People Search with Spock.com!

Most Trekies will see the website name and immediately assume it has to do with their beloved Sci-Fi TV hero, the pointy-eared extra-intelligent Vulcan character, Mr. Spock. However, Spock.com - A Great Place for Search is in fact an intelligent search engine which helps you find people. Just by typing in a name, email, location or other info you can begin your search. (No stalkers please) You could search for a long lost friend, Brazilian models, your new neighbor, or even Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy).

Spock.com acts not just as a search engine for people, but also an online network where you can add your trusted friends, family and others, or add new connections made from friends on Spock (similar to Myspace's concept). You can modify any existing info Spock has on you as well, to ensure that anyone searching you is not being mislead by the info. The way Spock does its powerful people search is by searching for information on biography pages, social networks, news sites, blogs, and also directories. The Spock community network also has members contributing information to help with the search experience. Registered members of the site can add tags, pictures, and web links or even vote on any existing information to increase its relevance. The contribution system will help greatly in being able to find people online. In fact this tool could become quite useful for tracking down long-lost siblings or even missing children, if it builds to that level of membership.





Above: The Monetizer's search on Spock for Mr. Spock

The Monetizer decided to boldly go for a Mr. Spock search. As you can see, it provides a recent photo, pictures, news, Wikipedia entry, IMDB entry, and several sites that specifically feature Spock. Not to confuse things, but Mr. Spock is not an official spokesperson for Spock.com. It just made logical sense to search for him on their site.

Here's a look at Spock.com's Top 10 Searches (as of 3.31.08)

1.Astronaut Hall of Fame
2.Pensioner
3.Model Actress
4.100 Most Powerful Women
5.Glastonbury Festival
6.Entertainment Law
7.Video Blogger
8.Carrefour
9.Human Rights Activist
10.Champion Surfer

Sky's the limit for searches on this Beta search engine. Spock.com is a powerful site capable of helping people with things such as locating long-lost family members, gathering info on celebrities or historical figures for reports, and just general info assembly on people. Even though it's still in Beta, Spock.com is a great place for search and I recommend adding it to your bookmarked favorites today. You don't have to be a registered member to use the powerful search, but it will help for your own personal info, even marketing yourself, your website(s) and your blog! Just like the big "G" you can download or install a Spock.com browser search bar for your internet browser, making searches even easier to perform.

The Hour the Earth Went Dark

Not quite the entire Earth, but millions of people around the globe observed March 29th's "Earth Hour", a global effort to show how we can have an impact on the climate. The premise was to turn off your lights between 8 and 9 PM during your local time, which in turn would conserve energy in a big, unified way. Many cities participated with hosted events to observe the hour. Not only homes, but restaurants, local businesses and even landmarks turned their lights out as part of the event. According to news reports, even the Queen of Denmark shut lights out to be part of the effort.

Earth Hour was started over 10 years ago by the WWF (not the pro wrestling league, but World Wildlife Fund). According to their site's info page on the effort:

Created by WWF in Sydney, Australia in 2007, Earth Hour has grown from a single event into a global movement. In 2008, millions of people, businesses, governments and civic organizations in nearly 200 cities around the globe will turn out for Earth Hour. More than 35 US cities will participate, including the US flagships--Atlanta, Chicago, Phoenix and San Francisco.

More at WWF's Earth Hour page

Something like this should really be done on a weekly basis in homes just to cut down their energy bills and save money. WWF encouraged people to replace their standard light bulbs with energy-efficient fluorescent bulbs during the blackout hour. It's amazing just how much power and electricity we use on a daily basis, but a little bit of conservation can go a long way. Hopefully this becomes an annual tradition with more and more homes and people participating.

The Day Google Went Dark

Today when I first went to Google, I immediately thought Firefox or my PC had some sort of virus going on. The entire Google frontpage is black today (as seen above), but it's no virus or reason for concern. Today Google has "shut off its lights", and is reminding people across the world to do the same, from 8 to 9 PM during their local time. The act is an effort to conserve energy for that hour. Here's more from Google about today's "Earth Hour":

Google users in the United States will notice today that we "turned the lights out" on the Google.com homepage as a gesture to raise awareness of a worldwide energy conservation effort called Earth Hour. As to why we don't do this permanently - it saves no energy; modern displays use the same amount of power regardless of what they display. However, you can do something to reduce the energy consumption of your home PC by joining the Climate Savers Computing Initiative.

On Saturday, March 29, 2008, Earth Hour invites people around the world to turn off their lights for one hour from 8:00pm to 9:00pm in their local time zone. On this day, cities around the world, including Copenhagen, Chicago, Melbourne, Dubai, and Tel Aviv, will hold events to acknowledge their commitment to energy conservation.

Do your best to observe today's energy conservation from 8 to 9pm, and encourage friends, family and neighbors to go dark also..It will be interesting to see what sorts of effects this has in future reports.

Read more about Earth Hour at Google and Earthhour.org.

Why I Have 8 Blogs to Make Money Online

I was chatting with a friend last night and mentioned I maintain about 8 blogs on various topics that interest me. She was stunned by the number, and I explained it can be a lot of work, with some blogs getting updated more often then the others. There's times where I look at the RSS counts and then feel those people will be let down if there's not recent updates. I tend to update the one that is my "breadwinner" while the others get a little less attention based on how I feel at the moment. So while it may seem overwhelming to have 2 or more blogs, I feel having more is better, and here's why...

In the Rich Dad, Poor Dad series, Robert Kiyosaki discusses the notion of not just having 1 business, but many. The more business assets you own and profit from, the better. While it's great to have just 1 blog going and making you money, why not have several? There's no rule you need to update blogs daily, or advertise heavily on each one. Some you can set up just for search engine traffic and experimenting. You can set up a 10 entry blog, and really make it into a website to catch search traffic.

I think it's a great idea to have at least 1 additional blog, besides your main stay. Make it experimental in nature and use it to test different monetization strategies. It can be more of an "anything goes" blog, where you just go crazy. Consider an entertainment or random humor type blog, where you can let your imagination go crazy. Create your own unique character to pitch products or just give your own take on life in general. You'll see many examples of these blogs over at Entrecard.com.

The good thing about that sort of blog is you can build it up at your own pace, and then profit from paid advertising, Google (or alternatives), try Amazon product sales or even paid review sites. Sky's the limit if you set up one of these sort of blogs, because you can test the implementation of all sorts of money strategies...

Another consideration is with more blogs, you expose yourself to more opportunities, networking and link building. You also can leave some projects behind if they just aren't working, then return to them later. Tapping into your creative thoughts is also one of the keys to becoming rich. It's what many smart industrial age millionaires and billionaires did, and most of today's young dot com generation have done.

You don't need to have 8 blogs, but consider starting up a second blog over the weekend. It doesn't have to take up all your time, start simple and build from there. Make it your "anything goes" project and have fun with it. Sometimes the most creative, wacky and out of the ordinary ideas end up making you the most money!