I’ve been writing a lot of posts about Japan since I started this blog and not enough about English teaching or making money on the internet. Today, I’ll focus on the internet side of things.
The first thing I do every day is check my email (read ‘delete spam’) and then I log straight into my personalized Google homepage to check my favorite blogs. I’m still surprised so few people I meet in my daily life subscribe to blogs. There are so many to choose from that it’s easy to find people with the same interests as you.
One of my favorites is Steve Pavlina’s Personal Development for Smart People blog. This site is full of motivation and he covers so many topics, including time management, money and problem solving. I first stumbled across his site when he wrote 10 Reasons You Should Never Get a Job – an absolute classic! Incidentally, Steve has just launched his Forums section and it has attracted over 1000 members in just the first three days!
Another of my favorite blogs is John Chow dot Com – The Miscellaneous Ramblings of a Dot Com Mogul. John writes posts so often it’s hard to keep up, and I often sacrifice breakfast in order to read all his latest news. As the title of his blog suggests, he talks about the latest goings-on in the internet world – topics such as online marketing, blogging, and …erm, Really Expensive Burgers! If you have your own website and are interested in earning dollars from advertising or simply promoting your blog, I highly recommend John’s blog. The post that first brought me to his site was The Internet’s Biggest Google Whores which made a daring attempt to list the top 8 Google Adsense earners.
For ESL humor, you don’t have to look any further than Az’s GaijinSmash.net. Az writes about his experiences teaching English in Japanese public schools, and they are so funny you’ll wet yourself.
I guess those are my three favorite blogs. I also subscribe to web feeds from tech forums such as Digital Point, the social bookmarking sites del.icio.us and digg, and of course my favorite news sites.
What I like most about web feeds is that the news you want comes to you. You don’t have to go looking for it, or have to sit through news that doesn’t interest you. Really, once you’ve signed up to a bunch of news sites, you’ll suffer from information overload! I often find myself knowing more about Japanese news than my students because I read it on the web before they see it on the evening news!
If you don’t yet subscribe to web feeds, you are missing out! Find out more about web feeds on Wikipedia. Then come back and subscribe to this blog!
If you like, you can find me on Twitter at @nick_ramsay. I'd love to hear from you!