News just in through Darren Rowse. In an interview conducted with Matt Hulett (CEO of Widgetbucks), it was revealed that

"Publishers will be seeing two things, primarily. First, merchants are no longer being charged for clicks from outside the U.S. and Canada on WidgetBucks widgets, and as a result, publishers will no longer receive credit for those clicks."

"The key factor is non-converting clicks from outside of U.S. and Canada, because the reality is that this traffic is dragging down RPC across the board. International users who click-through to a U.S. merchant’s site and highly unlikely to purchase from that merchant for various reasons, such as language barrier or shipping cost."

So, if your readership comprises a majority from Non-North American residents, you can expect a drop in your income pretty soon.

Needless to say, Darren feels that the changes which will take place "sucks!". Though I am not a Widgetbucks publisher, I also feel that it damages the company's credibility to make such sweeping changes midway after all the sweet talking at the launch of the company's programme till this was revealed. As I commented in Darren's blog

"They relied on bloggers around the world to give their business a buzz and got them to sign up with attractive propositions on how much they could earn. Now that they are well known, they decide unilaterally to slash away all non-North American clicks.

I may be over-generalizing but if this is not unfair business practice, I don’t know what is. It speaks much about the credibility of the company, doesn’t it?"

I am in a holiday mood. It's going to be a long holiday weekend and all the more meaningful as my sister will be getting married this Sunday. She will be married in Singapore and we will all be travelling down there beginning with a trip to Johor first this Thursday. It will be the first "overseas" trip for my 2 daughters. In fact, we just got their passport application done recently as well as renewing both mine and my wife's.

The last time we visited Singapore was more than 5 years ago (which was why the passport had expired) and we had a good time shopping there. We bought some cutleries the last time around and this time, we'll see what's on offer. Might want to get a nice plate so that I can have better food presentation for photo taking for my food blog.

Christmas is also around the corner and perhaps we might find some attractive christmas presents in Singapore. As usual, when you get gifts, you gotta make sure you get gifts fairly. Meaning, evenly distributed. Perhaps I will start by checking out for some ideas from shopping.com which has a fair selection of holiday gift ideas. That should help me save some time from browsing around aimlessly with precious time to spare.

Singapore, here I come! Woohoo!

Shopping ideas by Shopping.Com

Frankly, what's new? The Chief Justice, Tun Ahmad Fairuz Sheikh Abdul Halim, retired yesterday having reached his retirement age of 66. With no immediate replacement, the current Court of Appeal President Datuk Abdul Hamid Mohamad was made Acting Chief Justice until such time that a new Chief Justice is formally appointed. With all the publicity surrounding the immediate vacancy of the top judge post in this country, the public could be forgiven to think that this is the only vacancy in the whole judiciary at the moment. How wrong they are.

Ask any lawyer and they will tell you that there are vacancies across the board with some courts having no magistrate or judge for months. Don't believe me? Just take a look at the following Leave Schedule for lower courts in KL displayed on the KL Bar's website as of todate which shows vacancies at the Sessions Criminal No. 9, Sessions Civil No. 3, 5 and 10 and Magistrate Traffic No. 2 courts.

In Melaka, there are 2 High Courts sitting but there is only one Judge available for the past couple of months. Cases get postponed because there is no one available to hear them. Why was there a vacancy in Melaka? Well, the ex-High Court judge was transferred to KL and has since been promoted to a Court of Appeal judge. And yet, there has been no replacement. Litigants are left in the lurch. Due to the increasing number of cases which could not be heard due to the non-availability of a judge, cases are postponed.

In Kuantan, where there are 2 sessions court sitting, one has been designated to hear criminal cases whilst the other, civil cases. I was supposed to handle a trial in Kuantan yesterday but was informed that it would be postponed because my case was filed in the year 2005. The court is currently busy disposing pre-2004 cases. And so, if at all lucky, my case will be heard sometime end of 2008.

So, if you think it is just a problem with filling up the top judge post, you've been hoodwinked. The state of affairs in the judiciary as far as the availability of magistrates and judges to dispose cases is far worse and more urgent as there are hundreds, if not thousands of litigants left waiting.

My hairdresser has been giving feedback to me of late that I seem to be losing my hair a bit. Signs of aging? He said that my hair seems to be thinning. I replied in jest that my little girls at home have been tearing my hair with their antics. But then again, perhaps it has got to do with family genes. My grandfather was bald and most of my family members have thin amount of hair. Anyway, I was prepared for balding. After all, it's part of life, isn't it?

However, it would appear that society treats receding hair line and loss of hair as something serious which warrants intervention, at a cost, of course. In fact, 8TV has been showing a series on Sunday evenings which talk about stuffs like this and how those affected obtained treatment with success. Most of the time, I remain sceptical about the claims of success. There cannot be any magic formula which works for all. But the number of treatments available can be bewildering to the uninformed.

TrustSource.Org is a relatively new site on the net which provides some reviews (actually, only 4) on hairloss products, one of which is provillus. Read it up if you are interested.

I've been toying with the idea of installing internet connection at home. Gasp! Yes, I don't have an internet connection at home. In fact, I don't even have a phone line at home! My mobile phone suits me at the moment as whoever wants to find me can indeed find me when they call my mobile. But as I was saying, I am thinking of getting myself online at home because I have a pc at home and it can get a little frustrating not being able to use it to its full capabilities (read : blogging).

So, I was making some enquiries with Telekom for the installation of a phone line and Streamyx when I came across this 4G wireless broadband introduced by Izzi. It's a new technology introduced in Malaysia and this company was just set up recently. A check on the net shows that the technology employed (IBurst) might not be as good as a fixed line broadband service, if the users' reviews are taken as an indication. These reviews were given by users in Australia and South Africa. Some complained that the downloading speed fluctuates and could be attributed to bandwidth congestion.

Has anyone signed up with Izzi before and if yes, some feedback would be useful here.