I’m still alive and kicking, just in case anyone was wondering why there have been no new posts over the past 2 days. Yesterday I got the call from IBM to inform me that my ThinkPad was ready for pickup. So I made the arduous journey across the “wild west” streets of Bangkok to go and collect it.

IBM did a great job and the new screen is perfect, the only problem is that they formatted my hard drive. Why they did that when only replacing the screen is beyond me, but I was just happy to have my notebook back. So as soon as I got home I started restoring all my data. Luckily I keep extensive backups of everything so everything went pretty smooth.

Once I was back up and running, I decided to check my affiliate stats and I got the shock of my life. I had a great Google Adwords campaign running that was promoting a Credit giveaway offer, conversions were good, so I increased my Adwords spending limit. Unfortunately, the offer expired yesterday morning. So all those Adwords clicks were being sent to an offer that was no longer available. The end result, I am $513 in the red. That’s quite a big loss for me.

Well, I’ve learnt my lesson, I’ve got to read the fine print on all offers and set time limits on my campaigns from now on. If I had my notebook I probably would have caught it early and the losses would have been minimal. Do you think I could claim from IBM for this? I suppose that’s just wishing…

Having a good domain name can often mean the difference between a successful blog and one that never gets any visitors. It will most likely be the first thing that your visitors will encounter, and remember your blog by if they ever find your blog online. Many bloggers still use their internet provider’s domain name or a free blogging service to get their messages online.

With good domain names getting scarcer and scarcer, some people are willing to pay top dollar to get hold of one. I’m proud to say that I paid just $10 for my one, well actually $7 as I used a GoDaddy discount code. While I’m cheap when it comes to running my blog, many people shell out vast sums of cash to buy a domain. You’d think that these big spenders would actually use their premium domain? Wouldn’t you?

I came across an interesting fact while aimlessly browsing the net. Only 30%, of people that purchase premium domains, actually develop them. That’s quite shocking, these people are willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a domain and then just leave it.

I have compiled a small list of premium domains and what people paid for them, if you visit them, you will notice that they are either for sale or simply display one of those cheesy PPC systems.

Cameras.com	$1,500,000.00	PPC Parking Page
Wrestling.com	$500,000.00	PPC Parking Page
Blue.com	$500,000.00	PPC Parking Page
Sex.net	$454,500.00	PPC Parking Page
WirelessPhone.com	$355,000.00	PPC Parking Page
Brown.com	$300,000.00	For Sale
POS.com	$252,500.00	PPC Parking Page
Mortage.com	$242,400.00	PPC Parking Page
FlashGames.com	$226,950.00	PPC Parking Page
Shopping.eu	$196,803.00	PPC Parking Page

Well, after finalizing the blogs theme and plugins yesterday, I was ready to kick back and relax to an easy day of content writing. That was until I logged in the Admin control panel and was greeted by the news that the new version of WorPress, version 2.6 (A.K.A. “Tyner”), had just been released.

Firstoff, I would like to congratulate the WordPress team on the release and thank them for supplying us with such a great blogging platform. The new release brings with it some nifty new features, my favourite of which are the ability to track changes to a post. That feature alone makes it worth the time it took me to upgrade.

The WordPress team has also released a video detailing some of the changes in 2.6. I have embedded it into this post for your viewing pleasure. There are also loads of improvements to some of the features introduced in version 2.5.

WordPress is not only a great blogging platform, it can be used as a full featured CMS. I use it to power 95% of my sites. Now I better be off as I have a full days work ahead upgrading all my sites to the latest version.

Well for once I think my luck is turning. I’ve been browsing the net looking for an affordable and easy to use video camera when I noticed that my “online idol”, John Chow, is giving not one but two Flip Video recorders away on his blog.

The Flip Video recorder would suit my needs perfectly. I need a camera that is small enough to carry with me everywhere I go and also easy to use. Judging from all the reviews this camera has received all over the net, this seems like an awesome little tech toy.

While you are not going to be ale to shoot a Hollywood blockbuster on it, it still manages to take relatively good quality videos and stores them on its internal memory. The camera has a built in USB connector, so you don’t have to carry around any extra cables when you are out on the road.

John is partnering up with BIC Promo Pens to bring us all this great offer. BIC is probably one of the best known companies in the stationary world. I remember using BIC pens when I was in school. Now the chance to promote you business using brand-able promotional pens from BIC will really be of a benefit to most businesses.

After selling my old Acer notebook to my brother in April, I have been relying on my aging iBook for my day to day computing needs. My wife has also been using the iBook for her university projects. This had led to various issues and time constraints which has had a serious affect on my productivity.

To combat this affect, I decided to invest in a brand new Lenovo ThinkPad about a month ago. The main aim of using the ThinkPad, was to aide my online money making ventures. I think it has had the opposite result though. The switch from OS X to windows XP has been a nightmare for me and the “cherry on top” is that my brand new notebook seems to be dying a slow painful death.

About 2 weeks ago, I noticed that the screen had developed 2 dead pixels. While these were annoying, they didn’t affect me too much. I also noticed that the screen was getting unusually hot. Even though, I wasn’t subjecting the notebook to any really processor or graphics intensive tasks. When I booted up the notebook last night, I noticed that the amount of dead pixels have no multiplied to about 12. This has now become a problem, being in Thailand and not speaking much of the language has led to even more problems. The store I bought it from simply referred me to the Lenovo helpline; they in turn referred me to a service centre consultant who can not speak any English.

Well it looks like my weekend will be spent personally visiting the IBM service centre and using a series of hand gestures to explain the problem. Oh, what joy…