Week holiday
December 29, 2006
I am taking off for the next week. I am staying in a place that has wireless but I think I will be leaving the laptop at home so I can just spend some time unwinding. It will be a good chance to start thinking about my monthly and quarterly goals for the year.
Creating a blog network
December 28, 2006
I have been toying with the idea of some how putting together a blog network, not unlike b5media.com or 9rules.com. I have a whole bunch of different blogs and ideas for a few new ones. The obvious step would be to some how put them all under a single umbrella to try and create some order with them.
I don’t want to employ bloggers like what b5 do, but create a group of blogs around different themes. If no-one joins, I don’t really mind as I see it a way to try and organize my own blogs and try to keep them all updated regularly. At best larger advertising contracts could be negotiated and revenue split, at worst it could be a way to try and drive traffic to each other’s sites.
The main themes I am interested in are making money online, finance, property, sporting events, city/country guides, health and travel. However, I would consider any blog as long it is not totally brand new, is hosted on its own domain and is updated fairly regularly. If anyone has an idea for a blog, I would be happy to set it up for you, provide the hosting and the domain for a share in the revenue. I can also help you to transfer your site from a free blogging site, like blogger to your own domain.
I just registered “fusionpress.com” which to me sounds like pretty cool name. If anyone would like to join or create a logo for the site, please drop me an email.
Retiring in your 30s
December 27, 2006
I found this interesting article on how one could possible retire in your 30s via. Even just the thought of being able to retire in your 30s would have been unheard of until recently. For people who plan their finances and have some success with them, it is entirely possible.
I don’t think anyone who has the financial ability to retire in their thirties would just quit their work entirely and take up lawn bowls, but it does give people who have the financial means to quit their corporate jobs and pursue their own dreams and aspirations.
Not having a regualar income means you need to rely on money to come from a business or investments. This does take some time to manage, but hardly the time and stress it takes to fulfill the requirements of a regular job. The other advantage is that if you structure things correctly, you can live in almost any location, preferably with a lower cost of living.
My requirements for a suitable location would include:
- good food
- close to the beach
- low cost of living
- good internet connection
- friendly locals
- relatively safe
Ad Tech Sydney
December 23, 2006
I just noticed that Ad-Tech are holding their first conference in Australia. Now that I am back in Australia I think I will try to make some effort to attend these conferences.
http://www.ad-tech.com/sydney/
Website cleanup
December 21, 2006
I am back in Melbourne now and have spent a great day with my family. I just set up our new ADSL connection and is running well. My new workspace at least for now looks out onto a nice little garden, a little better than what I was used to in Tokyo.
I am out in the suburbs which should free me from some of the distractions I faced in Tokyo. It is warm here, so I can see spending quite a bit of time outside and my nights up late burning the midnight oil.
My first priority is trying to clean up all of my sites. Some of my blogs and forums don’t have proper spam controls, so this is going to be one of my first tasks. Some blogs are also running an older version of wordpress which I am planning to upgrade. Hopefully now I will have the time to focus on doing some badly needed house keeping.
Saigon Airport
December 20, 2006
I am in Hoh Chi Min now waiting for my connecting flight. I am flying on Vietnam Airlines and I must say they have provided excellent service thus far. They are currently the cheapest option for flying to Australia from Japan, the only drawback - a five hour wait at the airport.
I could easily afford a direct flight but I just can’t help always looking for the cheapest option, even if it does mean a little more inconvenience.
Out of Tokyo
December 19, 2006
I have finally packed up everything in my apartment, handed over the keys and now staying the night in an hotel not far from Narita airport. It really is amazing how much stuff you accumulate without even trying. I threw out so much rubbish. The move is good in some ways as it really makes me feel like I am moving on.
I have an early flight tomorrow morning, so I thought it would be better to stay near the airport where I could have a bit of sleep in. Typical of me, I didn’t make a booking but was lucky enough to get a nice room for just 6000 yen a night. A bargain in Japan.
It is a tremendous relief to be finally moving on after the last few months of planning.
First .mobi advertisement seen
December 18, 2006
While travelling on Tokyo’s circular loop train, the ‘Yamanote Line’ I saw an advertisement which featured a .mobi URL. It was interesting because I didn’t think that Japanese companies would use the .mobi extension.
The site was norikae.mobi which means to change trains in Japanese. I just checked the site on my mobile and they have various train and transportation information, including when the last train leaves. This is vital information in Tokyo where trains stop for about five hours at midnight. The site also has hotel and restaurant information.
It has given me new inspiration to start developing my own .mobi sites.
I remember reading somewhere, one of the reasons why .com domains are so successful, because every advertisement which features a .com domain is in a way promoting the .com TLD. It would be interesting to see companies promoting their .mobi URL.
Cleaning up
December 18, 2006
I have just one more day here in Japan. It has been an extremely busy couple of of weeks. I can’t wait to get my place cleaned up, of course though it is going to be very sad leaving. I have done very little on my sites. It is very difficult working on the floor!
Get your blog re-indexed by Google
December 14, 2006
I have mentioned in the past that I was having problems getting my blog completely indexed by Google. One problem I had was that the meta data was the same for every page. I then installed a plugin which automatically creates your meta data for every page you have. This seemed to help and all of the pages which were displaying the new meta data were properly indexed.
A couple of days I changed my blog tagline in the Options tab in Wordpress and bang, Google has now indexed over 900 pages. Many of pages are in the supplemental index, but that is something else I need to work on.
