There is no Maxis / Hotlink cellphone service in Kota Kinabalu. And there’s also no information on the outage it either.

Woke up this morning around 8am with no reception on my phone. No bars. Not one.

It’s not unusual for my phone to show no bars.  My phone has taken many impressive tumbles from my hands and well, now strange things sometimes happen.  It has also, on occasion, happened that my entire neighbourhood has lost coverage, so I wasn’t too hassled by it.

But by the time I left my neighbourhood and had switched my phone on and off several times (even opening the back to remove the battery and the SIM card to blow on it - hey, sometimes it does work), there was still no reception.  I happened to be in the Karamunsing Shopping Centre and popped into the Maxis Service Kiosk to ask for assistance.

“The entire system has a problem”, offered the attendant even before I could finish my sad tale of a possibly borken phone. “All our phones are down too”, he said as he pointed as his colleagues.

At lunch time, with still no reception, I went online to maxis.com.my, with a futile hope that there would be some sort of message, a public announcement, an apology or even just a clue acknowledging a problem and setting a time-line for rectifying it.

But no such luck.

I phoned the Maxis helpline to get some info, but quickly realised that every other Maxis subscriber might be doing exactly the same thing.  The line was engaged and I gave up.

We are often kept on our toes and every so often reminded what life was like before modern conveniences such as running water, electricity, internet connetions and yes, now even cellphone reception.

I wonder how long this survival training a.k.a. Maxis service interruption will last.

Update 30 June, 17:14: Brenda gave me a headsup about an update on Maxis’ website, but it simply confirms what thousands of subsribers knew already and they (Maxis) elegantly understates it by saying “… subscribers in Sabah have been experiencing some problems in making and receiving calls and SMS since early this morning…“.

I have been experiencing some difficulty making and receiving phone calls and SMSs, I’ve not had a connection, at all.  I wonder why it took them so long to put  message on their website - were they too busy answering the Complaint Line?

They also say they’re working on the problem and will restore service as soon as possible.  I would hope so.

But, I can’t help but wonder how many subscribers will switch providers before they get it going again.  And I think if they couldn’t fix the problem within hours of it happening, it’s a rather big deal.  If, according to Brenda, the outage has been since at least 2am, then we’re already looking at 15 hours of down time - wow, that’s a lot of revenue.

Somebody’s going to have a lot to explain.

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There are many conspiracy theories in this world. Loose Change is likely not one of them.

I had a conversation with a friend last night and inevitably high fuel prices came up.  We had a bit of mass hysteria here in Kota Kinabalu on Tuesday as a rumour spread that the petrol stations would be closed for 3 days due to some or other strike.

There were some talks of unhappiness about petrol commissions and losing out due to credit card payments, but no firm plans to strike (which is apparently illegal anyway for petrol kiosks, a seller of controlled items).

Nevertheless, the rumours spread like wildfire and by 3pm on Tuesday the roads started jamming up as people rushed to fill their cars.  KKliens, whenever there’s more than 2 people participating, seems to throw all rules, traffic and otherwise, out the window and quickly petrol stations were jammed from all sides as people pushed and shoved and tried to cut their way to the front.

The queues into the petrol stations spilled onto the roads, blocking single lane and, in many places, double lane roads and by 5.30 when I left worked, the entire city was grid-locked.  I passed petrol stations where people had entered from both the entrance and the exit and with the stations jammed, nobody could go anywhere.

I eventually made it to Julia’s where we hung out at the pool until about 7.30pm waiting for the traffic, passing at glacial speeds, to clear.  Police drove around town broadcasting over loudspeakers that the rumours are false.  I received a text message from The Star at 7.51pm also announcing this.

So back to our conversation; we spoke about how gullible we as humans sometimes are and that if enough people believe something, whether it’s true or not, it will be perceived as truth.

Governments manipulating this gullibility and herd mentality came up.

There are many governments today that lie to their people, but none are under the spotlight quite as brightly as the American government.  I’ve read many articles calling George W. Bush the worst US president and biggest liar in history and starting wars under false pretenses to benefit in various ways, most notably stakes in oil.

But the lies and deceit go much further than fabricated evidence about Iraq’s real threat to the world. Much, much deeper.

I’m not sure why I haven’t stumbled across this before, or even heard of it prior to my friend bringing it up last night.  Loose Change is a documentary looking at 9/11 from an angle you never contemplated. Or perhaps you have.

It’s an hour and a bit long, but the time will pass in a flash.

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Is GrassRoots Advertising and gr-ads.com a scam or not? Here’s my experience.

A month or so ago somebody who says her name is Kristen Romero contacted me saying she’s from a company called GrassRoots Advertising at gr-ads.com, and that she wanted to do some sponsored links on old posts of mine.

What she offered was generous for a small-time blogger like myself, so I looked into it.

After investigating a little bit, things seemed seriously fishy:

• Their website is very old-looking, which is very odd for an Internet advertising company;
• They seem to only employ good looking people, except for the CEO and web designer. The web designer seems to be a 70 year old, which is quite odd too;
• If you download the employee pictures, right-click and look at the properties, the Meta data on the pictures indicate that they are stock photos;
• The company has no contact details listed on their website, other than an email link to the CEO, but it doesn’t give a hint as to where they’re located;
• Something really odd was that they claim to have enough business for 2008 and can’t take on anymore;
• From domaintools.com I learned that their domain has been in existence for 6 years, although the company was established in 2004.  This could mean something or it could mean nothing;
• I also saw their company details were hidden by a proxy service, which, I guess is not all that uncommon (Spam is problem for us all), so this was inconclusive;
• So then I looked at the headers of the email she sent me, and the domain groundupadvertising.com was revealed - registered in April 2008, it’s likely in reaction to the bad rep they’re fast gaining for gr-ads.com.  The website looks similar, but is a wee bit more realistic.  It looks like this site incorporates things to counter what people says make gr-ads.com look like a scam (the staff of this company is not SO good looking - although it still looks like stock photos);
• If you ping either domain, you get the IP Address - 69.72.214.98 - a host in the US.
• Both domains have robots.txt with only - user-agent: * - and - disallow: / - in it, which to search engines means “To all search robots, index nothing on this entire site”.  Again, for an Internet advertising agency, this is super odd as it means nothing on these websites will show up in searches.

Aside from a lot of odd tidbits, amplified by a suspicious mind, there’s nothing conclusive to say that these people were trying to scam me.

As I also use the email address she contacted me on for PayPal, I thought I’d give them a go (I didn’t have to expose info she didn’t already have).

I posted the text she gave me and a few days later the payment came in PayPal (from Find Your Dreams, Inc. - no info on that either), as agreed.

End of that story.

Bad Mouthing

Two days ago Kristen again contacted me and said a blogger she couldn’t negotiate a rate with had put up an unfavourable post about her and it was attracting bad comments.  She asked if I would put in a good word for her, and as I had no problems with my experience, I was willing to give an honest opinion.

I read the post and contact Kristen again about the issues raised in the post and in my own mind.  I told her, I could give an honest opinion, but my honest opinion is that I too thought that they were scammers, but tried them anyway and my suspicions were proven false.

In another email to Kristen I asked her to explain a few things to me so that I could comment on that post and put her in a better light, because my honest opinion alone will not.  Here’s what I said:

The woman wanted x amount for her website and that wasn’t what you offered - you negotiated, she declined - I honestly don’t see the big deal.

But I can see your dilemma with the negative post and you did good by me so I don’t mind to put an honest opinion up there for you.

But here’s my honest opinion and maybe you can shed some light on it so that I can understand: Your website does come across as a scam website, and as the only contact with you it makes your business seem shady as well. Here’s why:

a) it’s like a 1990’s-style website, (quite out of step for a Internet advertising company)
b) your domain details (and registration address) are hidden,
c) there’s no actual company information on your site,
d) there’s no contact details of any kind,
e) you claim to have enough business for 2008 (wow!),
f) your employees are ALL unbelievably good looking, and
g) the meta data on your employee pictures DOES indicate that they are stock photos.

The only reason I gave you a try is because you offered a good rate, and you only need my email address for Paypal, which is pretty difficult to use in a scam by itself, as it’s virtually in the public domain anyway.

Obviously not many people make these deductions and are still willing to take the risk.

Yet you did what you said you would and in good time too, so I don’t really understand - why the masquerade and the dodgy website when you do legitimate work?

But alas, the only reply I got from Kristen was to say “you’re right i think its ridiculous and i just don’t know or care anymore..“.

Epilogue

So I’m now no closer to knowing than I was before.  All I know is that Kristen contacted me with an offer, we negotiated, I did my part, and she paid as promised.

Is this company dodgy as hell? Sure. Is there at least a ton of fish around gr-ads.com? There certainly is.  Are they scammers? Well, I wasn’t scammed and I didn’t actually read about anybody that was scammed - just those who say they look like scammers.

So the question remains, and more importantly is there any proof either way: Is GrassRoots Advertising and gr-ads.com a scam or not?

Update 080715 - Just picked up a comment from Rose Desrochers, somebody reported that a rep from bridgeofknowledge.org contacted them for something that sounds like our friends at gr-ads.com / groundupadvertising.com.  Surfed on over and wouldn’t you know it, my friend Kristen Romero is employee No.1.

Other employees include Lauren Keidis, Amy Callahan, Sean Callahan (Yay! They finally got a male employee that isn’t the CEO or an octogenarian web designer - he was a famous television blurb writer in the 90’s) and Melinda Hathaway.

The non-scam (or scam, depends on your school of thought) is evolving, as now they include a contact page, they don’t brag about how they don’t need any more business and they don’t have stock-photo employee mug-shots anymore.  But the temptation to carry on with the employee profiles are just too strong…

Bridgeofknowledge.org is a more noble enterprise. They are a bunch of students who got together to provide links, or a bridge, to useful knowledge, which is where the paid-for-links come in.  Obviously Sean Callahan didn’t write the copy for the front page, because he has a keen eye for detail and there are various typos on the front page. (Please note, I make no such claims, therefore typos on my pages are perfectly acceptable).

A quick whois on bridgeofknowledge.org reveals that the domain was registered on 8 July.  I bet right now they’re hating the Internet community. It’s not so hard to carry on legitimate business on the Internet, why not try to not be one of those shady advertiser they talk about on their front-page blurb.

The gr-ads.com /  groundupadvertising.com / bridgeofknowledge.org saga continues…

Update 080724 - Through links from the other blogs that have posted about this company, there are at least four related domains. They are:

• gr-ads.com
• groundupadvertising.com
• bridgeofknowledge.org
• firstdayads.org

The design of these websites are quite similar. I was contacted by gr-ads.com, some other people from bridgeofknowledge.org, and yet other by firstdayads.org.  Both my and other people’s emails had groundupadvertising.com in the email headers, and this is how we know they are related.

I’ve established that they’re not scammers.  They offered me money to place links, I did it, they paid me. No scam.

But I still had this question: Why if your company is legit do you choose such unorthodox methods that puts your company in bad light?

Apart from what I’ve listed above, here’s some other things that doesn’t make sense. 

• On Rose DesRochers, ‘Kristen’ posted this photo saying “Here’s another cute one with me sarah and jen“.  Below, in that order, you will see the picture from that link vs. the gr-ads.com employee profile pics.
  
  
• Arguably the third addition below to Sarah Raymond’s pictures are the same person as at least the middle picture above.  The middle picture above was found on Sarah Raymond’s gr-ads.com employee profile picture, and the third one is Kayla Milledge from bridgeofknowledge.org (employee pofiles have been removed since this post).
  
• Next is Amy Calahan who works or worked for gr-ads.com, but also works for bridgeofknowledge.org (but they’ve removed their employee profiles). Could just be a namesake, of course.
  Info she gave to the two companies are a little different although she admits on both to growing up in the mountains of Vermont.  On her gr-ads.com resume she said she graduated from SUNY New Paltz with a degree in Communications, but to bridgeofknowledge.org she said she has a degree in Information Science from SUNY Oswego. Both Amy’s personalities enjoy the park and building web pages.
  
• Luaren Kiedis also works two jobs at gr-ads.com and bridgeofknowledge.org. She replaced her stock-photo gr-ads employee pic taken by Jim Jurica, with another (on the right) at bridgeofknowledge.At gr-ads.com Lauren said she “has a degree from Ohio State in communication“, whilst over at bridgeofknowledge.com she graduated with a degree in Liberal Arts from Ohio State. At both jobs she said she likes being on top of water, snowboarding, softball and going for long runs in the woods with her dog named Dylan.
  

More absurd than the time that I’ve spent on this article (you’re right David Salsberger, I need another hobby), is this company that seems to be going out of its way to look illegitimate, when they actually do pay people money like they say they do.

Why?

Update 080822: Because it’s informative, and because people tell me about it, webmatchers.net is the newly discovered addition to the websites associated with gr-ads.com.

Big up to geekhideout.com for linking the latest in a slew of domains to these guys.

Why do they insist on the corny profiles?  We now have the following websites in our non-scam scam scheme, with the latest one in red:

• gr-ads.com
• groundupadvertising.com
• bridgeofknowledge.org
• firstdayads.org
• webmatchers.net

Jen Keenan, now with her 3rd company, is the common denominator here.  Although both her profiles claim she graduated with a BS in Marketing and Minors in Theater and Computer Science, the institution changed from SUNY Plattsburgh at gr-ads.com to SUNY Brockport over at WebMatchers.com.

Does the BS here refer to bull shit?

Anyway, you can’t cross reference many of the sources anymore, because over at bridgeofknowledge.org they’ve taken down employee profiles all together, and at groundupadvertising.com Jen Keenan’s profile is no longer a link, and it looks like they’ve change employee pics for many of the other profiles too.

Think they’re paying attention to Blogs?

Update 080824: Well, if you’ve been following this saga and haven’t discovered this gem of an information source yet, then head on over to miqel.com where not only has Miqel done some serious investigation into this scam (no more no-scam, it IS a scam), he’s laid it out bare for everyone to see.  Good work Miqel.

Miqel also implicated a few new domains in this scam, not to mention SEO Guru Jim Boykin, bringing the list down to this:

• gr-ads.com
• groundupadvertising.com
• bridgeofknowledge.org
• firstdayads.org
• webmatchers.net
• smallstepsbigleaps.org (the page design we all know and … well, it’s familiar)
• www.webuildpages.com (this Jim Boykin is apparently an SEO guru, oops!)

Anyway, he also notice that bridgeofknowledge.org is “experiencing difficulties” with their hosting account and is asked to contact their hosts… hmmm.  As for this moment the other websites are all still intact.

So what’s the next step?  This Jim Boykin actually makes a living of claiming to be an SEO guru with seminars and the works, and I can’t help but notice that internetmarketingninjas.com, which looks like his home page, is based on the very same design as many of the other implicated domains in this scam - which is a little more than coincidence in my opinion.

If this so-called Guru really is the king pin of this scam, then surely something should be done about it?

How much money could such a scam extort from unsuspecting clients who thought they were buying legitimate services and how many blind-to-the-truth-because-we’re-slightly-greedy-for-easy-money-bloggers, such as myself, have been scorned by Google for associating with the dark under belly of the paid-for links world?

Anyway, nice scam, but now it’s out.  So the best thing to do for those looking for SEO or paid-link campaigns is to avoid scams the likes of which Jim Boykin has been associated with and front companies gr-ads.com, groundupadvertising.com, bridgeofknowledge.org, firstdayads.org, webmatchers.net, smallstepsbigleaps.org.

I guess the status of the near-urban legend of “Is gr-ads.com a scam or not” is now: TRUE

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With great excitement I read about and applied for the new Maybank Visa debit card.  Unfortunately the new Maybank Visa debit card has limited usefulness.

First, Maybank has been a wee bit slow with all this.

Available for yonks overseas

In, South Africa where I’m from, for example, which isn’t exactly known for leading the planet in the technology stakes, I’ve had a card that was no different to a credit card (embossed numbers and name, hologram, Visa logo, CCV) in 2001 already.

From any merchant’s point of view, in an actual store or online, it was a credit card and was treated as such.  For me, the only difference was that instead of paying my purchases off monthly, I paid for them immediately.

Locally the market has been with-it for a while

Malaysia didn’t have a card like this until late last year (and believe me, I looked).  So simple: function llike a credit card, but instead of a credit account, use my actual account.

Then AmBank (bless their souls) made it to the market first with the NexG prepaid debit card.  Finally, a solution for people who wanted to do online transactions but, like me, couldn’t get a credit card.  The prepaid debit card is convenient in that you can use it anywhere you can a credit card, but it’s inconvenient as you have to keep on reloading it.

And for me, a non AmBank customer, it’s not always convenient to find an AmBank to reload the card.  Another drawback of the NextG is that you can’t make PayPal withdrawals with it, because it’s a Mastercard, and in Malaysia PayPal only wants Visa.

A few months later Tune Money filled that gap when, in collaboration with CIMB Bank, they offered the Tune Money Prepaid Debit card in a Visa flavour.  Props to Tune Money for actually putting your name on it too.  And with that came the ability to draw money from PayPal. Patontheirbacks.

However, it was still a bank other than my bank and thus still not very convenient with having to reload the card constantly - plus, they actually charge you to put money in your card.

New Maybank Visa Debitcard to the fore

Then at long last Maybank decided to join this new market of direct spending via credit card channels.

You would think that they had nearly a year to watch and observe what worked and what didn’t, and why it work.  You would think they would then come up with the ultimate product.

True, they a few things right:

1. It’s linked to your account instead of being a prepaid card and thus no annoying top-ups;
2. It’s Visa, and PayPal likes Visa;

Merely for the fact that it’s now the new, standard account card, it means that millions will soon be using it, automatically stomping on the market share of the other prepaid offerings. Or so it may seem.

However, Maybank slipped up on one particular issue, which with Malaysia’s huge online community might just be a very big issue.

It will cause people to not only not dump their prepaid cards, but will most likely reinforce the bond they have with their Tune Visa for instance:

The New Maybank Visa debit card cannot be used for Internet transactions.

The leading bank is following

No use on the Internet?

I’m sure they have their reasons. It’s most likely security related, because once you let those cards loose online, people’s bank accounts can be emptied out, unlike a prepaid card where the damage can be limited.

But as this is not a unique product and not the first time Visa has done something like this (refer to my 2001 experience in South Africa, for instance), why couldn’t they get their acts straight in preparation for the Malaysian market which obviously yearns for something like this?

Word from the call centre

Last night I used the debit card to buy petrol for RM50 at Shell (Yay! Previously I could only use Petronas if I didn’t want to pay cash).

However, this morning I check Maybank2u.com and there’s a charge of RM200 on my statement, so I give the good people at Maybank’s call centre a call (1-300-88-6688, Accounts & Finance option).

The operator said the amount is like a block at a hotel.  When you check in, a hotel would reserve an amount on your card, usually that of your room, so in case you don’t have credit they will know this immediately, or if you run away without checking out they already have authorisation on your card with which they can deduct the money.

Why this would be required at the petrol station just doesn’t make sense.  You put the card in and immediately get the product.  Also, said the operator, this will happen every time you do it, even if you do it twice a day. A requirement from Visa, she said.

And if you only have RM150 in your account when you want to get fuel? Well, she said, then the transaction will be declined.  The block is usually removed within 3 - 5 working days (is the official statement, although other blog entries have said a day or so).

While I had her on the phone I asked about online purchases.  I tried adding this card to PayPal, and I tried to buy something small off the Internet.  Both transaction were declined.

It’s not, she started saying and I knew what was coming, enabled for the Internet.  She didn’t say “yet”, she didn’t offer any other glimmer of hope.  I was gob smacked, as I thought I had the ultimate card.

So I asked if there were any plans to enable it for online transaction.  Yes, she said tentatively, somewhere next year. Apparently they will let customers know.  Whoop de friggen do.

Inconclusive Conclusion

If you’re somebody who runs through stores swiping their card, this card will be useful to you in a few additional places compared to your plain, vanilla Maybank card.

Biggest bonus for me is to now be able to fill up at Shell with electronic money, even if they take RM200 off the card (before returning it of course… I hope).

But, if like me, you wanted to make purchased on the Internet and thought this was another option for PayPal, well, you’re going to be dissapoitned, as the new Maybank Visa debit card has limited usefulness.

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I’ve cottoned on to this a little late. You can download Firefox 3 on 17 June and help set a world record for the most downloaded software in a 24 hour period.

The reason that I’m so far behind the times is actually because I’m so far ahead of times.

You see, I upgraded my Ubuntu Gutsy to Ubuntu Hardy what, two months ago, and the new install came with Firefox 3, albeit a Beta.

However, at some point last week I got an update notice and one of them was Firefox 3, which I now believe is not a Beta anymore, but an actual stable release. So being all 3′ed up at home on Ubuntu, I didn’t really pay attention to my ailing Fx 2.0.0.14 on XP at work.

Be a Firefox Fan

I’ve been a Firefox fan for as long as Firefox has been a viable alternative to IE and I started using it full time when they were the first of the two to introduce tabbed browsing. By the time IE7 (I believe it was) caught up with this feature, I had moved so far away from IE that there was no turning back.

I have IE on my work computer to cross test my websites on different browsers, but it’s still IE6. I can’t be bother to spend the energy to upgrade to a bloated, slow and unsecured late model release.

The only complaint that I had with Firefox 2 was that it was a little tad on the slow side when I came to web page rendering, but that seems to have been sorted out in Firefox 3, which is quick to start up and loads pages in a flash. On Ubuntu it does and I’m sure it will do it equally well in Windows.

Ailing Internet Explorer

I maintain a handful of website, probably about 9 or so, and in all their server logs it’s clear to see that Internet Explorer no longer dominates absolutely. To be sure, the vast majority of web surfers still use Firefox, but none of my sites have more than 90% IE visitors.

1Earth, for instance, last month had 55% IE users and 37% Firefox users, the rest spread amongst Safari, Opera, Netscape, Konqueror & various PDAs/Mobile phones in that order. But my work websites have more IE users, between 75 - 85% depending on how corporate the website is. The more corporate, it seems, the more IE.

Firefox is your step in virus prevention

With various virus outbreaks on our network at work, my first step in virus protection for the afflicted, is to install Firefox. Chances are far less to get some sneaky, unauthorised piece of software installed using Firefox than it is Explorer. Especially if you’re on of those click-crazy-know-nothing-much users who surf and click on any random pop-up box (which Firefox blocks by default, btw).

And Windows Update sends out virtually daily security patches for Windows which often involves an Explorer plug (and Windows Media Player for that matter).

So for me, it’s just easier to avoid the entire threat, and surf safe with Firefox.

Firefox 3 is amped

With Firefox 3 comes a slew of new features and performance enhancements, most notably less RAM usage, which pains me endlessly at work where all my applications are RAM gluttons.

But I digress.

Help make the web a safer (and faster) place to be. Download Firefox 3 on 17 June and you could be part of a world record!

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