You will get shock if I tell you how long until my first payment from Google Adsense. I have actually placed Google Adsense in my blog for more than one year and only now I reached the payout target. I am quite happy about it, although it’s not a big money, but it’s gaining from time to time and it helps me to cover my web hosting fee.

Payment has been easy now as I can receive payment via Western Union service in cash instead of in a cheque. Cheque (check) usually takes 2 weeks to send from the States to Malaysia and bank will charge you some percent for foreign cheque bank in.

But with Western Union, I get the exact amount, according to the exchange rate from USD to MYR in cash and coins. The exchange rate that I got on that day as of 29/10/08 was 3.53MYR to 1USD.

Receiving your payment is easy.

1. Wait for your Payment Details to show up after you reach the payment target.
2. Write down the Money Transfer Control Number (MTCN), payment amount and Google’s address. I would print that page out makes your job a lot easier.
3. Bring a photocopy of your IC. (CIMB Bank did photocopy for me)
4. Visit any bank with Western Union logo on it.
5. Ask for the Yellow Form (for receiving money) and fill it in.
6. Go to the counter, wait for your cash. =)

You will be asked what is source of the cash. You can said it’s “payment from Internet advertising”.

What I am gonna do with the cash? Save it up, I am gonna get a new phone soon.

Search for a Western Union Agent location.

It’s the fact that Astro is still far away from the current television technology. DirectTV in United States which uses satellite signal has already provide high def content but not Astro in Malaysia.

Anyway, let’s wait and see when will Astro jump in to high definition. So sad that TVB drama shows in Hong Kong is actually high def but when it comes to Malaysia on Astro On Demand channel, it turns into standard definition.

Sometimes, you may notice 2 black bar when watching some show on Astro On Demand channel, (chn 901-950). It’s actually a widescreen show and originally shown as 16:9 in high definition in Hong Kong, but it turns into a letterbox standard definition in Malaysia.

I am a fan of high definition and widescreen pictures. So I don’t really mind changing the setup when I saw there’s a letterbox on the television screen. Just pick up your remote control and press the zoom key or picture size to zoom in to remove the letterbox.

The what you see is in widescreen but a little bit lousy quality because of low resolution.

Fellows in the United States have already get their hands on the T-Mobile G1 or also known as HTC Dream. Somehow, I can’t find HTC Dream on HTC’s website instead G1 is what I got. Selling for $199 (with subscribtion plan) which I’ll say not expensive and the data plan from T-mobile is seems to be more worthful than the iPhone 3G plan from AT&T.

What’s so great about this phone is it runs on Android, the open-source OS by Google. Focusing on apps on the mobile, especially web apps. I am a person that adore the Internet a lot and G1 is a must for me. Unfortunately, it’s not available in Asia.

It’s an iPhone rival. People do actually queue up long for the G1 and there’s a launch party for the G1 too.

The nice part of the phone is it’s side sliding QWERTY keypad and the touchscreen. I like QWERTY and I like touchscreen too. QWERTY is very good for texting and sending emails and touchscreen is for navigating web page and perhaps almost everything.

There’s a iPhone Apps Store like software in G1 and that is the Android Marketplace where you can find a lot of software and application to be installed on the phone. Mobile applications are the popular one right now, the fame of iPhone is because of Apps (besides it’s design and Steve Jobs). In Marketplace, there’s paid and free application.

Camera (3.2Megapixels) is available on the back but the front facing camera is lacking which made the G1 not perfect. I believe not much people uses 3G video call and that’s why no camera for video calls.

“The wait is over.” is what T-mobile is trying to tell everyone. It’s up in store in the States, you can get one now. Europes will get theirs by next week.

Will G1 hits Asia or perhaps other continent like Australia or Africa where there’s no T-Mobile?

I like phones, I like high end phones, I like stylish phones but the problem I don’t have the money to get one for myself. I spend my savings, little earnings on gadgets like iPods, camera accessories, hardware upgrade and others which made cell phones not so neccessary to me.

My first phone was Nokia 3120, got stolen and after that I bought no cell phones. Brother gave it to me, as if it’s a second hand phone to me. Currently using a Samsung D500C and the Nokia 1680 Classic.

At current moment, a new cellphone is in the top of my shopping/wish list. =)

Let’s talk about the Nokia 1680 Classic which I just got it recently. Maxis, one of the telco in Malaysia gave it for free for subscribing to their postpaid plans. In fact, T-Mobile offers it for free too in the United States. Since it’s free, I’ll just use it, nothing lose on me. I need a second phone for texting, I text a lot, my previous Nokia 3100 went dead with no signal bar.

Nokia 1680 Classic is quite a new phone though the specification and function is definitely not interesting. Though one cool thing is, it’s the cheapest Nokia camera phone (VGA/0.3Megapixels). Design is sleek but hands on is very plastic, due to cheap built quality.

Nothing much I can do with the phone, I just use it for texting and some Twitter updates and Gmail checking. It lacks Bluetooth or Infrared for data transfer, so you can hardly transfer music, ringtone or photos to and out of the phone except using GPRS.

It might not be fast, lag sometimes while loading the message inbox. I’m using 1.6MB on Messaging as I have about 1.6k messages in my inbox. I am not gonna delete it. Haha. It’s about 7.6MB of on board memory, no memory card expansion, it’s for your pictures, contact and message.

Don’t expect much, this is a cheap, very low price, in fact free (by subscribtion) candybar camera phone by Nokia for those who want a temporarily phone.

Check out the package, it’s has a relatively small box with a small phone, a charger and a small manual. That’s all.

People from the Makezine is very good at doing DIY things. After checking out the video, I have made myself a DIY iPod stand too, but without that much of paperclips.

Check out the tutorial video. 10 minutes of it speaks a lot and within minutes, you can complete yours too.

My dock :

Here is my very own DIY iPod stand, I uses one big and one small paperclip. In order to stick it still on the desk, I uses some plasticine to stick it. It’s never move, even a bit. I have 2 iPods, unfortunately, I only have one iTouch USB cable, the other one is different.

I was reading the newspaper and then an advertisement caught my eyes. It’s a T-Mobile Sidekick liked phone but doesn’t twist around for the QWERTY keyboard instead it’s a slider that slide sideway to review a QWERTY keypad.

It’s the LG KS360 and the price is quite interesting as it’s selling for RM699 (as stated on the advertorial).

This is probably aimed at heavy text messaging user like me but then mobile phone users in Malaysia are noobs, they don’t really like QWERTY keypad because most of them are used to T9 English and they are not familiar with the QWERTY keyboard layout. It also has a iPhone messaging liked UI which link up all the message into speech bubble thread which makes it look like chatting on IM.

Touch screen and the QWERTY keypad are the main attractive points of the phone and of course the price. It has a 2MP camera (without LED flash), microSD card slot (can be expanded until 4GB memory), 16MB built-in memory, media player and other usual things. Unfortunately, it doesn’t has a front-faced camera or 3G connection and a 3.5mm line out jack for playing music. It will be almost great if it does.

AP LG phones are quite hard to find, in fact not much people knows about this LG KS360 yet. Hopefully I can see one soon in store.

Pros:

• QWERTY keypad
• 2.4″ Touchscreen
• Sleek design
• Interesting price
• Expandable memory via microSD and hotswap

Cons:

• No 3G
• Camera without LED Flash
• No WIFI
• Lousy web browser (can be fixed with Opera Mini)
• No 3.5mm headphone output jack

Comes in a few colours too. I’ll picked the silver keypad one. =)