The annual Taiwandeful Taiwan Blog Awards are on again this year and voting has opened today.

OzSoapbox is up for the Central Taiwan and General categories so let’s see how I go this year. Last year I ranked 11th overall so I’m curious to see if there’s any change.

Like last year at the conclusion of the 2011 blog awards I’ll be reviewing the winners blogs and doing a writeup.

You can vote once per 24 hours from the same IP address and voting runs from today till December 30th, 2011. All you have to do is visit the OzSoapbox Taiwanderful page and click the little + icon below the voting number (example button on the right there).

Cheers for any votes thrown my way and thanks for reading and sharing my adventures through Taiwan.

Largely closed off to the internet population at large (for now, the web is still dominated by English), these countries tend to evolve a unique internet culture of their own.

Looking at blogging in particular, in Taiwan if you’ve got a vagina, can write reasonably well, pull off the Hello Kitty look that appeals to the masses of lonely males on the island but at the same time aren’t too pretty to evoke jealousy in Taiwan’s women, and know how to start a blog… there’s a very lucrative market out there for you in the form of paid-per-post advertising.

But… as with all things solidly built on deception and the shallowness of an evaporated puddle, if Taiwan’s Legislative Economic Committee has its way – perhaps not for much longer.

Employing primarily females who would otherwise no doubt be flogging betelnut from roadside aquariums, paid-per-post blogging is where an advertiser partners with a blogger and gets them to praise the product for cash.

Get enough readers and companies on board, and a blogger can earn enough money to quit their day job. Hell, the whoriest most succesful bloggers who do this actually make quite a decent living out of it.

‘But why on Earth would anyone want to read a bunch of paid for marketing crap?’ I hear you ask…

Well, in a similar way to how betelnut is marketed, these girls almost universally are halfway attractive and aren’t afraid to show a bit of skin, albeit much more subtly then their oft sluttishly dressed betelnut selling counterparts.

This sex appeal is usually delivered by means of photo or video footage and if the blog owner publishes frequently (which all the succesful ones do), they appeal to that ‘I like eye candy’ instinct of guys which in turn leads to online popularity and a following.

This creates fans and celebrity culture which then equates to real world dollars via authority and financial partnerships with companies looking to flog their products.

Pretty much you’ve got both female and male demographics covered right there. Guys stare at the pictures and fantasize, and women rush out to buy the products featured. To say that this relationship works particularly well in Taiwan’s at times rampant consumerist society is an understatement.

Some of these bloggers make a reported $50,000-$100,000 TWD (per article written. I think part of the success model is due to the largely celebrity orientated advertising model used here.

Venture out into the streets of Taiwan and you’re instantly bombarded with cut outs of Taiwanese celebrities flogging everything you can think of. 99.9% these ads are nothing more than someone holding a product with a smile but their sheer persistency and frequency.

It’s not uncommon to walk down a street and see the same celebrity four or five times on massive billboards infront of completely unrelated shops flogging completely different products and brands.

Combine that with the internet, some racy photos and an appeal to the cute… and you might just be Taiwan’s next biggest paid-per-post blogger.

So what’s wrong with all this? Bloggers make money, people read and enjoy the pretty girls content and companies sell products.

Well, nothing would be wrong with it… if it wasn’t most of the time just a giant scam.

To illustrate the inner works of these sham paid-per-post blogs, I’ll share with you an example I first read about over at My Kafkaesque Life earlier this year.

‘HoneyQueen’ (林哈妮) had enough fans such that when she promoted a company or product, ‘her readers would flood the shop or store she would write about‘.

This is naturally a wet dream come true to companies looking to hire blog whores and as such it’s estimated that HoneyQueen (on the right there pulling ‘duckface’) was bringing in around $30,000 TWD ($1000 USD) an article.

With thousands of readers and fans, companies lining up to get their products featured on her blog and thousands of dollars to be made – it all came apart when HoneyQueen was exposed to be a fraud.

(HoneyQueen) wrote a product review about a skin care product that supposedly removes pimples and she posted before and after photos.

But one of her readers found out that she used a makeup foundation in her after photo to cover the pimple for the (nonexistent) effect.

HoneyQueen claimed the before and after photos were 4 days apart, but the data proves that she first put make up on and took a photo and later used it as the after photo.

Then she gradually removed the make up from the pimple and took more photos, which she used for the before photos.

All photos were taken within few minutes.


An innocent once off mistake? Not likely!

people started to check her older reviews and found out that she’s done similar things in the past.


Here was a blogger earning a considerable amount of money to write bullshit reviews that duped the thousands of readers who followed her blog.

Given the sort of money we’re talking here, you’d have to be incredibly naive to think this fraud wasn’t going on at a major level amongst Taiwan’s more popular paid-per-post bloggers.

Infact, so out of control has the deception of bloggers whoring out faked paid reviews that the government has decided to step in.

An amendment to Article 21 of the Fair Trade Act, approved by the Legislature’s Economic Committee, includes recommendations by bloggers in the law’s definition of advertisements.

Under the amendment, bloggers who offer baseless recommendations will also be held liable, as advertisers who put out false advertisements already are.


Facing fines ‘capped at 10 times of the amounts they are paid’, the obvious question is ‘how is this going to be policed?’

I mean, in the case of HoneyQueen she was exposed by a reader… and even then that was only after years of writing fraud reviews for cash. Is the government seriously expecting police to patrol Taiwan’s blogs and search out fraudulent reviewers?

This is where my dilemma over the Taiwanese government’s decision resides. Make no mistake, I think these whores (female and male bloggers) are the scourge of the blogging world and are nothing more than scam artists that should be held accountable.

If money is paid for a review, it ceases to be a review and is instead an advertisement. Advertisements are already held up to scrutiny and advertising laws so why should misleading ‘girl next door’ reviews on the internet be any different?

But then it comes down to ‘well what are you going to about it?’ The problem is obviously large enough to warrant policing of the issue (although part of me wonders if whether or not these bloggers are or aren’t paying tax has motivated the government), policing individual reviews is a logistical nightmare.

Ultimately I think that if the public at large are stupid enough to believe these blogging shamsters, anything intervention by the government isn’t really going to achieve much.

As entertaining as it was to read about HoneyQueen being caught out (who doesn’t like a good scandal?), perhaps therein lies the answer. These scammers rely on trust and authority to perpetuate their lies, and quite honestly these paid whores deserve neither.

Expose their lies and you effectively kill off their business model.

Then again, despite HoneyQueen’s fraud getting nationwide media coverage, all it took was an apology published on her blog (now removed) plus a short hiatus and it wasn’t long before she went right back to publishing her paid-per-post garbage.

And evidently HoneyQueen’s blog is still wildly popular with her readers…

For some people it’s home, for others it’s China… without the crazy China’ness, a great place to learn Mandarin, a land of cheap delicious foods, a relaxing lifestyle, a place to retire, the last line of defence against China’s aggressive territorial expansion, a place to explore…

…and then there’s this guy.

Subject: Looking for Taiwanese girl for marriage

Message Body:

I am Ron, from New York City, USA. I am a simpleman down to the earth, I am looking for a Taiwanese girl who is single, nice, kind and social and who can take care of me.

Out looking or age is not fact, just need a person.

Rahman Moh


Apparently somebody turned OzSoapbox into a matchmaking website and forgot to tell me.

But what the hell, anybody up for it? This Rahman guy sounds like a real catch… he’s ‘down to the earth‘ (short??) and all he wants is a Taiwanese girl who is single (well, duh?) and can take care of him.

Evidently Rahman is unable to take care of himself and needs a Taiwanese slave kind and social wife.

Oh and he’s not too worried about looks or age either so all you old fuglies are welcome to apply.

All he needs is a body person.

Applicants can apply for the position at whatthefuckamIsupposedtodowithshittyemailslikethis@nobodycares.com

Best of luck Rahmon!

(photo supplied)

Monday we should be good to go and back to our regular publishing schedule. Comments will still function as normal in the meantime but I might be slow to approve them when applicable.

Cheers guys and thanks for reading.

Sound vague? You betcha, but here’s a bit more of a detailed explanation into the three steps of the Jade Lotus course;

The first step involves a full body massage. At the International Institute of Tantra, people learn the Chakra system of the body, gaining a deeper understanding and meaning behind why it exists and its methodology.

It is said that cosmic energy flows through the body via the chakras. These chakras control our mental and physical stability. As tantra is all about keeping things in balance, this is very important. The full body massage helps the cosmic energies flow correctly through the body and out of the microcosms from whence they entered.

The second step involves breathing techniques. The International Institute of Tantra teaches these different tantric breathing techniques to help purify the body with each breath taken, removing the toxins that poison it and find that all-important pathway between mind and body.

It is a pathway that many spend years trying to find, but through these breathing techniques, it can be found through intense meditation and breathing.

The third and final step involves waking the Kundalini, which is said to reside at the base of the spine. Through the lessons learned in the first step (full body massage) and second step (breathing techniques), the third step combines the first two steps and massages the spine slowly from the bottom upwards, the life force is stimulated and combined with cosmic knowledge.


Cosmic knowledge? Chakras? Kundalingus… er, Kunadalini? Microcosms and claims that breathing can remove toxins from the body?

Yeah, what you’ve got there definitely sounds like your typical serving of new age spiritual mumbo jumbo for the masses. Y’know, the kind of stuff that was popular in the sixties and today, really only resonates with people who haven’t quite yet realised the sixties ended a half century ago.

Well, at least that’s what I think. Delve deeper into the realm of Tantra massage and you’re going to find Phd studies, internationally recognised bodies of certification and some very, very precious practicitioners.

One particular practitioner is of the belief that absolutely nothing critical of Tantra massage should ever be published. Simply put, the public aren’t allowed to have a negative opinion of Tantra massage.

Well, at least not if the National Institute of Tantra have their way. In light of recent discussions criticising Tantra massage and the validity of the spiritual ideas that comes with it, the Institute decided to send me a thinly veiled legal threat…

…pending of course the removal of any and all criticism of Tantra massage, specifically the Jade Lotus method…

Hi.. my name is Jade Lotus on the threads on the website regarding happy ending massages.

I believe there are certain comments that are nasty and not professional and defamatory that are written in regards to the services that we provide and personal names are being posted on the threads also.

I do seek to have someone look into this.

And i request that it be removed… especially the name Suheyl Yekenkurul.

I request the writings that Jade Lotus is full of bullshit be removed. as well as National Institute of Tantra refrences.

I seek this as this email is a request.

I will also contact a legal representative as Jade Lotus Tantra is a trademarked name and a business operating in Melbourne.

Best regards

Jade Arslan

National Institute of Tantra


For those not familiar with the backstory, Jade Lotus Tantra massage is a non-erotic form of Tantra massage run out of a place in Melbourne, Australia.

I’d originally included them in an article asking ‘So… where can I get a happy ending massage?‘. I was confused as their site mentioned a whole bunch of spiritual sounding jargon but then essentially seemed to boil down to an erotic massage administered by multiple females.

Just as down and dirty as the rest of them it’d seem.

My confusion was sorted by a ‘Jade Lotus’ who began to contribute to the discussion in early February.

She clarified that

the erotic sessions are not jade lotus sessions.. they are exactly that… erotictantra.com and the jadelotus sessions are http://www.tantramassage.com.au different staff, different extablishment.. same venue.


Hmm, so what are the chances of a totally unrelated business to Jade Lotus massage, operating out of the same venue and being related to Tantra massage going to be I wonder.

Well, turns out not much.

Here’s erotictantra.com’s (which redirects to tantricsex.com.au) domain information, and here’s tantramassage.com.au’s domain information.

Both are registered to a ‘YEKENKURUL, SUHEYL’ using the ABN: 28117319788.

Why would two unrelated establishments, who just happen to share the same address, also be sharing an ABN?

Hmm.

It’s also interesting to note that the ABN 28117319788 appears to have been cancelled from the 3rd November 2008 and is no longer active.

Anyway, Suheyl Yekenkurul hey… wait, that name sounds familiar. Having not previously heard of this fella before I was a little curious as to why the email from Jade specifical mentioned him by name. And moreso why they wanted all references to him removed.

A quick Google search of very publicly accessible information reveals that Suheyl Yekenkurul is the author of the Jade Lotus program;


Note: The Sedona Temple listing was removed within 24 hours of publication of this article. Google is still caching the listing but incase that expires, I’ve also saved a screenshot below of the website for the record (click to enlarge);

Jade Lotus Tantra is a sacred sexuality program put together by Dr. Suheyl Aslan and was designed as a part of a Phd. Program for Somerset University.


Aslan hey? That sounds familiar, as in ‘Jade Arslan?’ (the author of the email I received).

Probably just the skeptic in me but it would explain “Jade’s” apparent specific interest in seeing any and all references to this Dr. Suheyl fella be removed.

On somewhat hilarious unrelated note, according to that site I just linked to, this apparently legitimate spiritual massage methodoly known as Jade Lotus requires just three days to become certified in (the dates listed are December 12-14).

After completing this presitigous course, which appears to be open to anyone, practioners are then able to

• Open your own business as a Tantra Therapist immediately
• Offer up to 7 Levels of Tantra, each level progressing to the next
• Become an empowered healer and teacher of Tantra – not just a sexual goddess
• Receive certification from the International Institute of Tantra


Holy crap, just three days and I can open my own Tantra business, exceed the title ‘sexual goddess’, be certified in 7 levels of Tantra and receive a certification?!

Wow, that’s some hard work right there. I can’t think of any three day period in my life that has thus far been more productive then what these guys are offering.

I mean hell, I’ve taken some pretty labour intensive dumps that left me feeling pretty good and certified, but nothing as extensive as three whole freaking days! And on top of that, apparently certification can be yours for a measly $270 US! OMG BARGAIN!

Additionally I’m also left a little further confused by ‘Jade Lotus” comments in the happy ending massage article, in which she states;

i WILL not divulge my real name for your satisfaction..
which is the name that the PhD was done by.


So ‘Jade Lotus’ wrote the PHD? Well, I guess that removes any shadow of a doubt that Jade ‘Arslan’ is none other then this Suheyl Yekenkurul chap I’m not supposed to talk about.

Finally Jade mentions that ‘Jade Lotus Tantra is a trademarked name and a business operating in Melbourne‘.

Now, unless I’m doing something wrong, it appears this claim is questionable as an ABN search for ‘Jade Lotus Tantra’ turns up nothing.

As for the legitimacy of Tantra massage, for some of us the very mention of spirituality calls into question the subject matter of whatever it is we’re discussing. Be it happy ending massages, personal development, personal connections or anything really.

There’s no doubt a lot of psuedo science out there and years of spiritual jargon and exploitative use of the ‘mysteries of the east’ to peddle all sorts of crap onto the ignorant populations in the west haven’t helped.

Jade Lotus Massage and Tantra massage in general might have very well helped individuals in finding their inner sexuality, but for others it could very well just be seen as a crock.

Myself I’m highly skeptical of a PHD carried out by an individual who has the vested interest in opening a Tantra business with the efforts of the finished PHD (the Lotus method).

Not withstanding the fact that Yekenkurul appears to own both the erotic and non-erotic arms of Jade Lotus massage as well as being the founder of the self serving International Institute of Tantra.

Isn’t it wonderful when people don’t declare their own vested financial interests and randomly contact you with demands that you censor criticism of said vested interests?

Not really.

After just over a year of blogging about Taiwan, I decided to enter OzSoapbox as a contender for any of the awards on offer. Unfortunately I didn’t win anything but I did manage to rank 11th out of the 114 blogs registered.

Not award winning but certainly not to shabby considering OzSoapbox is relatively new to the Taiwan blogosphere and I don’t exclusively blog about Taiwan.

This year one of my goals is to branch out into the greater Taiwan blog community and I thought one of the ways I could achieve this would be doing a writeup of the winners of the 2010 Taiwanderful blog awards after they were announced.

So without further ado, here’s my own personal review of last years 2010 Taiwanderful Blog Award winners;

My Kafkaesque life


Winner: Best Overall Taiwan Blog (popular vote), Best General Taiwan Blog (popular vote) and Best Northern Taiwan Blog.

With a giant 620 votes in the popular vote, My Kafkaesque life was the runaway winner of the blog awards for 2010. Written by ‘MKL’ and started back in March 2008 (making it nearly three years old), My Kafkaesque life is a well written blend of mostly travel related topics and MKL’s own personal thoughts on a variety of issues (both global and Asian related).

From a writer’s voice point of view My Kafkaesque life is largely informal which makes it quite easy and engaging to read. There’s a great sense of informality that runs through the blog and you really get a sense of MKL speaking directly at you in his posts.

Some negatives I encountered whilst reading My Kafkaesque life however were a little annoying. For starters it appears right clicking has been completely disabled. Presumably this is to stop (less technically minded people) stealing MKL’s photos but instead comes across as quite irritating.

My Kafkaesque life is littered with links to relevant content and various subcategories of navigation within the blog itself. At times when I want to open multiple tabs within my browser to keep various pages open to read later I find I can’t. Coupled with the fact that opening links in new windows isn’t a preset default, I found myself bouncing all over the place if I dared click on a link whilst reading an article.

This had quite a significantly negative impact on my readership experience and seemed to go against MKL’s policy of creating a ‘user friendly blog’. Copy and pasting text is notably also disabled which meant I had to manually type any quoted bits I wanted to use in this review. Not a huge inconvenience but still…

Then there was a bit of confusion between the blue Kafkaesque life and the green site. The blue site is the main blog and contains mostly everything, but for some reason MKL also runs a secondary green themed site in which he publishes mostly ‘informative posts about travel‘.

This wasn’t too detracting for me but did become a bit confusing when I was initially navigating the blog only to find the theme changing colors as I bounced between pages and blog posts (all the pages are hosted on the secondary green theme).

Finally there the small issue of readability taking a hit in the form of massive paragraphs. MKL’s voice is easy enough to be engaged by and read but My Kafkaesque life is littered with gigantic paragraphs which have always been a pet hate of mine.

I’m not about to go all gangbusters on another blogger’s grammar but avoiding overly large paragraphs should be pretty much writing 101.

With those three faults out of the way what you’re left with is definitely an interesting slice of the Taiwanese blogosphere which is updated regularly. I’ve subscribed and look forward to commenting on some of MKL’s future posts.

Neil Wade’s Photography Blog


Winner: Best Overall Taiwan Blog (peer judged) and Best Photography Taiwan Blog (peer judged)

Neil Wade’s Photography Blog is the work of freelance photographer Neil Wade. Currently living in Taipei, Wade’s photography blog showcases some of his photographs, life experiences in Taiwan and insight into some of Wade’s broader travel experiences.

I’m very mindful of the fact that I’m just a random guy running around Taiwan with a camera phone so I’m always a little taken back when I see professional photos of Taiwan. Whilst I pride myself in my literary work over my lack of photographic expertise, it’s great to see some alternative strengths showcased in Taiwan blogs.

Make no mistake the photos contained in Wade’s photography blog are stunning. Admittedly as I look back at my own photography collection I am slightly envious, although it’s not my craft a sense of guilt washes over me when I see someone truly passionate about the photographs they capture and choose to share with the world.

My only criticism of Wade’s blog is the lack of updates but I digress, photographic art takes time and I can only imagine the amount of field work effort it takes into putting together a collection of photographs I can digest in mere minutes.

Still, as long as Wade keeps publishing, his blog is definitely worth checking out.

Letters from Taiwan


Winner: Best Overall Taiwan Blog (peer judged) and Best Politics Taiwan Blog (peer judged)

I’m completely aware of my own shortcomings when it comes to political awareness in Taiwan, but reading Letters from Taiwan is like colliding headfirst into a freght train of political heavyweightedness.

Admittedly at this stage of my Taiwanese political education, much of the content found on Letters from Taiwan is way over my head. Also, being a blogspot blog the annoying ‘show full posts on the main index page’ option is switched on meaning the homepage is annoyingly long.

Whilst I’m sure Letters from Taiwan is of interest to those with a much keener interest in Taiwanese (and by proxy Chinese) politics, for me it was a little hard to digest.

Ben Goren definitely doesn’t write for those testing the waters of Taiwanese political awareness. That’s not to say his blog posts aren’t well written, far from it, but just that there is a definite feeling that the content is written for political heavyweights.

If you aren’t largely familiar with the political tides of China and Taiwan then there’s probably a very good chance you’re going to feel overwhelmed trying to engage Letters from Taiwan as a blog.

Writing Taiwan’s Languages


Winner: Best Other Taiwan Blogs (peer judged)

Yeah… so I’m not entirely sure what this blog is about. Devoid of an ‘about’ page and written primarily in presumably some old Taiwan languages that nobody uses anymore, Writing Taiwan’s Languages largely excludes your average reader.

The last post date for Writing Taiwan’s Languages was November 5th, 2010 and the blog had just 27 posts published in total for 2010. Needless to say it’s safe to categorize it as infrequently updated.

I’m sure reading long forgotten dialects of somethingese is useful to someone out there though so uh.. yeah, good luck with that.

Taiwan Sustainable Cities


Winner: Best Other Taiwan Blog (peer judged)

Author of Taiwan Sustainable Cities, Benjamin, is an academic who started a blog in October 2010 focusing on ‘Taiwan’s green urban development‘.

Possibly due to my lack of a connection with the subject matter of the blog (I have a hard time reading about Taiwan’s green urban development when every shop hands out plastic bags like they’re candy and the country seemingly uses a gabillion disposable wooden chopsticks a day), I felt that the content on Taiwan Sustainable Cities was very specialised.

Specialised to the point that, unless you were studying a familiar field to Benjamin, most of it is largely useless data to the average reader.

I’m not saying it’s worthless or anything, just that it very much has that academicy tone to it. Taiwan Sustainable Cities appears to be more about keeping an academic record of Taiwan’s eco urban development rather than coming across as an engaging blog about Taiwan.

US Taiwan Defense Command


Winner: Best Other Taiwan Blog (popular vote)

I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect when I first clicked the link over for US Taiwan Defense Command but I’m glad I was pleasantly surprised. Half expecting to see some blog detailed with intricate military conspiracy theories or some such, instead US Taiwan Defense Command documents the long since retired command of US troops stationed in Taiwan.

Now all but non-existent with all traces of the command gone, Don Wiggins has painstakingly detailed a treasure trove of information relating to US Taiwan Defense Command.

Started back in 2007, US Taiwan Defense Command is full of historical accounts, photographs, anecdotes and general information covering the Command’s twenty three and a half years existence.

As Wiggins appreciably notes,

I am not a historian, but I do recognize that history unrecorded is history lost.

My objective here is simply to record some of my own experiences as an Air Force enlisted man during my assignment to USTDC during 1973 and 1974, and to provide a platform for others to do the same.


With some great hands on first accounts of this little piece of forgotten history, US Taiwan Defense Command makes for some great reading. A little something different to read and a great alternative historical context to an otherwise forgotten little bit of Taiwan history.

Darren Melrose Photography


Winner: Best Photography Taiwan Blog (peer judged)

Darren Melrose Photography is a photo blog run by none other than Darren Melrose. It’s been running since 2008 and appears to be a somewhat random collection of photographs Melrose has taken during his time in Taiwan.

There’s not a lot of meat to Melrose’s postings other than the photos themselves and as of late it appears that his publishing frequency has dropped considerably. Although primarily themed around Taiwan, often at times it feels as if the technical side of the photos takes the forefront over the photos themselves.

There’s a lot of photos on Melrose’s blog that I found interesting but was a bit disappointed not to have any further explanation or context to anchor them to.

Interesting photos but not enough regular content to keep me around as a reader.

Photojazz


Winner: Best Photography Taiwan Blog

Photojazz is run by Brian Q. Webb and is a mix of photography tips and photographs featuring Taiwan. Primarily the blog focuses on photography (two out of the top ten articles are related to Taiwan), so you kinda need to be interested in photography to get value from the core content of the blog.

The articles that do feature Taiwan are a nice balance of written content to accompany the photos and provide some context. With just nine posts published since last October though, content wise Photojazz is a bit light.

Still, the articles featured are well written and informative. Worth checking out but note that the blog layout is a bit confusing. Up top you’ve got featured articles which date all the way back to August 2010, it’s not until you scroll down that you get a list of the most recent articles.

The New Hampshire Bushman


Winner: Best Personal Taiwan Blog (peer judged)

The New Hampshire Bushman (NH Bushman for short) covers the travels of author MJ Klein and his wife, Hui-chen.

The NH Bushman is a longstanding blog having been published since May 2005 and covers a wide range of travel destinations (England, the US, China, Hong Kong, Thailand, Laos and Taiwan), as well as the daily life of author Klein.

Most of the articles are accompanied by photos (just the way I like a blog) and offer interesting insight and well written content that’s easy to read.

Navigation can be a bit of an issue though as the NH Bushman seems to suffer from widget’itis. Klein has a gabillion widgets running which tend to make the site a bit sluggish to load and at times distracting from the content.

More a travel blog I think than personal blog, despite the overboard widgets, there’s plenty of valuable information to be found on the NH Bushman about Taiwan and the other destinations he’s visited. All round, a solid effort in the Taiwanese blogosphere.

shu flies


Winner: Best Personal Taiwan Blog (peer judged)

shu flies is the personal blog of journalist Catherine Shu. Shu regularly contributes to the Taipei Times and as such the writing quality on shu flies is top notch and easily readable.

Content wise shu flies seems to primarily focus around girly stuff. Y’know, arts and craft, designer this and that, women’s body issues… etc. Stuff I’m not remotely even the target demographic for.

As a women’s blog it (probably) makes for a great read but as a guy I felt a bit of a disconnect between myself and shu flies content.

Definitely a blog for the ladies this one.

24°09′N 120°40′E


Winner: Best Personal Taiwan Blog and Best Central Taiwan Blog

I’m not entirely sure on how to pronounce the name of… uh…

…

…well, let’s just call it 24 degrees shall we (twenty four degrees, nine minutes north and one hundred and twenty degrees, forty minutes east is a terrible mouthful). Although breaking the rule of an easy to remember blog name (and spell) 24 degrees follows the adventures of two married teachers from America, Allison and Jeremiah.

24 degrees’ blog layout is pretty basic but it does serve it’s purpose as a personal blog. It’s been a while since I’ve read truly personal blogs (unless I’m personally connected to the author then I don’t usually bother) and reading 24 degrees, while interesting enough, didn’t really engross me.

I really felt more like I was reading someone’s diary than informative pieces on where Allison and Jeremiah had travelled.

Still, I guess that’s why I don’t read too many personal blogs these days.

The photos are pretty but the written content is light and there really wasn’t much of an author’s voice throughout the content to capture me. Despite winning the popular vote for best personal blog this year, I’m probably going to give 24 degrees a miss.

Taiwan Matters!


Winner: Best Politics Taiwan Blog (peer judged)

With a name implying that Taiwan doesn’t matter, Taiwan Matters! is a heavy hitting punchbowl of a blog. Taiwan Matters! is a group collaboration that’s been running since 2006 and covers Taiwanese politics from a strongly anti-unification stance.

Coming off the back of reviewing the personal Taiwan blogs, reading the political blogs was a bit like a punch to the head as the content cannot be scanned or lightly read through.

You need a thorough understanding of what goes on in the world of Taiwanese politics and the intricacies of Taiwanese and Chinese relations to get the full benefit of the content here.

Unfortunately not being privy to access media in Chinese, I’m largely ignorant to the political landscape of Taiwan. As such I did have a bit of trouble relating much of the content on Taiwan Matters on a personal level of understanding, but appreciated that it is mostly written well enough for me to connect to.

Unlike some political blogs which throw you in at the deep end, Taiwan Matters is gentle enough to ease you in but explores its content in a depth deep enough to not leave you feeling like you’ve just read the ‘diet edition’ of the daily news.

I’m not quite ready to plunge myself into the minefield of Taiwanese politics and began open commentary, but when I do, Taiwan Matters! is definitely going to be one of my starting points.

Free Taiwan


Winner: Best Politics Taiwan Blog

Free Taiwan is quite annoying to navigate as a blog. There’s no author information readily available so I’m not sure who’s behind the blog and the navigation is quite lacking.

For starters there’s no archive section which made back reading of Free Taiwan annoying and then there doesn’t appear to even be any categories or basic organisational structure of the articles published.

All of this drastically takes away from the reading experience, which is quite a shame seeing as Free Taiwan’s content is well written and informative.

Although not of the same calibre as Taiwan Matters!, Free Taiwan does offer up sporadic (a few posts per month seems to be the status quo) ‘independent news‘ covering politics in Taiwan.

It is rather light though (in theme design and content) and I feel that personally there just isn’t enough to keep me around in the long term. Free Taiwan is most definitely informative research wise but probably not something you’re going to subscribe to.

Sponge Bear


Winner: Best General Taiwan Blog (peer judged)

Sponge Bear amazingly runs on the LiveJournal platform (hang on a sec, LiveJournal stil exists?!) and reads like a personal blog.

Content wise Sponge Bear details the day to day life of it’s author, ‘a Japanophile currently living in self-imposed exile in the former Japanese colony of Taiwan, where I’m married to a wonderful woman, and the proud father of a beautiful daughter.’

With nearly every article featuring the author’s daughter, Amber, you do get a sense of Sponge Bear being a family centric personal blog. However there are snippets of news and insight which mostly seem to revolve around Japan and Japan-Taiwan relations.

The photos featured on the blog are great to look at though and really add to the content. Being one myself, I’m a great fan of amateur photography and you can tell the author of Sponge Bear always has his camera with him.

One gripe though is that the content is hopelessly non-paragraphed. Giant chunks of text are stupidly hard to read and the content could be so much easier to use if basic punctuation was followed.

Not broad enough to cover my tastes but Sponge Bear is well worth the read if you’re after a bit of family insight into expat living in Taiwan.

(and kudos to them for sticking with LiveJournal, holy crap what a feat!)

The Wild East


Winner: Best General Taiwan Blog (peer judged)

The Wild East is a collaborative project and bills itself as offering

News, Views & Analysis from Greater China and the Asia-Pacific region, specializing in investigative coverage newspapers can’t afford to publish, or won’t publish.


In practice, probably due to the sheer number of contributors, I felt more like I was reading a Facebook status page then an actual blog. An attribute true to the nature of The While East which claims to be a ‘magazine’.

As with any collaboration all author’s voices are somewhat inevitably diluted and you don’t really get a sense of regularity. Not that I’ve got anything against magazines, but I’ve come to expect a certain level of standard and familiarity when reading blogs and the Wild East falls short on that front.

Some of the content The Wild East publishes though is quite engaging. For instance this story on a hit and run trial involving a scotsman was news to me and quite enjoyed following the story.

No doubt I’ll be back on March the 15th to read its conclusion.

The variety of The Wild East’s content could be seen as a strong point by some but for me I prefer a much more solid direction editorial wise. This is quite hard to achieve with such a variety of writers and I feel detracts from the overall reading experience.

On the plus side though you never quite know what you’re going to get with The Wild East and that I suppose does make for a refreshing change.

A Hungry Girl’s Guide to Taipei


Winner: Best Travel Taiwan Blog (peer judged)

Some blogs wander about aimlessly not really sure who their target audience is or what they’re really about. They bombard you with dozens of topics from dozens of viewpoints leaving you confused and irritated.

A Hungry Girl’s Guide To Taipei is not one of them.

A Hungry Girl’s Guide to Taipei (ok had enough of typing that, from here on out it’s AHGGTT), focuses on one thing and one thing only; food.

And in keeping focus with it’s food niche, author Joan does a remarkable job in serving up interesting articles covering… well, food!

Blogs like this make me incredibly hungry and coupled with AHGGTT’s regular steady stream of updates, that makes for a dangerous combination.

Arguably the best food blog in Taipei, if not Taiwan.

Wandering Taiwan


Winner: Best Travel Blog (peer judged)

When I think of what characteristics I look for in a travel blog, two come to mind. I want to read well written and interesting articles about places I haven’t been to and, whilst not as important as the first, I want to learn something new.

Wandering Taiwan covers the travels of Micki and Kristen, who are based in Taipei.

The articles are a pleasure to read and cover a vast geographical scope of places to visit in Taiwan. They’re also accompanied by a wonderful array of photos which really adds to the reader experience.

Navigation Wandering Taiwan is a breeze as articles are segregated up based on which area they’re in as well as a few other useful categories.

As far as travel blogs go, Wandering Taiwan is definitely up there as a fine example of how to do one properly and make your content the focus.

MattGibson.org


Winner: Best Travel Taiwan Blog and Best Southern Taiwan Blog

MattGibson.org is the personal travel blog of Tainan based travel writer Matt Gibson. As such I found his website to feel more like an online resume then genuine blog.

There are however some gems of information to be found (this article on finding writing jobs in Taipei was quite handy for instance) on the blog and I feel that reflects a greater overall sense of quality in his work, although it can be hard to find.

Hitting the main page of MattGibson.org you kind of feel a bit overwhelmed with all the navigational choices open to you.

Interested in the blog aspect of the site, I clicked on ‘read the blog’ and was directed to a page that had little to no content about Taiwan dating back to December last year.

Luckily there’s a navigational menu on the right that seems to have more Taiwan appropriate content but why it’s not included in the main blog directory of articles I’ve got no idea. It’s almost like there’s two seperate blogs running off the same site which is annoying.

Navigation issues aside, Matt Gibson’s articles are a good read but it’s hard to get past the ‘read my work and then hire me please!’ aspect of the blog. I guess blogs mean different things to different people and in this day and age it’s not all that uncommon for them to be utilised as an online resume.

Still, as a reader I prefer something with a bit more weight and less commercial appeal content wise.


Phew, that’s all of them – what a list!

When I set out to write about the winners of Taiwanderful’s 2010 blog awards I had no idea it would take me nearly two months to read and review every blog that won an award.

I plan to do the same with this year’s awards and obviously I’m going to have to start a lot earlier.

Thanks to Taiwanderful and all of the blogs within the Taiwan blogosphere for providing me with interesting and insightful content to review. Cheers guys!


Footnote: I might appear to be a little harsh in some of my reviews but please don’t take it personally. I’ve tried to review blogs for what they are, blogs and as such haven’t intended to personally criticise anyone or their work.

All reviews are written from the viewpoint of a reader and obviously contain my own personal biases, likes and dislikes.

Seven hundred and twenty one articles later, here we are and after two years, although I have missed the odd publishing day here or there, I feel that I’ve still got years of writing left in me and tons to share.

Undoubtedly this second year of blogging has been a massive transitional period towards blogging about Taiwan. It’s been hard to ignore the content shift away from Australian issues and the strong influence my travels in Taiwan have had on my writing focus.

Whilst I’m sure I’ve lost some readers with this focus shift I’m also pretty sure I’ve gained (and hopefully will continue to gain) new readership. Traffic wise we were up a whopping 140% over the past twelve months and thanks to your contributions we’re rocketing along nicely to the 10,000 comment milestone.

As an author yeah, the content primarily comes from me but it’s you the readers that provide the bulk of my motivation and for that I thank you.

One thing I’ve found myself struggling with more so this past year than the first is balancing my personal life with my blogging life. Wanting to share virtually everything that happens to me in my day to day life in Taiwan has left me at times searching deep within to establish the line at which I’m comfortable sharing with the world at large.

Some pretty heavy stuff has happened this past year, my girlfriend at the time was kidnapped, I was in a scooter accident which involved the police and in general tidbits of my personal life have, as I’m sure regular readers have noticed, slowly seeped their way into a lot of the articles published on here.

At the forefront of my mind is the desire to share as much as I can about daily life in Taiwan and my observations as someone continually striving to find my place here.

That means the good and the bad and I guess as difficult and revealing as it can be at times I’ll do my best to continue providing insight and hopefully a different perspective than your average run of the mill joe travel blog.

From places to go, food to eat, culture and everything inbetween I’m really going to try and make this third year a continuing serious attempt at blogging the crap out of Taiwan. Recognition by the greater Taiwanese online community might be a ways off but the road has to start somewhere.

You might not agree with my opinions, impressions or takes on everything I write about, but at least it’ll be an authentic genuine experience; and hopefully one that we can share together.

Looking into the future I’ve made it one of my goals to integrate further into the greater Taiwan blog community and so far I’m happy with the results. I had a crack at the Taiwanderful blog awards last year and unfortunately didn’t place, but I guess there’s always next year.

If my traffic and reader participation continues to grow as it has over the last twelve months, then I think we’re in for a decent enough year here on OzSoapbox – and I hope you stick around.

Thankyou for reading and co-incidentally, happy Chinese New Year.

The tool, previously accessibly to anyone, allows publishers and advertisers (both potential and current), to look up a whole host of values specific to certain keywords.

Sometime in the last 24 hours Google went ahead and blocked access to the Adwords Keyword Tool to users who don’t have an Adwords account.

When I attempted to browse the Adwords Keyword Tool today I was presented with the message;

You’re signed in to Google Accounts under the email (email removed) and your Google Account password, but this is not a valid AdWords login. If you’re an AdWords advertiser, try signing in using your AdWords email and password.


Not Happy Jan.

As a publisher who’s not interested in paying for traffic, isn’t selling a product or looking to target a niche audience I’ve got no use for a Google Adwords account.

As a publisher in the broader sense though I’ve definitely got other uses for the keyword tool. Whilst it doesn’t dictate what I do and don’t write about, if I’m writing about a particular subject the keyword tool has proven useful to gauge search numbers and alternative keywords related to the article topic.

This quick check has spawned off a number of separate articles on it’s own.

Finally of course there’s also the ability to gauge CPC estimates for specific keywords or search phrases. This I know is invaluable to a whole host of publishers, especially those who conduct research on keywords to build monetized websites around.

From Google’s perspective it doesn’t seem to make much sense to block the keyword tool for non-adwords accounts.

From an advertiser viewpoint it’s useful to see what your market rate is in order to evaluate whether the program is viable for you or not.

The only publishers who would be using the keyword tool would be those using Adsense. If these publishers are successful this increases Adwords business.

I’m not quite sure what the reasoning is but I do know for me personally it’s annoying. I fail to see what the benefit to Google is making me sign up to a service I’m not likely to ever use.

Hopefully they reverse this decision soon or at the very least offer a similar sort keyword tool for Adsense publishers.


Update 14/05/2010: I’m not sure if Google are playing around with the Adwords account requirement but access seems to be intermittent.

I don’t have an Adwords account, sometimes I can acess the keyword tool and sometimes I’m locked out.

The response I got was mostly positive and given the popularity of the content on here, I decided to give the project the green light and see how it goes.

At this point my brain is more then a little fried. I’ve spent the better part of the last 48 hours coding and setting Behind MLM up.

The first thing of course you’ll notice is that it runs on the same template as OzSoapbox. Rather then spend another few months deciding on a new theme and then customizing the crap out of it again I decided to just use the OzSoapbox one.

It’s flexible, the focus remains on the content and having worked on it solely by myself I’m pretty familiar with it.

I’m still plugging away at various design aspects and tweaking them properly. The entire blog isn’t up and running yet but I figured it was better to announce it now. I’m happy with the green but haven’t settled on the overall design, specifically the header, logo and text color scheme.

I had planned on updating it over the week with at least 5 articles before going public but figured due to the content it’s existence would probably leak anyway.

In BehindMLM I plan to write about not only the companies involved but also the greater MLM industry in general. At this stage I’m not too sure what the update schedule will be like but I should be able to get a few articles out a week.

The articles on OzSoapbox about Polaris Media Group will remain in their entirety but any new articles will be appearing on Behind MLM.

To start with it’s going to be a bit of a mammoth task as there’s simply so much to cover but over time hopefully Behind MLM becomes a useful resource for those researching the MLM industry.

As is often pointed out the MLM industry continues to be shrouded in mystery and shady marketing. The lack of clear and consise commentary has, I believe, been noticeably absent.

Feel free to have a poke around the new site and let me know if anything is horribly busted in the About section. Here’s hoping this new project works out and as always, thanks for reading.

(sidenote: I plan to sort out OzSoapbox’s and Behind MLM’s About pages later today after a nap so please excuse the lack of one on BehindMLM.)

So naturally one of my wordpress plugins realises I’m not around and decided to go rogue and place undue stress on the hosting database. Hosting company then realise this and disable the database until I get in touch with them.

All fixed now.

It’s been an interesting year for me writing for this website. I started off with absolutely nothing. I had no web presence under OzSoapbox and started from scratch.

In just one year I’ve attempted to take OzSoapbox from internet nothingness into what I believe is a decent sized blog.

For my first year review I decided to take a look back and share where the last 12 months of blogging has taken me.

1. The beginning

The first post on OzSoapbox, ”Hassan Bakr: Judge rules 40 cyclists’ lives worth only $1200” went live on the 28th January, 2009. At that stage OzSoapbox was running on Godaddy’s ‘Quick Blogcast’ platform and looked something like this (click to enlarge):

A few months later I switched over to WordPress. The design you see today on OzSoapbox is the result of more then a few hours of mashing together various designs and functionality from various themes.

Not knowing jack about php this was quite the challenge but the end result is both useful and functional so I think it was worth it.

I’m a big fan of if it’s not broken don’t fix it so for now I don’t foresee any major changes to the design template.

2. Liberty League and Polaris

Without a doubt the most sought after, commented on and widely read articles on OzSoapbox this year has been both the coverage and my own penned thoughts on Liberty League (now Polaris Media Group).

I started writing about the company after seeing an advertisement on television for one of the company’s co-ops, ‘Six Figure Chicks’.

Seeing as the advertisement didn’t really tell me anything I did a bit of research myself and decided to publish my opinion.

Over the next few months I followed Polaris Media Group and discussion raged about the validity of the business. A critical point in this discussion was the NSW government going public with it’s belief the company was a pyramid scheme.

This was somewhat of an important moment for me as it was the first time what I’d written about had effected events occurring offline. I still don’t really know if the NSW Office of Fair Trading planned to release their May findings regardless of what I’d written. To me it will always seems strangely co-incidental that they chose to release their four month old not publicly disclosed findings two days after I went public with them.

Pre-empting the announcement (I don’t know if DoFT had released the findings to the company before the public or not), Liberty League had already set itself up to rebadge as Polaris Media Group in an attempt to distance itself from any bad press associated with the old name.

A few months after that came proof of something completely out of left field, that a lot of the upper management of Polaris were involved in Scientology.

This came as a complete surprise to me and I suspect I wasn’t alone. The timing couldn’t have been better as it happened right in the middle of a push for a parliamentary enquiry into the legality of the religion.

Writing about Liberty League and Polaris taught me a few things about blogging. First and foremost that if you write about a topic people are passionate about and they disagree with you, that they will strike hard and fast to discredit you.

I guess the proof is there in itself that information is only effective and believable as people make it. I try to put as much research in as possible when writing about topics and I think proof of this is in the circulation and popularity of the material written itself.

People as massively skeptical these days so you really can’t get away with half arsed analysis or arguments. Sure nothing is stopping you from doing so but if it’s credibility you’re after you won’t last long if you’re just spinning bullshit from the get go.

3. Debuting on Russian News Network Zvezda

One of the more surreal experiences I had in my first year of OzSoapbox was the invitation to feature on Russian news network, Zvezda.

Broadcast to over 1,300 Russian cities, late last year  I was invited by one of the producers to do a short 30 second commentary on recent bushfires in New South Wales.


Seeing myself on the Russian news was quite the out of body experience for me and certainly one of the highlights of writing for OzSoapbox.

4. Death threats, blackmail and legal threats

My mother once said to me words to the effect of ‘if you’re not being sued then you’re not doing a good enough job writing’.

I don’t know if legal threats are purely the result of the topics I write about, how I choose to write about them or if they just simply comes with the turf of blogging.

Whatever the reason though, thus far I’ve had several legal threats made against me this past year. Not surprisingly the bulk of which were related to my articles on Polaris Media Group.

To their credit Polaris Media Group as a company hasn’t launched any action against me. Instead the threats have come from various distributors and people associated with the company. For the most part they’ve been half arsed and appropriately ignored.

5. Website traffic and reader participation

I don’t really have a gauge for this other then knowing that some websites get a few million visitors a month/day. For my first year running a website I’m pretty happy with my traffic results and reader participation.

In the 12 months since I started it, OzSoapbox has been accessed over 320,000 times and reader participation currently stands at over 5,100 comments.

My own comments are included in that number but I like to think of feedback as a whole.

6. Where to from here?

When I started OzSoapbox I decided I’d give it my best for two years and see how I felt about the site. Currently I’m still happy with this strategy and plan to stick to it.

One year in I feel like I’ve really been progressing as a writer and hopefully some of that reflects back in the articles you read.

Just in case you’re new to the site (I will update the about page eventually), I also found myself moving from Australia to Taiwan late last year. Keeping the blog going during this transition has brought about it’s own challenges but I seem to have settled on a schedule I can follow comfortably.

My biggest problem at the moment is the lack of reliable internet at home. My whole building shares the same internet connection and I’m unable to get my own hookup.

The only option at this stage is to move out in a few months and make internet connection a higher priority when choosing a place to live. In the meantime I have written a few pieces on current events,  but regular readers have no doubt noticed I’ve been focusing mostly on articles that can be written at home and later uploaded.

Due to this I don’t think I’m going to have a topic as large or time consuming to research as covering Liberty League but I hope that the site will continue to grow.

I certainly hope to refine my voice and with the whole of Taiwan to explore I don’t think I’m going to run short of content anytime soon.

As always my journey doesn’t really mean much if I can’t share it with people so I’d like to thank everyone who’s participated on here, has read OzSoapbox and/or continues to read OzSoapbox.

If you asked me what this post was going to contain a year ago I’d have not even come close to describing the experience, for better or worse, that I’ve had.

Here’s to the next 12 months, cheers.

Having said that however there are several things you can do to make relying on an Eee PC that much easier. Today I thought I’d share five must have accessories for owners of EEE PC’s who travel.

1. A portable laptop mouse

The touch pad on my Eee PC is the biggest gripe I have with my system. I remember using a laptop years ago and hating the touch pads back then thinking they were great in theory but horrible to use.

Turns out nothing much has changed and by default not only are the Asus Eee PC touchpads just as inaccurate, the Eee PC’s also come preloaded with software that works against you. Things like touching the pad too often result in clicks or zooming in or some other random mouse function you weren’t expecting.

Although somewhat bearable with the ‘intuiative’ software disabled, the Eee PC touch pad still suffers from inaccuracy and randomness with the pointer. You’ll be moving the mouse along and all of a sudden it will just go berserk and streak across the screen.

The best way to get around this is to use a portable mouse. Basically the same as a normal mouse only smaller. The trade off is of course that they aren’t as responsive as their desktop counterparts and are sort of awkward for larger hands, but compared to using a touch pad 24/7 they are heaven.

Be aware if you go for the wireless laptop mouse option that batteries should be taken into consideration. If I was blogging from a remote location and ran out of batteries, I’d be pulling my hair out trying to edit images in Photoshop with the touch pad.

2. A Proper Laptop Case

Most Eee PC’s come with some sort of sleeve or soft case to store your laptop in. For home use this is more then adequate but on the road and especially in remote areas a softcase or sleeve isn’t really enough to protect your Eee PC.

Even in a suitcase or carry bag if I’ve just spent the entire day walking around often the safety of my laptop is the last thing on my mind as I drop my bags on the floor and head for the shower. Although small in impact, these little drops are still going to do longterm damage to your laptop.

When choosing a case for your Eee PC remember to go by screen size as you want a case that fits snugly. Too loose of a case and it’s impact absorbing ability is weakened, too small and obviously your laptop won’t fit inside.

The second consideration is weight. Often I’m carrying my Eee PC around in a carry bag over my shoulder and the last thing you want is for a case to add an extra 1-2kg of weight to your pack.

Lastly have a good look at the locking mechanism. You don’t want something that’s fiddly and will break after a month or so. The locking mechanism (even if it doesn’t lock and just closes) should be strong, sturdy and not a pain in the arse to use.

Alternatively if you already have a laptop carry bag you can also probably use this in conjunction with the supplied sleeve instead of buying a separate case.

3. A Second Battery

Personally I haven’t had traveled remotely enough to rely on a second battery. If you’re going extreme traveling however a second battery is definitely an idea to think about.

The same concept as a second battery for a mobile phone applies. You charge both batteries and then one one runs out if you have no power source you can switch over.

My Asus 1000HE Eee PC’s battery life is roughly about 8-9 hours on power saving mode so used sparingly I’ve managed to go two to three days without a charge when I’ve hit the road.

If you’re looking at anything more then that without a power supply and you rely on your laptop for communications then I’d strongly suggest a second battery option.

4. Upgrading the RAM

Depending on what you’re doing with your laptop, upgrading the memory can have a pretty decent improvement in the performance area.

When writing for OzSoapbox occasionally I’ll be editing and processing video I’ve recorded previously. Out of the box my 1000HE Eee PC came with 1GB of ram, with an extra 1GB of RAM added tasks like video editing aren’t as tedious on a laptop.

The faster you can get things done means the less time your laptop has to stay on which means you save more battery time.

5. A Travel Plug Adaptor

This was one of the things I forgot to buy before leaving Australia and I remember my first few days in Taiwan as a bit panicky. I had to use the laptop for things like Google maps but I was paranoid about being stuck with no battery life until I got an adaptor.

Not speaking the local language meant it took me a few days to finally track one down. If I had an Eee PC with a smaller battery life I’d have certainly been without a PC for some time.

When buying a travel plug it’s worth getting one that is global. Don’t worry about getting a voltage transformer as all laptops these days should come with a universal voltage power charger.

To check have a read of the writing on the power pack for your laptop, if it mentions a range of 110-240v then you’re good to go.

Also remember that with an Eee PC (and any laptop) that you can piggy back USB devices and charge them off the laptop, even while it’s switched off. Things like iPods, mobile phones etc. can be charged with USB cables avoiding the need for multiple power adaptors.

Typically I’ll leave the laptop charging every second night or so and just plug in my mobile phone into a USB port to charge. If you’re phone didn’t come with a USB to power cable (my N95 only came with a USB data cable that didn’t charge the phone), then they can usually be readily sourced pretty cheap online.


I was a bit worried when I left Australia about whether or not my Eee PC would offer me 100% reliability in terms of keeping my blog running. With the addition of some relatively cheap accessories I’m quite glad I made the choice to go the Eee PC route over a full sized laptop.

Of course I’d still jump at the chance to use a dedicated desktop to publish from but when you’re traveling you make do with what you have. I know I could do far worse then my Eee PC so why not make the most of the experience.

Over the next week or so (could be two weeks) I’m going to experience sporadic internet access so keeping up with the news in Australia is going to be problematic.

That and I’m slowly adjusting to blogging from my EeePc full time. You don’t really miss the luxury of blogging from a desktop until all of a sudden you don’t have one!

(I’m ready to smash this touchpad something chronic).

Since arriving in Taiwan I’ve been jotting down anything that comes to mind to use as a future blog post. So what I’ve decided is that till I’m stable (mid to late December) internet wise again, I’m going to start writing about these topics as they don’t need an internet connection to research.

What that means is probably a week or maybe two of posts about Taiwan. It’s only a temporary departure from what I usually write about and while I don’t have the net 24/7 it keeps me writing which is good.

Like anything if you don’t keep doing it it’s easy to fall off the bandwagon and get lazy.

Some of the topics to look forward to:

My plane ride over
How I lost $200 of bicycle gear to Australian customs
Packing a bicycle for air travel
Taiwanese hotel peculiarities
So…English isn’t anywhere near as widely spoken as I thought
My disaster of a first attempt at experiencing Taiwanese nightlife
Taiwanese nightlife take two: Success and happy endings
My first Taiwanese bus trip
Proof bad Asian driving is not a stereotype
Taxis in Taiwan: Close your eyes and hold on tight
Television in Taiwan: What the hell am I watching?!
Travelling with a bicycle overseas
Using a mobile phone in Taiwan
My first Taiwanese train ride
How to get around the mandarin language barrier
Dealing with banks in Taiwan
Taiwanese food: Uh… someone please tell me what I’m eating?
Cycling around in Taiwan
Redefining panic: My first teaching demonstration
Taiwan Beer: At $1 a can why aren’t I dead yet?

…stick around.

Don’t get me wrong, I see the practical use for them but personally I’ve never had the need for one and have avoided getting one ‘just because’.

Last week when I broke the Liberty League NSW Dept of Fair Trading story my internet went down whilst I was writing and hadn’t come back up by the time I’d finished the post. Whilst I did manage to get the post published remotely, driving home I couldn’t help but notice how annoying it was to use somebody elses computer to publish.

For starters I didn’t have access to my image editing programs which meant a thirty second watermark job took me nearly half an hour in MSpaint. On top of this I wasted time on the internet searching for an easier solution first as I didn’t want to have to bother with paint.

Then there was the fact that if I wanted to do any editing to the post it would be on someone elses machine and the fact that post publishing I’d have to wipe my tracks. Not that I have anything to hide but it’s a habit of mine to wipe browser histories on other people’s computers and to leave them clean.

Any guy will tell you it’s a nightmare trying to track down a particular site you visited a few weeks back when your history is cluttered with 38,000 celebrity gossip and Hello Kitty websites (thanks girls).

So anyway, I’m on holidays as of today and am heading off on a roadtrip for a while in the mini. At first I was worried about being away from OzSoapbox for so long but then the idea of a laptop started to creep into my conciousness.

A few days ago I decided on an Asus Eee PC netbook and set off to MSY to purchase one. The following is a review from someone who dislikes laptops (or netbooks or whatever they’re calling them now) vehemently.

I first saw an EEE PC sometime last year when I was sitting in on one of my then girlfriend’s university lectures. I remember seeing it and wondering when laptops got that small, it actually looked a bit like a toy and if it wasn’t for the fact I could see Windows running on it, I’d probably have assumed it was.

I don’t need much in a laptop. I’m not going to be playing games on it or doing any huge multimedia editing or anything really that’s CPU intensive. Having said that I didn’t want something that ran like dogs balls either.

Size was also a big concern for me, I mean I can get the internet and check my email on my N95 but I’d rather not be typing blog posts on it.

The Asus 1000 HE netbook comes in black, is compact, has a 9.5 hour battery life, a 10″ screen, is wireless capable and features a 92% sized keyboard (92% of the standard keyboard size).

Sold.

I don’t plan on using this netbook outside of blog posts when I’m not at home but in setting it up over the last few days I have found it handy to sit on my coffee table. From here I can respond to emails and keep an eye on OzSoapbox without having to get up and use my desktop machine.

The 1000 HE comes with a ton of rubbish that you’re probably never going to use and will delete shortly after starting the pc up for the first time. MS Office student, Norton Security and some other crap come with it but they are all easily removed.

To install what I wanted I simply networked the Eee PC to my desktop and shared the desktops dvd drive. This worked a treat.

Using the 1000 HE isn’t as nice as a desktop but it’s definitely passable. If typing on my pc is like getting a really good handjob and using my N95 to type is like humping a cactus, using the Eee PC falls somewhere inbetween but definitely closer to the desktop experience (getting a hand job from a cactus?).

I have pretty big hands so my biggest worry was using the Eee PC would mean that I wouldn’t able to touch type fast without thinking. Thankfully I’m happy to report that despite my large hands typing on the 1000 HE is easy. Occasionally I do hit two keys at once but I’ve only been using it a few days and I’m sure I’ll adjust soon enough.

I’m not a big fan of carrying a separate mouse around so I’ll be using the touch pad on the netbook. Tracking wise it’s fine and easy enough to use although the pre-installed software Elantech has some annoying options you’re probably going to want to disable.

Whilst gestures like the two finger scroll are unbelievably responsive and handy, gestures like the double tap as a double click or zooming in by moving two fingers closer to eachother are ridiculously easy to do unintentionally.

All in all I wound up disabling all of the additional gestures apart from the scroll (two fingers on the pad moving in a sliding motion up or down is hard to accidentally trigger).

The 1000 HE comes with 1gb of DDR2 memory which I’ve read is quite easy to upgrade to 2gigs. As of yet I haven’t done this and I’ve found that 1gig of ram seems to be enough to power a browser, Youtube videos etc. quite comfortably.

Storage also isn’t an issue with 160gb of hard drive space. There is also some online storage thing called Eee Storage but I believe that’s a subscription based service so I didn’t bother with it.

One problem I’m kind of concerned about is the fact that the netbook comes with a recovery package on a CD. The 1000 HE itself doesn’t have a cd drive and the manual states that to run the recovery disc you need to plug in an external drive.

Currently I am using the drive on my desktop to install stuff on but should my Eee PC ever completely die on me I’m kind of not sure how I’ll go about fixing it, seeing as I don’t own an external cd drive and all.

I guess I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it but it does seem somewhat worrying. Catastrophic failure in a pc is rare but when it happens you want to be able to wipe the drive and re-install the OS quickly. Without access to an optical drive I’m not sure how that’s going to be possible on an Eee PC.

Battery life is a very decent 9.5 hours and possibly longer in the power saver mode. I couldn’t really notice a difference in power saver mode so I’ll just run that while I’m on the road. 9.5 hours of battery life is more then enough to do some websurfing, blog admin and possibly write a post.

While the 1000 HE Eee PC isn’t something I’d want to use fulltime as a pc (although it makes a decent enough temporary backup should my desktop go down) it seems to be the perfect solution to writing blog posts whilst on holiday or out and about.

It’s small and light enough to carry with you and comes with all the features of a full sized laptop. Durability wise I don’t think I’ll have any issues as it appears to be well made although I get the feeling it’d shatter into a thousand pieces if I ever dropped it.

As of today OzSoapbox is officially in holiday mode. I haven’t scheduled any pre-written content so any content I post up will be coming to you live on location from wherever I am at the time. I’m crossing my fingers nothing catastrophic happens but if the last few days are any indication, the Eee PC should be more than up to the task of my online admin while I’m away.

The Asus Eee PC 1000 HE is highly recommended if anyone’s looking for a mobile blogging solution.

Well, seems British blogger Bruce Everiss decided to have a closer look at the game and didn’t like what he found.

Turns out Evony is owned by chinese businessman Eric Lam, who runs a bunch of gold mining companies.

Not happy about being exposed, the chinese based Evony decided to threaten to sue over UK based Everiss’ comments. Oh and here’s the kicker, Evony is threatening to launch legal action using Australian law.

Chinese gold farming is a common gaming phrase and relates to ‘farms’ of workers (99.9% of the time based in China) who sit around playing games all day ‘farming’ special items and in-game currency which are then sold to other players for real world cash.

Due to players often being time restricted and lazy it’s a pretty lucrative business run at the expense of fairness and playability.

Usually the go is that these chinese farms latch onto an existing game and destroy the local game economy by flooding the market with ingame-currency and items. Evony however “cuts out the middle man” as Everiss puts it and charges players directly.

Mind you it’s not the first game to employ this model but coupled with a massive viral advertising campaign, comment spam and god knows what other marketing tacticts it’s easy to see why it’s raised the ire of gamers.

It seems Australia’s draconian online defamation laws are known worldwide and after a series of critical posts by Everiss on his blog, Evony are using NSW lawyers Warren McKeon Dickson and claiming defamation due to the fact Everiss’ blog can be viewed online in NSW.

No doubt the case that will be cited here is the infamous Dow Jones & Co. Inc. Vs Gutnick where it was ruled that if you can access information online from anywhere within Australia, regardless of the laws governing the country where the content was published, you are entitled to sue for defamation.

Basically anything ever published anywhere on the internet is open for anyone in Australian’s to launch legal action against.

It was a stupid decision then and it’s still a stupid decision now as we watch a Chinese company take advantage of the case to pursue defamation against a British blogger. Do we need any more proof our online defamation rulings are wide open to abuse and exploitation?

What’s Everiss supposed to do? Fly down to Australia to defend himself because some Chinese company doesn’t like bad publicity?

As far as I know nothing Everiss has posted about Evony is untrue and the case is simply a calculated step in Evony attempting to get the removal of bad press on their game.

As an Australian blogger who was threatened with legal action myself in the first few months of starting OzSoapbox it disheartens me that the laws of this country allow such frivolous law suits to be brought about by companies against individuals who don’t even reside here.

In doing so our legal system becomes nothing more then a political tool used at will by foreign interests to censor other foreigners. In effect we’ve whored out our courts to any global commercial interest by permitting actions like this to be legal.

Everiss meanwhile is stuck in an uneviable position;

So what can I do? If I remove the articles it is a victory for censorship and oppression. If I leave the articles Evony will bring a case against me that I cannot defend, even though I have told the truth.


Whatever you decide Bruce, good luck mate.

On behalf of Australian bloggers and the Australian legal system I apologise for my country’s hopeless ineffectiveness at bringing our defamation laws into the modern age. What a disgrace.

Liskula Cohen and Rosemary Port are two of these people.

Liskula Cohen is a socialite (I don’t know what else to call her) who runs around New York doing socialitey things. One day Liskula learns off a blog on the internet slagging her off as a skank.

The blog is hosted by Google’s Blogspot so Cohen launches a 3 million dollar defamation lawsuit against the blogger. Last week I wrote about the US courts decision to order Google to reveal the name of the Blogger.

Not only was it someone Cohen knew but after satisfying her ego and getting a name she dropped the lawsuit and after wasting everybody’s time let bygones be bygones.

I’m not sure who she was expecting was behind the blog but clearly it wasn’t Mr. Money McMoneybags like she’d hoped.

The unmasked blogger was Rosemary Port, a former acquaintance of Cohen. The reason for the outburst?

Apparently Cohen had been bitching about Port to one of Port’s ex-boyfriends.

…and this is what happens when you let socialites with the intellect of twelve year olds on the internet.

One minute it’s ‘SUE SUE SUE’, the next ‘oh I know you? That’s ok babe forget about it, you know like whatever’.

The point I made in my original article on this matter was that Cohen had of been much better of if she’d just let the blog disappear into internet obscurity. One other point I wasn’t able to decipher was beyond ego stroking, why Cohen launched the suit in the first place.

Turns out Ms Skank was being led by Solicitor Stupid.

“The idea that Liskula brought this on herself is repulsive. It’s shameful. It’s like saying she had it coming,” Wagner said. “We never contacted the press. If we had thought for a minute that the Google case would have brought more attention to the anonymous blogger’s site, we never would have started it.”


Oh really. You sued the biggest company on the internet and thought nobody would hear about it? What the hell did you think was going to happen? That you’d just rock up to court all suave for a private court session, Google’s defense lawyers would just roll over and CHA-CHING badda bing badda boom?

To quote Barney Frank, “on what planet do you spend most of your time?”

The stupid doesn’t end there though, oh no.

Rosemary Port today has announced plans to sue Google for revealing her identity for $15 million.

WHO LETS THESE PEOPLE ONTO THE INTERNET?!

Putting aside the small factor that a court ordered Google to release her name, Blogger is owned by Google and users of the free service are bound by the terms of service. The Blogger terms of service clearly state:

As a condition of using the Service, you agree to the terms of the Google Privacy Policy. You agree that Google may access or disclose your personal information, including the content of your communications, if Google is required to do so in order to comply with any valid legal process or governmental request (such as a search warrant, subpoena, statute, or court order), or as otherwise provided in these Terms of Service and the general Google Privacy Policy.


It’s right there for anyone to see.

Apparently not so for Port.

“When I was being defended by attorneys for Google, I thought my right to privacy was being protected,” Port said.

“But that right fell through the cracks. Without any warning, I was put on a silver platter for the press to attack me. I would think that a multi-billion dollar conglomerate would protect the rights of all its users.”


Riiight. So the multi billion dollar company’s service, which you pay nothing for to use is going to throw all their money into challenging the American legal system so you can sit on the internet and call your friends skanks anonymously?

I’m going to let you in on a little secret Rosemary, Google didn’t become a multi-billion dollar industry by spending millions on lawsuits defying court orders and defending people who pay nothing to use their services.

Google’s lawyers weren’t there for you, they were there to protect Google.

Maybe next time hire your own damn lawyer and don’t be a tightarse and pay for some blog hosting. Good luck convincing a judge you didn’t agree to Google’s terms and conditions when you signed up to Blogger.

As much as I hate censorship it’s times like this I wish we could just put permanent bans on certain people contributing anything further to the internet.

These two women continue to feud like rampaging bulls throwing their egos all over the internet, do the rest of us really have to suffer the consequences?

If you did care would you bother to start legal proceedings in an attempt to identify the anonymous blogger?

Recently Liskula Cohen who from what I gather was on the cover of Vogue magazine once and did some modelling way back when (I’m confessing I know stuffall about her just in case that wasn’t clear), managed to convince a court to order Google to hand over the identity of one of it’s Blogger.com bloggers.

The author of ‘Skanks of NYC’, a now defunct blog claimed that Cohen was the biggest skank in NYC.

A random person posting on a free blogging platform called somebody else a skank over the internet. No, really? THAT’S OUTRAGEOUS!

Being a blogger myself I could harp on about freedom of speech and the fact that opinions are just that, opinions but instead I thought I’d be a little more constructive and discuss just what court decisions like this potentially mean.

When taking a blogger to court, much the less someone who is faceless posting anonymously you are always risking the potential of whatever it is you’re trying to silence, be it an opinion, news piece or leaking of information blowing out all over the internet.

Case in point a quick google search for ‘Liskula Cohen‘ is now pages and pages of articles and blog posts about her with the word skank plastered all over them. Meanwhile had she of just ignored the ranting of the blogger I’m sure the blog post would have disappeared into search engine obscurity.

Unless the blogger was running a site devoted to Cohen or was specifically targeting her (I believe she was mentioned in a single post) then I doubt a free blog mentioning her in one post, even if it’s owned by Google, is going to rank well.

Now be aware I’m not suggesting people ignore everything ever posted on the internet, for example I was quite vocal when Whozadog.com was running a virtually unmoderated anonymous posting board full of claims and the personal details of potential innocents.

This I have a problem with and rightfully so action should be taken. Calling someone a skank however is wildly different to posting unverifiable claims and someones complete personal details online.

I can’t help but wonder why Cohen took offense to this particular blogger. Not familiar with the blog and unable to view it I can’t help but wonder if it was simply a one post blog or a regularly updated blog with a skanks of NYC theme.

If it was a one post blog solely dedicated to slagging off Cohen then it’s probably a safe bet to say whoever posted it knew her or had at the very least interacted with her offline somewhere.

A lawsuit seems to be a lot of trouble to go to just to find out who’s writing about you but if you look at the other reasons none of them seem to make sense. News.com.au cites “defamation” as the official reason but cmon seriously, skanky defamation?

Financially it’s a good bet someone using a free blogging service to host a casual blog isn’t going to be loaded. So putting your kids through college at the expense of a blogger isn’t a smart business plan.

Random offense to the remark doesn’t seem to sit squarely either. I mean once you’ve found out who it is, what then? Are you seriously going to try and sue someone for defamation because they called you a skank? The US has pretty strong freedom of speech and besides, how the hell do you prove you’re not a skank?

Skank n. – One who is disgustingly foul or filthy and often considered sexually promiscuous. Used especially of a woman or girl.

-Dictionary.com


“Here is a list of people I’ve slept with in the last decade your honour as you can see it’s well below the international standard of skankyness. In addition to this here’s forty three sworn statements from upstanding members of society stating that I am neither ‘disgustingly foul’ or ‘filthy’.”

“Well then, that’s good enough for me. GUILTY! I hereby order the defendant to pay eleventy billion dollars to Ms. Cohen”

Good luck proving skankyness or the lack of in court or that people were likely to believe what was written about you on an anonymous blog about your skankiness.

Other then that I can’t really see what other possible motivation Cohen could have had. I mean she might just have wanted it taken down but wouldn’t you then just send off an email to Google and if they didn’t do anything just let it die out.

I mean how important do you think you are, were millions searching ‘cohen skank’ daily or something before the lawsuit?

Instead what we have now is Google being ordered to hand over the bloggers details and the words ‘Cohen’ and ‘skank’ forever partnered in internet history – quite the opposite effect she was going for I’m sure.

If some random ex-model can do it and a precedence has been set, then what’s stopping others from doing it in the future over anything? What if say a certain government wanted to know the indentity of a blogger posting about a certain recent election?

Launch a court case and before you know it that blogger and their entire family have dissapeared off the face of the Earth. Sure it’s a step up from protecting a models vanity but really it’s where court decisions like this inevitably end up taking us.

Whilst this works great for written content sites, sites that contained other forms of multimedia content (audio, video, photos) for example were often not targeted as effectively as they could be. What would tend to happen is you’d either wind up serving up a small number of ads over and over again, showing irrelevant ads or the annoying public service announcements.

Interest-based targeting (which is really just a fancy name for reader profiling) changes the focus from the content and instead starts to keep track of what interests visitors to your site have.

This information is based on previous visits to other categorised sites and long term browsing habits. Whilst this might be good news for non written content sites as they have the potential to gain more relevant advertising, written content sites won’t necessarily share this improvement.

Here’s why.

1. Internet surfers are fickle.

Unless you’re one of those weird people that use the internet for one thing and one thing only, you’re probably going to be hard pressed remembering what it was you were searching for yesterday, let alone 10 minutes ago.

Don’t believe me? Go and open up your browsers history and see if you can remember half the stuff you searched for today. If that’s not challenging enough set it to show the last 7 days browsing history and see what you can remember.

A typical internet user burns through that many searches it’s pretty impractical to group them into user-based categories and hope they still haven’t found what they were looking for a day, or even a few hours after they stopped looking.

2. Time-delay relevancy

Personally when I’m scanning a webpage I focus things that are relevant to what I’m looking for at that particular time. Eg. if I came to your site looking for information on lightbulbs and a bicycle ad was prominently featured it’d have to be a damn good ad to detract my attention away from your aeroplane content, despite me being an avid cyclist.

Right then and there I’m not necessarily interest in bicycle deals, my mind is focused on lightbulbs.

Meanwhile an ad on say lightbulb sales would be much more likely to catch my eye as it fits in with the content I’m accessing and you’re more likely to get a click.

3. Topic familiarity

Most people who visit my blog are looking up specific information in regards to something. For this reason I try to have complementary advertising that might enhance their reading experience.

To use the cyclist example again, I’m an avid cyclist and as such am pretty fixed in terms of where I buy things and what I read in regards to cycling. Most people with well established interests are the same.

Because people are creatures of habit, capturing the attention of someone who is well versed in a particular topic is much more difficult. I am far less likely to click on a cycling ad to learn more information about a particular aspect of cycling, then if the ad was about something I’d just searched on but knew a lot less about.

For this reason although it might be nice statistic wise to group readers into interest-based categories, the ads you display when this is in effect have to be that more engaging to attract interest and compliment your content.


Taking those three points into consideration and in my own testing over the last few months I’ve concluded that for written content based sites, Adsense’s interest-based ads aren’t really that effective.

If however you find that there simply aren’t enough relevant ads for whatever it is you’re writing about it’s certainly a much better idea to show interest-based ads then hit and miss non-relevant ads. The same applies for photo, video and audio dependant sites.

Adsense’s interest-based ads feature is something I’ve been thinking about on and off for a few weeks now as I’ve weighed the pros and cons and tried to better understand reader engagements with advertisements. Hopefully my thoughts give some other publishers out there some ideas on what may or may not be working if they’ve noticed a drop in revenue over the last few months.

If I’ve learnt anything from my own site it’s that sometimes no matter how in depth or complete you thought you’re coverage was on something, all it takes is one reader to come along with a new perspective for you to see something you’d previously overlooked.

When you’re representing a website the importance of the value of your comment increases. Not only are people reading your comment but they’re also forming a subconscious first impression of your website and that’s before they’ve even visited it.

Think of leaving a comment as the contents of a shopping trolley. The way people form an opinion on your site from your comment is the same thought process that people use when making assumptions when they take a peak at what’s in someone’s trolley.

Instead of people though imagine you’re peeking into a website’s trolley. For example if McDonalds.com was standing in the queue with a trolley full of fruit and vegetables, you’d know something was up and not be inclined to trust them.

Similarly if a comment is posted that makes no sense, is irrelevant to the topic or contradictory to the nature of the advertised website, people aren’t going to click to visit your site.

At least not for the reasons your hoping they will.

Over at ProBlogger I’ve noticed a new serial commenter ‘Salman’, who runs a few months old blog on ‘blogging tips and hacks’ and continually leaves a textbook example of how not to write comments.

Darren has even written two posts about commenting recently, the first during the 31 Days to build a better blog challenge:

It should go without saying but just having moderated the comments on my own blogs I suspect it needs to be said a day – DON’T BE A COMMENT SPAMMER!

More than that – DON’T LOOK LIKE A COMMENT SPAMMER!

I add that second warning because I come across a lot of bloggers who try to leave comments on other blogs in a way that they think is genuine – but that looks very spammy. Their comments more often than not get them on blacklists of comment spam filters.

A comment that simply says ‘great post’ and that then has a link signature back to your own blog adds little if any value to the blog. It looks spammy.


And the second titled “How not to promote your blog: Top 10 broken blog promotion strategies”.

Where’s the sincerity? Where’s the realness? It’s a fake comment meant to do one thing, drive traffic. It’s a waste of everyone’s time and it’s a big no no.

When you leave comments on other blogs, remember these three things: sincere, relevant, and valuable.


Now keep in mind Salman is supposed to be the author of a blog teaching others ‘blogging tips and hacks’ so how he missed these important points about commenting I have no idea.

Here are the last 10 examples of his comments from the last 10 ProBlogger posts. I’ve included links to the posts so you can see that they are genuine along with the spammy comment signature Salman includes with every comment linking back to his blog. No he’s too lazy to use the neat comment username link – he spams his url in every comment ARGH!

Apologies in advance for the trackback spam Darren.


1. What blogging platforms do we use?

Hi Darren,

I always use blogger because blogger is the best in my opinion.Before 1 month I have created a wordpress blog but it was not much satisfying as blogger.


Well gee I’m glad you shared your opinion but care to explain WHY it’s better or HOW it’s more satisfying then blogger? We’re not talking about brands of softdrink here we’re talking about communication tools people use to express themselves.


2. Warning: Do you recognise these 21 blogging mistakes?

Hi Darren,

Nice post. I understood many things from this post. Keep it up.


The whole world didn’t need to know you understood the post and whilst encouragement is nice do you really think Darren would stop posting if you hadn’t have told him to keep it up? Comment value: a big fat zero.


3. Speedlinking: 10 posts I read today

Hi Darren

Out of the ten I felt one is useful for me “10 golden rules of social media”


WHY was it useful?! Are you saying the rest of the post was not useful? If you don’t explain why, then why the hell is anyone care what you did or didn’t find useful?


4. 6 More tips for affiliate marketing on blogs

Hi Darren

Superb post.
Can you post anything that helps bloggers to create an e-book and keep it downloadable.


This one was actually semi-decent bar the superb post bit (you’ll see why over the next few comments).

If you’re going to ask for such specific help though that isn’t directly related to the content of the post (ebooks weren’t mentioned specifically in the post), you’re probably better off searching to see if the question has been covered in a previous post or emailing the author directly.


5. How listening to a waiter can jack your profits up 33%

Hi Darren
Superb article But how does this help bloggers in making money?


Really? It was such a superb post that you read it and seemingly not understood the comparisons it was drawing? Jesus christ if a superb post is one you completely miss the point of, I wonder how you describe a post you actually get the point of?


6. How NOT to get a guest post published on a blog

Hi Darren
SUperb post
But you always say to write guest posts with our link at bottom.


I couldn’t find reference to Darren suggesting this anywhere in the article. If you’re going to accuse someone of doing something is probably a good idea to check to see if they’ve done it first.


7. 5 Tips to help you get a blogging job

Hi Darren
Superb Wonderful video post
Thanx I did learn many things.


WHAT DID YOU LEARN?!?!? Seriously, I don’t think I can take much more of this superb wonderfulness…


8. How I got 12,000 pageviews for $50

Hi Darren
Are there any free ways to increase page views.
As I am a starter so I cant afford paying out $50


This comment was posted twice verbatim just because spammy mcspam spam forgot to include a link back to his website the first time he posted.

Not only that, for a guy who’s advertising a website for blogging tips and hacks that has ads everywhere, do you really want to be telling the world you don’t even have a spare $50 to your name?

Because you know, if there’s one thing that makes me click on blogging tip sites it’s the author shouting ‘HEY EVERYONE, I’M WORTH LESS THEN AN AIG BACKED ZIMBABWEAN SUB PRIME MORTGAGE!’


9. The weekend is here… The perfect time to get your blog in order…

Hi Darren,
Is that for starters or anyone can use it?I am blogging from 2 months and almost I have developed my blog according to my satisfaction.


No, of course this is only for starters. If you’ve been running a blog for more then ten minutes and dare to even think about using the information nasty men will show up at your doorstep, kidnap your children, rape your wife and burn your house down.


10. How to protect against invalid clicks

Hi Darren,
Superb post but I think if I had known this I would have also put adsense click lock on my blog.I got my account disabled 2 times and I am not able to apply for adsense again.


On Salmans’ previous comment he states he’s only been blogging for 2 months. Really, you’ve had your adsense account disabled twice in two months? I think someone’s telling porky pies.


If you’re not ready to kick someone in the nuts as hard as you can after reading all of Salman’s comments I salute you as you’ve obviously got the patience and understanding of a quadriplegic charity worker.

As for Salman’s site itself, well here’s some blogging tips and hack suggestions of my own:

• ITALIC FREAKING TEXT?!?! Unless your chosen niche is ‘retarded people who have an italic text fetish’ there is no goddamn excuse to have the ENTIRE site written in italics! What were you thinking??

• Black backgrounds are so goth era 90′s. Come on, at least look like you’ve put some effort into a theme.

• Having a giant spammy box at the bottom of your blog linking to 3000 spam sites with blatant adbrite keywords is not a good way to inspire confidence in your content

• Get rid of the hitcounter.

• White text on a light pink background is horrendously unreadable.

If you’re going to leave comments and masquerade as a regular reader please, for the sake of everyone else reading it and out of respect for the author themselves don’t do a Salman. Darren has written some excellent starting points on how to comment, so let’s put them into practice people.

Today we have informed Googlers that we plan to reduce the number of roles within our sales and marketing organizations by just under 200 globally.

Cuts to sales and marketing tells me one thing, that online advertising hasn’t escaped the financial meltdown.

With millions of publishers worldwide including most of the top media organisations relying on Google’s ad program entirely or at least partly for an income, I decided to put forth some ideas on just what might happen should the world’s largest online advertising firm suddenly disappear overnight.

Smaller companies filling the immediate void

Realistically the first thing that would happen would most likely be the emergence of thousands of ‘adwords alternatives’ blog posts and various smaller players in the targeted online market being inundated with publisher signups.

However, if the largest company in the field today was unable to sustain a business model then I see some key differences in business models compared to Google’s current ‘we’ll offer advertising to practically any site’ strategy:

Online advertising agencies would have to choose between high traffic or low traffic advertising. They’d either be able to cater to the large corporations and offer huge traffic sales to a relatively small clientele able to afford, or if they focused exclusively on low traffic publishers offer cheaper advertisements to more advertisers with cut throat profit margins.

Heavier reliance on alternative advertising models

Whilst it is true that currently contextualised online advertising is king, the fall of Google’s program would cast a shadow over similar less widespread programs. Currently the major publishers, both corporate and independent tend to rely on multiple sources of advertising models to deliver the most profit from their incoming traffic.

From affiliate programs to ‘pay-per-post’ to selling merchandise and more, there are certainly enough options out there to keep the industry alive.

I imagine online advertising models that involve goods and services such as affiliate programs, rather then selling targeted traffic such as Google’s model, stand a better chance at weathering the current situation. Governments worldwide are in the process of preparing economic stimulus packages and surely some of that revenue will be used on online purchases.

Private brokering of advertising deals between publishers and advertisers

The idea of private advertising between publishers and advertisers does happen today but is nowhere near the market share of agency style online advertising. Unfortunately the same obstacle that hinders it today will be the biggest hurdle to overcome in a post-adwords era.

With private deals either the publisher or the advertiser has to actively seek out the other. Unless you’re at the top of your field in a particular niche and a certain company within your niche is looking to advertise online, the chances of scoring an exclusive deal as a publisher are slim.

There’s a reason why private deals are usually only seen in extremely targeted high traffic and corporate media circles, obviously there are exceptions to the rule but they are far and few between.

Having said that private deals might take off in a post adwords era seeing as advertising online is still far cheaper then offline advertising and has a greater potential to reach a much wider audience.

Collapse of smaller ‘blogging for profit’ publishers

Whilst you will always have people who blog for pleasure currently even the smallest blogs are able to make a buck or two a month if they play their cards right.

I believe with the collapse of Google’s adwords online advertising might very easily return to the domain of being accessible to solely high traffic publishers in various niches, leaving the rest of us to either pay to put our own voices on the Internet or join up with free publishing services.

Currently I get by with an economy hosting plan due to only being a few months old (I’ve been blogging since 2002 on Blogspot but this is the first time I’ve taken it relatively seriously) but I know that as traffic grows without online advertising the hole in my hip pocket will get larger and larger each month. At least this blog is mostly text, heaven help the semi-popular photobloggers out there.


Online advertising is ripe for a snowball effect, when people stop spending online companies then advertise less resulting in revenue streams to support online publishing drying up meaning there’s less content out there.

Arguably that could be seen as a positive for some but I think the information sphere as a whole would be at a loss overall with the abandonment of midrange traffic publishers, not to mention the loss of niche publishers where even the top range publishers are still mid to low range traffic wise.

Regardless of whether Google adwords goes under or not (and let me just say if it does, it’s extremely unlikely it will happen overnight), I do think it’s vital to have some sort of revenue backup plan.

Even if you’re hopeless at planning, as a publisher at the very least spend some time thinking about it, preferably before you’re in that uncomfortable position of potentially having to decide just how much publishing online is worth to you.