T-shirt contest on BlueFur August 19, 2007
Posted by soniadomain in : Uncategorized , add a commentMy hosting provider BlueFur holds a contest for company T-shirt. I think their T-shirt is pretty cool and right on brand “Experience the legend”. What do you think?
Surf Internet forums with Tyler Cruz June 6, 2007
Posted by admin in : Uncategorized , add a commentToday’s focus is a personal blog of an Internet entrepreneur Tyler Cruz. Is he related to Penelope Cruz? This question goes unanswered in his “About Me” writeup, the rest of the topics is pretty much covered.
Tyler is 23 years old web publisher, who owns a variety of websites, builds online communities and profits from an advertising placed on them. Most of the advertisement income comes from private placements. Boxing forums, cooking forums, poker forum and a movie forum are just examples of his online communities and a good portfolio of sites for an online socialite. I’ve had a peek at the boxing forum and paid an attention that there is an option to chat online with a celebrity, who is a forum member. A very cool idea! Heading for a movie? Read the latest review of the movies being screened at another Tyler’s movie site . Tyler even writes a music for his videos - his inspirational video at “About me” page is highly recommended.
The blog is very well maintained and updated. I liked the form of a screencast Tyler had chosen to review other sites. This technique is pretty new to me, but then again I am a very old school. The blog is built as a personal journal and an easy read. The only recommendation I would make is to work out a bit better category structure. With this structure some interesting posts will be much easier to find. Overall - a very good and an informative blog.
Dream 1: Interview with BlueFur May 2, 2007
Posted by admin in : Uncategorized , add a comment Yesterday I had a dream of meeting BlueFur in a deep forest. In my dream I ventured into the deep forest to take an interview with BlueFur - a monster behind bluefur.com, my hosting company. I reviewed their logo before and this time the purpose of my interview was to get to know a little monster a bit better. Overcoming his natural first instinct to eat me, BlueFur agreed to be interviewed.
BlueFur, why are you pink?
Well, you see it is a spring time. And in a spring we, bluefurs, drop our old fur and change it to a new fur. This fur is actually golden, but will change to a blue fur later on.
How does Mrs. BlueFur call you?
She calls me fondly - Monster.
What are your hobbies?
When I’m not busy chasing after squirrels, I am reading marketing books.
What is your worst nightmare?
Loosing my helmet to strangers.
Who are you working for?
I am working for the government..
What wouldn’t you leave your house without?
My helmet - for sure.
Having said that, BlueFur suddenly disappeared in a thin air. As his image fuzzied out and I recollected details of our conversation later on, I whispered quietly “Experience the legend” and here he was standing in front of me and smiling.
Let’s Do Some Evil April 17, 2007
Posted by admin in : Uncategorized , add a commentBeing evil usually does not pay off ( unless you are a Johnchow.com blog), but doing some evil certainly does.
A good example is a new website InsultaMatic.com. First you ask the site to insult you and then you can respond to an insult. Your insults are logged and used to insult other people. An insult matching algorithm stays owners’ proprietary technology, but the promise on the bottom says that all logged insults will be placed for vote upon reaching 1,000,000 target. I can easily see how this service could be monetized if placed as a bot on the internet forums. And if you get tired of it, what the hell, scrap the bot and start all over again.
Have you come from outer of space? April 12, 2007
Posted by admin in : Uncategorized , add a commentLegend has it that these were the words spoken by Kazakh woman planting potatoes, a mother of six year old daughter. She greeted the first cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin upon landing. In a manned spacecraft race, Russians had beaten Americans by a slight margin. That’s right. And today is an anniversary of that date.
12 April 1961 0907 local time Flight Major Yuri Gagarin lifted off from what would become known as the Baikonur Cosmodrome aboard Vostok 1 - a first manned flight into the space had happened. 46 years later flights into space become more popular within a circle of software executives. Charles Simonyj, who oversaw the development of Word and Excel in Microsoft is visiting International Space station right now. Even the price was disclosed - $25 million per seat. I guess the price is affordable if you a Microsoft exec. Russian Space Adventures, who organizes these flights, reported that $100 million per seat price tag for a flight round the moon and back attracted some interest as well. I can understand. Considering gas prices, it is a real bargain today.
Today is big on news. My sister Olga gave a birth to her second son in Great Britain. She and her son are feeling well. I wish Ryan (my new nephew) to be healthy, lucky, free and wealthy. Celebrating family, space, Passover, Easter and Canucks playoffs on the same day enjoy this commercial:
Good morning, America! April 6, 2007
Posted by admin in : Uncategorized , add a commentWelcome to all new guests to my blog. “You” was a man of the year in 2006 according to “Time” magazine. And what is the better way to let you friends know how you care about them, then sending a greeting card. And this is the cutest tune! What’s a great way to start a morning!
The animated card above is Care2 Ecard by Camilla Eriksson. The best news is that you can select from a wide variety of cards and the service is absolutely free! BlueMountain and Plaxo provide similar services for a small fee.
Care2 is the World’s largest community of people who care about the Environment with 6 million members and counts. The community provides free services to its members, who can connect, look for a job, find an advice on healthier living, shop, donate clicks to environmental causes and even author a petition to a government. And all these services are aggregated nicely in one place. Great idea if you ask me. Enjoy!
John Chow = √Evil March 31, 2007
Posted by admin in : Uncategorized , 2commentsSo it looks like John Chow is on his way to the world domination in making money online . I am glad someone is finally doing it. Agloco, a money making scheme, where one can benefit from the power of his subscriber base is an important basestone in achieving his goal. John is sitting now within 0.01% of top members of Agloco community, which effectively makes him a main time shareholder of Agloco and moves him closer to his evil roots. And this is a quick and dirty proof:
Given that jonchow.com will be making money online with Agloco, let us assume that
Time agloco = a time spent by johnchow community online,
Money mean = an average amount of money that johnchow.com makes online
johnchow.com = Time agloco x Money mean
Since Time agloco = Money mean (1) =>
johnchow.com = Money2 mean (2)
Now we know that
John Chow = √johnchow.com (3)
Money mean = √Evil (4)
Substitute (3) and (4) in (2) =>
John Chow = √Evil
Biking for GPS cache in Richmond March 31, 2007
Posted by admin in : Uncategorized , add a comment 
A Bloom of the Cherry Trees
The spring has finally sprung in Richmond. On a day like this sitting at home doesn’t seem like such a good idea. People were out either taking photographs, flying kites at Garry point or taking a stroll in a sun.
Last Sunday I felt like going treasure hunting. So I took my bike and jumped on a quest to find as many geocaches in Steveston village as possible. I forgot to mention that geocaching is my new hobby. Basically, a geocache is is a small sealed box of goodies that someone had hidden and then posted GPS coordinates on the Internet. Geocaching.com is a good source for geocaches locations in your area. You just specify a postal code and Google maps brings a detailed list of geocaches. Then using GPS you track the cache and when you find it, you make a record in a logbook and also may exchange small items found in a box. Some caches have geocoins in them, who want to “travel” to specific location. During my 20 km trip I tracked down 4 caches and missed one. At one location, I met another geocacher from Australia, who told me that the cache I missed was magnetized and was sitting at the eye level. And I was looking for it on a ground. What a muddler!
I found that Garmin Nuvi 360 GPS I had with me was up to the task. The only drawback was that GPS run out of batteries pretty fast. I hope that cellular carriers will introduce GPS service in Canada really soon, so I could use my cellphone to track caches.
Why Do I Like Windows So Much March 30, 2007
Posted by soniadomain in : Uncategorized , add a commentHere I have to confess that I do like windows in life and this is the reason why. As I wrote in my previous posting about pedestrian crossing, an intersection may become a dangerous place to meet.
Let us assume that a driver listens to a radio and a pedestrian makes a call on his mobile and asks to play a song for his high school sweetheart, who happens to be driver’s wife. The car driver may get mad if he overhears the call. If he runs the red light, he may run over the other cars too. On the other hand a smart broadcaster will smoother a conversation a bit to let the truth out and listeners may hear that a broken hearted man wants the love of his life to listen to a song. Here a broadcaster, an independent 3rd party, acts like a “window” to screen out the request details. The odds are that a true life story will not make a driver feel bad are higher than a senseless demand for a gratification of someone’s super-inflated ego.
So, to summarize, windows and windshields in particular in combination with a true story telling is a best guard against malicious sound disturbances. This is why I feel weird when someone tells me that we must break windows to get to the next level of the social progress. Constant awareness of surroundings enforced by $100 fine for wearing iPod or talking on a cellphone proposed by NY Senator Carl Cruger will help to solve this problem.
Mad Intersection Driving March 22, 2007
Posted by soniadomain in : Uncategorized , 2comments
I am not the best driver in the world, moreover I am very far from that. May be this is the reason that I decided to upgrade my driver skills.
I am reading through “Driving commercial vehicles” now with a goal to pass Taxi driver (class 4 restricted) test. What I like about this idea, that getting there also requires of you not only knowing safe driving techniques, but also taking a taxi host program, knowing city maps and automobile basics. Yesterday my dad got an email from a friend with a video attachment, showing recordings of crashes at one of the intersections in St.Petersburg. After a short search on YouTube I found this video. Have a look and see by yourself. What is your take on it?
