Jessica Simpson's New Love

I recently discovered Odeo, which lets visitors like you send me voice messages. At the same time, it also allows you to create or upload podcasts onto your site.

This is a audio podcast on the who's with who in Hollywood. I thought this as good a podcast as any to start my first ODEO podcast with, so here it is!

The "All Consuming" Site

While the name is misleading, it is actually a creative spin for what the site is about.

What if you could meet at anytime, anyplace, people who have read the same book as you, listened to the same music album, or watched the same movies, and sit down to discuss what they loved or hated about all of it?

Allconsuming.com lets you do all that. Just create an account, post the books (or music, movies, food, etc.) you've "consumed" or are "consuming" and share what you think. You'll be instantly linked to all the same people who have "consumed" the same items with what they think of their book.

When out of ideas for what you should read or listen to, you can even post a "What should I read/listen/watch" post with a description of what you like, and people with the same likes can suggest books to you.

Lynette, this site is for you!

To keep the site interesting, a "Who do you want to meet" list feature has been added. It was amusing for me to see that the "person" who has the highest votes of who people would like to meet is "My Future Husband". I had a good laugh at that.

Check it out.

Looking for Blog Poll

I'm looking for a nice poll I could use on this blog. One that is easy to use, maintain, and make changes to. So if you know of a tool out there that is easy to install as yet, do drop me a note!

Starfish Advertising

Earlier this week I decided to try a little "Starfish Advertising" on blogdom. Since I wanted to have some statistics in Google Analytics that I could analyse, I would need to get traffic first. I wanted to find out how many visitors were reading my blog, what they were reading, and what they liked/thought about some of the entries. In short, I wanted to know who my audience was.

So I followed some good advice from Blogger's and carried out a few steps to advertise this little starfish blog in the blog communities out there:

1. I registered my feather-starfish at Technorati.
2. I linked other blog sites that I liked to my "Links" list.

My ratings from Google Analytics jumped from "0" pageviews to 54 overnight. 79% of the traffic came from Technorati, 14% from Blogger, and other 7% were direct links:





It also discovered that most of the site visitors are Singaporeans and that I have 2 regular visitors! One of them must be you, Karen, the yellow dot down there at Sydney Australia! *waves*

These stats may not seem like much, but they are a start.





Finally, it tells me that I have 25 new, unique visitors to my site, and they all visited on Friday, the day I set up an account at Technorati:



Ready to register yet? It takes like 1 minute, and is free!

Register at Technorati
Sign up for Google Analytics

Slander in Shoemoney Incites Court Case

While making comments about another site on one of the most networked blogs ShoeMoney, the person was later sued for those comments. This puts Shoemoney owner in a bit of a fix since he owns the blog, and he has been subpoenaed as a witness in the court case.

While he is unable to comment on proceedings for the case, his blog is rolling in even more hits over his already burgeoning audience. It has also started the debate on whether what is stated in blogs and comments should be "sue-able" material. Given that blogs were the only way for the average "Joe" or "Jane" to air their opinions publicly as an existing culture, many are upset that this "freedom of speech" is now being threatened since commercialism has taken over blogdom.

Technorati Sold Out

Some of you would be aware that there is a service provided by Technorati that predicts how much your blog is worth. While I didn't understand how it did its calculations, I was fascinated by it. Many successful blogs post it on their site to boast of their "estate" on the Internet.

While going back for my regular blog "check up", I thought I had stumbled onto a wrong site. After a few attempts to try to find the blog worth estimator, I finally realised I was on the right site. Technorati had sold out, and had been transformed from a simple blog assessing service into a "blog searcher", if you will. The google of blogdom.

It is sad indeed, but not surprising. Many people start a blog with the purpose of making it successful to sell it off for a good price. Its good to know though that many consumer blogs are started purely out of passion alone. Cheers to all you out there who just want to entertain/torture the rest of us "web crawlers" for that simple reason alone.

Read the report here.

PS The secret is finally unlocked. Why $564? Its how much an inbound link to your site is worth. So start getting others to link to your blog and you might just be on your way to the world of geeky millionaires.

Some Cool Google Tools

So I was mucking around the web trying to gather some stats and do some research. Then I stumbled onto some cool Google tools.

Google Analytics
It analyses the metatags you use for your website, and tells you who came to your site because of which tag. In addition, it generates pretty charts and graphs to give you all the stats behind those findings too.



Conversion University
This isn't a tool, but as the name suggests, a "university" of sorts. It tells you how to optimize your site (i.e. use keywords in your content that match your URL name, metatags, etc.) and utilize Google Analytics to convert your site visitors to customers.

Can anybody tell yet what a big fan I am of Google?

Google Books For Download

For all book lovers and avid readers, I recently discovered that Google has a book search service where you can find, read and even download classics for free. Not all books are for "Full View", i.e. completely free. Some have "Limited View", which means you can only browse selected pages.

If you do not want to be disappointed, simply select the "Full View" option, and type in the name of your favourite author. You might be surprised with what you get. Especially if you are the rare few who like the writings of stuffy, eclectic writers.

Start your book search here!

Read Google's Press Release here.

A Birthday Entry

This is my diary entry on the day I celebrated my 12th birthday - If I could be as easily pleased as I was then...

"Dear Diary,

I am very happy today 'cause it is my birthday. I am very busy too, helping my mother to prepare the things for my birthday party. When the cake arrived, I was very happy with it. It was simply beautiful. May Ling (my cousin a couple of years older than myself) gave me two Enid Blyton books. Patrick's mother (my auntie) gave me a very big box of toffees. Brian, Ritta and Edna (all cousins, the first of whom I had a huge crush on for quite a while - it may be yucky in the west, but is common and even smiled at in the east. In fact, the Taiwanese culture was to marry their cousins) gave me a box of games consisting of ten kind of games (the term compendium was a little over my head at the age of 12). Grand pa gave me $20, while my grand ma (father's side) gave me $16. My auntie (Tua Ee, or big auntie) gave me an Ang Pow (the famous red packet containing money) too, but I forgot where I put it as I was very busy. I gave my mother the $36 because she had spent a lot of money on my birthday celebration. I am now trying to find it.

Yours sincerely,
Ivy"

The Age of Innocence

Ok, so this is a cliche heading. But there is no other title I have for this entry. While clubbing the green eyed monster till his teeth fell out and he skunked away, I started evaluating the (limited) styles of my writing. Then I got to wondering if my writing has changed over the years. I remember as a child, I used to write deep poems (compared to my shallow rantings these days). So I dug out my much treasured diaries.

While I haven't consistently journaled my days, there have been several periods of my life where I have journaled to help me sort things out, or just to write about a significant part of my life.

I started "journaling" when I was 12, when my best friend gave me a diary just before my birthday and made me promise to use it. So I did. Interestingly, my first entry had the green eyed monster in it as well. See if you can spot him.

"Dear Diary,

Today, Mrs. Kiat (my form teacher then) was as hot as fire with that d*** idiot Hong Yong. (Yes, I started swearing at the age of 12).

That stupid boy, Ronald bought a new bike (No, I wasn't too kind as a kid). And he has been showing off since then. He would ring his bicycle bell between me and my neighbour's house in order to lure our attention.

Yours Sincerely,
Ivy"

The Green Eyed Monster

One of the projects that I've been busy with is preparing the launch of a regional newsletter for my company. No, not the entire company, just my business unit which is an amoeba swimming in the huge ocean of my company. I'm talking in terms of how cash rich our unit is. Yes, of course I'm exaggerating! But I'm in a funny mood tonight. Much like someone who's been kept in the mad house wrongly. But by the time they realise their mistake and let him out, he's already gone a little mad...

Anyway, while collating articles for the newsletter, I decided that I wanted some stories on the Amazing Race Asia. So I wrote this colleague from the Business Unit which constituted the ocean (the term swimming in money comes to mind) for the stories - he's the only one I know who was present for both Amazing Race Asia road shows.

He's a Kiwi and hails from the Hobbit Land of New Zealand. Yes, I know that Hobbit Land is NOT NZ, but the fact that it was filmed there makes it almost the same. Well, he's a former professional car racer who gave up his career to work with us. I never asked about the burn marks on his neck, but it wouldn't be difficult to guess how he got them. In any case, they didn't mar the fact that he's tall, blonde with blue eyes, pretty good looking, and has a really kind heart. He also happens to be happily married (rats!).

Being the nice guy that he is, he agrees to do the 2 articles for me, in the spirit of "enterprise building". I was happy, and waited for a "quick and dirty", "get it done and over with" type of article. After all, that was what I would have been happy with, telling him that 2-3 paragraphs for each would be good enough.

When the mail came in, I was stunned, blown out of my mind if you will. If I had gone out and gotten a professional foreign reporter (yes, not even local reporter for the Straits Times would do) and paid him a freelancer's fee to cover the event, it would be of the same quality of the article he sent. It was then that a network of brain cells came alive, tapped me on the shoulder, and reminded me that someone had mentioned he had a degree in journalism.

I couldn't believe what a stroke of good luck it was. His article was not only perfect, it conveyed the exact mood I wanted readers to have when going through the articles about the Amazing Race, and more. And I felt privileged that he had actually stayed back late in the office to finish the articles for me, as a favor.

I confess, that at the same time that I was surprised, the green ugly monster reared its head. Of course it was my own fault, for not having made a more conscious effort in writing, reading and improving my style. But while practice and hard work definitely pays off, it knows when to bow down to TALENT too. *clubs the green eyed monster to death*

What's my Login Again?

Greetings. This is my first login after 10 days of non-activity. Feels like a year though! Life has been busy - and I mean being in 2 meetings at the same time, having conversations with up to 4 people at one time in various forms, and running 4 time sensitive projects all at the same time...

But that is probably starting to sound tired to all of you out there, so I'll get on to what I want to say in this entry. Believe it or not, I actually forgot my login! I happily got my browser to knock on blogger's doors but blogger won't let me in without an ID. Same feeling as when you're trying to get into some hip nightclub in town but can't get in because you're not one of the "elite" patrons.

I froze, panicked, and went blank. Then it suddenly all came back to me in that instant. Now I understand why people with amnesia are so miserable. You can sense that you are on the tip of remembering something so important to you, to the point where you feel you've lost a large part of your life. Yet your memory betrays you in that it simply won't cooperate by telling you what you need to know.

But enough of the drama. I'm glad I'm in. Lesson No. 1 (and thankfully that I did something right) - always associate your login ID with the name of your blog. Yes, the association technique for memory recall works. This entry is proof of that.