I have been a bookstore lover for a very long time.  Whenever I am at any shopping centre, I tend to check if there is any bookstore for me to take a look.  It is such a standard procedure for me that my wife is already used to it.  In the past, we used to quarrel about where to shop as I love to shop at bookstores while she will do her window shopping for clothes.  I can spend literally hours in the bookstore, enjoying myself buried with the books and magazines.

It is not a surprise for me that a bookstore is closing down as it struggles to keep up with the digital media.  Many of the people tend to argue that they love the feeling of going into a bookstore (just like me).  But for myself, I tend to go to the bookstore to check out for the latest books and then I will buy them from Amazon because it tends to be cheaper and I have saved a lot of money just like that.  It solves my craving for going to the bookstore as well as owning the books that I yearn for.

For many years, a lot of people has been saying that it is impossible for an online store to make more sales than a traditional brick-and-mortar store.  I believe these people have not seen the power of online influence whereby it has the strength of TV influence and even more.  Online is not considered as a media actually… In fact, we are doing disservice by coining this term “social media”.  It is actually a “telephone” whereby we can talk to literally hundreds of thousands and even millions of people out there!  This “telephone” basically allows you to speak in your own voice, and also to hear what the other parties have to say in their comments.  It is so powerful that if you have a great product out there, you can prepare yourself for great reviews and enjoy more sales.  Whereas for a traditional brick-and-mortar, it depends a lot on the people who are going to the store, and attracting the passer-by crowd to come in to buy.  Out of 100 people who came in, there might be only 1 or 2 who will buy something!  Moreover, it has to bear high rental costs, high maintenance of the books and to make losses for tempered books, manpower to store the books, and everything else!

The power of having an online store is that the books can be purchased as they are being sold.  The store owner don’t have to deal with customers directly.  Manpower cost is extremely low, except to pack for purely sales.  Rental cost can be extremely low or even nothing if you are creative enough.

Now that one of my favourite bookstores is closed, I am praying that Kinokuniya will continue to be strong especially the one at Orchard.  Yes, I do buy books at times just to support the stores.

Just got to know about the WordPress Users Association, I thought it might be useful for my blog here since I am a heavy WordPress user since almost the sites that I have done so far are powered by WordPress.  It is very simple to implement, and yet it gives the end users the power to update the websites with simplicity.

They called themselves WPUA.  This is the place where anybody can learn, master and succeed using WordPress.  They have extensive training resources and an expansive network of WordPress users (like myself) to assist the people like yourself in your website development.

Thought I should give myself some time to dedicate in this blog since it is a great place to network with the rest of the world and make new friends who are also wordpress users.  Let’s learn and care together in this community.  Hopefully, this new community will evolve for all of us to benefit from.

See ya around!  By the way, I might not be able to access Internet in the next two weeks… Hence, do apologize if you are trying to contact me.  Just drop me an email when you need to let me know anything.  I will try to catch up my mails!

Email is something which has existed even before the birth of internet. And it is the single internet programme that has never died off before. We tend to see a lot of different functions giving birth along the way, such as skype, icq, msn, fring, and even the web forums along the way. We also have ecircles, friendster, multiply, blogs, etc. Back in the past, when people thought of signing up a service, they need to have an email address. Even for facebook, you will need an email address in order to sign up for an account.

Just think about it… If anybody asks you for your phone number, you may feel uncomfortable giving him. But if someone asks for your email address, you may actually be more than willing to give him. How about giving him your facebook profile? You are likely to resist giving him. How about giving him your facebook email address? If it is associated with your facebook account, the email address may defeats its purpose in the end.

There are definitely a lot of opportunities when facebook users have their very own facebook email addresses. For example, people are more likely to be authentic because they have a real facebook account that companies can reference from. And I think that is the nearest that we can go because facebook is merciless when banning an account… And those non-facebook emails tend to be created easily to be anonymous and not authentic.

What do you think about having your own facebook email address? Will you get an account for yourself? How will you use it for your daily life?

I’ve just checked my email.  12 hours ago, Digg emailed me a notification that they are giving us (the social media users) an opportunity to ask Toyota questions since the recent controversy surrounding the Toyota vehicle recall, one of the largest in history.

The Toyota US President and Chief Operating Officer, Jim Lentz, will be in the hot seat for their latest LIVE Digg Dialogg, where he will tackle our questions head-on.  He’ll be sitting down with us to provide perspective on what happened, what Toyota is doing about it, and what consumers need to know.

This is YOUR opportunity (mine as well..) to make your voice heard – you can submit & Digg questions from now through Monday. The ones with the most votes will be asked in the Digg Dialogg LIVE at 2pm PT/ 5pm ET on Monday, February 8th.

—

Some thoughts from Charles

In terms of crisis management, I think Digg is a good forum in the social media to have your clarification explained to the citizen journalists.  Citizen journalists are actually referring to any social media users who have access to any form of social media such as Facebook, twitter, blogs, Posterous, Friendfeed, delicious, flickr, digg and so on.  That’s where they can update their status and be heard to the outside world!

In my opinion, you can consider using Digg to give your corporate announcements.  And I think this is a good model for the rest of the social media websites to have so that it will attract more brands to find an edge to be involved professionally with the social media in a personal way.

Photo credit: toyotacarmycar@yahoo.in

I am glad to know Dan Schawbel in the social media world… He has just released his next issue of Personal Branding Magazine.  And I am excited that Seth Godin is featured in this newly released magazine!

In this magazine, it discusses about becoming so important to your company, your customers and your people around you that they can’t live without you.  When that occurs, you’ll be making more money, having better relationships and wielding a powerful personal brand.

The three key persons featured in this magazine are: Seth Godin, Guy Fieri and Jarvis Green…
Seth Godin reveals his hope for career revolutionaries who want to remain relevant in a world that is being transformed by the internet. Also, in this issue we explore how Guy Fieri has built his personal brand as a television personality on the food network and how NFL football player Jarvis Green has taken the leap into entrepreneurship.

For free sample of this magazine, you can find it in Personal Branding Sample.

Or if you have decided to buy this magazine, you can get it at Personal Branding Mag.

To continue expanding my reviewing skills, I am going into reviewing useful software which I have either personally used myself, or they are new product launches, or just a new product to me which I found it might be useful for all of you. They might be from open-source, commercial, or of any kind of licence so long as they are useful to the visitors.

The focus of this site is to allow a computer user to install interesting hardware and software for his new computer which he has bought to enhance his experience with the computer. They may be new and old applications. But who cares? So long as it does the work, that’s the most important. Right?

I am just wondering how far I can bring this new blog into since I have my dedications. Most importantly, all my websites are able to keep me alive in the Internet arena while I am working hard into my Internet business development.

While many blogs are trying very hard to create a very nice interface, I focus on creating contents first since that’s what Google and internet visitors wanted. Nice interface can come later when the time is coming. So, you will see a very nice default WordPress theme in this blog. As an Internet reviewer for almost a year myself, I am arriving a conclusion myself that I have to keep the contents coming in to attract the right crowd first before I focus on beautifying the whole blog.

Please do me a favor by subscribing to the feed, and keep reading the gadget box info blog and give me comments on how to improve better through editor@gadgetbox.info.

Check out Gadget Box Info.

The few possible ideas might be:

1. The arrested man is just being unlucky to be arrested.
2. Or the bank teller was trained in banks to identify such smell.
3. Or the bank teller did business or consumed before.
4. Or the bank teller was previously a police or some investigator.
5. Or the bank teller was being instructed by someone else to frame the arrested man.

The whole idea is that the one who is more suspicious is the bank teller instead of the arrested man. The whole story was done in such a way that the whole operation looks so smooth… Is it really true?

And I was shocked to find out how young Mark Zuckerberg is for his famous facebook online application. He is only 23 years old! Even Google founders are above 30s. Mark is a Harvard dropout student. And it seems to me that being able to attain such an achievement doesn’t require you a degree after all. And if I am not wrong, Michael Dell and Bill Gates are also dropouts.

Being rich in his money as well as his time, Mark is probably able to spend all his time and money everywhere he can. But again, even if you own huge amount of money today, it doesn’t mean you will get to own them tomorrow. Money is always an ongoing process of achievement. Just look at how a poor person uses his money after he won a lottery, the next minute you will find out that he’s poor again…

Bluehost has been quite reliable along the past 1 year. And most of my web applications have been running well under their hosting. Previously, I was complaining about the usage of my previous host which seems to have problem with the slash. Now, bluehost seems to be getting better. Anyway, I had encountered the instability of the server only twice so far. Provided that a server needs quite a lot of maintenance, this kind of temporary instability is nothing!

I have been very supportive of their web hosting plan since they are providing a plan which is so attractive. And only when my business is stabilized, I would probably get a server to support the incoming customers since I had been an administrator myself before in the past. It would be fun to play with my own server, serving my own customers. Don’t you think so?

Anyway, I had a hard disk crash with my laptop recently. It has caused me to lose a lot of data on my computer. Now, I have some difficulty trying to get back some of the digital products…

I noticed that many friends of mine, who are above 30, are still eligible bachelors and spinsters. And I was asking them the real reason to remain single, they say that they have no plans to be bonded in marriage. They are all making lots of money, and they don’t find the urge to get married.

If I am not wrong, Singapore government has been encouraging people to go for dating for quite a while already. And it indeed has some effects on my age range of between 20 and 30. Many friends who are around my age are already getting married and having children. I can’t imagine looking at them with their kids when we had lots of fun playing together when we were still kids ourselves. Time has come for us to look at ourselves with our own kids. I had just attended a friend’s 1st month baby at her house yesterday. Here’s the photo of us at her house with her and her baby. Watch how she made her baby sit in front to smile at the camera… Notice the 1-month-old baby sticking out his tongue…

I am the second one from the left, standing behind.

Online dating website has been a real hot topic and it should be a good social website to start as a business for those of you who are interested. You should be looking at it if you are from some event company or wanting to start out an internet business. Ask me out to be your consultant if you are interested.

Now that there is some fundings for the website, there must have some opportunity for us as Internet Marketers. For those of you who had not tried internet business, it might be a good idea not to waste so much money yet because I personally feel that Internet business is all about trial and error, which means it is advisable for you to have some experience with it first. Or you might get into trouble if you are not sure how to go about doing the internet business with money invested in you.