Betshopboy.net

Sorry folks, I was hung over with euphoria, basking in the rousing success of the blog’s official opening ceremony, which stretched out over a couple of days. Now let me get back to business, by plunging straight back into some more fun! I love watching movies, but I don’t do movie reviews and have no intention to start now. I just want to share with you a little local production, which have created certain waves in the local movie scene.

The local film industry does not have the pedigree of the Hollywoods and Bollywoods of the world but this film had open with a bang and had overtaken Hollywood blockbuster “Bourne Ultimatum” and also surpassing Jackie Chan’s vehicle “Rush Hour 3″ in the local box office.

I’m talking about the local mandarin movie titled “881“. It is a heart-wrenching story of a pair of sisters’ journey towards fulfilling their dream of being getai singers. The stage name given to the duo is “Papaya Sisters”. The numbers 881 actually sounds like “pa-pa-ya” in mandarin, hence the catchy title.

Subculture
Getai, which literally means “song stage” in mandarin, is a uniquely Singaporean subculture that has been around since WWII. It is a roadside live concert staged on temporary structures, held in the 7th month of the lunar calendar, or the Hungry Ghost Festival. Getai are staged for the enjoyment of “brothers and sisters of the nether world” which are believed to roam the earth during the ghost month. It entails performances by amateur singers, either solo or in groups, often in flamboyant and outlandish outfits, belting out mostly Hokkien or Mandarin songs. The compere will usually spout loud and lewd jokes and engage in silly banter with the audience to connect with them.

Have Your Say
What interesting subculture does your community practice? Is the subcultures strongly woven into the fabric of society and supported by young and old alike? Blog about it and share with us here.

Howdy friends! Welcome to the coolest and raunchiest blog party of the year, it’s my new blog’s official unveiling ceremony! The transformation is completed, I’ve finally broke away from blogspot and migrated to self-hosted wordpress! It is a natural progression of my blogging endeavor, much like the metamorphosis of a moth that had undergone a series of remarkable changes between seemingly very different forms culminating in the emergence of a butterfly. With this new blog, I will float like a butterfly and sting like a bee!

Ladies and Gentlemen, I hereby give you Betshopboy.net

All are welcome to crash my blogging party, bring your friends, the more the merrier! And stick around for more blog juice, but make sure no spam diarrhoea. What’s a party without beer? Just because beer cannot be downloaded doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy our booze. You are always welcome to head over to my sidebar(pun totally intended) and buy me one or a few mugs! For those who had just joined this party,and want to get to know the host better, you can check out my About page, or check these must-read posts here and here.

Admist such joyous celebration, I want to say a big thank you to everybody who had read, commented, subscribed, inspired and supported my blog during my blogspot days. You are the cool people that made all this possible, This new blog wouldn’t be born without the support and encouragement of you wonderful people! I also want to acknowledge my friends miriguy and Garry Conn for helping with the setup of this blog. However, there is always the possibility that something got passed us. Please feel free to browse and check out my new pad and tell me what you think. If you spot any errors, please let me know as well. All congratulatory notes, feedbacks, critiques are sportingly welcome in the comment page.

With this official opening post, I’ll embark on my journey towards blogging greatness. You are cordially invited to join me on this great online adventure! Please continue to shower me with your unconditional links love and support like you always have.

Psst! Want to win a brand new 8GB iPod Nano valued at $249.99? Then crank up your creative juices and help Michael Kwan and Ed Lau think up a fantabulous domain name for their new hockey blog. These 2 “good Canadian kids” are planning to start up a hockey blog together and is roping in your help to come up with a cool name for their hockey blog as they’ve hit a snag for creative ideas.

The domain name must be hockey related and must be an unregistered dot com, they are not going to settle for .net, .info, .ca and the likes. These guys are dot com mogul wannabe!

The winner with the coolest domain name selected by these guys will walk away with a black 8GB iPod Nano, and to make the competition more exciting, they are throwing in a blue 4GB iPod Nano into the fray, to be given away in a random draw. More information about the contest can be found on Michael’s freelance writing blog and on Ed’s personal blog.

I’ve submitted my entry of some uber cool names via email. Of course I’m not going to blurb out my suggested domain names here, otherwise someone might register it, effectively disqualifying my entry. So put on your thinking cap, surprise the boys with your most creative domain names, you just might be rewarded with music on the go!

The Sneaky Bastard burst onto the blogging scene in June with Cash for Comments, a blog where readers can learn how to get paid to comment. Having such unforgettable nickname, I say that is classic example of brilliant branding at work. With many sneaky ideas up his sleeves, Cash for Comments is indeed a breadth of fresh air in the overcrowded “make money online” blogs.

His claim to fame so far has been his unique Free ReviewMe promotion which won him many fans and of course, lots of comments! Since setting his goal publicly in early August to make $1k by end of this month, my sneaky friend Prija had gone on an aggressive marketing blitz to hit his target.

Many great marketing ideas were unleashed, among them Technorati train station, Contest Jet Train, Top Commentator, Free ReviewMe v2.0 and the best of all, he is giving away a free 24 inch LCD Monitor!

This grand prize is sponsored by Elite Baseball Instruction, which is a four-part series on baseball training. There is also an early bird bonus draw of a free copy of 4-Hour Workweek Book for entries received before 09/01/07. This contest ends 09/15/07, leaving you with lots of time to enter. But if you want a chance in the early bird draw, you better act fast!

If you are a firm believer of the “Content is King” dictum, welcome to the new era of blogging where content will not always make you King! It will win you some friends and admirers, but not royal status anymore. Many self-respecting bloggers advocate writing killer content as the be-all and end-all of a good blogger worth his salt.

Power To The People
In this Web 2.0 age of social media demographic, this belief no longer holds water. What makes me make such a bold statement? Isn’t it such an “anti-blogging-social-behavior” thing to say? How can I justify my bold statement that content is no longer important?

I will not begin to bore you with writing about what social media is. Many of you will have a vague idea, if not the correct definition of social media. However, the term was so widely used, that it created a life of its own, and spawned different meanings to different people. For the purpose of this discussion, we shall use the definition of social media defined in Wikipedia.

Well, for a start, how many of you agree that all the articles that appear on the front page of Digg are there on the basis of awesome content? Got the gist? See where I’m coming from? Nowadays, just merely good content (notice I didn’t indicate great or killer content) coupled with the power of social media will get more traffic and links than great content that’s not marketed effectively through social media.

It is easy to start the process of using social media to promote your website
To leverage the power of social media to market your blog, you can start with replacing “content is King” with “Having lots of Friends is King“. It’s like being in high school all over again. The popular kids get noticed. You don’t have to be good looking to be popular online. You don’t even have to be good at sports or be a cheerleader. All you need is active participation and engaging the virtual communities. Make friends on social media sites, the more the merrier. Get your online friends to vote your articles up the front page of those sites, and enjoy the spike of traffic coming your way!

Here are a few sites and some online tools to help you harness the power of social media. This list is in no particular order and by no means an exhaustive list:

1) Create a MySpace Page
MySpace (www.myspace.com) is the largest and best-known social network. Individuals create profiles about themselves and then invite similarly minded people to become their online friends. When someone becomes a friend, you can communicate with them and subtly direct them towards your own website

2) Join Facebook
Facebook (www.facebook.com) is a social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them. People use Facebook to keep up with friends, upload an unlimited number of photos, share links and videos, and learn more about the people they meet

3) Register with Bebo
Bebo (www.bebo.com) is the next generation social networking site where members can stay in touch with their College friends, connect with friends, share photos, discover new interests and just hang out.

Notice the keywords associated with the above 3 social networks are “connect“, “friends” and “share“. Remember what I said earlier about making friends - the more the merrier!

4)MyBlogLog
Bloggers registered with MyBlogLog can initiate a blog community for one or more blogs they author. Other registered members can subscribe to these communities, effectively bookmarking them for future reading and sharing them with their own contacts

5) Share Your Photos Online
Posting photos related to your blog niche on photo sharing websites such as Flickr and PhotoBucket. Tag those photos with keywords and people searching for those images are likely to follow the link on the photo to your blog.

6) Upload Videos Online
You will be surprise some video clips shot by amateurs can attract more viewers than some successful professional media personnel. A video clip on You Tube can attract up to 40 million views. Post your videos on YouTube and Google Videos. Give it a catchy title and teaser to drum up the buzz. Also link to the videos from your blog.

7) Add Bookmarking Links to Your Article Pages
Social Bookmarking leverage the power of viral marketing and popular opinions, and has the ability to discover what is important before any bot can spider the site and rank it among the thousands of sites available.

There are two ways of doing this, you can go to each of the leading bookmarking sites and download their code and links onto your site. This is a time consuming route and time is a precious commodity we can ill afford to spend on such mundane activity. The alternative is to sign up with AddThis.com, copy the HTML code to generate a “button” on the foot of each page. This gives your users access to over 30 bookmarking sites.

Add a full RSS feed
RSS has been discussed and dissected so widely, it probably has become such a clich