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29 April 2009

Hollie Steel: The Singer Ballerina

Britain's Got Talent has another 'talent' to make money online.

And that is through exposing their 'talents' for the world to appreciate. We have to thank the viewers and other concerned individuals who seemed unstoppable in uploading these videos in YouTube.

Now let's talk about Hollie Steel, the latest face to hit YouTube's viewing traffic. This fragile girl looked like an ordinary girl as she walked to the stage and started to move like, you guessed it from her costume, a ballerina.

But that changes as she opened her mouth and sang her piece. What used to be a 'weak' looking girl became a strong contender for this season of Britain's Got Talent. :) Take a peek on the video from YouTube.





First it was Susan Boyle, then the little cutie Shaheen Jafargholi, now comes Hollie Steel. Who will be the next BGT's darling? Now this is getting a lot more exciting for all of us who follows this BGT's season of great talents.

28 April 2009

If You Build It, They Will Come

Now that's a quote from "Fields of Dreams" and it has often been applied to blogging. I encountered one person in a certain forum who is very new to this whole blogging phenomenon. He asked a question as to why is his blog still not getting many traffic (I'm not sure what is his standard of the word 'many') considering that his blog is already 3 months' old.

Three months, do you guys think that is already a good enough time to expect much from a blog? In my opinion it's not enough. And I don't know the details of this fellow's blogging habits but I'm sure that the reason why he is not satisfied is because he set quite a high standard on his blog. His goal might be too hard to reach. Perhaps he's already expecting thousands of regular visitors. But at 3 months, I'd really say dream on.

There is so much work to be done with a blog especially if you expect to earn from it. Number one would be posting valuable content on a regular basis. Valuable content because what good is a blog if all that can be read on it are pure trash? And posting on a regular basis is important because if you fail to update your blog, you will lose your visitors.

That's just my two cents on this blogging topic.

:)

Is It Just All Up in the Air?

That's what a friend of mine said when he argued that everything that I accomplished online doesn't really amount to anything because he doesn't see anything physical, tangible or concrete output.

For example, with all these blogging that I do, he argued that what if there comes a time (and it will, he said) when blogging becomes passe and people got tired of it all? Or, what if technology breaks down on me and everything that I have put up on my blogs suddenly got deleted? What now then? Everything that I worked hard for goes kaput.

Well, my reply to him was I do back-ups. :)

But seriously, I believe that all that I do online has a degree of meaning, that these are not just anything trivial or whimsical. It is important to me because it is a part of my life right now. And when something becomes a part of your life, it does become important.

27 April 2009

24 Hours Online

Yesterday I lived up to my blog's name of being 24x7 Online Diva. How come? Well, I've let my laptop on for more than 24 hours!

It was weekend and so I did a lot of online stuff especially catching up on my blog posts, Tweets, emails, Facebook, etc. And boy, were there really a lot of stuff to be done. Two days over the weekend are not enough... who am I kidding, even 7 days in a week is never enough to fully be up-to-date with my online presence.

During this time that I would like to sing the Beatles' "Eight Days A Week". :)

And did I get much sleep? Of course not. Just 5 days of sleep time yesterday. Now that's not much of sleep on my standards because even though I'm the 24x7 Online Diva, I still honestly believe in getting a good rest.

Sometimes I even think of getting a day's off from the World Wide Web, but I just can't resist going online. Maybe I will someday.

25 April 2009

Fun Friday - Five Things about Online Diva

I'm done with my share of making money online for this week. So while I am waiting for the next set of online opportunities, I remembered a fun, yet easy task to share here in my blog.

This theme is called Fun Friday, the first ever theme that we have for our Blogging for Fun yahoogroup. The rule is just to share five random things about you. In this post I will share five random things about me, being an Online Diva.

1. ) I have six dot.coms, 1 blogspot.com and 1 wordpress.com blogs. This is to organize my thoughts as I wear different roles everyday of being a call center trainer, fiancee, part time freelancer, online diva and chef's daughter among others.

2.) I can stay online for more than 5 hours on weekdays and 15 hours on weekends. This is to work on my different blogs, network with my other blogger friends and google on a lot of stuff.

3.) I usually listen to music while researching on some stuff online. Right now, I am listening to Ant and Dec's When I Fall in Love ( that's sooo 90's for me now LOL! ).




4. ) I am always interested to have friends overseas. I frequently send them snail mails and postcards and because of that, I was able to collect postage stamps from different countries (aside from those provided by my Dad).

5.) When I'm out, I still want to make sure that I have an online access for my blogging needs. I can stay in a coffee shop for hours, sipping cold drinks while blogging.

So that explains how I became a (self-proclaimed) online diva. How about your fun friday stuff? What were some random things that you do online?

22 April 2009

Shaheen Jafargholi vs Susan Boyle?



Shaheen Jafargholi vs Susan Boyle?

He is the newest talk of the town after Susan Boyle's viral audition in Britain's Got Talent. This young man caught my attention as he showed everyone, even Simon Cowell, that he prepared so much for the audition.

I mean, what would you do if your choice piece became scrapped seconds after you first hit the note? An ordinary contestant would react differently, and you will immediately see a different facial register of disappointment or a lonely look in one's eyes.

But not Shaheen Jafargholi, who has prepared both his vocal cords and emotions. When he was asked to change his song, he immediately took a leap and belt out Jacko's Who's Loving You.

Which turned out to be a better pick because everyone, I mean everyone, including the three judges stood to show how much they liked his performance.

Now, a lot of online publishers are raving about the idea of competition between the two latest Britain's Got Talent's favorites. Will Susan Boyle continue to live the dream or will Shaheen Jafargholi ask him the "Who's loving you?" question. :)

What do you think?

Photo credit: http://watching-tv.ew.com/

21 April 2009

Twitter Non-User

My boyfriend is a complete Twitter newbie even though he already has an account for more than 4 months now. He kept telling me that he just couldn't get what satisfaction he could make out from Twitter.

I have already explained to him the obvious benefits of Twitter foremost of which is the ability to promote your blog to such a wide and varied audience. But he had no patience with that.

When I told him that it's just like IM which he uses very fun, it still didn't work with him.

Oh well, I just resigned myself thinking that you can't really convert everybody to Twitter.

:)

20 April 2009

Online Family

How many of your family members are very much into this social thing on the Internet? Are they active in using Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, Twitter, and other such online services?

I asked this because I once came upon a blog wherein the blogger said that she and her mom are both 'addicts' to those kinds of sites. They both have accounts on virtually all social sites and they are online for the major part of the day. Especially her mom because she's a stay-at-home kind of mom so she has all the time to herself.

Don't you think that sounds very cool? My mom don't do those things. All she knows is how to chat with my Dad using either Yahoo! Messenger or Skype, which is by itself already cool, right? I mean, not all mothers know much about online stuff.

How about you? Are your parents active online patrons?

:)

Using Your Email as a Portable Hard Drive

How much do you rely on your free email account?

I have emails on Yahoo!, Gmail, Hotmail and GMX. Each of these provide different level of services. For one thing, I like Gmail's 20mb of file size for transmitting files and its very good anti-spam system.

GMX is also great with large files and it has a built-in online harddrive. I just don't know how to put links within the message. I find it very troubling.

Hotmail... I don't really use Hotmail much. I find its interface very boring.

Yahoo!, now that's the email service that I've been using the longest. I think it's been 10 years since I first opened my very first email account and it's with Yahoo. It's no longer active though.

But about a month ago, I had a document file that I saved in one of my folders in my Yahoo email. When I needed it so badly, I tried logging into my Yahoo account but it so happened that they were doing some sort of maintenance and their services will not be available again for the next 12 or so hours.

I panicked! It's the only file that I have because I was very stupid not to make any copies.

So now whenever I save a file online, I make sure that I save copies on my other email accounts, just in case.

19 April 2009

Will Paid Posts Still Be Viable Next Year?

I do some paid posts on my other blogs and I know some friends who are into it also. But lately, we have noticed a downturn in the paid posts opportunities in the various paid post sites.

Could this be a sign that it is coming to an end? Some people have predicted that this type of monetizing blogs is just a fad and will not last very long.

There are some indications that this could be right. For one thing, I have read that Google abhors this activity because Google believes that the majority of paid posts are written poorly and do not really provide any value. I personally believe that the search giant is going to make some changes in its algorithm so they can limit blogs with such paid posts from appearing in the top search results, or even in the results at all.

Has this already happened? Can anybody tell me if it has?

Twitter's Different Faces

Happy Twitter Morning to all!

I've been blogging seriously for more than 13 months and having blogger friends constantly brings in a new experience for me. I get to interact with them through different means and one of those is through Twitter.

Before, I really had a challeging time to understand the value of Twitter. I wondered why a lot of bloggers raved about using Twitter as part of their blogging activities. Even Problogger himself analysed why people love this microblogging site.

Little by little, I see Twitters value in my blogging activities. I remembered using Twitter to interact with other bloggers, pick their brains once in a while and use those to be inspired in writing some of my blog posts.

Aside from that, I also benefitted from this as I noticed the increase of blog traffic in most of my blogs. Before, I would really spend much time on Entrecard, dropping like there's no tomorrow. Now, I have found an additional avenue to gain visitors on all my blogs because of Twitter :)

To strike a balance, Twitter can also be an avenue to help non-bloggers in need. Months ago, I published a post about asking people to help our fellow Filipinos in Cagayan as they were stuck in flood for days. Together with a day of using Plurk for the same goal, I felt the response of our fellow 'kababayans' who twitted and plurked back with their pledges.

It was so overwhelming right? I mean, using Twitter to make money online but also to give back to the community. :)

I just have a wish though. That Twitter stay good for a long time. A lot of people, bloggers and non-bloggers will benefit from it, if they just know how to use it properly.

18 April 2009

Earning Big Money Playing Online Games

I am not really a gamer. I sometimes think that it's a complete waste of time; valuable time that could be used on more meaningful ways.

But yesterday I was shocked when I heard a co-worker told me that she had just sold her character in Rohan (a popular MMORPG in the Philippines) for P20,000, which is about US$417.

Now that's a lot of money indeed!

I can't go into details because just like what I said earlier, I'm not a gamer and I don't know really much about online games. Well, my co-worker said her character is very much advanced already that's why some rich fella got interested and offered to buy it from her.

She agreed (who wouldn't?) and they met in an Internet shop in a mall. Right there her buyer double checked the game character and when he was already satisfied, he gave the money to her.

Now my friend has a new iPod Touch thanks to that game character.

:)

15 April 2009

Susan Boyle, Britain's Got Talent's Biggest Yes!

Susan Boyle lived the dream. And I just so love the way she did it. :)

I know that at this time, her YouTube video I Dreamed a Dream is hitting almost 4, 044, 900 views and I am expecting this number to rise, thanks to bloggers who believed that Susan Boyle is worth their time.

At first when I watched the video I really can't believe with what I saw and heard. I was moved to tears. It was more of a vindication on her part. At first the audience felt cynical about the talent that she had to share. But when she started to sing, everyone was dumbfounded. They were all proven wrong.

Even Simon Cowell. You could see the surprise on his face.

After Susan's performance, the audience where giving her a standing ovation that lasted minutes. Afterwards, I laughed when Simon said that the minute Susan walked on the stage, he expected that she would be giving a great performance.

Well, that's Simon. He doesn't want to be proven wrong so he obviously joked about it.

:D

13 April 2009

Taking Time Off from Online Activities

Well, I didn't but I've noticed that some people did. The recently ended Lenten season, which is actually a vacation for all those hardworking office workers, gave the great opportunity for most people to take some time off from their everyday work life. And some people included their online activities.

For one thing, my instant messenger was very quiet the whole past week. Almost none of my friends went online and engaged in chit chat. Some of my blogging friends also did not make a post or go around visiting other blogs and leave some comments. This I continued to do because for me, this vacation is the best free time that I will ever have to do such things.

I am not complaining. All I'm saying is that I am not used to such level of silence on my online life. It goes to show that blogging, IM, and other such related activities are really social activities that even a day of non-activity can be a deafening silence after all.

:)

04 April 2009

Holy Week Online Reflection


It's Lenten Season again. Let's pause from making money online for at least a week and check out how we are in terms of our faith.

I hope not to offend readers who have their own beliefs. I would just like to dedicate this post and share my thoughts about celebrating Holy Week.

I will miss going online for a week. Well aside from attending to my day job as a trainer in a call center, I also need to use my free time after office to have my own time for reflection.

Yes, I am Catholic and I believe in Jesus Christ. I may not always be present in every Sundays and Holy Days of obligation to celebrate the feast with Him, but I am trying my best to do little acts of kindness to others. Isn't that what's supposed to happen? To put your faith into practice?

How about you? What do you usually do during Holy Week?
Picture credit: oursaviorchurch.org