Taiwan

Buzz RadioTime – a little lunchtime listening treat

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It’s rare these days that ‘big media’ does much right, but this website is one such effort… I hope it stays around… What is it? Well, in these days of online radio, it’s not difficult to start an online radio station effort, and there are literally THOUSANDS. Indeed, tradtional radio has largely joined the crowd of online stations, but until RadioTime, there were few places to easily access all the traditional radio stations…

radiotime

Simply, it’s a website that brings traditional radio to the web. You can tune in and listen to any of the stations, and when you tune in, one of several integrated media players opens in a small popup window. I was quite excited about this, because while online radio stations really do complement traditional radio, there are an awful lot of places where there are no equivalents: the music selection is narrower on RadioTime, but there’s a lot more variety of news, sports and more ‘traditional’ fare than on online stations. You can also select stations by geography, say New York City or London. Try it… so if you want to hear what Dublin sounds like in the morning or Taipei sounds like late at night!

About RadioTime

RadioTime is a privately-held Dallas-based company focused on making traditional over-the-air radio as available as possible online, through your PC and in other devices since 2002. It supports a free, personalized website, a comprehensive guide to radio, membership account services, and desktop software and hardware packages to allow consumers to listen where and when they want.

Are you a credit card slave? Part 4

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In this series, I’m looking at our changing attitudes to money, and answer the simple question: are we all credit card slaves now? Part 1 was entitled Where did our attitudes to money come from?. Part 2 is Credit Cards, Bank Accounts and Salaries. Part 3 was The Credit Card Cascade and the Madness of Spending. This is the fourth installment in this week’s series.

What is a credit card slave?

In Taiwan, a few years ago, many banks started promoting a new form of credit loan that was a cross between a credit card and a traditional bank loan. After being approved, consumers were issued with ATM cards that could be used to withdraw cash at machines around the world; of course, the ATMs attracted fees, and the interest rates were high. Slowly, the banks pitches become more and more aggressive and the advertisements more and more outrageous. One bank called in Chinese ‘Wan Tai Bank’ or Cosmos Bank ran such a successful ad campaign that they become almost a household name in Taiwan. The cards were called George and Mary…

g&m

But many borrowers were unable to pay back the loans they had made, and the interest rates (now regulated) stood at more than 18% apr. Prior to regulation, rates had been much higher, and newspapers reported many stories of individuals and families killing themselves and their offspring as a result of their debts. There are quite a few stories in the Taipei Times about this issue:

In fact, an article last year cited over 3,000,000 credit card slaves (about 1 in 8 of the population!), and more than 400,000 Taiwanese have been declared bankrupt because they are unable to clear their credit card debts. (cited: The Asian Pacific Post Newspaper)

Slavery is defined by Wikipedia as: “Slavery is a social-economic system under which certain persons — known as slaves — are deprived of personal freedom and compelled to perform labour or services. “

While the definition is rather narrower than would warrant, it is possible to characterize credit card debt as a form of slavery, simply because the high interest rates deprive customers of their personal freedom as they struggle to pay off their debts.

To some ‘credit card slaves’, it seems they are indentured to the financing companies, and some financing companies don’t hesitate to employ less than orthodox means to ensure repayment. However, to suggest that credit card debt is a form of slavery is to underestimate one important factor: it is the borrower who incurred this debt, in the first place. The compounding factor of course is the high level of interest and penalties that are imposed subsequently on the borrower.

While this may depress many creditors who stare at the pile of mounting debts, this thought should encourage because if it’s something that was done by you, then it can be fixed, too, no matter the scale of the challenge.

Thanksgiving, Themes, and Thoughts: Friday Round Up

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Hah! Back for Thanksgiving Friday! Sorry to say I didn’t celebrate Thanksgiving… In Taiwan, it’s not a holiday, and in the UK Thanksgiving is much earlier!

Google BUYS Content – hardly!

Google comes under the microscope in an article in BusinessWeek. Unfortunately, the writer doesn’t seem to understand the difference between AdWords and AdSense. Anyway, here’s my comment on the story, just in case BW doesn’t publish it.

It seems your author doesn’t understand that Adsense and Adwords are two sides of the SAME coin… Adwords are purchased by advertisers on (amongst other avenues) publishers’ websites (who use Adsense). Unfortunately, with ctr rates dropping with recent changes, and increasing dissatisfaction over being NOT paid for impressions, etc.. Many smaller publishers and blog owners are removing Adsense altogether. It’s likely to be a trend that continues, too. Esp. as Google is now behaving more like a Gorilla towards those smaller publishers and bloggers who try to find alternative ways to finance their bloggings. heck, most bloggers would starve if they had to rely on Adsense earnings….

Does your blog have a TOS?

Many blogs just don’t. Mine doesn’t. But I’m increasingly coming to the conclusion that I should… I think the TOS should include Privacy issues, IP issues, Commenting Policy, Copyright Issues, … and what else? What else would you include? Comment some ideas for me. I do have a Disclosure Policy, but that may no longer be enough… Here’s WordPress.com’s TOS.

Advertising: Where can you see InvestorBlogger dot Com?

InvestorBlogger’s advertising budget hasn’t been particularly great. In fact, in the last three months, I’ve spent the grand total of $85.00 on advertising on Michael Kwan’s site, on CashQuests, and now on JohnCow’s site.

These sites are all excellent for different reasons: Michael Kwan’s review was really pointed and detailed, and helped my simplify the design (I admit the current theme looks ugly!), but I’m still looking for a theme that I can make UNIQUE; CashQuests has generated 50 visits for my site from the link there, that’s 30c per view, though the bounce rate has been quite high; and now, I’m trying out John Cow’s website by having a link there (it’s more expensive than CashQuests, but we’ll see…).

I am reluctant to try for AdWords with this site, simply because there’s already quite a lot of competition. I think my money would be better spent on other advertising routes.

A New Theme…

After the theme emergency last month, when MistyLook simply stopped working, and upgrade didn’t work either, I had to hastily adopt this rather plain looking theme. I’ve been looking at Magazine/Newspaper type themes recently, as this is how my blog seems to be going… Over the weekend, I’ll be trying a theme a day… Let me know in the comments if you like the theme or not. Here are a couple of interest from JustinTadlock who is teaching in Korea at the moment…

Happy Holiday, and remember to give thanks for all the good things you have, and once you start to list them, you’ll find that there is a lot!