Topo is the 2nd most commentator on zakiyamani.com, and as part of the threesome contest‘s reward, I’ll review his blog for free. Few days ago, I have released my review on earncent and vangardx. I hope they like it, yeah!!
Mylifeastopo is the personal Topo’s personal blog. Currently, it was hosted on fwenz.info which is one of the free blog host. But he has plan to have his own hosted blog somewhere. That is one of the reason why this review is delayed (other than I’m busy working on other stuff)
His blog is relatively new, whereby the first post was published on 6th Jan 2008. Unlike Titan who has graduated, Topo is still studying at Teknikel Malaysia Melaka (UTEM). He is still single, but unfortunately not available (why??) Looks like most IM/bloggers are still single, which I believe is due to their too much commitment and time spent on their project! Hahaha, don’t wait too long dude.
The theme
I admire the green theme, 3 columns with 2 sidebars on the left and right side, similar to what I have in this blog except that it has an additional section below the header. My personal favorite design. The RSS reader and search buttons are well placed and clearly visible at first glance. Nothing to comment about that.
I subscribed to the feed so I can read the post in 1 shot. Luckily he has full feed (except for certain posts), so I can read the blog’s content peacefully without any hassle to go back and forth to the blog to get more details.
Contents
The contents are more about personal stuffs, a little bit about making money online on the technical things such as SQL server and Adobe Photoshop. I don’t have any special niche or topic to concentrate on as well, but as long as readers enjoy what you write, that shouldn’t be a problem to you.
In this post, he mentions that his traffic is like roller coaster. I think you know why. The day you have a new post, your traffic will be high and the other way round when there is no new post. Google loves websites which is updated frequently, and it will index this website frequently as well. The key here is to write consistently and go deeper on what you’re talking about. If you haven’t read Problogger, you might want to take a look at this blog, which provides tonnes of resources related to blogging.
Make money online
It is almost free from advertisement. So far Topo monetize the blog using Nuffnang and private ads only. 1 thing that I would suggest is to put the ads on the right sidebar, since that area has more visibility to your readers
There are more rooms for improvement
As long as Topo is willing to learn more, I don’t see why he can’t be successful in future. But first, do write consistently. I do write some posts in the past about blogging ideas which you can find here and here, and you’re most welcome to apply it on your convenience.
Topo has new home!!
Topo finally has his own hosted blog, Topotato after blogging on a free platform for quite sometime. Unfortunately the web hosting is not reliable, and causing his blog inaccessible for the last couple of days. If you ask me which company should you choose, my answer is serverfreak. No intention to promote them, but I’m amazed with how fast their respond to your support ticket. Anyway Topo, congrats for having a new blog.
greeny topo
PC fair 2008 is coming to town
It is PC fair time again. Though I wont’ be attend any PC Fair this year (until Luqman has reduced his crying tempo and rate) , I still have interest browsing for the best deal on the net. As usual, Dell slashing their price for certain model up until MYR2000. HP, Lenovo, Acer and Toshiba done the same I believe, but since their bulk sales coming from their retail or channel partners, it is hardly to find any detail or promotion on their local website.
In Kuala Lumpur, as usual , the fair would be held at KLCC convention centre. I don’t even know that Manjung, one of the nearest town at my home town (Teluk Intan) now has their own PC Fair. I wonder when Teluk Intan will have one. PC Fair’s event and place detail can be found on their website.
2008 PC Fair first round schedule
| 4-6 April 2008 | Johor Bahru, Taiping, Sandakan, Tawau & Kuching | |
| 11-13 April 2008 | Kuala Lumpur, Ipoh, Kuantan, Kepala Batas & Muar | |
| 18-20 April 2008 | Penang, Melaka, Sibu, Miri & Manjung |
Best Deal
Normal price: 2,399
Normal price: 2,299
Normal price: 3,599
Normal price (Tesco) : 1,899
PC fair vs ICTS Computer Fair
I remember sometime back, there is an attempt to have another PC fair which known more as ICTS Computer Fair by PIKOM’s members who dissatisfied with how PC fair was organized. However, it seems that it only runs for 2 years, 2004 and 2005 if I’m not mistaken. In fact, their domain name, icts.org.my and their website (and even the cache version) no longer available in WHOIS . Having single major PC Fair is better (and more crowded), since all IT players can be gathered in one place which will ensure that fair is bigger and attractive enough to bring more international brands joining the fair. And at the end, end user like us is the real winner here. There are more choices available, and be able to spend without any hesitation knowing there is no other fair that could offer similar things
PC Fair’s price cheaper than computer shop such as lowyat??
Of course there is no definitive answer for this questions. PC Fair has been in most states in Malaysia including small towns. In order to attract the shoppers, the price could goes down pretty significant compared to the local shop, especially if the booth operated by big companies from KL or Penang or which has wide range of distribution. Local computer shop also, usually sell their stuff with more discount and more free gift (sometime useless) to win the competition with the bigger competitor from outside
But the situation is different in big cities like Kuala Lumpur or Penang where PC Fair’s price is almost similar with what offered in shops at Lowyat or Digital Mall but with one exception. Big and renown brand or distributor such as Dell, Canon, Apple and HP will normally open their own both and offering discount you can’t get else where on the their product. Taking example like Dell above, you can’t get this price(discount up to RM200) except during PC Fair or festival (the discount not at this best). Similarly with HP, such as when ZakiY bought a new printer and get a lot of goodies. I also agree with the fact that, sometime, it is not the price that matters, but it is the goodies that matter most(from ZakiY’s comment). You might want to have a look discussion about this on Lowyat.net at here and here
PC Fair VS CES VS CeBIT
CES and CeBIT are arguably among the largest PC and electronic fair in the world. Back in Asia, we have Computex Taipei, the larget IT shows in Asia. It is matters of time and the right strategies before PC Fair will level with all these bigger and well known fairs who has more exhibitor from around the world showcasing the latest product. It might not happen on short period of time, but I’m hopeful that PIKOM together with the Ministry of Energy, Water and Communications (MEWC) can do something to further enhance the visibility of this fair on IT’s world map.
On related development, I’m fully supportive of PIKOM’s proposal to have new ministry especially for ICT to spearhead Malaysia’s Information and Communications Technology (ICT) industry. Why?? I feel that the current ministry has too many portfolios, energy, water and communication, thus less efficient to tackle on each portfolio effectively. Just my 2 cent
I thought Google don’t like Pay Per Post..
Looks like Google still love Pay Per Post after last year ‘grand slam’. At least on their $$$$..
How to get sponsorship from webhosting?
Salam & hello to all my dearest readers, today I would like to share my idea on how to get sponsorship from webhosting. First of all I would like to thank Zaki for giving me the opportunity to be a guest blogger in blogjer’s blog. Apparently, we know that blogging is not just a hobby, personal diary and whatsoever. People now realize that they can do anything they want like business things, express their feelings and even seek for their life partner from blogs. Ok, here are a few ideas that I have.
1. Show your blog performance – it’s not about showing off. It’s about your blog portfolio, which means to attract people to view the number of people who have visited your blog, current visitors in your blog and how your blog traffic history is. In this case, statistic does matter.
2. Provide quality posts – I don’t know how many people has mentioned about this, content is king and quality contents will drive quality visitors seriously. If you just provide copy and paste stuffs, people will know about it and they’ll just leave it. Be creative and be different.
3. Be friendly with the webhoster – this is about relationship and networking. Sometimes when you need help, friends will come first right? In this matter, if the webhosting owner is your friend, why not you ask him or her a favor. Don’t laugh, this happens. So be friendly with others. Who knows, your online friend might be the future CEO of the hosting company
4. Specific niche blog – Ok, good example is Jalan-jalan Cari Makan TV3(1 popular slot in local TV channel, TV3). Do you think they pay for the food that TV3′s crew ate? TV3 is well known local television channel and Jalan-jalan Cari Makan niche is the best food program in town. How about you build a food stuff blog and blog about local food and who knows, in the next 2-3 years your blog would be popular and everyone is going to ask you to review their food, which means you can eat for free at that time. During that time, sponsorship would just be a small matter.
5. Be the hosting die hard fan – this is not funny. It is just an idea about how you promote some hosting company aggressively and they’ll be happy with the incoming and registered customers coming from your promotion. Surely you will get sponsorship from them, trust me.
So, be creative in blogging, improve your writing skills and catch the eyes of the reader about your blog name! Thanks
This article has been written by Syamsulariff Mohamed 22 years old National Defence University of Malaysia student, the author of Syamsulariff.com. Subcribe his feed to receive any updates from his blog. Would like to invite me to be your guest blogger for specific topic? Do kindly contact me.
when splogs steal my contents
Thanks to Google alert and Azwan for alerting me, and Google Blog search for assisting me to search the copycat, and leading me to several blogs (splog) which has copied my RSS feed (no track back) and contents whether intentionally or unintentionally. I’m not sure what they’re thinking off, perhaps they think I will never know or they’re too newbie to be aware of this, but rest assured that I won’t sit tight and keep my mouth shut.
I guess the war against copycat or plagiarism will never stop. Lorella has posted a very detailed post on what you should do when someone steals your content. It teaches you a lot about plagiarism and what is your right to protect your own content.
image credit to marbella-lawyers
Plugin, badge or widget will never stop this act, but at least the warning has been there at the very first place. I have experienced this issue, a couple of times before, but this is the first time I mention it in my post.
Do you know that occasionally the copycat page will have higher rank than the original page? And truthfully speaking, one of the SPLOGs, has high Alexa rank (44k), but luckily it has no pagerank. This is what I’m scared of, and before search engines started crawling this blog, it is better that I make a move.
Thanks to Online Tech tips which provided a list of useful plugins to combat plagiarism, on which I have implemented some of it. BIG thanks to fellow bloggers for the alert. This is what I call blog-sphere’s neighbourhood. I appreciate that very much!!
