Wotif.com, an online accommodation booking site, has severed ties with Ninemsn Ltd.

This comes as Ninemsn and Sensis recently joined forces. Ninemsn is a portal that brings both Microsoft (MSN) and Channel 9/PBL content -particularly news- together through the one interface. Currently, Ninemsn attracts around 11-million visitors per month.

Wotif.com’s chief operations officer, Robbie Cooke said in a letter to shareholders that “The withdrawal of Wotif.com from the Ninemsn site will have no negative impact upon the Wotif.com’s financial performance.”

Without the partnership (with Ninemsn) Wotif.com is likely to see a decline in visitors. I feel we’ll see advertising attempts increased by Wotif.com in the coming months.

MySpace is one of the first appliances of the Web 2.0 movement. MySpace is an online, social community that allows people to interact with one-another, host a personal profile and add friends to your profile. (This is a basic overview of MySpace as it’s so much more.)

Web 2.0 is the label for the second generation of the internet. Characteristics of Web 2.0 include social networking, user-generated content and open-source (user-editable) software. MySpace is mostly user-driven.

Being an active user of MySpace I can vouch for how addictive and fun it is. To me, the site doesn’t have a hell of a lot you can do, but I have found myself dabbling in it for hours on end. Of the things there are to do there is messaging, commenting and adding friends, searching bands, books and other entertainment, creating social groups, contributing to forums –all types of fun stuff.

Networking with existing friends is one of the main drawcards of MySpace. At one stage I had a group of around 20 “offline” friends added to my personal profile and we would message one-another, comment each others blogs and photos and so on. Now let me share an experience I’ve had on MySpace that I think has direct reverence to a theory known as Power of Context.

You’ll have to wait for part two though.

A greenhouse levy for domestic air-flights may be introduced to curb demand. A surcharge of $30 per ticket may apply.

Author of a study by the Australia Institution “think-tank”, Andrew Macintosh says the basic message of this initiative is for people to “fly less”: to do their part to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

It’s common knowledge that passenger jets emit large amounts of greenhouse gas to the atmosphere and this levy would help achieve reduction targets.

“Unfortunately for aviation, there are no technological options that will allow us to drastically reduce aviation emissions.” says Macintosh. Due to the dense nature of jet-fuel a replacement or substitute is a long way off.

With the introduction of high-speed broadband, video conferencing, voIP and the like. It’s easier for business people to keep in touch without the need to fly. This has positive effects, both financially and environmentally for businesses.

Some references for this article sourced at ABC.

Microsoft’s latest purchase is NASDAQ listed ad company, AQuantive Inc. This news comes soon after Google acquired DoubleClick, also an ad firm.

According to analysts at Goldman Sachs, “[Microsoft buying AQuantive] increases the likelihood that the software maker will also buy Yahoo! Inc.”

Pajago

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.

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

For those of you that don’t know, I run a tramping/trekking/hiking blog called Trampola. Of late, I have been very neglectful of the ol’ gal and haven’t really submitted any unique content. Having said that, I am still getting unique visitors and loads of page views.

Why is this the case? Few posts, non-unique stuff, shoddy layout, overall neglect and people are still liking it?

I must say, the search engines have nicely indexed the site so I am guessing that has something to do with it. I am even making a little revenue from the site.

In other news, I got an email from a gear company yesterday, wanting me to do a product review on the site.

I was considering selling the site due to lack of time and inspiration to carry on, but now I am thinking of getting the design done properly and concentrating some time on her.

Anyways, that’s my babbly for now. I’ll keep people posted on the progress and my decisions.

Pajago

So it seems Cibo Espresso, Adelaide’s premier coffee outlet has intentions to not only expand to the Eastern states of Australia (they already have a few stores on Brisbane) but they want to go big-time in New York City and Rome. Good on them -they’ll make it!

I feel their next step out of Australia should be New Zealand. I find the coffee in New Zealand to be absolutely horrendous. I would have tried at least 10 different coffee places when I was over there and they were all similarly; milky, weak and ick. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Pajago