• Who is Charles?

    I have been an Internet reviewer, reviewing websites since June 2007.

    Social media has been a phenomenon since 2007. It brings in the true two-way communication between the websites and their visitors. That's what Web 2.0 is all about. I aim to review what the world has become, and to give you my opinions and choices.
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    Please prepare your product ready for me before contacting me. Thanks. :)
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Archive for October, 2008

New Wavelog For N95

By Charles On October 20, 2008 11 Comments

I’m now trying out the newly launched version 2 of Wavelog for my Nokia N95. It has a much better feel to write on it now, than the previous version. Previous version, the font size is so much smaller and thinner. I barely can see what i’m typing. And if i accidentally pressed something, almost all my work is lost. I’ll see if this version has that same problem..

I noticed that whenever i type in HTML comments, it’ll disappear when i switch to preview or design. This is bad because i am trying to make use of Adsense which is using HTML comments.

What i like most about the new version of wavelog is that i can now choose my blog accordingly. I don’t have to key in the settings of my other blogs whenever i’m blogging on other domains. It allows me to add different providers to choose from.

I’m glad that i can now choose my post categories as well. Previously, i am not allowed to choose a category and that really sucks when all my postings are defaulted to a certain category.

Yes, we can now even edit our posts! Our previous posts can now be seen and edit if necessary. That gives us the necessary tools to check back and do any amendments if there’s any mistake.

Also, our post title was previously only allow us to see once. This leaves me with no choice to change previously. Now, i can change to suit the contents and to see my post title is correct.

Tagging is also another new feature which is important to us to use. It’s now in as well.

Adding of our own image, audio and video is also easy. We can even embed our YouTube video easily today.

Ok, that’s all for my initial review with Wavelog. We’ll see how this program is faring over the period again.






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Why A Corporate May Not Be Suitable In Setting Up A Blog?

By Charles On October 15, 2008 2 Comments

I was into a heavy discussion about the topic of setting up a blog for corporate websites. There are two different opinions about it. One talking about setting up a blog is good, while the other is very much against setting up a blog.

As those of us who are very much into the internet world, especially into blogging, we will embrace blogs for as much as we could. That’s because we have gone through a lot in our days of blogging and it can have enormous effects in either good or bad which depends on our returning traffics.

As we can see a lot of new web businesses being setup, they do have a blog shown clearly up there. They know why they must set up a blog. And they know they can’t do without it..

Most corporate companies have never really made a lot of money directly from the websites. They mainly get their business from retail marketing. Things that you can see, touch, and feel directly. Most importantly, you can buy immediately. I can really understand their situation when they can spend as little as 1 day in every month to work on updating the websites. That’s a wasteful thing to do.

In 2003, I can vividly remember about Google having to set up their pagerank around the websites where they count every link as a vote to their webpage. That sounds really cool when i start hearing comments saying that blogs have ruined Google’s big plan. That’s because a lot of people don’t really take blog seriously, and hence all the cross-linking has caused Google’s ranking system all messed up.

But since 2007, Google has proved everybody wrong as more and more people are looking at the information in whichever format. Blogs included. So what is right? And what is wrong?

While many websites are still not using blogs, they did it passively by having blogs at the back. For example, i don’t see HP’S main website linking directly to their many HP blogs!

We’ll keep on observing about it…






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No Time To Work On Your Websites?

By Charles On October 14, 2008 9 Comments
I got to know of a friend who has a pretty successful website with a good community of reviewers of a niche topic and readers as well. But because it was due to her workload, she decided to shut down the website altogether! I was all shocked to hear that! This website is making a decent income and yet she is giving it up for a job. Would anyone of you do that? Will you be shocked?

Last few weeks ago, i was asking one of the twitters i have followed. He is actually quitting his full time corporate job that he has just started after studying so hard for it. He has a wonderful full time job, a beautiful fiancee, with a very big degree in his education. And what he’s doing? To work on his websites! Would you do that?

The same situation, two different choices. Many of us are having a full time job out there, while having successful websites outside as part of their hobbies. It’s really fun to play with websites and to keep growing with it. My friends are thinking i must be too crazy over internet when i spent so much time on it.

Why would you want to give up your websites when it’s a hobby? You can do so much more things out of it. You make friends, you play games with friends, you share information with friends, you buy food and many other things.






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Why Do We Need Affiliates To Sell Our Products?

By Charles On October 9, 2008 No Comments
Many of us are either selling our own products and/or services online, or we are doing so with other people’s products and/or services. It can be quite tedious if we were to sell them on our own. We may have to set up hundreds of websites with different value-added contents for our visitors in order to achieve a certain result. That will be very unrealistic and tedious.

I do know of a friend who has set up over 40 websites in order to make a decent living. You can comment him to be lucky, but most of his success comes from paid traffic. He has used Google Adwords mainly so as to create a buzz. And the good news is that he has been able to achieve a good landing page optimization for his websites so that his traffic conversion rate optimized to be pretty high. But come to think of it, his sites are pretty good now that the search engines may like to give him free targeted traffic.

And the interesting part is that he is just an affiliate. That’s to say that he is able to make his product creator making good money out of it.

A lot of people may only like to create products to sell. They are simply leaving most of the money on the table because they are not maximizing their exposure in the internet which he may not have foreseen.

And as for the affiliates, they may argue that they don’t have an exclusive right to sell. First of all, they have to ask themselves if they have enough traffic to communicate and to convert into sales. Secondly, it’s much more recommended to be affiliated with products with worldwide presence. That’s because the visitors will feel much assured of buying a recognized product.

And for resellers, having so many websites selling competitively with you, the potential customer will be focusing more on your website’s credibility and not to suspect about the product’s ability. That’s where our websites need to be optimized properly on the sales conversion and also to establish a better online reputation.

Having said so much, i do hope this helps in your online endeavours and let me know if it helps in your online career.






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Here Comes Everybody

By Charles On October 7, 2008 2 Comments
The internet has made everybody so accessible that it can be so scary. Every now and then, there is someone praising somebody, and there is someone else who is complaining so much about that somebody. And this happens every single day on the internet. And for those who cannot embrace such matter, they might be the ones who are not as internet savvy and are not having a “big heart”. They will find ways to fight back just because they don’t feel good being commented badly, whether it is true or not.

Well, the truth is that there is always someone out there who might comment on you or me. It all depends on how famous or infamous you are. The idea is to embrace and change for the better. And this is something which many MNC companies cannot accept as it’s to do with their online reputation. And so, we have new companies setting up to become online reputation managers for you and me.

Online reputation managers’ job is not a one time thing. Once they are able to solve your current issues, it doesn’t mean they will end there. Instead, it will keep on happening and it looks to stay for more of such managers around.

Everybody, including you, me, business entities, community groups, and just any individuals or groups, have been utilizing the Internet Web 2.0 tools for their social network use. Whether you start your own dot com, or you leverage on Google Groups or Facebook Groups, it’s going to help you to build a presence.

Search engines are going to like you as they can provide more targeted traffic as their business. Social media websites are going to help you to get more traffic. Bloggers are going to link one another for information relevance.

Who really cares so much about their look and feel? So what if we get grammatical errors? Big companies are very careful about their every communication channel. It makes the focus to be on what is “right”, instead of what is your contents for the website.

Everybody are coming in. And because of its convenience, i believe the baby boomers will catch on pretty soon.






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10 Things Why A Phone Will be Part Of Internet

By Charles On October 5, 2008 No Comments
The internet has become so much more accessible than before with the introduction of mobile broadband. I have got myself with this instant internet access wherever i go. It’s so interesting to see how far i can reach with internet and my mobile phone without my laptop.

It took me quite a while to convince myself to get mobile broadband internet access when my phone can access wireless access points which are readily available in many places in Singapore.

As such, i’ve been thinking what i can do with my mobile phone and unlimited internet access before i signed up a two year plan with Singtel promotion on their Broadband on Mobile Plan 2000 which costs me SG$24.40 per month.

1. I used Nokia Sports Tracker which utilises GPS to track my running route, and Navteq Maps which uses the mobile broadband to download the relevant maps. It’s so useful as i can track my speed of jogging and whether i can pace myself better in my next run at Mount Faber.

2. I used Google Maps which tells me where i can go with GPS and 3G. It shows me the map and i can plan my route better when i drive around. :)

3. I used Wavelog to blog here and everywhere. It’s my portable blogging program which i can use to blog wherever i go. It’s so useful as i will be able to be more efficient as a blogger.

4. I used Widsets to check my RSS feeds regularly. They are so useful as i wouldn’t be bored with my connected phone with me.

5. I used Gmail program on my Nokia N95 to check my mails and it’s a really terrific program!

6. I used Twibble to access my twitter to update my followers of where i am, and what i am doing. It’s really useful and i can keep in touch with them.

7. I used Fring to chit chat on my N95 which allows me to avoid making too much phone calls locally and in overseas. It’s great for me to keep in touch with all of them.

8. I used Qik from time to time to let the world see what i’m doing right now and then. It’s a good program not to be missed!

9. I used Internet Radio to listen to Webmaster Radio dot Fm and many others. It’s a great tool to relax and to listen to radio from all over the world.

10. I used Joikuspot premium to allow my internet devices to connect to internet. It’s so much faster than the bluetooth which only allow up to 1mb. My laptop can now access internet without restrictions. :) Who needs a Hua Wei device? These people are missing a lot of things here.






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