I'm at JoshLam.com!

Hey, that's cool. You like to keep it oldschool. But that means there won't be anymore new stuff here. If you want any new stuff, head over to Joshlam.com, my new website. See you there!

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Last Chance For Shoemoney X

If you haven't signed up for Shoemoney's free course, you better soon. Shoemoney will be closing the doors to his FREE program soon if you don't hurry. The program might not even open again. 

The reason Shoe is closing the course isn’t because he’s trying to create a bunch of last minute sales (pretty hard to do that when it’s free). Each week’s lesson generate a ton of questions from students. Right now, all the questions pertain to lesson 1 and 2 since those were the ones that have gone out. However, as the course progresses, answering questions will get harder and harder if Shoe keeps the course open. He’ll be fielding questions from students at different points in the course.

Sign up for the FREE 12 week Internet Marketing Course now!

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Shoemoney Motive Contest

Wow. Shoemoney just announced  his new contest with Motive Interactive for June. And instead of just having one way of winning, there are three ways of winning fabulous prizes!  So you have 3x the chances of winning!


For the Publisher who earns $500,000 or above with Motion, the top prize includes 2 First Class Tickets to Las Vegas, 2 nights Stay at the Wynn's Fairway Villa, Bottle Service at Club Tryst and $5,000 Cash. 


If you just tweet and/or blog (like me), you'll still get a chance to win an iPod shuffle every week or a Xbox 360 Elite, just by tweeting or blogging about the contest!



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Palm Pre on June 6th for $200: It's official!

Oh yeah! :) The day you've been waiting for is here. Sprint just announced that the Pre will cost $199.99 after $100 mail-rebate and 2-year contract and will launch on June 6th as rumored. The phone will go on sale nationwide at Sprint stores, Best Buy, Radio Shack, and select Wal-Mart stores. The Pre will be available under Sprint's Everything Data or Business Essentials with Messaging and Data plans. Accessories include the optional $69.99 Touchstone charging dock kit that includes the $49.99 dock and $19.99 Pre back cover. June 6th, that's two days before the WWDC keynote. Poor Apple. Read

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Lack of blog posts

As many dedicated Joshlam.com visitors have noticed, there has been a lack of blog posts.
Just to clear things up: Josh does NOT have super cancer or swine flu, he has this horrible, time consuming thing called "Exams" and therefore cannot provide you (the reader) with high quality blog posts, obviously education first. After exams are over, I guarantee that you will see more blog posts!

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Windows 7 RC Download now available!

It's here. the Windows 7 Release Candidate. Get yours here. It's valid for one year, till June 10th 2010. 

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GoDaddy: Don't buy a .tv domain name, the Island's Sinking!

If I'm reading the pop-up window correctly, domain registrar Godaddy recommends against purchasing .tv domain names because the island of Tuvalu, which the domain represents, is sinking.

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Swine Flu!

Swine Flu was officially confirmed by Chief Executive Donald Tsang at around 8:50.

Person infected was a mexican that came from Mexico to Hong Kong via Shanghai

Joshlam.com urges ALL VIEWERS to PLEASE wear a mask and consult a doctor if you have ANY flu like Symptoms!

More information at: http://www.theswineflufacts.com/

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Ubuntu 9.04 has arrived!

Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) was released a few days ago and I must say that it has certainly improved quite a lot!

One of the first things noticed after installing Ubuntu 9.04 was the MUCH faster bootup time! There wasn't much difference when booted up Ubuntu 9.04 on my desktop (as it already boots up pretty fast anyways) but there was a noticeable difference when booting Ubuntu 9.04 on my laptop. Normally it takes about 1-2 minutes to FULLY boot up (by fully boot up it means everything is done loading and nothing else is being loaded).

Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope)

After Ubuntu 9.04 was installed the boot up time was around 30 seconds, a MAJOR improvement! Openoffice was also updated to 3.0.1, but the one thing that really caught my eye was a "Notification" window. It's pretty neat and useful like when you're expecting an important email yet you have a document to type up the notification window can notify you when the email arrives so you don't need to go back and forth, back and forth thinking "Where is that email?"

Head over to http://tinyurl.com/2cm3o5 and grab a copy of Ubuntu 9.04 while it's still hot!

Instructions on how to upgrade from Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) to Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) will be posted soon! Keep checking joshlam.com

The "Notification" window

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4 Ways To Monetize Twitter!

Twitter is a social network which simply asks the question, “What are you doing?” And you reply in 140 characters or less by mobile texting, instant message, or the web. It okay if you’re still new to this Twitter “thing”, you’re not alone. 26% of the U.S. population don’t even know what Twitter is yet. Hopefully after this post, we’ll change your mind.

RevTwt

Simliar to Magpie below, RevTwt posts Advertisting links into your tweets. Unlike Magpie, the tweet are paid per click, not pay per view. Many people turn off the idea of ads in their timeline, so there maybe a situation where they might unfollow you due to the ads. The rate is from $0.01 to $0.10 per click, while you can cash out to your Paypal account after reaching $20 in your account.

TwittAd

TwittAd uses your Twitter profile page background to place ads. Advertisers use TwittAd's website listing of Twitter users making their profile available to search for relevant Twitter accounts. Twitter users place information about their Tweets, their bidding place, location, topic. If an advertiser finds a suitable Twitter account, he/she will place a order for that Twitter account. The Twitter account user can choose to accept or deny this offer.

The makers of TwittAd also created What's your tweet worth? to allow Twitter users to estimate how much their account is worth. This is a great tool as many people either hope for too much money or undercharge, leaving them short-changed. You can cash out to your PayPal account when your account reaches $30. 

Josh's Advice: Use What's your tweet worth?, but reduce that price by $5, but always have a price below $100 a month. This will increase the chances of you getting an advertiser interested in you as they may think yo

u're undervaluing your profile, but you actually not. Try to get over 100 followers before adding your profile on the listing, as well. This makes the advertiser more attracted to your profile as there is a larger audience.

Magpie

Magpie is another advertising solution for Twitter. Magpie, though, tweets adverts instead of using a Twitter's user background. Many people turn off the idea of ads in their timeline, so there maybe a situation where they might unfollow you due to the ads.
Magpie also pays pretty quite well - with the cost depending on your number of followers - so get more followers first! You can cash out when you reach 50 Euros.

Josh's Tip: Remove the "#magpie" tag option to hide your Magpie tweets, set your Pre-Approval off, and make it your tweet/ad ratio to 1 tweet/1 ad.

Adjix

Unlike the other three, Adjix helps you montize your Twitter account by using those shortening URL's. Those

shortened URL's contain an iFrame which contains ads. The payouts are quite low compared to the two other service I metioned above. I

only suggest using Adjix if you have a large base of followers, otherwise you'll find it quite hard to monetize this service. Personally, I don't actually like this service much.

Do you have any other ideas on how you could monetize Twitter? Comment Below!

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LEAKED Images of Zune HD!

An anonymous leaker sent Engadget these images..

Josh's Verdict: Do you know where all my pocket money is going to go now? It looks so sweet! Microsoft should had launched a touch screen Zune ages ago. But knowing Microsoft, it won't be available in Hong Kong... :(

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I Just Acquired TheUniversityKid.com

Yepp, it's official.

Along with my business partner, Stanley Tang, I'm pleased to announce that we have just acquired the blog TheUniversityKid.com, from Jason Pereira, another great Young Internet Entrepreneur. As this blog is about Young Entrepreneurs, it's obviously a great blog for both Stanley and myself to continue - we're both Young Entrepreneurs ourselves.

No, this doesn't mean I'm going to stop blogging on this blog. But it does mean that I'm going to convert this blog from a "Tech News" blog to something more about myself - a personal journal being a Young Internet Entrepreneur.

I have great ideas for both Josh's Blog and The University Kid, watch out for them! Don't blink otherwise you're miss out!

P.S. The new design is currently being tested :)
P.P.S I've got a free eBook planned, as a gift to all of Josh's Blog readers coming soon! Stay tuned!

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Apple introduces Nehalem-based Xeon Xserves

As expected, Apple on Tuesday announced an updated family of Xserves that deliver an 89 percent improvement in performance per watt and up to twice the overall performance of the previous models by tapping Intel's "Nehalem" Xeon processors and a next generation system architecture.

The 1U rack-optimized servers are available with up to two 2.93 GHz Intel Xeon processors, each with an integrated memory controller with three channels of 1066 MHz DDR3 ECC memory that delivers up to 2.4 times the memory bandwidth while cutting memory latency up to 40 percent. Using high-efficiency power supplies and intelligent thermal management, the new models also deliver a 19 percent reduction in idle power use.

New storage capabilities include a 128GB SSD boot-drive option that requires a fraction of the power of a hard disk and delivers up to 48 times faster random access times without occupying a drive bay, according to Apple. The servers also include three 3.5 inch drive bays that support both 7200 rpm SATA and 15,000 rpm SAS drives and can be configured with up to 3TB of internal storage.

"The Xserve is the best workgroup server for our education, business and creative customers," said David Moody, Apple's vice president of Worldwide Mac Product Marketing. "With up to twice the performance, better power efficiency and an innovative SSD drive option, this is the best Xserve we've ever made."

Two PCI Express 2.0 x16 expansion slots provide wide I/O bandwidth to support the latest high-bandwidth expansion cards. An Xserve RAID card option delivered improved performance of up to 497MB/s in Apple's test and also supports RAID levels 0, 1 and 5 with 512MB of cache without using a valuable PCI Express expansion slot. A 72-hour backup battery is included for enhanced data protection.

Starting at $2,999 and available immediately, every Xserve ships with an unlimited client edition of Mac OS X Leopard Server, offering support for Mac, Linux and Windows clients without the added cost of client-access licenses.

Apple also touts the new Xserve as the latest hardware product in its portfolio geared towards setting new standards for environmentally friendly design. Xserve uses PVC-free internal cables and components, contains no brominated flame retardants and features a power supply with an average energy efficiency of 89 percent.

The Xserve standard configuration, with a suggested retail price of $2,999 (US), includes:

• a single 2.26 GHz Quad-Core Xeon 5500 series processor with 8MB of fully shared L3 cache;
• 3GB of 1066 MHz DDR3 ECC RAM;
• a single 160GB 7200 rpm SATA Apple Drive Module;
• dual Gigabit Ethernet on-board;
• two PCI Express 2.0 x16 expansion slots;
• Bonjour-enabled Lights-Out Management processor and Server Monitor Software;
• internal graphics with Mini DisplayPort output;
• two FireWire 800 and three USB 2.0 ports; and
• an unlimited client license for Mac OS X Server version 10.5 Leopard.

Build-to-order options and accessories for Xserve include: dual 2.26 GHz, 2.66 GHz or 2.93 GHz Intel Xeon processors; 160GB and 1TB 7200 rpm SATA Apple Drive Modules; 450GB 15,000 rpm SAS drives (third party option); internal Xserve RAID card; Gigabit Ethernet, 4Gb Fibre Channel cards and a 750W redundant power supply.

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New RSS address! Please Update!

If you're reading this in a RSS reader, you're cool! No need to change anything else!

But if you're reading this at joshlam.com, please update your RSS reader as we changed our feed address to:
http://feeds2.feedburner.com/joshlam

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New domain, New Look, New Josh's Blog!

In case you haven't noticed, Josh's Blog is now located at:
http://www.joshlam.com

Instead of the previously ugly BlogSpot subdomain joshl2.blogspot.com

Also, I'll like to tell you guys that a new design is coming in a few weeks time! Stay tuned, and if you haven't susccribe to my feed below to keep up with the latest Tech News! I understand that there hasn't been much news for some time, but that's going to change right now.

Cheers,
Josh

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Dell roadmap LEAKED: High-end 720p Mini 10 and Mini 11!

Looks like there's going to be a high end Dell Mini 10 coming, codenamed the Mini 1010 Tiger, with "purpose-built for the internet entertainment and mobility". It's coming with a higher end 1.8GHz Intel Atom Z processor, and a Magnesium Body "for Looks". A 16:9 HD 720p ETE Display and HDMI completes this awesome high end netbook. Other Options include Touch pad with gestures, Integrated GPS and Mobile TV.

Another thing would be the new Mini 11, coming sometime in Q3 in 2009. Check out the slides below. Thanks to netbooknews.de for the leak.

Josh's Verdict: Wow, a netbook with HDMI? No way. I can't wait to see it!

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Second Microsoft Laptop Hunters Ad: Giampaulo

Well, so much for the redhead Lauren. Here comes Giampaulo: a tech savvy guy who calls Macs "so sexy", except in the end, he rejects Macs calling them "all aesthetics and brand with no computing power". Anyways, once again, just like Lauren, he picked an HP with a $1,500 budget. He picked the HP HDX 16 with 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo, NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT graphics, 4GB of RAM, and a 500GB drive, which would cost him $2,499 from Apple. Check out the video here: 



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WebHostingChoice.com: Your Guide to Web Hosting!

I just found a great site I felt like sharing: it's called Web Hosting Choice. They offer an awesome guide to popular web hosting services, which includes reviews and easy to read comparison charts. 

Have you ever wondered with web hosting to choose? With the number of hosting companies these days, it's quite hard to pick the right plan for the right price. Well, Web Hosting Choice makes it easy to pick a web host. On their front page, they show a frequently updated table for the top 10 web hosts, based on a number of criterias. Currently, the Top Web Host is JustHost, with only a cost of $3.95 per month and comes with a free domain, Unlimited Space and Data Transfer. That to me, sounds like a great deal. The  Top 10 web host is shown below:

If you are more specific and picky about each individual web host, you can try their Advance Search feature, which allows you to pick a web host depending on a particular feature a web host, might have, for example, payment by PayPal or support for C++.  This can be seen below. 

Josh's Verdict: Overall, a great site to begin finding your first Web Host! Good Luck!

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Is this the new MacBook mini?

A Russian magazine has just showed a picture of the new, so called MacBook mini, aka Apple's netbook. Of course, I can't read a single bit of Russian so I can't tell you what it says.. but I can read the specs.. .. sounds pretty sweet to me :)
• 10.4" WXGA display.
• 1280 x 768 pixel with LED backlighting.
• NVIDIA MCP79
• Intel Atom Z740 1.83GHz with 1MB L2 cache.
• 2GB DDR3-800.
• NVIDIA GeForce 9400M
• 64GB Solid State Drive.
• Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR, Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/n
• 1 x USB 2.0
• 1 x Mini Display Port
• Battery Li-Ion 5100mA

So how does this differ to the MacBook Air, you ask? Well here's a comparsion shot: 

Josh's Verdict: Some Russian Photoshopper? Maybe. But according to the magazine, it'll be released in 2009 for a cool $899.


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Where's the TECH NEWS??

I'm sorry guys. I'm currently on my Geography field trip studying Rivers and Development. This, obviously, doesn't give me much time to blog, if any time at all. The field trip data collected will then be used for my coursework, which is pretty important as it's 25% of my final grade.

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Twitter's OAuth now in Public Beta!

Sick of malicious apps? Sick of typing in your Twitter passwords to third party apps and not even knowing what they are going to do with it? Welcome to OAuth, the token based authentication system, now available as a public beta for Twitter Apps! This was just announced (via Twitter, naturally) by Alex Payne, Twitter API's lead.

An example of the authentication process is seen above, with TipJoy.

Josh;s Verdict: Simple, no password required. Now we'll just have for other Apps to use this, to reduce abuse.

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WTF: The worst ad for a missile EVER!

Seriously. I'm going to buy a Rafael missile after watching this ad. But on the serious side, Rafael, an Israeli defense company, displayed this ad at Aero India 2009 at Bangalore, trying to increase their business in India. Did it work? Who knows.

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Kevin Rose: Copy/Paste for iPhone!

Kevin Rose on Diggnation just stated that iPhone 3.0 software will have copy and paste, as well as other Palm Pre features. Kevin says that the interface is much like the magnifying glass - you use two fingers to select the text you want, and then you can cut or copy. Oh, by the ways, he said there won't be any background apps support :(





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iPhone 3.0 is coming!

People have started to receive invites to an Apple event on March 17th announcing the iPhone software v3.0. It has been about 8 months since the release of OS 2.0, and 6 months since Apple missed their self-imposed deadline for push notifications for background applications.

Josh's Verdict: Why now? Any copy and paste? And what about apps being able to run in the background?

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How to: Auto Follow and DM, Track keywords on Twitter and more!

If you're new to Twitter, you may want to read this. And even if you're not new to Twitter, and want to automate your tasks on Twitter, read on.


I'm going to introduce Tweetlater - please don't assume about their name and think that all they do is allow to schedule your tweets to a later time. They offer way more than that. Here's what Tweetlater CAN do: 



Send automated thank you notes to new followers, and automatically follow new followers, if you choose to do so. Optionally, select to vet (approve, ignore, block) new followers before we perform your selected automation tasks.

You can set up alerts and track keywords in the public Twitter stream. Tweetlater will monitor the Twitter tweet stream and periodically email you a digest of the tweets that contain those keywords. You can also use this to track your @replies.

Schedule tweets and keep your Twitter stream ticking over with new tweets even when you're not in front of your computer. Publish tweets when your international followers are online and you're asleep.

Save draft tweets, frequently used text snippets and URLs and reuse them in your scheduled tweets. Save tons of time by avoiding repetitive typing.

Grab your own personal 140-character tweet scheduling engine and RSS feed. You can schedule and publish tweets that don't go to Twitter, they go to your personal tweet stream, which is available in RSS, XML and Javascript formats.

Josh's Verdict: All that, and for free too! You can add and manage as many Twitter accounts as you want. Sign up Today, like I did. Tweetlater helped me automate a number of tasks which would take me way too long if I did it manually - After all, I have 10k+ followers!


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GrandCentral is now Google Voice!

Wow, after 2 years, Google finally does something about their acquired company, GrandCentral. This is currently only avilable for previous GrandCentral users. The official announcement is here.

The new application improves the way you use your phone. You can get transcripts of your voicemail (see the video below) and archive and search all of the SMS text messages you send and receive. You can also use the service to make low-priced international calls and easily access Goog-411 directory assistance.



As you may know, GrandCentral offers many great features, including a single number to ring your home, work, and mobile phones, a central voicemail inbox that you could access on the web, and the ability to screen calls by listening in live as callers leave a voicemail. You'll find these features, and more, in the Google Voice preview. Check out the features page for videos and more information on how these features work.

If you need an invite to Google Voice, sign up here.

Josh's Verdict: Is eBay going to quit their Google AdWords campaign just because Google launched a competitive product, i.e. to Skype? Why not? They did that when Google launched Google Checkout, the competitor to PayPal.

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Apple releases iTunes 8.1

As anticipated, Apple on Wednesday evening delivered iTunes 8.1 with performance enhancements, support for CD imports to iTunes Plus, and new Genius features. Separately, the company also updated its Front Row media application.
iTunes 8.1 (65.4 MB) "is now faster and more responsive," Apple says. "You will enjoy noticeable improvements when working with large libraries, browsing the iTunes Store, preparing to sync with iPod or iPhone, and optimizing photos for syncing."

In addition, iTunes 8.1 provides several other improvements and bug fixes, including:

• Supports syncing with iPod shuffle (3rd generation).
• Allows friends to request songs for iTunes DJ.
• Adds Genius sidebar for your Movies and TV Shows.
• Improves performance when downloading iTunes Plus songs.
• Provides AutoFill for manually managed iPods.
• Allows CDs to be imported at the same sound quality as iTunes Plus.
• Includes many accessibility improvements.
• Allows iTunes U and the iTunes Store to be disabled separately using Parental Controls.

iTunes 8.1 also includes a couple of security enhancements.
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Topify: Manage your Twitter followers with email (100 Invites!)

Topify basically does 3 things with your Twitter account within your email, without even going on the Twitter website. If you're the Power Twitter user, this is your serious power tool and time saver.Topify was created by two former TechCrunch France employees, Ouriel Ohayon (@ourielohayon) and Arik Framovitch (@arikfr).

1. First of all, they create better notification emails when some one follows you. The improved email is seen below:

The email now shows Following/Followers stats, their Display Image, Bio, On Twitter Since, Updates Count, their Website and their Latest Update, versus the original Twitter one, which only told you your new follower's name and username (e.g. only @Joshlam and Josh Lam).

2. Awesome. I want to follow this guy who just followed me. Do you need to go all the way to twitter.com, sign-in, go to the guy's profile page, and click follow? Well, with Topify, you don't have to. All you need to do is to reply to the email. Simple, Easy and Smart. Now why didn't Twitter think of this before?

3. How about Direct Messages?
I just followed this really cool guy on Twitter (I know, it's @Joshlam) and he told me I was awesome :)
Topify makes it really easy to reply to Direct Messages. Once again, all you need to do is to reply to the Direct Message notification email.Done.

So, to conclude, Topify may be simple, but has to be a great shortcut, especially if you're a Power Twitter user.

Topify is currently in private beta. So how do you get into the action then? :(
Well, as a lucky Josh's Blog reader, you get EXCLUSIVE invites to Topify. Just click here. 100 Invites only!

If you're on Twitter, follow @Joshlam as well for Josh's Blog updates, exclusive Beta Invites and cool freebies! :)

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