Life’s So Beautiful

Google has taken the plunge into the world of social media with its announcement about Google Buzz. Its foray into the social media is a melding of pieces of Facebook and Twitter.

Google Buzz is a new way to start conversations about the things you find interesting and share updates, photos, videos, links and more. There will be no more fuzzy little pictures: Buzz makes it easy to quickly flip through photos and experience them the way they were meant to be seen: big and full-resolution. And videos play inline so you can watch them without opening a new window.

Buzz is built right into Gmail, so you don’t have to peck out an entirely new set of friends from scratch — it just works. Buzz sets you up to follow the people you email and chat with the most. You have the choice to share publicly with the world or privately to a small group of friends each time you post. You can connect other sites you use, such as Picasa, Flickr, Google Reader, YouTube and Twitter, so your friends can easily keep up with what you’re doing online — all in one place.

Making sure that you don’t miss out on the best part of sharing, Buzz sends responses to your posts straight to your inbox. Unlike static email messages, buzz messages in your inbox are live conversations where comments appear in real time.

There are many basic tasks you can perform using Buzz such as leaving a comment on someone else’s buzz, liking it, or even emailing it. And you can make your buzzes private or public too. One of the major benefits is the excellent built-in search functionality. The Buzz search beats Twitter’s search hands down and is definitely one of its killer features.

You can follow the specific people whose posts you want to see, but Buzz also recommends posts from people you’re not directly following, often ones where your friends are having a lively conversation in the comments. If you’re not interested in a particular recommendation, just click the “Not interested” link and your feedback will help improve the recommendations system. Buzz also weeds out uninteresting posts from the people you follow — collapsing inactive posts and short status messages like “brb.” These early versions of ranking and recommendations are just a start; they’re working on improvements that will help you automatically sort through all the social data being produced to find the most relevant conversations that matter to you.

Buzz is also available on your mobile phone. It uses your mobile device and geo location technology to see where you are which can put context into the items that you share on the go. When you’re out on the move, a lot of the information you want to share often has to do with where you are or what you are doing: for example, you may want to buzz about a trendy hair saloon that you are patronising for the first time or the score of the English Premier League game you’re watching at a sports cafe. Buzz for mobile thus brings location to the forefront and makes it easy to have conversations about places. Additionally, the ability to see who is buzzing around you (it doesn’t matter whether you are following them or not) is really neat. Buzz’s integration with Google Maps comes in very handy to find “hot spots” or areas where people have left advice, tips and the like.

In the months to come, it will be very interesting to see how Google Buzz fares against Facebook. Will Buzz triumph over Facebook to become the “Google” of social media? Let’s wait and see!

I saw this humorous photo when I was browsing the internet last night.  Please don’t take offense as it is meant as a joke and hopefully it will bring a smile to your face. You lose nothing by smiling but a smile can do wonders sometimes!

I started my new blog “My Cherry-Picked Programs” on January 30, 2010. In this blog, I am sharing the programs from which I am making money online. Do drop by when you are free……I hope you will benefit from that blog so that 2010 may turn out to be a great year for you!

Go to: http://www.mycherrypicks.com

My Cherry-Picked Programs...May You Prosper From Them

We went to QQ Duck Specialist in Pelita Commercial Centre for breakfast today. This coffeeshop was doing brisk business because of its barbecue duck. As we parked our car, I noticed dozens of slaughtered ducks and chickens  hanging on some railings behind the coffeeshop.

After breakfast, we went to Bintang Megamall to do some shopping. There were huge crowds there and it took us quite a while to find a parking slot. On arrival at the main entrance of the megamall, we saw a lion dance competition in progress and I managed to snap a few photos before entering the mall.

As soon as you enter the mall, you will immediately feel the Chinese New Year mood. You can see red almost everywhere.  And Chinese New Year music fills the air…….oh ya, kong si kong si kong si ni!

Year of the Tiger

I saw a Caucasian lady browsing around the store selling Chinese New Year lanterns and decorative items. I thought she was just killing time browsing but I later saw her leaving the mall with a few big red lanterns and Chinese New Year decorative items. I guess she must have been gripped by the Chinese New Year mood too, haha!

Morning had broken and I was sending my wife and son to work yesterday when we saw the sun’s rays  emanating from the clouds that had shielded the sun from view. And the clouds had so intense silver linings. It was a sight to behold and I quickly captured the views on my camera. Unfortunately I don’t any zoom lens so the photos that I took do not depict the actual scene well.  Anyway you can get an idea of the beauty of the scene from these photos.

As we were driving, we then saw this huge rainbow stretching across the sky. I always feel blessed and often I am seized by a sense  that something good is going to come my way whenever I see a huge rainbow like this. So needless to say, I “captured” the rainbow on my camera. The last time I saw one was a couple of months ago and I also quickly “captured” it on my camera and on that night, I had an amazing windfall. Hmm….maybe something great is going to materialize this weekend…..I am keeping my fingers crossed!

Spring Is Here!

Today marks the beginning of the season of Spring or Lichun according to the Chinese solar calendar. However Chinese celebrate Chinese New Year on February 14 2010 in accordance with the Lunar calendar.

There are some Chinese who believe that today is a very important day as what happens to you today is an indication of what the year has in store for you. If great things happen to you today, then the rest of the year will be fantastic. However, if unfortunate things happen to you, then the rest of the year will not be smooth too.

If you happen to see a lot of Chinese wearing red today when you go to the bank, don’t be surprised. It is believed that if you wear red and go to the bank to bank in some cash or cheque today, it augurs well for your finances for the rest of the year. Now you know……..will I be seeing you at the bank wearing red today?

Most of us are loyal Facebook users and enjoy the social aspects of the social networks.  We all love to use Twitter and to be honest in the beginning I had no clue how to work Twitter and I did not understand it.  The fact of the matter is that social networks are the way of the future and the way most people are communicating nowadays.  People are spending less time emailing each other and more time leaving messages on each others wall.  Theses companies are exploding in popularity and are estimated to worth in the billions of dollars.

There is only one problem. These companies do not pay their members for all of the traffic and the advertising revenue that they generate.  PeopleString exploded onto the scene a few months ago and has been rising fast on the Alexa.com ranking.

So, what exactly is People String? It is a new social media site launched on September 23, 2009 to compete with giants like Facebook by paying anyone and everyone to recruit members and grow its ranks.

People String is also working with companies who want to bypass the advertising giants and pay people directly for looking at their products/services. The more people participate, the more companies will see this as a viable alternative to reaching their target audience. PeopleString shares 70% of its revenue with its members. Just imagine getting paid for what you do online!

To get a preview of PeopleString, watch the following YouTube video:

It can potentially be quite lucrative for those willing to recruit new members. They will earn a commission for every person they recruit, get paid per item of advertising they look at, thus getting a percentage of revenues from everyone they recruit for life! For those not interested in recruiting others, the remaining income streams may be more to their liking and more are to be added over time. You can join for free and still earn lots of money by referring others to join. There are some members who are now enjoying a monthly income of few thousand dollars

When you have a business where everyone who joins makes money even if that is $1 and you get a percentage of that $1, this gives you very powerful residual income potential.  Imagine getting a percentage of the ad revenue that your every member brings to Facebook every month.  Imagine sharing in the billions of dollars of ad revenue that Facebook generates on a monthly basis.  Yes it would be very profitable but more importantly it has the power to help those who otherwise would not be able to make a lot of money have a chance to build a great business in the social network marketing world.

Well, wait no more because PeopleString gives you this opportunity.  Best off all the PeopleString social portal already integrates with Twitter and by the time you read this article it is very well likely that it will be integrated with Facebook.  What this means is that you can send messages from your PeopleString wall and your message will show up on your Facebook and Twitter wall.  But now you will be getting paid because PeopleString will be sharing all of their advertising revenue with you.

Lastly PeopleString has an innovative mailbox cashbox program which eliminates the middleman and allows advertisers to advertise directly to you.  You walk to your mailbox and you get paid. You also get a percentage of the your referrals mailbox cashbox offers as well.  PeopleString also has cashback shopping and gives you a free Blackgrape energy drink store as yet another way to make money with PeopleString. So if you are not a PeopleString member yet join today and own a piece of the web! Click here to join.

Chinese New Year is just two weeks away. This morning we did some spring cleaning in our house before heading downtown for brunch. After brunch, we went shopping at Boulevard Hypermart at Imperial Mall.

There are large crowds at the shopping malls and Chinese New Year music fills the air. You cannot help but be gripped by the Chinese New Year mood.

As my wife was choosing some potatoes for cooking curry during the Chinese New Year, I saw this potato that looked like it had a face…..but this potato definitely wasn’t in a Chinese New Year mood……its mouth was curved downwards as if it was angry or unhappy. I could not resist taking a photo of it…..my son said it looked like a tortoise head or o-kui-tow in Hokkien, haha!

Mr Tortoisehead

I have been reading the book “The 8-Day Internet Wonder” by Edwin John published by True Wealth Sdn Bhd.  This book is quite easy to read and it lays out a step-by-step guide to making money online.

One of the ways to draw traffic to your blog according to the book is add your blog to Technorati by a process called “claiming your blog”.  Technorati is a blog search engine that has plenty of information on all kinds of blogs.

As part of the procedure to “claim my blog”, I have been asked by Technorati to insert this code VTC9Y78ASW7K within a new blog post so that is what I am doing now.

Miri is aiming at becoming the first green city in Malaysia with May 20 as the deadline. On May 20 this year, Miri will be celebrating its 5th anniversary as a city.

Bird's Eye View of Miri City

Since taking office, Mayor Lawrence Lai has impressed Mirians with his leadership and initiative to transform Miri into a better municipality.  He has been busy visiting many parts of the municipality to listen to complaints from the people and trying to carry out improvements where necessary.

Mayor Lawrence Lai

One of the first step undertaken by the Mayor towards making Miri a green city is appealing to Mirians to lend their wholehearted support to make Miri the first city to say no to plastic bags everyday.

The city council’s “Say No To Plastic” campaign launched on August 30 last year has garnered the support of local hypermarkets and supermarkets that give no free plastic bags on Sunday. With effect from this month, the no-plastic days were increased to 3 days every week from Friday to Sunday.

Say No To Plastic Bag

The city council has always been active in planting trees and plants in the city and the mayor has pledged to plant a minimum of 1000 trees per year. I can see nice landscaping in many areas of the city which makes the city look much more beautiful….kudos to the city council!

The city council is planning to hold landscaping competitions among schools to inculcate the “go green” culture among students. It is also encouraging all government departments and agencies to carry out landscaping too.

A major green project that the city council will implement is the bicycle track from Taman Selera to Lutong in two phases. Under the first phase, the bicycle track will link Taman Selera to Miri City Fan while the second phase will link Miri City Fan to Lutong. The aim of the project is to encourage more people to use bicycles thereby reducing the number of motor vehicles on the road.

Beach at Taman Selera

A View of Miri City Fan

The city council is studying the feasibility of installing solar or LED lightings for the whole city. With about 17,000 street lights in the city, the council is paying over RM7 million in electricity bills annually. It is estimated that the council can save between 60 to 70 percent in the electrical bills. And Miri will also become the first city in Malaysia to have such lightings if the project is implemented.

I wasn’t born in Miri but I have lived in Miri for almost 30 years and have come to love the city dearly. It is in my opinion the best place to live in Sarawak.