It’s not often that I get out of the cold confines of the Dev Room where I work. Last time I was out was to Cotabato, teaching the staff of an NGO how to use their high tech computer gear. That was in 2006.

This time it’s not going to be as far as Mindanao, but never the less adventurous. I’m heading off to Masbate for the introductory meetings leading to the two-week teaching stint that will start on the last week of November and will run into the first week of December.

I am going as Project Manager and Trainer for the Corporate Social Responsibility program of one of our clients at work. The startup project involves 13 computer systems to be spread out to four schools in the city of Masbate, and Municipalities of Baleno, Milagros and Balud. The packages each include a Lenovo K300 desktop system, an HP 5610 printer, an APC BackUPS E500 and a SmartBro USB Internet kit, complete with computer table and chair.

The package also includes Ate Vikki to teach the teachers how to use the system, and how to milk the internet for all its worth.

My first trip will consist of a plane ride from Manila to Legaspi, hired car from Legaspi to Pilar, a ferry ride from Pilar to Aroroy in Masbate, drive down to Baleno and then Masbate City to meet the two nearby schools representatives, determine who the training participants will be, and to help decide on the best places to position the computer sets. On the second day we will be heading off to the Municipalities of Milagros and Baleno to meet the representatives there, and then back to base in Aroroy, for the trip back home the next day.

On the 25th of November I will be back there with one of our tech guys to put in all 12 computers in the respective schools, and start the round of 2-day training sessions on the use of Windows Vista and basic MS Office.

At first glance it looks just like the real ebay site. But a quick look at the URL in the address bar will tell you that this is NOT ebay.

The link says http://www.grandzawiyah.com/state.wa/signin.htm?213rjceirjqexr98rdlkmsanchfrinvc58ucrdjkxnerimjgtmxkjnzmhrugt45ncoirehviuhtrckm45x and you end up here if you happen to have received the spoofed ebay email.

My client got theirs from email address eBay Member: quickshipelectronics [mailto:lindbergjh@hotmail.com] and as usual I checked the URLs embedded in the email. While on the surface the URLs say http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=130258573190 the actual destination is http://www.shamick.com/SWF?item=130258573190 which leads you to the URL of the site in the screenshot above.

However, www.shamick.com and www.grandzawiyah.com appear to be legitimate domains and websites — but people with malicious intent may have hijacked a subfolder on their hosting service where the redirect from shamick.com/swf has been placed to lead to the fake ebay landing page above.

So a CAVEAT to all. Check the actual links before you click on them, especially if you know you shouldn’t be getting emails from services you have not signed for. Mouse over the link and then check if the URL that appears in your status bar matches the link and is the actual URL of the service.

Now ain’t that cool? Pictobrowser lets you embed that slideshow/album on your blog in just 4 quick and easy steps. All you need is a Flickr account with the photos in it either Tagged, in a Set or Group. There’s lots of other things you can do to customize your slideshow as you will see in the Pictobrowser builder.

The photos you see above are from our trip to Corregidor Island early this year.