I’ve always been on the lookout for the perfect start page.  I wanted something with links to everything that I do online, plus some extras like various feeds, news, my email, etc.  I tried iGoogle, but it didn’t really work for me, so eventually I settled on the simple Google search page as my home page, and then played around with the bookmark feature inFirefox that allows me to open various websites in tabs, with one click.

Until someone (sorry, can’t remember who) suggested I try Pageflakes.  It works like  dream, loads superfast, and gives me everything I want on one page, first thing in the morning!

It is a breeze to set up, easy to customize and works for me!

One of my favourite magazines, Business 2.0 is running a fascinating story on domain moguls. I have always known that there is money to be made in domain purchase and reselling, but the article blows my mind.

So how do domains make you money? Three ways:
1. They point to a revenue generating, legitimate website
2. They point to a web page filled with Adsense ads from Google (or other ad network). Every time anyone clicks on the ad, you make money
3. You can sell them on to someone who wants them for 1. or 2. above

So how much money is made? A lot.

Kevin Ham is the guy who is profiled in the Business 2.0 article., He trained as a doctor, but quickly figured out where the real money is. He owns 300 000 domains, and makes about $70 million a year.

Him and Cameroon. Cameroon? Yep. It turns out that the country extension for domains for Cameroon is .cm, which just happens to be a common typo for those of us who want to type .com. And now, thanks to Ham, if you type almost anything dot cm, you get taken to an ad page. Kaching, as they say. He shares his profits with Cameroon.

The article outlines his whole story and method – it’s a good read.

And you will be amazed at how much some domains actually cost. I bought this one (of relevance.com) for about $9, But Ham paid $171,250 for hoteldeals.com and $350,000 for greeting.com. Nice.

Personally, I think the days of making money from ad pages is pretty numbered. The trick for these domain owners is to get the “fake” page to feature high on search engine results by fooling the search engines into thinking that the page is full of relevant info. But Google is smart, of course, and is already knocking a lot of them off the front page. As the technology and algorithms improve and suss out the fake pages, the domain owners will have to rely more and more on actual typos to get people to visit their pages.

As a follow-up to my post on South Africa’s Top Bloggers, as ranked by Technorati, I whipped out my calculator, and did some number crunching.

There are approximately 16 million blogs tracked by Technorati.

I’ve been told that there are about 30 000 active blogs in South Africa.

That means we represent about 0.002 % of all blogs.

As I pointed out in my post, we also represent only 0.00045% of the Top 100,000 ranked posts on Technorati.

That means that we should have FIVE times as many Top 100,000 blogs as we do right now.

Of course:

1. I probably have not got a full list of our Top Blogs. (Help me update it by leaving a comment below if you know of a blog that is in the 100 000 rank on Technorati)

2. The audience ie. blog readers is also skewed away from South Africa, and if the theory that there are more people who read blog than people who blog, this would also affect South Africa.

But still.

Any comments?

Eric Edelstein is hosting the next OpenCoffee in Cape Town tomorrow, at 6pm at the Extreme Hotel.
He has changed the format slightly, and there will now be a 10 minute presentation by Henk Kleynhans from Skyrove.

Eric has done a great job getting the ball rolling for OpenCoffee in Cape Town, and the meet up between investors, and web entrepreneurs has already gotten some sweet results. If you are a player in the web world, and if you are hoping to make money of it (even if only one day!), or are looking to meet fellow colleagues in the space, go on over and sign up.

Eric has also set up a Facebook group for OpenCoffee, if you are interested. There are over 250 members, so you are bound to be in good company!

For those of you in Jo’burg who are interested in attending our next OpenCoffee, please sign up here.

Once every two months or so, I look at my inbox, see which emails in my inbox I have not opened, and unsubscribe from these newsletters. And every time I do this, I am amazed at the dance I have to go through to complete the process.

Take Barnesandnoble.com

1. They send me a newsletter, for which I probably signed up at some point.

2. They tell me that to unsubscribe, I must click “here”, log in , and change my prefernces.

3. I am already worried, because I know I do not know my password to enable me to log in. So I have to request it. It comes.

4. I log in, go to my preferences, and have to log in AGAIN with my email address. I do that.

5. IAM TOLD AN EMAIL WILL BE SENT TO ME WITH A LINK TO MANAGE MY PREFERENCES!!!!!

6. I wait.

7. And wait.

8. And wait some more.

9. No email. No unsubscribe completed. I KNOW it wasn’t that difficult to subscribe to the bloody thing.

10. Never buying a book from them again!

By the way, did you know (as I have now been told) that Barnes and Noble offers

FREE product Alerts and Newsletters

Wow. Free? Really? Free info that will allow me to buy books from you? Wow? Free? You’re the BEST!

According to a somewhat outdated copy of Fast Company that I recently managed to get my hands on, active Internet users spend 9.1 hours less watching TV than those who do not or choose not to have Internet access.

That got me thinking.  I never surf the Tv box.  I always know exactly what I want to watch, and when.  I also have a PVR decoder, so now I can manage my TV time even better.  This is  what my TV-watch list looks like:

Monday: ER or Gray’s Anatomy

Tuesday: Prison Break (which I record, and haven’t watched one episode of this season yet!)

Wednesday: Studio 60 (wow!)

Thursday: Men in Trees, Desperate Housewives and CSI (which I also tape but have not watched this season)

Saturday: Without a trace

In between: Larry King and Oprah.

Total estimated time: about 7 hours per week. I fast forward all commercials and boring bits, which saves A LOT of time.  I can usually fit 2 or 2.5 episodes into an hour.

How much time do I spend in front of the computer OUTSIDE of a 9-5 work day? At least 3 hours per day, seven days a week.  I guess if I wasn’t typing/surfing I’d be watching TV or reading.  But I certainly see TV as entertainment - not a source of news, documentaries etc.  I know how to get that faster, better and more accurately using my Mac.

On the other hand, I rarely use my Mac for entertainment.  I never visit YouTube etc since  time just disappears when I do.

How much time do you spend on TV every week? How much time do you spend on your computer, working? And playing?

Please help spread the word!

I am organizing an OpenCoffee meeting in Joburg for this Thursday evening, at the Hilton Hotel coffee lounge. If you are an entrepreneur with a start up (preferably something to do with the Internet) please consider attending. You can sign up here.

The OpenCoffee movement was started in London by Saul Klein to, :

encourage entrepreneurs, developers and investors to organise real-world informal meetups to chat, network and grow

As Saul Klein said in his blog that launched the movement on Feb 23, 2007:

This is an attempt to establish recognized, open and regular meeting places where entrepreneurs can meet with investors (and anyone else who fancies coming along) in a totally informal setting.

The key is a regular place and a regular time - it’s not important who comes along, some days it might be no one - just that people know if they want to meet, this is the time and this is the place.

We want to create some density for people — a few places where people know they can meet or bump into others.

It is now run globally at over 55 locations, and usually happens on the 3rd Thursday of the month. A past participant has described it as :

“Imagine it more as a big open lounge where people come and go, talk to others in their industry, showcase demo’s of what they are working on, save the world, and ultimately maybe get some work done and run a few small meetings.”

Make no mistake - this is a social event. No name tags, no presentations. Come, order some coffee and chat to others who also play in this crazy Internet world. Attendance is free - you only pay for your drinks.

Hopefully, as the event grows, we will attract angel investors and the likes, to make it even more appealing.

If you are working on a new website or project, bring it along and show the rest of us. Get some feedback.

And, just for fun, I am going to feature a full article on the OpenCoffee concept in my upcoming magazine, Internet Guide. So this is a great opportunity to get yourself in the mag, and let the world know what you are up to.

Please sign up, and see you there!

I think I have finally finalised my blogging platform.

I started out on Typepad, which was a heat of the moment kind of action, since I really wanted to try out this blogging trend.

Then I moved the blog to my domain name, www.evedmochowska.com. But since it is impossiblr to spell, pronounce or remember (unless you are me) I realised that that wasn’t the best move.

So I registered the name of the blog as its own domain (it was available!), www.ofrelevance.com and now I think I have settled.

Of course, I realise that I have probably lost some subscribers due to all this havoc, and certainly because I haven’t really been blogging. But that will now change. Trust me. And I promise, no more change.

(I realise that feedburner allows you to keep subscribers when you change hosts, but I made some fundamental errors when I first signed up, so it didn’t work for me).