Charles Lau

This is about protecting our digital information, probably the most important asset on earth! It is being used for processing businesses which can worth millions of dollars. It can be used to store almost anything. It’s so important that we see how companies tried their very best to secure their information.

Some companies protect by restricting internet access. Some protect by preventing media from circulation.

But how far can you really do to protect your information? You probably won’t be able to protect if this person already has that kind of mentality. Don’t you think so?

I think it’s all about ourselves who matter, not the media of transferring information..

I was having fun at twitter today until I encountered someone twittering me saying “Follow me and I will dm you“.

I find this a little “rude” in one way or another.  But when I google this sentence, it turned out that there are a lot of people doing the same thing.  And they have some interesting responses to this sentence… Let’s see:

1) Follow me too and I’ll DM you something you can use.

2) Can you follow me so I can DM you. Just tried and said you weren’t following. Thx!

3) lots of info..follow me and dm your email and I will send something through for you

4) what do you see on IE7? Would you send me a screen grab, please? Would love to help. Please follow me, and I will DM you

5) Follow me so I can DM you and enter.

There are a lot more.  I believe there are quite a number of twitter users finding this sentence quite offending in one way or another.  But having to say so, it is still good to understand that you just wish to communicate with that person, and hence you want to follow.  There is always a button to unfollow, so don’t make a big fuss out of it.

I found another relevant blog post about the same topic on “How to be anti-social on social media“.

So the next time people ask you to follow so that they will dm you, I think you can just do so, just like me!

I remember the day when I decided to change my blog into a review brand to review websites. This domain name has been with me since 2004 when I was still trying to use PHPNuke as my content management platform. At that time, I used it more like a Portal. Back then, I was still working as a real estate agent. It was really fun to discover about using the website to tell people about me, and just me.

When I left my delivery startup company in May 2007, I was already equipped with an idea of making money online. I have been thinking what I can do online. That’s when I search for the keyword “make money online” in Google. And I found John Chow dot Com.

I was wondering at that time… Why would Google give the number 1 search result to a blog? I thought blog was not really credible to the Internet world? I was wrong in the end. I started to read John Chow’s first ebook when he shares his experience to start with WordPress. I tried to explore the various blog platforms around at the same time. I realise MovaType is quite hard to install. TypePad is not free. Blogger.com seems to be a little inflexible and ugly to work with. Even when blogger.com implemented widgets, I just find it not very flexible either.

Then, I find out about GoDaddy who hosts my domain names and web back then. Bob Parsons was using Serendipity if I am not wrong. It was quite flexible, but yet it is too complicated to understand.

I gave up and follow what John Chow is recommending.

It turned out to be too easy to use. It’s too easy to understand the whole platform, and I can laugh when I see how to implement any plug-in and themes with WordPress because they have made it too easy to code with. Then, I fell into the trap of focusing too much on designing my own blog. I couldn’t really find that design flair in myself to get a nice WordPress Theme till today!

And to tell you the truth, I am now engaging a really good web designer who has the creativity to design some of the well-known websites around. I really wish to find a good one and get the things running!

I find that blogging with my own name, I tend to blog a lot about myself. It’s the same with John Chow when he also blogs a lot about himself. So, I have decided to keep my name identity as who I really am. And I am really feel that blog should have a certain branding by itself.

It could be your name, if you want it that way.

It could be a verb or a noun found in the dictionary.

It could be a nice little unique name to work with.

Whatever you are choosing, it works. I am very sure! It’s just about what you wish to work on.

Content is the one that keeps the person coming back. It wouldn’t be nice for a person to see what I am blogging which doesn’t interest him. It’s especially when you are into online publishing business – blogging.

Get yourself up and blog a lot of link-baiting quality articles!

Have you all ever had an experience of going to the shop, only to be disappointed because it has closed? I think that is very common to all of us. And to me, I am particularly sensitive towards business behavior towards customers because I simply enjoy the process of a business system from ground up. This particular experience made me felt really lousy, and I have really thought of not going back to that shop anymore. Here’s what happen.

By the way, I am a full-time internet marketing executive, and I was working late at HarbourFront Tower on 23rd June 2008. I felt my hair was quite long and messy, so I went to VivoCity hoping to have a quick SGD$10 haircut at QB House. I rushed all the way to VivoCity, and I can tell you that I was really glad to see from a distance that the hairstylists are still there at 9.50pm. Probably I was really late for the haircut. I ran there, and saw one of the employees was just about to turn the shop sign to “We Are Closed”. I went to ask the hairstylist for a quick haircut, she hesitated for quite a while as the other hairstylist showed a crossed hand indicating to her that they have closed. This hairstylist then replied that “We are closed”. I was looking at the other hairstylist for a while, and then looking at my watch. It was 9.50pm.

Please take a good look at this snapshot I got from QB House website…

Ok, I don’t know what time they are closing actually. But it can’t be at the odd hour of 9.50pm. Or unless they are working overtime since 9.30pm or even 9pm. The correct answer from the website shows that they are closed at 10pm.

What I am trying to show you is the power of internet marketing which is so personnal, it can be done at the consumer level! So many companies out there have been spending so much money on marketing themselves, and they thought the minority of complaints wouldn’t be able to spread. I am sorry to tell these companies that the social media networks are growing in strength and there are numerous of them! Most of the big companies even chose to be “blind” and “deaf” about all these things.

All these things are going to change in the very near future… And because of the advanced level of marketing today which is made so simple and easy, products and services will simply become better and better as the lousy ones are going to be closing forever.

I am not really trying to prove who is right or wrong. I could be in the wrong too because they may have a system of closing at 9.50pm and ready to go by 10pm? I don’t know anyway. Anyway, they should not have over-promised their timing. Maybe it’s just those two hairstylists being tired and not wanting to make more money since work can never be completed. Probably I may send a email to them to find out more.

Subway came to the RESCUE!
On the other hand, I wish to thank Subway for staying operational after 10pm because I was so hungry at that time after getting myself angry with QB House. I went to their restaurant, and took Subway Melt meal. Actually, they are closing already when I was reaching there. It happens exactly the same situation as QB House. However, I went ahead and ask politely for a meal. The auntie looked really nice enough and tell me what meal I want, and even told me that they are left with Italian and wheat bread. My heart really melted by her words… What makes me even felt good is that there is no cookies for me to choose from, but the guy offered to went behind to his inventory to fetch me my choices of cookies…

And because of me, the queue for Subway food starts to form up even though they have closed.

I was wondering how they are dealing with the queue, so I stayed quietly at the side to see. I was shocked to see that they are still trying to cater to the queue! It was until there wasn’t anybody queuing that they start to do cleaning up, and that’s when they couldn’t cater anymore. Great service!

I can understand that this is probably happening more on the personal basis by the employees, and it might not be happening in other Subway restaurants. However, this kind of little service can be viral. “Pssst! Subway should be still serving food right now. Let’s go there!” Ok, it might not be a good thing for the tiring employees who worked the whole day. By working an additional 20 minutes, Subway could actually think of diverting their advertising budget towards their employees’ pocket! But it is definitely worthed it since it is gaining exposure by making the customers to spread for them. Isn’t that Win-Win situation where Subway makes a little more money while the customers are helping to spread the Subway brand as a whole? Many companies have been spending millions of dollars just to maintain the people to talk about their series of advertisement!

According to ZDNet in response to The New York Times, 99.999% of the bloggers have a day job. If that is true, blogging doesn’t really kill after all since it is an extreme case. Sitting in front of the computer for too long is not very good for health since we may be ignoring our health of not working out, or even to go out socializing. In fact, I don’t believe that the bloggers blog every single second of the day. They might be blogging only when they saw something interesting. It’s an overall effect from blogging, social networking, online chatting and other online activities.

It is just like watching too much TV, and making your mind so tiring and yet you can’t help but being a TV addict. It’s not only bad for the eyes, you start to have pop-belly, you start to forget about your other happenings in your life.

According to ZDNet, Tom Foremski admitted that not many bloggers really can make money out of blogging. And that is why they still have to hold a day job as a living. No doubt that we do make some money out of it, it really depends on individual to become outstanding enough to become that 0.0001%… Hence, watch your health as you become a full time blogger!

This news is no longer fresh. More and more people are using WordPress as a CMS software. They are managing the contents using WordPress platform, while creating their own customized interface on the outside. WordPress is made in such a way that it can be expandable. You can have your own pages to be published for public view, and then you can show your blog posts beside it. Oh by the way, CMS means Content Management System.

I am seeing many blog designers like Adii working on new cool designs such as VibrantCMS. Unique Blog Designs has been focusing on building customized designs for their customers, and I am not sure if they are heading that direction or not.

I believe in my coming reviews, I will be working on unique blogs where the blog is on the secondary page, and not on the front page. While Matt Cutts practices blogging on the second page, he mentioned that it is always good to have your blog on your second page since your front page can do many things else. People are linking to your blogs directly too. And in my opinion, every web page is treated equally in Google’s eyes. There should be no favoritism for the front page.

We’ll wait and see the coming days for the blogs to come out as second page. Oh by the way, Problogger’s blog is also on the second page!

Blogging has been part of an interesting career for me because it actually teaches me more about what internet marketing is at my own pace. I was blogging for a while till I got my niche to blog about website reviews in the form of video. I had been testing and trying different ways of blogging. This topic is written in response to Seth Godin’s blog about writing like a blogger.

When Seth said something like this, it actually gives me an idea that blogging is a skill by itself. When I start to blog, I always look for new things to learn and to add on. Because blogging industry is not really that old after all… It is even less than 10 years old! And yet, more and more people are starting to blog! We blog with our own direction. We blog with our own learning curve. We blog by learning from different angles as well. Never did we know that blogging itself is also a lesson to be learnt!

Blogging actually reveals a person’s thinking. It gives us a very good idea about what a person really wants. The blogger might not be writing anything personal. But from the way he is writing, you can start to see the kind of direction that he is going unknowingly over the days, months and years. Like Seth said, every blog post is just an idea piling on a thesis over time. So as the time goes by, you will start to see what makes a blog unique.

In fact, blog is like a business. If you are very excited about your own business at the very beginning stage, you will start to build up the momentum at the beginning stage. But as you build up, and you just don’t feel like working because of circumstances, your business will start to go down. In other words, we have to maintain our excitement till the business ends. It not only gives the blog a whole new fresh look every time, it also gives the people feeling like coming back for more. Business is always an ongoing process. Everyday, we have to make money on a consistent basis. If we stop, the business stops and we will have no money to spend anymore.

Keep blogging. Give yourself the best in every post that you write. Write as though it is your last post every day!

Blogging too much may not be good for your health and may increase stress in your life. What do I mean by that? Find out more from The New York Times about it. Thanks Mark for the link. TechCrunch people have been working non-stop on their famous blog that they are sometimes lacking of sleep. This can be dangerous if you didn’t manage your blogging career well…

In actual fact, we can blog in almost everywhere we are so long as we have a computer with Internet access. There are so many tools out there to give us the flexibility such as our mobile phones. My N95 phone can allow me to blog while I am outside so long as there is WiFi… Or else, I may choose to pay the more expensive version of blogging anywhere using the telephone network.

There are people who had achieved the ideal life by blogging as they travel around the world. One very good example is Grace Cheng and her Worldiki. She actually blogs about herself going around the world, and she is still working from the Internet. So where is her workplace? Internet!

So where is your workplace? If it is home, and you are working at home all day like myself, it will depend a lot on your determination and maintaining yourself between work and home…

I had a terrible news to break to all of you. My hard disk crashed last Friday and my information is totally wiped out! What a bad day I had after re-formatting my hard disk few weeks ago. In such a day, I start to learn something about hard disk which you guys should take note of when you are doing your own internet marketing. It is all about information here since we are all infopreneurs in one way or another. Even if our products are tangible, we are all still using information to market them.

Hard disk is the most important device of all in our computers. Our computers may not be functional as time goes by, but if we could take our hard disk out and placed it in another computer, we can still carry on with our work. And by the way, if your hard disk is spoilt and you wish to retrieve information, the pricing for repair can be as much as buying one or two new computers! So, spending $1000 to retrieve your information from the faulty hard disk is a norm… So, don’t be alarmed if your system integrator is quoting you this price.

But of course, if your hard disk is not faulty and you don’t wish to retrieve the information in it, you can still format your hard disk and start your hard disk afresh. In this case, the computer repair costing around $100 or even less, shouldn’t be a problem to the system integrator.

Buying hard disk for our computers can be an exciting process. Because we want to enjoy greater space for a longer period of time, we tend to buy bigger spaces for our hard disk. But no matter what, please always take note that your hard disk typical life span is about 3 to 5 years of reliability. After which, it is best recommended for you to buy a new hard disk to replace the old one. In my case, my hard disk is going 5 years old now… It’s no surprise that it has crashed without my knowledge. The only surprise is that I should have done some backing up.

If your hard disk is already three years old and is still running well, the best suggestion is to have a separate partition or a new hard disk to back up your important information while your old hard disk continues to run the programs and operating system (such as Windows XP). So, if one day you couldn’t access your hard disk partition, there is still a chance that you might be able to access the other one. Always keep your information in one partition, while running your applications in the main partition. This will ensure your hard disk crash in a more preventive measure.

Anyway, we can now store all our information online. With so many ways of keeping our information online, our hard disk is mainly used for running the applications that we need. For example, I am now using Gmail to access all my email needs (All thanks to Carl Ocab for giving me the tip to use just that.) We can also use Flickr to store all our photographs. We have Google Docs to save all our documents. And for those website owners, they can also store files for their visitors to download as gifts and products.

As an internet marketer, keeping your business portable is one of the criteria to allow yourself not to be location-restricted. Have fun exploring ways to use any computer to do your online business!

Blog is actually a name card for you to introduce yourself in both the short term as well as the long term. I don’t care whether you are blogging formally or casually, which kind of topics you are covering, or even whether you are really making money through your blog. Your blog is used as your very own personal name card with your introduction in it. Everywhere you go, be it online forum, MSN chatting, reading other blogs, or even talking to your friends outside the Internet arena, a blog can become your identity for your visitors to look forward to as an icon of yourself.

What is the meaning of an introduction in a blog?
Basically when we are meeting a new friend, we would normally do a short introduction of ourselves. And if time permits, we will start talking about our interest and even express that out to that new friend so that time will be passed more pleasingly. Likewise for blogs, we are blogging so much every day (once or twice a day, or once every few days) so that our visitors will get to know us and our interests. (I don’t mean those people who tend to do auto-blogging by extracting information from other blogs.) Our visitors wish to get to know us more by reading more and more about our past and our interest through our blog. And if they are very interested, they could either subscribe to our RSS feed, or to come back to our blog for the latest happenings about us. And if you only want your visitors to know you more about a certain area of your life and cover away the rest, you could do the same to your own blog so that you will be able to attract the right force for your blog.

Blog is your real “You Inc”.
It’s not really about you in your blog. It’s about your corporation that you give to your blog. Everybody will get to know you through your own blog. Your blog is the one that is teaching people what they wish to know about you and your expertise. That is what makes people wanting to come back for more information through your own website. First of all, they don’t really care about how beautiful your website is so long as you are able to satisfy their needs for contents. But your website beauty will definitely be an invisible added-value for your visitors.

Start your blog today. You are probably going to start another make-money-online. But so what? You don’t have to make your money through this blog. Most importantly, this blog is going to give you the credibility that you need when you are doing some joint ventures with the new guys out there who are looking through the Internet for your information before deciding to work with you or not.