One World Documentary Film Festival 2007
The One World International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival opened yesterday in Prague. Good! I need to watch more of those things to balance the uncountable number of commercial movie I’ve watched over the course of my life.
I had this idea the other day to watch as many films as possible and blog about each of them. Will run to the city and buy a film pass.
For more information, visit www.oneworld.cz
Film Watched
- The Operation (Germany) [trailer]
- New Year Baby (USA) [trailer]
- Jesus Camp (USA) [trailer]
- The Railroad All-Stars (Spanish) [trailer]
- Palestinian Blues (Palestine, USA) [trailer]
- Jonestown: The life and death of the People’s Temple (USA) [trailer]
- Children of the Solidary (Poland, France)[trailer]
- Wrong Time, Wrong Place (Germany)[trailer]
- The End of the Neubacher Project (Austria, Neitherlands) [trailer]
- Acts of Men (Brazil, Germany) [trailer]
- Yaptick – Hasse (Russia) [trailer]
- Please Vote for me (China) [trailer]
- Black Sun (UK) [trailer] [site]
- A lesson of Belorussian (Poland) [trailer]
- Three Comrades (Neitherlands) [trailer]
Keotag to the Rescue
I’d been bitching for months that I couldn’t find new and interesting topics for my blogs and almost folded one of my most beloved blogs after leaving it idly for months.
Okay, not blogging too often gave me more time to surf the net. During one of those stumbles,–I was surfing with Stumble Upon–I discovered amazing Keotag. This wonderful tool has changed my blogging experience dramatically, and it will do the same to yours.
You enter a keyword, and Keotag performs a search on many popular news and social sharing sites today: technorati, del.icio.us, google, digg, reddit, bloglines…
Even better, you can subscribe to the search results and see all sort of interesting news related to your searched keyword delivered to your RSS feed reader.
Now, instead of being worried about the lack of topics and news for my blogs, I rather feel overwhelmed by the bulk of it.
Also I read a post on John Chow in which he said something like if you really want to blog, you will find enough information to write about.
I absolutely agree. I stopped blogging for a while simply because I didn’t want to do it anymore.
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Tags: Bohemian Biz, Keotag, John Chow, Blog Block
Someone Please Help! I also Have a RegisterFly Mess
Two weeks ago, my boyfriend complained that he had a problem with Registerfly. He was pretty upset being charged twice for one renewal. He tried to complain but got no result. So two weeks ago, he asked for my domain name registrar to transfer his domain name there. And he did “successfully”; at least we thought it was. I read an article today about Registerfly and its ongoing technical problem beside horrible frauds. It sounds serious.
But…I couldn’t find the original post about Registerfly so I googled for registerfly and came across a few more negative reviews from people who found themselves in this domain name mess. This grievance caught my attention and the name ENOM was just two/three lines below. My we-are-lucky-so-sorry-for-you attitude started diminishing, so I went to whois.net (whois.com was not functioning) to lookup my bf’s domain name.
Oh oh! My suspicion was confirmed. His domain was associated with ENOM, which connects to RL.
If he successfully transferred the domain name to Go Daddy, the information should look like this.
This domain name will be expired in five more days, and I don’t know what to do. I’m sure he won’t either.
Crossed the Border into East Germany
I traveled to Liberec, a city north of Prague, to cross the border into Zittau, Germany. It wasn’t a sudden urge to see the former communist state; I had always thought that Germany had nothing interesting to see as much of it was destroyed from WWII. That was why I was baffled seeing grand architectures in this small border town, and my hand couldn’t help clicking at the camera non-stop.
I visited the three-country spot where Germany, Czech Republic and Poland met. I stood beside a cross on the German land looking over a tiny ditch which divided these countries and seeing a couple of Czech on my right and a group of Poles walking on the left. They were all Caucasians, and I could not tell them apart. It was then I shook my head in confusion trying to understand what the differences were which set them against one another countless of times in the past.
Mission accomplished. I now have a new stamp on my passport, thus extend my illegal stay in Czech for three more months.
Before I relocated to Czech, I told my friend that I wouldn’t think twice about his country when I leave, that it has nothing to offer compared to Bosnia. But I’ve changed my mind. I start liking the Czech Republic and won’t mind settling here for a longer time.
Metacafe – Youtube’s Arrival?
I found out about Metacafe.com from a CNN’s article about 25 new startups to watch. I immediately visited Metacafe to search for new video on Bosnia and found a useful, fairly unique video for my site.
And this company offers something Youtube has not yet done: paying the authors for their works.
The auteurs get $100 after 20,000 viewings and $5 for every 1,000 subsequent views. Since September, Metacafe has paid a total of $250,000 to 200 contributors.
Wait! There is more. Metacafe even has an affiliate program which pays blog/site publishers to host a customized Metacafe player. Read what Metacafe says about its affiliate program:
You can become an affiliate partner of Metacafe simply by hosting a Metacafe video player on your site. The video player can be customized to fit the interests of your audience so that each day your visitors can watch fresh, high quality and engaging videos without ever leaving your site.
This sounds like a good idea, but Metacafe doesn’t have many videos to make this model effective. Those who publish unpopular topics won’t be benefited this method as there are few or even no video to customize for the player.
I’m anxious to know if the business model will succeed. I recommended Eefoof for those who want to make extra money from their creative works. However, I think Eefoof will sink due to its mediocre GUI and low quality submissions. I also suggested MSN’s Soapbox, which is currently available as beta version and does not include any monetizing program. On the other hand, Metacafe has a professional user-interface and sounds much more promising. It might not beat Youtube but can be a mighty competitor.
I will watch this company very carefully. Stay tuned.
[via cnn]
The Purple Cow and I
The picture was taken at Prague Airport, terminal 2, upstairs at the departure lounge.
You have to see my expression when I spotted the cow and couldn’t help glancing at him while waiting for an appropriate time to take this picture. I bet that my boyfriend had no idea why in the world I wanted a picture with a weirdo looking cow. But he should as he was the one who showed me the funny Czech commerical “Milka.”
The reason which got me so worked up (not because of the video) was that I recently decided to study Seth Godin’s Permission Marketing. I’ve been following his blog more and read his free e-books…If you’ve never heard of Seth Godin and don’t care about Internet Marketing, just know this: he wrote the bestseller “Purple Cow.”
I changed my mind. Maybe you should know about him a little. Read his stuff, many of which are free or check out his blog, I guarantee you learn at least a thing or two.
2 Easy Things To Increase Blogs’ Exposure
I’ve been readings a bunch of blogs, articles and books on how to improve blogs and sites’ exposure. I learned many useful and practical tips but many of them involve a long and sometimes complicated procedure. My memory is limited so often time, I did one a few of those thing or forgot all about them in the next few days.
That’s why when I read this article last week, I instantly put the author’s 2 things on my Blog’s Todo-List.
Do one of the following every day.
-
Add an article.
-
Get a back link.
Now, posting a fresh article and get a link to your blogs and sites are actually a long process and involve many sub-steps. But when you see that you only have to do one or two things, you feel that you can actually achieve them.
#2 can be complicated if you seek advice from a SEO guru as you will deal with a lot of technical jargons. But in the beginning, the simplest thing you can do to get a link to your site is by leaving comments on other blogs. Don’t spam though.
Unsure of What To Do in Life? Observe a Painter
I visited a friend, Tom, last night to have my pictures taken for a working visa application. He took three batches of pictures and messed around on Irfanview, Windows Paint and Adobe Photoshop CS2 for another half a hour to finish the photo processing. I joked that he should start a part-time gig taking photos in the neighborhood for extra money or just for fun. Better yet, he should have promotion such as “Saturday Half-price or Exclusive 2-hour Free on Friday Evening Only” to attract females and hopefully score a date.
Tom has recently bought a painting tablet and wanted to show me how to use it. I doodled for a few minutes, producing pitiful lines and figures on the canvas and quickly got bored. Tom took over and showed off his arts. It was then that I asked him to sketch some logos and illustrations for my blogs and a series of children stories I was working on. I told him a concept and he was quick at work. In 15 minutes, I started seeing the picture forming. A few more painting and erasing, and he was done with his first assignment. I asked him to draw another sketch, another sketch and another; my amazement never ceased. I kept shaking my head and continued groaning “Why do I suck so badly?”
Then it really dawned on me in that single moment that we had to do whatever it is we’re truly and naturally good at. Otherwise, life will be one unnecessary challenge after another. Yes, we can try and learn new things for fun, but if we’re not naturally good at them, we can deliver only mediocre if not horrible results. I might take drawing and designing classes in my free time, but I will be stupid to consider painter or graphics designer as my career options and compete with people like Tom. What takes him only 15 minutes will surely cost week of my time to come up with an idea, search for free clip art and fix them in photo-editing apps. (See! And it’s not even original.)
Next time when you struggle to decide what you want to do in your life, do one simple task. Watch a painter, observe his focus and flow and see how easy it is for him to produce a work of art. If you choose to do something against your natural talents, be warned that you will have to compete with this master and many more.
Life will not be fun.
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Technorati Tags: Bohemian Bid, Self Development, Self Help
Barak Obama – Web 2.0 Politician
Update: Myspace button was added. Hmm I hoped they learned from my post 
. But I think this had to do with the person who is in charged of his website is one of Facebook’s founders. Good stuff!!!!
That he’s running for the 2008 presidency?
-> You’re already known that.
That he’s black?
-> Uh unless you don’t watch TV or read the news lately, then yeah.
That he’s only half black.
-> Uh if you’re interested in the man this much, you probably knew this too.
That he went to a radical Islamic school?
-> Hot stuff, but sorry to disappoint you. This rumor was proved to be false.
No and no.
What you should know is Barak Obama is the Web 2.0 politician. Take a look of his web site.
Include three of the top power players in social sharing media. I’m surprised MySpace is nowhere to be found.
Your own BarakObama
Is this guy a rock star or what?
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Seth Godin, the marketing guru, said “technology works because it gives you a shot at marketing.” Right on.
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Technorati Tags: Bohemian Biz, Politics, Barak Obama, Web 2.0, Website
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