A drop in reputation scores for hundreds of prominent Web sites this week has bloggers buzzing that Google has tweaked its PageRank algorithm. Although Google hasn’t admitted to tweaking PR (PageRank), which appears in the Google Toolbar and is Google’s system for weighing a Web page for its relevance to a specific query based on the number of links that it has to it, Search Engine Land, one of many search-oriented sites to notice the move, pointed out the PR drops on Oct. 24, noting that Forbes.com, WashintonPost.com, SFGate.com, SunTimes.com and Engadget.com all dropped from PR7 to PR5.

http://www.timw.com itself has dropped from PR4 to PR1. I’ll admit I’m annoyed, but as long as my daily visitor count doesn’t drop, I’ll keep quiet.

Today I received my first cheque from Google Adsense! It’s great to see all the hard work I’ve put into this website worth something. I’d like to give thanks to everyone who visits. Currently, timw.com receives on average 650 unique visitors a day!

One thing I believe this website is lacking is comments. Comments are open to everyone, and anything can be posted (except spam, porn, illegal crap, etc.). I love feedback, and if anyone has any comments they like to make, feel free to do so in the corresponding blog entry. Alternatively, if you have any suggestions or would like to contact myself directly, please contact me here.

Again, thank you for visiting!

Please say hello to the new website theme! I was getting very bored of the old theme and have been considering changing themes for several months. Despite having an extremely busy schedule, I have finally managed to fit in a full website overhaul.

Ignoring the many cosmetic changes, the website has several improvements I think are worth mentioning:

• Much better use of space on a cleaner layout.
• Changed navigation layout. Blog related links are now on the left, and ‘pages’ (i.e. static pages) and other miscellaneous things are on the right.
• Changed advertisement placements. Sponsored links are now placed on the right side of the website, and dynamic ads by Google are now placed at intervals within content.
• Interface bugfixes. Several bugs in the old layout caused certain parts of the website to be displayed differently on different browsers. I was too lazy to fix them before, but they have now been squashed.

I’ve gone through and eliminated as many problems as possible, but if in the unlucky case there is something wrong, please let me know.

You have all probably noticed super slow updates lately - I currently have very limited Internet access (until the end of the month) so won’t be able to update as frequently. When I do get access, I’m also on a tight schedule so won’t be able to post anything too worthy.

Either way, thanks for visiting and keep an eye open for hot posts to come

The most valuable part of my website is my domain name. Firstly, it’s super short – it stands at a bold 4 characters long. Secondly, it represents me – I am Timothy Wong. Thirdly, it took me a long time to get it. There’s probably a few more reasons why its so valuable to me, but I guess you now understand how Timothy Wong (I) might have a close emotional bond with timw.com. Alright, enough emotional talk and boasting.

Everyday I dig through around 100 emails, spread across several accounts (personal, business, etc.). Yesterday, one particular email caught my attention. It was sent through this website’s contact form and is as follows (names and emails censored for privacy reasons):

—– Original Message —–
From: ********@*******.com
To: *@timw.com
Sent: Sunday, August 12, 2006 3:06 PM
Subject: Contact Form: Offer for domain www.timw.com

Dear Timothy Wong,

I am interested in acquiring your domain, [http://www.timw.com] for US$1000 (One Thousand US Dollars). I understand that you currently have a website under this domain name, but I strongly believe that my offer is sufficient in getting you set with another domain, as well as leaving you with quite a nice sum of cash.

Please let me know what you think ASAP. I am willing to negotiate for the domain in question.

Regards,
T***** W*********

I have sold about 6 domain names in my time, but I have never even considered selling timw.com. It doesn’t matter what price you throw at me, timw.com is not available. I’m going to sit on it until I die.

P.S. Please excuse my excessive use of ‘Timothy Wong’ in the first paragraph - I’m trying to increase my search engine ranking for the keyword “Timothy Wong”

I’ve been spending some time tweaking up this website and thinking of things to add. Some of you may have noticed the new “Most Popular Posts” section on the sidebar – posts are given points based on the number of views, comments, pingbacks, trackbacks etc., and posts with the highest total are listed there.

I’ve also just finished setting up the Systems area of the website – this is where I will be placing little coding projects or systems that you might be interested in. Check it out – so far I’ve added a Password Generator and a cool little UFO shooting game programmed in Flash.

This website has also been much more popular than expected. Although most visitors do not seem keen on posting comments (start posting!), this site has attracted some 760+ unique visitors and 30,000 hits since its launch 15 days ago. I never thought numbers would make me so happy!

Yesterday I installed some new statistics software and found that I had visitors from all around the world! Check out the screenshot from my statistics software below:

I think the legendary programming quote fits perfectly with this post: Hello World!

Anyway, that’s all for tonight, thanks for stopping by - see you soon!

IE6 users will have noticed a problem with the layout - all content was pushed down, leaving the website with a huge block of white space. In addition, running the site through W3’s HTML Validation Service showed over 30 HTML problems. After spending about two hours digging and correcting (with the help of some people on IRC), I’m proud to announce that timw.com is now “XHTML 1.0 Transitional”, and IE6 users should no longer see any frustrating white spaces!

I’d just like to announce that I’ve finally sorted out a (better) layout / theme for this site. I think it looks much better and much less generic; the previous theme used the default layout.

Any feedback on the new layout?

Thanks for visiting and keep up the support!

Firstly, thanks for dropping by! Right now, there definitely isn’t very much on this site - mostly because I haven’t had time to do much, but it’s getting here. So what’s coming?

Apart from this place being my personal blog site (one with probably the shortest & easiest to remember URL, as well as being worth quite a fortune - yes i’m proud to own it!), I’m also going to be throwing in the occassional news I think you’ll find interesting, and my own articles and perspectives on things.

Anyway, although I’m supposed to be enjoying my summer holiday, sitting back legs up and relaxing, I’ve actually got quite a lot of things going on around me. Here’s a quick list of things that I’m currently engaged with:

• Spending time with friends before I leave to university at the end of summer!
• Starting up a web hosting company
• A summer job at Intel & Microsoft
• Finishing up my final set of demo tracks I’m going to send to a record company
• Completing my Kayak instructor certificate
• Helping design an online futuristic Role Playing Game (RPG)

I hope you’re all looking forward to what’s coming!