8 Days To Go

8 more days to go till Beijing kick off the 2008 Summer Olympic Games on 08.08.08 at 8.08pm Beijing time. This once-in-a-lifetime date and time must be specially selected as the Chinese word of number 8 is read as "ba" which sounds like "fa" - the Chinese word for fortune and prosperity.

Hosting the biggest sporting event on Earth is the pride and joy of all Chinese, especially so for the Chinese in Beijing. Modern architectures and skyscrapers doted the city skyline, and with the old world charm of ancient China, Beijing is ready and set to welcome and play a good host to the ten of thousands of athletes, officials, and tourists that are expected to converge in the city.

After an excruciating 4 years of waiting, the end to the wait is in sight and the countdown towards One World One Dream is truly on for all sports fans. Let the Games begin!

Create Your Free Blog At Thoughts.com

I started blogging two and a half years ago and went through a pretty long and steep learning curve as blogging tools were not as intuitive back then as currently available.

Blogging is not only about writing and sharing your thoughts online. Other than writing, blogging constitute a chain of activities which includes Internet marketing, promoting, networking and basic HTML coding. If we don’t work on the social aspect of blogging, then most of us will be writing in a vacuum and our most likely readers will be our mothers and our cats!

Speaking from my personal experience, I joined many different social networks and actively participate in the community to establish my presence in the World Wide Web. If only there was a free blogging platform with a built-in social networking community back when I started, my learning curve would not be so steep and time consuming.

A new site still in beta, Thoughts.com enables its users to create Free Blog with unlimited bandwidth to upload and share photos, videos, music files and podcasts.
What makes thoughts.com different from other blog platforms, and in my opinion a very important feature especially for newbie bloggers, is the interaction that takes place in their community.

At thoughts.com, you will have an instant audience, commenting, discussing and rating your postings. This feature is essential to keep the ‘fire’ burning and lessen the learning curve in our blogging endeavor.

Thoughts.com free blog system has been developed to make blogging as simple as possible and HTML skills are not required, but at the same time you decide for each blog post if you want it to be public, private, or only viewable by your friends and family Are you ready to share your thoughts?

Flip Video Ultra Camcorder Contest

There’s a contest going on at Million Dollar Portfolio where one lucky blogger stands to win a brand new Flip Video Ultra camcorder.

To enter to win the Flip Video Ultra Series Camcorder, you have several choices to enter.
1. 1 entry is given for simply commenting on the contest post.
2. 2 entries are given for subscribing to MDP full RSS feed.
3. 5 entries are given for blogging about the contest and tracking back to using the keywords “million dollar portfolio”.

The contest runs through the end of July and the winners will be notified on August 1st. All qualified entries will be put into a hat on August 1st and one winner will be chosen to win the grand prize of a Flip Ultra.

Tickle My Funny Bone

It's not everyday that you get to make fun of the evil dot com mogul and still stand a chance to win a big box of cool computer stuff. So when Michael Kwan offer this blog contest, I just have to grab it with both hands.

All I got to do is edit the below picture(s) - Add, remove, distort, supply captions… do whatever it takes to make for a funny picture. You don't need to be a Photoshop expert or creative guru to take part, most importantly is to have fun. So here goes my submission.

World Wild Web

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, had said "you CAN" by giving the nod to free up domain names and allow a variety of Web address suffixes, called top-level domain (TLD). Currently the domain-name system consists of more than 20 suffixes, which are generally restricted to labels for countries - .sg for Singapore – and the more familiar .com for commerce and .org for institutional organizations.

Come next year April or May, ICANN will start accepting application for new TLDs and critics fear the World Wide Web may become the World Wild Web because almost any domain extension will then be possible! Expected to be very popular with investors and speculators are TLDs like “.sex”, “.porn”, “.casino”, “.hotel” and really, a nearly infinite variety of extensions beyond yours and my imaginations!

For companies and organizations, this move opens up branding opportunities. Instead of the generic “.com”, they will be able to use their brand names in their Web addresses, for example, “.nike”, “.coke”.

Although this loosening of the network address system is expected to be messy (which new initiative isn’t?), and maybe prone to exploitation by cybersquatters, I’m sure adequate and appropriate mechanisms will be built in to protect trademark holders.

Personally, I’m hopeful that we will begin to see an entire new generation of URLS, making Web addresses more colorful and interesting. Dot Tom, Dick or Harry, anyone?

Petrol Saving Grace

Photo by Carey Tilden

With petrol prices in Singapore (and all over the world) soaring, and the cheaper alternative of enjoying subsidized petrol from our neighbors up north all but evaporated, the time has never been better to use all resources available to lower our car’s petrol consumption. Check out the following websites for tips and other information you can use to save on money on fuel as prices seem to be going up and up!

Petrol Watch – In their own words

Petrol Watch is designed as a community project with an aim to provide information and services to all motorists in Singapore. We know how expensive it can get driving around. Here at Petrol Watch, we seek to enhance the average consumers’ awareness of petrol pump prices, car park prices, car prices and become the de-facto guide which Singaporeans can refer to.

Improving Your Fuel Economy
Many fuel-savings driving tips that many drivers find unnecessary to implement when oil was trading at US$50/barrel will surely come in handy in the current situation. Short of getting rid of your car and switching to public transportation, here are some petrol-savings tips:

Downgrade that petrol guzzling SUV to a smaller model.

Convert your car to be CNG powered or purchase a Hybrid electric type vehicle.

Try to schedule your trips and errands during off-peak hours when traffic is lighter to avoid getting stuck in rush hour traffic jams. While idling, your car gets exactly 0 miles per gallon. Stopping and starting the engine frequently will cause extra wear.

Keep all tires inflated to the pressure as recommended for your car. Allowing them to get too deflated will increase drag and decrease your mileage. Keeping them over inflated will degrade traction and wear the tires rapidly.

Avoid having to stop completely. Look far ahead, if approaching a red light, let up the accelerator earlier to see if you can slow down enough to avoid having to actually stop completely (because you reach the light after it turned green). Speeding up from 5 or 10 miles per hour will be easier on the petrol consumption than starting from full stop.

WikiHow has a lot more practical tips on saving money on petrol.

Promotional Pens Plus Flip Video Contest

John Chow and his friends at Bic Promo Pens are holding a really cool contest. They will be giving away two Flip Video cameras to two lucky winners, one Flip Video Ultra and one Flip Video Mino. The winners can also expect a few Bic Pens as well.

The great thing about this contest is how easy it is to enter. You earn one entry by simply commenting on the contest post. Easy, right? But there’s more! You can earn five more entries if you blog about this contest and link to the contest post and the sponsor.

You have until July 31 to send in your entries. Good luck!

Win A Brand New iPhone 3G Contest

The ultra cool iPhone 3G will be released on 11 July in 22 countries, and I really want to get my hand on this sexy phone. Unfortunately, the local market here will not be among the first to release it in July. It will only be available at the end of the year.

I really crave to own this sleek gadget and thanks to Market Leverage, it has sponsored one to be given away to one lucky John Cow dot com reader.

You only have to subscribe to John Cow’s RSS feed via email to stance a chance to win the incredibly cool iPhone. If you want to increase your chances of winning, then check out the contest post for ways to earn more tickets.

Contest entries ends Thursday July 3rd at 12:00pm eastern time and the draw will be Friday July 4th. Winner will be selected by random draw and the more tickets that you have, then the more chances you have of winning.

If There Was No Internet

Market Leverage sponsored contests are all over the net and their promotional marketing campaigns are sure making waves in the blogosphere. Dat Money dot com is also running a contest with prizes sponsored by Market Leverage but Jason, who also owned iBlogtoBlog.com, has made his contest with a creative twist to make it more fun to participate instead of that typical “Please subscribe or write about the contest, blah, blah, blah.” kind.

In order to earn 10 entries to the contest, I’m writing on the topic “If there was no internet, what would you be spending your time doing?”

This is a very interesting topic and a scenario I can’t imagine happening in this age and time. I mean, the Internet is so deeply integrated into our modern lives, from online banking, researching information online, video conferencing, IM chat, blogging, twitter, Facebook etc. Without the Internet, Google probably won’t exist and I’ll not be blogging and entering this Market Leverage Sponsored Contest: Win a iPod, Flip Mino, $200 Gift Card or USB Pen.

But for the contest's sake, lets assume the internet really got shut down....

If there’s no Internet, I would probably care more about the people around me, my surroundings, and the environment at large. I will exercise more and read those books that I always wanted to but never seems to find the time since most of my time during and after office hours is spent in front of a PC on the World Wide Web!

If there’s no Internet, I’ll be forced to call up friends and meet them in person, instead of simply super-poking them on Facebook and/or just seeing their blurry image through IM video chat.

Come to think of it, it’s not such a bad thing after all. Without Internet, life would probably be much simpler like the good old days and relationships will be more personal again.

For a complete list of the different method to gain more entries, check out the contest post.