to those of you who dont know Ashton, wow ur even more anti-MTV than i am.  Hes the dude behind the hit series Punkd. Hes acted in a couple other shows but i like him best there.  Anyway so in his considerable spare time, Ashton came up with a concept of 3 teenage chicks yabbering about celebrities and how their farts smell good (yes. “I heard all celebrities farts smell good”).

Check it out…

You’ll either hate it or love it. I cant stand it (friggin blahgirls) but I cant stop talking about it and quoting shit from it (all celebrity farts smell good WTF???).  Anyway, to all my readers more concerned about the business aspect of things, READ ON! i promise no more quotes. ha ha ha

Blahgirls is by Kalalyst Media, a company owned and operated by Ashton and Jason Goldberg. The company itself has been producing shows such as “beauty and the geek”, “punkd” and movies like the “butterfly effect”. The business model behind blahgirls is placement advertising within the videos. If you see Mr. Fiddy Cent pop up holding a bottle of colored water, thats it. That way the video can be embedded off-site/go viral/whatever and still be driving revenue.

Technorati recently published part 1 out of 5 of their annual “state of the blogosphere”. here’s the higlight of it all, there is a glimmer of hope in the dark clouds (for me at least) because Technorati says 

“Blogs are Profitable!”

“The majority of bloggers we surveyed currently have advertising on their blogs. Among those with advertising, the mean annual investment in their blog is $1,800, but it’s paying off. The mean annual revenue is $6,000 with $75K+ in revenue for those with 100,000 or more unique visitors per month. Note: median investment and revenue (which is listed below) is significantly lower. They are also earning CPMs.”

Remember that these include both professional and corporate blogs, the buggers who actually do some work instead of just re-writing an already written piece (waitaminute thats me). I have no ads but a big blue colored survey form asking if i’m a dude or babe (im sure all of you know what that is).

*Graphic from Technorati

Nevermind, lets keep going. Asian bloggers make up only a small piece of the pie. is it possible that thats because the chinese/jap/korean/communities are not indexed using technorati? Can someone confirm this?
ANyway, based on the survey they conducted on ASIAN bloggers, here are some interesting facts.

We are Single, Male, aged between 18-34, and we are well educated College Grads

Ha ha.. Throw in tall, dark & handsome and it sounds like stats from a dating site to me. At least now girls know where all the “good” men are hiding - in Starbucks hunched over a mochacino.  On average, we get more unique pageviews than our American and European counterparts AND we are more inclined to publish ads and make more money! 

*Graphic from Technorati

Thats pretty much all that interested me, i’ll give my “warped” opinions again once the other parts are released. Meanwhile if you like, visit Technorati to read the full article:
http://www.technorati.com/blogging/state-of-the-blogosphere/who-are-the-bloggers/

Actually i think this app is really meant for more casual users. I’m sure the maniacs and geeks want full featured software. Update - after testing out the photo displaying, i take back what i said, i think this app is great for professional photographers who want to show off a portfolio and dont want people ripping off your pictures. As a reference check out how my gallery is displayed (I disabled downloads, but there is a feature to enable it) - http://thamkengyew.photoshop.com/

Anyway yes adobe photoshop is FREE and ONLINE (web based). 

What i like about it (photo-editing aside), is this little piece of software that you can download as a desktop application and then queue up your images to be uploaded to photoshop, especially when your internet line is shaky. I HATE it when my 50 pictures stops at 20-something then i have to figure out which image it stopped at, regroup all the files etc.  So its kinda like flickr with advanced photo-editing. 

It is a very flash intensive site but it loads fast enough (i’m testing this out during peak work-hours). Having tried the app, I have to say the user interface and flow isnt intuitive and smooth. I have to read each and every button to figure out where i want to go. 

The photo editing options are very advanced and I dont know enough to evaluate it properly but heres a screen shot.

PROs - photo uploading is great. very advanced photo editing options for a web app. Great gallery display and navigation, definitely beats flickr, multiply. 

CONs - lousy user interface. really lousy. 

So if you like online photo editing, signup

What am i introducing today? (Ha ha I should get paid to do reviews like this…)
Branddoozie is a startup that allows YOU the business owner to create your marketing collateral easily and for FREE.

Firstly, you can sign up here. I believe there is a “Try it now” option but I already tested the service for you and i can vouch for it . So using BrandDoozie you can create Business Cards, Marketing Flyers, Sales Documents, Post Cards and Letter Heads.

The screenshot below shows me editing my sales document & my business card.

All the TEXT that you see is editable, enter your business/company/personal info as you see fit. All the graphics are preconfigured for you (this is the part i love) because frankly most of us werent given the talent and should never be allowed to fiddle with graphic designs. Pick themes for your industry, and you can pick certain color schemes, pick the fonts and text sizes you think are appropriate and the rest is magically generated by Brand Doozie.

After you are satisfied with your work, then download your documents in pdf format. It’s almost 99% certain that you will end up with some looking very professional and easy on the eyes. It’s great for self-employed, small to mid sized businesses (SMEs). No more ugly business cards and horrendous 90s era disco light marketing documents. If you want to see what mine look like before trying brand doozie out, download them here. One warning though, the site is very heavy on flash, and depending on your broadband bandwidth, you might time out or get pissed off, whichever occurs first.

1. business-card-1

2. sales-sheet-sample

What is this Tell-A-Friend thing?
It’s a little widget for your blog or website so that you can basically get your loyal readers to spread the word about your particular article or product, via MSN, Facebook, and maybe create a viral effect (tho i seriously think that a viral affect has alot more to do with the product than the medium of transfer). Anyway its really easy to implement (i’ve started using it).
Update: It’s not entirely compatible with Google Chrome 

Download your own “Tell-a-friend” - here. 
You can sign up and get the code in less than 5 minutes. If you’re a wordpress user like me, you can just download the plugin and dont need to do any code embedding (i’m terrible with code). 

Fitbit is a new startup that developed a device to keep track of your lifestyle. i.e. Calories you burn each day walking the dog, jogging, sitting infront of the computer blogging, etc. This is what the fitbit looks like. 

Its small enough that you can wear it around the entire day. and at the end of the day, upload that information to their website @ fitbit.com and get all that information summarize. You can also compare your daily stats with your friends (yes its a social network), to get some sort of friendly & healthy competition going! Fitbit retails for about $99, which is really kinda affordable. The web service is free with any fitbit purchase but i think they are planning to charge for a premium subscription model.
Here is a video of how the fitbit technology works, and a Q&A session with founder James Park.

So i’m testing out some CHAT/IM for this blog. 

1. Plugoo is real time chat from your blog/website to your IM. 3 easy steps

a) Sign up & Fill out your profile
b) Login to your account and go to > my widget to customize the look& feel (mine is default)
c) embed the code

It’s free at first but when you want to let multiple users chat with you, then u gotta pay. Thats the only part that sucks. Here is what plugoo will look like (this is fully functional by the way, feel free to msg me)
Continue reading ‘embedding real time chat/IM into your blog - Meebome, Plugoo, Gabbly’

What do i mean by cartoonizing? Pictures speak a thousand words.

Its kinda cool cause its not entirely a cartoon but actually you. It’ll probably work very well for avatars in forums/blog comment postings. If anyone cartoonizes their dog or cat, let me take a look. ha ha.

Anyway, check out befunky

Theres some other stuff in there as well such as cartoonizing an entire video. I haven’t had time to play yet. maybe another post another time.