Webmasters normally need to display a lot of images on their webpages. One method to use so that the image is uploaded and displayed faster is to use thumbnail of the original images.

The thumbnails that are hyperlinked to the original images are displayed first. This shouldnt take very long with thumbnails. When a thumbnail image is clicked, the actual and bigger image is then displayed in the browser window.

One such software that can help webmaster to convert normal images to thumbnails is Easy Thumbnails, created by Fookes Software. The beauty of this small software utility is that it is offered completely free.

Checkout the sample that I created. Click the thumbnail to see the actual image. If you would like to download the software, please click here.

Key Features
Can scale images up or down with high quality results.
Choice of eleven resampling filters, including Lanczos3.
Can sharpen soft images, particularly those from digital cameras.
Shows a real-time preview of the target image and its file size.
Preserves EXIF data in JPEG images larger than 300×300 pixels.
Automatically removes EXIF data from small thumbnails.
Supports JPEG 2000.
Supports lossless rotation of JPEG images.
Offers an extensive set of command-line switches.
Can create Web pages of image sets, based on customizable templates.
Free software producing quality results.

Supported Image Formats
JPEG (*.jpg;*.jpeg;*.jpe;*.jps)
JPEG 2000 (*.jpc;*.j2k;*.jp2)
Portable Bitmap (*.pbm; *.pgm; *.ppm)
Portable Network Graphics (*.png)
Tagged Image File Format (*.tif;*.tiff;*.fax)
Truevision Targa (*.tga;*.targa;*.vda;*.vst)
Windows Enhanced Meta File (*.emf)
Windows Icon File (*.ico)
Windows Meta File (*.wmf)
Windows or OS/2 Bitmap (*.bmp;*.dib;*.rle)
Wireless Bitmap images (*.wbmp)
Zsoft PC Paintbrush (*.pcx)

Which software tool you use to convert your images to thumbnails?

As I said, my Victorian HSC result was not one that I would be proud of and would be telling everyone about. Nevertheless, it was enough to get me enrolled to Bendigo College of Advanced Education (BCAE), now known as Latrobe University Bendigo Campus. I was offered a common year Bachelor of Engineering program which I gladly accepted. Depending on how I would progress, I could decide on my major in the second year. Remember my original intention was to study Civil Engineering? Well, the day I received the offer letter from BCAE must be my lucky day, so I thought.

For your information, Bendigo is about 200 kms away from Melbourne. She was very much a country town, very well known for the gold rush era, but I believe she must have been progressing very well in transforming herself to a more modern and vibrant city. Check her out at Bendigo Tourism website.

I still remember very clearly when I arrived in Bendigo by train for the very first time. I could not understand what the taxi driver was talking about…the slang was sooo different from the Melbourne folks…or was it just my imagination and perception?

Despite the fact that Bendigo was just a small country town, the years I had spent in Bendigo were more colourful than the year I had spent in Melbourne…I will touch more on this in my other postings later.

So I finally settled down in Bendigo with quite a few of my friends, most of us were studying Engineering with some guys and gals in the Computer Science, Geology and Accounting streams.

Did you study in Bendigo or any part of Australia? Share with us your experience.

I have known about blogging for a long time but have never had the ‘wanting’ feeling to start and own a blog. I have been reading how blog can be different thing to different person…some blogging for just fun, some treat blogging as another channel to release and express whatever feeling inside them, and there is a growing trend blogging for money…I am probably all of them even though the latter is not yet a reality but that is the least of my concern now which explains why I hardly talk about it…yet.

In my research about blogging, I have come across a few popular names (at least from my perspective) in the blogging world. LiewCF (LiewCF.com), Darren Rowse (ProBlogger.net), Irfan Khairi (IrfanKhairi.com), Alang (Blog Webmaster Malaysia), Wendy Piersall (eMoms at Home), Sabri dan Curixs (SaifulHisham.com) just to name a few.

I am beginning to enjoy blogging and have spent every available moment doing more research about blogging and reading more and more blogs from all walks of life. I already have a few ideas to further my blogging interest, the details of wich will be anounced in this blog in the very near future.

Do you have a blog? Share with us about your blog so that more people will know about you. Cheers..

I found out Amazon and Google Ads can co-exist in one page provided Amazon ads are not set as content-based ads. This is because Google IS content-based ads and it has made it very clear that Google has exclusive right to deliver content-based ads on its members website.
So I will be working on this soon to incorporate Amazon ads on my website.

On top of that, I just signed up with PayPal for a Personal Account. PayPal account allows anyone to send and receive money to and from anyone from 55 countries. This would be helpful in the future for handling internet-based monetary transactions I may have with anyone from overseas.

In the mean time I am still working on promoting my ‘CJCM and IT’ blog and ArticlePortfolio.com directory to the internet masses. Good luck to me…

I did get the reply from Amazon yesterday. They approved my application for the affiliate program. Now I can access Amazon Associates webpage and start putting Amazon ads on my sites. Actually I already did that yesterday, but something strike me in my head. Are we allowed to have Amazon and Adsense Ads in one page?

Amazon did not mention anything about this…if you are Amazon affiliate and have read otherwise about this somewhere or have anyknowledge about it, I appreciate if you would share with me here.

I went to Adsense website and read their terms of services. It specifically mentioned that other content-based ads cant be displayed next to Adsense if it creates confusion to visitors…do I understand this correctly?

Which brings up another question..are Amazon ads considered content-based ads? Any help out there? Anyone of you affliates to both Amazon and Google Adsense? Do share with us your experience.

In the mean time, I have decided not to feature Amazon ads yet until I find out more on this. Looks like some emails to Amazon and Google will be required.

I am in the midst of customizing my blog to incorporate some links to show Googel Adsense contents. You should be able to see some of the results here already here. This is not going to be final yet as I stilll explore the templates and may include some other customized codes in the future.

All in all, working on the Wordpress templates is not difficult at all. After a while of browsing the templates, you get the idea of where you should change to incorporate new enhancements.

I have also joined Amazon affiliate program already but that part will have to wait for a go-ahead from Amazon after they have reviewed my site. I hope there would be no problem getting their approval for my application.

Actually, it is quite time consuming having launched two sites, ArticlesPortfolio.com and ‘CJCM and IT’, at almost the same time. Both require some degree customizations and a lot of setting up at the beginning.

In the meantime, my article directory started to get registrations from authors and at this moment, I already have more than 10 registered authors…not bad for a start. One author already submitted an article so I have additional one on top of mine…:)

I look forward to receive more articles from Article Marketer through automated posting, which should happen sometime next week, because I have setup the script on my site and successfully tested it.

During the migration of my blog from Blogger.com to WordPress (installed on my domain), I have decided to change my blog name to CJCM and IT. This is to reflect my own identity within all of my blog entries and articles submitted to article directories. I also want to start ’selling’ CJCM as my own ‘trademark’ in the world wide web…if you know what I mean.

This morning I was working on new script from Article Marketer. I installed the script so that new articles from Article Marketer can be submitted automatically and directly to my article directory. The script was easy to install and works well during the testing. I am waiting for the first batch of new articles from Article Marketer to arrive into my approval queue. I have setup my account to receive only one article per author per day to see so that I dont have to spend that much time approving stacks of articles submitted to my directory. Eventually I will have to look for  new script to allow for mass approval to automate the task. Dont forget to regularly visit my article directory site at Articles Portfolio.

Have a nice weekend.

Since I have created Articlesportfolio.com, I have been quite occupied researching for more information on promoting the article directory and my other website including this blog site. Upon further reading, I realized the benefit of having my blog on my own site. After careful consideration, I decided not to spend additional money on new hosting account, but instead I decided to make use of my existing hosting account that I already have for ArticlesPortfolio.com. With this new development, this blog posting would my last posting on this site. My blog will be moved to a new site at the following address http://www.articlesportfolio.com/blogcjcm/.

For the new blog site, I have made some research as well and decided on the WordPress due to its popularity. Installing the WordPress was a breeze. It also provides a feature to import my existing postings from my old blog site. So its not bad after all, I can still have old postings in my new blog. I managed to download a new theme as well but that was just to test the installation of new theme feature. I will make some time to search the web for theme in the near future.

There is so much to do and so much to write, I will see you again in my new blog site….thank you to www.blogger.com for hosting my blog thus far…..sayonara www.cjcm.blogspot.com, welcome to http://www.articlesportfolio/blogcjcm/.

I have been busy for the last few days….with what? To cut the story short, I just got involved with article directory on the internet.

So today I will break the journey from the past and travel right back into realtime….but I dont have to set the time mcahine like the one used by Michael J Fox in his Back to the Future movie which I had watched tens of times….really I am serious about it.

What is article directory? It’s a website where you publish all the articles submitted by online writers, all for free. Search the Google for ‘article directory’ and you will see what I mean.

In the mean time, the past few days were spent on researching more about article directory. The interest was developed when I was visiting a local internet marketeer (http://www.szab.net/blog/), whose article directory website is one of the websites he owns.

After so much research and getting all excited with all the hypes about article directory, I downloaded two article directory content management system ArticleMS (http://articlems.com) and Article Dashboard (http://articledashboard.com) . The whole weekend was spent to install the system onto my existing webhosting subdomain (http://www.desaminium.com) . In the end, I opted for Article Dashboard for simple reason that it has more features than ArticleMS.

So, finally I have my own new article directory website, please feel free to visit me at (http://www.articlesportfolio.com) . I will talk more about this later to share with you the progress of my new article directory.

The year was 1982. I had taken my SPM examination by end of that year (SPM or MCE in English is short form for Malaysian Certificate of Education, a Form 5 major examination in Malaysian education system). Early 1983 the result was out and I scored Grade 1 with just a pass in English….but that was enough for me to get an offer for scholarship by the Public Service Department (PSD) of Malaysian Government, to study overseas. Victoria, Australia was my destination.

Prior to departing for Australia I had to undergo a compulsory 6-month English course at Mara Institute of Technology (ITM, now known as UiTM after upgraded as university). I was interviewed by the PSD officials to determine my course of study in Australia. Needless to say, I proudly told the interviewer that I enjoy working outdoor and aspired to become a Civil Engineer. However due to my not-so-good results in Additional Mathematics, this was discounted by the interviewers so there goes my dream to become a Civil Engineer.

They must be the kind of ‘hey i know whats best for you ‘ - persons, that they had earmarked me for a study in…guess what….Real Estate Management. Well….not bad idea after all…I still get to work outdoor occasionally….so it still fulfilled that criteria…what a great way to send a poor student overseas and earmarked him for a course that didnt even crossed his mind….ever. When I told my late Dad about it…he was nevertheless excited..thinking of his eldest son becoming the great real estate king like Rahim…of Rahim & Co….one of Malaysia’s success story in real estate. Ha…ha…ha

So 6 months at the ITM went really fast. We started with free-style dressing ala university but eventually ended up with school children style of dressing due to a lot of students flunking their weekly tests in TOEFL and Australian Government English Test (AGET)….so the lecturers decided that punishing the students like that could provide them with some insentives to study harder and pass the exams eventually.

To cut the long story short, I completed the intensive course, speaking literally very little English despite the 6 months stints…passed the AGET exam and finally set my foot in Melbourne in 1984. Australia…here I come.

On the other side of this story…we found out two students actually didnt make it to Australia because of AGET failure…but they were sent to USA instead….so a lot of us screaming….had we known that…we would have flunked the AGET tests with flying colours…what a wish.