As you know both Shoemoney and John Chow are giving things away for their RSS competition. John and Shoemoney wanted to see who could get the most new RSS subscribers in the month of October. Shoemoney started out with 10,833 subscribers and John had 8585 subscribers. As things stand right now Shoemoney has more RSS subscribers at 13600, to John’s 13317, but the contest is for NEW RSS subscribers. John is in the lead with 4732 new RSS subscribers to Shoemoney’s 2767. It’s crazy how many new RSS subscribers they were able to get in only a months time. Hell I have only cracked 150 recently!
Of course both of them are giving away a ton of prizes to get people to subscribe to their RSS. I’m not an RSS guy as I said before, I have both of their sites in my bookmarks, but since they were giving stuff away I decided what the hell! So I added them both on my Google reader and subscribed to the RSS via e-mail. Not really thinking I would win surprisingly I won both contests!
I was a Google reader winner on Shoemoney’s blog winning 1 free page on the Million Dollar Wiki and 1 license of Backup Platinum. I was an RSS by e-mail winner on John’s blog winning a $25 gift certificate to NewEgg! Not bad eh?
I already know what I’m going to do with the $25 and the copy of backup platinum, but what should I do with the free page on the Million Dollar Wiki? I’m really not sure what to use it for, most good keywords are already taken, any suggestions?
Well we missed The Net last week so this week are not going to miss it! Although I have been crushed with work all week long! This is the real busy time of year for hardware reviews, because a lot of companies are releasing new products for the holiday season. Also real quick does anyone use twitter? You can follow me on twitter at twitter.com/enigma5. It is a slow week for tech news, but I have few things that I found interesting this week. So what going on, on The Net this week?
ThinkComputers Published its’ 666th Review
Now this really isn’t real news, but it’s kind of interesting. It is quite weird that right around Halloween we post our 666th review and the product that we were reviewing the Thermalright IFX-14 CPU cooler performed horribly. It has to be one of the lowest rated products that I have tested. Anyways I thought it was weird.
iPhone Costumes
Since Halloween is coming up you know there would be some crazy costumes, but these have to be some of the most creative. Yeah you can make an iPhone costume, but does your costume have the iPhone in-store display video playing? I don’t think so! These 2 guys really pulled out all the stops for Halloween and are total Apple fan boys!
10 Absolutely Stupid Quotes by Steve Ballmer
We all know Steve Ballmer is hilarious. I’m sure most of you have seen the DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! video. The guys over at Learn More About Your Linux have a great article of 10 absolutely stupid quotes by Steve Ballmer with sources cited. I’ll give you their #1 and you can take a look at the rest.
“I’m going to f—ing bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I’m going to f—ing kill Google.”
Microsoft’s Eclusive Deal with Facebook
I talked about this in my previous post, but it is probably the biggest story of the week. Microsoft paid $240 million for 1.6 percent of Facebook and the exclusive advertising rights. This means that the ads on Facebook will now be powered by Microsoft’s adCenter. At the price that Microsoft paid for the 1.6 perfect it puts the total value of Facebook at 15 billion dollars! To hear my thoughts on the whole thing check out my post on it.
This week Microsoft bought a 1.6 percent stake in Facebook for a whopping $240 million! That puts the value of Facebook at $15 billion! Now that is a lot of money for a company that does not even have 200 million in annual revenue. Myspace was bought back in 2005 for $580 million. Since that time speculations of how much it is worth range anywhere from $10-20 billion. So I would say the $15 billion is right around what Facebook should be valued at. Good thing Facebook did not take Yahoo’s 1 billion dollar offer last year.
So what does this $240 million get Microsoft? Well now they own 1.6 percent of the company (big deal). The bigger thing here is that Microsoft will be the exclusive provider of banner advertising and sponsored links on Facebook, of course using Microsoft’s adCenter platform. This is huge for Microsoft as their adCenter is a slow third behind Google’s Adsense and Yahoo’s Publisher Network. They are also sticking one to Google who won the bidding battles on YouTube and DoubleClick Inc. I think in Google’s mind it would have been nice to have the exclusive deal with Facebook, but unlike Microsoft it was not necessary.
Facebook is another great story of a kid who started the site from his dorm room in school. Mark Zuckerberg started the site while at Harvard and in less than 4 years it is valued at $15 billion! Myspace is the only social network larger than Facebook, but a lot more people are heading the way of Facebook. I know I am, I am tired of all the crap on Myspace, and I really like the clean look of Facebook. In my opinion it is a much better social networking platform. So when are we going to see Facebook stock? Make sure you get it early, look at the Google stock!
One of the biggest reasons that I don’t get things done that I need to is that I procrastinate and put things off till they absolutely need to be done. This is something I’ve been trying to remedy to make things less stressful on myself. I was talking to John Chow the other day I was talking to him about this and he said, “Just shut up and work!”, good motivation right? But thinking about what he said it really dawned on me. Seriously just shut up and work!
My problem like I said was putting things off, but it also was distractions and just being plain lazy. If I was posting a review on ThinkComputers I would start it, take a break, work on it some more, and then take another break, then finally finish it. This is no way to do any type of work! I mean I am wasting A LOT of time taking breaks and not just getting the review done. If I just did the review all at once I would have it done and not have to worry about it later in the day and I could concentrate on other projects. So I will be adding this mentality to my daily work routine.
Believe me it’s nice being lazy and only doing what you have to, but that’s not how you make money. If someone tells you different they don’t know what they are talking about. Almost everyone who is successful on the internet puts in long hours, just look at Nate with his 16 hour days! Wish me luck in getting more done and working more efficiently!
Ok so if you haven’t noticed I have not updated since the 19th! There are a few reasons for this. One I’ve been extremely busy with ThinkComputers, it’s the busy season for product reviews and they are kicking my ass! Two I’m on a horrible sleeping schedule! As I am writing this I have not gone to bed yet, hopefully I can stay up the rest of the day to get back on my normal schedule! Three I am helping a friend out with a new site. So all of those things combined are taking every last minute of my time!
For some reason today my RSS feed finally hit 150! I have been trying to get to 150 for a while now. It’s quite funny that I don’t post in 4 days and my RSS increases. Maybe I should take breaks more often. Anyways expect some useful posts later in the week, oh yeah I’m going to the Pens game in Thursday!
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