Vote on Blogger's Choice Awards

If you like my blog, please vote for me for the 2008 Blogger's Choice Awards. My blog has been nominated for "The Best Geek Blog".



Voting closes in the next month or so.

What happened to Project Petaling Street

I have been a member of Project Petaling Street or PPS for a long long time. Started by Aizuddin Danian (if I am not mistaken), it was the best content aggregate site for Malaysian blogs. I say "WAS" because I just found out that the site is now this:



The title says "restaurant wong fook kee pps at petalingstreet.org".

Wonder what happened? Maybe the domain name owner forgot to renew it or he simply lost interest and let it go. I think the former is the more likely reason. It's really sad.

Now where do I go to get my latest on the Malaysian blogging scene? Any suggestions.

UPDATE: PPS is is back up again.

Google PR updates are still on

Just a few days back, I noticed that the Page Rank on my both my ah ok lah blog as well as this blog was down to 0. I didn't think much about it as it had happened before - where my blog' PR had gone to 0 and back up again.

Apparently, this is not some short term thing as my blogs are still showing a big 0 PR. It's clear that the Google updates are not over and in fact may signify that it's an ongoing process unlike in the past where they updated the PR and we had to wait a few more months until the next.

In case you are wondering about my reaction... I have to say initially I was really really upset. I seriously considered boycotting them. Moving all my blogs to my own host, removing Google as the default search engine on my browser, removing adsense ads from all my blogs - I earn peanuts from it anyway and discouraging everyone I know from using their products.

Why do I feel like this?

Mainly because I feel betrayed. Like how can they do this to me? Unlike some bloggers I know (online), I don't earn thousand of dollars from my blogs. Then there is the fact that I have always been a Goggle supporter, this was even before I started blogging (in 2003) and I have introduced hundreds of my students if not thousands, to the search engine (when it was still a search engine) and their email service. Talking about their email service - it was what actually makes it quite hard to boycott them. I love Gmail and sacrificing my email account might be an extreme move and to my great disadvantage.

It was my wife who brought me down to Earth, like she does most of the time. She asked me why I was so worked up about, "it's only PR".

One thing she said really made me think: "Do you blog because you love blogging or because of the stupid PR?"

To think about it, I never really cared about PR. I simply blog because I love blogging - sharing my ideas and thoughts. I became obsessed with PR only after I started blogging commercially in December 2006.

I am still pissed off but I am not boycotting Google.

Problogger answers my question

Sometime back, Darren Rowse, the original problogger, invited his blog readers to ask him questions. Of course, I did. Here's the question I asked:

I became a full time blogger early this year. However, unlike other people, I miss the work place and socializing with “real” people. Did you ever face this situation?

I finally got my question answered in a video on his blog: Getting to 1000 Visitors a Day, When to Go Pro, .Net or .Com and Lonely Bloggers - Reader Questions Answered. Thanks Darren. Yes! I was getting pretty lonely.

Anyway, I am now working in a temporary position in the University of Warwick and to tell the truth, I now realise how much I miss going to work to a real office. That's the reason why I haven't been able to update my blog that regularly.

WAHMs leading the blogging brigade

Blogging is a movement, a phenomenon, a revolution or a combination of all. A good example of something that has resulted in paradigm shifts or the way we think. It has changed and is still in the process of changing how everything works. No institution has remained untouched - families, communities, the press, businesses and even governments. They all had to figure out how to adopt and adapt to this new "thing". A few years ago people used to exchange telephone number. Then it was emails and now it's blog urls. Best of all you don't need to be a very tech savvy person in order to join in this new wave.

In fact, I can say that it has been very empowering to the common people - to you and me. I don't need to write to a newspaper to complain about a bad service or product any more . I can do it right here on my blog. Governments cannot suppress unfavourable news any more. Among the most empowered have been the "Work at home mums" or WAHM. Many creative and talented women who gave up their careers to care for a family (voluntarily or otherwise) have finally found their voice again.

I may be wrong but according to feedback from several lady bloggers, even though it was initially the social networking that motivated them, now it is the opportunity to make money online through their blogs, that has become a stronger motivating force. Of course money has always been a good motivator and with the rise of the importance of consumer generated advertising, money is pouring into this new medium.

Two main reasons make blogs an ideal medium for advertising. First of all, it is consumer generated and as we know word-of-mouth is the best advertising of all. Blogging is an advanced version of the 'word of mouth' transmission of information. Next, it an interactive medium where everyone can participate and discuss - where not only the blogger but visitors to their blogs as well, can voice their opinion (to some extent).

I cannot fully explain why, but women have taken to blogging for money in a big way. Just take a look at the top earners at PayPerPost, all of them are women and almost all are WAHMs. There are some "Work at home dad" bloggers as well (including myself) but we are outnumbered by the ladies.

Some say that it's effectiveness as an advertising medium is not proven as yet. However, many companies are slowly but steadily embracing the fact that consumer generated advertising through blogs may be actually the next big thing. Maybe it already is but people just don't realise it.