I’ve started a series on how to create a blog aggregator using WordPress at Blogging Fu (I finally got around to doing my first post, whoopee!). As the self-appointed administrator to the first Sabah blog aggregator Giuk.net (OK, not really self-appointed but I got the approval from its domain owner, mrBadak, to be one), one of my responsibilities is to verify each and every application that got through the registration form.

I verify the following manually before adding it to the blog aggregator:

1. A working blog feed: I don’t really care whether it’s a full or summary feed, as long as it’s a legible and well-formatted feed according to the popular standards such as ATOM and RSS.
2. A link back to Giuk.net using the exact HTML codes and keyword link.
3. Some form of content that could indicate to me that the blog owner is definitely a Sabahan.

Matter #3 above drives me crazy. I do a lot of blind-guessing on this one, because:

1. The blog owner may blatantly declare that (s)he is a Sabahan, which I can accept at face value, regardless of the fact that it may be a big, fat lie; or,
2. The blog contains posts with that certain Sabahan flair (e.g. dialect, Sabahan slangs, expressions of the word bah strewn about), which would also convince me, although that can be easily faked; or,
3. The blog owner is someone whom I’ve personally met or know, which rarely happens and is my safest bet in ensuring (s)he qualifies for the aggregator (and which, BTW, would be a good reason for you to turn up for the upcoming Sabah Bloggers Gathering this Hallow’s Eve).

Help me, peoples! What would be a good way to verify that the blog owner claims who (s)he claims (s)he is? Gimme your bright ideas, I beg of you!

I pwnd WebGrrrl yet again, this time in Facebook. Where it used to be a long unintelligeable URL is now just http://facebook.com/webgrrrl. Facebook officially rolled out this option around the middle of this month which enables you select a profile name (sort of a user ID if you will) that you can use to invite others.

If you have a Facebook account and very often go under a pseudonym, you need to heavily consider registering that nickname to avoid other people from misleading and disguising themselves as you.

No idea how to go about personalizing your Facebook profile address? Easy. Just go to http://facebook.com/username, get logged in, and type in the user ID you desire. Hopefully your chosen ID hasn’t been taken by anyone else.

This short post is a heads-up to mrBadak’s announcement on his blog concerning the logo competition. Please hop over to his blog for more details.

We currently do not have any prize in mind, other than a permalink from giuk.net to your site. Do you? Add your comment here or at mrBadak’s site, and we’ll see what we can do.

I just realized I didn’t have a post for June 7! I did schedule an article for that day, but I forgot to publish it, having it still set on Draft mode. The silly thing was, I was working on two posts to show up, one in this blog and the other is my maiden post up at Blogging Fu, and even that was still set as a draft!

And both were suppose to be such cool posts

I’ll reschedule them to another future date. In the mean time, I’ll also cheat a bit and schedule one newer article to appear as the June 7 post, so that I won’t feel too bad about missing that one day.

Sheesh.

It all started when I noticed that PayPal tried to deduct my monthly subscription to Keyword Academy multiple times, whereby two of the transactions got through. So I e-mailed Mark & Court using the e-mail address stated in the PayPal details.

Their response was pretty fast, i.e. within the same day I sent my query. The last e-mail I received from either of them is this:

Trusting that action was to be taken, I waited. Since then, I had not logged into the Keyword Academy members site, being busy and all.

So I was surprised when PayPal sent me an auto-notification saying that my subscription was cancelled due to insufficient funds (boy, was I glad I was using a debit card!). This meant that not only was PayPal still trying to deduct my balance, but Mark and Court didn’t actually look into solving my problem.

Now, I realize that the deduction were PayPal’s error in the first place. But even after a week since my request for refund of one of my payments, there was none coming from either of the guys at Keyword Academy.

I waited still. I finally received an e-mail from them.

Too bad it was an autoresponder! Nothing about the subscription problem was mentioned. I replied to that e-mail, and sent a couple more over the next few days.

By the way, before any of you cry “scam” over this, let me be frank with you and say that nothing about this program is a scam — they’re very legit and give good information about how to build your site right to make money. However, their response so far leaves little to be desired.

What the heck is going on, people (and in people I mean Court and Mark specifically)? Did my e-mail fell into your Spam folder? How long does it take to refund a measly $33? Reply already!

Is my frustration obvious enough for ya?