I LOVE SHOPPING. Which girl doesn't? But living in Singapore means shopping habits adding up to costly astronomical sums if you don't keep yourself, and the bank account, in check.

And then you discover the joys of shopping online!!! Many school going girls have been setting up online shops on social media sites such as livejournal and blogger as the cost of starting up and maintaining the shop is not very high (low overheads). The clothes they sell are popular with their peers because they cost a fraction of what we usually pay at shops in the malls as the girls get them straight from wholesalers. This business model would then be a consumer to consumer (C2C) business model.

I favor the C2C model simply because the girls know what kind of styles I like, and sell them at a much lower cost than most other places. Being consumers themselves, they know what trends and looks are popular, and therefore brings in more of those items to sell. Also because of the low overhead costs, these get translated into increased cost savings for us, the consumers.

So now instead of only being able to buy one dress for $100 at shopping centers, I am now able to purchase three or four dresses with the same amount!

$$$$$$$$$$$



A list of some online shops I check out frequently:
http://bonitochico.livejournal.com/
http://hollyhoque.livejournal.com/
http://www.therobotninjas.com/
http://hervelvetvase.com/
http://loveandbravery.blogspot.com/

After using my old half croaked Nokia phone for THREE whole years, my dad finally got me a blackberry in dec! As expected I was really elated and over the moon about it. Sadly, I must admit I am not a tech junkie, in fact I think I am quite the opposite, I think I am a tech noob...



So anyway being the tech noob that I am, it took me quite a while to figure out all the functions of my new NEARLY-smarter-than-me smartphone. So while having fun discovering and playing with my new toys functions and applications, I stumbled upon the blackberry messenger (BBM) service.





-side track- some background information about myself, I hardly ever use my MSN whenever I am on the computer because I did not see a need to use it.

Initially while I added my friends to my BBM contact list, I was skeptical and thought to myself "Why am I going through this whole huge hassle, trying to get my friend's PINs and adding them when i can simply just send them an SMS? After all my new student plan allowed for unlimited SMSs."



BUT IT WAS ALL WORTH IT. BBM has got to be one of the coolest applications on a blackberry! I love using it because:

1. Format: I can easily view the entire thread of the conversation I was having. I tend to have the bad habit of forgetting what I just asked the person and hence when the person replies, the replies makes no sense unless i slowly scroll through my sent messages and inbox to find out where I left off in the conversation. So using my BBM totally eliminates this problem! Little things like that make me so happy, life's gooood!!! Haha..

2. The little D and R in the corner: Ever wondered if the person you sent a message to has read it but chose to ignore it, thus making you wait only forever by the phone for a reply? HA. With the BBM, one can now know if the recipient has read your message and chosen to reply, or not. Once a message is sent out through the BBM, a little nondescript D will appear on the top left hand corner. This means your message has been delivered and your friends blackberry's light is flashing nonstop in an attempt to get the owner's attention. Once your friend has read the message, the D will change into a R! So you will know if someone has chosen to ignore/reply you later/is busy/has more important things than reply your just as important message. Heh heh.



3. Sharing files and pics: BBM allows you to do this! No guys allowed in the changing rooms? No problem, just snap a picture of yourself in that new dress you are thinking of getting and send it to him. As everything is in real-time, he will be able to receive the picture straight away and let you know if you look fat or not. Hence helping you make that all important decision on if you should get another $100 dress which you know you don't really need...

4. Talking/sharing with multiple contacts at once: So much easier to organize events and pass messages around now! Just type once, click send, and everyone will receive the message and be able to see each others comments.

5. FREE: And the best part is that it is all FREE. (don't count the data plan charges la)

So being curious (and wanting to make sure the smartphone is not smarter than me), I checked out the blackberry website to find out all the cool functions of the BBM.
Here is the website for you to check it out (and then also get a blackberry so that my BBM contact list doesn't look so pathetic). Go to this page to find out more about the BBM features and system requirements.
http://na.blackberry.com/eng/devices/features/im/blackberry_messenger.jsp

SO WHAT'S YOUR PIN? ADD ME.

This week i took away from class all about the HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP). HTTP is the Internet protocol used to transfer web pages and was developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). It runs in the application layer of the TCP/IP model. A HTTP session begins when a clients browser requests a resource, such as a Web page, from a remote internet server. When the internet server responds by sending the page requested, the HTTP session for that object ends.

Below is a sample conversation between an HTTP client and an HTTP server running on www.example.com, port 80, taken from wikipedia.

Client request

 GET /index.html HTTP/1.1
Host: www.example.com

A client request is followed by a blank line, so that request ends with a double newline, each in the form of a carriage return followed by a line feed. The "Host" header distinguishes between various DNS names sharing a single IP address, allowing name-based virtual hosting. While optional in HTTP/1.0, it is mandatory in HTTP/1.1.

Server response

 HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Mon, 23 May 2005 22:38:34 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.3.7 (Unix)  (Red-Hat/Linux)
Last-Modified: Wed, 08 Jan 2003 23:11:55 GMT
Etag: "3f80f-1b6-3e1cb03b"
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Length: 438
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8

A server response is followed by a blank line and text of the requested page. The ETag (entity tag) header is used to determine if a cached version of the requested resource is identical to the current version of the resource on the server. Content-Type specifies the Internet media type of the data conveyed by the http message, while Content-Length indicates its length in bytes. The HTTP/1.1 webserver publishes its ability to respond to requests for certain byte ranges of the document by setting the header Accept-Ranges: bytes. This is useful if the client needs to have only certain portions of a resource sent by the server, which is called byte serving. When Connection: close is sent in a header, it means that the web server will close the TCP connection immediately after the transfer of this package.

A video on the history of the internet I found!