From the day we born, how many people did we talked to? The shopkeeper that promote you that brand of shoes? That guy at the burger stall across the road? That girl at the train’s ticket counter? Your boss? Your clients?

We talked to them, we interact with them, we try to understand them, we try to make them understand us.

• “This shoe is nice, but I don’t like this color”,
• “I want 2 meats in my burger… what? Only chickens? Damn”.
• “I wanna go to Low Yat Plaza, would it be better if I switch trains at KL Sentral or Hang Tuah? Oh the one at Hang Tuah is Star LRT?”
• “I can do this in 3 days but I can do much better in 5 days boss”.
• “The price is negotiable but I’m not the one making the decision, my boss is”.

Behind those people, are lives, experiences and memories that we have no idea what. We send messages, data across by words, expressions and physical signs. “I want this”, “No you need that”, “This is good” and “This is not”. We are not created equals. Yet we are equals. Life is colorful as it is and as vibrant as it will ever be.

And then.. there’s the weird encounters. Where both parties understands each other with minimal effort. Where information, data were  sent across by Terabytes/Seconds. Just like talking to a mirror.

Again,

We are not created equals. Yet we are equals*. Life is colorful as it is and as vibrant as it will ever be.

*- this is a paradox

Here’s a table of what I want (or imagine) to have, not to have on 2010:

All in all, the only thing I can conclude out of my self is, I want to be a better man, for me, for my family, for my company, and for my friends. Amen to that.

On another note, I was assisting my friend with his gaming rig build. He emailed me his specs and budget. You know those ads Google shows beside your email? Those are shown based on the content of the email. This ad suggestions is wrong, on so many level.

Happy New Year!