What happens when Pierce Brosnan, Martin Sheen, Tom Hanks, Cindy Crawford, Olivia Newton-John and Halle Berry all come together in Malibu? They stop an $US800 million ($973.06 million) liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal from being built 22.25km off the coast of Malibu.

BHP submitted the plans to the Californian Government back in 2004. Australia’s Prime Minister, John Howard even went to the US on behalf of BHP to talk-up the plans and the economical benefits with ex-movie star, cum-Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Arnold “The Terminator” Schwarzenegger has terminated the plans as being not environmentally sound.

In my opinion and that of others, the project sounds like a polluter, an eyesore, and a target for terrorist. Good on those celebs for standing up to “the man.”

Pajago

Wow, two high-profile resignations in two days. Yesterday it was Margaret Jackson, chairwoman of Qantas. Today, CEO of Nine and president of the Collingwood football club, Eddie Maguire. Controversial are they both.

Margaret Jackson has been getting plenty of time in the news of late with regards to the Qantas take-over. Analysts have suggested that she step down and finally the pressure has proven too much. Personally, I haven’t followed the stories in the Qantas bids. I wonder, where-to-next for Ms. Jackson.

Eddie Maguire: was he ever worthy or qualified for the CEO position of Nine? He’s entrepreneurial, has run a successful media company, has hosted a couple of successful TV programs -is that CEO material? Perhaps. A few people I know, Collingwood supports no less, think he is top dog. Me, well I just can’t see a man of his on-air talent as the chief of a commercial TV network.

“He says his time as CEO was an “amazing journey” but is “very excited” about his future with the network, which will include production and on-air responsibilities.” (As reported by ABC.)

I really feel that Eddie will be better off in an on-air/production capacity. After all, that’s where he has the most experience. I could see this coming all along.

Finally I did it, I got an Airport Express and I had two first impressions (if that’s possible): aesthetically -crisp; technologically -easy!

Easy is an understatement. I unpacked the unit, had a scan through the manual, realised how much I hate reading manuals, plugged in my cable modem, Airport straight-away picked it up, and ta-dah. I am unsure how to secure my connection at this point but all I was concerned about is getting it up and running.

Signal strength is great. I tried using my iBook around 20-metres from the Airport Express and I was getting all but one bar. Awesome.

Pajago

(will keep ya’ll posted!)

Why do people think marketing is just advertising? Admittedly, marketing is often a misused term.

I just discovered this definition and I like it: “marketing is the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion and distribution of ideas, goods and services to satisfy customers.”

Also, to answer the age-old question of, “how should I promote my X?” -do your research as to who to promote it to before you ever think about an advertising campaign. What good is it asking such a general question when it could be easily answered yourself, by simply knowing your target markets eye-balls and purchasing behaviors?

Pajago

Tonight, I really secured value in a transaction I made.

Indian food was on the cards for dinner so a local placed was called as; 1) it’s only a 10-minute walk away, 2) the food is top-notch, 3) well-priced and 4) the service is extremely personal and friendly.

These variables play on the value-exchange-model theory of physical, psychological and economical contribution vs. outcome. I look at value-exchange as being a simple study of return-on-investment (ROI.)

What really cements value-achieved for me, is making a comparison to another Indian take-away in my area -this hits it home. This other take-away requires a longer walk, the food is comparable, as is the price, but the customer service is far inferior.

This shows that the end product and price really had little bearing on my decision. Instead, physical and psychological elements took precedence.

Now I think back on it, the physical aspect is quite immaterial as I’d go back solely on the customer service face.

Excuse this random post. Just had a moment of inspiration!

Pajago

BigPond is Australia’s first major corporation to set-up shop on Second Life. Already, many major International companies are using it as a promotional tool so I am sure BigPond has the same objective in sight with it’s island, The Pond.

Although BigPond is the first major Australian company to launch a Second Life base, this is a growing trend globally, sparked by entrances from Dell, Toyota, Adidas, IBM, and Intel.

Second Life is a virtual world developed by Linden Lab in California. Initially, a client-program is downloaded to the users PC, then an “avatar” is created with a name, personality and other characteristics, to interact with others in the world. Your avatar can shop, spend Linden dollars, watch a movie, speak to others -all sorts of stuff.

BigPond didn’t make a terribly large investment to affiliate with Second Life but customers will see value in it, being part of their unmetred content network.

Some of BigPond’s support staff would help customers inside Second Life as part of their day-to-day roles, but BigPond had not yet committed staff to police it full-time.

Source: SMH

Pajago

Ok, let’s discuss how this blog is traveling so far on this, it’s 9th day of life.

I have posted on average 2-posts per day -we are up to 20 at the moment. On average the site is getting 20-unique visitors per day. In actual fact, some days it’s gets 10-12 then others it spikes to 30-40. Highest day so far got me 73-unique visitors. What a lovely day!  Google has indexed 10-pages at this stage. I can’t wait till that starts to grow, along with backlinks. Overall, having a good time writing here and watching the stats grow.

Pajago

When it comes to bookmarking sites I am so disorganised. I start out with cleverly titled folders and every intention to store each bookmark in an orderly fashion. Two days later, it’s a shambles again. So in this post I will plug a few of my favourite internet business blogs and it’ll also act as a means of me bookmarking these sites -some more.

Net Business Blog
Matt Coddington launched this blog at the start of 2007. Since then it’s grown and grown and gone from strength to strength. What I really like about Matt’s site is his case study on the rock’n'roll music blog he’s recently launched. Very informative and inspiring. (Stay tuned as i’ll be launching a new blog as a case study soon, myself!)

Entrepreneurs Journey
What can I say: Yaro Starak is a gun. I don’t know of a site more rich in information about internet business and marketing than his blog, Entrepreneurs Journey. Constantly, he fills us in on his success and progress with BetterEdit and many of his other endeavors. A must see!

College-Startup
College student, Ben Bleikamp’s blog intends to teach students how they can make money on the internet from their dorm-room. He should know; that’s what he’s done. I really enjoyed the article on 5 Steps To Jump-start Your Website.

Have Laptop, Will Travel
This blog isn’t really about internet business but it’ll get a mention as one of my favourite technology blogs. Always seems to feature something exciting. Now that I have “marked it” here I will hopefully check it more often.

Eli Burfords Blog
I stumbled across Eli’s blog whilst looking at an auction for a Photoshop Tutorial site he was selling. Again, not so much about internet business; more web development. He’s very talented, especially for his age.

That’ll do me for now.

Pajago

MAKING a name for your business in a national market is never easy. It’s even harder when you’re a small start-up company based at Ballarat in regional Victoria.

Sometimes a lateral approach to the market can help - such as providing a free service to get your name out there and get potential paying customers hooked.

That small start-up, Imaging Associates, decided that a web 2.0 tool could help give them that edge. Imaging Associates provides a specialist service and software to help professional digital photographers calibrate their computer systems.

Read full article. 

Regulation in the Australian telecommunications environment is currently in disarray. It seems as though it’s growing more and more unbalanced and immoral. I support Telstra through-and-though, simply because I see what they are trying to do, as the right thing.

Telstra announced today, in newspapers across the country, that it has $4.1-billion in its hands to build the FTTN network which will produce high-speed broadband between 24-50MBPS. Telstra will not invest until there is regulation in place to stop competitors pinching it at below cost, like it already does with the ADSL network. Is it wrong to protect the shareholders funds?

Sol Trujillo, CEO recently said to the media: “We have competitors and their companies, in some cases, are bigger than Telstra but they don’t invest capital inside this country. They are foreign owned and they like riding on the investment back of Telstra shareholders.”

Why should these companies be given that ability through poor regulation? Simply, the likes of Optus Singtel absolutely have the finances to invest in a network like FTTN but they choose not to as they prefer to piggy-back Telstra’s efforts. And the Government allows this some how?

Consumers tend to have a sour view of Telstra. Thinking Telstra is a money-hungry, monopoly that doesn’t give innocent “little” companies like Optus a chance to compete. How ridiculous. It’s about time they start spending some of their own revenue on technology. I guess it’s the socialist view of Australians.

The only reason why the Next G network, for instance, seems monopolistic is because no other provider has challenged it. As Sol has also said: “success is about: “who can out-innovate, who can out-deliver, who can out-create partnerships and relationships and bring new services to market”. Telstra is encouraging competition, and why not?

Something else in the telco industry that makes my blood boil at the moment is that Optus advertisement that compares Optus’ $49 3G cap-plan to not even a comparable plan by Telstra. A look at the Telstra website will reveal that Telstra does, in fact have an offering very similar to that of Optus. The advertisement uses a $40 non-cap plan, where Telstra actually has a $49 cap-plan. This is a sign of Optus being afraid of fair competition. Why mislead? Are they so insecure that they have to mislead people into buying their product? talk about lack of integrity. How must someone that’s signed-up with Optus, to that understanding feel.

Pajago