Newsbites

Buzz: Trusted Tours & Attractions in San Francisco- Sign up and win an iPod!

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It was January 1998, my wife and I had just moved house to Tienmou in Taipei, and despite everything being a mess, we still decided to take a much delayed (and much needed) honeymoon to Hawaii, San Francisco and Northern California.

san francisco

I do have some of the pictures I took then, but it’s difficult to find them from those Geocities HomePage days! I’ll be adding a few from those days if I can find them! So when I had a chance today to write this post about San Francisco, I grabbed it!

goldengate

Trusted Tours and Attractions is the name of the company seeking this ‘buzz’ and, of course, from the name, you can tell it’s a tour company offering quality tours and tickets to attractions in leading cities in the United States of America. Naturally, these packages offer special pricing for visitors.

sf-map

During our time we took several wonderful trips, some of which are on offer from Trusted Tours and Attractions: including San Francisco City Tour, Napa Valley Wine Tour, San Francisco Museums and Galleries, and the trip to Chinatown.

sf-cablecar

We managed to pack a lot of excitement into just those six days. We visited the pier, the Golden Gate Bridge, and a bunch of other places that you’d recognize from movies…! I was quite surprised at the time by how many places I already recognised! San Francisco has to be one of the most photographed cities in the world!

skyline

As part of the promotion of its service, Trusted Tours and Attractions is announcing a competition for visitors to sign up to their Trusted Travel eNewsletter, and they’ll be giving away an iPod Nano. You have to sign up before December 31st, 2007. I’m already on it myself!

 

AGLOCO is over: Cash Over, Game Over

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Earlier this year, CashQuests ran a story on why Agloco wouldn’t ever work… and it’s looking like she might have been right.

I just received this email in my mailbox in the last few minutes,…

Dear kenneth,

We would like to update you on the status of AGLOCO’s operations. We continue to believe in the AGLOCO concept, but our revenue is currently not sufficient to give Members a meaningful distribution. And though there are increases in membership, the resulting revenue is not enough to support operating costs. As a development team we are unable to continue to use our savings to fund the operations. If any Member would like to pursue continuing the operations of AGLOCO, you may contact us at agloco1@live.com .

We would like to thank every Member for supporting our effort to bring a piece of the Internet directly to the user. We hope that we can find a way to keep the operations going.

My heartfelt sympathies go with the development, as they have surely invested a lot of time, energy and money in the project, but it looks like it has been running out of time, since earlier this month. No reaction from John Chow at this time, since he was one of the biggest supporters… but let’s see.

I just hope that their supporters didn’t waste too much money and time themselves… I promoted it for a little while, but it wasn’t worth the effort, and I never liked the Ad-bar so I removed after just a few hours… I’ll be following this story up soon.

Friday’s Reading: Four Good Stories for the Weekend

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Great Investment Advice

This article in San Francisco Magazine called “The Best Investment Advice You’ll Never Get” describes how Index Investing started off, it’s a wonderful insight into the world of mutual funds, fees, and passive investing.

San Francisco magazine

The best investment advice you’ll never get – page 1 of 3 For 35 years, Bay Area finance revolutionaries have been pushing a personal investing strategy that brokers despise and hope you ignore. The story of a rebellion that’s slowly but surely putting money into the pockets of millions of Americans, winning powerful converts, and making money managers from California Street to Wall Street. By Mark Dowie

Unfortunately for this writer, this story is a story that has already happened… So can you still make money out of this? That’s an interesting question because if everyone starts chasing the mean, then what will the ‘mean’ really mean? Will greater value be found in ‘managed’ funds again? …

Are you READY to retire?

This article on Extreme Retirement,

Could retirement before you’re even eligible to join AARP be the quintessential impossible dream? Not if you’re consistently disciplined, focused, driven and don’t give a hoot about what the Joneses think of that beat-up Chevy in the driveway, say experts. Whether you work to live or live to work is a question increasingly answered in favor of living by couples who have opted out of the daily grind before the traditional “early” retirement age of 50-something. What’s more, they’re not going quietly, but instead are springing up on Web sites and in media interviews, telling their stories and encouraging others to follow suit.

Dreaming of retiring at 45 or earlier? I’m not. Why? Because I don’t want to retire… I just want to be free to pursue things that I believe are important, not do the tasks that others pay me to think are important! Of course, that includes blogging on this blog: I love doing it. I just wish I could find the time to write even more ‘good’ articles’… so I should retire!

StumbleUpon Trolls: Good for your traffic!

One blog I was reading today suggests an off-beat way to get additional traffic from StumbeUpon. It’s an interesting read, and something that I’m aware of: writing negative stories or giving negative opinions (like editorials in newspapers) often elicits much more of a vocal, even visceral, response from readers. That’s why TV Shows like Mad Money, etc. are popular these days, because they elicit a reaction from the audience. Does your blog do that? Does this one? …

It’s All in the Blogger

After blogging about CashQuests.com dismal performance since the sale a few weeks ago, my story has been picked up by John Cow on his blog. Both of these articles suggest what happens when an original owner leaves his/her business in the hands of the new owner: sometimes it doesn’t last long at all.

In the area where I live, I’ve seen new businesses start up, be sold, and close down within the space of two years: I’m particularly thinking of one restaurant near my home where the owner worked hard to create an affordable pleasant lunchbox, and eventually sold the restaurant as a profitable business.

But the new owners couldn’t replicate the lunchbox experience. Fortunately, they had the tenacity and wherewithall to keep going by eventually selling a completely different set of popular food items in Taiwan: Taiwan’s Little Treats. Now they are moving, and I don’t think the new owners will be successful at all. It would be better to start a completely new business for them.

So, this weekend, where there’s money, there’s InvestorBlogger!