Even though you’ve got the social network icons on the menu bar, underneath every post and your email plastered all over the website. Sometimes it’s worth it to have a contact form for visitors to contact you via the webpage. This means they don’t have to login into facebook/twitter or their email to contact you. There are advantages of course, if someone stumbled across your page from an airport computer, they’re less likely to logon to anything there but they’d be more than willing to send you an email via your contact form. Personally I receive a lot more messages from people via the contact form then on any social media. The old way still lives :)

As you probably know by now, I host my blog on NearlyFreeSpeech.net, they are easily the best host out there, why?

They AREEEE CHEEEEAP!!

Hey there, if you’re hoping to reach Keith you’ve come to the right place.

The best way to reach me is via email keith[at]keithrozario.com (replace the [at] with @).

I do not accept ‘sponsored post’ or any other external marketing material to be posted on the site. Please don’t send me these.

If you’re really paranoid, here’s my PGP key if you wish to send me an encrypted email. All e-mail should be sent to keith[at]keithRozario.com.

Ever wonder what that funny looking Barcode thing on newspaper ads and beer cans is? Well it’s called a QR code and it’s a fad that catching on. Just like a barcode that encapsulates information into lines of varying size–remember that thing cashiers scan at the checkout aisle? A QR code is exactly like a bar-code but in 2 Dimensions rather than just 1.

A QR code encapsulates information into a digital block of black and white squares. However, unlike barcodes that are single dimension across one line, a QR code is 2-dimensional across both length and height. That extra dimension however, allows it to store FAR more data than a regular barcode. This extra dimension is why some call a 2D-barcode.

QR codes act like barcodes, but instead of storing numbers that need to be deciphered, QR codes store actual information in text form. So for instance the bar code for a bottle of Orange Juice would be deciphered as 11232323 , and then the supermarkets computer would tie that number to the price and description of the Orange Juice. From my previous knowledge of working with these things, I believe their called SKUs.

The QR code for the bottle would be deciphered as, Sunkist Orange Juice 5L: made in America. With all that information in text form, rather than just a number to be looked-up.

The one thing I hated in Composito (my wordpress theme) was the ugly looking comment box. Thankfully however, I found this great plugin called Disqus.

So with the latest that the Malaysian government hopes to spend upwards of USD15 million to give every single Malaysian above 18 years of age an email address, I just noticed I have no email address @keithrozario.com

Unfortunately, Nearlyfreespeech.net (my web host) does not provide a email like other webhost do. If you’ve got your website hosted on goDaddy, Dreamhost or bluehost, you’ll have in built email functionality. If you’re with Nearlyfreespeech, you’re on your own (which is why they’re cheap).

That being said, Google also offers free email service for your own domain and it’s much better than whatever offered by GoDaddy or Dramhost. So no matter where you host your domain, I advise you use Google Apps to host your email. Here’s a quick and dirty tutorial on how to setup your Email on Google apps, and have Google host your domains email for FREE!!

According to the LinkedIn blog, LinkedIn that ever popular ‘professional’ facebook like thingy now has more members than the population of Australia, Malaysia, Singapore combined. LinkedIn has grown to a more niche social network that proves Facebook isn’t the only kid on the block, and niche networks like LinkedIn do have a future, for instance we’re more likely to search for a job/talent via LinkedIn than via facebook, and for the most part it’s probably better to keep our social (facebook) and professional (linkedIn) lives separate.

One of the reasons I starte

d this blog was to try out new things and see if I could land a job with an impressive website. I love my current job, but it’s a bit unstable, so I’d thought it’ll be wise to remain marketable. It’s one thing to tell people I’m a Business Analyst with strong technical skills, and a whole other thing to display a full blown webpage with yourname.com.

So I searched the web for resume templates, my initial idea was to have 2 wordpress themes. One for the main blog, another for the resume. However, I discovered it’ll be a whole lot easier to just find a CSS/HTML template and copy that to a separate location and link it from my blog.

Analytics are those little bits of code that allow you to track vital statistics of your blog. Things like:

1. How many people visited my blog
2. Where did they visit from
3. Which country are they from
4. How long did they read my blog
5. What’s my most viewed post?

You can always tell the difference between a ‘standard’ blog that’s hosted off blogger or wordpress and one that looks professional. Obviously the first thing that comes to mind is the themes. If you’ve got a theme at least your blog would look a bit different, if you’ve got a premium theme (one that you bought for either 20-100 dollars), then chances are none of your visitors have seen the theme before and your blog would look a whole lot more individualistic.

I gave myself a 100 dollar budget for this blog and currently I’ve got 80 more dollars to spare. That’s not bad, considering I spent 20% of the budget and already have a good looking blog. Even though the budget permitted, I’d thought I’d save a bit of cash on the theme and just get a free one. There are some others things you can do to make your blog look a bit more professional though: