Infinity Video Check out this video by Citizen for its Eco-Drive series of watches. It doesn't look nor feel like a video. Awesome Japanese sights and sounds!Found this while surfing Danny Choo's website. He found it while surfing another chap's website. :) Q10 Full Screen Text Editor I continue to experiment with various types of technologies related to personal effectiveness and managed to stumble upon this simple text editor called Q10.It's a bare-bones, no-frills full screen text editor that allows you to concentrate on generating content through a black screen that fills the entire monitor. It has features such as character count as well number of pages. This is customisable as you can set how many words go into 1 page.What I like about Q10 is its simplicity. You can install it very quickly and it runs out of a thumb-drive even.As someone who writes almost a post a day, it comes in quite helpful in allowing me to type quickly and efficiently and to see what I've typed all in one page.Consider trying out Q10 as your text editor of choice if you are considering a simple, no-frills but effective tool to raise your writing productivity. :-) How to generate ideas for blogging, being and believing Idea generation is something easy for people. If you analyse your thoughts, there are literally hundreds of random thoughts coursing through your head over a weekend. But the catch is that most of us do not harness these thoughts into actionable tasks.So how do you generate ideas for blogging for solutions to your problems at work or home?Let Panzer share some of his ideas on how to generate ideas for blogging, being and believing.How to Generate Ideas for Blogging1. Note down ideasI make use of my Palm Treo 650 (a PDA phone) to keep track of ideas of blogging. Writing article requires a decent command of English and some fluency, but really, what's important is to have a unique angle or perspective on issues that matter to you. Anyone who has genuine interest and passion about something can write about it.Before I started my blogs, especially my main personal finance and financial freedom blog five cents ten cents, I used to jot down stuff in random, haphazard manners that didn't help me compile a database of ideas for blog posts. Ever since I've gotten serious about blogging on financial freedom, I jot down ideas that come to me in the bus, MRT, during meal times into my PDA. I try not to censor myself too much but just put down the genesis of the ideas down. I'll refer to these later when I actually have to sit down and write out the blog posts.You can use simple notebook or get a fancy journal but the idea is to write it down. Thoughts are intangible until they are written down and acted upon. Then your ideas have power of their own. ;-)2. Don't CensorCensoring yourself is the quickest way to kill ideas at birth. Sometimes an idea may sound absurd but you won't know if it works till you try to do something about it. So keep it alive. Just write it down first WITHOUT killing it. You'd be surprised how some half-baked ideas may trun into useful actionable items later on.3. Be a Keen ObserverMany ideas are generated through what you see, read or hear. Be a keen observer of life. Note down things that are happening to you. See some interesting characters in the bus or MRT, write it down. Feel something at that point in time that is out of the normal, write it down. Observe and note down what is happening in the world as many things are happening but sometimes we are not observing them.4. Write and Generate OutputIdeas beget more ideas. Sometimes, when you write, you generate related ideas to the main one you started with. At times, you may go off on tangents. That is all right. Go with the flow and tap your creative juices by generating output. From the mass of writing, you may get one or two truly original and illuminating insights. Press on and write on!5. Use Tools to Enhance Idea CreationI've talked about mindmapping tools such as Freemind and Mind Meister that can be used to generate mind-maps to help idea creation. These help make associations and branching out of ideas easier and visual tools enable you to work with ideas better.Share with Panzer what other ideas you have to generate more ideas for blogging, being and believing. Still Using Internet Explorer? Maybe this will convince you to switch This article talks about "zero-day" flaws found in Microsoft's internet explorer 7 (IE 7) browser.You may want to consider switching to a host of other free browsers. I personally use Mozilla Firefox 3, but you can try Flock, Opera, Safari or Google's Chrome.So many choices that cost you nothing in dollars and cents but only some investment in learning the interface. But if you're net savvy enough to read this post, you should be net savvy enough to download, install and configure any of these browsers. Sometimes, it's fun to have a good cry I like watching and listening to Japanese popular music (jpop) through video sharing sites such as Dailymotion or Youtube. Arising from this interest, I also managed to view an interesting Japanese Drama.The most recent one I watched was, "Taiyo no uta" or "Midnight Sun" featuring the jpop songstresses Yui. It's a romantic and sad story about a girl who has XP disease. XP or Xeroderma Pigmentosum is a disease where the afflicted cannot be exposed to ultra violet rays or he/she will get severe sunburns and even skin cancer. As such, the girl Kaoru has to stay sleep in the day at home and can only go out at night. Like Cinderalla, she has to be home before sunrise or risk fatal exposure to the sun.Watch the film on youtube with English subtitles to see if you can resist crying before the end of the film.Enjoy. Understanding the world outside your comfort zone Image via Wikipedia The more I write in my blogs and experience life through the various facets of life, I realise that the hobbies I've developed now are vastly different from when I was younger. I used to love computer games but have outgrown them. I still enjoy watching films but the typical Hollywood blockbuster now appeals less than independent films such as the Brazilian "Tropa de Elite" or "Elite Squad" and "The Guard Post" - a Korean film. Hollywood films tend to be "me-too" ones and they have started remaking Japanese and Korean films as well such as "The Ring", "My Sassy Girl". My interest in toastmastering and public speaking has grown in the 5 years I have been active in the movement and it has reaped rewards manifold in-terms of my confidence in speaking in front of strangers especially. The growth came through daring to experiment with new technologies such as getting involved in the blogging phenomena and being in touch with technologies that are democratising content such as Youtube and Dailymotion. My forays into Wordpress and setting up my own blog monetisation websites Five Cents Ten Cents as well as Singapore Fixed Deposits has allowed me to enjoy small success in seeing this blogs generate some small allowance for me that covers the costs of internet access as well as to the occasional coffee. All these new discoveries of japanese popular music (jpop) artists such as Utada Hikaru, BoA and Hiro through online video websites has whetted my appetite to learn Japanese and even Korean before I leave this world. How have you experienced the world outside of your comfort zone. Have you discovered any new hobby that helps you learn more about the world around you?   What gets you excited about life? As I get older, I realise that you need some excitement in your life. I don't mean driving fast cars and going sky-gliding but if that gets your adrenalin pumping, maybe that's for you. I am referring to that which gets you interested and engaged in life.I've been depressed during the downtimes of my life where I felt life had no meaning even though by most practical measures, I was successful. However, life appeared to be a series of routines that didn't intrinsically satisfy me.The more I read, the more I realised that money is not everything. Money is needed for our basic needs and more but beyond a certain point, it does not satisfy. Of course, having no money will likely get you unhappy about life if you cannot even meet basic needs such as food, shelter, healthcare and the occasional McDonalds' ice cream sundae.Beyond our basic needs, being excited about life is to recapture that interest or passion about something. If you can get the desired excitement from work, that would be ideal but most of us work to live and don't live to work. Excitement for me now comes from reading interesting books such as "The Black Swan: Impact of Highly Improbable Events" that I will be reviewing in my personal finance blog. Excitement comes through watching very interest Jpop or japanese pop music videos such as Utada Hikaru's "Prisoner of Love". It comes from writing and expressing myself through my various blogs and getting a kick from seeing comments and readership figures. It is about trying out new things in blogging and blog monetisation and learning about new technologies.What gets you excited about life?Maybe Utada Hikaru's video will inspire something exciting in your life as she has for mine: 2008 - [PV] Utada Hikaru - Prisoner Of Love [2008.05.21] Video sent by CryptoMystic Utada Hikaru - Prisoner of Love PV 2008 Have you done something naughty lately? Living in Singapore is about following rules, regulations and restrictions. It can be a stifling place. And yet, in the midst of all the rules, regulations and restrictions, you can break free of it as well within the confines.My national service stint as well as the reservist portion taught me about how to get things done by right, by left and to avoid getting "caught". This was what we called the golden rule of "do anything, but don't get caught!" It's interesting to note that this unwritten rule gets promoted in the very organisation that is all about rules and regulations, the Singapore Armed Forces.It is the same with living in Singapore. Do anything but don't get caught. I am not advocating that we should live a life of deliberately disobeying laws and causing hurt to other people. What I'm interested to do is to challenge you to do something naughty. Naughty doesn't have to be breaking the law. It can be about moving along those areas of grey for a change to get out of the "don't do this", "don't do that" mindset that is not about making a living but sometimes is a lot closer to making a dying.Naughty means to explore a side of you that you don't know existed.Naughty means to try out something outrageous, so contrary to what you normally do that it scares you a little.Naughty means to connect with the inner child in you, to be happy, joyous and full of life about something.Ultimately, it means to, LIVE a little.Have you done something naughty, recently? How to steal more time for yourself by NOT watching television Time is a finite resource that everyone uses. All of us have 24 hours in a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year as long as we are alive. Individual circumstances may be different, but majority of us have the same amount of time each day.What are we doing with our time?Ever since my daughter was born 6 months ago, the main sacrifice I had to make is to stop watching television. By doing so, I managed to survive the sleepless nights for the first few months when she needed her night feeds. I manage to juggle the responsibilities of being a father and the time demands by freeing up more time from not watching television.Television is a very insidious time waster. Vegetating in front of the television set is one form of relaxation but it comes at a cost. The time you spend watching television programmes takes time away from you from doing your own personal tasks. Catching up on sleep. Having a meaningful conversation and dinner with family members.With my daughter's introduction into this world, I realised that I could function more effectively from 6.00 a.m. to 10 p.m. instead of relying on my previous habits of functioning from 7.00 a.m. to 12 midnight. The quality of sleep improves dramatically when I sleep early and now I get sufficient rest by sleeping early and waking up early. Doing so also makes more more effective in my own daily tasks as I need to prepare for the next day relying on the evening before rather than waking up and trying to rest through the morning routine before work beckons.I guess I am more of a morning person and that is why my productivity has increased by shifting my waking hours. But the fundamental time saver has been in not watching television. I still get my news from reading MyPaper and Today or using the Straits Times online websites.Save time, watch less televisionAll of us have finite time on our hands. Even as we draw each breath, it is one breath less than we take as our days are ultimately all numbered. Consider what you want in life, and if watching too much television is taking away time from being human, you may want to reduce the amount of time you spend in front of it.Related Articles:Finding Time to Pursue Your Dreams: Free Up 750 Hours a Year with One Simple Change What I've learnt from blogging and writing I have learnt more about myself and explored other avenues of my skills and abilities through the various blogs I write. Besides this blog which shares more about blogging and developing the mind through mind-maps and other life-hacking type of tools, I have engaged readers in personal finance through fivecentstencents, talked about the way my life was changed through my experiences as a conscript in the Lion City as well as spinning off new blogs that have been a learning experience in blog monetisation and learning how to make some pocket money from the internet.What have I learnt from my blogging and writing experiences?Writing is catharticOne of the benefits of writing your blog is the ability to express your feelings into the written word. Many of the experiences that shaped me was my experience serving in the Singapore Armed Forces. It was singularly the most life-changing experience because whilst I hated it, it shaped me to be less dependent on my parents to solve my own problems and also made me so aware of how deep my mother's love was. It was only a few years later when my junior college class mates told me about how she cried during my enlistment sending off ceremony, that I could see the depth of her feelings for her youngest son to finally take up arms for the country and to change to become a man.Recently, my mother has also continued to be a bedrock for me to anchor my emotions as I faced personal challenges in my family. Her voice of reason and support helped me through the days when I thought it was all hopeless and meaningless. The personal upheaval that I am going through has made me aware of my priorities in life. I had been too focussed on money and being financially free but realise that all this means nothing if you have no peace in your heart.Writing explores different facets of your lifeMy blogs made me realise that there were many hidden facets of me that were not sufficiently explored in my life before I started actively blogging. By simply writing about topics that I thought I knew nothing much, I realised that there were also a lot of perspectives I could share even though I may not be the subject matter expert in those areas. For instance, I am not a personal finance guru nor profess to be one. But my journey towards financial freedom and sharing my small victories also motivate others who are walking along the same path. I have also made some friends through the personal finance aggregator, thefinance.sg where the author's inclusion of my blog has allowed me to connect with other like-minded bloggers.Writing clears the mindI realise that in order to write a post that is readable, you have to be clear what you want to say in the first place. This is something that I also learnt as a toastmaster. Making speeches involves having something to say and then saying it to your audience that they "get it". It's the same with writing. In order for your readers to "get it", you need to be very clear about what you want to say. For you to be clear about what you say, sometimes, you need to write it down first to see if you yourself understand it. My posts made me realise when my mind has been muddled and confused. Where my thoughts do not make sense. By starting and editing a post, I start to develop a clearer picture of what I am trying to say to you.Even as you are reading this post, has it occurred to you that there is a post inside of you that is waiting to be expressed? Do you not feel strongly about something and want to write it out?Try writing today. You don't know what you're missing. ;-) Wordle Word Art of Ganxiezhu Blog Blogging is a long and lonely road When I started this blogging journey, I wasn't sure where I will be in the few years that this blog has been around. Looking back, I realised that I have grown my one blog to a series of 15 blogger blogs, 2 wordpress blogs hosted on paid hosting services and 2 wordpress.org blogs that have been left rather inactive.Not all blogs are equally active as I have the same 24 hours that everyone else has and need to allocate between personal time, family time and work time. Thus, with the few hours I manage to steal while my daughter is sleeping or when the spouse is not around or during lunchtime, I try to blog as much about issues that I'm passionate about such as personal finance and to also spend time reading about other blogs on lifestyle design and how I can improve my writing, blogging and social media skills.The road towards blogging can be long. The road towards blogging can be lonely. When I first started out, it appeared that I was talking to the world but the world was ignoring me because hardly anyone visited my blog or dropped any comment in response to what I had posted. Over time, some of my blogs have become popular enough to hit 603,911 on Alexa. No mean feat when I started with a blog that didn't rank at all and back then I didn't even know what Alexa was.Now I realise it's time to go back to basics, i.e. to be more focussed about my blogging to write about more in-depth topics of value. Partly as a way to express my thoughts that remain hidden in my daily life as a father, spouse and employee but also as a record to posterity should I die before reaching 40. Recently, I have undergone some measure of stress in my personal life because of the arrival of my daughter. It's not so much the lack of sleep that a baby brings but rather the impact on the family dynamics that makes it a much tougher experience that it needed to be. I am starting to feel very weary and thoughts of ending it all by giving up have surfaced but I realised that it's literally ALL IN THE MIND. The blues, feeling down and depressed and occasionally that I am a victim rains down occasionally and drenches all the passion and fire I have for life. In my army days, my instructors would have a choice word for this, they called it being, "WEAK"!Sometimes I really feel WEAK in my spirit and my heart. I find that I am living to make others happy but deep down inside I am not happy. Recently, I read Chris Guillebeau's blog "The Art of Non-Conformity" and his manifesto "Brief Guide to World Domination" really resonates. The key to living a life that is remarkable starts with this statement:You don't have to live your life the way other people expect you to.This really rocks you to the core when you examine the implications of how you live your life. I find that living in Singapore is really one big game of conformity. Conform to parental expectations. Conform to societal norms. Conform to State Control which is so evident during the 2.5 years and 10 years conscripted service the State put me through which ended in two deaths I've seen in the Singapore Armed Forces.I am getting tired and weary of following the "script" of conformity. Lifestyle design starts to sound so very attractive, much more attractive then ending up as a splat on the asphalt or to die a slow death of being mediocre and safe, to conform and not rock the fracking boat.Will I succeed in being remarkable? Wordpress 2.6 is out now! Image via WikipediaMatt Mullenweg from Wordress.org has released the latest version of Wordpress 2.6. The previous version was 2.5.1.There are more feature upgrades in this version as updated by the Wordpress website:Word count! Never guess how many words are in your post anymore.Image captions, so you can add sweet captions like Political Ticker does under your images.Bulk management of plugins.A completely revamped image control to allow for easier inserting, floating, and resizing. It’s now fully integrated with the WYSIWYG.Drag-and-drop reordering of Galleries.Plugin update notification bubble.Customizable default avatars.You can now upload media when in full-screen mode.Remote publishing via XML-RPC and APP is now secure (off) by default, but you can turn it on easily through the options screen.Full SSL support in the core, and the ability to force SSL for security.You can now have many thousands of pages or categories with no interface issues.Ability to move your wp-config file and wp-content directories to a custom location, for “clean” SVN checkouts.Select a range of checkboxes with “shift-click.”You can toggle between the Flash uploader and the classic one.A number of proactive security enhancements, including cookies and database interactions.Stronger better faster versions of TinyMCE, jQuery, and jQuery UI.Version 2.6 fixes approximately 194 bugs.for more information.Check out the video Are you a specialist general or a general specialist? Image via WikipediaThe Four Hour WorkweekI just finished reading Tim Ferriss's "The Four Hour Workweek" which challenges the conventional wisdom of working for 20-30 years, saving up and retiring. He advocates a fundamentally different way of living or lifestyle design premised on the 80-20 rule or pareto principle that 20% of the inputs gets you 80% of the results.The way to live a life without dragging yourself through the 9-5 x 5 days x 52 weeks a year is to fundamentally and radically alter the way you look at the money-time trade-off.After reading his book, I am inspired even more so to achieve financial freedom as the enabler of the lifestyle that I want. Its' not about materiality per-se but more the ability to break free from the slavery of the 9-5 work-hour that provides the income for existing but not truly living.The recent books I have read have started interesting connections. It started with "Your Money or Your Life" written by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin that talks about how we can transofrm our relationships with money and also touches on the time-money trade-off so prevalent in modern living.Generalists vs SpecialistsRecently, I also started following Tim Ferriss's blog on lifestyle design and one of his older posts "Top 5 Reasons to be a Jack of All Trades" resonates. My own lifestyle has been slightly unconventional in some parts in that I did humanities in Junior College, Accounting in the University and had stints in a traditional accounting related career in financial and internal audits as well as branching out as an Information Technology (IT) security consultant for a significant part of my 13+ year working career. My experiences has made me somewhat of a specialist in audit and internal audit as well as being able to hack it as an IT guy speaking IT-speak with IT folks conversantly as well as to do basic home wireless networking setup and the resident IT support at home.Mr W, a welshman who was one of my humanities tutors in Junior College, liked to share about the concept of the "renaissance man" and many sources quote Leonardo Da Vinci as an example. Da Vinci was truly someone who was a generalist and yet specialist in so many respects. Sculptor, artist, engineer, designer, scientist. I am fortunate to have been able to experience a little bit of what it means to be a jack of all trades and to be good enough in some of them to be close to a specialist. My involvement in kidsREAD as a volunteer teaching children reading and English literacy skills was fulfilling and allowed me to put into practice my toastmastering skills in public speaking and communication. I did not know how far I could go in toastmastering until I managed to top my division in the table-topics contest in 2007. That made me realise that the 5 years of toastmastering had an impact and I could achieve significant results if I worked at it and was very focussed.I abhorred my military experience as a conscript in the Lion City but it was the years of training for the individual physical proficiency test (IPPT) and overcoming my inate laziness and apathy towards physical fitness that allowed me to achieve overcome my aversion to jogging and even manage to achieve silver in my final IPPT test before I completed by 10th and final in-camp training in the Singapore Armed Forces.The more I live life, the more I realise I should not typecast myself. Externally, others can label me so that that can make sense of it all. Internally, I know that I am more complex with so many different facets to be explored.Have you explored your own unique talent, skills and abilities? If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there Image by Sophistechate via FlickrMy blogging adventures have started out that way, meandering as I started it without much strategic planning about where would I be 2 years down the road.This blog was born as part of a personal journal. It has recorded bits and pieces of my life, in an unchained, unrestricted and unfettered way. Being a place where I could document down some of the streams of consciousness that permeates through my head.As time goes by, this blog has evolved into more a blog about personal effectiveness and a blog about blogging. The fun part of this blogging journey and self-discovery through how I can be BETTER in blogging, in personal productivity in being more effective as a person. The wealth of personal effectiveness or lifehacks, stuff to make your life easier is immense. The more I dig into this gold mine of resources, the more I realise, "less IS more". The way towards personal effectiveness is to cut out the clutter, the "stuff" we have in our lives and to concentrate really on the simple things that make you happy.I started out having no road-map for this journey of self-discovery and have ended up 2 years down the road with blogs that are monetised for small amounts enough to feed my coffee addiction and pay for broadband costs. More importantly, I have re-discovered my inner voice, my ability to put words to keyboard to blog. To articulate some of the miastic fog that drifts through my mind even as this post is written.What new adventures await me as I continue to write here and in my other blogs. How would my 3 month daughter see her father 18 years down the road. Would his blogs still remain. Would she be able to see what her old man is about in cyberspace?I guess only time can tell.In the meantime, I'll be blogging on.Related articlesWhy Blog? [via Zemanta]Blogging: mum's the wired word [via Zemanta]Do You Have a Blog? [via Zemanta] Food for the Soul, Nourishment for the Stomach Image via WikipediaDid lunch at IKEA's Alexandra cafe outlet which has re-opened after some renovations completed by late May 2008. Their vegetarian tanghoon was rather yummy. What wasyummier was their fried chicken wings... heavenly.... ;-)Topped up with kopi-c across the road at Anchor Point.Ever since I got my set of wheels, I have been exploring lunch venues that are beyond walking distance as I have been making do with having lunch within mostly walking distance from my workplace for a decade plus some change.How was your lunch today? Ping.fm --> How to post to blogs/micro-blogs/status updates from one location I'm trying out ping.fm even as this post is generated using ping.fm. Is Plurk the new Twitter? Is Plurk the new Twitter?Welcome to the wonderful and strange world of micro-blogging. If you are reading my blog now, you must know what a blog is, right?But how does Twitter and Plurk fit in the scheme of things? And what exactly is micro-blogging?Evolution of bloggingBlogs started out as web-logs or websites that were used as personal journals and written from a time perspective with the latest post read first to the earliest post last. If you have been on the internet since the good ol' days of 1200bps modems, you will realise that the evolution was from bulletin boards to www to homepages to blogger, wordpress etc.Micro-blogging takes the complexity out and begins with the concept of simplicity. What can you blog about in 140 characters (or less).Why Micro-Blog?It might seem counter-intuitive but it appears that the immediacy of telling the whole wide world what you are doing now is compelling, addictive and quite frankly somewhat narcissistic. If you twitter that you are picking your nose now, your followers would know it if they are tracking you and they can track you via your twitter page 24x7x365. That's stalking without the creepiness of it all. Of course, unless your followers are nose fetish people, you won't have many followers if you twitter about your disgusting personal hygiene habits.Don't Plurk with Me Punk!Plurk is a newer kid on the block than Twitter. The interesting thing about Plurk is how the timeline is arranged. It goes from left to right with the most current plurk happening on the left side of the screen. You can scroll left to right to find out what's happening in yours and other folks' plurks.The good thing about plurking is that you can claim the coolest nicknames before they run out. The bad thing about plurking is that if you are as addicted to twitter as many people are, you may find plurking another excellent time-waster and productivity killer. But hey, I know of people who could kill time playing mine sweeper on Windoze 3.1 so it's not the tool but the user who is evil.Good/bad, evil or sad, it's up to you to decide after trying these new micro-blogging technologies. Download Mozilla Now for Singapore ! You can start your downloads now at Mozilla's website!Go squirrel go! :-)Related articlesFirefox 3 Download Day is June 17th [via Zemanta]Daily Debrief: Firefox 3 looks for a million downloads [via Zemanta]Mozilla keeps promise, Firefox 3 here on June 17th [via Zemanta] Decluttering Your Life Interesting article about "How to Live with 100 Things" by Time magazine while scrolling through my RSS feeds of Delicious Hotlist.Makes you think about how much life energy you are spending on acquiring, managing and thinking about "stuff" in our lives. Official Launch of Firefox 3 on 17 June 2008 (Tuesday) The official date has been confirmed!It will be on 17 June 2008 (Tuesday) US Time or 18 June 2008 0100 hrs for Singapore Time!If you are interested, visit their website and learn how you can get involved.Go squirrel go! :-)Related articlesFirefox 3 Download Day is June 17th [via Zemanta]Daily Debrief: Firefox 3 looks for a million downloads [via Zemanta]Mozilla keeps promise, Firefox 3 here on June 17th [via Zemanta] Entrecard Drop List Image by exper via FlickrI have installed the Entrecard widget in all the blogs I maintain either in Blogger or hosted in my web hosting service providers. So far, it has generated interesting traffic and allowed my blogs to be exposed to a larger audience than if I were to rely purely on Google searches or from referrals within my own blogs.If you are into Entrecard dropping, you can consider visiting this blog as the author ModEraTor is trying to get a quick list for you to go entrecard dropping.Related articlesBlog Income Report - January 2008 [via Zemanta]Ex-Googler's Plinky Raises $1.5 Million [via Zemanta]Comparing Web Site Hosting Plans [via Zemanta] John Chow Blog Contest for MarketLeverage I follow a number of bloggers through RSS feeds with Google Reader and have a category known as blog monetisation. Some of the bloggers I follow include Darren Rowse of Problogger.net fame and John Chow of johnchow.com. While the common thread that runs through these bloggers are that they can generate six figures per year from blogging and related activities, their approach to blogging is a different as chalk and cheese.John Chow is having a contest and you can also take part for a chance to win some freebies from this company called MarketLeverage. The rules of the contest are here in John Chow's blog.The rules as referenced from John Chow's site:=================How to Enter There are two ways to enter the bag of stuff contest. You’ll receive one entry by simply replying to this post. Easy, right? You only have to reply once. You can reply more than once but you’ll still only get one entry. You’ll receive five entries if you blog about this contest and send a trackback. Your post should link to this contest post and to Market Leverage. If the trackback doesn’t work, then enter the URL to your post in the comments. Entries will be accepted from today until June 20. The winner be drawn on June 21 at Dot Com Pho. This is a world wide contest. Market Leverage will ship the bag of stuff anywhere in the world." =================So give it a try and you may win yourself the goodies above.Related articlesWin A Market Leverage Bag of Stuff [via Zemanta]Basic Business Blogging Suggestions [via Zemanta]Get Your Gmail Feed Read to You by Phone [Gmail] [via Zemanta] Help Mozilla Foundation Create a World Guinness Record in Firefox Downloads! Mozilla Foundation is aiming to set a Guinness world record, hear what they set out to achieve:"We want to set a Guinness World Record for the most software downloaded in 24 hours. With the backing of our community and your help we know we can make it. "If you are interested, visit their website and learn how you can get involved. I have been using Mozilla firefox as my default browser for a few years since I was working in an IT company. It is just way faster than Microsoft Internet Explorer and has many nifty plugins.I look forward to the event which will be held in June 2008 at a day to be announced by Mozilla.Go squirrel go! :-)Related articlesMozilla aims for Guinness World Record [via Zemanta]Mozilla shooting for record books with Firefox 3 release [via Zemanta]Mozilla aims for record books with Firefox 3 release [via Zemanta]Help Mozilla Set a Firefox 3 Download Record [In Brief] [via Zemanta]First public Firefox 3 candidate shoots out the door [via Zemanta] Blogging with Zemanta Image by Getty Images via DaylifeLookback at this blogI have been actively blogging for the past year or so and realise that one of the interesting benefits of blogging besides the ability to express myself online to an audience is that I learn new technologies all the time.I started out this blogger blog Ganxiezhu sometime in January 2006. Wow, that's like 2.5 years, the same time it took me to complete my full-time service as a conscript in the Lion City. Besides getting in touch with blogger, I already got into creating some blogs in Wordpress before learning that I could buy a domain name, some web hosting services and host my own wordpress blog that allows me to have more creative control over my blogs and at the same time to monetise them better.New TechnologiesThis blog used to start as a personal web log but has grown more into the niche of personal productivity, blogging technologies as well as a new things I learn about the internet. One new technology that I came across through reading a RSS feed from Problogger was Zemanta.Zemanta is a blogging tool that searches for relevant links, images as well as related web articles to what you are writing. It does the background work for you while you are typing out your blog post and gives you an update every 300 characters or so. Zemanta provides a gallery, relevant articles and links that gives your blog article more depth.I see it as an assistant that helps me do the background legword to help make my article more useful to readers through the images, links and relevant articles. However, when you are using it on the fly, the moves the cursor to the top left of this blog post and is somewhat irritating.If you intend to try out Zemanta, it might be more useful for you to type your blog post using a text editor and paste it into your blog post and let Zemanta do its magic. So far, I've tried it out in my blogger and wordpress blogs and it's quite fun to use.Give Zemanta a try and let me know your comments!Related articlesBlog Income Report - April 2008 [via Zemanta]Blogging Discovery Tool Zemanta Adds A Slew of New Features [via Zemanta]New release: more stuff [via Zemanta]