InvestorBlogger

For those of you wondering what I’ve done on Obblogatory and here on InvestorBlogger to speed things along recently. I will tell you: I was playing with my other server space at MediaTemple because my blog had slowed to a crawl, and MT were shooting emails at me advising me of the server load on the Databases.

So I installed a couple of plugins there, including one called db cache and my site loads so much faster now. I matched it with a regular caching plugin, like SuperCache or HyperCache and the server just rockets along. Why?

The DB Cache plugin simply caches requests to the database, and the Caching programs just serve those cached files. Occasionally, the server experiences a slight hiccup, but even then I noted that server queries dropped from over 350 sometimes to a manageable 20~50 queries.

I thought you should try it out. It seems to be compatible with other caching programs like supercache, hypercache etc. and when both db cache and caching plugins are used together, the server really runs fast. And I haven’t found any incompatibilities with other plugins, yet.

I tried this solution matched with a different page caching plugin on different sites, and results are approximately similar: Obblogatory loads about 90% fewer queries, InvestorBlogger often loads just 10~20 queries each time. My school site occasionally loads in excess of 135 queries so there’s still some work to do there.

What I do notice even with sites loading so many queries is that the sites still load much faster than ever. I know though that queries can be cut down even more: by adding fixed urls in the header and footer, but that’s quite a bit of work to get rid of them. And subsequent page loads are significantly faster still, as much of the stuff needed is already cached in your browser cache!

But for the sites on Dreamhost, I also added a Database Virtual Server and Dreamhost upped my original Virtual Server Memory by 100%. So overall, any of my sites hosted on Dreamhost are loading much faster anyway. The database caching plugin keeps things chugging along!

For those bent on optimizing every last ounce out of their server, it might be worth doing! Getting a Dreamhost PS Server is worth it for me! It insulates me from flaky software running other people’s sites, it doesn’t cost the earth, and I have unlimited storage space and bandwidth… it’s an amazing deal, for about $31.00 per month all told. With a VPS system, I might actually get to use it, too!

Hyder really got me going when he posted a list of tools he’d never use again, I’ve installed and removed dozens of scripts and I keep testing stuff out…. My list is surprisingly similar.

Tools I do not use much any more

1. SocialSpark*
2. PerformancingAds (they lost my money)*
3. Alexa (for increasingly inaccurate stats)
4. TopSpots*
5. BlogCatalog (too much like MyBlogLog)
6. Dreamhost Referrals (never had one successful referral)
7. TTZMedia*

Tools I would never use again

1. Scribefire
2. Widgetbox
3. Sitemeter
4. Smorty
5. Blogsvertise*
6. Blogitive
7. SponsoredReviews
8. AdBrite*
9. AdToll*
10. NewsRoom*
11. Picasa Online
12. CafePress
13. A GuestBook or Hit Counter (so 1990′s!)

*these sites marked all owe me money (in some cases more than $10). In total, I’m owed about $60 which would be better in my bank account than theirs.

These are the tools I can think of right now, but I’m sure that the lists could be much longer if I thought about it.

After doing the volte-face about WPMU, I remerged the entire blogs I had set up back into this one. However, for some weird reason a number of critical posts went missing. I still have no idea why. And I nearly lost some great posts for ever when I removed the Database, too. Still all was saved by Dreamhost not empting there trashcan on time! For that I’m very thankful. I recovered a dozen or so great posts. But to import them back to this blog, I had to publish them all. Hence yesterday’s feed blast from the past! Do check them out! Apologies if you got too much junk. Next time, I’ll disable the feed.

This is my personal credit card report which highlights my spending for this month. In fact, I have two credit cards: One of which I use primarily for online transactions courtesy of Shanghai Bank, and one for general use courtesy of Taishin Bank.

Be CAREFUL with your Cards

With the second one, we had a bit of a fuss this month. I had just finished upgrading the server at school, when I decided to replace one of the staff computers, too. It was partly to save money on electricity that we switched to low power computers and to save carbon (specifically, the Asus Eee Ebox 202 series, which is a fine complement for teachers in our school).

So I ordered an extra computer from our local supplier. It came, and I took out my credit card to pay the bill. No success. Tried again. Turned out the credit card had been canceled and that it had been fraudulently used abroad somewhere towards the end of 2008. Since I hadn’t noticed any odd transactions, I can only assume that the anti-fraud measures banks use had been successful in preventing the abuse of the card.

I’m still surprised that it happened. The gentleman at Taihsin International Bank was surprisingly polite and efficient. I had my new cards within just a few days, and was able to use them again. But I still have no idea when or how my card details were skimmed. I have checked my PCs for viruses and bugs and other nasties. All of them are totally clean. My only guess is that someone skimmed the details when I was in the UK, perhaps with a small hand scanner, at one of the hotels or restaurants or stores I went to.

This month’s report. Anyway.

Personal Shopping Purchases

1. For school, we bought several memory cards which were unbelievably cheap (2 cards at about NT$200 each for 2MB), a PC computer extension cord with lots of extra sockets, and a USB socket charger for the wife so she can charge her MP3 player without worrying about access to a PC. That cost NT$2477 in total.
2. The mobile phone bill was for two months at NT$376. Google AdWords was NT$8. I pretty much stopped my campaigns for the time being as the clickthroughs were really bad for both my personal sites and my business sites. In fact, the visitors clicking through were just bad quality.
3. We also paid our car insurance again this year for NT$3864: of course on the form that we received we noted that our car had devalued again! It’s quite surprising how F-A-S-T an NT$500K car becomes only NT$200K. And our regular payment of NT$2000 was also made as usual.
4. The biggest shopping purchase damage in January was our trip to Mitsuokoshi at Taipei 101 right at the end of December. Christine bought ear-rings for herself and her sister at NT$4480, and two pairs of shoes that she really liked which cost NT$6552.

Business Purchases

1. With the most recent set of fusses at the Server, I started migrating my domain registrations from Dreamhost to NameCheap. It has cost quite a lot of additional money to do this as I had to pay additional registration fees for extending the registration period. Given that I now control over 20 domains, you can imagine. Fortunately, NameCheap has been running special offers for domain transfers (US$7.99 for the first year). I have to say that I have been solidly impressed with the quality of the help and service I have received from NameCheap. It has been absolutely outstanding as they have dealt with three queries of mine: billing, DNS issues and non-transferred domains. On each occasion, the issue was satisfied. Good service. Damage to my wallet: NT$3241. I know there is at least one other bill coming for about NT2500 as well in February.
2. Dreamhost bills came up twice in December for December and November: total NT$1181 which included one domain renewal. There was another NT$101 for something that I can’t quite remember. I’m still checking what that was for. In fact, that was a payment to Scratchback. I had about US$15.00 in their system that had sat for months. I decided to stop using the widget on my blogs, so to get the money out, I bought a slot myself with one paypal address. And then I was able to withdraw the amount as it met the minimum required. It did cost me a little, but I figured it was better than letting the money sit in Jim Krukal’s Paypal account.
3. A New Theme: I promised a new theme for InvestorBlogger for 2009. And indeed I purchased the theme for InvestorBlogger (to be revealed) at about the same that this server was attacked and it was useless. I implemented it on EeeBlogger for a while, and discovered that there were some issues with the premium theme I bought. I’m still hoping to use it on InvestorBlogger soon, but implementation is a real pain. NT$2385.
4. Database and Scanner: Our business (a language school) decided to start categorizing and organizing the books we have for children to read. In other words, we felt we should have some facilities to start a small lending library. So we purchased software and a hand scanner to start cataloguing the books. We’re hoping to find out how many books we have, how much we spent on them, and have facilities to keep tabs on the books, too. Perhaps I’ll review the software one day. NT$2719.

Final Note: I use Paypal a lot for my online purchases, it’s pretty handy. But it’s difficult to keep tabs on what money goes out and how. So I’ve opted to use one account for money received, and one for purchases only. It hasn’t quite worked out like that yet. But it’s getting there.

Oh, and I earned a little cashback on one of the cards: NT$46.00. There were no penalties, no interest charges, or other surprises, and the total amount owed on each card WILL be paid in full. But I stupidly let over 4000 bonus points expire without using them. What a shame. I just noticed that they expired on the last day of January. Oh, well.

With the recent and much anticipated release of WordPress 2.7, I was reluctant to upgrade some of my blogs because of past foibles, bugs and unexpected incompatibilities with plugins. So when I read that 2.7 was released, I was initially reluctant to upgrade ANY of my blogs. So I started with a couple of them, and updated, tested things out, and moved on. Ordinarily, I would have waited until 2.7.1 was released as a bug fix for some of the issues that area always present in a full release of WordPress.

Overall, I’ve been very impressed with WordPress 2.7, in the few days that I have used it, and I’m a little frustrated that some of the hosting companies I work with haven’t updated the software on CPanel yet. Of course, Dreamhost jumped in pretty early, and that’s why I was happy to try it out. I’d say that there are five basic reasons I like this version of WordPress more than any previous release.

1. A Simplified Dashboard: You can eliminate clutter!

The dashboard has long been a bone of contention for me, because of the tendency of WordPress to want to flaunt its gimmicks, updates and features to all and sundry. In this version, though, users get to turn off the feeds, through the screen options at the top right. Simply uncheck the things you don’t want. Voila!

Additional features that are helpful are the little downward arrow that occurs at the top of most boxes, in the top right corner of each box. Simply clicking on that arrow or area closes or opens the dialog box in an obvious fashion. You’ll see the downward pointing arrow next to tools (see highlighted area). It works simply in a toggle fashion. These toggle switches are all over the admin area. To find them, just hover over the task bar for each item on the right hand sided.

The dashboard area is divided into three areas: the sidebar on the left where each of the menu items can be opened and closed; the central column which includes the stats box, the writing box; and the right column that pretty much includes everything else. As you can see from mine, it’s easy enough to pick things up and move them around a lot. Clicking on the words “screen options” highlights an area where you can turn off things you don’t want to see.

The right sidebar includes several new designations which may be confusing to new users. First the ‘pages’ button has moved to just below ‘links’. It used to be located right next to ‘posts’. This confuses me now. I often hover between writing posts and pages, and now I have to look further afield to find the pages button. It seems illogical to place it after ‘links’.

The old ‘design’ menu has been renamed ‘appearance’ on 2.7 but functions in pretty much the same way as the its predecessor. The Tools menu, however, is a new one and features several items that were moved from the former ‘Manage’ menu, including import/export functions. The Upgrade items, though, hint at some of the new features of WordPress that make management much easier (more later).

2. Keeping Upgraded – it’s getting easier!

Plugins are getting easier to manage: You will soon no longer need to use FTP to upload stuff – plugins and core upgrades can all be done within WordPress itself. This leaves ‘themes’ as the only item that now needs FTP. I imagine that future versions of this will remedy this. Other software, such as Joomla or SMF, have long had this ability. Right now, you can upgrade a plugin in much the same way as uploading other items. Find the item ‘plugins’ on the left hand menu. Click it, and you will see it open slowly to reveal four options. To add a new plugin, click on the words ‘add new’, and you will be taken to a page where you can upload a zip file of the plugin which is uploaded and installed. After it’s done, you can activate it straight away. A nice touch. Just hit ‘install now’ to upload the plugin!

It’s also much easier now to find new plugins. Take a look at the next screenshot: you will see what I mean! The tags below the upload button hint at the next page. These plugins are from WordPress.org’s own plugin area, and clicking on the tags reveals that they can all be downloaded and installed quickly and without any fuss.

In fact, activating and inactivating plugins has also got easier as has removing unwanted plugins. Simply just click on the plugins area on the sidebar, usually under ‘plugins’ >>> ‘installed’ menu option. You’ll find it easy to manage plugins from there, including removing them completely!

But this plugin management hints at another feature (one that I have not needed to try yet)… upgrading WordPress can now be done entirely from WITHIN the admin panel. Take a look for yourself! Under Tools >>> Upgrade, you’ll see the following dialogue.

Very tempting when you can choose to download and reinstall automatically. I have no idea how this works, yet. But it would be a neat variation IF you could upgrade from WITHIN the admin area. Perhaps this is just teasing us.

3. Commenting from WITHIN WordPress

Admins often had to comment in a very odd fashion before: read the comment in the comments area; find the post in the archive, read the post, and then comment in the comment box AFTER the end of the article. Now it’s much easier:

Just hit ‘reply’ to answer the query and a simple but functional comment box will appear just below, enabling you to answer without messing around in the archives! Of course, this presumes that you remember what you wrote!

4. Quick Posting and Quick Editing

The commenting function also has another feature that hints at much more power: the quick edit button. Clicking on the Quick Edit enables you to edit the comment very quickly, without calling up the entire post or page where it is entered. But the ‘quick’ idea has been extended with in several ways: making a powerful trio of blogging tools.

QuickPress : on the admin page, when you login you’ll be taken to a dialog box that enables you to write a short post, with media and tags and publish it in a matter of minutes! While you don’t have a WYSIWYG editor, you can learn some simple codes to faciliate quick blogging (they’re all available in the Write Post area).

Quick Edit is also enabled in the post and page view, and allows you to quickly update a number of features (the usual suspects that a busy blogger will forget in the heat of the moment!): such as tags, categories, slug, date or more…

This combined with Press Links (shouldn’t it be called ‘Quick’ Links?) means that posting, editing, linking and commenting can all be carried out fairly rapidly.

5. You can now add media without creating post

This is another puzzle from the previous version that was finally finished! For years, I never thought about uploading media to WordPress. I simply created a post and added the stuff I wanted… until last month when I created a batch of videos and wanted to upload them all at once. I would have had to create a post and add each one one by tedious one! Now it seems, I can simply upload media as I need and when I’m ready I can create a post and find the media I already uploaded! It’s funny, but that’s something you don’t need, until you really need it! And now it’s here!

Now it would be nice if I could upload a number of files at one go! Oh, wait! It does! Or at least I think it does! I’m practising uploading media now! Now I wonder how I can create a simple gallery from these files! …

What on earth is going on? I wish someone could explain to me in good order… because I’ve never seen so many problems all in one day.

I’ve getting lots of help but I’m still struggling to figure out the source of the problem, and hence the solution.

I’ve had five serious problems in the last 24 hours.

1.- Unable to reboot…

Yesterday my webserver went down, couldn’t bring it back up. When it did come back, some sites were absolutely fine… but some were totally screwed up.

So I’m trying to find out what if any updates DH made to the server that would cause these two kinds of problems:

#2: Erroneous Codes
this is being generated by the plugin wp-cache (yesterday the plugin was working without any problems!) I tried removing the plugin and reinstalling: didn’t work. Just produced the same errors even after removing it from the plugins directory…

Warning: fopen(/home/.damper/obblogatory/obblogatory.com/wp-content/cache/wp_cache_mutex. lock) [function.fopen]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/.damper/obblogatory/obblogatory.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-cache/wp-cache-p hase2.php on line 96
Couldn’t write to: /home/.damper/obblogatory/obblogatory.com/wp-content/cache/wp-cache-357509ba2733 b5ed2b4e72148985cc17.html
Warning: flock() expects parameter 1 to be resource, boolean given in /home/.damper/obblogatory/obblogatory.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-cache/wp-cache-p hase2.php on line 105

Warning: fopen(/home/.damper/obblogatory/obblogatory.com/wp-content/cache/wp-cache-357509 ba2733b5ed2b4e72148985cc17.meta) [function.fopen]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/.damper/obblogatory/obblogatory.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-cache/wp-cache-p hase2.php on line 240

Warning: fputs(): supplied argument is not a valid stream resource in /home/.damper/obblogatory/obblogatory.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-cache/wp-cache-p hase2.php on line 241

Warning: fclose(): supplied argument is not a valid stream resource in /home/.damper/obblogatory/obblogatory.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-cache/wp-cache-p hase2.php on line 242

Warning: flock() expects parameter 1 to be resource, boolean given in /home/.damper/obblogatory/obblogatory.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-cache/wp-cache-p hase2.php on line 114

#3: I’m still getting this error on at least three sites…

Warning: require_once(/home/.damper/eeeblogger/eeeblogger.com/wp-config.php) [function.require-once]: failed to open stream: Permission denied in /home/.damper/eeeblogger/eeeblogger.com/wp-load.php on line 27

Fatal error: require_once() [function.require]: Failed opening
required ‘/home/.damper/eeeblogger/eeeblogger.com/wp-config.php’ (include_path=’.:/usr/local/php5/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php’) in /home/.damper/eeeblogger/eeeblogger.com/wp-load.php on line 27

What’s even odder is that they are all supposed to be running on the same server, all of them are running WP2.7 as you requested, and most of them have the SAME plugins or broadly similar ones.

#4: FTP is shutout

All the passwords for my FTP accounts were non functional until I reset them. I still can’t login via FTP to most of my accounts UNLESS I set them to Shell access. They were working before that’s for sure. And no one else has Shell access.

#5 A lot of permissions have been reset making errors for some blogs that I can’t fix EVEN IF I reset the folder permissions.

I am thinking that one of two possibilities happened: an update was roled out with unexpected consequences in some cases or that the server became corrupted (by accident or by hacker?) and this means some sites are just dandy while others are out.

I spoke extensively with DanielG who helped me get the passwords reset and saved me from tearing my hair out. But we’re still no nearer on what happened and how to fix the situation. Kudos to DanielG for his effort…

Please can you help me sort this mess out.

Best Wishes
Kenneth

These problems have had me spend hours trying to trouble shoot the origin of the problems. It’s really prevented me from running my sites, doing maintenance or getting posts done. Very frustrating, what is it with DreamHost? Things were going well, but things are just so seriously screwed up…

There’s common wisdom that you should put all your eggs in one basket, then watch over it like a hawk. But if like me, you manage a number of domains, customer sites, and blogs, this is somewhat disastrous if your primary host does go down. Fact is even if a hosting company promises you that you will have 99.9% uptime in any 12 month period, that still means you will have over 8.76 hours downtime in any year.

So, if you are going to manage any more than a couple of sites, split your eggs between baskets to ensure that WHEN one of your sites/accounts goes down, you can still be productive on the OTHER sites until service returns. This is what I’m doing at the moment to keep sites up and running.

Keep your domains and hosting SEPARATE

Domains are registered at NameCheap. If one host turns out to be really hopeless, as long as I can retrieve the most recent data, I can be up and running on another host within 24-48 hours as long as it takes the DNS to resolve properly. Recently, it’s been within 12 hours for some changes.

Separate Crucial Sites

Customer sites are generally hosted on their own accounts, separate from my blogs, and separate from each other. With domains registered elsewhere, it makes switching sites a breeze. Also, it largely protects sites from mistakes made by their owners having an effect on other unrelated sites.

Keep redundant back ups

My own blogs are generally hosted on one personal server, but the biggest have their own space on another server as well. Smaller blogs, though, share my VPS solution. Unfortunately, this means if my server goes down, most of my blogs are inaccessible. Since most repairs are quick, and data is generally unavailable during outages, moving the domains at that time is impossible.

However, if you have a daily backup of your blog, including the database and the files, you should be able to get up and running quickly on another hosting company. I don’t have a copy of the latter stuff. More fool me.

Redundancy: An Expensive Option

For my most important blogs, I’m looking at creating some form of redundancy so that I can switch and keep things up. But for most small blogs, this is quite expensive to achieve. It’s called Failover Web Hosting where your site is accessible from a number of IPs should the original site fail. This would work well with HTML based sites, but dynamic sites which lots of commenting and posting would have issues with keeping the data synchronized properly.

I’ve been using BlueHost, BlueFur, Hostmonster and Dreamhost for hosting these past few years. Though each has had intermittent problems through that time, I found Dreamhost has been the most reliable in the past six months, while BlueFur turned into a bit of a disaster as we kept getting locked out of our account/Cpanel/Website. It got so ridiculous that we stopped using their service. I can’t particularly recommend BlueFur but you may get different mileage. Still, let me know how you plan to keep your sites running in an emergency.

Well, Izea has been slowly building out the SocialSpark platform for quite sometime. It’s moved slowly from Beta to full launch, and it’s becoming increasingly sophisticated in a number of ways.

As a blogger, though, there are some problems that I’ve had with the platform, most of which is that I’m not getting enough work from them to be really bothered. Still, I’ve maintained my blog in the system to get access to the stats, keep an eye on SocialSpark and perhaps be able to take part on a better level in the future. So I’m keeping an open mind.

Izea Does Affiliates

Recently, though, Izea expanded the platform even more by adding affiliates . I’m naturally interested in affiliate marketing so I was pleased to see this opportunity in the marketplace. You can take a look for yourself.

There are only limited opportunities right now, but the payouts are quite generous. A smart blogger, for example, could easily attract extra income to the blog by posting certain affiliate type banners and links on their blogs. Of course, one has to ask the question: are blogs could places for making conversions? So far, I’ve not had much success with conversions, so I’m not convinced yet. But that may be due to my own limitations, rather than anything problems inherent in using blogs for affiliate marketing.

There’s a big but. It doesn’t seem to work like traditional affiliate programs. Why? There’s a time limit to the opportunity of one year. This would preclude certain types of sites that would be built to a longer time horizon. A friend of mine has just spent a lot of time and money building a website to market lawncare products and services, it’s taken him months to build his website, do the SEO, and start the marketing via AdWords. If the marketer only had a window of 12 months to pursue an affiliate program, it just wouldn’t make much sense: the first three months would be gone in the build-up period.

Since SocialSpark is simply trying out affiliate programs at the moment, we’ll see if they take a different tack in the future on this issue.

About six months ago, I had been having a lot of trouble with my hosting provider, Dreamhost. So I started looking around for new hosting solutions, and it was a pain to track down different hosts. There are numerous hosting solutions on the web, but painfully clicking through all those different ads on computer websites can be slow.

Enter a review site: WebhostingGeeks.com offers reviews for web hosting as well as ratings for many of the top websites available for hosting and they breakdown the different packages in ways that can help you identify suitable products for your needs.

Can a review site such as this be useful?

While the type of website isn’t particularly new these days, if you are researching a host, positive and negative reviews can be helpful in describing the kind of problems that you will experience with the different hosts. For example, if you are not particularly needing robust hosting, you may wish to go for more budget hosting that has reasonably good uptimes.

Some may legitimately wonder if a website like this can offer impartial advice, and this may or may not be the case. Reading reviews will allow you to have a better review of the site’s editorial policy. Negative reviews, especially, will allow you to see if the editorial is light- or heavy-handed. Check for negative reviews.

As a simple guide to some of the more popular solutions, a site like this may never be able to cover ALL the options out there. Indeed that would be impossible. But it could certainly help steer you in the right direction, provided you realize that these sites are affiliate links, and could earn money for the site-owner.

Some suggestions

Yahoo! hosting generally is not highly regarded, yet it is placed quite high on the list. I’m not sure why. It would also be great if users could submit hosts to the directory so that the list of hosts gets longer. Naturally, with many hosts offering affiliate schemes, it would be easy to generate additional revenues from them. But hosts without affiliate schemes may not be included… It would also be nice to see some easily identifiable disclaimer links such as “…this link is an affiilate link…” or even a disclaimer page.

Overall, it would have saved me quite some time, cut out some of the waste of effort in examining useless sites, and saved me even more money. Pity I found it six months’ too late. Oh, well.

Welcome to our archives. Each post is listed by its publication date in the archives. It is updated automatically. It’s a good place to find what topics and themes are covered in the blog. Happy reading!

This is a static page so it’s only updated every few weeks. To check recent posts in the last week or so, click to the frontpage or page 2 or page 3 .

July 2008

• 22: Quotation: Given a Shovel, Americans Dig Deeper Into Debt (0)
• 20: Trying Adsense Again! (1)
• 19: The Bear is here: Are you still bullish? (0)
• 18: DotCom Carnival – July 23rd 2008 (0)
• 18: Should I have stuck with those old stocks…? Let’s See. (0)
• 18: Dow stocks: General Electric (0)
• 17: Friday Foto: Overlooking Guandu Farms towards the South of Taipei (0)
• 17: RevResponse.com – The Leading B2B Performance Based Publisher Network (0)
• 17: Toys for the boys: WordPress 2.6, firefox 3 and livewriter (2)
• 16: Problems with the Top Twenty Money Making Feeds? (0)
• 16: Should I upgrade? Version 2.6 is very seductive! (2)
• 15: Would you buy Home Depot (HD) at these prices? (0)
• 14: 20th Carnival of Making REAL Money – July 15th 2008 (3)
• 13: Quotation: An English Proverb
• 11: Getting My Act Together: News Update on InvestorBlogger (6)
• 09: Quotation: George Burns (0)
• 08: Who is stealing your blog’s content? (0)
• 06: North East Coast: scenic coastline from Keelung to Gongliao (0)
• 05: Asus PC900 vs HP Mini-note 2133 (4)
• 04: July 4th: Taiwan welcomes cross straits direct flights – but what about all the other problems? (0)
• 04: DotComCarnival for Independence Day, July 4th (0)
• 03: FatChance you’ll get that deal next year: false advertising in hosting? (0)
• 03: Saving Money: You can save money by cutting energy use! (1)
• 01: June Income Report on InvestorBlogger Dot Com (0)
• 01: Follow up to yesterday’s complaint about FatCow dot com Hosting (0)

June 2008 (34)

• 30: Looking for hosting: getting the facts straight? FatCow Hosting isn’t, is it? (2)
• 29: Credit Card Crap: Statements ‘n’ all. (0)
• 28: Would you like a small, efficient PC? (0)
• 28: Should you use savings to pay debt? It’s tempting (0)
• 28: Dark Copy: A Useful Tool + Website (0)
• 27: 19th Edition: Carnival of Making REAL Money, June 28th, 2008 (0)
• 27: New TLDs? Could be a good business opp! (0)
• 27: Want to buy some RMB? In Taipei, you’re out of luck… (0)
• 27: Selling a house: Would you take a 100% profit? (0)
• 25: Video: My first JumpCut Movie (0)
• 25: Shame, Deceit and Double Standards? How to get caught in the trap (0)
• 24: Unbridled inflation is eroding income (0)
• 24: Budgeting Baby Steps #1: Recording Your Expenses/Income (0)
• 23: Blogging For The Money: Don’t just do it for the money! Enjoy it… (0)
• 23: Video: PC vs. Mac – it’s funny! (0)
• 19: Cool Stuff from Computex 2008: Video (0)
• 19: The Mortgage Crisis: Why Do Mortgage Lenders Hate America? (0)
• 19: Tips on Getting a Good Balance Transfer Card (2)
• 17: The DEAL – Would you buy an extra car parking space? (0)
• 16: Server Needs: Consider carefully what you need, and why! (0)
• 16: Vivid Skies: Sunday Trips in Northern Taiwan (0)
• 12: Welcome to BlueHost dot com
• 09: Problems with the server
• 08: Yehliu: Nature’s Spectacular Sculptures
• 08: Isla Formosa: Five Videos from Taiwan
• 07: Twitter Updates for 2008-06-07
• 07: In The News: MSI Launches a new UMPC
• 07: Your lightbulbs: Have you changed them yet?
• 06: Notes from Computex 2008: Asus Eee PC 1000
• 06: May Income on InvestorBlogger Dot Com
• 05: The British Economy: Telegraph TV
• 02: Save Money: Choose the right model, the best finances, and drive carefully!
• 01: Get Started Blogging #3: Writing Content

May 2008 (37)

• 31: Photo of the Day: On the Walk to Tamsui
• 30: Buzz: How did you choose your hosting company? 5 Things I’d Do Differently Now!
• 30: Credit Card Bills: May 2008
• 29: Fast-Teks: What do you do when your PCs crap out?
• 27: Stock Brokers: Which online brokers can YOU use?
• 26: What’s in that download now?
• 26: Trips in Taiwan: From little Bavaria to little Italy
• 25: Quotation: Timothy R. Fox
• 24: Buzz #12: Last.FM – beats Pandora hands down
• 24: New Blood: New Hope – Can Taiwan Finally Escape the Impasse of the Last 30 Years?
• 24: Living in Taiwan: Photographs found on Flickr
• 22: Make Money With Affiliate Marketing
• 21: News Updates from InvestorBlogger – EntreCard, Investing, Presidents and Last.fm
• 21: Stealing Blogs’ Content: What happened?
• 19: Weekend Trips Around the North East Coast
• 18: Video: Windows Vista on an Asus Eee 900 PC
• 18: Lots of Great Posts On InvestorBlogger
• 18: Splogging is STEALING… Stop STEALING our blogs…
• 17: Financial Bearings: Where am I heading?
• 16: Buzz #9 – Blog @ MaguireClan
• 16: Buzz #11: Obblogatory dot com
• 15: Twitter Updates for 2008-05-15
• 14: Introducing: Google Friends Connect
• 13: Making a Newsletter: Tips on Making One for your Business
• 12: Betelnut culture in Taiwan
• 11: Dot Com Carnival Edition for May 12th, 2008
• 10: Quotation: Why Investors Fail
• 10: Upgrading vs. buying new: Bring a new lease of life to your PC experience
• 09: Stimulus Checks: Are you going to go shopping?
• 09: Flickr: My first photostream!
• 08: That’s $900 off! Twisting Language in the Stores of America
• 07: Profile: Ron Sim – Chairman of OSIM International Ltd
• 07: BlogBuzz #8: My Little Corner
• 06: Portable Applications: Easy, Affordable and Portable
• 05: Some Weekend Exercise: Don’t try this @ Home
• 02: Finding your publicity on InvestorBlogger!
• 01: 19th edition of the Carnival of Making REAL Money – May 1st, 2008

April 2008 (44)

• 30: April Income 2008 on InvestorBlogger Dot Com
• 30: Success online and offline – or how to earn an extra $10K!
• 30: Are your posts being eaten by WordPress?
• 29: Photo: Reflecting yourselves
• 28: In-print vs. On-line: What are you reading these days?
• 28: Hacked? It could happen to your site!
• 25: Little Notes on Life – April 25th
• 24: Buzz #7: Strategist.org.uk – or how NOT to run a blog
• 24: Lesson #2: Finding a Blogging Platform
• 23: Tools for Making Money With Your Blog
• 21: Life on InvestorBlogger: What’s new?
• 21: Harley Davidson Launches in Taiwan
• 21: What advertising works on this blog?
• 20: Photo of the Day: Taipei 101
• 19: Buzz: Our Computer Guy @ NationWide Dot Com Dot TW
• 18: Newsbytes: Alexa, EntreCard and why PayU2Blog Could Suck for SocialSpark Users
• 18: BlogBuzz #5: My Opinion Counts, and a little more…
• 18: Video News Feature: Asus Eee PC 900 Series
• 18: Get Started Blogging: Lesson #1
• 17: Video: Good Advice for ALL Credit Card Applicants
• 17: NewsFlash: Asus Eee 900 PC – available VERY soon!
• 16: Taiwan vs China: Through the News Media Lens
• 16: Three Effective Rules for Credit Card Security – Take care of your cards NOW
• 16: Buzz: #3 – Mum’s Finance
• 16: Izea: It could still be a good Idea!
• 15: Buzz: Craig is in the News!
• 15: Buzz: Is 8 enough? Buzz #1 out of 30
• 15: Notebooks vs. desktops: What are we using at work and play?
• 14: Third Dot Com Carnival – April 13th, 2008
• 13: Payperpost and SocialSpark: Is it time to give up posting for pennies?
• 12: Buzz: Journyx – Will it keep you on time?
• 12: BlogBuzz 2008
• 10: New Advertiser Shout Out: AnyCredit Car Finance and Urgent CashLoan
• 09: Wednesday’s News on InvestorBlogger: Social Spark, Kiva and Dreamhost
• 08: Traffic, PR, Technorati, and more… How is InvestorBlogger Dot Com doing?
• 07: InvestorBlogger’s March 2008 Income Report
• 06: Mr Credit Card’s Survey: My Personal Answers… And yours?
• 05: Drive in Taiwan – if you DARE!
• 04: The Taiwan Haze: How to spoil good photographs?
• 03: Making it on Main Street: Are you looking for the big kahuna?
• 02: Accident Prone: And it’s not April First
• 02: Carnival of Making Real Money: 18th Edition April 1st, 2008
• 01: Kiva Update: Efrain Montuffar Olguin
• 01: April Fools: Technorati, Safari, SRG, and Analytics – all borked

March 2008 (49)

• 31: WordPress 2.5: Five Things InvestorBlogger loves!
• 30: Upgrading to WordPress 2.5
• 29: Quotation: Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War”
• 28: Shopping: Are retailers driving you ‘Potty’?
• 27: Cash Low? Play CashFlow 101 and learn why
• 26: Quotation: Douglas Adams
• 26: Money Talks: Read the fine print before you sign
• 26: What’s a ‘hui’? How you can borrow and lend money in China
• 25: Tuesday’s News on InvestorBlogger: WordPress 2.5, Social Spark, Hosting and more
• 22: Election from Taiwan 2008: The Results
• 22: When thing’s don’t work… shake things up!
• 21: Quotation: MR
• 21: 17th Carnival of Making REAL Money: March 22nd 2008 Edition
• 21: Open letter to PayPerPost: Goodbye and thanks for all the fish!
• 21: Whose blog is it? Google’s? Payperpost’s? Whose…?
• 19: Quotation: Steve Pavlina
• 18: Check Your Credit Card History and Save Yourself Time, Worry and $$$
• 17: Entrepreneur’s Club: Taipei Get Together
• 17: Credit Card Carnival: 2nd Edition
• 17: Five Steps to Managing a Carnival: Policy and Action
• 17: Balance Transfer Cards: The four rules of Balance Transfer Cards.
• 16: Quotation: James Brausch
• 15: Top Ten Posts Updated
• 15: “Money” – Liza Minnelli, Joel Grey
• 14: Saturday News: Errors, Making Money, PR, and more
• 14: PC breakdowns – why drag your PC to the repair store?
• 14: (Re-) Installing Google’s Tracking Code: it’s easy but Google makes it tricky!
• 14: Keep tabs on your budget: send yourself notes, SMS, even email!
• 14: Asus Eee PC 900: Video
• 13: Should you pay off your balance or make a minimum payment?
• 13: The RankSpank: What a skank!
• 13: Quotation: What Does a Millionaire Sound Like?
• 12: Is your bank book your financial statement?
• 12: Quotation: Caroline Baum
• 12: Seinfeld Reruns: George Costanza’s Wallet!
• 11: Identity Theft: It Could Happen To You! Protect Yourself
• 11: Tuesday’s News Round Up: Asus Eee PC 900, PPP, and Carnivals
• 11: LapTop Bags: From Fashion to Street Testing
• 10: Video: Make Music – Windows Style
• 10: Business Start-Up Killers or How to close your business in five steps!
• 10: Quotation: Successful Footsteps
• 09: Second Dot Com Carnival – 10th March 2008
• 09: Not your typical Costco – or is it?
• 08: Saturday’s News: Payperpost Campaigns, FaceBook, Forbes and NT$
• 07: Advertising Your Blog: My First Campaign On Payperpost
• 06: Buy, Sell and Hold: Javascripts for my blog, and Yours!
• 05: PayDay Loans: Should you use or avoid them?
• 02: First Dot Com Carnival – 2nd March 2008
• 01: February, 2008: Financial Results – a quiet month

February 2008 (44)

• 29: Friday News Bytes: Google, Greenbacks, Salaries, and more
• 28: February’s Credit Card Statement: NT$26,413 in 31 days!
• 27: Vote for your top money making feeds! Vote NOW
• 26: Make money like the top bloggers – in one easy download
• 25: Cool Tech: Personal Technology
• 25: My New Wallet: Bigger, Longer and Fatter
• 25: Check your credit card statement: Don’t let the fraudsters get away!
• 23: Quotation: Robert Phillips
• 23: Buy Cheap: Buy Dear – How many phones did you buy?
• 23: CreditCard Carnival: 1st Edition
• 22: Scenic View of Tamsui River: 2007
• 22: Buzz: SKY.FM – What a wonderful service
• 21: Three Tools for Managing Your Credit Card Debt – Calculators, Worksheets, and Forms
• 20: Quotation: Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert T. Kiyosaki
• 19: Download my Top Feeds
• 19: Four solid reasons to start a blog: audience, content, skill and a feel for business
• 18: Freedom from debt: can you blend your credit cards?
• 17: Monday News: Winners, Downloads, Carnivals and my new project
• 16: Saturday Business News from Jim Rogers
• 16: Banned in the UK: Let’s see why… NSFW
• 16: Saturday Reading: InvestorBlogger’s Top Ten Feeds
• 15: Review: PayU2Blog – Sponsored Blogging with a difference?
• 14: Consulting and Advising – Combining Blogging and your Career
• 14: Thursday and freezing…
• 13: Buzz: Michael Turton’s – The View From Taiwan
• 13: Downtime: A Few Minutes
• 12: Old Calendars: New Pictures – Creating extra excitement in your living room
• 11: Microsoft Vs. Yahoo: Yahoo said no!
• 11: Quotes: Ratatouille (2007)
• 11: Buzz: USAPlayers – You Are Welcome To Party Like It’s 1999!
• 10: Monday’s Video: Dani has the ‘big idea’ or does she?
• 09: Saturday News: Keywords, EASYMODE, WordPress, and more…
• 09: Saturday Competition: What is it?
• 08: The 80/20 Principle: It’s just a rule of thumb
• 07: Security in WordPress: Are you still showing YOUR plugins?
• 06: The View from My Desktop: Lots of great apps
• 05: WordPress 2.3.3 Security Upgrade: A simple upgrade technique
• 04: Buzz: StreamingQuotes dot Net – timely information for investors
• 04: Monday News on InvestorBlogger dot com
• 04: How do you navigate a 1000 posts? Five Practical Suggestions for WordPress Bloggers
• 03: Our trip to Taichung in Pictures
• 03: 11th Carnival of Making REAL Money: February 3rd 2008.
• 02: Guess the picture: Where in Taiwan?
• 01: January 2008: Financial Results, Traffic and More…

January 2008 (47)

• 31: A Man With A Plan: Ways to create additional income
• 30: What would you do if… (some bad news)
• 29: Missing in Action: The following keys from my keyboard; V, A, C, A, T, I, O, N
• 28: Quotation: Warren Buffett
• 28: Monday News: A Carnival, Tidying Up, Chinese New Year and our 1st Martian Reader
• 27: NetWork Solutions: How YOU can gouge your customers in 10 steps or less – a case study
• 26: Saturday Bytes: WMV to FLV and FireFox’s Causing Me Frustration
• 25: Technorati: Why you should bother, how you do it, and the ‘dark side’
• 25: Quotation: Ted Murphy
• 24: What’s in your wallet? Money Meme
• 24: Advice Column: Your House Is Not YOUR ATM Machine
• 23: LunchTime News on InvestorBlogger
• 23: On going projects: Obblogatory dot com and MakingREALMoneyBlog
• 23: Credit Card Spending: What’s your first bill in 2008 like?
• 22: Newsbytes: Blog Announcement, WordPress Problems, Money Manager Ex, and Goog Stock Price
• 21: Asus Eee PC: Video overview
• 21: Panasonic, Prada and Perspectives: Change isn’t that hard, is it?
• 20: Sunday Trips in Taipei – A Local Flower Market
• 19: E-commerce: Why are some sites so unfriendly to customers?
• 19: Carnival of Making Real Money 9th Edition – January 20th, 2008
• 18: Buzz: FlashBack Data Recovery – Just in case…
• 18: Newsbytes on InvestorBlogger: Apple Hot Air?, Affiliate Linking, Banner Plugins for WP and more…
• 17: Buzz: Linkfest Haven drives traffic to your blog everyday
• 17: Buzz: ManyBooks dot net – really does have many books!
• 16: Guerrilla Marketing Your Blog with GMail, Reader And GTalk
• 16: Quotation: Joseph Stiglitz
• 15: Dreamhost: is it turning into a nightmare again?
• 15: New Advertising on InvestorBlogger dot com: Best Small Caps Dot Com
• 14: PageRank: an intro, making money with PR, and recent controversy
• 13: Wimax, HDTV, Gadgets at CES, and more: Video Stories
• 13: Carnival of Making Real Money 8th Edition – January 13th, 2008
• 12: Is Alexa a REALRANK? Well, it tracks traffic but…
• 12: InvestorBlogger’s Quick Recap: Posts, links, and Carnival News
• 11: Goodbye Adsense, it’s been sweet’n’sour…
• 10: What should you do when you strike it rich? – 7 ways to benefit from windfalls, bonuses, and other ‘found’ money!
• 09: Buzz: Trading Concepts – Can you make money on E-Mini?
• 08: ABCs of Promoting your business, website or charity: Don’t forget the BIG PICTURE!
• 08: NewsBytes: EeeII, Carnival, Making REAL Money, Whitespace
• 07: Going to War Against Google’s Hubris: Three Actions You Can Take Today!
• 06: Carnival of Making Real Money #7 – January 6th, 2008
• 06: Sunset in Tamsui: Pictures from my Lumix
• 05: New Year – New Theme: Is it time to revitalize your blog?
• 05: Quotation: Alyce Lomax
• 04: NetLoans.co.uk: Polished, Pretty and (a little) imPersonal
• 03: Featured Carnival: Carnival of Making REAL Money
• 02: December 2007 Income Report
• 01: A Random Act of Kindness: Even I am an Apprentice

For posts in 2007, please search.